Church fire strengthens community

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Westport Presbyterian Church pastor Rev. Scott Meyers said, "The church may have burned down, but the congregation didn't."

The pastor at Westport Presbyterian Church is assuring his congregation Thursday's massive fire will not ruin Sunday's service.

Meyers said Second Presbyterian Church at 55th and Oak Strett is inviting the congregation to attend a service this Sunday at 11:30 a.m.

"The church may have burned down, but the congregation didn't," Meyers said.? "We're going to continue to send out a message of love in this city."

Fire officials estimate the damage to cost $3 to $4 million.

"This is probably the most terrible thing I have ever experienced in my whole pastoral," Meyers said.? "And I've been a minister for close to 30 years."

Meyers says the community has really come forward with support.

"It's like a person who's lost their mother or their father or their child and is at the funeral, and all these people are around them," Meyers said.? "You just feel the love."

Meyers says his primary focus is now on the kids at Willow Woods, the early learning center just feet away from the church.

Pre-k teacher Kaitlyn Symsek was there when the fire started.

"We just grabbed as many kids as we could and grabbed their coats and shoes because we didn't know how long we'd be outside," Symsek said.

The kids had just met with firefighters about a month ago, and had been practicing their fire drills.

"The kids have really remembered what they taught them and what they need to do if this happened," Symsek said.

All 11 kids and four adults made it out safely.

Crews worked well into the night Friday building a walkway between the church and school.? Crews say the walkway includes a canopy which will protect workers from falling pieces of church.

Crews say will have electricity restored to the school by 11 p.m. Friday.? They will continue cleaning the items that were damaged by smoke, and say the school will likely re-open by the middle of next week.

Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/local_news/church-fire-strengthens-community

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Video: Monks brawl in Bethlehem

At the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Greek and Armenian monks fought each other with broomsticks during the church's annual cleaning. NBC?s Harry Smith reports.

>>> take a look at this. all hell breaking loose in one of christianity's holiest places. the church of the nativity in bethlehem. greek and armenian monks fighting with broom sticks during the annual cleaning, each side accusing the other of encroaching on parts of the church they claim as their own. security forces had to break up the melee.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45819928/

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Former X Factor winner Leon Jackson unrecognisable in saucy shirtless Twitter picture

By Sarah Bull

Last updated at 11:02 PM on 30th December 2011

He was the fresh-faced young teen who wowed the public with his soulful voice on the 2007 series of The X Factor.

But now former winner Leon Jackson is virtually unrecognisable, as he showed while posting a saucy shirtless picture of himself on his Twitter page.

With a thick beard and donning a beanie hat, Leon, 22, looked more like Jude Law than his former clean-shaven self in the picture.

Who's that man? Former X Factor winner Leon Jackson looks worlds away from his former self in this saucy shirtless snap he posted on his Twitter page

He accompanied the shot with the caption: 'My birthday suit ;)'

Spitting image: Leon's beard and hat made him look just like Jude Law

Spitting image: Leon's beard and hat made him look just like Jude Law

Leon, who was mentored by Dannii Minogue on the TV talent show, has been fairly quiet over the past couple of years, and was last year named the 2nd biggest reality TV flop after another former X Factor winner, Steve Brookstein.

Despite winning thousands of fans with his appearance on The X Factor, Leon was dropped by record label Sony in 2009 after his debut solo album Right Now failed to set the charts alight.

Since then, however, Leon has been working on new material after teaching himself to play the guitar and piano. During a recording trip to Los Angeles, the Scottish singer teamed up with various songwriters in an attempt to reinvent his sound.

After performing a set of acoustic tracks at the Scottish New Music Awards in September, it is expected Leon will release his second album sometime next year.

In a recent interview Leon denied reports that he had called X Factor a 'curse' on his life, insisting: 'If it wasn't for the X Factor then I wouldn't be a working musician right now, so I owe a great deal to that show.

'I have obviously worked hard since then but I am thankful to the people who invested in me as a person on the show and have continued to support me since then.'

And asked how his musical style has changed since the show, Leon said: I think I am a million miles away from what people perhaps know me for. In my opinion, I was so new to music and I had never had any experience or any inkling as to what type of artist I wanted to be or where I wanted to go.

'I was pigeon holed into a specific genre that I felt deep down that wasn't me.'

Reality show star: Leon with former mentor Dannii Minogue on The X Factor back in 2007, and performing with her sister Kylie on the show's final

?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailymail/tvshowbiz/~3/Go7piYunMRQ/Former-X-Factor-winner-Leon-Jackson-unrecognisable-saucy-shirtless-Twitter-picture.html

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Lawsuit seeks to get Gingrich on Va. ballot (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A Virginia attorney and tea party activist is seeking to have Newt Gingrich's name placed on the state's Super Tuesday primary ballot.

Attorney Jonathon Moseley of Reston, Va., says he filed the suit Thursday in the Circuit Court of Richmond County. It contends that Gingrich met the requirement of filing 10,000 signatures and that many of those were improperly excluded. The suit also takes issue with how the Republican Party of Virginia determined that not enough signatures were valid.

Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have been found eligible for the Virginia primary ballot. The campaign of Rick Perry is challenging his exclusion in court.

Moseley says he is acting independently of the Gingrich campaign but is encouraging the former House speaker to join his suit.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said the campaign has not decided how to proceed in Virginia.

Gingrich believes that he was kept off the ballot in the state ? where he now lives ? because a paid campaign worker committed fraud by turning in false signatures, according to Hammond.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111230/ap_on_el_pr/us_gingrich_virginia_lawsuit

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veezworld: *dead* RT @charles270: RT @MsLightBright: Skins trading poor McNabb for 2 Hot Pockets, a pack of Now & Laters and some golf tees.

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Morgan Stanley to cut 580 jobs in New York

FILE - In this file photograph taken July 19, 2010, traffic passes the headquarters of Morgan Stanley in New York. Of the 1,600 job cuts announced earlier in Dec. 2011 by Morgan Stanley, 580 will be at its home base in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file)

FILE - In this file photograph taken July 19, 2010, traffic passes the headquarters of Morgan Stanley in New York. Of the 1,600 job cuts announced earlier in Dec. 2011 by Morgan Stanley, 580 will be at its home base in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file)

(AP) ? Of the 1,600 job cuts announced earlier this month by Morgan Stanley, 580 will be at its home base in New York.

The relentless tug of the dismal economy is hitting employees in the banking sector hard, and it's no surprise that many of the job cuts are hitting the epicenter of the financial industry. Citigroup, with its headquarters a seven-minute drive up Park Ave. from Morgan Stanley in Manhattan, said recently that it would eliminate 4,500 jobs, or about 1.5 percent of its global work force of 267,000, over the next few quarters.

But jobs are being slashed by banks almost everywhere.

In September, Bank of America Corp., based in Charlotte, N.C., said it would cut 30,000 jobs over the next few years. Swiss lender UBS is downsizing its investment bank to 16,000 people from the current 18,000 as it reduces its exposure to risk.

Morgan Stanley disclosed in a filing with the Labor Department on Wednesday that the cuts will be made at four New York locations: 1221 Ave. of the Americas, 1 New York Plaza, 1585 Broadway and 750 Seventh Ave.

The investment bank said that the layoffs ? which began two weeks ago and will represent 2.6 percent of its work force ? will hit all levels of the company and would go on through the first three months of next year.

Morgan Stanley had more than 62,000 employees at September's end.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-28-APFN-US-Morgan-Stanley-Job-Cuts/id-ec05c060bf204a57a826965f91f965b8

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Rancic back at work after double mastectomy

>> good morning to you.

>> good morning, ann. it's great to see you.

>> you look really well.

>> thank you.

>> we know that you've had lumpectomies.

>> mm-hmm.

>> but now there's a new decision, a major decision you've had to make about your treatment. what is your decision?

>> last time i was here, i told you that i was getting the double lumpectomy and radiation. now instead of radiation, i'm going to go ahead and move forward with a double mastectomy.

>> yeah, and i think when you saw in that report, the next day we were going into the doctor hoping for some good news. unfortunately, the one breast they weren't able to clear the margins and get all the cancer out, so we were then faced with a decision to make. do you go back and do another lumpectomy and try to clean it out or do you go for a more radical procedure.

>> this is a very dramatic decision. it's a drastic decision. to what degree does wanting to have children play into your decision to go for a double mastectomy.

>> that was actually a big part of it. not all of it, but a big part. if i had chosen to just do another lumpectomy and then do radiation and then do anti-estrogen therapy, which means two to five years of medication, that basically puts me into early menopause , then i would have to put off having a baby for several years. so that was something we took into account. but to be honest, at the end all it came down to was just choosing to live and not looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.

>> . that's really what it came down to.

>> and that isn't a decision we made lightly. we talked to as many experts as we could, we got the best information available to us. one of the other factors that came into play was quality of life . if she would have gone with the lumpectomy and radiation, then you have to go in every six months for the rest of your life getting mammograms. knowing giuliana , she's going to be worrying three weeks before the mammogram, waiting for the results worrying and you're always looking over your shoulder. so i think in this particular case this was the best option for giuliana .

>> and it could have come back more aggressively next time. so for me it was just very important to get the cancer out. that's what i wanted to do is just get it out.

>> what did doctors tell you about the chance of not ever getting it back? with the double mastectomy.

>> with the double mastectomy i have less than a 1% chance of getting it back. with another lumpectomy, radiation and medication, i could have seen 20 to 30 to 40% chance in my lifetime. and for me it just wasn't worth it. and like i said -- like bill said, it was a very hard decision to come to, but really in the end what happened was, you know, bill said to me, i think this definitely got me. bill said to me i just need you around for the next 50 years, kid. that's what he said. he goes i don't care what you look like, i don't care about the physical portion of this, i just need you around for the next 50 years, so let's just get you healthy. and that certainly helps me come to the decision.

>> beyond that, what do you want to say about how important bill has been, having a spouse who is supportive, who's there for you can be in your personal and emotional survival going through all this?

>> oh, my gosh. bill has been the world to me through this. i couldn't have done it without bill. even right from the beginning when we found out we had the option about mastectomy, we went in the backyard and i remember -- in typical bill fashion he pulled out a yellow legal pad and made a pros and cons list of the mastectomy. and he just -- he brought some laughter to the process, some light to it and just kept reminding me who we are as a couple and that none of this is going to break us apart or get us down or affect our love for each other. in fact it's just made it stronger. and i couldn't be more at peace with the decision, but it was hard. and i still break down some nights, you know, when it's quiet in bed. it's easy to just start crying and be very sad. but i'm okay.

>> i know from my own family's experience that it's also hard to be the spouse. what is getting you through this, bill?

>> well, i'm focused on the finish line, and i'm thinking our goal is to be done with this by christmas time and then we don't look back. my role was to make sure that she was armed with as much information and the best information possible so she could make the right decision. and i tried to take the emotion out of it a little bit, that's why i pulled out the legal pad and we put pen to paper and when we looked at it, it made the decision i think a little bit easier because in our particular case, and i think the message here -- there's no right or wrong answer, it's an individual decision that each person has to make for themselves, but this is the right decision for giuliana .

>> i tell you, i had to see it as well. i think that was very important. when they first told me mastectomy was an option, i said absolutely not. absolutely not. i am 37 years old. i don't want to do it. because to me the word was very scary and it meant i would be disfigured. and so a very, very wonderful friend of mine who actually has been on this show, she's in an organization called bright pink, she had a mastectomy in her early 20s when she found out she had the breast cancer gene. she said not only am i going to tell you what a mastectomy is but i'm going to show you what a mastectomy is. and when i saw it and she was wonderful enough to share that with me, i thought, okay, this is okay, she looks beautiful, she's healthy, she's vibrant and doesn't regret her decision and i think that is very important. that girls, women stick together and we share our experience with each other because that helped me i think more than anything was to get to the decision was to see another woman, similar age as me, who had been through it.

>> well, we found from our website and the e-mail that we've been getting about you, that you've been helping a lot of women. so coming up in just a few moments, we're going to call in a breast cancer specialist to join this conversation and sort of see what more we can learn that might benefit other women from your own personal experience , so stand

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45800268/ns/today-entertainment/

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Vikings expect Peterson back for start of 2012

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) is helped off the field after an injury during the second half of an NFL football game against Washington Redskins in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) is helped off the field after an injury during the second half of an NFL football game against Washington Redskins in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) reacts as he's driven off the field after an injury during the second half of an NFL football game against Washington Redskins in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) is carried off the field after an injury during the third quarter of an NFL football game against the Washington Redskins in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. Peterson was scheduled for an MRI late Saturday after taking a direct hit to his left knee on the first offensive play of the second half in the Vikings' 33-26 win. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) is helped up after injuring his knee during the second half of an NFL football game against Washington Redskins in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

(AP) ? The athletic abilities of star running back Adrian Peterson led the Minnesota Vikings to give him a seven-year, $100 million contract extension before the season started.

Now, they hope his recuperative abilities are just as good and he is able to live up to being the highest-paid running back in the NFL.

Minnesota expects Peterson to be recovered from left knee surgery for two torn ligaments in time to start the 2012 season.

"We expect most people to recover from this injury in eight to nine months and instead of comparing Adrian to any other player at any level that's had an anterior cruciate ligament, and they happen every day, I would really like Adrian to stand on his own merit because Adrian, I feel, is very unique," Vikings head trainer Eric Sugarman said Monday.

"Adrian has a great work ethic. Adrian has the DNA to heal quickly, which he has shown in the past. He certainly will have the desire and the mental toughness to be able to get through the rehab process, which will take months and months, as you know. So, I think if anyone can get better quickly and safely in that time period, it would be Adrian Peterson."

Peterson tore his ACL and MCL when he was hit in the side of the knee by Washington Redskins safety DeJon Gomes in the third quarter of Saturday's 33-26 win at Washington. An MRI on Saturday evening revealed the ligament tears and meniscus damage, and Peterson will undergo surgery within the next seven to 10 days.

Backup Toby Gerhart, who started three games earlier this season when Peterson was out with a high ankle sprain, will start Sunday in the season-finale against the Chicago Bears. A second-round pick in 2010, Gerhart has filled in well for Peterson and notched the first 100-yard rushing game of his career with 109 yards on 11 carries Saturday. But the Vikings expect Gerhart's time as the starter to be short-lived.

"He sets his goals extremely high and he's one of those guys who, when he puts his mind to it, there's no reason to ever doubt that he can achieve what he sets his mind to," Minnesota coach Leslie Frazier said of Peterson. "We're looking forward to his attacking this rehab like he's attacked every offseason, to come back and play and be even better than he was before. I know with Eric and our medical staff, they're going to do everything they can to get him back on the field and ready to go when we line up in that first football game next season."

Gerhart's emergence over the past month at least offers optimism if Peterson has to miss extended time next season.

Gerhart has had the top three rushing days of his career in the past four weeks. On his first carry after Peterson left Saturday's game, Gerhart showed some big-play ability of his own, busting free for a 67-yard run, the longest of his short career.

Believing Peterson will be ready for the first game of 2012 and knowing Gerhart is available if needed, Frazier said the team wouldn't change its run-first offensive approach.

"One of things about Adrian's absence earlier in the season, we had a chance to get Toby some extended snaps and we really haven't altered the offense by any means," Frazier said. "Toby has done a very good job in Adrian's absence. Did a great job (Saturday) of stepping in and performing and rushing for over 100 yards. So we really haven't had to alter things. We really don't plan to. We look forward to eventually getting Adrian back on the field, but we don't think we have to really alter the offense."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-12-26-FBN-Vikings-Peterson/id-e3c7dbfeea5245cbbfff4a506f7a7aac

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TechGrinch Was Not Impressed By Google?s ?Jingle Bells? Doodle

Google Jingle Bells FailWhen I visited Google.com this morning, I was as excited as the kids sprinting from bed to tree. But all I found was a lump of sonic coal. Oh joy, after months of Christmas music, I get to hear a crummy elevator music version of "Jingle Bells" one more time? *sigh* But wait, is it a game where I guess how to play the song on the colored keys? No.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/sQVzTIzrgr0/

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