| TOUR OF CALIFORNIA
Ironically, the opening race, Sunday's prologue in Palo Alto, is a step back from the previous two Tours of California. The flat, 2.1-mile route from downtown to the middle of the Stanford campus hardly compares with the prologues the past two years in San Francisco, which featured quick ascents to the heights of Telegraph Hill and favored climbers like Leipheimer, who donned the gold jersey after each S.F. prologue. The Palo Alto race is more to the liking of Zabriskie or Cancellera or Scotland's David Millar or someone other than Leipheimer. "This (prologue) is not going to favor Levi as it has in the past two years," Birrell said. Last year's first and second stages will be repeated: a 97-mile run up the California coast from Sausalito to Santa Rosa on Monday and a 116-mile ride from Santa Rosa to Sacramento on Tuesday.
Winner-take-all competition set for today
No, it's not true that Antioch High's cheer squad is jumping for joy because it got out of school early on Thursday to get to Bloomington for the IHSA state finals. The Sequoit team is one of the favorites to bring home the gold tonight.
(Marina Samovsky/News-Sun) .
Cyclists not welcome in Scottsdale neighborhood
Homeowners and bicyclists are squaring off in a gated community on Scottsdale's border with Fountain Hills. Homeowners in Hidden Hills complain that cyclists are using 145th Way, a steep private street at the end of Via Linda, as a training ground where they speed down the long, curving hill en masse and invite accidents. Cyclists say homeowners are exaggerating problems with a minority of riders and reneging on their subdivision's 2000 agreement with Scottsdale to allow a non-motorized connection to Fountain Hills. .
Saratoga bus route overhaul beats expectations
But just over seven months into the expanded venture, ridership on CDTA's Saratoga system has almost tripled, surprising even those who designed the new service. "We nearly tripled ridership by doubling the amount of service available," said Carm Basile, CDTA's deputy executive director for business development. "It's phenomenal, the number of riders we have seen." The most stunning ridership increase has been along the Route 50 corridor between Schenectady and Saratoga Springs, where the number of trips each day, Monday through Saturday, was increased from two in each direction to 18. Sunday service also was initiated. Meanwhile, the Route 50 route, which used to end in Ballston Spa, was stretched farther north to Saratoga Springs, finally giving Saratoga residents a link to the rest of CDTA's network in Schenectady, Albany and Troy.
Here from beginning to the end
It was 1935 and Birmingham and the country were in the thralls of the Great Depression. During that economically challenging time then-Birmingham Post Editor Jimmy Mills knew the newspaper had to do more than deliver printed words and bold headlines to the public. Many families, after all, couldn't afford to put food on the table, much less buy a newspaper. So Mills started the Goodfellows program which bought candy and fruit for needy youths. It evolved into a program that delivered fruit and toys to needy Birmingham-area around Christmas each year. It would be the Post's, later to become the Post-Herald's, first foray into community service, but not its last. Since then, the Post-Herald has sponsored various community service projects from the State Spelling Bee to the All-State Academic Team to the Kudzu Run and Car Show to the Distinguished Teachers Awards to the Scholar-Athlete Awards.
Three Cape officers to be feted for heroism
The quick action of two Cape Coral police officers saved a life and the quick thinking of a third helped solve a crime against a 93-year-old woman.
All three will be honored Wednesday at the departments monthly awards ceremony.
The first two officers Brian Gumm and Matthew Squires are receiving a life-saving award after an incident that happened Jan. 2. According to reports, Gumm was on routine patrol that day when he spotted a car that had just crashed into a palm tree.
The driver was pinned inside the vehicle in such a way that his airway was blocked and he couldnt breathe, police spokeswoman Dyan Lee said. Officer Squires was able to rip away part of the drivers seat and position the man so that he could breathe better.
The man suffered life-threatening injuries, but he survived.
Anti-obesity campaign in Britain goes big
The British government last month outlined a new strategy, including a £75 million, or $145 million, three-year advertising campaign, to try to get Britons to slim down. Almost two-thirds of adults and about a third of children in Britain are overweight or obese, health officials say. Some people in the advertising industry are calling for the campaign to resemble the recent anti-poverty initiative that went under the name "ONE" in the United States and "Make Poverty History" in other countries. Millions of people bought white wristbands to signal their commitment to the movement. To be effective, advertising executives say, the anti-obesity initiative needs to be similarly broad-based. "We're saying, if you just run some advertising and then forget about it, it's going to have zero effect," said Hamish Pringle, director general of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, which represents British advertising agencies.
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