So in the video below Weezy announces a new member
to is Young Money imprint, which is Cory Gunz. I
truly didn’t see this one coming. Check out the announcement
after the break………..
Sphere: Related ContentDemocrat Dan Hynes is scheduled to make a major announcement this morning regarding his campaign for his party’s nomination for governor.
The three-term state comptroller will speak at 10 a.m. at his downtown campaign headquarters, 57 W. Grand Ave.
Many expect he will finally concede the primary election to Gov. Pat Quinn, who with all precincts counted held a nearly insurmountable lead of nearly 8,100 votes. Hynes’s political allies privately acknowledged late Wednesday that a drawn-out recount doesn’t appear viable.
Quinn claimed victory election night. President Barack Obama made a
congratulatory phone call Wednesday to Quinn and also called Hynes, who
remained out of the public eye Wednesday.
While Hynes’ announcement could bring clarity to one of the governor’s races, the Republican side is anything but clear.
Republicans are gearing up for the possibility of a recount with little
more than 400 votes separating state Sens. Billy Brady of Bloomington
and Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale. On Wednesday, Dillard issued a statement
noting there were hundreds of provisional and absentee ballots that
remained to be counted.
–Staff report
We’re barely into 2010 and already the rumor mill is abuzz with speculation surrounding this summer’s festival headliners. The NYE announcement that grunge pioneer Soundgarden is reforming led many to suspect that the group was a shoe-in for this year’s Lollapalooza (which the Seattle group has played twice previously, in 1992 and 1996). Now, NYC/Chicago music blog Consequence of Sound reports an already popular rumor that recently reformed indie heavyweight Pavement will headline this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. We immediately put in a call to Pitchfork’s office, and while it wouldn’t yet confirm, it didn’t deny it either. COS doesn’t cite its source, but the idea makes enough sense on paper. Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus has a history with the Pitchfork Fest, having performed solo in 2007.
We’ve also learned from our own private source that Chicago’s own Smith Westerns are slated to appear at this year’s Pitchfork Fest. But back to the guessing game: It’s pretty safe to assume that the folks at Pitchfork will call on their current crop of buzz bands, among them Neon Indian, Surfer Blood, Girls and the Drums. Judging by the site’s coverage, we also wouldn’t be surprised to see rising rapper Freddie Gibbs on the lineup. That is, if Lolla doesn’t snatch him up first, which seems just as likely given the surprisingly homogenous pool of artists from which talent is drawn, as Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis discovered in this revealing interview with William Morris “super-agent” Marc Geiger. As we reported a few months back, Lollapalooza is currently accepting suggestions for this year’s lineup. So if the thought of thousands of shirtless middle-aged dudes in Dr. Martens bellowing “Outshined” in Grant Park is too much to bare, best suggest some alternatives immediately.
Originally published 1/11/2010.
UPDATE: An interview with Pavement multi-instrumentalist Bob Nastanovich in this past Sunday’s edition of Louisville’s Courier-Journal appears to be the source that many web outlets are crediting the Pavement leak to. Nastanovich himself isn’t quoted, but reporter Jeffrey Lee Puckett gives it away when mentioning how the group’s Pitchfork appearance is the closest they’ll get to Louisville on their reunion tour:
“The vast majority of venues will be far larger than any they used to play, but none are expected to be in Louisville. Chicago’s Pitchfork Festival will likely be the closest; the only non-festival U.S. dates announced so far are the late September shows in Central Park.”
WASHINGTON — President Obama has directed the federal government to buy the near-empty state prison in rural Thomson, Ill., to house federal inmates and up to 100 detainees from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said late Monday.
The official announcement is planned for Tuesday and follows weeks of consideration of the Thomson Correctional Center as the most secure site in the federal prison system.
The decision is part of a complicated plan for shutting down the controversial Guantanamo detention center, a lightning rod for anti-American sentiment around the world as a result of detainee abuses there during the previous administration.
Obama ordered the shutdown of the detention center as one of his first acts after inauguration last January.
But actually closing it has proven a cumbersome matter, largely because of the difficulty of finding other places to put the suspected terrorists.
Illinois and local officials suggested the near-vacant Thomson prison, which was started in the 1990s and completed in 2001.
Under a plan officials will unveil in the coming days, the administration plans to send some of the detainees to their home countries and others to third countries, some of which operate rehabilitation programs for suspected terrorists.
The Thomson prison could house between 35 and 90 of the Guantanamo detainees, said one source familiar with the discussions.
Toward that end, Obama has directed that the federal government proceed with the acquisition of the Thomson prison center, an administration official said late Monday. The official said the prison would be used to house federal inmates as well as “a limited number of detainees” from Guantanamo Bay.
“Closing the detention center at Guantanamo is essential to protecting our national security and helping our troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of Al Qaeda,” the administration official said.
The announcement on Tuesday “is an important step forward as we work to achieve our national security objectives,” the official said.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Patrick Quinn are scheduled to be in Washington on Tuesday afternoon to be briefed by administration officials at the White House on the decision. Both Democrats, Durbin and Quinn have been major promoters of the project.
–Christi Parsons
Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.
Here’s the Florida Highway Patrol report into last week’s Tiger Woods car crash outside the golfer’s home. The document, released this afternoon, follows yesterday’s announcement that Woods, 33, was issued a careless driving citation in connection with the November 27 incident. Woods yesterday paid a $164 fine, and will be hit with four points on [...]
Sphere: Related ContentIn the completion of the Florida Highway Patrol investigation, Tiger Woods has been charged with careless driving.
A woman patroller made the announcement at 3:00pm on Tuesday, and included that the department will not be pursuing criminal charges.
Tiger will be given a ticket for $164.00 for the single-vehicle crash.
It was also said that there is insufficient evidence to issue a subpoena for any further medical records.
Before wrapping it up, the agency said no one involved has made claims of domestic violence.
The loss of a second trade show that meant big business for ChicagoChicago reviews
is putting quick and powerful pressure on McCormick Place, the city’s showcase convention center, to combat the impression that the Second City costs too much to visit.
The plastics industry trade show on Tuesday said it is moving to Orlando, Fla., for 2012 and 2015 after nearly four decades in Chicago. The announcement follows a decision by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society last week to move its 2012 annual meeting to Las Vegas. Both shows cited the high cost of doing business in Chicago.
The plastic show’s decision to leave is “a very serious loss,” Mayor Richard Daley said, calling on unions and others working at the convention center to change fee structures and onerous work rules so Chicago can better compete for major shows.
“I think they have to go back, everybody involved, and say ‘This is a serious situation. It’s a serious situation for hotels, retail, (the media), everything,’ ” Daley said. “Because if the shows keep dwindling down, there will be less and less activity at McCormick Place, and that will have a deep effect on the state, county and city governments, the revenue.”
A lot is riding in the balance. Some 45.6 million visitors spent an estimated $11.8 billion in Chicago last year, generating $656 million in tax revenue, according to the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau. Business and convention visitors contributed close to half that spending.
“We will take a look at this very important economic engine, because our engine is in need of a major tuneup,” said Juan Ochoa, chief executive of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, or McPier, which owns and operates McCormick Place.
A task force of officials from McPier, the convention bureau, the unions that work at McCormick Place, the restaurant industry and the city’s hotels will convene Wednesday to attempt to devise ways to make Chicago more competitive.
And McPier will continue to seek a restructuring of its debt in Springfield as a way to ease its financial squeeze, a crunch that has hampered its efforts to match deals offered by competitors, Ochoa said. The agency also may seek a subsidy for its operations, he said, but only if the economic climate improves.
Plastics show officials said they expect their move to yield up to $20 million in savings for exhibitors and attendees, with more than half coming from savings in travel-related costs, including hotel, restaurant meals and parking.
The defections to the city’s chief rivals occur as the deep recession is cutting into the tourism and convention business, leading McPier to decide this week to trim its work force by 20 percent, or about 100 positions, as part of a larger cost-cutting program aimed at trimming a projected $28.8 million deficit this fiscal year.
The plastics show, known as NPE and produced by SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, is triennial. The June show, which drew 44,000 attendees, likely will turn out to be the 9th largest of the year for McCormick Place, generating an estimated $95.3 million in spending locally.
But the show is exiting after exhibitors complained about high costs. “With the deep recession, costs really exacerbated themselves,” said William Carteaux, president and chief executive of the association.
The plastics show said much of the savings in moving to Orlando will be derived from travel expenses, but officials say the high cost of union labor to assemble anything at McCormick put a crimp in exhibitor’s willingness to bring along their sophisticated machines. Seeing those machines in action is critical to buyers.
“With the cost structure in Orlando, we can put on a more high-quality event,” Carteaux said.
By moving to Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center, average exhibitor costs would drop by 48 percent for utilities, 19 percent for on-site hauling and rigging, 23 percent for lodging and 11 percent for travel, the trade group determined in an in-depth study this year.
The group examined detailed bills from the 2009 show, and compared them to projected costs in Orlando in 2012. For example, one exhibitor with a midsize booth paid $6,167 for utility service at McCormick Place, but would see that cut by 43 percent, or $2,648, in Orlando due to lower labor charges, the group determined.
UnionThe Union reviews
work rules are another issue.
The extra labor expense of putting on a show in Chicago is often due to union rules that require certain levels of staffing and don’t permit exhibitors to perform many of the tasks required to build exhibits.
“A right-to-work state, like Florida, allows us to best mimic what our exhibitors are used to on an international basis,” said Gene Sanders, senior vice president for trade shows for the association. In overseas shows, exhibitors “typically are able to assemble their own equipment and do a lot of their own work.”
Daley acknowledged that unions working at McCormick Place agreed to previous work-rule changes, but said those changes weren’t sufficient. “We will meet with the plastics show and talk to them about some of the changes they wanted.”
–Kathy Bergen and John Byrne
Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.
CBS-Ch.2 reports: Without any announcement, the city of ChicagoChicago reviews has begun sending out Denver boot crews late at night and into the pre-dawn hours to stalk scofflaws six days a week.
In an effort to bring in more revenue to the city, Revenue Department trucks, equipped with high-tech cameras and computers, will be looking for vehicles with old unpaid parking tickets.
Get the full story: cbs2chicago.com
BURBANK – Burbank Police Chief Tim Stehr announced Monday he will retire Dec. 31. Stehr’s retirement announcement comes six days after City Councilman David Gordon requested that he be placed on administrative leave in connection with three investigations into the department and the suicide of Sgt. Neil Thomas Gunn.
Sphere: Related Content
“According to sources from Roc Nation Jay-Z has inked a deal with the Hip Hop Queen B, Lil Kim.
Expect an official announcement later this week!!!”
The Brooklynite in me is going “score!” but I’ve got some reservations about how good this could be if it’s true. I love Jay-Z as an artist but when it comes to signing and developing rappers other than himself (lately) his track record is a bit spotty. We’ll see how this shakes out. I guess Big Poppa would be happy.
Building a replica of Michael Jackson’s Gary, Ind., boyhood home in the city’s downtown area could be part of a plan Mayor Rudy Clay is expected to announce Wednesday to celebrate the King of Pop and breathe new life into a city starving for economic development.
The project also might include a museum honoring Jackson, who died in June, and his family’s journey to stardom from humble beginnings, as well as a performing arts center and a hotel, according to Chuck Hughes, executive director of the Gary Chamber of Commerce. He said Clay showed him sketches of the proposed museum a few weeks ago.
Details remain vague. The Gary City Council hasn’t seen the proposed plans, and Clay could not be reached for comment. He is in Las Vegas and, along with Michael Jackson’s father, Joe Jackson, is expected to make an announcement about the museum Wednesday at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, said Simon Sahouri, who publishes Las Vegas Hollywood Magazine and is coordinating the announcement.
A spokeswoman for Clay referred questions to Sahouri, who would not provide further details.
The Jackson Museum Performing Arts Center Corp. was created in July, according to a filing with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. Odie Anderson, a clothing store owner who hosted a birthday party for Joe Jackson and a fundraiser for the memorial project at his Tinley Park home this summer, is listed as the business agent. Other public records list him as the president. He declined to comment.
Some council members say it’s too soon to say if a tribute to Michael Jackson will be built, given that the idea has been floated for years. The Gary City Council would have to approve the proposed project.
Council member Kimberly Robinson, who represents the district that includes the Jackson home, said she’d be happy if anything memorializing Michael Jackson would shine a positive light on Gary and generate revenue for the cash-strapped city.
“I just believe that if we got a mere dollar just by everyone coming to take a picture” of the former Jackson home, the museum and performing arts center “would fund itself,” Robinson said. “I would just hate for people to keep coming here, and that’s all they see and all they do.”
Sphere: Related Content
