| Moreno Valley woman nourishes the minds and bodies of students in the ...
Alisha Ellis says her former employer would find it ironic that she teaches teenagers how to work hard. After all, her bank fired her 22 years ago for being absent too much. "I had just started my one-woman janitorial service," Ellis said, "and I had to service my customers. When I couldn't find help, I had to take off work to keep my business going. After taking off one time too many, I lost my job." Ellis, now 44, says it was a difficult decision to walk away from a $25,000-per-year managerial position to clean toilets and mop floors. However, her company, A&W Industries, a commercial janitorial service in Los Angeles, has been successful enough that it funds much of her charitable work. .
Lily Allen Returning To Work After Miscarriage; Plus Green Day, Diddy ...
Lily Allen is returning to work after suffering a miscarriage last week, Us Weekly reports. The British songstress will begin shooting her upcoming TV show, "Lily Allen and Friends," on Wednesday. The show will air on the U.K.'s BBC3. "She has insisted on coming back to work," a BBC insider told Us. "Obviously it's tough for her right now, but she is a professional and sees going back to work as a way to focus on something else." Allen was four months along with her first child with boyfriend Ed Simons, one-half of the Chemical Brothers, when she had the miscarriage. ... Pinhead Gunpowder, a side project for Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, will be playing two very rare shows next month. The band is booked to perform February 3 at the Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California, and on February 4 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.
Hominy & Hash
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Surprisingly, there were many calls, e-mails and letters from readers who enjoyed my article on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh Baby and events surrounding the 1932 event. Every once in awhile, there are stories that capture our attention and stay with us until decades later we still want to know more. Another such story is the disappearance of Judge Joseph Crater. Now, admittedly, I have no first-hand information on this story. What I do have is a sharp recollection of how his vanishing act became colloquial humor almost from the day he stepped into a taxicab on August 6, 1930, never to be heard from again, until ... well, now - at least to people old enough to still remember what "pulling a Judge Crater" would mean. Sightings became popular in the middle of the last century.
The Australian way: Auction the house
A buyer registers an offer, the seller may counter it, and they go back and forth until a deal is struck. People who purchase homes this way get a "cooling off period" of several days that allows them to change their minds between the initial agreement of purchase and the exchange of title, Joyce said. This form of consumer protection doesn't exist in western Australia, where state laws are different. There, most homes are sold through one—on-one negotiations. A further difference with Toronto is that 95 per cent of buyers don't use real estate agents. And agents by law must compete on the commissions they make. Commissions run between 1 and 3 per cent of sale price, compared with Toronto's unshakable 5 per cent. "If there's any collusion amongst agents in relation to fee structures they're right on to us," Joyce said, referring to regulatory bodies.
BACK IN IRAQ: THE 'WHORES OF WAR'
EVEN FOR Blackwater, it was an atrocity too far. If an Iraqi government report is to be believed, Blackwater, a US mercenary company which is unofficially the world's largest "for hire" private army, indiscriminately and without provocation opened fire earlier this month on civilians in a Baghdad street, killing at least 20 people. Iraq immediately revoked the firm's licence to operate in the country and moved to expel its staff and prosecute those responsible for the shootings, but Blackwater's activities have since resumed. This coincides with the release of a US Embassy report on the September 16 shooting, obtained by the Washington Post and described by a State Department official as a "first blush" account. It details the events, as given by Blackwater guards, and has stirred controversy in Iraq and Washington and prompted an inquiry into the role of Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq.
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