Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Smile – unedited (323 words)
“I’m fine and excited,” 7-year-old Chelsey Thomas, clutching a favorite doll, said as she walked with her parents into Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills.
The corners of the blond, blue-eyed girl’s mouth sag because she was born without a key nerve in her face, a condition called Moebius Syndrome that afflicts up to 1,000 people nationwide. The nerve transmits commands to facial muscles that control smiling, frowning and pouting.
In an eight-hour operation that began at midmorning, doctors planned to remove a muscle and nerve from Chelsey’s leg and transplant it to one side of her face. If the transplant succeeds – something that won’t be known for at least three months – the other side will be done in about six months.
“She’ll be able to smile for the first time, and that’s something every parent waits for. Usually it happens in the first few weeks of their life, but we’ve had to wait a little longer,” said Lori Thomas, her mother.
The $70,000 two-step operation is covered by the family’s health insurer, Kaiser Permanente, because it is not considered cosmetic.
“Just being unable to smile has numerous problems associated with it, social and psychological,” said Dr. Avron Daniller, one of Chelsey’s surgeon’s.
Her mother said: “It’s been hard for her because people think she’s unfriendly or ignoring them or bored. It’s been hard. Kids stare at her. Adults are pretty understanding, but she has a worse time with kids.”
Kaiser flew renowned Canadian surgeon Dr. Ronald Zuker, who pioneered the procedure, to Los Angeles to lead the surgery. Chelsey was expected to be hospitalized for five days.
Last month, Chelsey said she was eager to have the operation: “After the surgery, I’m going to smile at all my friends and have a party.”
Smile – edited (273 words)
“I’m fine and excited,” said 7-year-old Chelsey Thomas, as she walked with her parents into Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills.
The corners of Chelsey’s mouth sag because she was born without a key nerve in her face, a condition called Moebius Syndrome. This disease afflicts up to 1,000 people nationwide. The nerve commands facial muscles that control smiling, frowning and pouting.
In an eight-hour operation, doctors removed a muscle and nerve from Chelsey’s leg and transplanted it to one side of her face. If the transplant succeeds – which won’t be known for at least three months – doctors will do the other side in about six months.
“She’ll be able to smile for the first time, and that’s something every parent waits for,” said her mother, Lori Thomas. “Usually it happens in the first few weeks of their life, but we’ve had to wait a little longer.”
The $70,000 two-step operation is covered by the family’s health insurer, Kaiser Permanente, because it is not considered cosmetic.
“Just being unable to smile has numerous problems associated with it, social and psychological,” said Dr. Avron Daniller, one of Chelsey’s surgeons.
Her mother said: “People think she’s unfriendly or ignoring them or bored. It’s been hard. Kids stare at her. Adults are pretty understanding, but she has a worse time with kids.”
Kaiser flew Canadian surgeon Dr. Ronald Zuker, who pioneered the procedure, to Los Angeles to lead the surgery. Chelsey was expected to be hospitalized for five days.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Repost from another blog: "Why Newspapers Fail"
http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-newspapers-fail.html
Monday, October 5, 2009
Headline notes
• Usually present tense
• No periods; Properly punctuated
• Use single, rather than double quote marks
• Most newspapers are ‘down style’
• OK to imply the verb ‘is’
• use a comma in place of ‘and’
• Should have verbs, unless it’s a special headline for a feature page
• Keep one idea per line
• Don’t split nouns and their modifiers, verb forms or prepositional phrases
• Don’t write question heads
Here is a link that shows you roughly how many characters you can have in a headline:
http://www.edbond.com/editing/headlinesamples.htm
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sample stories for headline practice
NEW YORK (AP) - Benny Andrews, a painter and teacher whose work drew on memories of his childhood in the segregated South, has died at age 75.
Andrews died Friday at his home in Brooklyn of cancer, his wife, Nene Humphrey, said Sunday.
Andrews painted socially conscious works that addressed issues including the civil rights movement, the Holocaust and the forced relocation of American Indians. Even in an era dominated by abstract art, he exhibited his work in galleries and won awards and prizes including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974.
His work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., among others.
Andrews was born in Plainview, Ga., in 1930 to a family of sharecroppers. He was one of 10 children who worked in the cotton fields. In 1948 he became the first member of his family to graduate from high school.
ELLENBURG, N.Y. (AP) - A man died Sunday after being attacked by a deer he was keeping in captivity, state police said.
Ronald Donah, 43, of Ellenburg, was attacked by the buck around 7:30 a.m., said state Trooper Joseph House. About a half dozen deer were found penned up on the property in Ellenburg, about 180 miles north of Albany in Clinton County.
Details of Donah's injuries and what may have prompted the attack were not available Sunday night.
Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said Donah had a license for keeping the white tail deer on his property. She said incidents of deer attacking, at least in the wild, are extremely rare. She did not know why Donah was keeping the deer in captivity.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - Dominicans prayed and wept for relatives lost on American Airlines Flight 587, which was bound for Santo Domingo when it plummeted into a seaside New York neighborhood five years ago Sunday.
About 100 people attended a Roman Catholic Mass at Santo Domingo's Santa Maria la Menor Cathedral and watched a live broadcast from New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated a memorial to the 265 people killed in the second-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history.
The sound of crying echoed through the vaulted cathedral at 10:16 a.m. Atlantic time, when firefighters in New York rang a bell to mark the moment the airliner plunged into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
RICHFIELD, N.Y. (AP) - A large methamphetamine lab was uncovered at a home during a raid Saturday morning, state police said.
Five people were arrested at the home in Richfield, about 70 miles northwest of Albany. All were charged with second-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, a felony punishable by life in prison. Additional charges, including unlawful possession of hazardous material, were pending.
Police said the lab was in the process of making methamphetamine when it was raided. State troopers seized over 20 liquid ounces of meth and several firearms. A surveillance system with a camera and monitors and a police scanner were also found.
NEW YORK (AP) - A man was shot to death during a fight over a parking space in Brooklyn, police said.
The fight, which broke out early Saturday, may have involved as many as a dozen people on Atlantic Avenue off Third Avenue in Boerum Hill.
After the attack, police said, the suspects piled into a couple of SUVs and raced from the scene, leaving Dallas Gilchrist, 34, of Queens, on the ground and clinging to life.
Gilchrist, shot five times with a .32-caliber handgun, died about an hour later at Brooklyn Hospital Center.
NEW YORK (AP) - The body of a 23-year-old man who was beaten, stabbed and strangled was found stuffed inside a black duffel bag in Brooklyn, authorities said.
Roberto Sesenton,'s body was found shortly before 7:30 p.m. Thursday between two parked vehicles in Brooklyn's Bath Beach neighborhood, authorities said.
Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the city medical examiner's office, said
Sesenton was beaten, stabbed and strangled. No arrests had been made in the case as of Sunday, police said. Sesenton, who was unemployed, lived with his sister and his nephew at an apartment in Bay Ridge about three miles from where his body was found.
NEW YORK (AP) - Manhattan resident seeks companion for ride to airport, maybe more.
In the latest novelty for a mobile city in a networked world, an online service that debuted this weekend offers to help New Yorkers hook up for cabs and any other connection that might blossom along the way.
Called Hitchsters.com, it's ride-sharing with a side of social networking, the digital trend that made MySpace a household word.
Hitchsters' pitch is largely economic in a city where a cab to the airport can run upwards of $50, but the service isn't shy about its social potential. Its Web site extols the possibility of meeting new people – and maybe getting a free ride if one of the travelers is on business. Users can even specify their fellow rider's gender, and whether they're more interested in safety or socializing.
"If people want to use it for the social networking aspect, we wanted to provide that," explained Hitchsters founder Terry Crawford. A mergers and acquisitions lawyer, he says the free service stems from his own travel frustrations. He ultimately hopes to expand it to other cities.
NEW YORK (AP) - The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is getting more personal this year.
Hundreds of wannabe parade clowns were being trained Saturday by professionals from the Big Apple Circus to lend the nationally televised event "more humanity, more solid, heartfelt warmth, more one-on-one contact with people along the parade route," said Liz Boleck, a professional clown with the troupe.
"We don't want artificiality," Boleck said.
On Nov. 23, the parade will be sprinkled with 800 amateur clowns, armed with flying confetti and blowing bubbles for 2½ miles down Broadway.
There'll be everything from patriotic clowns to class clowns, all-star baseball clowns and banana-split clowns.
Parade clowns are volunteers, recruited by Macy's employees, who have the privilege of contacting anyone they wish.
On Saturday morning, volunteers from as far away as California, Colorado and Florida gathered at the Pennsylvania Hotel in midtown Manhattan to go through their funny paces in an 18th-floor room with a panoramic view of the city.
The doctors, lawyers, real estate agents and teachers in the group also got some practical tips: Before they're zipped into their clown suits, they should hit the bathroom. In addition, during the parade: No smoking, no sipping coffee or chewing gum, no cell phone calls.
"And no excessive drinking," joked Sue Mazursky, a Macy's vice president for corporate planning who has 11 family members participating in the parade.
ATLANTA (AP) - A family riding in a mule-drawn carriage alongside a rural highway had pulled closer to the road to get around a stop sign when a tractor-trailer plowed into it, killing three and injuring three others, a relative of the victims said Sunday.
The truck driver apparently never saw the covered carriage before the collision Saturday on U.S. Hwy. 82 just outside of Alapaha, not far from the Florida state line, said Patricia Davis, the niece of 76-year-old John Joyce, who was killed.
Also killed was Joyce's son, Franklin Joyce, 45; and Franklin's great-nephew, Andrew Joyce, 5, authorities said. Abigail Joyce, 2, Andrew's sister, and their mother Kimberly Joyce, 24, were injured. The little girl was set to leave the hospital Sunday while Kimberly Joyce remained hospitalized, Davis said.
WALDENBURG, Ark. (AP) - Randy Wooten figured he'd get at least one vote in his bid for mayor of this town of 80 people - even if it was just his own.
He didn't. Now he has to decide whether to file a formal protest.
Wooten got the news from his wife, Roxanne, who went to City Hall on Wednesday to see the election results. "She saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did," said Wooten, owner of a local bar.
However, Poinsett County results reported Wednesday showed incumbent William H. Wood with 18 votes, challenger Ronnie Chatman with 18 votes and Wooten with zero.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - Both major-party candidates for a congressional seat are decrying an ad sponsored by a national Republican committee that accuses the Democrat of billing taxpayers for a call to a phone-sex line. The ad, which began airing Friday, shows Michael Arcuri leering at the silhouette of a dancing woman who says, "Hi, sexy. You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line."
Arcuri's campaign said an associate mistakenly dialed an 800-number sex line two years ago from Arcuri's New York City hotel room, and released records supporting the claim. The number shares the same last seven digits with the number for the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, which was dialed the minute after the first call was made.
Arcuri, the district attorney in Oneida County, said the ad was "clearly libelous" and threatened to file a lawsuit. His GOP opponent, state Sen. Ray Meier, described it as "way over the line."
At least seven television stations in Syracuse, Utica and Binghamton refused to run the ad, Arcuri said. …
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) - The driver of a tour bus that crashed into an Interstate 81 construction zone and killed three workers was found guilty Wednesday of having inadequate brakes, speeding in a construction zone and not keeping a current logbook.
The crash inspired new state laws that increased charges and fines for accidents in construction zones.
Robert E. Smith, 59, of Nixa, Mo., was driving a group from Central Bible College of Springfield, Mo., on May 20 when the bus swerved to avoid stopped traffic and struck a motorcycle, a cement curb, a tractor-trailer and a cement mixer. The bus and the mixer then traveled about 75 feet and struck another vehicle.
The victims were Jonathon Randall, 32, and Wayne Bonsell, 39, both of Binghamton, and Jason Pessoni, 30, of Cincinnatus. All worked for Economy Paving Co. in Cortland.
No sentencing date was set for Smith, who was seriously injured. He had earlier pleaded innocent.
LONG LAKE, N.Y. (AP) - Broad-shouldered Doug Conklin used the hand rims to propel his lightweight wheelchair through John Dillon Park, up the gravel path through pine forest. He was breathing hard by the time the trail from the boat dock branched off toward several new log lean-tos.
"I'll tell you what: Pushing up this thing, I won't have to go to the gym tonight," joked Conklin, visiting the central Adirondacks in September from suburban Kansas City, Mo.
The hard-packed gravel trail overlooked Grampus Lake in the 200-acre wilderness park, built entirely for people with disabilities and their companions. It opened in June about 100 miles north of Albany.
Conklin, 53, talked about returning next summer for a few nights. Firewood was neatly stacked by the lean-tos, the hearths showing little evidence of use, which annoyed him.
"People go the extra mile and do something good, and they don't use it," he said, noting a tendency of many disabled people to stay around the comfort zone of home. Paralyzed since a 1973 car crash, he drove alone to upstate New York to visit friends.
While federal laws have guaranteed handicapped access to the outdoors at federal, state and municipal land for almost two decades, advocates and officials say privately owned Dillon Park is exceptional.
Many public parks have wheelchair-accessible rest rooms, designated handicapped parking spots, a few campsites with an asphalt pad and at least one short paved trail. …
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) - Authorities have accused a 41-year-old man of strangling his girlfriend with an apron and then reporting her death as a suicide.
Michael Fitzgerald, of Binghamton, was arrested Sunday and charged with second-degree murder in the Sept. 20 death of 32-year-old Joey Lansdowne, said Lt. William Yeager. Fitzgerald was being held without bail in the Broome County Jail.
Police learned of Lansdowne's death Sept. 20 when a man later identified as Fitzgerald called 911 and claimed Lansdowne had committed suicide, Yeager said.
Authorities pursued charges against Fitzgerald after sifting through what Yeager called "considerable medical evidence" following an autopsy. A Broome County grand jury handed up a sealed indictment Friday charging Fitzgerald with murder.
Yeager called the slaying a domestic dispute.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Four days after the record-setting snowstorm hit, nearly 200,000 homes and businesses remained without power, and a carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator was blamed for three deaths, officials said Monday.
At least three other people died earlier in the storm, which dumped up to two feet of heavy snow on Buffalo and surrounding areas Thursday and Friday.
Some community warming centers were filled to capacity Monday as about 95,000 remained in the dark, Mayor Byron Brown said. About 380,000 people originally lost power in the storm.
Most schools canceled classes Monday, and several large districts announced they would remain closed all week. In Buffalo, 21 school buildings were without electricity, while other districts worried buses would be unable to get down blocked streets.
National Grid spokesman Alberto Bianchetti said crews from 10 states and Canada were involved in the restoration effort, working in 12- to 16-hour shifts.
"This is certainly a storm and restoration effort that ranks among the most significant we've ever had," Bianchetti said. …
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - Honeywell Inc. will spend $451 million to help clean
up Onondaga Lake, once a sacred American Indian waterway turned into a toxic stew by a century of municipal and industrial pollution.
The agreement announced Thursday is one of the largest legal settlements against a polluter in state history, said Gov. George Pataki and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Honeywell will commit to a nine-year cleanup plan that calls for dredging 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the five-mile long lake on the city's northeastern limits, according
to a consent order filed in U.S. District Court in Syracuse.
