Students: School Suspended Us For Dressing Alike

Students: School Suspended Us For Dressing Alike
Girls Are In After School Dance Group Together
UPDATED: 11:57 am MDT September 28, 2006




MARION, Ind. -- A school recently suspended four eighth-grade girls because they wore identical outfits on the same day, some of the girls and their parents said.

Two of the girls, Dacia Small and Mindy Ellis, said McCulloch Middle School officials incorrectly branded them as gang members because of the outfits. The four received a five-day suspension after Principal Michael Shaffer saw their clothes, Small and Ellis said.

"One of the girls asked him what was the matter with it. Then he started yelling at all everybody and took us to the office and suspended us," Small told Indianapolis TV station WRTV.


Shaffer said the girls were suspended because they violated school rules, but he declined to say which rules they broke.

"I can't really address specifically a student discipline issue in regard to a particular student," Shaffer said. "I will tell you that we have a code of conduct here at McCulloch Middle School that we expect all of our students to measure up to. We're talking about a violation of that code of conduct."

The girls, whose suspensions end Tuesday, are in an after-school dance group together, but not a gang, Small said.

"We dressed alike because we are just friends," Small said.

Small's mother, Regina Barnett, said she isn't happy with Shaffer's decision. She said she thought the suspension had to do with the girls being black. Shaffer is white.

"I told him I think it's a racial thing," Barnett said. "He said he didn't appreciate me saying that because he has black friends and this and that," Barnett said.

Barnett said she is worried that the gang allegation would be on her daughter's school record.

"I don't want it on her record that she got kicked out for a gang," Barnett said. "She's not in a gang. I'm not going to let that get stuck on her record."

Barnett said she hoped to talk to the school district's superintendent about the issue.
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© 2006, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc.

Health insurance costs rise 7.7%, twice the rate of inflation

Health insurance costs rise 7.7%, twice the rate of inflation
By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY




Workers and employers won't find much comfort in the smallest increase in health insurance costs since 1999. The 7.7% increase this year is still more than twice the rate of inflation.

And those rising costs have so far failed to boost the percentage of employers offering what are touted by some, including President Bush, as an answer to health care inflation: high- deductible insurance policies coupled with savings accounts.

Despite being the biggest buzz among benefit consultants, the Kaiser Family Foundation says only 7% of employers offered such policies this year, unchanged from 2005. The results come from the non-profit foundation's annual employer survey, released Tuesday.

"This shows that the debate in the media and in Washington health policy circles is way out in front of the reality," says Drew Altman, president of the non-profit research group in Menlo Park, Calif.

Other results from the survey:

• Among all types of health insurance, what employers paid rose 7.7% this year, smallest increase since 1999, but still more than twice overall inflation.

• The most common type of insurance, a preferred provider organization plan, averaged $11,765 for a family and $4,385 for single employees.

• Employers did not substantially raise deductibles, premiums or co-payments that their employees pay. The average percentage of the premium paid by workers was 27% for family coverage and 16% for single plans.

Still, workers are paying more because overall premiums rose.

"Working people are still feeling the pain," says Altman, who says on average, what workers pay toward premiums has risen 84% since 2000, while wages are up 20% and inflation 18%.

The total premium increase is up 87% since 2000.

While high-deductible policies have always been sold, the new twist in the market came when Congress in late 2003 allowed certain policies to be coupled with tax-free "health savings accounts." Money in these accounts not used for deductibles and other medical care can roll over and be used in future years for medical care. That's a change from the flexible spending accounts many companies offer.

Proponents, including President Bush, say the policies will get patients to act more like savvy consumers and shop for medical care based on cost and quality. Critics, including the Commonwealth Fund, say such policies benefit mainly the healthy and wealthy and will discourage preventive medical care.

The policies have annual deductibles of at least $1,050 for singles and $2,100 for families. Another type of account, a health reimbursement account, is similar, except the worker generally cannot take any money left in the account with him or her when leaving the company.

The Kaiser survey found that the average annual deductible for the reimbursement accounts is $1,442 for individuals or $2,985 for families. For health savings account plans offered by employers, the average annual deductible was $2,011 for singles and $4,008 for families. Sixty three percent of employers contribute something toward the savings accounts.

While high-deductible accounts have lower premiums than other types of insurance, the Kaiser survey found that most employers don't save any money compared with other types of insurance, once employer contributions to those savings accounts are added to premium costs.

Asset Resources, a 10-employee debt collection firm in Minneapolis, switched to a high-deductible plan after several years of 17% increases in health insurance premiums.

"The broker said we might be able to cut some costs for you and afford some employees an opportunity from a tax point of view," says Mark Wallerius, vice president.

"It seemed a win-win at the time."

So the company switched from insurance with a $500 annual deductible, a $15 co-pay at the doctor's office and a 20% coinsurance charge for hospital services to one with an annual deductible of $1,250. Some preventive care is fully covered at the doctor's office, but employees had to pay the full cost of other visits until they reached the deductible.

"They were pretty disgruntled," says Wallerius, who said the employees voted to go back to a lower-deductible plan this year.

Posted 9/26/2006 10:43 AM ET








Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

3 kids found dead in fetus theft case

3 kids found dead in fetus theft case
By JIM SUHR, Associated Press Writer







Autopsies were planned Sunday for three young children who were found dead hours after a woman was charged with killing their pregnant mother and her fetus in a grisly attack.

The two boys, ages 7 and 2, and their 1-year-old sister were found together Saturday in an East St. Louis apartment where their mother lived, State Police Capt. Craig Koehler said.

The children were last seen Monday with family friend Tiffany Hall, 24, now charged with first-degree murder in the death of their mother, who is believed to have been slain days before her children disappeared. Hall is also charged with intentional homicide of an unborn child, prosecutor Robert Haida said.

Koehler declined to say whether Hall was suspected in the children's deaths. The cause of their deaths had not been determined, he said.

The bodies of DeMond Tunstall, 7, Ivan Tunstall-Collins, 2, and Jinela Tunstall, 1, were found in an apartment at the John DeShields public housing complex, capping a furious two-day search that included scouring an 1,100-acre state park.

Authorities said a lead directed them to check the apartment, which had not been searched previously. They declined to elaborate.

"Anytime you have three deceased children, it's a very emotional time," Koehler said late Saturday as he fought back tears. "All these investigators have worked tirelessly with one outcome in mind — to find these children alive."

The body of their mother, Jimella Tunstall, 23, was found Thursday in a weedy East St. Louis lot. Authorities believe her womb was cut open after she was knocked unconscious.

An autopsy showed Tunstall, who was seven months pregnant, bled to death after sustaining an abdominal wound caused by a sharp object, believed to be scissors, said Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner.

Relatives say Tunstall grew up with Hall and had let her baby-sit her children.

"She said (Hall) was looking out for her," Tunstall's brother, Ernest Myers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Family members told the newspaper Tunstall had lost custody of her children at one point but was trying to get her life back on track. "She had a heart of gold," Myers said.

Officials suspect Tunstall was slain on or about Sept. 15, Haida said. The same day, Hall summoned police to a park, saying she had given birth to a stillborn child, Hart said.

Hall and the fetus were taken to a hospital, where she would not let doctors examine her and offered conflicting reasons for why she went into labor, alternately saying she had consensual sex and was raped, Hart said. The dead baby showed no signs of trauma, and an autopsy the next day failed to pinpoint a cause of death, Hart said.

Hall has two children of her own. Koehler said they are "safe and sound."

Authorities say Hall acknowledged to her boyfriend during the baby's funeral Thursday that the child wasn't his, and that she had killed the mother to get it. The boyfriend, reportedly a sailor home on leave, told police, who arrested his girlfriend hours later, investigators said.

Hall, jailed on $5 million bond, will likely be arraigned Monday on the two charges, each carrying a 20 to 60 years or life in prison, Haida said. The murder count could be punishable by the death penalty.

DNA tests should determine definitively whether the baby was the one Tunstall was carrying, Hart said.






Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

War price on U.S. lives equal to 9/11

War price on U.S. lives equal to 9/11
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 22, 7:29 PM ET




Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now match those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next. Add casualties from chasing terrorists elsewhere in the world, and the total has passed the Sept. 11 figure.

The latest milestone for a country at war comes without commemoration. It also may well come without the precision of knowing who is the 2,973rd man or woman of arms to die in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, or just when it happens. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed.

Historians note that this grim accounting is not how the success or failure of warfare is measured, and that the reasons for conflict are broader than what served as the spark.

The body count from World War II was far higher for Allied troops than for the crushed Axis. Americans lost more men in each of a succession of Pacific battles than the 2,390 people who died at Pearl Harbor in the attack that made the U.S. declare war on Japan. The U.S. lost 405,399 in the theaters of World War II.

Despite a death toll that pales next to that of the great wars, one casualty milestone after another has been observed and reflected upon this time, especially in Iraq.

There was the benchmark of seeing more U.S. troops die in the occupation than in the swift and successful invasion. And the benchmarks of 1,000 dead, 2,000, 2,500.

Now this.

"There's never a good war but if the war's going well and the overall mission remains powerful, these numbers are not what people are focusing on," said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Boston University. "If this becomes the subject, then something's gone wrong."

Beyond the tribulations of the moment and the now-rampant doubts about the justification and course of the Iraq war, Zelizer said Americans have lost firsthand knowledge of the costs of war that existed keenly up to the 1960s, when people remembered two world wars and Korea, and faced Vietnam.

"A kind of numbness comes from that," he said. "We're not that country anymore — more bothered, more nervous. This isn't a country that's used to ground wars anymore."

Almost 10 times more Americans have died in Iraq than in Afghanistan, where U.S. casualties have been remarkably light by any historical standard, although climbing in recent months in the face of a resurgent Taliban.

As of Friday, the U.S. death toll stood at 2,693 in the Iraq war and 278 in and around Afghanistan, for a total of 2,971, two short of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Pentagon reports 56 military deaths and one civilian Defense Department death in other parts of the world from Operation Enduring Freedom, the anti-terrorism war distinct from Iraq.

Altogether, 3,028 have died abroad since Sept. 11, 2001.

The civilian toll in Iraq hit record highs in the summer, with 6,599 violent deaths reported in July and August alone, the United Nations said this week.

The latest U.S. deaths identified by the armed forces:

_Army 2nd Lt. Emily J.T. Perez, 23, Fort Washington, Md., who died Sept. 12 in Kifl, Iraq, from an explosive device detonated near her vehicle. A former high school sprinter who sang in her West Point gospel choir, she was assigned to the 204th Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

_Marine Sgt. Christopher M. Zimmerman, 28, Stephenville, Texas, killed Wednesday in Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

A new study on the war dead and where they come from suggests that the notion of "rich man's war, poor man's fight" has become a little truer over time.

Among the Americans killed in the Iraq war, 34 percent have come from communities reporting the lowest levels of family income. Half come from middle income communities and only 17 percent from the highest income level.

That's a change from World War II, when all income groups were represented about equally. In Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, the poor have made up a progressively larger share of casualties, by this analysis.

Eye-for-an-eye vengeance was not the sole motivator for what happened after the 2001 attacks any more than Pearl Harbor alone was responsible for all that followed. But Pearl Harbor caught the U.S. in the middle of mobilization, debate, rising tensions with looming enemies and a European war already in progress. Historians doubt anyone paid much attention to sad milestones once America threw itself into the fight.

In contrast, the United States had no imminent war intentions against anyone on Sept. 10, 2001. One bloody day later, it did.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Infants' doses were 1,000 times too strong

11:05 PM September 18, 2006
Infants' doses were 1,000 times too strong
By Tammy Webber
September 18, 2006




Methodist Hospital took immediate steps Monday to try to prevent fatal overdoses of an anti-clotting drug to infants, two days after six premature babies accidentally were injected with doses 1,000 times greater than they were supposed to receive.

Two of the infants died late Saturday, and a third was listed Monday as unstable and in critical condition at Riley Hospital for Children. The other three were stable and showed no signs of harm from the overdoses, said Sam Odle, Methodist president and chief executive officer.

A pharmacy technician with 25 years of experience accidentally delivered vials of heparin in adult concentrations to the neonatal intensive care unit, officials said. The vials look identical to those intended for the neonatal unit, where heparin is used to prevent blood clots in intravenous lines.

Two-day-old Emmery Miller and 5-day-old D'myia Alexander Nelson died late Saturday, likely from internal bleeding, officials said. Odle said no other infants were at risk.

"Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with these children and their families and all those who have been affected by this tragic incident," he said. "It's not surprising there's a lot of anger."

The hospital will continue its investigation and deliver a report -- along with an improvement plan -- by the end of the week to the Indiana State Department of Health and the national Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Odle said.

Among the changes announced Monday: Adult-strength vials of heparin identical to the infant dose vials no longer will be stocked by Clarian Health Systems hospitals; hospital pharmacies must double-check all drugs taken from stockrooms before delivering them to the floors; and at least two nurses must validate doses before they're given to an infant. In addition, a mass re-education of staff members on safely administering drugs was to be completed by Saturday. Riley and Indiana University Hospital are Clarian hospitals, as well.

Some Indiana hospitals have taken other steps in the past to avoid similar problems.

St. Vincent Hospitals stopped using heparin and now uses saline to keep IV lines open in the neonatal intensive care unit, said Dr. Niceta Bradburn, director of newborn services. St. Francis Hospitals and Health Centers has standardized heparin doses so staff members don't have choices, said Susan Brown, director of pharmacy services at St. Francis Hospitals and Health Centers. Prefilled syringes come from the manufacturer at set doses for IV flushes as well as to prevent blood clotting.

And this summer, the hospital system began using a bar-coding system. All medications are scanned and must be matched to bracelets worn by patients.

Odle said Clarian also hopes to use bar coding and is "moving in that direction as rapidly as we can."

The employees involved in the overdoses -- one pharmacy technician and five nurses -- were on leave and receiving support and counseling, but were expected to return to work, Odle said.

"Whenever something like this happens, it's not an individual responsibility; it's an institutional responsibility," Odle said. "Our system allowed this to happen. What we have to do is learn from this (and) make sure we improve our systems so this cannot happen again."

Joint Commission spokeswoman Charlene Hill said punishing employees for mistakes -- unless they were intentional -- would discourage them from reporting errors so that they can be fixed.

"The first reaction (from the public) is that we should fire nurses and discipline doctors. But that will not solve the problems because it's the system that's broken," Hill said.

Indiana in January began requiring hospitals to report 27 types of medical errors to the state Health Department, and the results will be made public in the first quarter of 2007. In 1999, an Institute of Medicine report estimated that almost 100,000 patients a year die in U.S. hospitals as a result of preventable errors, though many experts say the number is much higher. The Joint Commission knows of 36 deaths or injuries in Indiana hospitals from January 1995 through December 2004, though that number is certainly higher, commission officials said.

That's why blameless error-reporting is important, Hill said.

"Blame and shame is part of culture in society so it forces errors underground, and they do not get fixed."



Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved

Gonzales wants Internet records saved

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 · Last updated 6:14 p.m. PT
Gonzales wants Internet records saved
By HOPE YEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER



WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.

Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller have met with several Internet providers, including Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Comcast Corp., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.

The law enforcement officials have indicated to the companies they must retain customer records, possibly for two years. The companies have discussed strengthening their retention periods - which currently run the gamut from a few days to about a year - to help avoid legislation.

During those meetings, which took place earlier this summer, Justice Department officials asserted that customer records would help them investigate child pornography cases. But the FBI also said during the meetings that such records would help their terrorism investigations, said one person who attended the meetings but spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were intended to be private.

Testifying to a Senate panel, Gonzales acknowledged the concerns of some company executives who say legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on customers' privacy rights. But he said the growing threat of child pornography over the Internet was too great.

"This is a problem that requires federal legislation," Gonzales told the Senate Banking Committee. "We need information. Information helps us makes cases."

He called the government's lack of access to customer data the biggest obstacle to deterring child porn.

"We have to find a way for Internet service providers to retain information for a period of time so we can go back with a legal process to get them," he said.


At Tuesday's hearing, Gonzales said he agreed with the sentiment of 49 state attorneys general who in a June letter to Congress expressed support for a federal law that would require longer retention of customer records.

"We respect civil liberties, but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information," he said.

The subject has prompted some alarm among Internet service provider executives and civil liberties groups after the Justice Department took Google to court earlier this year to force it to turn over information on customer searches. Civil liberties groups also have sued Verizon and other telephone companies, alleging that they are working with the government to provide information without search warrants on subscriber calling records.

Justice Department officials have said that any proposal would not call for the content of communications to be preserved and would keep the information in the companies' hands. The data could be obtained by the government through a subpoena or other lawful process.

---

On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/










©1996-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

States pass laws protecting 'fetal rights'

Posted on Mon, Jul. 10, 2006
States pass laws protecting 'fetal rights'
By RICK MONTGOMERY
Kansas City Star





In Arkansas, lawmakers are considering making it a crime for a pregnant woman to take a drag off a cigarette.

In Utah, a woman serves 18 months' probation for child endangerment after refusing to undergo a Caesarean section to save her twins, one of whom died. In Wisconsin and South Dakota, authorities can haul pregnant women into custody for abusing alcohol or drugs.

And July 1 in Alabama, Brody's Law took effect. It enables prosecutors to level two charges against anyone who attacks a pregnant woman and harms her fetus.

Are these common-sense measures to protect America's most helpless citizens-to-be -- or something else?

Abortion-rights groups see this wave of "fetal protectionism" as a setup to make a fetus a person, entitled to constitutional rights, contrary to how the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

But anti-abortion forces -- plus some groups with no stake in the fetal-rights debate -- say it's a no-brainer that society do whatever it can to keep developing babies safe and healthy.

"It's an economic issue and a public-health issue," said state Rep. Bob Mathis, an Arkansas Democrat who touts a record backing abortion rights and recently floated the idea of a smoking ban during pregnancy.

A tragedy in Wichita last month underscored the intractable politics at work.

The killing of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks, who was nine months pregnant, became a political cause celebre after her family learned that the state could not file homicide charges in the death of Alexa -- the daughter Chelsea was carrying. Three people, including her boyfriend, have been charged in Chelsea's killing, which authorities say was a murder for hire.

Legislative inaction this year on a fetal-homicide bill kept Kansas from joining more than 30 states, including Missouri, where murder laws include the unborn as legal victims.

The anti-abortion group Kansans For Life leapt on the controversy, accusing Senate moderates and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of "kowtowing" to abortion-rights forces by stalling a bill that might have given Chelsea's family the justice it sought.

"Two lives were taken from us," Chelsea's mother said in a statement to the media. "We will do whatever it takes to make sure that the law, in the future, recognizes all life."

Critics of fetal-rights legislation see a slippery slope in the making. In some states, prosecutors have turned such laws against mothers whose behavior -- typically methamphetamine or crack use -- may have contributed to a stillbirth or to costly birth defects.

Taken further, could authorities charge pregnant women who reject a doctor's advice to take prenatal vitamins and then miscarry? How about banning them from playing sports? And why not punish alcoholic men whose addiction, studies show, could affect sperm and produce birth defects?

"What we're seeing is a political trend in which the fetuses are coming first, and the rights of women... are coming last," said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

"I think 30 years of anti-abortion rhetoric --'women killing their babies' -- has led to a moral vilification that doesn't just stick to those who seek to terminate a pregnancy. It's spreading to all pregnant women."

Still, many courts have been uneasy about how far fetal rights can go.

Saying prosecutors overreached, a Texas appeals court last year unanimously threw out the convictions of two women charged under the state's Prenatal Protection Act for "delivering" cocaine and methamphetamine to their babies through the umbilical cord.

"It makes sense that if a woman's right to privacy encompasses decisions regarding procreation, such as contraception and abortion, it should also include decisions regarding health during pregnancy," wrote Chicago lawyer Erin Linder in the September issue of University of Illinois Law Review.

Even Mathis, the Arkansas legislator, harbors doubts about the state's ability to enforce an anti-smoking law. "The more I think about it... you might end up with a fat lip" if police approach a smoker who is overweight but not pregnant, he said.

In Kansas, fetal-rights advocates pushed a homicide bill that took the mother out of the equation.

Bill 2300 -- overwhelmingly passed by the House in March 2005 -- specifically excluded abortion and "any act committed by the mother of the unborn child" from the law's reach.

It contained, however, a clause that made moderates suspicious: "As used in the Kansas criminal code, 'person' and 'human being' also mean an unborn child."

State Sen. John Vratil, a Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the bill landed, said the language "makes it an abortion bill (because) it would implicitly indicate that life begins at conception."

In any case, his committee received the bill from the House in late March -- too late, he said, for senators to schedule a hearing before the end of the spring session.

Another Republican judiciary committee member, conservative Sen. Phil Journey, is dubious of Vratil's explanation.

"I brought it up at the beginning of the session and was promised the bill would get a hearing," Journey said. "Now the bill is dead -- and so is Chelsea's baby."

So goes the tenor of the debate.

Said Vratil: "Given the history of abortion and the controversial nature of the debate, I don't think you can fashion a bill" that would make killing an unborn child a crime -- and satisfy both sides with the terms.









© 2006 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com

Widow Rented Rotary Phone for 42 Years

Sept. 14, 4:13 PM EDT
Widow Rented Rotary Phone for 42 Years



CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.

Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones - the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger - in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.

Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones - $29.10 a month. Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills.

"I'm outraged," Gordon said. "It made me so mad. It's ridiculous. If my own grandmother was doing it, how many other people are?"

New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service, said customers were given the choice option to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said.

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.

Benefits of leasing include free replacements and the option of switching to newer models, he said.

Gordon said she believes the majority of people leasing are elderly and may not realize they are paying thousands of dollars for a telephone.

Skalko said bills are clearly marked, and customers can quit their lease any time by returning their phones.

Strogen says she's not a big fan of her new push-button phone.

"I'd like to have my rotary back," she said. "I like that better."



© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy

Court Room Conversations

Court Room Conversations



ML All-Star. A collection of some of the most hilarious / stupidest court-room conversations ever. Definitely worth the read.
These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
-------------------------------
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty year old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty.
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh....
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?
____________________________________________
And the best for last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

China’s trade surplus hits record high

China’s trade surplus hits record high
By Andrew Yeh in Beijing
Published: September 11 2006 12:40 Last updated: September 11 2006 12:40













China’s trade surplus reached $95.7bn through the first eight months of the year, soaring to a monthly record of $18.8bn in August, according to customs statistics released on Monday.

The figures for August were the fourth consecutive monthly record this year, well exceeding the $14.6bn reported in July. China’s trade surplus this year is expected to exceed last year’s total of $102bn within weeks.

The release of the latest trade surplus data comes as China’s export sector has been diversifying from long established industries and could lead to more vocal criticism - especially from Washington - of how China manages the renminbi.

Some US officials have argued Beijing should allow the renminbi to appreciate further to help reduce the ballooning trade gap between the two countries. The US says such a move would help China tame its runaway growth at the same time.

Through the first eight months, China’s aggregate trade surplus widened 59 per cent compared with the same period during 2005. The August surplus easily exceeded the average $15bn projected by many leading economists polled separately by Reuters and Bloomberg.

But the customs figures cited by the official Xinhua news agency did not detail export and import quantities, making it hard to judge if the expanding surplus was more due to falling imports or rising exports.

But for both June and July, China’s monthly exports hovered over $80bn while imports during those periods registered around $66bn.

Over the past two years, Beijing has faced criticism from the US and EU, mainly for maintaining a tightly managed currency and its state-influenced manufacturing sector.

Critics have argued China’s renminbi is greatly undervalued, giving it an unfair trade advantage that keeps the cost of its exports artificially low. Beijing’s economic policymakers have said they intend to move toward more currency flexibility over time.

Some experts have speculated another mild revaluation is possible in the weeks ahead, possibly timed around an upcoming visit to Beijing by Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary.

China revalued the renminbi by 2.1 per cent in July of last year but there has been minimal movement since then, with the currency most recently trading at 7.955 per dollar.

Beijing officials have said they are attempting to stimulate domestic consumption to balance its economy and prevent over-reliance on external demand and fixed-asset investment as growth engines.

But many economists have said such efforts are unlikely to lead to drastic results over the short term since it could take several years to develop a strong consumer economy in the country.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006








© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.

Blame placed for botched Sept. 11 loans

Blame placed for botched Sept. 11 loans
By FRANK BASS
Wed Sep 6, 5:58 PM ET




WASHINGTON - The government failed to ensure that recipients of terrorism-recovery loans were actually hurt by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allowing banks to spread more than $3.7 billion in aid to whomever they wanted, Senate investigators concluded Wednesday.

The Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee sharply criticized the Bush administration's primary terrorism relief loan program, saying it was so loosely managed that "conceivably every small business in the country became eligible to participate."

The findings substantiate an Associated Press investigation last year that found government-backed Sept. 11 recovery loans went to small companies that weren't hurt by the attacks and didn't even know they were getting help designated for terror victims.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, who leads the Senate committee, said her investigation found no evidence that small companies that received the low-cost Supplemental Terrorist Activity Relief loans had tried to deceive the government.

Instead, she said, the problems stemmed from the Small Business Administration and the private lenders who approved the loans.

Bankers who could lend more money at less cost under the program had an incentive to push the loans, especially after SBA officials told lenders they wouldn't be second-guessed for making STAR loans, she said.

"The lack of clear guidelines allowed lenders to justify making a STAR loan to almost any borrower," the committee report said.

Nearly 3 of every 4 loans made under the program contained either insufficient or questionable documentation to show recipients were actually hurt by the Sept. 11 attacks, Snowe's committee found.

Michael Stamler, an SBA spokesman, said the agency didn't believe it "pushed lenders to abuse the program. ... However, we believe most of the report's findings are valid."

The guaranteed loan program was designed by Congress to help small businesses "adversely affected" by the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

AP reported last year that recipients of the STAR loans ranged from more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway franchises to a motorcycle shop in Utah. Ultimately, barely 10 percent of all Sept. 11 direct and guaranteed recovery loans actually went to companies in the Washington and New York areas, AP found.

The Senate report Wednesday follows an investigation late last year by the SBA's own internal watchdog, which found that lenders frequently gave money to companies that weren't hurt by the attacks and didn't document why the loans were related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Former SBA chief Hector Barreto, who resigned in April, had described the agency's oversight as "far from flawless" but insisted no loans were given to ineligible companies.

___

Associated Press writer Dirk Lammers contributed to this story from South Dakota.

___

On the Net:

SBA: http://www.sba.gov







Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

How US merchants of fear sparked a $130bn bonanza

How US merchants of fear sparked a $130bn bonanza
The homeland security market has an army of lobbyists working for its interests in Washington
Paul Harris in New York
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer




Brian Lehman's farm lies down a gravel road, between two fields of swaying corn as tall as a man. It is in the middle of Indiana's rural heartland in a landscape populated mostly by bearded Amish farmers and their wives.
Horse-drawn buggies are more common than cars, roads are littered with horse manure and fields are worked by hand. It feels distant in time and place from big cities such as New York or Washington, or even Indianapolis, two hours' drive south.

Yet Lehman's farm, from which he runs a small popcorn business, was recently declared a target for terrorists. State security officials included it in a list of assets considered potential victims of attack, most likely by Islamic fanatics. That was a surprise to Lehman, who had previously never considered Amish Country Popcorn on the front line in the war on terror. But he reckons he knows why he was chosen: 'It's the money.'

Five years after the World Trade Centre fell, a highly lucrative industry has been born in America - homeland security. There has been a goldrush as companies scoop up government contracts and peddle products that they say are designed to make America safe.

The figures are stunning. Seven years ago there were nine companies with federal homeland security contracts. By 2003 it was 3,512. Now there are 33,890. The money is huge. Since 2000, $130bn (£70bn) of contracts have been dished out. By 2015 annual federal spending on the industry could be $170bn.

But state officials want in on the government handouts too. That is why Indiana ended up identifying 8,591 potential terrorism targets (including Lehman's farm) inside its Midwestern borders. But they went too far.

Indiana's total was the most of any state - twice as many as California and 30 per cent more than New York.

The reason is simple. With so much money on offer and such riches being made, there is a powerful economic incentive to exploit the threat to America. The homeland security industry has an army of lobbyists working for its interests in Washington. It grows bigger each year and they want to keep the money flowing. America is in the grip of a business based on fear.

Inside a fancy office block in downtown Washington DC lie the offices of the Ashcroft Group. It is six blocks from the imposing buildings of the Department of Justice where the head of the firm, John Ashcroft, used to be President George W. Bush's Attorney General. As Attorney General, Ashcroft controversially extended the surveillance powers of the state in order to fight terrorism. Now he lobbies and consults on behalf of technology companies seeking to capitalise on the new powers. His clients include firms such as ChoicePoint, which gathers data on individuals and sells it, and Innova, which makes software for surveillance drones and robots.

In turning from powerful official to powerful lobbyist, Ashcroft is a brazen example of what critics call Washington's 'revolving door' - a process whereby officials leave public service for the private sector, exploiting their old contacts for commerce. 'It's become the norm that senior officials open up their own shops in their old sectors. It can be incredibly lucrative for them,' said Alex Knott, project manager for Lobby Watch, part of the Centre for Public Integrity.

In the new anti-terrorism industry, centred on the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, the door is revolving faster and faster. Though the department was created only three years ago, 90 of its former officials have already left to make money in lobbying and consulting. They include Tom Ridge, the first head of the department, who - like Ashcroft - now runs his own company. It is a crowded field. In 2001 only two lobbying firms registered as homeland security consultants. By the end of 2005 there were 543. Rules limit the ability of officials to enter the private sector in their old field for at least a year, but they are easily circumvented. They do not apply to those earning less than $140,000 a year and top-ranking officials often get around that by working in the 'background' at their new firms.

In effect there has been a huge privatisation of the homeland security industry in the US. It extends from surveillance issues to developing technology to working in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where many jobs once carried out by the military are now done by private contractors. At government hearings last year ChoicePoint said it considers itself a private intelligence agency doing the government's spying. 'After 9/11 we have seen the rise of the security-industrial complex,' said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and former Clinton adviser.

Some aspects of this new industry and its relationship with American citizens sound like science fiction. Dulles Research, another Ashcroft client, claims its software can detect terrorists by monitoring everyday behaviour such as travel schedules, credit card usage and bank transfers. It is bidding for a government contract to monitor millions of people for suspicious patterns.

That is the tip of an iceberg. The industry has the feel of a boom town where the outlandish and the mundane compete for attention. Four years ago there had not been a single business conference for homeland security firms. Now there have been 50. There is an industry newspaper, Government Security News, once a quarterly, now bi-weekly. Venture capital firms exist solely to invest in new and upcoming national security companies. Across America, universities offer courses in homeland security. 'All this money in the industry is just up for grabs. It's like a goldrush,' said Knott.

Of course, there is a real terrorist threat to America. There are many areas of the country, especially its ports and airports, where money needs to be spent to improve security and prevent a tragedy on the scale of 11 September from happening again. Private firms have a vital role to play in this. But there are grave concerns as to whether the industry has properly addressed these issues.

Instead, critics argue, it has trampled citizens' rights by invading their privacy, created an atmosphere of fear and done little to prevent a future attack. There have been many stories on the mis-spending of huge amounts of government money, from bullet-proof vests for dogs in Ohio to puppet shows in Iowa. At the same time US container ports still monitor little of what is imported through them, and a multi-million-dollar scheme for all transport workers to get a tamper-proof ID is two years late, has cost millions and still does not work. States have also fought over who should get the biggest security grants from the federal government. Midwestern states claim they are ignored and more obvious targets, such as New York, say not enough is being spent on them. All of which adds an economic incentive to play up an area's vulnerability.

This explains why Brian Lehman and his popcorn suddenly appeared on a terrorism target list. Lehman reacted with good humour. 'We've really had a lot of fun with it,' he said. It spurred a wave of interest in the company and - far from hiding away from the 'terror threat' - Lehman put up a new sign to help people find the isolated place. In the annual parade last month in Berne, the local town, his truck was painted with a target on the side as a joke. In a bizarre way, Lehman is hoping that he too can reap a bit of extra money from the boom in homeland security.







Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold'

Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold'
U.S. Steps Up Efforts, But Good Intelligence On Ground is Lacking
By Dana Priest and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 10, 2006; A01





The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world -- no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image -- has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

"The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence" that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone "stone cold."

But in the last three months, following a request from President Bush to "flood the zone," the CIA has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers and assets devoted to the pursuit of bin Laden. The intelligence officers will team with the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and with more resources from the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The problem, former and current counterterrorism officials say, is that no one is certain where the "zone" is.

"Here you've got a guy who's gone off the net and is hiding in some of the most formidable terrain in one of the most remote parts of the world surrounded by people he trusts implicitly," said T. McCreary, spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center. "And he stays off the net and is probably not mobile. That's an extremely difficult problem."

Intelligence officials think that bin Laden is hiding in the northern reaches of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking on a trail toward Pakistan at the end of the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when U.S. forces came close but failed to capture him.

Many factors have combined in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to make the pursuit more difficult. They include the lack of CIA access to people close to al-Qaeda's inner circle; Pakistan's unwillingness to pursue him; the reemergence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; the strength of the Iraqi insurgency, which has depleted U.S. military and intelligence resources; and the U.S. government's own disorganization.

But the underlying reality is that finding one person in hiding is difficult under any circumstances. Eric Rudolph, the confessed Olympics and abortion clinic bomber, evaded authorities for five years, only to be captured miles from where he was last seen in North Carolina.

It has been so long since there has been anything like a real close call that some operatives have given bin Laden a nickname: "Elvis," for all the wishful-thinking sightings that have substituted for anything real.

After playing down bin Laden's importance and barely mentioning him for several years, Bush last week repeatedly invoked his name and quoted from his writings and speeches to underscore what Bush said is the continuing threat of terrorism.

Many terrorism experts, however, say the importance of finding bin Laden has diminished since Bush first pledged to capture him "dead or alive" in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Terrorists worldwide have repeatedly shown they no longer need him to organize or carry out attacks, the experts say. Attacks in Europe, Asia and the Middle East were perpetrated by homegrown terrorists unaffiliated with al-Qaeda.

"Will his capture stop terrorism? No," Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a recent interview. "But in terms of a message to the world, it's a huge message."

Despite a lack of progress, at CIA headquarters bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are still the most wanted of the High Value Targets, referred to as "HVT 1 and 2." The CIA station in Kabul still offers a briefing to VIP visitors that declares: "We are here for the hunt!" -- a reminder that finding bin Laden is a top priority.

Gary Berntsen, the former CIA officer who led the first and last hunt for bin Laden at Tora Bora, in December 2001, says, "This could all end tomorrow." One unsolicited walk-in. One tribesman seeking to collect the $25 million reward. One courier who would rather his kids grow up in the United States. One dealmaker, "and this could all change," Berntsen said.

Bin Laden Still Alive

On the videotape obtained by the CIA, bin Laden is seen confidently instructing his party how to dig holes in the ground to lie in undetected at night. A bomb dropped by a U.S. aircraft can be seen exploding in the distance. "We were there last night," bin Laden says without much concern in his voice. He was in or headed toward Pakistan, counterterrorism officials think.

That was December 2001. Only two months later, Bush decided to pull out most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts in the paramilitary division that were leading the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq, said Flynt L. Leverett, then an expert on the Middle East at the National Security Council.

"I was appalled when I learned about it," said Leverett, who has become an outspoken critic of the administration's counterterrorism policy. "I don't know of anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's very likely that bin Laden would be dead or in American custody if we hadn't done that."

Several officers confirmed that the number of special operations troops was reduced in March 2002.

White House spokeswoman Michele Davis said she would not comment on the specific allegation. "Military and intelligence units move routinely in and out," she said. "The intelligence and military community's hunt for bin Laden has been aggressive and constant since the attacks."

The Pakistani intelligence service, notoriously difficult to trust but also the service with the best access to al-Qaeda circles, is convinced bin Laden is alive because no one has ever intercepted or heard a message mourning his death. "Al-Qaeda will mourn his death and will retaliate in a big way. We are pretty sure Osama is alive," Pakistan's interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post.

Pakistani intelligence officials also say they think bin Laden remains actively involved in al-Qaeda activities. They cite the interrogations of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a key planner of the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, and Abu-Faraj al-Libbi, who served as a communications conduit between bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda operatives until his capture last year.

Libbi and Ghailani, who was arrested in Pakistan in July 2004, were the last two people taken into custody to have met with and taken orders from Zawahiri and to hear directly from bin Laden. "Both Ghailani and Libbi were informed that Osama was well and alive and in the picture by none other than Zawahiri himself," one Pakistani intelligence official said.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials recently interviewed in Karachi said that the last time they received firsthand information on bin Laden was in April 2003, when an arrested al-Qaeda leader, Tawfiq bin Attash, disclosed having met him in the Khost province of Afghanistan three months earlier.

Attash, who helped plan the 2000 USS Cole bombing, told interrogators that the meeting took place in the Afghan mountains about two hours from the town of Khost.

By then, Pakistan was the United States' best bet for information after an infusion of funds from the U.S. intelligence community, particularly in the area of expensive NSA eavesdropping equipment.

"For technical intelligence ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) works hand in hand with the NSA," a senior Pakistani intelligence official said. "The U.S. assistance in building Pakistan's capabilities for technical intelligence since 9/11 is superb."

Since early 2002, the United States has stationed a small number of personnel from the NSA and the CIA near where bin Laden may be hiding. They are embedded with counterterrorism units of the Pakistan army's elite Special Services Group, according to senior Pakistani intelligence officials.

The NSA and other specialists collect imagery and electronic intercepts that their CIA counterparts then share with the Pakistani units in the tribal areas and with the province of Baluchistan to the south.

But even with sophisticated technology, the local geography presents formidable obstacles. In a land of dead-end valleys, high peaks and winding ridge lines, it is easy to hide within the miles of caves and deep ravines, or to live unnoticed in mud-walled compounds barely distinguishable from the surrounding terrain.

The Afghan-Pakistan border is about 1,500 miles. Pakistan deploys 70,000 troops there. Its army had never entered the area until October 2001, more than a half century after Pakistan's founding.

Pakistani Sources Lost

A Muslim country where many consider bin Laden a hero, Pakistan has grown increasingly reluctant to help the U.S. search. The army lost its best source of intelligence in 2004, after it began raids inside the tribal areas. Scouts with blood ties to the tribes ceased sharing information for fear of retaliation.

They had good reason. At least 23 senior anti-Taliban tribesmen have been assassinated in South and North Waziristan since May 2005. "Al-Qaeda footprints were found everywhere," Interior Minister Sherpao said in a recent interview. "They kidnapped and chopped off heads of at least seven of these pro-government tribesmen."

Pakistani and U.S. counterterrorism and military officials admit that Pakistan has now all but stopped looking for bin Laden. "The dirty little secret is, they have nothing, no operations, without the Paks," one former counterterrorism officer said.

Last week, Pakistan announced a truce with the Taliban that calls on the insurgent Afghan group to end armed attacks inside Pakistan and to stop crossing into Afghanistan to fight the government and international troops. The agreement also requires foreign militants to leave the tribal area of North Waziristan or take up a peaceable life there.

In Afghanistan, the hunt for bin Laden has been upstaged by the reemergence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and by Afghan infighting for control of territory and opium poppy cropland.

Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2003, said he thinks bin Laden kept close to the border, not wandering far into either country. That belief is still current among military and intelligence analysts.

"We believe that he held to a pretty narrow range of within 15 kilometers of the border," said Vines, who now commands the XVIII Airborne Corps, "so that if the Pakistanis, for whatever reason, chose to do something to him, he could cross into Afghanistan and vice versa."

He said he thinks bin Laden's protection force "had a series of outposts with radios that could alert each other" if helicopters were coming or other troop movements were evident.

Pakistani military officials in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, described bin Laden as having three rings of security, each ring unaware of the movements and identities of the other. Sometimes they communicated with specially marked flashlights. Sometimes they dressed as women to avoid detection by U.S. spy planes.

Pakistan will permit only small numbers of U.S. forces to operate with its troops at times and, because their role is so sensitive politically, it officially denies any U.S. presence. A frequent complaint from U.S. troops is that they have too little to do. The same complaint is also heard from U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where there were few targets to go after.

Although the hunt for bin Laden has depended to a large extent on technology, until recently unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were in short supply, especially when the war in Iraq became a priority in 2003.

In July 2003, Vines said that U.S. forces under his command thought they were close to striking bin Laden, but had only one drone to send over three possible routes he might take. "A UAV was positioned on the route that was most likely, but he didn't go that way," Vines said. "We believed that we were within a half-hour of possibly getting him, but nothing materialized."

Faced with the most sophisticated technology in the world, bin Laden has gone decidedly low-tech. His 23 video or audiotapes in the last five years are thought to have been hand-carried to news outlets or nearby mail drops by a series of couriers who know nothing about the contents of their deliveries or the real identity of the sender, a simple method used by spies and drug traffickers for centuries.

"They are really good at operational security," said Ben Venzke, chief executive officer of IntelCenter, a private company that analyzes terrorist information and has obtained, analyzed and published all bin Laden's communiques. "They are very good at having enough cut-outs" to move videos into circulation without detection. "It's some of the simplest things to do."

Uncertain Command Structure

Bureaucratic battles slowed down the hunt for bin Laden for the first two or three years, according to officials in several agencies, with both the Pentagon and the CIA accusing each other of withholding information. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's sense of territoriality has become legendary, according to these officials.

In early November 2002, for example, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

"How did they get the intel?" he demanded of the intelligence and other military personnel in a high-level meeting, recalled one person knowledgeable about the meeting.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.

"Why aren't you giving it to us?" Rumsfeld wanted to know.

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. Rumsfeld said it would have to stop.

A CIA spokesman said Hayden, now the CIA director, does not recall this conversation. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "The notion that the department would do anything that would jeopardize the success of an operation to kill or capture bin Laden is ridiculous." The NSA continues to share intelligence with the CIA and the Defense Department.

At that time, Rumsfeld was putting in place his own aggressive plan, led by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), to dominate the hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists. The overall special operations budget has grown by 60 percent since 2003 to $8 billion in fiscal year 2007.

Rows and rows of temporary buildings sprang up on SOCOM's parking lots in Tampa as Rumsfeld refocused the mission of a small group of counterterrorism experts from long-term planning for the war on terrorism to manhunting. The group "went from 20 years to 24-hour crisis-mode operations," one former special operations officer said. "It went from planning to manhunting."

In 2004, Rumsfeld finally won the president's approval to put SOCOM in charge of the "Global War on Terrorism."

Today, however, no one person is in charge of the overall hunt for bin Laden with the authority to direct covert CIA operations to collect intelligence and to dispatch JSOC units. Some counterterrorism officials find this absurd. "There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

"We work by consensus," explained Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., who recently stepped down as deputy director of counterterrorism under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In order to find Osama bin Laden, certain departments will come together. . . . It's not that effective, or we'd find the guy, but in terms of advancing United States power for that mission, I think that process is effective."

But Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the JSOC commander since 2003, has become the de facto leader of the hunt for bin Laden and developed a good working relationship with the CIA to the extent that he recently was able to persuade the former station chief in Kabul to become his special assistant. He asks for targets from the CIA, and it tries to comply. "We serve the military," one intelligence officer said.

McChrystal's troops have shuttled between Afghanistan and Iraq, where they succeeded in killing al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and killed or captured dozens of his followers.

Under McChrystal, JSOC has improved its ability to quickly turn captured documents, computers and cellphones into leads and then to act upon them, while waiting for more analysis from CIA or SOCOM.

Industry experts and military officers say they are being aided by computer forensic field kits that let technicians retrieve information from surviving hard drives, cellphones and other electronic devices, as was the case in the Zarqawi strike.

McChrystal, who has commanded JSOC since 2003, now has the authority to go after bin Laden inside Pakistan without having to seek permission first, two U.S. officials said.

"The authority," one knowledgeable person said, "follows the target," meaning that if the target is bin Laden, the stakes are high enough for McChrystal to decide any action on his own. The understanding is that U.S. units will not enter Pakistan, except under extreme circumstances, and that Pakistan will deny giving them permission.

Such was the case in early January, when JSOC troops clandestinely entered the village of Saidgai, two officials familiar with the operation said, and Pakistan protested.

A week later, acting on what Pakistani intelligence officials said was information developed out of Libbi's interrogation, the CIA ordered a missile strike against a house in the village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Pakistani and American officials thought Zawahiri to be hiding.

The missile killed 13 civilians and several suspected terrorists. But Zawahiri was not among them. The strike "could have changed the destiny of the war on terror. Zawahiri was 100 percent sure to visit Damadola . . . but he disappeared at the last moment," one Pakistani intelligence official said.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest near Damadola, shouting, "Death to America!"

"Once again, we have lost track of Ayman al-Zawahiri," the Pakistani intelligence official said in a recent interview. "He keeps popping on television screens. It's miserable, but we don't know where he or his boss are hiding."

Contributing to this report were staff writers Bradley Graham, Thomas E. Ricks, Josh White, Griff Witte and Allan Lengel in Washington, Kamran Khan in Islamabad and John Lancaster in Wana, Pakistan, and staff researchers Julie Tate and Robert E. Thomason.



© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Foster parents of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel indicted for murder

BREAKING NEWS
Foster parents of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel indicted for murder
Authorities said couple faces life in prison if convicted
By Dave Greber
Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 06, 2006







BATAVIA — The two foster parents charged in Hamilton County in the killing of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel were indicted Wednesday morning in Clermont County on charges that could keep the couple in prison for life.

A Clermont County grand jury indicted Liz and David Carroll, Jr. on seven felony charges including, murder, involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and three counts of endangering children. Additionally, David Carroll, Jr. was indicted on a gross abuse of a corpse charge for allegedly taking the dead body of little Marcus to a secluded chimney in rural Brown County where he burned it.

Clermont County Prosecutor Don White and Assistant Prosecutor Woody Breyer said the Carrolls may be arraigned Thursday in Clermont County Common Pleas Court where they will likely face a similar $10.1 million bond set in Hamilton County two weeks ago.

White said all charges the Carrolls face are serious, but the murder charge is the biggest.

"That's the primary charge in this case, and that is obviously the most important," White said.

Amy Baker, David Carroll's live-in girlfriend, has helped law enforcement officials with the case thus far and as a result has not faced any charges. Breyer said Baker's immunity is dependent on two key facts: that she inflicted no harm on Marcus, and that she remains honest with prosecutors.

"Amy Baker is the be-all, end-all to this case," Breyer. "The fact remains that if it weren't for Amy Baker, we wouldn't be where we are today."

Prosecutors stressed that they did not want to try the case in the media and would be guarded with statements from now to protect against tainting a potential jury pool.




Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2840 or dgreber@coxohio.com.




Copyright ©2006 Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, USA. All rights reserved.

IRS audits may not catch wealthy cheats

IRS audits may not catch wealthy cheats
By MARY DALRYMPLE,
AP Tax Writer
Sat Sep 2, 2:03 PM ET




WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service has been auditing more high-income taxpayers but may not be effectively going after one of the biggest problems — wealthy people who evade taxes by reporting too little business income or overstating business expenses.

The reason is that IRS auditors most often conduct audits of high-income taxpayers by correspondence, said a report by the Treasury office that oversees the tax collection agency's operations. In those cases, the IRS sends letters to taxpayers asking them to verify information on their returns.

Fewer audits actually require high-income taxpayers — those reporting $100,000 or more in income — to sit through intensive, face-to-face examinations.

Those audits could turn up more evidence of missing business income or overstated deductions for business expenses, J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, said in a new report.

"These types of taxpayers and issues are difficult to examine through correspondence," the inspector's report said. By their nature, audits by letter are "less complex and issues are limited" when compared with traditional audits, it added.

The IRS has increased the number of intensive face-to-face audits of wealthier taxpayers over the last few years, even though its budget has remained basically flat.

Kevin Brown, who heads the IRS small business and self-employed division, agreed that intensive audits find more unreported income. "The observation is correct," he said. "We don't think we're doing enough there, and we want to do more."

Both types of audits — those by mail and in person — have increased in recent years, reversing a slide in IRS tax law enforcement that started in the late 1990s.

The IRS examined 1 in 65 tax returns filed by high-income individuals and families and 2005, higher than the 1 in 116 examined in 2002. More than 5 percent of people reporting more than $1 million in income saw their returns audited last year.

The number of face-to-face exams increased by 25 percent in that time, a change that the Treasury inspector called a "significant achievement" because they are more complex and time-consuming.

Examinations by letter, however, increased 170 percent during that time. The result was that two-thirds of the audits of high-income taxpayers in 2005 were done by mail.

The IRS uses the correspondence examinations because they cost less and require less time compared with face-to-face meetings, allowing the agency to check up on more tax returns.

Brown said the average face-to-face audit takes 40 hours, compared to the 10 hours an average correspondence audit consumes.

IRS Commissioner Mark Everson has increased audits of high-income taxpayers in an effort to start closing the annual tax gap, the roughly $345 billion owed but not paid.

IRS researchers have found that the biggest contributor to the tax gap are taxpayers who don't report income from business ventures. That includes sole proprietors, independent contractors, self-employed workers and others who report business income on their individual tax returns.

Audits of high-income taxpayers reporting such income on their returns has increased, the Treasury investigators said. The IRS audited 1 in 28 such returns in 2005, an increase from the 1 in 69 examined in 2002.

But more than half, or 54 percent, of those audits were correspondence examinations done by mail, the Treasury inspectors found.

Almost 20,000 high-income taxpayers reporting business income had their returns examined through correspondence. In only 22 percent were raised questions regarding the taxpayer's business, the report found.

Business income, unlike wages paid through paychecks, does not always get reported independently to the Internal Revenue Service. That can make it more difficult for the tax agency to detect when taxpayers understate their business income on their tax returns.

___

On the Net:

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration: http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/







Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons

Bush admits the CIA runs secret prisons
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer






President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the CIA runs secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.

Bush said 14 suspects — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania — had been turned over to the Defense Department and moved to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial.

Bush said the CIA program "has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill." Releasing information declassified just hours earlier, Bush said the capture of one terrorist just months after the Sept. 11 attacks had led to the capture of another and then another, and had revealed planning for attacks using airplanes, car bombs and anthrax.

Nearing the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Bush pressed Congress to quickly pass administration-drafted legislation authorizing the use of military commissions for trials of terror suspects. Legislation is needed because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

"These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans for new attacks," Bush said, defending the CIA program he authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks. "The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know."

The president's speech, his third in a recent series about the war on terror, gave him an opportunity to shore up his administration's credentials on national security two months before congressional elections at a time when Americans are growing weary of the war in Iraq.

Democrats, hoping to make the elections a referendum on Bush's policies in Iraq and the war on terror, urged anew that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld be made to step down.

With the transfer of the 14 men to Guantanamo, there currently are no detainees being held by the CIA, Bush said. A senior administration official said the CIA had detained fewer than 100 suspected terrorists in the history of the program.

Still, Bush said that "having a CIA program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting lifesaving information."

Some Democrats and human rights groups have said the CIA's secret prison system did not allow monitoring for abuses and they hoped that it would be shut down.

The president declined to disclose the location or details of the detainees' confinement, or the interrogation techniques.

"I cannot describe the specific methods used — I think you understand why," Bush said in the East Room where families of some of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks gathered to hear his speech.

"If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful and necessary."

Bush insisted that the detainees were not tortured.

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it."

Bush said the information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al-Qaida member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since the program began.

He said they include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused Sept. 11 mastermind, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells.

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," Bush said.

He said interrogators have succeeded in getting information that has helped make photo identifications, pinpoint terrorist hiding places, provide ways to make sense of documents, identify voice recordings and understand the meaning of terrorist communications, al-Qaida's travel routes and hiding places,

The administration had refused until now to acknowledge the existence of CIA prisons. Bush said he was going public because the United States has largely completed questioning the suspects, and also because the CIA program had been jeopardized by the Supreme Court ruling.

Bush also laid out his proposal for how trials for detainees should be conducted, a plan he says ensures fairness.

His proposed legislation was hailed by some Senate leaders, but other lawmakers said it would curtails certain rights of terror suspects.

"It's important to remember these defendants are not common criminals," said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Rather, many are terrorists, sworn enemies of the United States who would gladly use any information to harm us, and any opportunity to strike us again."

However, Rep. Ike Skelton (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri, senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress was being pushed to make a hasty decision on the plan for special military trials. Skelton questioned whether Bush's approach would meet the requirements laid out by the Supreme Court.

The proposal is likely to prompt a showdown on the Senate floor among Republicans. GOP moderates John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham have drafted a rival proposal.

Their version would guarantee certain legal rights to defendants common in military and civilian courts that Bush's proposal omits, including a defendant's right to access to all evidence used against him.

Graham, R-S.C., said withholding evidence from an alleged war criminal would set a dangerous precedent other nations could follow. "Would I be comfortable with (an American servicemember) going to jail with evidence they never saw? No," Graham said.

Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon put out a new Army field manual that spells out appropriate conduct on issues including prisoner interrogation. The manual applies to all the armed services, but not the CIA.

It bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hooding and other procedures that have become infamous during the war on terror.





Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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Another year, another wage loss

ROBERT KUTTNER
Another year, another wage loss
By Robert Kuttner September 2, 2006






LABOR DAY was created by the machinists union in New York in 1882 as a ``workingmen's holiday." Unions all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace, to improve livelihoods and lives.

Today, the politics have largely been leached out of it. Labor Day is a long weekend that marks summer's end.

And that extra day of rest is needed more than ever. Government statistics show that the typical family works about 500 more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are failing to keep pace with the cost of living.

This past week, these items have been in the news:

The Census Bureau reported that median incomes for working-age families were down again, for the fifth straight year. Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket people and corporate profits.

The Pew Research Center released an extensive survey on public attitudes about the economy. Pew reported, ``The public thinks that workers were better off a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are shown by employers." And, statistically, the public is right.

The Globe recently reported that chief executives of nonprofit hospitals now routinely make more than $1 million. University presidents are not far behind.

The Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has released its annual, encyclopedic report, ``The State of Working America." Among its findings: The economy's productivity increased by a remarkable 33.5 percent between 1995 and 2005, but real wages have declined since 2000. Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent in 1979 to 56 percent in 2004. The top 1 percent's share of interest, dividends, and capital gains has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979 to 57.5 percent in 2003.

Politically, it's evident what is occurring. Those in a position to capture astronomical incomes are awarding themselves an ever-larger share of the national economic pie. Meanwhile, ordinary incomes, job security, health security, and retirement security are eroding.

The political mystery is why everyone else is not kicking up a fuss. After all, as the Pew report suggests, it's not as if people are unaware of what's happening. Here's a clue to some of the puzzle: Polls show that people do want more reliable wages, pensions, and health insurance. But too many people have given up on the idea that the political process can be used to restore the American dream.

Theda Skocpol, author of several books of social history, tells of interviewing a hard-pressed woman with small children and a low-wage job. Her only social support was that her mother-in-law -- the children's grandmother -- looked after her children while she worked. As Skocpol observes, this was possible only because Social Security enabled the grandmother not to have to work herself.

Skocpol asked the woman whether she thought there was anything government might do to improve her economic circumstances. The woman replied, ``Nothing they do there ever makes a difference for people like me."

But that was not always so. Social Security, Medicare, college aid, the GI Bill, government wage-and-hour laws, and government protection of the right to unionize made a real difference in people's lives.

These policies, which benefited the vast middle class (and helped to create it), did not just happen. They were the result of political organizing and a public awareness that government could affect the economic opportunity and security of ordinary Americans, for better or worse.

It's understandable why politics today is often a turnoff. But if a great many middle-class and poor Americans have given up on politics, you can be sure that the economic elite is invested in politics as never before. The changes in the tax code and regulatory laws and workplace practices that benefit America's super-rich did not just happen, either. They are the result of relentless maneuvering by the financial elite and its political allies.

So this Labor Day, at the beach or in town, we suffer not just from reduced economic opportunity but diminished political imagination. You can ignore politics, but you can't escape it. So we might as well reclaim democracy to benefit the many rather than the few.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.




© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

Starved girls' father, stepmother charged

Posted on Thu, Jul. 27, 2006
Starved girls' father, stepmother charged
BY TIM POTTER
The Wichita Eagle





The father and stepmother of two small Wichita girls who were found emaciated and dehydrated last week were charged with multiple counts of child abuse this afternoon in Sedgwick County District Court.

The charges allege that the girls could have been abused since September.

The allegations filed in court say that on or between Sept. 23, 2005, and July 19, 2006, the couple did "intentionally torture, cruelly beat and inflict cruel and inhumane corporal punishment" on the two girls.

District Judge Joe Kisner set bond of $100,000 each for the couple -- Jennifer L. Wood, 27, and her husband, Alex A. Wood, 28.

That means that Jennifer Wood will have to return to jail and remain there unless she can post additional bond. She had been released on a $50,000 bond earlier this week. Alex Wood has remained in jail.

The two girls, ages 6 and 7, have been taken into protective custody after being released from a hospital.

Both Jennifer and Alex Wood are charged with two felony counts of abuse of a child.

Jennifer Wood also is charged with one count of aggravated battery, a felony.

That charge alleges that on July 20 and 21, she strangled the older girl. Police have said the girl had marks on her throat.

Assistant District Attorney Janice Fitch said the investigation is ongoing and that more charges could be filed.

For more on this story, see Friday's Wichita Eagle.








© 2006 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansas.com

Accused Grave Robbers Charged With Attempted Sex Assault On Corpse

Accused Grave Robbers Charged With Attempted Sex Assault On Corpse
Tue Sep 5, 7:45 PM ET



The three men arrested for allegedly digging up the grave of a woman who died last week in Grant County are also charged with attempted sexual assault.

The three men appeared in Grant County Circuit Court on Tuesday. According to a criminal complaint, the three men were charged with digging up the grave at the St. Charles Catholic Cemetery in Cassville with the intent to have sex with the victim's body, WISC-TV reported.

Alexander Grunke, his twin brother Nicholas Grunke and their friend Dustin Radke -- all 20 years old -- have been in a Grant County jail since Saturday.

The grave that the men are accused of trying to dig up belonged to Laura Tennessen, 20, of Cassville, who was buried last week after being killed in a motorcycle crash on Aug. 28.

The men were formally charged with attempted theft and attempted third degree sexual assault.

Radke allegedly confessed and said that the incident was an elaborate plan to have sex with the corpse. He told authorities that Nicholas Grunke asked him to help dig up Tennessen's grave and take the corpse back to a pre-selected location behind his house with the intent to have sex with her, WISC-TV reported.

Authorities said that Radke said that the three stopped at the Wal-Mart in Dodgeville on their way to the cemetery and bought condoms.

If the three men are convicted, they could face more than five years behind bars for both the misdemeanor theft and the attempted sexual assault, which is a felony, WISC-TV reported.

The bail for Radke was set at $1,500. For both Nicholas and Alexander Grumke, bail was set at $1,000.





Copyright © 2006 WISC Channel3000.com.


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$10 an hour, 4,000 apply

Friday, August 25, 2006
$10 an hour, 4,000 apply
Many ex-autoworkers seek work at lesser wages
Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News




STERLING HEIGHTS -- Six years ago, Fred Hibbard, 46, was making $22.50 an hour as a machinist in a tool and die shop.

On Thursday, he was among some 2,000 job-seekers who lined up for a chance at a $10-an-hour assembly job with no benefits with a French auto parts supplier. The jobs include medical benefits and 401(k) options.

Faurecia SA, which has facilities in four Metro Detroit communities, drew an estimated 4,000 people, many of them former auto workers like Hibbard, over the two days of its job fair Wednesday and Thursday, a sign of the times in a state where the unemployment rate hovers at 7 percent.

The long line of job applicants Thursday snaked through a city park outside the Sterling Heights Parks and Recreation Center, the site of Faurecia's job fair. It was just around the corner from where Hibbard used to work.

"That tool and die shop is dead," he said. "And now, I could really use this job. Ten dollars an hour is a lot better than living on your 401(k)."

Out of 17 job applicants queried by The News on Thursday, eight of them once had auto factory jobs that offered higher hourly wages and health benefits; 14 currently have jobs that pay less than $10 an hour; 11 have children; and only two have health insurance.

Many said they wouldn't have considered taking a $10 an hour job just a few years ago.

But times have changed in Michigan, with an unemployment rate among the highest in the nation and high-paying factory jobs dwindling by the month.

"I've pretty much given up trying to get a job that pays $20 an hour," said Pebble VanConant, a veteran toolmaker who was making that kind of money five years ago. Her firm closed, she said, because the company kept losing work to Chinese and Mexican firms willing to do the same jobs at a much lower rate.

"Five years ago, if you would have offered me this job I would have laughed at you," said Debbie Kowalke, a former administrative assistant who was downsized and now "just survives" on a waitressing job. She wants to work at Faurecia and still keep the restaurant job, she said.

"I really need this. And look, I'm not the only one," she said.

Hiring bright spot

It was unclear how many people the auto supplier would ultimately hire. Representatives from Faurecia could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The company specializes in automotive modules for interiors, such as seats and exhaust systems. It supplies its parts to General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG, BMW and Volkswagen.

The fact that Faurecia is hiring at all is the exception right now for the state's auto industry.

The high unemployment rate of the past year in large part is because of massive job cuts at GM, Delphi and Ford, which have trickled down to other industries.

Earlier this year, 47,600 union workers at GM and bankrupt supplier Delphi Corp. accepted early retirement offers or cash buyouts.

Last year, Ford eliminated some 3,000 white-collar positions in North America. Another 4,000 salaried jobs and as many as 30,000 factory jobs by 2012 are to be cut as part of its restructuring plan announced in January.

Ford is weighing a major expansion of its attrition program for hourly workers and could extend buyout or early retirement offers to all of its blue-collar employees in the United States.

By year's end, Michigan will have 20,000 fewer auto jobs than it did at the start of 2006, predicts Comerica Inc. Chief Economist Dana Johnson. Michigan has lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 1999.

You can reach Louis Aguilar at (313) 222-2760 or laguilar@detnews.com.







© Copyright 2006 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.