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RIPTA schedules on Google Maps
Local bus and trolley schedules are now accessible through Google Maps, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority announced yesterday.
The system, Google Transit, is also automatically available anytime a user enters directions into Google Maps. Along with driving directions, bus and trolley stops are shown, with upcoming departures.
Google Transit, according to RIPTA General Manager Alfred Moscola, is “incredibly easy to use, gives you all the information you need, and is perfect for the person who hasn’t used RIPTA’s bus system before.”
“It’s a great incentive to use transit in Rhode Island,” he added, “because it figures out the whole trip for you. It does all the work. With this tool, Google is providing a tremendous public service.”
Moscola said RIPTA provided the schedule information, and the service is provided free from Google.
Parole denied for drag-racer
The state Parole Board yesterday denied parole for a Barrington man who is four years into his 12-year prison sentence in connection with a drag-racing crash that killed two Bristol passengers, Steven J. Botelho, 19, and Justin M. Nunes, 17.
Brendan Lombardi was 19 when he was sentenced in Providence County Superior Court in April 2004, almost a year after the April 19, 2003, crash in which the police said Lombardi and Michael Cabral raced cars on Market Street and Metacom Avenue through Swansea, Bristol and Warren at upwards of 80 mph.
Shortly before 3 a.m., Lombardi’s car went into a tree, and Botelho and Nunes were thrown from the car and killed.
A statement from the parole board said that to parole Lombardi “so soon” into his sentence “would depreciate the serious nature of the crime and the devastating impact the crime has had on so many individuals.”
The statement also said the board will reconsider Lombardi for parole in 18 months.

projo.com

The Council Bluffs school board is expected to award contracts for remodeling and renovation projects at Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson high schools at its next meeting. Both projects are scheduled for this summer.
One contract will involve an estimated 85,000 square feet of interior work at Thomas Jefferson. Plans call for the administrative offices to be moved east to another area of the first floor, the life management and science laboratories will be renovated and the art studio will be relocated. New lockers and flooring also will be installed.
The district also asked for alternate bids for new lockers and finishes for the basement level boys locker room.
Another contract will involve the gymnasium and auditorium renovation project at Abraham Lincoln. The work will include a new heating and air conditioning system and new terrazzo and hardwood flooring. The exterior window wall just south of the gym will be replaced.
The bids also included remodeling for the girls locker room and the instrumental and vocal music rooms.
The board will also consider approving a bid on roofing work at Thomas Jefferson High School as well as at Hoover Elementary and Lewis and Clark Elementary schools. Contractors were asked to submit bids on about 2,800 square feet of roofing work at the three facilities.
The Board of Education will meet Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at school headquarters, 12 Scott St.

zwire.com

IF THE story had broken today and not last week, most of us would have laughed it off as another April Fool’s Day media spoof.
“World’s First Pregnant Man,” said the headlines. And beside them was a picture of a naked and bearded Thomas Beatie, with a stomach bulge that could be a pregnancy - or just the first signs of a serious Guinness habit.
The poor man - or woman - says his family have been mostly unsupportive and even doctors and nurses have laughed in front of him.
No, it can’t be easy being the World’s First Pregnant Man. But imagine what it’s like being the World’s First Pregnant Man’s best mate?
Think about it. What if your best pal suddenly put his pint down, looked you straight in the eye and said: “Hey big man, I think I’m up the duff.”
I don’t know who Thomas Beatie hangs out with over in Oregon, but, if he’s really a regular guy, his mates will need as much professional help as he does.
Over a lifetime and a tsunami of swally, I’ve counselled pub mates through every problem life could throw at them.
Marital disputes, sexual hang-ups, financial strife - Big Boab’s psychiatric bar stool has heard them all. My finest hour was probably the day I talked Freakie Freddie out of committing suicide because he thought Attila, his monster pet Alsatian dog, was gay.
“I saw it with my own eyes, he was humping wee Bertie the beagle next door,” he wailed. “My Attila is… Jackie Trent.”
It took all my persuasive skills to convince him that Attila wasn’t, as he would say, “bent”.
It was only after I explained that dogs can do it with everything from a cushion to a human leg that Freakie began to calm down.

dailyrecord.co.uk

Readers who last month squandered several perfectly good minutes here reading about my missing 200 bucks have so far told me nothing that’s enabled me to recover the dough. But this isn’t about the irresponsibility of my readers.
To recap: I had a little windfall, a couple hundred bucks I didn’t expect. Cognizant of the ever-present danger of wasting the money on bills or suchlike, I decided to put it someplace special so that I’d be able to find it and blow it. I plucked a book from a shelf, stuck the money inside and forgot about it.
My wife and I later moved the books on those shelves to new, bigger shelves in the family room, along with boxes of books from the garage. The implications of what we were doing didn’t register. Duh.
When I remembered the money, the only thing I had to go on was that I seemed to recall putting the bills in a novel. That meant at least I wouldn’t have to waste my time looking through the nonfiction.
Little by little I started poking around in the fiction. I soon found myself on the horns of a dilemma. If I ignored the books’ titles and contents, the task was painfully mechanical and boring.
You’d be surprised what hard work it is to look through hundreds of books. You take a book off the shelf, eyeball the top edge for any minute, tell-tale gap in the pages, riffle through it, maybe turn it upside down and shake it, put it back. Do it again, and again, etc. It took hours, spread over several days.
But if you looked at what you were handling, the books seemed to mock you and your lost swag. Titles such as Jessica Abel’s “La Perdida,” Frederick Barthelme’s “Traces,” Ann Beattie’s “Where You’ll Find Me,” Sheridan Hay’s “The Secret of Lost Things,” Alan Lightman’s “Reunion,” Milan Kundera’s “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” Jack Womack’s “Going Going Gone.” I’m not making any of them up.

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