The cherry on top is that Stanford also announced it was expanding financial aid. The university said that no parents with an annual income and typical assets of less than $125,000 will have to pay a single cent toward tuition. The threshold for this aid was previously $100,000.

Stanford also said it will offer free room and board -- in addition to free tuition -- for those making less than $65,000, raised from the previous $60,000 threshold.

Without financial aid, annual costs for a typical Stanford student run about $65,000, including yearly tuition at more than $45,000.

Related: 100 students refuse to pay their loans

"Our highest priority is that Stanford remain affordable and accessible to the most talented students, regardless of their financial circumstances," Stanford provost John Etchemendy said in a statement.

As it stands, the school said that 77% of its undergraduate students graduate with no student debt.

Stanford, which came in fourth place in U.S. News and World Report's national university rankings, admitted just about 5% of applicants. A record 42,487 students applied. About 16% of the admitted class are the first in their families to go to college.

Related: Private colleges with the biggest payoff

Stanford isn't the only elite school to offer such financial aid packages. At Harvard, parents making less than $65,000 are not expected to contribute. Families making between $65,000 and $150,000 contribute from 0-10% of their income.

Like Harvard and Stanford, Yale parents making less than $65,000 do not have to contribute to tuition. Beyond that, Yale subtracts a family contribution from the cost of tuition, room and board, books and personal expenses, and will meet 100% of demonstrated financial need.

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Stanford offers free tuition for this group

The cherry on top is that Stanford also announced it was expanding financial aid. The university said that no parents with an annual income and typical assets of less than $125,000 will have to pay a single cent toward tuition. The threshold for this aid was previously $100,000.

Stanford also said it will offer free room and board -- in addition to free tuition -- for those making less than $65,000, raised from the previous $60,000 threshold.

Without financial aid, annual costs for a typical Stanford student run about $65,000, including yearly tuition at more than $45,000.

Related: 100 students refuse to pay their loans

"Our highest priority is that Stanford remain affordable and accessible to the most talented students, regardless of their financial circumstances," Stanford provost John Etchemendy said in a statement.

As it stands, the school said that 77% of its undergraduate students graduate with no student debt.

Stanford, which came in fourth place in U.S. News and World Report's national university rankings, admitted just about 5% of applicants. A record 42,487 students applied. About 16% of the admitted class are the first in their families to go to college.

Related: Private colleges with the biggest payoff

Stanford isn't the only elite school to offer such financial aid packages. At Harvard, parents making less than $65,000 are not expected to contribute. Families making between $65,000 and $150,000 contribute from 0-10% of their income.

Like Harvard and Stanford, Yale parents making less than $65,000 do not have to contribute to tuition. Beyond that, Yale subtracts a family contribution from the cost of tuition, room and board, books and personal expenses, and will meet 100% of demonstrated financial need.

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Stanford offers free tuition for families making less than $125,000

George and Amal submitted plans for a 12-seater cinema, as part of upgrades to theirBerkshire mansion Property expert says media rooms 'expected' in homes over 10million andcan cost anything up to 100,000 Clooneys will need to choose lighting, interior, seating and an AV system for their cosy space

By Naomi Greenaway for MailOnline

Published: 02:28 EST, 1 April 2015 | Updated: 05:06 EST, 1 April 2015

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George and Amal submitted plans to their council for a 12-seater home cinema

They're newlyweds settling down in their dream home, and this weekend it was reported that George and Amal Clooney have submitted plans to improve their 10million Berkshire mansion - which include the addition of a 12-seater cinema.

While this may seem extravagant, according to industry experts, a cinema room is now an 'expected' luxury in properties worth over 10million.

Robert Osborn, co-founding director of top luxury property developerConsero London explained: 'Home cinemas are a growing requirement, particularly for brand new or newly refurbished properties.'

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The real cost of George and Amal Clooney's home cinema in their 10m mansion

Metros book of safety rules for rail operations runs more than 700 pages, a manual so thick that some transit employees refer to it by a nickname: the Brick.

In January after a deadly smoke event in a subway tunnel revealed problems with Metros emergency preparedness a fat new paragraph was added.

The insert warns, in part:

While in the control center, persons should refrain from shouting or becoming involved in loud cross-chatter between consoles/workstations.

The 108-word insert was directed at employees of the Rail Operations Control Center, or the ROCC, where workers monitor the second-busiest U.S. subway, governing the movements of trains.

During a crisis such as the event in which scores of rail passengers were caught in a smoke-filled tunnel outside LEnfant Plaza, the ROCCs role is to calmly and proficiently help direct Metros immediate response.

On Jan.12, however, the center apparently contributed to the chaos.

Moments after a Virginia-bound Yellow Line train left the station at LEnfant Plaza that afternoon, it encountered heavy smoke in the tunnel and stopped. Amid a subsequent cascade of mechanical and communications failures, the six-car train remained stationary as sickened riders, coughing and gasping for air, waited more than 30minutes for help to arrive. One passenger, 61-year-old Carol Glover, died of smoke inhalation.

How the controllers and supervisors based in the ROCCs Landover offices conducted themselves that day, after an electrical malfunction on the tracks generated a massive volume of smoke, is one of many aspects of the crisis under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Although the NTSB and Metro officials have declined to comment on the performance of the ROCC whose director retired in February the instructions added to the Brick on Jan.21 suggest there were problems that day:

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Addition to Metro safety manual suggests problems at control center

UK Provinces continue to overshadow

HotStats UK Chain Hotels Market Review February 2015

Hotels in the UK Provinces continued to post positive year-on-year movements across all key performance indicators in February, with the largest increase recorded in gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR). Once again, this growth outshined London's results which showed a general decline with average room rate (ARR) being the only exception, according to the latest data from HotStats.

The North East was among the best performing regions and contributed to the positive bottom-line performance of the Provinces by registering a 20.7% increase in GOPPAR. A combined surge in occupancy of 2.6 percentage points and 5.6% in ARR resulted in an uplift in revenue per available room (RevPAR) of an impressive 9.3% to 53.28. With non-rooms revenues also climbing, total revenue per available room (TRevPAR) rose by 6.4% to 93.74, compared to the same period last year.

This increase in revenue performance was further enhanced by effective payroll management and efficient operating cost control, with departmental operating profit per available room (DOPPAR) surging by 9.6% to 49.13. Although overheads per available room rose by 2.7%, profit conversion went up to 22.0% from 19.4% delivering this impressive GOPPAR growth.

RevPAR rises, profits drop in Heathrow hotels

In February, Heathrow hotels demonstrated once again that RevPAR alone can be a misleading indicator of hotel health with a rise of 1.5%, as TRevPAR and GOPPAR levels fell by 0.5% and 0.6% respectively, according to the latest data from HotStats.

A surge in demand of 0.9 percentage points with a 0.3% increase in ARR delivered the RevPAR growth. In addition, travel agency commission per occupied room reduced by 4.3% to 4.72. However, a general decrease in non-rooms revenue per available room from food (-6.0%) and beverage (-0.2%) led TRevPAR levels to decline to 82.84 (-0.5%). While hoteliers managed to marginally lessen payroll costs, a 1.0% increase in overheads per available room further impacted the GOPPAR decline of 0.6% to 24.55, representing a gross profit conversion of 29.6% for the month.

Manchester performs

Manchester hotels recorded a strong February with TRevPAR and GOPPAR levels rising by 12.9% and 30.3% respectively, according to the latest data from HotStats.

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HotStats UK Chain Hotels Market Review February 2015

Yvette Cormier claims she suffered emotional damage after sharing a gym locker room with a trans woman who entered briefly to hang up her coat.

Carlotta Sklodowska (left); Yvette Cormier

Yvette Cormier, the Midland, Mich., resident who received national attention after her Planet Fitness membership was revoked following repeated complaints about seeing at trans woman in the women's locker room, is suing the fitness chain, reportsThe Saginaw News.

Claiming, among other assertions, that she experienced emotional harm, damage to her reputation, invasion of privacy, and breach of contract, Cormier is seeking more than $25,000 in retribution in Midland County Circuit Court. Her suit relates to the March 4 cancellation of her gym membership, a decision the Planet Fitness Midland location's management made in line with its "no judgment" nondiscrimination policy which includes allowing gym-goers to use the locker room that accords with their "sincere, self-reported gender."

Cormier, 48, says she was unaware of this policy when she spotted someone she thought was a "man" local transgender woman Carlotta Sklodowska in the women's locker room February 28. After being informed by her gym's staffas well as the Planet Fitness national headquarters that the woman in question had not violated any policies, Cormier returned to the gym the for four consecutive days to "warn" other cisgender (nontrans) women that trans women were allowed to share the women's facilities. On the fourth day, Cormier was told by staff that, due to her behavior, she no longer had a membership.

Planet Fitness's decision made headlines nationally, prompting Sklodowskato come forward to The Saginaw News to clarify that she meant no harm. "I'm not actually a member. I was there was a guest of my friends," she said, adding that she had asked whether she could use the women's locker room prior to entering and had only used the facilities to hanging up her coat and purse. The gym's policy would still have protected her had she used the locker rooms to change clothing.

Responding to Planet Fitness's claim that her behavior had been "inappropriate and disruptive to other members, [in] violation of the membership agreement," Cormier told the media she acted of concern for her own safety and that of other cisgender women and children a claim she repeats in her lawsuit.

"I feel [the policy] is kind of one-sided. I feel I am the one who is being punished," she explained to theNews,noting that she wished the policy had been made explicit to her when she signed up for a gym membership. She later added to CNN, "I didn't go out to specifically bash a transgender person that day. I was taken aback by the situation. This is about me and how I felt unsafe. I should feel safe in there."

Cormier's safety claims draw on imagery often decried by trans advocates as inflammatory and baseless: that of predatory trans women who enter public women's facilities to threaten others' safety or privacy. In reality, however, trans people far more often face serious safety issues in public bathrooms and locker rooms and are more likely than their cisgender peers to be harassed or physically attacked in gender-segregated facilities.

Cormier's lawsuit was filed by Kallman Legal Group the same week the the Michigan Civil Rights Commission endorsed model legislation for statewide nondiscrimination protections that would include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, notes Zack Ford atThinkProgress. The commission had already begun urging legislators in November to add sexual orientation to Michigan's Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act a move the House considered in December (in addition to a bill that would add gender identity protections as well), but ultimately failed to pass, according to ThinkProgress. Cormier's lawyers state in a press release that her case "further illustrates the potential harm caused by adding the proposed new categories of sexual orientation/gender identity" to the Civil Rights Act.

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Michigan Woman Sues Planet Fitness Over Trans-Inclusive Locker Room

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A new favorite. Im serious. This was GOOD! I have made it before with a chocolate frosting but this time for Purim, I made it with a basic creamy white frosting.

This cake has a delicious deep yellow cake flavor and yet is spongy too. What I LOVE about the quantity of the batter is that it makes three 9 round cakes! This means you can double the cakes for a nice height (and freeze the 3rd:) or triple them for an over the top height OR you can slice each cake in half and layer them into a 6 layer cake.the ultimate decadent cake experience!

(I have done this before for Succos and I must say, our guests were speechless as I cut slices of 6 layered cake filled with chocolate frosting. Definitely a sweet way to end the meal!)

The link to the original recipe is here so you can see which frosting they used and how it looks as a 6 layer cake)

Bon Appetite Original Recipe

Enjoy! I think this one will be a favorite in your home too!

Arrange racks in upper and lower thirds of oven; preheat to 350. Coat cake pans with nonstick spray. Line bottom of pans with parchment-paper rounds; coat paper. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until no lumps remain. Combine buttermilk, oil, and vanilla in a medium bowl.

Combine sugar, butter, and brown sugar in another large bowl. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean. Using an electric mixer, beat butter mixture until light and fluffy, 34 minutes. Add yolks and eggs one at a time, beating to blend between additions and occasionally scraping down sides and bottom of bowl.

Continued here:
chana's art room | where colors of the soul come to life

A new bar at the Line hotel in Koreatown just opened and it fulfills our need for nostalgia and kitsch. Break Room 86 is a magical and straight-up cool bar where you enter through a retro vending machine and get transported to the '80s.

In the same vein as Good Times at Davey Wayne's and La Descarga, Houston Hospitality has done it again: created an immersive bar experience where you feel like you're in another country or decade. Break Room 86 is the newest addition to The Line hotel's growing hip bar and food scene, and it's all about the impeccable '80s touches that make us feel giddy in this space.

LAist visited Break Room 86 on opening night on Tuesday. To get into the bar, you walk a long way through a loading dock off Ardmore Ave. and Wilshire Blvd. and end up at a snack machine that also just so happens to double as a door to Break Room 86. Suddenly, you're in a reddish and dimly-lit bar with leather booths, gig equipment boxes as coffee tables, and tiled walls and ceiling as if you're in a New York subway station. Music from the likes of Prince, Tears for Fears and Simple Minds is blasting while folks dance in front of stacked vintage TVs showing retro '80s videos. The walls are covered with cassette tapes, old stereos, speakers and band posters. You can toss some quarters into the vintage arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga that sit in a corner of the room. And there's even a wall lined with red lockers to make you feel like you might be in a scene from The Breakfast Club in real life.

Fitting in with Koreatown culture, Break Room 86 also has four karaoke rooms for groups of 10 to 20 people that guests can rent out. Even getting into those rooms is like a trip through Narnia. One of the entrances is through the wall of an old telephone booth. We'll leave it to you to find the other ones. Once inside, you'll find a cozy room that feels like somebody's den in the Midwest, with vintage album covers lining the walls and neon signs featuring things like the Ghostbusters logo. Apparently, you can also play games from the Atari console in there. As expected though, these karaoke rooms don't come cheap and can go from $150 per hour to $1,500 all night depending on how many people you bring along with you.

As for their craft cocktailsa menu helmed by Houston Hospitality beverage director Joe Swifkathey are new spins on colorful and sugary sweet and fruity drinks popular in the '80s. Their Rock-It Pop drink (one of our favorites) is a throwback to the red-white-and-blue rocket popsicles. They also have drinks with names like Cherry Chapstickcherry-infused Encanto piscoand Purple Rain, made with Pernod absinthe. True to '80s fashion (a la 1988 Tom Cruise flick Cocktail), they even have a bartender there doing some impressive flair cocktail tricks, like flipping bottles around in the air and balancing glassware.

Break Room 86 also has flavored wine coolers to bring you back to your Boone's Farm days that arrive in glass flasks. The best part is that you can also get alcoholic Push-Up Pops at the bar as well. Fair warning, after enough sugary drinks, you might find yourself with a heinous hangover. However, you can wash that all down with some childhood snacks like Pop Tarts, Cup O'Noodles and Cheez Balls that you can get at the bar. And since it's all about the details with twin brothers Mark and Johnnie Houston, who are the masterminds behind the bar, even the cocktail menus are inside of old VHS boxes with films like The Lost Boys or Ferris Bueller's Day Off on the covers.

One of the things I was most amused by were the live performances that guests can expect on some busy nights. Behind the bar is a stage on hydraulics that seems to appear out of thin air. A breakdancing crew came out and helicoptered to When In Rome's "The Promise":

And then a Michael Jackson impersonator came out moonwalking:

When I turned around for a split second after the performance, the stage seemed like it disappeared. Another mysterious and otherworldly feel to Break Room 86.

Break Room 86 is located at 630 S. Ardmore Ave., Koreatown, (213) 368-3056. It's open Tuesday through Saturdays from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

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Photos: The New '80s Bar That You Enter Through A Vending Machine

If Community had a motto itd probably be something like More with less. That is, if it isnt Six seasons and a movie or a quote from Bloodsport or Weird, Passionate, and Gross translated into Latin. Actually, there are probably about as many possible mantras for the show as there are classes in Ruffles the Dogs course loadincluding Greendales own Youve already been acceptedbut suffice it to say a certain narrative thriftiness has always been one of the big guns in Harmon & Co.s arsenal.

The show makes varied use of its spaces, finding all the nooks and crannies of storytelling they can in Greendales impossible geography. The college is like a TARDIS, or whatever off-brand police box used by Inspector Spacetimeits a lot bigger on the inside. Similarly, the show can stuff a lot of story into a space as small as the meeting room. Two of the series best episodes are bottle episodesthe paired bookends Cooperative Calligraphy and CooperativePolygraphyrelying on bedrock of the shows solid character interactions over any conceptual or meta razzle-dazzle. So when the third episode of the sixth season turns out to be a near-bottle episoderallying the troops in the library as an emergency response team for an attack ad put on the air by those snobby neer-do-wells over at City Collegeit also serves as a good point to assess the structural integrity of the cast now that a few load-bearing characters have been switched out for newer, less stress-tested replacements.

It turns out the center can hold. I thought the episode was the quickest, strongest, and funniest half-hour of the three so-far aired from Yahoos new season. Tasked with combating the image that Greendale is the kind of incompetent, anarchic place that would give a dog a degree, the group runs into trouble with the fact that Greendale is exactly the kind of incompetent, anarchic place that would give a dog a degree. The meeting room is given yet another makeoverthis time a central nervous system of operations for political strategizing straight out of The War Roomand the group splits off into more manageable groups. Some are united by flimsier bonds than others: Elroy shrugs Shes wearing my pants! when he runs off with a sloppy drunk Britta, but Annie and Frankie self-separate to compare and contrast their twin Type-A personalities.

Paget Brewster is turning out to be an interesting addition to the stew. Shes still partly the outsider commenting on the show after five seasons of Flanderization (her line Did we give a degree to a dog? is perfectly deadpan), but shes also revealing individual specificities. While shes as fastidious and checklist-oriented as Annie, shes also a hard-nosed pragmatist who doesnt have time for Annies rose-tinted optimism. Hope is pouting in advance, she says, dousing the fire in Annies heart with a bucket of cold, wet truth. Hope is faiths richer bitchier sister. Hope is the deformed attic-bound incest monster offspring of entitlement and fear.

They eventually find a way to get the ad pulled on a technicality. Ruffles overdue fees at the library (mostly Jack London books and the occasional shameful Cat Fancy) prevented him from actually receiving a degree, despite being enrolled in dozens of classes. But while this counts as a win (as Frankie puts it, Victory, you know within the context of Greendale), Annie sees it as an opportunity to take a cold hard look at themselves and decide whether they really should be so proud about being at a school where a dog only almost graduated with a 28-dog-year degree. Its hard not to read self-commentary into pretty much every second of Community, and here Annies words almost seem to serve as a reminder to the shows creators that silliness will only get you so far, a preemptive (even anxious) course-correction and reminder that there should always be a there there.

Add into all this the Deans text correspondence with a Tokyo schoolboy pretending to be Jeff, Brittas 90s-style music video drunken hallucination, and Keith Davids look of unfiltered disgust when Frankie says she doesnt own a TV, and youve got a a solid bottle-and-a-half episode of Community worth its weight in canned olives.

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'Community' recap: 'Basic Crisis Room Decorum'

MANCHESTER Manchester VA Medical Center recently celebrated the opening of a veterans Integrated Health Care addition with a ribbon-cutting.

The new addition offers space to support delivery of integrated health care services to veterans.

It is our mission to honor Americas veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and well-being, said Medical Center Director Tammy Krueger. Manchester VAMC is strengthening its foundation, and adding key building blocks that will continue to enhance veterans experiences at the medical center.

Gov. Maggie Hassan and U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta, R-N.H., attended and shared remarks. The program was opened by Jorg Dreusicke, veteran and 6th District commander, Department of New Hampshire VFW, who led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The new addition is home to Nurse First (expedited care provided by a registered nurse to resolve minor health concerns), Primary Care and Mental Health.

It offers state-of-the-art technology with a group treatment conference room including secure telehealth video capability allowing veterans to receive care remotely.

The medical center also announced its involvement as a pilot site for a new model of care for veterans that are chronically homeless. Called Homeless Primary Aligned Care, it is staffed by a primary care provider, a registered nurse, a social worker, and a peer support specialist.

The team will case manage veterans from homelessness to when they obtain permanent housing. The model of care is meant to be a bridge or transition team to assist until the veteran obtains stability, which is defined as permanent housing.

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VA Medical Center opens addition