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Show Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2010 Page 2 World&N Utah State University • Logan, Utah • www.utahstatesman.com Clarify Correct The policy of The Utah Statesman is to correct any error made as soon as possible. If you find something you would like clarified or find unfair, please contact the editor at 797-1762 or TSC 105. Nat'lBriefs Ariz. case re-opened PHOENIX (AP) - Arizona officials on Monday reopened the investigation into a deputy's explanation of how he was shot in the remote desert south of Phoenix amid speculation it was a hoax timed to enflame the debate over illegal immigration. The Pinal County Sheriffs Office announced its decision Monday after two nationally known forensic pathologists raised questions about a wound the deputy suffered in a Phoenix New Times story, and then later to other media outlets. Pinal County Deputy Louie Puroll told investigators that he was following a group of smugglers carrying bales of marijuana April 30 when he was ambushed by men firing AK-47 rifles. In what Puroll described as a running gunbattle, he was grazed by bullet in the back. The pathologists, Dr. Michael Baden of New York and Dr. Werner Spitz of suburban Detroit, examined photos of the wound released by the sheriffs office. They told The Associated Press on Friday that they concluded the bullet was fired from inches away, not from at least 25 yarch away as Puroll said. Four dead in Boston shooting BOSTON (AP) - Police scoured Boston for clues and suspects Tuesday after four people, including a toddler, were fatally shot overnight in a brutal crime that carried tones of an execution and shook up an already troubled neighborhood. Some of the victims were dragged from a house and killed in the street, where their naked bodies were found, a neighbor and a neighborhood activist said. A fifth victim was hospitalized and not expected to survive, police said. A neighbor who heard the gunfire at ran to see what happened and saw two nude bodies on the ground. "People were screaming from the windows, saying 'Help, help,"' said Ralph Myrthil, 43. Myrthil said his 6-year-old son, Jovany, was awakened by the gunfire and asked: "Dad, is it the Fourth of July?" Two men and a woman were found in the street and pronounced dead at the scene in the Mattapan neighborhood. The toddler, a 2- or 3-year-old boy, was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. Another man was in critical condition. The victims were not immediately identified, and autopsies were planned. Police were releasing few details. Law enforcement officials said that they didn't know a motive and that no suspects had been identified. They were looking for a silver or gray Ford Explorer that witnesses saw leaving the scene. LateNiteHumor Top 10 Questions Asked During The Alien AmbassadorJob Interview September 27. 2010 10. "Do you have any experience sitting in an office doing nothing?" 9. "Are you fluent in Klingon?" 8. "On a scale of 1 to 10, how delusional are you?" 7. "Where's the hidden camera?" 6. "Have you ever dabbled in witchcraft?" 5. "How many wackjob conspiracy theories can you type per minute?" 4. "Why does Jim Belushi keep getting television shows?" 3. "Have you ever florfed a Zargon?" 2. "Why were there jugglers on Letterman?" 1. "May I have your autograph, Ms. Lohan?" Eiffel Tower is evacuated PARIS (AP) - The Eiffel Tower was briefly evacuated Tuesday evening after officials received a bomb threat called in from a telephone booth, in the second such alert at the monument in two weeks. The warning came as French officials have been on alert for possible terror attacks on crowded targets. Police closed off the immediate surroundings of the tower, France's most visited monument, blocking off traffic. Officers pulled red-and-white police tape across a bridge leading over the Seine River to the monument. Dozens of officers stood guard in the area. Bomb experts combed through the 324-meter (1,063-foot) tower and found nothing unusual, the Paris police headquarters said. Tourists were let back inside about two hours after the structure was emptied. Jean Dupeu, a 74-year-old Paris retiree, had planned to go to dinner in the tower but found himself looking for another restaurant. "It's surely a bad joke," he said of the threat, adding, "Now is not a good time." National Police Chief Frederic Pechenard said last week that authorities suspect al-Qaida's North African branch of plotting a bomb attack on a crowded location in France. His warning came after Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed responsibility for the Sept. 16 abduction of five French nationals and two Africans in northern Niger. The French parliament voted this month to ban burqa-style Islamic veils in France, a subject that has prompted warnings by AQIM. Counterterrorism officials say that is just one of several factors contributing to the heightened threat. At the Eiffel Tower, an anonymous caller using a phone booth in a nearby neighborhood called in a warning to firefighters, the Paris police headquarters said. The company that runs the monument asked police to evacuate it. Police responded to a similar false alert at the tower on Sept. 14, also following a phone threat. On Monday, the bustling Saint Lazare train station in Paris was briefly evacuated and searched. As soon as the latest bomb alert ended, huge lines of eager tourists immediately formed under the tower. Mike Yore, 43, of Orlando, Florida, was among those waiting in line who had no idea the 121-yearold iron monument had even been evacuated. A POLICE OFFICER STANDS "There's no bomb that can blow this thing up," on Sept. 18. AP photo by the Eiffel Tower Gov't working to close border post HELENA, Mont. (AP) - U.S. border in northeastern Montana. ing us that 'virtually no one wants Customs and Border Protection said Residents say it is largely used by area or needs' the Port of Whitetail, and Tuesday it will take steps to close a farmers for trade and convenience. that's very clearly not true," Tester, a little-used border Montana post that The episode underscores the critiDemocrat, said in a statement. "And was in the midst of an $8.5 million cism leveled against the U.S. governI invite anyone who believes rural stimulus-funded makeover when ment for spending more than $23 Montana is 'nowhere' to come visit, or Canada announced it would shut its million in federal stimulus funding at least spend more time understandside of the crossing. to upgrade Whitetail and four other ing the very real security threats we CBP officials said Tuesday the Montana border posts. face at America's remote border crossWhitetail port can be closed only "We've got some politicians tellings." after a 90-day congressional review, a 60-day public comment period and .117' 1111 then a final decision by the agency. The Whitetail port was thrown into limbo this summer after Canada decided it will close its station April 1. That left U.S. officials who had directed federal stimulus money at the station scrambling for solutions. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held a forum last month to get local comment. Last week, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester declared the station should be closed since Canada couldn't be talked into sharing the new facility. Tester said the upgrades were needed to improve poor security provisions at the U.S. port - which before 9/11 closed for the night by placing orange cones in the road. He said that until the decision by Canada to close its side, upgrading the little-used port made sense. U.S. SENATOR JOHN CORNYN talks with officials following a news conference The port is one of a few that serafter taking a tour of the Port of Hidalgo. AP photo vices a rural and long stretch of the " . Montana politics provided a testy backdrop to the decision. Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg has been hammering the project as a waste of money. "No one bothered to investigate the Whitetail Port or talk to the Canadians before deciding it was worth millions to fix it up," Rehberg said. "While I'm glad that CBP heeded my demands to stop wasting this money, I think the taxpayers in Montana would have preferred that these kinds of decisions had been made before more than a million unrecoverable stimulus dollars were put into it in the first place." The CBP says it expects several million will be saved by the time the project formally wraps up. The money saved by halting work will go back to the treasury. In making his recommendation last week to close the port, Tester said the best offer from Canada was to remotely monitor car traffic only on its side of the border - and only if the U.S. paid for the needed technology. "CBP and the Canada Border Services Agency explored a number of scenarios in an attempt to maintain two-way traffic at this location but were unable to find a solution that met both the needs of the local community as well as our national security standards, leaving closure. Marriages have hit an all-time low WASHINGTON (AP) - The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever. The long recession technically ended in mid2009, economists say, but U.S. Census data released Tuesday show the painful, lingering effects. The annual survey covers all of last year, when unemployment skyrocketed to 10 percent, and the jobless rate is still a stubbornly high 9.6 percent. The figures also show that Americans on average have been spending about 36 fewer minutes in the office per week and are stuck in traffic a bit less than they had been. But that is hardly good news, either. The reason is largely that people have lost jobs or are scraping by with part-time work. "Millions of people are stuck at home because they can't find a job. Poverty increased in a majority of states, and children have been hit especially hard," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau. The economic "indicators say we're in recovery, but the impact on families and children will linger on for years," he said. Take marriage. In American, marriages fell to a record low in 2009, with just 52 percent of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57 percent in 2000. The never-married included 46.3 percent of young adults 25-34, with sharp increases in single people in cities in the Midwest and Southwest, including Cleveland, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, N.M. It was the first time the share of unmarried young adults exceeded those who were married. Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments. In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them. The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans - those making more than $100,000 each year - received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower. Three states - New York, Connecticut and Texas - and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps between rich and poor. Big gaps were also evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents. Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Hawaii had the smallest income gaps. "Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more," said Timothy Smeeding, a University of WisconsinMadison professor who specializes in poverty. "More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy." Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don't get needed training for future jobs, he said. Homeownership declined for the third year in a row, to 65.9 percent, after hitting a peak of 67.3 percent in 2006. Residents in crowded housing held steady at 1 percent, the highest since 2004, a sign that people continued to "double up" to save money. Average commute times edged lower to 25.1 minutes, the lowest since 2006, as fewer people headed to the office in the morning. The share of people who carpooled also declined, from 10.7 percent to 10 percent, while commuters who took public transportation were unchanged at 5 percent. The number of U.S. households receiving food stamps surged by 2 million last year to 11.7 million, the highest level on record. |