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With the government facing imminent default because it has depleted its authority to borrow money, the debt limit bill would pump up the federal borrowing cap to $8.18 trillion. That is 70 percent the size of the entire U.S. economy, and more than $2.4 trillion higher than the debt Bush inherited upon taking office in 2001.
Republicans said they were being responsible because the increased borrowing will let the government pay Social Security (search) benefits and its other bills. They blamed Democratic spending for the problem, and accused them of playing politics by opposing the measure.
"Let's not use our elderly as political pawns in trade for a seven-second sound bite back home," said Rep. Kevin Brady (search), R-Texas.
Democrats said the red ink was due to GOP tax cuts and their refusal to require budget savings to pay for tax reductions or spending increases. They accused Republicans of passing the buck to future generations.
"I want someone to explain to me how it can be moral for a father to stick his kids with his bills," said Rep. Gene Taylor (search), D-Miss.
Lawmakers hope to end their postelection session, which began Tuesday, by passing both the spending and debt-limit measures and possibly an intelligence agency overhaul by this weekend.
Negotiators spent Thursday clearing away final disputes on the massive spending bill. They agreed to $577 million, the same as last year, to continue developing a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, one lawmaker said.
Remaining problems included an effort by some legislators to curb Bush's plan to contract out federal jobs to private businesses, as well as a plan to pay for some of the bill's increases by cutting unspent defense funds.
The bill would grant increases to such priorities as veterans' health care and the FBI and will probably contain thousands of home-district projects.
Hewing to Bush's demands to curb domestic spending, it also would cut grants for local water improvements and research supported by the National Science Foundation, while holding the federal subsidy for Amtrak to $1.2 billion, the same as this year.
Aid to help refugees in Sudan's war-torn Darfur (search) province would be $404 million, including $93 million to be transferred from Iraq reconstruction money that is being spent at a snail's pace.
Spending-bill bargainers also sorted through a stack of policy changes that lawmakers and lobbyists were trying to shove into one of the last measures Congress will approve this year.
Congressional aides said they believed a milk subsidy extension sought by Midwesterners and an effort to repeal required country-of-origin labels for meat would not make the final bill. Also thwarted was a drive to ease rules designed to protect endangered species from pesticides, the aides said.
The spending measure, covering the government budget year that started Oct. 1, is an amalgamation of nine separate bills financing all federal agencies except the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department.
The GOP-led Senate approved the debt limit increase on Wednesday, 52-44, almost strictly along party lines.
The fight over raising the debt limit has become a staple of the Bush years, which will have now seen three such increases and two consecutive record annual deficits.
The government reached the current $7.38 trillion cap last month, paying its bills since with investments from a civil service retirement account, which it plans to repay. Even so, Republican leaders postponed the showdown vote until after the election, realizing Democrats would use the issue to highlight the red ink of the Bush years.
President Woodrow Wilson promised the Allies he would send “a division” to France immediately, but the Army had no such divisions. The United States quickly ordered four infantry and three artillery regiments from the Mexican border in Texas to Hoboken, N.J., to board transports to France. That group of seven regiments joined together to officially form the "1st Expeditionary Division," later the 1st Infantry Division, under Brigadier General William L. Sibert on June 12, 1917. With more than 28,000 men, the "Big Red One," as the division was later nicknamed from its shoulder sleeve insignia, was twice the size of either the allied or German divisions on the Western Front.
The Giants are going to need to make up the sacks lost by trading Olivier Vernon to the Cleveland Browns somewhere, and it appears they are in the market for one of the top EDGE rushers available in free agency.
According to an individual with knowledge of the negotiations as the NFL’s legal tampering period begins, the Giants have expressed significant interest in former Washington EDGE rusher Preston Smith, including from the suddenly free-spending Oakland Raiders.
However, the person identified approximately six or seven teams that are also in talks with the 26-year-old on the eve of free agency.
Smith has 24.5 career sacks, including four last season along with 53 total tackles and would immediately walk into a starting role in the Giants’ defense opposite second-year linebacker Lorenzo Carter.
According to Pro Football Focus, Smith was the No. 19 EDGE rusher in the NFL last season. Smith was chosen by Washington in the second-round of the 2015 NFL Draft and has two seasons with eight sacks or more in his first four years.
There currently isn’t a player on the Giants’ roster with more than 7.5 career sacks, after dealing Vernon.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Giants add pass rushers both in free agency and the NFL Draft after logging on 30 sacks as a team last season which was the second-fewest in the NFL. The Giants’ passing defense was ranked No. 23 in the league in 2018.
Emma Watson Goes for the Gold!
Here's Emma Watson at a pre-BAFTAs party in London on Friday (left) -- and figure skater Katarina Witt at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer (right).
At least one of them is on thin ice.
Spain's Duchess of Alba -- Marge Simpson's Sister?
Casey Anthony Is a 'Teen Mom'?
I stopped after a while because I was angry.
They were clearly bitter after Mr. Ward ended their team’s season.
I guess that they temporarily forgot about the National Hockey League's first Black Player Willie O’Ree, played for the Bruins.
As a blogger, I know what it is like to deal with racists who hide behind social media to voice their foolish behavior. See my blogs about Tim Tebow and the animal rights folks. These people are nothing but cowards who are jealous that they cannot play pro hockey like Ward can.
Too often racism is used to put someone down when a person has ran out of intelligent thoughts. We live in a time when knee-jerk reactions can be posted onto a social media website for the world to see. Now the world knows that some of the Boston Bruins fans are some of the stupidest people on Earth.
As a hockey fan, I am shamed by this behavior. I even own a Boston Bruins sweater (not jersey) of one my favorite players in the game Zdeno Chara.
To all of you who read this and posted something shameful about Joel Ward: You not only shame yourselves, you shame hockey fans worldwide.
Wow, sad to see racism on TWITTER!!! Like really it's freaking TWITTER!!! I guess it's inescapable, HOWEVER I really have to say I didn't expect anything less from people in Boston. It's the Northeast's South.
Yeah its sad in this day and age. that team has had black players in the past. I wonder what they said about them.
Shameful and embarrassing. Can't even believe it - wait yes I can. Racism is so rampant it scares me. Sometimes it feels as though times have not evolved a bit. Thanks for the eye opener.
Thank you for reading and retweeting it Teppi.
In that dark time of the year when the world is frost-bitten brown, a bleak Earth has run out of bounty, and long black nights are relieved only by short gloomy days, the continuing existence of life seems precarious at best. Faced with such a barren prospect, mankind for millenniums has done the only sensible thing: staged elaborate festivals to drive away depression and ensure the return of spring and fertility.
But many try to cram all the revelry-Christmas through Twelfth Night into Carnival and ending only with Mardi Gras-into one event: the New Year`s celebration.
For municipal New Year`s festivities, no city plays second fiddle to Philadelphia and its gaudy and drunken Mummers Parade. But if you seek a celebration with more subtlety and variety, Boston could be the place for you. Here, the entire city turns out on New Year`s Eve to join in what is known locally as the First Night celebration; when grotesquely costumed characters take to the frosty streets, strange sculpted shapes appear on Boston Common, dance and theater troupes take over every available space from shop windows to churches, and the distinction between spectators and participants blurs.
And, since New Year`s Eve falls on a Saturday this year, a weekend journey here will allow you to take in the celebration from beginning to end. It usually starts almost imperceptibly on Dec. 29, when a troupe of jugglers or mimes or fantastically costumed actors suddenly appears on a street to offer up antics. Then another troupe pops up somewhere else, and then another, until shoppers and strollers are almost certain to meet one.
Meantime, seven huge blocks of ice have been lugged onto the common, which together with the Boston Public Garden forms a large park in the heart of the city. By the afternoon of New Year`s Eve, sculptors are hard at work with chisels and chain saws, and from the lumpen blocks are beginning to emerge the outlines of colossal heads, 12 to 16 feet high.
Youngsters begin celebrating at 1 p.m. on New Year`s Eve, when four hours of special children`s programs begin in a number of indoor locations.
As night falls, the streets begin to thicken with revelers. Even babies in backpacks and toddlers in strollers swell the crowds that drift inexorably toward Boylston Street, where they gather in deepening clumps to await the parade that kicks off the evening`s celebration.
And now down the street it comes: juggling unicyclists, great inflated figures, a Dixieland jazz band, towering puppets, phalanxes of strangely masked and costumed characters, great mythical beasts-not to mention a computer-synchronized moving-light sculpture and oversize rolling suitcases that open to reveal various tableaux made of materials including ice and coconuts.
On the common, floodlights create islands of brightness, revealing weary ice sculptors still chipping away at their shimmering creations. Another refuge of light surrounds a latter-day totem pole, a specially commissioned sculpture designed to receive the New Year`s resolutions and wishes of any who care to make them. The sculpture includes a fish sprouting tiny hooks. Resolutions written on small plaques-provided at the site-are hung on the fish.
City Hall becomes a misty hallucination, bathed in clouds of steam and projections of lights and color. On fashionable Back Bay shopping streets, crowds stand as if mesmerized before the brightly lit windows of boutiques and art galleries, where static displays of merchandise have given way to stages for dancers and performance artists.
Throughout the evening, as many as half a million people-generally well-behaved and sober-flow along streets and through the common and Public Garden to take it all in.
They flow as well into dozens of churches, museums, hotels and historic sites, beacons of warmth as well as light, where they are treated to mini-performances of early, classical and new music; folk and ethnic music and dance; theater, vaudeville, puppetry, storytelling, poetry, video and visual arts.
Like the shop-window performances, these are no more than a half-hour long and are repeated throughout the evening, so celebrators can take in several if they choose.
As midnight nears, the evening moves toward its crescendo: a 10-minute fireworks display on the waterfront. Performances wind down about 11 p.m., and thousands of people begin to make their way on foot and by public transportation to the harbor, where the brilliant bursts of rockets and incendiary chrysanthemums put the old year to bed and welcome in the new.
Of course all of this costs money, and the nonprofit group that sponsors the festivities covers 60 percent of the cost by selling First Night buttons for $5 apiece. Even these are works of art. This year`s design of a blue-and- yellow stylized bird was designed by Toshiro Katayama, a senior lecturer at Harvard University.
All outdoor events are free, but a button is required for admission to indoor performances. A separate admission fee of $8 will be charged for an hour-long show featuring the Chinese Acrobats and Air Jazz jugglers.
None of the indoor performances are by reserved seating, and waiting lines for the most popular groups are frequently long. So it`s better not to set your heart on a particular performance, but to drop in wherever seats are available and see what turns up.
Spontaneity is part of what First Night is all about.
First Night attracts many visitors from out of town, and most Boston hotels offer special New Year`s packages to accommodate them. Reservations should be made soon, though, since accommodations start getting tight from Thanksgiving on, according to the Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Following is a partial list of New Year`s hotel packages. Prices quoted are for double occupancy and do not include Boston`s hotel tax of 9.7 percent. - Back Bay Hilton: $175 for one night, including use of skylit swimming pool and free parking. Up to two children at no extra charge. Rate is good Friday or Saturday night; 617-236-1100.
- Bostonian Hotel at Faneuil Hall Marketplace: $350 for two nights. Available for Friday and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday; 617-523-3600.
- Copley Square Hotel: $190 a night. Includes one full American breakfast for two and reduced-rate parking; 617-536-9000.
- The Inn at Children`s: $99 for one night, includes champagne in room, party favors, brunch for two on New Year`s Day, free parking; 617-731-4700.
- The Lenox Hotel: $299 for two nights includes champagne, party favors, one continental breakfast for two, brunch for two on New Year`s Day. Corner rooms with working fireplaces, $349. Third night $75; 617-536-5300.
- Quality Inn Downtown Boston: $95 for the night of Dec. 31. Includes continental breakfast for two delivered by room service. Additional nights, $50; 617-426-1400.
The dental problems often faced by the guests of the St. John's centre can make them sick — or even be fatal.
Robert Rideout can't remember the last time he saw a dentist, but he does know it's been years — and that's why he's excited to see the opening of the Gathering Place's new dental clinic.
"I've got a piece of tooth caught in me gum, and it's irritating. I need some false teeth, and I can't afford it," he said.
"But now I can, with this program going on … I can't hardly talk without my false teeth, and I can't eat no solid food."
The outreach organization already has a medical clinic, but Dr. Kelly Monaghan, part of the team for the Gathering Place's primary health-care clinic, said it quickly became apparent that oral care needed to be part of the health care provided at the centre.
Problems with dental care can be caused by a variety of issues — addictions, chronic pain, poverty — faced by people helped by the Gathering Place.
"What we were doing was constantly retreating people for the same issue — dental abscess, dental pain — and it clearly became apparent that we needed to remove the source of that pain and decay and truly move toward primary health care and preventive health care."
There are cosmetic and self-esteem considerations to dental work. Stewart Gillis, chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Dental Association's dentistry outreach committee, asked during opening speeches how likely it is someone with a missing front tooth will nail a job interview that could help them out of poverty.
But underlying health problems can go beyond a toothache or a cavity, especially if people don't have the means to address even minor issues, said Monaghan.
"The human mouth is full of a lot of microbes, and unfortunately, they can seed anywhere in the body," she said, adding that she knows of a patient whose dental infection last year led to sepsis, prompting a medical transfer to Halifax because the problem couldn't be treated in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Left untreated, dental problems can be fatal, she said.
"It can attack the heart valves and lead to the need for heart replacement, particularly in people with risk factors for that anyway. So really, it can cause an infection that goes throughout the body, and in immune-suppressed people, as people living in poverty often are, they are the ones more likely to get those critical complications."
Gathering Place executive director Joanne Thompson said oral care can help break a tragic cycle for Gathering Place guests.
"What we see around the dental is people in excruciating pain because of abscesses, and then they're starting to take more medications," she said.
"They die from bleeds, from secondary complications. They're not able to get to the emergency room, and it's just a cycle of neglect, poverty intersections, I mean, whatever language you want to use around it, but they're not able to access services in a timely manner."
By the time they do enter the health-care system, said Thompson, it's in crisis — the most costly and least efficient way to return someone to good health.
Thompson said the clinic is truly a grassroots initiative, with a substantial donation from Ches Penney, as well as in-kind donations of time and materials for the construction and the operation. Gathering Place guests can use the services for free, while volunteer dentists and hygienists will be donating their fees back toward operating costs.
Right now, she said, the clinic, which has two chairs, will be open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and they're hoping to add Saturdays as well.
GARY Barlow has left his fans stunned after he revealed he washed his hair today for the first time in 14 YEARS.
The Take That star took to his Twitter page to make the declaration as he started his social media countdown to tonight’s episode of Let It Shine.
And it wasn’t long before his fans started to respond with astonishment and hair jokes at his expense – but he took it all as good fun even replied to some.
Gary is back on our screens tonight for the fourth episode of talent show Let It Shine, which Barlow created to find five men to star in a new musical about Take That.
Is this shocking scenario how EastEnders’ Lee Carter makes his exit from the Square?
This week it was exclusively revealed by The Sun that chat show queen Ricki Lake has been confirmed as a guest judge for the first live show.
And Ricki revealed: “I am super excited to be guest judge on Let It Shine. I love musicals and this is a fantastic show.
More than one-third of Americans will take a vacation this year, according to a report by AAA. Summer is, literally, the hottest time for employees to request time off and take advantage of a vacation.
With missing employees, you may find your business understaffed and in the weeds, trying to manage operating capacity. Deadlines still loom regardless if the employee is there to take care of the work. You may be at breaking point and unable to handle the demands of your clients while still giving your staff their earned time off. The crux is too much to bear for any agency, and you need a solution quick.
In a horrific attack in Paris today, multiple terrorists assaulted the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, reportedly shouting "we have avenged the prophet Muhammad" before fleeing by car.
The BBC reports that 12 people are dead and seven injured after gunmen opened fire at the offices of the magazine. The gunmen also reportedly shot a French policeman who begged for his life in the street outside the magazine.
French President Francois Hollande proclaimed the attack to be terrorism as the terror alert was raised in the country, while the terrorists escaped and were stated to be still at large.
The cover of this week's Charlie Hebdo featured Michel Houllebecq, whose new novel Submission is an alternative future dystopia in which France is run by an Islamist party. In 2011, the Charlie Hebdo offices were burned to the ground by terrorists with a molotov cocktail.
a loan, plus any interest and finance charges, that is to be repaid in full by a specified future date. Loans that have property or motor vehicles as collateral are usually closed-end.
closed end credit. InvestorGuide.com. WebFinance, Inc. http://www.investorguide.com/definition/closed-end-credit.html (access:April 20, 2019).
Commercial property zoned B-1 with 410 feet of frontage along Hardy Street, 495 feet of frontage on South 20th Avenue and also 290 feet of frontage along O'Ferral Street. This property is situated in close proximity to Hwy 49, The University of Southern Mississippi and Forrest General Hospital. Minutes from historical downtown Hattiesburg and Midtown districts, Hardy Street is the main corridor that traverses through the City of Hattiesburg. This is a very high-traffic area with an estimated 21,600 cars per day passing this location. This property is well suited for a restaurant, office park, strip center, banking, medical, professional and many other possibilities.

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