Ms. Bancroft, who has managed to become a fixture at fashion shows, movie premieres and fund raisers without being mega-wealthy, maximizes her closets, which are modest by socialite standards. Her 1,600-square-foot Upper East Side Manhattan apartment, the top half of a duplex that once housed George and Ira valentines day jewelry, includes three closets for her wardrobe, one 10 feet by 4 feet, the others 4 feet by 5 feet and 8 feet by 6. The three closets hold only her go-to, in-season items; everything else is stored in her Southampton home. Ms. Bancroft, 55 years old, lives with her husband, William Woodward Bancroft Jr., an investment manager, and their daughter, Serena, 13. Their son, 19-year-old Will, is away at college.

Ms. Bancroft, who writes a society column for Avenue magazine, gets a lot of her clothing as gifts from designer friends such as Vera Wang. “With this social life, I go out a lot and have a good shot at getting photographed,” she said. The rest are mostly presents from friends or deals she scored at sample sales. “For me to go and outright and buy something is unusual for me,” she said. “There are very few pieces I’ll pay full price for without blinking.”

Wearing a custom, short, strapless, feathered dress given to her by Calypso, Ms. Bancroft said she has no intention of retreating to older, perhaps more matronly styles of clothing. “The legs are holding up. I’ve got plenty of time to wear conservative suits,” she said. She pulled out a funky ensemble by her friend designer Nicole Miller: a black coat decorated with Art Deco and vaguely ethnic prints with a matching sheath dress and skirt.

“She’s fearless,” said Ms. Miller. “I’ve never heard her say ‘I’m too old for it.’ Not that you want to go out and look earrings, but she’s a very confident person.”

Ms. Bancroft’s bedroom closet is hung with 100 dresses in the front; in the back are skirts and blouses on a bottom rung and 30 suits on the top. Her attic, an unusual feature in New York, has the two other closets, the first bearing spring summer clothing and the other containing long, evening dresses and skirts, including a grey silk dress by Carolina Herrera decorated with hand-painted flower motifs, crystals and silver threads. “There are traces of the last party on it,” she said, pointing to liquid stains.

The Carolina Herrera was purchased at a sample sale. Ms. Bancroft said she sticks to a budget whenever she shops, often buying on discount. She said she thinks her least expensive purchase is a $60 Kate Moss Topshop dress, bought on sale last month while she was shopping with her daughter and since worn at an art-crowd party. “I was kind of hip in my Topshop,” she said, holding the black and silver metallic three-quarter-length sheath. She also bought a pair of $100 silver high-heel shoes to go with the dress.

Occasionally, however, she will splurge, like the time, four years ago, when she spent $1,500 on a vintage Chanel dress. The torso of this sleeveless piece, which was made in the late 1980s, is made of black plastic that resembles the quilted pattern on Chanel’s classic quilted handbag.

She recalled the day she purchased the item from a trunk show for Decades, a Los Angeles boutique that specializes in 20th century vintage couture. “I was at my thinnest. I was feeling at my most physically optimal moment. I put it on and it was an enchanted moment. There’s always a piece you put on and when you come out and in the whole room there’s a collective sigh. So I bought it.” She hasn’t worn it recently. A size 2, “it’s a little tight,” she said.

The only child of a doctor father and a nurse-turned-homemaker mom, Ms. Bancroft grew up on Long Island. After key rings Finch College, a women’s college in Manhattan, she embarked on a career working for magazines such as Elle Decor.

“There’s nothing boring in her closet,” said another friend, tiffany Dubin, a decorative-arts appraiser, auction coordinator and stepdaughter of A. Alfred Taubman, a former chairman of Sotheby’s. “Everything’s unique. It reflects her personality. It’s creative, but it’s got an edge and it’s got a little conservatism. It’s also kind of ageless in a way.”

Ms. Bancroft’s bedroom is also packed with shoes — she estimated owning roughly 150 pairs in total. One favorite is a pair of black satin Manolo Blahnik shoes with crystal-studded heels that she holds up like jewelry. “I wear [them] often, but judiciously, as they are satin,” she said of the shoes, which were given to her for her 50th birthday by Lisa Jackson, an interior designer. “I know there will be a day when the satin has frayed around those beautiful, hard crystals, and am already planning on how I’ll revive them.” Ms. Bancroft keeps her 60 bags or so in cabinets built inside her closet.

She got a tan silk wrap dress patterned with orange, pink, black and white ovals and semi-ovals of various sizes by necklaces merely by showing up to a lunch hosted by the label. “At the end of the lunch, [a senior public-relations person] held a little picture of four different dresses and said, ‘Tell me which dress you like and you’ll get it on the way out,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ ” she recalled, still awestruck. “That’s my best goody bag ever in the history of my life.”

“We will see what we can do and seek continuation of support where it is absolutely necessary,” he said, adding valentines day jewelry that labour-intensive sectors such as handicraft, leather, and gems and jewellery continue to be in trouble.

“Sectoral reviews have been completed. I am soon going to work on the recommendations. They will also get reflected on our budget proposals,” Sharma told reporters at the sidelines of a conference organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or Ficci.

The Directorate-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under the ministry carried out the performance review of key export sectors.

It also examined if any sector might need additional incentives due to the slump in external demand for Indian earrings goods.

Asked if the finance ministry would withdraw some of the incentives provided to the exporters, Sharma said any such move will be a considered pull-back. “The finance minister will dispassionately examine the sectoral performance and do what is judicious,” he said.

Merchandise exports rose in November for the first time this fiscal to $13.2 billion (Rs61,512 crore) from $11.16 billion earlier, up 18.28%. However, exports in the April-November period were lower than in the year-ago period, having dropped 22.32% to $104.25 billion.

Sectors that saw significant growth are gems and jewellery (40.4%), petroleum products (83.6%), iron ore (47.2%), and plastic and linoleum (28%).

The sectors that lagged behind are textiles (6%), drugs and fine chemicals (8.7%), tobacco (5.6%), carpet (5.8%), and engineering goods (6.8%).

Earlier on Wednesday, commerce secretary Rahul Khullar said: “I am not in favour of providing incentives if it key rings cannot be sustained.”

Khullar also called for “some degree of stability”, expressing apprehension that there could be a tendency to “claw back some of the incentives” already provided to exporters.

Jewelry is now expected to account for about 21% of gift sales, up from 16% last year.

And the hottest items in jewelers’ cases have been charms, accounting for about 8% of all jewelry sold.

Charm bracelets, which tie together current fashion with the tradition and sentiment that have been retail trends since last fall, can be found everywhere, from high-end jewelers, such as tiffany, to mass-market retailers in malls.

“People are forgoing the frivolous and disposable in favor of the precious and eternal” for the first Mother’s Day after the terrorist attacks, says Elizabeth Florence, executive director of the Jewelry Information Center.

“Jewelry is a gift which is an emotional salve,” says Ken Gassman, an analyst with the Jewelry Industry Research Institute.

Charms come in all shapes and materials — some are simple silver or gold, others are encrusted with gemstones, embossed or even glazed with photo images. Charms can cost as little as $15 and can exceed $1,500. The bracelets, sold separately, mostly range from $80 to $800.

Part of the appeal of charm bracelets for a mom is that they start conversations, with each ornament telling a story, writer Kathleen Oldford says. She details generations of stories in her new book My Mother’s Charms.

“You get an idea about a person, depending on what’s on the bracelet. It can tell you their passions and what their lives were about,” she says.

Oldford advises collectors to log who gave them the charm and why to keep the stories alive, including tragedies such as Sept. 11. “It should be something that remembers a person for who they were or to say thank you,” she says, “so a firefighter’s helmet, police officer’s cap or American flag.”

John Desjardins, executive vice president of Marks Bros. Jewelers, which operates The Whitehall Co., says his charm business has had double-digit gains this year.

“The traditions of people, places and events lends to purchasing charm bracelets,” he says. “They memorialize things.”

They can also solve future gift decisions. They are a gift that one can keep on giving — for any life event.

“We’ve seen a resurgence in any sentimental gift,” Harriet Schreiner, executive vice president of merchandising for Sterling Jewelers, says of charm bracelets as well as lockets for photos, another piece of nostalgia. Sterling is a unit of London’s Signet Group and also operates Kay Jewelers, JB Robinson and Shaw’s Jewelers.

Consumer Mother’s Day spending has increased as the day’s observance has extended to female relatives, stepmothers and friends. That’s one of the trends, along with jewelry buying, that is expected to drive household holiday spending this year to $97, a 56% increase from $62 spent last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Men, who purchase jewelry for moms more than women do, are expected to boost their spending 49% to $118 vs. $79 a year ago.

“Every day I’m inspired by residents of this great City and their commitment to our neighborhoods,” said Ravenstahl. Valentine’s Day gift “I’ve had the pleasure to hear many heart-warming stories about why Pittsburghers love their neighborhood. It’s time for their stories, for our stories, to be told so we’re launching the ‘Six Burgh Reasons Why I love My Neighborhood’ contest.”

The aim of the contest is this: Tell the Mayor your love story with your neighborhood – incorporating six reasons why you feel that way. Write an essay, narrate your story through photos or create a video. If your entry is one of the top six chosen, you will be notified and honored at a neighborhood celebration in May, and your entry will be posted on the City’s website and the City Cable Channel.

“Pittsburgh’s comeback story, recently showcased in many national publications, is a story about real people who have stayed committed to their communities and family,” Ravenstahl said.

Said the Mayor, “We had such a great response to last year’s Valentine’s Day contest that we wanted to do something key rings like it again this year, but bigger. For this contest, we needed to allot more time for submissions, so we’re launching it for Valentine’s Day and allowing two months for entries. We threw in a little bit of Super Bowl mania for fun with the Six Burgh theme by asking for six reasons and choosing six winners.”

Participants must be residents of the City of Pittsburgh and have until April 13, 2009 to submit their entries. Essays must be 250 words or less, and videos must be no longer than 10 minutes. Only written essays can be submitted online. All entries can be mailed in, dropped off at the Mayor’s office or at any of the City of Pittsburgh Senior Centers. All entrants must sign a General Release, Indemnification, and Consent form should their entry be chosen. A complete list of rules, along with locations of the Senior Centers, can be found on the City of Pittsburgh website at www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us. Rules may also be obtained at the Mayor’s Office on the 5th floor of the City-County Building, 414 Grant St., Pittsburgh, PA, 15219, or at any of the City’s Senior Centers.For more information about necklaces US Fed News contract awards please contact: Sarabjit Jagirdar, US Fed News, Email:- htsyndication@hindustantimes.com.

That could be especially true on this Valentine’s Day gift, the first to fall on a Saturday since 2004. And the first since the economy tanked in the fall.

Local restaurant owners said they expect to see more people tonight than they’ve seen in a while.

Shoemakers restaurant in downtown Lynchburg has been booked solid for more than a week. Manager Lucy Smith said the steakhouse has 215 reservations, with 20 couples on a wait-list. That’s the biggest turnout since the grand opening more than 18 months ago, she said.

“We’re thrilled that we still have the enthusiasm coming in the front door,” Smith said. The reservations include “so many first-time diners coming that we know of. That means there’s a lot of people out there that haven’t experienced Shoemakers.”

Most other restaurants in the Lynchburg area do not take reservations. However, they’ve been getting plenty of calls asking for reservations for tonight.

“Valentine’s Day is our best day in the month of February,” said Jeffrey Eames, a manager at Neighbors Place in Wyndhurst. “Valentine’s Day is definitely a booster.”

Harry Leist, owner of Olde Liberty Station in Bedford, said Valentine’s Day is earrings one of the three best days of the year.

While they expect tonight to provide more business than has been seen in recent weeks, local restaurateurs said it’s because January is usually slow. Overall, a weakened national economy and an uptick in unemployment in the Lynchburg area hasn’t curbed their business.

Data on local meals tax collection illustrates that people have continued eating out. Amherst County Administrator Rodney Taylor said the county is surpass-ing its expectations for meals tax collections this fiscal year. Late in 2008, meals tax receipts in Lynchburg were higher than in the year before.

Meals tax receipts have dropped about 2 percent in Bedford County since July, said Faye Eubank, commissioner of revenue.

Michele Digiovanni, owner of La Villa on Timberlake Road, said Lynchburg is a steady market where people still have money to spend eating out.

A restaurant he owns in Martinsville has been hit harder by economic woes, Digiovanni said. Martinsville’s unemployment rate is higher than 10 percent. Lynchburg’s unemployment rate in December was 5.3 percent.

Digiovanni said that he ex-pects to do good business this weekend.

Rob Campbell, a waiter at The Briar Patch in Amherst, said the restaurant has been just as busy in recent weeks as it was before the end of the year.

He said Valentine’s Day is an important business day there. The restaurant is rolling out New York strip steak, which it usually does not serve, as well as some off-menu desserts.

At Shoemakers, Smith said having Valentine’s Day on a Sat-urday key rings is a good thing and should help bring more people out.

At Olde Liberty Station, Leist had a different take: If the third biggest day of the year falls on a weekday, “you have two Saturdays that week” to pull in $5,000.

Having the day on the weekend means that couples have to compete with the usual Saturday crowd and the business won’t increase quite as much.

“We love for these holidays to be Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays,” he said.

Hellmuth celebrated into Tuesday morning after setting a world record Monday night in Las Vegas, winning his 11th World Series of Poker bracelet — poker’s equivalent of the home run record.

“It’s the one I wanted,” said Hellmuth, who passed poker legends Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan for career victories in the WSOP — all in Hold’em games.

Hellmuth might have set another record in the celebration that followed his win in the $1,500 buy-in No-limit Hold’em tournament. “I think we spent about $10,000 on champagne for my friends,” he said. “Thing is, it bought only eight bottles.”

Hellmuth, 42, says he didn’t imbibe much champagne, but he was still drinking in his record — the latest high point of a career that started in the 1980s. He dropped out of the University of Wisconsin to become a full-time professional poker player and has won $5.5million in WSOP events. He won $637,254 in Monday’s event, which attracted 2,628 players — the largest field Hellmuth has defeated.

“I’ve been saying Doyle is the greatest poker player of all time,” Hellmuth said.earrings “I will say I’m the greatest Hold’em player in the world.”

Brash for sure, but that’s his trademark. There’s a reason Hellmuth is nicknamed “Poker Brat” — he has even berated players for what he considers poor play.

“It’s hard to describe what I do at the poker table,” Hellmuth said. “I can tell when they’re strong or they’re weak, and when you know that, you can win.”

“People just want to beat him and watch him go off,” Chan said. “They just give him too much action.”

That’s the reason Brunson said he would take Hellmuth against anybody in a tournament.

“His strength is getting players who don’t know him to not like him,” Brunson said. “It creates a giant edge for him. They’re going to show him they can beat him, but instead they fall right into his trap.

“You have to know Phil. He alienates people because of his attitude. (But) Phil’s emotions are genuine. Phil’s not showing off. That’s really Phil.”

So when Hellmuth says he’s the world’s greatest Hold’em player, he means it. And it’s key rings no surprise to hear he has no plans to stop at 11 bracelets.

Hellmuth said in 1993 he picked a number of bracelets he wanted to win in his career — 24. He’s almost halfway there, 14 years later.

“I keep thinking I can win 12 or 13 this trip,” he said.

One could come in the WSOP’s Main Event, the Texas Hold’em world championship, starting July 6. Hellmuth won the Main Event in 1989. He was 24, the youngest player to win the event.

Table talk

Allen Cunningham won the $5,000 buy-in Pot-limit Hold’em to become the eighth player to win five WSOP bracelets. … Former Northwestern wrestler Will Durkee, who competed in the 2006 NCAA championships, won the $2,000 buy-in No-limit Hold’em for his first WSOP bracelet. … Alex Kravchenko, a 36-year-old businessman from Moscow, won the $1,500 buy-in Omaha High-Low to become the first Russian citizen to win a WSOP bracelet.

One person even tried strapping the SCRAM to a cat in the hopes of being able to take a drink undetected. The attempt may have been creative, but it wasn’t effective.

“The machine said, ‘I ain’t buying this. That’s not a human heart,’” said Bob Moeller, a subcontractor for Polygraphs Etc. in Cheyenne.

A SCRAM, or Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, is a sophisticated ankle bracelet some multiple and high-risk DUI offenders are ordered to wear in Laramie County to make sure they do not drink as a condition of their bond or probation.

The monitor is bulky yet lightweight and detects alcohol consumption through sweat around the clock at a rate of about once per hour.

If someone wearing the bracelet has a drink or tries to tamper with the device, it won’t be long before the court learns of the violation.

“One of the big issues that we have, alcohol is always the most difficult thing to catch if people are using it,” said Kurt Zunker, coordinator of the Laramie County DUI and drug courts.

Before SCRAMs, Zunker said, the traditional standby for preventing alcohol use was to pendants do surprise visits on a Friday and Saturday night and catch offenders with a breathalyzer test, a technique he described as ineffective.

The bracelet works in conjunction with a modem that is connected to a land telephone line that is usually placed at the offender’s home or work place. The modem processes information from the bracelet that is then sent over the phone line to a data processing center in Denver.

The DUI Court recently received a $36,000 grant from the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Program to fund the continued use of the SCRAM bracelets.

The court, which began operating in the summer of 2006, contracts with Polygraphs Etc. to help provide the SCRAM services.

Zunker said the bracelet can detect the difference between when a person drinks alcohol or has a small amount of alcohol in their system from a medicine. It keeps track of a person’s pulse and body temperature and registers an alert for fluctuations by a few degrees. An infrared device also detects the distance between the bracelet and the wearer’s skin to help prevent people from strapping it to something else.

“In the long run, it’s a benefit to the community, because we know that people who have been arrested multiple times for DUI are not on the road,” he said.

The length of time participants in the DUI Court have to wear the bracelet varies from person to earrings person. The program typically lasts a year.

Zunker credits SCRAMs for some of the effectiveness of the county’s DUI Court because the sight and constant reminder usually ensures participants immediately stop drinking.

“It gives you that initial buy-in, and then hopefully we can get you involved in drug and alcohol therapy,” Zunker said.

The DUI Court has had 43 people wear a SCRAM bracelet, and Zunker said between eight and 10 court participants are usually wearing the bracelets at any given time. To date, 23 of the 71 people who have participated in DUI Court have graduated.

Zunker said one person in the program and one graduate have been rearrested for DUI.

Moeller said he knows of several people who credit staying sober to the constant reminder key rings strapped to their ankle, including one woman who wanted to keep wearing the SCRAM after seven months because she believed it was all that prevented her from drinking again.

“It’s a reliable system,” he said. “You don’t get false readings, despite what some of the clients might say.”

Levelland resident Bobby Duwayne Froman, 54, agreed to 10 years in federal prison after admitting to running methamphetamine from California to the South Plains and distributing it throughout West Texas.

U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings ordered a pre-sentence investigation, and Froman will be sentenced at a later date.

If Cummings decides not to accept the agreement, Froman can withdraw his plea.

According to court documents, Froman admitted to heading the drug operation from silver key rings January 2003 until July 2009, when he and 27 others, including Hockley County deputies Gordon Clark Bohannon and Jose Jesus Quintanilla, were arrested on multiple drug, gun and conspiracy charges.

Froman often recruited members of the outlaw motorcycle gang he founded, the Aces and Eights — a support group for the Bandidos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang — to help traffic multipound quantities of narcotics, according to court documents.

In a signed admission, Froman confessed to multiple instances of drug trafficking over several years, but pleaded guilty to only one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine.

As a result of the plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will drop the remaining charges silver necklaces against Froman, as well as against his wife — with the understanding that the charges against Sharon T. Froman will be resolved in state court.

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