ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, September 30, 2009 NATION • A5

$6B urged for border-port upgrades

BLOOMBERG NEWS
The U.S. should spend $6 bil-
lion to fortify and rebuild ports
of entry along its border with
Mexico, a government-appoint-
ed task force recommended.
The Southwest Border Task
Force also urged spending more
money to hire thousands of cus-
toms officers to staff the entry
points.
The $6 billion “is needed in
infrastructure funding immedi-
ately, including modernization
to highway, railway” and sup-
porting facilities, the task force
said.
Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano created the
group in June to advise her on
how to keep drug-cartel-fueled
ment is engaged, there will con-
LOCAL ANGLE tinue to be problems policing the
There are land ports of entry in six Arizona border cities: Douglas, Naco, border,” the task force said.
Nogales, Sasabe, Lukeville and San Luis. The Homeland Security Advi-
The Mariposa Port of Entry, in west Nogales, already is scheduled to get sory Council, a panel of security
a $212 million upgrade that will include more inbound and outbound experts that confers with the
lanes, new buildings, booths and canopies, and more parking. The upgrade Department of Homeland Secu-
is the largest port-of-entry project funded in the stimulus bill, accounting rity, will decide in a meeting to-
for more than half of the $400 million dedicated to ports on the South- day whether to endorse the rec-
west border. ommendations and forward
Work is set to begin in October and is expected to take four years. The them to the department.
current port, built in the 1970s, was designed to handle 400 trucks a day, Napolitano, the former gover-
but it now gets as many as 1,600. The new facility will have a capacity for nor of Arizona, and other Obama
2,000 to 3,000 trucks a day. administration officials have
Brady McCombs been working with Mexican au-
thorities to quell the drug-relat-
violence in Mexico from spilling thorough inspections of south- ed violence. Mexico and the U.S.
across the border and to improve bound traffic and work with the are performing more joint inves-
U.S.-Mexican commerce. U.S. to professionalize Mexico’s tigations and inspections to find
The task force on Tuesday rec- law enforcement agencies. guns and money before they
ommended that Mexico do more “Unless Mexican law enforce- reach the drug cartels.

AZ lawmaker clarifies remark critical of Obama

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — A Republi-
can congressman who called
President Obama an “enemy of
humanity” said Tuesday that he
should have made clear that he
was referring to the president’s
policies related to abortion.
Trent Franks of Arizona said in
a speech to conservatives Satur-
day in St. Louis that, given Oba-
ma’s decision to fund interna-
tional family planning organiza-
tions that support legal abor-
tion, “we shouldn’t be shocked
that he does all these other in-
sane things.”
“A president that has lost his Tuesday that he was referring to their creator with certain un-
way that badly, that has no abili- “unborn humanity” and should alienable rights and chief among
ty to see the image of have clarified his re- those rights is the right to life,”
God in these little fellow marks. His statement Franks, who represents Ari-
human beings, if he listed a series of actions zona’s 2nd District, said in the
can’t do that right, then Obama has taken relat- statement.
he has no place in any ed to abortion. A White House spokesman
station of government “While I absolutely had no comment.
and we need to realize should have made the A video recording of Franks’
that he is an enemy of meaning of my state- speech was provided by the lib-
humanity,” Franks said ment more clear, the eral interest group People for the
to the How to Take Back Trent Franks, facts remain that these American Way, whose president,
America conference, R-Ariz. radical pro-abortion Michael Keegan, said Franks’ re-
organized by conserva- policies do not have marks “show a stunning lack of
tive interest groups, including place in a government founded respect for our president and the
the Eagle Forum. on the principle that all men are office of the presidency.”
Franks, 52, said in a statement created equal, and endowed by

EPA seeks
tougher law
on chemicals
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — With more

and more toxic chemicals turning
up in people’s bodies and the envi-
ronment, the Obama administra-
tion asked Congress Tuesday to
draft a tougher law for how the
government regulates tens of
thousands of chemicals.
Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Lisa Jack-
son called the 32-year-old statute
governing toxic substances a
flawed tool for protecting the
public from the more than 80,000
chemicals that have been intro-
duced on the market. Those
chemicals, which do not include
pesticides or drugs, are used in
everything from cell phones to
plastic drinking-water bottles.
Not all of them are still in use, ex-
perts said.
“The American people are
looking to the government for as-
surance that chemicals have been
assessed using the best available
science and unacceptable risks
haven’t been ignored,” Jackson
said in a conference call with re-
porters before a formal announce-
ment in San Francisco. “Unfortu-
nately, the current law does not
allow us to grant them that assur-
ance.”
Jackson said recent scares with
lead in toys, dioxin in fish and
phthalate esters — plastic-hard-
ening chemicals used in intra-
venous bags, where they can enter
a patient’s bloodstream — are
making the public “understand-
ably anxious and confused.”
The Obama administration
wants Congress to craft a law that
will require chemical manufac-
turers to provide enough informa-
tion so that the EPA can evaluate
the risks, and to give the agency
the authority to act against chem-
icals it determines to be danger-
ous.
In addition to asking Congress
to enact a stronger law, Jackson
said the agency would immedi-
ately launch a review of six chemi-
cals that have raised concerns.
Those substances include:
• Bisphenol A, or BPA, which
is used in plastic beverage con-
tainers and, some evidence sug-
gests, can effect the brain and be-
havior in fetuses, infants and
children.
• Perfluorinated chemicals,
used in nonstick cookware and in
some waterproof clothing, will
also be checked out because of
some research linking them to in-
fertility in women.
Environmentalists applauded
the EPA’s action Tuesday, saying
it was long overdue. Sen. Frank
Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he
would introduce a bill incorpo-
rating the administration’s sug-
gestions.
A14 • TUCSON & REGION
Charged in ’03 killing, man
arraigned in 2 more deaths
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A 53-year-old man already
charged with killing his sister in
September 2003 was arraigned
Tuesday on first-degree mur-
der and kidnapping charges in
the deaths of a Pima County
couple.
“Not guilty” pleas were en-
tered on behalf of Michael
Jonathon Carlson by his attor-
ney, Harley Kurlander.
Carlson is accused of killing
Kenneth Alliman, 49, and Re-
becca Lou Lofton, 52, on May
25, according to an indictment
unsealed Tuesday.
5 counts of wire fraud for local man
By Brian J. Pedersen
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A 69-year-old Tucson man
was indicted last week on
charges he created a fake ab-
ducted child recovery company
to bilk a man of $65,000.
Philip Wolfe-Fierson is
charged with five counts of wire
fraud, according to the indict-
ment filed in U.S. District Court
in Tucson.
Wolfe-Fierson was contacted
in the spring of 2007 by a Cali-
fornia man who was looking for a
way to get back his 2-year-old
daughter, who had been taken il-
Driver in gang killing gets 1.5-year term
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The getaway driver in a fatal
gang-related shooting was sen-
tenced to 1.5 years in prison
Monday, said Deputy Pima
County Attorney Lewis Brandes.
A Pima County jury convicted
Jose Uribe, 18, in June of hinder-
ing prosecution, fleeing from
law enforcement and two counts
of criminal trespass, but he was-
n’t sentenced by Judge Howard
Hantman until Monday because
Carlson left Texas and moved
to Alliman’s and Lofton’s prop-
erty on Trico Road in mid-May,
according to Pima County
Sheriff’s Department officials.
On June 2, Alliman and Lofton
were reported missing.
Carlson was arrested on an
outstanding Texas warrant for
parole violation on June 16 and
during questioning, Carlson ad-
mitted he’d lured his sister,
Maria Thoma, to the Cienega
Creek Wash area under the pre-
text of digging up hidden money
and shot her three times with a
shotgun, court documents indi-
cate.
legally to Argentina by the girl’s
mother,court records show.
The man found a company
online called Delta International,
which purported to specialize in
abducted child recovery, court
records show. Wolfe-Fierson
was the owner of Delta Interna-
tional,court records show.
The man began contacting
Delta and in April 2007 faxed an
eight-page contract to Wolfe-
Fierson and agreed to pay $65,000
to have his daughter brought back
to California,court records show.
The man made four payments
totaling $65,000 to Delta be-
he fled before his trial and wasn’t
arrested until recently.
Uribe is believed to have
driven Jesus “Jesse” Garcia, 24,
away from the Circle K near
South 12th Avenue and West
Drexel Road shortly after Garcia
shot Roy David Fierros, 17, to
death in October 2008.
Brandes told jurors during
Uribe’s trial that Uribe was ar-
rested after crashing into a trail-
er near South First Avenue and
East Drexel Road and hiding out
Her body was discovered
Oct. 1, 2003, near the Marsh
Station trestle.
Carlson also confessed he’d
shot Alliman and Lofton to
death and then burned their
bodies over a three-day period,
authorities said.
On June 22, Pima County
Sheriff’s deputies found burned
fragments of human remains in
a fire pit at the Trico Road prop-
erty.
A status hearing in the dou-
ble homicide case is scheduled
for Nov. 17 before Pima County
Superior Court Judge Richard
Nichols.
tween March and August 2007
but in October 2007 received an
email from Wolfe-Fierson say-
ing Delta had terminated their
contract,court records show.
Wolfe-Fierson spent 30
months in federal prison after
pleading guilty to an unknown
charge in August 2001, court
records show.
He was placed on five years of
supervised release, which was
set to end Sept. 2, according to
court records.
Contact reporter Brian J. Pedersen at
573-4224 or bjp@azstarnet.com
for a period of time. Authorities
believe Uribe broke into two trail-
ers while hiding, stole clothes and
changed into them in one of the
trailers,the prosecutor said.
Jurors didn’t know it, but af-
ter Uribe was arrested, he post-
ed $5,500 bail and fled, possibly
to Mexico. Brandes had no de-
tails on how Uribe came to be
arrested again.
Garcia is now serving a life
sentence with parole possible
after 25 years.
LAW AND
ORDER
Robbery victim shoots
assailant at carwash
An 18-year-old man suffered
life-threatening injuries Tues-
day when he tried to rob another
man at a midtown carwash and
was shot by the victim, Tucson
police said.
The incident occurred at a self-
service carwash on East 22nd
Street near South Beverly Avenue
just before 4:30 p.m.,said Sgt.Di-
ana Lopez,a police spokeswoman.
A 50-year-old man was
washing his car when he was ap-
proached by the 18-year-old
man, Lopez said.
The younger man pulled out a
gun and attempted to rob the
older man, she said. The older
man pulled out his own gun and
shot the 18-year-old.
The younger man ran away and
got into a vehicle that was being
driven by another person. A short
time later, the 18-year-old man
showed up at a hospital with life-
threatening injuries,she said.
The 50-year-old man was not
injured. He was being ques-
tioned by police.
The driver of the car who took
the wounded man to the hospital
also was in police custody.
Jamar Younger
Fourth man sought
in home invasion
Tucson police are seeking a
fourth man who assaulted a
woman during a west-side home
invasion last month, police said.
Tucson police have already ar-
rested Manuel Garcia Salvador,
17, Jesse James Perez-Geehan, 17
and Marcos
Lamont Bus-
tamante, 34 in
connection
with the Sept.
16 home inva-
sion in the
1300 block of
West Silverlake
Manuel Road, said Sgt.
Salvador Diana Lopez, a
Tucson Police
Department spokeswoman.
The four forced themselves
into the home, assaulted the
woman at the door and re-
strained her, Lopez said.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The intruders took numerous Tucson Police Department
items from the house, including spokeswoman.
the woman’s vehicle, she said.
Bustamante
Verdugo walked into the bank
just after 6 p.m. on Monday and
and Salvador implied she had a weapon before
were arrested fleeing with an undisclosed
shortly after amount of money, Lopez said.
the home in- Jamar Younger
vasion.
Perez-Gee-
han was ar-
Drug found in vehicle
rested the fol- leads to pair’s arrest
Jesse James lowing day, A routine traffic stop along
Perez-Geehan she said. Interstate 10 Thursday resulted
They are in the discovery of a half-pound
facing charges of methamphetamine hidden in
of aggravated a bag of potato chips, police said.
assault, armed Enrique Orozco, 36, Vanessa
robbery, kid- Concepcion Gaxiola, 27, both of
napping, auto Tucson, were arrested and booked
theft and into the Pima County jail on
first-degree charges of possession and trans-
burglary, she portation of dangerous drugs, ac-
Marcos said. cording to an Arizona Department
Bustamante No infor- of Public Safety news release.
mation on the The DPS pulled over the 2003
fourth suspect was released by Chevrolet around 2:30 p.m. on
police. westbound I-10 near Marana for
Jamar Younger a moving violation and an
equipment violation, the release
Police identify man said. A narcotics dog alerted au-
found dead in his yard
The man found dead in the
thorities to the drugs — valued at
$9,500 — stuffed inside a bag of
barbecue-flavored Lay’s chips in
front yard of his university-area the back seat, the release said.
home Sunday night has been Brian J. Pedersen
identified as 37-year-old Steve
Nordlof, Tucson police said. Man gets probation
Nordlof was dead when Tuc-
son police arrived at the home in
for money laundering
the 700 block of East Drachman A 68-year-old man who ad-
Street about 9 p.m., police said. mitted to laundering money for a
Preliminary findings deter- Tucson-based drug trafficking
mined Nordlof was not the vic- ring was given three years of
tim of a homicide, though no of- probation Monday.
ficial cause of death has been cit- Jan Louis Beauchat must also
ed, Tucson Police Department forfeit the $137,000 he received
spokeswoman Sgt. Diana Lopez from Walter K. Riedesel, one of
said. 14 people indicted over the past
Brian J. Pedersen two years as part of a drug traf-
ficking ring with ties to the East
Woman suspected Coast, according to documents
filed in U.S. District Court.
in bank holdup caught Beauchat admitted in June
A woman suspected of rob- 2008 he sold $137,000 worth of
bing a west-side bank this week rock ’n’ roll memorabilia posters
was arrested Tuesday evening,
police said.
Norma Sabrina Verdugo, 33,
to Riedesel, knowing the pay-
ments were made from proceeds
of drug trafficking, court records
was booked show.
into Pima Riedesel and nine other de-
County jail on fendants have pleaded guilty to
suspicion of drug trafficking charges.
robbery after a Brian J. Pedersen
holdup at a
Wells Fargo On StarNet: Find an interactive
Bank at 1370 map of reported crimes in the
N. Silverbell City of Tucson, updated every morn-
Norma Road, said Sgt. ing with the previous day’s data, at
Verdugo Diana Lopez, a go.azstarnet.com/crime
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Life without parole
possible for woman
guilty of killing son
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A Tucson woman is facing a
life sentence with or without the
possibility of parole after a Pima
County jury convicted her Tues-
day of first-degree murder in the
stabbing death of her son.
Paramedics and Tucson police
who were summoned to Della
Lisa Vermeule’s home in the
3300 block of North Geronimo
Avenue in July 2008 found Ver-
meule and her son, Spencer Car-
bone, 31, suffering from stab
wounds.
Carbone died at University
Medical Center, and Vermeule,
50, was arrested upon her release
from the hospital three days later
and charged with first-degree
murder.
On Friday, Vermeule told ju-
rors that on the day her son died,
she was under a lot of stress be-
cause she was ill and worried
about family issues. She’d been
to the hospital earlier that morn-
ing with a kidney ailment, but
she decided to come home when
she was told she would have to
wait in the emergency room for
eight to nine hours.
When she got home, Ver-
meule testified that her son
“started getting on her,” asking
her for money.
They began to argue, and in
the middle of the argument, she
saw a butcher knife on her son’s
bedroom entertainment center,
Vermeule said.
“I spotted it. He spotted it and
we both reached for it,” Vermeule
testified.“We had a struggle over
it. I didn’t know if he was going
to do me or do harm to himself.”
Vermeule told her attorney,
county Assistant Public Defend-
er John Sando, that she couldn’t
remember who got the knife
first, but her son was the last one
holding the knife.
DEATHS
The deceased are from Tucson unless
otherwise noted. Occupations are
stated when available.
ACEVEDO, Hortensia A., 85, home-
maker, Oct. 1, Carrillo’s.
BAINS, Richard R., 88, sales manag-
er, Sept. 21, Desert Rose.
BAYSINGER, Mary E., 89, school
teacher, Oct. 2, Adair Dodge.
BURKE, Delia, Santa Cruz, 57, Sept.
30, furniture upholsterer, Sept. 30,
Adair Dodge.
CARRILLO, Robert S., 68, railroad,
TUCSON & REGION • A15
Once she realized he’d been
cut on the arm, she pleaded with
him to stop, but he kept backing
her up toward the bathroom
door, Vermeule said.
Some point after realizing she,
too, had been stabbed, Vermeule
said her son must have discovered
he’d been stabbed in the side, be-
cause he went into the living room
and collapsed into a chair.
Her son asked her to hold him,
and she obliged, Vermeule testi-
fied. She applied pressure to his
wound and rocked him while a
friend called 911.
Vermeule said she vaguely re-
members going to the hospital
and into the operating room.
When she regained con-
sciousness, she was shackled to a
bed and had a police officer
standing guard over her, Ver-
meule said.
She was told her appendix had
been removed, her spleen rup-
tured and her colon had to be re-
constructed.
During Deputy County At-
torney Nicol Green’s cross-ex-
amination, Vermeule denied
telling police that her son came
out of a bathroom wielding the
knife at her. She also denied
saying her son was trying to
harm himself.
Vermeule further denied
telling police that one of her
friends could have stabbed her
son or that she could have
stabbed herself.
The defendant also adamant-
ly denied exclaiming “You (ex-
pletive) drove me to it” after her
son collapsed, as one of her
friends had testified.
Vermeule will be sentenced
next month by in Pima County
Superior Court by Judge Paul
Tang.
Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241
or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
Oct. 2, Carrillo’s.
CZESKI, Rose A., 85, registered
nurse, Oct. 2, Adair Dodge.
DEAN, Joseph L., 58, plumber, Sept.
24, Desert Rose.
DIMERCURIO, Mary H., 63, home-
maker, Oct. 1, Adair Dodge.
FRUCHTERMAN, James R., 78,
lawyer, Sept. 24, Desert Rose.
JARILLO, Jovita, 82, homemaker,
Oct. 5, Carrillo’s.
HANANO, Mary Mitsuye, 94, retail
customer service, Sept. 29, Adair
Dodge.
HANSEN, Victor, 59, technician, Sept.
24, Desert Rose.
HAVENS, Mary E., 77, bookkeeper,
Sept. 17, Desert Rose.
HEWITT, Fred M., 82, Bisbee, ranch-
er, Sept. 29, Adair Dodge.
HOAGLAND, Charles F., 96, Sept. 20,
Desert Rose.
LECK, Jennifer D., 51, Sept. 8, Desert
Rose.
MAMEDOV, Dzhasim, 77, factory em-
ployee, Oct. 3, Adair Dodge.
MARASCHIELLO, Sebastian C., 92,
English teacher, Oct. 2, Adair
Dodge.
MARSH, Erika M., 27, student, Oct. 1,
Carrillo’s.
MCWILLIAMS, Deborah, B., 65, ac-
countant, Sept. 27, Desert Rose.
MEDINA, Lilliana, 46, Nogales, Ariz.,
homemaker, Oct. 3, Adair Dodge.
MOORES, Damien, C., 32, construc-
tion contractor, Sept. 25, Adair
Dodge.
MORRIS, James, A., 65, engineer,
Sept. 27, Desert Rose.
PALLANES, Maria J., 78, teacher, Oct.
2, Carrillo’s.
PERIGO, Curtis K., 88, mechanical
engineer, Sept. 18, Desert Rose.
PIERSON, Curtis L., 63, auto me-
chanic, Sept 27, Desert Rose.
RENTERIA, Gloria A., 50, not avail-
able, Sept. 26, Adair Dodge.
SPITZER, Ruth, 86, teacher, Sept. 29,
Adair Dodge.
STEPHENS, Timothy I., 56, electri-
cian, Sept. 17, Desert Rose.
STEWART, John L., 88, draftsman,
Sept. 21, Desert Rose.
TAVOLINO, Eileen T., 79, homemaker,
Oct. 2, Adair Dodge.
TAYLOR, Sable R., 47, housekeeper,
Sept. 25, Adair Dodge.
TURNER, Margaret A., 83, caregiver,
Sept. 22, Desert Rose.
VALENZUELA JR., Francisco R., 43,
chef, Sept. 26, Carrillo’s.
VETTA, Penelope L., 31, retail store
assistant manager, Sept. 28, Adair
Dodge.
WRIGHT, Gregory D., 40, journey-
man, Sept. 28, Adair Dodge.
ZENTZ, Dale, 57, mechanical mainte-
nance, Oct. 5, Adair Dodge.
ZIELBAUER, Virginia J., 76, home-
maker, Oct. 1, Adair Dodge.
A14 • TUCSON & REGION
Separate trials
sought for 3 in
Arivaca deaths
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The three people suspected of
killing an Arivaca girl and her fa-
ther in May may be getting sepa-
rate trials.
In Pima County Superior
Court, attorneys for Shawna
Forde, 41, Albert Robert Gaxiola,
42, and Jason Eugene Bush, 35,
told Judge John Leonardo Tues-
day that they believe the facts of
the case necessitate separate tri-
als.
Bush and Gaxiola were
brought before Leonardo to dis-
cuss possible trial dates; Forde
refused to be brought to court
from the Pima County jail.
Leonardo scheduled a Nov. 23
court date to discuss severing the
cases. He also indicated that if
the cases are separated, the first
trial would likely be scheduled
for January 2011.
Prosecutor Rick Unklesbay
told the judge that he had given
the defense attorneys almost all
the evidence in the case, al-
though he is still awaiting FBI
and lab reports.
Man gets 3-year sentence for March home invasion
He, 3 accomplices
held UA students
hostage with gun
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
One of four men who pleaded
guilty to committing a home in-
vasion last March was sen-
tenced to three years in prison
Tuesday.
Alex Peter Lopez, 18, was
sentenced in Pima County Su-
perior Court by Judge Richard
Fields on two counts of armed
READER-SUBMITTED PHOTO
Yep, that’s a ringtail all right
Christian Roessler got a late-night visit from a ringtail and was able to cap-
ture the state mammal of Arizona on film. See this photo, as well as pic-
tures of other Arizona animals, at go.azstarnet.com/wildlife.
We’re looking for your best photos for our online galleries. So whether you want to share im-
ages from college or high school sports events or a shot of Arizona’s wildlife, we want them all.
Just go to go.azstarnet.com/galleries to upload your pictures.
The trio are accused in the
slayings of Brisenia Flores, 9, and
Raul Flores, 29, and in the at-
tempted murder of Gina Marie
Gonzalez.
Gonzalez called 911 on May 30
to report that several men and a
woman claiming to be police of-
ficers forced their way into her
home.
She told authorities that one
of the men killed her daughter
and husband, and wounded her
in the leg.
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said
at the time that Raul Flores was
suspected of being a drug dealer,
and the three suspects targeted
the house with the intention of
stealing money and drugs.
Forde’s relatives say Forde had
talked about robbing drug traf-
fickers on the Arizona-Mexico
border to fund a group called
Minutemen American Defense
to fight illegal immigration and
drug trafficking.
Bush, another member of
Minutemen American Defense,
also is charged with two murders
in Washington state.
robbery.
Lopez, Ronnie J. Anderson,
25, Diamond J. Taylor, 20, and
Albert Bell III, 24, walked in
through the unlocked back door
of a home in the 1200 block of
East Grant Road just after mid-
night March 24, Tucson police
said.
Once inside, Taylor pointed a
shotgun at six of the seven Uni-
versity of Arizona students in-
side the house and forced them
to empty their pockets while the
other men ransacked the house,
according to court records.
Taylor racked the shotgun
Attorneys for Jason Bush, above, Shawna Forde and Albert Robert Gaxiola want separate trials in the
killings of Brisenia Flores, 9, and Raul Flores, 29. In that event, the trials will likely start in January 2011.
several times throughout the in-
cident and struck one of the vic-
tims in the head with the gun
before the four men fled the
house with a TV, a laptop com-
puters, cash and jewelry.
The thieves left in a Ford Ex-
pedition. One of the victims fol-
lowed them and pointed the ve-
hicle out to police, who had
been contacted by a friend of
one of the victims, who had
stayed out of sight during the
incident.
The friend and the victim had
been exchanging instant mes-
sages through the social net-
ARIZONA
All 45 cats taken from home
on west side are euthanized shoots self,
Resort asks
for prayers
in 2 deaths
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEDONA — The owners of
a resort where two people
were overcome in a sweat
lodge and later died are asking
for prayers in hopes that
something positive will come
out of what they say was a
tragic and unexpected acci-
dent.
Angel Valley Retreat Cen-
ter owners Michael and
Amayra Hamilton said in a
statement Tuesday that a
prayer ceremony had been
conducted at the sweat lodge
site for the victims, and their
friends and families. They
said a heart-shaped memori-
al had been laid with stones
for 38-year-old Kirby Brown
of Westtown, N.Y., and 40-
year-old James Shore of Mil-
waukee, who died Thursday
evening.
working site Facebook at the be-
ginning of the incident, and the
victim alerted her friend about
what was going on.
Police officers stopped the
vehicle nearby in the 1200 block
of East Edison Street, and all of
the men ran from the SUV.
Bell was found hiding in a
trash can, and Lopez was in
nearby shed.
Both suffered bites from a po-
lice dog while being arrested.
Anderson and Taylor were ar-
rested at a home in the 400
block of East Prince Road.
Suspect
Bell and Anderson both
in robbery
police say
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
All 45 cats taken from the
home of an elderly woman on
the west side have been eutha-
nized because they were sick or
in poor health, the Pima Ani-
mal Care Center said.
The cats were seized from
the home in the 100 block of
South Grande Avenue on Mon-
day afternoon, said Jayne
Cundy, an Animal Care
spokeswoman.
Veterans’ widows target of scam
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson police are looking for
a man running a bank scam on
widows of deceased military
veterans.
The man defrauded an eld-
erly woman of several thou-
sand dollars recently, said
Officer Chuck Rydzak, a Tuc-
son Police Department
spokesman.
The man usually claims he is
a law enforcement officer in-
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
DEAN KNUTH / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
pleaded guilty to three counts of
aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon. Bell was sentenced to
two years in prison, and Ander-
son was given three years.
Taylor pleaded guilty to
three counts of armed robbery
and is facing up to 12ƒ years in
prison when he’s sentenced on
Nov. 19.
On Tuesday, Lopez apolo-
gized for his actions and swore
he would never end up before
Fields or any other judge again.
Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241
or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
The cats had a variety of
health problems, including
some that were underweight
and others with severe respira-
tory problems, she said.
A veterinarian made the de-
termination to euthanize them
after examining the animals,
Cundy said.
The woman, in her mid-70s,
was cited for unsanitary shelter,
failure to provide veterinary care
and a lack of proper ventilation.
vestigating fraud on the vic-
tims. He is suspected of run-
ning a similar scam in Califor-
nia, Rydzak said.
He is described as being
about 30 years old, 6 feet tall
and weighing about 160
pounds with dark brown eyes.
The man has a swirl-style
tattoo on the right side of his
neck.
Anyone with information is
asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME.
Man gets
17 years
for boy’s
molesting
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A 73-year-old Marana man
was sentenced to 17 years in
prison Tuesday for molesting a
young boy more than a decade
ago, said Deputy Pima County
Attorney Ryan Schmidt.
Three brothers told their
guardian on Oct. 27, 2006, that
Arnold L. Geib had molested
them numerous times when they
were small children, according to
court documents.
Their guardian then contacted
Michigan authorities because
that was where they were living
at that time. After Michigan au-
thorities contacted the Pima
County Sheriff’s Department,
detectives learned the alleged in-
cidents happened while Geib
was living in Sahuarita.
One of the brothers was 5
years old at the time he was mo-
lested; another is mentally chal-
lenged.
Geib was indicted on multiple
charges on Dec. 4, 2006. He ac-
knowledged last month that he
committed certain acts with one
of the brothers, Schmidt said.
He pleaded guilty to molesta-
tion of a child and attempted
sexual assault, Schmidt said. He
could have received probation or
up to 21« years in prison.
Judge Clark Munger of Pima
County Superior Court sen-
tenced him Tuesday.
Geib previously had been ar-
rested in Pima County in 1982 on
suspicion of kidnapping and
child molestation. He pleaded to
a lesser charge of child fondling,
court documents show.
In 1989 in California, he failed
to register as a sex offender. He
has other felony and misde-
meanor arrests and convictions
not related to sexual abuse, ac-
cording to court documents.
By Brian J. Pedersen
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A man suspected of robbing a
south-side pizza place Monday
shot himself in the leg while com-
mitting the crime,police said.
John B. Catania, 31, was
wounded in his right thigh, said
Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a Tucson
Police Department spokesman.
The wound was not life-threat-
ening.
Just after 10 p.m. Monday, po-
lice received a 911 call from a
woman saying her boyfriend had
been shot. When police went to
the 3500 block of East Lee Street,
they found
Catania, who
said he had
been shot by
two men,
Pacheco said.
Catania said he
didn’t know
John B. why he’d been
Catania shot.
About a
half-hour earlier, police had also
received a report of a robbery at
the Little Caesar’s Restaurant,
1998 E.Irvington Road.
Witnesses told police that the
robber shot himself as he placed
his handgun in the front waist-
band of his pants,Pacheco said.
Robbery detectives linked
Catania to the restaurant through
evidence at the home where
Catania was found,Pacheco said.
Catania was arrested on suspi-
cion of armed robbery and was
taken to a hospital.
He is expected to be booked
into the Pima County jail after he
is released from the hospital,
Pacheco said.
Contact reporter Brian J. Pedersen at 573-
4224 or bjp@azstarnet.com
 CHASE K

ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Friday, October 23, 2009 ¤ TUCSON & REGION • A19

LAW AND Jason Tarket, 30, the driver of

the truck, was in fair condition.
hour to control the blaze, Tracy
said.
TUCSON TIME CAPSULE

ORDER William M. Enriquez, 19, a pas-

Pair found slain were
‘violently attacked’
Tucson police on Thursday
said a pair found slain at a north-
side apartment were “violently
attacked.”
Police still have not released
details nor a motive in the attack
but they did identify the pair
who lived together at the apart-
ment in the 2800 block of North
Mountain Avenue, north of East
Glenn Street, where their bodies
were found
The victims are Malcolm
Wheeler, 23, and Crystal Julian,
34.
An acquaintance called police
to the apartment home reporting
suspicious activity just before 5
p.m. Wednesday, police said.
No suspects had been identi-
fied. Anyone with information is
asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME.
Staff report
Head-on collision
near Bisbee kills two
Two people died in a head-on
collision Thursday morning near
Bisbee, authorities said.
George Root, 48, of Tucson,
and William I. Enriquez, 38, of
Bisbee, were pronounced dead at
the scene after a 1-ton Ford truck
and a 2006 Ford station wagon
collided on Arizona 80 near the
Mule Mountain Tunnel, accord-
ing to the Arizona Department of
Public Safety.
Root was a passenger in the
truck when it struck the station
wagon, which was driven by En-
riquez, DPS said.
Two other men suffered in-
juries in the collision, DPS said.
senger in the station wagon, was
still in the emergency room late
Thursday, according to Univer-
sity Medical Center.
Jamar Younger
Man dies of wounds
in group-home attack
A 50-year-old man who was
stabbed at a group home last
month died this week as a result
of his injuries, police said.
Michael DeWeese was pro-
nounced dead Tuesday. He was
stabbed Sept. 29 at a group home
in the 1500 block of East Drach-
man Street, said Sgt. Fabian
Pacheco, a Tucson Police De-
partment spokesman.
The suspect, Andrew Garcia,
19, was found in the surrounding
neighborhood on the day of the
stabbing and taken into custody,
Pacheco said.
Garcia is now booked into
Pima County jail on suspicion of
first-degree murder.
DeWeese and Garcia got into a
fight over tobacco before De-
Weese was stabbed several
times, police said. They both
lived at the home, police said.
Jamar Younger
Another fire quelled
at recycling plant
A fire burned through a pile of
recycled materials at a north-
west-side recycling plant
Thursday, authorities said.
Firefighters arrived at the
blaze just after 4 p.m. and found
materials on fire at Recycle
America, 3909 N. Runway
Drive, near Interstate 10 and
West Prince Road, said Capt. Tr-
ish Tracy, a Tucson Fire Depart-
ment spokeswoman.
TPD unit to combat
It took firefighters about an
The fire was caused by some
discarded materials burning at
the bottom of the pile, she said.
No buildings were damaged and
no one was injured, she said.
Another fire burned a pile of
recycled debris at the plant May
19, she said.
Jamar Younger
Contraband costs
inmate 33 months
A federal prison inmate in
Tucson was sentenced Thursday
to 33 more months for possess-
ing contraband.
Prosecutors say 31-year-old
Joseph William Nichols of Tuc-
son pleaded guilty in August and
will serve the additional sen-
tence after he completes his cur-
rent 66-month term for a Texas
bank robbery .
Authorities say Nichols was
assigned to the kitchen staff at the
federal penitentiary in Tucson on
Aug. 12, 2007, when a supervisor
noticed Nichols was acting suspi-
cious and appeared to be hiding
something in his clothing.
Prison officials searched
Nichols and found a 6-inch-long
plastic shank, made from a plas- BRUCE McCLELLAND / ARIZONA DAILY STAR 1984
tic chair in his prison cell, hidden MINORITY VIEWPOINT
in the hemline of his pants.
They say a search of the Julian Bond, then a Georgia state senator, addressed several hundred
kitchen resulted in the discovery people at the UA on Oct. 23, 1984. He talked about the Reagan admin-
of two packages hidden under an istration and its impact on minorities. He believed the Reagan admin-
upside-down pan on a table. The istration had been a disaster, and said,“The most effective spokesman
packages contained five serrated for privilege sits in the White House, and the gains of the past 20 years
knife blades, nine box-cutter ra- are being whittled away.” He did express optimism that a sizable num-
zor blades, 10 syringes with hy- ber of people did not share President Ronald Reagan’s vision.
podermic needles, four rolls of
marijuana and other items. Tucson Time Capsule is a daily feature, a photographic record of Tucson as it was. If you have a memory
The Associated Press of an event, please go to go.azstarnet.com/timecapsule, where you can find all of the Time Cap-
sule photos. You can also add your own historical Tucson photos to the collection. Please observe copy-
right laws.
On StarNet: Find an interactive
map of reported crimes in the
City of Tucson, updated every morn-
ing with the previous day’s data, at
go.azstarnet.com/crime

Smuggling tunnel found ‘epidemic’ of graffiti

under border in Nogales
By Jamar Younger the consequences of vandalism.
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The Tucson Police Depart- Who will the program

By Phil Villarreal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
U.S. Border Patrol agents dis-
covered a smuggling tunnel un-
der the border in Nogales, Ariz.,
on Wednesday. It was the first
passageway agents have found in
the Tucson Sector in nearly four
months.
The 30-foot tunnel, 150 yards
east of the DeConcini Port of En-
try, was fortified on the Mexican
side with shoring, but on the
American side it appeared unfin-
ished, U.S. Border Patrol spokes-
man Mario Escalante said.
The tunnel was not connected
to the drainage system. Escalante
said there was no evidence as to
who was using the tunnel.
“They already had an opening
on the north side at the time we
found it,” Escalante said. “It’s
hard to say who was using it, but
the point of a tunnel system (is to
use it).”
The tunnel seems to have
originated on the Mexican side
of the border, whereit starts off
3 feet wide by 3 feet high. On
the American side, the tunnel is
dirt-only and shrinks in size to
18 inches in circumference.
“On the Mexican side it’s
properly done, but from that
point on it’s kind of a hand-dug
tunnel,” Escalante said.
Escalante said an outside con-
tractor would fill in the hole with
concrete in a remediation
process today at the latest.
Lucero Salazar Cruz, a spokes-
woman with the Nogales, Sonora,
police,said city police involvement
in the discovery was limited to se-
curing the entrance. She said the
Mexican army has jurisdiction
over the case.
The Mexican army officials in
Sonora could not immediately
confirm information related to
the tunnel.
Reporter Mariana Alvarado contributed to
this article.
Contact reporter Phil Villarreal at 573-
4130 or pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
ment is joining with the Pima
County Attorney’s Office and
private businesses to rid the
walls throughout Tucson of
graffiti.
Tucson police Chief Roberto
Villaseñor announced Thursday
the department has taken over
the city’s Graffiti Abatement
Program and will use officers to
help fight graffiti and catch tag-
gers.
The initiative will include a
new graffiti hotline available
through 88-CRIME to report
suspect information.
The department also will part-
ner with other businesses to clean
graffiti and raise money for re-
sources to fight the vandalism.
Here are some specifics of the
program:
What is it?
The Tucson Police Depart-
ment has formed the Targeting
All Graffiti — TAG — unit, which
will work with a graffiti removal
company to identify suspected
taggers and investigate graffiti
vandalism.
The unit and the company,
Graffiti Protective Coatings, will
share a database that will include
target?
The program will target graf-
fiti artists and taggers who van-
dalize property.
TAG officers will use tips, the
database and other information
to identify names and monikers
of graffiti artists.
Anyone arrested for tagging or
using graffiti can face criminal-
damageand vandalism charges.
Why are authorities
targeting graffiti?
Villaseñor referred to the
graffiti problem in Tucson as an
“epidemic” and “quality of life”
issue.
City officials cited the diffi-
culty of cleaning up graffiti, only
to have it reappear as soon as the
next day.
“This is a crime committed
frequently in the dark of the
night,” said Pima County Attor-
ney Barbara LaWall.
Problem areas
The areas with the worst graf-
fiti problems include neighbor-
hoods near East Broadway and
North Camino Seco, downtown
near Stone Avenue and Broadway
and the area near South 12th Av-

Jewish food fest, cook-off photographs and other informa-

tion about graffiti incidents.
The removal company will
enue and West Irvington Road,
according to Graffiti Protective
Coatings.

will benefit food bank, too take photos of graffiti while

ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tantalizing beef brisket sand-
wiches, steaming chicken matzo
ball soup, hummus and pita,
pierogi, shish kebabs, decadent
desserts and many more mouth-
watering foods will be offered at
the second annual Jewish Food
Festival and Family Fun Fair.
The festival and cook-off is
scheduled for 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Sunday at Brandi Fenton Memo-
rial Park, 3482 E. River Road.
The one-day event will fea-
ture live musical entertainment,
a food cook-off, craft vendors,
Judaica gifts from Congregation
Or Chadash sisterhood gift shop,
children’s activities and food
from some of Tucson’s hottest
restaurants.
Admission is $3 for adults.
Children under 12 get in free.
Parking is plentiful and free.
Admission proceeds will ben-
efit the Community Food Bank,
Congregation Or Chadash and
Interfaith Community Services.
For more information,go online
to www.jewishfoodfestival.com
or call Congregation Or Chadash
at 512-8500.
cleaning the vandalism.
People can now call 88-
CRIME to give information on
suspected taggers. Residents can
still call 792-CITY to report
graffiti in their neighborhoods.
Who’s involved?
In addition to TAG-unit offi-
cers, Graffiti Protective Coat-
ings and the County Attorney’s
Office, Target Corp. will work
with local businesses to raise
money and volunteer to clean up
graffiti.
Clear Channel Radio is airing
public-service announcements
that warn graffiti artists about
How much will it cost?
The program has a budget of
$720,000 a year, which had al-
ready been allotted for the ef-
fort, Villaseñor said.
The TAG-unit police officers
were reassigned from the Vio-
lent Crimes Task Force, which
has been disbanded.
The task force was charged
with breaking up loud parties
and other incidents that lead to
violent crimes. Two other
squads will still perform those
duties,police said.
Contact reporter Jamar Younger at
573-4115 or jyounger@azstarnet.com

DEATHS
The deceased are from Tucson un-
less otherwise noted. Occupations
are stated when available.
ANTONELLI, Margaret, 90, home-
maker, Oct. 13, Bring’s Broadway.
BEEL, L. Maxine, 91, homemaker,
Oct. 12, East Lawn.
BEITEL, Donald E., 90, aerospace,
Oct. 10, East Lawn.
BLAIR, J.C., 82, mining, Oct. 20, Adair
Avalon.
BLOHM, Joanne, 74, pottery artist,
Oct. 14, Bring’s Broadway.
BUTCHER, Lebert E., 74, military,
Oct. 14, East Lawn.
CAMPBELL, Don B., 86, dentist,
Oct. 10, East Lawn.
CARAMELLA, Mae, 96, homemaker,
Oct. 14, Bring’s Broadway.
CARTER, Timothy R., 58, mechanic,
Oct. 18, East Lawn.
COLVIN, Beal H., 89, machinist,
Oct. 16, Bring’s Broadway.
COTTON, Mary, 97, loan clerk, Oct. 15,
East Lawn.
FINLEY, Murray, 92, railroad manage-
ment consultant, Oct. 18, Bring’s
Broadway.
HAGEN, Warn, 54, homemaker,
Oct. 15, Bring’s Broadway.
JACOBSON, Esther, 92, homemaker,
Oct. 7, East Lawn.
LEE, Robert A., age unavailable, min-
ing manager, Oct. 16, Adair Avalon.
MALIN, Leona J., 92, homemaker,
Oct. 17, Bring’s Broadway.
MANN, Vernon LeRoy, 86, minister,
Oct. 15, East Lawn.
MASCARELLA, Lois N., 81, facilities
coordinator, Oct. 17, East Lawn.
MAURER, Kenneth C., 76, police offi-
cer, Oct. 13, East Lawn.
MONROE, June, 80, secretary,
Oct. 17, Bring’s Broadway.
NAYLOR, Betty H., 82, homemaker,
Oct. 17, East Lawn.
ORRED, Eva Vivien, 86, homemaker,
Oct. 15, East Lawn.
ROADY, Florence H., 96, homemaker,
Oct. 18, East Lawn.
ROSENBERG, Albert, 65, investor,
Oct. 12, East Lawn.
SAMPSON, Marshall D., 93, lawyer,
Oct. 16, East Lawn.
SESSA, Laura M., 89, registered
nurse, Oct. 13, East Lawn.
SHELKSOHN, Owen D., 33, software
engineer, Oct. 9, Bring’s Broadway.
THEISS, Francine, 84, dental hygien-
ist, Oct. 18, Bring’s Broadway.
WILSON, Vernon, 85, educator,
Oct. 15, Bring’s Broadway.
YAGER, Vera, 83, assistant director
for special education, Oct. 14,
Bring’s Broadway.
A24 • TUCSON & REGION
McClusky files complaint over Dems’ mailer
By Rhonda Bodfield
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Republican candidate Shaun
McClusky filed a complaint
against the Pima County Demo-
cratic Party on Thursday, alleg-
ing a flier that went to house-
holds last week violated cam-
paign-finance laws.
The Democratic Party, which
has called the complaint a frivo-
lous and “last-minute desperate
attempt of a losing candidate,”
sent a two-sided flier to house-
holds last week. On the front is a
picture, in black and white, of a
smiling Republican Gov. Jan
Brewer, surrounded by head-
lines, largely culled from editori-
als from around the state and
blasting the budget battle as a
“bad rerun” and criticizing the
infighting dividing Brewer and
TUCSON TIME CAPSULE
MAYORAL MALLEABILITY
A mayor presides over a lot of openings and dedications and is used to
working with whatever equipment is provided. So when Tucson Mayor Lew
Murphy addressed the crowd at the opening ceremonies for the Gemco
department store at 7151 E. Speedway, it was probably no big deal that his
lectern was contrived from two shopping carts. The new store was part of
the Lucky Stores chain. It covered 102,000 square feet and would carry
the grocery brands Lady Lee and Harvest Day.
ARIZONA
Ruling: Public records include
all the embedded electronic info
By Howard Fischer
CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES
PHOENIX — Government
officials cannot deny public ac-
cess to the electronic tidbits
that are embedded in their
records, the Arizona Supreme
Court ruled Thursday.
In a precedent-setting deci-
sion, the justices said the elec-
tronic tags, word-processing,
database and spreadsheet pro-
grams attached to files and doc-
uments are as much a part of
the public record as the actual
printout itself.
The court was quick to say
the new ruling does not man-
date that documents be stored
in an electronic format. Nor
does it require governments to
create new files.
But Justice Scott Bales, writ-
ing for the unanimous court,
said if there is an electronic
record, the public is entitled to
the entire record, including the
embedded data.
Thursday’s decision is sig-
nificant as more and more pub-
lic records are created by — and
stored in — computers.
Dan Barr, an attorney for the
Burns releases hold on nonbudget legislation Sweat-lodge guru cancels
By Howard Fischer
CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES
PHOENIX — Senate Presi-
dent Bob Burns is scrapping the
blockade he imposed on key
legislation last session to get
lawmakers to focus on the
budget.
Burns said Thursday he will
allow the people he has chosen
to run various committees to
decide which measures to de-
bate and bring up for a vote
when lawmakers reconvene in
January.
That is in line with what has
lawmakers.
Text along the top and bottom
warns, “Don’t let the Republi-
cans do to Tucson what they’ve
done to Arizona.”
On the back, the flier states,
“Right-wing Republican ex-
tremism is not working up in
Phoenix, it certainly won’t work
for Tucson,” and shows face
shots of the three Republican
candidates.
The flier states that Ben
Buehler-Garcia wants to repeal
impact fees, which it argues
would shift the burden to tax-
payers of paying for infrastruc-
ture such as roads, utilities and
public safety. It states that Shaun
McClusky wants to raise taxes,
eliminate economic develop-
ment and cut programs for fami-
lies. It also says Steve Kozachik
First Amendment Coalition,
which filed a legal brief in sup-
port of public access to what is
known as “metadata,” said the
decision will make public-
records requests quicker and
cheaper. He said it also will
make research easier.
Most immediately, it will en-
able those who demand a record
to see, at the very least, exactly
when it was created.
Virtually all computer files
have embedded data: Clicking
on a document in a directory
listing reveals its electronic
properties, including not just
the type of document it is but
also its origination date. That
can provide valuable informa-
tion, particularly when there is
a question of whether a docu-
ment was actually written
when claimed.
But the ruling is a defeat for the
Attorney General’s Office, which
argued that lawmakers never in-
tended for that information to be
part of the public record.
The case involves David
Lake, a Phoenix police officer
who had filed an administrative
complaint and federal lawsuit
historically been the practice, at
least until this past session
when Burns ordered that noth-
ing dealing with changes in state
law or policy be heard until
there was a budget plan.
The result was a huge back-
log of bills, with several
months’ worth of legislation
being voted on in just weeks. It
also meant that the majority of
proposals, including many by
the Republicans who control
the Legislature, never got a
Senate hearing, much less be-
came law.
opposes a Convention Center
hotel, even though such a deci-
sion would force the gem show to
leave Tucson.
McClusky cited an Arizona
statute that requires a political
committee making an inde-
pendent expenditure relating “to
any one candidate or office”
within 10 days of the election to
send a certified copy of the cam-
paign literature to the candidate
mentioned in the piece.
McClusky has not said on the
campaign trail that he wants to
raise taxes. He is backing Prop.
200, which would mandate
higher public-safety staffing ra-
tios, which local Democratic
Party Chairman Jeff Rogers con-
tends would either decimate city
programs or force a tax increase.
McClusky has suggested cutting
JIM DAVIS / ARIZONA DAILY STAR 1979
Tucson Time Capsule is a daily feature,
a photographic record of Tucson as it
was. If you have a memory of an event,
please go to go.azstarnet.com/
timecapsule, where you can find all
of the Time Capsule photos. You can
also add your own historical Tucson
photos to the collection. Please ob-
serve copyright laws.
alleging employment discrimi-
nation. Lake also submitted a
public-records request to the
city for notes kept by his super-
visor documenting the officer’s
work.
Lake, suspecting some docu-
ments created on a computer
had been back-dated, asked for
the metadata, including “the
TRUE creation date, the access
date, the access dates for each
time it was accessed, including
who accessed the file as well as
print dates, etc.” When the city
said that data was not a public
record, Lake sued.
A trial judge and the state
Court of Appeals rejected his
arguments, saying what Lake
sought did not fit within the
what are considered “public
records” under Arizona law.
But Bales said the Court of
Appeals made the mistake of
trying to separate the metadata
from the document itself. He
said the question is simpler
than that: Does the record re-
quested include not just the in-
formation normally visible but
also the embedded data? Bales
said the answer clearly is yes.
Yet, it still took lawmakers
until the last possible minute of
the fiscal year — actually slight-
ly beyond — to adopt a new
spending plan.
Despite that, Burns told
Capitol Media Services that
didn’t make how he handled the
last session a mistake.
“The exercise that we went
though last year, which was to
get people more up to speed on
some of the budget issues, I
think served a purpose,” he said,
considering the size of the
deficit and no clear consensus
funding to the region’s economic
development arm, saying it is
not doing a good job at luring
high-paying jobs to town.
Buehler-Garcia has not said
on the stump that he wants to
repeal impact fees, although he
did lobby against them as a lob-
byist for the Tucson Metropoli-
tan Chamber of Commerce and
has said they depress home-
ownership rates.
Kozachik, meanwhile, has said
that if Tucson is going “grow and
develop as a major community,
we need to have a Convention
Center hotel downtown.” He has
also said, however, that he does
not support asking taxpayers to
fund it, instead saying the city
should encourage the private
sector to develop the hotel.
“Permitting renegade organi-
LAW AND
ORDER
Family sues driver
in fatal DUI collision
The family of a 54-year-old
man killed last year in a head-on,
alcohol-related collision has
filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against the driver of the other car
and her parents.
Christine Meneses is suing
Elizabeth Tuccini on behalf of
her siblings and grandmother,
according to the lawsuit, filed
Thursday in Pima County Supe-
rior Court.
Tuccini, 22, was found guilty
of negligent homicide two weeks
ago in the December 2008 death
of Marco Salazar.
Deputy Pima County Attor-
ney Victoria Otto presented evi-
dence Tuccini was drunk and
driving at a high speed when she
collided head-on with Salazar
two miles north of the Marana
Road exit on the Interstate 10
frontage road.
Tuccini's blood alcohol level
was 0.157 about 90 minutes after
the crash; the legal limit in Ari-
zona is 0.08.
Tuccini admitted to authori-
ties she’d mixed a pint of Jäger-
meister with Red Bull before get-
ting behind the wheel of her
pickup.
The lawsuit,which was filed on
Meneses’ behalf by attorney
Kevin Moore, seeks unspecified
compensatory and punitive dam-
ages from Tuccini and her par-
ents,whose car she was driving.
Kim Smith
DPS seizes pot loads
totaling over 1,300 lbs.
A pair of marijuana seizures in
Cochise County netted more
than 1,300 pounds of contraband
Wednesday, the Arizona Depart-
ment of Public Safety said.
A DPS officer discovered 1,222
pounds of marijuana in a com-
partment underneath a flatbed
truck that had been stopped for
making an unsafe lane change on
Arizona 90 south of Benson at
4:30 p.m. Wednesday, according
to a DPS news release.
The two men who were in the
flatbed fled into the desert after
being pulled over and could not
be found, DPS said.
DPS officers also discovered
97 pounds of marijuana in the
trunk of a 1996 Toyota Camry
that had been pulled over for fol-
lowing too closely on Interstate
10 west of Benson just before 9
a.m. Wednesday, DPS said.
The vehicle’s driver, 25-year-
old Michael Florez, was driving
on a suspended license and was
booked into the Sierra Vista jail
on suspicion of possession of
marijuana and suspicion of
transportation of marijuana for
sale, DPS said.
Brian J.Pedersen
on how to handle it.
In the end, lawmakers ap-
proved a plan that largely relied
on spending cuts and some bor-
rowing, only to have Gov. Jan
Brewer veto key elements be-
cause they did not also approve
her demand to let voters decide
whether to temporarily hike the
state sales tax.
Burns said the budget, which
still is not in balance for this
year, remains the top priority.
But he said there is no reason to
repeat the “exercise” of halting
action on everything else.
Friday, October 30, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
zations to drop last-minute
charges is a disservice to the vot-
ers of Tucson,” McClusky wrote
in the complaint. Alleging that
the campaign was not independ-
ent from the candidates, as re-
quired by the law, he demanded
an investigation subpoena phone
and e-mail records between the
party and the candidates.
City Clerk Roger Randolph
said he received the complaint
and was looking into it, but had
no further comment.
“ ‘Right-wing extremist’ is
just a nasty label designed to
make conservatives look like
they’re not rational,” said Pima
County Republican Chairman
Bob Westerman, who said he
agrees with McClusky that the
mailer was not legal. He said he
thought such mudslinging
A bank-camera photo, released by Tucson police, shows a robbery in
progress at a Compass Bank branch inside a grocery store.
2 jailed in bank heist
on northeast side
Tucson police arrested two
men Tuesday in connection with
a northeast-side bank robbery
earlier that day.
JuJuan M. Gibson, 20, and
Danny J. Simmons, 23, were
booked into the Pima County jail
on two counts each of suspicion
of armed robbery, suspicion of
aggravated robbery and suspi-
cion of aggravated assault with a
deadly
weapon, ac-
cording to a
Tucson Police
Department
news release.
A bank rob-
bery was re-
ported around
4:15 p.m. at a
Danny Compass Bank
Simmons branch within
the Albert-
son’s grocery
store at 6660
E. Tanque
Verde Road,
the release
said.
Witnesses
said two men
had robbed
JuJuan the bank at
Gibson gunpoint and
left after get-
ting an undisclosed amount of
money, the release said.
Detectives were given a de-
scription of the getaway car, and
it was found unoccupied near
East Pima Street and North
Rook Avenue, the release said.
Gibson and Simmons were
taken into custody about 6:30
p.m. Tuesday at an address asso-
ciated with the vehicle, the re-
lease said.
Brian J.Pedersen
Tubac man, 41, dies
after motorcycle crash
A 41-year-old Tubac man died
Monday from injuries received in
a motorcycle accident over the
weekend just off Interstate 19
south of Amado, the Arizona De-
partment of Public Safety said.
seminars in wake of deaths
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX — Motivational
speaker and author James Arthur
Ray is canceling his remaining
2009 seminars in the wake of
three deaths that occurred after
a sweat-lodge ceremony he led
this month in northern Arizona.
Ray announced on his blog on
Thursday that he needs to dedi-
cate all his “physical and emo-
tional energies” to bringing clo-
sure to the matter.
Ray is the subject of a criminal
would backfire against the De-
mocrats.
Rogers, however, said the
mailer was clearly allowed under
the law. The piece refers to three
candidates and does not single
any candidate out, which puts it
outside of the statutory refer-
ence cited by McClusky. It also
falls outside the 10-day period.
And, he said, there was no col-
lusion with the candidates, say-
ing the charge was baseless and
that the themes in this election
are simply similar to the candi-
date platforms.
He accused McClusky of try-
ing to “either gain publicity or
tarnish the Democratic Party or
its candidates.”
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 573-
4243 or rbodfield@azstarnet.com
SURVEILLANCE PHOTO VIA TUCSON POLICE
Martin Petersen was found ly-
ing unresponsive on the I-19
frontage road by two Border Pa-
trol agents at 3:10 a.m. Saturday,
said Officer Quent Mehr, a DPS
spokesman.
Petersen’s motorcycle was ly-
ing on its side in the middle of
the road, Mehr said.
No cause has been deter-
mined for the crash. No evi-
dence was found indicating the
motorcycle was run off the road
or had made any type of evasive
maneuver before the crash,
Mehr said.
It appears Petersen was not
wearing a helmet, Mehr said.
Brian J.Pedersen
City panel to discuss
race, justice system
The Tucson Police Depart-
ment and the city of Tucson’s
Office of the Independent Police
Auditor are hosting a public fo-
rum Thursday to discuss the im-
pact of race on policing the
criminal justice system.
Representatives from local
law enforcement agencies and
court systems have been invited
as panel members for the event,
scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. at Pima
College’s West Campus, 2202 W.
Anklam Road.
The forum is free and open to
the public. For information call
791-4593 or 791-4441.
1 dead, 1 injured
in Safford-area crash
A single-vehicle crash killed
one person Thursday on U.S.
Highway 191 near Safford, ac-
cording to the Arizona Depart-
ment of Public Safety.
Another person suffered seri-
ous injuries from the crash, which
occurred at 1:50 p.m.on the high-
way north of Safford,DPS said.
No other information was
available.
Jamar Younger
On StarNet: Find an interactive
map of reported crimes in the
city of Tucson, updated every morn-
ing with the previous day’s data, at
go.azstarnet.com/crime
investigation by Arizona authori-
ties looking into the Oct. 8 sweat-
lodge ceremony at a high-priced
retreat outside Sedona. Besides
the three deaths, 18 others among
more than 55 people inside the
sweat lodge were hospitalized. No
charges have been filed.
Ray has not spoken to Yavapai
County investigators but says he
is cooperating fully and writes
that he is “helping the authori-
ties and the families get to the
bottom of what happened.”
A18 • TUCSON & REGION
DEAR ABBY By Jeanne Phillips • Universal Press Syndicate
DEAR ABBY: My boss wants
my cell-phone number for
“work purposes.” He has trouble
with limits, and I am reluctant to
give it to him. I don’t want to re-
ceive text messages, unsolicited
calls or contact outside of work.
My private life is just that — pri-
vate.
Am I out of line? I realize
that many people use their cell
phones as their only phones
and others don’t mind receiv-
ing calls, but am I required to
do so?
I think this has upset my boss
even though I have explained my
reason. I don’t use my cell phone
on the job; it’s in my purse except
during personal time. Must I
give up my privacy to keep my
job? — WANTS PRIVACY
DEAR WANTS PRIVACY: As
long as your boss has your home
phone and can reach you in case
of some emergency, I see no rea-
son why he should be pressuring
you for your cell-phone number.
Murder of
woman draws
life sentence
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A handyman who murdered
an 89-year-old Sahuarita
woman was sentenced Thurs-
day to life in prison with release
possible after 25 years.
In Pima County Superior
Court, Judge John Leonardo
also gave Edward Terrazas Vil-
la an extra four years for bur-
glary and car theft, which will
be served consecutively with
the life sentence, Deputy
County Attorney Richard
Wintory said.
Villa was convicted last
month of first-degree murder
in the death of Robin Satinsky
and of stealing her car.
Wintory told jurors that
Satinsky was reported missing
in late October 2007 after wor-
ried family members and
friends couldn’t reach her for
several days.
Satinsky’s car was found in a
parking lot near South 12th Av-
enue and West Valencia Road in
Tucson on Nov. 7, and her body
was found seven months later
by a motorcyclist who broke
down south of Pima Mine
Road.
Satinsky was clothed only in
a nightgown and socks. Her
legs and mouth had been duct-
taped, and an autopsy revealed
she’d been strangled.
While investigating the case,
detectives learned Villa had
been doing work for Satinsky,
and he’d once been arrested for
stealing her car, although he
never had been prosecuted for
that.
In addition, they learned
Villa worked across the street
from where Satinsky’s car was
found, and his DNA was found
in the car. Artwork and tea
services belonging to Satinsky
were found in Villa’s storage
unit, Wintory said.
The prosecutor argued that
Villa killed Satinsky to cover up
the fact that he’d stolen her car
a second time.
Contact reporter Kim Smith at
573-4241or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
Man convicted in fatal DUI rearrested
By Kim Smith
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A 19-year-old who could re-
ceive probation next month in a
fatal DUI-related crash was ar-
rested early Wednesday morning
on suspicion of driving under the
influence and drug possession
charges.
A convenience-store clerk
called the Pima County Sheriff’s
Department early Wednesday
morning to report two underage
people were trying to buy alco-
hol, said Deputy Pima County
Attorney Heather Lane.
When a deputy tried to pull
the suspects’ car over in the
store’s parking lot, the driver re-
peatedly tried to evade him, but
the deputy was able to box the
car in, Lane said.
The passenger fled, but Miguel
Rodriguez, the driver, was taken
FOR THE LATEST ON UPCOMING CONCERTS
visit go.azstarnet.com/upcomingconcerts and go.azstarnet.com/upcomingconcerts_phoenix.
It’s a Tucson thing.
Friday, November 6, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Stick to your guns, and don’t
apologize for it.
DEAR ABBY: I’m a 16-year-
old girl whose parents have been
married for almost 19 years.
Mom started school two years
ago to become a nurse.
She has always been inde-
pendent, but since she went
back to school and is making her
own money, she wants to be
more free. Mom works eight to
12 hours a day. She leaves early
and comes home late. She never
stays for dinner, nor does she do
anything with us as a family
anymore. She used to work in
the same study as Dad, but she
moved upstairs.
Mom is seeing a marriage
counselor, and she wants a di-
vorce and to move away. She
promises she won’t see less of
us, but she will be more than a
half-hour away. She works non-
stop and is constantly going out
with her friends. I miss her, and I
COMMUNITY CALENDAR
TODAY
Chess club — Oro Valley Public Li-
brary, 1305 W. Naranja Drive. For
adults and serious youth players.
1-5 p.m. Nov. 6. Free. 229-5300.
Comin’ Home 20th anniversary
dinner — El Conquistador Country
Club, 10555 N. La Canada Road,
Oro Valley. Dinner, silent auction
and a surprise retired military
guest speaker. Organization pro-
vides assistance to homeless vet-
erans. Reservation deadline: Nov.
6. $60. 820-1622.
Great Beginnings Infant Care —
University Medical Center, 1501 N.
Campbell Ave. Learn how to take
care of a newborn, the milestones
to watch for in your baby’s devel-
opment, and the latest informa-
tion on home and car safety. 5-
7:30 p.m. Nov. 6. $15. 694-6667.
IONS monthly presentation — Mar-
shall Conference Center,Tucson
Medical Center, 5301 E. Grant Road.
“The Living Classroom: Teaching
and Collective Consciousness”by
Chris Bache, an award-winning
teacher, author and researcher. Pre-
sented by the Institute of Noetic
Sciences. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Nov. 6. $5
suggested donation. 798-6300.
Scarecrows in the Gardens —Tucson
Botanical Gardens,2150 N.Alvernon
Way.Handcrafted scarecrows of all
shapes and sizes.8:30 a.m.-4:30
p.m.Nov.6.Included in garden ad-
mission: $7; $3 kids. 326-9686.
Southwest American Indian art
lecture series — Morning Star
Traders, 2020 E. Speedway. 2 p.m.
Nov. 6. Free. 881-2112.
Urban Yarns at the Library — Joel D.
Valdez Main Library, 101 N. Stone
Ave. Bring your hooks, needles and
lunches. No instruction provided.
Noon-1 p.m. Nov. 6. Free. 791-4010.
SATURDAY
Annual Treasure House estate sale
— Plaza Palomino, Red Sky
RADAR VAN LOCATIONS
The city’s police radar van is sched-
uled to snap photographs of speed-
ers at these locations today, accord-
ing to the Tucson Police Department:
• 6 to 9:30 a.m.: In front of
Townsend Elementary School, in
the 2100 block of North Beverly
Avenue.
into custody, Lane said.
Rodriguez had cocaine with
him, and a breath test came back
positive for the presence of alco-
hol, Lane said.
Pima County Superior Court
Judge Deborah Bernini ordered
Rodriguez held without bond on
the new case Wednesday after-
noon and imposed a $200,000
bond in his old case, Lane said.
Rodriguez was convicted Oct.
30 of driving with an illegal drug in
his system and leaving the scene
after causing a fatal crash, but he
was allowed to remain free pend-
ing his Dec.11 sentencing hearing.
The charges stemmed from
the July 2008 death of Lenora
Florez, 45.
Rodriguez turned left in front
of Florez,causing her to crash into
him near Old Nogales Highway
and Old Vail Connection Road.
To subscribe, call 1-800-695-4492.
want my old mom back! Is there
any way I can stop her from go-
ing? Am I selfish for wanting her
to stay? — SHAKEN IN VIR-
GINIA
DEAR SHAKEN: You have my
sympathy. Your mother appears
to be so preoccupied with herself
that she has forgotten she’s a
mother. Under the circum-
stances, all of your feelings are
normal. Of course you want your
mother and your old life back,
and those feelings aren’t “self-
ish.”
While you can’t stop your
mother from leaving, you can
ask her if you can join her during
a couple of her therapy sessions
so you can air your feelings in a
safe environment and get some
of the answers you’re looking
for. You deserve some answers,
and you are old enough to hear
them.
Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or
P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Restaurant space, 2900 N. Swan
Road. Annual sale of upscale an-
tiques, furniture, silver, china, col-
lectibles and other decorative and
unique household treasure. 10
a.m.-3 p.m. Nov. 7. Free. 250-6680.
Writing Inspired by Butterflies —
Tucson Botanical Gardens, 2150 N.
Alvernon Way. Participants will
write memoir, essays, myth, poetry
or children's stories with author
Connie Spittler.Writers will then
share their work with the class. Pre-
registration required.Three ses-
sions. 10 a.m.-noon Nov. 7. $52; $45
TBG members. 326-9686, Ext. 19.
ShredFest 2009 — Better Business
Bureau of Southern Arizona, 434 S
Williams Blvd. This event gives res-
idents a secure way to recycle old
documents, and for the first time
collects old cell phones, comput-
ers, laptops, parts, peripherals and
office equipment. 9 a.m.-noon
Nov. 7. $10 suggested donation per
box of paper shredded. 888-6161.
Junior Scientist Kids Day — Univer-
sity Libraries Science-Engineering
Library, 744 N. Highland Ave.
Geared for elementary- and mid-
dle-school children. Hands-on, sci-
ence-related activity tables. 9:30
a.m.-1 p.m. Nov. 7. Free. 621-6375.
Adoption training — Southern Ari-
zona Center Against Sexual As-
sault, 1600 N. Country Club Road.
For professionals who serve
women who experience unintend-
ed pregnancies. 8:15 a.m.-1 p.m.
Nov. 7. Free. 327-2387.
Used-book sale — St. Philip’s In the
Hills Church, 4440 N. Campbell
Ave. Proceeds benefit the church
library. 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Nov. 7.
Free. 299-6421.
Computer class — Joel D. Valdez
Main Library, 101 N. Stone Ave. Top-
ics can include résumé writing, on-
line job searching, e-mail accounts
and more. Registration required. 10
a.m.-noon Nov. 7. Free. 594-5500.
More listings at dailystarcalendar.com
• 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: On East
29th Street between South Cray-
croft Road and South Swan Road.
• 1:30 to 4 p.m.: In front of Los Ami-
gos Elementary School, in the
2200 block of East Drexel Road.
• 4:30 to 8 p.m.: On East Broadway
near Santa Rita Avenue.
Florez, who was not wearing a
seat belt, died almost immedi-
ately.
Rodriguez left the scene and
was arrested about 45 minutes
after the crash.
The jury convicted Rodriguez
of having marijuana in his sys-
tem but acquitted him of driving
under the influence of marijua-
na. They also acquitted him on
drug-possession and drug-
paraphernalia charges.
Assistant Pima County Public
Defender CeCelia Valentine de-
clined to comment on Ro-
driguez’s new arrest.
When Bernini sentences Ro-
driguez, she could place him on
probation or give him up to five
years in prison.
Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241
or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Friday, November 13, 2009 NATION • A13

Plea deal Veteran reporter King to take Dobbs’ place at CNN

today in THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — CNN moved

porter King was the perfect
choice for the passionate, non-
King, whose Washington-based
program has no name yet.
the National Hispanic Media
Coalition. “That he is gone from

balloon
swiftly to replace Lou Dobbs in partisan reporting that CNN Dobbs was a CNN original who CNN is a great blessing and a
its nightly lineup with John King, wants for its image. King will be was one of the TV business’s great victory for our community.”
who said Thursday that all views leaving the Sunday political talk leading financial journalists be- CNN supported Dobbs, par-

boy hoax
would be welcome on his politi- show over which he has presided, fore taking on many other topics ticularly as the opinionated fare
cally oriented talk show when it creating another opening. post-9/11,and increasingly offer- boosted his ratings. But his show
debuts early next year. King will compete directly ing his own opinion. increasingly became inconsis-
Dobbs’ abrupt exit prompted a with another political hour, Lou Dobbs John King Hispanic groups charged that tent with CNN’s effort to present
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS victory lap by advocacy groups Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” on Abrupt exit Meaty fare Dobbs’ emphasis on illegal immi- itself as the down-the-middle
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — that had sought his ouster for out- MSNBC. (Shepard Smith’s gen- gration promoted an atmosphere alternative to Fox and MSNBC,
The parents accused of pulling spokenness, particularly on illegal eral-interest newscast on Fox ing more meaty fare than those of intolerance. and Klein pressured Dobbs to do
a spectacular hoax by report- immigration. But CNN President News Channel is the cable news of his competitors. “We had hundreds of thou- a straight newscast. Complicat-
ing that their 6-year-old son Jon Klein said their pressure had ratings leader in the time slot.) “Anybody who has a major sands of people who said, ing things was Dobbs’ new role
had floated away aboard a he- nothing to do with the decision. The CNN personality said he stake in a major topic will be in- ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Alex as a radio commentator, and the
lium balloon have agreed to Klein said veteran political re- hoped to establish a show offer- vited to be on the show,” said Nogales, president and CEO of personas were often confused.
plead guilty in a deal that could
send them both to jail but pro-
tect the wife from deportation.
Richard Heene is to plead
guilty today to attempting to
influence a public servant, a
felony,said his attorney,David
Lane.
Heene’s wife, Mayumi, a
Japanese citizen who could be
deported if convicted of more
serious charges, will plead
guilty to a lesser charge of false
reporting to authorities, a
misdemeanor.
Lane said the threat of de-
portation “fueled” negotia-
tions with prosecutors. An at-
torney for Mayumi Heene said
her immigration status was a
factor in reaching the deal but
would not comment further.
Prosecutors announced
criminal charges against the
couple Thursday.
The Oct. 15 saga gripped a
global audience, first with
fear for the safety of 6-year-
old Falcon Heene and then
with anger at his parents
when au-
thorities
accused
them of
perpetrat-
ing the
hoax to
drum up
Richard attention
Heene for a possi-
ble reality
show.
Lane
said the
deal does
not call for
removing
Falcon or
the cou-
Mayumi ple’s other
Heene two chil-
dren — ages
8 and 10 — from the parents’
custody.
The plea deal would spare
the Heenes the maximum jail
time, but Richard Heene could
still get up to 90 days and
Mayumi up to 60,Lane said.
Without the deal, the
charge against Richard Heene
carries a possible sentence of
two to six years in state prison
and a fine of up to $500,000.
The charge against his wife is
punishable by up to six
months in the county jail and
a fine up to $750.
Mayumi Heene’s attorney,
Lee Christian, said he expects
her to serve any jail time in a
work-release program that
would involve some deten-
tion and some time at home.
The parents still face a civil
investigation by the Federal
Aviation Administration.
Possible penalties range from
a letter of reprimand to a fine.
The balloon briefly forced
some planes to switch to a
different runway for takeoff
from the Denver airport.
Prosecutors said the
Heenes agreed to turn them-
selves in and went to court
Thursday to sign documents
promising to appear before a
judge today. They held hands
as they walked into the court-
house. Their children were
not with them.
Richard Heene also had a
booking photo taken at a
county jail and was released.
He would not comment.
Lane said prosecutors in-
sisted on a “package deal”
that required Richard Heene
to plead guilty to a felony so
Mayumi Heene could plead
guilty to a misdemeanor and
avoid deportation.
“He feels like he’s got to do
what he’s got to do to save his
wife from being deported,”
Lane said.
The Heenes are amateur
storm chasers and had twice
appeared on the ABC reality
show “Wife Swap.”
Former business partners
said Richard Heene wanted a
show of his own called “The
Science Detectives” or “The
Psyience Detectives.”
Richard Heene, 48, denied
the saga was a publicity stunt.
Two days later, deputies
questioned both parents sep-
arately, and authorities said
Mayumi Heene admitted the
incident was a hoax.

A20 • WORLD
AROUND THE
WORLD
BOLIVIA
Less rain, more sun
shrink Lake Titicaca
LA PAZ — Evaporation
blamed on global warming has
reduced Lake Titicaca, one of the
world’s highest navigable lakes,
to its lowest level since 1949, au-
thorities said Thursday.
Diminished rainfall and a rise
in solar radiation have in the past
four years led to critically low
water levels that now threaten
fish-spawning areas and plant
life, the Lake Titicaca Authority
said in a statement.
Titicaca’s waters have
dropped 2.65 feet since April and
flora and fauna are apt to be
damaged if they drop another
foot, the statement said.
Navy Capt. Jorge Ernesto Es-
pinoza told ATB television that
South America’s largest lake is
receding by about an inch a week.
ALASTAIR GRANT/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The lake, straddling Bolivia
and Peru at 12,493 feet elevation,
A MAN WITH STRONG FOLLICLES is a 3,240-square-mile oasis on
Manjit Singh breaks a Guinness world record by pulling a double-decker an arid high plain an hour’s drive
bus weighing 9.5 tons for 69.55 feet across Battersea Park in London from the Bolivian capital of La
with ribbons attached to his hair. Singh, 59, who set the mark Thursday, Paz.
previously had failed to break the record for pulling a double-decker About 2.6 million people de-
bus with his ears. pend on the lake for their suste-
nance.
FINAL1
BRAZIL
Amazon deforestation
down 46%, gov’t says
BRASILIA — Deforestation in
the Brazilian Amazon dropped
nearly 46 percent from August
2008 to July 2009 — the biggest
annual decline in two decades,
the government said Thursday.
Analysis of satellite imagery
by the National Institute for
Space Research shows an esti-
mated 2,705 square miles of for-
est were cleared during the 12-
month period, the lowest rate
since the government started
monitoring deforestation in
1988.
“The new deforestation data
represents an extraordinary and
significant reduction for Brazil,”
President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva said in a statement.
The numbers have been falling
since 2004. The government
credited its aggressive monitor-
ing and enforcement measures
for the drop, as well as its promo-
tion of sustainable activities in
the Amazon region, an area in
northern Brazil the size of the
U.S.west of the Mississippi River.
But Paulo Gustavo, environ-
mental policy director of Con-
servation International, said a
major factor is the drop in world
prices for beef, soy and other
products that drive people to
clear land for agriculture in the
rainforest.
¡ Friday, November 13, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
BRITAIN
Questioning of Blair
on war to be public
LONDON — Former Prime
Minister Tony Blair will be ques-
tioned publicly about the Iraq
war during Britain’s long-await-
ed inquiry into mistakes made
before and during the conflict,
the inquiry chairman said Friday.
Chairman John Chilcott said
Blair and other senior politicians
will be questioned early next
year on their roles and decisions
over the war.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown
announced in June that he would
hold an inquiry into the 2003
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He ini-
tially had said the hearings
would be private but changed his
stance after bereaved families
and anti-war campaigners said a
private inquiry would command
little confidence.
Chilcott, a former civil ser-
vant, said the first round of hear-
ings will start Nov. 24 and last
until February. He said senior of-
ficials and military officers
would give evidence first, and
politicians including Blair would
then be questioned.
NORWAY
World’s tallest man
has tasty company
OSLO — The world’s tallest
living man has unveiled the
world’s largest gingerbread man
at an Ikea outlet in Norway’s
capital, Oslo.
Guinness Book of World
Records spokeswoman Justine
Bourdariat said 8-foot-1-inch
Sultan Koesen of Turkey dis-
played the 1,435-pound biscuit.
Baked locally in the traditional
gingerbread-man shape, it beat
the previous gingerbread cookie
record of 1,307 pounds set in
2006 in Smithville, Texas.
Ikea spokesman Jan
Thommesen said Guinness Book
of World Records representative
Kelly Gerret awarded the furni-
ture store a world-record diplo-
ma Thursday as part of the pub-
lication’s World Records Day.
Koesen was declared the tallest
living man by the Guinness Book
in September.
AUSTRALIA
Extradition is OK’d
for alleged Nazi helper
ADELAIDE — The govern-
ment on Thursday approved the
extradition of an alleged Nazi
collaborator accused by Hungary
of a World War II killing.
Home Affairs Minister Bren-
dan O’Connor said Australia
takes war crimes seriously and
will not be a haven for criminals.
Australian citizen Charles
Zentai, 88, is accused by the
Hungarian government of being
one of three men who tortured
and killed a Jewish teenager in
Budapest in 1944 for failing to
wear a star identifying him as a
Jew.
Zentai, who emigrated to
Australia in 1950, says he is in-
nocent and was not even in Bu-
dapest at the time. He turned
himself in to Australian police in
the western city of Perth last
month after the Federal Court
ruled he was eligible for extradi-
tion.
FRANCE
Sarkozy: Nation has
‘no place for burqa’
PARIS — President Nicolas
Sarkozy says there is no place for
full face and body veils such as
the burqa, or for the debasement
of women, in France.
Sarkozy says all beliefs will be
respected in France but “be-
coming French means adhering
to a form of civilization, to val-
ues, to morals.”
Sarkozy said Thursday during
a speech on national identity
that “France is a country where
there is no place for the burqa.”
France has a large Muslim com-
munity but only a small minority
of French Muslim women wear
burqas, common in Afghani-
stan, or other face-covering
veils.
Sarkozy said in June that
burqas would not be welcome in
France. Since then a parliamen-
tary panel has been looking into
the possibility of banning them
in public.
RUSSIA
Research module
docks at space station
MOSCOW — A cargo ship has
delivered a Russian research
module to the International
Space Station.
Russia’s space agency said the
spacecraft carrying the Poisk
module docked with the orbital
station Thursday after a two-
day trip from Earth.
Poisk is Russian for “search.”
The space agency, Roskosmos,
said the small module will be
used for scientific research and
experiments once it is secured
and linked to the station with
communications cables. That
will require a spacewalk, sched-
uled for January.
The Russian-made module
can also serve as an additional
docking port.
The decade-old international
space station has expanded and
now has a crew of six. The cur-
rent crew includes two Russians,
two Americans, a Canadian and
a Belgian.
The Associated Press
 FINAL

ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, November 18, 2009 ¡ NATION • A11

CO2 output up despite economy, propelled by China

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS published in the journal Nature CO2 emissions rise
WASHINGTON — Pollution Geoscience. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions
typically declines during a reces- According to the study, the from the burning of fossil fuels and
sion. Not this time. 2008 emissions increase was production of cement rose 2 percent
Despite a global economic smaller than normal for this from 2007 and 2008.
slump, worldwide carbon diox- decade. Annual global pollution
ide pollution jumped 2 percent growth has averaged 3.6 percent. Countries’ change in carbon dioxide
last year, with most of the in- This year, scientists are forecast- emissions from 2007 to 2008, in
millions of tons
crease coming from China, ac- ing a nearly 3 percent reduction,
LARGEST INCREASE
cording to a study published on- despite China, because of the
China 490 million
line Tuesday. massive economic slowdown in
India 134
“The growth in emissions most of the world and in the
Russia 32
since 2000 is almost entirely United States. Saudi Arabia 32
driven by the growth in China,” The U.S. is still the biggest per Brazil 29
said study lead author Corinne capita major producer of man- South Africa 22
Le Quere of the University of made greenhouse gases, spewing South Korea 19
East Anglia. “It’s China and In- about 20 tons of carbon dioxide Indonesia 19
dia and all the developing coun- per person per year. The world Iran 15
tries together.” average is 5.3 tons, and China is Poland 10
Carbon dioxide emissions, the at 5.8 tons LARGEST DECREASE
chief man-made greenhouse Last year, U.S. emissions fell -192 U.S.
gas, come from the burning of by 3 percent, a reduction of -43 Europe*
coal, oil, natural gas, and also nearly 192 million tons of carbon -20 Australia
from the production of cement, dioxide. Overall European Union -19 Spain
which is a significant pollution emissions dropped by 1 percent. -10 Italy
factor in China. Worldwide The U.S. is still the No. 2 biggest -7 Finland
emissions rose 671 million more carbon polluter overall, emitting -7 U. Kingdom
tons from 2007 to 2008. Nearly more than the next four largest -7 Germany
polluting countries combined: -3 Denmark
three-quarters of that increase
-3 Czech Republic
came from China. India, Russia, Japan and Ger- * Includes 27 countries
The numbers are from the many. China has been No. 1 since THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak pushing past the United States in SOURCE: U.S. Department of AP Smoke rises from cooling towers at a coal-fired power plant in Kaifeng, in central China. Nearly three-quar-
Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Ridge National Laboratory and 2006. 11/18/09 ters of the worldwide increase in carbon dioxide emissions from 2007 to 2008 occurred in China.

TSA takes 6 years to draft Lead found in toys with Barbie, Disney logos
rule on repair-site security THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Jerry Brown has sent letters to sell it. Bell said the kit was an store shelves.”
WASHINGTON — Children’s Target, Wal-Mart and the other older product that passed safety The center did an initial round
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS copied the generally tight secu- toys carrying the Barbie and Dis- retailers who sold the seven tests in 2007, but the company of testing on products and sent
WASHINGTON — Eight rity programs in place in the ney logos have turned up with products, warning that chil- didn’t know it was still on store the ones singled out as having
years after the 9/11 attacks European Union, he said. high levels of lead in them, ac- dren’s goods on their store shelves. high lead to an independent lab-
brought a new focus on security So far there haven’t been any cording to a California-based shelves were found to contain il- Disney said the Tinkerbell oratory for additional testing and
at airplane maintenance facili- incidents involving U.S. airlin- advocacy group — a finding that legal levels of lead and should be necklace was tested by its licens- confirmation.
ties,and six years after Congress ers that have been tied to secu- may give consumers pause as pulled immediately. ee, Playmates Toys, before being The Consumer Product Safety
first required action, the gov- rity lapses at repair stations, they shop for the holiday season. The findings released Tuesday distributed — and that it com- Commission, which regulates
ernment still hasn’t tightened but experts said lack of security The Center for Environmental come about a year after a prod- plied with all federal and state toys and thousands of other
its vigilance. standards remains a glaring Health tested about 250 chil- uct safety law that ushered in consumer safety regulations. products, is looking into the
Concerned that terrorists concern. dren’s products bought at major strict limits on the amounts of The Center for Environmental matter.
might use a repair station to TSA spokesman Greg Soule retailers and found lead levels lead and chemicals allowed in Health in Oakland, Calif., said Commission Chairman Inez
sabotage airliners, Congress in said it took time for the agency that exceeded federal limits in products made for children 12 the Barbie toy was bought at Tenenbaum held a meeting with
2003 passed a law ordering the to craft a rule that takes into ac- seven of them. Lead can cause ir- years and younger. Congress Tuesday Morning and the Tin- parents and consumers Tues-
Transportation Security Ad- count the diversity of the 4,100 reversible brain damage. passed the law after a slew of re- kerbell jewelry was purchased at day in New York to praise the
ministration to come up with domestic and 700 foreign repair Among those with high lead calls of lead-tainted toys in 2007, Walgreens. The other products new safety protections provid-
security requirements for re- stations certified to work on levels: a Barbie Bike Flair Acces- including several Mattel-related the center said had high lead ed in the consumer law, known
pair facilities, and gave the U.S.-registered aircraft. The sory Kit and a Disney Tinkerbell recalls that involved more than 2 came from TJ Maxx, Sears, Wal- as CPSIA. She said lead recalls
agency eight months to do it. stations range from small busi- Water Lily necklace. The group million toys. Mart and Target. are down this year and that CP-
In 2007, after no rule had nesses that are miles from air- said it also found excessive lead in Mattel said it licensed the The center’s executive direc- SIA should give consumers
materialized, Congress again ports and work on specialized a Dora the Explorer Activity Tote, Barbie name to Bell Sports for tor, Michael Green, said parents greater confidence while shop-
passed a law ordering TSA to parts like seatbelts, to huge two pairs of children’s shoes, a the bike accessory kit found with “need to know that there are ping for toys during the holiday
put security requirements in hangars and warehouses inside boys belt and a kids poncho. high lead, but did not make or still some lead problems on season.
place within one year. That airport grounds. California Attorney General
deadline expired in August
2008.
This week, faced with a con-
gressional hearing Wednesday
on the issue, TSA finally posted
a proposed rule to its Web site
rather than wait for publication
in the Federal Register. Officials
acknowledged they wanted to
get it out ahead of the hearing.
It’s still not a done deal.
Industry and other interest-
ed parties will have 60 days to
comment on the proposal once
it’s published, and there is no
telling when it will take effect.
It’s not unusual for there to be a
gap of months or years between
the proposal of a regulation and
issuance of a final rule.
Aviation maintenance and se-
curity experts who reviewed
TSA’s proposal told The Associ-
ated Press that it prescribes the
kind of security program com-
mon in industry and throughout
government: A qualified securi-
ty program chief, photo identifi-
cation for employees, controlled
access to airplanes and parts, a
secure facility or property
perimeter and background
checks of employees.
“These (security) concerns
are not new, they have long
been known by the govern-
ment. Why it has taken so long
for them to act defies logic,”
said John Goglia, who was the
first Federal Aviation Adminis-
tration mechanic to serve on
the National Transportation
Safety Board.
TSA could have at anytime
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, November 18, 2009
ANALYSIS
Obama’s visit to China yields few concessions
By Charles Hutzler
and Jennifer Loven
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING — President Oba-
ma’s first visit to China under-
scored a shifting balance of pow-
er: two giants moving closer to
being equals.
In this week’s choreographed
show of U.S.-Chinese good will,
Obama’s pledge to treat China as
a trusted global partner won a
return promise of shared effort
on world troubles — but not
much else.
Standing stiffly together in
the Great Hall of the People after
a morning of talks, Obama and
President Hu Jintao talked ex-
pansively Tuesday of common
burdens and joint efforts on
global warming, nuclear disar-
mament, the anemic economy
and other big issues. They dealt
coolly with differences over hu-
man rights and trade, leaving
them out of public view or re-
served for coded language.
Their first formal summit fea-
tured none of the rancor that
spoiled many previous summits
between the nations.
But Obama went into the
meetings with a weaker hand
than most past presidents. The
battering that economic reces-
sion and wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have given U.S.
prestige is felt nowhere more
keenly than in a China that is
busily growing and accruing
global clout.
“The U.S. has a lot to ask from
China,” said Xue Chen, a re-
AROUND THE
NATION
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Byrd being honored
for record 56+ years
WASHINGTON — The Senate
is a resolutely superlative place,
so it was resolved that the august
body will open its session today
by saluting
Sen. Robert C.
Byrd, Con-
gress’ longest-
serving mem-
ber.
“I look for-
ward to serv-
Robert ing you for the
C. Byrd next 56 years
and 320 days,”
Byrd said in a statement marking
the occasion.
Byrd has cast more than
18,000 votes and, despite fragile
health that has kept him from
the Senate floor during much of
the year, has a nearly 98 percent
attendance record over the
course of his career.
Which, by Byrd’s count, has
spanned 20,774 days. Byrd’s
service today ties the record set
by Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz.,
who served from 1912 to 1969.
WYOMING
8-state gas pipeline
now fully operational
CHEYENNE — A 1,679-mile
pipeline crossing eight states is
now completed and funneling
natural gas from Wyoming and
Colorado to the eastern edge of
Ohio.
The long-awaited Rockies Ex-
press Pipeline became fully op-
erational Nov. 12 after the recent
completion of the final 195-mile
section between Warren and
Monroe counties in eastern
Ohio. The $6.8 billion pipeline
carries 1.8 billion cubic feet of
gas, enough to heat 4 million
homes, and took three years to
complete.
FLORIDA
Madoff’s Mercedes,
boats fetch $1M+
FORT LAUDERDALE — Dis-
graced financier Bernard Mad-
off’s yacht named Bull, two
smaller boats and a Mercedes-
Benz convertible were sold at
auction Tuesday for more than
$1 million combined.
Madoff’s 1969 Rybovich, a re-
stored 55-foot fishing boat, sold
for $700,000 to an unknown
buyer. A 38-foot Shelter Island
runabout named Sitting Bull
went for $320,000, and the 24-
foot Maverick center-console
Little Bull fetched $21,000. The
Mercedes, a 1999 model owned
by Ruth Madoff, sold for
$30,000.
The private auction was held
by the U.S. Marshals Service,
which seized Madoff’s property
and assets after his massive
Ponzi scheme was exposed. All
searcher on strategic affairs at
the Shanghai Institute for Inter-
national Studies. “On the other
hand, the U.S. has little to offer
China.”
Obama’s outreach here contin-
ued the type of pragmatic bridge-
building he has used in Europe
and the Middle East in hopes of
earning goodwill that will pro-
duce payoffs down the road.
In China, though, the chal-
lenge is of a different magnitude.
The Chinese government is
America’s biggest foreign credi-
tor, with $800 billion of federal
U.S. debt that gives it extraordi-
nary power in the relationship.
Its military buildup is rubbing up
against America’s influence in
Asia. And Beijing feels the global
recession, sparked by U.S. finan-
cial industry excesses, vindicates
its authoritarian leadership.
Gone are the days when a U.S.
president could come to China
expecting the release of a dissi-
dent or a trade concession as an
atmospheric sweetener. For
Obama, he not only didn’t get
that, but not one notable shift by
the Chinese toward U.S. posi-
tions in key areas such as cli-
mate, nuclear challenges in Iran
and North Korea, human rights
or monetary policy.
For Obama, going back home
from a weeklong Asia trip with
little more than hopes that he’s
laying groundwork for better co-
operation could sour, fast, on
Americans.He was elected in part
because of his promises to restore
the battered U.S.image abroad.
proceeds will benefit Madoff’s
wronged investors, and Madoff
himself is serving 150 years.
UTAH
Kidnapper of Smart
admits guilt, apologizes
SALT LAKE CITY — Seven
years after she was abducted at
knifepoint, Elizabeth Smart fi-
nally has an apology — and a
guilty plea — from one of her
kidnappers.
“I am so sorry, Elizabeth, for
all the pain and suffering I have
caused you and your family,”
Wanda Eileen Barzee, 64, said
Tuesday. “It is my hope that you
will be able to find it in your heart
to forgive me.”
The appeal
came minutes
after Barzee
pleaded guilty
to federal
charges of kid-
napping and
unlawful
Wanda Eileen transportation
Barzee of a minor in
federal court.
Smart, now 22, was 14 when
she was taken from the bedroom
of her Salt Lake City home,
sparking a search that riveted the
nation. Nine months later, in
March 2003, Barzee and her
now-estranged husband, Brian
David Mitchell, were arrested af-
ter they were spotted walking on
a suburban street with Smart.
PENNSYLVANIA
Letter from Lincoln
to boy, 8, goes on sale
PHILADELPHIA — A letter
President Abraham Lincoln
wrote to a boy whose friends
didn’t believe he had met the
commander in chief is being sold
in Philadelphia.
Lincoln sent the letter from the
to George Patten, 8, two weeks af-
ter his March 1861 inauguration.
The youngster had been mocked
by classmates for saying he’d met
Lincoln with his father, a journal-
ist. His teacher wrote Lincoln to
uncover the truth.
Instead, the president wrote
to the boy: “Whom it may con-
cern, I did see and talk with mas-
ter George Evans Patten, last
May, at Springfield, Illinois. Re-
spectfully, A Lincoln.”
The Raab Collection is offer-
ing the letter for $60,000.
WASHINGTON
Would-be ninja has
some learning to do
SEATTLE — Police say a man
who thought he was a ninja was
impaled on a metal fence when
he tried to leap over it.
An officer who was looking for
an assault victim nearby Monday
night heard the man screaming
for help. Police supported him to
prevent further injuries until
medics arrived and took him to a
hospital, where he was in serious
condition Tuesday.
Wire reports
President Obama listens to Chinese President Hu Jintao as they attend a state dinner reception Tuesday at
the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The presidents’ translators are behind them.
One sign, albeit small, that
people are growing weary with
Obama’s pragmatic humility
overseas: A mini-furor erupted in
the U.S. when he bowed to greet
the emperor of Japan in Tokyo on
Saturday. Conservative com-
mentators are calling it groveling
before a foreign leader.
The effect could stretch beyond
foreign affairs. Many Americans
Ford, Subaru, VW earn top safety marks
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Ford,
Subaru and Volkswagen sit
atop the insurance industry’s
annual list of the safest new
vehicles, according to a closely
watched assessment used by
car companies to lure safety-
conscious consumers to show-
rooms.
The Virginia-based Insur-
ance Institute for Highway
Safety awarded its “top safety
pick” on Wednesday to 19 pas-
senger cars and eight sport util-
ity vehicles for the 2010 model
year. The institute substantially
reduced the number of awards
compared with 2009 because of
tougher requirements for roof
strength.
Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo
unit received the most awards
with six, followed by five awards
apiece for Japanese automaker
Subaru and German automaker
Volkswagen AG and its Audi
unit.
Toyota Motor Corp., BMW
AG, Mazda Motor Corp. and
GOP attacks Web site on created stimulus jobs
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — The fed-
eral Web site that tracks spend-
ing from the Obama adminis-
tration’s $787 billion economic
stimulus program reports that
the program has created thou-
sands of jobs in congressional
districts that don’t exist, in-
cluding Arizona.
According to www.recov-
ery.gov, Arizona has 22 con-
gressional districts, including a
00 and an 86th. In reality, the
state has eight districts.
In total, the site said Arizona
has saved or created 12,300 jobs
with the federal funding. The
site lists most of the money go-
FDA says Prilosec, Nexium cut blood thinning by Plavix
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Federal
health officials said Tuesday a
popular variety of heartburn
medications can interfere with
the blood thinner Plavix, a drug
taken by millions of Americans
to reduce risks of heart attack
and stroke.
The Food and Drug Adminis-
tration said the stomach-
soothing drugs Prilosec and
Nexium cut in half the blood-
thinning effect of Plavix, known
generically as clopidogrel.
Regulators said the key ingre-
dient in the heartburn medica-
tions blocks an enzyme the
PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
still think of the U.S. as an unas-
sailable superpower and don’t
want presidents who make them
think otherwise. Problems in this
area could make it more difficult to
forge ahead with already divisive
health-care reforms, make bold
choices on a new strategy for the
drawn-out war in Afghanistan, or
get re-elected.
For China, Hu and other lead-
HOW THEY RATE
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety named 27 vehicles as winners
of their top safety pick award for the 2010 model year.
LARGE CARS
Buick LaCrosse
Ford Taurus
Lincoln MKS
Volvo S80
MIDSIZE CARS
Audi A3
Chevrolet Malibu (built after Oct.
2009)
Chrysler Sebring (four-door with
optional ESC)
Dodge Avenger
Mercedes C Class
Subaru Legacy
Subaru Outback
Volkswagen Jetta (four-door)
Volkswagen Passat (four-door)
Volvo C30
SOURCE: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. were
shut out in the annual review.
ing to the eight congressional
districts, but also lists 30 jobs
saved or created in the 15th Dis-
trict, which doesn’t exist.
California, according to the
Web site, has seven more con-
gressional districts than the 53 it
actually has, including a 99th
District. In South Carolina, the
site reported Tuesday evening,
$40.7 million in economic stim-
ulus funds have gone to seven
spurious congressional dis-
tricts, including 00 and 25.
South Carolina has six U.S.
House districts.
“The inaccuracies on recov-
ery.gov that have come to light
are outrageous,” said Rep. David
body needs to break down Plav-
ix, muting the drug’s full effect.
Procter & Gamble’s Prilosec
OTC is available over-the-
counter, while AstraZeneca’s
Nexium is only available with a
prescription.
“Patients at risk for heart at-
tacks or strokes who use clopi-
dogrel to prevent blood clots
will not get the full effect of this
medicine,” the agency said in a
statement.
Plavix is marketed by Sanofi-
Aventis and Bristol-Myers
Squibb. With global sales of
$8.6 billion last year, it’s the
world’s second-best selling
NATION & WORLD • A13
ers clearly delighted in the show
of face Obama gave them. Far
from crowing, however, Hu gave
Obama a respectful welcome by
soldiers in dress uniforms and
in-depth discussions that ran
overtime.
At a state banquet Tuesday
night, the People’s Liberation
Army band serenaded Obama,
Secretary of State Hillary Rod-
SMALL CARS
Honda Civic (four-door with op-
tional ESC, except Si)
Kia Soul
Nissan Cube
Subaru Impreza (except WRX)
Volkswagen Golf (four-door)
MIDSIZE SUVs
Dodge Journey
Subaru Tribeca
Volvo XC60
Volvo XC90
SMALL SUVs
Honda Element
Jeep Patriot (with optional side
thorax air bags)
Subaru Forester
Volkswagen Tiguan
The vehicles are selected for
best protecting motorists in
Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat
who chairs the House Appropria-
tions Committee. “The adminis-
tration owes itself, the Congress
and every American a commit-
ment to work night and day to
correct the ludicrous mistakes.”
Republican lawmakers were
more scathing Tuesday, with
some accusing the administra-
tion of a cover-up. No House Re-
publicans and only three GOP
senators voted for the stimulus
bill, which President Obama
signed into law on Feb.17.
“The government Web site
charged with reporting waste,
fraud and abuse is its very own
worst offender,” said Rep. Joe
drug behind Pfizer’s cholesterol
drug Lipitor.
Because Plavix can upset the
stomach, it is often prescribed
with stomach acid-blocking
drugs.
The FDA says patients who
need to reduce their acid should
take drugs from the H-2 blocker
family, which include Johnson &
Johnson’s Mylanta and
Boehringer Ingelheim’s Zantac.
FDA scientists say there is no
evidence those drugs interfere
with Plavix’s anti-blood clot-
ting action.
Nexium and Prilosec are part
of a class of drugs known as
ham Clinton and much of the
Chinese leadership with Ameri-
can songs including “I Just
Called to Say I Love You” and
“We Are the World.”
The joint statement that Oba-
ma and Hu issued was the
broadest of its kind in 30 years of
formal relations. It contained
expressions of cooperation in re-
lations between their two often-
mistrustful militaries, on a hu-
man-rights dialogue, on space
exploration and on shoring up
Afghanistan and Pakistan — as
well as the big topics of climate
change, economic recovery and
defanging North Korea’s and
Iran’s nuclear programs.
Chinese leaders, however, are
wary of Obama’s charisma.
Though they prevented a na-
tionwide broadcast and cen-
sored Web transcripts of a
meeting Monday he held with
Chinese students in Shanghai,
students who attended said they
found Obama and his rise to the
presidency inspiring. Bloggers
cheered his appeal against cen-
sorship of the Internet.
“It’s wonderful to have the
President Obama here,” Lu
Hualin, a middle-age office ad-
ministrator in Beijing’s business
district, said Tuesday. “I didn’t
watch the town hall, but it’s
pretty obvious that the Chinese
really like him for the energy, in-
tellect and charisma he brings to
the conversation. I think we’ll
welcome anyone who has an
agenda to better the world and
work toward world peace.”
front, side and rear crash tests
based on institute evaluations
during the year. The vehicles are
required to have electronic sta-
bility control to qualify for the
award. Earlier this year, the in-
stitute said vehicles would need
to receive its highest score in its
roof-strength evaluation to
qualify the safety pick designa-
tion.
“With the addition of our
roof-strength evaluation, our
crash test results now cover all
four of the most common kinds
of crashes,” said institute presi-
dent Adrian Lund. “Consumers
can use this list to zero in on the
vehicles that are on the top rung
for safety.”
The institute awarded its top
prize to 94 vehicles in 2009
and attributed the decline in
awards this year to the roof-
strength requirement. The
Honda Accord and Ford Fusion
both dropped off the list be-
cause 2010 versions didn’t earn
high-enough scores on the roof
test.
Wilson of South Carolina.
The White House didn’t re-
spond to repeated requests for
comment.
Ed Pound, a spokesman for
the Recovery Accountability
and Transparency Board, told
ABC News that human error
caused the mistakes.
“We report what the recipi-
ents submit to us,” he said, ac-
cording to ABC.
Computer experts ques-
tioned that explanation, how-
ever, noting that many of the
Web site’s state links included a
District 00, suggesting that
there was a technical glitch in
how the data were received.
proton pump inhibitors, but
FDA regulators said they don’t
have enough information to say
whether other drugs in that
class shouldn’t be used with
Plavix.
The FDA said the warnings
on Plavix have been strength-
ened based on a 150-patient
study submitted by Sanofi over
the summer.
But some consumer advo-
cates said the agency’s action
fell short, arguing that regula-
tors should have placed the in-
formation in a “black box”
warning label, the most serious
available.

ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Soldiers of the South Carolina National Guard patrol a village south of Kabul, Afghanistan. President Obama is ready to spell out his plans for
prosecuting the war, saying he is confident the American public will support a troop increase likely to number in the tens of thousands.
Obama: US will back Afghan increase
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — War-
weary Americans will support
more fighting in Afghanistan
once they understand the perils
of losing, President Obama de-
clared Tuesday, announcing he
was ready to spell out war plans
virtually sure to include tens of
thousands more U.S. troops.
He is expected to make his
case to the nation in a Tuesday
night televised speech, even as
the military completes plans to
begin sending in reinforcements
in the spring.
Eight years after the Sept. 11
attacks led the U.S. into Af-
ghanistan, Obama said it is still
in America’s vital national in-
terest to “dismantle and de-
stroy” al-Qaida terrorists and
extremist allies. “I intend to fin-
ish the job,” he said.
Obama said he would an-
nounce after Thanksgiving his
decision on additional troops.
Republican critics have been
pressing him for months to de-
cide on the next step in Af-
ghanistan, but Obama has said
repeatedly that he is more con-
cerned with making a decision
that is right rather than quick.
With U.S. combat deaths
climbing on Obama’s watch and
SC lawmakers begin road to impeachment
THE NEW YORK TIMES
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Over the
protests of Gov. Mark Sanford’s
lawyers,South Carolina lawmak-
ers on Tuesday began the prelim-
inary steps of a process that could
lead to the governor’s impeach-
ment and removal from office.
A subcommittee of the House
Judiciary Committee, made up
of four Republicans and three
Democrats, held its first meeting
to review a resolution to impeach
the governor for secretly leaving
the state in June to see a woman
in Argentina with whom he was
having an extramarital affair.
Official: Census taker found hanging killed self
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Ken-
tucky census worker found
naked, bound with duct tape and
hanging from a tree with “fed”
scrawled on his chest killed him-
self but staged his death to make
it look like a homicide, authori-
ties said Tuesday.
Bill Sparkman, 51, was found
strangled Sept. 12 with a rope
around his neck near a cemetery
in a heavily wooded area of the
Daniel Boone National Forest in
southeastern Kentucky. Author-
ities said his wrists were loosely
bound, his glasses were taped to
his head and he was gagged.
US TOLL IN
AFGHANISTAN
• Deaths: 845
• Wounded: 4,564
Latest identifications
• Spc. Jason A. McLeod, 22, of
Crystal Lake, Ill.; assigned to
the 704th Brigade Support Bat-
talion, 4th Brigade Combat
Team, 4th Infantry Division,
Fort Carson, Colo.
• Staff Sgt. Matthew A. Pucino,
34, of Cockeysville, Md.; as-
signed to the 2nd Battalion,
20th Special Forces Group of
the Maryland Army National
Guard in Glen Arm, Md.
• Sgt. James M. Nolen, 25, of
Alvin, Texas; and Pfc. Marcus A.
Tynes, 19, of Moreno Valley,
Calif.; both assigned to the 2nd
Battalion, 508th Parachute In-
fantry Regiment, 4th Brigade
Combat Team, 82nd Airborne
Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
SOURCE: Department of Defense
more than half the American
public opposed to escalation,
the president seemed to ac-
knowledge Tuesday that he has
a lot to explain.
Members voted unanimously Sanford released the full ethics
to broaden the review to include complaint and a lengthy legal
37 ethics charges that
accuse the governor of
misusing state aircraft
for personal or political
reasons, repeatedly vi-
olating a policy that
requires officials to use
coach-class tickets,
and misappropriating
campaign funds. Mark
In a separate action, Sanford
the state ethics com-
mission will hold hearings on the egregious offenses would lead to
37 allegations early next year. impeachment, and not merely
The night before the meeting, personal moral failings, neglect
Kentucky State Police Capt.
Lisa Rudzinski said an analysis
found that “fed” was written
“from the bottom up.” He was
touching the ground, and to
survive “all Mr. Sparkman had
to do at any time was stand up,”
she said.
Authorities said Sparkman
was not under the influence of
any drugs or alcohol at the time
of his death. His clothes were
found in the bed of his nearby
pickup truck.
“Our investigation, based on
evidence and witness testimo-
ny, has concluded that Mr.
Sparkman died during an inten-
¡ NATION & WORLD • A13
DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
“I feel very confident that
when the American people hear
a clear rationale for what we’re
doing there and how we intend
to achieve our goals, that they
will be supportive,” he said,
speaking at a White House news
conference with Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh.
“I can tell you, as I’ve said be-
fore, that it is in our strategic in-
terest, in our national security
interest, to make sure that al-
Qaida and its extremist allies
cannot operate effectively” in
the area, he said. “We are going
to dismantle and degrade their
capabilities and ultimately dis-
mantle and destroy their net-
works. And Afghanistan’s sta-
bility is important to that
process.”
Military officials expect an in-
fusion of 32,000 to 35,000
troops to begin in February or
March, the largest expansion
since the beginning of the war
and one that could bring the cost
above $75 billion annually.
Obama held his 10th war-
council meeting Monday
evening, and officials said it was
his last.The Situation Room ses-
sions that began in September
were the most visible markers of
a debate inside the administra-
review of the impeach-
ment process, in which
his lawyers said neither
the secret trip nor the
ethics charges were
grounds for impeach-
ment. The state consti-
tution’s standard of
“serious crimes or seri-
ous misconduct in of-
fice” seeks “to make
sure only the most
tional, self-inflicted act that
was staged to appear as a homi-
cide,” Rudzinski said.
Sparkman’s mother, Henrie
Sparkman of Inverness, Fla.,
bristled at the conclusion: “I
disagree!” she wrote in an
e-mail to The Associated Press.
Authorities said Sparkman
alone manipulated the suicide
scene, which was so elaborate
that a man who discovered the
body was convinced Sparkman
was murdered.
FINAL K
tion about how to address a
resurgent Taliban and other in-
surgents and whether the U.S. is
creating its own enemies the
longer it remains.
War commander Gen. Stan-
ley McChrystal has warned that
the war risks failure without a
large troop infusion. Although
he preferred a higher figure —
about 40,000 — McChrystal is
expected to tell Congress next
week that this lesser addition
still gives him the tools to better
combat insurgents.
The Afghan war bill hit $43
billion annually this summer,
with the 21,000 forces Obama
has already added to the fight
this year. The White House has
given Congress this rough yard-
stick for future troop increases:
About $1 billion a year for each
1,000 troops atop the current
record figure of 68,000.
NATO and other allies collec-
tively have 45,000 troops.
If the full expansion that U.S.
military planners anticipate
does happen, it would take up to
two years to get all the addition-
al U.S. forces into the land-
locked country.
The United States is quietly
pressing NATO and other allies
to increase forces as well.
of duty or a temporary absence
from the state,” they said.
But the lawmaker who drafted
the resolution, state Rep. F. Gre-
gory Delleney Jr.,said no crime is
necessary to impeach an official
for serious misconduct.
“Impeachment is a political
process — it’s not a legal process,”
Delleney, a Republican, told the
other members of the subcom-
mittee.
“The South Carolina House of
Representatives alone defines
what meets the constitutional
threshold of serious misconduct
in office,” Delleney said.
Rudzinski said Sparkman
“told a credible witness that he
planned to commit suicide and
provided details on how and
when.”
Authorities said Sparkman
talked about it a week before his
suicide and the person did not
take him seriously.
Sparkman also had recently
taken out two accidental life in-
surance policies totaling
$600,000 that would not pay
out for suicide, authorities said.
AROUND THE
WORLD
MEXICO
Astronaut set to help
start a space agency
MEXICO CITY — A NASA as-
tronaut says he wants to help
Mexican officials start the coun-
try’s first space agency.
Astronaut Jose Hernandez
says he has no plans to leave his
job at NASA, but hopes to help
Mexico’s program get off the
ground.
Hernandez, the U.S.-born son
of Mexican migrant farm work-
ers who spent much of his child-
hood moving between Mexico
and the U.S., lobbied for a space
program in meetings with Mexi-
can lawmakers Tuesday. Legis-
lators have set aside 10 million
pesos ($775,000) for the Mexi-
can Space Agency in next year’s
budget, but the program has not
yet been officially established.
RUSSIA
Joint Chiefs chairman
in arms-control talks
GENEVA — President Oba-
ma’s top military adviser attend-
ed the latest talks with Russia to
replace an expiring Cold War-
era arms-control agreement, the
U.S. said Tuesday.
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met
with Russian officials from Sun-
day to Tuesday, U.S. spokesman
in Geneva Michael Parmly said.
Obama and Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev want to con-
clude a new treaty by Dec. 5,
when the 1991 START I accord
cutting nuclear arsenals expires.
BOLIVIA
5 cocaine labs seized
in Indian village
LA PAZ — Bolivian police say
they have busted five cocaine
labs and arrested two people in a
remote Indian village after a
confrontation in which an offi-
cer was shot.
Maj. Alex Alfaro says Indians
in Qaqachaca village held police
at bay with dynamite blasts, al-
lowing some to escape. One offi-
cer was wounded in the leg.
IRAQ
Google documenting
Iraq national museum
BAGHDAD — Google is docu-
menting Iraq’s national museum
and will post photographs of its
UN chief Ban to world’s men:
End violence against women
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS — Secre-
tary-General Ban Ki-moon
launched a Network of Men
Leaders Tuesday to act as role
models in the global campaign to
end the “pandemic” of violence
against women.
Ban said it is unacceptable
that about 70 percent of women
experience some form of physi-
cal or sexual violence from men
— “the majority from their hus-
bands, intimate partners or
someone they know.”
He urged men, young and old
and around the world, to join the
network and pledge to work to
end violence against women and
girls wherever it occurs, from the
home to war zones.
The secretary-general said
men “have a crucial role” be-
cause they are a major part of the
problem and are key to the solu-
tion.
Unless men change their atti-
tudes and behavior, he warned,
“violence against women will
continue.”
Ban spoke at a commemora-
tion of today’s 10th anniversary
of the International Day for the
Elimination of Violence Against
Women and at a news confer-
ence.
He was joined by several
ancient treasures on the Internet
early next year, Google chief Eric
Schmidt announced Tuesday.
The museum was ransacked in
the chaotic aftermath of Saddam
Hussein’s ouster in April 2003,
and only reopened to visitors
early this year. Schmidt, who
toured the museum with U.S.
Ambassador Christopher Hill on
Tuesday, said it was important
for the world to see Iraq’s rich
heritage and contribution to
world culture.
“The history of the beginning
of — literally — civilization is
made right here and is preserved
here in this museum,” Schmidt
said at a ceremony attended by
Iraqi officials.
BRAZIL
New power outage
hits posh Rio areas
BRASILIA — Rio de Janeiro’s
posh beach neighborhoods lost
power for hours in sweltering
summer weather Tuesday,
prompting restaurants to toss
out spoiled food and business
owners to send their employees
home.
The outage came two weeks
after a massive blackout left
more than 60 million people in
the dark and raised questions
about the nation’s ability to host
the 2014 World Cup and the 2016
Olympic Games in Rio.
Light SA, which supplies elec-
tricity to the city of 6 million,
said only 12,000 clients were af-
fected starting before dawn in
the tony Rio district of Leblon.
But lights were also out in Co-
pacabana, Ipanema and Lagoa;
all told, the four neighborhoods
have more than 250,000 resi-
dents and are key tourist desti-
nations.
The power company said the
outage began when it cut off
power to fix a problem with an
underground cable.
ITALY
Mafia boss who faked
paralysis is rearrested
ROME — A convicted Mafia
boss who got out of jail by faking
paralysis and anorexia has been
arrested at a restaurant after
more than two months on the
run, police in Sicily said Tuesday.
Officers arrested Carmelo Di
Stefano on Monday as he dined
at a seaside village near the Sicil-
ian city of Catania, which he had
reached behind the wheel of a
sports car.
The Associated Press
ON THE NET
endviolence.un.org
members of the new network
and activists campaigning to end
violence against women.
The secretary-general said he
is “encouraged by the momen-
tum” of the campaign he
launched in 2008 but felt that as
a son, husband, father and
grandfather it was essential to
launch “a dedicated Network of
Men Leaders.”
Men must teach one another
that real men do not violate or
oppress women — and that a
woman’s place is not just in the
home or in the fields but in
schools, offices and boardrooms,
Ban said in a statement.
That view was echoed in a
video message from Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, the South
African Nobel peace laureate and
one of the 14 initial members of
the network, who decried the
many forms of violence against
women and girls including traf-
ficking, child marriage and do-
mestic abuse.
“You are a weak man if you use
your physical superiority to as-
sault and brutalize women,”
Tutu warned.
A14 • WORLD
MUSLIMS IN PRAYER
Pilgrims pray near the Hiraa cave on the outskirts of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. According to tradition, Islam’s Prophet Mohammed received his first
message to preach Islam when he was praying in the cave.
Claim coma survivor ‘speaks’ is doubted
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRUSSELS — With a care-
taker holding his hand, a Belgian
man who was diagnosed as
comatose for 23 years typed out
a message Tuesday that he felt
reborn after decades of loneli-
ness and frustration.
A leading bioethicist, howev-
er, expressed skepticism that
the man was truly communi-
cating on his own.
Car-crash victim Rom
Houben was diagnosed as being
in a vegetative state but appears
to have been conscious the
whole time, doctors here said.
An expert using a specialized
type of brain scan that was not
available in the 1980s says he fi-
nally realized Houben was con-
scious and provided him with
the equipment to communicate.
Assisted by a speech therapist
who rapidly moved his finger
letter by letter along a touch-
screen keyboard, Houben told
AP Television News that years of
being unable to move or com-
municate left him feeling
“alone, lonely, frustrated, but
also blessed with my family.”
The therapist, Linda Wouters,
told APTN that she can feel
Houben guiding her hand with
gentle pressure from his fingers,
Canada reports some bad reactions to H1N1 shots of deadly baby formula
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON — Canadian doc-
tors have been advised not to
use a batch of 170,000 doses of
H1N1 flu vaccine while authori-
ties investigate reports of aller-
gic reactions among recipients,
drug maker GlaxoSmithKline
PLC said Tuesday.
Authorities routinely moni-
tor vaccines for any signals of
problems, such as the allergic
reactions that do occur, rarely,
every year.
Company spokeswoman
Gwenan White said that Glaxo-
SmithKline advised medical
Rom Houben uses his touchscreen and assistance from speech thera-
pist Linda Wouters to communicate during an interview.
and that she feels him objecting
when she moves his hand toward
an incorrect letter.
“It was especially frustrating
when my family needed me. I
could not share in their sorrow.
We could not give each other
support,” Houben wrote during
the interview.
“Just imagine. You hear, see,
feel and think but no one can see
that. You undergo things. You
China executes 2 in case
staff in Canada last week to re-
frain from using one batch of
the vaccine while they look into
reports that that it might have
caused more allergic reactions
than normal.
“One batch has seen a slight-
ly increased rate of anaphylax-
is,” she said. Anaphylaxis is a
life-threatening type of allergic
shock.
Six people in Canada had
suffered an allergic reaction,
said Tim Vail, the spokesman
for Canada’s health minister.
The batch contained about
170,000 doses. It was not im-
YVES LOGGHE / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
cannot participate in life.”
Arthur Caplan, a bioethics
professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, said he is skeptical
of Houben’s ability to communi-
cate after seeing video of his hand
being moved along the keyboard.
“That’s called ‘facilitated
communication,’ ” Caplan said.
“That is ouija board stuff. It’s
been discredited time and time
again. When people look at it,
mediately clear how many had
been administered, although
Vail said the majority had been.
GlaxoSmithKline said it has
distributed a total of 7.5 million
doses of the vaccine across
Canada.
“We’re not seeing any thing
wild or spooky or crazy about
our vaccine at all,” Vail said, ar-
guing that it may have been a
statistical anomaly that the re-
actions occurred.
The vaccine chief of the World
Health Organization, Marie
Paule Kieny, said Monday that
the number of people who went
HASSAN AMMAR / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
it’s usually the person doing the
pointing who’s doing the mes-
sages, not the person they claim
they are helping.”
Caplan also said the state-
ments Houben allegedly made
with the computer seem unnat-
ural for someone with such a
profound injury and an inability
to communicate for decades.
Asked how he felt when his
consciousness was discovered,
Houben responded through the
aide that: “I especially felt relief.
Finally be able to show that I
was indeed there.”
“Just like with a baby, it hap-
pens with a lot of stumbling,” he
wrote.
The doctor who discovered
that Houben had been wrongly
diagnosed said that he is re-ex-
amining dozens of other cases.
Dr. Steven Laureys said he has
discovered some degree of con-
sciousness using state-of-the-
art equipment in other patients
but won’t say how many. He
looks at about 50 cases from
around the world a year but none
are as extreme as that of Rom
Houben, who was fully con-
scious inside a paralyzed body.
Many center on the fine distinc-
tion between a vegetative state
and minimal consciousness.
into anaphylactic shock after
getting the vaccine in Canada
was “a bit higher than normal”
but that the numbers were still
small. She said Canadian au-
thorities are investigating the
components of the vaccine to see
if there might be a problem with
any of them.
GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s
second largest drug maker by
revenue, is investigating only
the one batch of its swine flu
vaccine in Canada. White said
no other doses of its swine flu
vaccine around the world are
affected.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Saddam’s ouster
sought in 2001,
UK panel hears
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON — An inquiry into
Britain’s role in the Iraq war
kicked off Tuesday with top gov-
ernment advisers testifying that
some Bush administration offi-
cials were calling for Saddam
Hussein’s ouster as early as 2001
— long before sanctions were ex-
hausted and two years before the
U.S.-led invasion.
Critics hope the hearings,
which will call ex-Prime Minister
Tony Blair and are billed as the
most sweeping inquiry into the
conflict, will expose alleged de-
ception in the buildup to fight-
ing. However, they won’t estab-
lish criminal or civil liability.
As the inquiry began, a small
group of anti-war protesters
gathered near Parliament. Three
wore face masks of George Bush,
Blair and Prime Minister Gordon
Brown — their hands and faces
covered in fake blood.
“Five years we’ve waited for
this, and finally we’re getting
somewhere,” said Pauline Gra-
ham, 70, who traveled from the
Scottish city of Glasgow to see the
hearings. Her grandson Gordon
Gentle,19,was killed in the south-
ern Iraqi city of Basra in 2004.
Sir Peter Ricketts, who was
chairman of Britain’s Joint Intel-
ligence Committee in 2001, said
Britain had hoped for a strength-
ened policy of containment — re-
ducing the threat posed by Iraq
through sanctions, weapons in-
spections and security measures.
The strategy had been in place
since the 1991 Gulf War when
Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.
But Ricketts said some in the
Bush administration had a dif-
ferent vision.
“We were conscious that there
were other voices in Washing-
ton, some of whom were talking
about regime change,” Ricketts
said, citing an article written by
national security adviser Con-
doleezza Rice warning that
nothing would change in Iraq
until Saddam was gone.
The panel will question dozens
of officials over the next year —
including military officials and
spy agency chiefs. It will also seek
evidence but not testimony from
ex-White House staff.
Bereaved families and activists
have long called for an inquiry
into the U.S.-led war that left 179
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING — China executed a
dairy farmer and a milk salesman
Tuesday for their roles in the sale
of contaminated baby formula —
severe punishments that Beijing
hopes will assuage public anger,
reassure importers and put to
rest one of the country’s worst
food safety crises.
The men were the only people
put to death in a scheme to boost
profits by lacing milk powder
with the industrial chemical
melamine; 19 other people were
convicted and received lesser
sentences. At least six children
US TOLL IN IRAQ
• Deaths: 4,368
• Wounded: 31,572
Latest identifications
• Sgt. Briand T. Williams, 25, of
Sparks, Ga.; assigned to the 1st
Battalion, 10th Field Artillery
Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade
Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Di-
vision, Fort Benning, Ga.
SOURCE: Department of Defense. Deaths as
of Tuesday. Wounded as of Tuesday.
British soldiers dead and trig-
gered massive public protests.
The Labour-led government lost
a significant share of parliamen-
tary seats because of the war.
But with no lawyers on the
panel, few believe the inquiry
will answer one of the most basic
questions — whether the war
was legal.
Blair will be questioned on
whether he secretly backed U.S.
President George W. Bush plan’s
for invasion a year before Parlia-
ment authorized military in-
volvement in 2003.
“There were no weapons of
mass destruction and we know
that, so what are we going to get
out of this?” asked Mabel Saili, a
49-year-old office administra-
tor.“It’s too little too late.”
Led by a panel appointed by
Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
the inquiry can only offer repri-
mand and recommendations in
hope mistakes won’t be repeated
in the future.
In the United States, the 9/11
Commission examined some is-
sues around prewar intelligence,
and a Senate select committee
identified failures in intelligence
gathering in a July 2004 report on
prewar intelligence assessments.
But the Iraq inquiry is envi-
sioned to be a comprehensive look
at the war. Brown set up the in-
quirytoaddresspublic criticism of
three key aspects of the conflict:
the case made for war; the plan-
ning for the invasion; and the fail-
ureto prepare for reconstruction.
Any significant findings could
pose embarrassing questions for
the government ahead of a gen-
eral election next year. Both the
Labour Party and the opposition
Conservatives voted for the in-
vasion.
died after drinking the adulter-
ated formula, and more than
300,000 were sickened.
Beijing is eager to show it has
responded swiftly and compre-
hensively to eliminate problems
in its food-production chain that
have spawned protests at home
and threatened its export-reliant
economy. The milk powder con-
tamination struck a nerve with
the public because so many chil-
dren were affected,but it was only
one in a series of product recalls
and embarrassing disclosures of
lax public-health safeguards.
Melamine, which is used to
make plastics and fertilizers, has
also been found added to pet
food, eggs and fish feed, al-
though not in levels dangerous to
humans. The chemical, which is
high in nitrogen, fooled inspec-
tors. It can cause kidney stones
and kidney failure.
China has tightened regula-
tions and increased inspections
on producers and exporters in
cooperation with U.S. officials,
who have noted a drop in the
number of product recalls on
Chinese exports.
But Beijing continues to
struggle to regulate small and il-
legally run operations, often
blamed for introducing chemi-
cals and additives into the food
chain. The country has 450,000
registered food production and
processing enterprises, but
many — about 350,000 — em-
ploy just 10 people or fewer. The
U.N. said in a report last year
that the small enterprises pres-
ent many of China’s greatest
food-safety challenges.
Zhang Yujun, the farmer, was
executed for endangering public
safety, and Geng Jinping for pro-
ducing and selling toxic food,
according to the official Xinhua
News Agency.

ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Sexual
offender
mandate
ignored
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA — More than
three years after Congress or-
dered stepped-up monitoring
of sex offenders, only one
state has adopted the govern-
ment’s strict new require-
ments, and some others are
weighing whether to ignore
the law and just pay a penalty.
So far, Ohio is the lone state
to meet the new federal stan-
dards. Elsewhere, efforts have
been hampered by high costs
and legal challenges from the
nation’s 686,000 registered
sex offenders. Advocates
worry that the delays are put-
ting public safety at risk.
“This means more of the
same — that we’re losing sex
offenders when they cross
state lines and disappear,” said
Erin Runnion, who lobbied for
the law after her 5-year-old
daughter, Samantha, was kid-
napped and killed in 2002.
“It’s incredibly frustrating.
How many children do we
have to lose to repeat sex of-
fenders before we start taking
these guys seriously?”
The initial deadline for
states to comply was in July.
Then the deadline was ex-
tended to July 2010, although
several states have signaled
they may still be unable to
meet it. States that do not
adopt the mandates risk los-
ing millions of dollars in fed-
eral grants.
The law was designed to
keep closer tabs on sex of-
fenders, including an esti-
mated 100,000 who are not
living where they are sup-
posed to be. It would create a
national sex offender registry
and toughen penalties for
those who fail to register.
The president of the Na-
tional Center for Missing and
Exploited Children said states
need more money to adopt
the law, and he called on Con-
gress to help.
“We understand that there
are challenges in becoming
compliant, but the greatest
challenge is that states are
overwhelmed. And they’re
going to need resources to ad-
dress this,” Ernie Allen said.
Last year, a federal judge in
Nevada declared the law un-
constitutional because it
would subject offenders to
additional penalties after
they have served their time.
The Ohio Supreme Court
heard similar arguments last
month from more than
26,000 sex offenders who
were convicted before the law
was signed.
Critics have also com-
plained that juvenile offend-
ers would appear on registries
in some states. And because
the law requires offenders to
register in person, it could
unfairly burden people in ru-
ral areas who would have far
to travel.
In addition to the legal
challenges, states are also
struggling with the cost,
which could climb into the
millions of dollars.
“We have states being very
laid back, and states where
legislators are pulling out
their hair trying to comply,”
said Alisa Klein of the Associ-
ation for the Treatment of
Sexual Abusers. “And there’s
lots of states waiting for an-
other state to bust a move and
say, ‘We’re not going to com-
ply.’ ”
STORM LEAVES SNOW FOR PLAY IN ALAMOGORDO
Veronica Smith, 7, rolls a giant snowball around her front yard in Alamogordo, N.M. A wintry storm swept over
southeastern New Mexico Monday, leaving plenty of snow for Veronica on Tuesday.
Heated Senate debate tackles
health bill’s effect on Medicare
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — A Republi-
can senator asserted Tuesday
during a rancorous floor debate
that President Obama’s health-
care overhaul will shorten the
lives of America’s seniors by cut-
ting Medicare.
“I have a message for you:
You’re going to die sooner,” said
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., an
obstetrician-turned-lawmaker.
A senior Democrat decried
such comments as scare tactics
designed to kill legislation that
he said would improve some
benefits for seniors. At times, the
debate recalled the raw charges
and countercharges of the sum-
mer’s town-hall meetings.
Finance Committee Chairman
Max Baucus, D-Mont., defended
the health-care legislation, say-
ing it would make Medicare a
smarter buyer and improve pre-
scription coverage and preven-
tive benefits for seniors.
“I hate to say it … these are
scare tactics,” Baucus said.
“Sometimes you’ve got to call a
spade a spade.”
The Senate was debating an
amendment by Sen. John Mc-
Cain, R-Ariz., that would re-
move from the bill more than
$400 billion in Medicare cuts to
home health providers, hospi-
tals, hospices and others.
Polls show that seniors are
concerned that expanding cov-
erage for the uninsured will
come at their expense. Medicare
spending actually would keep
FAA: No sleeping in the cockpit
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
WASHINGTON — Federal
regulators said Tuesday they
would not allow pilots to sleep in
the cockpit as part of a proposed
rule for reducing pilot fatigue.
Some airlines and aviation
safety experts have endorsed short
naps as one ingredient of a strate-
gy to reduce fatigue. But Peggy
Gilligan, the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration’s associate adminis-
trator for aviation safety, said the
agency could manage pilot fatigue
without permitting napping.
“We do believe the crew has to
come to work prepared for the
schedule they are undertaking,”
Gilligan told the Senate Com-
mittee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation. “We can
¡ NATION • A13
MICHAEL JOHNSON / ALAMOGORDO DAILY NEWS
, PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sen. John McCain, right, with Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell,
left, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, speaks to reporters on saving Medicare.
growing under the Democrats’
legislation, but at a slower rate.
Despite the partisan sparring
over Medicare, the first health-
care amendment offered was bi-
partisan, a measure to increase
preventive care for women co-
sponsored by Sens. Barbara
Mikulski, D-Md., and Olympia
Snowe, R-Maine. Their amend-
ment would give the Health and
Human Services secretary au-
thority to require health plans to
cover additional preventive serv-
ices for women and was inspired
in part by controversial recom-
mendations last month that
women undergo fewer mammo-
grams and Pap smears to test for
cancer. Republicans seized on
those recommendations as early
signs of rationing of care they say
would happen under the Demo-
manage and mitigate their fa-
tigue through the regulations
sufficiently that they should be
alert throughout that flight.”
The FAA committed to over-
haul its pilot flight and duty rules
after a regional jet crashed in Feb-
ruary in Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50
people.
Investigators determined that
pilot fatigue,as well as poor train-
ing and pilot error, probably con-
tributed to the crash.
The FAA appointed an aviation
rulemaking committee to recom-
mend new flight and duty rules,
which date from the 1940s. Cur-
rent rules limit a pilot to eight
hours of flying in a 24-hour peri-
od, but permit a duty day of 16
hours.
crats’ nearly $1 trillion health bill.
However, the amendment
doesn’t specifically address
mammograms or spell out what
additional services would be
covered, leaving that to the dis-
cretion of the HHS secretary.
The Congressional Budget Of-
fice said the amendment would
cost $940 million over a decade.
“We know that some in Wash-
ington have wanted government-
run health care for years. And it’s
hard to escape the conclusion that
these same people saw the current
economic crisis as their moment,”
said Minority Leader Mitch Mc-
Connell, R-Ky. “Earlier this year,
some in the administration said
that a crisis is a terrible thing to
waste. Americans are hoping this
bill isn’t what they meant. But
they’re concerned it is.”
Gilligan said Tuesday the FAA
is behind schedule on the pro-
posal and won’t be done with it
until early next year. The pro-
posal would then have to be re-
viewed by the U.S. Department
of Transportation and the White
House before it could be released
for public comment by airlines
and other parties.
The FAA hasn’t made its com-
mittee recommendations public,
but Tuesday’s hearing offered in-
sights into some of the proposals.
Gilligan said the proposed rule
would target the time of day a pi-
lot flies and whether he or she
flies many trips in a given day.
The latter would have a greater
impact on regional airlines —
which fly shorter trips.
FINAL
AROUND THE
NATION
GEORGIA
Recount seems likely
in Atlanta mayor race
ATLANTA — The race for
Atlanta mayor appeared head-
ed for a recount early today,
with the two candidates sepa-
rated by only 620 votes.
Former state Sen.Kasim Reed
had the slight lead with 99 per-
cent of precincts reporting, but
Mary Norwood told supporters
that she was not conceding and
was open to a recount. Both had
50 percent of the vote.
Under Georgia law, the run-
ner-up can petition for a re-
count when the margin of vic-
tory is less than 1 percent of the
total vote. Voters cast 84,076
ballots, so the winning margin
would be less than 1 percent.
Both tried to gain a critical
mass of racial crossover votes.
Norwood was trying to become
the city’s first white mayor in
more than three decades; Reed
who is black, claimed victory.
OHIO
Suspected serial killer
indicted in 11 murders
CLEVELAND — A registered
sex offender attacked 14
women and killed 11 of them,
leaving their remains in and
around his home, a prosecutor
said Tuesday in announcing a
grand jury indictment against
the suspected serial killer.
Anthony Sowell, 50, is in-
dicted on murder charges in the
deaths of 11 women, plus
dozens of other counts, includ-
ing kidnapping, abuse of a
corpse, attempted murder, as-
sault and rape.
Authorities said Sowell lured
vulnerable women to his home
and that, “once inside, he tor-
mented them, threatened them
and assaulted them. He mur-
dered 11 of them.” Authorities
have said the victims were
homeless or living alone and
had drug or alcohol addictions.
NEW YORK
Mistrial — and 4th
hung jury for Gotti
NEW YORK — A judge de-
clared a mistrial Tuesday at the
racketeering trial of John “Ju-
nior” Gotti after a jury failed to
reach a verdict against the son of
the notorious Gambino crime
family mob boss — the case’s
fourth hung jury in five years.
The anonymous jurors de-
liberated 11 days before notify-
ing the judge they were hope-
lessly deadlocked over racket-
eering conspiracy and murder
charges. Prosecutors accused
Gotti of ordering gangland hits
to settle scores and of secretly
pocketing drug money despite
insisting he’d gone straight.
U.S. District Judge Kevin P.
Castel freed Gotti — behind
bars for more than a year — on
$2 million bond while the gov-
ernment decides whether to
seek a fifth trial.
Gitmo detainee seeks
dismissal of charges
NEW YORK — A Guan-
tanamo detainee has asked that
charges be dismissed in the
1998 bombings of two U.S.
embassies in Africa, citing a
long wait for trial.
Lawyers for Ahmed Ghailani
filed papers Tuesday in a New
York City federal court seeking
to have the indictment dis-
missed. The lawyers said their
client’s case raised the question
of whether national security
can trump an indicted defen-
dant’s constitutional right to a
speedy trial. Authorities allege
Ghailani was a bomb-maker,
document forger and aide to
Osama bin Laden. The attacks
at embassies in Tanzania and
Kenya killed 224 people, in-
cluding 12 Americans.
Ghailani was brought to the
United States earlier this year.
The Tanzanian, captured in
Pakistan in 2004, was held in
Guantanamo since 2006.
TEXAS
Lawyer: Army orders
Hasan mental exam
FORT WORTH — An attor-
ney for the Army psychiatrist
charged with killing 13 people
at Fort Hood says the Army is
ordering a mental evaluation
for his client.
Attorney John Galligan said
he received notice Tuesday
night that the Army wants to
perform the exam on Maj.
Nidal Hasan.
Hasan is charged with 13
counts of premeditated murder
in the Nov. 5 shooting spree on
the Texas post. The evaluation
would determine whether
Hasan had mental responsibility
at the time of the crime and
whether he’s competent to
stand trial. Galligan said the
exam is premature because
Hasan remains in intensive care,
and because authorities say
more charges may be pending.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Council votes 11-2
for gay marriage
WASHINGTON — The Dis-
trict of Columbia Council took
a major step toward joining
New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Iowa, Vermont and Massachu-
setts in legalizing same-sex
marriage Tuesday, approving
the change by a vote of 11 to 2.
Although the outcome was
expected from the heavily De-
mocratic city, the move re-
mains controversial because of
opposition from socially con-
servative churches. The coun-
cil’s vote Tuesday is not final.
Wire reports

A14 • NATION & WORLD
Relatively
peaceful
life returns
for Iraqis
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
BAGHDAD — From the rick-
ety upper deck of the small tour
boat cruising the Tigris River, it
was easy to imagine Baghdad as a
peaceful city again.
The boat listed badly when it
turned, the dock was old and
rusty, and the Tigris was blem-
ished by trash floating along its
banks, but that didn’t dim any-
one’s spirits on a sunny after-
noon. Certainly not those of boat
driver Muslim Hadi Naji, whose
vessel had been anchored upriver,
unused,for most of the decade.
“This is the first Eid we are
operating,” Naji said of the reli-
gious festival that ended for
most Muslims on Monday, but
which was being celebrated into
Tuesday. “It’s better than before
— a lot better than before.”
Iraq has just passed through
what may be its least violent
month since the U.S. invasion
6ƒ long years ago. Political vio-
lence remains a daily occur-
rence, but fewer Iraqi civilians,
policemen and soldiers died in
November than in any of the past
79 months, according to official
figures. Two U.S. soldiers died of
combat-related injuries.
Whether the relative quiet will
last is anybody’s guess. A massive
bombing in downtown Baghdad
on Oct.25,which killed at least 155
people and badly damaged gov-
ernment buildings, proved that
al-Qaida in Iraq, which claimed
responsibility, is still active and
Iraqi security is still porous.
Sectarian violence may have
ebbed, but tensions remain raw,
and an unresolved dispute over a
long-delayed election law hasn’t
helped. Sectarian killings, assas-
sinations and attacks on Iraqi
journalists remain common.
“Sticky bombs,” adhered to the
undersides of vehicles, are a
weapon of choice, along with
firearms, Katyusha rockets and
roadside bombs.
Abu Nawas Park, one of Bagh-
dad’s few green refuges, was
jammed with people and had a
carnival air. Hawkers sold nuts,
tea and balloons, horse-drawn
carriages offered rides; and chil-
dren chased one another around
playgrounds.
Azzam Ibrahim, his wife, Nid-
hal Sachit, their two daughters
and grandson were among those
who voted — cautiously — with
their feet and visited the park
along the Tigris with thousands
of others Tuesday.
Exiting from their turn on the
tour boat, Ibrahim said the fami-
ly spent the first two days of Eid
al-Adha, the holiday that follows
the holy pilgrimage to Mecca,
Saudi Arabia, “checking the
pulse” of security, determining
how safe it was to move around
the city. Only in the final two
days did they go out.
The Iraqi government released
figures Tuesday showing that
122 Iraqis died from violence in
November. The reported toll was
88 civilians, 22 police officers
and 12 soldiers.
The toll is a far cry from the
sectarian bloodshed of just a few
years ago. In September 2006,
3,389 Iraqi civilians and 150 se-
curity forces died, according to
the Web site icasualties.org.
A CHRISTMAS SPECTACLE IN PARIS
Along the Champs-Elysées, the headlights of rush-hour vehicles can hardly compete with the thou-
sands of lights laced into the trees along the famed avenue and framing a huge Ferris wheel, in the
background. There’s nary a traffic light in sight. The photo was taken Tuesday.
N. Korea revalues its currency
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea —
North Korea has revalued its
currency for the first time in a
half century, reportedly trig-
gering chaos in the impover-
ished nation by moving to as-
sert state control over a grow-
ing market economy.
The development came at
the end of a year of turmoil as
leader Kim Jong Il apparently
recovered from a stroke. The
communist country also
stoked tensions by launching a
long-range rocket and con-
ducting its second nuclear
test, drawing U.N. condemna-
tion and beefed-up sanctions.
North Korea revalued its
currency — known as the won
— at an exchange rate between
old and new notes of 100 to 1,
China’s Xinhua news agency
said in a dispatch from Py-
ongyang. It cited a verbal no-
AROUND THE
WORLD
FRANCE
Iraqi shoe thrower
targeted by copycat
PARIS — The Iraqi journal-
ist who threw his shoes at
President George W. Bush in
Baghdad last year had a taste of
his own medicine Tuesday
when he nearly got beaned by a
shoe thrower at a news confer-
ence in Paris.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi ducked,
and the shoe hit the wall be-
hind him. “He stole my tech-
nique,” al-Zeidi quipped later.
The identity of the new shoe
thrower — and his motivation
— weren’t immediately clear,
but he appeared to be an Iraqi.
The confrontation didn’t
stop there. Al-Zeidi’s brother,
Maithan, chased the attacker
in the audience and — what
else? — pelted him with a shoe
as he left the room.
The Paris news conference
was held so Al-Zeidi could talk
about his experiences.
IRAN
Five yachtsmen
from Britain freed
TEHRAN — Iran has re-
REMY DE LA MAUVINIERE / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
tice Tuesday from North Ko-
rea’s Foreign Ministry to em-
bassies in the capital.
The surprise move report-
edly sent shockwaves through
North Korea, with reports of
shops being closed and citi-
zens angry and panicked.
The exchange of old notes
started Monday and will con-
tinue until Sunday, Xinhua re-
ported.
State-run shops in Py-
ongyang were closed Tuesday
morning, with one unidenti-
fied saleswoman saying they
would reopen a week later after
the government sets new
prices, Xinhua said.
Pyongyang residents rushed
to black markets to convert
stashed-away money into dol-
lars and Chinese yuan, South
Korea’s Yonhap News Agency
reported, citing unidentified
North Korean traders operat-
leased five British sailors de-
tained after their racing yacht
was stopped in the Persian
Gulf after entering Iranian wa-
ters last week.
The official IRNA news
agency said the yachtsmen
were let go after an interroga-
tion by Iranian authorities
found that their entry into
Iranian waters had been a mis-
take.
The report said the British
were released early today.
ARGENTINA
Latin America’s first
gay nuptials blocked
BUENOS AIRES — An Ar-
gentine couple’s attempt to
unite in Latin America’s first
gay marriage was thwarted
Tuesday when city officials de-
cided to block the wedding be-
cause of conflicting judicial
rulings.
Jose Maria di Bello and Alex
Freyre showed up at the
Buenos Aires civil registry of-
fice despite a national judge’s
ruling late Monday that over-
turned a city court’s decision
to permit them to wed. The
first judge ruled again Tuesday
that they could wed.
The couple, dressed in black
suits, silver ties and a red band
symbolizing AIDS awareness,
waited for hours in the munic-
ipal office as officials debated
FINAL
¡ Wednesday, December 2, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
ing in China.
The North Korean won was
officially traded at 145 to the
dollar, according to Dong
Yong-sueng, a senior fellow at
Samsung Economic Research
Institute in Seoul. But more
than 3,000 won were needed
to buy $1 on the black market,
he added.
The revaluation had South
Korean media and North Korea
watchers guessing as to the
motive for the change. Some
said the government was try-
ing to impose limits on private
commerce.
“This is a way to strike a blow
against people who are engaged
in market economic activities
that are beyond state control,”
said Marcus Noland,deputy di-
rector of the Peterson Institute
for International Economics in
Washington and an expert on
North Korea’s economy.
which judge to obey.
They were surrounded by
supporters and a swarm of
media.
The final decision fell to
Mayor Mauricio Macri, who
originally had given the green
light to the wedding.
The city decided it would
not allow the marriage until
the Supreme Court has ruled
on the case.
Gay-rights groups said they
were angry and would march
to City Hall in protest.
BRITAIN
Woman accidentally
smothers her baby
LONDON — A breast-feed-
ing mother accidentally
smothered her 4-week-old
child aboard a United Airlines
flight from Washington, D.C.,
bound for Kuwait, a British
tabloid reported Tuesday.
The Sun newspaper said the
mother, whom it identified as
a 29-year-old Egyptian-born
woman, fell asleep as she
breast-fed on the jet and
awoke to find that the child
had been smothered.
The paper said the plane
was diverted to London’s
Heathrow Airport in an un-
successful attempt to save the
baby’s life.
The Associated Press
ENTERTAINMENT
BRIEFS
NEW YORK
Philbin has hip
replaced successfully
NEW YORK — Regis Philbin
had successful hip replacement
surgery Tues-
day, and plans
to return to his
syndicated
daytime talk
show early
next month.
An e-mail
from “Live!
With Regis and
Regis Philbin Kelly” says:
“Word from
the hospital is that everything
went perfectly this morning dur-
ing Regis’ hip replacement sur-
gery,and his doctor said that Reg-
is couldn’t be in better shape.”
RHODE ISLAND
Actor Woods settles
suit against hospital
WARWICK — Actor James
Woods on Tuesday settled a law-
suit against a
hospital in
Rhode Island
where his
younger
brother
Michael died
in 2006.
Woods
James Woods claimed Kent
Hospital was
negligent in the death of his 49-
year-old brother, who had a
heart attack and died in its emer-
gency room after going there
with a sore throat and vomiting.
The hospital’s chief executive,
Sandra Coletta, acknowledged at
a news conference with Woods
DEAR ABBY By Jeanne Phillips • Universal Press Syndicate
DEAR ABBY: I am a 30-year-
old woman who has recently
discovered my biological family.
I have a wonderful half-brother
and several other amazing peo-
ple I can now call family.
The issue I’m struggling with
is my profound attraction to my
half-brother. I know it’s morally
wrong, and I may be confusing
the newfound relationship with
him. Your perspective would be
very much appreciated. — CON-
FLICTED IN SOUTHERN CALI-
FORNIA
DEAR CONFLICTED: Phys-
ical attraction is a reflex — and
not something we can control.
Our BEHAVIOR, on the other
hand, is something we CAN
control.
This is a case of wrong time,
wrong place. If you had been a
member of the royal family in
Egypt 3,000 years ago, you could
have married your half-brother
and continued the dynasty. But
this is 2009 and the U.S.A., so
you’re just going to have to satis-
fy your physical attraction with
someone less incestuous.
DEAR ABBY: Is it rude to la-
bel one’s leftover food when
staying with relatives? My hus-
band, daughter and I visit his
family often. When we go out to
eat and bring leftovers back to
the house, we usually label them
if we want to eat them later.
It has never seemed out of the
ordinary to me. I was raised that
way. My mother always said that
if I didn’t want something eaten
by one of my siblings, then I
should label it.
Recently, my husband’s sister
(who is 16) asked if she could eat
the rest of some pizza we had
bought the night before. I polite-
ly responded that I planned to
have it for lunch. She remarked
that she thinks it is funny that
we are so protective of our food.
outside court that mistakes were
made.
She said the hospital is creat-
ing an institute in Michael
Woods’ honor and investing
$1.25 million over next two years
to study redesigning health care
and reducing errors. James
Woods said his brother’s chil-
dren will be provided for.
Gibson leaving ABC
‘World News’ Dec. 18
NEW YORK — ABC says
Charles Gibson will sign off from
the “World News” anchor desk
on Dec. 18.
The 66-
year-old Gib-
son, who an-
nounced his
retirement in
September,
has been at
ABC News for
Charles more than
Gibson three decades
and plans to
continue as an occasional con-
tributor.
CALIFORNIA
Judge bars release
of J. Lo home videos
LOS ANGELES — Home
videos featuring Jennifer Lopez
and a movie project based on
them won’t be coming to a
screen near you because a judge
blocked their distribution Tues-
day.
Los Angeles Superior Court
Judge James C. Chalfant issued
the preliminary injunction
against Lopez’s ex-husband,
Ojani Noa, and manager, Ed
Meyer, who have sought to dis-
tribute the footage.
Lopez wed Noa in 1997, but
their marriage lasted just 11
months.
The Associated Press
It got me to thinking — is our be-
havior odd? — TAKEN ABACK
IN WASHINGTON
DEAR TAKEN ABACK:
Considering that you come from
a family in which anything in the
fridge was considered fair game
among your siblings, it’s not odd
at all. And when your sister-in-
law said what she did, you
should have explained that to
her. Had you done so, she
wouldn’t have questioned it.
DEAR ABBY: My 20-year-
old daughter,“Marissa,” is self-
centered, lies compulsively and
does not consider the conse-
quences of her actions. She has
been diagnosed with narcissistic
personality disorder. We have
just learned that she is now
pregnant, and her father and I
are not happy about it.
We will eventually be meeting
the parents of the child’s father.
Is it our responsibility to discuss
Marissa’s problems with them?
Or should we keep our mouths
shut and pretend we are happy?
— TRYING TO DECIDE IN WIS-
CONSIN
DEAR TRYING TO DE-
CIDE: Does the young man
know about your daughter’s di-
agnosis and what it means? If
not, then HE should be told and
the implications explained to
him.
Because your daughter’s per-
sonality disorder will affect their
son and the grandchild, his par-
ents should also be informed.
Ideally, he is the person who
should do it. But if he doesn’t,
lay all the cards on the table be-
cause the other grandparents
should be prepared.
And no, you do not have to
“pretend” to be happy about the
situation. And neither do they.
Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or
P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Friday, December 4, 2009
US turning more isolationist recently, survey says
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — At the very
moment when President Obama
is looking to thrust the U.S. ever
more into global affairs, from
Afghanistan to climate change,
the American public is turning
more isolationist and unilateral-
ist than it has at any time in
decades, according to a new poll
released Thursday.
The survey by the Pew Re-
search Center found a plurality
of Americans — 49 percent —
think that the U.S. should “mind
its own business international-
ly” and leave it to other countries
to fend for themselves.
It was the first time in more
than 40 years of polling that the
ranks of Americans with isola-
tionist sentiment outnumbered
those with a more international
It was ‘our fault,’ Secret Service chief says of party-crashers
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — The Secret
Service, whose agents are
trained to protect the president,
attempted to do the same Thurs-
day for President Obama’s social
aides by insisting that the agency
was solely responsible for the se-
curity lapse that allowed two
party crashers to talk their way
into last week’s White House
state dinner.
“This is our fault and our fault
alone,” Mark Sullivan, Secret
Service director, told the House
Homeland Security Committee.
But lawmakers from both par-
ties — contending that this was
not a harmless security lapse but
rather a threat to national secu-
rity — told Sullivan that at least
part of the blame rested with the
White House social staff, which
was in charge of invitations for
the gala.
Secret Service agents and
White House aides typically
monitor entrances for guests,
such as those attending last
week’s dinner in honor of Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh.
However, there were no social
aides present when Secret Ser-
vice personnel allowed Tareq
and Michaele Salahi to enter the
White House after they insisted
outlook, Pew said.
“The U.S. public is turning
decidedly inward,” Pew said.
The U.S. is also growing more
unilateralist, with 44 percent
saying that the country “should
go our own way in international
matters, not worrying about
whether other countries agree
with us or not.”
That was the highest percent-
age since the question was first
asked in 1964.
The country also has grown
pessimistic about U.S. clout in
world affairs.
By a margin of 41 percent to 25
percent, those polled think the
U.S. is playing a less important
role in the world than 10 years
ago.
It was the first time since the
1970s — when the U.S. had
they had been invited to the din-
ner.
“Every single time that I have
entered the White House, there
has always been somebody from
the White House there at the
very first point,” said Rep. Loret-
ta Sanchez, D-Calif.
Sullivan said that he did not
know who made the recommen-
dation to have only the Secret
Service at the checkpoints. The
security plan in effect that night
required the White House staff
to be available by phone to clear
any discrepancies on the list, he
said.
“We should have called for
someone to come out,” Sullivan
acknowledged.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas,
said the Salahis would not have
been admitted if White House’s
social staffers, overseen by Oba-
ma’s social secretary Desiree
Rogers, had been stationed at the
entrances with the Secret Ser-
vice.
The agents who mistakenly
permitted the Salahis to enter
have been placed on administra-
tive leave, Sullivan said.
Separately, Obama said in an
interview with USA Today and
the Detroit Free Press that “the
system didn’t work the way it
was supposed to” at the state
Isolationist views
How Americans respond to the
statement, “The U.S. should mind
its own business internationally
and let other countries get along
as best they can”:
Agree Disagree
49%
60%
45
30
44%
15
0 Afghanistan will be able to with-
’95 ’97 ’99 ’01 ’02 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’09
Source: Pew Research Center survey of
2,000 U.S. adults (most recent, Oct. 28-
Nov. 8, 2009); margin of error: +/- 3
percentage points
12/04/09
withdrawn from Vietnam, been
hurt by an Arab oil embargo and
seen its citizens held hostage in
President Obama as he greeted Michaele and Tareq Salahi in the Blue Room of the White House on Nov. 24.
dinner. Nonetheless, he said he
still feels safe in the White
House and “could not have more
confidence in the Secret Ser-
Iran — that a plurality of Ameri-
cans thought their country was
weaker than it had been a decade
before.
The shift in sentiment comes
after more than eight years of
war in Afghanistan and almost
seven in Iraq, and in the midst of
the worst economy since the
Great Depression.
Just 32 percent of those ques-
tioned favors increasing U.S.
troops in Afghanistan, and only
46 percent say it’s likely that
stand the threat posed by the
Taliban.
The survey of 2,000 U.S.
adults was taken from Oct. 28-
MCT
Nov. 8 — before Obama’s speech
on Afghanistan Tuesday night.
It has an error margin of plus or
minus 3 percentage points.
vice.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-
Miss., chairman of the commit-
tee, had invited the Salahis and
The public turn toward isola-
tionism comes as Obama plans
to escalate the U.S. role in
Afghanistan with more troops
and as he engages with other
countries and international in-
stitutions on issues ranging
from climate change to the
economy.
Next week, he will visit Den-
mark to attend an international
conference on climate change,
then Norway to accept the Nobel
Peace Prize.
On other points, the Pew poll
said:
• A plurality of Americans, 44
percent, now say that China is
the world’s top economic power,
while just 27 percent say it’s the
U.S. That’s a sharp reversal from
nearly two years ago, when 41
percent thought the U.S. was
COURTESY OF THE WHITE HOUSE
Rogers to testify. However, the
Salahis didn’t show up and the
White House invoked the Con-
stitution’s separation-of-pow-
NATION • A13
the No. 1 economic power, and
30 percent thought it was Chi-
na.
• A majority of Americans, 53
percent, see China’s growing
power as a “major threat.” That’s
virtually unchanged from what
the quadrennial poll found in
2001 and 2005.
However, 642 members of
the Council on Foreign Rela-
tions, who are seen as opinion
leaders and also were polled by
Pew, had the opposite view. Just
21 percent of them saw China as
a major threat, down from 38
percent in 2001 and 30 percent
in 2005.
For them, Pew said, “China
has been transformed from a
major threat to the United States
to an increasingly important fu-
ture ally.”
ers doctrine to explain that
Rogers wouldn’t appear before
the panel.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., criti-
cized the White House for
“offhandedly” announcing dur-
ing a White House briefing
Wednesday that Rogers would be
a no-show, instead of notifying
Congress directly.
King accused the White
House of “stonewalling” to try
to save Rogers, an Obama ally
from Chicago, and itself from
embarrassment.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-
Texas, posed the basic question
underlying the investigation:
“How in the world could this
couple get past the Secret Ser-
vice without having their names
on the list and get right up to the
president of the United States?”
Sullivan replied: “Sir, I’ve
asked myself that question a
thousand times over the last
week.”
Rep. Christopher Carney, D-
Pa., called the Salahis “patho-
logically egomaniacal.”
Some lawmakers also specu-
lated about why the Salahis did
not appear at the hearing.
“Perhaps it’s because they
were on the invited-guest list,”
joked Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-
Ariz.
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Friday, December 4, 2009
$3.5B to be used to turn
failing schools around
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Oba-
ma administration will spend at
least $3.5 billion to push local of-
ficials around the country to
close failing schools and reopen
them with new teachers and
principals.
Education Secretary Arne
Duncan hopes to see the 5,000
worst-performing schools,
about 1 percent of all U.S.
schools, turned around in five
years. The administration is
beefing up the federal school
turnaround program, which was
created under the No Child Left
Behind law championed by for-
mer President George W. Bush.
“As a country, we need to get
into the turnaround business,”
Duncan said in a statement.
“Adults need to have the courage
to make these tough decisions
and do right by our kids.”
Nature adapts to climate change
and so must we, experts warn
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
With the world losing the bat-
tle against global warming so far,
experts are warning that humans
need to follow nature’s example:
Adapt or die.
That means elevating build-
ings; making taller and stronger
dams and sea walls; rerouting
water systems; restricting cer-
tain developments; changing
farming practices; and ultimate-
ly moving people, plants and an-
imals out of harm’s way.
Adapting to rising seas and
higher temperatures is expected
to be a big topic at the U.N. cli-
mate-change talks in Copen-
hagen next week, along with the
projected cost — hundreds of bil-
lions of dollars, much of it going
to countries that cannot afford it.
That adaptation will be a ma-
jor focus is remarkable in itself.
Until the past couple of years,
experts avoided talking about
adjusting to global warming for
fear of sounding fatalistic or
causing countries to back off ef-
forts to reduce emissions.
“It’s something that’s been
neglected, hasn’t been talked
about, and it’s something the
world will have to do,” said Ra-
jendra Pachauri, chairman of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change. “Adaptation is go-
ing to be absolutely crucial for
some societies.”
Some biologists point to how
nature has handled the changing
climate. The rare Adonis blue
butterfly of Britain looked as if it
were going to disappear because
Copenhagen police set for summit
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
COPENHAGEN — In Den-
mark’s biggest security opera-
tion since World War II, police
are mobilizing thousands of offi-
cers and — for the first time — a
water cannon for next week’s
U.N. climate summit.
Copenhagen police demon-
strated the German-made 22-
ton vehicle to media Thursday,
showcasing it mainly as a beefed-
up firetruck that could spray wa-
ter on burning cars or trash bins if
protests get out of hand.
But police spokesman
Michael Engell said it was possi-
ble to add tear gas to the 1.5 mil-
lion-gallon water tank, implying
that the cannon could also be
aimed at rioting protesters. Po-
lice said they have never before
The president doesn’t have the half the staff and reopen the
power to close and reopen schools school with new personnel.
himself. That authority rests with
local school districts and states.
But federal officials have an management organization.
incentive in the turn-
around program, which
gives money to states
for school districts to
overhaul the worst-
performing schools.
Districts will have to
compete for grants.
Applications for the
money, made available
Thursday to states, Arne Duncan
should result in a list of
about 1,200 schools that states ries” where two in five kids don’t
have targeted for turnaround, make it to graduation.
the Education Department said,
adding that the eventual goal is schools chief, has experience
5,000 schools.
To get the money, a district Chicago targeted several public
must do one of four things:
• Fire the principal and at least Duncan was still in charge.
it couldn’t fly far and global
warming was making its habitat
unbearable. To biologists’ sur-
prise, it evolved longer thoraxes
and wings, allowing it to fly far-
ther to cooler locales.
“Society needs to be changing
as much as wildlife is changing,”
said Texas A&M biologist
Camille Parmesan, an expert on
how species change with the cli-
mate.
One difficulty is that climate
change is happening rapidly.
“Adaptation will be particu-
larly challenging because the rate
of change is escalating and is
moving outside the range to
which society has adapted in the
past” when more natural climate
changes happened, U.S. Nation-
al Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration chief Jane
Lubchenco, a marine biologist,
told Congress on Wednesday.
President Obama and Con-
gress are talking about $1.2 bil-
lion a year from the U.S. for in-
ternational climate aid, which
includes adaptation. The U.N.
climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said
$10 billion to $12 billion a year is
needed from developed coun-
tries through 2012 to “kick-
start” things. Then it will get
even more expensive.
The World Bank estimates
adaptation costs will total $75 bil-
lion to $100 billion a year over the
next 40 years. The International
Institute for Environment and
Development, a London think
tank,says that number is too low.
It may even be $200 billion a
used such a vehicle.
At least 100 world leaders, in-
cluding President Obama, will
converge on the normally tran-
quil city in the next two weeks to
try to forge a new pact against
global warming.
Roughly 15,000 delegates have
signed up for the conference —
and many more protesters are ex-
pected to march through the
streets of the capital.
Most demonstrations are ex-
pected to be peaceful manifesta-
tions urging world leaders to
craft an ambitious climate
agreement, but police say they
are ready if things get rowdy.
“We do not want to be at war
with anyone,” Copenhagen po-
lice operations chief Per Larsen
said. “But we will act according-
NATION • A17
• Turn a school over to a char-
ter school operator or other
• Close the school
and send students to
higher-achieving
schools in the district.
• Replace only the
principal and take other
steps to change how the
school operates.
A special focus will be
on fixing middle schools
and high schools, espe-
cially “dropout facto-
Duncan, a former Chicago
with school turnarounds:
schools for turnaround while
year or $300 billion a year, said
Chris Hope, a business school
professor at the University of
Cambridge and part of the IIED
study.
Nevertheless,Hope said failing
to adapt would be even more ex-
pensive — perhaps $6 trillion a
year on average over the next 200
years. Adaptation could cut that
by about $2 trillion a year, he said.
As much as three-quarters of
the spending will be needed in the
developing world,experts say.
“Those are not the countries
that caused the problem,” Hope
said. “There’s a pretty strong
moral case for us giving them as-
sistance for the impacts that
we’ve largely caused.”
As for helping plants and ani-
mals, British climate scientist
Martin Parry said the world will
have to create a triage system to
figure out which living things
can be saved, which can’t and are
effectively goners, and which
don’t need immediate help.
“It’s a brutal way to go about
things,” Parry said.
And what about people?
Some islands, such as the
Maldives, and some coastal
cities will not be able to survive
rising seas no matter what pro-
tections are put in place, said
Saleemel Huq, a senior fellow at
the International Institute for En-
vironment and Development who
runs an adaptation center in
Bangladesh. In those cases, he
said, the world will need
“planned relocation” of people
and cities.
ly if something unacceptable
happens. This is not a threat but
consumer information.”
Lene Vennits,one of the organ-
izers of a planned demonstration
on Dec.12,criticized the police for
deploying a water cannon.
“It sends a signal that the cli-
mate summit is about violence,”
she told The Associated Press.
Still, anarchist and anti-capi-
talist groups have suggested they
will seek confrontations with po-
lice.
It’s unclear how many will show
up in Copenhagen.
The Bella Center conference
facility on the outskirts of the
capital has been turned into a
fortress, sealed off by massive
concrete blocks and 6-foot-high
metal fences.
A12 • NATION & WORLD Wednesday, December 9, 2009 / ARIZONA DAILY STAR

US settles suit
over Indian land
for $3.4 billion
THE DENVER POST
WASHINGTON — After 13
years of bitter litigation, the fed-
eral government agreed Tuesday
to settle for $3.4 billion a lawsuit
that claims it badly mismanaged
millions of acres in Indian trust
land over more than 100 years.
The agreement, which must
still be approved by Congress and
the courts, requires the federal
government to pay out $1.4 bil-
lion to 300,000 American Indian
plaintiffs, compensating them
for what they claim is decades of
lost income from grazing, logging
and mineral royalties.
It also sets up a $2 billion fund
ELAINE THOMPSON / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS to buy back interest in an unruly
maze of “allotment lands” that
HONORING 4 SLAIN POLICE OFFICERS dot reservations across the West.
About 20,000 mourners honored four slain police officers Tuesday at a memorial service in Tacoma, Wash. A procession of 2,000 cars followed The federal government will re-
the caskets of Sgt. Mark Renninger and Officers Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards to the Tacoma Dome, where the service was turn those lands to tribal owner-
held. The Lakewood officers were killed by a gunman on Nov. 29 before the start of their shift. Authorities say Maurice Clemmons singled them ship,reversing a controversial pol-
out at a coffee shop in a suburb south of Seattle. Clemmons was shot to death by a Seattle police officer after a two-day manhunt. “Our dad icy of privatization that dates back
was a hero to many, even long before he became a policeman,” said Richards’ teenage son, Austin. “The way he lived his life spoke volumes.” to 1887, was reversed in the 1930s,
and is seen by many in Indian
Country as contributing to a lega-
cy of poverty and underdevelop-
ment that continues to this day.
one that a district judge last year
called an “irreparable breach of
fiduciary duty” by the Depart-
ment of the Interior.
Although the settlement was
far less than the $27 billion plain-
tiffs once claimed they were owed,
Attorney General Eric Holder
called it “fair to the plaintiffs (and)
responsible for the United States.”
Elouise Cobell, a Blackfoot In-
dian and the lead plaintiff,said she
wouldn’t describe it as fair, but
was “one way that Indian people
can actually get some money paid
to them for historical wrongs.”
“If it was me, I would fight on
for another hundred years,” Co-
bell said Tuesday. “But the de-
ciding factor is, I live in Indian
Country, and I see every single
day people dying without their
money, and you just can’t take it
anymore. Now, at least we can
get them something paid.”
That sentiment partly reflects
the frustration of American In-
dians over the byzantine litiga-
tion that began in 1996 and has
been to courts of appeal 10 times

US lags badly in life expectancy

Despite huge outlays, nation ranks
near the bottom among rich nations
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS — The United States
ranks near the bottom in life ex-
pectancy among wealthy na-
tions despite spending more
than double per person on
health care than the industrial-
ized world’s average, an eco-
nomic group said Tuesday.
Life expectancy at birth in the
U.S. was 78.1 years in 2007, ac-
cording to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and De-
velopment.
That’s a year less than the or-
ganization average of 79.1, and
puts the U.S. just ahead of the
Czech Republic, Poland and
Mexico, where spending on
health care is many times less
per person, the Paris-based
group said in its latest survey of
health trends among its 30 rich
member countries.
Total U.S. spending on health
care was $7,290 a person in
2007, nearly 2ƒ times the or-
ganization average of $2,984.
The figures include spending by
both individuals and govern-
ments.
“It suggests that the U.S. is
not getting great value for its
health spending, in terms of life
expectancy,” said Gaetan Lafor-
tune, one of the report’s co-au-
thors.
He said the U.S. needs to look
“closely at spending that has
little or no value in terms of im-
proved health.”
“Life expectancy is only part-
ly driven by how a country’s
health care system performs,”
Lafortune said.
Outside factors such as the
country’s higher rates of obe-
sity and violent death, as well
as mishandling of chronic
conditions leading to avoid-
able hospital stays, play a big-
ger role in life expectancy rates
than health care spending,
Lafortune said.
Spending on health care in
the U.S. grew more quickly be-
tween 1997 and 2007 than in
France, Italy, Germany and
Spain, averaging 3.4 percent
annually over the period. The
U.S. growth rate was still below
the organization average of 4.1
percent.
The U.S. far outspent the
next biggest health care
spenders, Norway and Switzer-
land, despite the fact that those
countries’ life expectancies are
two to four years longer, accord-
ing to the report.
The report notes that, in ad-
dition to the U.S., Denmark and
Hungary also have lower life ex-
pectancies than would be pre-
dicted by their relative wealth
and levels of health care spend-
ing.
On the other hand, the
Japanese and the Spanish live
longer on average than their na-
tional income and their health
care spending would predict.
The U.S. also underperforms
other rich countries in the
health of its youngest.
U.S. infant mortality, at 6.7
deaths per 1,000 live births,
was well above the organization
average of 3.9 in 2007. Only
Mexico and Turkey had worse
rates of infant mortality. In
Luxembourg, the top per-
former, the infant mortality rate
was only 1.8.
The report noted that re-
search suggests many factors
beyond the quality of a coun-
try’s health system, such as in-
come inequality and individual
lifestyles and attitudes, influ-
ence infant mortality rates.
Per capita spending on phar-
maceuticals rose by almost 50
percent over the last 10 years in
organization countries, reach-
ing a total of $650 billion in
2007. The U.S. was the world’s
biggest spender on pharmaceu-
ticals, spending $878 per per-
son, with Canada next at $691
per person and the organization
average at $461.
“We are here today to right a since then. Among the difficul-
past wrong, to forge a solution to ties, federal officials appeared to
an ongoing and worsening prob- have lost millions of critical
lem,and to lay out a path to the re- records dating back decades that
sponsible management of Indian were supposed to record income
trust assets in the 21st century,” from trust lands and what was
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said
at a press conference Tuesday.
done with the money.
Years of trying to reconstruct
The settlement marks the end the accounts led to the collection
of seven full trials, 22 court deci- of more than 300 million pages
sions, and — for the federal gov- of old ledgers and accounts in a
ernment — one of the largest cavern in Kansas — an ad hoc
class-action cases in its history, archive — but even those efforts
involving about one of every 10 were eventually abandoned.
American Indians. Last year, a federal judge con-
For the plaintiffs, the an- cluded the accounts could never
nouncement finalizes a monu- be reconstructed and awarded
mental legal struggle that had the plaintiffs $455 million, a
become a symbol of government judgment that was later over-
neglect and mismanagement, turned on appeal.
Ohio uses just 1 drug
for execution — a first
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS the U.S. Constitution because it
LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Ohio can subject the condemned to
made history in September when extreme pain while leaving them
an execution was botched so immobile and unable to cry out.
badly the governor called it off. The three-drug method con-
The state made history again sists of sodium thiopental,a com-
Tuesday, executing an inmate mon anesthetic, along with pan-
with just one drug for the first curonium bromide, which para-
time in the United States. lyzes muscles, and potassium
Kenneth Biros, 51, was pro- chloride, which stops the heart.
nounced dead shortly after one The single-drug technique
dose of sodium thiopental began amounts to an overdose of the
flowing into his veins at the anesthetic — a method that injec-
Southern Ohio Correctional Fa- tion experts and defense attor-
cility. The U.S. Supreme Court neys agreed would not cause pain.
had rejected his final appeal two Biros’ executioners struggled
hours earlier. for several minutes to find suitable
Experts had predicted veins, inserting needles
that sodium thiopental repeatedly in both arms
— used in many parts of before completing the
the world to put pets process on just his left
down — would take arm. He winced once,
longer to kill than the and his attorney, John
previous method. But Parker, said he was con-
the 10 minutes it took cerned by all the needle
Biros to die was about as Kenneth sticks. But prison offi-
long as it has taken other Biros cials declared nothing
inmates in Ohio and amiss.
elsewhere to succumb to the Prisons director Terry Collins
three-drug combination. said the process worked as pre-
The mother, sister and brother dicted.
of Biros’ murder victim, Tami In 2008, the U.S. Supreme
Engstrom, applauded as the Court upheld lethal injection in a
warden announced the time of case from Kentucky involving a
death. three-drug method similar to
“Rock on,” Debi Heiss, En- the one used in Ohio and practi-
gstrom’s sister, said a moment cally every other death penalty
earlier as the curtains were state. After a seven-month
drawn for the coroner to check moratorium on the death penal-
on Biros.“That was too easy.” ty while the high court decided
Ohio’s switch to one drug was the case, executions resumed
born of a botched execution at- across the country.
tempt on another inmate in Sep- Biros killed his 22-year-old
tember, but critics of the three- victim in 1991 after offering to
drug method have long argued drive her home from a bar, then
that it amounts to cruel and un- scattered her body parts in Ohio
usual punishment in violation of and Pennsylvania.
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Obama approval rating just 49%
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — President
Obama and the Democratic Par-
ty end the year far weaker than
they started it, according to a
McClatchy-Ipsos poll released
Tuesday.
Obama has the lowest ap-
proval rating of his presidency —
49 percent — slipping below 50
percent in the poll for the first
time and entering a danger zone
for presidents heading into a
midterm election year.
The sinking numbers extend
to his party as well. The Democ-
ratic Party has lost double-digit
ground to the Republican Party
on every issue, including the
economy, other domestic issues
such as health care and foreign
affairs.
On the economy, for example,
it clings to a 1-point edge over
the Republicans, down sharply
from the 31-point advantage it
enjoyed a year ago.
Underlying it all: a sour
mood. The American people
have the worst view of the
country since Obama’s elec-
tion, with just 36 percent saying
it’s on the right track and 60
percent saying it’s on the wrong
track.
The numbers show how
Sensitive airport-security info is leaked
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The federal
government improperly posted
an internal guide to its airport-
passenger screening procedures
on the Internet in a way that
could offer insight into how to
sidestep security.
The document outlines who is
exempt from certain additional
screening measures, including
members of the U.S. armed
forces, governors and lieutenant
governors, the mayor of Wash-
ington, D.C., and their immedi-
ate families.
It offers examples of identifi-
cation documents that screeners
accept, including congressional,
federal air marshal and CIA ID
President Obama’s sinking numbers extend to the Democratic Party as
well. It lost ground to the GOP on every issue, including the economy.
much Obama and the Democ-
rats have lost since their tri-
umphant victory a year ago,
when they won the White
House and added to their ma-
jorities in the House of Repre-
sentatives and the Senate. The
figures also underscore the
challenging environment they
face as they head into 2010,
when the House and a third of
cards; and it explains that diplo-
matic pouches and certain for-
eign dignitaries with law en-
forcement escorts are not sub-
jected to any screening at all. It
said certain methods of verifying
identification documents aren’t
used on all travelers during peak
travel crushes.
The Transportation Security
Administration, which over-
sees airport security, said the
document is outdated. It was
posted in March by TSA on the
Federal Business Opportunity
site. The posting was improper
because sensitive information
was not properly protected,
TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee
said.
SUSAN WALSH / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
the Senate are up for election.
“The public is declaring the
honeymoon over,” said Michael
Gross, the vice president of Ipsos
Public Affairs, which conducted
the polls.
The biggest drag is the econo-
my, Gross said.
“To an extent, people were
willing to give Obama the benefit
of the doubt. But until there are
As a result, some Web sites,
using widely available software,
were able to uncover the origi-
nal text of sections that had
been blacked out for security
reasons.
On Sunday, the Wandering
Aramean blog pointed out the
document in a posting titled
“The TSA makes another stupid
move.”
According to the blog, TSA
posted a redacted version of the
document but did not delete the
sensitive information from the
file. Instead of removing the text,
the government covered it up
with a black box. But the text was
still embedded in the document
and could be uncovered.
some big gains in jobs or tangible
benefits in people’s lives, the
president and the Democratic
Party are going to bear the brunt
of the public anxiety.”
The survey found 49 percent
approving of the way Obama is
doing his job, dropping from 53
percent in October. It found 49
percent disapproving.
Dropping below 50 percent is
a warning sign of political peril if
not corrected.
Since 1962, presidents with
approval ratings below 50 per-
cent have lost an average of 41
seats in midterm House elec-
tions. That’s precisely the
number that would cost De-
mocrats control of the House
this time.
Obama still has the approval
of 77 percent of Democrats,
though that dropped below 80
percent for the first time. Re-
publicans remained strongly
negative, with just 16 percent
approving and 81 percent disap-
proving.
His bigger challenge might be
independents, with approval
among the swing bloc dropping
to 41 percent and disapproval
leaping to 55 percent, a jump of
14 percentage points since Octo-
ber.
TSA asked that the document
be removed from the Federal
Business Opportunity site on
Dec. 6 after the security lapse
was reported in a blog.
But copies of the document —
with the redacted portions ex-
posed — circulated on the Inter-
net and remain posted on other
Web sites not controlled by the
government.
Lee said TSA takes the inci-
dent seriously and a review is
under way.
Noting that the transporta-
tion agency uses multiple layers
of security, Lee said, “TSA is
confident that screening proce-
dures currently in place remain
strong.”
Monitoring of drugs
for safety lags long
after Vioxx episode
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Food
and Drug Administration still
hasn’t restructured its staff to
better monitor drug safety,
more than three years after ex-
perts recommended key
changes in the wake of the
Vioxx scandal.
That’s according to congres-
sional investigators who found
that the FDA has yet to follow
through on changes suggested
in 2006 to help the agency de-
tect problems with drugs taken
by millions of Americans.
Those recommendations
came after the embarrassing
and dangerous episode with
Vioxx, a blockbuster pain drug
the FDA approved in 1999, only
to pull from the market in 2004
after linking it to heart attack
and stroke.
Agency officials have made
some changes to drug over-
sight, according to a Govern-
ment Accountability Office re-
port, but the FDA continues to
give the bulk of its decision-
making power to scientists
who approve new drugs, rather
than those who monitor the
side effects of drugs on the
market.
“It is not yet clear if or when
FDA’s decision-making
process will be substantially
improved as a result of its ef-
forts,” according to the GAO
report, a copy of which was ob-
tained by The Associated Press.
Within the FDA bureaucra-
cy, scientists tasked with re-
viewing new drug applications
have traditionally had the most
say over questions of safety,
even after drugs are approved.
But outside experts say leaving
such key decisions to the sci-
entists who first cleared the
drugs could lead to inadequate
NATION • A13
safety actions, putting pre-
scription drug users at risk.
“There’s this desire on the
part of the people who first ap-
proved the drug to say, ‘We
predicted everything and it’s
fine,’ ” said Dr. Diana Zucker-
man of the National Research
Center for Women and Fami-
lies in Washington.
Zuckerman and others say
such decisions should be made
with equal input from the
FDA’s office for monitoring re-
ports of side effects collected
from across the country.
The GAO, the Institute of
Medicine and other experts
have long recommended that
the so-called Office of Surveil-
lance and Epidemiology be
given equal authority on drug
safety with the agency’s Office
of New Drugs. But GAO inves-
tigators report that FDA leaders
still have not transferred key
responsibilities to surveillance
officials.
“No more time should be
wasted at the FDA in establish-
ing independence for its post-
market surveillance,” Sen.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said
in a statement.
Grassley — one of the
agency’s toughest critics in
Congress — asked the GAO to
follow up on its 2006 recom-
mendations to the FDA.
The watchdog agency’s re-
port calls on the FDA to set a
timetable for transferring new
responsibilities to the surveil-
lance office.
Despite a formal memo be-
tween the offices designed to
put them on equal footing, the
new drug office still retains
nearly all the power over regu-
latory decisions, according to
the GAO report to be released
Wednesday.
ARIZONA DAILY STAR / Wednesday, December 9, 2009 WORLD • A15

EU’s urging to share Jerusalem as capital angers Israel

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRUSSELS, Belgium — Euro-
pean Union foreign ministers on
Tuesday urged Israel and the
Palestinians to make Jerusalem
their shared capital, prompting a
swift, angry reaction from Israel.
For their part Tuesday, the
Palestinians announced a boycott
of products made in Israeli settle-
ments in the West Bank.Palestin-
ian Economics Minister Hassan
Abu Libdeh said the government
has already confiscated $1 million
worth of products, including
foods, cosmetics and hardware,
and that he hoped to remove all
such goods from Palestinian store
shelves next year.
In Brussels, EU foreign minis-
ters reiterated that the 27-mem-
ber bloc would not recognize Is-
rael’s annexation of the eastern
part of Jerusalem it occupied in
the 1967 war. The ministers
called for Israel to share
Jerusalem as a capital with a fu-
ture Palestinian state.
Although the EU has long op-
posed the annexation of east
Jerusalem, the statement angered
Israel and was sure to deepen Is-
rael’s sense that the Europeans fa-
vor Palestinian positions. Presi-
dent Obama has been trying, so
far in vain, to nudge the sides to-
ward renewed peace talks.
“The EU will not recognize
any changes to the pre-1967
borders including with regard to
Jerusalem, other than those
agreed by the parties,” said the
ministerial statement. It was re-
ferring to the Mideast war in
which Israeli forces captured
east Jerusalem from the Jordan-
ian army.
“If there is to be a genuine
peace, a way must be found
(through negotiations) to resolve
the status of Jerusalem as the fu-
ture capital of two states,” it said.
The EU ministerial statement
dropped an earlier Swedish draft
resolution which explicitly stat-
ed that east Jerusalem — the dis-
puted part of the holy city —
should be the capital of a Pales-
tinian state after Israel warned it
would damage the bloc’s ability
to take part in any resumed peace
talks as a negotiator.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry
reacted immediately.
“We regret that the European
Union chose to adopt the text,” Is-
raeli Foreign Ministry spokesman
Yigal Palmor said in a statement.
He said the statement “does not
contribute” to promoting peace
and ignores the Palestinians’ re-
fusal to resume talks.
Palestinian President Mah-
moud Abbas refuses to resume
peace talks, which broke down a
year ago, unless Israel halts all
settlement construction.
The Palestinian prime minis-
ter, Salam Fayyad, welcomed
Tuesday’s EU statement. He said
it gives Palestinians “a better
sense of hope and possibility
about tomorrow.”
The competing claims to east
Jerusalem remain perhaps the
most explosive issue in the Is-
raeli-Palestinian conflict.
East Jerusalem is home to
sensitive Jewish, Muslim and
Christian holy sites.

Uganda
mulls death
penalty for
some gays
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KAMPALA, Uganda — Pro-

posed legislation would impose
the death penalty for some gay
Ugandans, and their families and
friends could face up to seven
years in jail if they fail to report
them to authorities. Even land-
lords could be imprisoned for
renting to homosexuals.
Gay-rights activists say the
bill, which has prompted grow-
ing international opposition,
promotes hatred and could set
back efforts to fight HIV/AIDS.
They believe the bill is part of a
continentwide backlash because
Africa’s gay community is be-
coming more vocal.
“It’s a question of visibility,”
said David Cato, who became an
activist after he was beaten up four
times, arrested twice, fired from
his teaching job and outed in the
press because he is gay.“When we
come out and ask for our rights,
they pass laws against us.”
The legislation has drawn
global attention from activists
across the spectrum of views on
gay issues. The measure was
proposed in Uganda following a
visit by leaders of U.S. conserva-
tive Christian ministries that
promote therapy for gays to be-
come heterosexual. However, at
least one of those leaders has de-
nounced the bill, as have some
other conservative and liberal
Christians in the United States.
Gay-rights activists say the
legislation is likely to pass. But
the bill is still being debated and
could undergo changes before a
vote, which has not been set.
The legislation in its current
form would mandate a death
sentence for active homosexuals
living with HIV or in cases of
same-sex rape. “Serial offend-
ers” also could face capital pun-
ishment, but the legislation does
not define the term. Anyone
convicted of a homosexual act
faces life imprisonment.
Anyone who “aids, abets,
counsels or procures another to
engage of acts of homosexuality”
faces seven years in prison if
convicted. Landlords who rent
rooms or homes to homosexuals
also could get seven years, and
anyone with “religious, political,
economic or social authority”
who fails to report anyone vio-
lating the act faces three years.
Gay-rights activists abroad
are focusing on the legislation. A
protest against the bill is planned
for Thursday in London; protests
were held last month in New
York and Washington.
David Bahati, the legislator
sponsoring the bill, said he was
encouraging “constructive criti-
cism” to improve the law, but in-
sisted strict measures were nec-
essary to stop homosexuals from
“recruiting” schoolchildren.
“The youths in secondary
schools copy everything from the
Western world and America,” said
high school teacher David Kisam-
bira. “A good number of students
have been converted into gays.We
hear there are groups of people
given money by some gay organi-
zations in developed countries to
recruit youth into gay activities.”
Uganda’s ethics minister,James
Nsaba Buturo, said the death-
sentence clause would probably
be reviewed but maintained the
law was necessary to counter for-
eign influence. He said homosex-
uality “is not natural in Uganda,” a
view echoed by some Ugandans.
“I feel that the bill is good and
necessary, but I don’t think gays
should be killed. They should be
imprisoned for about a year and
warned never to do it again.
“The family is in danger in
Uganda because the rate at
which vice is spreading is ap-
palling,” said shopkeeper John
Muwanguzi.