The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC) and APACS, the UK payments association, has today (26 February 2008) issued a new advice guide for consumers on how to write and receive cheques safely. As people use cheques less and less, particularly as more retailers like Tesco and Marks & Spencer stop accepting them, they may not be as aware as they have been in the past about how to use them safely. This new guide brings together all the best easy-to-follow advice for customers who still write and receive cheques, to ensure cheques clear without unnecessary delay and to prevent fraud. Although personal cheque use has halved in the last ten years, from 1.8 billion cheques in 1997 to 890 million last year, cheques remain popular for certain payments, including subscriptions to clubs and societies, paying bills and for giving birthday gifts.

Shooting prompts state probe of Don Juan restaurant

Had cops been notified that a Westbury night club planned to hold a "teen night" Nassau police said they likely would have intensified patrols the night a teenager was fatally shot and three others critically wounded outside the club.

Now, the State Liquor Authority is scrutinizing Don Juan Mexican Restaurant's Club La Boom, where the four young men had been partying before they were shot Sunday, an agency spokesman said Thursday.

The scrutiny comes after police investigating the shooting found patrons as young as 12, a Nassau police spokesman said.

Have your loudspeakers. But not here

Maybe we can have a trade-off with different and conflicting interests: IF we can have on-demand traffic lights for the main roads next to "Kinloss", for the benefit of its often elderly and infirm congregants (and all other pedestrians), then why not accommodate Muslims as well, there is nothing theologically objectionable to "Allahu Akbar" for either Christians or Jews. It's the intrusiveness of both church bells and electronically-amplified muezzins that's the problem. I am an unbeliever in all three monotheist faiths, and as a disabled pedestrian, I think cars are intrusive also, noisy and ubiquitous...We can all compromise if we really want.

Seize the day: The magic and mystery of leap years

It was on this date in 44BC that he was stabbed 28 times while in the Senate. Among the less dramatic consequences was a misinterpretation of the Julian reforms, and Caesar's good intentions were interred with his bones. After the first leap year in 42BC, bureaucratic bungling led to an extra day being added once every three years, rather than the intended four years.

As a result, the Roman calendar again raced ahead of the seasons for 36 years. In 8BC, Augustus Caesar, Julius's reforming successor, rectified the error by skipping three leap years. Reinstituted in 8AD, the cycle of leap years continued unbroken until the 16th century. Along with this quadrennial adjustment, Julius and Augustus left another indelible mark on our calendar. July and August were named in their honour.

Debate takes on contentious air for U.S. Democrats

Instead of looking directly for a telephone after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, I walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin, Joseph Gargan and Phil Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me — this was sometime after midnight — in order to undertake a new effort to dive down and locate Miss Kopechne. Their strenuous efforts, undertaken at some risk to their own lives also proved futile.

All kinds of scrambled thoughts — all of them confused, some of them irrational, many of them which I cannot recall, and some of which I would not have seriously entertained under normal circumstances — went through my mind during this period. They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I said and did, including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area, whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what has happened and to delay my report, whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might, in some way, pass from my shoulders.

Lovestruck teens run off, leave parents heartbroken

The parents of two lovelorn teenagers from the Flint area tried to keep them apart.

Rosa Maria ‘Grammy’ Stader

Visitation is from 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, 2008, at Red Oak Funeral Home Chapel. Rosary will be at 6:30 p.m. The Mass of Christian Burial will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008, at Red Oak Funeral Home Chapel, followed by interment at Red Oak Cemetery.Arrangements are under the direction of Red Oak Funeral Home. .

Police: Tucker man went on 20-hour crack binge after killing ...

A Tucker man went on a 20-hour crack drug binge after bludgeoning his girlfriend to death last week, Gwinnett County police said Thursday.

Office romances: Is love a cubicle away?

Plenty of people spend valuable time browsing chat rooms and Web sites in search of love.

Visiting a popular night spot is another way singles can meet the perfect mate.

Then there's meeting your significant other in the cubicle across from you.

It makes sense.

Working together often translates into sharing the same interests, and there's ample time to get acquainted during coffee breaks.

As a supervisor for a telemarketing company in Tahlequah, Stephanie Lee once dated an employee.

"It was a casual relationship," Lee, 29, said. "Co-workers knew we were together, but we didn't go around kissing each other in front of everyone."

She said her boyfriend had grown on her over time and that the two had been friends before intensifying their relationship.