| Supercars that will spoil you
Buyers of ultra-high-end cars have traditionally fallen into one of two camps: performance or luxury. There are the thrill seekers, strapped into million-dollar Bugatti Veyrons, zooming down the autobahn at 200-plus mph. And then there's the chauffeured set, lounging in the backseats of Rolls-Royce Phantoms while sipping glasses of Cristal. Judging by the latest crop of supercars to hit the market, automakers are betting more big-spenders fall somewhere in between the two extremes. You no longer have to choose between ultra-fast acceleration and hand-stitched comfort. In some new models, you get the best of both worlds. No car embodies the Goldilocks approach better than Fiat's Maserati GranTurismo, a supercar that made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show. A sportier update of the four-door Quattroporte, the Pininfarina-designed GranTurismo is more compact and more curvaceous than its predecessor, with a wider grille.
Maserati roars back into lead
FIFTY years ago the great racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio called a halt to his career at the age of 47. He retired at the top, Formula 1 world champion for the fifth time in 1957. His last race, the 1958 French Grand Prix, was in a Maserati 250F and it marked the end of the road for the Maserati racing team, which had been more than a match for Ferrari, its Italian compatriot. For all its success, Maserati, then owned by the Orsi family, had run out of money. Though it subsequently raced sports cars, Maserati continued to decline. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and new shareholders and owners came and went until it fell into the hands of Fiat, Italy’s automotive giant, in 1993. After wondering what to do about a company with an exciting name that was making a small number of cars with a poor reputation for reliability, Fiat entrusted the management of Maserati to Ferrari, which it had owned since 1988.
Big, big win for Romney
The morning of February 6 will be the first chance to do some serious analysis on the republican side. I fully agree with Glenns late post yesterday Huckabee continues to show some strength, and I am near the point where I feel a need to speak against him. He is the only viable republican candidate against whom I have any serious reservations. .
A history of the Daytona 500
Relive the history of the Daytona 500 with a look at the first 49 Daytona 500s. The 50th race is Sunday, Feb. 17. Race 1
Feb. 22, 1959
Top 3: Lee Petty, Johnny Beauchamp, Charley Griffith.
Margin of victory: 2 feet.
Synopsis: The iconic photo of Lee Petty, Johnny Beauchamp and the lapped car of Joe Weatherly all approaching the finish line side-by-side is as much a part of NASCAR as the picture of Ty Cobb sliding into third is to baseball. Beauchamp is declared the winner but three days later NASCAR gives the win to Petty after studying photos of the finish.
Fast facts: No cautions. ... Only two of the 59 cars that start the race finish on the lead lap. ... 28 cars fail to finish the race. ... The only 500 to feature hard tops and convertibles.
City asks drivers to move cars
City of McCook workers smooth snow-packed ridges in the street and scrape ice from a curb and gutter in the 400 block of West I Tuesday afternoon. Similar work at intersections throughout McCook helped removed debris from catch basins, improving the flow of melting snow and ice along residential curbs. The work came just in time before the next big snow fall, predicted to come in a blizzard today.
(Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette)
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Miller, Sabres blank Panthers
I mean I've had 20 of those (scoring chances) already this year and that's the first one I got in. So, it was nice but, like I said, I'm more worried about winning. That's three in a row and we'll go for four in Atlanta." Tomas Vokoun stopped 40-of-41 shots for the Panthers, who have dropped two straight and six of eight overall. Florida played its 29th one-goal game of the season, falling to 13-11-5. The Panthers, though in fourth place, remain just five points back of idle Carolina for first place in the Southeast Division. In the dying seconds of the first period, Florida's Richard Zednik was sent to the penalty box for a holding the stick infraction. The power play carried over to the middle frame, where the Sabres took full advantage. Vokoun stopped Jason Pominville's blast from the point, but Vanek scooped up the rebound and deposited the puck in the back of the net 40 seconds into the frame.
Salvador and Mayers formed an instant bond
Bryce Salvador and Jamal Mayers were aspiring NHL athletes in the late 1990s, playing for the Blues' minor-league affiliate in Worcester, Mass. The first time they met might have been a hard hit on the ice, but the details are fuzzy more than a decade later.
In what Salvador remembers as the unofficial beginning of their friendship, Mayers was showing him how to drink a glass of wine at a postgame dinner.
"He was telling me how to smell it and how to suck it through my teeth," Salvador said, laughing. "I'm thinking, 'Holy cow, what's this guy all about? This guy likes his wine a little too much. Maybe he's a bit out of my league.'"
To the contrary, Salvador and Mayers would discover through personal exploration that they had more in common than either could have imagined.
What the gaffer said
OffatEleven looks at Steve Coppells post match thoughts after the defeat to Aston Villa left us deep in relegation trouble. "I think today if you'd looked at the league table before the game, you're conclusion after the game would be that there's a team going for Europe and a team in the bottom three so the difference was there," "They had the edge, but from a fight perspective, from an effort perspective, we couldn't ask for anymore. "We just need to be better, we need to be more competitive and we need to push these teams a little bit closer. "I do feel that there's more potential there, there's more to come from them. "For whatever reason we're not playing to our optimum at the moment and now it takes a collective effort, with direction from me, to get ourselves out of this." Kalifa Cisse was harshly punished for handball in the first half and conceded a spot kick but Coppell feels justice was done, "Well to be honest I thought it was poetic justice because if any player tried to get his arm out of the way it was (Kalifa) Cisse when the player shot it.
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