| Costas outlines city plan
Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas has big plans for Valparaiso in 2008 and beyond. Among Costas' surprise announcements at his State of the City speech Thursday was to hire a director of special events to attract more people downtown, and to create a downtown urban park. He also said he will challenge residents to increase their recycling from the current 49 percent to 70 percent by 2011. In his speech, Costas said he plans to continue several of the projects his administration already started: n Phase two of the Valparaiso Street project will be completed. The $6 million drainage and road project will reduce flooding and improve the intersections at Evans and Calumet, and Valparaiso and Glendale. n Lincolnway will be rebuilt from the roundabout to Roosevelt.
Computing Q&A
With the newest version of Windows Media Player, insert a regular blank CD into your CD drive, then click the down-arrow under the Burn button in the top menu and choose Data CD. Drag MP3 albums from your Windows Media Player library to the right-hand pane and click the Start Burn button to create the disc. In Real Player, insert a blank CD into your CD drive, then go to the Tools menu at the top, point to CD and choose CD burner. Under Tasks in the pane at the left, click Select CD Type and choose Data CD. Then add music from My Library and click on Burn Your CD. Note that if you buy the premium version of Real Player, you can opt to burn an "MP3 CD." That option lets you convert music in other audio formats to MP3s when you burn the disc. If your music already is in MP3 format, you don't need it.
Manzullo office says funding for courthouse safe
The plan also includes business tax deductions to spur investment, and it nearly doubles the price of home mortgages that can be bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In essence, the president wants to borrow $150 billion from our creditors in China to give Americans money to stimulate the economy by purchasing Chinese TV sets. This makes no sense to me. Bush pledged to veto any bill with a tax increase and asked Congress to make his earlier tax cuts, which expire in 2010, permanent. Democrats say the breaks benefit "the wealthy" and want to let the tax cuts die. "Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800," Bush said. Neither the president nor congressional leaders advocate the kind of stimulus package that would improve our economy for a generation — a massive investment in infrastructure, from highways, bridges, rails and ports to fiber optics.
Aidy: It was a fair result
Which of them would be trail blazing in our position? I don't think any of them would be. You have to accept there is a way to go and luck will have a lot to do with it. Having said that, if all fans stay behind the team at home games, like the travelling horns do, (save the moans for the pubs) it can only help. .
THE LESS-DYNAMIC DUO
Any money these two make in the foreseeable future will undoubtedly go toward paying back Mom and Dad. The "Bonnie and Clyde" couple, arrested last Friday in an identity-theft scam, were sprung from jail yesterday by their grim-faced parents, who posted 10 percent of a combined $235,000 bail. As if the media mob that greeted the parents outside the Criminal Justice Center wasn't humiliating enough, Kirsch's mother and father had to process the increasingly outlandish stories that have emerged about their daughter. Among the Drexel University student's bigger boasts that emerged this week was her claim that she qualified for the U.S. Olympic team pole-vaulting trials for the 2004 Greek games. But since Drexel doesn't have a track and field team, Kirsch would practice with the University of Pennsylvania team, she told a former friend, who didn't want her name to be used.
Shopping Spree
Despite recent record gas prices and a slowing economy, customers are still expected to open their cyber wallets, dig deeper and spend more time and money shopping online this holiday shopping season than they did last. The fact that a growing number of consumers will be doing even more of their Christmas shopping online in 2006 has web retailers anticipating a strong holiday buying season, according to Internet Retailers latest surveythis one on holiday shopping expectations and preparations. Each year retailers count on their online holiday sales to deliver big contributions to their overall annual financial performance: 9.5% of all retailers depend on the final months of the year to generate more than half of their yearly sales, according to the Internet Retailer survey.
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