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Centre Stage Players make a welcome return to put on a World War 1 play about the lads from Accrington who were all drafted into the same brigade and the impact they had on the giirls they left at home.
Directed by Dorothy Lowey, the play will be performed at the Erin Arts Centre on the 8th and 9th November and on Remembrance Sunday, 100 years from the end of the Great War.
The event runs from 7:30pm to 10:00pm on the following dates.
Select a date to add this event to your calendar app.
Pokémon Go, released yesterday by Niantic Labs, is essentially a cross between traditional exercise-tracking mobile apps and a game. In order to “catch ‘em all,” you need to explore the game’s virtual world (which, in real life, means you have to do some walking). As you move around, so does your character, alerting yo...
At any rate, some users on Twitter have noticed that a lot of the PokéStops, gyms, and other in-game locations are real-life churches.
Pokémon collectors directed to churches seem to be taking it all in good humor. In some cases, very good humor.
So the church next to my house is a PokeStop in Pokemon Go which means I can finally tell my grandma about all the time I spend at church.
Downloaded Pokémon Go and it told me my nearest shop was in our local church down the road. Nice try, God!
Aside from creating a clever means of giving us a reason to look forward to exercising, Niantic may have inadvertently come up with the best reason in years for atheists to go to church.
Southern Florida has seen little to no rainfall since the start of January, according to the United States Drought Monitor.
Keep watering your flowers because severe and moderate dry conditions could continue in the coming months in the Treasure and Space coasts.
Will Ulrich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne, said the agency Thursday declared parts of the two regions under severe drought because there has been little to no rainfall since the beginning of the year.
Ulrich said the drought is because of a lower amount of rainfall than expected during the wet season this past year.
"During the months of August and September during the end of the wet season, we really saw a downturn in the amount of showers and storms that we saw across portions of the Space and Treasure coasts," he said. "Unfortunately, when you dry things out when you're supposed to be at your wettest, that can be a problem when...
Jim Karels, the director for Florida Forest Service, said it's common for the agency to start preparing for an increase in fires during the beginning of the dry season.
"Treasure Coast and the Space Coast are starting to see some of those dry trends that are common for this time of the year, but what effects it has for us is an elevated fire condition," he said. "We've seen some fires recently, one fairly large fire recently around Lake Okeechobee."
The rainy season takes place between May to October, with both regions typically seeing anywhere from 22 to 26 inches of rain during this time.
Last year, Ulrich said the average amount of rainfall for both regions was about 14 to 16 inches during the rainy season.
'We came out of the wet season dry and we entered the dry season dry, and that puts us in the situation we are in now," he said.
Part of Melbourne and the southern part of Brevard County are going through severe drought, as are areas along the coastline.
The cause of the decreased amount of rainfall during the wet season probably was high pressure that developed over east-central Florida toward the end of the rainy season, Ulrich said.
"So that high pressure kind of held on in October and November," he said. "We didn't see many cold fronts move through, so that prevented rainfall."
Since the beginning of the year started with little to no rainfall, Ulrich said there's a good chance the droughts in both Space and Treasure coasts could continue.
While the agency is predicting there could be an increase in rainfall in the coming weeks, Ulrich said it won't be enough to bring both coasts out of the drought.
"Since we're already starting off so dry and we're in the dry season, we don't think these drought conditions are going to disappear," he said. "Unfortunately, drought conditions are going to continue through the winter and into the spring months."
Karels said the agency is especially on the lookout for fires during the dry season until about April.
"We're preparing as it starts to dry out," Karels said. "We've got our firefighters and our equipment ready through that area, and we're not right now forecasting a real severe fire season, more of a normal fire season, but it is drying out a little early, so we'll be looking at it and adjusting it."
One of the biggest things Karels said people should be thinking about during the dry season is being cautious when they burn their yard clippings.
"As it dries out, those conditions change," he said. "That (yard clipping) fire that you would normally have in a wet condition is no problem, but as it gets dry it's very easy for the wild to blow a spark out, to ignite adjacent woods and to have a ragging wildfire."
For the holiday weekend, Ulrich said a cold front will move in early Sunday morning with a good chance of rain.
"It will be cold Sunday night with overnight lows expected to dip into the upper 30s to near 40 degrees, though 10 to 15 mile-per-hour winds will make it feel several degrees colder early Monday morning," he said. "Temperatures will only warm into the low 60s Monday afternoon."
Less than an hour after her commanding win in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton took the stage and declared the presidential race is going national. And that meant going directly after Donald Trump.
"Despite what you hear, we don't need to make America great again. America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers," Clinton said.
Dedicating her victory to everyone "the parents and teachers of rural South Carolina” to the pastors she met with on the trail, Clinton said Americans need to build each other up and work together.
"We’ve now gone through four early states, and I want to congratulate Sen. Sanders on running a great race, and tomorrow, this campaign goes national," she told supporters at a victory speech on the campus of the University of South Carolina.
She called out Wall Street, saying she wants to ensure big banks don't abuse their power at the expense of women and the young.
"But America isn't a single-issue country, my friends," Clinton said, returning to her oft-repeated dig at Sanders' singular focus on economic inequality.
Clinton hailed Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who introduced Clinton before her speech, thanking him for being "your champion, your statesman in Congress."
"We tonight have started Hillary Clinton on her way to the White House," said Clyburn, who became the highest-profile African-American lawmaker to endorse Clinton earlier this month.
Clinton earned 87 percent to Sanders' 13 percent among African-American voters, according to exit poll data, which also showed that six-in-10 voters who went to polls on Saturday were African-American, compared to a little more than three-in-10 who were white.
The Associated Press and networks declared Clinton the winner moments after polls closed at 7 p.m. EST.
This serious and thoughtful—and maybe great—film is quite the labor of love. It’s a film about broken families and broken lives made by the father-and-son team of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. The way is the Christian pilgrimage of walking the Camino de Santiago or the Way of St. James to the Cathedral of Santiago d...
The film seems to have some obvious deficiencies, beginning with rather thin dialogue and underdeveloped characters. But the real deficiencies might be mine. I’m still thinking about it.
For now, I’m just offering some random observations.
Even today, the film emphasizes, it’s quite common and highly appropriate that the pilgrimage be made alone.
Today, however, few seem to make it in search of God. In post-Christian Europe, few who make it are believers. The pilgrims we see are nonetheless searchers in some sense. They’re dissatisfied with living freely in the midst of prosperity. They’re not poor; they’re journey is funded by credit cards, and they can readil...
The American—the Sheen character—is angry and despondent over the accidental death of his young son early on his walk along the Camino de Santiago. He decides to take the journey himself. He was, in his pride and complacency, estranged from the life of his only son. The son—played by Estevez--wants to see places for hi...
The son--a man in pursuit of a PhD out of genuine intellectual curiosity—decides to drop his pursuit of that credential in order really to wonder. He spends his life wandering—without even a cell phone (his dad complains he’s the only person left in the world without one)—in search of we don’t know what. But we do know...
The dad is a lapsed Catholic (like some Walker Percy character): He says time and again he’s not much of a religious man. He refuses to pray with a priest when he hears about his son’s death. But a priest on the way does give him a rosary, and he admits later he puts it to good use. He does make the sign of the cross a...
The wisdom of the gypsy patriarch—Ishmael—is of the sacredness of family and tribe, bonds that have been promiscuously violated and broken in our individualistic time. It’s not that those bonds oppose religion, necessarily, but they’re not to be displaced by it either. Ishmael says, as a matter of fact, that he has 200...
There’s a lot more, which I will save for another post.
OTTAWA (Reuters) - An interest rate cut remains on the table if the risks facing the country are realized, the Bank of Canada said on Wednesday, warning there would be “material consequences” if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump enacts protectionist policies.
Nonetheless, the central bank held rates steady, even as it nudged economic growth forecasts higher, saying the big unknown of Trump’s trade policies makes it prudent to wait and see.
In its first major report since the U.S. election, the bank highlighted potential positives and negatives for the Canadian economy from changes Trump may bring, saying infrastructure spending could boost growth but tax cuts could hurt competitiveness.
Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz emphasized that assessing the effects of such risks, such as Trump’s promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, is not cut and dry, though the bank was ready to act.
“Should any of those downside risks materialize and put our inflation target at risk, then we would have the room to maneuver,” Poloz told reporters.
“He’s trying to stamp out some of the commentary about raising rates,” said Sherry Cooper, chief economist at Dominion Lending Centers.
The bank said key risks to the outlook included a stronger growth path in the United States triggering “animal spirits,” and rising global protectionism in response to U.S. protectionism.
The loonie has strengthened with the greenback against other currencies, the bank noted, exacerbating competitiveness challenges and muting the export outlook.
The bank reiterated there is material excess capacity in the Canadian economy and “significant” labor market slack. Still, it lifted its 2017 growth forecast to 2.1 percent citing higher oil and base metals prices and a boost from government spending.
A statue of Emperor Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia and a longtime ruler who served from 1930 until his overthrow by the Marxist regime in 1974, was unveiled outside the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa on Sunday. The Emperor, who garnered an image of an elder statesman and leader of Africa, is ...
The unveiling ceremony of the statute was attended by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and Rwandan president Paul Kagame.
Cast in bronze, the 3 metre statue shows the Emperor making his signature hand sign with the thumb and index finger in a triangular shape. Created by three Ethiopian artists, Bekele Mekonnen, Mesfin Tesfaye and Henock Azene under the auspicious of the Addis Ababa University’s Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, the st...
Get your acrylics ready, because TNT is heading back to Palmetto this June for Claws season three.
TNT announced the return of its candy-coated Florida noir, which follows a group of vivacious nail techs who have spent the last two seasons evading various mob operations while showing a considerable knack for money-laundering and criminal enterprise in general. Season two of Claws, which comes from creator Eliot Laur...
Just kidding—this first-look teaser shows Virginia walking around in short-shorts and just conspiring with the rest of the Nail Artisans once more. It also looks like the casino Desna inherited will play a significant role in the new season, which also sees Desna and Roller (Jack Kesy) firmly back together. And is that...
Claws season three premieres June 9 at 9 p.m. ET on TNT.
WASHINGTON -- Fans will have noticed that when a basketball team's best player sits out for a while the team will sometimes actually do better than when the star is playing. Concepts from the mathematical science called game theory help to explain why this is.
Game theory seeks to show how complex networks operate -- things such as automobiles in a crowded highway, ants in a pile, or bacteria in a colony.
For the problem of traffic, if all cars on a road cooperate by moving smoothly -- and not cutting each other off -- the flow will be maintained even if the density of cars is high. However, as soon as a few drivers aggressively try to move through the formation of cars the whole formation can slow down dramatically, re...
Brian Skinner, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota, has shown how to extend this reasoning into an analysis of basketball. Modeling each play as a pathway, he has analyzed the process by which a team moves the ball down to the opponent's basket and tries to score.
Surprisingly, you get the best results -- and the highest score -- if you share the ball more than seems reasonable. Running your offense in the most efficient way, said Skinner, isn't the same as taking the highest-percentage shot each time down the court.
When a particular star player is used more often than other players his efficiency begins to decline. This is because the defense begins to focus more intently on that player, thereby making it harder for him to score. Sharing the ball, even to the extent of letting the less talented players shoot, is equivalent to spr...
In sports an important factor is keeping the defense honest. Consequently it is important to spread out your offense over multiple options. In baseball, to take another sports analogy, pitchers will not always throw their best pitch all the time; even at the risk of giving batters an increased chance of getting a hit a...
Similarly, in football, passing the ball results in a higher average yardage gain than running the ball, yet most teams will combine the two offensive methods in an effort to maximize scoring.
Skinner argues that in basketball it pays to let some of the lower percentage shooters on the team have a chance rather than always letting the star player drive the offense. What Skinner is proposing is a way to formalize the reasoning of keeping the defense honest, and to calculate the optimal level of mixing up your...
Skinner suggests that ball-hogging can be detrimental to a team's success. He uses the phrase the price of anarchy, which in game theory is the name for the action by which an individual -- perhaps a selfish driver or a star basketball shooter -- will disrupt an otherwise successful play strategy.
How about defense? In his model Skinner assumes that a defense always focuses on a given player when that player gets increased use. In reality, the defense has the right to choose how much to focus on any given player, and Skinner plans to take more defensive strategies into account.
The green on the Mountain Course's 157-yard 16th.
His name is Jim Mahoney, but he could easily be called Mr. Palm Springs or Lord of La Quinta. Wearing a bright green sweater, yellow pants, a green glove and green-and-yellow golf shoes, he is roaming the La Quinta Resort & Club's practice area puffing a giant cigar. He'll play this morning and again tomorrow -- and th...
He makes a great point. Guests at the club (laquintaresort.com, 800-598-3828) can choose from five courses, two of them on-site and three only a 10-minute shuttle ride away at the affiliated PGA West resort. The story goes that when Pete Dye designed the Stadium Course, ranked 89th on Golf Digest's list of America's 10...
There is much debate over La Quinta's next-best course. In truth, all of them are strong. The Mountain Course is another Dye design that takes you through and around the Santa Rosa Mountains. The Nicklaus Tournament Course has also hosted Q school. The elevated greens require hitting approach shots from the correct pos...
The courses of La Quinta and PGA West have undergone a $7.5-million renovation. At the Stadium Course, for example, workers have removed thousands of bushes originally placed as wind buffers. But the courses might be just the beginning of the face-lift. "We're looking at every inch of the property," says Davis Sezna, p...
Green fees at all the courses are $185 on weekdays and $205 on weekends, except for the Dunes, which charges $140 and $150. Same-day "replay" rounds cost just $49, including cart.
Bandon Dunes might be a better option for four to eight flat bellies who want to play 45 a day, but if you're looking for a full-service destination with great golf and perfect weather, La Quinta is the place. Rooms range from casitas (starting at $229 a night in the spring) to suites ($699 a night). Located 30 minutes...
The Adobe Grill restaurant is one of seven dining options at the resort. It's a great choice for authentic Mexican food and features a massive margarita. It's the size of a small bathtub, so buyer beware -- if you drink two, the bathtub is where you might sleep.
Be sure to make reservations at Arnold Palmer's (arnoldpalmers.net) just down the street from La Quinta. Save room for the banana split -- and save time to see the shrine of images and memorabilia from the King's career. This is where he eats when he's in town, so have your camera phone ready.
Despite many ups and downs, Ball stock today sits right about where it started the year.BLL Total Return Price data by YCharts.
You might not guess it from the stock price, but Ball Corporation seems to have beat earnings on Thursday. Reporting financial results for its fiscal third quarter 2015, Ball reported a profit fully $0.15 ahead of what Wall Street had been looking for -- and yet, investors sliced 1% off the stock price regardless.
Quarterly sales of $2.1 billion, which were down roughly 5% against last year's Q3, and just shy of analyst estimates as well.
Earnings per share of just $0.32, down 69% from the $1.04 earned in last year's third quarter.
Ball Corp blamed $0.78 in after-tax charges for restructuring, debt refinancing, and "economic hedging losses" for the decline. But for these expenses, the company's $1.10 per share in profits would have been roughly flat against last year's profit, and exceeded analyst pro forma expectations for Q3 2015.
Ball Corp, which despite still bearing the name that made it famous for canning jars, no longer makes Ball jars. Ball is, however, still heavily involved in "canning," through its metal beverage packaging and metal food and household products packaging divisions -- which, according to S&P Capital IQ, account for about ...
Sales and revenues within the beverage divisions were down slightly year over year, according to the company's report, in both the key Americas and Asia division and in the less important Europe division. The food and household products division, Ball's third-largest, suffered even more, with sales off by 17%...
What might go right?It almost goes without saying that investors were not thrilled with these results, and bid the stock down 1% in response to the news. And yet, the news isn't all bad. For one thing, Ball CEO John Hayes says that "difficult year-over-year volume comparisons and aluminum premiums headwinds are be...
In addition to the poor GAAP results, declining cash flow and rising capital investment costs have left Ball with free cash flow of just $240 million produced so far this year -- a 40% decline from the company's performance through the first three quarters of 2014. But next year,Hayes says, he expects to see Ball ...
Even so, the best-case scenario for Ball still seems to be a valuation of about 16.7 times 2016 free cash flow levels. That seems a bit rich for a stock that, according to analysts polled on S&P Capital IQ, can be expected to grow its profits at no better than about 10% annually over the next five years.
Long story short, even if everything goes right with Ball, and the company hits every target management has set for it... there still seems little reason for an investor to go long Ball stock today.
The article Ball Corporation Rolls Over originally appeared on Fool.com.

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