US job hunters line up at Baltimore jobs fair
US unemployment is improving but millions are still looking for work

The US unemployment rate fell in November to 10% from 10.2% in October, Labor Department figures show.

Employers in November cut the lowest number of jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

In all, 11,000 jobs went over the month. That was far fewer than the 130,000 expected by most analysts.

Tags: 2009, bbc, unemployment, usa

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-georgia-speaker4-2009dec04,0,6564096,print.story

Richardson recently threatened to beat her and have state law enforcement track her down

December 4, 2009

Reporting from Atlanta

Embroiled in a strange and unsavory drama involving a suicide attempt and allegations of an affair with a lobbyist, Georgia's powerful House Speaker Glenn Richardson, a Republican, said Thursday that he would resign.

The announcement by Richardson -- a hard-charging, family-values conservative -- came amid Republicans' mounting calls for his ouster and fears that a lingering sex and ethics scandal could harm the Georgia GOP in next year's state elections. Richardson will leave office Jan. 1.

The GOP controls both houses of the Legislature, and Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue is completing his second and final term. But next year, every legislator is up for reelection in a shaky economy. And on the Democratic side, Roy Barnes -- who served as governor from 1999 to 2003 and could appeal to moderates -- has declared his intention to run again.

Republicans "could have their whole legislative agenda, not to mention their leadership, done in by a sex scandal," said Tom Crawford, editor of the Georgia Report, an online political news service. "That's not good for any party, but especially bad for a party that here in Georgia has positioned itself as a champion of mainstream family values."

But Jerry Luquire, president of Georgia Christian Coalition, said it was too early to "predict doom" for the party based on one scandal. "I don't see a shower and call it a thunderstorm," said Luquire, who had called on Richardson to step down.

The House speakership is the second most powerful public office in Georgia. After Richardson distinguished himself as minority leader -- during which time he pushed for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage -- he helped engineer the 2004 Republican takeover of the House, becoming the first GOP House speaker in Georgia in 134 years.

During his reign, he clashed with members of both parties: He once said Perdue had showed his "backside" after the governor vetoed a budget bill.

He has also been dogged by talk of scandal since January 2007, when Bobby Kahn, then chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party, filed a complaint with a legislative ethics committee. It accused Richardson of having an affair with a lobbyist with Atlanta Gas Light while he was a co-sponsor of a bill that would have financed a $300-million pipeline for the company.

A committee of two Republicans and one Democrat dismissed the complaint 12 days after it was filed.

Richardson's private life has seen turmoil since. He and his wife, Susan, were divorced in 2008, and the recession has reportedly harmed his law firm and a bank in which he had invested.

On Nov. 8, Richardson shocked Georgians when he attempted, by his own admission, to kill himself by overdosing on pills. His candor about the episode -- and his admitted struggle with depression -- earned him kudos from anti-suicide activists.

But this week, his ex-wife gave an interview to a local TV station, renewing allegations of the affair and producing e-mails that she said proved it. She also alleged that Richardson recently threatened to beat her and have state law enforcement track her down when she went out of town with a new boyfriend.

The suicide attempt, she said, was an effort to win her back -- "to guilt me into doing what he wanted," she said.

Tags: champion, mainstream family values.

http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory-comments&story_id=235313


West Virginia
W.Va. man charged in shooting of couple
Robert and Laura Hicks were each shot twice in the head but are expected to recover
By MATTHEW UMSTEAD
December 2, 2009
matthewu@herald-mail.com

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A Falling Waters, W.Va., man is charged with shooting a Berkeley County couple Friday after the husband refused to sell prescription pills to him, according to police. Each was shot twice in the head.

Donald Mark “Donnie” Seibert Jr., 21, of 318 Merrimack Drive, was charged Wednesday with two counts of malicious wounding, according to Lt. Gary Harmison of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department.

Seibert was being held Wednesday night in Eastern Regional Jail on a $200,000 bond set by Berkeley County Magistrate JoAnn Overington, according to court records.

Robert and Laura Hicks each were shot twice in the head at about 8 p.m. Friday at their home at 2649 McCoys Ferry Road in the Brookstone subdivision, Harmison said. The couple, who were taken to Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., for treatment, are expected to recover from their wounds, Harmison said.

Laura Hicks, who told police she was shot first, has been released from the hospital, Harmison said. Robert Hicks’ condition has improved since the shooting, but he was still being treated at the hospital Wednesday, Harmison said.

The bullets, which remain lodged in the victims’ heads, are not expected to be removed because of additional health risk, Harmison said.

A doctor told police the wounds appeared to be from a .22-caliber weapon, according to the arrest warrant issued for Seibert.

In the charging documents, Harmison said an older .22-caliber pistol and shells owned by Seibert’s father were missing after the shooting. A weapon has not been found, Harmison said.

Laura Hicks told police Seibert came to their house and began talking about troubles with his girlfriend and said he wanted to buy pills, according to Harmison’s complaint.

Robert Hicks told police that when he denied the request, Seibert went outside to his truck and got a gun, returned and shot them both, Harmison said.

Seibert declined to give a statement to police and asked for an attorney after he was arrested without incident, Harmison said.

A felony conviction on a count of malicious wounding carries a two- to 10-year prison sentence, Harmison said.
Donald Mark Seibert Jr.
West Virginia Regional Jail & Correctional Facility Authority |

Donald Mark Seibert Jr.

Tags: caucasian, crime, drugs, guns
Current Location: disney land
Current Mood: frustrated

http://www.tribstar.com/local/local_story_246225916.html/resources_printstory

Wabash Valley woman didn’t realize second cold medicine purchase violated drug laws

By Lisa Trigg
The Tribune-Star

CLINTON September 03, 2009 10:58 pm

— When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.
Now, Harpold is trying to clear her name of criminal charges, and she is speaking out in hopes that a law will change so others won’t endure the same embarrassment she still is facing.
“This is a very traumatic experience,” Harpold said.
Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.
Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.
When the police came knocking at the door of Harpold’s Parke County residence on July 30, she was arrested on a Vermillion County warrant for a class-C misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine. But through a deferral program offered by Vermillion County Prosecutor Nina Alexander, the charge could be wiped from Harpold’s record by mid-September.
Harpold’s story is one that concerns some law-abiding citizens who fear that innocent people will get mistakenly caught in the net of meth abuse roundups.
But the flip side of the story comes from the law enforcement arena, which is battling a resurgence in methamphetamine production in the Wabash Valley.
As the 12th-smallest county in the state, Vermillion County ranked as the state’s fifth-largest producer of methamphetamine just a few years ago.
“I don’t want to go there again,” Alexander told the Tribune-Star, recalling how the manufacture and abuse of methamphetamine ravaged the tiny county and its families.
While the law was written with the intent of stopping people from purchasing large quantities of drugs to make methamphetamine, the law does not say the purchase must be made with the intent to make meth.
“The law does not make this distinction,” Alexander said.
If the law said “with intent to manufacture methamphetamine,” no one could be arrested until it was proven that the drug actually was used to make meth, the prosecutor said.
And that certainly wasn’t the intent of the law, either. It was written to limit access to the key ingredient in meth — pseudoephedrine — and thereby to stop the clandestine “mom and pop” meth labs that were cooking drugs throughout the area.
Just as with any law, the public has the responsibility to know what is legal and what is not, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, the prosecutor said.
“I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written,” Alexander said.
Pharmacies post “Meth Watch” signs, alerting customers that their purchases of drugs containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are being monitored. Pharmacies also are required to submit a list of purchase records to police, who then examine the lists for violations of the law.
It is up to customers to pay attention to their purchase amounts, and to check medication labels, Alexander said.
“If you take these products, you ought to know what’s in them,” she said.
While many people know that Sudafed, Actifed and Claritin-D contain pseudoephedrine, there are many more over-the-counter medications that also contain the key meth ingredient.
Ron Vencel, a pharmacist with JR Pharmacies in Terre Haute, said consumers should check all drug labels, and notes that any drug that has a “D” after it, for “decongestant,” has a likelihood of containing pseudoephedrine, or PSE.

Tags: absurd, crime, laws, meth
Current Mood: distressed

http://www.ciachef.edu/



The Culinary Institute of America is the culinary college to fuel your passion for cooking or baking. Since 1946, the college has set the standard for education excellence in the culinary arts and the baking and pastry arts. Here you'll develop a broad base of knowledge and a confidence in your skills, preparing you to move successfully into the career that's absolutely right for you.

Tags: that's the culinary institute of america
Current Mood: hungry

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/news/judge-punishes-repulsive-bank-and-cancels-mortgage/story-e6frg90o-1225804028567

The judge was outraged and accused the bank's representatives of
an “opprobrious demeanour and condescending attitude”.
He pointed out that the Horoskis had turned up for court on six
occasions, despite Mrs Horoski's difficulty in walking and her husband's many health problems.

“At each appearance, they have assiduously attempted to resolve this controversy in an amicable fashion,
only to be callously and arbitrarily turned away,” he wrote.

Eviction would leave the Horoskis and their daughter homeless,
“leading to an additional level of problems, both for them and for society”.
The mortgage was “hereby cancelled, voided, avoided, nullified,
set aside and is of no further force and effect”.

Mr Horoski told the New York Post that
negotiating with the bank was “like dealing with organised crime”.

Tags: bankers, courts, organised crime

* David Brown and Francis Elliott
* From: Times Online
* November 26, 2009 9:35AM

* Increase Text Size

THE GOVERNMENT received intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have access to weapons of mass destruction ten days before Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, the inquiry into the war was told yesterday.

Inspectors in Iraq had also told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that they believed that Saddam might not have chemical and biological weapons. But with British and US troops massed on the border, the new intelligence was dismissed.

Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office's director-general of defence and intelligence at the time, told the inquiry that information was received shortly before the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. "We did at the very end, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly," he said. "There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/tony-blair-knew-saddam-hussein-did-not-have-wmds-before-iraq-war/story-e6frg6so-1225804048236

Tags: blair, bush, cheney, lies, war
Current Mood: annoyed

A 16 year old welfare mother with 6 kids?
sleep with her?
YOU CHILD MOLESTER

FBI wants public's help in civil rights killings

Posted 11/23/2009 6:54 AM ET

E-mail | Save | Print

Enlarge by Rogelio V. Solis, AP This is a Feb. 12, 2009 photograph showing a chart the FBI unveiled in Jackson, Miss., of civil rights cold cases in the state. The federal law enforcement organization says agents investigating civil rights-era murders have scoured faded documents, interviewed aging lawmen and tried to track down grand jury witnesses who gave testimony decades ago, but still have hit a brick wall in many of the cases. Now, they're turning to the public for information on the next of kin for victims in 33 unsolved killings. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Now, the agency is at a dead end in the search for relatives in at least 33 civil rights-era cases, and the FBI needs the public's help. Agents are appealing for relatives of the victims to come forward, the latest challenge in a three-year-old effort to right historical wrongs.

"We have done everything we can to find those families and we've run out of leads," said Cynthia Deitle, unit chief for the FBI's civil rights division. "Whether it's a spouse, child or parent. We've even gone as far as locating cousins who are the next of kin."

In some cases, the FBI is looking for family members to provide any evidence or details about the crimes. In others, agents want to give a status update or simply tell the relatives the FBI's investigation has ended.

Among the cases is Johnny Robinson, a black teen shot by police in 1963 in the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala. Another case is the killing of John Earl Reese, a 16-year-old who died in 1955 when two men fired shots on a black cafe in Gregg County, Texas.

The Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative began in 2006 with a solemn charge: Reopen long dormant cases from a period in America's history when blacks and whites were killed in the South's bloody fight to maintain a segregated society.

The unit had 108 cases under investigation, including the infamous Ku Klux Klan slayings of three civil rights workers found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi in 1964. A part-time Mississippi preacher was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 in the case, and the investigation continues.

The FBI said those identified as suspects in nearly half of the homicides are now dead. Federal officials also have determined about 20 cases were not racially motivated homicides.

Successful prosecutions cited by the FBI include the 2003 conviction of Ernest Avery Avants, found guilty of federal charges of aiding and abetting in the 1966 Klan killing of Ben Chester White, a black handyman shot to death to possibly lure Martin Luther King Jr. to Natchez, Miss.

Another was the 2007 kidnapping conviction of James Ford Seale, a reputed Klansman. Authorities said Charles Moore and Henry Dee were kidnapped, beaten and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater in 1964.

Charles Moore's brother, Thomas Moore, was instrumental in getting that case reopened. Thomas Moore said he took FBI records he obtained to Mississippi U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, who then looked into the case.

Though the FBI's effort has been applauded, some believe the pursuit comes too late.

"I think the window has been closing for a couple of years because many of the potential defendants are dying or have died. This was an effort that would have been wonderful about 15 years ago," said Susan Glisson, director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi.

Southern Poverty Law Center president Richard Cohen said his organization has turned over information to the FBI in hopes someone will be prosecuted in at least a few of the remaining unsolved killings.

"The justice that is achieved in those few is going to have to serve as symbolic justice for the whole," Cohen said.

Deitle said the investigations are "incredibly labor intensive." Agents who can't get in touch with relatives seek sheriffs or deputies and comb neighborhoods where the crimes occurred. If that fails, they turn to grand jury dockets.

"We've dug that deep to just find anybody," she said.

Tags: civil rights, fbi, killings, public's help

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091123/NEWS11/911239999/-1/NEWS

EAST PROVIDENCE, RI — A bitter dispute over abortion that prompted Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop to ask Rep. Patrick Kennedy not to receive Holy Communion has revealed the depth of the divide among Catholics over how politicians should reconcile their faith with their public duties.

Bishop Thomas Tobin on Sunday said he made the request because of the Democratic lawmaker's support for abortion rights. The news prompted debate among Catholics around the country and within the bishop's flock in the nation's most Catholic state about whether it was right for Tobin to publicly shame Kennedy for breaking with the church on what its leaders consider a paramount moral issue.
.
.
.
.

A small number of prelates have publicly asked a Catholic politician to voluntarily abstain from the sacrament.

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, said statements made in 2004 by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who threatened to deny Communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, intensified the debate.

Tags: catholic, church, politics, religion, state
Current Location: vatican city
Current Mood: cold