An Essex councillor is asking for additional disaster relief from the provincial and federal governments for the devastating hailstorm that has caused millions of dollars in damage to crops south of Harrow.
“This is a devastating blow to a region which is struggling to regain economic recovery,” Essex Coun. Bill Baker said in e-mails sent to Essex MPP Taras Natyshak and MP Jeff Watson this week.
Baker said if farmers have crop insurance it won’t cover all their losses such as the profit expected. Corn and wheat prices are good.
Baker said he had already received a response from Natyshak who said his staff will survey the damage and see if there is additional provincial support.
“Is there some assistance in addition to their crop insurance because they’ve never seen this as long as they’ve farmed. I’ve talked to most of them and they have said we have never seen this type of devastation for that amount of crops in such a short period of time,” Baker said Wednesday.
Baker estimates the hail caused millions of dollars of damage. One farmer alone estimates he will be out $1 million.
MORE TO COME
Source: blogs.windsorstar.com
Kent, University of - The Independent
Age: 47
History: A sixties university, it was founded on an interdisciplinary philosophy typical of the time.
Address: 300 acres of parkland in the rolling Kent countryside on a hill above Canterbury. The Medway campus, which opened in 2005, is near the Chatham Historic Dockyard. There is also a centre in Tonbridge, which offers part-time courses and training for businesses.
Ambience: Pastoral in summer, grey and atmospheric in winter, surrounded by hop fields and white-turreted oast houses. The main campus' modern buildings are surrounded by landscaped garden and there's a cinema, theatre and a nightclub on site. The Medway campus is in the heart of the Kent Thameside development.
Vital statistics: Almost 20,000 students, with more than 14,000 full-time undergrads. 12 per cent are international students, from 125 different countries.There's a collegiate system, and sandwich years in industry are also on the menu.
Added value: The British Cartoon Archive is unique, and the School of Physical Sciences has been involved with most of the significant exploratory space projects this decade. Kent is the UK's European University with a strong European focus and bases in Brussels and Paris. It also has one of the best employability rates in the UK. The Medway campus has been developed with the University of Greenwich, Canterbury Christ Church University and Mid Kent College and includes the new Medway School of Pharmacy, where students are taught by staff from Kent's department of biosciences and Greenwich's school of science.
Easy to get into? Most courses ask for between 300 and 360 UCAS entry points, though students returning to learning without traditional qualifications can also apply.
Glittering alumni: Gavin Esler, news presenter; Shiulie Ghosh, news correspondent; actors Alan Davies and Tom Wilkinson; novelists Sarah Waters and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Transport links: Good coach and rail links. Mainline train connections to London and Dover, and points north. The A2 and M2 connect to London. Eurostar from Ashford International and ferries from Dover and Folkestone go to France and Belgium.
Who's the boss? Professor Julie Goodfellow is vice-chancellor.
Teaching: Came 23rd out of 116 in the Complete University Guide in 2011.
Research: Came 29th out of 115 in the research assessment exercise in 2011.
Overall ranking: Came 33rd out of 116 in the Complete University Guide.
Nightlife: Nightclub The Venue, with bars, DJs and disco, is the hub of university life. There is the Gulbenkian Theatre, Cinema 3 and a number of bars on campus for less strenuous entertainment. The Medway campus houses Coopers bar and late night venue Purple.
How green is it? Not good - came joint 107th out of 145 universities graded by People and Planet for their 'Green League 2012', an assessment of environmental performance.
Any accommodation? Yes. Over 4,700 rooms at Canterbury, and new, private halls offered at Medway. Self-catering at Canterbury ranges between around £99 to £153 per week, while it is £118 to £209 per week for catered college halls. An en-suite, self-catered room at Liberty Quays, Medway, is £127 per week.
Cheap to live there? Not bad for the south-east, but not cheap. Private rents averaged around £80 per week in 2011.
Sports ranking: 36th in the BUCS league table.
Fees: £9,000 per year for full-time home undergrads starting in 2012.
Bursaries: The Kent Bursary offers up to £1,000 per year to students in receipt of a full maintenance grant. There are also a number of scholarships for specific subjects and for students from the local area.
Prospectus: 01227 827 272 / www.kent.ac.uk
UCAS code: K24
Source: www.independent.co.uk
'TOWIE' Joey Essex: 'Sam Faiers and I are thinking about having kids' - Digital Spy
Source: www.digitalspy.co.uk
Essex chief admits corruption case damaged club - BBC News
Essex chief executive David East has admitted the corruption scandal involving Danish Kaneria and Mervyn Westfield "drained" the entire club.
Last month Pakistan leg-spinner Kaneria, 31, was banned from playing in England and Wales for life.
Seam bowler Westfield, 24, was banned for five years, but can play club cricket again after three.
"It's probably the most difficult thing I've ever had to deal with," East said in an interview with BBC Essex.
"It drained the whole club in terms of the pressure it put on us and it's something I wouldn't wish to go through again."
A CB40 game between Essex and Durham in 2009 was at the centre of the case and Westfield was jailed for four months in February for taking money for deliberately bowling badly.
At last month's inquiry by the England and Wales Cricket Board, he pleaded guilty to accepting money to underperform and Kaneria was found guilty of corruption.
David East Essex chief executive“Post-the ECB hearing it's become evident that the club wasn't at fault and nor were the players in terms of the way they reported it. I do hope that message has got across”
Neither has played county cricket since 2010.
The ECB disciplinary panel concluded that Kaneria:
• acted as a recruiter of spot-fixers
• approached a number of Essex players he saw as potential targets
• cajoled and pressurised Westfield into becoming involved, knowing he was young and vulnerable
• was present when Westfield received his payment for underperforming.
Kaneria continues to protest his innocence and is considering an appeal against his sentence, which the International Cricket Council (ICC) has recommended should be implemented worldwide.
East declined to comment on Kaneria, but said it was very difficult for him to be sympathetic to Westfield because he had "caused the club so much discomfort and for a certain period of time tarnished the reputation of the club".
He continued: "I can understand why it happened, certainly. Whether I can feel sympathetic towards him, I'd need to reflect on that a bit more.
"I think it's hugely disappointing that one of our own, that came through the system, who we nurtured, played for England Under-19s - we had high hopes for Mervyn in his career and for it to be ended or at least be curtailed in this way is very sad."
East praised the bravery of another seam bowler, Tony Palladino, 28, for giving the evidence which led to the police investigation.
Palladino left the club at the end of the 2010 season and now plays for Derbyshire.
"It was a very difficult decision for him, I'm sure, but it's something I think we should be proud of. Tony raised that issue and all credit to him," said East.
"Post the ECB hearing it's become evident that the club wasn't at fault and nor were the players in terms of the way they reported it.
"I do hope that message has got across."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Shipwright builds on past to save maritime future - msnbc.com
By BRIDGET MURPHY
Associated Press
ESSEX, Mass. (AP) - With a river basin view that mesmerizes, out-of-towners might miss the tree trunks stacked along the street by Harold Burnham's shipyard. But locals see these mounds of mostly white oak for what they are: the building blocks of the Massachusetts shipwright's dreams.
This is the raw stuff that makes its way from the street to the sea, helping Burnham keep afloat a wooden boatbuilding culture in a town known for constructing more two-masted wooden fishing schooners than anywhere else in the world.
Many see the 45-year-old Burnham as a master of a dying art. The Essex-born shipwright uses locally harvested wood and hand tools to build schooners at Burnham Boat Building with a modern adaptation of the same techniques builders used on this waterfront land in Colonial times.
Burnham recently captured recognition by winning one of nine $25,000 heritage fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts awards annually. The prize is meant to pay tribute to his craftsmanship and mission to preserve a part of American culture for future generations.
"This craft is so tied to place, in a way it's reconnected a town with its shipbuilding heritage that's sort of been lost," said Maggie Holtzberg, who manages the folk arts and heritage program for Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Burnham is the 28th member of his extended family to run a shipyard in Essex since the town incorporated in 1819, a tradition he can trace back 11 generations on the same land.
"It's as if he was born and had to do this," said Molly Bolster, who runs the New Hampshire maritime nonprofit Gundalow Company.
Burnham sees wooden boatbuilding not as family history, but as a local culture he helps perpetuate with local resources. Any wood that doesn't go toward boat construction fuels stoves that heat the yard's lofting shop - and the house on the same land where Burnham lives with his family.
The father of two went to school at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, working as a merchant mariner on commercial ships and building wooden boats when he was onshore, before giving his current occupation a go full-time in the 1990s.
He got a boost in 1996, when someone hired him to build a 65-foot vessel. Then 29 years old, Burnham built Thomas E. Lannon, which nowadays takes schoolchildren on sailing charters out of the fishing town of Gloucester.
Burnham counts each of his six schooners as a triumph and credits his community for helping him preserve his town's maritime culture. He said his pursuit is really about keeping the art form going with the hope it won't end with him.
"It's been extremely difficult to have even built six," Burnham said. "But what I'm proud of, they all worked and they've been extremely well loved and taken care of by their owners."
Friends pitch in during construction phases, and thousands of locals show up when a craft creaks its way down greased slabs to splash into the water for the first time.
"He's not afraid to call his boats beautiful, because it's not just his work," said Tom Ellis, who commissioned Thomas E. Lannon. "It's the community's and everyone who came before him."
Burnham mills the wood he uses at the shipyard, preparing piles for the next schooner order he's always hoping will come in. When one does, Burnham designs, engineers, and constructs the vessel before he and his team launch it into the creek just off the Essex River.
Last year, he tried something new by building a boat for himself. The shipwright said he was going slowly broke at the time, but friends, family and community members kicked in materials and labor to get the 45-ton vessel built.
Now Burnham's captaining that 58-foot schooner Ardelle on summer charters from a dock behind a maritime heritage center in Gloucester.
"With every boat, his reputation builds and it's not just that he's a throwback to the olden days," said Justin Demetri, a historian at Essex Shipbuilding Museum across the creek from Burnham's shipyard. "One man is almost encapsulating my whole museum."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: www.msnbc.msn.com
Businessman charged with attempting to murder Devizes solicitor - The Guardian
A businessman has been charged with attempting to murder a solicitor as he worked at his desk in a market town.
Michael Raymond Chudley, 62, is accused of attempting to murder Jim Ward, who suffered life-threatening head injuries in an attack with a sawn-off shotgun at the solicitors firm Morris, Goddard and Ward in Devizes, Wiltshire.
Chudley, who lives in Rowde, a village two miles from Devizes, is also charged with making threats to kill, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and carrying a firearm with criminal intent.
He is in police custody and will appear at Salisbury magistrates on Wednesday morning.
Ward, 58, a father of three, suffered a single gunshot wound in the attack on Monday afternoon. Police have said four other people were in the office at the time but were not hurt. Two members of the public, including an off-duty paramedic, rushed in to try to save the injured man.
Ward was airlifted to Frenchay hospital in Bristol and his family was at his bedside. Police said on Tuesday he remained seriously ill.
A neighbour at Ward's red-brick farmhouse in Westbury, Wiltshire, who did not want to be named, said the solicitor would do anything for anybody.
He said: "He is just such a lovely man. The whole family is lovely. It is such a shock this has happened – he wouldn't hurt a fly. It's the type of thing you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy – I can't think why anybody would have done this.
"We have all been praying for him at the local village church and we hope that he gets better – you have to have faith. He's just such a nice man."
Morris, Goddard and Ward was set up in 1988, specialising in matrimonial and family law, personal injury, general legal claims and residential conveyancing. Ward is listed as principal solicitor at the practice.
Police emphasised that such incidents were uncommon. Local inspector Ron Peach said: "I would like to stress how very rare incidents such as this are in Devizes, and across the county. However, we recognise that the community will be concerned and will experience some disruption as officers conduct inquiries. Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the victim at this difficult time."
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
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