Home grown — and savored: Farmers reap organic crops, good will.
The News Review:
- Home grown — and savored: Farmers reap organic crops, good will.
- On music: the lure of Berlin
- Security Versus Civil Liberties Debate Bubbles to Surface Again, With…
- Ten more China auto firms added to government supplier list – Xinhua
- 10 years of Five: but is it worth celebrating?
Home grown — and savored: Farmers reap organic crops, good will.
Free with registration – Sacramento Bee – AccessMyLibrary.com – Mar 29, 2007
29–Inside the greenhouse, Kay Panek inserted tomato seedlings into tidy rows of soil blocks. Her hands were smeared with dirt; her face lit with sunlight penetrating its translucent roof. Once the seedlings reach 6 to 8 inches tall, Panek will transplant them into the fields, where they will be grown together with a cornucopia of potatoes, peppers, eggplants and carrots. When harvested, the produce of Soil Born Farm — a nonprofit urban agriculture project with sites in Arden and Rancho Cordova — will travel less than 25 miles before ending up on a dinner plate. “We want to produce.
On music: the lure of Berlin
Telegraph.co.uk – Mar 29, 2007
It’s one of many signs that Berlin takes its culture seriously – as London does too, but Berlin’s music scene has a special edge, a combination of innovative daring and stellar quality, which makes it utterly distinctive. This is partly a cultural difference. German new music often has a dark intensity and political heat reminiscent of German artists such as Anselm Kieffer. But it also reflects the fact that in terms of funding, Berlin really puts its money where its mouth is. This isn’t just the mentality of a high-spending social democratic nation that invests in high culture, though it’s partly that. It is also a shrewd realisation that, lacking any industrial base, culture is Berlin’s only real calling card. This is why, despite the city’s dire financial plight, spending on the arts hasn’t suffered as much as everybody feared… The elegantly neoclassical Konzerthaus in the Gendarmenmarkt was where Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman first saw the light of day, but these days it’s an important venue for new music. It houses its own Konzerthausorchester (until recently known as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra) and presents 600 concerts a year. On the border between the old East and West is the distinctive ochre-and-green modernist Philharmonie, where the Deutsche Sinfonie Orchester often performs, alongside other first-rate home-grown bands such as the period-instrument Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik. Like the Konzerthaus Orchestra, the DSO has a newly appointed chief conductor with a taste for adventurous programming. The amazing richness of Berlin’s musical life means that the most famous institution of the lot – the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – is kept on its mettle. Its British chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, has performed a very clever balancing act between preserving the orchestra’s heartland in the Austro-German tradition, and eye-catching forays into new music. But to be absolutely sure of catching the best Berlin has to offer, the wisest policy might be to head for one of the music festivals, such as the Musicfest, a feast of orchestral music which this year launches on September 1 with the Concertgebouw orchestra from Amsterdam.
Security Versus Civil Liberties Debate Bubbles to Surface Again, With…
FOX News – Mar 29, 2007
But I don’t know what happened at the end of the show, because I had to switch it off after five minutes to keep my eyes and ears from bleeding. If you haven’t been following the debate over civil liberties vs. Perhaps, at this stage, those representing both ends of the argument could at least try to understand how the NYPD got on this logic train. The local and state authorities determined that one part of the solution was to develop a ground-up capability for intelligence, which would allow them to gather information using local resources, knowledge and capabilities, and would also allow for the intelligence flow to hopefully go both ways — i… Now, all this was happening against a backdrop of several decades of legal wrangling over the appropriate use of police surveillance and intelligence gathering against domestic political organizations and various activist groups with a wide ranging list of agendas, mostly peaceful, some occasionally less so. The 1960s spawned a slew of class-action lawsuits as a result of police monitoring of activist groups, civil rights leaders and antiwar organizations. The same decade also spawned some pretty excellent music. In NYC, the limits imposed on police for such monitoring and surveillance are referred to as the Handschu guidelines. In 2003, through the judicial process, the parameters for police surveillance were expanded, although still under the Handschu guidelines and still with an oversight system.
Ten more China auto firms added to government supplier list – Xinhua
Forbes – Mar 29, 2007
Chery Auto and Brilliance China Auto are the only two home-grown car makers included on the list, the first time domestic brands have been on it, the report said. It noted that the firms’ have been endorsed by the State Environmental Protection Administration, as meeting necessary environmental standards for inclusion. jiang@xinhuafinance. com Neither the Subscriber nor AFX News warrants the completeness or accuracy of the Service or the suitability of the Service as a trading aid and neither accepts any liability for losses howsoever incurred.
10 years of Five: but is it worth celebrating?
The Independent – Independent – Mar 29, 2007
Despite the challenges of the 200-channel digital age, Five airs one of the most popular American imports on British airwaves, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, as well as several other stateside successes such as House, Grey’s Anatomy and Prison Break. It has also won praise for its arts programmes, as well as changing the format of television news by famously perching the newscaster Kirsty Young on her desk. A successful bid to broadcast highlights of England cricket Test matches and continuing negotiations for the rights to England football matches are held up as evidence of Five’s commitment to sport, while there are also plans for increased home-grown content. Five has also launched two spin-off stations, although the increase in viewers – 0. 3 per cent of Five’s share – has been minimal. All this with a programming budget of £215m – less than half of that wielded by Channel 4 and less than a quarter of ITV’s. A Five spokesman said: “We have only been around for 10 years.