Keeping her little girl involved in her social life, Kourtney Kardashian took Penelope to a playdate at a girlfriend's house in Beverly Hills on Wednesday (October 16).
The eldest Kardashian sister wore a cream blouse, ripped denim cutoffs, and heels as she held her adorable little girl on her hip on the way outside.
Just the day before, the 34-year-old reality star got into the Halloween spirit by posting a throwback photo on Instagram.
In the snapshot, little Kourtney wears a ballerina costume while mom Kris Jenner wears a Geisha outfit with the comment, "Vintage Halloween! My best friend since I was two, little baby Koko and our mommies."
KEARNEY – Ed Scantling, dean of UNK’s College of Education, announced his decision to return to the faculty ranks at the end of academic year 2013-14.
Charles Bicak, senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, informed deans and directors on Oct. 15.
Scantling became dean of education in June 2006, after two years as associate dean. Prior to that he was chairman of UNK’s department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Leisure Studies, from 1998 to 2004.
Scantling is a former high school and collegiate wrestling coach, previously serving as head wrestling coach for the Lopers. Before coming to UNK in 1985 Scantling was an instructor of physical education at the University of Northern Colorado, and before that, a high school teacher in Clear Lake (Lakeport, Calif.) High School. He served as assistant wrestling coach at Northern Colorado and head wrestling coach in Lakeport.
Bicak, in his note to deans and directors, pointed out Scantling’s accomplishments for the college, community, and for the university.
“Ed has guided the college (of Education) through a highly successful NCATE reaccreditation, overseen advances in all five departments, enhanced the fundraising within the college and launched several important academic initiatives,” Bicak said. “These include collaborative workshops with Kearney Public School teachers and UNK faculty, the One Room/One Teacher recognition program, the advancement of the iPad initiative, approval of the Early Childhood Unified Endorsement online degree completion program and grant-supported outreach efforts in communication disorders.
“This is a better university because of Ed Scantling. Chancellor Kristensen and I are grateful for his service as dean. He will be hard to replace.”
Scantling will return to teaching in the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Leisure Studies, soon to be renamed the department of Kinesiology and Sports Science.
An expert scholar and research in physical education and recreation, Scantling has had numerous articles published in journals such as “Physical Education, Recreation and Dance,” and “Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators.” He has written two textbooks on fitness education, “Fitness Education: Teaching Concepts-Based Fitness in the Schools” (1997), and “Fitness Education: Ideas and Implications for Secondary Schools” (1996).
For his efforts as a faculty member Scantling has received the Leland Holdt Distinguished Faculty Award in 2001 and the Pratt-Heins Faculty Award for Service in 2005.
Scantling said, “It has been an honor to serve as the Dean of the College of Education over the last eight years. I would like to thank the Chancellor and Dr. Bicak for their support of the College of Education and express my gratitude to the chairs and faculty members of the COE for their dedication to UNK.”
Scantling earned his bachelor’s from Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.; his master’s from University of Northern Colorado and his doctorate from University of New Mexico.
Bicak said a search for a new dean of education will begin shortly.
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Writer: Kelly Bartling, 308.865.8455, bartlingkh@unk.edu
The U.N. Security Council votes on a resolution that will require Syria to give up its chemical weapon, at U.N. Headquarters last month.
Craig Ruttle/AP
Saudi Arabia says it will turn down a two-year seat on the United Nation's Security Council in protest over "double standards" in resolving international conflicts.
"Saudi Arabia ... is refraining from taking membership of the U.N. Security Council until it has reformed so it can effectively and practically perform its duties and discharge its responsibilities in maintaining international security and peace," said a Foreign Ministry statement issued on state media.
"The kingdom sees that the method and work mechanism and the double standards in the Security Council prevent it from properly shouldering its responsibilities towards world peace," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
"The gesture seemed to reflect Saudi Arabia's simmering annoyance at the Security Council's record in Syria, where Russia and China — two of the five permanent members — have blocked Western efforts, broadly supported by Saudi Arabia, to pressure President Bashar al-Assad. The other permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.
The Saudi announcement came a day after Chad, Chile, Lithuania, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia were elected to seats on the 15-member Security Council for a two-year term starting in January. They replace Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo.
It was the first time that Saudi Arabia had sought to gain one of the nonpermanent seats on the council. Its decision to turn down the seat seemed all the more surprising because its efforts to seek representation had been taken by experts as a reflection of the kingdom's wish to be more assertive in resolving the Syrian civil war and the Arab-Israeli conflict."
"It is the second time this month that Saudi Arabia has made a public gesture over what it sees as the Security Council's failure to take action to stop the civil war in Syria that has killed more than 100,000 people.
Earlier this month, the Saudi foreign minister cancelled a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in frustration over the international inaction on Syria and the Palestinian issue, a diplomatic source said."
iOS 7 brought with it the introduction of iTunes Radio. This left me hoping I could cancel a few of my streaming subscriptions and replace them with it . My initial impressions of iTunes Radio for iOS left me skeptical to say the least. Since then I've looped back around and given it a second chance. While it's far from perfect, I have come to find that it's a great companion to my daily driver, which is Rdio. Here's why:
All of us have different music habits. Some of us choose to buy music while others are 100% committed to a streaming service of some kind. Over the years I've taken a look at many different streaming services, done trials, bought subscriptions, cancelled subscriptions, and come full circle again. At the end of the day, I've come to the realization that not one of them completely fits my needs.
What I do know is that I feel I've finally found a happy compromise and iTunes Radio is partially responsible for that. After giving it a second chance, I have found that iTunes Radio typically provides more suggestions and random artists that I do like than what other services provide. This leaves me listening to iTunes Radio throughout the day and adding the songs I really like to my Wish List. Since I'm not a buying music kind of person (I quickly get tired of it and never listen to it again), I'd rather pay a subscription fee to Rdio. I can then add all those tracks I discovered with iTunes Radio to my Rdio collection. Then when I don't want random and prefer listening to a certain kind of music or specific artist, I can do so with Rdio. When I get bored of a certain song, I can delete it and repeat the process at no extra cost to me aside from an all you can eat subscription fee.
I currently pay around $18/month for Rdio as there are two of us in the house that have unlimited subscriptions. This means we can stream all we want without ads and download as many songs as our iPhones or iPads will hold as long as we have an active subscription to the service. Both of us also subscribe to iTunes Match since we both have extensive music libraries that preceded the convenience of streaming services. With that subscription, we've both got unlimited access to iTunes Radio without ads at no extra cost.
Prior to iTunes Radio I also subscribed to di.fm and Songza. Since giving iTunes Radio a second chance, I've cancelled both of those premium subscriptions. I still use both but I can deal with ads for as little as I'm using them nowadays. I still think iTunes Radio is sorely lacking when it comes to electronic music but I can simply listen to the ad supported version of di.fm when I'm in the mood for that. And just like I do with iTunes Radio, I jump into Rdio and add the tracks I really like to my collection.
In our household, this setup works for us. iTunes Radio has saved me a few bucks a month on premium streaming subscriptions and while I gave up a little, I'm happy overall with the compromise.
How do you listen to music on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC?
While this is my current setup, I'm interested to hear what you guys are using too. Has iTunes Radio changed anything for you? Why or why not? Do the genres you listen to impact the services you use?
The roundtable of cackling hens show The View is finding that their audience is not getting into the whole Jenny McCarthy is smart and talented and amazing meme. In fact, quite the opposite. According to a RadarOnline squeal piece from a show insider:
“ABC has begun doing deep research on Jenny’s work on the show and the initial findings are that viewers want to tune out the second she opens her mouth!”
I guess I do have something in common with the frontal-lobe challenged ladies who form the core audience for The View. Even in my fantasies about binding Jenny to my bedpost and jizzing on her eyelashes, the minute she opens her maw and words come out, I untie her and offer to double her fee if she leave quickly. Show producers are trying to ‘adjust’ Jenny’s performance on the show to make her more appealing. Like telling her to not talk so much and to say less things and silently hold up pictures of her new puppy.
For consumers looking forward to 5G mobile technology for super-high speed, network giant Ericsson says there will be more to it than that -- and less.
A 5G mobile standard isn't in formal development yet and isn't likely to be in commercial networks until 2020, according to Vish Nandlall, Ericsson's CTO and senior vice president of strategy, who spoke at the GigaOm Mobilize conference Wednesday. Even then, 5G won't be totally at consumers' beck and call to deliver their cat videos and social network feeds.
More so than any previous generation of cellular gear, 5G will have to serve two masters, Nandlall said. Between wireless sensors, industrial equipment and an array of consumer gadgets, in a few years there are likely to be 10 mobile connections per person. If 5 billion humans join the mobile world, that's 50 billion connections that 5G networks will need to serve.
Not all of those devices will be hungry for megabits per second, Nandlall said. For example, remote sensors may need slow connections to achieve decades of battery life, while other pieces of the so-called Internet of Things may have to have much higher reliability than consumers get when they're just making phone calls.
"Every now and then, those calls drop, and that's probably not something that we want if I'm putting an industrial application on it," Nandlall said. For example, a device that turns the floodgates on a dam had better work correctly and at the right time, he said.
Bandwidth-hungry consumers won't get left behind, Nandlall said: As the next major step in the standards process, 5G should deliver 10 times the speed of 4G, putting a theoretical maximum of 10Gbps (bits per second) on the books. But with many more uses of wireless emerging, service providers may carve up their 5G networks and dedicate only part of that capacity to what we think of today as the mobile Internet, he said.
In an example of software's growing role in networks, 5G should be flexible enough that carriers can reprogram and reconfigure their networks to accommodate different applications, according to Nandlall.
"Those will actually get different slices of the network with different technologies," including modulation schemes and levels of capacity, Nandlall said. He compared the future architecture to cloud computing with multiple tenants each running their own applications.
Meanwhile, 4G will coexist with 5G, along with Wi-Fi and other technologies, which may include a future lightweight protocol specially designed for machine-to-machine communications, he said.
By moving to 5G, carriers should be able to keep cutting the price of mobile data, Nandlall said. Most consumers haven't recognized falling prices because their consumption continues to rise, he said. Network efficiencies have slashed the cost of delivering a megabyte of data by about 50 percent per year, from about 46 cents in 2008 to between 1 cent and 3 cents now. That hasn't lowered subscribers' bills at the end of the month because average data consumption has been doubling or more each year, he said.
Those looking at requirements for future 5G networks want them to be able to support 50GB of data consumption per subscriber, per month.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Fitch credit rating agency has warned that it is reviewing the U.S. government's AAA credit rating for a possible downgrade, citing Thursday's looming deadline to increase the nation's borrowing limit.
Fitch has placed the U.S. credit rating on negative watch, a step that would precede an actual downgrade. The agency said it expects to conclude its review within the next six months.
Fitch says it expects the debt limit will be raised soon, but adds, "the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default."
Fitch is one of the three leading U.S. credit ratings agencies, along with Standard & Poor's and Moody's. S&P downgraded U.S. long-term debt to "AA" in August 2011.
Even after sending home nearly all its staff during the shutdown, the Chicago office of the Environmental Protection Agency managed to detect a potentially toxic substance. A 16-year-old can of Campbell's soup was discovered in a refrigerator there.
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Even after sending home nearly all its staff during the shutdown, the Chicago office of the Environmental Protection Agency managed to detect a potentially toxic substance. A 16-year-old can of Campbell's soup was discovered in a refrigerator there. Apparently no one ever got to the back of the fridge until furloughed staff had to take home all their snacks.
A welcome back email included a reminder to keep the fridges clean. It's MORNING EDITION.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
BEIRUT (AP) — Nine Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon kidnapped in Syria were freed late Friday night as part of a negotiated hostage deal that could see two Turkish pilots held by Lebanese militants released, officials said.
The complicated three-way deal also potentially includes the release of female prisoners now held by the embattled government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. While details about the deal remained murky, it appeared to represent one of the more ambitious negotiated settlements to come out of Syria's civil war, now entering its third year and being fought by forces tearing apart the region and largely opposed to any bartered peace.
The pilgrims were part of a group of 11 hostages taken by a rebel faction in northern Syria in May 2012. Two were later released, but the nine had been held since, causing friction in the region and sparking the August kidnapping in Beirut that saw two Turkish Airlines pilots abducted.
Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told The Associated Press that the nine Lebanese hostages "are now in Turkish territories." Charbel said he expects two Turkish pilots to be released in Lebanon soon and the Syrian government will release a number of female detainees.
"We insist that those who kidnapped the Turks release them," Charbel said, referring to the pilots. The two pilots appeared in a video on Wednesday, the first since they were kidnapped.
"This is all part of one deal," Charbel said by telephone.
Asked when he expects the freed Lebanese to come home, he said "in the coming 24 to 48 hours."
In Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying "there are positive developments" concerning the hostages and that the issue had "mostly been resolved." The agency did not immediately provide any further details, though a previous story said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the wife of one of the kidnapped pilots to say the two would be released soon.
"We are very close to reaching a happy ending, this could happen any time," the agency quoted Erdogan as saying.
The pilgrims were kidnapped in May 2012 while on their way from Iran to Lebanon through Turkey and Syria. Militants kidnapped them shortly after they crossed the Turkish border into Syria. Two of the pilgrims were later released with Turkey's assistance.
In Beirut's southern suburbs, the families of the nine Lebanese gathered Friday night at a travel agency that they went to Iran with, some of them weeping.
The two Turkish Airlines pilots, previously identified as Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca, were kidnapped after flying into Beirut from Istanbul on Aug. 9. Lebanon's state news agency reported that a group called Zuwaar al-Imam Rida claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The group said the pilots "will only be released when the Lebanese hostages in Syria return," referring to the Shiite pilgrims.
The commander of the rebel brigade that kidnapped the pilgrims, Ammar al-Dadikhi, told the AP last September that he was holding them captive to try to force Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah to stop supporting Assad's government.
Syria's rebels are predominantly Sunnis, and are widely supported by Lebanon's own Sunni community. Hezbollah fighters have played a critical role in recent battlefield victories for forces loyal to Assad.
Details about the negotiated deal remained vague Friday night, including who was responsible for coordinating across different factions in the Syrian civil war. Satellite news channel Al-Jazeera quoted Qatar's Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah as saying the tiny Gulf nation negotiated the release of the nine pilgrims.
It also remained unclear what female prisoners the Syrian government would release under any potential deal. Syrian officials could not be immediately reached for comment Friday night.
At least 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the country's civil war, now in its third year. While world powers recently helped negotiate a deal for Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons to be itemized and destroyed, bringing the government and rebel factions to peace talks remains difficult. Syria's government this week floated Nov. 23-24 as possible dates for talks on a political solution to the conflict, though there was no agreement on the ground rules for negotiations and the main Western-backed opposition hasn't decided whether to attend.
Meanwhile, the war continues. Regime forces and Syrian rebels fighting for control of the small but strategic town of Tal Aran in the country's embattled northern province of Aleppo have killed at least 20 people, most of them civilians, activists said Friday. Meanwhile, rebels killed at least 30 Syrian soldiers, including ten who were executed after they were captured, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
___
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Jon Gambrell in Cairo and Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (right) plays Solomon Northrup, a New York freeman kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and eventually resold to plantation owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Chiwetel Ejiofor (right) plays Solomon Northrup, a New York freeman kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and eventually resold to plantation owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
12 Years a Slave
Director: Steve McQueen
Genre: Biopic, drama
Running Time: 133 minutes
Rated R for violence/cruelty, some nudity and brief sexuality.
Just a few years before the start of the Civil War, two anti-slavery books became bestsellers in the United States. One was Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Harriet Beecher Stowe opus that went on to become the best-selling novel of the 19th Century.
The other was a memoir with a mouthful of a title: Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and rescued in 1853 from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana.
Twelve Years a Slave — successful enough to prompt multiple editions before falling into obscurity after the War — was rediscovered by scholars in the 1960s, and has now been transformed into into a wrenching, soul-stirring film from British director Steve McQueen.
The film begins with an enslaved Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) cutting sugar cane on a Louisiana plantation, then flashes back to the life he'd been leading just a few years earlier in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. There, he was a musician of stature, living with his wife and three kids in comfort and even some luxury. A free black family in a state that does not allow slavery, they inhabited a world of learning and culture.
In fact it's Solomon's talent as a violinist that leads to his downfall. He accompanies two men to Washington for what he thinks is a fiddling job, only to have them get him drunk and betray him. New York has laws protecting its African-American residents. The nation's capital does not. He wakes up in chains.
Patsy (Lupita Nyong'o, middle), another of Epps' slaves, becomes the subject of her master's unwanted attentions — and the abuse of his jealous wife.
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Patsy (Lupita Nyong'o, middle), another of Epps' slaves, becomes the subject of her master's unwanted attentions — and the abuse of his jealous wife.
Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Without papers to establish his identity, far from anyone who knows him, Solomon is helpless when his kidnappers rename him Platt and ship him off to Louisiana to be sold. As other desperate men in chains tell him, he'll be killed if he even says his real name, let alone tries to escape. Survival means "keeping your head down," he's told.
"I don't want to survive," he gasps. "I want to live."
Still, survival comes first. Sold to a Baptist preacher (Benedict Cumberbatch) who realizes there's more to him than meets the eye, and who treats him, as another slave puts it, like "prized livestock," Solomon does keep his head down. He bides his time, and urges others around him to do the same.
Inwardly, though, he's seething. And when another slave accuses him of truckling to his master, he roars, "My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom."
McQueen keeps those scars — and the brutality that creates them — front and center in 12 Years a Slave, with incidents that scald, and searing supporting performances, particularly from Michael Fassbender (star of McQueen's previous art-house films Hunger and Shame) as a sadistic but strangely conflicted slave owner.
But it is Ejiofor — bewildered, sorely tested, morally towering — whose staggered dignity anchors the film.
John Ridley's script brings both historical sweep and an urgent intimacy to Northup's story — no small accomplishment. Rife with visceral beatings, multiple lynchings and an almost casual air of psychological cruelty, 12 Years a Slave is anything but easy to watch, but it is powerfully moving.
It's also a powerful corrective, because it so skillfully links that brutality to the sort of tranquil antebellum South that Hollywood has often peddled — the broad porches, the hoop skirts, the fields fluffy with cotton. It will be hard for audiences to see those images ever again without thinking about the savagery and injustice that propped them up.
Onyx in an undated photo. From left to right, Sticky Fingaz, Fredro Starr, Suave and Big DS.
Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
This year marks the 20th anniversary of a remarkable year in hip-hop. Over the 12 months of 1993, Dr. Dre, De La Soul, Salt 'n' Pepa, Snoop Dogg, A Tribe Called Quest, the Wu-Tang Clan and more than a dozen other rap artists released or promoted albums that helped to change the sound of America.
One of those was the debut of the rap group Onyx — whose raucous single "Slam" became an unlikely hit on MTV and pop radio. The song was on the leading edge of a media change of heart.
In 1990, MTV and pop radio sounded like Wilson Phillips' "Hold On." Excluding specialty shows like Yo! MTV Raps, the occasional rap song that received airplay alongside Wilson Phillips and Whitney Houston sounded something like MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This."
Pop rap from the likes of MC Hammer was anything but "hard." Back then, Rick Cummings was the program director of Los Angeles pop radio giant Power 106.
"Vanilla Ice and Hammer were pop artists," he says. "They were non-threatening. There wasn't anything about their lyrics or their appearance or the sounds of their records that could be terribly troubling or unsettling or even regarded as somewhat aggressive. They were just really mainstream, mass appeal pop records." Some entrepreneurial record labels were releasing hard-hitting hip-hop albums that sold millions without airplay — like Ice Cube's debut — but most were chasing radio with poppy rap.
In 1990 Profile Records signed a rap group from Queens — four kids who called themselves Onyx. I'd just landed my first job out of college at Profile doing radio promotion to specialty hip-hop shows. I was green, and so was Onyx. Fredro Starr, de facto leader of the group, recalls what Onyx was trying to do with its first single, "Ah, And We Do It Like This," which sounded like a novelty pop hit.
"We called it the 'country style' back in the days," says Starr. "I used to go down south when I was 13, 14, and I would come back home to Queens, from summer down south — I was down south for like two months. People was noticing. 'Yo, you sound like you was from the country.'"
Pop radio didn't bite, and the record bombed. Even at the specialty rap shows. Onyx was dropped from the label.
"I walked away and I was like, hurt, depressed, and everything," says Starr. "I wanted to just jump off a building after that."
While Starr and his band-mates nursed their wounds, hardcore rap continued to sell by word-of-mouth, and pop radio continued to focus on hip-hop lite. Then, in 1991, something strange happened. In Los Angeles, Rick Cummings saw it in his stations' ratings, which dropped from first to tenth.
"It started with the ratings faltering," says Cummings. "After being Number 1 and taking the world by storm, [Power 106] suddenly found itself in 10th place and we said, 'Huh. What went wrong here?' And we started doing a little research and getting back on the streets. And we realized very quickly that these young kids, especially the Latinos, were talking about hip-hop. And I still remember kind of this singular moment when a consultant with our group turned to us and said, 'What's hip-hop?' And I thought, 'Oh, boy, we are in trouble.'"
The following year Cummings did something that no pop radio programmer in America had ever done. He made hip-hop the core of his format.
"You didn't have to go to very many events and see the response that A Tribe Called Quest or a Wu-Tang Clan or an Ice Cube in his early days, or a Snoop — any of those artists — got. I mean, it was kind of a no-brainer," he says. "Once we embraced it, we embraced it fully. If we added a rap record, it played around the clock."
Amid these developments, the rap group Onyx resurfaced — with a new mentor, the late Jam Master Jay, a new record deal with Def Jam/Sony and a new aesthetic.
"We created these characters called Mickey Billy and Sticky Fingaz," says Starr. "We were being crazy and having fun playing these crazy, stick-up kid characters," says Sticky. "And," Starr says, "that's where the grimy style got created." They're talking about a song called "Stik 'N' Muve."
"When Jay heard that record, he was like, 'Yo, who is on this record? Who's this?'" says Starr. "I was like, 'That's me and Sticky.' And he was like, 'Yo, that's crazy, you all sound crazy. I want the whole album to sound like that. Give me 10 of those!'"
But by the time the album was done, Jam Master Jay decided Onyx didn't have its hit single yet. He sent them back into the studio.
"We needed to make a song that was just as aggressive, or more aggressive, but can play on the radio," says Sticky. "We spent the whole week in the studio, and that's how 'Slam' was created."
"We got the chorus from Nirvana, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' That's where the idea came from," says Starr. "We wanted to have black people, hip-hop, slam dancing in the gym just like that."
The melody contained a little code language for hardcore hip-hop fans, inspired by a record that MCs had been rhyming over for decades, a song from 1967 by The Mohawks, called "The Champ."
When I saw Onyx onstage in early 1993, I couldn't believe this was the same group. Gone was the happy country-style. They were bald. They snarled. They yelled. And, for the first time, they rocked. Onyx was making music somewhat closer to their hearts.
Ironically, in becoming more true to themselves, the members of Onyx were falling in line with pop radio's new openness to the sounds of the street. At that time Johnny Coppola did radio promotion for Sony Music. "I can remember getting a call from the music director at WPGC," he says. "'Dude, this record is so off the hook, the phones will not stop ringing.' I had five or six big stations calling me telling me, 'You've got power rotation on this record.'"
Onyx made a rowdy video for "Slam" that was as smart as the record. David Belgrave commissioned it for Def Jam. "Big crowd scene, moshing, slamming, crowd surfing," he remembers. "OK it's white, it's black, this is hip-hop, there's this rock thing, it's east and then they're out in the west coast with these guys tatted up and the wife beaters on in front of the low riders."
The video hit MTV right when the channel had also begun to play harder rap. Patti Galuzzi was MTV's director of music programming.
"I feel like 1993 was the year that the rap artists in particular started moving in heavy rotation.," she says. "Onyx felt like it was smack in the middle of the sort of thing that we could play. It's a really memorable hook. The video looked a little bit like a grunge concert. They looked authentic. They looked really cool."
Galuzzi and MTV did have one problem: The album title, which they had to find some way to display onscreen. Solved with this spelling, says Galuzzi, "B-A-C-D-A-F-star-star-star-Up."
"But," she says, "there was nothing about the lyrics that were misogynistic, violent. And we did play it in heavy rotation. It was something like number 13 in the top 100 of 1993, which is huge."
Onyx's "Slam" became a Top 5 hit on pop radio, a feat that would have been impossible just a few years earlier, says Cummings. "Had 'Slam' come along in '91, I don't know," he says. "I'm skeptical that we would have played it. But by 1993, it was like, 'Yeah this is great. Let's play it.'"
Onyx themselves were never able to create a follow-up hit, or capitalize on the opening they helped create. Yet "Slam" came at a pivotal moment of hip-hop's ascension to the mainstream. Within a few years, most pop radio stations in the country would essentially switch to hip-hop formats — it was the new rock 'n' roll.
MARC travel awards announced for the 2013 Society for Glycobiology meeting
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Gail Pinder gpinder@faseb.org 301-634-7021 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Bethesda, MD FASEB MARC (Maximizing Access to Research Careers) Program has announced the travel award recipients for the 2013 Society for Glycobiology (SFG) annual meeting in St. Petersburg, FL from November 17-20, 2013. These awards are meant to promote the entry of students, postdoctorates and scientists from underrepresented groups into the mainstream of the basic science community and to encourage the participation of young scientists at the SFG annual meeting.
Awards are given to poster/platform presenters and faculty mentors paired with the students/trainees they mentor. This year MARC conferred 2 awards totaling $3700.
The FASEB MARC Program is funded by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health. A primary goal of the MARC Program is to increase the number and competitiveness of underrepresented minorities engaged in biomedical and behavioral research.
POSTER/PLATFORM (ORAL) PRESENTERS (FASEB MARC PROGRAM)
Dr. Deborah Leon, Boston University School of Medicine [SFG member]
Kristian Saied, Albert Einstein College of Medicine [SFG member]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
MARC travel awards announced for the 2013 Society for Glycobiology meeting
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Gail Pinder gpinder@faseb.org 301-634-7021 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Bethesda, MD FASEB MARC (Maximizing Access to Research Careers) Program has announced the travel award recipients for the 2013 Society for Glycobiology (SFG) annual meeting in St. Petersburg, FL from November 17-20, 2013. These awards are meant to promote the entry of students, postdoctorates and scientists from underrepresented groups into the mainstream of the basic science community and to encourage the participation of young scientists at the SFG annual meeting.
Awards are given to poster/platform presenters and faculty mentors paired with the students/trainees they mentor. This year MARC conferred 2 awards totaling $3700.
The FASEB MARC Program is funded by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health. A primary goal of the MARC Program is to increase the number and competitiveness of underrepresented minorities engaged in biomedical and behavioral research.
POSTER/PLATFORM (ORAL) PRESENTERS (FASEB MARC PROGRAM)
Dr. Deborah Leon, Boston University School of Medicine [SFG member]
Kristian Saied, Albert Einstein College of Medicine [SFG member]
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An exciting thing happened in the world of dinosaur bones this week: News broke that a rare Diplodocus longus skeleton will go to the auction block next month. This must have thrilled everybody's favorite beat jockey, Diplo, who took his name from the dinosaur.
That's a sum that Diplo, one of the world's highest paying DJs, can actually afford—though, obviously, it's unclear if he's even in the market. For now, let's celebrate Misty's arrival with one of Diplo's more colossal tracks,
NBC is turning its lens to the mysterious world of pharmaceutical companies.
The network is teaming with Parenthood executive producer Lawrence Trilling and Shaun Cassidy for Empowered, a family thriller set in the pharmaceutical world that has received a script commitment from the network.
The drama revolves around Charlotte Davis, the public face of Omni Health, a massive pharmaceutical company with its tentacles in everything from bioengineering and nanotechnology to the U.S. military. When Charlotte's father is tragically killed and a mysterious stranger shows up on her doorstep claiming that Omni -- and Charlotte's husband -- are responsible, she finds herself torn between her search for the truth and the company that's always been her family. Against the backdrop of dangerous pharmaceutical experiments with far-reaching implications for everyone involved, Charlotte must risk everything she has left to uncover the truth.
Trilling will pen the script and direct should the drama move to pilot. He'll executive produce with Cassidy, with whom he worked on the latter's ABC drama Invasion. The drama marks the first sale for Cassidy under his new two-year overall deal with Universal Television.
Trilling's credits include exec producing and directing NBC's Parenthood; he also has directed Masters of Sex and was a co-EP on Pushing Daisies. He's repped by CAA and Jackoway Tyerman. Cassidy most recently was a consulting producer on CBS' Blue Bloods and developed the Western The Frontier for NBC via Sony Pictures Television. The drama from EP Thomas Schlamme was picked up to pilot but did not move forward in 2012. His credits also include Invasion, The Mountain and Cold Case. Cassidy is with CAA and Myman Greenspan.
Narrow-spectrum UV light may reduce surgical infections
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Elizabeth Streich eas2125@cumc.columbia.edu 212-305-3689 Columbia University Medical Center
Destroys drug-resistant bacteria but safe for human exposure
NEW YORK, NY Despite major efforts to keep operating rooms sterile, surgical wound infections remain a serious and stubborn problem, killing up to 8,200 patients a year in the U.S. A study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers suggests that narrow-spectrum ultraviolet (UV) light could dramatically reduce such infections without damaging human tissue. The study, conducted in tissue culture, was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 patients suffer surgical wound infections in the U.S. each year, accounting for $3 billion to $10 billion in health-care expenditures, the researchers report. Patients with surgical wound infections, compared with those without such infections, are 60 percent more likely to spend time in an ICU, are five times as likely to be readmitted to the hospital, have twice the mortality rate, have longer hospital stays, and have roughly double the total health-care costs.
Scientists have known for many years that UV light from a standard germicidal lamp (which emits a broad spectrum of wavelengths, from about 200 to 400 nanometers [nm]) is highly effective at killing bacteria; such lamps are routinely used to decontaminate surgical equipment.
"Unfortunately, this UV light is also harmful to human tissue and can lead to skin cancer and cataracts in the eye," said study leader David J. Brenner, PhD, the Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics, professor of environmental health sciences, and director of the Center for Radiological Research at CUMC. "UV light is almost never used in the operating room during surgery, as these health hazards necessitate the use of cumbersome protective equipment for both surgical staff and patients."
Dr. Brenner and his team hypothesized that a very narrow spectrum of UV lightaround 207 nmmight be capable of destroying bacteria while leaving human tissue unaffected. Because UV light at this wavelength is strongly absorbed by proteins, it is expected to be safe for two reasons: At the cellular level, it cannot reach the nucleus of human cells, and at the tissue level it cannot reach the sensitive cells in the skin epidermis and the eye lens. But because bacteria are much smaller than human cells, this UV light can reach their DNA. "What this means is, if you shone 207-nm light on human skin or eyes, you would not expect to see any biological damage," said Dr. Brenner, "but it should kill any airborne bacteria that land on a surgical wound."
To test this hypothesis, Dr. Brenner and his colleagues exposed MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus) bacteria, a common cause of surgical wound infections, and human skin cells to a krypton-bromine excimer lamp (also known as a KrBr excilamp), which emits UV light only at 207 nm, as well as to a standard germicidal UV lamp.
The researchers found that 207-nm UV light was as effective at killing MRSA bacteria as a conventional UV lamp. However, the 207-nm light resulted in 1,000-fold less killing of human skin cells than did the standard UV light.
In another experiment, the researchers tested the two UV lamps on a standard tissue-culture model of human skin (which includes the major skin layers, the epidermis and dermis). Exposure to a standard UV lamp caused extensive precancerous changes in the epidermis, while exposure to the same level of 207-nm light did not.
"Our results to date suggest that 207-nm UV light may be an effective add-on to current infection-control measures, without the need for protective equipment for staff or patients," said Dr. Brenner. "We need all the tools we can get to reduce surgical wound infections, especially those involving drug-resistant strains of bacteria, which have become increasingly common."
According to Dr. Brenner, a main route to surgical infection is through the air. "Despite every possible effort to promote sterility, MRSA and other bacteria are essentially raining down on the wound during the entire surgery," he said. "If this UV lamp were continuously shone on the wound during surgery, the bacteria would be killed as they landed." The lamps, known as excimer lamps, are small, rugged, inexpensive, and long-lived, the researchers noted.
"These findings have important clinical significance for mitigating surgical infections," said K.S. Clifford Chao, MD, the Chu H. Chang Professor of Radiation Oncology and chair of radiation oncology at CUMC and professor and chair of radiation oncology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Right now, incidental infections occur unexpectedly. But with the use of narrow-spectrum UV light, surgical care may be improved at an affordable cost."
The researchers are now conducting in vivo tests of the 207-nm lamp.
###
The paper is titled, "207-nm UV LightA Promising Tool for Safe Low-Cost Reduction of Surgical Site Infections. I: In-Vitro Studies." The other contributors are Manuela Buonanno, Gerhard Randers-Pehrson, Alan W. Bigelow, Sheetal Trivedi, Franklin D. Lowy, Henry M. Spotnitz, and Scott M. Hammer (all at CUMC).
Columbia University has filed international patent applications for a method for generating a narrow wavelength of UV radiation that can selectively affect and/or kill bacteria. The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interests.
The study was supported in part by a grant from the Columbia-Coulter Translational Research Partnership.
A video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M65kmB8Svy4#t=30
Description for video: Dr. David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, explains the significance of a single-wavelength UV light which can kill bacteria but remain safe for humans.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Narrow-spectrum UV light may reduce surgical infections
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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| Share
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Contact: Elizabeth Streich eas2125@cumc.columbia.edu 212-305-3689 Columbia University Medical Center
Destroys drug-resistant bacteria but safe for human exposure
NEW YORK, NY Despite major efforts to keep operating rooms sterile, surgical wound infections remain a serious and stubborn problem, killing up to 8,200 patients a year in the U.S. A study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers suggests that narrow-spectrum ultraviolet (UV) light could dramatically reduce such infections without damaging human tissue. The study, conducted in tissue culture, was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 patients suffer surgical wound infections in the U.S. each year, accounting for $3 billion to $10 billion in health-care expenditures, the researchers report. Patients with surgical wound infections, compared with those without such infections, are 60 percent more likely to spend time in an ICU, are five times as likely to be readmitted to the hospital, have twice the mortality rate, have longer hospital stays, and have roughly double the total health-care costs.
Scientists have known for many years that UV light from a standard germicidal lamp (which emits a broad spectrum of wavelengths, from about 200 to 400 nanometers [nm]) is highly effective at killing bacteria; such lamps are routinely used to decontaminate surgical equipment.
"Unfortunately, this UV light is also harmful to human tissue and can lead to skin cancer and cataracts in the eye," said study leader David J. Brenner, PhD, the Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics, professor of environmental health sciences, and director of the Center for Radiological Research at CUMC. "UV light is almost never used in the operating room during surgery, as these health hazards necessitate the use of cumbersome protective equipment for both surgical staff and patients."
Dr. Brenner and his team hypothesized that a very narrow spectrum of UV lightaround 207 nmmight be capable of destroying bacteria while leaving human tissue unaffected. Because UV light at this wavelength is strongly absorbed by proteins, it is expected to be safe for two reasons: At the cellular level, it cannot reach the nucleus of human cells, and at the tissue level it cannot reach the sensitive cells in the skin epidermis and the eye lens. But because bacteria are much smaller than human cells, this UV light can reach their DNA. "What this means is, if you shone 207-nm light on human skin or eyes, you would not expect to see any biological damage," said Dr. Brenner, "but it should kill any airborne bacteria that land on a surgical wound."
To test this hypothesis, Dr. Brenner and his colleagues exposed MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus) bacteria, a common cause of surgical wound infections, and human skin cells to a krypton-bromine excimer lamp (also known as a KrBr excilamp), which emits UV light only at 207 nm, as well as to a standard germicidal UV lamp.
The researchers found that 207-nm UV light was as effective at killing MRSA bacteria as a conventional UV lamp. However, the 207-nm light resulted in 1,000-fold less killing of human skin cells than did the standard UV light.
In another experiment, the researchers tested the two UV lamps on a standard tissue-culture model of human skin (which includes the major skin layers, the epidermis and dermis). Exposure to a standard UV lamp caused extensive precancerous changes in the epidermis, while exposure to the same level of 207-nm light did not.
"Our results to date suggest that 207-nm UV light may be an effective add-on to current infection-control measures, without the need for protective equipment for staff or patients," said Dr. Brenner. "We need all the tools we can get to reduce surgical wound infections, especially those involving drug-resistant strains of bacteria, which have become increasingly common."
According to Dr. Brenner, a main route to surgical infection is through the air. "Despite every possible effort to promote sterility, MRSA and other bacteria are essentially raining down on the wound during the entire surgery," he said. "If this UV lamp were continuously shone on the wound during surgery, the bacteria would be killed as they landed." The lamps, known as excimer lamps, are small, rugged, inexpensive, and long-lived, the researchers noted.
"These findings have important clinical significance for mitigating surgical infections," said K.S. Clifford Chao, MD, the Chu H. Chang Professor of Radiation Oncology and chair of radiation oncology at CUMC and professor and chair of radiation oncology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Right now, incidental infections occur unexpectedly. But with the use of narrow-spectrum UV light, surgical care may be improved at an affordable cost."
The researchers are now conducting in vivo tests of the 207-nm lamp.
###
The paper is titled, "207-nm UV LightA Promising Tool for Safe Low-Cost Reduction of Surgical Site Infections. I: In-Vitro Studies." The other contributors are Manuela Buonanno, Gerhard Randers-Pehrson, Alan W. Bigelow, Sheetal Trivedi, Franklin D. Lowy, Henry M. Spotnitz, and Scott M. Hammer (all at CUMC).
Columbia University has filed international patent applications for a method for generating a narrow wavelength of UV radiation that can selectively affect and/or kill bacteria. The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interests.
The study was supported in part by a grant from the Columbia-Coulter Translational Research Partnership.
A video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M65kmB8Svy4#t=30
Description for video: Dr. David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, explains the significance of a single-wavelength UV light which can kill bacteria but remain safe for humans.
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cumc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
After the end of hostilities in WWII, France and Germany have become surprisingly close. The two nations are stalwart proponents of expanded European Union integration and are regularly referred to as the EU's "twin engine." But on the issue of unmanned aerial platform, the two simply cannot agree. So while France and its cohorts are developing the nEUROn, Germany is building the stealth Barracuda.
Development on the EADS Barracuda fully-autonomous, medium-altitude, long-range UAV began in 2003, and is backed by both Germany and Spain. France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, alternately, have funded the Dassault nEUROn, while the UK has independently forged ahead with the BAE Taranis. Despite crashing during a 2006 test flight, which grounded the project for nearly two years, the Barracuda has since successfully completed more than a dozen test flights.
Though details on the vehicle itself remain classified, we do know that the Barracuda is built from a mix of off the shelf components and custom hardware systems. Its entire fuselage—save for a pair of reinforcing wing spars—is composed of the same carbon fiber composite that covers the Eurofighter Typhoon. What's more, the 26-foot long, three-ton demonstrator does almost entirely away with hydraulics—aside from the landing gear, the UAV operates entirely on electronic actuators. And while it isn't as quick as the Taranis, the Barracuda reportedly packs a 14 kN Pratt & Whitney jet turbine capable of achieving mach .85 with a 20,000 foot service ceiling and an estimated 124 mile operational radius.
Britney Spears' previously untitled eighth studio album will be called Britney Jean, her first and middle names, the pop star revealed during a radio interview in London on Tuesday.
"It's a personal album and all my family, they always call me Britney Jean -- it's like a term of endearment, and I just wanted to share that with my fans," Spears said.
Spears reiterated the news on her Facebook page later Tuesday morning, writing: "Cat's out of the bag people.... #BritneyJean!!! Bringing ALL of me to the music... DECEMBER 3." Spears' publicist also confirmed the album title to The Hollywood Reporter.
The first single off of the album, "Work Bitch," is out now. Spears also begins a two-year residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas on Dec. 27.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker talks to supporters during an election night victory party after winning a special election for the U.S. Senate, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, in Newark, N.J. Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan faced off to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Newark Mayor Cory Booker talks to supporters during an election night victory party after winning a special election for the U.S. Senate, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, in Newark, N.J. Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan faced off to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Newark Mayor Cory Booker talks to supporters during an election night victory party after winning a special election for the U.S. Senate, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, in Newark, N.J. Booker and Republican Steve Lonegan faced off to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Newark Mayor Cory Booker walks out of a polling booth after casting his vote in a special election for the vacant New Jersey seat in the U.S. Senate, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, in Newark, N.J. Booker is going up against Republican Steve Lonegan. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Lorraine Rossi Lonegan exits a voting booth with her husband, Republican senate candidate Steve Lonegan, in Bogota, N.J., Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. In a race for U.S. Senate that touched upon a candidate's tweets with a stripper and a political strategist's profanity-laced rant, perhaps it's only fitting that the outcome will be decided on a Wednesday in October. The two-month campaign in New Jersey between Democrat Cory Booker and Lonegan ends amid a lingering federal government shutdown, underscoring the different approaches each would take as a senator. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan answers a question after voting in Bogota, N.J., Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. Lonegan and Democrat Cory Booker are vying to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Frank Lautenberg. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Newark Mayor Cory Booker won a special election Wednesday to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, giving the rising Democratic star a bigger political stage after a race against conservative Steve Lonegan, a former small-town mayor.
With nearly all precincts reporting, Booker had 55 percent of the vote to Lonegan's 44 percent. The first reaction from the social-media savvy victor came, of course, on Twitter: "Thank you so much, New Jersey, I'm proud to be your Senator-elect."
In a speech later to supporters in Newark, Booker spoke, as he often does, of the unity of the American people.
"That's why I'm going to Washington — to take back that sense of pride. Not to play shallow politics that's used to attack and divide but to engage in the kind of hard, humble service that reaches out to others."
He also told of how his father, who died last week at 76, taught him about love and hard work, values he says he'll carry to the Senate.
Booker, 44, will become the first black senator from New Jersey and heads to Washington with an unusual political resume. He was raised in suburban Harington Park as the son of two of the first black IBM executives, and graduated from Stanford and law school at Yale with a stint in between as a Rhodes Scholar before moving to one of Newark's toughest neighborhoods with the intent of doing good.
He's been an unconventional politician, a vegetarian with a Twitter following of 1.4 million — or five times the population of the city he governs.
With dwindling state funding, he has used private fundraising, including a $100 million pledge from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to run programs in Newark, a strategy that has brought his city resources and him both fame and criticism.
Booker was elected to complete the 15 months remaining on the term of Frank Lautenberg, whose death in June at age 89 gave rise to an unusual and abbreviated campaign. If he wants to keep the seat for a full six-year term — and all indications are that he does — Booker will be on the ballot again in November 2014.
Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican with a national following of his own, appointed his attorney general, Jeffrey Chiesa, to the Senate temporarily and scheduled a special election for a Wednesday just 20 days before Christie himself is on the ballot seeking re-election. Christie said he wanted to give voters a say as soon as legally possible.
Democrats challenged the timing, saying Christie was afraid of appearing on the same ballot as the popular Booker. But courts upheld the governor's election schedule.
Booker had a running start on the election. Before Lautenberg died, Booker passed up a chance to run against Christie this year, saying he was eyeing Lautenberg's seat in 2014, in part so he could complete a full term as mayor — something he won't do now that he's heading to Washington.
He won an August primary against an experienced Democratic field including two members of Congress and the speaker of the state Assembly in a campaign that was largely about ideas.
The general election was about deeper contrasts, both ideological and personal.
Lonegan stepped down as New Jersey director of the anti-tax, pro-business Americans for Prosperity to run. Lonegan, who is legally blind, got national attention as mayor of the town of Bogota when he tried to get English made its official language.
After two runs in Republican gubernatorial primaries and as the leader of successful campaigns against ballot measures to raise a state sales tax and fund stem-cell research, Lonegan was a favorite of New Jersey's relatively small right wing.
Gathered with supporters Wednesday evening in Bridgewater, he said, "Unfortunately for whatever reason the message we delivered together ... did not win the day."
Lonegan, who has twice sought his party's nomination for governor, told The Associated Press he has no plans to challenge Booker again next year or seek any elected office again.
Booker does not expect to be sworn in until close to the end of the month, an aide said, noting the results still need to be certified by the state. When he steps down as mayor of New Jersey's largest city, the council will be able to appoint an interim mayor.
The two candidates had portrayed each other as too extreme for the job.
Throughout the campaign, Lonegan was aggressive, criticizing Booker during a string of homicides in Newark, holding a red carpet event in rally to mock the time Booker spent fundraising in California and declaring that "New Jersey needs a leader, not a tweeter."
Lonegan also criticized Booker when a Portland, Ore., stripper revealed a series of not-so-salacious Twitter messages she'd exchanged with Booker, who's single. The topic resurfaced last week when Lonegan fired a key adviser after a profane interview in which the adviser suggested Booker's words were "like what a gay guy would say to a stripper."
Lonegan had called it "strange" that Booker won't say whether he's gay. Booker, for his part, has said his sexuality should not matter to voters and has been elusive on the subject.
At a debate this month, Lonegan responded to Booker's comments about the need for environmental regulations to clean a river through Newark. "You may not be able to swim in that river," he said. "But it's probably, I think, because of all the bodies floating around of shooting victims in your city."
Booker seemed stunned at the remark, and his campaign has criticized Lonegan for it.
___
Mulvihill reported from Trenton. AP reporters Angela Delli Santi in Trenton, Samantha Henry in Newark and Bruce Shipkowski in Bridgewater contributed.
Scantling is a former high school and collegiate wrestling coach, previously serving as head wrestling coach for the Lopers. Before coming to UNK in 1985 Scantling was an instructor of physical education at the University of Northern Colorado, and before that, a high school teacher in Clear Lake (Lakeport, Calif.) High School. He served as assistant wrestling coach at Northern Colorado and head wrestling coach in Lakeport.
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