| New Aurora hires face extensive background checks
The city is now mandating criminal background checks on all new employees after a former parks worker and convicted sex offender allegedly assaulted a teenage boy he met this summer at a city event. The cost of the expanded checks, which began this month, is more than 800 percent greater per person than before, but it's money well-spent, officials said. "We have to learn from our mistakes," City Councilman Ryan Frazier said. "If that's what it takes to minimize this from happening again, absolutely it's the right thing to do." The Mountain States Employer Council runs expanded checks on all new hires, according to human resource director Kin Shuman. They include checks of the National State Offender Registry, local and state criminal checks and even checks in other states applicants have lived in.
Window puzzles win city a fan
Dawn Tilbury's family visited from Minnesota this summer. She showed them the sights, and when she went back to visit recently, they were still talking about the things they now identify with Ann Arbor: the fairy doors and the rebus puzzles in the front window of Vogel's Lock and Safe, 113 W. Washington St. "You know there's this talk about cool cities,'' Tilbury says. "I think fairy doors and window puzzles are things that make Ann Arbor cool.'' As a little thank-you to Vogel's, Tilbury came up with a rebus puzzle of her own while she was out for a run one day. When she got home she put clip art to paper and sent a copy to the shop, where locksmith Steve Bolling says it may end up in the window. Piano party Call yourself a music lover? Consider this: on Saturday, Ron and La Vonne Harris threw a party for a piano, celebrating the homecoming of their recently refurbished 1894 Steinway B brand piano.
Lebanon Check List
August 30, 2006: In the weeks since the cease-fire in Lebanon, news of Israeli shortcomings have emerged. This criticism of the Israeli Defense Force's performance has continued. However, many of the critics are confusing the failure of the Israelis to achieve their immediate objectives with a total loss on all levels of fighting a war. This is not unusual, particularly when one side's media and society is much more open than the other's, creating a distorted media picture.
This is not a new phenomena in time of war. For example, look at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, 1942. In that engagement, the United States lost one fleet carrier (Lexington), an oiler, and a destroyer, and had another carrier (Yorktown) suffer damage. Japanese casualties were one light carrier sunk (Shoho), and a fleet carrier damaged badly enough it could not participate in the Battle of Midway (Shokaku).
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