So Who is Esperanza Spalding?
February 19, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under Entertainment
Esperanza Spalding was the winner of the Grammy Award for Best New Artist on Sunday night. For many, especially Justin Bieber fans her win was a big surprise, to the point where Bieber fans hijacked her Wikipedia page with a barrage of insults and nasty comments. To be nominated for the award was a big surprise even to Esperanza Spalding;
“I certainly did not expect to even be considered for that type of nomination, me being a little old jazz musician and everything.”
Esperanza Spalding grew up in Portland, Oregon and at 26 she is already an accomplished jazz musician. Next she will be supporting Prince for his tour “Welcome 2 America” which starts later this month. She has been quoted referring to Prince as “a dear friend”. She is currently writing the music for a new album which is going to be called ‘Radio Music Society’ and is set to be released late 2011.
Somali-born teen arrested in U.S. car bomb sting
November 27, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
WASHINGTON: U.S. authorities have arrested a Somali-born teen in a car-bomb sting operation in the state of Oregon, Fox News reported on Saturday.
Fox said the arrest occurred on Friday, the day after Americans celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, and that the suspect had attempted to use a cellphone to detonate what he thought was a bomb in a van in Portland.
The bomb was a fake and had been provided to the teen as part of the sting, Fox said, citing unnamed officials. The officials added that there was no reason to believe that people in Oregon were in danger, the network said. AGENCIES
Talk Like A Pirate Day 2010
September 17, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under Entertainment
It may be one of the most ridiculous idea of this century. Which would in their right mind that comes from ever with the idea to start a vacation when you talk like pirates? Actually did two of his friends, John Baur and Mark Summers, quite the opposite.
The idea was born in Albany, Oregon, which as far as we know it is not known at the national level in connection with the pirates. This is what happened.
Mark and John play tennis when, for reasons not clear to either of them now, and they started insulting each other in the language of pirates. And realized that there was a lot of fun and one of them said: “We should be talking like pirates on.”
They decided to start talking like pirates on, and chose September 19 to Summers that the former wife of Holiday date. And could have ended the story there, if not for Dave Barry, who stated in his column is widespread national and talk like pirates on and then took off.
In all parts of the world, and even hundreds of miles above it, people celebrate international talk like pirates on September 19 each.
It was celebrated by millions of people in all seven continents – yes, even Antarctica – and on the International Space Station! The two friends – Go Now by the characters of pirates Chumbucket Ol ‘and Slappy Cap’n and Swashed Buckles them from the Gulf of Mexico to Puget Sound, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Philadelphia. They have performed in Las Vegas glamorous resort, in bookstores, libraries, schools and non-normal in several bars.
kyron
June 11, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Kyron Horman’s Family Speaks Publicly for First Time
One week after 7-year-old Kyron Horman went missing near his elementary school in Portlant, Oregon, his family issued its first public statement, thanking the hundreds of people who have searched for the boy and sending a message of hope directly to him.
“We want to say how much we appreciate the outpouring of love and support as we wait for you,” said the boy’s stepfather, Tony Young. “Until you come home we are not a family.”
“Please, Kyron,” Young said, hoping to speak directly to the missing first grader, “keep up the hope. We believe in you.”
Kyron disappeared the morning of June 4 following a school science fair. He was last seen by his stepmother, walking toward his classroom 150 feet away. But he never made it there.
The search consists of more than 200 people, some on horseback. Dogs and a National Guard helicopter also have been deployed.
Efforts have been held back at times because of constant rain and cloudy conditions in the area. The school is near the top of a hill surrounded by deep woods and several ravines.
Also at the podium were Kyron’s biological mother, Desiree Young; her husband, Tony Young; and Kyron’s stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman.
“We miss you, we love you and we need you home right now,” Tony Young said. “Until you come home, this family’s not complete.”
Tony Young thanked searchers and the community. Nearly every local business features a flier with Kyron’s picture, and the family appeared Friday in T-shirts bearing his face and information.
The searchers were checking an area within a two-mile radius of the school, and Sgt. Diana Olsen of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said they were expanding that search area on Friday. She declined to elaborate.
Capt. Monte Reiser of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said community members can make donations into a fund at the Bank of America in Kyron’s name. Some of the money will be used to offset the cost of the search. Reiser said search teams from Washington and California have also been dispatched to help in the search.
“Morale is high,” Reiser said of the search teams, which are largely comprised of state-certified volunteers who took vacation days from work to participate. “I think we are closer (to finding him).”
Capt. Mike Shults, the sheriff’s office liaison to the family, said the last eight days have been difficult.
“This has been a very difficult time for the family,” Shults said. “Keep your prayers and thoughts on our little boy.”
elizabeth diane downs
June 9, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Over 27 years ago, Elizabeth Diane Downs shot her three children on a dark, rural road, according to OregonLive.com. It was one of the most notorious murder cases Oregon had ever seen.
But Downs claimed then, and still does today, that a “shaggy-haired man” approached her on that dark road, tried to hijack her car, and shot her kids. Cheryl, 7, died. Danny, who was 3-years-old at the time was paralyzed. And Christine, 8, suffered a stroke, Glamour Magazine reports in a new story about the old case.
“Over the years, I have told you and the rest of the world that a man shot me and my children. I have never changed my story,” Downs said in her application for parole, according to PoliticallyIllustrated.com. Her Parole was denied. Lane County District Attorney Douglas Harcleroad sited that “Downs continues to fail to 
demonstrate any honest insight into her criminal behavior… Even after her convictions, she continues to fabricate new versions of events under which the crimes occurred.”
When Downs appeared for trial in 1984, she was very pregnant, and always smiling for the cameras. She was found guilty and sent to prison but she briefly escaped from the Oregon State Penitentiary three years after being locked up. Hers was a sensational case for sure.
As if the Downs tale couldn’t get any more like a made-for-TV-movie, the child Downs was pregnant with during her trial has come out to tell her story. Rebecca Christine Babcock says she knew she was adopted and knew her biological mother was in prison, but it wasn’t until she saw a movie dramatizing her mother’s story that she figured out exactly what Elizabeth Diane Downs had done.
Babock, now 25, is a single mother and a college student. Four years ago, she got up the nerve to contact her mother, who is serving a life sentence plus 30 years at a California federal women’s prison. They exchanged letters but Downs’ writings eventually became “filled with paranoid fantasies,” the Glamour article says.
“On 12 pages torn from a legal pad, Diane scrawled stories about a secret man — ’someone very powerful has been watching over you all your life for me’ — and how she was in jail so she’d be safe from the real killer,” Babcock said.The piece begins by describing how Babcock, after an idyllic childhood, sat down to watch “Small Sacrifices” on video — the TV movie starred the late Farrah Fawcett — with a boyfriend when she was 16. She was horrified.
“It was like a dream,” Babcock says in the article. “I couldn’t be from the belly of such a monster. But I was.”
She had run to a bookstore years earlier, after a baby sitter told her the truth, and flipped through the pages of the book, but had never fully understood the magnitude of it all. That led to episodes of teenage rebellion, drug use, fears that she had evil blood flowing through her veins, teenage pregnancy and other parallels with Downs’ life, she says in the article.
commercial real estate
May 19, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
U.S. commercial real estate values fell in March, pushed lower by a quarterly drop in retail and office properties in the biggest metropolitan areas, Moody’s Investors Service said.
The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index fell 0.5 percent from February, the second straight monthly decline, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said today in a report. Prices slid 25 percent from a year earlier and are down 42 percent from the October 2007 peak.
“This is continued bad news for property owners,” Christopher Cornell, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview. “The trend is basically flat prices.
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With CRES-Tek, commercial brokers can upload property information into a Web-based data system and have a full package of marketing materials generated in minutes, says Ingrid van Arnhem, senior executive vice president with Commercial Real Estate Solutions (CRES), a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based consulting firm and developer of the CRES-Tek’s application.
Retail property prices in the top 10 metropolitan areas fell 19 percent in the first quarter from the last three months of 2009 and office prices dropped by 7.2 percent.
Nationwide, office prices declined 3.2 percent and retail prices slumped 4.7 percent. Cornell called the retail performance “dismal.”
Recently, van Arnhem and her partner, CRES president and CEO Mark Donahue, both long-term veterans of commercial brokerage firm CB Richard Ellis, noticed brokers had few options for generating marketing collateral for commercial properties. A number of services aid residential brokers in creating marketing brochures online, but similar services did not exist for commercial real estate. Instead, commercial real estate brokers often rely on shared in-house marketing directors to create collateral—which can delay turnaround times. And brokers at smaller firms often don’t even have that option and have to build the materials themselves, which can lead to inconsistencies in the company’s branding.
chris dudley
May 19, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Ex-NBA player Dudley wins GOP
Former NBA player Chris Dudley has won his rookie political contest, grabbing the Republican nomination for governor of Oregon.
Dudley defeated Allen Alley with 40 percent of the vote, with 70 percent of the expected vote counted. Alley had 32 percent.
Dudley has been a consultant on executive benefits and a wealth adviser since retiring from basketball in 2003. He played 16 seasons, including six with the Portland Trail Blazers.
Both he and Alley are from the upscale Portland suburb Lake Oswego.
Former state legislator John Lim had 14 percent and conservative ballot activist Bill Sizemore had 8 percent.
The two won their primary contests Tuesday to set up a campaign to succeed Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who is leaving office after two terms.
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Kitzhaber, who preceded Kulongoski as governor for two terms, said his experience and understanding of Oregon make him the candidate to lead Oregon out of tough times, as he did in the 1990s.
Dudley, a financial adviser to executives and the wealthy since retiring from professional basketball after 16 years, is in his first political campaign. As an outsider, he said, he’s poised to lead “Oregon’s comeback” from 11 percent unemployment and serious budget problems.
When Dudley talks about how governments don’t create jobs – which is a standard in the Republican hymnal – he illustrates it by saying that “the government did not tell Phil Knight that shoes are the next big thing.” That was something that Knight figured out for himself.
Dudley also talks about when Knight asked him why he shouldn’t just leave Oregon in the wake of the passage of Measures 66 and 67. Dudley relates that he told Knight that he wouldn’t leave because he loves Oregon too much and he’s not a quitter.
Presumably, Knight likes these stories as much as Dudley enjoys telling them. The Nike chairman this week gave Dudley another $50,000, for a total of $100,000 in this campaign.
Former state legislator John Lim had 14 percent and conservative ballot activist Bill Sizemore had 8 percent.
manohara odelia pinot
April 26, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Manohara Odelia Pinot: Fairy Tale Without Happy Ending
Speaking in Indonesia after her dramatic rescue in Singapore early Sunday, Manohara Odelia Pinot reveals the horror she endured during her nine-month marriage to prince of Malasia, Prince Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Petra. Indonesian-American socialite Manohara Odelia Pinot has claimed that the prince of Malaysia kidnapped, sexually-assaulted and held her captive for nine months. But that was a year ago. Indonesians are still hungry for news on Manohara.
Fakhry has denied all of the claims and sued Manohara and her mother for $1.8 million. The Prince won the case as Manohara Odelia Pinot failed to file defense nor attended her court case.
Recently, Manohara again became a news item in Malaysia, with her picture kissing Amil Mohede in the public, while her divorce is still pending
greg mcdermott
April 26, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Greg McDermott Accepts Offer At Creighton; Holy Hell, Iowa State, You Are A Mess
With longtime Creighton mainstay Dana Altman bolting for the greener pastures of Oregon (and all of their Nike money), the next coaching domino appears set to fall: Rivals reports that Iowa State coach Greg McDermott has agreed to replace Altman at Creighton. McDermott will reportedly receive a 10-year deal worth $9 million.
While leaving for Creighton may seem like a backwards move for McDermott, at this point, with things going in the wrong direction in Ames, it certainly makes a fair amount of sense to leave before likely being let go in a season or two, as the Des Moines Register explained. McDermott has struggled fielding competitive teams at Iowa State since coming aboard four seasons ago, due in large part to a series of player suspensions and transfers that have left the program in perpetual rebuilding mode. At Creighton, McDermott will be returning to the Missouri Valley Conference, which he obviously knows well, after navigating Northern Iowa to three NCAA tourney appearances in five seasons there before he had left for Iowa State.
source:sbnation
legarrette blount
April 24, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
2010 NFL Draft: LeGarrette Blount goes undrafted
A year of turmoil proved too much for former Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount to overcome in the eyes of the NFL.
Blount, projected by some experts as a potential third-round pick before last season began, was not selected during the seven-round, three-day NFL Draft held Thursday through today.
All is not lost, however. Blount likely will sign with a team as an undrafted rookie free agent. But falling out of the draft certainly was not expected by many.
Blount watched the draft from his hometown of Perry, Fl. Capturing his experience were ESPN cameras set up in his parent’s home. Early in the sixth round, ESPN checked in on Blount who was laying on a couch with his eyes closed.
The good news for Blount is that he now can select a team to sign with that will provide him with the best opportunity to succeed in a role as a power back.
