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USA Today reported that “less-lethal weapons” were used during the school shooting Friday in Santa Fe, Texas, which claimed 10 lives and injured 10 others. |
The idea that shotguns aren’t especially lethal is . . . well. |
San Antonio Spurs center Tim Duncan picked up the 155th playoff win of his career with Sunday's 116-95 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, tying former teammate Robert Horry for second place on the NBA's all-time playoff wins list for an individual player, per NBA.com/Stats. |
Duncan only logged 19 minutes in Sunday's game as his Spurs completed a sweep of the injury-marred Grizzlies, contributing seven points, two rebounds, two assists and three blocks in the easy win. |
While effective on the defensive end, the 40-year-old big man had a modest series from a statistical standpoint, averaging 5.8 points, 6.3 boards, 2.0 assists and 2.0 blocks over just 20.3 minutes per game. |
In addition to co-owning the No. 2 spot on the all-time playoff wins list, Duncan passed Horry to take sole possession of second place on the playoff appearances list, with the former now having 245 to the latter's 244, per NBA History. |
Derek Fisher owns the records for wins (161) and games (259), but it's possible Duncan could break both by the end of the postseason. |
In order to break the wins record, Duncan either needs to reach the NBA Finals or lose in the Western Conference Finals in seven games. |
As for the games record, he'll need the Spurs to reach the Finals, though he could move into a tie if both San Antonio's upcoming series and the conference finals go to seven games. |
Can following the herd pay off? |
MOMENTUM investing has been an unfashionable investment strategy since it proved so disastrous during the technology shares bubble of the late Nineties. But can it ever work? |
At its basic level it involves buying a share simply because everybody else is buying it and you hope that other investors will continue to purchase after you have bought. |
As each company has only a limited number of shares in issue, the greater the demand from buyers, the higher the price should rise. |
The danger with the strategy is that there may not be a buyer after you and, as many found when the technology bubble burst, prices can fall sharply. |
To test whether momentum investing can work as a short-term strategy, we have set up an experimental portfolio based on the six shares from the FTSE 350 that have shown the biggest price increases in the past month. |
Though Marks & Spencer tops the list of FTSE 350 risers, we have excluded it because its price has been inflated by the possible bid situation. |
Price: 84 3/4p Monthly rise: 22.8%. |
THE business telecommunications group that operates across Europe has seen its share price rise on speculation that France Telecom or Cable & Wireless might be considering a bid. |
Colt is viewed as a target in any consolidation of the sector, particularly in the UK, where there is overcapacity in the market. |
Chief executive Steve Akin, who was brought in by 30% shareholder Fidelity to restructure the group, leaves later this year to be replaced by former BT executive Jean-Yves Charlier. |
Price: 280p. Monthly rise: 22.8%. |
THE audio and video microchip developer joined the stock market at 210p last October and its shares rose as high as 322p in January. |
Then they lost ground, but in the past month they have reversed the falling trend, helped by positive support from brokers. |
This month, Wolfson, whose chief executive is David Milne, signed up its first major manufacturing partner in China to help it meet growing demand for its products in the Far East. |
Price: 1200p Monthly rise: 20.2%. |
MAJOR oil finds in India have sent shares in Cairn soaring this year and its most recent update showed that the company expected to extract more from its field in Rajasthan than it had initially hoped. |
Chief executive Bill Gammell pulled off a major coup when he picked up the field from Shell, but his company's share price jump has also been helped by sharply higher oil prices in recent months. |
The share price has tripled so far this year, and at last week's closing price, the Scottish company was valued at £1.8bn, which means it is knocking on the door of the FTSE 100 index. |
Price: 64 1/4p. Monthly rise: 19.5%. |
BID talk has also helped buoy the share price of pharmaceuticals group SkyePharma, with consolidation seen likely in the drugs sector. |
But the company has also benefited from American regulatory approval for DepoMorphine, its slow-release morphine injection. |
It is one of several new products that the company, whose chairman is Ian Gowrie-Smith, has in its pipeline. As these launch, they should help to secure more regular royalty income. |
Price: 257 3/4p Monthly rise: 16.2%. |
THE property group is not short on ambition and plans a 50-storey office block in the City, which would be the tallest building in the Square Mile. |
London is an important market for Minerva, with 76% of its portfolio there, and it would benefit from any recovery in demand. |
As well as its property interests, Minerva, whose chief executive is Andrew Rosenfeld, has a 60% stake in Scarlett Retail, which owns department stores group Allders. |
Price: 403p. Monthly rise: 17.5%. |
MAIL order and educational equipment group Findel sells a vast range of goods from greeting cards to microscopes and it is highly profitable. |
Last month the company, whose chairman is Keith Chapman, posted a 27% rise in annual profits to £41.2m on turnover up 14% to £421.1m. |
Findel also has an operation that helps other businesses to service customers through warehousing and marketing. |
• Midas verdict: Our Momentum Portfolio must be viewed as an experiment as you should never base your investment decisions on a single criterion, but it may shed some light on whether riding a buying wave can pay off. |
Momentum investing is by its nature a short-term strategy, so we will evaluate the portfolio and its members' performance next month against the FTSE 350. |
Trace Adkins, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert and Montgomery Gentry have been added to the list of performers at the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 18. Nominated for top vocal duo, Brooks & Dunn have won the most ACM Awards in history with 24 trophies. Lambert is up for top female vocalist, single (“Famous in a ... |
Nearly three decades of Republican dominance may be coming to an end. |
The Republican-led defeat of President Bush’s Wall Street bailout plan caused an immediate financial catastrophe: The stock market fell an unprecedented 777.68 points, wiping out, by one estimate, $1.2 trillion in wealth. But the greater and more lasting damage may be to the Republican Party itself. |
Percentagewise, the Sept. 29 crash was one-third the size of Black Monday, the stock-market crash of Oct. 19, 1987. As I write, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen more than halfway back up (though stock prices remain volatile). It’s still possible to believe that the economy will return to normal in a year or t... |
That’s not to say that John McCain is certain to lose this year’s election to Barack Obama. As I’ve noted before, this race has experienced so many abrupt reversals that we’re all starting to suffer from “game-changer” fatigue. At the moment, though, things seem to be going the Democrats’ way, with Obama up five or six... |
The Reagan coalition survived because nobody wanted to believe this and because both upper and middle classes were bought off with President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. (That the tax cuts favored the wealthy didn’t seem to matter.) But the proposed $700 billion bank bailout made it hard for Republicans to cling to their... |
It should be remembered that a fundamentalist belief in untrammeled capitalism is not the first but, rather, the second pillar of Reagan-style Republicanism to fall. The first was the belief that the United States should extend military power wherever enemies lurk, regardless of what our allies do. Reagan didn’t actual... |
This is not, I’ll confess, the first time I’ve believed that the Republican ascendancy has ended. In 1994, I felt sure that the warmed-over Reaganite nostrums of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” spelled defeat in the midterm elections. Instead, the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the fi... |
It sure looks dead, though. |
Russian skiers have taken all three podium spots in the prestigious 50 kilometer race at the FIS Cross-Country World Cup stage in Oslo. The victory was even sweeter as it came on the home turf of the main rivals from Norway. |
Russia's Alexander Bolshunov, Maxim Vylegzhanin and Andrey Larkov powered past Norway's golden boy, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, and his teammates, who came into Saturday’s event as hot favorites after their recent success at the World Championships in Austria. |
But it just wasn’t their day as the Russian trio produced some impressive speed and team work on the track to claim a respective one-two-three on the podium. |
The three escaped from the pack with some 4 kilometers remaining before the finish to put their impressive victory beyond doubt. |
First place was taken by Russian No.1 Bolshunov, completing the distance in 2 hours 23 minutes 49.8 seconds, in doing so replacing Klæbo at the top of the Word Cup’s overall standings on 172 points. Bolshunov also became the youngest ever winner of the race aged just 22 years and 68 days. |
“Today everything was planned. As for the struggle for victory in the overall standings, I don’t think about it,” Bolshunov said after the race, RIA Novosti reported. |
Silver went to veteran Vylegzhanin, for whom it was the last race in his impressive career, giving the 36-year-old three-time Olympic silver medalist the perfect stage on which to bow out in style. |
The podium was concluded by Larkov, with fourth place also taken by a Team Russia member, 25-year-old Ilya Semikov. |
As recruiters, we are always asked to find a sales or marketing applicant with a highly specific background. Anyone could go out and find your average sales or marketing professional. People pay fees to search firms like mine in order to find them somebody who has a high worth on the job market and who cannot easily be... |
1. Stay in one industry. This is probably one of the most important facets of career success. There are thousands upon thousands of sales and marketing resumes floating around on the job boards. However, there are not thousands upon thousands of people who maintain a very specialized background in any particular indust... |
2. Become a leading authority on your industry. You should frequently be writing articles about your industry and be posting them on the web as well as various social media sites. Even prior to speaking, there is a good chance that a prospective employer may Google you. Don't have the search results come up barren. |
3. Don't bounce from job to job. This is the worst thing anybody can do to their sales or marketing career. Be very selective as to the employer whom you decide to work with. Do your best to put in 3 years' time at each position you take. Bouncing also becomes a habit with a lot of people. Remember, every strike you wi... |
4. Learn skills that other sales and marketing representatives do not have. What are you doing on your free time and during weekends? You should be learning. As sales or marketing representative, if you have knowledge of, let's say, programming on your resume, it stands out. The knowledge does not need to be 100% relev... |
5. Keep good contacts. Employers love sales representatives who come with a book of business. Many people don't see this angle, however having a book of business or contacts also leads one to assume that you are honest, you are effective at account management, you know your marketing and have impressed people in the pa... |
For an employer, having an employee with multiple connections throughout various industries is always a plus and it is well worth the money. |
6. Keep your Linked-In page up to date with pictures and always maintain a good amount of contacts. I understand that this is a pain. Though, if you were to Google yourself, chances are that your social media site pages would come up. A picture, a good amount of contacts and memberships to a targeted amount of professi... |
7. Get out of outdated industries which have no real growth opportunities. I use this as an extreme example, but if you are in the paper industry, look to make an exit. The sales and marketing jobs which are paying right now are media oriented. If media is not your thing, then you might want to get into the technology ... |
8. Proofread your emails and resume very thoroughly. I don't know how many executive level sales and marketing resumes we have come across with misspellings and improper grammar. This is not a minor detail and can lose you potential interviews. Indirectly, this will hurt your salary asking price on the open market. |
The series will cover 30 years and include interviews with Colin Powell, John Major, John McCain and more. |
History channel is marking the 100th anniversary of World War I with a six-hour docuseries. |
The cable network has ordered World Wars, which will tell the story of three decades of war from the perspective of the men who came of age in the trenches and decided the fate of a world on the brink of disaster. The series will be told through men like Roosevelt, Hitler, Patton, Mussolini, Churchill, Tojo, DeGaulle a... |
The event series, which will feature interviews with Gen. Colin Powell, British Prime Minister John Major, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and U.S. Sen. John McCain, among others, will be broadcast on both History and H2 in the U.S. and internationally. It will also premiere on France Televisions and Germany's N24. |
The series examines the two wars as one contiguous timeline starting in 1914 and continuing to 1945. The stories will be told through the original style that History and producers Stephen David Entertainment used for its Emmy-winning The Men Who Built America and utilize state-of-the-art CGI, dramatic scenes and contri... |
Russell McCarroll, Paul Cabana and Christian Murphy will executive produce for History, while David serves as EP for Stephen David Productions. |
History and H2 are also developing a global educational outreach campaign that will be geared toward high school and college students throughout the world. |
Beyond the docuseries, History is also developing a few war-themed scripted miniseries, including one pegged to the Revolutionary War. |
GateHouse Media New England announced Friday it has acquired the Provincetown Banner, making it part of GateHouse Media New England’s (GHMNE) Cape Cod operations. |
Details of the acquisition were not disclosed. |
The company purchased the newspaper from founder and owner Alix Ritchie of Provincetown. GHMNE’s other Cape print publications include The Cape Codder, The Register, Harwich Oracle, Falmouth Bulletin, Sandwich Broadsider, Bourne Courier, several Pennysavers and has online properties hosted by Wicked Local. |
Davis pointed out that GateHouse Media is one of the largest media companies in the country that focuses virtually exclusively on local news, information and advertising. It is also the largest local media company in Massachusetts, operating more than 120 daily and weekly newspapers, and more than 160 web sites. |
“We have had a very long-standing commitment to the readers and advertisers on Cape Cod, the addition of the Banner will allow us to greatly strengthen this commitment,” Davis added. |
In a statement to employees and the community, Ritchie said the Banner acquisition to GateHouse is a natural next step for the paper’s future. |
“It has been the great good fortune of the Provincetown Banner to serve these communities. And in looking to the future, we want to ensure that we have the resources to continue to meet that challenge as professionally and as creatively as we can. Our communities deserve nothing less,” Ritchie stated. “It is, therefore... |
Mark Skala, publisher of GHME’s Cape Cod group, said the Banner’s focus on local news and service to the community are what make it unique and successful. |
“Print editions and their associated Web sites need to continue to evolve. Change is inevitable. In the 20-plus years I have been involved in Cape media, we have all witnessed many changes to the journalism landscape. But the one constant we have continued to pursue here at GateHouse is our commitment to the communitie... |
As I navigated a sidewalk crowded with Nevada Day revelers, I saw a former student of mine standing along the parade route with her family. |
Now in ninth grade, she looked like the teenager she was: makeup awkwardly applied to cover a spotty complexion, clothing approved by her peers, and an air of mingled boredom and embarrassment at being in the company of her family. |
As I approached, her eyes lit with recognition. The smile she gave me was the same, though it seemed more guarded. |
Before I could speak, Anna disappeared into the crowd. |
Words are powerful. And often we don’t understand the harm they can inflict. |
Several years ago I entered the middle school just as the bell rang to end of the first day of school. I moved to the wall, waited for the crowded hall to clear and watched the students leave. |
The boy’s face burned red and he stumbled as he pushed through the door. |
I knew how he felt. |
My mother once explained to me that we weren’t poor, we just didn’t have much money for things we didn’t need. Unfortunately, she and I defined need differently, and sometimes I felt poor, particularly when others treated me as if I were. |
On occasion, movies were shown on Friday afternoons at Lake Shore Elementary. We’d file into the cafeteria and sit cross-legged on the floor to watch the adventures of Pinocchio or the antics of Abbot and Costello. |
We enjoyed the movies, but the best part of the afternoon occurred when the principal, changing the reel on the projector, ran it backward for a few minutes, causing an uproar of hilarity. |
We each had to pay twenty-five cents to see the movie, which was usually not a problem. |
But one winter Dad had been laid off, and though he managed to find a job at Rigtrup’s chicken factory, we were on an extra-tight budget. In March, when Bob, Carolyn, and I asked for money for a school movie, Mom explained she didn’t have any quarters to give us. |
Maybe Mrs. Peterson had no idea what to do with me, or perhaps her feet hurt. She strode across the room, displeasure rippling across her face, yanked her purse from the closet, grabbed a quarter and slammed it on her desk. |
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