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Ryan Ludwick’s consecutive home run stripe ended at five games, which tied a Cardinals record, after he went 1-for-3 with a sole, brace strikeouts and a walk. Ludwick has 29 homers and is batting .475 (19-for-40) for the period of a 10-game hitting streak.

The 20-year-old Kershaw, the seventh overall pick of the 2006 draft, allowed only three singles while matching his season best with seven strikeouts and laboring around four walks. The seven-inning distress was the deepest he’s gone by a abounding inning in 12 career starts.

In his continue three outings the rookie has been nearly untouchable, giving up one run and 11 hits in 19 innings. Cesar Izturis, who was 6-for-11 in the series, ended the left-hander’s 17-inning scoreless streak with an RBI single in the fifth.

Hong Chih Kuo tossed a perfect eighth and Jonathan Broxton, shaking in his first appearance in six days, worked around a hit and a stroll in the ninth for his sixth gather in six chances since Takashi Saito went on the 15-day disabled list greatest month. The Cardinals scored 15 runs and batted .381 during the first two games of the series.

Lohse (13-4) allowed four runs and seven hits in seven innings, including his fifth homer in three starts, missing a chance to match his career high for victories contrive in 2003. He finished strong, retiring his last 10 batters after Juan Pierre’s RBI triple in the fourth put the Dodgers ahead 4-0.

Ramirez, booed throughout the series in the sight of each at-bat through fans who unmistakably remember his 2004 World Series MVP turn in Boston’s sweep of the Cardinals, is 13-for-23 with nine RBIs since joining the Dodgers. His 514th course homer was a two-run reach in the third part off a first-pitch fastball from Lohse, putting the Dodgers ahead 3-0.

Cardinals reliever Jason Isringhausen, removed from the closer’s role for a second appropriated time on Tuesday, worked a scoreless eighth and ninth and was impressive. The only hit he allowed was erased on Ramirez’s double-play ball and he struck out the side against the Dodgers’ 6-7-8 hitters in the ninth.

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“God forgive them, receive my spirit,” Heliberto Chi said in English. In Spanish, he told a friend vigilance through a window that he loved him and appreciated his hard work. He appeared to be whispering a prayer in Spanish with a mangle at the corner of his right eye as the lethal drugs began to take effect.

One of Chi’s cousins, who was among the witnesses, sobbed uncontrollably. Two sons of his victims watched end another window and Chi glanced at them briefly however didn’t appear to acknowledge them.

Chi was pronounced dead nine minutes later at 6:25 p.m. CDT.

He murdered his former master, Armand Paliotta, for the period of a 2001 robbery at an Arlington men’s clothing store where Chi had one vacant time worked. An employee was wounded trying to run away and another hid among clothing racks and called 911 for help.

Chi went on the roll on with his 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend. She turned him in California through six weeks later for assaulting her and told authorities he was wanted beneficial to murder in Texas.

Lawyers towards Chi had claimed in appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court that he should have been told he could increase legal assistance from the Honduran consular term when he was extradited to Texas to part charges.

The Supreme Court, ruling on the eve 2 1/2 hours before his scheduled execution time, rejected his appeal without dissent. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, rejected a similar appeal sometime Wednesday.

The arguments in Chi’s case, focusing on rights of foreigners under between nations convention, were uniform to those used unsuccessfully Tuesday by lawyers for condemned Texas captive Jose Medellin. In that case, the Supreme Court, with four of the nine justices dissenting, rejected his appeal and the Mexican-born Medellin was executed in opposition to participating in the gruesome gang rape and murders of two teenage Houston girls 15 years gone.

Unlike Medellin, Chi was not mixed some 50 end of life row inmates around the country, all Mexican-born, who the International Court of Justice said should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether the 1963 Vienna Convention treaty was violated during their arrests. Mexico had sued in the try to please on behalf of its citizens condemned in the U.S.

President Bush asked states to review those cases and legislation to implement the process was introduced recently in Congress, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year neither the president nor the international pay court to could force Texas to wait.

Chi’s attorneys argued that unlike the Vienna Convention obligations with Mexico, the 1927 U.S. Bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Consular Rights with Honduras was specifically between the U.S. and Honduras and was self-executing, purpose it didn’t ask legislation to have effect. They said the treaty also conferred individual rights and incorporated international law into enforceable domestic code.

Terry O’Rourke, a lawyer on Chi’s legal team who teaches international law at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, said Chi’s guilt wasn’t the issue.

“Chi is a murderer, Medellin is a murderer,” O’Rourke said. “But we don’t kill all murderers. We put on’t execute all murderers. We do it according to the law.

“When your state violates international law to kill somebody, it has very negative consequences.”

The getaway driver at the murder scene, Hugo Sierra, who is the brother of Chi’s girlfriend, is serving a life prison term.

Chi would say little ready the delinquency in an interview with The Associated Press shortly preceding his then-scheduled achievement last year.

“My seat is not about essential being innocent or guilty,” he said. “My rights were violated.”

“If it’s the Lord’s will” and he was executed, Chi said he had “great peace in my mind and soul.”

Four other Texas prisoners are placed to die this month, including two more next week. They’re among at in the smallest degree 15 Texas inmates through execution dates in the coming months.

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RENTON

It took only a trouble of minutes for the headquarters to win outer the players, though.

“Everything about it was kind of fun and exciting,” quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said Wednesday.

The relocation to Renton becomes official Aug. 18. Wednesday morning was more preference a test drive similar to the Seahawks loaded a rosterful onto buses and drove south without interruption I-405 to habitual performance outside the strange training facility in continuance a field tucked between the freeway and Lake Washington.

It’s more than just a field. It’s four fields, actually. Each regulation size, all precisely manicured. Three are grass, the fourth any artificial turf that is indoors, covered by a structure that bears an bad resemblance to an airplane hangar.

The acreage is meanly double from the team’s current headquarters in Kirkland. The building itself is three stories and covers five times as crowd square feet. There are whirlpools and cold tubs and a pool that includes a treadmill for rehabilitation work.

There’s an auditorium with extra-large seats to accommodate the extra-large bodies, and each locker in the clubhouse has its own electrical outlet.

The Seahawks announced construction plans in 2006, locating it on a parcel of land owned by Paul Allen. The team built the complaisance since every investment in the future. A down payment of sorts. It’s up to the team to produce the dividends.

“Paul built this by intentions adhering us to form on what we’ve accomplished and keep going,” linebacker Lofa Tatupu said. “He put a lot of money into this, and we want to capitalize and make him proud. Make Seattle proud.”

Holmgren related that the real results will show up in the team’s ability to attract free agents and make the franchise even more of a desired destination.

“Letting players know that we will do everything possible for the players,” Holmgren said, “to make it a great experience, all that kind of stuff. This building says that.”

A seaplane flew nearby since the team practiced kickoff drills Wednesday morning. Construction workers in orange vests were finishing up landscaping work on the row of 50 or in the same state trees bordering the fields.

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U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said the charges announced Thursday against David W. Dreifort, 41, reflected one of the largest lobster poaching operations ever prosecuted in the southeastern U.S.

More than 6,000 lobster tails were confiscated after Dreifort was arrested earlier this week, about 1,000 times the legal pouch limit towards Florida’s just-completed lobster sport diving mini-season. And officials said most of them were taken from protected seabeds of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

At up to $20 a pound, this one amount of confiscated lobster tails could obtain been sold to local fish houses on this account that about $30,000. Hundreds of various take part in the annual sport mini-season, which this year claimed the lives of four people searching because the popular crustaceans.

“Actions similar this have long-run consequences. It means divers have to dive more ofttimes and look longer to catch their legal confine,” Acosta said.

The operation used traps known as “casitas” that can range from large slabs of concrete and metal to discarded washing machines and parts of roofs. Lobsters are attracted to the cover they provide. All a poacher has to do is mark the spot by a GPS evasion and return to scoop up the entrap.

Beyond the unlicensed poaching, these traps subsist possible to convoy into existence dead zones among the coral and grasses that provide natural locality for fish and other sea creatures.

“Casitas acquire been an ongoing problem in the Keys,” said Dave Score, superintendent of the Keys marine sanctuary. “We’ve been seeing these for a number of years.”

Dreifort, of Cudjoe Key, was freed on in addition than $1 million bail after a brief federal court hearing Thursday in Key West. His attorney, Manny Garcia, said Dreifort will argue not guilty.

“We enjoin aggressively defend this case,” Garcia reported.

Dreifort was charged through federal environmental law violations and conspiracy, which could bring a prison judicial decree of up to five years each during the time that well as fines and penalties. Prosecutors also planned to seek forfeiture of Dreifort’s fishing boat, gear and other items. It’s also possible others could be charged.

According to a criminal complaint, federal agents were tipped that Dreifort had been harvesting lobster illegally for 20 years and had more than 1,000 pounds stored in a freezer at his home. After checking out the tip, they used GPS technology to track Dreifort’s boat in late July to allegedly collect lobsters and then used a hidden camera to registry him placing lobster tails in the freezer.

Agents afterward returned to the eight offshore sites Dreifort visited, finding lobster traps and remains of lobsters whose tails had been wrung from them. They took photos and video of the underwater locations.

To supplement tuition revenue, colleges are looking at everything from high-demand graduate courses to real estate deals

by Francesca Di Meglio

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This is the third part of a multipart series onward the business of college.

At Lasell College in the Boston suburb of Auburndale, there is a retirement community that essentially constitutes a campus within a campus. But the community of 230 who practise there and take courses is more than just any proof in seniors engaging in lifelong learning. For Lasell, the retirees are a source of alternative revenue that will help protect the college’s bottom line from fiscal and demographic trends that are making the college concern added challenging.

Increasingly, colleges and universities, especially publicly funded greatness schools and those by small endowments (BusinessWeek.com, 10/22/07), are turning to alternative revenue streams—including grants, private donations, patents, real estate, and money-making graduate courses—to travel ends meet. Administrators at these schools say it is the only way they can compete with opulent private schools, such as Harvard, that have brand names and hefty endowments (BusinessWeek.com, 11/29/2007).

Even though tuition is high across the board, administrators say they spend more to school undergraduates than they can charge students. "The cost of higher education is increasing so fast. There’s no end I can see," said Neil Theobald, vice-president and chief financial magistrate of Indiana University in Bloomington and Indianapolis, in which place tuition makes up only about a third part of the institute’s revenues and state attend is declining.

Additionally, the so-called echo boom generation—children of the baby boomers—is finishing literary institution, and the coming generation is smaller. Therefore, there power of choosing be fewer potential common students. "We must preserve ourselves as being that age when the competition [for tuition dollars] is going to get rougher," said Lasell College President Michael Alexander.

So where’s the new money coming from? For many colleges, providing additional forms of education is each obvious way to occasion a new revenue tendency. Many schools are developing graduate program—in areas such as management, health care, and breeding—on this account that they are in demand and can be profitable. A instance in point: New England College in Henniker, N.H., which added a masters in management with a health care specialization and an MFA program in poetry, which combines online moil by two 10-day on-campus sessions. "We’re not a wealthy institution. We don’t have a large endowment," said Michele Perkins, New England College’s president. "We are what you’d call tuition sustained by." In 2003, the first year that New England College offered a graduate program, it generated $1 million in revenue. In the 2008-2009 academic year, the graduate programs are projected to bring in $5 million.

Some universities are creating revenue streams of an entirely different sort by going beyond teaching and becoming real estate developers and landlords. Many universities already do this to some extent by owning scholar dormitories and apartments. But some schools are finding that their attribute is valuable and in demand for uses beyond bookish man housing and classroom buildings. For example, Emmanuel College, a Catholic liberal arts school in Boston, leased an acre of put on shore in the Fenway neighborhood to pharmaceutical companionship Merck (MRK), that built a 12-story, 300,000 square-foot private scrutiny facility that opened in 2004. The 75-year ground lease notwithstanding a research facility brought in $50 the masses, said Jack Maguire, who like chairman and founder of higher education consultancy firm Maguire Associates brokered the deal with the literary institution.

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E! News has confirmed that attorneys during the Emmy-nominated actor were in court Tuesday to request a custody hearing on their retainer's behalf.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marjorie S. Steinberg value the date for Aug. 11. (View the minute grade.)

Attorneys for both parents didn't immediately return calls for comment.

Baldwin and Basinger divorced in 2002 after nine years of marriage. Things have been pretty quiet lately in the actors' now years-long battle over daughter Ireland, who will exist 13 in October.

The last major outcry was made, literally, when Baldwin briefly lost his visitation privileges with his daughter over a year ago subsequent to a vitriolic voice mail-bag that he left for his daughter was leaked to TMZ.com and subsequently became the topic du jour onward talk shows and in the blogosphere.

The embarassment prompted a comment from Baldwin about wanting to leave 30 Rock to converging-point adhering his family, which, fortunate for TV viewers and for the still-struggling sitcom, never amounted to anything.

(E! Online articles will no longer arise on Yahoo! after Fri., Aug. 15, on the other hand you can unceasingly find them at www.eonline.com.)

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BELLINGHAM — In retrospect, the opening date for the Chrysalis Inn & Spa — April 2001, exact a few months before Sept. 11 — was appropriate. It ended up as a year when cocooning seemed like the best creative going.

A chrysalis, on this account that the lepidopteran-challenged, is the pupal stage of the butterfly — the correlate to a cocoon for other winged insects.

And this waterfront hotel on the edge of Bellingham’s historic (and increasingly gentrified) Fairhaven province is a pretty cozy place to curl up on a window seat (every room has one), read a good book or simply recharge while you gaze out at broad, glittering Bellingham Bay and the brooding hump of Lummi Island or have in keeping pirouetting fleets of butterfly-spinnakered sailboats dodge the Alaska ferry.

If cabin agitation strikes, you be possible to join multitudes of multi-sporting Bellinghamsters on the Taylor Avenue Dock and South Bay Trail, right audibly front.

The Chrysalis tucks 43 rooms into one elegantly modern three levels designed by McClellan Architects of Seattle. Muted colors counterpoint design splashes such as rooftop skylights reminiscent of upstretched wings — those butterflies another time — and a dramatic three-story lobby by soaring, sensuously curving staircases.

Chrysalis owner Michael Keenan, also part owner of Anacortes’ Majestic Inn & Spa, is a hands-on kind of entrepreneur who will oftentimes greet you from behind the front desk. Here’s the kind of you’ll attain to in the rest of the tavern:

The rooms

Polished hardwood floors make a handsome entry to both extent (and are even more expansive in the suites).

Colors are calming. Our full-view deluxe room ($234 rack rate upon a July Thursday) came in a palette of what we’ll call Campbell’s Cream of Celery complemented by Sage Stuffing, with a carpet of, uh, Kiwi Fruit (a brown and green blend).

Décor is minimalist modern. A small mantel-shelf over the gas fireplace (cast in all rooms) held two pieces of true pottery targeted by an overhead spotlight. Original artwork — some large and colorful — is throughout the inn; in our room was a small charcoal attrition on parchment and a little think out of the definiteness of sense-perception pastel, not enough to distract from that expansive view (what one. would trump most numerous anything).

Which brings us to that window seat, fastidiously cushioned and great enough to stretch confused on, with Roman blinds to lower when the afternoon sun does the klieg-light-in-your-eyes thing. (The inn faces immediately west.) The water view from our third-floor room was unimpeded; trees may partially block views from some rooms on lower floors.

A leaf-print spread covered a down comfortable on our king-size lay, which had lots of down pillows and a headboard of “pickled” gray wood (repeated in the room’s nightstands, chest and desk).

If you’re a fan of boob-tube-hiding armoires, tough hap: A naked 27-inch television perched brazenly atop the chest in our room. A DVD player was a bid welcome joining (by movies to borrow at the front desk), and a bedside Sony clock radio also played CDs (gain your allow tunes).

The details

Two neo-industrial metal lamps provided volatile at bedside, with a similar floor lamp next to the field’s single overstuffed chair. A canister light on a dimmer switch lit the window seat.

A mini-bar through a granite-look in opposition to held a motel-issue Sunbeam four-cup coffee maker, with a preference of Torrefazione Italia or Fidalgo Bay decaf, two types of Sir Aubrey’s White Lion teas, plus sugar packets, Equal, Coffee-mate and pair packets of “honey pearls.”

A well-stocked fridge had well-padded prices on items such as a half bottle of chardonnay ($26) or a split of Louis Roederer Champagne ($40), plus the usual array of $3.50 cashews, $1.25 Cokes and $4 caramel corn.

Wireless Internet is available in most rooms; apply the mind in the hotel guide because the password.

The bathrooms

Every room has a two-person tub, and they mean it: Tubs are roomy and deep enough for you and a good friend to squeeze in without requiring plastic explosives to get you out. Suites add jets to the tubs and bump up the size of the sunder glass-enclosed shower.

Corner suites, the best in the house, give you a window with a water see from the tub (through droppable blinds as far as concerns privacy). Other rooms have sliding screens between the tub and the bedroom that can be closed for privacy or opened if bathers wish to (A) peer across the field to see the water view; (B) keep every eye upon “Saturday Night Live” while soaking; or (C) consider a merry conversation with the visiting room-service guy.

Floors are mottled brown slate, and counters have a maybe-granite, maybe-Corian look. Two comfy robes of fleece and microfiber are hung by the shower.

The details

A dimmer dust one’s jacket controlled a spotlight above the tub. Accessories included a shaving/makeup mirror (unlit), a hair dryer and a rattan box of cotton-wool swabs and pads. Toiletries from Essentiel Elements included minty shampoo, conditioner and lotion, plus herbal hand soap and skin-care bar. Plenty of thick white towels, but a shortage of towel racks.

Mirroring the ouchingly-priced mini bar, there’s a “spa bar” basket of bathroom goodies priced to double your room rental if you’re not troubled: confetti bubble bath, $5.50; mango aromatherapy candle, $12; B. Kamins Night Cream, $24, and more.

Common areas

The fit with a face lobby isn’t a place to linger — you’ll find solely a couple wicker chairs — but that soaring ceiling and those unruffled staircases set the tone for the place. “It’s my beloved thing about the inn,” said owner Keenan, 54, who moved to Bellingham in 1998. “Rooms are rooms, but the lobby is in what place you can secure a description.”

That’s not to say there’s no pleasant place to hang. Continue through the lobby to a lounge with big windows overlooking the bay. A mix of withe and upholstered furnishings surround a ample stone fireplace (with real firewood for at the time that the weather cools). Everything’s in earth tones, with more original artwork lining the walls. A Parcheesi game sits on a shelf.

From here, doors open onto a terrace with umbrella tables above the bay and boardwalk. A wisteria-draped arbor fronts the inn next to gardens of dune grass, shore pine and Oregon grape.

Back inside, in that place are two conference rooms, accommodating up to 50 people.

But the distended news is the inn’s elaborate spa, which just finished a major renovation. Down a dim hallway with enough flickering aromatherapy candles to calm even the most overcaffeinated, services range from downright (a visit to the steam room, frank to inn guests) to surreal (the new hydrotherapy chamber where couples have power to paint each other with Turkish mineral mud).

The details

I’m not typically a spa kind of guy. But I had to try the steam room.

After some window-seat snacking on rosemary bread from Fairhaven’s Avenue Bread bakery and organic cheddar from Samish Bay Cheese, I went for a stimulating waterfront walk on a breezy afternoon, then bravely checked in for my first-ever mineral spring experience.

They gave me a huge, fluffy robe that felt preference wearing an alpaca, and india-rubber sandals with a footbed of little nubs that simulated a foot massage. I sat in the dark slate-floored steam scope where every few minutes a hissing valve opened and navigate from the center of the sod gushed from retirement, reminding me of that Julia Child cooking show in which she tried peeling tomatoes with a blow torch — singly in this case the tomato was my calf (too close to the steam vent). After 10 minutes, I burst out of there and took a cool shower. Dressing for dinner, I wallowed in a contrariwise full of complimentary “product” (their word): shaving stuff, hair goo, pertaining soaps and lotions.

I left, well blanched but refreshed, and smelling pretty darn good, over.

Dining

The inn’s Fino Wine Bar is also a fine-dining restaurant, and while Fairhaven offers a wide variety of restaurants within a five-minute walk, Fino’s combination of tolerably great wine, good food and can’t-beat-it view means you need doings no further than downstairs at dinner allotted period.

The small eating-house occupies a narrow distance on the water side of the hotel next to the spa. The penurious quarters can make the open-kitchen concept a bit claustrophobic, but on summer evenings, terrace tables offer a pleasant place to have the advantage the bay van.

Named for a famous Spanish sherry, Fino boasts “the flavors of Europe,” delivered in traditional European dishes as well being of the class who in its all-European wine list that draws from a 3,000-bottle cellar. Our tapas sampler ($12.50) was hit and miss, through good chicken croquettes and sherried prawns, but Spanish albóndigas (meatballs) reminiscent of Chef Boyardee. Steak au poivre by cognac cream ($30.50) was entirely grilled with frites crisp and crinkly, and hazelnut-crusted halibut ($27.50) was fresh and tasty, though the brie mashed potatoes were a characterless blob.

Fino serves inn guests a permitted breakfast stroke — a support spread of bagels, granola and fresh fruit that adds punctilious touches such as fresh breakfast breads (cranberry, orange and nut), a hot stimulate dish and full-linen condensed statement settings. A step up from Best Western.

The details

A pungent extra in this eye-popping setting: a pair of loaner binoculars at each table.

When they say wine bar, confident it. Don’t try to order a g-and-t before dinner. (European beer is served, though.) Besides wines by the taste, glass or bottle, in that place is a wine cocktail menu (e.g., “The Fairhaven,” with red vermouth, cold Champagne and lemon, $7).

One hard-burnt brick: The pre-meal bowl of gathering mix brought to every one table, complete with butter-toffee peanuts, said “Costco” added than “Europe.”

Room service is available, including a sample tray from the free breakfast slap for a $5 enunciation charge. The Fino menu is available at standard prices from noon to 9 p.m. except whereas the dining room is too busy, with any 18 percent tip added.

Activities

This isn’t a destination resort with its own activity center, but there is plenty to see and be enough in Fairhaven.

Attractions include Village Books, 1200 11th St., one of the province’s best independent booksellers, with its approved Colophon Cafe. Purple Smile Wines, 1143 11th St., offers tastings, a small in number steps from Avenue Bread (and if you stopped at Bow’s Samish Bay Cheese upon your way up Chuckanut Drive, you have all the food groups covered). There are knick-knack supplies, a tea room and lots more. Pick up a Fairhaven map at the inn’s front contrariwise.

Or if the “active” portion of “activity” woos you, the bay front place has enough to offer, too, not to cursory reference nearby parks, hikes and scenery along Chuckanut Drive or up the Mount Baker Highway.

The details

A walk or run on the waterfront trail couldn’t be easier from the Chrysalis — just stone’s throw outside — or you can rent a bike from nearby Fairhaven Bike and Ski, 1108 11th St. ($10 for an twenty-fourth part of a day/$20 per day). Rent kayaks, small sailboats and rowboats at nearby Bellingham Bay Community Boating Center, 501 Harris Ave., starting at $10 per hour (www.sailpaddlerow.org).

Fairhaven Outdoor Cinema shows movies preceded by live harmony on Saturday nights end August, and there’s a farmers market Wednesday afternoons through September, both at the Village Green at Mill Avenue and 10th Street, in the rear Village Books.

Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com

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The blonde Hilton, dressed in a leopard impress swim suit and gold pumps, jokingly declared her own candidacy in a video posted on the website Funny or Die, saying: "I privation America to know that I'm, taste, totally fitted to lead."

She was responding to a television ad by McCain, 71, that used her representation of an object to attack Democratic emulate Barack Obama.

The 27-year-old socialite related McCain's use of her in the ad, which sought to undermine Obama by likening his popularity to her celebrity, had effectively put her in the race for the top U.S. office.

Pretending to cause to surrender time done from reading a travel magazine in the manner that she leaned back on a live lazily chair, Hilton insinuated herself into the hot issue betwixt Obama and McCain — how to solve the U.S. energy crisis.

"We be able to do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars," Hilton simpered, drawing forward suggestions from both candidates.

Hilton, a tabloid preferred who gained fame from a notorious home-made sex tape, offered to paint the White House pink and threw down the gauntlet to McCain and Obama.

"I'll see you at the debates, bitches," she said.

Under U.S. law, Hilton would not in fact be eligible to hold the office of the presidency for eight more years.

McCain, meanwhile, released a second television ad that mocked Obama as a person of note, but it avoided any mention of Hilton or other Hollywood types.

His spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a less ill energy proposal."

Hilton's mother, a McCain donor, had lambasted being of the class who a complete waste of riches the Republican candidate's using her daughter's image.

"It is a complete spoil of the country's time and attention at the true second when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely idle habitual method to choose the next President of the United States," she wrote on the political Web site Huffington Post.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington)

Reuters/Nielsen

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Fed up through his students' complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to take . "variant spellings" as legitimate.

Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" because "opertunity," why not take . anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it wish power to be understood?

"Instead of murmuring not far from the state of the education combination of parts to form a whole as we correct the identical mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

"University teachers should sincerely accept for the judgment that variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").

Then of course there are words like "misspelt" (often spelled "mispelt"), not to mention "varient," a commonly used variant of "variant."

And that doesn't even begin to delve into all the problems English people obtain with words that use the culture "i" and "e" together, approve weird, snatch, ease, foreign and neighbor.

The rhyme "i under the jurisdiction e except after c" may be on the lips of every schoolchild in Britain, but that doesn't mean they remember the rule by dint of. the time they reach to university.

Of course, such proposals have been made in the past. The advent of text messaging turned various students into spelling neanderthals in the same proportion that phrases of the like kind as "wot r u doin 2nite?" became socially, if not academically, acceptable.

Despite Smith's suggestion, language mavens are unconvinced. John Simpson, the especial editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, says rules are rules and they are there for good reason.

"There are enormous advantages in having a coherent system of orthography," he told the Times newspaper.

"It makes it easier to communicate. Maybe during a learning phase in that place is some length for error, but I would chance of the desired end that by the time people get to university they have learnt to spell."

Yet even more of Britain's greatest wordsmiths have acknowledged it's a language with irritating quirkiness.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word "ghoti" could just as well be pronounced "fish" if you followed common pronunciation: 'gh' as in "tough," 'o' as in "women" and 'ti' as in "nation."

And he was a playright.

The U.S. formerly underrated Japanese industry’s many successes. Today, China and India are gaining market share—but even faster

by Harold L. Sirkin

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In 1969 I caught a fever that swept from one side New York similar a pandemic: Mets febrile disease. That was the year the once-hapless New York Mets racked up a 100-win season during the first time and went on to beat the Baltimore Orioles in one of the greatest upsets in World Series history. My parents bought me an inexpensive little transistor radio, a Panasonic (manufactured by means of a then-unknown company called Matsushita, so I could keep up by the Miracle Mets. During the Series I would even sneak out of tutor to listen to the games.

Fast-forward a few years to 1972. That was the year my father brought home our first Japanese car—a funny illiberal thing called a Datsun (built by another then-unknown company called Nissan (NSANY)).

For many Europeans and Americans—not to mention Japanese—it’s hard to treasure in the memory when Japanese products were mere curiosities. In the 1960s, "Made in Japan" often meant inexpensive "tchotchkes" or junk to U.S. consumers; by 1990 it meant world-class quality.

Americans born after the mid-1960s probably can’t call up the vital spark without Japanese cars and electronics. Those born precedent to then were probably introduced to Japanese goods in the fashion of cheap ceramic trinkets, inexpensive toys, transistor radios, or those little cocktail umbrellas at Chinese restaurants.

In the 1960s, most U.S. businesses were in a state of denial about Japan. They looked at Nissan, Honda (HMC), Toyota ™, Sony (SNE), and Matsushita as cheap imitators and self-styled copycats not to be taken seriously. They failed or refused to recognize a world that was changing around them. Many didn’t acknowledge Japan’s growing capabilities and lucky hit, let alone anticipate Japanese industry’s many people later successes. They are still paying the price for this nonchalance.

While much has changed in the intervening years, mindsets haven’t. Many top and between the extremes managers today view China and India the way the 1960s generation viewed Japan: They attend them as backward countries whose companies do low-cost "subcontracting" for U.S. and other Western companies, and as manufacturers of low-end goods we no longer can produce profitably ourselves.

We be constant to underestimate that companies from China, India, and other developing markets have the capability to challenge us, giving these companies date to sharpen their skills, enhance their marketing capabilities, become weighty innovators, gobble up Western knowhow and companies, and set their sights onward global markets, including the lucrative U.S. emporium.

But things are different this time. The Japanese attack was the coming of age of a pertinent maniple of little-known "challenger" companies from a single, low-cost country through a postwar population that, according to the World Bank, didn’t scheme 100 the masses until 1967.

Like the Japanese challengers U.S. companies faced in the 1960s and 1970s, the next wave of competitors is hungry, low-cost, and gifted. But this wave will be much bigger, more like a tsunami, with more than 3.5 billion people and hundreds (and eventually thousands) of challenger companies. These companies will have easier access to the U.S. and the world than the Japanese had in the 1960s, thanks to transportation advances, the Internet and information technology revolution, liberalized trade policies, and the ability to outsource globally to obtain what they stand in want of to achieve competitive superior situation. Most of the new challengers also are fluent in the lingua franca of the creation: English.