Talkin \’bout Progress Clerks

Source: Florida Times-Union (Original Article)

In 1966, 24-year-old Max Earnheart was on patrol in Vietnam when an enemy grenade exploded. Shrapnel tore into his chest and collarbone.

Now, after a 42-year battle that would do a soldier proud, he finally is getting his deserved Purple Heart.

Earnheart, who lives in Mandarin, still isn’t sure how he got lost in the Army’s system despite at least some documentation showing he was eligible for the award.

“I just slipped through the cracks, I guess,” he said.

His plight began on May 28, 1966, when as part of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, Earnheart and about 10 fellow soldiers were on patrol in Vietnam’s central highlands near An Khe.

The grenade went off, with the shrapnel piercing him.

Earnheart was taken to the base hospital at An Khe and stayed put for about 1? weeks. It was then the cracks started widening and the Purple Heart, awarded to those wounded or killed while serving, started to slip away.

“They [the Army] must have forgotten everything,” he said of the beginnings of his administrative nightmare. “I even missed a month’s pay [$96].”

During his hospital stay, Earnheart got a visit from former boxing champ Archie Moore and an Army chaplain.

He wasn’t worried about the Purple Heart; he was worried about the pay and asked both to try to do something about it.

“I was a poor little private and didn’t have any money to speak of,” he said.

He still hasn’t seen the money.

After his release from the hospital, Earnheart finished his two-year tour of duty back in the U.S., before being discharged in 1967.

Over time, Earnheart says he “pretty much had put any hope of receiving the Purple Heart out of my mind,” and he wound up in St. Petersburg working for a bank. In 1991, he and his wife of 23 years, Connie, transferred to Jacksonville with the former First Union bank.

In early 2006, Earnheart decided to fight the everybody loves raymond dvd fight.

“I looked at Purple Hearts …continue reading

Source: MiamiHerald.com (Original Article)

With his girlfriend and her baby girl waiting in a getaway car early Friday, a man wearing a mask, police said, robbed a Dunkin’ Donuts in Lauderhill and shot the clerk in the face before disappearing into the night.

They didn’t get far.

Thanks to an alert customer at the Dunkin’ Donuts shop, police quickly tracked down Steven Woods, 23, and his companions at a Comfort Inn parking lot on West Commercial Boulevard — only about 40 blocks from the crime scene.

The customer who spotted Woods at the doughnut shop was not identified by police.

The Dunkin’ Donuts employee, Sukhbir Singh, 40, somehow survived the shooting. He was taken to Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale in stable condition.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Here’s how the alleged gunman was thwarted, according to Lauderhill police spokesman Lt. Rick Rocco:

About 1:15 a.m. Friday, a regular Dunkin’ Donuts patron was pulling through the drive-through lane at 7340 W. Commercial Blvd.

The customer saw a robbery in progress, with Woods holding Singh at gunpoint.

After pulling around to the other side, the customer saw a red car leaving the parking lot. The patron called 911 to tell police about the robbery — and then followed the red car.

Police arrived at the Dunkin’ Donuts to find Singh alive, but bleeding from a gunshot wound in the left cheek. He had also called 911.

Meanwhile, the customer tailed Woods’ car to a Comfort Inn at 3601 W. Commercial Blvd., where Lauderhill police and Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies intercepted it.

CHILD FOUND IN CAR

Inside the car, they found Woods, his girlfriend — Marie Patterson, 20, who was driving — and her young child.

Woods, of Sunrise, and Patterson had been dating for only three weeks.

As Woods stepped out of the car to give himself up, a mask he reportedly wore during the robbery and money taken from the doughnut shop Aussie Credit Cards fell off his lap, police said.

The …continue reading

Source: The Oregonian - OregonLive.com (Original Article)

It’s not the weather that has Portland socked in today.

Instead, it’s fans of the wildly popular blogger
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee — aka the Yarn Harlot — who will be
storming about the city snapping photos of partially knit
socks.

Pearl-McPhee is a big fan of knit footwear; when she tours,
she always takes a photo of her “traveling sock”
against the backdrop of those who come to hear her. This
time, Tina Newton of Blue Moon Fiber Arts, a yarn company in
Scappoose, which is bringing Pearl-McPhee to town, decided
to put things on the other foot, so to speak, and have the
fans take the sock photos.

She concocted an “Inexplicable Knitting Behavior
Scavenger Hunt” tied to Pearl-McPhee’s reading
tonight at the World Forestry Center.

The sock-in-progress-picture scavenger hunt began Saturday,
with Earth Day cleanups being the sought-after backdrop.
Today, for Pearl-McPhee’s visit on the actual Earth
Day, knitters have a list of more than 50 point-producing
options. Included are trees, yarn stores, McMenamins
brewpubs, Voodoo Doughnut, Portland City Hall (extra points
if you get the mayor to hold your knitting), Benson
Bubblers, . . . well, it’s a long list of Portland
sites, eco-friendly and otherwise.

Rachel Nichols of Hillsboro was one of the knitters out and
about Saturday shooting photos. (Technically she was only
supposed to be at cleanup sites, but she got a jump on the
scavenger hunt list instead.)

“I just thought it’d be really funny to walk up to
random people” and take sock photos with them, she said
Monday. “It’s a really good way to get to know
downtown better and just to meet people.”

While the folks at Voodoo Doughnut weren’t expecting
her request to write the word “sock” in icing on a
doughnut, the clerk in the Made in Oregon store said,
“You want to take my picture with your sock,”
before Nichols had a chance to ask. Other footwear-holding
Yarn Harlot fans had already prison break dvd been by.

Blue Moon plans to …continue reading

Source: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (Original Article)

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana counties inundated with voter registrations, thanks to the hotly contested Democratic presidential primary, are struggling to process the applications in time to send their poll books to printers, and some say a state system designed to clean up voter rolls is hindering their progress.

A total of 160,000 voter registrations were processed in Indiana since January, bringing the number of registered voters up to nearly 4.28 million, the Secretary of State’s office said.

In the week before the April 7 registration deadline for the May 6 primary, nearly 86,000 forms were submitted. The crush caused voter registration offices around Indiana to hire additional staff, extend hours and work through weekends to process the forms.

“It’s been a train wreck,” said John Riordan, Democratic member of the Marion County voter registration board in Indianapolis. “The reason we’re working 24 hours is because the system is working so poorly.”

The county had about 20 temporary workers and staff working 24 hours a day to process more than 40,000 applications received since March 25.

Registration officials in counties including Lake, Allen and Vanderburgh said it could take six minutes or more to enter one voter into the database during peak periods.

“The system seems to be running slower as the day gets longer,” Bartholomew County Clerk Tami Hines said Wednesday.

Some counties said they could print supplemental poll books for names that weren’t processed by printing deadlines.

In 2006, all 92 Indiana counties began entering voter records into a database that is connected to several others, including those at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Department of Correction.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s office said it was confident that everyone who registered would be able to THATS SO RAVEN dvd vote.

Exact year-to-year comparisons were not possible …continue reading

Source: Modesto Bee (Original Article)

Fire near Pine Crest

By DAVE PETERSON
dpeterson@modbee.com

last updated: April 19, 2008 02:17:13 AM

COLD SPRINGS — One home was lost, two others were damaged and about 20 acres of forest burned Friday evening in this mountain community near Pine Crest, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Cal Fire ordered 50 to 60 homes in the subdivision evacuated after the fire spread and the house and a garage were overrun.

Rita Wolf, 53, chief clerk at the Cold Springs Store and a 28-year resident of the area, said she spotted smoke about 3:30 p.m. and called for firefighters to investigate.

By 10 p.m., firefighters from Cal Fire and Tuolumne County were battling to surround the flames. Forward progress of the fire, which had been moving northeast, had been stopped, Cal Fire spokeswoman Nancy Longmore said. They had a line around the fire but did not call it contained.

The fire started when an unattended debris burn spread, Longmore said.

“Even though the hills and grass are somewhat green, there is a lot of dry grass underneath the green grass,” Longmore said.

She said the person who left the burn unattended has been cited.

“Even though burn permits are not required until May 1, people are still required to take care with debris burning,” Longmore warned. “This is a case of people not being careful.”

Nine fire engines and nine ground crews — six of them inmate teams — were fighting the fire, which was being fed by high winds and heavy timber in the area, Cal Fire spokeswoman Lisa Williams said. More crews are expected to arrive today, Cal Fire Capt. Mark Steward said.

Along with the home, on Kerns Drive, that was destroyed and the two damaged, a garage, two vehicles and a boat were destroyed, Williams said.

An evacuation center was set up at Black Oak Elementary School, 18995 Twain Harte Drive in Twain Harte, Williams House And Garden Article 24201 said. About 8 p.m., the county …continue reading

Source: USA Today (Original Article)

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana counties inundated with voter registrations thanks to the hotly contested Democratic presidential primary are struggling to process the applications in time to send their poll books to printers, and some say a state system designed to clean up voter rolls is hindering their progress.

Some 160,000 voter registrations were processed in Indiana since January, bringing the number of registered voters up to nearly 4.28 million, the Secretary of State’s office said. In the week before the April 7 registration deadline for the May 6 primary, nearly 86,000 forms were submitted.

The crush caused voter registration offices around Indiana to hire additional staff, extend hours and work through weekends to process the forms.

“It’s been a train wreck,” said John Riordan, Democratic member of the Marion County voter registration board in Indianapolis. “The reason we’re working 24 hours is because the system is working so poorly.”

The county had about 20 temporary workers and staff working 24 hours a day to process more than 40,000 applications they’d received since March 25.

Registration officials in counties including Lake, Allen and Vanderburgh said it could take six minutes or more to enter one voter into the database during peak periods.

“The system seems to be running slower as the day gets longer,” Bartholomew County Clerk Tami Hines said Wednesday.

Some counties said they could print supplemental poll books for names that weren’t processed by printing deadlines.

Deputy Secretary of State Matt Tusing said “the speed and performance of the system is a minor problem.”

“This perfect storm got generated but the system was stable and robust,” Tusing said. Melbourne bar “It’s caused a little bit of …continue reading

Source: News & Observer (Original Article)

Sean Coffey CHAPEL HILL -
News stories have highlighted the effects of the subprime meltdown on borrowers throughout North Carolina. While much of the focus has been on practices that many would construe as predatory lending, state legislation went into effect April 1 to regulate another set of practices, ones that consumer advocates have described as “predatory loan servicing.”This term encompasses several practices that harm borrowers, including loan servicers illegally charging borrowers extra fees, not crediting borrowers’ payments or charging borrowers for insurance they already have.The new law makes progress in regulating loan servicing, but it fails to address all the predatory loan servicing practices that harm borrowers.Loan servicing companies collect and process mortgage payments from borrowers and submit the payments to the mortgage owners. Two key factors may lower the incentive for servicers to act in the best interests of homeowners.First, while borrowers choose their lenders, they have no input as to what company services their loan.Second, loan servicers are typically allowed to keep all revenue generated from the fees they charge borrowers.Kurt Eggert, a law professor at Chapman University, has cited the example of Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, who allegedly bragged in 2004 that fees generated an extra $17 million to $19 million in monthly revenue.State House Bill 1374, signed into law in August, is intended to better regulate mortgage loan servicing. The need for regulation was clear; in addition to lawsuits in North Carolina and settlements at the national level, North Carolina’s commissioner of banks received 299 complaints about loan servicing in 2007, a 32 percent increase from the prior year.Two of the most significant provisions in the law, Sections Four and Five, did not take effect until April 1. As part of the foreclosure process, Section Four requires loan servicers to disclose whether or St George No Annual Fee not they met a borrower’s requests …continue reading

Source: International Herald Tribune (Original Article)

EDITOR'S NOTE — This is another story in an occasional series following the efforts of Salva Dut, a Sudanese refugee in the U.S. and one of the former “lost boys,” who has devoted himself to bringing water wells to his impoverished homeland.

%byline(By BEN DOBBIN%)

%bytitle(Associated Press Writer%)

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ABILNYANG, Sudan (AP) — Every day, Manut Ngor Koot leads his family's cow for miles across the southern Sudan plains to a murky swamp that serves as his village's chief source of water. The cow is balky and has a limp. Looking after her is time-consuming, often frustrating.

The little boy's routine is about to change.

In a few weeks, he'll be taking a shorter walk in the opposite direction to attend school for the first time. There, in a stand of trees, a 260-foot-deep bore-hole is being drilled, endowing isolated Abilnyang and its more than 1,600 inhabitants with a perpetual supply of safe drinking water.

For most everyone here, the hand-pump well is an unimagined bounty, a magnet of vitality in a semiarid nook of Africa. Already, a two-room primary school is being built a hundred yards away, and a market hawking maize and sorghum, fish, salt and honey is sure to follow within a year.

Resting under a fig tree in 123-degree heat, drilling crew chief Salva Dut spies a sparkle in Manut's eyes. Considering his own passage from war-frayed youth to American immigrant as one of the rescued “Lost Boys of Sudan,” Dut understands a thing or two about wondrous possibilities.

“You never know what person will change the world someday, maybe in a corner of this bush,” he says. “It's very important for us to do this hardship work … to show them the path where they could go.”

Veiled in dust and wearing a shredded black polyester shirt with roughly scissored sleeves, Manut answers brightly when asked why he's eager to compare credit card go to school.

“I want to learn …continue reading

Source: Chicago Sun-Times (Original Article)

Hard times hit the good life
‘A LOUSY RUN’ | Majority of middle class feel they’ve spent last 5 years stuck or in reverse

April 10, 2008

BY ANDREW HERRMANN AND PATRICK REHKAMP Staff Reporters

If the middle class is the backbone of America, the country appears to be in need of a good chiropractor.
A new poll finds the majority of the middle class feel they either haven’t moved forward or have fallen backward in their lives in the last five years — the worst showing of short-term personal progress in nearly 50 years, the Pew Research Center said Wednesday.

» Click to enlarge image

The majority of the middle class feel they either haven’t moved forward or have fallen backward in their lives in the last five years.
(Photo illustration)

» Click to enlarge image

While it’s rough out there, it’s not as bad as the Great Depression. Here 5,000 people line up for federal jobs in New York in 1933.
(AP)

RELATED STORIES

Gas prices: $112 a barrel, $4 a gallon?

Comment: How have you cut spending?

For better or worse

Asked about progress over the last five years, Americans said:
It’s Better: 41 percent
None: 25 percent
Fallen backward: 31 percent
(High mark: In 1997, some 57 percent said they were in better shape than they were five years earlier.)
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE:* Cable or satellite TV: 70 percent
* High-speed Internet: 66 percent
* High-def or flat screen TV: 42 percent
* Child in private school: 15 percent
* Paid household help: 16 percent
* Vacation home: 10 percent
Pew Research Center

“Americans feel stuck in their tracks,” mobile clips researchers reported in the study, “Inside …continue reading

Source: Independent Online (Original Article)

Twenty-seven Western Cape traffic department employees were investigated for fraud in relation to the alleged copying and selling of learner’s licence tests in the past year, says Melvin Arendse, assistant manager in the compliance monitoring unit.

Of the 27 cases, 11 had resulted in a warning, nine were still in progress, six had been cancelled and one employee had been suspended.

Arendse said examiners who wanted “quick money” did not realise they were causing danger to society by giving out learner’s tests before the tests were written.

From August a new learner’s licence test would be introduced. There were plans for a computerised system, to be introduced from 2009.

It was a touch screen system, where questions would not be in the same order and no two applicants would have the same test.

A learner’s licence holder said he had passed by revising from a copied test paper. He said he bought it from an examiner for R180 and it had helped him pass.

Nothobeka Jali, a Khayelitsha Driving Licence Testing Centre administrative clerk, where an electronic testing system was already running, said the system had resulted in a decrease in the amount of test fraud. - West Cape News

This article was originally published on House And Garden Article 13749 page 4 of Cape Argus on April 10, 2008