Dolores DeFina Hope, a singer, philanthropist and the wife of the late, legendary comedian Bob Hope, died Monday of natural causes at her Toluca Lake home in Los Angeles. She was 102.
Born in Harlem on May 27, 1909, Dolores was singing at the Vogue Club in Manhattan under the stage name Dolores Reade when she was introduced to Hope, then a rising Broadway star. As he described it, it was “love at first song,” and they were married for nearly 70 years until his death in July 2003 at age 100.
Though she accompanied her husband on many of his USO trips to entertain the troops -- usually closing the show with a touching rendition of “Silent Night” -- she put her singing career on hold to be at his side and to raise their children. But at age 83, she recorded several albums and performed with Rosemary Clooney in New York at Rainbow and Stars for several weeks.
Hope made her last visit to the servicemen and servicewomen during Operation Desert Storm, performing “White Christmas” from the back of a truck in the middle of the Saudi desert. She was 84 at the time.
“She was the first lady of the USO,” actress Carol Channing said. “They didn't come any more patriotic, caring or talented than Dolores.” Thanks for the memories.
#1
Bob and Dolores were very special people. Rest in peace.
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/19/2011 19:53 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The story is told of Bob Hope that his wife Dolores asked him as he was getting nearer to passing on, where he would like to be buried. "Surprise me.', he said.
#4
Ironic, given the win of 15 seats by the Pirate party in the Berlin parliament yesterday.
Someone acted confused, because they said the Ninja party won almost as many seats, but they couldn't see any mention of them. Then..."Oh, I know why."
The story has zip to do with WoT, but with a title like that how could we pass it up?
[An Nahar] A heroic pig who survived more than a month buried under rubble after the 2008 earthquake in China's Sichuan province has been successfully cloned, according to a report Sunday.
Scientists in the southern city of Shenzhen performed the experiment on Zhu Jianqiang, or "Strong-Willed Pig", and produced six offspring with DNA identical to their dad, who was hailed as a national hero following his harrowing ordeal, the Sunday Morning Post reported.
The births over the past few weeks of six piglets happened even though Zhu had been castrated before the quake, suffered severe trauma from being buried for 36 days, and is five years old -- or about 60 in human terms.
"But the wonderful pig surprised us again," Du Yutao, the leader of the cloning project, told the Post.
The 330-pound (150 kilogram) hog reportedly survived in the ruins of its sty by chewing charcoal and drinking rainwater.
His offspring reportedly bear a striking resemblance to their dad, including a birthmark between their eyes, the Post reported.
The piglets will likely be paired off and sent to a museum and a genetic institute, it said.
An 8.0-magnitude quake rocked Sichuan and parts of neighboring Shaanxi and Gansu provinces on May 12, 2008, killing tens of thousands and flattening swathes of the province.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
His offspring clones reportedly bear a striking resemblance to their dad himself. Duh.
"A telomere is a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes."
As mammals age, their cellular telomeres become "frayed", and less able to function. Cloned animals are born with pre-frayed telomeres, so are thought to have the "lifespan-age" of their host.
For example, Dolly the cloned sheep only lived for six years instead of the normal 12 years for sheep. She also developed arthritis at 4 years. However, because she also had several other diseases common to sheep at any age, it is hard to tell with precision how strongly her life may have been foreshortened by frayed telomeres.
A pity the Pakistanis have no tradition of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or perhaps it's the Ten Plagues they're experiencing.
[Dawn] The recent outbreak of dengue has claimed four more lives bringing the total fatalities from dengue fever to 32 in the country on Sunday.
Three patients passed away in Lahore while one was reported dead in the Thatta city of Sindh on Sunday, DawnNews reported.
According to the Health department 6147 patients have been confirmed with dengue virus out of which 5715 patients belong to Lahore.
However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... the unreported number of dengue patients exceeds the official figures.
Chief Minister of Punjab, Mian Shahbaz Sharif presided over a meeting for controlling the spread in dengue fever in Punjab. The Sri Lankan experts were also present in the meeting.
Shahbaz acknowledged the fact that it will take time to deal with the dengue situation. He said the Sri lankan authorities fought the virus for 30 years.
He further said that the provincial government is trying to learn from the expertise of the Sri Lankan team.
"Every individual belonging to any profession, including politicians, will have to work to combat this disease," said Shahbaz.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
There is a dengue season in Mexico, and for years health authorities have been on the lookout for cases near the border. It is a very strange disease.
Depending on the individual, a whole body rash, swelling in the extremities, weird mental states bordering on psychotic or walking coma, vomiting and diarrhea, etc.
But after three weeks you generally survive. However, unpredictably, if you get bitten by another mosquito and get the disease a second time, it could turn into the hemorrhagic form, which is like ebola, and about as lethal.
[Dawn] The United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... and Pak government appealed for $357 million in foreign donations Sunday to urgently help more than seven million people swamped by a second year of catastrophic floods.
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... also visited relief camps of the flood survivors at Nabi Sar area in Sindh on Sunday
Addressing on the occasion, he said the government would provide emergency assistance of Rs20000 to each affected family.
He said the government would also help in reconstruction of damaged houses for the victims.
Gilani accepted that the damages from the rains and floods in Sindh were colossal but reassured that the government would try its best to assist the affected people.
He further said that a proper drainage system would be installed in the areas to save the areas from flooding next year.
Gilani has cancelled a visit to the UN General Assembly in New York to oversee aid efforts.
One year on from the country's worst-ever floods that left more than 21 million people in need, Pakistain's southern plains have been inundated again, with some parts of Sindh province swamped with more water than last summer.
Thousands of people are stranded on hills and roofs, with the government unable to meet more than 30 per cent of funds needed for emergency rescue and relief efforts, it said in a joint news conference with the UN in Islamabad.
The UN said its assessment showed that nearly every district in Sindh province had seen flooding, as well as five districts of neighbouring Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... province, killing 342 people and injuring 633 others so far.
The $357 million appeal is only to garner initial "life saving assistance to the most affected people" said the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Pakistain, Timo Pakkala.
"We need to look to also paving the way for some kind of a recovery for them. The water needs to be removed," he said.
Nearly half a million people are living in temporary relief camps, with 1.35 million homes affected by the floodwaters.
Hundreds of thousands of families needed help to recover from lost livestock or crop farming incomes, while only one quarter of Sindh's population currently has access to markets, the UN said.
As much as six million acres (2.4 million hectares) of land is under water, including two million acres of arable land. Sindh's fertile lands are the country's breadbasket.
The government's response to the 2010 floods was panned for being late and insufficient, and this year's disaster has raised questions over whether better flood-proofing since then could have prevented a second year of upheaval.
Information Minister Firdous Aashiq Awan denied the government was at fault: "Today my fellow countrymen are unfortunately once again passing through great hardship due to unexpected and unprecedented monsoon rains"
Information Minister Firdous Aashiq Awan denied the government was at fault, blaming the disaster on climate change and insisting authorities were working to their maximum capacity.
"Today my fellow countrymen are unfortunately once again passing through great hardship due to unexpected and unprecedented monsoon rains," said Awan.
"The government of Pakistain has tried its level best to cope with the situation by itself," but required foreign help "due to the sheer scale of the disaster and the huge number of vulnerable people" she said.
Further assessments of recovery needs would be carried out over the next 30 days to assess how much further aid the floods would necessitate, she added.
The UN said it was working with Islamabad to get visa approval for foreign aid workers to come and help with the relief operations.
The UN's food agency is scaling up its response to reach 2.5 million with food handouts next month.
Many victims are also facing dire shortages of clean drinking water, leading to outbreaks of acute diarrhoea and other waterborne disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The UN's children agency says it will distribute 200,000 litres (50,000 gallons) of water to 40,000 people daily and deploy 40 more water tankers in coming days, aiming to ensure access to clean drinking water and avert disease.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Floods Hunh, the hell with them, let them drown, say ALLAH AKBAR. (Allah's wishes)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/19/2011 0:50 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Whadja do with the billions we gave you last year? Any thought of using it for flood control? Didn't think so.
[An Nahar] Thousands of Phlegmish nationalists marched Sunday under tight security on the outskirts of Brussels to stake their claim to a part of Belgium at the heart of the country's linguistic feud.
Amid a sea of yellow-and-black flags and balloons -- the colors of northern Dutch-speaking Flanders -- separatists clamored "Our country!" through the largely French-speaking streets of Lindebeek as police helicopters hovered ahead and 300 officers stood watch.
Police estimated marchers at 2,000 to 3,000 while organizers said 5,500 people had turned out for a protest taking place just kilometers away from the heart of the Belgian capital.
It came days after the country's divided politicians announced a breakthrough in 15 months of efforts to end the longest political crisis in Belgian history, which has left it without a government for a world-record 462 days.
At the heart of the dispute between the language communities of Flanders and the French-speakers in southern Wallonia is the future of Brussels and 35 districts on its outskirts that make up the nation's last bilingual electoral constituency.
"Belgium is dead, the only solution to the crisis is independence," Filip De Winter, a leader of the far-right Vlaams Belang party, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"This is Phlegmish land," he added of Brussels and Linkebeek, which lie geographically within Flanders but where French-speakers have won special language and voting rights.
"We have come here to show that Linkebeek is and will remain a Phlegmish district despite the wishes of the French-speakers who have come to live here over the years," said one of the organizers, Roel de Lenner.
The march gathered both hardline nationalist groups as well as members of the separatist New Phlegmish Alliance (N-VA), which garnered the majority in Flanders in general elections of June 2010 that failed to throw up a workable governing coalition.
The N-VA has refused to join ongoing talks between eight other mainstream parties from both sides of the language divide to form a government.
Protesters complained of losing portions of ancient Flanders to Wallonia while their taxes went to fund social services in the struggling south.
"A united Belgium will never work," said 62-year-old Jean-Luc Berten. "We are rightwingers, they're leftwingers, we pour money in constantly, our cultural differences are simply too great."
Talks are continuing between the politicians, notably on devolving more power to the regions -- a key demand by leaders of the 6.2 million people of Flanders in face of the widening gulf with the 4.5 million French-speakers.
Resolving the crisis is a matter of urgency for Belgium, a member of the debt-stricken eurozone. Ratings agencies have warned that Belgium's credit score could be downgraded if it remains without a government for too long.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/19/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Vlaams Belang (English: Flemish Interest, VB) is a Belgian far-right[3] political party in the Flemish Region and Brussels that advocates the independence of Flanders and strict limits on immigration, whereby immigrants would be obliged to adopt Flemish culture[4] and language. The party rejects multiculturalism, but accepts a multiethnic society as long as people of non-Flemish backgrounds assimilate into Flemish culture.
How is the "far-Right" and why should I have a problem with it? Am I missing something?
#2
A late, damp summer. Kids back in school sharing illnesses, and now a gathering of the masses with shouting, spitting and the breathing of used air in their close proximity.
This is all contributing to the Phlegmish condition.
The little reference cards that are issued in academic connote nationalism=far right. That's why for generations the National Socialist Workers Party was/is portrayed as far right even though their policies were socialist. Yep, its lazy and deceitful but its also the warning sign of the quality of the analysis of the tagger.
#5
It came days after the country's divided politicians announced a breakthrough in 15 months of efforts to end the longest political crisis in Belgian history, which has left it without a government for a world-record 462 days.
And, outside of Belgium, very few care.
Probably very few in Belgium care...
Local governments handle an awful lot, and they're doing just fine, tu3031. No doubt the federal bureaucrats are continuing to function under rules that were in effect when the last functioning government went whimpering into the outer darkness, continuing to send their reports up to offices empty of their political lords and masters.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A heroic pig who survived more than a month buried under rubble after the 2008 earthquake in China's Sichuan province has been successfully cloned, according to a report Sunday.
The recent outbreak of dengue has claimed four more lives bringing the total fatalities from dengue fever to 32 in the country on Sunday.
[Dawn] The 
