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Ga. Muslim jailed over head scarf
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. - A judge ordered a Muslim woman arrested Tuesday for contempt of court for refusing to take off her head scarf at a security checkpoint.
The judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta's west suburban outskirts.
Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.
"I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights," Valentine told The Associated Press on Wednesday from her home, after she said she was unexpectedly released once CAIR got involved. Jail officials declined to say why she was freed.
No comment from judge
Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that "it would not be appropriate" for him to comment on the case.
Last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her head scarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit in February 2007 after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.
Valentine's husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.
Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.
Associated Press
8:20 AM PST, December 17, 2008
ORAN, Algeria — OPEC says it is cutting 2.2 million barrels a day from its output -- the largest ever at one time -- to stem crude prices that have plummeted over 70 percent from summer highs of nearly $150.
An OPEC statement says its latest announcements means it is taking 4.2 million barrels a day off the market compared to September levels. The 4.2 million figure includes more than 500,000 barrels of overproduction OPEC said in September it would eliminate and a formal cut of 1.5 million barrels a day that it agreed on last month.
That amounts to a new reduction of 2.2 million barrels announced Wednesday.
In practice, "it's 2.2" said OPEC President Chakib Khelil.
Members among the 13-nation organization were officially producing a daily 29.045 million barrels in September.
Grandma recounts 26-hour abduction ordeal
The 75-year-old grandmother was strangled, punched, kicked, bound in duct tape and thrown in the trunk of her own car by three young adults. After 26 hours without food or water, Sandy Vinge made a silent plea to God: Either save me, or let me die.
“I told God that,” Vinge, her face still swollen and marked by ugly purple bruises, recalled to TODAY’s Matt Lauer. “Then I asked my late husband, who had just died — I said, ‘Don, tell God [to] help me.’ And he did. That night he helped me. The sheriffs came and they rescued me, because I wouldn’t have lasted long.”
Vinge had spent several days in a San Diego hospital, so badly beaten that she couldn’t even speak at first. But by Monday, the spirited woman who loves to dance was feeling well enough to get her hair done, put on a nice dress, and talk to Lauer from her La Mesa, Calif., home with her son, Daniel Allen, at her side.
Trust betrayed
“I have bruises on my body because they kicked me and hit me and everything,” she told Lauer in an interview that was recorded on Monday and aired Tuesday.
Vinge’s ordeal had begun a week earlier on Monday, Dec. 8, when she bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman identified as Jeffrey Edward Nelson, 19. That night, she said, he returned to her home and asked to use the phone.
“He said his girlfriend had kicked him [out] and could he use my phone to call his mother,” Vinge told Lauer. An open woman who likes to help anyone she can, she let him in.
“I said, ‘Yes, you can,’ so I showed him where the phone was,” Vinge said. “As I turned to walk away, that’s when he choked me from behind.”
Vinge lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she was in the trunk area of her Dodge Magnum station wagon, bound with duct tape so she couldn’t move. “They stole me in my own car,” she said. “That was awful.”
Two others were in the car with Nelson, she said: another young man identified by police as Luis Lomeli Osborne, 18, and a young woman identified as Antoinette Marie Baker, 18.
26-hour ordeal
For the next 26 hours, police say, the three abductors drove around in Vinge’s car, using her credit cards to buy gas and other items. They never offered anything to Vinge, and when she asked for something to drink because she was desperately thirsty, one of the men smashed her in the face with his fist.
“I was so taped and bound I couldn’t even move to protect myself,” Vinge told Lauer. “He was driving crazy and I was bouncing all over the place.”
Finally, on Tuesday night, a police officer saw the car committing a traffic violation, gave chase, and stopped the car. The officer found Vinge in the back. When the duct tape was removed, it took her skin with it in some places.
Nelson, Osborne and Baker were arrested and charged with a number of crimes, including kidnapping and assault. They were arraigned on Friday and are being held on $2 million bail each. The three pleaded not guilty.
An in-court television camera zoomed in on Nelson, a muscular young man with buzz-cut hair, and showed him rolling his eyes as the charges against him were read.
“This is the most egregious, baffling set of circumstances that I’ve ever come across,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Greenwood told reporters.
“It’s hard to believe someone would do that,” Daniel Allen told Lauer. “For what, some credit card charges, a few bucks and a bottle of booze? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Life goes on
Vinge has three children, including Allen, and two grandchildren. Allen is staying with her as she recovers. He told Lauer it’s not easy to control his anger at what happened to a woman as sweet and beloved as his mother.
“I’m holding it together because my job right now is to take care of my mom,” Allen said. “I didn’t go to the court, because I didn’t want to be the guy climbing over the fence trying to get to the guy, especially with their attitude being it was no big deal.”
It’s hard for him to look at his mother’s bruised and battered face. “But when she talks, it’s my mom behind it all,” he told Lauer. “It’s very comforting that she’s the same sweet, loving person that loves everybody and her home is open to everybody. That’s probably how this all came about, that she became an easy target because she’s an open door.”
Although she can’t understand why she was attacked, Vinge is determined to get back to her active and busy life. “There’s nothing I can do about what happened,” she said. “I have to be positive, because life goes on.”
Lauer asked Vinge if she would be letting any more strangers into her home.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said with a big smile. “There’s not that many people out there like this. I’ll probably be afraid — even now, when the doorbell rings, I get a little scared even [though] I have my big old boy with me. I don’t think I’ll do that again, Matt.”
Lauer wished Vinge a happy holiday and told her to take care of herself.
She smiled and offered Lauer some grandmotherly advice of her own: “You take care of you, too, Matt. Don’t you let strangers in.”
Drew Peterson says he's engaged to be married
Drew Peterson, the retired Illinois police sergeant who gained national attention after he was suspected in his third wife's disappearance, is engaged to be married again, his publicist said Wednesday.
Peterson's publicist Glenn Selig confirmed the engagement to a 23-year-old woman to NBC's Chicago affiliate, WMAQ, after it was first reported by CBS News. The woman's name was not revealed for privacy reasons.
Selig said that the 54-year-old Peterson made this decision to remarry because he wanted to be happy and was trying to move forward with his life.
Peterson confirmed that the woman accepted, despite the fact he's also a suspect in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and implicated in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, to whom he is still married.
"Yes, we've been dating four months," Peterson said.
Selig wouldn't give any details about Peterson's new fiance and Peterson wouldn't comment, either.
The engagement continues his pattern of courting women less than half his age and proposing while still married, CBS reported.
Peterson also admitted to rumors that he dated various women in the last few months since Stacy disappeared Oct. 28, 2007. That remains an open case and under investigation by the Illinois State Police and the Will County State's Attorney Office.
Peterson, retired last year from the Bolingbrook, Ill., Police Department as a sergeant after 29 years of service. The retirement followed shortly after Stacy Peterson disappeared, and Peterson reportedly collects a $5,800 monthly pension.
Peterson claims Stacy Peterson left him for another man.
Four wives
He has been married four times. His first wife, Carol Brown, divorced him in 1980 after six years of marriage partly because he was unfaithful. His second marriage, to Vicki Connolly, ended after 10 years. Connolly later told reporters that he had physically abused her during the marriage.
His next wife was Kathleen Savio, with whom he had two sons, now in their mid-teens. The union began to disintegrate in 2002, when Savio said that her husband took up with the 17-year-old girl who would become his fourth wife, Stacy Cales.
During a two-year period at the end of the marriage to Savio, police were called to the home 18 times because of domestic disturbances, and in 2002 Savio got an order of protection against her husband, charging him with threatening to kill her and physical abuse. No formal charges were ever brought against him.
He and Savio were in the process of finalizing their divorce in 2004 when she was found dead in a bathtub in her home. The tub was dry and there was clotted blood on the back of Savio’s head, but medical examiners ruled that she had fallen accidentally, with the tub draining itself after her death. She was 40 years old.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the recession leaves more retail casualties in its wake, rising store bankruptcies and mall closures could have devastating economic consequences.
As more stores exit malls, regional mall vacancies could rise past 7% by year-end, a level not hit since the first quarter of 2001, according to real estate research firm Reis.
Major cities across America will be impacted, said David Birnbrey, Chairman and co-CEO of Atlanta-based The Shopping Center Group, a retail real estate services firm.
Both Birnbrey and Susan Wachter, professor with University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Real Estate Department, warn the social and economic impact of empty stores can be devastating.
"One of the biggest consequences [of store and mall closings] is the loss of a sense of community," Birnbrey said. "I am a big believer that malls are an essential part of Americana. A mall is a place where people gather and socialize."
In addition, many municipalities are heavily dependent on retailers for the tax revenue and jobs that they generate.
For example, Montgomery County, Pa., gets as much as 50% of its tax revenue from the local King of Prussia mall, said Wachter.
The impact will be felt on local police service, schools and roads, said Birnbrey.
The village of North Randall in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is on the verge of extinction after a challenging economic and competitive climate has crippled business at the Randall Park Mall.
The shopping center, once the largest enclosed mall in the greater Cleveland area, is closing after 32 years. [Read story]
The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), in its most recent forecast, expects that 6,100 chain stores will shutter this year, the highest level since 2004 "as the U.S. recession continues to take its toll on the retail sector and its job market."
In 2009, the ICSC estimates that store closings could exceed 3,100 in just the first half of the year. However, the number of potential closings rises exponentially when the firm takes into account both public and private sector businesses.
The ICSC projects that about 148,000 retail establishments - both public and private - will go out of business this year and another 73,000 stores will close in the first half of 2009.
The ICSC projects that about 625,000 retail jobs will be eliminated this year "with little change in the pace for early 2009."
Fewer retailers means less competition and fewer places to shop. "Right now everyone is euphoric over the big sales," Birnbrey said. "Once the holiday season is over then we could get this monopolistic situation where the [retail] survivors realize that they don't need to be as competitive on prices."
But not everyone sees a dead mall as a negative development.
"Our country has six times more retail space per capita than any other county," said Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the architecture program at Georgia Institute of Technology.
"We're just cannibalizing our existing stores by building more stores even when sales aren't increasing," she said. "We were long due for a retail correction and we're going through it now."
Dunham-Jones said big-box enclosed malls have become a dying breed as more shoppers prefer going to shop at strip malls or "lifestyle" open-air malls.
"The good news is that this isn't the first time we'll see dead malls," she said. In an upcoming book, "Reftrofitting Suburbia," co-authored by Dunham Jones, she's included case studies of more than 100 places across North America that have turned dead malls or big-box stores into thriving community centers.
What's needed, she said, is for the public and private sector to be opportunistic and develop the 100 acres of prime mall space for mixed community use like schools, libraries and new housing.
John Norquist, a former mayor of Milwaukee who now lectures on urban planning, agreed with Dunham-Jones.
"There's no disgrace in a dead mall," Norquist said. "In Milwaukee, we had one department store, Boston Store, in the downtown area. When that went away and the rest of retailing went into the suburbs, we focused in developing the empty space into housing and I gave fast permits."
Norquist rationalized that more housing would eventually attract more retailing. "Milwaukee opened up for [retail] business in 2001 and it's continued to grow," he said.
But Wharton's Wachter remained unconvinced. She said any talk of redevelopment in this environment is "unrealistic."
"Everything that has been suggested needs funding. There's no money for these adaptive reuses [of retail space] for communities," she said.
Birnbrey's criticism was somewhat harsher. "It's human nature to put a positive light on a bad situation," he said. "It's just a case of hope springs eternal."
Freight trains collide, rail cars fall into river
DRESBACH, Minn. - Two freight trains collided sending derailed cars plummeting into the Mississippi River and sparking a liquid ammonia leak, police said Wednesday.
Emergency crews were sent to the scene near the Wisconsin border after the collision at around 5.30a.m. local time.
NBC News affiliate WTMJ reported that up to 40 railway cars were involved but it was unclear how many were in the river.
Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand told KAGE Radio that two people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
Officials said the ammonia leak posed no danger to the public.
One train had reportedly left Portage, Wis., and was heading to St. Paul, Minn.
Wednesday 12-17-08
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HOLLYWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- A deceased drifter long suspected in the abduction, murder and beheading of 6-year-old Adam Walsh committed the crime that put missing children on the national agenda, police said Tuesday.
"If Ottis Toole was alive today, he would be arrested for the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh on July 27, 1981," Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner said at an afternoon news conference announcing the end of the 27-year investigation.
The chief apologized to the boy's parents, John and Reve Walsh, for what he called "lapses" in the initial investigation. He added that there was no "magic" piece of evidence that led investigators to officially name a suspect now.
"This case could have been closed, and should have been closed years ago," Wagner said.
When he took over last year as police, Wagner vowed to close the Walsh case. He reviewed the entire case file and assigned a retired detective, Joe Matthews, to conduct an independent review.
John Walsh's voice shook and his eyes brimmed with tears as he thanked the chief for closing the case. Walsh is best known as host of the television show "America's Most Wanted." Watch Walsh's reaction
"For 27 years, we have been asking ourselves, 'Who would take a 6-year-old boy and murder him and decapitate him? Who? ' " Walsh said. "We needed to know. Today we know. The not knowing has been a torture but now that journey is over. It is only fitting that it ends here at this police department. "
Toole, a convicted pedophile and killer who associated with notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, died in prison in 1996. Wagner said investigators were able to place Toole in Hollywood at the time Adam disappeared.
Toole twice confessed to killing the boy -- and twice recanted his story, saying he made it up. It could not be learned what, if any, new evidence exists.
Adam disappeared from a Sears store across from the Hollywood police station in July 1981. Two weeks later, his severed head was found in a canal 120 miles away. The boy's body was never recovered, and no one was ever charged in the case.
Walsh turned his grief into action, becoming an early advocate for for missing children and crime victims. Three presidents -- Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- have honored John Walsh for his efforts to safeguard children.
His efforts led to the passage of the federal Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984, which established the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
His fierce loathing of fugitives, convicts and predators launched a new career as host of the television show "America's Most Wanted."
Walsh has long believed Toole killed Adam, and on Tuesday, Chief Wagner said there never any other suspect. Toole died in prison in 1996 while serving a life sentence on unrelated charges.
Toole's confessions in the Walsh case were questioned by police because Toole confessed to other murders that police knew he did not commit.
Although the details of his story changed, Toole did lead police to the Sears store and pointed out the spot where Adam was last seen. He also led police to the canal where the boy's head was found.
But investigators could not find Adam's body where Toole said he left it.
A bloody piece of carpet removed from Toole's car was lost by police many years ago, before DNA testing became available.
Police believe a 17-year-old security guard asked a handful of rowdy kids who were playing video games in the toy department to leave the store. Investigators believe Adam was grouped in with those kids, who left him alone outside the store. That was the last time he was seen.
The Fed’s new zero-tolerance policy
For the first time in its history, the Federal Reserve has set a target for short term interest rates as low as zero percent. The moves signals that the central bank has entered a new phase in its campaign to revive a battered U.S. economy. Here's what the Fed is up to:
Q: What does it mean if interest rates go to zero? Does everyone get to borrow money for free?
No. Pushing the federal funds rate down to zero doesn’t mean everything comes with zero-percent financing. It means banks can now raise cash — for very short periods — without paying interest.
Think of the Fed's target as the wholesale price of money. Banks and other lenders will still charge more than zero interest when they lend it to you and me. That’s how banks make money. But borrowers with very good credit will be able to get a great deal on a short-term loan.
The problem is that with the economy shrinking, businesses cutting back and banks worried about getting their money back, lenders have become stingier about providing credit. To get the economy moving again, the Fed typically cuts the cost of money to encourage more borrowing.
Q: So that’s why the Fed cut its target interest rate to zero?
Not exactly. Short-term interest rates already had fallen below the Fed’s latest 1 percent target before Tuesday's move cutting that target to a range of zero to 0.25 percent. The Fed normally achieves its target by buying and selling Treasury securities to move cash in or out of the financial system.
But short-term interest rates have been falling sharply since the financial markets went into a tailspin in September. With Tuesday’s announcement the Fed was essentially acknowledging that it can’t control interest rates any more.
Q: If the Fed isn’t controlling rates, how come they’ve fallen to zero?
In a full-blown global market panic, investors around the world have dumped other holdings — from stocks to corporate bonds — and stampeded into U.S. Treasury securities. That’s because, despite the turmoil in the U.S. economy and heavy borrowing by Uncle Sam, Treasury debt is still considered the safest place to stash cash.
Like all debt securities, the interest rate on Treasuries moves lower as demand pushes up the price.
Demand has been so strong, in fact, that at times the return on short-term Treasuries has gone negative — meaning investors are so afraid of the financial markets that they’re willing to lose a little money just to make sure they got most of it back.
Q: Wait a minute: how can interest rates go “negative”? Doesn’t that mean the borrower gets paid interest instead of the lender? How can that happen?
That’s what happens when so many investors want to buy debt from the Treasury — in effect, lend it money — that they’re willing to take a little less when the debt matures.
Besides, when you’re talking about the real cost of borrowing, you can't just look at the nominal interest rate — the sticker price, if you will. Instead, you have to factor in the future spending power of the money you’re borrowing.
In normal circumstances, the spending power of cash is gradually eroded by inflation. So if you’re paying 4 percent interest on a loan when inflation is running at 2 percent, your true borrowing cost is only 2 percent — because you’re paying off the debt with money that has lost 2 percent of its spending power.
Last year, when inflation was running at 4 percent, and the Fed targeted short-term rates at 5.25 percent, that meant the real cost of short-term borrowing for banks was about 1.25 percent. Since then, the Fed has been cutting rates and, more recently, inflation has been coming down. That means the normal impact of rate cuts — spurring lending and getting the economy growing — has been less pronounced.
Q: But the government reported Tuesday that prices actually fell in November. What effect does that have on rates?
It means that it'll still cost you something to borrow, even if the sticker price of short-term borrowing fall to to zero. That's what happens when inflation — a steady rise in prices — turns to deflation and prices keep falling.
With the threat of inflation gone for the moment, the Fed is now worried that deflation may take hold. Deflation turns everything upside down; instead of losing spending power, your money is worth more as prices fall. If that keeps up, people postpone purchases to get a better price; companies sell less stuff and have to cut production and lay off workers, those workers can’t buy stuff, and the cycle continues.
It also makes it more expensive to borrow because you’re paying back your debt with dollars that are worth more than they were when you borrowed them. If prices continue falling at 1.7 percent — and interest rates are at zero — the true cost of borrowing is 1.7 percent. That works against the Fed’s efforts to make borrowing cheaper and get the economy moving again.
Q: So if it can’t cut rates below zero, what does the Fed do now?
It shifts gears. Plan B involves flooding the economy with trillions of dollars in cash, which the Fed began doing in September. Through a variety of special “facilities” the Fed has been buying up debt that no one else wants to buy. It’s already bought more than $1 trillion worth and says it plans to buy more.
This is called “quantitative easing.” It means the Fed makes money easier to get by providing it in vast quantities. The hope is that now that battered banks have been pulling back from the aggressive lending that got us into this mess, all this money sloshing around in the system will find its way into the hands of businesses and consumers that are having trouble getting loans.
Q: Is this going to work?
The honest answer: No one knows. The last time anything like this was tried, Japan’s central bank cut its short-term target rate to zero for five years — from 2001 to 2006 — to fight a nasty bout of deflation that was touched off in the 1990s by a collapse in real estate prices.
The prolonged recession in Japan has been called the Lost Decade. Most economists believe the Fed’s aggressive policy to flood the U.S. economy with money will help get the economy back on track by sometime next year. There’s a significant lag effect in any Fed move.
But we won’t know for some time whether the zero interest rate policy — combined with quantitative easing — will be enough to do the trick.
| A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.
|
Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron. While the team for now has managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain, they said the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds. "It was the first time in the world that it was possible to visualise what people see directly from the brain activity," the private institute said in a statement. "By applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams." When people look at an object, the eye's retina recognises an image that is converted into electrical signals which go into the brain's visual cortex. The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see. In their experiment, the researchers showed people the six letters in the word "neuron" and then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity. The team said that it first figured out people's individual brain patterns by showing them some 400 different still images. |
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Tuesday 12-16-08
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