People often get excited about the possibility of getting a nice return on their money through investing, so as soon as they have a little bit of cash in hand, they’re ready to invest. They want to make their money work for them, and that’s completely understandable. But not everyone is ready to jump in.
There are so many stunning places to see in the world, but some of them are really expensive to visit. While no destination is quite the same, Cheap Tickets rounded up some cheaper alternatives to popular (but expensive) vacation spots.
When I think about thrift and meat—specifically in the U.S., but increasingly in areas like Europe—the first thing that comes to mind is the devotion folks have to tenderness. This tends to be the Holy Grail quality people look for in meat. To me, this is a backwards approach to quantifying the quality of meat.
Dollar stores are cheap, but it’s easier to waste money there than you think. Without a keen eye, you’ll end up with damaged goods, nasty food, and last dibs on the best merch. Every dollar store is different, but these strategies will save you money and keep you safe.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Police in New Jersey’s capital city say a man told them he broke into a business because he wanted to see his brother in jail.
The robbery in Trenton was discovered around 4:20 a.m. Saturday. Authorities say the business’ glass front door had been smashed.
Officers say they found 24-year-old Jose Ixcolin about a block away, holding a computer monitor taken in the burglary.
Police say Ixcolin told officers he wanted to get arrested so he could see his brother. It wasn’t immediately clear why his brother was in jail or if Ixcolin had been able to speak with him following his arrest.
Ixcolin now faces burglary and theft charges. It wasn’t known Monday if he has retained an attorney.
The post Police: Man broke into store so he could see jailed brother appeared first on WTOP.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — It’s not only drones and driverless cars that may become the norm someday — ocean-faring ships might also run without captains or crews.
The Pentagon on Monday showed off the world’s largest unmanned surface vessel, a self-driving 132-foot ship able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own to hunt for stealthy submarines and underwater mines.
The military’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in conjunction with the Navy will be testing the ship off the San Diego coast over the next two years to observe how it interacts with other vessels and avoids collisions. Unlike smaller, remote-controlled craft launched from ships, the so-called “Sea Hunter” is built to operate on its own.
“It’s not a joy-stick ship,” said DARPA spokesman Jared B. Adams, standing in front of the sleek, futuristic-looking steel-gray vessel docked at a maritime terminal in the heart of San Diego’s shipbuilding district, where TV crews filmed the robotic craft.
“Sea Hunter” relies on radar, sonar, cameras and a global positioning system. Unmanned ships will supplement missions to help keep service members out of harm’s way, Adams said.
Besides military leaders, the commercial shipping industry will be watching the ship’s performance during the trial period. Maritime companies from Europe to Asia have been looking into developing fleets of unmanned ships to cut down on operating costs and get through areas plagued by pirates.
During the testing phase, the ship will have human operators as a safety net. But once it proves to be reliable, it will maneuver itself — able to go out at sea for months at a time. With its twin diesel engines, it could go as far as Guam from San Diego on a mission, developers say. There are no plans at this point to arm it.
“There are a lot of advantages that we’re still trying to learn about,” program manager Scott Littlefield said.
The idea in the commercial sector has sparked debate over whether it’s possible to make robotic boats safe enough. The International Transport Workers’ Federation, the union representing more than half of the world’s more than 1 million seafarers, has said it does not believe technology will ever be able to replace the ability of humans to foresee and react to the various dangers at sea.
Others have expressed concern about hackers taking control. Military officials have been working on hacker-proof protections and say it’s possible to make ships cyber-secure.
The “Sea Hunter” was built off the Oregon coast, and it moved on a barge to San Diego’s coastline. The prototype can travel at a speed of up to about 30 mph and is equipped with a variety of sensors and an advanced optical system to detect other ships.
The program to develop the ship cost $120 million, though DARPA officials say the vessels can now be produced for about $20 million.
The post Move over drones, driverless cars _ unmanned ship up next appeared first on WTOP.
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A mentally disabled West Texas teenager who told a school worker she had been impregnated by her stepfather was found with her uterus removed when authorities discovered her body in her family’s partially burned home, according to an arrest warrant.
The mother of the 18-year-old who was found dead in Idalou, northeast of Lubbock, in February remained jailed Monday after being arrested last week on a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a disabled person. The teenager’s stepfather is being held on three counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child. No one has been charged in the death, but the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office has said more charges are coming.
The arrest warrant for the mother alleges the woman knew her husband was abusing her two daughters. The mother doesn’t yet face charges related to the younger daughter, who is 15.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify victims of sex crimes. The AP isn’t naming the 15-year-old girl’s family members because that could reveal her identity.
Online jail records did not list attorney for either the mother or her husband. A spokesman for the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office didn’t return several phone calls Monday seeking comment.
According to the arrest warrant, the 18-year-old, who had the mental age of a 6 to 7 year old, had told a school worker on Jan. 29 that her stepfather had impregnated her.
“Mom told her not to tell anyone because Mom needed (the stepfather) to pay bills,” authorities wrote in the warrant.
The warrant alleges that the mother knew as early as 2008 that her husband was sexually assaulting her older daughter. The 18-year-old told a school counselor that her stepfather also abused her sister and that the sisters had talked about this and told their mother, according to the arrest warrant.
On Feb. 2, the teenager told an interviewer with the Children’s Advocacy Center that her stepfather had been touching her since she was 12. After that, the girls’ mother was told to have no contact with her husband, but he remained at their home, the arrest warrant says.
The mother later told investigators that her husband had been “intravenously using methamphetamines inside the home over an extended period of time,” the warrant says.
The 18-year-old was found dead, her throat slashed, on Feb. 10. Investigators have said that a fire was set to hide evidence.
The younger daughter told investigators on March 10 that her stepfather had been having sexual contact with her since she was 9 years old and that he had been sexually assaulting her two to five times a week for the past two to three years, according to the mother’s arrest warrant. The girl also told authorities she had seen her stepfather sexually assault her older sister.
The girl told investigators that her mother had kicked her husband out of their home after catching him about to sexually assault her two years ago, but that the mother allowed her husband to return after two months.
“By providing (the husband) access to her daughters after being made aware that (he) was molesting them, (the mother) aided (her husband) in the sexual assaults of her daughters,” according to the arrest warrant.
The post Warrant: Slain pregnant Texas teen found with uterus removed appeared first on WTOP.
BOSTON (AP) — Mayor Marty Walsh says a transgender pride flag raised Monday over Boston City Hall plaza will continue to fly until everyone is equal under the law in Massachusetts.
The Democratic mayor and other elected officials joined activists in raising the flag of blue, pink, and white horizontal stripes as state lawmakers continue to weigh a bill that would extend protections to transgender individuals in public places.
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker hasn’t said whether he would sign the measure, which would expand a 2011 state law banning discrimination against transgender people in the workplace and housing by also prohibiting discrimination in restaurants, malls and other public accommodations, including restrooms or locker rooms.
The bill would allow transgender people to use public accommodations corresponding to their gender identity.
“We raise the trans pride flag for those who cannot be here today, for those who have been taken from us due to anti-trans violence,” said Mason Dunn, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.
Dunn said the ceremony marked the first time a trans pride flag has been raised in Massachusetts. Supporters said they know of only three other cities in the country to fly the flag — Philadelphia, San Francisco, and San Jose, California.
Boston has had a public accommodations law for transgender individuals since 2002, Walsh said, and he wants those same protections put in place statewide.
“We’ve proven there’s nothing to fear from being inclusive,” the mayor said. “Quite the opposite. We are safer, we are stronger when everyone enjoys the same protections.”
Massachusetts House leaders last week unveiled a revised version of the bill, adding language that could facilitate legal action against anyone who makes an “improper” claim of gender identity. The redrafted bill would allow the attorney general to provide “guidance or regulations” to law enforcement about legal action against “any person who asserts gender identity for an improper purpose.”
Opponents have cited fears that a male sexual predator could falsely claim to identify as a female to gain access to a women’s bathroom or locker room. And the Massachusetts Family Institute has dismissed the House redraft saying it offers no protections to women and children who don’t want to be eyed by or exposed to naked men in locker rooms.
Supporters argue such fears are unfounded.
Baker told reporters Monday that he “appreciated some of the clarity that was provided by the House version.”
“This is an important issue and as we’ve said before we’ll look forward to reviewing whatever makes it through the process,” he added.
Democratic Senate President Stan Rosenberg said the Senate will debate the House bill May 12.
“We welcome the diversity of the human race here in Massachusetts,” Rosenberg said at the flag-raising ceremony.
___
Associated Press reporter Bob Salsberg contributed to this report.
The post Transgender pride flag raised at Boston City Hall appeared first on WTOP.
PHOENIX (AP) — Identity theft laws that Arizona used against workers in the country illegally were set to go back into effect after a federal appeals court said Monday they were used against U.S. citizens as well as immigrants who use false identities to get jobs.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an order that stopped the state from enforcing the laws.
The ruling will not immediately go into effect while the plaintiffs consider an appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel, said Jessica Vosburgh, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The laws are part of a package of measures approved in 2007 and 2008 that aimed to confront employers who hire immigrants who are in the country illegally. The package has been criticized as focusing too heavily on workers and too little on employers, leading to hundreds of criminal cases against immigrant workers while targeting only a handful of employers.
A lower-court judge had said immigrant-rights advocates were likely to succeed in claiming federal immigration law trumped the ID measures.
But the 9th Circuit said authorities also use the laws to go after citizens, not just immigrants, so federal immigration law is not always a factor. As a result, the three-judge panel said the laws cannot be blocked in their entirety.
“We cannot say that every application is unconstitutional,” Judge Richard Tallman wrote for the court.
For example, the court said Arizona had prosecuted citizens who used someone else’s identity to hide a criminal history from a potential employer.
Vosburgh said the plaintiffs’ lawsuit challenging the laws will continue. “If you look at enforcement data, the vast majority of individual prosecutions are being brought against undocumented workers,” she said.
Supporters of the ID theft laws say immigrants who steal identities to get jobs are committing a crime, and that victims could face difficulties such as getting loans.
Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of metro Phoenix known nationally for targeting illegal immigration and calling himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” has raided dozens of businesses and arrested more than 700 immigrants.
He said in a statement Monday that the identity theft laws should be enforced now but that he has not decided “when or if to resurrect” enforcement.
The post Court gives green light to enforcement of Arizona ID laws appeared first on WTOP.
DETROIT (AP) — The Latest on the sick-out by teachers that’s closed dozens of Detroit schools on Tuesday (all times local):
6:30 p.m.
Detroit teachers say they will return to the classroom Wednesday after most schools were closed for two straight days because faculty called out sick.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers announced the end of the protest after the district’s state-appointed transitional manager, Steven Rhodes, offered assurance “that they will be paid for their work.” Union leaders encouraged members to go back to school.
The district is projected to run out of cash by June 30. Without money from the state, teachers who have opted to receive their pay over 12 months instead of the course of the school year will not get checks this summer.
State lawmakers are working on plans to restructure Detroit’s ailing school district.
About 45,000 Detroit students missed class Monday and Tuesday.
___
1 p.m.
A Michigan legislative committee has approved a $500 million plan to restructure Detroit’s ailing school district by paying off enormous operating debt and creating a new district.
The bills winning passage Tuesday next head to the floor of the Republican-led House, which could vote on them later this week. The new bills differ from a bipartisan $720 million plan approved by the Senate in March. The Senate and House will have to work out their differences to advance the measure before the Legislature adjourns in June.
The committee’s Republican chairman Al Pscholka (pa-SHOLKA) has promised that teachers will be paid and lawmakers will fix the state-managed district’s finances.
Teachers concerned they would not be paid this summer held a second sick-out Tuesday, forcing the closure of 94 schools.
___
10:55 a.m.
A top Republican lawmaker says Detroit teachers will get paid and that lawmakers have never indicated they won’t solve the district’s financial problems.
State House Appropriations Committee Chairman Al Pscholka (pa-SHOLKA) told a hearing Tuesday that it’s “time for us to act.” Pscholka says it doesn’t matter who’s to blame for the state-managed district’s long-lasting problems, but that “the future of Detroit’s schoolchildren … is on the line.”
The state Legislature passed $48.7 million in emergency funding in March, but that will only last through June. Teachers held another mass sick-out Tuesday, forcing the closure of 94 schools, over concerns they will not be paid this summer.
Gov. Rick Snyder proposed overhauling the Detroit Public Schools a year ago, but legislators are at odds over issues such as charter schools, labor contracts and how quickly an elected school board takes power.
___
10:15 a.m.
Michigan lawmakers facing pressure to rescue Detroit’s state-managed school district are at odds over how much to spend and other details.
A state House committee is considering a $500 million restructuring plan Tuesday, as students missed class for a second straight day after teachers called out sick over fears they will not be paid this summer. The bailout is less than a $720 million proposal approved by the state Senate in March.
Unlike the Senate legislation, the House bills would limit employees’ bargaining rights and prohibit labor contracts in place in the current district from being transferred when a new district is launched.
8:45 a.m.
About 45,000 Detroit Public Schools students are missing class for the second straight day after teachers called out sick over pay issues.
That has forced some parents to skip work or find someone else to watch their children.
Monique Baker McCormick’s daughter is an 11th grader at Cass Tech.
She says her daughter is missing out on learning, but that the district’s teachers shouldn’t be blamed for “just trying to survive themselves off of what little they get.”
The state-appointed transition manager for Detroit Schools has said the district is projected to run out of cash by June 30. Teachers who have opted to receive their pay over 12 months instead of the course of the school year will not get checks this summer without help from the state.
___
7:30 a.m.
Nearly all Detroit public schools are closed as mass teacher sick-outs over pay roll into a second day.
The district released a list of 94 closed schools as of 7:15 a.m. Tuesday.
Detroit Federation of Teachers president Ivy Bailey said in an email Monday night that educators are not expected to show up for work Tuesday.
The district is projected to run out of cash by June 30. Without funds from the state, teachers who have opted to receive their pay over 12 months instead of the course of the school year will not get checks this summer.
More than 1,500 teachers called out sick Monday, forcing 94 of 97 schools to close. More than 45,000 students missed class.
Another protest and a union meeting are planned Tuesday.
The post The Latest: Detroit teachers say they will return to work appeared first on WTOP.
LAKEWOOD, Wash. (AP) — When a man accused of torturing a woman to death broke out of Washington state’s largest mental hospital with another patient in early April, officials called it a rare occurrence and cited only two other escapes in the past seven years.
But a review of police reports and interviews by The Associated Press reveal 185 instances in which patients escaped or walked away over just the past 3 1/2 years or so.
Patients have bolted out unsecured doors, jumped over fences, crawled out windows, run away from staff during off-campus appointments and wandered off after being allowed outside the building.
Some returned on their own within hours, but many disappeared for weeks or longer. Police captured them down the street, in nearby cities, in faraway counties and in other states. Others were never found.
At least eight patients committed assaults or other offenses while they were out, authorities said.
Lakewood police reports obtained by the AP through a public records request list the incidents differently depending on the circumstances of the disappearance or who wrote the report, but the files show 71 “AWOL” patients, 43 escapes, 70 missing persons and one unauthorized leave between the start of 2013 and late April of this year.
Dennis Brockschmidt, a nurse at the institution for 18 years, said it is easy for patients to get out.
“It has happened many times,” he said, recalling one patient who kicked out windows and others who picked locks with paper clips. One patient tossed his mattress out a third-story window and jumped, Brockschmidt said. He broke his leg but made it to a city 25 miles away before getting caught. He tried again six more times, the nurse said.
Kathy Spears, spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services, said escapes from inside the hospital are “extremely rare.”
She said most reports to local police involve patients who don’t return after being allowed to leave hospital grounds for a short time — a practice intended to help them ease their way back into the community.
“We continue to make adjustments to our policies on grounds privileges so they meet the recovery needs of the patients, while keeping them, staff and the community safe,” Spears said in a statement.
Most of the missing patients were held under Washington’s involuntary commitment law, which says people can be locked up if a mental disorder makes them a danger to themselves or others. Some of the missing had been hospitalized after being charged with such crimes as murder, rape, kidnapping, assault and robbery.
Yet in most cases, the staffer who reported the escape wrote “no” in the box that said “Dangerous.”
“For God’s sake, many of these people are seriously dangerous,” said Dr. Richard Adler, a forensic psychiatrist who has worked on civil commitment cases for years. He said patients flee without medications or a treatment plan.
In the April 6 escape that exposed security weaknesses at the 800-bed psychiatric hospital, Anthony Garver and another man broke out of their locked unit by crawling out of a window of their ground-floor room. Garver, 28, had been institutionalized after being found incompetent to stand trial on charges of murdering a woman by tying her up with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times and slashing her throat.
His fellow patient, Mark Alexander Adams, was caught the morning after the escape 27 miles away. Garver rode a bus 300 miles to Spokane and hid in the woods near his parents’ house for two days before he was found by a search dog. Both men were captured without incident.
Gov. Jay Inslee reacted by firing the hospital’s CEO, and the Corrections Department was brought in to inspect the building for security improvements. The department closed the ward where the escapees had been living and moved similar patients to a more secure area.
Even before the breakout, federal regulators had threatened to cut millions in funding for the hospital because of patient attacks on staff members and other patients.
When Garver was captured, the sheriff in Spokane criticized the state for not keeping a violent criminal locked up. Lakewood Assistant Police Chief John Unfred responded: “Welcome to our world.”
The institution is “right in the middle of our community,” said Unfred, whose city of 58,000 people is about 40 miles from Seattle and 10 miles from Tacoma. Most of the patients haven’t been charged with a crime so they can’t be treated like jail inmates, he said, “but there has got to be a way to keep them secure and safe.”
Western State Hospital, a sprawling multi-story brick building, is surrounded by a waist-high stone fence but no barbed wire or guard towers. Patients are kept in locked wards with varying levels of security.
Depending on how well they have responded to treatment, some patients are allowed out on the grounds. Others can venture beyond the property, some with an escort, some without.
Across the street are a soccer and baseball field, playground and park. Steilacoom High School sits on one corner of the hospital grounds, and runaway patients sometimes head in that direction, forcing the school into lockdown.
Thomas Shaw, who lives in a nearby apartment, said he sees patients around town. He said they don’t bother him as long as they’re quiet, but he steps in or calls the police if they get aggressive.
Shaw and others said they generally feel safe because they believe patients who have permission to be outside are harmless and the ones who escape flee the area.
But that’s not always the case. A patient who was at the hospital in 2002 for a competency evaluation after being arrested on burglary and animal-cruelty charges climbed a security fence and escaped. He tried to get into one nearby home and ran in and out of another before being caught.
Of the 185 escapes or walk-offs uncovered by the AP, the public was never notified at the time about 180 of them, even though many of them had violent histories, were convicted felons or registered sex offenders, or were the subject of protection orders.
Henry Richards, a forensic psychologist who was chairman of the state’s Public Safety Review Panel until 2014, said the hospital “has not done a good job of knowing which patients were missing or where they were.”
In some cases, hospital officials gave police incorrect information on the status of escaped patients, such as whether their commitment periods were up, according to the police files.
A staffer told police that a patient who disappeared in 2014 returned the same day, but a later report said the Snohomish County Sheriff’s office picked him up five days after he skipped out. After Garver broke out, someone at the hospital filed paperwork wrongly releasing him from his state commitment.
Spears, the social services spokeswoman, said letting patients out is part of treatment because it helps them become more comfortable around other people.
But Richards said the hospital needs to “tighten up those privileges.”
“The perceived needs of the patients took priority over public safety concerns,” he said.
The post AP Exclusive: Dozens escaped from mental hospital since 2013 appeared first on WTOP.
Some of the most virulent superbugs plaguing health facilities around the globe have been found hiding in hospitals around the District, particularly inside a population of patients known as “silent carriers.”
That was the finding of a citywide study completed over 15 weeks examining the prevalence of the multidrug-resistant bacteria called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE. Of about 1,000 patients who were tested across the District, there was a 5.1 percent prevalence rate of CRE, according to results released by the D.C. Hospital Association.
The fact that these superbugs were found in local facilities wasn’t terribly surprising. But it is the first time the District knows just how common they are.
“We didn’t know what we would find because no one’s ever done this before. There’s nothing in the scientific literature that really says, ‘You could expect to see this level of these organisms in hospitals,'” said Jo Anne Nelson, executive vice president and chief operating…
The post Exclusive: First-ever study of superbugs in D.C. hospitals shows how common they are appeared first on WTOP.
One of the most annoying things about breaking your phone is having to go somewhere and wait in line to get it fixed. There’s another, unexpected option now for iPhone users who have shattered their device’s screens or need help with a dead battery: satellite provider Dish has launched a new repair service that sends a technician to wherever the customer is.
Right now, the house call service is limited to the iPhone 5, 5s, 5c, 6, and 6 Plus, though it’s expected that Dish will add more devices — likely Android phones — to the list in the coming weeks.
Here’s how it works, starting today, according to Dish: customers request an on-site screen fix or battery replacement through the service’s site, and Dish will send a technician who will use “high-quality replacement parts from respected third parties” to complete repairs.
Customers can schedule an appointment in two-hour windows for any day of the week. Depending on when you book a tech, you can either get same-day or next-day service.
The techs will go to a customer’s home, office, or the gym. While the customer waits, they can check their tech’s name online, see a photo, and track their vehicle as they make their way to your location.
“Fixing your phone shouldn’t mean losing your phone for days on end, so we come to you — whether you’re at the office, the gym or even the coffee shop,” John Swieringa, Dish’s executive vice president of operations, said in a press release.
P
Prices start at $74.99 for a battery swap and range up to $224.98 if you have to fix the display and battery in an iPhone 6 Plus. Again — the only services a tech will perform are to fix a screen or battery, so if you’ve got liquid damage or anything else going on, you’re out of luck.
If something happens to your phone afterward that’s related to the repair the tech performed, Dish has a 60-day warranty to cover any subsequent fix needed.
Nearly three years after hundreds of people from all over the country got sick from eating Salmonella-tainted chicken from Foster Farms, the poultry producer is facing another issue with its products. The company announced that it would recall 220,000 pounds of chicken nuggets that may contain pieces of plastic.
Foster Farms says the frozen chicken nuggets, sold at retailers and non-retail wholesalers, may contain rubber fragments and pieces of plastic embedded inside.
The issue was first detected after the company received customer feedback. A subsequent investigation into the products found the inedible fragments.
So far, there have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products, Foster Farms says.
According to a notice posted with the USDA, the recall covers two varieties of Frozen Chicken Breast Nugget five-pound packages sold at Costco stores in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, and two types of 10-pound boxes of chicken nuggets to distributors in California and Arizona.
The products can be identified by the following Codes, and Best By Dates:
• 5-lb. bags containing FOSTER FARMS “Breast Nuggets – Nugget Shaped Breaded Chicken Breast Patties with Rib Meat.” The bags exhibit best by dates of 2/21/17 and 3/8/17.
• 10-lb. bulk boxes containing FOSTER FARMS “Fully Cooked Breast Nuggets – Nugget Shaped Chicken Breast Patties with Rib Meat Fritters.” The boxes contain package code 6053 and 6068.
Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. They should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.
“Food safety is, and has always been, our top priority and we are vigilant in employing the most up-to-date safety measures to produce wholesome, healthy and delicious food products,” the company said in a statement.
If someone told you today that a new, brightly lit neon sign was going up across the street from where you live, you might react with disgust at the thought of such a commercial eyesore invading the skyline of your community. Yet when some older sign or billboard is threatened, everyone is suddenly up in arms, rushing to its defense. How does something as mundane as outdoor advertising grow to become considered an essential piece of the urban fabric?
Take, for example, the recent news that the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission bestowed landmark status on a neon, 147-foot-long Pepsi-Cola sign dating back to 1936. The sign, made by a company called Artkraft Strauss, once sat atop a Pepsi bottling plant in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, and it is widely accepted as an important aesthetic element of the community, having been saved multiple times already.
“They no longer merely advertise, but are valued in and of themselves. They become icons”
It was first put up for landmark consideration in 1988, the New York Times reported then, and was reconstructed by PepsiCo in 1993 after it was severely damaged in a storm.
When Pepsi sold the plant in 1999, the company included a stipulation that the sign would remain, carving out a chunk of land on the East River front for it to occupy. In 2013, the development company behind a new residential tower took the sign into considering while designing the new building, making sure that there was space provided for the sign to keep its place on the waterfront.
Why go through all this effort to preserve this Pepsi ad? It doesn’t appear to arise out of any overwhelming affection for the beverage.
The public’s connection with these structures runs a bit deeper than just brand loyalty. It’s a bond that can grow from familiarity and a shared history. In a brief regarding the preservation of historic signs, the National Park Service makes a surprisingly eloquent argument.
“They become landmarks, loved because they have been visible at certain street corners — or from many vantage points across the city — for a long time,” writes Michael J. Auer in the brief. “Such signs are valued for their familiarity, their beauty, their humor, their size, or even their grotesqueness. In these cases, signs transcend their conventional role as vehicles of information, as identifiers of something else. When signs reach this stage, they accumulate rich layers of meaning. They no longer merely advertise, but are valued in and of themselves. They become icons.”
Katie Rispoli, executive director for We Are the Next, a non-profit group that helped save the original Taco Bell building, agrees — in this specific instance, and in general.
“It’s not about PepsiCo in a lot of ways; it’s about the sign and the sense of continuity in what they see every day, and this place and the sense of gravitas that they get in their own neighborhood,” Rispoli told Consumerist. “It’s something that represents the place that they call home.”
These kinds of signs also represent a community’s commercial past, located atop factories or company headquarters. They serve to remind people of an economic boom time, in many cases, a time when people were busy at work in the building.
“Signs are like archeological layers that reveal different periods of human occupancy and use,” Auer writes. “They sometimes become landmarks in themselves, almost without regard for the building to which they are attached, or the property on which they stand.“
“It’s about the sign and the sense of continuity in what they see every day… It’s something that represents the place that they call home.”
Lannette Schwartz, a sign enthusiast who is pursuing her thesis in Heritage Conservation in the school of architecture at the University of Southern California, agrees, noting that a familiar sign can give people “a sense of place during that past era, for the community now, and the people who identify” with it.
Beyond the familiarity factor, many people treasure these older signs, billboards, and other commercial structures because of the work that went into constructing them; work that can’t always be easily replicated today.
Many signs weren’t mass-produced, and used neon or other materials that aren’t easy to work with and require a high level of skill, Schwartz explains.
“They actually have skilled workers and artists involved in creating these signs,” she tells Consumerist. “That creates a unique piece of history and art.”
That can make reconstructions especially difficult or financially cumbersome, which adds to an existing sign’s air of elevated craftsmanship.
For example, Boston residents are no doubt familiar with a glowing 60′ x 60′ Citgo sign that’s presided over the city skyline since 1940. Although that structure originally got its glow from neon, the company later opted to “upgrade from using neon tubes to LEDs” when it was restored in 2005.
Buildings often change hands, but often the signs don’t — not every company is like PepsiCo, which included a provision in the sale of its building that ensured the continued existence of its famous sign under new ownership.
A new company moving into a space might not want to be associated with the past, and in some cases, keeping an old sign could mean less space for the current business to advertise its name or logo. Many cities have laws that only permit a certain amount of signage per business.
Some municipalities, however, have what are known as “sign-bonus” regulations, meaning that the space used by the historic sign isn’t counted against a company’s overall sign space allotment. Thus, keeping a historic sign doesn’t mean the new owner can’t also put their name on the building.
“Increasingly, however, communities are enacting ordinances that recognize older and historic signs and permit them to be kept,” the NPS says, adding that it “encourages this trend.”
It behooves many businesses to keep these vestiges of the commercial past, if they can, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own messaging. Heck, it can make them appear cool and trendy to have retro signs.
Take another recent example, a former Boeing plane factory that’s now used by Mercedes-Benz as a production facility in Long Beach, CA. As part of the purchase and sales agreement between Boeing and the new owners, the new owner is required to maintain and operate a “Fly DC Jets” sign because of its “historical significance,” The O.C. Register reported at the time.
Again, the NPS agrees, noting that while it can be difficult for some companies to do so, “keeping the old sign is often a good marketing strategy.”
“It can exploit the recognition value of the old name and play upon the public’s fondness for the old sign,” the NPS says. “The advertising value of an old sign can be immense. This is especially true when the sign is a community landmark.
“I think there are plenty of them that are still out there,” Rispoli says. “I think they’re hiding around us every day,” she adds, citing Hollywood’s “abundant collection of signage” from the ‘60s and ’70s that people are starting to think about what they mean, and what to do with them.
Schwartz isn’t so sure, saying the current advertising movement is “too digital,” what with billboards that can flash a different ad every eight seconds.
“I don’t know that a digital sign would necessarily become historic, but you never know,” she adds. If it can “impact the community in such a way that they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really love that sign, and it speaks to me, and it reminds me of this area,” then “yes, I think there could be future signs” that speak to people 50 years from now like signs from 50 years ago speak to us today.
You only need one contaminated ingredient to show the complexity and interconnectedness of our food supply. In the case of commercial bakery CSM Bakery Solutions in Georgia, one batch of peanut-contaminated flour led to prepared baked goods at clients nationwide that include Cinnabon, Safeway, Jewel, 7-Eleven, and Chick-fil-A.
Peanut allergies can be serious and potentially life-threatening, so even trace amounnts of peanut in a finished food product is an important food-safety issue. In this case, it looks like a batch of peanut-contaminated flour at one company that makes mixes for cookies, cakes, and other treats led to peanut-contaminated baked goods being sold across the country. We all learned a little more than we wanted to know about how the tasty prepared baked goods that we enjoy end up on the shelf.
For the peanut-allergic or generally curious, here are the affected products:
Recalls of cookies, cakes linked to peanut-tainted flour [Food Safety News]
If you’re the kind of person who can kill a plant just by looking at it, Kmart’s new “Plants for Life” guarantee might sound like the solution to your brown thumb: the retailer is offering a lifetime guarantee on its trees, shrubs, and perennials that gives a customer a replacement or store credit if their plant dies before its time. Claiming that replacement, however, means first clearing your plant from a slew of plant-death scenarios included in the offer’s fine print.
First of all, to qualify for the “Plants for Life, Guaranteed” offer, the plants have to be planted in the ground, “in the recommended USDA Plant Hardiness Zones.” So make sure you’ve got your zones straight. Second, we’re only talking about your average outdoor shrubs and trees: “Annuals, houseplants, tropicals, seeds, bulbs, and seasonal plants including, but not limited to, Christmas trees, poinsettias, and Easter lilies are excluded.”
If your plant is the right kind of vegetation to qualify, you won’t get your free replacement for a plant that you neglected, didn’t adequately water, or for otherwise “abused” plants.
And if it was destroyed by anything from the lawnmower or a hurricane, you’re also out of luck: the guarantee doesn’t apply to “plants damaged or destroyed by mechanical (vehicles, snow plows, mowers, etc.), chemicals, animals, vandalism, or acts of God, including, but not limited to: disease, insects and related plant pests, or weather.”
So… what’s left? Genetic defects, essentially.
“They’ve covered just about everything that’s going to go wrong,” Ken Johnson, a horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension told the Chicago Tribune. “There would have to be something wrong with the tree itself, with its genetics.”
Other caveats include the fact that Kmart has the right to “limit or refuse any lifetime guarantee or exchange” at its discretion, and reserves “the right to modify or discontinue this program.”
When the Tribune asked the company about the range of exceptions, Kmart said in a statement that the guarantee “provides customers with peace of mind that the eligible plants they get from Kmart will last.”
“If a plant dies as a result of a covered problem Kmart will replace it. Like any guarantee, there are certain exclusions for things like abuse, mechanical damage or extraordinary weather events,” the company said.
The offer is also only valid for plants purchased in a store, and not online.
If you’re arrested or a suspect in a crime, the police can’t force you to remember the combination to your safe, or the passcode for your iPhone. But what if that phone can be unlocked with biometric data like a fingerprint? Does the ready access to this information give law enforcement an easy way to open secure devices, or would that be a violation of your constitutional rights?
The U.S. Supreme Court made it clear in 2014 that police must have a warrant to search the contents of a mobile device, but does that warrant give them the authority to compel you to use your thumb to actually unlock the device?
The answer to that will ultimately hinge on how courts view fingerprints. Is using your finger to unlock the device no different than being ordered to turn over a key, or is putting your fingertip on that button tantamount to testifying against yourself in violation of the Fifth Amendment?
Some courts have already chimed in on the matter, with a Virginia state court ruling in Oct. 2014 that while police can’t force suspects to reveal the passcode to their phones, compelling the use of a fingerprint is acceptable because it “does not require the witness to divulge anything through his mental process.”
More recently, the L.A. Times writes of a U.S. Magistrate Judge who signed off on a warrant compelling a woman to provide her fingerprint to unlock a phone seized at her boyfriend’s apartment.
However, University of Dayton law professor Susan Brenner tells the Times that she believes this is a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against self-incrimination.
“By showing you opened the phone, you showed that you have control over it,” she explains. “It’s the same as if she went home and pulled out paper documents — she’s produced it.”
Yet, as noted in the Virginia ruling, the Supreme Court has held in 1976’s Fisher v. United States that “The Fifth Amendment protects against compelled self-incrimination, not the disclosure of private information,” and that compelling a suspect to turn over documents or other evidence that may ultimately be incriminating is not the same as testifying against yourself.
While a passcode might be more old-fashioned and seemingly less secure than a biometric lock, there is court precedent giving passcodes more legal protections than fingerprints.
In 2010, in U.S. v. Kirschner, a federal court in Michigan held that compelling a defendant to provide a passcode qualifies as testimony because it requires the defendant to “communicate knowledge, unlike the production of a handwriting sample or a voice exemplar,” which — like fingerprints — have long been excluded from Fifth Amendment protections.
“This is why I tell my criminal procedure students that they have more protections if they use a passcode rather than fingerprint to guard entry to their phones,” University of Washington law professor Mary Fan explains to Ars Technica. “While I don’t conduct crimes on my cell phone, I still decline to use my fingerprint out of an abundance of caution!”
Everyone should own a large USB battery pack for long plane rides and power outages, and you’ve got three solid options to choose from today.
The post Photos: Hail pelts D.C. area Monday appeared first on WTOP.
WASHINGTON — Poison ivy is beginning to show up in the D.C. area, and you’ll want to get rid of it to avoid nasty rashes.
Some people attack poison ivy with herbicides, but WTOP Garden Editor Mike McGrath says that’s likely not the best idea.
“That is one of the huge misunderstandings about poison ivy,” McGrath said. “You can spray it with Roundup until it’s brown and dead and has little x’s over its eyes,” but that doesn’t neutralize the oils that cause allergic reactions.
“You might not recognize it anymore and you might pull it up with your bare hands,” McGrath adds.
Instead, he suggests wrapping supermarket plastic bags around your arms before handling the plant.
“Everything you’ve heard about miracle cures for poison ivy residue is totally bogus,” McGrath said. “The only thing that dissolves the oil is cool water,” according to dermatologists whom McGrath has spoken with personally.
Roundup’s FAQ page confirms such notions: “If you come in contact with poison ivy, wash immediately with plain, cool water (soap can move the oil around on the skin).”
There’s no need for a washrag and soap to clean poison ivy oil, McGrath said. To be extra careful, you could rinse a washrag with cool water and wipe down any surface you might have touched.
WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report.
The post What you should know about treating poison ivy appeared first on WTOP.
The post 10 things to buy at the farmers market this week appeared first on WTOP.
No, it’s not a prop from 50 Shades of Grey; it’s an outdoor hammock chair, and it can be yours for $30.
When ants invade your pet's food, the pet may refuse to eat. When ants invade food stored inside, you might end up with a pest problem inside your home. These instructions will help you ant-proof your pet's food, helping prevent such infestations. In addition to helping keep ants out of your pet's food, moreover, you may be worried that ants will end up in food you put out for wildlife around your home. These instructions also include steps to keeping ants out of these foods. The key is to create a chemical barrier that ants will not cross and which will not be harmful to pets, wild birds, or any other animals you wish to feed.
Cite error: <ref> tags exist, but no <references/> tag was found
When a debt collector decides to file a lawsuit against an alleged debtor, that decision might have more to do with where the defendant lives than with how much they allegedly owe.
A new report from ProPublica claims that Nebraska — with its low fees for filing lawsuits, and collector-friendly state laws — has created the ideal situation for over-eager litigators, resulting in tens of thousands of collections lawsuits every year.
In 2013 alone, collectors filed some 79,000 lawsuits in Nebraska, for debts as small as $50.
Here are just a few of the important takeaways from the ProPublica piece:
1.) It’s about the costs — In Nebraska, the fee for filing a lawsuit is $45, making the often last resort of legal action a desirable and easy choice for collectors looking to obtain payments on overdue debts.
Because the cost to file is so low, filing a suit for a debt of just $100 can still be lucrative for collectors.
2.) Collector-friendly laws — According to ProPublica, Nebraska has less stringent standards for serving debtors with a lawsuit, making the process less of a hassle for companies.
For example, collectors aren’t required to personally serve the borrower with the lawsuit personally or provide documentation that the debts are legitimate.
3.) Small population, more lawsuits — The number of lawsuits filed in Nebraska far outweighed other areas where the population was significantly higher.
For example, Cook County, IL, where it costs $172 to file a lawsuit, has a population of five million people, but had the same number of lawsuits filed against consumers as were filed in Nebraska, with its population of about two million.
In New Mexico, which has a similar population to Nebraska, the cost to file a lawsuit is $77. Although the fee is still rather low, the number of lawsuits filed in 2013 was about one-third of Nebraska’s rate — about 30,000 lawsuits in all.
4.) A lower cost debt — Most of the debt collection suits filed in Nebraska in 2013 revolved around medical bills.
Of the 100 lawsuits reviewed by ProPublica, most sought less than $700, 40 were for debts of $500 or less, and four were for $100 or less. In comparison, suits filed in Cook County, where the fee is $172, averaged a debt of $3,000.
5.) Hundreds each day — Of the 79,000 lawsuits filed in Nebraska in 2013, nearly half were from one company, Credit Management Services.
CMS, as it’s known, has a team that works to persuade debtors to make voluntary payments. When this fails, the company files lawsuits. In 2013, that number totaled 30,000, or about 120 each work day.
While the company said in 2012 that consumers aren’t sued unless the individual has means to pay, CMS did not specify how it makes that determination.
6.) Not holding back — ProPublica reports that CMS uses a variety of aggressive tactics to collect on debts. In one case the company emptied a debtor’s bank account 11 times over a two-year period. In all but three of those debits the account had less than $100.
7.) Trying to change — Earlier this year, the Nebraska legislature passed a law that increased the fee for court filings by $1.
While the increase seems insignificant, it became a point of contention for lawmakers and debt collectors. The measure eventually passed 40-0, and was signed by the state’s governor.
For more on the correlation between low court costs and lawsuits, as well as information on CMS’ business practices check out ProPublica’s report.
For Nebraska’s Poor, Get Sick and Get Sued [ProPublica]
For some caffeine lovers, there’s nothing more refreshing than adding some ice to a cup of coffee or tea to bring the temperature down and the energy levels up. Balance is important — too much ice and not enough coffee can result in a weak drink. According to a new lawsuit, Starbucks baristas have been upsetting that balance by allegedly adding too much ice to cold coffee drinks, and skimping on the liquid.
A Starbucks customer filed a class action [PDF] against Starbucks in Northern Illinois Federal Court last week, claiming that the chain’s cold drinks are almost half ice, and that Starbucks misrepresents the fluid ounces of its iced coffee and tea beverages.
In the complaint, the lead plaintiff points out that Starbucks makes a hefty chunk of change on cold drinks prepared in-store, “accounting for billions of dollars in revenue” each year.
Despite the fact that Starbucks advertises four sizes of drinks — Tall, Grande, Venti, and Trenta, which correspond to 12, 16, 24 and 30 fluid ounces, respectively — the plaintiff claims that customers don’t get the full advertised fluid ounces because the company fills much of those cups up with ice.
“A Starbucks customer who orders a Venti cold drink receives only 14 fluid ounces of that drink — just over half the advertised amount, and just over half the amount for which they are paying,” the 29-page complaint states. “In the iced coffee example, a Starbucks customer who orders and pays for a Venti iced coffee, expecting to receive 24 fluid ounces of iced coffee based on Starbucks’ advertisement and marketing, will instead receive only about 14 fluid ounces of iced coffee.”
What this all boils down to, the complaint says, is that Starbucks is, in essence, “advertising the size of its cold drink cups on its menu, rather than the amount of fluid a customer will receive when they purchase a cold drink — and deceiving its customers in the process.”
Adding insult to injury, the customer claims, is that Starbucks charges more for cold drinks than their hot partners, even though customers opting for the cold version get less of the product than hot-drink customers.
That enables Starbucks to reap higher profits off cold drinks, the complaint claims: “Starbucks’ Cold Drinks are underfilled to make more money and higher profits, to the detriment of consumers who are misled by Starbucks’ intentionally misleading advertising practices.”
To solve this problem, the plaintiff suggests, Starbucks could serve cold drinks in larger cups that allow room for the advertised amount of beverage, while still allowing for ice.
“Starbucks is misleading customers who expect to receive the advertised amount of fluid ounces,” the lawsuit states. “For example, if a gallon of gas is advertised as costing three dollars, and a customer pays three dollars and pumps gas, that customer is expecting to receive a gallon of gas — not approximately half a gallon.”
The plaintiff is seeking to represent a class of anyone who bought a cold drink from Starbucks in the last 10 years. She’s accusing Starbucks of breach of express warranty, breach of implied warrant of merchantability, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, and fraud.
“We are aware of the plaintiff’s claims, which we fully believe to be without merit. Our customers understand and expect that ice is an essential component of any ‘iced’ beverage,” a Starbucks spokesperson told Courthouse News. “If a customer is not satisfied with their beverage preparation, we will gladly remake it.”
Starbucks is under fire on the hot side of its beverage menu as well: just last month, customers filed another lawsuit accusing the chain of underfilling lattes.
Is it a crime for a company or its representatives to keep on shipping food products that may be dangerous to the public if they know that the items may be contaminated? Dole’s Springfield, OH processing plant has started shipping salad again, but new evidence shows that the company kept shipping lettuce even as it was aware of Listeria contamination in the building as far back as 2014.
The company won’t say what it has done to eradicate the Listeria in the facility that caused an outbreak that hospitalized 33 people in the U.S. and Canada, and killed four. Seeking more information on the history of inspections of the facility and any possible history of contamination in the facility, the blog Food Safety News filed a Freedom of Information request with the FDA. (Food Safety News is an independent publication published by Bill Marler, an attorney who represents victims of food poisoning.)
The first record of Listeria on surfaces in the plant was in July 2014. The company followed its normal protocol of “focused cleaning/sanitization” along with follow-up testing after tests showed positive results in July and September 2014, then again during the outbreak period in September, November, and December 2015. The focused cleaning and sanitization apparently weren’t working, but the facility kept cranking out bags of salad for the Dole brand and U.S. and Canadian store brands anyway.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, chair of the subcommittee that oversees and funds the FDA, spoke out about the contamination. “The Dole facility in question has said that they have taken corrective actions, but we need specific answers as to what those actions are,” she said in a statement. “If Dole’s actions are not sufficient to ensure food safety, then this facility must be shut down.”
Senior food safety attorney David Plunkett of the Center for Science in the Public Interest had harsh things to say about Dole’s behavior now that the public knows about the Ohio plant’s history of Listeria. “Dole’s failure to stop shipping products and clean up its plant before the outbreak showed a total disregard for its customers’ health,” he wrote. “Moreover, its press releases afterwards in recalling the bagged salads showed more concern over the company’s public image than for the people who buy its products.”
Dole announced in a statement last week that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the outbreak, and the company is cooperating with that investigation.
Dole knew of Listeria; feds launch criminal investigation [Food Safety News]
When you’re fumbling through airport security — putting your shoes and belt back on, finding your glasses again, stowing your laptop back in its bag — do you make every effort to make sure you’re not leaving anything behind in the plastic bins? Maybe you’re not doing as thorough a job as you think, because someone is leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in loose change behind every year.
USA Today looks at the “unintentional tips” that travelers are unwittingly providing to the TSA when they leave money behind at the security checkpoints.
The law allows for the TSA to collect and keep the unclaimed money lost at checkpoints, most of it in the form of loose change left behind in bins from travelers who hastily empty their pockets.
While it might just be a penny here and a dollar there, it adds up. In 2015 alone, the TSA collected nearly $766,000 from travelers who either didn’t notice or didn’t care that they were leaving behind some pocket change.
That’s nearly double the $383,000 collected in 2008. Since then, the yearly total has increased almost each year (with the exception of a one-off dip in 2010), resulting in a total of more than $4.32 million collected over that eight-year period.
What happens to all this money?
“Receipts of unclaimed money are deposited into a Special Fund account so that the resources can be tracked easily and subsequently expended,” the TSA explained in a statement to USA Today.
If you’ve tuned into the lab-grown meat discussion whatsoever in the past few years, it could seem like it’s only a matter of time before we’re all dining on hot dogs, bacon, and burgers produced in a lab by scientists. We’re not quite at the point of casually shopping for these products alongside meat derived from animals, as there are still things the scientific community has to hash out before lab meat hits the market.
Scientists have claimed victories in recent years with things like a 2013 lab-grown burger experiment from the Netherlands, and a “cultured meat” — the term preferred by scientists for lab-produced meat — meatball introduced here in the U.S. in February.
Along with those advances comes a discussion about whether or not cultured meat is better for people than conventional meat, and whether making meat in a lab could have a positive impact on the environment or a negative one, as The Washington Post points out in a recent article. Here are a few things scientists and those in the lab-grown meat industry talk about when they talk about lab-grown meat:
Is growing meat in a lab better for the environment than raising animals to slaughter? On the one hand, scientists cite a 2011 study that calculated that growing meat in labs would cut down on the land required to produce steaks, sausages and bacon by 99% percent and reduce the associated need for water by 90 percent. One pound of lab meat would produce less greenhouse-gas emissions than those produced by cows, pigs, and poultry.
On the other hand, cultured meat production isn’t so great when you take into account the generation of electricity and heat you need to grow cells in a lab, authors of a 2015 life-cycle analysis of potential cultured meat production in the United States point out.
It’s too soon to tell what environmental impacts of the first products will be, experts say, so we should keep researching them but prepare to manage the downsides.
Cultured meats would be produced in sterile environments, which means they wouldn’t have any dangerous bacteria, proponents say, thus helping to prevent the spread of food-related infections in humans.
Skipping animals would also mean avoiding antibiotics they’ve consumed to help them fight disease and grow faster. Those antibiotics have been linked to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that is dangerous to humans.
Remember when the World Health Organization linked processed meat like bacon and hot dogs to cancer? Though we don’t know exactly what it is about those products that could be cancer-causing, one suspect is heme iron, which is common in meat and is basically only found in meat. Producers of cultured meat say they can make beef and pork in the lab that is free of heme iron, and thus, perhaps cut down on the risk of cancer related to those products.
It could also be possible to remove or reduce saturated fat in lab-grown meat, and replace it with healthier omega-3 fatty acids, scientists say.
“Stem cells are, in principle, capable of making omega-3 fatty acids. If we can tap into that machinery of the cell, then we could make healthier hamburgers,” Dr. Mark Post, who is working on the fat content of lab-grown beef, tells The Post.
Nitrates and nitrites, other possibly carcinogenic compounds, might still be required to prevent things like hot dogs from losing their color. Post says that because cultured meats are sterile, however, they wouldn’t need as much nitrate to stay safe to eat.
Other chemicals can’t be done away with if you want it to taste good — namely heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAA) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can cause DNA damage, the WHO’s report says, but which also are created as part of the Maillard reaction in the cooking process. That reaction is what gives cooked meat its brown color and tasty flavor. Take it away, and meat won’t taste like it was grilled.
There are other issues as well, all of which add up to trying to figure out a balancing act. Basically, there’s no way to have something that tastes exactly like meat that doesn’t also come with a few downsides for your health.
“We’re not there yet,” Uma Valeti, a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Memphis Meats, maker of the cultured meat meatball, told The Post, “but in just a few years, we expect to be selling protein-packed pork, beef and chicken that tastes identical to conventionally raised meat but that is cleaner, safer and all-around better than meat from animals grown on farms.”
Lab-grown meat is in your future, and it may be healthier than the real stuff [The Washington Post]
Prince William County community calendar Washington Post Art Expo A fine arts show and wine tasting. Noon-6 p.m. Vint Hill Craft Winery, 7150 Lineweaver Rd., Vint Hill. 540-351-0000. vinthillcraftwinery.com. Free. “The Music Man” Castaways Repertory Theatre stages the musical about a band leader who attempts ... and more » |