| Dear Santa, please bring me safe toys
Couple that with a sagging economy, a diving Dow, record home foreclosures and leaping living expenses for everything from gasoline to milk to prescriptions; it could mean a blue Christmas for America's children.Or at the very least a challenging holiday season for parents, grandparents and Santa Claus, not to mention retailers and manufacturers.Parents are scared. Buyers are leery — what's to say their gift won't be the next on the list of recalls. No one wants to be the one who bought the killer toy — literally."Maybe this is the year of the puppy," quips Donald Mays, senior director for product safety planning at Consumer Reports.Of course, he is joking.But he also touches a very sensitive nerve for the 2007 holidays.Realistically, very few American parents will permit their children to wake up to a toyless Christmas and Hanukkah, said Jonathan Samet, publisher of The Toy Insider (www.thetoyinsider.com)."Christmas is going to come.
Mormons look to the future with Monson
Monson is an affable, open-minded leader who was an ally in interfaith activities, said Archbishop George H. Niederauer of the Catholic Diocese of San Francisco. "Whenever we had questions or concerns about the community, we would walk down to his office," said Niederauer, Utah's Catholic bishop until February 2006. "He always made time for us." John W. Gallivan goes one step farther in describing Monson's outreach. "More than being tolerant of persons of other faiths, he abides by the golden rule of 'Live and let live,' " said Gallivan, retired publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune. Gallivan tells how Monson once rode the Concorde, the supersonic plane capable of crossing the ocean in a couple of hours. Upon deplaning in New York City, every passenger received a gift -- a half pint of whiskey.
Why the Giants Shouldn't Be in the Super Bowl and Ways They Can Win It
Not forever, as it turns outnot if they can win the Super Bowl. As late as December 16, the home fans booed them in a 22-10 loss to the Washington Redskins at the Meadowlands. Coughlin's crew doesn't perform well in the hometown spotlight; these Giants are the first Super Bowl team in NFL history with a losing record at home. Throughout his 12-year pro coaching career, Tom Coughlin has given a perfect imitation of someone who is both in charge and out of control, with the result that the Giantsone of the most talented teams in the leaguehave also been the most erratic, forever changing the way of their errors without changing the error of their ways. Things got so bad last year that The Washington Post's Mark Maske wrote, when Coughlin accused the media of being a distraction: "What the media was distracting Coughlin's players from .
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