Body Found in SUV, Still Unconfirmed If It's Hudson's Nephew

Boy Missing Since 'Dreamgirls' Actress' Mother, Brother Were Found Shot in Home

By LUCHINA FISHER, IMAEYEN IBANGA and DEAN SCHABNER

Oct. 27, 2008 —

 

The body of a young black boy recovered from a sport utility vehicle this morning is believed to be Jennifer Hudson's missing 7-year-old nephew Julian King, an FBI official told ABC News.

Official confirmation of the body's identity is still pending.

Police found the body in a white SUV on Chicago's west side; authorities had been searching for him since Friday. Julian hasn't been seen since Hudson's mother and brother were found shot to death in their home Friday afternoon.

Police issued an Amber Alert Friday for Julian and were looking for a 1994 white Chevrolet Suburban.

An Illinois State Police spokesman confirmed to ABC News that the Amber Alert had been canceled, but declined to comment further on the investigation.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office and Chicago Police Department were investigating a white SUV on the city's west side today. Television footage showed police vehicles escorting a flatbed tow truck as it removed the SUV from the scene.

Police refused to comment.

Hudson, an Oscar-winning actress and singer, used  a MySpace blog entry Sunday  to express her thanks and ask for aid in finding her missing nephew and information in the shooting deaths of her mother and brother.

"Thank you all for your prayers and your calls," the blog entry said. "Please keep praying for our family and that we get Julian King back home safely. If anyone has any information about his whereabouts please contact the authorities immediately. ... Once again thank you all for being there for us through this tough time."

Hudson announced late Sunday, through her publicist, that she was offering a $100,000 reward for Julian's return.

"Jennifer Hudson and her family are offering a reward of $100,000 for the safe return of her nephew Julian King who has been missing since Friday, Oct. 24," the statement released by Lisa Kasteler said. "We ask that all inquiries be directed to the Chicago Police Department, Area 1 Detective Division at 312/747-8380. Jennifer and her family appreciate the enormous amount of love, support and prayers they have received while she and her family try to cope with this tragedy and continue the search for Julian."

Julia Hudson, the boy's mother and Jennifer's sister, held a news conference Saturday to plead for her son's safe return.

In the impoverished South Side Chicago neighborhood where the singer and actress grew up and which she often credited for her success, her sister Julia Hudson stood fighting back tears.

"All I ask, I don't care who you are, just let the baby go. Please," Julia Hudson said Saturday before a crowd from the podium of the Pleasant Gift Missionary Baptist Church, where her sister sang as a child. "My biggest fear has already happened. My greatest hope is finding my child."

With Greg King, the boy's father, beside her, Julia Hudson expressed her belief that Julian was still alive and added that her brother's white truck was missing. "I know he's out there," said Julia Hudson, who discovered the bodies of her mother and brother Friday at the family's Englewood home and soon realized her son was missing. "Just let him go. Put him on the side of the street. He'll sit there. Somebody will see him. He'll probably cry until somebody comes along."

"I just want my son. That's all I have to say. Please just let my baby go. He didn't do nothing to nobody, nobody. He don't deserve this," she said.

Barack Obama, an Illinois senator who shares the Hudsons' Chicago hometown, issued a statement Saturday:

"Michelle and I were absolutely heartbroken to learn about this unimaginable tragedy and we want Jennifer to know that she is in our thoughts and prayers during this very difficult time," the Democratic presidential candidate said. "We also pray for the swift and safe return of her young nephew."

Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem during the Democratic National Convention in August after a personal request from Obama's camp.

Autopsy results released Saturday showed that Jennifer Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, and her brother, Jason Hudson, 29, died of gunshot wounds, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

 

The Balfour Connection

While Julia Hudson did not address her relationship with William Balfour, the news media are reporting that Balfour is the "person of interest" who was named in the Amber Alert after Julian's disappearance.

Chicago police have confirmed that they have someone in custody but have not identified the person.

They transferred custody Sunday to state authorities.

No one has been charged in the disappearance or murders.

"From what we know right now, it appears to be some type of domestic situation, but that's very preliminary," Chicago Police Department Superintendent Jody Weis said.

Balfour, who was paroled two years ago after serving seven years in jail for attempted murder and other crimes, has been referred to as Julia Hudson's estranged husband by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.

His mother said he is innocent and had nothing to do with the tragic events.

"This is not my son that did this," a very distraught Michelle Davis Balfour said. "You cannot say my child did this to that girl. He loved Julia. He loved Julia's mother. My God, he put that girl's mother before me."

Mourners have showed an outpouring of emotion outside the family house, where the red Toyota that Jennifer Hudson bought for her mother sits with a birthday card for the missing Julian in the backseat.

Neighbors said Jennifer Hudson had urged her mother to leave the high-crime neighborhood but, after having lived there for decades, her mom told her it was her home.

The tragic events come just before Jennifer Hudson was scheduled to embark on a world tour today to promote her self-titled debut album with its chart-topping single, "Spotlight."

Jennifer Hudson, whose star had been on the rise after she was ousted on Season 3 of "American Idol," was featured in the summer blockbuster "Sex and the City" and stars in the film "The Secret Life of Bees."

In 2007 she hit superstardom with her debut film role in "Dreamgirls," earning a best supporting actress Academy Award for her role as rising singer turned down-and-out single mother Efie White -- a role Jennifer Hudson said she always wanted to play.

The singer also recently announced her engagement to David Otunga, best known for his stint on VH1's reality show "I Love New York."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

October 27, 2008

By KATHERINE ZOEPF

BAGHDAD — Iran joined  Syria  on Monday in condemning what they described as an attack by four United States helicopters on the Syrian side of the border with  Iraq  that they said killed eight people.

The United States confirmed that a Special Operations mission took place in the area on Sunday, but a senior military official gave no more details for now.

The United States is trying to negotiate a strategic agreement with Iraq that would allow American troops to remain in the country and carry out military operations. The pact faces strenuous opposition from neighboring countries, especially Syria and Iran, because of concerns that the United States might use Iraqi territory to carry out attacks on them.

Syria’s state-run news channel reported that United States helicopters on Sunday attacked an area within Syria near the town of Abu Kamal. The official news agency, SANA, cited an anonymous official as saying that four American helicopters had “launched aggression on a civilian building under construction,” killing eight people, giving the details of those it said were killed, and that the Syrian deputy foreign minister had summoned the chargé d’affaires from the American and Iraqi Embassies in protest.

Syria also said that United States soldiers on the ground had stormed a building in the area, Reuters reported.

In Tehran, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, condemned the attack, saying a violation of the territorial integrity of any sovereign state was unacceptable.

“Iran condemns in strongest terms any form of aggression or violation of the states’ territorial integrity which leads to the death of innocent civilians,” he told reporters, according to the official news agency IRNA.

Syria’s state-run media also intensified its criticism of the United States on Monday, with the government newspaper Tishrin accusing American forces of committing “a war crime,” Agence France-Presse said.

The Iraqi government found itself in an awkward position, at once needing to remain on friendly terms with Syria — which is a neighbor and now home to more than a million  Iraqi refugees  — but also wanting to bolster the United States, which has said that the border area is used by people believed to be fomenting antigovernment unrest in Iraq.

In a statement, Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman, tried to give something to each country. In support of the United States’ position he said, “This area was a staging ground for activities by terrorist organizations hostile to Iraq.”

In the most recent action, militants killed 13 Interior Ministry employees in a border village, he said, adding, “At the time, Iraq requested that the Syrian authorities hand over the personnel from this group which uses Syria as a base for its terrorist activities.”

At the same time, Mr. Dabbagh emphasized that Iraq wanted good relations with Syria. But he said that “the presence in Syria of groups that are hostile to Iraq and who contribute to terrorist activity against Iraqis hinders the progress of our relationship.”

On Sunday, the police in Anbar Province in Iraq said an explosion on the border of Iraq and Syria had killed nine construction workers and wounded 19 others.

Local witnesses said they believed that the blast was caused by American shelling, but Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Youssef, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, which borders Syria, said that could not be immediately confirmed at the time.

The police statement did not indicate on which side of the border the blast had taken place. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria.

Also late Sunday, an Iraqi lawmaker announced that the country’s oil and gas draft law had been sent on to Parliament. It had been stalled in Iraq’s cabinet since February 2007 because of disputes over control of Iraq’s oil fields, and it has gone through several revisions.

Abdul-Hadi al-Hasani, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on oil, gas and natural resources, said the latest draft of the law had been received by his committee on Thursday and was undergoing careful review before being presented to the full legislature.

“The draft still needs more discussion and the opinion of experts in this field before it really goes to the Parliament,” Mr. Hasani said in a telephone interview. “We wish to activate the law very soon, and we’re serious about it. We talked today with the parliamentary leadership and went through some points concerning the draft of the law.”

Also Sunday, the chief of the Wasit provincial council announced that he had refused to sign a memorandum of understanding with United States forces that was intended to formalize Wasit’s transfer to the control of Iraq’s own security forces. Wasit, a province that borders Iran, was due this week to become the 13th of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be handed over to full Iraqi control.

The council chief, Muhammad Hassan Jasem, said he had rejected the memorandum because its first article gave the United States permission to continue military operations in Wasit.

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U.S. has plundered world wealth with dollar: China paper

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has plundered global wealth by exploiting the dollar's dominance, and the world urgently needs other currencies to take its place, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Friday.

The front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said that Asian and European countries should banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations for a start, relying only on their own currencies.

A meeting between Asian and European leaders, starting on Friday in Beijing, presented the perfect opportunity to begin building a new international financial order, the newspaper said.

The People's Daily is the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party. The Chinese-language overseas edition is a small circulation offshoot of the main paper.

Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly voice leadership views. But the commentary, as well as recent comments, amount to a growing chorus of Chinese disdain for Washington's economic policies and global financial dominance in the wake of the credit crisis.

"The grim reality has led people, amidst the panic, to realize that the United States has used the U.S. dollar's hegemony to plunder the world's wealth," said the commentator, Shi Jianxun, a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University.

Shi, who has before been strident in his criticism of the U.S., said other countries had lost vast amounts of wealth because of the financial crisis, while Washington's sole concern had been protecting its own interests.

"The U.S. dollar is losing people's confidence. The world, acting democratically and lawfully through a global financial organization, urgently needs to change the international monetary system based on U.S. global economic leadership and U.S. dollar dominance," he wrote.

Shi suggested that all trade between Europe and Asia should be settled in euros, pounds, yen and yuan, though he did not explain how the Chinese currency could play such a role since it is not convertible on the capital account.

A two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of 27 EU member states and 16 Asian countries was set to open on Friday. Though few analysts expect much in the way of concrete agreements, Shi said it could prove momentous.

"How can Europe and Asia grasp each other's hands and together confront the once-in-a-century global financial crisis sparked by the U.S.; how can they construct a new equitable and safe international financial order?" he said.

"The world is waiting for this Asian-European meeting to achieve big results in financial cooperation."

(Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)

October 25, 2008

By  HOWARD BECK  and  MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Isiah Thomas, the former  Knicks  president and head coach, was taken from his Westchester County home by ambulance and hospitalized early Friday morning after he overdosed on sleeping pills.

After a day of conflicting reports about the nature of the incident and who was hospitalized, a person directly involved in the investigation confirmed that it was Thomas. Thomas was released from the hospital later in the day and was reported to be fine.

Emergency personnel and police officers, responding to a 911 call, said they found a 47-year-old man unconscious at Thomas’s home in Purchase, N.Y. Although the authorities withheld the man’s name, Thomas is 47.

At least two earlier news reports indicated that Thomas was not involved, causing confusion. Thomas, in a brief cellphone interview with The New York Post, said it was his teenage daughter, Lauren, who was in distress. Thomas denied that anything had happened to him. His son, Joshua, gave a similar account, telling The Daily News that his sister has hypoglycemia, which is caused by low glucose in the bloodstream.

“Reports of sleeping pills are false,” Joshua Thomas told The Daily News. Referring to his father, he added: “He looked faint from stressing over her. They sat him down, let him drink some water. He’s fine.”

Reached Friday evening, Harrison Police Chief David Hall confirmed that a 47-year-old male had been taken from Thomas’s home. He refuted claims that the incident involved Thomas’s daughter.

“I understand that this person claims it was his daughter; he is lying,” Hall said. “It was definitely not his daughter, it was a male. We know the difference between a 47-year-old black male and a young black female.”

Hall said that the man was unconscious when officers arrived at the home shortly after midnight.

“We administered oxygen and we loaded him into an ambulance,” Hall said. “He was unconscious, but breathing. So we are calling this an accidental overdose of a prescription sleeping pill.”

Hall added, “We aren’t mind readers, so we don’t know why he did it, but there was nothing to indicate a suicide, no notes left.”

Hall said that a prescription bottle was handed over to officers, who gave it to ambulance personnel, who then handed it over to doctors at White Plains Hospital Center.

Thomas, who was hired as the Knicks’ president in December 2003, presided over one of the worst eras in franchise history — a four-and-a-half-year run in which the team cycled through five head coaches (including Thomas) and dozens of players, but never reached .500 despite a league-high payroll.

The Knicks went 23-59 last season, reaching a series of low points on and off the court. Thomas feuded with point guard  Stephon Marburyand frequently benched center Eddy Curry, both of whom were acquired by Thomas and portrayed as franchise cornerstones.

In addition, Thomas and his employer, Madison Square Garden, were found liable for sexual harassment last October, with a jury finding in favor of a former team executive and awarding her $11.6 million in punitive damages.

In April, the Garden’s chairman,  James L. Dolan, removed Thomas as team president, replacing him with  Donnie Walsh. A few weeks later, Walsh removed Thomas as coach. But the team kept Thomas on the payroll, with no title, no authority and no office. He is an infrequent visitor to the team’s headquarters in Greenburgh, N.Y. Walsh said he uses Thomas as a consultant. In the spring, he dispatched Thomas to Italy to scout Danilo Gallinari, whom the Knicks later selected with the sixth pick in the June draft.

The Knicks released a statement Friday evening, but it provided little clarity.

“Isiah Thomas spoke with members of the New York Knicks’ organization and is O.K.,” the team said in the statement. “He is dealing with a family matter and we will have no further comment. He has asked that we respect his privacy and we will.”

As the Knicks prepared to play  the Nets  in their final preseason game Friday at Madison Square Garden, Thomas’s former players expressed concern for his well being.

Walsh said he had not seen Thomas since just before training camp opened in late September.

“I didn’t talk to him, but people in the franchise have spoken to him,” Walsh said.

Brendan Suhr, a longtime friend and former Knicks official under Thomas, said in a telephone interview that he was confident Thomas had not attempted to harm himself.

“He’s in a great frame of mind,” said Suhr, who said he spoke with Thomas earlier in the week. “That’s why I say that with such confidence.”

Suhr said that Thomas was in great shape, both mentally and physically, after taking time off.

“He is not depressed; he is not down,” Suhr said. “He is just the opposite. He’s a very upbeat guy.”

None of the Knicks players said they had talked with Thomas since training camp began.

“He seemed fine, it was good to see him,” said Jamal Crawford, who said he saw Thomas in early October. “I don’t know enough about it to really comment, but I just hope he’s doing well.”

While expressing concern over Thomas’s situation,  Mike D’Antoni, the Knicks’ new coach, said he had little contact with Thomas in the last few months.

“I just feel bad about it like everybody else, but I have no knowledge about it,” D’Antoni said.