(Dayton Daily News) It makes sense that LaRashia Edwards would have an affinity for food.

Her mother, Culpatrice Foster, was raised in a Dayton household where her mother and father used gardening to keep the family of three children strong and connected.

Foster said having her mother introduce her to such things helped her, so she’s passing that on.

At age 9, LaRashia is a budding chef.

When she was 3, LaRashia used to help her mom crack eggs, put bacon on the platter, mix ingredients and pour drinks.

“She liked to help me in the kitchen,” she said. “She took a liking to it.”

So she went on to teach her a bit more over the years. And a chef was born.

“I’m just thankful God gave me a mother,” LaRashia said simply.

LaRashia has been a contestant in a national youth cooking contest, has given a cooking demonstration to kids at Second Street Public Market and hopes to design her own aprons and have a cable-access cooking show.

LaRashia entered The Next Great Chef Contest baking a brownie recipe she created from scratch. It went through five different lists of ingredients and adjustments before it was just perfect.

“I just make my own,” she said. “I don’t get there with a recipe.”

Another hallmark of LaRashia’s cooking is health. She uses Florida crystals instead of refined white sugar. She cooks with organic brown eggs and unsalted butter.

“I want my food to be healthy,” LaRashia said. “I don’t want them to say there is too much fat or too much carbs.”

She’s serious and careful. While making pizza, she put on gloves.

“If you don’t cook with gloves on, you’re touching someone else’s food,” she said.

She spooned tomato sauce onto dough, asked her guest if a pepperoni or plain pizza was requested. She also offered extra pepperoni.

She went back and forth, checking on her dish. And because she’s only 9, mom still helps her with the stove.

After a delicious pizza is eaten, “Then you clean up your mess,” she said.

LaRashia watches all the cooking shows from Rachael Ray to Ming Tsai. She doesn’t get so much from the celebrity cooks as far as technique, but she likes learning about new ingredients. Recently, she learned about cognac and fennel.

Click here to read full story.

By Kim Margolis, Staff Writer (Dayton Daily News)
4:17 PM Thursday, August 20, 2009

Leahcim

From birth to fifty years
Why couldn't he overcome his fears?
Media, fans, grabbing his hands
making ridiculous demands
No more sorrow
No more tomorrow
That man in the mirror you saw
should be wanted by the law
The pain you must have felt
the misery you dealt
I'm sorry you had no help
no one heard you, "YELP"!
Dying within
How do you not sin?
Prescriptive drugs, he didn't know
that one of them would make him go
I'm tired, and now I must go
to a place called heaven
that we all should know.

Written By,
Serena Dudley

Would like to read more from Serena Dudley, logon to POETRY.COM and search poet database.

For appearances & speaking engagements please forward all enquires via email to: Marie40@clearwire.net

NEW YORK (June 29) - Convicted Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday for a fraud so extensive that the judge said he needed to send a message to potential imitators and to victims who demanded harsh punishment.
Scattered applause and whoops broke out in the crowded Manhattan courtroom after U.S. District Judge Denny Chin issued the maximum sentence to the 71-year-old defendant, who said he lives "in a tormented state now, knowing all the pain and suffering I've created."
Chin rejected a request by Madoff's lawyer for leniency and said he disagreed that victims of the Ponzi scheme were seeking mob vengeance. Click here read full juice.

(NCAABASKETBALL) - Jeff Jordan, most famous for being Michael Jordan's son, has decided to hang up the high-tops -- at least as far as competitive play goes. The 6-foot-1 incoming junior has decided to stop playing basketball and stay at the University of Illinois to concentrate solely on his academics.

Jordan, a player who won over the Illini coaches with his heady play and strong work ethic, was set to be a part of the Illinois rotation this coming season. He, unlike his Dad, was not an offensive threat, concentrating more on being a defensive stopper. Illinois head coach Bruce Weber offered some kind words for their now dearly departed.
"Jeff was an invaluable member of our team the past two seasons and I thank him for his contribution to our program," Weber said. "He brought great work ethic to the gym and pushed himself as well as his teammates. We will miss him, but we fully support the decision he has made." Click read full basketball juice.

On June 5, 2007 we reported the mystery person juice - The Scoopy Doop.com will keep this person unexposed for now to avoid any lawsuits. The person has been an Anchor/Reporter for a local Dayton affiliates TV station since 1993, was involved in a automobile accident where the other driver 23 years old was killed. The accident happened in March 2007, NO local TV affiliates or local radio stations ever talked about the incident. A person close to the family tells The Scoopy Doop.com they think it is a cover up because the connections the person has in the Miami Valley. Stay tuned for developments.........

BREAKING NEWS - June 24, 2009

TV anchor faces suit in fatal crash - WHIO-TV news anchor Natasha Williams is facing a wrongful death civil lawsuit filed by the mother of a Moraine man who was killed in March 2007 in Harrison Twp. after his car collided with Williams’ SUV.

According to a Montgomery County sheriff’s investigator’s report, Michael Hugee failed to yield the right of way at 8:54 p.m. Saturday, March 24, 2007, when he attempted to turn left from Valerie Arms Drive onto northbound Philadelphia Drive and was struck by Williams’ vehicle, which was southbound on Philadelphia.

Hugee, 23, was taken to Miami Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead from blunt force trauma to his chest.

Williams, 43, and her two children were unhurt. After an investigation that lasted more than seven months, the case was closed with no charges against Williams.

“Hopefully, as tragic as it is, the situation will resolve itself,” Williams said in an interview with the Dayton Daily News on Monday, June 22.

Williams is married to Joey Williams, president of Chase Bank and a Dayton city commissioner.

In her March 20, 2009, lawsuit, Hugee’s mother, Mona Dello-Stritto, blamed the crash on “Williams’ excessive speed and inattention,” and said, “had Williams been traveling the posted speed, she would have been able to avoid the collision.”

Late last week, Hugee’s insurance company, Financial Indemnity Co., a co-defendant in the civil lawsuit, said in legal papers that it shouldn’t be liable for monetary damages because Hugee’s actions caused or contributed to the injuries.

But the company said that if it is found liable, it should be able to recover from Williams any money it is required to pay, “for the reason that it was the negligence of defendant Natasha Williams that proximately caused the damages and injuries referred to in plaintiff’s complaint.”

The sheriff’s investigation found that the air bag control module in Williams’ SUV recorded she was driving 57 mph in a 40 mph zone two seconds before the accident, when she first applied the brakes. A momentum analysis by the sheriff’s office set Williams’ speed at 51 mph and Hugee’s at 15 mph. Williams was not issued a speeding ticket in the fatal crash. Williams told deputies her speed was about 40 mph.

Deputy Josh Evers’ report indicates Hugee may not have been wearing his contact lenses and may have been using his cell phone when the crash occurred. His autopsy found the presence of the sedative Midazolam and a blood-alcohol level of 0.04 percent, under the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

A test showed Williams had no alcohol in her bloodstream. She told officers she wasn’t taking any medication.

Deputies presented their investigation results to Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck’s office on July 20, 2007. Prosecutors asked for further investigation, including a review of Williams’ cell phone records.

When Evers asked Williams for the phone records, he wrote, “Williams said she is going to call her attorney because someone told her there would be no charges in this case and when asked who told her this, she refused to say.”

In Monday’s interview, Williams again declined to say who told her she would not face charges. “The fact that the young man had been drinking, was talking on his cell phone and he took my right-of-way, that’s where the information came from,” she said.

Sheriff Phil Plummer said his deputies typically don’t offer information about charges because the prosecutor’s office decides whether charges are filed.

Prosecutor’s spokesman Gregory Flannagan said: “That’s obviously not something we would’ve said, because that decision hadn’t been made yet.”

Evers got a subpoena for the phone records, which show Williams made a two-minute call to her husband’s cell phone, then called 911.

A three-prosecutor panel on Nov. 8, 2007, determined there was insufficient evidence to support a felony charge, according to Evers’ report. Evers took the case to Vandalia City Prosecutor Claudia Turrell, who told the Daily News that she declined to bring misdemeanor charges because Williams’ speed was not so excessive as to outweigh Hugee’s failure to yield.

Records from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and area municipal courts show Williams has had 15 speeding violations since 1996, including one since the fatal accident. She also was cited, in 1999, for following too close. BMV records show she has had three accidents since 2001, including one since the fatality.

AOL- A three-letter typo has slashed years off a prison sentence for a repeat drug offender in Ohio. Calvin Eugene Wells of Akron was sentenced in October 2005 to 10 years in prison after being convicted of possessing more than 100 grams of cocaine, a first-degree felony.
Or so it seemed. Skip over this content Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
Calvin Eugene Wells was originally sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in prison for his conviction on a felony drug charge.

While serving his time, Wells discovered a stray word on the verdict form signed by the jurors who convicted him in Summit County Common Pleas Court. The form, typed up by a court or prosecutor's office employee, read:

"We, the Jury, find the Defendant Guilty of the offense of POSSESSION OF CRACK COCAINE.
"We, the jury, further find that the amount of crack cocaine WAS in the amount exceeding ten one hundred (100) grams as charged in the indictment." The word "ten" in the second sentence is extraneous. Wells brought the error to a succession of attorneys' attention, but no one managed to turn it to his advantage until Jason Desiderio was appointed to represent him.

Our new toolbar integrates latest news into your Web browser and installs in seconds. Download It Now "I have never seen anything like this in my life, where just attorney after attorney did nothing," Desiderio said. "I think he had four appellate attorneys, and one appeal ... It's a very, very bizarre case."
Under Ohio law, for a person to be found guilty of a higher-level felony, the jury form must state either the degree of the offense or the circumstances that would make it a higher offense. The form's second sentence apparently was an attempt to state those circumstances, but the stray word muddled the meaning, Desiderio said.
A three-judge panel of the Ohio Court of Appeals unanimously agreed.
"The form is unclear, and we cannot determine what the jury understood 'ten one hundred (100) grams' to mean," Judge Eve Belfance wrote in the court's decision. "It certainly could have meant an amount exceeding one hundred grams, but it is possible the jury believed the form actually meant an amount exceeding less than one gram."
The uncertainty meant Wells could be convicted of nothing more than a fifth-degree felony, the judges ruled. The maximum sentence for a fifth-degree felony is one year, and Wells already had served four. Game over. But not quite. It seems Wells is wanted in Morris County, New Jersey, on a November 2000 sheriff's warrant for violating his probation for drug and weapons convictions. The sheriff is seeking extradition, spokeswoman Staci Santucci said. It's unlikely he'll be able to avoid it, said Desiderio, who will not be able to represent Wells because he's not licensed in New Jersey.
The original judge in the Ohio case, James R. Williams, is retired. The Summit County prosecutor's office did not return calls seeking comment on Wells' case.
"At the end of the day, he was convicted, and I understand that some people are going to feel upset that he's essentially out six years earlier than anyone anticipated," Desiderio said.
"But in our system, we give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, and we do that for good reason. And in here there's a statutory mandate to ensure that we know what we're convicting people of and we know why we're doing it. And that mandate wasn't met."