| Bridal Bargains
Soon-to-be brides packed the Friends Center of Southern Ohio Medical Center on Sunday looking for bargains and wedding ideas at the 2008 Bridal Expo.Rhonda Ballengee, of By Design Floral and Bridal in Sciotoville, is chair of the committee that hosts the annual event - along with Tammy Wagner, of Party On Rentals in Wheelersburg, as treasurer. She said it started at the Ramada Inn about 12 years ago, but her committee took over the show about six years ago.During the show, retailers like Ballengee and Wagner can setup displays for interested brides-to-be to browse through. Wagner said it was a great way for local shops to get their names out to the public.Along with Party On Rentals were displays for event planners, caterers, photographers, disc jockeys, videographers, limousine services and much more.
Shade of gray suits new Falcons coach Smith
Smith is 48, admits he looks 58, and hardly gets upset at all when a stranger comments on what a cute little granddaughter he has. Seven-year-old Logan is his one and only daughter. Turns out it was a very short trip from long-haired Daytona Beach surfer boy to hoary-headed tendency wonk. The first flecks of white began appearing in Smith's thatch at 23. By 28 he was all gray and unwilling to buy Grecian Formula by the barrel. "It wasn't worry, it wasn't stress, he got it honestly," said his mother, Carol, whose eight children all have inherited their mother's and father's premature gray gene. Thanks, folks. The eyes, it is said, are particularly adept at spotting talent. When the Falcons' new general manager first met Smith, Thomas Dimitroff was struck by just how much they had in common on that score.
'What we did was crazy and brutal'
The 2006 Lebanon war, known locally as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, was a 34-day battle between, primarily, Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli Defence Force. The fighting started on July 12, 2006, and continued until a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations went into effect a month later. The brief conflict – brought to the public by 24-hour satellite news channels and the internet – killed more than a thousand people, most of them Lebanese civilians, and severely damaged the nation's infrastructure. Nearly one million Lebanese were displaced from their homes – as were between 300,000 and 500,000 Israelis across the border.Though the fighting ceased after 34 days and the war ended for the politicians, Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah, 18 months on it continues to cast a dark shadow over the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon.The UN estimates that during the conflict, Israel dropped four million bombs.
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