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Celebrities
Restaurant owned by Paula Deen reopens after fire SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A restaurant owned by well-known Southern chef Paula Deen reopened for lunch Monday following a late-night fire. Savannah Fire and Emergency Services Capt. Matt Stanley said firefighters responded to a blaze about 11 p.m. Sunday at The Lady & Sons eatery. No injuries were reported. He said the blaze apparently started in a laundry bag full of linens and rags. Stanley ...
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Police: Two dead in N.C. bottling plant shooting
Mitch Weiss Associated Press Writer CONCORD, N.C. (AP) — Two people were shot and killed Friday morning during an apparent robbery at a soda bottling plant north of Charlotte, authorities said. Concord deputy police chief Guy Smith said authorities were using a helicopter and police dogs to hunt for the shooter, who was seen running away from the Sun-drop Bottling Co. carrying a box. He remained at large late Friday afternoon. “We have 2...
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Celebrities
Marissa Jaret Winokur busy getting ready for baby NEW YORK (AP) — It’s crunch time for Marissa Jaret Winokur, who is busy preparing for the birth of her first child. The baby boy, scheduled to be born July 22, is being carried by a surrogate mother. Winokur, who had cervical cancer seven years ago, and writer-husband Judah Miller plan to name the baby Zev. The 35-year-old actress was busy unpacking boxes of baby furniture, she told The As...
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Floodwaters swamp Iowa town; drinking water all but gone
Amy Lorentzen Associated Press Writer CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Hospital patients in wheelchairs and on stretchers were evacuated in the middle of the night as the biggest flood Cedar Rapids has ever seen swamped more than 400 blocks Friday and all but cut off the supply of clean drinking water in the city of 120,000. As many as 10,000 townspeople driven from their homes by the rain-swollen Cedar River took shelter at schools and hotels o...
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Oddities
Va. church school’s only graduate gets ceremony HOPEWELL, Va. (AP) — High school senior Kelly Danielle Mayo didn’t have to sit through the usual speeches or wait while classmates collected their diplomas. She was the only graduate at Broadway Christian School’s commencement ceremony Thursday night. Her pastor was the speaker at the ceremony, which included a presentation of colors and a procession. “I’m nervous to be the center of attent...
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Ask Amy
Dear AmyHIS GIRLFRIEND PUTS CLEANING CAT’S LITTER BOX AHEAD OF MAKING LOVE DEAR AMY: My girlfriend is a bit of a neat freak. This weekend, things were getting amorous, and we were heading to the bedroom when I lost track of her. Her explanation for the delay was that she stopped to clean the cat litter box. I found the mental imagery disgusting, and it ended my interest in cuddling. She is completely unapologetic. She insists it’s no big...
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Tips for getting more sleep
The Associated Press Sleep experts’ tips for getting a good night’s rest: — Stick to a schedule: Keep regular bedtimes and wake times, even on the weekends. This will help train your body when to fall asleep. — Keep your bedroom cool, dark and quiet. Eliminate distractions such as TV, computers and ticking clocks. — Avoid trying to sleep. The harder you try, the more awake — and anxious — you’ll become. — Hide the clocks in your bedroom...
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Blunt denies request to lift ethanol mandate
Chris Blank Associated Press Writer JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Gov. Matt Blunt announced Friday that he is denying requests to exempt Kansas City from the sale of ethanol-blended gas. The Mid-America Regional Council and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce had asked the governor to issue a waiver from a state law that requires most of Missouri’s gas to include a 10 percent ethanol blend whenever the alternative fuel is cheaper tha...
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World Briefs
NBC’s Tim Russert, moderator of ‘Meet the Press,’ dies at age 58 after collapsing WASHINGTON (AP) — Tim Russert, who pointedly but politely questioned hundreds of the powerful and influential as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” died suddenly Friday while preparing for his weekly broadcast. The network’s Washington bureau chief was 58. In addition to his weekly program, Russert appeared on the network’s other news shows, was moderator f...
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Heloise
FOR RELEASE SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2008 Dear Heloise: I wanted to remind readers of one very important thing that people should do when leaving their pets in the care of someone else. Contact your veterinarian, and leave a signed permission to treatPERMISSION TO TREATform. That way, if anything really serious happens to your pet, the sitter can take the animal immediately to the vet for treatment, without having to try to contact the ow...
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Wheat harvest under way in Kiowa, most of Kansas too wet to cut
Roxana Hegeman Associated Press Writer WICHITA (AP) — The Kansas winter wheat harvest was well under way in a few dry places in the state, but fields elsewhere were still far too wet to cut after storms soaked the state. The first loads coming into the OK Co-op Grain Co. elevator in Kiowa bode well for the rest of this year’s harvest after last year’s disastrous crop in that region. The Kiowa elevator has taken in close to 1 million bushels i...
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Obama Web site confronts rumors being circulated
Nedra Pickler Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word “whitey” in a speech from the church pulpit as it launched a Web site to debunk rumors about him and his wife. The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against “whitey” in a diatribe at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by r...
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Ask Amy
WOMAN WONDERS WHY ALL HER LOVERS HAVE BEEN CHEAPSKATES Dear AmyDEAR AMY: I am 44 and have attracted cheap men all of my life. Looking back, I realize that my boyfriends were cheap. My husband is cheap (we live comfortably), my lovers have all been cheap with me, but what’s even more painful is that they have told me about the gifts they bought for their wives and former mistresses. My current lover and I have been together for more than t...
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World Briefs
Supreme Court says Guantanamo detainees have constitutional rights, rebuking Bush WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration disagrees strongly with a Supreme Court decision that gives suspected terrorists the right to go to federal court to seek their release from indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Friday the deeply divided high court ruling would not affect the Guantanamo trials agains...
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Not all Democrats falling for Obama
Ben Evans and Sam Hananel Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON (AP) — Nothing personal, Sen. Obama, but our re-election comes first. Barack Obama, for all his attention and primary successes, does not go over so well in a fair number of Democratic lawmakers’ home districts. So it seems there is little chance that some will endorse him for president. Some are counting on Republican votes in their re-election bids. Some are newly minted and...
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Kansas Supreme Court hears arguments in Planned Parenthood suit against Kline
Attorney for JoCo prosecutor: Office did nothing wrong John Milburn Associated Press Writer TOPEKA (AP) — Kansas Supreme Court justices on Thursday questioned how a prosecutor handled abortion patients’ records that were part of a criminal investigation. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri is trying to force Johnson County prosecutor Phill Kline to return patient files that are part of his case accusing an Overland Park clinic of pe...
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California wildfires burn homes, force evacuations
Jordan Robertson Associated Press Writer FELTON, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters on Thursday battled a series of fast-growing wildfires burning across Northern California, including a wind-whipped blaze that destroyed at least 10 homes and forced thousands of residents to evacuate. Authorities closed all roads to Paradise, a town of about 30,000 residents about 90 miles north of Sacramento, and ordered several thousand Butte County residents t...
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Southern Baptists remain wary of McCain
Eric Gorski AP Religion Writer INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Four years ago, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign hosted a reception for Southern Baptist pastors at a hotel across the street from their annual meeting. The country is electing a president again, the Baptists are meeting again and John McCain’s campaign is nowhere to be seen at a gathering of 7,200 people, most of them staunch Republicans. The absence has some Southern Baptists wondering ...
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Celebrities
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ben Jones figures he drank 43,000 beers, 2,000 jugs of whiskey, wine, gin and vodka, and smoked pounds of pot in the 20 years he was out of control. “I’d wake up in jails just wondering how I got there. Vomit on my shoes and blood on my shirt,” the 66-year-old actor told AP Radio in a recent interview. Jones had to hit rock bottom before things could get better. That happened on Sept. 26, 1977. “I really was literally dyi...
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Huckabee joins Fox News as political commentator
Andrew DeMillo Associated Press Writer LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential hopeful, has been hired by Fox News Channel as a political commentator. “Gov. Huckabee’s campaign experience and knowledge of politics makes him a great addition to our ongoing election coverage,” Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming, said in a statement Thursday. Huckabee, who served as governor of Arkansas for 10 1/2 y...
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