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Tracy Woody heaved a hemp bag filled with oysters across the deck of his boat and began inspecting his catch. One shell after another was empty.

It's virtually official, Woody said: the third-worst drought in state history has killed any hope that Texas oysters would make up for the severe losses in Mississippi and Louisiana, where the shellfish suffered from last year's oil spill and this year's massive flooding.

"There's no way," said Woody, a fifth-generation oyster fisherman who says he has never seen conditions this bad.
Oysters are a $217 million industry on the Gulf Coast. Louisiana and Texas account for 70 percent of the eastern species found in the Gulf and along the East Coast. Pessimism about the harvest this season is growing, even though experts won't offer a specific projection.

This year, the drought has made the water in Texas' Galveston Bay, where most of the state's oysters are harvested, so salty that predators and disease are thriving. Conditions are so dire, the deadly "dermo" parasite has been found in two reefs where it's never been seen before.

Combined with the losses in the southeastern states, consumers may be hard-pressed to find Gulf Coast oysters this year.

"There's not going to be enough oysters, the price is going to go through the roof and the consumers are not going to pay," Woody said, as workers threw hemp sacks of oysters onto wooden pallets.

Shrimp and blue crabs may also be affected by the drought. Shrimp has the biggest share of Texas' commercial fishing business, with $236 million in revenue in 2009; oysters are right behind, pulling in some $28 million in 2009, an off-year because of Hurricane Ike and other factors.

Galveston Bay has not experienced such high salinity since at least the 1980s, said Lance Robinson, regional director of the coastal fisheries division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "This is unprecedented," he said.

In normal years, rain in Central and North Texas fills the rivers and streams. The fresh water flows down to the Gulf and mixes with saltwater in the bays and estuaries. This environment allows oysters to thrive and reproduce. This year, there has been less than six inches of rain on average in Texas, compared to 13 inches normally.

Like The Apprentice, the show has the perfect formula. But it desperately wanted another old dragon, mostly to rival the Grumpy Old Woman, or Deborah Meaden, as her family call her.

Last night the dragon was unveiled as Hilary Devey and what a magnificent creature, an amazing CREATION, she was.
She arrived dressed in a black pencil skirt and a white jacket bearing the biggest shoulder pads seen on television since The Colbys. They were so wide she looked like a quarterback from the Dallas Cowboys who was into cross-dressing.

The Den’s answer to Bette Davis, Ms Devey is as thin as a bird, a glamorous scarecrow fashioned from two brooms, a wig, lashings of lipstick, pearls and some Alexander McQueen.

With her wobbly fringe and fabulous pins, she resembles a flamingo in drag.
Her voice is a smoky growl that suggests she exists on a diet of cigarillos.

A woman who has made a ￡100million fortune from road haulage (not presumably, driving the lorry herself, although you wouldn’t put it past her), Devey is a woman who is Not To Be Messed With. She makes Deborah Meaden look like Mavis Riley.

She has (thankfully) replaced James Caan – the suave silver dragon who used to spend each show thoughtfully stroking his beard and never investing.
But surprisingly, Meaden’s response to her Jurassic adversary was to become uncharacteristically girlish.

“Did you just say ‘splashback’?” she squealed to a man who claimed to have revolutionised male urination by chucking a lump of what looked like coal at the bottom of the toilet. “My God man, it’s your job to have that information,” Hilary snarled at the next innovator, jabbing bony claws weighed down by rings the size of ice cubes at him.
“You would make my foot itch,” she hissed. It could have been “make my butt itch.” I was too busy running for cover.

Member for Clarence, Steve Cansdell said the NSW Liberals and National’s Waterways Policy will see proper maintenance dredging of rivers along the East Coast, including the Clarence, Evans and Richmond Rivers.

“If maintained properly, these rivers have huge potential for increased trade, fishing and tourism,” Mr Cansdell said.
“Dredging is the single most effective activity that could be undertaken to turn around the economy of our region.”

The dredging call was welcomed by Marine Rescue Ballina commander, Norm Lannoy.
“We have an outer bar that has been building up for the past two years,” Mr Lannoy said.
“Dredging would increase safety across this bar.

“It’s one of the worst along the East Coast.
“When the sand builds up it causes pressure waves and they cause all sorts of problems.”
Greens MLC, Ian Cohen, said that while the Greens were not completely opposed to sand dredging, a scientific approach needed to be applied.

“Dredging is not a one-size fits all solution to deal with a very complex ecological and land use issues,” he said.

“Yes, in some cases there are very legitimate public safety issues but there needs to be thorough scientific assessments done on the ecological impact before anything is discussed.

“This announcement is a simplistic, old fashioned reaction.”
Marine Rescue Evans Head commander and former prawn trawler, Tony McNally, said he would welcome dredging of the Evans River from a safety point of view, but was not convinced it would be long-lasting.

The Chronicle was bombarded with phone calls, emails and visitors all day yesterday after publishing a story on the hovering objects, which appeared in the night sky above the city last Thursday, Friday, Saturday and yesterday.

While all residents had similar descriptions of the glowing balls of light and their slow movements back and forth across the sky, the story did take quite an eerie twist – no one was able to successfully capture the unidentified objects with a camera.

“My partner, my brother and I all saw the lights. I tried to film them on my phone, but when I later looked at the footage nothing showed up – very strange,” Phil and Karina said in an email.

“I took a very magnified photo of the last single orange orb, but it does not seem to have come out on my camera,” Martine said.

“It was very weird ... (the lights) did not seem to be flying too high above us.”
Greg said: “We saw four lights in a group,”

“I tried to take photos with my camera, but they didn’t come up.
"I grabbed my binoculars to try and get a better look.

“It was queer ... while I could see a string of lights without the binoculars, when I looked through the binoculars I could only see one light.”

UFO Research Queensland sightings officer Martin Gottschall, who has studied UFOs for more than 30 years, yesterday said he had received reports about orange balls of lights moving over Maryborough.

“It could well be UFO activity. They (UFOs) are pretty clever at camouflaging themselves and making themselves look like conventional objects,” he said.

As for the objects not showing up in photographs, Mr Gottschall said it seemed as though extraterrestrial craft could “make light do things that we haven’t learnt yet”.

Environmentalists are renewing a push for a countywide ban on plastic shopping bags, an issue county officials have studied more than 18 months but one that may finally be headed toward a vote.

Environment California, a statewide nonprofit, is pushing the ban along with other local advocacy groups as a way to protect the ocean, saying plastic bags often end up in the sea, polluting the water and being mistaken for food by marine life. They also hope enough cities pass bans that a statewide law becomes inevitable.

"To sea turtles, plastic bags look like jellyfish, one of their tasty and delectable treats," said Stephen Michael, a director with Environment California, during a small press conference Wednesday at Natural Bridges State Beach.

The county was among the first to ban polystyrene takeout containers, and has been studying a plastic bag ban since 2009.

But a final vote has been delayed while a lawsuit over Manhattan Beach bag ban played out. That case was decided last week, and environmentalists are now eager to push forward.

"So many people we talk to say, 'Santa Cruz has already passed a ban, right?' But it hasn't. It's very, very odd that a lot of places have passed it before Santa Cruz, being such a progressive town," said Lauren Gilligan, a program coordinator with Save Our Shores.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Stone would like a vote as soon as possible, but said it may wait until after a September meeting of a multijurisdictional waste management meeting in September. That meeting could lead to local cities such as Santa Cruz and Capitola considering a ban as well.

"It's one thing for the county to do it, but it's better if other jurisdictions do the same thing," said Stone, who wants the ban to withstand - or avert - potential litigation.

Santa Cruz County's proposed law bans plastic carryout bags, but not the use of plastic for produce bags or pre-packaged items. It also implements a 10-cent per bag fee in the first year after the law passes and a 25-cent per bag fee after that, and requires paper bags to be made from 40 percent recycled material.

The industry-supported Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, which has sued over bag bans, disputes the harm caused by plastic carryout bags, particularly when compared to paper bags. They say claims about an aquatic gyre of discarded diapers, empty milk jugs and plastic grocery bags is inaccurate. [According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Pacific Garbage Patch consists of small pieces of debris, often plastics, circulating in the sea, and is largely invisible to the naked eye].

After five years of steady growth, business at the nontraditional mattress maker and retailer started to sag as the housing crisis worsened in 2007 and the economy tanked in 2008.

The slump caused cash-strapped consumers to cut spending on discretionary items like mattresses, sending its business into a tailspin along with the rest of the bedding industry.

Select Comfort was hit hardest in 2008, when it lost 55 cents a share and sales slid 24% from the prior year.

That same year, management at the Minneapolis-based firm began a sweeping overhaul to reverse its fortunes and assure more profitable growth. Select Comfort cut costs, laid off staff, stepped up marketing and closed stores. It also stopped distributing to third-party retailers.

Its strategy has paid off. The company moved back into the black in 2009, when it earned 21 cents a share. In 2010, profit popped 171% and sales rose 11% after two years of declines.

Back To The Core

"The crisis allowed us to get better focused and more fine-tuned in on core business, which has been helping us and will continue to help us as we go forward," said Chief Executive Bill McLaughlin.

Most recently, in the first quarter, profit climbed 114% over a year ago to 30 cents a share, smashing views. Sales rose 22% to $193.1 million. Same-store sales rose 26%.

McLaughlin says the company has moved past what management calls the "stabilized" phase into the "thrive" phase.

"We're writing the next chapter of our growth story right now," he said.

Watchers expect that growth story to continue when Select Comfort reports second-quarter results July 20. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters see profit rising 55% to 17 cents a share. They forecast a 13% jump in sales to $156.9 million.

Select Comfort makes a line of adjustable-firmness mattresses featuring air-chamber technology, branded the Sleep Number bed, which can be adjusted on each side of the bed according to the user's personal preference. They sell for $699 to $3,999. Its stores also sell accessories such as pillows, mattress frames and sheets.

Stephens analyst Eric Hollowaty says the company has gotten a lift from a general recovery in demand for mattresses as consumers feel comfortable spending again on larger-ticket items.