Offerings

Cable's Lifetime channel, coming off a recent ratings spurt, will beef up its original programming this fall with a couple of new daytime offerings and a late-night talk show dealing with relationships. The programming moves are the latest under network president Doug McCormick, who took the reins of the female-targeted Lifetime in 1993. The relationships program, hosted by Sari Locker, the 24-year-old sex educator and author of "Mindblowing Sex in the Real World," launches in October.

September and the approach of autumn mean a new theater season for several Burlington County theater groups. The following is a list of performances that Burlington County theatergoers can catch over the next few months: Annie will be performed at Shawnee High School on Tabernacle Road in Medford by the Pinelands Players this month. Performances began Friday night and will run today, Sept. 18 and 25 at 2:30 p.m. and Sept. 16, 17, 23 and 24 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for children and seniors.

When Ken Foster decided to consolidate his two houseware stores into one mega-store, he knew he hadto include a large demo kitchen for cooking classes. They'd outgrown the cramped space at the back of his cookware store at the Reading Terminal Market, and he believed a new, spacious kitchen could generate an important chunk of new business. The new 11,000-square-foot store, Foster's Homeware, at Fourth and Market, includes a high-end, Miele-equipped kitchen in the rear of the store, which is outfitted like a loft apartment.

Camden County's year-old Educational Technology Training Center has expended its role from providing instruction for teachers on how to use computers in the classroom to teaching computer skills to municipal workers. The move was announced last night at a meeting of the Camden County Technical School District's Board of Education, which operates the center in a building at its campus here. The primary goal of the center will remain providing computer training for teachers.

Area children who can't get enough of school and adults who would like to continue their education may still register for more than 175 non-credit classes at Gloucester County College in Deptford. Classes begin this week and are being offered in "an effort to get the parents and their kids to come to the college" and become familiar with the programs and facilities the school has to offer, said Molly Pennell, director of professional and continuing education at Gloucester County College.

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society's season-ending concert Friday at the Free Library drew but a modest number of familiar faces. Most audience members were young and hip, and some wore shorts, jeans and T-shirts. Guitarist Sharon Isbin, wearing a blindingly bright gold pantsuit and a black jacket, had come to town, bringing with her guest artist Gaudencio Thiago de Mello, a charming percussionist from the Amazonian jungle who now lives in New York. The program first devoted itself to solo guitar pieces, which were then followed by Isbin and de Mello's playing together.

Everybody has a neighbor he could do without. Maybe the guy parks his RV on the street, or doesn't keep his lawn trimmed just so, or lets his dog leave land mines on the sidewalk. It's irritating. What really gets people on South 47th Street in Lincoln is when their neighbor makes his burnt offerings and stinks up the whole block. "The smell," says Julie Wiedeman, who lives next door to Don Moren's two- story frame house, "is just awful. " On the other hand, she concedes, it's a darned interesting thing to watch.

Born in a basement nine years ago, Philadelphia's edgiest film festival, FirstGlance, has ascended to the Painted Bride, where the ninth annual event opened last night and runs through Sunday. Of the 31 shorts and features screened, nearly half are local or world premieres. Tonight's offerings include Rent Control, about a prospective renter's mania to marry off the man living in the apartment she wants, and The Kings of Christmas, about New Yorkers from five boroughs who compete to create holiday houses across New York City.

"It is time to go to the river," boomed the voice from above. Along South Street, African drums were pounding, barbecued ribs were smoking, and jovial crowds were shopping. On sale were wood carvings, reggae recordings, traditional garments, dolls in African dress. On stage, an African dance performance was soon to start. But the loudspeakers broke in with a reminder that the Odunde Festival is more than a party, and more than a celebration of the culture of the African diaspora.

New programs and courses ranging from child care to optical science will debut this fall at community colleges in South Jersey. Here are some of the offerings: GLOUCESTER COUNTY COLLEGE. GCC will offer a course on food-industry management for the first time. The course was developed in consultation with managers in the food industry and the New Jersey Council on Community Colleges, said Dick Smith, spokesman for the college. Seven community colleges in the state will offer the program; GCC is the only school south of Middlesex involved.

SEOUL - North Korea on Sunday proposed wide-ranging "senior-level" talks with the United States, an offer it said Washington should accept without setting any "preconditions" about denuclearization. The North's proposal marked the latest attempt at reconciliation for a family-run police state that spent much of March and April making threats. In a statement issued by its state-run news agency and attributed to the National Defense Commission, a top policy body, North Korea said the talks should be used to defuse "military tensions," draft a peace treaty for the peninsula, and discuss mutual denuclearization.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, a candidate in this week's presidential elections, vowed Saturday he will reset the country's economy and reverse President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's foreign policy stance if elected. Addressing a campaign rally in Tehran, Hasan Rowhani said his priority in foreign policy would be to "reconcile" with the outside world and distance Iran from Ahmadinejad's combative, hard-line style. Iran's president does not have control of central issues like nuclear policy, but a president who has a close relationship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can wield influence.

LAST TIME we saw Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson making mischief together was "Wedding Crashers" - being, as Vaughn put it then, "young and stupid. " Wilson's response: "We're not that young. " And that was eight years ago, before Wilson entered his Brian Wilson-ish "Drillbit Taylor" period, including "Marley and Me" and a gig as the voice of Marmaduke. That would put visible miles on any man. Now the duo is back, turning their over-the-hill-gang status into a running joke in their reunion comedy "The Internship.

Over a period of time, automakers engender certain expectations and assumptions. We expect sports cars from Porsche, and comfortable, cosseting luxury sedans from Cadillac and Lexus. We assume that SUVs from Jeep will be useful, go-in-the-snow four-wheelers. But on occasion, automakers get out of character and build rides we didn't anticipate. Driven by a desire to carve out new sales niches in a brutally competitive business, they zig when we expect them to zag. There are a number of these surprising "zigsters" on the market right now. Let's take a quick look at four with particularly high zigosity quotients: Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon ($64,110 with shipping)

Ling Zhong's parents have come from China to watch her graduate from Swarthmore College on Sunday, and she surely wants them to understand the ceremony. So Zhong, 22, a Beijing native, and a younger classmate, also from China, will set up in a classroom on the third floor of the college's performing arts center, where they will translate the speeches into Mandarin. Zhong's parents and anyone else who cares to hear the Mandarin version can don headsets and listen at both the spacious amphitheater where the event will be held and an auditorium in the performing arts center where it will be projected onto a large screen.

Jazz keeps getting more international, as this review of recent album releases shows. Top players are coming from Japan and even India - via the American diaspora. At the same time, Philadelphia artists continue to evolve. City native Christian McBride, the über bassist of his generation, continues his string of successes with a new release, while a SEPTA manager, Jawanza Kobie, gets into the act, too, with a credible CD and a release party scheduled June 21 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

THE AMANDA BYNES saga gets more and more bizarre, as if Lindsay Lohan being in rehab has left a void in the actress-out-of-control section of the newspaper that Amanda feels obligated to fill. ( Tattle note: We interviewed Amanda a number of times back in her "She's the One," "Hairspray" days and found her to be one of the most together young actresses we'd ever met. We were sure that by the time she turned 30 she would be running a studio. So what the heck happened?)

Freebies from Verizon and Comcast could add to the fun of the Memorial Day Weekend. Verizon's offering a slew of free content for four days, and Comcast's Xfinity is giving away access to thousands of wireless hotspots through Independence Day. From Friday till Tuesday, Verizon subscribers can find more than 1,700 movies and 50 entire TV series through the cable service's 900 channel. That includes such recent theatrical films as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dark Knight Rises, Bridesmaids, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, The Hunger Games, Hugo, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus , and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows . They're available through Cinemax, ePix, HBO and ViewNow.

Pennsylvania will offer an amnesty program June 1 through Aug. 31 to collect $613 million the state's Department of Labor and Industry is owed in unemployment benefits or taxes. The program covers benefits paid or taxes owed before June 30, 2012. The amnesty covers 130,000 people, who were overpaid $356 million, either because of a mistake or because they submitted false information. Those who submitted false information will only have to pay half of interest and penalties if they pay before Aug. 31. Those who were overpaid through an error will only have to repay half the amount.

Imagine Sean Payton holding up a Surface tablet instead of a cardboard playsheet on the sideline. Envision Peyton Manning sitting on the bench and dissecting the last series from a variety of camera angles on his handheld device instead of looking at still photos. Or sitting at home and pulling up real-time highlights on a Sunday afternoon. It's coming. The NFL and Microsoft Corp., through its next-generation Xbox device, are combining to upgrade interactive TV viewing of pro football games in a multiyear agreement announced Tuesday.