| Harrington: Alcoa pair to peddle 'high-tech' bicycles
Over the last couple of years, Douglas Benton made a point to carry a rubber glove in a pouch on his Trek bicycle because the chain often would come off. Those days are over for the Alcoa resident, who recently bought a chainless bicycle that sells for about $500. Calling the bike "amazing" and hoping to get people "moving," Benton plans to begin selling it and other "high-tech" bikes when he and his wife, Trysh, open in a few weeks Wheels 4 Tomorrow at 215 Aluminum Ave., along a stretch of greenway that runs 11 miles in Blount County. "We've got some of the best food in the world in the South, but we also have a lot of overweight people. We just kind of decided that more people needed some exercise. What we will offer is an opportunity to get outside with these cool bikes on an underutilized greenway," said Benton, a 1980 University of Tennessee graduate who grew up in Northeast Knoxville.
City's two-wheel transformation
London is likely to become one of the most cycle-friendly places in the world, with a series of two-wheeler superhighways cutting a swath through traffic and congestion. Plans for the super-cycleways will be unveiled next week as part of an initiative to stimulate a 400% increase in the number of people pedalling round the capital by 2025. At a cost of £400m, the 12 routes are intended to be the motorways of cycling and are likely to be emulated by other cities across the UK. Londoners without bikes will be able to use one of the city's free bicycles. "We want nothing short of a cycling transformation in London," said the mayor, Ken Livingstone. "We are announcing the biggest investment in cycling in London's history, which will mean that thousands more Londoners can cycle in confidence, on routes that take them quickly and safely to where they want to go." The cycle scheme is one of several environmental announcements expected in the capital over the coming weeks, including a decision on plans for a £25-a-day congestion charge on the highest-polluting vehicles and a proposal to re-fit 900 civic buildings across the capital to make them more energy-efficient.
Boarder slapped with hefty fine for sidewalk skating
HAYWARD Mason Francouer would have had to be driving a car pretty fast to earn the kind of ticket he picked up last fall for riding through downtown on a skateboard. The 17-year-old's first brush with the law happened after school one day. He was rolling down a B Street sidewalk when a police officer on a bicycle pulled him over and fined him $560. "I was going like 3 miles an hour and, I don't know, I got a ticket. It was kind of lame," said Francouer, a shaggy-haired high school senior who has been plying downtown on wheels since seventh grade. His parents were infuriated by the ticket, and his father, electrician David Francouer, took several hours off work to join his son in court. "We just thought it was kind of bogus," the teen said. "I don't mess up the sidewalk.
Doing Good: Teacher's hope is to get hearts to homebound kindergartner
From the start, 6-year-old Carolyn Hastings had the heart of her Seymour Primary School kindergarten teacher, Elisha Brown. Now Brown hopes to brighten Carolyn's Valentine's Day with some heartfelt thoughts from others in the community. Brown is trying to collect 1,000 Valentines to send to Carolyn, who was diagnosed early this year with polymyositis. The rare autoimmune disease occurs when white blood cells spontaneously invade muscles, inflaming muscle fibers. The cause is not known. Around November 2007, Carolyn began having a hard time walking and told her parents her legs hurt, said her mother, Julie Hastings. "We didn't know if it was growing pains or what," Julie Hastings said. By December, Carolyn couldn't sit down, dress herself or even go to the bathroom unassisted.
Baptist Health System ceases tubal ligations
The sentence of the Inquisition was (1) he was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest; (2) his offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future. On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. Talk about slow actions. .
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