First MLK grandchild born - CNN.comATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The first grandchild of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born Sunday in Atlanta.
Martin Luther King III's wife Andrea Waters King gave birth to a girl on Sunday.
The girl, named Yolanda Renee King, is the daughter of Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, the family said in a statement.
The newborn weighed in at 7.5 pounds. Her birth comes two years and two days after her parents were married.
"We are excited about our precious gift from God and cannot express how fortunate we feel to have our beautiful baby girl. It is truly the happiest day of our lives. I know my parents are smiling down from heaven," the new father said in the statement released by Matlock Advertising and Public Relations, which works with the King family.
The girl carries the first name of her father's sister, the oldest of the four King children, who died last year.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
First MLK grandchild born - CNN.com
Dear friend: It's over 'tween us - CNN.com
(LifeWire) -- Weddings are supposed to be a time to celebrate new beginnings. But for Shay Nowick, whose friend asked Nowick to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, it was the beginning of the end -- of their friendship.
Even before the wedding, Nowick says their relationship had been "rocky."
"She was one of those friends who made you feel bad if you didn't call," Nowick, 36, a technology director in San Francisco, says of her former pal. Still, she wanted to support her friend on her special day.
But as the wedding approached, Nowick says, she felt overwhelmed by her friend's bickering and constant demands. On the big day, smiles were few and far between.
"By the end of the day, it was clear we weren't going to be friends," she says.
Soon thereafter, they argued on the phone. Her friend hung up on her, Nowick says, and that was that.
When friends grow apart, commit acts of betrayal or demand too much time and energy, what's the best way to end the relationship?
There are right ways and wrong ways, says Kerry Patterson, a consultant on human interaction in Provo, Utah. "It's one thing when it dies a natural death, but when it's one-sided, you have to be really sensitive."
Pulling a disappearing act
The most common way people choose to break up is to withdraw and stop communicating, says Patterson, author of "Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations and Bad Behavior." In such cases, the other person should be able to pick up on the cues.
That's what happened to Nicolette Schumacher, 24, a sales account manager in San Francisco. After living together for four years and helping each other through everything from boyfriends to bad hair days, her best friend "just disappeared."
"We had no falling-out, no fight. We were really good friends," says Schumacher. But her friend gradually ceased to follow through on plans, stopped taking her phone calls, and didn't return repeated e-mails and voice mails. Schumacher got the hint, but she didn't know why.
"It totally caught me off guard. It's like losing a family member," she says.
Mailing it in
If you want some final contact but a live conversation is too hot to handle, you can put it in writing.
"People say that if you're really angry with someone, you should write a letter because it captures so much more," says Christen O'Brien, a conference director in San Francisco who had frequent spats with a friend whom she describes as "really needy."
But it was a guy who caused their relationship's ultimate demise. When a man her friend was eyeing fancied O'Brien (although O'Brien says the interest wasn't returned), a fight ensued after the friend sent O'Brien a heated e-mail. They traded several e-mails and O'Brien says she stopped responding.
Is such behavior acceptable? That may depend on the type of friendship, cautions Patterson. He says people use e-mail as a way to avoid face-to-face conversation.
"You can do it, but it's the least polite and helpful. But it's also the safest because it won't lead to a conversation that you can't handle," says Patterson. However, he adds, "I've never heard of it used in any but a disdainful way."
Months later, O'Brien's friend e-mailed her, seeking to rekindle the relationship. O'Brien has yet to reply. "Even though I have a lot of feelings for her as a friend," she says, "I think it's best we don't talk."
That's what Sheila Heen, a lecturer on negotiation at Harvard Law School, advises: If you've made a decision to end a friendship, stick with it and enforce boundaries, she says.
Should you discuss why?
Having a conversation with the friend about what happened and why might open the door to a painful and unproductive negotiation -- or it could save the friendship.
Schumacher, the sales account manager from San Francisco, would have appreciated having that conversation. "I just feel bad because I don't know what I could have done. There's nothing I can think of."
If a friend is breaking up with you, Patterson says, "you can be gracious and say you don't want to be needy, or you can ask for feedback."
If you go with the latter option, Patterson says, "Ask for specificity. Many times they'll say, 'It's not you, it's me.' But that's a big lie, because there's two people in a relationship."
But no matter who's doing the breaking up and how, Patterson says, the main thing is to be careful with your friend's feelings: "Make sure that when burning the bridge, you don't burn the person."Fast-moving California fire destroys 10 homes - CNN.com
Fast-moving California fire destroys 10 homes - CNN.com(CNN) -- An aggressive wildfire has burned 10 homes and spread across 3,000 acres in Northern California, officials said Thursday.
A wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains is causing mandatory evacuations for neighboring homes.
1 of 3Flames were threatening at least 50 more homes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
About 200 children at a 4-H Club camp were told to take immediate shelter as high winds fanned the flames in the Santa Cruz mountains.
The wildfire was burning in rugged terrain in Santa Clara County and moving south towards Santa Cruz County, south of San Francisco.
About 190 people from the two counties had been evacuated, officials said.
The Summit Fire began around 5:30 a.m. PT (8:30 a.m. ET) Thursday near Mount Madonna County Park in Santa Clara County.
Five fixed-wing aircraft and four helicopters were dropping water on the fire, fanned by sustained winds of 15 mph to 20 mph with gusts up to 40 mph.
Officials ordered a so-called Supertanker, a jumbo jet modified to battle fires from the air.
Don't Miss
State fire officials said at least 149 firefighters but likely many more were battling the blaze, which is being fueled by dry brush. Strike teams from across Northern California were being mobilized.
Aerial video footage from local TV station helicopters showed structures and vehicles engulfed.
The Santa Cruz Mountains are dotted with multimillion-dollar homes.
The Santa Clara and Santa Cruz sheriffs were handling evacuations.
A Red Cross evacuation center was established at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, said Officer Dinah Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.
Director Sydney Pollack dies of cancer - CNN.com
Director Sydney Pollack dies of cancer - CNN.comLOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, who achieved commercial and critical success with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa, has died. He was 73.
Sydney Pollack's notable films include "Out of Africa," "Tootsie" and "The Way We Were."
Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said agent Leslee Dart. He had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.
Pollack, who often appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act," actor George Clooney said in a statement issued by his publicist.
Watch how Pollack's career spanned decades »
"He'll be missed terribly," Clooney said.
Last fall, Pollack played Marty Bach opposite Clooney in "Michael Clayton," a drama that examines the life of a fixer for lawyers. The film, which Pollack co-produced, received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture and a best actor nod for Clooney.
Pollack was no stranger to the Academy Awards. In 1986, "Out of Africa" a romantic epic of a woman's passion set against the landscape of colonial Kenya, captured seven Oscars, including best director.
Over the years, several of his other films, including "Tootsie" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" got several nominations, including best director nods.
Pollack's last screen appearance was in "Made of Honor," a romantic comedy currently in theaters, where he played the oft-married father of star Patrick Dempsey's character.
In recent years, Pollack produced many independent films with filmmaker Anthony Minghella and the production company Mirage Enterprises.
The Lafayette, Indiana, native was born to first-generation Russian-Americans.
In high school, he fell in love with theater, a passion that prompted him to forgo college and move to New York and enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater.
"We started together in New York and he always excelled at everything he set out to do, his friendships and his humanity as much as his talents," Martin Landau, a longtime close friend of Pollack's and an associate from the Actor's Studio, said through spokesman Dick Guttman.
Studying under Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant.
After appearing in a handful of Broadway productions in the 1950s, Pollack turned his eye to directing.
Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; his brother Bernie; and six grandchildren.
South Beach becoming backpacker hot spot - CNN.com
South Beach becoming backpacker hot spot - CNN.comMIAMI BEACH, Florida (AP) -- Charity Simon is sharing a bedroom and a bathroom with two other young women she has never met during her stay at the Tropics Hotel & Hostel in Miami Beach. But that's fine with her since she is saving a ton of money every night.
Charity Simon, from Germany, stands outside the Tropics Hotel and Hostel in Miami
Simon, who is from Germany, used to stay in four-star hotels until she found out about hostels, which offer low-price lodging and the chance to make new friends.
"It started with I wanted to travel around the world as much as possible," said Simon, who declined to give her age. "I asked what is it all about? They said a hostel is where you save first of all a lot of money, where you meet a lot of people international from all over."
With its Art Deco buildings, bikini-clad women and late-night party scene, experts say South Beach is becoming a hot tourist destination for young travelers looking to spend less money on where they are going to sleep and more on sightseeing.
Anywhere between three to 14 travelers are cramped in one room at a hostel, sleeping on bunk beds. A room with 12 beds can run for $18 a night per person; an eight-bed room is $18; $30-$40 for smaller rooms.
At Jazz on South Beach Hostel, some rooms are divided by gender (four or six-bed rooms for women) while other rooms are mixed. Depending on occupancy, and if there are any empty rooms, people who are traveling together can request to room together - just like they would in a hotel.
"But the point of the hostel is to meet other people," notes general manager Bobby Gera. "Or they can just pay for the rest of the beds in the room," essentially turning the dorm room into a private room.
Some hostels on South Beach offer private bathrooms with each room and have individual wall units or central air conditioning for those hot Miami nights.
There are also private rooms for two-three people. Those are popular, hostel operators say, in the slow season when travelers want to save some money but still take in the experience. Those rooms can run $100-$125 per night - still cheaper than most hotels.
Visitors are provided with bed sheets, a towel and a locker (bring your own lock) to store their belongings while out exploring. Some hostels have a kitchen for visitors to prepare their own food, while most offer computers with Internet access and a lounge area to watch television.
The idea has always been more popular in Europe and Asia, where the beds are seen as a cheap rest stop. But hostels on South Beach focus on creating a sense of community by organizing trips to the Florida Keys or Fort Lauderdale, enjoying the Miami club scene without waiting in line, or by hosting Sunday beach parties on the sand.
And at $30 a night per person -- sometimes even as low as $16 -- the American hostel market is starting to come into play.
Travis Lajoy, general manager of South Beach Hostel, said six years ago there were only three or four in the area that advertised as a hostel in Miami. Today, there are more than a dozen. "That's insane. You know it's 300 percent more competition than there was when we first started," he said.
The hosteling industry in the U.S. generated $17.8 million for the 2007 fiscal year, which ended March 31, according to Hostelling International USA, a nonprofit hostel organization which oversees the largest network of hostels in the U.S.
But some hostels are not members of the organization, like many in Miami Beach, and there is no association that keeps track of any industry data.
Hotel experts note that the industry is going through a transformation, especially in South Florida, where discount hotels are now offering hostel room prices.
"Discount hotels are saying, 'I don't want to convert fully to a hostel because of the connotation that comes with that, but I want to provide hostel rooms,"' said Andrew Wharton, managing director for the accounting firm KPMG LLP, and is responsible for the real estate and hospitality practice in the Southeast.
Plus, older property owners in Miami Beach are realizing they may not have the cash flow to pump more money into renovating their buildings. So owners are looking at converting to a hostel as a way to "put more heads in beds and pack the square footage," he said.
Take a double-room that was once renting for $100 a night. When you put six people in that one room and charge $20 a night per person, you are increasing your revenue by 20 percent.
But one expert says it will be difficult to purchase a new building in the hot South Beach market and make a profit if it is turned into a hostel because it just does not pay enough.
"I don't see how anyone can make a youth hostel in South Beach and make a dollar if they haven't had the building for a while," said Hank Freid, president and owner of Impulsive Group, which owns and operates hotels and hostels in New York City.
He said hostels may be economically feasible because "the real hostels are nothing fancy," and it would cost less to fix up than a hotel. But he noted that "a lot of kids who do backpacking want to go to a nice, safe place." Some hostels in New York, he said, have doormen who help with luggage and others have 24-hour security, which is not the case in Miami.
Mark Vidalin, of Hostelling International USA, said Miami is a "funny market" because of the amount of affordable hotels in the area, and the fact that backpackers are expecting better quality than what they are getting with the hostels here. He said some would not meet the health and safety standards HI sets forth.
Staff training needs to be up to speed, cleaning regimes must be well-managed and bunks should not be cramped in one room. "It's a safety issue. That's why we have so many feet per bed," he said. There also need to be a certain number of bathroom fixtures per guest, so 40 guests are not sharing one home-type bathroom, he explained.
Hostels may not be for everyone. Jessica Lopez, 21, of the Bronx, N.Y., stayed at Tropics Hotel & Hostel with her brother and a friend but said she would feel "very uncomfortable sharing a space with complete strangers," especially when she had to get dressed.
But for the experienced backpacker who has seen it all, hostels are a great way to travel on a budget. Xain Coslow, 22, from Oregon, has stayed in over 40 hostels in the past two years in places such as Thailand, Costa Rica and San Francisco. He is now at the Jazz Hostel on South Beach.
"People hear hostel and they think horror movie or they think of a cramped little space. But in reality, though, it's like meeting a bunch of friends pretty much," he said.
If You Go...
Here are a few hostels in South Florida and the Everglades, with per-person rates for dormitory-style bedrooms. The prices also depend on the season:
Boy, they REALLY make tourists feel welcome here! - Yahoo! News
Boy, they REALLY make tourists feel welcome here! - Yahoo! NewsTOKYO (Reuters) - One of the travelers who arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport over the weekend may have picked up an unusual souvenir from customs -- a package of cannabis.
A customs official hid the package in a suitcase belonging to a passenger arriving from Hong Kong as a training exercise for sniffer dogs Sunday, but lost track of both drugs and suitcase during the practice session, a spokeswoman for Tokyo customs said.
Customs regulations specify that a training suitcase be used for such exercises, but the official said he had used passengers' suitcases for similar purposes in the past, domestic media reported.
"The dogs have always been able to find it before," NHK quoted him as saying. "I became overconfident that it would work."
Anyone who finds the package should contact Tokyo customs as soon as possible, the spokeswoman said.
Consumer confidence index falls to 6-year low - May. 27, 2008
Consumer confidence index falls to 6-year low - May. 27, 2008NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A key measure of consumer confidence dropped in May to the lowest level in 16 years, as Americans grew more concerned about their jobs and more pessimistic about business conditions.
The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index dropped to 57.2, the lowest level since October 1992, from a revised 62.8 in April. Economists had expected the index to decline to 61, according to a consensus compiled by Briefing.com.
With gas and food prices on the rise, home values declining and lending policies getting more strict, consumers of all incomes are being hit hard, according to Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's Economy.com.
"There is nobody off the hook right now," said Hoyt.
The index - based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted for The Conference Board by TNS - has now declined for five months in a row. The index uses 1985 as the benchmark year when the index stood at 100.
"Weakening business and job conditions coupled with growing pessimism about the short-term future have further depleted consumers' confidence in the overall state of the economy," said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, in a statement.
Those claiming business conditions are bad jumped to 30.6% from 26.5%, while those claiming business conditions are good slumped to 13.1% from 15.4% last month.
The Present Situation Index, which measures where the average consumer feels the economy is right now, decreased to 80.7 from 90.6.
When the average consumer thinks about the economy, the most important factor is always his or her job situation, according to Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board.
The percentage of consumers saying jobs are hard to get was virtually unchanged, 28% versus 27.9% in April. Those claiming jobs are "plentiful" declined to 16.3% from 17.1%
Consumers pay their bills with the paycheck from their job, and "the concern is the paycheck now is getting stretched and it is only going to continue to get stretched," said Goldstein.
Stuck in a rutThe Expectations Index, which measures what consumers think will happen to the economy in the coming months, declined to 45.7 in May from 50 in April.
"Consumers' inflation expectations, fueled by increasing prices at the pump, are now at an all-time high and are likely to rise further in the months ahead," said Franco. "As for the short-term outlook, the Expectations Index suggests little likelihood of a turnaround in the immediate months ahead."
Consumers anticipating business conditions to worsen over the next six months increased to 33.6% from 27.4%, while those anticipating business conditions to improve increased slightly to 10.4% from 10.1% in April.
The percentage of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the months ahead declined slightly to 32.4% from 32.9%, while those anticipating more jobs was virtually unchanged, 8.7% in May versus 8.8% in April.
The proportion of consumers expecting their incomes to increase declined to 13.4% from 15.5%.
In a recession, consumers may really have to batten down the hatches and suffer through a tough period, but consumers expect to move through and out of a recession with some momentum, said Goldstein. According to economic indicators, however, this slowdown in the economy is not a recession.
There is "the sense that we are stuck in a rut here," said Goldstein. "The bigger picture is that there is nothing out there to give us hope that this will get better by July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving."
