To any parent who's argued with a child over shutting off a video game, John Morrissey's Game Doctor Video Game Timer may sound like salvation.

The 50th anniversary of the first two American combat casualties of the Vietnam War will be marked Wednesday (July 8) at the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.

With the 2009 college football season quickly approaching, I find it hard to believe Tommy Bowden, Tommy Tuberville and Phil Fulmer won't be roaming sidelines this year.

Covering football in the South, those names, with 362 career victories among them, have been staples this decade and beyond.

"Fourth of July - Reflection and Renewal"

by Arthur I. Cyr

The Fourth of July celebrates community, local as well as national. Parades featuring people in uniform -- scouts, firefighters and police as well as the military and others -- traditionally are a fixture. Military uniforms remind us of the role of war in our history -- and our present.

Robert Taylor's career is a non-stop game of cat and mouse.

And if the retired Miami Beach detective is the cat, the mice are international crooks and jewel thieves.

Taylor, 55, is the director of operations for the South American Theft Group Intelligence Network (SATGIN), an East Coast nonprofit dedicated to tracking organized crime rings from south of the border.

Bob Powell was armed with a slingshot that dark night when he went to do surveillance on a reported moonshine operation.

"BATTLE FOR THE SUN," Placebo (Vagrant)

After five years of living about an hour's drive away, the eldest is boomeranging back our way to live in new digs that are practically within spitting distance.

OK, that's a slight exaggeration. It's more like walking distance.

For business owner Greg Mesaros, "social shopping" is a win for online buyers and sellers.

His Tampa, Fla.-based software company, eWinWin, develops Web applications to help online merchants promote social shopping, a practice of consulting with other shoppers before, during and after making a purchase.

For just the second time since the Great Depression, California began paying some of its bills with IOUs this week, as this year's version of the state's annual budget battle dragged on.

The IOUs began going out a few hours after state financial officials set a 3.75 percent interest rate on them Friday, along with a redemption date of Oct. 2.