The White House is illuminated in rainbow colors after the historic Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage in Washington
Archives for the month of: June, 2015
When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women’s hall of fame, one name came to mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But when the former secretary of state’s representatives quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked. “Yikes!” one e-mailed another.
So the school turned to the next best option: her daughter, Chelsea.
The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton’s brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014, a demonstration of the celebrity appeal and marketability that the former and possibly second-time first daughter employs on behalf of her mother’s presidential campaign and family’s global charitable empire.
…Chelsea Clinton, who at the time was just shy of her 34th birthday, commanded a higher fee than other prominent women speakers the university considered booking when Hillary Clinton proved too expensive, including feminist icon Gloria Steinem ($30,000) and journalists Cokie Roberts ($40,000), Tina Brown ($50,000) and Lesley Stahl ($50,000), the records show.
“I stood atop this crack with my legs spread three feet wide and waited over 40 minutes for sunset light,” says Jason Matias, who submitted this shot
of a lava field in Kalapana, Hawaii, to the 2015 Traveler Photo Contest. “I didn’t want anyone to take my spot if they happened by.”
Kalapana was covered by a Kīlauea Volcano eruption in 1990—and the lava keeps coming. “No way I wanted to leave this place,” Matias says. “The
lava on the upper left and the right side of this image was not there when I claimed my perch.”
During its most successful run, Gap’s fashion catered to children of the 1980s and ’90s — first with plain T-shirts and blue jeans, then with button-downs and clean-cut khakis. Artists and musicians helped popularize the androgynous look, one that seemed to define Generation X, whose shoppers strove to look like everyone else.
…But the idea that once made Gap so popular has become obsolete. “Historically, Gap has had a very distinct look. It was very much about creating uniforms,” Kelly Tackett, research director and retail analyst at Planet Retail, told The Washington Post. “Millennials want to put together their own identity.”
On Monday, Gap, which was once touted as the world’s largest specialty apparel retailer, said it is closing 175 stores in North American to attempt to boost profitability. After cutbacks over the next few years, the chain in North America will include about 500 regular-price stores and 300 outlets, The Post’s Sarah Halzack reported. Stores that are being shuttered are regular-price Gap shops.
How millennial shoppers have made Gap’s uniform look obsolete
 |
|||||||
| How millennial shoppers have made Gap’s uniform look ob…“Historically, Gap has had a very distinct look. It was very much about creating uniforms,” retail analyst Kelly Tackett said. “Millennials want to put together… | |||||||
| View on www.washingtonpos… | Preview by Yahoo | ||||||
The hospice industry is booming, but concerns are rising about treatments for patients who aren’t near death.
MAIDEN, N.C. — Clinard “Bud” Coffey, 77, a retired corrections officer, did the crossword in The Charlotte Observer after breakfast every morning, pursued his hobby of drawing cartoons, talked seven or eight times a day to his son Jeff and, just two weeks before his death, told a pal that he still felt “like a teenager.”
He did, however, have some chronic back pain, and in late March he was enrolled in hospice care “essentially for pain management,” his doctor said. Over a two week period, he received rising doses of morphine and other powerful drugs, grew sleepy and disoriented, and stopped breathing, dying peacefully at home, according to his family and medical records they provided.
His death certificate, which was signed by the hospice doctor, listed the cause as “renal cell carcinoma” or kidney cancer. But that doctor had never examined Coffey, his family said, and medical records from just a few weeks earlier do not mention it.
“My dad wasn’t dying of cancer,” said his son, Jeff Coffey. “Once he was on hospice, their answer for everything was more drugs. Everything we know about his death is consistent with an overdose.”
…The hospice industry in the United States is booming and for good reason, many experts say. Hospice care can offer terminally ill patients a far better way to live out their dying days, and many vouch for its value.
But the boom has been accompanied by what appears to be a surge in hospices enrolling patients who aren’t close to death, and at least in some cases, this practice can expose the patients to the more powerful pain-killers that are routinely used by hospice providers. Hospices see higher revenues by recruiting new patients and profit more when they are not near death.
A medium sized bird found in the rain forests of South America.
The flower is a fading Evening Primrose blossom.
Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friends
 |
|||||||
| Three quarters of whites don’t have any non-white friend…Data show that for most white Americans, none of their best friends are black. | |||||||
| View on www.washingtonpos… | Preview by Yahoo | ||||||
16 almonds – 15.3 gallons
The average American consumes more than 300 gallons of California water each week by eating food that was produced there.
California farmers produce more than a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts. To do that, they use nearly 80 percent of all the water consumed in the state. It is the most stubborn part of the crisis: To fundamentally alter how much water the state uses, all Americans may have to give something up.
The portions of foods shown here are grown in California and represent what average Americans, including non-Californians, eat in a week. We made an estimate of the amount of water it takes to grow each portion to give you a sense of your contribution to the California drought.
The estimates include the amount of water used to make derivative products. For example, grape consumption includes not just fresh grapes, but also wine, jam and juice.
| 3 mandarin oranges | 42.5 gallons |
| Four ounces of rice | 30.2 gallons |
| 16 almonds | 15.3 gallons |
| 1.75 ounces of beef | 86 gallons |
| 4 glasses of milk | 143 gallons |
Things Uncle John Sends 