Baseball: ThunderBolts trio form bond on, off diamond

By Steve Millar For Sun-Times Media July 16, 2013 8:56PM

The ThunderBolts' Michael Torres slides to stop a ground ball from going into the outfield. | Vincent D. Johnson~for Sun-Times Media

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Updated: July 16, 2013 9:54PM

Entering his fifth season with the Windy City ThunderBolts in 2013, Zach Aakhus knew he was close to several franchise records.

He broke the games played and RBI marks early in the season, but it was his misguided pursuit of the team?s hits record that turned into an inside joke between his best friends on the team: fellow veterans Mike Torres and Chad Cregar.

?This offseason, I had a couple of hours to kill one night and I looked up some of the records,? Aakhus said. ?I knew I was close to the hits record. When I got up here, I started counting it down. I?d tell Mikey every day how many I needed.

?Then it hit me. I got to the cages one night and Mike?s like, ?What?s with that look on your face? I said, ?Well, you?ve been here four years hitting leadoff or in the two-hole. I haven?t been healthy my five years. You?re beating me to that hits record.? ?

Indeed, Torres broke the record with his 369th hit for the T-Bolts on July 10. Torres knew all along that it would happen, but let Aakhus continue to bask in false glory.

?It was really funny,? Cregar said.
? ?Aak? kept counting down and Mikey told me earlier that he was ahead of him. We just didn?t tell Zach. We let him keep talking.?

The situation brought plenty of laughs, but that?s nothing new for the trio, who have become close friends.

?All three of us have been around the game for quite a while now,? Cregar said. ?We?re the first people to get to the yard and for the most part the last people to leave the yard. We?re always together. We?re hitting together. We all have that same veteran thing going. We all love to talk about the game. Even when we get away from the game, we?re still together and talking about other things.?

Torres came to the T-Bolts in 2010 and has been road roommates with Aakhus ever since. Cregar came along the next year and ?fit right in,? Torres said.

All three seem to care as much about one another?s success as their own. Take last year, for example, when Aakhus battled a shoulder injury and had the worst year of his career at the plate.

?Last year was tough,? Torres said. ?My whole career here, I had seen ?Aak? hit and hit some more. Last year, he was giving us the best chance to win because of his defense, but he knew he?d have to take a back seat offensively. So to see him come back this year and swing the bat the way he?s capable of has been great.?

Aakhus and Torres will represent the T-Bolts in Wednesday?s Frontier League All-Star Game. It?s become an annual thing for the pair, each earning his fourth invite to the game.

Cregar, who in 2012 set franchise season records for home runs (31) and RBI (93), hasn?t played since June 14 because of a groin injury, but is expected to be activated when the season resumes Friday in Traverse City, Mich.

The group is ready to lead the team to a second-half push. After all, this likely will be their final year playing together.

Even if all three choose to play another season, Frontier League rules allow just one player over age 27 per team via the veteran exception. Aakhus, 29, and Cregar, 27, will both be in that category in 2014.

?We?ve already talked about how these (44) games, that?s it for us,? Aakhus said. ?You never know about next year. We?re focused on right now and we?re going to go hard for sure.?

Regardless of what happens in the second half, all three have made their marks on the franchise.

?Ten or 15 years from now, we?re all going to be able to look back at these records and say, ?Remember when the three of us played there? We did some pretty cool things together,? ? Torres said. ?Maybe it?s not the big leagues or Triple A, but we?ll have some stories to tell.?

Source: http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/sports/21350192-419/baseball-thunderbolts-trio-form-bond-on-off-diamond.html

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AT&T joins the crowd by offering early upgrades

4 hours ago

Tim Boyle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AT&T said on Tuesday that effective July 26 its customers will be allowed get a new AT&T smartphone or tablet every year with no down payment, no activation fee, no upgrade fee, and no financing fees.

The catch is that customers must pay full price for the devices. Under contract plans, the cost of the devices is generally subsidized.

The deal requires customers to sign a 20-month, zero percent APR installment agreement and have qualifying credit.

AT&T's offer is available to new customers and existing customers who are eligible for an upgrade.

(Read more: Leap Wireless shares double as AT&T agrees to $1.2 billion acquisition)

Last week, T-Mobile US said that customers would be allowed to upgrade phones every six months and it unveiled a family plan for prepaid customers as it moves to lure customers away from its three bigger rivals.

Verizon Wireless andSprint Nextel offer phone discounts in exchange for tying customers to two year contracts and typically do not allow phone upgrades during that period.

?Reuters contributed to this report.

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Calculated Risk: Fed's Beige Book: Economic activity increased "at a ...

by Bill McBride on 7/17/2013 02:05:00 PM

Fed's Beige Book "Prepared at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and based on information collected on or before July 8, 2013."

Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that overall economic activity continued to increase at a modest to moderate pace since the previous survey. Manufacturing expanded in most Districts since the previous report, with many Districts reporting increases in new orders, shipments, or production. Most Districts noted that overall consumer spending and auto sales increased during the reporting period. Activity in a wide variety of nonfinancial services was stable or increased in most reporting Districts. Transportation was stable or increased in several Districts. Tourism remained strong in some reporting Districts, although several Districts noted softness from bad weather. Residential real estate and construction activity increased at a moderate to strong pace in all reporting Districts. Commercial real estate market conditions and construction continued to improve across the Districts. Banking conditions generally improved across the Districts. Credit quality improved, while credit standards remained largely unchanged. Agricultural conditions were mixed, as weather patterns varied, while extraction was generally stable or increased.

And on real estate:

Residential real estate activity increased at a moderate to strong pace in most Districts. Most Districts reported increases in home sales. Cleveland noted that June sales of single-family homes were down compared with earlier in the spring but up from last year. Boston, New York, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco noted strong residential real estate markets. Home prices increased throughout the majority of the reporting Districts. Boston, New York, Richmond, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Dallas noted low or declining home inventories and upward pressures on home prices in some areas. Residential construction activity also improved moderately across the Districts, and contacts in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, and San Francisco reported faster growth in multi-family construction, in particular.

Commercial real estate market conditions continued to improve across most Districts. New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and San Francisco reported modest to moderate improvements in nonresidential real estate activity. Dallas reported strong growth in leasing activity for office and industrial space. Boston and Richmond reported that commercial real estate conditions were holding steady or improving, depending on location. Nonresidential construction activity was stable or increased throughout the nation.
emphasis added

Residential real estate continues to be a strong sector for the economy.? Overall this was similar to the previous beige book with economic activity increasing at a "modest to moderate" pace.

Source: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/07/feds-beige-book-economic-activity.html

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DHS Official: Reliance on Industry May Have Led to Texas Oversight Lapse

By Douglas P. Guarino

Global Security Newswire

BALTIMORE -- A reliance on industry to provide information about facilities that handle dangerous chemicals might have contributed to the Homeland Security Department?s failure to regulate the site of a major explosion in Texas earlier this year, a DHS official suggested Wednesday.

?It is absolutely a shared responsibility,? David Wulf, director of the department?s infrastructure security compliance division, told Global Security Newswire. ?Facilities that are in the business of dealing with ? high-risk chemicals ? have an obligation to do that reporting, just as I have an obligation to file our taxes with the IRS.

?The IRS doesn?t necessarily come out and look for us,? he added. ?At the same time, we?re committed to doing all we can to get word out? that these reporting requirements exist, he said.

During formal remarks at a chemical-sector security conference, Wulf said DHS officials have ?a pretty high degree of certainty that we have reached facilities that are members of the national trade associations? and informed them of their responsibility to comply with federal Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards, which require companies to submit site security plans if they handle a significant amount of dangerous chemicals.

He noted, however, that it appears that the West, Texas, fertilizer plant that exploded in April -- killing 14 and leveling nearby homes and businesses ?--was not a member of such a trade group.

Since the incident, Wulf said, the department has ?doubled down? on its efforts to reach facilities that qualify for regulation. It recently exchanged lists of known facilities with state agencies in Texas in an effort to identify sites known to the state but not to the federal department and vice versa. DHS officials have also renewed efforts to compare notes about relevant facilities with other federal agencies involved with chemical-safety regulation, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Wulf said.

The Homeland Security Department had previously attempted such information sharing with the EPA Risk Management Program several years ago when the CFATS program was just getting under way, according to Wulf. The initial effort was largely unsuccessful due to technical differences between the two agencies? databases. However, this time around, the department has launched a more advanced information-technology program aimed making the exchange more useful.

The move appears aimed at addressing concerns that the Texas facility was not on the Homeland Security Department?s radar, even though other regulatory agencies were aware the facility had been handling significant quantities of dangerous chemicals.

A risk-management plan filed with the Environmental Protection Agency said the facility possessed up to 54,000 pounds of toxic anhydrous ammonia -- more than five times the CFATS threshold of 10,000 pounds. In addition, the plant last year reported to the Texas State Health Services Department that it possessed 270 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate -- more than 1,000 times the CFATS reporting threshold of 400 pounds.

On Thursday, Joan O'Hara, deputy chief counsel to the House Homeland Security Committee, told conference attendees the panel would host a hearing to further examine why the DHS program has not reached certain "outlier" facilities such as the Texas plant.

The West, Texas, incident has been the focus of the latest criticism directed at the DHS program. Prior to the incident, the initiative had faced more than a year?s worth of congressional scrutiny pertaining to a leaked internal memo that revealed a litany of management problems, including a failure to conduct onsite inspections and approve facility security plans.

On Wednesday, Wulf, who co-authored the memo, sought to portray the CFATS program as one that had ?turned a corner.? He noted that as of last July, the program had given preliminary approval to only 50 site-security plans, conducted only 10 inspections and had not granted final approval to a single site-security plan since it was first authorized by Congress in 2007. One year later, the department has provided preliminary approval for ?upwards of 500? site-security plans, has conducted more than 50 inspections and has granted final approval for 160 site-security plans.

The program has also completed 90 of 95 ?action items? that the internal memo had identified as needed to get the program back on track, Wulf said.

Labor and environmental groups argue, however, that even if it runs smoothly, the DHS program lacks the legal teeth needed to ensure that domestic chemical security is adequate. They note that the law authorizing the program does not allow the department to require any specific security improvements and argue that the Environmental Protection Agency should use its own authorities under the Clean Air Act to craft more stringent rules.

In recent weeks, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has also pushed for stronger EPA action on chemical security. Boxer, who has oversight authority over the agency as chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has offered harsh criticism over what she says is an inadequate response to the Texas tragedy.

Republicans and major industry groups have long opposed further EPA involvement in the chemical security arena, arguing that the agency?s existing regulations -- along with those of the Homeland Security Department, Occupational Health and Safety Administration and various state agencies -- are sufficient.

Source: http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/dhs-official-reliance-industry-may-have-led-texas-oversight-lapse/

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"So Walker has been creating jobs ? for an Arizona firm. But, in all likelihood,...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/WisDems/posts/10151674733363592

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And yet another one bites the dust: Google has announced that its local recommendation service Alfre

And yet another one bites the dust: Google has announced that its local recommendation service Alfred, purchased from Clever Sense back in 2011, is shuttering on July 19th.

Read more...

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20th Century Fox to create musicals from its films

NEW YORK (AP) ? Get ready for more stage versions of your favorite movies ? 20th Century Fox has formed a new joint venture to turn the studio's vast arsenal of films into musicals.

The studio said Thursday it has joined up with Tony Award-winner producer Kevin McCollum, film producer John Davis and entertainment executive Tom McGrath to develop at least nine musicals based upon the studio's films over the next several years.

The three will continue to work on other projects while collaborating with Fox.

The move takes 20th Century Fox from a licenser of films into a player on Broadway, adding its heft to already established film studios operating in Times Square, including Disney, Warner Bros., Sony and MGM.

But 20th Century Fox ? which includes the units Twentieth Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox International Productions and Twentieth Century Fox Animation ? has a mouth-watering list of films that range from "Cocoon" and "Carmen Jones" to "Zorba the Greek" and "There's Something About Mary."

McCollum put together the Broadway hits "Rent," ''Avenue Q" and "In the Heights." Davis was behind the movies "Predator," ''The Firm," ''Grumpy Old Men" and "I Robot." McGrath, a former executive with Viacom Entertainment Group, currently helps lead Crossroads Media, Inc.

They will be aided by Isaac Robert Hurwitz, the executive director and producer of The New York Musical Theatre Festival, who will act as a consultant.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-07-11-Theater-20th%20Century%20Fox/id-10994fb50367432f85912f5e4c459fad

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