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A healthy Urban Meyer returns to coaching



From Dayton Daily News
Gene Smith was explaining why Urban Meyer was the search committee’s first choice, its only choice, its perfect choice to become Ohio State’s new football coach.
“He gets it,” the OSU athletics director said on two different occasions at a Monday evening news conference to announce the big-splash hire. “We’re fortunate to have a man who gets it.”
Whether Meyer truly does, that is the big question.
Sure he’s a born and bred Buckeye — he grew up in Ashtabula infatuated by the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Big Red Machine and the Cincinnati Bengals.
And, yes, he understands what it takes to run a big-time college football program and win a national championship. In six seasons, he took the Florida Gators to two national crowns.
But the real test for him will come with the contract he just signed.
Not the one he supposedly inked earlier Monday. That one is for six years and is thought to pay him at least $4 million a year to lift the scandal-nicked Buckeye program back to national prominence.
To hear him, that’s an easy task compared to the other pact he signed.
When he took his turn at the microphone, Meyer reached into a pocket of his dark suit coat, pulled out a folded-up pink piece of paper and held it up so the media crowd that jammed the Fawcett Center could see.
“This is the contract my kids made me sign before I was allowed to sign a real contract. And it’s tougher than any other contract I’ve signed in my life,” he said in reference to his three children — two daughters who are playing college volleyball and 13-year-old son Nate who sat next to his mom, aunt and uncle at the gathering and was nodding vigorously as his dad explained.
Although Meyer never revealed the provisos he had agreed to, his family later filled in some of the details…(full story)

Barney Frank: Don't Blame Me for Fannie, Freddie Problems



From Wall Street Journal
Rep. Barney Frank is blamed in certain quarters for spurring the financial crisis of 2008 by encouraging the government to make more loans to the poor.
In announcing his plans to retire from Congress at the end of 2012, the Massachusetts Democrat offered a characteristically detailed and spirited defense of his actions, and cast blame at Republicans for a failure to act.
Mr. Frank acknowledged that he did not see the financial crisis coming and believed that government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “doing well” until 2003.
However, Mr. Frank said that in 2004, he became concerned about the growth in the market for subprime loans, those made to borrowers with weak credit. Those loans are often faulted for sparking a financial panic starting in 2007…(full story)

Reno fire expands to over 2,000 acres

A cloud of grayish-white smoke settled over upscale homes and horse pastures at Reno's edge Friday as firefighters from across Nevada came close to taming a sudden wildfire that sent 16 people to hospitals and destroyed or damaged 25 houses.


The unexplained blaze also gave a firefighter first- and second-degree burns and was blamed for the death of a 74-year-old man who had a heart attack while trying to flee, but authorities said the worst was likely over as growing snow flurries and falling temperatures stoked hopes that the remaining showers of ember and ash would die down.
Reno Fire Chief Mike Hernandez said firefighters had largely contained the blaze that sent nearly 10,000 people from their homes in the middle of the night and sent flames licking the edges of the region's mountain roads.
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"We are actually backtracking and going over areas that have burned and extinguishing hot spots," Hernandez said.
The cause of the blaze wasn't known, but a downed power line or homeless encampments in the area might be to blame, Hernandez said. He said the region is also a popular area for teenagers who might have started the fire to stay warm.
At least 400 firefighters from as far as 260 miles away flocked to Reno early Friday as multiple fires roared from the Sierra Nevada foothills in northwestern Nevada and spread to the valley floor. Flames reached 50 feet high and embers pushed by the wind traveled up to a mile.
Police went house-to-house, pounding on doors and urging residents to evacuate in the dark of the night.
Hernandez said residents ran from their homes dressed in pajamas, frantically trying to grab as many possessions as possible. One elderly man dressed in his underwear ran out with a blanket wrapped around his body.
"The people are in a state of shock and are hanging in there," Gov. Brian Sandoval said.
Dick Hecht said that when he escaped from his home with his wife, "the whole mountain was on fire," and it was so windy he could barely stand.
"It was so smoky, you couldn't hardly see," Hecht said.
The couple tried to return to their home before morning, but they were turned back by high winds and erupting flames. As they made their way back down the mountain roads, flames burned less than 40 yards from their vehicle.
Gusts of up to 60 mph grounded firefighting helicopters and made it difficult for firefighters to approach Caughlin Ranch, the affluent subdivision bordering pine-forested hills where the fire likely began after 12:30 a.m.
Source: csmonitor.com