Senior statesman of scat

There’s probably not a jazz singer alive who is more celebrated than Jon Hendricks. Best known as the lyric-writing heart of the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, he has, over the past half-century, collected accolades by the handful and awards by the dozen – everything from the French Legion of Honour to a Peabody for the 1979 documentary Down at the Dunbar.

Yet he is hardly ready to rest on his laurels, and at 86 remains as busy as ever. In addition to a faculty position at the University of Toledo, in Ohio, he continues to play the festival circuit, touring with a new trio dubbed Lambert, Hendricks and Ross Redux, with his daughter, Aria, filling in for Annie Ross and Kevin Burke standing in for the late Dave Lambert.

Canada-U.S. lumber spat gets split court ruling

OTTAWA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A London arbitration court has issued a split ruling on Canadian softwood lumber shipments to the United States in the latest installment of the two countries’ long-running trade feud.

The ruling, released on Tuesday, addresses the first of two complaints the Bush administration has lodged, alleging that Canada had breached a 2006 trade deal by shipping too much lumber and exacerbating woes for struggling U.S. lumber firms.

Microsoft Office On-The-Web Available For Public Trial

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Tuesday it has made available for worldwide public testing a hosted version of its widely used Microsoft Office productivity software.

As part of the trial, users can access an English-language beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the offering is called, from the company’s Web site at no charge. Microsoft for the past several months has conducted a private beta program for Office Live that’s drawn more than 100,000 participants, according to the company.

Office Live Workspace lets users store and access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office applications on the Web through any computer with an Internet connection — even if the PC isn’t running Office on its hard drive.