The news is spreading here in New Orleans and across the journalism world: the fabled Times-Picayune, as we all know it, may cease to exist. Visitors tour Hurricane Katrina front pages from The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans and the Sun Herald of Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, as part of the 'Covering Katrina' exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, DC. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife) Writing in The New York Times, David Carr gave details in today’s edition of what seems to have been a closely guarded secret. According to his sources, Newhouse Newspapers, a division of Advance Publications, the Times-Pic’s owner, plans to discontinue the daily paper and embrace the model that it used in Ann Arbor, Mich. That means relying heavily on the ... Continue reading →
No more violent shaking. No more tapping the “57” logo. And certainly no more ketchup left to waste at the bottom of the bottle -- all thanks to Ph.D. candidate Dave Smith and his team of MIT researchers. Smith's team, consisting of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists, over the past several months has created “LiquiGlide,” a non-toxic coating so slippery that when you tilt the bottle, the ketchup just flows. Every last drop. "It just floats right onto the sandwich," Smith told Fast Company. The technology isn’t limited to just ketchup, Smith says. The coating can be applied to a variety of surfaces, glass or plastic, and could conceivably work with all kinds of thick sauces. And for Smith, the benefits are obvious. According to Smith, ... Continue reading →
Diamond Pet Foods has issued yet another recall, this time for its small breed dog food. In case you are losing count, this is at least the eighth round of recalls in the past six weeks since the discovery of a salmonella-tainted batch of food made in a South Carolina plant. Since the recall 16 pet owners in 15 states - including two in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey - and in Canada became sick after handling the food and now we hear reports of two cats at a shelter in Montreal that were sickened after eating Diamond brand food. Eleven brands of dog and cat food are made in the Gaston, S.C. plant operated by Diamond Pet Foods, including Costco under the Kirkland ... Continue reading →
So the National Zoo’s Copper Aitken-Palmer quickly ran her stethoscope over the anesthetized animal’s belly. Sure enough, there were the telltale rapid heartbeats of cubs. But how many? And could they be saved? Thus began the zoo’s dramatic struggle last month to preserve the lives of a litter of four cheetah cubs and their mother. It unfolded over two days like a medical thriller. Aitken-Palmer did an emergency Caesarean section on the mother cheetah, and keepers performed CPR for hours on the newborns, using thumbs and fingers. In the end, only two of the one-pound cubs lived, but the zoo said it had done its best, and Wednesday the surviving cubs are scheduled to make a brief media appearance in Washington. “It was one of ... Continue reading →
Cash-strapped Harrisburg's former court-appointed financial receiver, lawyer David Unkovic, was expected in Commonwealth Court Thursday for a hearing on the future of the reorganization plan he once led. It was unclear if the would-be financial czar will be telling details of the political interference he claimed led to his departure to Judge Bonnie Leadbetter, who's asked only for testimony that directly impacts the state's plan to sell city assets. Before resigning, Unkovic had called for a federal investigation into the bond deals that drove the city to default on its debt. Meanwhile Bryn Mawr lawyer Mark Schwartz, who has represented Harrisburg City Council and its treasurer and controller, questioned Gov. Corbett's choice of former Air Force Gen. William B. Lynch to replace Unkovic. Schwartz noted ... Continue reading →
11 arrested in Pittsburgh protesting Gov. Corbett's planned education cuts Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette Kevin White, in the middle with his fist in the air, yells during the protest. Eleven people were arrested Downtown this morning after blocking traffic at Fifth Avenue and Wood Street while protesting proposed cuts to public education funding near Gov. Tom Corbett's Pittsburgh office. The 11 were among a crowd of about 200 demonstrators protesting proposed cuts to education funding, first at the United Steelworkers Building on the Boulevard of the Allies and then peacefully on foot to Mr. Corbett's office on Fifth. PG VIDEO The demonstrators hoped to present Mr. Corbett with a giant pencil bearing some of their signatures and the words "Stand for children. Stand for public schools." Most ... Continue reading →
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Not content to leave Pennsylvania communities with any control over gas drilling within their borders, state legislators have stripped municipalities of their zoning authority under Act 13, choosing energy corporations over the people who elected them. This isn’t exactly new ground for the legislature; indeed, taking away communities’ authority to govern themselves is a decades-old pastime in Harrisburg, one that has shifted into high gear over the past 20 years. The legislature made logging a guaranteed right in all zoning districts back in 1992, giving in to timber interests and eliminating municipalities’ authority to provide for conservation zones. Shortly thereafter, lawmakers stripped municipalities of their authority to regulate corporate water extraction, the use of genetically modified seeds, and the dumping of urban sewage sludge on ... Continue reading →
