The James Logan Courier

By Donald Munro
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

Nitpicky viewers will love the chipper opening scene of "Hancock." As the film's initial action sequence — which features Will Smith's airborne superhero character wrecking cars, thrashing highways and wiping out several hundred thousand square feet of office space as he brings a group of thugs to justice — comes to an end, a news-reporter voiceover informs us of the price tag for the mayhem: a whopping $9 million. A personal record!

No wonder the taxpaying public is irked at Hancock, the superhero who can't seem to limit his collateral damage even as he fights crime. Finally, a film for the grouch in the bunch who pesters his fellow moviegoers afterward by asking such questions as: "But who pays for all the broken stuff?"

By Tom Horgen
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT)

In this weekend's potential blockbuster "Wanted," Morgan Freeman hands a gun to the film's reluctant antihero and orders him to shoot the wings — and just the wings — off a bunch of houseflies. Several slow-motion gunshots later, the bugs fall to the floor, wingless.

Preposterous? What do you expect from a movie that began life as a comic book? But when J.G. Jones, the original artist, saw the scene, he geeked out like one of those fanboys who fawn over him at comic conventions:

"I got a little excited, like: 'Hey wait, that's right out of the book — I drew that!'"

By James P. Miller
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

CHICAGO — U.S. employers chopped 62,000 workers from their payrolls in June, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the sixth consecutive month in which the nation's stumbling economy has lost jobs.

The jobless rate was 5.5 percent, unchanged from May but significantly higher than the 4.6 percent level of a year ago. Many experts expect unemployment to climb above 6 percent by early 2009. In addition, the already soft reports from April and May were revised downward, indicating further weakness in the job market.

From wikipedia:
Dr. Pilar Barbosa de Rosario (July 4, 1898-January 22, 1997) was an educator, historian and political activist.

Barbosa born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, was the daughter of Jose Celso Barbosa, also known as the "Father of the Puerto Rican Pro-Statehood Movement". Her father was a member of the Puerto Rican Senate from 1917-1921. Barbosa received her primary and secondary education in Bayamon and was exposed to politics at a young age. As a teenager she enjoyed teaching others. After she graduated from high school, she enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico.

Read Pilar Barbosa's obituary in the New York Times.