Elsewhere wire

North Korea's military, founded 81 years ago Thursday, is older than the country itself. It began as an anti-Japanese militia and is now the heart of the nation's "military first" policy.

An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston was alerted when one of the two brothers who later allegedly carried out the Boston Marathon bombings traveled to Russia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday in one of several disclosures that cast new light on the government's handling of the case.

The officials also said Russia, which had tipped off the FBI about its concerns over one of the men, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in early 2011 and asked the agency to look into him, made a second, identical request to the CIA in late September 2011.

True joy and happiness are valuable.

If one does not survive, no joy and no happiness are obtainable.

Trying to survive in a chaotic,2 dishonest and generally immoral3 society is difficult.

Any individual or group seeks to obtain from life what pleasure and freedom from pain that they can.

Your own survival can be threatened by the bad actions of others around you.

Your own happiness can be turned to tragedy and sorrow by the dishonesty and misconduct of others.

On April 11 over 400 people packed the third public Portland Budget Hearing, which was organized by the City of Portland and which left many spilling out beyond the room where the hearing took place. More importantly, for the City Council there was an unexpected critical outpouring from the vast majority who attended. For the first time, the City Council and Mayor Charlie Hales began to lose control over their attempts to sell austerity.

The East Coast Golden Age Theater 

welcomes you to a live performance of

"The Magic Quirt*"

Come in your Western boots and hats!

***Dramatic Reading***Music and Dancing*** 

*** Costume Contest******Photos with the actors!*** 

***Fabulous Dinner*** by the world class

Gold Medal Award-winning Fort Harrison chefs.

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

Ft. Harrison Ballroom 

A Texas man convicted of shooting a 17-year-old outside a nightclub in 2001 was executed on Tuesday, the third person put to death by lethal injection in the state this year.

A Senate immigration plan seeking billions of dollars to secure the porous Mexico border sparked some skepticism in southern Arizona, where wary residents of the border area said previous efforts to ramp up enforcement had failed to stop illegal crossings.

"They ain't going to stop it unless they build that wall 50 feet high and ... 50 feet deep," said Jesus Morales, the fire district chief in Naco, a tiny community southeast of Tucson, which is separated from its namesake town in Mexico by a 10- to 13-foot-high (3- to 4-metre-high) steel fence.

A bipartisan proposal to expand background checks for gun buyers appeared on Tuesday to be short of the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate, as supporters scrambled to save the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's effort to reduce gun violence.

The Senate held its second day of debate on the background checks plan forged by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, but no vote was scheduled.