An Oregon city has agreed to pay $19,000 to settle a federal lawsuit by a 29-year-old man the police arrested after he used a cell phone to record an officer arresting a friend at a bowling alley.
Beaverton police Chief Geoff Spalding says it's unlikely his officers would again use the state's eavesdropping laws to arrest somebody for recording the voice of an officer. But he's not ruling it out.
After a similar incident in …
While Jamie Foxx was making the rounds last year collecting his Oscar, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, NAACP Image and other awards for "Ray," somewhat overshadowed was his equally-deserving work in "Collateral." And most folks forget that for that picture, he worked with four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann.
Mann is a very gifted director who coaxed Oscar-nominated performances out of Will Smith and Jon Voightin "Ali" (2001) and Russell Crowe in "The Insider" (1999). So it is of some consequence, then, that Jamie and Michael have collaborated again to make "Miami Vice," a big screen adaptation of the high-octane, citrus-colored cop series which enjoyed a five-year run …
Frank Capra Jr., a producer who helped build a major television and movie studio and whose father directed the Christmas classic "It's A Wonderful Life," has died. He was 73.
Capra Jr. died Wednesday night at a hospital in Philadelphia, said Bill Vassar, the executive vice president of Wilmington-based EUE Screen Gems Studios, of which Capra was president. Capra died after a long fight with prostate cancer, Vassar said.
"With his Hollywood pedigree and extensive experience as a producer, Frank was the perfect ambassador to Hollywood," Chris Cooney, chief operating officer of EUE Screen Gems, said in a statement. "He will be missed …
Sizemore, the Indians' center fielder and leadoff man, hadn't played since last May, when he was forced to have microfracture surgery on his left knee. After grounding out to second in the first inning, he homered in the third — his first round-tripper since Aug. 27, 2009 — and doubled in the fifth.
''I just wanted to go up there, have good at-bats, help the team and get a win,'' said Sizemore, who was activated before the game. ''I was …
It was almost inevitable that Visual i|o CEO Angela Shen-Hsieh would have trouble booting up the projector to show some examples of her company's latest data visualization tool, Decisionlris. But when the image on the whitewashed wall of her conference room finally falls into focus, it's easy to see how it might appeal to a harried pharma executive.
The June 2008 launch of Decisionlris by Visual i|o provides pharma companies with a new enterprise solution to collect disparate corporate R&D data, including strategic portfolio management, cross-project resource management, and project tracking and analysis. The visual representations themselves are not overly elaborate-simple …
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Foreign Minister Alexandr Vondra on Wednesday voiced support for a U.S. missile defense base in the region that would protect America and Europe from intercontinental ballistic missiles.
However, Russia's military chief of staff criticized U.S. plans to build a missile defense site in eastern Europe, warning in an opinion piece published in the Polish daily Dziennik on Wednesday that it could spark a new arms race.
The base would be the first American strategic missile defense site outside U.S. territory.
"In the future, the North Atlantic Alliance and European states will not be able to avoid the construction of this system, and it is in the interest of Europe to build such systems in cooperation with America," Vondra told a conference on the U.S. missile defense system.
U.S. Ambassador to Prague William Cabaniss said just where the system would be located has not yet been decided. But he did say that "it's my hope that we will be able to offer the Czech Republic a chance to host a missile defense facility."
U.S. defense experts in July finished a survey of possible locations for a missile defense base in the Czech Republic. A similar survey mission also traveled to neighboring Poland and U.S. authorities are expected to decided where to locate the base later this year.
Russian Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said installing such a system near Russia's borders could "upset the existing balance between Russian and American strategic weapons systems." Such a step, Baluyevsky wrote, "will probably demand a correction in Russia's stance on arms reductions."
"The installation of the American national missile defense system could initiate a new spiral in the arms race, and divert colossal resources from solving a host of problems not just in Russia or the U.S., but also in other countries," Baluyevsky said.
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LATEST figures on the global market for organically-grown foods indicate that sales reached $23 billion in 2002. According to a study by an organization called Organic Monitor, increasing demand in North America helped to achieve a 10.1 percent increase over the previous year, as consumption of organic foods and beverages on this continent now surpass Europe as the leading market. The study also found that there are almost 57 million acres of organic farmland, "with even more farmers in developing countries being drawn to organic food production for its export potential." Over the many years that have steadily seen this growth since the early 1960s when the amount of organic farmland and number of organic farmers were ever so small, BioCycle has regularly reported on the importance of compost in an organic soil management program.
The tremendous advances in organic agriculture are reflected in Minnesota which leads the nation in production of organic corn and soybeans. In April of this year, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Minnesota, the University's Extension Service, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the USDA Farm Service Agency to provide important services to organic farmers in the state. "This organic partnership is the first of its kind to occur anywhere in the country," notes Meg Moynihan of the MDA staff.
Adds MDA Commissioner Gene Hugoson: "Organic agriculture is an important and growing part of Minnesota's farm economy. We each do our part to help Minnesota maintain and build on its leadership status in organic production. By more closely coordinating our efforts, each of us will have a greater impact than we would have working individually." The goal is to assist organic producers to improve profitability, identify new market opportunities and conserve natural resources.
The five-year program includes technical assistance for soil and water conservation, reducing agriculture-related pollution, enhancing agricultural systems, revitalizing communities and opening up new markets. As part of our arranging the November, 2003 BioCycle Conference in Minneapolis on "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling" (see pages 16 and 17), we spoke to Deborah Allan of the University of Minnesota Department of Soil, Water and Climate who will be speaking on the topic, "Fertilizer Value of Digested Manure Compared to Raw Manure." She is an active member of the "Organic Partnership" team - and will conduct a number of studies on organic farms that utilize biogas from dairy manure as a power source along with applying digested manure to their crops.
Interestingly, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a Conference cosponsor, is a participant in the organic farm project. Bill Hunt of NRCS will be speaking in several sessions at the Conference - on standards for digesters and on using NRCS program incentives to accelerate the pace of change to better soil practices.
For us here at BioCycle, it's great to see how key facets of our editorial foundation show up as essential elements of both renewable energy from organics and compost use in agriculture.
