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Funding offered for volunteers

Voluntary groups working with young people in Bath are invited toapply for funding.

Bath and North East Somerset Council has a youth enablement fundand is looking to hand out grants totalling Pounds 5,000.

Recently appointed voluntary sector development worker VickyBritton will be on hand to support applicants with the process.

Councillor Nathan Hartley, cabinet member for early years,children and youth, said: "We hope that the grants will help tolaunch aspiring projects, as well as supporting new ideas fromexisting providers of youth …

Court Rules in Favor of Enemy Combatant

RICHMOND, Va. - A divided panel from a conservative federal appeals court delivered a harsh rebuke to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy Monday, ruling that U.S. residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without being charged.

The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government should charge Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident and the only suspected enemy combatant on American soil, or release him from military custody.

The federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip al-Marri of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, the judges found in Monday's 2-1 decision.

"Put …

Ferrari to split KERS strategy in Bahrain

Ferrari will use the KERS power-boost device on only one of its cars at this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix as it searches for a way to turn around its miserable start to the 2009 season.

Kimi Raikkonen said Thursday that he will not use the device in Friday practice, while teammate Felipe Massa would, and the team would then assess which strategy gets better results.

"I won't use it tomorrow," Raikkonen said. "The other car will run it tomorrow and then we will make a decision about which way we go. We want to look a little bit to compare the two cars and see what difference it makes."

Ferrari has gone through the opening three …

Sox, Lamont `relieved'

WHITE SOX 4 ANGELS 3

ANAHEIM, Calif. Now the White Sox and Gene Lamont know thatGene Lamont can manage the White Sox.

The new skipper, who didn't have to push many buttons in Tuesdaynight's easy opening victory, played phone tag with his bullpenWednesday night when the Sox took a one-run lead in the eighth inningon Robin Ventura's single.

With one out in the Angels' eighth, Lamont called forright-hander Donn Pall to replace left-handed starter Greg Hibbard.Pall got one out, but when Gary Gaetti singled, Lamont summoned leftyScott Radinsky to get the last one.

Lamont made one more move in the ninth and it, too, worked. Heasked Bobby Thigpen to close …

Awake to despair, I discover hope

NEW ORDER VOICE

My eschatology has landed on earth; it's not pure heaven anymore. In other words, most Christian words of hope fail to console me. Yet I remain a stalwart follower of Jesus.

I am more convinced by environmentalist Derrick Jensen, who, along with others in his field, says in impolite terms, "We're ruined." We're mowing down forests (our great lungs), over-fishing the seas (vacuuming of the ocean bottom, killing "junk fish" not fit for the market), and doing so with an appalling apathy that allows the system of destruction to increase in momentum.

"Frankly, I don't have much hope," says Jensen in his two-volume Endgame: The Problem of Civilization. "Hope …

Huckabee Drops Out

Mike Huckabee bowed to reality Tuesday and out of the Republican presidential race.

"We kept the faith," he told his end-of-the-road rally Tuesday after John McCain clinched the nomination. "I'd rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place."

The genial conservative went out as he had campaigned all along, with a quip: "It's time for us to hit the reset button."

Huckabee won the leadoff Iowa caucuses, making him a sudden but short-lived sensation, and then seven other states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kansas. Meantime, McCain piled …

ROVERS SWOOP

Ian Atkins today pulled off a major transfer coup by bringingMillwall's Robbie Ryan to Bristol Rovers on a three-year deal.

The 27-year-old Dubliner has played 226 League games for the Lionsand his last appearance for the Londoners was in this year's FA Cupfinal, where he had the unenviable task of marking ManchesterUnited's Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo.

But the Republic of Ireland international has rejected a new one-year contract offer at the New Den and Atkins has beaten off a stringof other clubs to make his biggest capture of the summer.

The manager could well make it a double swoop in the next few daysby landing former Aston Villa and Blackpool …

Pakistan: Textile exports earn US$3.3 billion

Pakistani textile manufacturers earned US$3,313 million in foreign currency during the first half of the current fiscal year (July-December 2002) as compared with US$2,846 million in the year before, up 16.4%.

Exports of cotton fabrics increased by 20% to US$627 million from US$522 million, along with those of knitwear by 25% to US$544 million from US$436 million, bedwear by 27.2% to US$577 million from US$453.4 million, towels by 11.4% to US$ 147 million from …

Wednesday's Sports Scoreboard

All Times Eastern

American League

Tampa Bay 4, Oakland 3 F

N.Y. Yankees 5, Minnesota 1 F

Chicago White Sox 10, Texas 8 F

Detroit 7, Kansas City 1 F

L.A. Angels 14, Cleveland 11 F

Boston 6, Seattle 3 F 12 Innings

Toronto 2, Baltimore 1 …

East End fires may be related, Officials believe arson is to blame in series of blazes

Charleston firefighters believe the latest of nearly 30 fires inan East End neighborhood the past several months, like the othersbefore, was lit by an arsonist.

As in the other fires, there were no injuries reported in the4:19a.m. fire at 1547 Jackson St. Monday, department officials said.

Capt. Ray Griffith, who heads up the Charleston Fire Department'sarson investigation unit, is certain that all of the blazes in thelast few months have been set intentionally.Griffith reported all of the fires have been set within a three-block area near the 1500 block of Jackson Street, and each was setusing a cigarette lighter or matches.He also has tracked the times that each …

Jackson offers Will County majority seats on airport board

In an effort to keep the momentum going to build a third airport in the south suburbs, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. said Thursday he is willing to make changes to the airport commission he has long championed to provide for greater inclusion for Will County officials.

Before a summit called by Senate President Emil Jones (D-14th) with Jackson, Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halverson (D-40th), Will County Executive Larry Walsh, and Jackson spokesman Rick Bryant, the congressman held a news conference laying out he wants to proceed to comply with a legal ruling by Attorney General Lisa Madigan stating that home-rule communities must be involved in the process.

"As it …

Iranian FM: OPEC to study weak dollar and possible currency basket.

OPEC will study the weak U.S. dollar on the oil cartel's earnings and investigate the possibility of a currency basket, Iran's oil minister said Sunday.

"We have agreed to set up a committee consisting of oil and finance ministers from OPEC countries to study the impact of the dollar on oil prices," Gholam Hussein Nozari told Dow Jones Newswires at a rare heads-of-state OPEC summit.

Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani also confirmed that OPEC was forming the committee, which would "submit to OPEC its recommendation on a basket of currencies that OPEC members will deal with." He did not give a timeline for the recommendation.

…

Turbine decision delay

An Energy company's plans to build three 262ft wind turbines havebeen put on hold.

Councillors on the Formartine area committee have delayed decidingthe application until they have visited the site, at Mains of Hatton,Kirktown of Auchterless, near Turriff.

The committee heard that 20 letters of objection had been receivedto the proposal, highlighting concerns about property values and theimpact on bird life.

Part of the electricity generated would be used to support Grampian Country Foods.

The councillor for Turriff and district, Anne Robertson, saidthere were "too many ifs, buts and maybes and not enough firmevidence about some of the issues".

PSYCHED OUT

PSYCHED OUT Appraising the radical legacy of two French intellectuals SCOTT MCLEMEE GILLES DELEUZE AND F�LIX GUATTARI: INTERSECTING LIVES BY FRAN�OIS DOSSE new york: Columbia univeristy press. 672 pages. $38.

Bringing together Marx and Freud in a united theoretical front was an urgent task for radicals throughout much of the twentieth century, with benefits that would flow to historical materialism and psychoanalysis alike. The stakes were already clear in Wilhelm Reich's illfated efforts of the 1920s and '30s: The central but underdeveloped notion of class consciousness (about which Marx himself had written just a few suggestive pages) might be put on better footing by annexing a theory of the mind that was, after all, materialist in its basic assumptions. And revolutionary expropriation would be good for psychoanalysis itself - it would rescue the original radicalism of Freud's work, which was otherwise obscured by both the commodification of treatment and die founder's more conservative moods.

Reich's Sex-Pol movement was instrumental in die radical reclamation of Freud. Reich and his associates offered therapy and sex education in working-class neighborhoods in Germany and thereby created a bridge between the Communist movement and die International Psychoanalytic Association; but neither side really wanted such a bridge, and Reich was expelled from both in the early 1930s, within about a year of each other. He would go on to develop even more distinctive theories about how psychic energy worked and what you could do with it. But by that point, he had abandoned scientific socialism and was living within science fiction, via inventions like his renowned orgone box, which professed to harness libidinal energy for alleged scientific applications.

Just where Gilles Deleuze and F�lix Guattari stood vis-�vis this peculiar forebear was one enigma that loomed over their Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972), at least for some of us who read it in the United States during the decade or so after its 1 977 translation. A few years hence, the question would seem anomalous. But as late as the second half of the Reagan administration, Reich's writings were part of the canon that we untenured radicals absorbed from those slightly older than us - along with the Marxo-Freudian syntheses of Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization (1955) and Norman O. Brown in Life Against Death ( 1 959), and even a certain amount of R. D. Laing's work, with its rhapsodies on the deeper sanity of the psychotic break in a society that was itself insane.

These were important books in the 1950s and '60s, and we continued to read them, if not without misgivings. The deinstitutionalization of schizophrenics was mainly an effect of Reagan-era budget cuts, rather than of the counterculture. Either way, it was hard to see liberation on the faces of the people begging for change on the capitalist sidewalk. And that, in turn, made it more difficult to know what to make of Deleuze and Guattari's stated preference for "a schizophrenic out for a walk" over "a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch" as die model of subjective experience.

The crazy-salad system building o� Anti-Oedipus was intoxicating, as was that of its sequel, A Thousand Plateaus (1980), but the implications proved ambiguous and not a little troubling. Reich, at least, believed in the fusion of Marx and Freud as a step forward in the struggle for both collective and individual happiness. Even when he went mad, he saw himself as defending mankind from pollution by atomic bombs and sinister UFO technology. It seemed as if Deleuze and Guattari were picking up where he had left off, in prose that was playfully delirious, where Reich's later ranting had been in terrible earnest. But it was hard to tell how their vision of human emancipation could be distinguished from a celebration of profound abjection.

In expressing these concerns, I date myself, no doubt. By the early 1990s, something changed in the context of Deleuze's reception, at least in die United States. Until then, he had been known mostly by way of Foucault's epochal logrolling ("perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzean" ) . But by the time of Deleuze's death in 1995, the increasing pace of translation and interpretation had created its own well-regulated and institutionally disciplined plateau of meaning. Nobody would ever think to plug Anti-Oedipus into a "reading machine" cobbled together from leftover bits of New Left ideology. It had become a text inspiring patient exegesis, not worry.

At first reading, Fran�ois Dosse's joint biography of Deleuze and Guattari, subtitled Intersecting Lives, seems every bit a product of this change in discursive regime. It takes the apotheosis very much for granted. Dosse is the author of several volumes on the history of recent French theoretical work in the humanities and social sciences. His new book is, like them, conscientious to the point of exhaustion. None could wish it longer. His accounts of each stage of Deleuze and Guattari's work (separately and in collaboration) are cogent and never indulge in the mimicry that can make commentary on poststructuralist thought such a exercise in terminal cuteness. It is, at times, curiously stolid. There are chapters describing how Deleuze and Guattari encountered various radical factions during the 1960s and '70s, when traffic between the street and the seminar room was often heavy each way. But in Dosse's telling, all ardor has cooled into so much historical data; he might as well be narrating disputes among the Saint-Simonians in the 1 820s.

Such detachment has its advantages, however. The days when Deleuze inspired anything but gestures of reverence are long since over. Even Alain Badiou, who in decades past denounced Anti-Oedipus for its crimes against Chairman Mao Thought, has more recently conducted his polemic at the subtler level of suggesting that Deleuze's conception of multiplicity amounts to a surreptitious totalization. Beneath this politesse, the biographer hears echoes of the original battles, in which Badiou identified Deleuze and Guattari as "protofascist ideologues" whose seemingly anti-hierarchical notion of the rhizome was just a ruse of "the tyranny of revisionism. " Digging up the old screeds, restoring the work to the scene of combat rather than insisting on pure celebration, is a kind of service.

But to do so while also giving Guattari roughly equal prominence . . . well now, that is revisionism of another variety. The consolidation of a Deleuzean apparatus over the past two decades has come somewhat at the expense of his collaborator, who died in 1992. Even then, Guattari seemed in his friend's shadow - a matter of some unhappiness to both of them, though this is now starting to lift with the increasing availability of his writings (including previously unpublished material) and a small body of commentary on his psychoanalytic and political thought.This work developed in the context of experimental psychiatric institutions and far-left "groupuscules" that lie well off the usual maps of postwar French cultural life. Dosse's reconstruction of the network of youth hostels, Trotskyist factions, and offbeat discussion circles adds a great deal to our understanding of the tone of Guattari's work, as well as of its implications.

Any sense that Anti-Oedipus is celebrating schizophrenia in some neo-primitivist way (or, conversely, deploying it as some purely theoretical construct) tends to vanish given the full extent of Guattari's activity in treating people afflicted with it. This involved both experiments in relatively egalitarian relations between patients and staff and die use of psychopharmaceuticals. The usual '60s antinomian he wasn't. He could recognize the realities of suffering and vulnerability; the revolutionary project involved opening oneself to the possibility of solidarity across vast differences in experience, with schizophrenia as an extreme. Guattari also seems to have been a calming influence on some of his violence-prone comrades - working quietly, behind the scenes, to persuade them to explore more creative options than armed struggle.

There are complaints to lodge against this biography. Deleuze had an exceptionally ardent relationship with British and American literature. So his marriage to Fanny Deleuze who translated D. H. Lawrence into French, seems as if it would merit some discussion - but it doesn't get any here. Nor is there any serious appraisal of his interaction with the journalist Claire Parnet, which resulted in two volumes named Dialogues ( 1 987), as well as an eight-hour interview called "'L'Ab�c�daire" (i.e., an alphabetical primer). Guattari's involvement in various Marxist groups is described; so are the pleasantries exchanged between Deleuze and the poststructuralist psychoanalytic theorist Louis Althusser. But the question of how Deleuze and Guattari engaged with Marx's own work goes strangely unexplored.

There are numerous mistakes that are, by turns, irritating and inexplicable. I have not tracked down the original to see whether Dosse actually thinks Khrushchev delivered his report on die crimes of Stalin to the Communist Party USA or that Derrida was a member of the Annales School. But given the otherwise exhaustive reach of Dosse's research, it's hard to see how he could. The translator ignores precedent by rendering the objet petit a (that sturdy item of French psychoanalytic jargon, usually left in the original Lacanese) as "the object o." For some reason, the Parti Communiste Fran�ais is abbreviated FCP, which just looks weird. Perhaps I am obsessive, but this is too important a book to have been copyedited by someone who isn't.

"There is a history of thought that cannot be reduced to games of influence," Deleuze said in a late interview. "There is a whole becoming of thought that remains mysterious. " For all its tireless unearthing of texts and contexts, Dosse's biography isn't reductive, nor does the book try to interpret its subjects using their own conceptual idiom (creating a pastiche that domesticates ideas while pretending to radicalize them). For twenty years, we've had an academicized Deleuze - the totem symbol of a safe anarchism that would never do any thing roo crazy. In these pages, he's paired up again with his co-conspirator, a strange figure who haunted all kinds of revolutionary circles and manic gatherings. Staid as he is, Dosse makes Deleuze and Guattari mysterious again.

[Sidebar]

Crazy cool: Gilles Deleuze and F�lix Guattari in the early 1980s.

[Author Affiliation]

Scott McLemee is a writer for Inside Higher Ed.

Conference guidelines for dealing with disagreements [on non-celibate homosexuals]

The topic causing the most discussion at the April meeting of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada General Board was what to do with congregations who accept non-celibate homosexual members.

Helmut Harder, CMC general secretary, referred to letters he has received from five congregations in four provinces. Some churches want the CMC to discipline congregations who differ from Mennonite statements on homosexual relationships. Pleasant Hill Mennonite Church in Saskatoon has prepared its own resolution calling for disciplinary action.

The recent discussions were triggered by South Calgary Inter-Mennonite Church's public decision to welcome gay and lesbian persons as full members (see Canadian Mennonite, Nov. 24, page 20).

"I struggle with how much difference I can accept," said one board member. "I'm pleased we're not taking it too quick, that we're willing to work, that we're willing to counsel," said another.

"If we want purity, not a single one of us would be in the church," said a board member. "How many churches have been excluded since the formation of the conference? If we want to be a conference of exclusion, shouldn't we have started sooner? Certainly on the issue of peace and militarism we should have excluded some churches."

While one called for emphasis on "healing" for homosexual persons, another said, "I would betray [my friends who are gay and lesbian] if I would vote for something that would call homosexuality sin."

The board wrestled with whether the conference had the right to ask a congregation to withdraw its membership. "We are not a legislating body," said one member. It's not fair that we can invite congregations to join, but never ask them to leave, said another.

After hours of discussion, and in spite of obvious differences, the general board decided to take two actions to delegates this summer. One is a set of "Guidelines for building faithful relationships in the church." The guidelines suggest that the concerned parties engage in "loving dialogue in a spirit of mutual accountability."

Area conferences are to be the usual facilitators of dialogue when disagreements arise, with CMC ready to assist. Only as "a last recourse of action" would separation be considered.

The "Resolution on the issue of homosexuality" calls for a renewed commitment of faithfulness to Jesus Christ and a reaffirmation of convictions stated in "Vision: Healing and Hope," Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, and the 1986 resolution on human sexuality. It calls upholding the "Biblical call to faithfulness, chastity and self-discipline in all sexual relationships," and for continued dialogue "on those matters wherein we disagree."

The full text will be sent to congregations in the CMC report book.

Buzz and Johnny B. to get back together

It's official: Buzz and Johnny are getting back together.

Under a two-year agreement signed Friday, Buzz Kilman willreturn as Jonathon Brandmeier's sidekick, starting Jan. 11. The twoworked together for 15 years at WLUP-FM (97.9).

Brandmeier's midday show airs here on WCKG-FM (105.9) and in LosAngeles on KLSX-FM. Both outlets are owned by CBS.Kilman replaces Bruce Wolf, whose contract was not renewed.Wolf continues as morning sports anchor for WFLD-Channel 32.Before Brandmeier reached out to reunite with his formerpartner, Kilman had spent about a year as solo morning host at theLoop. Kilman blamed the premature demise of his show last October ona "lack of commitment" by the station."I was very disappointed with the Loop because of all of theeffort I put into it," he said. "But as I look back, I can see itwasn't going to happen because of the dynamics of everybody involved."When we came up with flat numbers in the spring (ratings) book,there was panic in the streets and a lot of finger pointing. Supportfor the morning show evaporated, and two months later they announceda new (more music) format. I was replaced by Pink Floyd."Kilman, 54, an accomplished blues musician, also will host aSunday night blues show on WCKG.In the latest Arbitron quarterly survey, Brandmeier's middayshow tied for 17th place with a 2.4 percent share and cumulativeweekly audience of 218,500.Tuning in: Union sees red over contract delayFollowing up on a similar demonstration Nov. 23, news anchors andreporters at WBBM-Channel 2 and WMAQ-Channel 5 dressed in black andred Monday. The gesture dramatized frustration over management'sdemands and the lack of progress in negotiations with the AmericanFederation of Television and Radio Artists. The previous contractexpired more than a year ago.Black symbolizes the members' solidarity and seriousness, whilered denotes anger, said Dick Kay, president of the AFTRA local andpolitical editor at Channel 5. Contract talks resume Thursday.Dan Rostenkowski, the former congressional powerhouse, may be headedfor a new career as a national pundit. After engaging in a spiritedexchange about impeachment with Oliver North on MSNBC last week,Rostenkowski was offered a contract to appear as a regular guest onthe cable network's nightly talk shows.Rostenkowski, who continues to share political insights withWalter Jacobson on Fox-owned Channel 32 from time to time, said he'smulling over the offer from MSNBC.Channel 2 has dropped Steve Baskerville's "Best of Chicago" featurefrom its 10 p.m. Friday newscasts. Figures. It was the best thingthe show had going for it.Dialing: Score didn't add up for Steve CochranNow that Steve Cochran is headed for WKQI-FM in Detroit, moredetails are emerging about his extended talks with WSCR-AM (1160)concerning a morning gig at the sports talker.Harvey Wells, vice president and general manager of the Score,confirmed that he and Cochran discussed a six-figure salary. Thatcame after Cochran met once with Wells and twice with operationsdirector Jeff Schwartz and program director Ron Gleason.Although Wells acknowledged that his salary proposal fell shortof Cochran's expectations, Gleason continued to pursue him until theday after Cochran signed with the Detroit station."I really wanted to stay in Chicago, but it's more clear nowthan ever that this was not the right situation for me," saidCochran, former morning host at WMVP-AM (1000) and the old WPNT.Roy Leonard, who's retiring after 31 years at WGN-AM (720), hosts afarewell remote broadcast from 8 to 10:45 a.m. Saturday at the Museumof Broadcast Communications in the Chicago Cultural Center. For hisfinal in-studio show Dec. 26, Leonard will be joined by his wife,Sheila.E-mail: feder@suntimes.com

Moscow gays want to picket Obama

Moscow Pride founder Nikolai Alekseev says members of his group will attempt to stage a picket in favor of same- sex marriage at the U.S. Embassy on July 7 during President Barack Obama's visit.

It is unlikely the activists will receive city permission to do so. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has banned pride parades for the past four years and sent riot police to aggressively arrest those who ignored the bans.

Luzhkov has called gay parades "demonic," "satanic" and "weapons of mass destruction." He also has said the bans are for gays' own good so that "radical Christians" don't have a chance to "kill them."

Alekseev is hopeful that he' 11 be able to pull off the picket regardless because "the presidential media pack will be in town."

Russia's FM compares Syria attack to civil war

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday compared an attack by Syrian renegade troops on a government building to the beginning of a civil war.

Lavrov urged Syrian authorities and opposition forces to cease violence and negotiate, saying that "violence is not only coming from authorities."

He called Wednesday's attack by Syrian soldiers who deserted and sided with the opposition "already looks like a civil war."

Russia earlier urged Syrian leaders to implement reforms, but insisted that opposition forces should also be held accountable for the unrest.

But prominent Syrian opposition leaders who met with Lavrov on Tuesday said that they would not talk with President Bashar Assad.

Pressure has mounted on Assad to end the government's deadly crackdown on dissent. Lavrov also urged Syrian authorities to admit monitors from the Arab league and allow journalists to cover events in the country without restrictions.

Clinton heads investment meeting in Haiti

Bill Clinton headlined an investors' conference Thursday in Haiti's capital to promote economic growth and job creation in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, is also planning to visit the countryside Friday as part of a two-day visit.

Two hundred foreign investors were gathering for the conference, sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank to discuss opportunities in Haiti's garment assembly, agriculture and energy industries.

"Haiti is open for business," Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis told attendees at an upscale hotel. "And as you know, time is of the essence."

Haiti was once home to productive farms and garment factories where low-wage workers sewed clothes for export, but years of turmoil have destroyed its environment and economy.

Clinton was tasked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this spring with helping restore the economy, and thus halt upheaval, in a country where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.

The U.N. has had five peacekeeping missions here since 1993, including a Brazil-led force of 9,000 soldiers and police that has been in place since a violent revolt in 2004.

But debate over raising the country's minimum wage in garment factories _ currently less than $2 a day _ has sparked street protests and clashes with police and peacekeepers in recent months.

Course set to create a buzz

THE Carmarthenshire Beekeeping Association are starting abeginners' course on Sunday, February 13 at their apiary atCwmoernant Farm, on Reservoir Road in the town. The course starts at2pm and will run for a total of six weeks and is aimed at people whoare interested in becoming beekeepers, but may know nothing or verylittle about the subject.

Spokeswoman for the county association Cath Tansley said: "Aspart of the course we will cover the life of the honeybee, thedifferences between honeybees and other foragers, types of hives,diseases, and a range of other topics." The cost of taking part inthe beginner course is Pounds 50 per person. Anyone wishing to speakwith association members for further details about the course shouldemail cathytansley123@btinternet.com.

December blockbuster ; The Ambani brothers love to make announcements around their father's birth anniversary on December 28. This year, while Mukesh started off the Reliance Petroleum refinery on December 25, Anil announced the GSM launch on December 30.

After some dithering, Reliance Industries' subsidiary ReliancePetroleum announced the commissioning of its new greenfield refineryat Jamnagar on December 25, meeting the yearend target it had setfor itself in 2008. The announcement came after initial reports thatthe commissioning might happen only in March 2009.The move wasperfectly timed with Dhirubhai Ambani's birth anniversary onDecember 28. But it was tokenism more than anything else. For itwill take months to get the plant fully running. Only the crude unithas been activated. The Reliance Petroleum press release said thatthe rest of the secondary units are being synchronised andcommissioned. While officials at Reliance Industries refused to comeout with a definite date by which all the units will be functioning,sources indicated that it may take a while. In fact, sources saidthecrude unit itself will take sometime to stabilise and it will bewell into January before processing starts.Meanwhile, with twoReliance refineries at Jamnagar, this little town in Gujarat isalready being labelled as the refining hub of the world. Essar'srefinery is also located in the same place. The capacity of the newReliance Petroleum refinery is 5.8 lakh barrels per day and is thesixthlargest in the world. It includes a 0.9 MTPA polypropyleneplant and has been built at a cost of $6 billion. The Reliance groupnow accounts for 2 per cent of the world's total refiningcapacity.The new refinery, however, comes on stream at probably themost difficult quarter for the group. Standard&Poor's (S & P's)changed its outlook on the company to negative from stable. S & P'scredit analyst Mehul Sukkawala said:Profitability is expected to beadversely affected by lower fuel demand, especially in developedmarkets.In a report, S & P has pointed out that the company willface adverse market conditions immediately, but its cash flows mayimprove once the new refinery starts full-scale operations.The otherissue that will worry Reliance Petroleum is the narrowing differencebetween the prices of sweet crude and the high-sulphur heavy crude.The company's ability to process the cheaper, heavier crude allowedit to enjoy a higher refining margin in the past. However, withrefiners globally adopting the technology to process heavy crude,the price differential between the two has already decreased to$1.20 a barrel, from as high as $10 a barrel in 2004. The newJamnagar refinery coming on stream has further buoyed the market forheavy sour crude. The output from Indian refineries fell by 1.1 percent in November 2008 an indicator of the adverse market conditions.Reliance Industries' refinery output, too, has fallen. Clearly, allis not well for Reliance and 2009 could be a challenging year forthe group.

Testing times& bull; New refinery is world's sixth-largest withcapacity of 5.8 lakh barrels per day& bull; However, RIL's grossrefining margins dropped by $2 in the September '08 quarter comparedto the average for 2007-08& bull; S & P feels refining margins woulddecline further by $3 to $4& bull; S & P revised outlook from stableto negative due to company's increased debtRinging in GSM& bull; Rs10,000 crore of investments almost committed& bull; Will reach11,000 towns and scale up to 24,000 soon& bull; Launch used existingtowers of Reliance Infratel (set up for the CDMA business)& bull;Infratel also offering network for other new licensees& bull;Aggressive plans for nationwide 3G services On Tuesday, December 30,Anil Ambani announced the nationwide roll-out of GSM services byReliance Communications (RCom). It was yet another importantmilestone for the Anil Ambani-promoted company. While it offers CDMAservices across the country, its subsidiary Reliance Telecomcurrently offers GSM telephony services in only three circles: WestBengal, Assam and Gujarat. Now, the junior Ambani intends to use itsGSM network to catch up with market leader Bharti Airtel and keepother rivals like Vodafone at bay. GSM services, after all, accountfor about 75 per cent of India's 325 million mobile users.Initially,Reliance Communications will cover 11,000 towns and 3,40,000villages with its GSM operations. It has completed most of thecapital spending on the second network and has already spent Rs10,000 crore ($2.1 billion). At a press conference in RelianceCentre in Mumbai, Ambani said:With the combined offering of GSM andCDMA we will be aiming to become India's #1 network and serve onebillion Indians.Ambani also announced that Reliance Communicationswill be bidding for 3G spectrum on both GSM and CDMA platforms andwould want to be a nationwide operator for both.Angel Broking'sanalyst Harit Shah feels the entry of Reliance in GSM services isonly good news for subscribers.Competition always helps,he says. Thebrokerage has put a buy on this scrip with a target price of Rs450.For Anil Ambani himself, things have come full circle. In 1997,Reliance Telecom, the initial telecom venture by the unifiedReliance group, began operations on the GSM platform under thestewardship of Anil Ambani himself. Later, in 2000, Mukesh Ambanitook over the mantle of Reliance Communications and preferred CDMAit was then known as the poor man's mobile service with limitedmobility. Subsequently, Anil took a backseat in the telecom businessuntil the Reliance empire was carved up between the brothers. Andtoday, he has led the business back to GSM technology.The tariffplans announced on January 4 for the GSM foray attempt to outdo thepopular 501 scheme (Monsoon Hungama) that the company had offeredunder his brother Mukesh's leadership. The GSM customers have beenoffered SIM card for as little as Rs 25. A plan called customerexperience programme has been launched that allows Rs 900 worth oftalk time to the customer for free over 90 days at Rs 10 per day.The plan promises almost 100 per cent freebies for any customerwilling to spend Rs 300 a month. It also comes with free unlimitedcalling at night within the Reliance Network and free unlimitedcalls for Mumbai customers within their state and Goa. Many of theseare 'first of its kind in India' plans. One will just need to waitand see how competitors and consumers respond.

U.S. envoy says Darfur talks to be extended

ABUJA, Nigeria - A top U.S. envoy said the African Union will extend its Tuesday midnight deadline for a peace pact aimed at resolving the violence in Sudan's Darfur region.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick spoke with time running out on the time limit for mediators to get rebels and the government to strike a deal.

Zoellick said late Tuesday that the Africa Union planned to announce the extension, as he waded into the long-stymied talks, pressuring the various factions to strike a deal.

"I believe there has to be an end to this process," Zoellick said.

But as time ticked away, there was no word from the AU on an extension and rebels stuck to their demands for concessions on security and power-sharing.

The Sudanese government said it approved a draft of the peace deal to end fighting that has killed at least 180,000 people and left millions more homeless. The draft was first circulated last week at the African Union-hosted talks.

"We asked him (Zoellick) to put pressure on the government side so that we can have a balanced paper - and then we can sign it," said Ahmed Hussein, a spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the Darfur rebel factions.

President Bush called Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Monday night about the importance of peace in Darfur, according to the official Sudan Press Agency and Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Bush's National Security Council.

Bush has described government-backed attacks on civilians in Darfur as genocide.

During the call, Bush urged al-Bashir to send his Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha, who left Abuja Monday, back to the peace talks, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. The president told al-Bashir to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission backed by NATO logistics and training for Darfur.

Zoellick was dispatched to the peace talks after thousands of people rallied over the weekend in the United States calling for an end to violence and deprivation in Darfur.

Two main rebel groups both accuse the central government of neglecting impoverished Darfur, though they also have battled each other for territory and at least one has developed its own internal factions.

The Justice and Equality Movement is closely linked to Islamic fundamentalists.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003. The central government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed upon civilians. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed.

Darfur has been a staging ground for Chadian rebels, who have risen up against the government there, and Sudan accuses Chad of supporting Darfur rebels. The violence threatens to escalate: Osama bin Laden last week urged his followers to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. presence.

The African Union had originally set a Sunday deadline for the end to peace talks, but extended that by 48 hours when the rebels rejected the AU-drafted proposed peace agreement.

The African Union has also selected five African heads of state to help ensure that any agreement on Darfur is accepted by all parties, said the Republic of Congo's U.N. Ambassador Basile Ikouebe, whose country is the current chair of the 53-nation bloc.

Ikouebe said the leader of his nation, along with those from South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and Egypt were scheduled to be in Abuja on Thursday to meet the participants in the negotiations.

Even as the peace parley continued in the Nigerian capital, U.N. officials reported an upsurge of fighting in Darfur, where a three-year conflict has led to the deaths of at least 180,000 people and the displacement of more than 2 million.

Ted Chaiban, who heads Sudan operations for the U.N. Children's Fund, said among the hardest hit areas was rebel-held Gereida, near the South Darfur capital of Nyala, which UNICEF says has seen major Arab militia attacks that have forced 200,000 people from their homes in the last three months alone.AP

Dinosaurs extinct? No, they're at the club

It was an innocent mistake. Sure, my lunch partners told me toget off on the 26th floor. But when the elevator stopped at 25 and Isaw the words "Tavern Club" emblazoned in front of me, and a coupleof men stepped out, well, that's where I thought I was going. So Igot off, too.

Being late, I swept past the gents. I overheard a shocked, "Whatis the world coming to?" An oversolicitous attendant approached meand escorted me rapidly to the stairs. My appointment had to be upthere, he told me, in what passes for the co-ed dining room.

And so it was. I should have known that this was a "men-only"club whose inner sanctum I had inadvertently invaded. After all, Ihad been asked to lunch by a couple of steel executives.

I guess that in this day and age, when women are doctors,lawyers, executives and, yes, even business editors, I had forgottenthat there are clubs out there that are firmly locked into an 1800smindset. They selectively allow women to darken their doors - butnever as official members.

The Tavern Club is one of those holdouts. The Union League Club,despite valiant recent efforts by some of its more enlightenedmembers, is renowned for its long-standing policy of keeping womenout. Another with an equally Neanderthal bent is the Butler NationalGolf Club in Oak Brook.

Their arguments are inane. As one pro-woman member of the UnionLeague Club told a Sun-Times reporter a few weeks ago:

"I've heard it all. From `The next thing you know, we will beselling feminine hygiene items at the cigar counter' to `Willleotards be all over the place?' `What if we get juice bars and theywant singles night?' `We won't be able to swim in the nude anymore'`What will it feel like to dog paddle with a bathing suit on?' and `Idon't want to have to exercise next to Oprah Winfrey.' "

Well, guess what, fellas? That game can be played both ways. Imean, who wants to swim next to a wheezing old fogey whose bellyhangs generously over the beltline of his bathing suit? And whowants to eat at a table next to the guy who waves around a stinkystogey while telling dirty jokes?

Oprah Winfrey probably wouldn't want to exercise next to you,either. Come to think of it, neither would I.

And an informal, unscientific (and anonymous, as a lot of theirmale superiors are prominent members of male-only clubs) survey of 10businesswomen I know indicates that nine of them would tell you guysthat you're welcome to your all-male domain.

"I can't even imagine myself being interested" in joining theUnion League Club, said one. "I don't feel it would offer me anythingpersonally. I mean, if I was going to join a club like that, I'dchoose the Metro Club or the River Club - or probably even Nautilus.Anything that doesn't come with 100 years of male domination."

Another recalled what she considered a "demeaning" experience atthe Union League Club: She was forced to take the women's elevator tothe floor where her meeting was scheduled. "That place is so dark anddreary . . . so stuffy and so Neanderthal. No way I'd ever join,even if women were allowed."

Only one woman said she would be interested in joining theUnion League Club if it ever opened its doors to women. And eventhen, she wavered.

"There are times when it would be nice to take a gentleman orfemale business client to a nice club for lunch. In my view, I'dlove to join it. It's a prestigious club. It has been around a longtime. And on that basis, I'd be interested. But it's not the onlyclub around," she said.

Interestingly, several of the women I talked to considered suchold-line clubs as being passe today. "The place to go these days isthe EBC (East Bank Club). I finally broke down and joined two monthsago," laughed one.

I guess a lot of us bow to our more militant sisters who havethe stamina to keep fighting the battle against the Union League andits ilk. But life's too short. There are plenty of places that willallow our kind. Happily.

The unfortunate fact is that the basic attitudinal problem thatexists among members of such men-only clubs is never going to changeif they are hounded into accepting us.

Sally Saville Hodge is financial editor of the ChicagoSun-Times. Her column, Etc., appears on this page every week.

Mom says LA toddler found dead not kidnap victim

A woman who reported her 18-month-old daughter missing now says the child died accidentally and that she dumped the body near a freeway, authorities said Friday.

The 23-year-old mother of Emma Leigh Barker told detectives that when her daughter died, she panicked and believed she would be blamed, Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Diane Hecht said.

A body found Thursday in Sylmar, a few blocks from Interstate 5, was identified by coroner's officials as Emma. The cause of death was not immediately determined.

The mother, whose name has not been released, initially told investigators that she was knocked unconscious by someone while putting Emma into her car in Lancaster on Wednesday. She said Emma was gone when she awoke partially clad hours later in another city.

Hecht said the mother has told investigators where she dumped Emma's body.

Officials said the mother was not being detained, but the case would be presented to the district attorney's office.

Sheriff's Lt. Pat Nelson said the woman was not a suspect, but added: "That may change as circumstances develop."

El río de los sueños: aproximaciones a la obra de Ana María Shua

Buchanan, Rhonda Lee Dahl, ed. El r�o de los sue�os: aproximaciones a la obra de Ana Mar�a Shua. Washington, B.C.: Organizaci�n de Estados Americanos, 2001. 333 pp. ISBN 0-8270-4207-8

Buchanan ha construido en El r�o de los sue�os una excelente colecci�n de ensayos, sintesis de su propia trayectoria a trav�s de la obra de Ana Mar�a Shua. Buchanan marca la diversidad en la obra de �sta, adem�s de la particular e ir�nica cercan�a que demuestra Shua con sus lectores, elementos esenciales en la considerati�n de la obra de esta importante escritora argentina. Los ensayos se organizan por novela, separadamente, luego en secciones sobre los cuentos brev�simos, cuentos para adultos, cuentos infantiles y sobre la traditi�n popular, seguidos de una entrevista hecha por la editera, junto con una bibliograf�a de las obras de Shua, y una bibliograf�a selecta de Io escrito sobre ella. Buchanan ha escogido como leitmotif de su propio an�lisis editorial la parad�jica y curiosa imagen, subrayada por la misma Shua, de la sue�era-t�tulo de una de sus colecciones de mini-cuentos. La met�fora se ve reflejada tanto en el t�tulo de Buchanan, El r�o de los sue�os, como en la portada donde aparece la "Muchacha a la ventana" de Salvador Dal�, y forma la base de los comentarios introductorios de Buchanan.

A prop�sito de una alusi�n a Jorge Luis Borges, la palabra sue�era es un argentinismo que quiere decir tener sue�o. Se encuentra en su famoso poema "La fondati�n mitol�gica de Buenos Aires" donde dice "�Y fue por este r�o de sue�era y de barro / que las proas vinieron a fundarme la patria?" Curiosa, y quiz�s por eso eficaz, la met�fora sue�era anuncia el desdoblamiento de tono en Io que Shua comenta de su propia obra, ya que ella misma destaca la referencia, y observa a menudo su propia inmersion en otros mundos: su fascinati�n con Las mil y una noches, libro que Ie sirve de diaria inspirati�n; sus reescrituras de cuentos de hadas (las "Versiones" de Casa de geishas, 1992 y La sue�era 1984; ambas colecciones de micro-relatos); sus exploraciones de personajes extraterrestres ("Altamente improbables" de Vmjando se conoce gente, cuentos, 1988); ? el metamundo de la escritura y las letras en que, por ejemplo, al so�ar, se cae en el pozo de una "o" (La sue�era: comentado de manera iluminadora en El r�o de los sue�os por Lauro Zavala, reconocido por su trabajo sobre la minificti�n).

La paradoja de la imagen sue�era consiste en que Shua, igual que la mayor�a de los ensayistas aqu� representados, frecuentemente indica no la inconsciencia en el sue�o, sino la consciencia de su picante humor, un humor vivo, par�dico, negro, kafkiano, como su caracter�stica m�s consistente, que tambi�n se vuelve juego comunicativo, sin trabas ni l�mites en consideraciones de g�nero literario. Para Shua, merece la pena desarrollar su acto comunicativo con el lector, dentro y fuera del texto. Comenta Irma Verol�n, al hablar de la "contrapositi�n" de mundos en la literatura juvenil de Shua, que "los lectores establecemos con el narrador una complicidad en la que los personajes quedan excluidos" como para despu�s re�rse de todo, porque "todo saber es altamente sospechoso" (273). As� tambi�n para el lector de El r�o de los sue�os vale la pena el dejar desarrollar el juego para reflexionar sobre esa imagen de entrada, porque, tal como concluye Ra�l Brasca al hablar de Bot�nica del caos (2000), se descubre que el texto "necesita la certeza de su autor y su lector. Y la postula" (227).

En parte, el humor de Shua proviene naturalmente de sus ra�ces jud�as, caracter�stica estudiada en muchos de los ensayos de El r�o de los sue�os. Por otra parte, su parodia es sintom�tica del momento actual. Para la �poca fmisecular, la parodia es una herramienta preferida. La mujer tiende a utilizar esa espada feliz con destreza haciendo resaltar las voces no s�lo de las mujeres, sino tambi�n de la respectiva situaci�n sociopol�tica en que se encuentra, en este caso la de la Argentina. Ana Mar�a Shua ha dicho que "Argentina es de los pa�ses m�s sicoanalizados" (Shua, ponencia dada en Resistencia, Argentina, 5 de julio, 2001, apunte m�o). El velo metaf�rico que envuelve su comentario sobre el pa�s descubre referentes no tan ocultos: la "hospitalizaci�n" de la Argentina de la guerra sucia, la Argentina abusada, sufriente, (Soy patiente, novela, 1980, tratado por Jorgelina Corbatta y Eugenia Flores de Molinillo); o el protagonista que piensa en matar a su padre (La muerte como efecto secundario, novela, 1997, analizado como discurso finisecular por Guillermo Garc�a-Corales, y como visi�n apocal�ptica por la misma Buchanan). Aunque Shua resta importancia a veces a expl�citas intenciones de protesta social, tambi�n afirma su participaci�n en este mundo extratextual. Al comentar el hecho de que sus cuentos hab�an aparecido en Secret Weaver, la autora replica, en una conversaci�n impl�cita, "Pero tejo p�blicamente, y no secretamente" (Shua, 5 de julio, 2001). El fulgor de su espada hace saltar chispas entre texto y realidad donde la autora se interpone para aguijonear al lector, para comentar, por ejemplo, la desconfianza que tienen algunos lectores en el narrador omnisciente, y para responderles que ella, en cambio, desconf�a de las palomas, seres subversives que, al final de cuentas, se van a organizar para denunciarla con el guardia del parque (Zavala sobre La sue�era).

Shua refuerza y desmiente sus im�genes; hace y deshace sus versiones y acercamientos a otros mundos, para que despu�s nos quedemos con el asombro borgeano, "�� fue por este r�o de sue�era y de barro/que las proas vinieron a fundarme la patria?" Todo y nada de sue�era tiene la obra de Ana Mar�a Shua, Io mismo que este libro de ensayos, en el siempre fluyente r�o de la literatura argentina.

[Author Affiliation]

Alice Reckley Vallejos, University of Missouri-Kansas City

For many Ryans, lots of baggage Tom the Unindicted seems clean, but even he has a family secret

Tom Ryan, a Homewood writer and editor who works in publicrelations, was not indicted by a federal grand jury Friday.

"Yes, he's a Ryan," said a top law enforcement official, "but wecouldn't find anything wrong. After a thorough investigation, all wecan say for sure is that he works hard, loves his wife and dotes onhis kids. We don't know what to make of it. I mean, he is a Ryan."

Tom Ryan, 48, was the first Ryan in Illinois targeted by a special"Operation Ryan" state and federal task force, formed recently in thewake of eight other people named Ryan getting caught up in allegedmajor felonies, sordid peccadilloes and general foolishness. Civillibertarians have accused the task force of surname profiling --singling out for special scrutiny anybody named Ryan.

"Where there's smoke, there's fire," shot back one investigator."We'd be fools not to play the odds."

Just last week, former Sauk Village schools Supt. Thomas Ryan wascharged with stealing more than $100,000 from the district. Andformer Gov. George Ryan goes on trial Sept. 15 on a slew of politicalcorruption charges.

A reporter asked Tom Ryan -- Tom Ryan the Unindicted -- how he hasmanaged to stay out of trouble.

"What can I tell you?" he replied. "I certainly am a clean Ryan, Ican tell you that, as are all my relatives. I have three brothers anda sister, and we're all law-abiding citizens, clean as the drivensnow."

But, the reporter pressed, you're a Ryan.

"It's a good name," he replied. "As far as I know, we are anentire family of law-abiding citizens. I have an uncle who was aWorld War II veteran, and my dad was a fine, upstanding citizenhimself. Harry Ryan was his name. He was an electrical engineer."

Sealed court documents obtained by the Sun-Times reveal otherpertinent details about Tom Ryan: He is senior editorial manager atthe American Dietetic Association. He and his wife, Susan, have twoyoung kids. He encourages his daughter in her violin lessons. Hethinks she's quite good. He takes the kids to the movies. He followsthe White Sox. The neighbors say he's a nice guy, as neighbors alwaysdo.

"I'm a regular Ryan doing regular suburban things," he is quotedas insisting during one interrogation. "I'm perfectly happy with it."

Ryans falling flat in the news

In addition to the former governor (George) and former schoolsuperintendent (Thomas), the following Ryans have fallen on theirface in the news in the last three years:

Jim Ryan The former Illinois attorney general ran a lacklustercampaign for governor in 2002. His billboards urged voters to votefor "JIM" -- with only the tiniest mention of his last name -- sofolks wouldn't confuse him with the disgraced George. But Jim Ryanhad his own baggage. Critics will always believe he put politicsbefore principle when, as a prosecutor, he helped keep two innocentmen on Death Row for the murder of a little girl, Jeanine Nicarico.

Jack Ryan The wealthy North Shore investor and teacher won theRepublican nomination for the U.S. Senate last year, but dropped outof the race after salacious allegations surfaced that he had takenhis wife, actress Jeri Ryan, to sex clubs.

Andy Ryan The 19-year-old son of a Carpenters Union official washired as a city inspector despite bogus credentials. After Sun-Timescolumnist Carol Marin exposed the scam, Andy got the boot.

Patrick Ryan He was founder and CEO of Aon Corp., the world'ssecond-largest insurance broker. But when the feds beganinvestigating alleged fraud between brokers and insurers last year,Aon settled out of court for $190 million. Aon's stock plummeted.Ryan's compensation was cut 39 percent, and he was paid no bonus inhis final year on the job.

Jim Ryan An aide to Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan, he wascriticized last year by a county grand jury probing an alleged cover-up in the beating of 49 jail inmates. Jim Ryan is also Sheahan'scousin. All the same, he was elected a Cook County judge last fall.

James T. Ryan As a Cook County judge, he once refused to allow awoman in his courtroom to go to the bathroom until she had soiledherself. He once upheld a speeding ticket against a woman racing to ahospital to give birth. He once told two little girls that if theydid not tell the truth, they would go to hell. All the same, he wasre-elected last fall.

Tom Ryan -- Tom Ryan the Straight Arrow -- says he'll sometimestear a Ryan headline from the paper and tape it to a door.

"I try to imagine it being about me -- 'Ryan takes the stand' or'Ryan found not guilty,'" he said.

And every so often, he said, somebody will ask him if he's relatedto one or another shamed Ryan in the news.

Which he is not.

Not yet.

"It makes me do a double take, though," he said. "I'll wonder ifanybody thinks it's me. Do they Google their past and see that TomRyan is suspected of taking money from a school district and think,'Oh, that's the guy I went to high school with.'"

But, despite the best efforts of Operation Ryan to find otherwise,Tom Ryan the Innocent apparently has no dark deeds to hide. Hebelongs to that noble band of Ryans who still bring pride to thefamily name: Meg Ryan, Nolan Ryan, Private Ryan, Ryan's Daughter, TomClancy's heroic Jack Ryan, Von Ryan and his Express, and Dan Ryan andhis Expressway.

Federal investigators, however, did discover one disquieting fact.

Tom Ryan the Perfect, it turns out, grew up in a family ofDemocrats in Wheaton. His mother rang doorbells for Dan Walker whenhe ran for governor.

To be a Democrat in DuPage County in the 1970s -- back when everystalk of corn voted Republican -- now that, truly, was a scandal.

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" column runs Mondays in the Sun-Times.

Former Chavez ally faces corruption probe

Venezuelan prosecutors have summoned a former ally of President Hugo Chavez for possible arraignment on corruption charges.

The Attorney General's Office said Tuesday that former Guarico state Gov. Eduardo Manuitt must appear next week before a judge who will decide whether to formally charge him with misusing public funds.

Manuitt denies any wrongdoing, saying the accusations are politically motivated.

Manuitt and Chavez parted ways last year after Manuitt decided not to join the president's newly formed ruling party.

Chavez later accused his one-time supporter of pocketing public funds, and Manuitt countered that Chavez was turning into an autocrat.

Nominees for 1999 ASEE elections

Presented on the following pages are candidates for officers to be voted upon in the 1999 ASEE elections. These candidates were selected by the 1998 ASEE Nominating Committee chaired by Win fred Phillips; the nominations were received by the executive director as required by the constitution. The ASEE Nominating Committee

believes that the candidates offered here are eminently qualified and deserve the close consideration of the membership.

Members are reminded that additional nominations of eligible candidates may be made by petitions of at least 200 individual members. Nominees so proposed must indicate willingness to serve before their names are placed on the ballots. …

Officials seek interest in use of Olympic Stadium

Wanted: Tenants for Olympic Stadium after the 2012 London Games.

The bidding process opened Tuesday for deciding the long-term use of the flagship venue, with the West Ham soccer club among the first to propose moving into it.

Organizations interested in managing or using the stadium in east London's Stratford area were given two months to bid by the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

A final decision will be made by the end of next March.

The 80,000-capacity stadium, which will host track events and the opening and closing ceremonies in 2012, is designed to be downsized after the Olympics to a 25,000-seat arena. London 2012 organizers have …

CIBC preps Canadian-backed CDO.

CIBC is prepping what is believed to be the first visible CLO backed primarily by Canadian corporate credits.

The $1 billion synthetic balance-sheet CLO, structured and placed by CIBC, is a mostly static deal, though CIBC is allowed to dynamically substitute names from time to time to include obligors for whom the bank has already reached its maximum credit exposure. These will replace names of obligors with equivalent credit standing for whom the bank bears less exposure.

The transaction will have an 85%-90% super senior-tranched basket credit default swap and about 10%-15% of cash notes providing subordination. …

BP starts offshore gas output.(TRINIDAD & TOBAGO)

BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company by market value, has started pumping natural gas at the Mango field off the coast of Trinidad, reports Bloomberg (Nov. 20, 2007). The Mango field, 35 miles southeast of Galeota Point, will send the fuel to the Atlantic LNG liquefaction plant. …

GED ON TV CLASS OFFERED THIS SUMMER.(CAPITAL REGION)

SARATOGA SPRINGS The GED on TV program is enrolling adults who wish to earn their high school equivalency diploma via television during the summer.

Participants are provided with a workbook series that follows the TV broadcasts on WMHT (Channel 17) and WMHQ (Channel 45). The students are contacted by a telephone …

Dude, where's my stuff? Wis. apartment cleaned out

A man left his apartment for five hours and came home to find everything gone. An efficient burglar? No, police say, just a landlord's error. Police said the landlord manages different properties, and meant to have an apartment cleaned out that had the same number in a different building.

Instead, a maintenance worker cleaned out the apartment of 36-year-old Edward Peterson.

After he called police, Peterson found most of …

President Bush, his father and Clinton to attend funeral

WASHINGTON - President Bush and two of his predecessors arejoining other world leaders in paying a final tribute to Pope JohnPaul II, whose papacy spanned the terms of five American presidents.

Bush led a small U.S. delegation that included former PresidentClinton and Bush's father, the first President Bush, the president'swife Laura, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Former President Carter had hoped to go as well, but …

THE STRATEGIST.(Frank Gentry)(Brief Article)

Frank Gentry reveals how the deals were cut to piece together the nation's biggest bank.

In his 27 years at Bank of America Corp. and its predecessors NationsBank and NCNB, Frank Gentry never made a loan or managed a branch. But as top corporate strategist and planner at a bank that made some 70 acquisitions in 20 years, he was at the center of the action.

He helped negotiate NCNB's first out-of-state bank acquisition, First National Bank of Lake City in Florida in 1982, and dickered with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 1988 to get Texas' largest bank, the failed First RepublicBank. As barriers to interstate banking fell, he scouted targets across the country, poring over financials, plotting strategy and helping negotiate deals.

But in January, less than two years after CEO Hugh McColl planted his flag on the West Coast, Gentry called it quits, retiring at age 57. The Clemson University professor's son hopes to settle into academia and a role in a proposed UNC-supported financial institute in Charlotte.

Gentry sat down with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA to discuss his career, the bank and doing deals.

BNC: Were you hired away from Exxon as a strategic planner?

Addison Reece, the first chairman, decided they needed to go outside to hire a planning manager because bankers thought a long-range plan was a 90-day loan. He thought oil companies would have a better idea of what planning was about.

The bank for a long time -- at least 20 years, and you can argue that it goes back to Mr. Reece and before -- had a plan to be a growth company. As a part of that, we wanted to take a proactive attitude toward deregulation -- we really wanted to compete. We wanted to hire bright young people, and in the early days at least, we wanted to raise capital whenever we could, all part of believing we needed to be a growth company in an industry that was fundamentally not growing. In fact, if you go back, you'd be surprised at how close the size of the bank is today to the sum total of the assets of all the companies that have gone into making it up. So it has been much more consolidation than growth, but from the perspective of the old North Carolina National Bank, it is an amazing growth story. It's like 200 times in the last 20 years, $3 billion [in assets] to $600 billion.

Your first bank acquisition outside the state was through a legal loophole.

We were looking for ways to take deposits in Florida, and Paul Polking, our general counsel, found the legal authority to do it [through a trust company the bank owned there]. We had been working at that time -- [Reece successor Tom] Storrs was the leader and Joe Martin was working with him -- to get a Southeastern regional compact [a reciprocal agreement among states to allow bank acquisitions across state lines]. There wasn't a lot of interest in it. We were very interested in it. Barnett was interested in it. We were probably the only two large banks who thought it was a good idea.

After we got into Florida, all of a sudden Wachovia, First Union, C&S and a number of others thought, well, maybe this is a good …

Keeping moisture in check.(ISA PREVIEW)

The self-contained NEPS1000 portable dry gas-purging system from Brownell facilitates effective humidity removal and oxygen inhibition of electronic and optical equipment, instruments, housings and other systems requiring gas drying to control moisture. When a pre-selected pressure setting is reached, the gas supply is isolated and present gas flows to the exhaust port where dewpoint is measured. Purging then continues until desired dewpoint protection has been achieved. The company believes other features include:

* Dewpointstat gas …

SENTENCING IN BRIBERY CASE POSTPONED FOR A FOURTH TIME.(CAPITAL REGION)

ALBANY -- For the fourth time in two years, federal authorities have postponed the sentencing of a former state worker in connection with a corruption and bribery investigation surrounding a multimillion-dollar state lease contract.

Peter F. Dembroski, 42, of Clifton Park, a former Office of General Services worker, pleaded guilty Sept. 5, 2001, to taking bribe money in exchange for steering a lucrative lease to a real estate company operated by one of the region's largest engineering firms, Laberge Group, headquartered on Computer Drive in Colonie.

Dembroski pleaded guilty after striking a deal with federal prosecutors that he would cooperate in their investigation and possibly testify …

AFRICAN KILLER BEES ARRIVE IN SOUTH TEXAS SWARM ATTACKS MAN MOWING LAWN.(Local)

Byline: William Booth Washington Post

Killer bees have attacked in South Texas.

The first mass stinging by the bees was confirmed by bee specialists examining Brownsville bee body parts at the government's bee laboratory in Beltsville, Md., on Wednesday. The victim is doing fine.

The incident involved a riding lawnmower, a maintenance man named Cenobio Jesus Diaz and a rogue swarm thought to have crossed into the United States sometime this spring. Diaz was astride his power mower at the Siesta Mobile Park in Brownsville, Texas, when the machine disturbed a hive inside an abandoned drainage pipe. Then the bees attacked.

Diaz was stung 15 to …

Barrett scores twice as Toronto FC beats Fire 4-1

Chad Barrett scored twice over a three-minute span of the second half to lead Toronto FC to a 4-1 victory over the Chicago Fire on Saturday.

Barrett, acquired in a trade with Chicago two years ago, scored in the 66th minute and …

AP-FBC--T25-East Carolina-South Carolina Stats, FBC

*2064 AP-FBC--T25-East …

Introduction to virtual PC 5. (MAC OS).

Many PC-based applications such as Microsoft Office now have Mac OS X-native equivalents, which has greatly alleviated previously common compatibility issues when working with both PCs and Macs. So, why do you need Virtual PC environment? From time to time you may find yourself in a situation where you need to use proprietary or Windows-centric software that will only work on a PC running Windows. Perhaps there's a scanner, printer or some other type of peripheral that you'd like to use but you don't have the Mac drivers, or you need to access a PC-based network and networked printers.

Virtual PC 5 overcomes such situations by using virtual machine technology to mimic …

Firefighters deal with road blockage.

FIREFIGHTERS were called to Cuddington Road in Haddenham yesterday where part of the road was blocked.

At 1.27pm firefighters were called to make the scene …

METHODIST ESCAPES WITH NCAA CROWN.(SPORTS)

Byline: PETE DOUGHERTY Staff writer

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- They didn't wear masks and they weren't toting guns. After all, they call themselves Methodist. Yet when the 22nd annual NCAA Division III golf championships were over Friday, Skidmore College felt like its home had been burglarized.

The golfers from Methodist, a college in Fayetteville, N.C., slightly smaller than Skidmore, won its sixth national title in seven years in virtual obscurity.

While the large crowds at Saratoga Spa State Park followed the top four schools, Methodist rose from fifth place to pass everyone, shooting a final-round 287 -- one under par -- to beat second-place Skidmore …

Novel epithelial-mesenchymal stromal cells identified in fetal liver.

2003 JUN 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A novel class of epithelial-mesenchymal stromal cells has been identified in the fetal liver.

"Liver becomes the predominant site of hematopoiesis by 11.5. dpc (days after coitus) in the mouse and 15 gestational weeks in humans and stays so until the end of gestation," researchers in France explained. "The reason the liver is the major hematopoietic site during fetal life is not clear."

J. Chagraoui and colleagues at Hopital Paul Brousse in Villejuif "tried to define which of the fetal liver microenvironmental cell populations would be associated with the development of hematopoiesis," and found that "a population of …