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"I don't feel the nervousness," he said. "I'm at home. These are my people. This is my family." |
Shady Gamhour (Pensacola) won by TKO against Starr Johnson, 1:17 Round 2. |
Fez Batista (Huddersfield, England) won split decision (2-1) against Lawrence Purifoy (Austin, Texas). |
Devin Cushing (Pensacola) won by TKO against Dylan Blakesley (Ocala), 1:50 Round 2. |
Anderson Hutchinson (Brazil) wins by unanimous decision against Jeremias Fernandez (Argentina). |
Jacob Kilburn (Woodlawn, Tenn.) wins by unanimous decision against Elvin Brito (Lockport, Ill.). |
Logan Woods (Nashville, Tenn.) won by KO against Leonard Williams (Pensacola), 2nd round. |
Co-Main — Abraao Magalhaes (Fortaleza, Brazil) won by tap out against Tito Jones (Panama City), 3:59 Round 1. |
Co-Main — James Freeman (Pensacola, Fontana, Calif) won by TKO against Charles Bennett (Ocala) 0:44 Round 2. |
#10. BLACK SUNGLASSES WITH GREEN LENSES. |
These are cult-lusted frames. It's funny because the average guy might not know what's up with this particular pair of shades but we guarantee that if you're angling for a PYT who knows anything about anything style-related, she'll recognize the three-prong, tell-tale, golden triangle at the hinge. These are constantly... |
What a wonderful place to escape to, this cute cabin in the woods! 2 BR/2 BA with a toasty fireplace! it has a great deck for watching the wildlife in a peaceful setting and it backs right up to the National Forest. Come check it out and watch your stress melt away. |
Wonderfully located cabin on Links Golf Course. Lot is over 1/2 acre. There is a 30x30 garage/shop for all your toys. Easy access year round. The large deck surrounds the house and is covered in back. There is an addition of a large 2nd bathroom/utility with a large walk in closet and pantry. |
Above: Barnes makes for some weird combos. |
Well, this list sure feels a lot like 2015: a role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, a couple of games from Japan, and just the biggest card game in the industry. |
Welcome to 2016. I’m Jason Wilson, the managing editor for GamesBeat (I’m the guy who, well, thinks he holds on the reins for Jeff, Mike, and Dean). Just as my approach to my top games of 2015 was a bit unorthodox last year, my take on my favorite games of 2016 is again different — this time, it’s a mix of the games th... |
Above: Dragon Quest Builders has a blocky world with realistic characters. |
Dragon Quest VII came out earlier this year, but it’s just a bit too much for my 6 year old. But Dragon Quest Builders is an approachable way for me to introduce both him and his 4-year-old brother to the beloved fantasy world of smilin’ slimes and silly puns. They fell in love with it — the building is more streamline... |
Above: Looks like Shinra has moved in. |
This was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. The mix of Pokémon-like monster collecting and odes to Final Fantasy’s lore-rich past make it an ideal game not just for series veterans but newbies, too — including children. It’s a great “My First Final Fantasy,” and my children are still begging me to play it... |
Above: Give him a smooch! |
I’m an old fart, but I’m also an old fart who once loved shooters. Back when Castle Wolfenstein and the original Doom were new, I loved racing through the levels, blasting everything that stood in my way. Now, 2016’s Doom isn’t just a HD remake of the iconic game from 1993, but it captures that old-school style of shoo... |
Above: Combat looks great up close like this — or from across the system. Also, blue lasers: definitely better than red ones. |
Paradox Interactive’s known for making grand strategy games … of a rather historical bent. Games like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis have setting hundreds of years ago. Hell, the publisher’s most modern strategy hit is Hearts of Iron, which takes place in World War II. Stellaris takes the company’s game design i... |
Above: Tyranny’s art is gorgeous. |
Obsidian Entertainment’s latest in a string of excellent role-playing games tacks into a different direction — here, the darkness has already won, and you play as the voice of the law in a world where your choices aren’t always between good and evil. Like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny throws a modern shine on the classi... |
Above: Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE brings Persona-like gameplay to the Wii U. |
The latest console role-playing game from the makers of Persona and Nintendo’s Fire Emblem strategy series gave me a reason to put something new into my Wii U for the first time all year when it debuted in June. And I’m still chipping away at this delightful and weird Atlus game. It leans more toward Persona than Fire ... |
This long-running strategy series from Sid Meier and his Firaxis studio feels more complete at launch than it has since the debut of the franchise’s first game back in … 1991. It offers the same, “just one more turn” gameplay that’s made building your civilization so compelling for 25 years. It’s a bit more cartoony, t... |
Above: Overwatch is celebrating Christmas. |
Blizzard Entertainment’s 2016 hit did something that Team Fortress never accomplished: get me into a team shooter. I fell for Overwatch from the first time I played it, piloting D.Va and her mech across the battlefield and blasting everything that got into my way. I later learned I could use the mech’s self-destruct an... |
My favorite role-playing game this year comes from Red Hook Studios, by far the smaller group of game designers on this list. It does something that no other game accomplishes in 2016 — making me feel dread. You recruit adventurers to help you clean out your ancestral home of the horrors, but these twisted terrors can ... |
Above: This is a gross Turn 2 board. |
My favorite game of 2015 is also my top game this year, but for other reasons (besides being my most-played game of 2016). Blizzard’s Team 5 (the design group that designed Hearthstone) faced a gargantuan task for the first four months of the year — planning its Standard set rotation scheme while also prepping its firs... |
But what made Hearthstone so fun for me this year was how I gave up on trying to beat ladder decks and just embrace what I find fun — silly creations focusing on random cards doing wacky things and control decks that lead to near-impossible combos that essentially win matches. And in the process, I earned my first thre... |
I want more from Hearthstone — better draft modes, new modes, and a better ladder system — but unless Team 5 makes radical changes, I see myself playing just as much, if not more, Hearthstone in 2017. |
UPLAND >> It was a job not many were willing to take in the summer of 2016. Upland was in need of an interim city manager after just firing its top executive. |
The departure marked the fourth consecutive city manager, dating back to 2005, to leave amid controversy. |
Then came Martin Thouvenell, who spent three decades working for the city in various capacities. He quickly began to stir things up, and much like his 17-month tenure, his departure was met with mixed emotions. |
On Monday night, after city and local leaders showered him with accolades and praise for serving on an interim basis, a majority of the council approved a consulting contract that could net Thouvenell $108,000 in the next year. |
As a consultant, Thouvenell would be getting a pay bump. It was a move that infuriated some at the meeting. |
Thouvenell is expected to help new City Manager Bill Manis, who starts in January 2018, lead the search for a new police chief, focus on Memorial Park renovations, and work on issues with San Antonio Regional Hospital, said Mayor Debbie Stone. |
Stone was confident Thouvenell would complete the work in under a year. |
After the meeting, Thouvenell confirmed, saying he expects to finish his work in six months. |
“It would be fairly difficult to abandon those projects right now and hand those over to somebody because they’re fairly technical in nature. They are big projects for Upland and we’ll be talking more about them soon,” he said. |
Thouvenell can be a man of few words, but he never held back during council meetings. Often quick to shut down any rumors or misinformation shared by the public. |
When the council first brought him on board, Thouvenell was paid $75 an hour. But in February 2017 they gave him a six-month extension, and the council agreed to increase his pay to $80 an hour or up to $76,000 for 960 hours. The contract was extended a second time, from Aug. 7 to Dec. 31. As a retired state employee c... |
During his tenure, Thouvenell has been spearheading moves to increase revenues and stop the threat of operating in a deficit. |
But in the last year, both Police Chief Brian Johnson and Fire Chief Paul Segalla left under a cloud of controversy – both were hired by Thouvenell’s predecessor. |
His biggest move was to lead the effort to disband the city’s fire department after more than a century of service and turn fire protection over to San Bernardino County. The move could save Upland $3.2 million a year. |
Under Thouvenell, the council was presented with a financial stability plan which included implementing parking fees at the Metrolink lots and seeking energy efficient building upgrades. The deal will inject $2 million worth of needed equipment improvements into city buildings that will reduce maintenance needs over th... |
The interim city manager was highly vocal about the need to consider a sales tax to address Upland’s financial issues but never put forward a plan for the council to vote on. |
Councilman Gino Filippi said Upland’s staff appreciated his guidance as the city overcame staff shortages and budget concerns. |
Residents like Ramella weren’t alone in raising questions, April McCormick called the contract bloated and said the council’s decision to approve it was a fatal flaw in their future reelection bids. |
“We just celebrated this man as though he’s leaving. He’s not going anywhere, he’s actually going to go home and receive $9,000 every single month from the city council,” she said. |
Councilman Sid Robinson disagreed, saying the contract was average for what cities pay. Although the cities are not comparable in size and budget, Ontario earlier this year awarded its former city manager Greg Devereaux a $120,000 contract for the 2016-17 fiscal year. |
Others residents like Eric Gavin, who is also a paid consultant for the city on homeless issues, applauded Thouvenell for the direction he had taken the council. |
In addition, Marcelo Blanco, who was representing the Upland Police Management Association, voiced support for his consulting contract. |
“He has done a great job as an interim city manager, and we believe his work is not done yet. We know he’ll be an asset to the new city manager, an invaluable resource to you, and ultimately the community,” he said. |
Councilwoman Janice Elliott was the lone official to oppose the contract, voicing her concern that only the council could nullify the pact. |
Elliott said she didn’t see the need for a year-long contract to facilitate a smooth transition, adding that Deputy City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi, staff and another consultant, was available. |
She said she also believed Thouvenell’s presence could potentially undermine the new city manager’s authority and motioned that the terms of the contract be amended to be shortened to two weeks with only a $4,500 stipend. |
Elliott’s response drew a long applause from the audience but failed to get the support of the rest of the council who were in support. |
Although many residents questioned whether Thouvenell would impede the new city manager, Manis later stood at the lecturn and squashed any of those concerns. Thouvenell agreed and has already spoke to the city’s next top executive about his new role. |
Filippi defended the move, saying he spoke with Manis earlier that day about the contract. In their conversation, Manis acknowledged he would be in a position to have to hire a consultant to find the new police chief. |
“I asked Mr. Manis if he had a choice who to assist with that function it would be Marty. I don’t think that’s beyond reason,” Filippi said. |
Councilwoman Carol Timm said Upland would most likely have to hire multiple consultants to get the projects done. Upland either hires one it doesn’t know or hires a consultant who knows what he’s doing, she explained. |
“I would rather hire him, somebody we know gets the jobs and knows about these projects,” Timm said. |
Timm was actually one of the two council members who wanted to keep the previous city manager and acknowledged she hadn’t met Thouvenell before he joined on an interim basis. |
Where has Our Gina gone wrong? Mining magnate Gina Rinehart has had a rough time of it recently. Her near $200 million stake in the Ten Network is practically worthless, and according to media reports, Rinehart's $13 billion Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australia (she owns 70%) is still suffering teething problems... |
Channel Ten is in big, big trouble. |
A major row is brewing in American letters. At issue is the text of Raymond Carver's 1981 short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love; a canonical work of "minimalist" fiction, much admired for its spare, laconic style, and its way of configuring ordinary life to yield unexpectedly powerful emoti... |
Like most people interested in the form, I was knocked out by these stories when I first read them, and I continue to reread them frequently with undiminished pleasure. I like their chaste preference of action, dialogue and curtly objective description, over the kind of ruminative authorial guff that blurs and sinks th... |
In The Bath, a slightly creepy baker calling about an uncollected birthday cake becomes - by one of the most diabolic sleights of hand I know of in any short story - a personification of all the forces in life that oppose happiness, well-being, existence itself. His call resolves nothing, but its cruelly timed incursio... |
Well, it turns out that Carver wasn't quite the coolly surgical artist that these impeccable deployments of the said and the unsaid suggest. His editor at Knopf, Gordon Lish, cut the stories radically before publication, jettisoning as much as half of the original in some cases, reshaping them and changing the way they... |
Now his widow, Tess Gallagher, wants to bring out the original versions, restored to their pre-Lish expansiveness by the Carver scholars William Stull and Maureen Carroll. She isn't advocating pulling the Lish versions from the shelves, but she does seem intent on launching a "real" Carver; a kinder, gentler, "life-aff... |
As precedents for this kind of restoration, Stull and Carroll cite, among other things, Plath's Ariel, and Lawrence's The Lost Girl. Personally I think The Waste Land would be more apposite. As Pound's cuts did with Eliot's original, Lish's audacious slashings liberated Carver's densely expressive artistry from the sup... |
The case is complicated by the fact that Carver himself, unlike Eliot, seems to have persisted in preferring his own original versions (though this is a murky matter too). He went on to publish a rewrite of The Bath entitled A Small Good Thing. In it, the painfully bleak ending is replaced by an upbeat reconciliation s... |
The implication is that if he had lived he might have done exactly what his widow is proposing to do now, possibly even going a step further and suppressing the Lish edition. Certainly he seems to have felt uncomfortable with the Carver persona created by the collaboration (if that's the word) with Lish. And judging fr... |
Who are we, then, to oppose such a project? Ethically, I think that even allowing for all the uncertainties, the rights and wrongs of the case probably stack up in Tess Gallagher's favour. But in literature there's no right and wrong, only good and bad. Pragmatism trumps "authenticity", a dubious notion at the best of ... |
LD put the shaving bag under his arm again and once more picked up the suitcase. "I just want to say one more thing, Maxine. Listen to me. Remember this," he said. "I love you. I love you no matter what happens. I love you too, Bea. I love you both." He stood there at the door and felt his lips begin to tingle as he lo... |
"You call this love, LD?" Maxine said. She let go of Bea's hand. She made a fist. Then she shook her head and jammed her hands into her coat pockets. She stared at him and then dropped her eyes to something on the floor near his shoes. |
It came to him with a shock that he would remember this night and her like this. He was terrified to think that in the years ahead she might come to resemble a woman he couldn't place, a mute figure in a long coat, standing in the middle of a lighted room with lowered eyes. |
"Is this what love is, LD?" she said, fixing her eyes on him. Her eyes were terrible and deep, and he held them as long as he could. |
L.D. put the shaving bag under his arm and picked up the suitcase. |
He said, "I just want to say one more thing." |
But then he could not think what it could possibly be. |
I can't imagine why anybody would want to turn the clock back on that. |
Authorities say eight people have been hurt, three critically, in an explosion and fire at a commercial building in south Los Angeles County. |
County Fire Inspector Keith Mora says the blast was reported shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday at a business in La Habra. |
Arriving firefighters found flames showing from the building. The fire has been contained. |
Mora says the building houses a rim polishing business. |
SENIOR ADVOCATE Mohammad Ahmed Khan, husband of late Shah Bano, died here this morning. He was 94. Ms Bano had passed away some years back. Shah Bano?s court battle had created a nationwide social upheaval when she demanded maintenance after she was divorced from her husband. |
SENIOR ADVOCATE Mohammad Ahmed Khan, husband of late Shah Bano, died here this morning. He was 94. Ms Bano had passed away some years back. Shah Bano’s court battle had created a nationwide social upheaval when she demanded maintenance after she was divorced from her husband. |
A 62-year-old Muslim lady hailing from Indore and a mother of five, she was divorced in 1978. As she had no means to support herself and her children, Ms Bano approached the court in order to secure maintenance. |
By the time the case had reached the Supreme Court, seven years had passed. The Apex Court invoked Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code and ruled that she should be provided maintenance money, similar to alimony. The orthodox section of the community perceived this as an encroachment on Islamic Personal Law and p... |
In 1986, during the premiership of Mr Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress enjoyed absolute majority in Parliament and the Protection of Rights on Divorce Act (for Muslim Women) was passed, nullifying the judgement. |
Critics strongly contend that this act was socially unjust especially for a woman with no means of support. They believed it was passed in order to safeguard the entire Muslim vote bank. |
The civil rights movement is an aspect of the country's history of which all Americans can be proud. |
Minority leaders fought for a just cause through nonviolent methods and an appeal to basic principles of human rights. The movement was an inspiration to oppressed people around the world, and its success can be judged by looking at the current occupant of the White House. |
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