Pooling of insurance for school employees will mean lower class sizes, restored programs SALEM - The Oregon Senate on Thursday voted to pass Senate Bill 426, legislation that will establish pooling of insurance benefits for school employees, resulting in cost savings that will go directly into the classroom. The bill is a part of the Senate Democratic Agenda and is a major step in the effort to create more accountability in education funding.  “Everyone knows that ... [full story]

Q: I have $60,000 in an IRA that has not been managed well since 1998, but that's a question for another time.Here's my situation: I owe $30,000 on my mortgage at an interest rate of 6.785 percent. The loan will be paid off in about 7 years. I'd love to get out from under the house payment of $730 per month and put an additional $500 per month into my 401(k) plan at work.What do ... [full story]

I spent some time over the weekend visiting open houses. While I'm not seriously thinking about moving, I like to see what's going on in my neighborhood.The thing I've learned recently is how sophisticated sellers in my neighborhood have become. For the most part, each home is a shining example of how to make lemonade with the lemons that exist in your own house. Mostly, the houses looked as if they'd been staged to be ... [full story]

At first glance, it seems like an unlikely place for the Queen of Hearth and Home to make an appearance, this arid California valley in the hinterlands just south of March Air Reserve Base. But Perris is part of Southern California's low-cost housing frontier. And among the suburban tracts sprouting seemingly everywhere in and around this city is one with homes bearing a seal of approval from Martha Stewart. MARTHA'S EMPIRE - Martha Stewart ... [full story]

Some movies of carnage open our minds to war, death and history in a valid way, like Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films. And then there are the bloody piles of raw meat for finger-lickin' oafs, like "Apocalypto" and "300." "300" has even more death than Mel Gibson's Mayan epic, a gain that adds up to a minus. Zack Snyder of "Dawn of the Dead" (the 2004 version) filmed Frank Miller's graphic novel, about the brave 300 ... [full story]

Some movies of carnage open our minds to war, death and history in a valid way, like Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films. And then there are the bloody piles of raw meat for finger-lickin' oafs, like "Apocalypto" and "300." "300" has even more death than Mel Gibson's Mayan epic, a gain that adds up to a minus. Zack Snyder of "Dawn of the Dead" (the 2004 version) filmed Frank Miller's graphic novel, about the brave 300 ... [full story]

Taking a wild leap into the unknown, Teri Polo dropped out at the age of 17 after her junior year at Dover High School in Dover, Del. She hit the ground sprinting to auditions between acting classes in New York City. Almost a year later, she portrayed beautiful, blond ingenue Kristin Larsen during the 1986 season on the ABC soap opera "Loving" (1983-95). For a goof, she went home to Delaware to say "Hi" to ... [full story]

  When setting up to hit the driver be sure to pay close attention to your hand position.  With most other shots, the hands at address are usually slightly ahead of the club head. The driver, however, is a different story. [full story]

For all the vastness of the universe, its real work occurs at the scale of elementary particles - subatomic entities with names like proton, positron, quark and baryon. These are the stuff of matter and the known universe. Yet these particles are so incredibly tiny that they are essentially invisible. Indeed, it has been only in the last several decades that technologies emerged to prove they existed at all. Among those technologies is the bubble ... [full story]

She's been a model, a cover girl, the focus of celebrity-driven TV programs and of tabloid media gossip as well as being a TV celebrity in her own right. But flip to the next page on the resume of Ivanka Trump, The Donald's 25-year-old daughter, and you'll find a former star student at the Wharton School of Finance (graduating with honors in 2004) who has become a jet-setting wheeler-dealer. Her real estate footprints extend from ... [full story]