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(10/03/06 2:41am)
NICKEL MINES, Pa. -- A 32-year-old milk truck driver took about a dozen girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, barricaded the doors with boards and killed at least three girls and apparently himself, authorities said.\nIt was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and similar to an attack just days earlier at a school in Colorado.\nThe gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, was inside for more than half an hour and had barred the doors with 2x4s with the girls inside, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. By the time officers broke windows to get in, three girls and the gunman were dead, Miller said.\nLancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner initially said six people were killed but later said he wasn't certain. At least seven people were taken to hospitals, including at least three girls in critical condition with gunshot wounds.\nRoberts walked into the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School with a shotgun and handgun, then released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with infants before barring the doors, Miller said.\nThe girls were lined up along a blackboard and their feet were bound, he said.\nA teacher called police at about 10:30 a.m. and reported that a gunman was holding students hostage.\nAbout 11 a.m., Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone, saying he was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," Miller said. "It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims."\nMoments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn't back away from the building. Troopers heard gunfire in the building seconds later.\nThe school has about 25 to 30 students in all, ages 6 to 13.\n"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller said. He released no further details about the grudge Roberts mentioned.\nThe school is among farmlands just outside Nickel Mines, a tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia. Hours after the shootings, about three dozen people in traditional Amish clothing, hats and bonnets stood near the small building, surrounded by a white board fence, as investigators walked in line through fields searching for evidence.\nThe shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.\n"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo.\n"On behalf of Park County and our citizens and our sheriff's office, our hearts go out to that school and the community," he said.
(09/13/06 2:45am)
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Islamic militants tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday using automatic rifles, hand grenades and a van rigged with explosives, the Syrian government said. Four people were killed in the brazen attack, including three of the assailants, but no Americans were hurt.\nThere was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. An al-Qaida offshoot group called Jund al-Sham was suspected, Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, told CNN. The radical fundamentalist group has been blamed for several attacks in Syria in recent years, he said.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Syrian security agents for repelling the attack but added it was too early to know who might have been behind it.\nThe attackers apparently did not breach the high walls surrounding the embassy's white compound in the city's diplomatic neighborhood.\nOne of Syria's anti-terrorism troops was killed and 11 other people were wounded, the official news agency reported. The wounded included a police officer, two Iraqis and seven people employed at nearby technical workshop.\nA Chinese diplomat also was hit in the face by shrapnel and slightly injured while standing on top of a garage at the Chinese Embassy, China's Foreign Ministry said. The diplomat, political counselor Li Hongyu, was in stable condition at a hospital, the ministry said.\nA witness said a Syrian guard outside the U.S. Embassy also was killed, but the government did not immediately confirm that. As at most American embassies worldwide, a local guard force patrols outside the compound's walls while U.S. Marines are mostly responsible for guarding classified documents and fighting off attackers inside the compound.\nWitnesses also said the gunmen tried to throw hand grenades into the embassy compound, shouting "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" It was not clear if any of the grenades made it over the walls, which are about 8 feet high.\nThe attack came at a time of high tension between the United States and Syria over the recent Israeli-Hezbollah war in neighboring Lebanon. In Damascus, the sentiment has become increasingly anti-American.\nSyria has seen previous attacks by Islamic militants. In June, Syrian anti-terrorism police fought Islamic militants near the Defense Ministry in a gunbattle that killed five people and wounded four. In 2004, four people were killed in a clash between police and a team of suspected bombers targeting the Canadian Embassy.\nThe Bush administration has been critical of the tight control that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has over its people. Rice, meeting with her Canadian counterpart in Nova Scotia, would not speculate on whether Tuesday's attack might be an indication that the regime's control is slipping.\nWhite House press secretary Tony Snow also expressed gratitude toward Syria.\n"Syrian officials came to aid of the Americans," Snow said. "The U.S. government is grateful for the assistance the Syrians provided in going after the attackers, and once again, that illustrates the importance of Syria being an important ally in the war on terror.\n"It does not mean they are an ally. We are hoping they will become an ally and make the choice of fighting against terrorists," he said, adding that the Bush administration does not know who is responsible for the attack.\nWashington recalled Ambassador Margaret Scobey after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, amid suspicions that Damascus had a role in it. She has not returned since, effectively downgrading U.S. diplomatic representation to the level of charge d'affaires.\nPools of blood lay on the sidewalk outside the U.S. Embassy, near a burned car apparently used by the attackers. A sport utility vehicle with U.S. diplomatic tags had a bullet hole in its windshield, and the windows of nearby guard houses also were shattered.\nThere were conflicting reports of what happened.\nSyrian TV said one car was rigged with explosives but the attackers never detonated them. But one witness said a second car did explode, and TV video showed a burned car.\nThe Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police, said a fourth attacker now in detention was wounded in what it called a "terrorist attack." The report, carried on state-run television, said anti-terror units brought "the situation under control" and an investigation was under way.\nIn Washington, a State Department spokesman confirmed the attack by "unknown assailants" but had few details. "Local authorities have responded and are on the scene," spokesman Kurtis Cooper said.\nA U.S. Embassy statement said the embassy came under armed attack at 10:10 a.m. and that all embassy personnel were safe. One Syrian guard was injured by gunfire and was hospitalized in a stable condition, the statement said.\nThe embassy's charge d'affaires, Michael Corbin, met with Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Maguid at the scene and spoke by phone with assistant minister of foreign affairs, Ahmed Arnous, according to the statement.\nIt said the Syrian government has pledged full security cooperation.\nAbout 30 Syrian guards usually are posted around the embassy 24 hours a day, Moustapha said.\nState television said four armed attackers "attempted to storm" the embassy, using automatic rifles and hand grenades. Syrian security guards attacked the gunmen, killing three and wounding a fourth, TV said.\nThe attackers came in two cars and parked one that was rigged with explosives in front of the embassy but did not blow it up, state-run TV reported. Explosives experts dismantled the bomb, it said.\nBut a witness told The Associated Press that two gunmen drove up in front of the embassy, got out of their car, shot at the Syrian sentries at the building's entrance and then detonated explosives in the car.\nThe witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the security personnel fired back, and security forces rushed to the scene.\nTelevision showed a delivery van loaded with pipe bombs strapped to large propane gas canisters outside the embassy. Had the bombs detonated, the explosions could have caused massive damage.
(09/12/06 4:13am)
PHILADELPHIA -- Early next year, students at the University of Pennsylvania will have the option to switch from the University of Pennsylvania's traditional e-mail service to something that looks more like Gmail or Microsoft's Windows Live Mail.\nOfficials are planning to replace the University's current e-mail server with a new host from either Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp.\nThe switch will begin in January and will cost the University nothing. Students will retain their Penn e-mail addresses but should expect a server that looks different -- and has different features -- than the current Webmail.\nDeirdre Woods, associate dean and chief information officer of Penn's Wharton School, said that Google and Microsoft are currently vying for the contract, which she said will be the first of its kind on a college campus.\nThe decision to make the change stems in part from a desire to conserve resources, said Ira Winston, School of Arts and Sciences information technology chief. Instead of spending money to improve its own system, Penn is opting for a free upgrade to a system known to work well.\nSAS Webmail has occasionally fallen victim to shutdowns, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month.\nBoth Google and Microsoft are designing programs that would offer undergraduate and graduate students not only e-mail but also calendars that are compatible with cell phones and palm pilots.\n"We are looking to develop a communications platform for higher education in the 21st century," Woods said. "We're a prestigious institution. We need to set the standard for these platforms."\nThough Penn won't pay, there's still something in the deal for the companies, which are anxious to get customer loyalty from college students, Woods said.\n"They are willing to do it for free for access to a good market," she said.\nThe new service will likely be mandatory for freshmen who matriculate next fall, Woods said.\nIn the meantime, advisory panels from both the School of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School will meet to discuss desired features of the program.\nOfficials will make a decision on the provider by late next month or early November.\nMany students already use an outside server for their e-mail, which is in part what prompted Penn to consider the switch.\nThis year, 40 percent of SAS students are forwarding their e-mails to an outside address, up 30 percent from last year, Winston said.\nWharton has forwarding rates of 11 percent for undergrads and 1.5 percent for MBA students.\nThe switch to other servers "is happening already, so we might as well take advantage of the fact and get you additional features," Winston said.\nStudents say they are mostly excited by the features that the new provider will include.\n"I think (the calendar) will be useful," Penn sophomore Baali Muganga said.\nAnd Woods said that officials will be seeking student input throughout the entire process.\n"This is a product for students. We really need them to provide feedback," she added.\nBased on suggestions from user feedback, the system will be refined and tweaked, Woods said.
(09/01/06 2:52am)
From Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" to Jonathan Safran Foer's novel "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," the taboo against taking on the attacks is long gone, at least among writers and filmmakers. Nothing in fiction has compared to the power of a real plane crashing into a real building yet, and audiences seem torn between the desire to know more about 9/11 and the fear of being reminded too closely.\nTanya Palmer, literary manager of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, says there is a "tension between wanting the art to be relevant but also a pressure from the audience ... to not always be showing them what's happening in the news."\nReaders so far have preferred the facts. Novels such as Foer's "Extremely Loud" or Jay McInerney's "The Good Life" haven't approached the popularity of the millionselling "The 9/11 Commission Report" or of the recent graphic adaptation. Another current bestseller is Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower," an in-depth investigation of events leading up to the attacks that has more than 100,000 copies in print.\n"Readers definitely have turned to nonfiction books about 9/11," says Ann Close, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, which publishes Wright and McInerney. "I think people are desperately trying to figure out what happened and what's going on there, and nonfiction seems to give people a better shot at that than fiction."\nJonathan Burnham, publisher at HarperCollins, recalls a 9/11 novel he released when he was the head of Miramax Books: Frederic Beigbeder's "Windows on the World," a book that sold "modestly" despite strong reviews. Burnham found the experience "instructive" in knowing what kind of fiction readers seek.\n"I still think it's extremely hard for people to look at 9/11 fully in the face," Burnham says. "So much of the anxiety and concern is projected in other directions, like toward 'The Da Vinci Code' and other conspiracy thrillers."\nHollywood remains squeamish about Sept. 11 projects, partly because of the long lead time involved in bringing movies to the big screen and partly because studios figure most movie-goers are not looking for reminders of the terrorist attacks.\nThe first two film dramatizations arrived this year. Paul Greengrass' "United 93" was a meticulous docudrama about the hijacked flight whose passengers fought back against their captors, their plane crashing in rural Pennsylvania, killing all aboard. "World Trade Center" starred Nicolas Cage in the story of two Port Authority police officers who were among the last of a handful of survivors pulled alive from the rubble of the fallen towers.\nBoth movies were well received by critics and did respectable business, but their box-office receipts were modest enough to confirm suspicions that many people were not ready to relive Sept. 11 in theaters -- and may never be ready.\n"I don't think there's any shame in the amount of box office those films did. They both performed solidly given the subject matter," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.\n"But if you're looking to greenlight a movie, you don't look at a movie based on Sept. 11 and say, 'This is going to be a huge blockbuster hit.' Sept. 11 movies are not about box office. If you're going to make them, you have to keep the budgets in line, and they better be pretty solid movies."\nStudios remain in a holding pattern, with no other major Sept. 11 projects expected soon. Audiences remain as escapist as ever, packing theaters for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Cars" and "X-Men: The Last Stand," while the two Sept. 11 films drew comparatively small crowds.\nIndependent-minded filmmakers and documentary directors likely will remain the key chroniclers of Sept. 11 and its aftermath. In the year following the attacks, there was a rush of smaller projects, including "The Guys," based on the play about a firefighter preparing eulogies for colleagues killed in the attacks, and "September 11," an anthology of short films whose directors included Sean Penn, Mira Nair and Ken Loach.\n"These movies aren't really developed at a marketing meeting. It's more a creative choice on the part of filmmakers willing to tackle this emotional subject," Dergarabedian says. "I don't think there's anyone sitting there saying, 'We've got to make a 9/11 film.' It's more about visionary filmmakers. That's how those films get made. If Oliver Stone says he wants to do a World Trade Center movie, who's going to say no?"\nThe events of 9/11 have touched TV drama in only limited and occasional ways.\nThe fallout from terrorism ushered in by that day perhaps contributed to the "under-siege atmosphere" of many subsequent series, such as "Lost," and furnished a narrative touch point for other TV shows: an episode of "Law & Order" dealt with victim remains at ground zero, and the hero of "CSI: New York" is haunted by the loss of his wife in the attacks.\nPerhaps the series most directly inspired by 9/11 is the FX network drama "Rescue Me." Set in a Manhattan firehouse, it focuses on the professional and personal pressures weighing down on this team of New York's Bravest -- all of whom continue to bear the loss of comrades in 9/11 rescue and recovery efforts.\nSince Sept. 11, the biggest change in the theater business has been in consumer-buying patterns, changes that the industry saw immediately after the terror attacks and that now have become a permanent part of the landscape. Audiences are buying tickets much closer to the date of the performances.\n"I remember right after 9/11 it was a source of stress for a lot of theater companies because you would go into a week where it didn't seem like you had that many tickets sold, and then you would come out of the week and you were OK," says Harold Wolpert, managing director of the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre Company. "It used to be people bought tickets far in advance.\n"It's possible that 9/11 accelerated what may have been a trend that would have developed anyway," Wolpert says. "It's changed how you advertise, for example. Theater companies and commercial Broadway shows now send out direct-mail much closer to the opening of a production than they used to. If you send it too far in advance, people just don't focus on it"
(08/02/06 10:22pm)
Bloomington is not the only Indiana city that may lose its standard "overnight" same-area postal service, but local postal workers are still concerned with the loss of speedy delivery for local Hoosiers sending and receiving mail.\nUSPS officials revealed a list of 139 American cities -- including Lafayette, Muncie, Kokomo and Gary -- that may lose current postal service standards in the name of the company's bottom line, although Southern Indiana's 474 zip code is still the only area under current evaluation. In protest of the USPS plan, local postal workers are picketing Bloomington's Main Post Office at 11:30 a.m. today on Fourth Street, in hopes of drawing community attention to their plight for maintaining current postal service standards for the hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers they serve.\n"The study that's being done is to take the mail that's collected in collection boxes and at the windows, and instead of processing it here in Bloomington for this area -- the 474 zip code area like we normally do -- the study is to determine if they can take it all to Indianapolis, basically a 100 mile round trip, process it and get it back down here," said 25-year postal employee Kevin McCaffery, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union 2122 local chapter. "The postal service is going to say, I'm contending they're going to say, 'It's to save money for the postal service' ... But our big gripe is there's no way we're going to get mail under the current standard from Paoli and French Lick, here, to Bloomington first, then trucked to Indy, and then processed up there, back down here, reprocessed in Bloomington and then out to Paoli and French Lick overnight like we do now, currently, in Bloomington."\nIf the USPS moves ahead with its proposal, all 474 zip code letters and packages mailed within the 474 zip code to other 474 zip code recipients will travel more than 50 miles to Indianapolis for processing, before the mail is shipped 50 miles back to Bloomington for reprocessing and then distribution within the same 474 zip code area.\nThe 474 zip code area covers 1,500 square miles in Southern Indiana with Bloomington as the primary hub, north to Quincy, Ind., east to Nashville, Ind., south to French Lick and west to Jasonville. Also snuggled within the 42 Hoosier cities and towns representing the 474 zip code area are 50 rural post offices to further facilitate local processing and distribution in a speedy fashion. \nMcCafffery said the proposed consolidation is a means for USPS officials to offset "big" discounts to large businesses and corporations, at the expense in time and convenience for small businesses and Hoosier families. \n"(The U.S. Postal Service's) effort is to consolidate the operation at the expense of service. What I mean to say by that is 'the person that drops mail in the mailbox is to me not given a fair shake on how important it is to serve them,'" he said. "The big mailers, discount mailers, are the ones that are getting all the breaks in service, and the person that drops their mail in the mailbox is the one that's going to lose the service if this proposal is enacted ... We're going from what used to be all about a service-oriented industry -- 'how to get mail there as fast as we can' -- to, well, 'we're not going to worry about the little people, we'll take care of the big people.'"\nMonroe County Board of Commissioner officials signed a proclamation Feb. 17 to decry the proposal as not acting to serve "Monroe County's best interest" because the "economy of the local communities would be negatively impacted" among other consequences. Common Council officials signed that same resolution against the USPS plan March 1, and Mayor Mark Kruzan added his name to the community member concern list March 2.\nRep. Mike Sodrel, R-9th, sent a letter to USPS District Manager Charles Howe and USPS Acting District Manager Kelvin Mack stating his opposition to the Area Mail Processing Feasibility Study because the plan would "negatively alter services provided by (Bloomington's) facility to Indiana residents."\n"Shifting mail operations to the Indianapolis location would add a minimum of one hour and 45 minutes of transit time in the processing of mail. The additional time added to the operation would be a less efficient process and could add additional costs to the USPS due to higher fuel and transportation costs," Sodrel wrote in the March 3 letter. "This increase in processing time would deteriorate service to the USPS customers in this facility's service area ... The presence of (Indiana) University coupled with the added processing time and the deterioration of service would negate any appearance of a benefit concluded by this study."\nEven though USPS attempts to consolidate Southern Indiana mail processing failed in 1991 because no significant savings were found, USPS officials began another survey of the situation in December 2005 to see if the financial scene had changed. At that time, USPS announced its intention to evaluate about 40 cities for postal service consolidation and it has since dismissed five such plans and approved 10.\nUSPS officials have not announced their progress or conclusions in regards to Bloomington's 474 zip code consolidation, but McCaffery said he fears the Feasibility Study is a forgone conclusion.\n"By keeping the local mail local, we have people here who live in these very communities that we serve, and we know the mail better. There's so much more of a personal touch from people that work this mail in this area than Indianapolis could give us," he said. "In December they told us it was pretty much a done deal anyway, so we think they are going to make the numbers fit the study and not really look at the big picture of service ... I know some people don't think the mail is important, whether it gets there in a day or two, but we do as workers -- we make every effort to get that stuff out and turn it around, especially overnight for our 474 area"
(07/13/06 4:00am)
One of the state's best-kept secrets borders a tiny gravel road off of Highway 46 in Center Point, Ind., about an hour west of Bloomington. The entrance, almost hidden, leads to a stretch of land with some unexpected inhabitants -- almost 200 exotic cats.\nExotic Feline Rescue Center owner Joe Taft walked slowly up a grass path between an enclosure with two servals and another with three lions. Even with his baseball cap on he squinted into the sun as he approached the chain link fence, the only thing that separates the cats from the humans at the center. To Taft and his staff, they're all humans.\nEven Taft's clothes showed how much he loves his 192 friends, all of different colors, sizes and breeds. The sleeves of his blue button down shirt were rolled up and the fabric was torn in various places. His shirt and blue jeans were stained with splotches of red drying into a crusty, deep burgundy because he had to help cut up the body of a dead horse donated by a farmer in order to serve his feline guests, who eagerly awaited their lunch in each enclosure. \n"Sometimes that's what you have to do when you're the boss," he said. "You have to help out where it's needed."\nThe grisly reminder of the food chain that sometimes greets the center's guests adds to the natural atmosphere, but it's still in stark contrast with the picturesque property. The 108 acres Taft bought in order to pursue his passion has been sectioned off into "15 years' worth" of massive enclosures for the cats he rescues. The property has areas of field and woods, which provides the cats with shade in the summer and space to roam. Once cats inhabit an enclosure, the area is not mowed, so cats feel more at home in the natural vegetation.\nEnclosures vary in size depending on how many cats are in the enclosure and how big the cats are, but each cage gives cats more than adequate room to play, eat and hide if they get tired of visitors. Some of the biggest enclosures, which are generally for lions and tigers, are about 20,000 square feet. Right now, they're about to start building new enclosures for cats that will be arriving later in the summer.\n"We average taking in two cats a month," he said. "That's a huge number. We've taken 11 cats so far this year."\nThat is a huge number, especially considering the center started rather unintentionally. Though Taft loved big cats, it was never his plan to run such a large facility.\nTaft's first big cat was an ocelot he bought in the mid-1960s. He also had a leopard for 20 years who had its own room in his house, which opened up to an outdoor enclosure.\n"My house was modified," he said. "It had chain link over the windows and double-locking doors. ... It was not your typical house pet. This was a leopard. It was more like there was a cot in the cat house for the zoo keeper."\nNow Taft gets several of his animals from people who think they can handle big cats as pets, but it often ends with abuse and neglect. He even admitted his own pet purchases were not exactly good ideas, but at least his experience ended happily.\n"I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to get a Lotus and a cheetah and I was going to drive very fast in my Lotus and my cheetah was going to sit perfectly well behaved and happy next to me. Well that really corresponds well with reality," he laughed. "I looked at Lotuses and got an MG and looked at cheetahs and got an ocelot. The ocelot had me hooked right from the very first minute. The cars came and went, but that cat, she grabbed my heart and I've had big cats ever since." \nSeveral years after Taft got his first pets, the idea for a rescue center was born. In 1990 Taft learned of two tigers that "were in a lot of trouble" because they had been locked in the back of a Volkswagon van for an extended period of time, he said.\n"One was blind and crippled and most of his baby teeth were rotted out," he said. "I took those two cats in and that's what started the rescue center. I came here in 1991 and bought the original property, and since then we've bought two adjoining pieces of property. Now we have 108 acres all together."\nAs Taft strolled by the enclosures, many of the cats came up to the fence to greet their guardian. Autumn, a full-grown female cougar, rubbed up against the fence, but when she saw Taft wasn't alone she briefly withdrew.\n"If you don't want pets don't lean like you want pets, OK?" he told her.\nBut within seconds she was back at the fence, letting him pet her as a loud, rumbling purr shook through her body.\nNext to Autumn, another cougar named Charlie laid peacefully in his enclosure a few feet from the fence.\n"Charlie is one of two cats here that are blind," Taft explained. "He has a condition that deteriorates retina."\nAt the sound of Taft's voice, Charlie got up and walked to the fence and Taft reached out his hand for Charlie to smell. Immediately, Charlie lay down again up against the fence right in front of Taft.\n"Most of them know me and quite a number will come if I call them. Two of the lions in there I can go in with," Taft said, pointing to the next enclosure.\nHe went to the fence surrounding the home of three lions and called for Tucker, one of the cats he's closest with. All three lions were lying on the other side of the enclosure but perked up when they heard his voice. They raised themselves briefly to locate Taft, but then curled back up to nap in the sun. They apparently didn't want to perform for an audience.\n"With the exception of a few cats I have a close relationship with, I won't go in the cages with a cat unless there's a reason," he said. "It's not standard procedure to be in the cage with the cats."\nMedical concerns often provide a reason for Taft to enter cages, but the cats often receive their vaccinations and basic care through the fence. For more serious problems, cats are professionally anesthetized and brought to the new, on-site and elaborate clinic Taft built in his basement. A veterinarian who lives about 10 miles from the center regularly cares for the cats if they become sick or need to be spayed or neutered.\nThe new clinic has helped both the staff and the cats, since simple medical procedures used to prove difficult to complete. Before the inception of the clinic, Taft had to cart new cats all the way to the University of Illinois in order to get them spayed, a requirement for all cats that live at the center. The entire process was expensive, complicated and would engage almost the entire staff for two days, he said. Now cats can be spayed on-site and Taft can ensure they're getting the best care.\nAs Taft continued to walk along the path, lions and tigers happily lunched on the animal parts he had cut up only a half-hour before. Female lions dragged a horse head around their enclosure while tigers shared their meat and frolicked in water bins next door. Taft said the center goes through about 3,000 pounds of meat each day and that they depend on farmers and hunters to donate food. Farmers bring in horses and cows that have died of natural causes and hunters occasionally bring in extra meat that they don't have room for or don't want to eat. If they're running low on food, they'll get money from donors to buy chicken, said five-year staff member Suzanne Taylor.\n"The cats are fed six days a week, once a day," Taft said. "One day they fast, and that's weather dependent. When it's cold, they have meat in front of them all the time. That horse head weighs about 200 pounds and it will feed those seven cats; they'll still be eating on it tomorrow when we take it out. During the summer they're usually given what they'll eat. Lions sometimes fast up to three days in the summer because it gets so hot that they don't want to eat. Tigers are quite often fasted two days a week. Not consecutive days a week, though."\nFor most of the cats, an abundance of food and enclosures with toys, vegetation, climbing towers and water bins is more like a luxury hotel than a rescue center. Most cats came from breeders who shoved them into small cages, from circuses where they were mistreated or from private owners who didn't properly care for them and ended up in jail for various reasons. Some were in such poor medical condition that they were near death by the time they reached the center. Others were so sparingly fed that they were severely underweight and every bone in their bodies was visible through their thick coats of fur. But now, they're happy, healthy, well fed and have a good home for the rest of their lives.\nAnd the cats offer something quite unique for visitors -- a chance to see wild animals up close. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Though it's a nonprofit organization, the staff asks for donations of $10 for adults and $5 for children who wish to tour the facility. For $120, guests can stay overnight in a small apartment for two attached to Taft's house. Overnight guests get a private entrance, access to the facility when it's closed and get to pet one of the animals. Several of the cats also live right outside the door of the apartment and guests can see them from the window.\nFrance Knable and John Smith, two Bloomington residents, opted to stay the night last week as a birthday present for Smith, Knable said. It was the second visit for Knable, a French teacher at Bloomington High School North, who had brought two visiting teachers from France who were in Bloomington for an exchange a few years ago. The overnight visit was Smith's first trip.\n"It's definitely interesting," he said as he looked around the apartment. "It feels kind of like Jurassic Park."\nKnable was looking forward to touring the facility again and possibly going on a nighttime walk.\n"I love cats so when I found out about this place I've been wanting to come out for a long time," she said. "I wanted to spend the night because cats howl at night and I want to hear them."\nTaylor and Taft both said people don't know what they're missing until they visit the center.\n"If you like big cats, you'll never see big cats like this anywhere else—this close to them and this rich of a habitat and this many of them," Taft said. "People come here and say it's the greatest zoological experience they've ever had … and all these animals are rescue animals and deserve your support"
(07/12/06 3:58pm)
One of the state's best-kept secrets borders a tiny gravel road off of Highway 46 in Center Point, Ind., about an hour west of Bloomington. The entrance, almost hidden, leads to a stretch of land with some unexpected inhabitants -- almost 200 exotic cats.\nExotic Feline Rescue Center owner Joe Taft walked slowly up a grass path between an enclosure with two servals and another with three lions. Even with his baseball cap on he squinted into the sun as he approached the chain link fence, the only thing that separates the cats from the humans at the center. To Taft and his staff, they're all humans.\nEven Taft's clothes showed how much he loves his 192 friends, all of different colors, sizes and breeds. The sleeves of his blue button down shirt were rolled up and the fabric was torn in various places. His shirt and blue jeans were stained with splotches of red drying into a crusty, deep burgundy because he had to help cut up the body of a dead horse donated by a farmer in order to serve his feline guests, who eagerly awaited their lunch in each enclosure. \n"Sometimes that's what you have to do when you're the boss," he said. "You have to help out where it's needed."\nThe grisly reminder of the food chain that sometimes greets the center's guests adds to the natural atmosphere, but it's still in stark contrast with the picturesque property. The 108 acres Taft bought in order to pursue his passion has been sectioned off into "15 years' worth" of massive enclosures for the cats he rescues. The property has areas of field and woods, which provides the cats with shade in the summer and space to roam. Once cats inhabit an enclosure, the area is not mowed, so cats feel more at home in the natural vegetation.\nEnclosures vary in size depending on how many cats are in the enclosure and how big the cats are, but each cage gives cats more than adequate room to play, eat and hide if they get tired of visitors. Some of the biggest enclosures, which are generally for lions and tigers, are about 20,000 square feet. Right now, they're about to start building new enclosures for cats that will be arriving later in the summer.\n"We average taking in two cats a month," he said. "That's a huge number. We've taken 11 cats so far this year."\nThat is a huge number, especially considering the center started rather unintentionally. Though Taft loved big cats, it was never his plan to run such a large facility.\nTaft's first big cat was an ocelot he bought in the mid-1960s. He also had a leopard for 20 years who had its own room in his house, which opened up to an outdoor enclosure.\n"My house was modified," he said. "It had chain link over the windows and double-locking doors. ... It was not your typical house pet. This was a leopard. It was more like there was a cot in the cat house for the zoo keeper."\nNow Taft gets several of his animals from people who think they can handle big cats as pets, but it often ends with abuse and neglect. He even admitted his own pet purchases were not exactly good ideas, but at least his experience ended happily.\n"I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to get a Lotus and a cheetah and I was going to drive very fast in my Lotus and my cheetah was going to sit perfectly well behaved and happy next to me. Well that really corresponds well with reality," he laughed. "I looked at Lotuses and got an MG and looked at cheetahs and got an ocelot. The ocelot had me hooked right from the very first minute. The cars came and went, but that cat, she grabbed my heart and I've had big cats ever since." \nSeveral years after Taft got his first pets, the idea for a rescue center was born. In 1990 Taft learned of two tigers that "were in a lot of trouble" because they had been locked in the back of a Volkswagon van for an extended period of time, he said.\n"One was blind and crippled and most of his baby teeth were rotted out," he said. "I took those two cats in and that's what started the rescue center. I came here in 1991 and bought the original property, and since then we've bought two adjoining pieces of property. Now we have 108 acres all together."\nAs Taft strolled by the enclosures, many of the cats came up to the fence to greet their guardian. Autumn, a full-grown female cougar, rubbed up against the fence, but when she saw Taft wasn't alone she briefly withdrew.\n"If you don't want pets don't lean like you want pets, OK?" he told her.\nBut within seconds she was back at the fence, letting him pet her as a loud, rumbling purr shook through her body.\nNext to Autumn, another cougar named Charlie laid peacefully in his enclosure a few feet from the fence.\n"Charlie is one of two cats here that are blind," Taft explained. "He has a condition that deteriorates retina."\nAt the sound of Taft's voice, Charlie got up and walked to the fence and Taft reached out his hand for Charlie to smell. Immediately, Charlie lay down again up against the fence right in front of Taft.\n"Most of them know me and quite a number will come if I call them. Two of the lions in there I can go in with," Taft said, pointing to the next enclosure.\nHe went to the fence surrounding the home of three lions and called for Tucker, one of the cats he's closest with. All three lions were lying on the other side of the enclosure but perked up when they heard his voice. They raised themselves briefly to locate Taft, but then curled back up to nap in the sun. They apparently didn't want to perform for an audience.\n"With the exception of a few cats I have a close relationship with, I won't go in the cages with a cat unless there's a reason," he said. "It's not standard procedure to be in the cage with the cats."\nMedical concerns often provide a reason for Taft to enter cages, but the cats often receive their vaccinations and basic care through the fence. For more serious problems, cats are professionally anesthetized and brought to the new, on-site and elaborate clinic Taft built in his basement. A veterinarian who lives about 10 miles from the center regularly cares for the cats if they become sick or need to be spayed or neutered.\nThe new clinic has helped both the staff and the cats, since simple medical procedures used to prove difficult to complete. Before the inception of the clinic, Taft had to cart new cats all the way to the University of Illinois in order to get them spayed, a requirement for all cats that live at the center. The entire process was expensive, complicated and would engage almost the entire staff for two days, he said. Now cats can be spayed on-site and Taft can ensure they're getting the best care.\nAs Taft continued to walk along the path, lions and tigers happily lunched on the animal parts he had cut up only a half-hour before. Female lions dragged a horse head around their enclosure while tigers shared their meat and frolicked in water bins next door. Taft said the center goes through about 3,000 pounds of meat each day and that they depend on farmers and hunters to donate food. Farmers bring in horses and cows that have died of natural causes and hunters occasionally bring in extra meat that they don't have room for or don't want to eat. If they're running low on food, they'll get money from donors to buy chicken, said five-year staff member Suzanne Taylor.\n"The cats are fed six days a week, once a day," Taft said. "One day they fast, and that's weather dependent. When it's cold, they have meat in front of them all the time. That horse head weighs about 200 pounds and it will feed those seven cats; they'll still be eating on it tomorrow when we take it out. During the summer they're usually given what they'll eat. Lions sometimes fast up to three days in the summer because it gets so hot that they don't want to eat. Tigers are quite often fasted two days a week. Not consecutive days a week, though."\nFor most of the cats, an abundance of food and enclosures with toys, vegetation, climbing towers and water bins is more like a luxury hotel than a rescue center. Most cats came from breeders who shoved them into small cages, from circuses where they were mistreated or from private owners who didn't properly care for them and ended up in jail for various reasons. Some were in such poor medical condition that they were near death by the time they reached the center. Others were so sparingly fed that they were severely underweight and every bone in their bodies was visible through their thick coats of fur. But now, they're happy, healthy, well fed and have a good home for the rest of their lives.\nAnd the cats offer something quite unique for visitors -- a chance to see wild animals up close. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Though it's a nonprofit organization, the staff asks for donations of $10 for adults and $5 for children who wish to tour the facility. For $120, guests can stay overnight in a small apartment for two attached to Taft's house. Overnight guests get a private entrance, access to the facility when it's closed and get to pet one of the animals. Several of the cats also live right outside the door of the apartment and guests can see them from the window.\nFrance Knable and John Smith, two Bloomington residents, opted to stay the night last week as a birthday present for Smith, Knable said. It was the second visit for Knable, a French teacher at Bloomington High School North, who had brought two visiting teachers from France who were in Bloomington for an exchange a few years ago. The overnight visit was Smith's first trip.\n"It's definitely interesting," he said as he looked around the apartment. "It feels kind of like Jurassic Park."\nKnable was looking forward to touring the facility again and possibly going on a nighttime walk.\n"I love cats so when I found out about this place I've been wanting to come out for a long time," she said. "I wanted to spend the night because cats howl at night and I want to hear them."\nTaylor and Taft both said people don't know what they're missing until they visit the center.\n"If you like big cats, you'll never see big cats like this anywhere else—this close to them and this rich of a habitat and this many of them," Taft said. "People come here and say it's the greatest zoological experience they've ever had … and all these animals are rescue animals and deserve your support"
(07/10/06 4:47am)
Many years ago, it took only one person to complete the job of a housing assistant in one of IU's 11 dormitories.\nToday it takes as many as five in each residence hall to complete the tasks necessary to house the 22,000 conference guests who come through IU's dorms this summer. \nHousing assistants are just a few of the more than 60 live-in summer staff who make their residence in the dorms during the summer. Other live-ins include administrative assistants, orientation assistants, summer school and groups resident assistants and a handful of graduate assistants.\n"Most of the summer staff are RAs during the regular school year," said Michael Moore, associate director for Residential Programs and Services. "We don't hire just anybody -- they have to have some background in housing."\nSince the focus is on using the dorms as a recruitment tool for future students, Moore said it is essential to provide a welcoming and friendly environment for conference guests and the summer staff helps put a good face on RPS.\nSummer staffers have various duties that often don't resemble the RA duties they are responsible for during the regular school year. \n"We check guests in and out, make sure the guests and their supervisors are comfortable while they stay with us in Briscoe," said senior Endy Obianozie, a housing assistant in Briscoe Quad. "But we do more than that. We check the doors at around 11 p.m. to make sure the buildings are secure, we do other various duties such as desk shifts, forwarding mail to former residents and give tours to those who want to see our facilities during orientation, among various other things that our resident manager needs us to do."\nThe summer staff, unlike RAs, does not have to deal with disciplinary problems during the summer unless the staff for the visiting conference guest is not around. Instead they mainly deal with building facility management. \n"From checking on broken windows, to lockouts, HA's are trained to do it," said Graham Shepfer, special services manager and acting director of RPS conferences. "They make sure that availability is there 24 hours a day in case something goes wrong and something needs to be done for the conference on a whim, whether it is at 10 p.m. in the evening or 4 a.m. in the morning."\nFor their service to RPS during the summer, summer staff members receive various incentives. All receive free housing in their various capacities, HA's, RA's and graduate assistants receive a meal plan and are also paid an hourly rate after serving past 20 hours during the week. \nFor the most part, the staff lives in the same area of the dorm, out of the way of conference guests. Living on the same floor provides various opportunities to get together for activities. \n"It's kind of nice living in the same hall with other RA's because during the school year we live on separate floors," said junior Joe White, an HA in Teter Quad. "It gives us an opportunity to play video games, basketball and chess among other activities that help us interact with each other. It helps us to get to know each other better on a personal level than during the regular school year."\nAlthough the job of the summer staff could be done by full-time staff, Shepfer said the amount of work would not be feasible for that situation.\n"We couldn't do it without them," Shepfer said.
(06/29/06 2:03am)
GREENSBURG, Ind. -- Honda Motor Co. will build an auto assembly plant near the city as part of a $1.18 billion global expansion, ending a five-state scramble and bringing jobs to a state hit hard by manufacturing losses.\nThe $550 million factory will employ 2,000 workers and eventually produce 200,000 vehicles annually, officials said at a news conference Wednesday.\nThe Japanese automaker announced in May that it planned to build its sixth North American plant in the Midwest, but did not say where. Officials from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin promoted sites in their states.\n"We believe that the great state of Indiana has what we need to continue ... success: an outstanding community of people, excellent transportation systems and the necessary infrastructure to support industry," said Koichi Kondo, president of American Honda Motor Co.\nHe said he has been to Indianapolis many times as all drivers in this year's Indianapolis 500 used Honda engines.\n"I'd like to point out that there was not one engine failure in the race," Kondo said. "With the racing spirit in mind, today I am happy to be able to say, 'Honda and Indiana, start your engines.'"\nState Rep. Cleo Duncan, R-Greensburg, called the announcement "monumental."\n"It will transform the entire region of the state."\nGov. Mitch Daniels, who returned to Indiana early after an 11-day trade trip to Asia, welcomed Honda officials.\n"Honda is going to feel right at home in Indiana, and you are going to love Greensburg and this part of our state," Daniels said.\nThe plant will help invigorate the state's economy, which has lost 98,000 industrial jobs since 2000.\nConstruction will be completed in 2008. Kondo declined to say which vehicles would be produced, although the cars would be four-cylinder models. The Anna, Ohio, plant will provide the engines, Honda said.\nThe Greensburg plant -- Honda's sixth in North America -- will boost the Japanese automaker's North American production capacity from 1.4 million to 1.6 million vehicles a year. The company will soon employ 37,000 people in North America, it said.\nSome community members also welcomed the news.\nAt Christy's Cakes and Confections, owner Christy Kinker, 30, displayed a hand-drawn sign in the window that read, "Welcome Honda."\n"We're just excited about the business," the Decatur County native said. "We hope it will help the small mom and pop businesses and bring more money to the area. We've lost so many jobs here. It seems like as a community we've been down in the dumps. I think this will rejuvenate everybody."\nHonda and its larger rival, Toyota Motor Corp., have been racheting up their North American manufacturing capacity to keep up with demand, even as U.S. automakers General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are cutting thousands of jobs and closing plants as their market share declines. North America accounts for about half Honda's annual global sales.\nIn 2005, American Honda achieved record U.S. sales of 1.5 million Honda and Acura cars and light trucks, the ninth straight year of increased sales, the company said. The Indiana plant was expected to help meet that growing demand.\nPlanning officials in Decatur County were to meet Wednesday to discuss rezoning 1,700 acres west of the city for the plant.\nHonda this spring collected options on land near Greensburg, a community of 10,500 people 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis, offering to buy property at 75 percent more than its assessed value. The deal included a $6,000 signing bonus to landowners who agreed to sell, regardless of whether the land was used.\nCommunity leaders had 300 people recently pose in the shape of the Honda logo as part of a campaign to demonstrate that residents welcome the plant -- and the jobs.
(06/05/06 9:44pm)
WHAT: "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," an exhibit featuring more than 130 objects from ancient Egypt, including the burial place of Tutankhamun. The treasures are all between 3,000 and 3,500 years old, and come from royal tombs. \nWHERE: The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr., Chicago. \nWHEN: Friday, May 26 through Jan. 1, 2007\nHOURS: Regular museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with the last museum admission at 4 p.m. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, the museum will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.\nSPECIAL HOURS: The museum has several dates during the summer when it will be open until 9 p.m., with the last entrance to the museum and the King Tut exhibit at 7 p.m.\nTUT TICKETS: Admission to the King Tut exhibit requires a timed-entry ticket that specifies a 30-minute window for entering the show. Once inside, you may stay as long as you want.\nn ADMISSION: Tickets to the exhibition during regular museum hours are $25 for adults, $22 for seniors and students and $16 for children ages 4 to 11.
(05/10/06 11:58pm)
A handful of Indiana judges will soon allow still and video cameras into their courtrooms as part of a pilot program lifting restrictions on news media coverage of trials.\nIndiana Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard signed the order Tuesday in Evansville authorizing the program, which came in response to requests from the Indiana Broadcasters Association and the Hoosier State Press Association.\n"We think that in general the public benefits by knowing more about what happens in its courts," Shepard said before signing the order.\nThe 18-month program will involve eight trial judges throughout the state who have agreed to allow news cameras and audio recorders into their courtrooms.\nShepard said the order could allow for journalists to better "tell the story of what happens" in courtrooms. The order also could allow for real-time Webcasts of court proceedings that are not already closed to the public under state law or Supreme Court rules, he said.\nRandy Wheeler, news director of radio station WIKY in Evansville, has been an advocate for opening Indiana's courtrooms to media cameras and microphones for years.\nWheeler said cameras should be allowed in the courtroom amid the digital media age.\n"It's fantastic for the people of the Hoosier State to see and feel and hear the emotions of the courtroom that can't be captured by the written word," said Wheeler, who is also president of Indiana Associated Press Broadcasters Association. "The tools that we have used in the electronic media have shown their impact in the Kennedy assassination and more recently on 9/11."\nUnder the order, which justices approved by a 3-2 vote, one video camera, one still camera and up to three tape recorders will be allowed at a time.\nThe project will begin July 1 this year and last until the end of 2007, and members of the media must agree to share coverage under an arrangement approved by the trial judge in advance.\nSteve Key, general counsel for the newspaper industry group Hoosier State Press Association, said the public has a right to know what happens in its courtrooms.\nIt's not at all similar to what popular television shows as "Judge Judy" depict, he said.
(04/26/06 3:28am)
HAVANA -- Little Cuban girls fantasize about being flamenco dancers -- strong, beautiful women in ruffled skirts and swept up hairdos who evoke wondrous, thunderous magic by stomping their black strapped shoes.\nIn a country that gained its independence from Spain a little more than a century ago, the Spanish dance remains highly popular among young Cuban girls in the same way ballet enthralls girls in the United States and tango captivates girls in Argentina.\nStill, thriving cultural societies formed by Spanish immigrants to Cuba represent regions such as Asturias and Andaluz and offer flamenco dance and other programs.\nThe leading flamenco school is run by the government's Ballet Español de Cuba, operating under the auspices of the grande dame of ballet, Alicia Alonso, and the leadership of classically trained dancer Eduardo Veitia, the company's general and artistic director. Reynaldo Ibanez, technical director of the school for 12 years, says the best of the best have the chance of joining the dance company as they mature.\nOn a weekday afternoon, 20 girls on the cusp of adolescence dance to the staccato claps of their teachers' hands in a small practice room in Havana's Gran Teatro. It's a majestic performing arts palace in clear need of renovation, with chipped and cracked columns, peeling paint on the towering walls and marble-floored hallways dulled by decades of grime.\nThey gather their black ruffled skirts in their small hands, clutch the fabric to their hips and stomp assertively on the rough wooden floor, sounding like a stampede of wild horses.\n"Bamp bamp bamp bamp BAMP! Bamp bamp bamp bamp BAMP!" thunders through the small room as the soft light of late afternoon pours through the tall, narrow, open windows looking out over the green gardens and towering palms of Havana's Parque Central.\nThe girls, each with her hair swept into a bun and fastened with a bright yellow tie, imitate the "profesora," gyrating their hands like a flock of fluttering birds.\nA similar scene unfolds in other small rooms throughout the huge multifloored complex. In some, girls as young as five in pale pink tights and leotards learn basic classical ballet moves to prepare for the transition to flamenco dance when they are older.\nTheir mothers wait on park benches outside.\n"Just imagine," says Aleida Gomez Rodriguez, smiling proudly as she talks about her 11-year-old daughter, Leidy Rosa. "She's been coming to classes since she was 5"
(03/06/06 7:28am)
8:20 p.m.: Ok it has been like 20 minutes and everything has been great. Opening rocked and they're already getting things off to a big start with the hardest category: Best Supporting Actor! Could it be my boy Giamatti? Envelope is being opened….. GEORGE CLOONEY! The man had to win SOMETHING tonight and he scored big! "Guess I won't be winning Best Director!" Priceless. If he was going to get a statue, this was the category to do it in.
(02/15/06 4:45am)
LAHORE, Pakistan -- Thousands rampaged through two cities Tuesday in Pakistan's worst violence against caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, burning buildings housing a hotel, banks and a KFC, vandalizing a Citibank and breaking windows at a Holiday Inn and a Pizza Hut.\nAt least two people were killed in Lahore, where intelligence officials suspected outlawed Islamic militant groups incited the violence to undermine President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's U.S.-allied government.\nAn Associated Press reporter in Lahore saw crowd members who appeared to be orchestrating the attacks, directing protesters -- some of whom were carrying containers of kerosene -- toward particular targets. The demonstrators also set the provincial government assembly building on fire.\nIn the capital, Islamabad, hundreds of students stormed through the main entrance of the tightly guarded enclave that houses most foreign embassies, brandishing sticks and throwing stones. They were dispersed with tear gas, and no foreigners were hurt.\nThe unruly protests and deaths marked an alarming spike in the unrest in Pakistan over the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been reprinted by other Western newspapers. One cartoon depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with an ignited detonator string.\nMany in this conservative Islamic country, as across the Muslim world, regard any depiction of the prophet as blasphemous. They reject the newspapers' explanations that the cartoons have news value and represent free speech.\nIn southern Iraq, Basra's provincial council demanded the withdrawal of Denmark's 530-member military contingent from the region unless the Danish government apologizes for the cartoons -- which it refuses to do, saying it has no influence over the media.\nThe president of the European Commission backed the Danish government's refusal, saying freedom of speech cannot be compromised. \n"It's better to publish too much than not to have freedom," President Jose Manuel Barroso told Jyllands-Posten, the paper that first published the drawings.\nDemonstrations around Asia and the Middle East have subsided in recent days, including in Afghanistan, where 11 people died in riots last week. But the protests have gathered momentum in Pakistan this week.\nIn Lahore, the eastern city that is the main commercial hub in the prosperous Punjab province, about 15,000 joined the protest organized by a little-known religious group and an Islamic school. The demonstration was also supported by associations representing local traders who shuttered businesses and most markets Tuesday.\nWitnesses said a minority of protesters in small groups ran amok down streets lined with old colonial buildings and shopping malls. Television footage showed at least one rioter firing a hand gun.\nSecurity forces fired live rounds into the air, but failed to stop protesters from setting fire to the Punjab provincial assembly and burning down four buildings housing a hotel, two banks, a KFC restaurant and the office of the Norwegian cell phone company, Telenor. Two movie theaters were also torched.\nWitnesses said rioters also damaged over 200 cars, dozens of shops -- many locally owned -- and a large portrait of Musharraf. American brands were targeted. Protesters vandalized a Citibank branch and broke windows at a Holiday Inn hotel, a Pizza Hut and a McDonald's restaurant.\nA security guard shot and killed two protesters trying to force their way into a bank, said Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao. At least 11 other people were injured in the riots.\nA security official said members of the outlawed militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba and others from Jamaat al-Dawat -- which is linked to the outlawed Laskhar-e-Tayyaba group -- were among the rioters, and were trying to turn the cartoon furor against Musharraf's government.\n"People belonging to outlawed militant groups participated in today's rally, and some of them attacked public and private property," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "They were the ones who stirred up violence."\nSherpao said that some "miscreants" were among the protesters, but refused to give details. He accused organizers of failing to honor a promise to keep the rally orderly.\nIn Islamabad, about 180 miles northwest of Lahore, police appeared lax in trying to control protesters.\nA dozen policemen looked on as 1,000 to 1,500 people, mostly students, rushed through the main entrance of the diplomatic enclave, smashing street signs and a bank window.\nU.S. and British embassy staffers were confined to their compounds until police reinforcements with batons and shields used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, who shouted "Death to America" and other slogans. About 50 protesters were detained.\nAssociated Press writers Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
(02/06/06 5:46am)
DETROIT -- Mick Jagger moved up and down the field at halftime more easily than the Pittsburgh offense did for most of the game. In the end, though, Jerome Bettis, the Steelers and their thousands of rowdy fans wound up the big winners on Super Bowl Sunday.\nSave for a few big plays that changed the game, style points were hard to come by on America's annual football holiday. But to Pittsburgh, the 21-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks was beautiful -- a gritty grind of a game that included just enough flair to transform a blue-collar team playing in a blue-collar city into champions.\nIn a stadium brimming with thousands of Pittsburgh fans waving Terrible Towels, the Steelers finally captured their fifth title, that "One for the Thumb" that the Steelers have been waiting for since 1980.\nTitle No. 5 for Pittsburgh was the first for jut-jawed coach Bill Cowher, a 14-year veteran, and for Bettis, The Bus, who said he would end his 13-year career with a win in his hometown, only a few miles from where he grew up.\n"I played this game to win a championship," he said. "I'm a champion and I think the last stop is here, in Detroit."\nWhen it was over, Cowher found himself drenched, with water from the traditional dousing given to him by his players -- and with tears, as he hugged his wife and daughters. It was a scene much different than one 10 years ago, when the Steelers lost in the Super Bowl and Cowher had to do most of the consoling.\nTwo plays made a difference in this one: Willie Parker's record-setting 75-yard run for a touchdown right after halftime and receiver and former IU Hoosier Antwaan Randle El's 43-yard touchdown pass to Hines Ward on a trick play that put the Steelers up by 11 early in the fourth quarter.\nThe NFL took a chance bringing its showcase game up North to one of America's great, old cities, but one under duress. Hurt by sinking population, growing unemployment and urban blight that doesn't go away easily, this proud metropolis was a happy host, eager to impress and hoping the NFL's magic and money won't go away as soon as the teams and fans leave.\nBettis wasn't ashamed.\n"The best part is being able to showcase the hometown," he said earlier in the week, of a city that was staggered last month when Ford announced up to 30,000 job cuts. "I love this city and it puts our city on the grandest stage in the world. It's something that's much needed."\nNobody had more reason to celebrate than the Steelers, who got this win despite a less-than-perfect game from their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger (9-for-21 for 123 yards and two interceptions) and an offense that desperately needed the big plays it got to pull this out. Nearly half of Pittsburgh's 339 yards came on three plays -- Parker's run, Randle El's pass and a 37-yard pass that Roethlisberger threw across his body to Ward to set up Pittsburgh's first touchdown.\nAn aesthetic masterpiece, it was not, although a workingman's city like Pittsburgh and a blue-collar team like the Steelers will certainly take it.\n"I hope they appreciate me, because we just brought a championship home," Bettis said. "One for the Thumb"
(01/13/06 4:53am)
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- President Bush, visiting the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast Thursday for the first time in three months, hailed marked improvement despite warnings to lower his expectations about the pace of recovery.\n"I will tell you, the contrast between when I was last here and today is pretty dramatic," Bush said. "From when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to visit."\nThe president met privately with small business owners and local government officials in the New Orleans visitors bureau, located in the Lower Garden District neighborhood that was not flooded. The area suffered little impact from the storm, and his motorcade passed stately homes with very little damage.\nBush praised the city's success in bringing much of its infrastructure back. He touted it as a "great place to have a convention" and as an attractive tourist destination.\n"It's a heck of a place to bring your family," said Bush, seated before a colorful mural depicting jazz musicians, a river boat and masked Mardi Gras revelers. "It's a great place to find some of the greatest food in the world and it's a heck of a lot of fun," he said.\nAfter meeting with Mayor Ray Nagin and other elected officials, Bush was restating his commitment to rebuild during a speech in the crumbled town of Bay St. Louis, Miss. There, trees still lay snapped in half, debris is strewn across the landscape and people are living in tents and trailers in front of homes with missing roofs and shattered windows.\nMany commercial buildings were destroyed. Some of those still operating among the wreckage displayed yard signs that said, "We are staying!"\nBush's message was that although recovery will be long and expensive, the federal government is in it for the long haul, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.\n"The destruction down there looks like it just happened yesterday," Duffy said. "It's easy for people outside the region to forget the challenges they still face."\nWhite House Chief of Staff Andy Card said Wednesday that although the emotions from the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have passed, there is still need for government help. He said he warned Bush to be prepared to see lingering destruction.\n"I had to manage his expectations this morning, because while there has been great progress, there continues to be great need -- indescribable need," Card said in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.\nCard said the Gulf Coast economy is struggling and only about half of the 90 million tons of debris from Hurricane Katrina in August has been cleared.\nIn New Orleans, many neighborhoods are still abandoned wastelands, with uninhabitable homes, no working street lights and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage. The levee system is as vulnerable as ever. Barely a quarter of the 400,000 people who fled have come back, demographers estimate.\nBush said from the visitor's bureau that the federal government has made $85 billion available so far to hurricane recovery, $25 billion of which has been spent.\nHe rapped Congress for diverting $1.4 billion of the levee rebuilding money to non-New Orleans-related projects. \n"Congress needs to restore that $1.4 billion," he said.\nBush hasn't been to the coast since a trip to Louisiana and Mississippi Oct. 10 and 11.\nHe was initially criticized for a slow federal response to the disaster, then made eight trips to the region in six weeks, and the White House hardly went a day without an event or mention of the challenges there.\nThen Bush shifted his focus to Iraq and a series of recent speeches designed to defend against growing criticism of the war. Eager to show that his attention to Katrina victims continues, the White House announced last month that the government would pay to rebuild New Orleans' shattered levee system taller and stronger than before.\n-- Associated Press writer Jennifer Loven contributed to this report from New Orleans.
(11/18/05 3:44pm)
SAN DIEGO -- The high-top sneakers cost $215 at a San Diego boutique, but the designer is giving them away to migrants before they cross to this side of the U.S.-Mexico border.\nThese are no ordinary shoes.\nA compass and flashlight dangle from one shoelace. The pocket in the tongue is for money or pain relievers. A rough map of the border region is printed on a removable insole.\nThey are red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.\nThis side of the border, the shoes sit in art collections or the closets of well-heeled sneaker connoisseurs. On the other side, in Tijuana, it's a utilitarian affair: Immigrants-to-be are happy to have the sturdy, lightweight shoes for the hike -- or dash -- into the United States.\nTheir designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 -- legally, she notes.\nOne recent evening in Tijuana, after giving away 50 pairs of shoes at a migrant shelter, Werthein waved the insole and pointed to Interstate 8, the main road between San Diego and Phoenix.\n"This blue line is where you want to go," Werthein, 38, said in Spanish.\n"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.\n"God bless you!" several cried back.\nWerthein has concluded that shoes are a border crosser's most important garment.\n"The main problem that people have when they're crossing is their feet," Werthein said. "If people are going to cross anyway, at least this will make it safer."\nOnly 1,000 pairs of the "Brinco" sneakers (it means "jump" in Spanish) have been made in China for $17 each. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana whose sponsors include nonprofit foundations and private collectors.\nBenefactors put up $40,000 for the project; Werthein gets a $5,000 stipend, plus expenses.\nSome say Werthein is encouraging illegal immigration -- but she rejects the criticism, saying people will cross with or without her shoes.\nEloisa Haudenschild, who displays a pair of the sneakers at her resplendent San Diego home, said the shoes portray an uncomfortable reality about the perils of crossing the border.\n"It's a reality that we don't like to look at," she said. "That's what an artist points out."\nAcross the border, several curious migrants waiting for sunset along a cement river basin approached Werthein as she took white shoe boxes out of a sport utility vehicle. One man already wore a dirty pair of Brincos. Another, Felipe de Jesus Olivar Canto, slipped into a size 11 and said he would use them instead of his black leather shoes.\n"These are much more comfortable for hiking," said Olivar Canto. He said he was heading for $6.75-an-hour work installing doors and windows in Santa Ana, about 90 miles north of border. "The ones I have are more dressy."\nFrom there, Werthein went to Casa del Migrante, a Tijuana shelter that will receive a share of the proceeds from Brincos sold in the United States.\n"Does it have a sensor to alert us to the Border Patrol?" joked Javier Lopez, 33, who said he had a $10-an-hour job hanging drywall waiting for him in Denver.\nSpending two years researching the best design, Werthein interviewed shoe designers, migrants, aid workers and even an immigrant smuggler. She joined the Mexican government's Grupo Beta migrant-aid society on long border hikes. She heard from a Salvadoran woman in Tijuana who said she was kidnapped and raped by her smuggler.\nBased upon those interviews, she added a pocket -- migrants told her they were often robbed. She also added the flashlight -- many cross at night.\nSome get lost -- hence, the compass and map.\n"If you get lost," she told the men at the shelter, "just go north."\nIn downtown San Deigo, a boutique called Blends displays the shoes on a black pedestal. Werthein says Blends and Printed Matter, a store in Manhattan, have sold about 350 pair.\n"I wouldn't wear them and I wouldn't want my husband to wear them," said Blends browser Antonieta LaRussa, 28. "But the cause is awesome. There's so much opposition to immigration. She's looking at it from the other side of the fence and asking why"
(11/10/05 4:51am)
I would like to thank Kacie Foster for her Nov. 3 article "Forum aims to reduce 'casual racism' on campus." As mentioned in the article, the Facebook can be a great tool to promote student interaction on campus but not when some IU students create groups such as "We hate Asian drivers." This illustrates the need in our community to actively promote the value of diversity on campus.
(11/09/05 4:40am)
IU head coach Terry Hoeppner has been saying it all year. He wants his team to "play 12."\nHe's even sported jewelry with his slogan, a faux-Livestrong bracelet he's not willing to discard quite yet, despite IU's ever-closing postseason window of opportunity.\n"We have two more chances and I'm not taking it off," Hoeppner said in a statement. "Someone is going to have to rip it off."\n"It's going to be tougher now. Our backs are against the wall. Every guy on this team has to look at themselves in the mirror and be able to evaluate themselves." \nWith two games left in the Hoosiers' schedule, including this week's match up at No. 21 Michigan, IU is forced to win out if it plans on playing more than the 11 regular season games. \nAfter beginning the season 4-1, Hoeppner's team has dropped four straight to Big Ten opponents. The four early wins included lopsided tallies against Kentucky and Illinois spurred by offensive firepower and defensive stability. \nSince then, though, IU has struggled to establish success on either side of the ball with regularity. \n"We've got to keep working and keep improving," sophomore quarterback Blake Powers said. "All we can do is focus on these two games and get to our goal."\nAn already depleted IU wide receiving corps received more bad news this week. Freshman wideout James Bailey will sit out IU's last two games because of academic ineligibility. \nThe loss of Bailey will set the Hoosier offense back even further as they head into their final two games of the season. Fellow freshman receiver and IU's leading pass-catcher, James Hardy, left Saturday's game with an undisclosed injury. His status remains uncertain.\nBailey leaves a sizable hole in IU's offense. The Detroit native is second on the team in catches, yards and touchdowns. Bailey also made a pair of 20-yard receptions in the second quarter against Minnesota Saturday to put the Hoosiers in scoring position. \nThe ineligibility also comes in the midst of IU's efforts to regain its early-season passing form, when Blake Powers broke the school's all-time touchdown passing record. \n"It is an opportunity for someone else to step and play," Hoeppner said in a statement. "We have other guys."\nBailey's suspension will last until the end of the semester, at which time his academic issues will be re-evaluated.\nIU has struggled with nagging injuries all year. As the season winds down, those injuries might be costing key Hoosiers playing time. \nSenior defensive tackle and captain Russ Richardson is the latest Hoosier to suffer a potentially season-ending injury. Richardson left the game against Minnesota with an injury to his left knee and is doubtful for Saturday's game in Ann Arbor, Mich.\nRichardson isn't the first senior, or even captain, to lose games due to injury this season. \nSenior linebacker John Pannozzo is out for the rest of the year with a hand injury. Also, Hardy is battling the injury that took him out of the game in the third quarter against Minnesota.\n"We have an unusual amount of bumps and bruises," Hoeppner said in a statement. "As all physical games are, sometimes it is easier for it to become an accumulative thing. Going into week 10, everybody is a little bumped and bruised. Right now, I think we will have everybody but Russ"
(10/20/05 5:22am)
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras -- The fringes of Hurricane Wilma lashed Caribbean nations on Wednesday, forcing schools to close and thousands to evacuate as it churned toward Mexico's Cancun resort and Florida after killing at least 12 people and becoming the most intense storm ever to form in the Atlantic.\nThe National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Wilma would be a "significant threat" to Florida by the weekend in a season that has already seen devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Officials ordered tourists out of the Florida Keys.\n"We had well over 1,000 lives lost in Katrina. If Wilma, you know, comes into the U.S., to the Florida coast as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane, that potential for large loss of life is with us," said hurricane center director Max Mayfield.\nThe White House, stung by criticism that it had not responded quickly enough to Katrina, promised to stay on top of the situation. "We are closely monitoring what is an extremely \ndangerous storm," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "People should take this hurricane very seriously."\nTourists packed Cancun's airport in hopes of catching flights out and MTV postponed its Video Music Awards Latin America ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday at a seaside park south of the resort town.\nFloridians braced for the storm by boarding up windows and stocking up on supplies, although forecasters at the hurricane center said the forward motion of the Category 5 storm appeared to be slowing, which could cause it to eventually weaken.\nMayfield said Wilma may not reach the Florida Keys until Saturday, possibly toward the evening. It had earlier been expected to reach the Florida mainland Saturday. It was still a Category 5 storm with 160 mph winds, down from 175 mph earlier in the day.\nHeavy rain from Wilma's outer bands also forced evacuations in Honduras, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti -- even as much of Central America and southern Mexico was still recovering from Hurricane Stan, which left more than 1,500 people dead or missing.\nWilma was on a curving course that would carry it through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico on Friday, possibly within a few miles of Cancun and Cozumel.\nAt 5 p.m. EDT, Wilma was centered about 285 miles southeast of Mexico's Cozumel island and about 465 miles south-southwest of Key West. It was moving west-northwest near 7 mph.\nWilma's confirmed pressure readings early Wednesday dropped to 882 millibars, the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Americas, but it later lost power and rose to 900 millibars, according to the hurricane center. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speed.\nThe strongest Atlantic storm on record, based on pressure readings, had been Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which registered 888 millibars.\nWith heavy rain, high winds, and rough seas already pounding coastal areas, flood-prone Honduras warned that Wilma posed "an imminent threat to life and property." The country closed two Caribbean ports.\nThe closest land to Wilma's eye were the nearly uninhabited Swan Islands, once used by the CIA for propaganda broadcasts to Cuba. They were 35 miles west of the storm's center.\nThe head of Haiti's civil protection agency, Maria Alta Jean-Baptiste, said rains associated with Wilma caused floods and landslides that killed at least 11 people since Monday. At least 2,000 families were forced from flooded homes.\nJean--Baptiste later said she received unconfirmed reports that two more people drowned Wednesday while trying to cross a river that overflowed its banks in the southern town of Les Anglais.\nCuban authorities suspended classes in the western province of Pinar del Rio and prepared to evacuate tourists from campgrounds and low-lying areas, according to Granma, the Communist daily. More than 1,000 people were evacuated in the island's eastern Granma province.\nJamaica, where heavy rain has fallen since Sunday, closed almost all schools and 350 people were living in shelters. One man died Sunday in a rain-swollen river.\nA military helicopter plucked 19 people from rooftops Tuesday in St. Catherine parish, where some areas were flooded with up to 7 feet of water, said Barbara Carby, head of Jamaica's emergency management office.\n"The problem is that with the level of saturation, it doesn't take much more rain for flooding to occur, so we still have to remain very much on alert," she said.\nPrime Minister P.J. Patterson ordered the military to make emergency food shipments to stranded residents.
