Author: Serkadis

Corriente’s European Divergence Master Fund LP is cashing out a portion of the profits they made shorting European government bonds now.

A source at Bloomberg says the hedge fund will be returning $320 million to investors in the fund, which was set up in late 2007.

They still think there’s a great opportunity, and are offering investors a chance to invest in another fund that’s still making the same bet.

But you have to figure that a move like this represents, to some extent, a desire to take chips off the table.

Bloomberg suggests that the negative press associated with shorting the economies of troubled nations might be also a factor, though the fund denies it’s done anything wrong.

Hugh Hendry seems to not care about negative press and to be betting on the continued decline of the Euro nations anyway.

Oh, and what is Corriente shorting next?

China.

Read the full article in Bloomberg.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Hugh Hendry’s Fund Is Up 8% YTD Because Greece Collapsed
• Watch Hedge Funder Hugh Hendry Fight WIth Joe Stiglitz And Say He Wants Greece To Collapse
• Goldman’s Scandalous Insult Towards Greece: €2,367 Billion Is "A Rather Small" Amount

No matter how good you get or no matter how many people call you “pro” online, you’ll never be an actual pro unless you play that game for a living. For those who haven’t given up on

Craig Dellimore, Political Editor, reporting
CHICAGO (WBBM) — The Daley Administration is honoring historian Dr. Margaret Burroughs with an exhibit along the lakefront at 70th and South Shore Drive.

Members of the South Shore Opera Company serenaded the guest of honor as Mayor Richard M. Daley presided over the dedications of the Margaret Burroughs Gallery.

Chicago Park District Superintendent Timothy Mitchell says the gallery at the South Shore Cultural Center features the artwork of a woman who champions Black History and is—-herself-—a major part of it.

She’s best known for founding and running the DuSable Museum of African American History. Mitchell says it was the first such African-American Museum in the U.S.

At the event, Dr. Burroughs suggested it’s nice to get such accolades while she’s still alive to hear them.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (CBS/AP) ― Proving that even discount stores aren’t recession proof, 21 more Sears and Kmart stores are closing around the country – including two in the Chicago area.

Sears is closing two Kmart stores, at 13200 S. Cicero Ave. in south suburban Crestwood, and at 2235 S. Eastwood Dr. in far northwest suburban Woodstock, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.

A total of 57 employees at the Woodstock store and 71 at the Crestwood store will be laid off, Crain’s reported.

Within the Midwest, Ohio is the most severely affected state. There, five stores will close and 314 people will lose their jobs, according to Crain’s.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Sears just posted its best quarterly profit in three years.

Led by financier Chairman Edward Lampert, Sears has spent years struggling as customers skipped out on its brands for competitors.

But in the fall, business began to turn around at its Kmart discount chain when sales at those stores rose for the first time since 2002 as deal-seeking shoppers returned to stores. That momentum continued in the fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 30., as Kmart shoppers snatched up cheap toys and home goods.

Sears shares climbed $1.86, or 1.9 percent, to $97.52 in premarket trading. Shares closed Monday at $95.66.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

CHICAGO (STMW) – A woman was killed in a Tuesday morning hit-and-run crash in the South Side Hamilton Park neighborhood, police said.

A woman was struck by a vehicle about 5:30 a.m. in the 6900 block of South Halsted Street and pronounced dead at Saint Bernard Hospital, police said. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office has not been notified of the death at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

The woman, believed to be in her 30s or 40s, was struck by a full-sized white car that fled east on 69th Street, police News Affairs Officer Robert Perez said. Police are looking for possibly a Buick or Cadillac with front end damage, police said.

The police Major Accident Investigation Unit is investigating. 

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

John Cody reporting
CHICAGO (WBBM) – A team of three teens from Lemont High School is working designs for a 100-story high-rise building named the “Lighthouse” as Illinois’ entry into the International Skyscraper Challenge coming up in April at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Design team leader Kathy Sitko says blue and black solar panels will swirl up the sides of the building which will use rainwater collected for cooling and to replenish fountains inside and outside the building.

Sitko is working on the project along with Mark Kaminski and Zymante Petrusevichiute.

They teamed up in teacher Scott Duensing’s CAD II Honors class at Lemont High School whose team last year won: “Top Model Presentation” at in the Architectural competition.

Sitko says she’d like to see herself as the next Donald Trump because she admires the buildings he puts up. 

She says she has traveled regularly to downtown Chicago to watch progress of Trump Tower, now open on the north side of the Chicago River.

More information at www.iit.edu

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. — About 350 people were responding well to medicine after getting sick on a cruise to the Caribbean that departed from South Carolina, the cruise line said Tuesday.

Celebrity Cruise spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said 326 of the more than 1,800 passengers on the Celebrity Mercury began complaining Sunday of upset stomachs, vomiting and diarrhea. Martinez says 27 of the nearly 850 crew members also reported symptoms.

The ship left Charleston on Feb. 15, the first departure in a newly-expanded year-round schedule of cruises from South Carolina as the industry expands in the state.

Martinez says the crew is conducting “enhanced cleaning” to prevent the spread of the illness.

An extra doctor and two nurses came aboard in St. Kitts, in the Leeward Islands, and will sail to Charleston, arriving early Friday.

It’s not clear what caused the outbreak.

The South Carolina cruise industry is growing and the Mercury sailing earlier this month began Charleston’s first year-round cruising season. There will be 67 cruise calls in the city this year.

The Celebrity Mercury has six more departures set from Charleston during the coming months, including a 16-night trip through the Panama Canal ending in Los Angeles.

Later this spring, Carnival Cruise Lines will permanently base its 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy in Charleston.

As the industry grows, the South Carolina State Ports Authority is pursuing plans to open a new cruise terminal and open another half-mile of Charleston’s historic waterfront to the public.

A recent study commissioned by the authority shows cruises will mean $37 million to the South Carolina economy this year.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

DUBLIN — Northern Ireland’s police commander denounced Irish Republican Army dissidents Tuesday for giving his officers just 17 minutes to evacuate the center of a border town before a car bomb detonated.

Monday night’s attack on the courthouse in Newry, between Dublin and Belfast, was the first of its kind in nearly a decade.

Police said they still were trying to steer people away from the bomb when it exploded, causing little damage to the heavily fortified courthouse and injuring no one. Nearby residents said their homes shook like an earthquake from the blast but their windows did not shatter, and traffic passed by the flaming remains of the car until police shut down the road.

Police said the bomb contained 225 pounds of homemade explosive — much smaller than typical IRA car bombs. It appeared to catch police off guard because, unlike more than a dozen previous similar threats across Northern Ireland, this one actually detonated.

The police’s painstaking search for clues Tuesday brought heavy disruption to Newry, a shopping-center hub normally full of bargain-hunters from the neighboring Republic of Ireland.

Police warned that parts of central Newry might be shut down through Wednesday as forensic officers in white boiler suits comb every surface within a half-mile for evidence. They hoped to retrieve DNA traces of the bomb maker or driver from the obliterated remains of the bomb and car.

Police said callers using recognized dissident IRA code words called Newry’s hospital and businesses after ramming the car bomb into the courthouse’s front security gates. They said the blast came just 17 minutes after police got word.

“The time we got to respond was very limited. It was reckless and callous,” Chief Constable Matt Baggott told reporters.

Baggott said his officers had arrested 130 suspected IRA dissidents over the past year to suppress their activities. But he said the dissident threat would be defeated only when the extremists’ own family, friends and neighbors in hard-line Irish nationalist areas tipped off police.

During the worst decades of Northern Ireland’s conflict — when the IRA regularly planted vehicle bombs ranging from 500 pounds to 2,000 pounds — police became expert at evacuating people from the imminent blast area. Citizens were usually maimed or killed when police received less than 30 minutes’ warning and no precise description of the bomb’s location.

The outlawed IRA, which renounced violence and disarmed in 2005, typically telephoned warnings when its bombers targeted civilian sites such as shopping centers. Its chief goal in those cases was to inflict financial losses and portray Northern Ireland as ungovernable.

Today’s IRA splinter groups also sometimes make telephoned warnings, but with less precision — and often only after their homemade devices are abandoned or fail to explode.

In the most notorious case, the Real IRA faction made three calls on Aug. 15, 1998, warning of a car bomb near the courthouse in Omagh on a bustling Saturday afternoon. Police moved crowds of shoppers and workers away from that building — and unwittingly straight into the blast. Twenty-nine people, mostly women and children, were killed in the single deadliest explosion from the entire Northern Ireland conflict.

IRA dissidents last exploded car bombs in 2001, when a trio of blasts shook London and the central English city of Birmingham to little effect. That bombing team was caught and imprisoned.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian park ranger escaped an attack by a Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizard species, when his colleagues heard his cries for help and drove the reptile away.

Marcelinus Subanghadir was outside his hut on Komodo Island late Monday when a nearly 7-foot-long dragon grabbed hold of his right foot, Komodo National Park chief Tamen Sitorus said.

The dragon had Subanghadir’s foot clamped in its shark-like, serrated teeth until fellow rangers heard his screams and drove it off with wooden clubs, Sitorus said.

Subanghadir, 34, suffered deep lacerations and was recovering at a hospital on nearby Bali.

Komodo dragons can be found in the wild only on the eastern Indonesian islands of Komodo, Padar and Rinca. The lizards — thought to number fewer than 4,000 — can grow longer than 10 feet and weigh 150 pounds.

An 8-year-old boy was killed by one of the lizards in 2007 on Komodo Island.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

WASHINGTON — Europeans’ aversion to military force is limiting NATO’s ability to fight wars effectively, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.

In remarks to a forum on rewriting the basic mission plan for the NATO alliance, Gates called for far-reaching reforms in an organization that was created 61 years ago as a political and military bulwark against the former Soviet Union and its Red Army.

The early successes of NATO in averting post-World War II eruptions of European conflict have led to a new set of concerns, Gates said.

“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” he told an audience filled with uniformed military officers from many of NATO’s 28 member countries.

The danger, he added, is that potential future adversaries may view NATO as a paper tiger.

“Not only can real or perceived weakness be a temptation to miscalculation and aggression, but, on a more basic level, the resulting funding and capability shortfalls make it difficult to operate and fight together to confront shared threats,” Gates said.

France’s Defense Ministry said it had no comment on Gates’ remarks.

In his more than three years as Pentagon chief, Gates has repeatedly urged European members of NATO to boost their defense budgets and to find ways to modernize their forces, while also praising their commitment to fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan.

“For many years, for example, we have been aware that NATO needs more cargo aircraft and more helicopters of all types, and yet we still don’t have these capabilities,” he said. “And their absence is directly impacting operations in Afghanistan. Similarly, NATO requires more aerial refueling tankers and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms for immediate use on the battlefield.”

Gates welcomed the in-depth effort by NATO to revise and update what it calls its “strategic concept,” or its basic mission document. He stressed that it must be more than a paper exercise, given the real world conflicts NATO is fighting today — with about 120,000 troops, including U.S. forces, in Afghanistan, and the prospect of staying there in some numbers for years to come.

“Most are living in austere conditions, and many are facing enemy fire on a daily basis,” he said. “That is a stark reminder that NATO is not now, nor should it ever be, a talk-shop or a Renaissance weekend on steroids. It is a military alliance with real-world obligations that have life-or-death consequences.”

A group of experts led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is working to update NATO’s strategic concept. It was last revised in 1999, before the alliance began substantial military operations beyond its borders — most notably in Afghanistan.

Gates’ speech kicked off a daylong seminar at the National Defense University to wrap up preliminary thinking on how to revise the strategic concept. The final product is expected to be formally adopted at an alliance summit in November in Lisbon, Portugal. NATO nations had a major falling out over the Iraq war in 2003, with several, including France, Germany and Belgium, opposing it and blocking alliance participation.

In remarks Monday night on the same subject, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said NATO’s basic purpose has changed little since its birth in 1949.

“I believe that the original tenets of NATO’s mission — defending our nations, strengthening trans-Atlantic ties, and fostering European integration — still hold,” she said. What needs to change is how the alliance pursues its goals, she added.

“As any good soldier knows, success in a protracted struggle is not simply a matter of having more troops or better equipment. It’s also a function of how effectively you adapt to new circumstances,” she said. “You don’t win by fighting the last war.”

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Mass layoff events — defined as any time an employer whacks at least 50 employees at one time — jumped again in January after having declined for four months in a row.

Employers took 1,761 mass layoff actions in January that resulted in the separation of 182,261 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for
unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single
employer.

Both mass layoff events and initial claims increased from the prior
month after four consecutive over-the-month decreases. In January, 486 mass
layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted,
resulting in 62,556 initial claims. Both figures increased over the month–the
first increases since August 2009 for events and since September 2009 for ini-
tial claims. (See table 1.)

mmls –

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• New York Unemployment Website Crashes Under The Weight Of Too Many Claimants
• David Goldman: Here’s Why Unemployment Will Remain In Nosebleed Territory FOREVER
• There Isn’t Any Unemployment Disaster For The College-Educated.

Filed under: Recalls, Safety, Chevrolet, Toyota

Through much of the recent deluge of recall announcements and ensuing media coverage, there have been large groups on either side of the issue, quick to criticize or to defend the automakers and the governing bodies involved in the investigations. While many media outlets have merely reported the news, others have weighed in to give their opinion on what’s going on. The latest to take a side on the issue is Edmunds.com. The well-known consumer information site issued a press release calling out the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), questioning what they see as Inconsistencies in the NHTSA’s handling of Chevrolet Cobalt and Toyota Corolla steering complaints.

After reviewing the cases of these two cars and other complaints dating all the way back to 1990, Edmunds found “no clear pattern in terms of the number of consumer complaints that trigger an agency investigation.” Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Michelle Krebs found that “as few as five complaints have triggered an investigation [while] other investigations haven’t started until 1,500 complaints had accumulated.”

In the case of the Chevy Cobalt there were 1,157 complaints about steering issues before the recall investigation was started, while the Toyota Corolla had registered just 84 complaints before that investigation was announced. Even more telling was the fact that NHTSA took an average of 262 days to conclude an investigation before launching a recall, but the range was curiously wide – from just 10 days to a full six years, according to the Edmunds.com report.

“Whether NHTSA’s process works properly and quickly enough and whether it is transparent enough is highly questionable. Ultimately, this week’s Congressional hearings may well reveal as many defects in NHTSA procedures as defects in Toyota vehicles,” said Krebs. The hearings will likely be a chance to play to the cameras for everyone involved, but hopefully some real change can come out of it if the system is indeed shown to be flawed. The full statement from Edmunds.com is after the jump.

[Source: Edmunds, Inc.]

Continue reading Edmunds looks at Toyota Corolla, Chevy Cobalt steering complaints, calls out NHTSA

Edmunds looks at Toyota Corolla, Chevy Cobalt steering complaints, calls out NHTSA originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Berlin, Germany | Incredible Ruins

This abandoned NSA field station sits atop an 80 meter artificial hill in the Grunewald forest on the west edge of Berlin.

The hill has a noteworthy history: created from the post-WWII debris of desolated Berlin, it is higher than the highest natural hill (the Kreuzberg) in the Berlin area, believed to be created from the rubble of some 400,000 buildings. Buried deep within the hill a building still stands, once a Nazi military-technical college, it proved easier to bury the robust structure, than to blow it up.

For a time the hill served as a ski-hill, before it was re-purposed by as a “listening station.” Believed to be part of ECHELON, a global network of listening stations, the listening station was erected on the hill and run by the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop on communist East Berlin. To their surprise, they found that the local Ferris wheel, erected each year for the German-American Festival, helped relay signals and improve their listening efforts, and the US radio spooks asked if the wheel could be left up for a longer period.

The station was abandoned after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and though there were plans to resurrect it for commercial purposes, today it is a vandalized and abandoned shell. The station’s elevated platforms offer incredible views of Berlin’s skyline, as well as the nearby 1934 Olympic Stadium and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation. Some say that the NSA built tunnels down through the mountain into the Nazi military-technical college, to serve as either an emergency bunker or escape route, however no evidence of this exists.

Wild boars roam the grounds around Teufelsberg, and visitors are advised to stay on the paths. Access to the station is officially restricted, but some visitors have found an opening in the chain link perimeter fence and used the exterior stairwell to gain entrance to the elevated platforms and radomes. Any visit to Teufelsberg should be taken with great caution — there are potentially dangerous openings, no guardrails, and an open elevator shaft (approx. 10 stories) not to mention it being illegal.

Big news today as two of the iPhone’s biggest game makers become one through acquisition. ngmoco, makers of such hits as Rolando 2 and Eliminate Pro, has purchased Freeverse, another hit game maker with some significant successes under its belt, including many early App Store hits. Flick Fishing and Moto Chaser might ring some bells, sitting as they did on the top 25 list for long stretches.

The acquisition brings together two of the most significant developers in App Store history, both of which have built their considerable reputations exclusively through their efforts with the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s a step that represents a big milestone in the life of the App Store’s maturing ecosystem.

On the surface, it doesn’t appear at this point as though the merger will affect what most App Store users see. According to ngmoco’s CEO Neil Young:

Freeverse, much like us, is comprised of true game-makers. Now with our combined forces, their titles can reach more people and the talented folks at Freeverse can keep doing what they do best, which is making great games.

Freeverse won’t undergo any changes in terms of its name, branding or management now that its owned by ngmoco. All Freeverse games will likely now include Plus+ network features, which allow gamers to have a more social experience akin to an Xbox live for iPhone users. Freeverse was already a partner involved in that ngmoco-started endeavor, beginning with Flick Fishing.

Even if the effects of this acquisition aren’t immediately apparent or even visible to the average consumer, that doesn’t mean this doesn’t represent a significant change in how the App Store operates. Freeverse is just the beginning for ngmoco, and a way to diversify its brand. The maker of Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Dogs has itself acknowledged a shift towards producing primarily free-to-play games in the press release announcing the acquisition, which depend on additional purchases of in-app content to generate revenue:

Last year ngmoco added top executives from the games, platform technology and web sectors and launched its leading player network, Plus+. The company shifted its production structures to build free-to-play games.

Now it can offer more traditional single-purchase games via Freeverse to get the best of both worlds while establishing strong, coherent brand identity. It will also quite easily be able to adopt and implement one model over the other if either one becomes much more obviously profitable or preferable to consumers.

Mergers and acquisitions will help smaller studios like ngmoco that made their name on the App Store go toe-to-toe with big production studios like EA Mobile and Gameloft, which were established players long before Apple’s mobile gaming device lineup ever existed. It’s good news for App Store shoppers, since ngmoco has been nothing but innovative to date and should now be better able to continue bringing quality titles to market.

But it’s also a sign that the tumultuous, super-heated forge that was the App Store in its inception is cooling, and that the landscape is taking on a much more static guise. A status quo is asserting itself, and with that, a definite aristocracy of content providers that will become harder and harder to knock off their perches. Games will become more less varied and surprising, but quality will improve.

I hesitate to comment on whether or not this is ultimately a good thing for iPhone users, but I think it is. As with any new market, the frontier days are fun, but maturity and establishment brings with it more focused efforts at improving quality and lowering cost for consumers. It’s time the App Store started getting much better at what it does well, even if some innovation is lost in the bargain.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Is There Any Demand For a True Gaming Phone?

Evan Lysacek, Olympic Games gold medalist who took the top prize for the U.S. in men’s figure skating, said last week he’s going to go home and treat himself to an Aston Martin DBS. Lysacek, who currently owns a Range Rover, says he now wants to be “just like Bond” and own the DBS supercar.

Lysacek was quoted by Yahoo! Sports saying he’ll buy the $269,000 sports car in Los Angeles soon after he returns from the Olympic Games. Gary Briggs, a salesman for Aston Martin Newport Beach said that the DBS is “very much the gentleman’s sports car…a fine choice for an Olympic champion.”

We’re pretty sure its a lot more fun to do spins in a DBS rather than skates.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Inside Line

CHAMPAIGN – The Champaign school board talked Monday night about how it will plan for building improvements for the next decade.

Bruce Knight, planning director for the city of Champaign, talked to the board about policies that will help the school district create a 10-year capital improvement plan.

The plan will guide the district in building, maintaining, upgrading and replacing its buildings. One of its key purposes will be to help allocate limited funds to the highest priority projects.

The district contracted with the city for Knight and his department to help with the capital improvement plan. Knight also helped lead the district’s strategic planning process two years ago.

The policies developed for the capital improvement plan include establishing a baseline standard for all schools, and a facility master plan for each school.

The top priorities for upgrades at schools would be the mechanical systems, electrical systems, air-conditioning, life-safety systems, library and special education rooms. The next highest priorities include computer labs, enrichment space, science labs, gyms separate from cafeterias, and drop-off/pick-up and parking areas.

The master plans will identify the needs for each building and help determine which can be made on a stand-alone basis and which need to be part of an overall facility upgrade.

The board is scheduled to vote on the policies at its March 8 meeting.

Also Monday, the board approved design plans for Garden Hills Elementary School in Champaign.

The school will be remodeled and expanded, and it is to become a magnet school focused on international education, with a secondary emphasis on fine arts.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

CHAMPAIGN – How to break down barriers between the community and the police department will be the primary discussion topic during a March 15 community forum, scheduled more than five months after the police shooting death of 15-year-old Kiwane Carrington.

The forum will check off another of City Manager Steve Carter’s six initiatives he presented following the death of Mr. Carrington, who was killed when Officer Daniel Norbits’ gun discharged on Oct. 9, 2009.

“What happens at a lot of forums is that people get a lot of information out, and we discuss things,” said city council member Will Kyles. “But if we can create some accountability on both sides of the issue, then I think things can get done.”

City officials will seek suggestions from the community on how to repair a strained relationship between the city’s residents and its police force, said Joan Walls, assistant to the city manager for community relations.

The forum’s organizers are targeting several groups of people, Kyles said, including minorities and youths.

Bill Glithero, a member of the city’s human relations commission, said he hopes that about half the forum’s attendees are of a minority race, and about a quarter of them are youths.

The city has made room at the Hawthorn Suites hotel, 101 Trade Center Drive, C, for about 250 attendees, and officials are requiring pre-registration by March 10. Glithero said he hopes that about 200 residents will attend.

“We’re targeting a lot of people,” Walls said. “And they’re going to be working together in small workout groups that will answer questions.”

Those “pre-identified” questions will be finalized by a city committee before the forum. The topics will be posed to the attendees in small groups moderated by city officials.

“Essentially what the questions are asking: How can the community and the police department work together basically for the betterment of the community?” Kyles said.

“They are going to be questions that will just get to the point,” Walls said.

The forum’s moderators will submit a written report to Carter following the forum, and that report also will be shared with the attendees, Walls said.

Kyles said he hopes the discussion does not end at the conclusion of the forum.

“I think that really, realistically, what I’d like to see from the forum is kind of sub-groups coming out of the forum and people willing to head each individual mission,” Kyles said.

The forum is one of six goals Carter presented following Mr. Carrington’s death that he hopes will help the city move forward.

Mr. Carrington was shot when Norbits and Police Chief R.T. Finney responded to a report of a burglary at a 906 W. Vine St. home. According to reports, Norbits became involved in a physical struggle with Mr. Carrington when Norbits’ gun fired.

It was later discovered that Mr. Carrington sometimes had been staying at the home with a friend.

Walls said city officials are continuing to accomplish the initiatives and are trying to “get really creative so citizens can check in and see how we’re progressing.”

The March 15 forum is the only discussion currently scheduled, but Walls said the police department and the Champaign Community and Police Partnership will be scheduling similar meetings in the future.

An internal investigation reviewing the department’s policies and procedures remains ongoing. Norbits has not returned to street duty, but has been assigned to administrative duties in the station.

Meeting set

WHAT: Community forum to discuss relationship between Champaign police and residents

WHEN: March 15, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

WHERE: Hawthorn Suites, 101 Trade Center Drive, C.

Space is limited, and organizers are asking attendees to register before March 10. To register, contact the city’s Community Relations Office at (217) 403-8830.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Filed under: Videos, Toyota

If morbid curiosity and political grand-standing is your think, C-SPAN is streaming the Congressional hearings on the Toyota Recall live on its site. The official title is “Response by Toyota and NHTSA to Incidents of Sudden Unintended Acceleration” and the cast of characters include Ray LaHood, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, David Strickland, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Akio Toyoda, President and CEO of Toyota Motor Corp. along with a handful of legislators, consumer advocacy groups and family members who’ve lost love ones due to the unintended acceleration issue. Click these oddly colored words to watch it live.

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

Watch the Congressional Toyota Recall hearings live originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HTC HD2 is not a small device, and we have seen many examples of the screen being destroyed after being dropped, including the phone owned by our editor l3v5y, which cost him £150 to repair.

HTC in their wisdom however decided not to include a lanyard strap hook in their device most likely to be dropped.  Barring a case, that leaves the smartphone forever vulnerable to falling when in use, especially if one attempts one-handed usage.

BiffsterX has decided to take matters into his own hands by recording this small how-to video which shows how to add a simple lanyard to the device.  Of course this approach is not close to as strong or reliable as a real lanyard hook, but might just save your device and wallet in a pinch.

Do our readers have any more creative solutions?  Let us know below.

By special request, BiffsterX performed a stress test, which can be viewed after the break.