Broward Community College is one step closer to offering a four-year degree in education, a move it hopes will alleviate teacher shortages and make higher education more affordable.

BCC's four-year education degree could be offered as soon as the fall session, providing the college gets additional approvals from the state and BCC's accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Niece resisted aunt, pursued own path

She remembers sitting on the front porch of her aunt's house on Ossie Court, the sun slanting through the jalousie windows. It's 1966, and her aunt is asking her to do something that brings tears to her eyes: go to a white high school instead of Jones High School.

"That was the hardest I ever cried," said Celinder Ware, 57 , a nursing supervisor at Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami. "I wanted to be with my friends. I wanted to go to Jones."

Emma Gaines Little, her aunt and the woman who raised her, never told Celinder about being one of the eight parents who filed the lawsuit to desegregate Orange County public schools. All Emma said was that she wanted her niece to be one of the first black children to attend a white high school in Orlando.

Neil Stein is a man with a plan - and a debt

Every entrepreneur has ups and downs. Few highs and lows in Philadelphia have been as public as Neil Stein's: On one hand, there are the openings of his restaurants, which helped define Philadelphia. On the other is his 10-month stay in federal prison for tax evasion, capping his empire's collapse. "At this moment," Stein said in a recent interview, "I'm very alive and very up." Stein, a year out of prison, is planning a comeback with a place called Cabaret in the restaurant space at the Morris House, a boutique hotel near Washington Square. As Stein was at Fish Market (1973), Marabella's (1984), Rock Lobster (1992), Striped Bass (1994) and Rouge (1998), he's the idea man. Not the money man. "I still owe a few dollars," he says, although Philadelphia court records show more than $1 million in active judgments against him and his former corporations - largely from unpaid city taxes.

Top 10 Stories of 2007

But after treatment, doctors declared her competent Sept. 14.Fisher-Riza is also being investigated for money missing from a Goody's department store in Brownwood, where she was a manager. Cash and check deposits from Goody's and other items were retrieved from Fisher-Riza's SUV after it crashed.In a jail house phone call, Fisher-Riza told her husband, "I know she's dead. Get the money and get me out," according to affidavits and search warrant documents filed with the Johnson County district clerk's office in April.— Matt SmithNo. 5 — Courthouse opensThe Johnson County Courthouse reopened (sort of) Dec. 1 after the completion (almost) of a two-year, $8 million renovation partially funded by a grant from the Texas Historical Commission. County workers have not moved back in, however.

NBA trade log

GO LATER: Raptors tried to have it at 4 p.m. on home game days but media obligations and too much of a rush before the game ended that experiment after one year.

Charmaine Dragun discovers her heritage in Croatia

After all, man cannot live on beauty alone. Still, it must have been awful to say goodbye to all this forever. And that they did, swapping one island for another, to try their luck in Australia.Like so many of their countrymen and millions of others from around the world, they helped shape our land into the nation it is today: a rich brew of migrant cultures and influences.But what was life like for them back in their mother country? And what did they leave behind? These were our thoughts as we started a family road trip with two other members of the Dragun clan, my aunt Pamela and uncle Tony, to uncover the path of our ancestors.Before this adventure began we were ashamed to admit we knew little about my grandfather’s past. Dad’s father had always been a man of few words, and took most of the stories of his family and youth with him to the grave.

Langston Hughes Lecture to focus on civil rights predecessor

When Randal Jelks was seven years old, the city of New Orleans closed the community swimming pool near his boyhood home. The pool's dry, cracked concrete was Jelks' daily reminder of the divided world he lived in. Jelks' skin was too dark to swim in that pool.