There’s a baby in there! Kristen Bell — who confirmed Monday morning that she’s expecting her first child with fiancé Dax Shepard — showed the smallest glimpse of a bump while shopping at The Americana at Brand in Glendale, Calif. on Tuesday, Oct. 30. Read More…
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Kristen Bell Debuts Her Baby Bump (PHOTO)
Melissa Joan Hart & Mitt Romney? Actress Tweets Support For Republican Candidate
The Twitterverse blew up Monday afternoon when Melissa Joan Hart announced that she is backing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. The “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” actress had previously made clear that she was a Republican but had yet to announce an endorsement for the 2012 election.Joan Hart first alerted followers that she would be taking a political stance later in the day.Read More…
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Apple Sells 3 Million iPad Minis, 4th-Gen iPads in Opening Weekend
Apple announced Monday morning that opening weekend sales of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad topped 3 million, double the sales of the third-generation Retina display iPad in March. … Read More
Dynamo Riga shareholders give coach marching orders
Pekka Rautakallio. (Reuters / Arnd Wiegmann)
Pekka Rautakallio has become the sixth coach to lose his job in KHL this season. He was fired from Dynamo Riga after a poor streak of results.
Riga is no stranger in the KHL playoffs but finds itself in unfamiliar territory this season, second to bottom in the Western Conference after winning only eight of its 24 games so far.
The last straw appears to have been Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to Dynamo Minsk on home ice. The team’s shareholders hold a meeting Monday and decided Rautakallio is the one to blame.
“The decision has been taken to free coach Pekka Rautakallio from his duties,” the club’s official website said, adding that Rautakallio’s assistant Artis Abols was named acting coach.
Rautakallio was appointed in April 2011, after the Latvians crashed out of the playoffs losing to Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod in the first round.
New Jersey Earthquake 2012: Small Quake Rattles Ringwood Community
RINGWOOD, N.J. — Some residents in northern New Jersey awoke to a small earthquake early Monday.The temblor, with a magnitude of 2.0, struck at 1:19 a.m. and was centered in Ringwood, a community that’s still dealing with downed trees and power outages from Sandy.Read More…
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Ohio election overseer tries to trash provisional ballots
Jon Husted (image from Jon Husted twitter page)
Days before the election in an important swing state, the Ohio Secretary of State laid out a directive that all provisional ballots incorrectly filled out should be trashed. This could alter the election results and is in violation of Ohio state law.
Provisional ballots are used to record votes when a voter’s eligibility has not yet been approved – for example, when the voter’s registration information is outdated or contains inaccuracies. These ballots are counted once the voter’s eligibility is verified – often 7-10 days after Election Day, and used only if the race is so tight that the additional votes could be the deciding factors of the election. Such ballots are most important in swing states where the presidential contenders receive nearly an equal number of votes.
In the 2008 presidential election, Ohio had more than 204,000 provisional ballots, of which about 40,000 were not counted.
President Obama beat Republican nominee John McCain by about 206,000 votes in Ohio during the last election. Scrapping thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots in a swing state as significant as Ohio could therefore have a deciding impact on the election.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s directive called for all election officials to reject ballots if authorized identification wasn’t provided voter slips haven’t been filled out correctly.The move has been criticized for putting the onus of responsibility on voters and allegedly violating voting law in Ohio. In the case that Obama and Mitt Romney are close to a tie in Ohio, these ballots would be crucial.
Husted is now required to show up in court on Monday to defend his actions, before provisional ballots are counted on Nov. 17. Ohio law “protects voters against poll workers’ abdication of their responsibility to complete or properly complete the provisional-ballot form,” the lawsuit states.
Provisional ballots and the recording of identification information lies in the hands of those who are trained by the Voter Integrity Project, which is affiliated with the tea party True The Vote project.
Husted has also been previously forced to appear in court for trying to cancel early voting in the 2012 election. Democrats have insisted that Husted’s action was an attempt to disenfranchise black voters, which are more likely to vote for Obama.
NYU Fertility Center: Embryos, Frozen Eggs And Sperm Safe After Hurricane Sandy Power Outage
The embryos are safe. So are the frozen eggs and sperm at the NYU Fertility Center. But saving them required dramatic effort on the part of hospital workers, as Hurricane Sandy took down power and the backup generator failed. “There were heroes here,” Dr. Jamie Grifo, the fertility center’s program director said in an interview today, describing the scramble Monday night and Tuesday. The building that houses the Fertility Center is located at 38th Street and First Avenue, which is outside the flood zone. But by Monday evening the power had failed, the basement had filled with water, and the fire department warned they needed to shut down the basement generator which served the lab. Doing so would mean losing the backup system on the roof, because the pump that fueled the smaller rooftop version was in the flooded basement. Read More…
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