In today’s tough economy, clothing swaps are an increasingly popular way to expand your wardrobe without expanding your credit-card balance. (There’s even a website, www.clothingswaps.com, with tips and information about swaps nationwide.)

In the Twin Cities,tiffany, there have been at least a couple of large, public swaps held during the past year. But this Saturday, the mother of all local swaps will be taking place in Minneapolis at the Grain Belt Bottling House. Called Alter/Nation,tiffany necklaces, it’s the brainchild of Angie Arner, president/founder of CounterCouture, a local clothing brand that takes fashion’s ultimate wasteful white elephants — bridesmaid dresses — and transforms them into cocktail dresses. (Bridesmaid gowns that are just too ugly to reappear on the cocktail circuit can still be "upcycled" into linings, accessories and "kitschy little promotional pieces," Arner said.)

While other industries are going green, the rag trade has lagged behind, Arner said.

Alter/Nation "aims to counter the wasteful habits of the apparel industry through the creative re-use of an existing clothing surplus."

But helping clothes change hands is only part of the mission for Alter/Nation. It’s not just a green event, but also a fashion event,tiffany money clips, sponsored by Spring MNfashion Week, as well as a DIY event. Those who attend will have an array of opportunities to do hands-on clothing enhancement. If you know your way around a sewing machine, you can alter your finds "live." Local designers, image experts and sewing assistants will be on hand to help you make simple alterations and embellishments.

"We’re here to help people change the way they put clothing on their bodies," Arner said.

There’ll also be a hair, makeup and photo booth, so you can flaunt your fashion finds, a style show and a DJ, plus appetizers from Red Stag Supper Club and, for the legal-age crowd, cocktails by Phillips Prairie Organic Vodka.

Organizers are asking those who plan to attend to RSVP at www.facebook.com/countercouture, but you can show up the day of the event with clothes in hand. There’s also an early drop-off this Thursday evening (Earth Day),discount tiffany, where you can preview the merchandise and pick up vouchers to be used at the event.

Kim Palmer –612-673-4784

ALTER/NATION

What: A clothing swap featuring eco-fashion shows and DIY "styling stations."

When: 1-5 p.m. Sat.

Where: Grain Belt Bottling House, 79 13th Av. NE., Mpls. (Early drop-off 4-7 p.m. Thu. Those who drop off clothes will receive vouchers for each piece donated. Vouchers can be redeemed at the swap.)

Cost: $5 and a bag of clothing/accessories (must be clean, stain-free and undamaged.)

Many consignment stores are busier than ever in this economy. Now even Bibelot gift shop is joining in. Its Como store (2276 Como Av., St. Paul,tiffany bracelets, 651-646-5651, www.bibelotshops.com) is accepting women’s fall/winter clothing in excellent condition. Used clothing (up to 12 items) can be brought to the Como location only. Consignors will be notified within a week if items have been accepted. The new ReWear department is expected to open in mid-July on the second floor.

Bibelot should be applauded for adding consignment as part of its "reuse, recycle, refresh" mission, but it’s disappointing that customers will receive 50 percent of the resale price in store credit, not cash or check. Store credit is more valuable at Bibelot than at many consignment-only shops, but it seems fair to offer more than 50 percent if it’s the only option. Bibelot marketing manager Katie McNamara Howie said the store chose 50 percent after researching the resale industry.

Nordstrom targets men

Just in time for Father’s Day Sunday, Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale for men starts Friday (Mall of America,tiffany necklaces, Bloomington, 952-883-2121, www.nordstrom.com) with savings throughout the department. In the past, it’s been disappointing to see the amount of "special purchase" merchandise brought in, a trick that outlet stores have been using for years. A retailer as revered as Nordstrom ought to save special purchases for its outlet, the Rack. Nordstrom’s department stores have been performing better in a strengthening economy, so the Racks aren’t getting as much "primo" stuff from the full-price stores this year. Shop accordingly.

Garage sales go monthly

American Cancer Society discovery sales (next to Home Depot,tiffany bangles, 6731 Boone Av. N., Brooklyn Park, 651-255-8716, www.cancer.org/mndiscoverysale) continue monthly in lieu of the annual garage sale in October. Occasional sales are a great idea if people can remember to show up. The crowds at the monthly sales so far this year have been less than expected. That’s good news for bargain hunters hoping to beat the crowds.

This month’s sale runs through Saturday and June 24 to 28. Admission is free, and anyone can get 10 percent off if you bring a friend. Items include furniture, housewares, art, kids and adult clothing, new jewelry, small appliances, lawn and garden, sporting goods, building supplies and tools. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday.

John Ewoldt –612-673-7633 or jewoldt@startribune.com. If you spot a deal, share it at www.startribune.com/blogs/dealspotter.

Credit: Star Tribune,tiffany pendants, Minneapolis

With brilliant lighting and buoyant rhythms, the beauty and her beast returned to the stage in Japan 15 years after their first performance. But the Shiki Theatre Company’s real star was its new theater, translated as Shiki Theater: Summer.

The summer theater offers more accessibility and comfort by increasing seats for visitors in wheelchairs and providing special rooms for families with young children who may cry during the show.

Children who are too small to watch the performance from the adult-size chairs can also borrow cushions to sit on.

The Shiki Theatre Company’s "Beauty and the Beast" is a harmonized mix of its actors’ explosive dynamic musical performances and visually appealing stage design.

The company chose this particular show as it appeals to both children and adults.

"When considering the first performance choice,tiffany bracelets, we opted for ‘Beauty and the Beast’ because that was the drama most demanded by our customers," said Nobutsugu Uchida,tiffany key rings, a Shiki Theatre Company spokesman.

"Beauty and the Beast" will be performed until Nov. 30 at Shiki Theatre: Natsu in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward. Tickets cost Yen 3,000-Yen 9,tiffany pendants,800. For more information and schedules, call (03) 5776-6730 or visit www.shiki.gr.jp (English available)

Credit: Japan Times, Tokyo

A tip from a person who had learned of Sherry Halligan’s case from recent news media accounts led the FBI and La Grange police to an apartment in the southwest suburb,tiffany cuff Links, where Halligan gave up without a struggle, authorities said. Police did not disclose the address of the apartment.

Halligan, 51,tiffany necklaces, is charged with the murder of Dennis Campbell, who was found fatally shot in her home in the 1000 block of South 6th Street in La Grange. Cook County prosecutors alleged that during a domestic quarrel on Jan. 30, 2003, Halligan hit Campbell in the chest and then pulled a gun out of a drawer and shot him five times.

After being arrested and released on $50,000 cash bond, Halligan failed to show up for a court appearance in April 2004. A warrant was issued for her arrest.

Her car was found at Midway Airport, and she was sought nationwide, with accounts of the crime featured on the television show "America’s Most Wanted."

In the end, she was captured a few miles from where the 2003 killing took place. Authorities said Halligan had confessed to killing Campbell after turning herself in to La Grange police in 2003. She allegedly had placed her bloody clothes and gun into a plastic bag and dumped them along Interstate 55.

Halligan was being held at the La Grange police station and was to appear in Bond Court in Bridgeview on Saturday. She was charged with murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Chicago and Cook County police assisted in the investigation.

Arthur Bilek,tiffany money clips, executive vice president of the Chicago Crime Commission,tiffany key rings, said that Halligan was the only suburban person to make the commission’s top 10 list.

Credit: Chicago Tribune

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"We appreciate and value our clients’ and employees’ opinions as they help achieve our mission of providing outstanding service," Founder and President Bill Nasgovitz said. "These awards demonstrate Heartland’s continuous focus on maintaining a distinguished customer experience."

Each Engagement Award is scored using a top-down analysis survey designed by loyalty experts to measure attitudes and intentions of customers or employees. Top scores were broken up into two different categories: overall score for 2009, and an honorable mention for improvement in engagement score from first half of 2009 to the second half of 2009.

Allegiance, Inc., a leading provider of Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) solutions, helps organizations drive growth and increase profitability through improved loyalty and engagement.

"Companies that understand the importance of engaging employees and customers are more successful and enjoy faster growth," said Adam Edmunds,tiffany bracelets, CEO of Allegiance. "We commend Heartland Advisors, Inc. for going beyond the ordinary in opening feedback channels with their employees and customers and being responsive to their needs."

About Heartland

Heartland Advisors, Inc. is an independently owned Milwaukee-based firm established in 1983 and renowned as America’s Value Investor(R). As of March 31, 2010, the firm managed $3.5 billion for institutional and high net worth clients and the Heartland family of value-driven mutual funds, which include the Heartland Value Fund (Investor: HRTVX),tiffany pendants, Heartland Value Plus Fund (Investor: HRVIX) and Heartland Select Value Fund (Investor: HRSVX). Learn more at http://heartlandfunds.com.

An investor should consider the Funds’ investment objectives,tiffany necklaces, risks, and charges and expenses carefully before investing or sending money. This and other important information can be found in the Funds’ prospectus. To obtain a prospectus, please call 1-800-432-7856 or download a copy from our website. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. The Heartland Funds are distributed by ALPS Distributors, Inc.

"That man is heartless," Hermenegildo Castellon said through a Spanish interpreter as Wilson’s trial on first-degree murder and robbery charges entered its second week.

Wilson, an 29-year-old alleged recruit in the American Nazi Party, is accused of fatally wounding Susana Pelayo-Perez,discount tiffany, 35, on Sept. 27 in the parking lot of the Shannon Glen apartments at 260 N. Murray Blvd.

Castellon, 33, wiped his tears with the front of his shirt while recalling the shooting. He also acknowledged that he and Pelayo-Perez were having an affair. They were sitting in his white Chevrolet Yukon around 1 a.m. that morning when two men in a red car drove by.

"They looked like they didn’t like me," he recalled.

The red car first pulled behind them and then along side, he said. The passenger in the red car asked for directions, but then pulled out a handgun,tiffany necklaces, demanded money and fired one shot as Castellon hit the gas pedal and drove his SUV forward.

"It hit me," Castellon quoted Pelayo-Perez as saying before she started gasping for air.

"How? That can’t be," he remembered telling her.

Castellon described driving south on Murray honking his horn and stopping briefly to ask another motorist for help before continuing on to Memorial Hospital.

"I got out quickly and was yelling. No one was coming out,tiffany rings," he said. "I went to where Susana was. I attempted to get her out, but I couldn’t do it."

"I was trying to hold onto her like this, in the way one would hold a child," he said, demonstrating a hug.

Emergency room workers did come out and brought Pelayo-Perez inside, where she died a short time later.

In cross-examination, Wilson’s attorney Philip L. Dubois focused on discrepancies between Castellon’s testimony and earlier statements he gave police.

Dubois also questioned why Castellon was unable to identify the gunman when shown two police sketches at a preliminary hearing in February.

Testimony resumes Tuesday. The trial is expected to continue all week.

For more on this case,tiffany bracelets, visit "The Sidebar" blog at gazette.com

"We decided to re-address this point by using phospho-specific antibodies to characterize active and inactive Lck partitioning in raft and non-raft membranes from primary human peripheral blood T lymphocytes. We show that most inactive Lck was localized in rafts and was associated with nearly all CD4 coreceptors and its negative regulator Csk in resting cells, while T cell receptor (TCR) engagement promoted a sustained dephosphorylation of inactive Lck. In contrast, active Lck had a more discrete distribution interacting with only a small number of CD4 coreceptors,tiffany bangles, and the kinase showed a rapid and short phosphorylation after TCR triggering. The differences in distribution and kinetics may be related to T lymphocyte signalling threshold modulation by Lck species and suggest how TCR triggering is first initiated," wrote C. Irles and colleagues, Instituto Nacional de Perinatologia.

The researchers concluded: "This study furthers our knowledge of the TCR activation model in primary human T lymphocytes."

Irles and colleagues published their study in Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology (Plasma membrane subdomain partitioning of Lck in primary human T lymphocytes. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 2010;88(4):487-96).

For additional information, contact C. Irles, Instituto Nacional de Perinatologia Isidro Espinoza de los Reyes, Departamento de Bioquimica y Biologia Molecular, Mexico DF, CP 11000,tiffany money clips, Mexico.

The publisher’s contact information for the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology is: National Research Council of Canada, NRC Communications & Corporate Relations,tiffany necklaces, 1200 Montreal Road, Bldg. M-58, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0R6.

Keywords: Country:Mexico, Blood Cells, Enzymes, Hemic and Immune Systems, Human, Kinase, Mononuclear Leukocytes, Plasma,discount tiffany, T Lymphocytes.

A senior banker with one of central London’s niche lenders asked me last week whether I thought the market was going to suffer a double dip.

I am frequently asked such questions and have an array of rehearsed responses I can wheel out at random.

But this time I had to be honest with myself because I’ve never been entirely sure what double dip means, and when I turned the question around my banking friend didn’t know either.

At school we used to have an annual bus trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach which features an enormous big dipper.

I remember this was once billed as having a double dip and as my banking friend was a Lancastrian he remembered it too. It was the closest image either of us could come up with.

The industry we work in is rife with sound bites and cliches – and by the way, if anyone can tell me what quantitative easing means I’d be eternally grateful.

I’m as guilty as anyone and, in common with many estate agents, have for years trotted out the mantra ‘the property is situated in an established residential area’.

I have now stopped saying this because the word established conveys precisely nothing to lenders.

The posh Wentworth Estate in Surrey is established but so is the roughest council estate in Tottenham.

I’ve never said ‘unestablished’ because I don’t think such a word exists,tiffany necklaces, and in any case an area that is not established as residential can only be rural. Or should that be established rural?

And aren’t you sick of the word progressive? During the post-election bun fight between Tory leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat boss Nick Clegg I kept hearing it.

We were repeatedly informed we were going to have a progressive coalition government with a progressive agenda informed by progressive ideas.

To me, the word progressive conjures up Rick Wakeman in a cape behind a bank of keyboards,tiffany rings, although I now understand this is not what the Lib Dems had in mind.

Word usage is often regional and I have my roots in the Potteries.

My Uncle Stan still lives there, not in a bijou mews cottage like the beautiful people have in Chelsea but in a terraced house.

If I were to call him now and ask him if the sun was shining brightly on his patio he’d say I had gone soft in the head.

Uncle Stan doesn’t have a patio, he has a back yard where he keeps his racing pigeons.

Even the word conservatory is fast being consigned to the verbal dump. I suppose this is because common people now have them.

Posh London and Surrey estate agents don’t say conservatory anymore. No,tiffany cuff Links, houses now have orangeries. Cor blimey, whatever next?

Copyright: Centaur Communications Ltd. and licensors

The what’s-in-what’s-out industry is still unsure of the Fame Monster,tiffany necklaces, who comes to TD Garden tonight for the first of two concerts.

Is she a fashion icon in the making or just an outrageous performance artist?

"I’m getting that she wants to be on the fashion scene, but I don’t know what she’s trying to say," said Sondra Grace, chairwoman of the fashion design department at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Gaga’s innovation has never been in doubt. Her costumes, carefully curated by her Haus of Gaga style team, have ranged from playful (last summer’s Kermit the Frog ensemble) to futuristic (a space-age Armani frock at this year’s Grammy Awards). She wowed the world — and the Queen of England — with a red latex dress last winter, and her 2009 Fame Ball tour plastic bubble dress is surely museum-bound.

But aside from being ogle-able,tiffany pendants, Gaga hasn’t had the impact on street fashion the way Madonna, or even Britney Spears, did. Simon Doonan, creative director at Barneys New York and adorer of the eccentric, called her a "liberator" and her influence "huge and polarizing."

"She’s giving (women) permission to try things they were intimidated about before," he said. "If she can wear a bucket on her head and huge McQueen platforms through the airport, women think, ‘I can do anything.’

"It gives people a sense of fashion possibility, which is always a good thing," he added.

But Grace said extravagant outfits aren’t enough.

"Usually with fashion and the persona, you don’t develop it into a caricature. You develop it in layers and I’m not seeing it," she said.

What she does acknowledge — and there’s consensus here — is that Gaga has made hot pants,tiffany earrings, usually paired with boots, a fashion staple among the glam crowd.

"Beyonce had been exposing her leg, but Gaga went all the way," agreed Grace, noting that pop stars from Katy Perry to Miley Cyrus are following her lead.

And though Gaga critics have pounced on her Madonna-copycatting ways, local stylist Sybylla Smith thinks the "Alejandro" songstress as a mashup of Bjork and RuPaul.

"She has the outrageous sensability of Bjork and the stage presence and in-your-face of RuPaul," she said.

Smith, who just launched her Go To Design Studio, said Gaga’s influence is everywhere from Marc Jacobs’ glasses to Japanese shoe designer Noritaka Tatehana.

"She took an unknown designer and put him on the map. She has the style sense to go for it," she said. "We haven’t seen the crest."

LA VILLA — An Edinburg man is set to be charged with capital murder today for the death of a 2-year-old here, according to authorities.

Adan Acuna, 32, brought the toddler into Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco sometime before 6:30 p.m. Tuesday,tiffany cuff Links, said La Villa Police Chief Eloy Cardenas. The boy, Austin Reyna Contreras, had serious bruising and was dead upon arrival at the hospital.

The toddler had just celebrated his second birthday on June 10.

Sandra Reyna — Acuna’s girlfriend and the child’s mother — has had several opportunities to meet with La Villa police,tiffany bangles, the chief said. However, she had yet to come into the station to give a statement as of Wednesday evening.

"Wouldn’t any mother who just had her 2-year-old son deceased in a questionable manner want some kind of answers?" Cardenas said. "I know I would if it were me."

Cardenas fears the woman will try to flee to Mexico. However, she shouldn’t be afraid to talk to officials,tiffany key rings, he said, noting she is merely a person of interest in the investigation right now.

Reyna has several other children, the oldest of whom is 11, the chief said. The state’s Child Protective Services division has placed them with family members while the agency investigates the toddler’s death.

This is not the first time the family has come under scrutiny by CPS for possible child abuse or neglect, agency spokesman John Lennan said.

CPS investigated four prior allegations beginning in October 2000, he said. The agency provided help to the family on two of those occasions. The investigator of the most recent of those allegations,tiffany necklaces, made in April, could not find enough evidence to support that child abuse or neglect was actually occurring.

__

Lindsay Machak covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4462.