Acker has served as interim chief in the past and was strongly recommended by Peterson. He has a broad range of experience and has been with the city a number of years.

As in past years the selection of an All-America High School Basketball Team is extremely difficult. Several weeks of phone calling, and communication with coaches and experts at all levels across the country help make the process go very smoothly. The nine-member selection committee did another fantastic job in selecting this year's team. The 20 All-Americans are deserving of this honor and will have a competitive game in Boston.

We feel we need to position and posture ourselves. We've got strong base of young, energetic managers and department heads and middle managers who have potential. It's part of any manager's responsibility to prepare them for the next position.

I think it's a positive response to some of the issues we've been struggling with the past few weeks.

We will win more championships during my time here. We've won championships in the past. This one is going to be significant and it's going to be special because it was so unexpected and accomplished with a lot of obstacles and a lot to overcome. That said that's about all the reflecting I'm going to do on it because we have a lot of basketball to play.

As destructive as past storms have been, they didn't leave an imprint on the U.S. business cycle,