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(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.
(10/14/05 5:57am)
When Aileen Scales' Franklin Hall office windows began shaking Thursday morning, she ventured to Dunn Meadow to see what was going on. \nWhat she found was a large National Guard UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter sitting square in the middle of the meadow's west end. \nThe chopper arrived for an IU ROTC display and recruitment event and was landed by Lt. Bryon Blohm, a graduate of IU's program. Passersby had the \nopportunity to hop into the chopper, sit in its passenger seats or even spend some time in the cockpit learning about its many complex features. \nOne of those features, the rescue hoist used to lift people off the ground without landing, attracted Scales' attention.\n"I'd love to do that," she said. "I think it'd be like being on a rollercoaster, maybe."\nThe Blackhawk flew in from Shelbyville, Ind., in only 15 minutes -- compared to an hour-and-a-half-long car ride -- at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour. \nSgt. 1st Class Ty Barnett said the purpose of the event was to engage people and teach them about ROTC and the National Guard.\n"We are National Guardsmen, and this is part of our job," Barnett said. "We're explaining to everyone some of the different jobs we have and display the pride we have in what we do."\nBarnett said the Blackhawk can carry up to 11 passengers and a four-person crew and is built to be able to move a lot of people in a short amount of time and land in tight spaces. \nThose attributes came in handy in its last mission, helping with the hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast. Barnett was a part of that mission, which lasted through most of September. \nThough he said he witnessed a lot of destruction, Barnett said it was rewarding to see the guardsmen's work making a difference. \n"It's always rewarding just to have people come up and say 'thank you,'" he said. "That's a world of difference. We got to meet a lot of people there and they were all very appreciative that we dropped in and were giving them water and ice and food."\nHurricane relief efforts were a popular conversation topic at the event, though most people just stopped by to find out what a large helicopter was doing in the middle of campus.\nSophomore Brennan Golightly toured the Blackhawk Thursday afternoon. He said he figured it was for a military display, but he might have thought differently had he seen it land.\n"I don't know what I would have thought," Golightly said. "Seeing a helicopter landing here at first, I'd be like 'Uh,oh, someone's done something now. Someone's in trouble.'"\nCarlos Colon, who works with IU's instructional support services in Franklin Hall, said he came to see it because he's fascinated with aviation. Colon, who has flown planes before, was less enthusiastic about piloting the Blackhawk after spending several minutes in its cockpit getting a guided tour from a guardsmen.\n"If someone else is doing the flying, then yes," he said of going up for a spin. "Those things are really difficult to fly."\nSgt. 1st Class Dale Blubaugh, National Guard liaison for IU's ROTC, helped organize the helicopter landing. He said IU approved the event about two months ago after some planning.\n"We just said, 'we'll blow your leaves off for free,'" Blubaugh joked. "And we don't need an 'A' permit or anything."\nBlubaugh said the event was important to remind people of the importance of the National Guard for war-time and humanitarian purposes. \n"It's important for people to understand we're not just out here doing the war thing," he said. "We're trying to help where we're needed always"
(09/22/05 4:29am)
After being ignored by the Bush administration since Sept. 11, 2001, North Korea and its nuclear program are back at the negotiating table. For the past three years, six-party talks have been deadlocked as North Korea continued to accelerate its program. Monday, North Korea promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as soon as possible. But faster than you could say "kimchee," the North Koreans demanded they be given a civilian nuclear reactor before they would end their nuclear weapons program. \nIn case you're not quite up to date, here's the deal: North Korea wants nuclear weapons and nuclear power to dig itself out of its ongoing economic disaster. Meanwhile, the United States, China, South Korea and Japan don't want North Korea to have nuclear weapons because Kim Jung-Il is an unbalanced, megalomaniacal dictator. And with North Korea's latest demand, it looks as if the recent agreement has hit another crippling hurdle.\nAnd so it goes. We negotiate. North Korea signs a piece of paper. They toss it out the window. Rinse, repeat. The first treaty was signed in 1993. The last was not agreed upon Monday. How can we ensure nuclear weapons aren't built in North Korea? We're obviously not going to give them a civilian nuclear reactor. Simply continuing the unending series of talks with North Korea with the same issues on the table (humanitarian aid and security guarantees) also gets us nowhere. And a preemptive strike, whether legal or not, is simply unfeasible, especially considering what happened the last time we invaded North Korea.\nWhat can we do? We can't just offer appeasement at every turn, and any agreement will have to include the dismantling of any and all nuclear activity in North Korea, as well as significant cutbacks in intermediate- to long-range missiles. If we are serious about eliminating nukes in North Korea, we have to take real action now and offer the North Koreans the one thing they can't get anywhere else: normalized relations with the West.\nSince 1953, when the trade embargo was enacted, North Korea has been bereft of any real economy. Many people in the country are malnourished, and official malfeasance is at a disgustingly unacceptable level. North Korea is using nuclear weapons to bargain with the world to help fix its country, but North Korea doesn't need security guarantees. It needs free trade and diplomacy with the West, making its nuclear aspirations far too risky if it really wants to right its ship.\nWe have every right to cut off North Korea. We're an independent nation-state, and it'll be a long time before North Korea directly threatens us. \nRegardless, we must engage North Korea because it's our duty as the world's most powerful country, a title we will not hold forever. We should quit acting superior and start being superior. If we're serious about eliminating nuclear threat, then we must open up North Korea with real engagement, not empty treaties.
(09/14/05 4:35am)
In a small village in Tajikistan, a young boy named Khorshid works in an instrument shop. Since he cannot see with his eyes, he sees the world around him by listening. \n"His sensitivity to the sound of the moment exposes the silence in which most of us live," writes professor Paul Losensky in a summary in the IU events calendar.\nThe experiences of little Khorshid are portrayed in an award-winning Persian film "Sokut," or "Silence". The first of a three-part film series, Bloomington residents are invited to experience this Persian film at 7 p.m Thursday in Swain East 105.\nThe department of Central Eurasian Studies is currently promoting a three-film series, highlighting films from Iran, Hungary and Turkey.\nPaul Losensky, the director of the Persian program at IU, said he selected these films to expose students to Persian language and culture.\n"This is an opportunity to see one of the more prominent and innovative national cinemas in the world today," he said. "The films are engaging and of extremely high quality in terms of cinematography, and they open up a window to part of the world that we know mostly through biased newspaper coverage."\nLosensky will preface each screening by explaining to the audience items of cultural significance, in hopes they won't be lost during translation. Unlike Hollywood, he said, the Persian film industry is state-funded. Film producers must submit a scenario and screenplay, and once approved, the film is put into motion.\n"These things look very different when they're realized on screen, so often there are films funded by the state that are not released in Iran, and are smuggled out," he said.\nLosensky will show the uncensored versions of the films. \n"This gives us a chance to see how people in Iran actually live, and in the way they see themselves," he said.\nLosensky will feature a film called "Tangsir" Oct. 20, and wrapping up the series Nov. 17 is "Through Sunglasses." All films in the Persian series are subtitled in English.\nProfessor Lynn Hooker has designed a film series in conjunction with her second eight- weeks class within the CEUS department called "Budapest in the 19th and 20th centuries: The Evolution of a European Capital."\nHooker is a music scholar who became interested in Hungary by playing Hungarian music in high school orchestra. She said the films she has selected emphasize the cultural history and urban sociology of Budapest.\n"I hope (viewers) have a way of seeing into a place that they may not know very well," she said. "This is a chance to see a filmmaker's version of how the city has evolved."\nThere are six films in the Budapest series. The first is in English and is called "Sunshine." It will screen at 6:30 p.m. today in Swain Hall East 140. The remaining five are in Hungarian with English subtitles, and will show at 7 p.m. in the same room. \n"One of the things you'll find with some Hungarian films is that the expectation of a linear narrative doesn't hold," Hooker said of the "visually spectacular" films. "The formulas are different or non-existent."\nHooker said before each feature film, she will show short propaganda films and commercials from earlier times.\nFor Turkish film fans, there are four films remaining in the series. All are at 8 p.m. in Wylie Hall 005. The films Oct. 7, Nov. 11 and Dec. 29 will be in Turkish with English subtitles. The film screening Dec. 19 will be in Turkish without subtitles.\nFor more information on all of these series, visit the IU Events calendar at http://events.iu.edu.
(09/13/05 5:10am)
A female student reported she had been raped in a Wright Quad dorm room early Sunday morning. The IU Police Department was contacted about 11 p.m. Sunday and was informed that the student was admitted to Bloomington Hospital, said Sgt. Leslie Slone. Evidence of a possible assault was gathered at the hospital. \nOfficer Randy Frye talked to the female student, who said she did not know the male who raped her, Slone said. It was reported that alcohol was involved, though police do not have proof of this, Slone said. \nIUPD is actively investigating the case as a rape, according to Slone. \n3 buildings on campus vandalized over weekend\nSmashed windows were discovered on three separate buildings across campus Friday.\nSomeone threw rocks at Willkie Quad, breaking five windows at the south entrance and causing about $3,000 worth of damage, according to police reports. IUPD was called at 8 a.m. to investigate. Evidence suggests the windows were broken between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m., according to Sgt. Craig Munroe. \nSecurity cameras on the south side of the building offered few clues, Munroe said. There are currently no suspects. \nA 10-foot-long wooden traffic barricade was thrown through a window in the Poplars building at 400 E. Seventh St. The barricade went through a 4-foot by 10-foot pane of high strength glass on the northwest corner of the building, where the human resources department is located, according to Munroe. The vandalism occurred sometime between 5 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. Friday, according to the complainant quoted in the police report. Damages are estimated to be worth $1,000. The police have no suspects. \nSometime Thursday night, someone broke a window of the History Department's Graduate Center on 712 E. Eighth St. It is unknown what method was used to break the window, Munroe said. There was no evidence the perpetrator tried to enter the building, and no items were reported missing, Munroe said. The damage has not been estimated, and there are no suspects. \nIUPD is currently investigating these cases, said Munroe. He speculated that some of these incidents were caused by drunk individuals wandering home from the bars Thursday night.
(09/07/05 5:29am)
Now you can buy a candy bar or a lottery ticket while simultaneously stepping back in time. \nDowntown Bloomington has a new late-night convenience store that provides a glimpse of its history. Inside the Black Mercantile, on the corner of Seventh and Walnut streets, the colors of shiny candy wrappers pop out against red brick walls that have existed for nearly 200 years. Neon signs glow inside windows that look as though they could've been taken out of a black and white movie; outside, you might half expect to see horse-drawn carriages rather than cars.\nMike Black noticed downtown Bloomington lacked a convenience store and he opened the Black Mercantile, or "Black Market." Black also owns the Video Saloon, a bar known to many as "The Vid," located directly above his new store. \n"It gave us a chance to do something besides sell alcohol," Black said.\nThe store opened Aug. 26 after about 11 months of construction and restoration work. It's convenient for students and Bloomington residents alike, open from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. weekdays and until 2 a.m. on weekends. Black's still testing store hours, waiting to observe customer flows before fixing a permanent schedule. \n"You can't tell the public what they want," he said. "They tell you." \nHe's considering making the store a 24-hour operation, although he suspects business would be bleak from 4 to 6 a.m.\n"Between those hours you could go lay down in the middle of the street and not get hit by a car," Black said.\nOnce he started renovating, Black realized the building below his bar had a lot of history, giving customers a peek of what businesses looked like in the early 20th century. He used maps and photographs of businesses in the area to aid in the design of the restoration project.\nBuilt as a brick house in 1828, the original brick walls are still visible inside the store today. The new storefront was partially designed after a market that stood on the same corner in the 1940s. \nTo recapture the architecture of the early 1900s, the building was literally given a facelift. The entire front of the building was removed, even the doors. Only the support structures remained until the market got an entirely new façade.\nPrevious businesses were built onto the building's original insides, and layers of carpeting and flooring were stacked on top of each other. Tools, which Black compared to ice scrapers, were used to peel away these layers, revealing the wooden floorboards customers walk on today. Black knelt down and moved his hand along the boards to demonstrate they are smooth and splinter-free. \nThe Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission aided in the restoration of the building. It took great pains to preserve the historic feel of the building's design. The most prominent feature of the store's façade is its tall, oblong display windows. It would have been much easier to build the windows with aluminum frames, but the Commission urged the use of wooden frames for authenticity. Black agreed, and the window frames were specially fitted with wood because as he mentioned, the Commission "said please and everything."\nNancy Hiestand, program manager of the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission, worked with Black to make sure the restoration process accurately echoed downtown Bloomington's architectural history.\n"He was very receptive to our ideas," Hiestand said.\nAs a result of Black's convenience store project, the Bloomington Urban Enterprises Association now offers a $10,000 grant to downtown business owners who want to restore their buildings. Hiestand said the grant was created to give incentive to restore and preserve the history of downtown's architecture. There are very few original storefronts left.\nThe Seventh Street side of the Black Mercantile is still under construction. Upon completion, it will include bay windows, an architectural feature common of downtown Bloomington's historic buildings. \n"They add to (the) uniqueness of Bloomington," Hiestand said.\nBut she lamented that many of these historic windows are covered with siding.\nStudents from Ball State University helped with the restoration process. Ball State has a Center for Historic Preservation as part of its College of Architecture and Planning. The students from the center developed guidelines for restoring the brick, options for painting and ways for the new design to complement the overall style of the building. \nTalisha Coppock, executive director of Downtown Bloomington Commission, said the Black Mercantile is a very important business to add to downtown. The Downtown Bloomington Commission is a non-profit organization that has been working to revitalize the downtown area for the past 20 years.\nCoppock accredited the push for the restoration of downtown to its importance in attracting tourists and improving the local economy. Bringing historic architecture to the surface helps preserve an area which makes Bloomington unique.\nThe Downtown Bloomington Commission's work to improve downtown is part of a statewide effort to preserve history, known as the Indiana Mainstreet Program. The program encourages Indiana towns to improve their downtown business districts. \n"Finding a vibrant downtown is important for the livelihood of the community," Coppock said. "Not every community has a vibrant downtown"
(08/31/05 10:51pm)
NEW ORLEANS - Set down on dry land for the first time in three days, 83-year-old Camille Fletcher stumbled a few feet to a brick wall and collapsed. She and two of her children had made it through Hurricane Katrina alive, but her Glendalyn with the long, beautiful black hair was gone.\n"My precious daughter," she sobbed Wednesday. "I prayed to God to keep us safe in his loving care."\nThen, looking into an incongruously blue sky, she whimpered: "You're supposed to be a loving God. You're supposed to love us. And what have you done to us? Why did you do this to us?"\nBut for the rescuers rushing to pluck Fletcher and untold others from roofs, balconies and highways flooded by Hurricane Katrina, such questions were a luxury they simply could not afford.\nEmergency officials say 72 hours is about the longest they can expect most people to last in the sweltering Louisiana heat. So they called in volunteers from across this "fisherman's paradise" to help improve the survivors' odds.\nRonnie Lovett and about 30 of his crew from R&R Construction drove four hours from Sulphur, La., to join the rescue effort. They arose with the sun Wednesday after spending the night in sleeping bags on the pavement outside Harrah's casino on the Mississippi River, because they couldn't find rooms.\nLovett is paying the men's wages and furnishing gas for their personal boats.\n"They're all Bubbas, swamp men," said Lovett, who brought his own 21-foot fishing boat. "We're here for the duration, until they turn us loose."\nAt dawn, a motley armada of air boats, aluminum skiffs and even a two-seater Jet Ski moved out from the central business district. Heading east in the westbound lanes of Interstate 10, the boats passed the Superdome, where hundreds of ragged people stood on the hot pavement and helicopters buzzed around.\nMany of the displaced had clearly spent the night on the highway rather than suffer the stable-like conditions of the sports stadium. The caravan passed people dragging suitcases and pushing shopping carts. One man waved an empty water jug like a railroad lantern, pleading for someone to stop and fill it.\nAfter nearly an hour of zigzagging around downed lampposts and plowing through water up to past their wheel wells, the volunteer navy arrived at a staging point in New Orleans East, just south of Lake Pontchatrain.\nNew Orleans police Officer Martin Jules warned the men not to overload their boats. Some volunteers have had their rigs taken from them at gunpoint, so Jules also warned them not to be heroes.\n"These people have been out here two or three days," he said, standing on the bow of a flatboat. "They're scared, they're tired, they're thirsty, they're hungry. If it gets hostile, we roll, OK? We're here to help 'em. We got to be here to help them for the next couple of months, however long it takes. Our safety is No. 1."\nWithin minutes of launching, the men were returning with sunken-eyed, sallow-skinned survivors.\nKevin Montgomery, 40, had spent the past three days shuttling between the attic of a one-story home and a makeshift canopy he built on the roof. He and two other men rationed a gallon of water between them.\n"It was terrible," the carpenter said as he trundled through the gasoline-laced water.\nEvery once in a while, Mongtomery would see a body float by. But he cannot swim and had to fight the urge to wade in and tie them down.\n"All I could do was pass them by and hope that God takes care of the rest of that," he said. "You have to think of self, too."\nThe boats circled a Day's Inn, where people had hung sheets on the balconies reading, "SOS." and "We need food and water." At Forest Tower, a high-rise senior citizens apartment complex, one man waved his empty oxygen tank out a window.\nA boat floated through the building's shattered entrance and pulled right up to the stairs. Elderly residents stepped gingerly onto tables and into the boats.\nSimon Queen, 68, said he slept through Hurricane Betsy. But Katrina was like "King Kong pounding at the windows."\n"I need to get me to some high ground," he said. "I wasn't born with fins."\nAt the nearby United Medical Rehab Hospital, 14 patients, 11 staff members and their families awaited their saviors.\nNurse Bernadette Shine said the facility was nearly out of oxygen, and several diabetic patients had been without dialysis for nearly a week. After the fruit cocktail and peanut butter ran out, the staff broke into the candy and drink machines for sugary items to keep patients from going into shock.\n"There are people that are not going to make it," Shine said, her voice cracking. "One I've known since I was 10 years old. But we did what we could for them. We did everything we could for them."\nAfter several hours, a small fleet of rented moving trucks showed up to take the people to the downtown convention center so they could be taken out of the city. Police herded people up metal ramps like cattle into the unrefrigerated boxes.\nCamille Fletcher sat forlorn, not really caring when it would be her turn. Suddenly, a woman emerged from the waters and began walking toward her. She had long, disheveled black hair.\n"Mamma?" she shouted.\n"Oh my god, oh my God," the old woman screamed, kissing Glendalyn's hand and pressing it against her forehead. "My daughter's alive!"\nThe 60-year-old Glendalyn Fletcher told her family a harrowing story of how she had floated through a wall when her house started to collapse around her; how she had swum, stripped naked by the raging waters, to a neighbor's house and cowered in an attic; how someone had picked them up Tuesday and left them stranded on a water-locked section of I-10.\n"It was horrible, but there were millions of stars," the dehydrated woman said.\nA few moments later, it was time for Camille Fletcher to go to a shelter. Before being helped into the back of the moving truck, she looked back at her daughter and smiled.\n"God is good"
(08/30/05 1:19am)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Hurricane Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast at daybreak Monday with shrieking, 145-mph winds and blinding rain, submerging entire neighborhoods up to the rooflines in New Orleans, hurling boats onto land and sending water pouring into Mississippi's strip of beachfront casinos.\nAt least two highways deaths in Alabama were blamed on the storm, and an untold number of others were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods.\n"Some of them, it was their last night on earth," Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for New Orleans, said of people who ignored evacuation orders. "That's a hard way to learn a lesson."\nKatrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and made a slight turn to the right before coming ashore at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the Louisiana bayou town of Buras. The storm passed just to the east of New Orleans as it moved inland, sparing this vulnerable below-sea-level city its full fury and the apocalyptic damage that forecasters had feared.\nBut there was plenty of destruction in New Orleans, and a clearer picture of the damage emerged after the storm had passed: Mangled street signs, crumbled brick walls in the French Quarter, fallen trees on streetcar tracks, highrises with almost all of their windows blown out. White curtains that were sucked out of the shattered windows of a hotel became tangled in treetops.\nAn estimated 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish just east of New Orleans.\nKatrina recorded a storm surge of more than 20 feet in Mississippi, where windows of a major hospital were blown out and billboards were ripped to shreds. In some areas, authorities pulled stranded homeowners from roofs or rescued them from attics. In Alabama, exploding transformers lit up the early morning sky and muddy, 6-foot waves engulfed stately, million-dollar homes along Mobile Bay's normally tranquil waterfront.\n"Let me tell you something folks: I've been out there. It's complete devastation," said Gulfport, Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan.\nEmergency officials had not been able to reach some of the hardest-hit areas to determine the number of injuries or deaths. Officials across the region sent water rescue teams out and stood ready to dispense ice, water and meals to hurricane-stricken residents.\n"We know some people got trapped and we pray they are OK," Gov. Haley Barbour said.\nAt 3 p.m. EDT, a rapidly weakening Katrina was centered about 20 miles southwest of Hattiesburg, Miss., moving northward at about 19 mph. Its winds had dropped to about 95 mph, making it a Category 1 storm.\nEd Rappaport, deputy director of the hurricane center, estimated that the highest winds in New Orleans were about 100 mph. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said her office had reports of as many 20 building collapses in New Orleans, and scores of residents stranded in attics or on rooftops.\n"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live."\nOn the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, entire neighborhoods of one-story homes were flooded up to the rooflines. The Interstate 10 off-ramps nearby looked like boat ramps amid the whitecapped waves. Garbage cans and tires bobbed in the water.\nTwo people were stranded on the roof as murky water lapped at the gutters.\n"Get us a boat!" a man in a black slicker shouted over the howling winds.\nAcross the street, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a brick home and shouted for assistance.\n"There are three kids in here," the woman said. "Can you help us?"\nAt least a half-million people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and well over 100,000 each in Alabama and Mississippi.\nAt New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, the wind ripped pieces of metal from the roof, leaving two holes that let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way. Others stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly 19 stories above the floor. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.\nAt the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets and pillows and to keep the doors to the rooms closed to avoid flying glass.\nIn Alabama's Mobile Bay, Fred Wright's whole yard was flooded and muddy waves were hitting the back of his home. Wright, shirtless and wearing shorts, spoke of the high-dollar real estate on the waterfront: "There are lots of homes through here worth a million dollars. At least they were yesterday."\nBy midday, the brunt of the storm had moved beyond New Orleans to Mississippi's coast, home to the state's floating casinos, where Katrina washed sailboats onto a coastal four-lane highway. The Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino, one of the premier gambling spots in Biloxi, had water on the first floor, and the governor said other casinos were flooded as well.\nKatrina was the most powerful storm to affect Mississippi since Hurricane Camille came in as a Category 5 in 1969, killing 256 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.\n"This is a devastating hit -- we've got boats that have gone into buildings," said Sullivan, the Gulfport fire chief. "What you're looking at is Camille II."\nIn New Orleans' historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted.\nOn Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.\nAt the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony French doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.\n"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."\nFor years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.\nThe fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.\nOfficials said a levee broke on one canal, but did not appear to cause major problems.\nBlanco took little comfort in the fact that the hurricane may have spared New Orleans much worse flooding, given the still uncertain toll in surrounding parishes.\n"I can't say that I feel that sense that we've escaped the worst," she said. "I think we don't know what the worst is right now."\nCrude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to $68.95 by midday in Europe. The approaching storm forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.\nAuthorities closed a major bridge over the Mobile River in Alabama after it was struck by a runaway oil drilling platform.\nCalling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation over the weekend for the 480,000 residents of the vulnerable city, and he estimated about 80 percent heeded the call.\nThe evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Officials said the cause was probably dehydration.\nNational Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said the forecast track issued Friday night was only 15 miles off from where the storm actually hit.\n"If that is not a superb forecast, I don't know what is," he said.\nNew Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in 1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.\nKatrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was blamed for 11 deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.
(08/29/05 5:36am)
NEW YORK -- Days before the fourth anniversary of the 2001 attacks, a photographer is offering intimate images of death and love inside Ground Zero at a new museum that brings you nose-to-nose with the smoldering pit.\n"If people want to come past the security gates and see what our world was like down in the hole, this is as close as they can come to it," said Gary Marlon Suson, the official Ground Zero photographer for the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the city firefighters' main union.\nSuson spent eight months at the site with recovery workers searching for the remains of the 2,749 people who died on a sunny September morning, including 343 firefighters. His time in "The Pit" comes alive at the Ground Zero Museum Workshop of photographs, videos and artifacts, opening Sept. 8.\nLast year, Suson went to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and visited the home of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who wrote a diary of her life before the Nazis sent her to the Bergen-Belsen death camp.\n"Within two hours of being in there, I felt like I'd come to know this little girl. It put a face on the Holocaust," said the 33-year-old Suson. "I went back to the hotel and cried."\nThe experience inspired him to create the 1,000-square-foot museum, whose rooftop he stood upon in 2001 to take images of the Trade Center collapse.\n"I felt if I could create something that would have an effect on people similar to the one the Anne Frank museum had on me, it could help people connect more to 9-11. If you can't connect, you can't heal," he said.\nAt the second-floor museum in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, visitors are met by 3-D displays of photographs that pull the viewer close to the terror, dirt, sweat -- and death.\nSuson took one of the first photos of the firefighter honor guard that carried remains as they were found. He shot the scene in close-up, as he did other moments, such as a firefighter helping carry out the remains of his own son.\nThe museum has tangible vestiges of the Twin Towers, including pieces of window glass, lobby marble and jagged beam steel. One display case holds a beer can from 1971, when construction workers building the new towers shoved it between two steel beams before sealing them. The can was pried from the metal at Ground Zero, twisted and rusty.\nOne jarring item is a frozen clock, its simple black hands stopped at 10:02, and the small one at 14. The south tower collapsed first that day, at 10:02:14 a.m. The clock came from a room with a weightlifting bench used by Port Authority Trans-Hudson train workers.\nSuson, an actor and playwright, contributed thousands of dollars toward the $60,000 museum; the rest came from private donations. Proceeds from the $15 entrance fee ($12 for seniors and children) will go to six charities linked to Sept. 11, some benefiting families.
(07/28/05 3:30am)
BIRMINGHAM, England -- Police pursuing suspects in the failed July 21 terror bombings in London raided four homes across Britain on Wednesday and detained four people, including a Somali man believed to be one of the fugitive bombers, media reports and a witness said.\nThe man was subdued with a stun gun when officers stormed a home in Birmingham before dawn. Members of the bomb squad, some dressed in armored suits, were seen entering the home after police evacuated 100 nearby residences in a quiet, ethnically mixed neighborhood of Britain's second-largest city.\nPrime Minister Tony Blair, without commenting on the man's identity, described the arrest as "an important development."\nThree more men were arrested in a pre-dawn raid at another home about two miles away in this city 120 miles northwest of London. The raids were carried out by 50 officers from London's Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch and West Midlands Police. No shots were fired.\nIn London, police said they raided two homes at 6 a.m. in the northern neighborhoods of Finchley and Enfield. No arrests were made, but forensic examinations were under way at the residences, a spokeswoman said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. She declined further comment.\nAuthorities said the four raids involved the investigation into the July 21 attack, during which bombs planted on three London subway trains and a bus failed to detonate fully. The attack came two weeks after four suicide bombers staged a similar assault that killed 52 other people.\nMeanwhile, police arrested a man at Luton airport near London under anti-terrorism laws as he prepared to leave on a flight for France, authorities said. Police did not say why he was detained or if the arrest was connected with the London attacks.\nTwo men also were arrested late Tuesday on suspicion of terrorism while traveling on a train in the Midlands region. Police said the train, which was on its way to London's King's Cross station from Newcastle, was stopped at Grantham and the men were taken off. It was not immediately clear if the arrests were linked to the investigation into the London bombings.\nAuthorities would not confirm BBC and Sky News reports that the Tasered man was Yasin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somali suspected of trying to blow up a subway train near Warren Street station.\nAt least one witness said the man resembled Omar.\n"I looked out of the window and the road was full of armed police and they had got the road closed off," said electrician Andy Wilkinson, who lives nearby.\nHe said the suspect looked like Omar but could not confirm it was him.\n"After 10 or 15 minutes, they brought a guy out. He looked like the darkest-skinned one in the photos of the four suspects released by the police -- the one with the curly hair," Wilkinson said. "They had him dressed in one of those white suits. He had plastic cuffs on the front."\nSuch suits are used by police to preserve any physical evidence that may be on a suspect.\n"I think it is an important development," Blair, in London, said of the arrest. "Obviously we are greatly heartened by the operations today. The police have been working extraordinarily hard on this and have shown a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication to the task in hand."\nPolice launched a manhunt after releasing images of four men thought responsible for planting the July 21 bombs. The pictures have been plastered over much of London's transit and railway system while police have for more than a week released various details about the attackers.\nOn Monday, they released the names of two of the suspects, Omar and Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said. Both came to Britain as the children of refugees, the government said.\nOmar arrived from Somalia in 1992 at age 11 and has British residency, the Home Office said. Said came in 1990 from Eritrea, his family said, and officials said he was granted residency in 1992 and British citizenship in September 2004\nPolice have been trying to determine whether the failed July 21 bombings were connected to the deadly July 7 attacks.\nThe Birmingham arrests would bring the number of people that police have said are being held in connection with the July 21 bombings to nine.
