| 2 TPS bus drivers resign after convictions surface
Tulsa Public Schools announced Monday that it had allowed two school bus drivers to resign after learning in recent weeks that they are convicted felons.
Tanza M. Bryant, 41, and Joycelyn L. Lowe, 36, left the district after administrators confronted each with court records documenting their felony convictions related to shoplifting, said Roger Holder, TPS' compliance officer.
District policy prohibits employing anyone with any felony conviction or any misdemeanor conviction involving drug or sex offenses in the last 12 years.
Bryant was hired in August and Lowe in October, TPS records show.
Holder said he had learned in December that the company TPS contracts with for nationwide background searches on prospective employees, USIS, was only checking records dating 10 years.
Howie Scores Backstreet Bride
Howie Dorough doesn't have to worry about the meaning of being lonely anymore. The Backstreet Boy took a bride Saturday in his hometown of Orlando, marrying longtime girlfriend Leigh Boniello, a lawyer for the band confirmed. With his fellow Backstreeters looking on, Dorough, 34, said his I-do's to cap a traditional Catholic ceremony at St. James Cathedral. "The wedding took place as planned, and all went well," attorney Jason L. Turner said in a statement. The nuptial news was first reported by OK! magazine, which was given exclusive coverage to the affair. Boniello was the Webmaster for the Backstreet site, and the two began dating six years ago. Dorough finally popped the question last New Year's. "She wasn't expecting it, and I was quite nervous—more nervous about proposing to her in front of 40 family and friends than about performing in front of 40,000 people onstage," Dorough told People earlier this year.
Rabbis get serious about matching up singles
The rise of interfaith marriage is a sensitive issue among American Jews, and now two powerful forces in the religion are teaming up to do something about it: rabbis and JDate, the top matchmaking Web site for Jewish singles. For the first time in its 10-year history, the site is offering a bulk rate to rabbis who want to buy membership accounts for congregants. According to Gail Laguna, JDate's vice president of communications, singles who sign up through their congregation get a slight discount on the site's $149 six-month subscription fee. "This is a way for us to break down the walls of the synagogue," said Rabbi Michael Cahana, of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Ore. The rabbis who negotiated the rate are also picking up the tab. Rabbi Donald Weber of Temple Rodeph Torah in Marlboro, N.J., has paid out of his own pocket for 24 six-month subscriptions.
Laure Manaudou's heartbreak at nude photos betrayal
THE Beijing Olympic preparations of France's gold medallist Laure Manaudou are in disarray with the swimming beauty an emotional wreck after explicit private photos and video footage of her were posted on the internet. Manaudou, 21, has called in a team of lawyers and has pointed the finger at her former lover, Italian swimmer Luca Marin. The offending pictures are of intimate moments during her relationship with Marin, which ended with an ugly public break-up at a recent swim meet in Hungary. To see some of the pictures click here. Be warned they contain nudity and some observers may consider them explicit. If you are easily offended, please do not click through. Marin last night denied any involvement, despite the photos appearing just hours after the pair's split.
Police chief explains Children's Theatre probe
The letter, released late Friday morning, says department investigators are working "tirelessly" to complete the probe and that the department understands the importance of the theater to the community. Johnson said the investigation to date has included: Witness and employee interviews. Review and analysis of thousands of city documents and e-mails. Search warrants served on numerous employee bank accounts (the average turnaround time for obtaining information from these searches is six to eight weeks). Search warrants served on three employee homes and a number of storage lockers. "My officers who are involved in this investigation are working tirelessly through their days off and on weekends to complete a thorough and objective case as fast as possible," Johnson wrote.
True to her Roots, Frosh Finds Home at GU
The court is where Monica McNutt did some big things. With students' handmade “Go Tartans!" signs taped to the walls and spectators' toes hanging onto the court in a gym so small that trips to the snack stand involve the back court, Coach Russell Davis sits quietly, in a purple shirt and tie, as his team struggles to rally back against a Bishop McNamara team that has already beat his squad once this year. It's Feb. 8, 2008, and Davis's Tartans are one year removed from a WCAC and D.C. championship and look the part of a very young varsity team. Forty-eight hours earlier and 10 miles south, Georgetown is looking at a 12-point deficit and a more experienced St. John's side, coming off a year where they failed to make the Big East tournament and finished with just three league wins.
Once there was a Radio Veritas Priest Part II
Still a priest after the martyrdom of Ninoy Aquino he was ready to give up his pastoral priesthood and Radio Veritas duties for the communist revolution in the 80s. EDSA I made him abandon all thoughts of violent revolution. In a Philippine Panorama interview in March 9, 1986, Fr. Dato was quoted as saying in a TV appeal that historic February: The real glory of the peoples revolution lay in the magnanimity of the victors. Great words from a priest at the forefront of a peaceful revolt, but they would soon be challenged by insistent allegations of corruption in the new government. He felt betrayed that although Cory Aquino may not have been directly involved in anomalies, the people surrounding her certainly were. It seemed a mere duplication of the Marcos dictatorship, if with more subtlety and less ostentatious greed Something was obviously wrong in the new government, but there was something equally wrong with the people themselves.
9/11 Commission Purposely Set Up So 9/11 Staff Had Conflict of ...
Indeed, Lehman strongly implies that the Commission was purposely set up so that every single person involved would have a conflict of interest which would prevent them from conducting an honest investigation. Lehman himself is a textbook example of conflict of interest. In 1998, 9/11 Commission executive director Zelikow published an article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled Catastrophic Terrorism: Imagining the Transformative Event. Some two years later, PNAC picked up the Zelikow language, saying that the campaign to convince the public to allow expanded use of U.S. military force around the world "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor". Lehman was a member of PNAC, and a signatory to PNAC's plea for "a new Pearl Harbor".
The Mirror
Over half of all high school seniors who state their intended majors on college applications graduate with something completely different on their diplomas. But what do you do if your emerging passion doesn't have a corresponding major? Even though built space is always around us — in dorms, in classrooms and even, however precariously, in frats — students of architecture at Dartmouth must blaze their own trail. Amy Davis delves into the small community of Dartmouth students and faculty who are looking at the world through blueprint-colored glasses. More » .
Muscovites count the cost of Valentine's Day
It was there I met Katya Kuznetsova, a beautiful and confident advertising executive with a weakness for strawberry ice cream, although you would hardly know it from her slim figure. Katya, who's 22, is dating Sasha, a drummer in a heavy metal band. This will be their second Valentine's Day together. Last year he took her to see a romantic foreign film, which was rather more her cup of tea than his. She also likes watching the TV comedy series "Sex & The City" about the seductive antics of some very liberated New York women. There's a Russian equivalent, in which Katya says the characters want more than hot dates and casual sex. They're looking for marriage. It's a silly programme, she says, but in a way very Russian. Speaking of her parents' courtship back in the days of the USSR, Katya says: "They took everything very seriously back then.
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