Technology Slice Blog

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas - Tax rates for some of the county's 1,500 taxing bodies went down, Orr disclosed Monday. Tax rates for Northwest suburban schools, which typically make up about half of a person's tax bill, dropped or increased modestly, with several exceptions. Coupled with lower property assessments for homeowners across the county, that should mean few surprises on many bills being mailed out on Wednesday, said Bill Vaselopulos of the clerk's office. But some areas where rates rose higher could buck that trend, and one wild card could push individual homeowners' tax bills up, Vaselopulos said. That's the record 430,000 property assessment appeals filed with the Cook County Board of Review half again more than the previous record of 280,000, and almost a quarter of the county's 1.8 million properties. Homeowners could see significant increases in their tax bills if many of their neighbors won significant assessment reductions and ...

Broward County Schools Lockdown Lifted - All schools in Broward County, Florida, are under lockdown because of what a county spokeswoman described as a "credible threat." A woman told a local radio station that her husband had threatened to fire shots at a school, police said. Later, the radio station received an e-mail saying "something big" was going to happen, CNN's Rich Phillips reported. During a noon news conference, a police spokesman said all students, faculty and staff are safe, and all approximately 300 schools and administrative buildings in Broward County were locked. Police in Broward County, Florida, have lifted a school lockdown; Pembroke Pines police Capt. Dan Rakofsky said. Broward County Schools Lockdown Lifted

Cam Newton Is Not Suspended - Sorry, folks, it’s just a rumor that Cam Newton was suspended. Stop listening to those people on Twitter already! If you’ve been following Twitter, you’ve probably heard that Cam Newton was suspended, but Just like Justin Bieber dating Kim Kardashian, it’s just a rumor. Apparently Twitter trouble makers said there was a report from Ian Fitzsimmons of ESPN radio that Newton was going to be suspended in the next few hours. Only problem was Fitzsimmons never reported any of that. But that didn’t stop the thousands, maybe millions, of re-tweets that followed. But in the end, it wasn’t purposely done. A listener, who just happened to be a blogger as well, misunderstood something Fitzsimmons said and came up with Cam Newton is going to be suspended in three or four hours. It’s like a bad game of Telephone. Cam Newton Is Not Suspended