Rice University student in prank gone awry seeks donations (Reuters)

HOUSTON (Reuters) ? A Rice University student has started an online campaign called Save Duncan's Butt to help him pay for the $15,000 worth of school property he damaged with his derriere while streaking.

Rice junior Duncan Eddy's problems began on Halloween night, when he and a group of fellow students stripped, lathered themselves in shaving cream and stormed a campus library as part of a student tradition that involves leaving body prints on the library windows.

Eddy's trip to the library, however, ended with a shattered window and a bloody rear end. He is now seeking help from friends and Rice alumni to help him pay the bill.

"Quite simply, if I cannot raise the money, I will not be able to remain at Rice," he wrote on his website, saveduncansbutt.com. As of midday on Friday, the site had generated more than $8,000 and had been shared on Facebook more than 1,600 times.

For $20, donors receive a T-shirt commemorating the naked run.

"I would like to thank all of my friends from Baker, as well as the rest of the Rice community, who have been incredibly supportive during this stressful time - even if I have been the butt of a few asinine jokes," Eddy wrote on the website.

The streak, known as Baker 13, is named after one of the university's residential colleges and is held on the 13th and 31st of each month.

"The movement to support Duncan spread really fast," said Claire Garney, a Rice University junior in Baker College.

Ian Chmar, who is also a junior in Baker, contributed $50 to the campaign. He said he was Eddy's roommate last year and that he streaked with Eddy and some 200 others this Halloween.

"From what I hear, the university is cracking down on him pretty hard," Chmar told Reuters on Friday.

A similar incident happened in 2008 during Baker 13, and the student was charged $15,900, said B.J. Almond, a university spokesman.

Almond confirmed that Eddy has been charged $15,000, but he declined to comment further, saying that the university does not discuss student disciplinary matters. Eddy told Reuters in an e-mail he was not giving interviews.

"This whole thing has turned into a circus," he wrote. "Right now, I'm just trying to get through exams."

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/us_nm/us_student_prank_houston

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McCready's ex says she's pushing luck over son (AP)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. ? Country singer Mindy McCready is pushing her luck with the legal system by not following a judge's order to return her 5-year-old son to the care of her mother in Florida, her ex-boyfriend and father of the boy said Friday.

McCready said Thursday she would not bring her son back from Tennessee, despite violating a custody arrangement.

McCready took the boy during a recent visit at her father's Florida home, and a judge signed an order Thursday ordering authorities to take the boy into custody and return him. It's not yet clear whether the singer could face criminal charges.

"I'm doing all this to protect Zander, not stay out of trouble," McCready wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday. "I don't think I should be in trouble for protecting my son in the first place."

McCready says she is in Tennessee and cannot travel because she's nearly seven months pregnant with twins.

The judge's order means law enforcement anywhere can pick up the boy and bring him back to Florida.

The boy's father, Billy McKnight, told the NBC "Today" show Friday he spoke on the phone with McCready and their boy after the judge's deadline expired.

"He did sound healthy and ok. He wasn't crying or scared," McKnight said about their son.

"I think she believes she has a case and doesn't realize she's pushing her luck on this one," he said.

McCready and her mother have had a long custody battle over the boy. The boy was living with McCready's mother, who was awarded guardianship in 2007. McCready says her son has suffered abuse at her mother's house; her mother, Gayle Inge, denies the abuse allegations.

"Once the child is located, we will pick him up and bring him back to Florida," said Terri Durdaller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Children and Families. "Although these circumstances are unfortunate for a young child, his safety and well-being are our number one priority."

McCready provided a series of emails to the AP with Lee County Judge James Seals' ruling to return the boy.

"Mom has violated the court's custody order and we are simply restoring the child back into our custody," the judge wrote. "Nothing more. Nothing less. The court makes no judgment about whether Mom will or will not competently care for the child while in her custody. It only wants the child back where the court placed him."

McCready found fame in the mid-1990s and has lived a complicated life in recent years.

In August, she filed a libel suit against her mother and the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., over a story published in the tabloid newspaper that quoted Inge.

And in 2008, McCready was admitted to a hospital after police said she cut her wrists and took several pills in a suicide attempt.

During the TV show "Celebrity Rehab 3" in 2010, McCready came off as a sympathetic figure, and host Dr. Drew Pinsky called her an angel in the season finale.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_en_mu/us_people_mccready

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1st Penn State abuse suit comes from new accuser (AP)

PHILADELPHIA ? Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky sexually abused a boy more than 100 times and threatened to harm his family to keep him quiet, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a new accuser who is not part of the criminal case.

The 29-year-old, identified only as John Doe, had never told anyone about the abuse he claims he suffered until Sandusky was charged this month with abusing other boys. His lawyer said he filed a complaint with law enforcement on Tuesday. He became the first plaintiff to file suit in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal a day later.

Sandusky has acknowledged that he showered with boys but denied molesting them. His lawyer did not immediately return a message about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims Sandusky abused the boy from 1992, when the boy was 10, until 1996 in encounters at the coach's State College home, in a Penn State locker room and on trips, including to a bowl game. The account echoes a grand jury's description of trips, gifts and attention lavished on other boys.

"I am hurting and have been for a long time because of what happened, but feel now even more tormented that I have learned of so many other kids were abused after me," the plaintiff said in a handwritten statement his lawyer read aloud at a news conference.

The lawsuit seeks tens of thousands of dollars and names Sandusky, the university and Sandusky's The Second Mile charity as defendants. The man says he knew the coach through the charity, which Sandusky founded in 1977, ostensibly to help disadvantaged children in central Pennsylvania.

The man was not referenced in the grand jury report that charges Sandusky with abusing eight boys over a 15-year period.

His lawyer, Jeff Anderson, said he believes Sandusky was a predator who could not control his sexual impulses toward children. He harshly criticized officials at Penn State and The Second Mile who failed to report their suspicions and put a stop to any abuse.

"We need to address the institutional recklessness and failures," said Anderson, who specializes in clergy sex abuse lawsuits. "Was it because of power, money, fear, loyalty, lack of education?"

The university said it had not seen the complaint.

The charity said it would respond after reviewing the lawsuit but added: "The Second Mile will adhere to its legal responsibilities throughout this process. As always, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families."

Anderson suggested that it ended four years later because Sandusky was not sexually interested in older teens.

The lawsuit was filed hours before students and high-ranking administrators participated in a town hall forum organized by students at Penn State's main campus in State College.

Penn State president Rod Erickson promised the university would raise the visibility of ethics "to a new level" following the scandal, which has rocked the campus.

"So hopefully everyone in the university understands ... we learn to do the right thing the first time, every time," Erickson said in opening remarks before an audience of about 450 students and employees at an auditorium in the student union.

Students said the forum, which was broadcast on the school's public television station, will help in the healing process.

Sandusky was charged on Nov. 5 with abusing eight boys, some on campus. A grand jury said the allegations were not immediately brought to the attention of authorities even though high-level people at Penn State apparently knew about at least one of them.

The scandal has resulted in the departures of school President Graham Spanier and longtime coach Joe Paterno. Athletic Director Tim Curley has been placed on administrative leave, and Vice President Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the university's police department, has stepped down.

Schultz and Curley are charged with lying to the grand jury and failure to report to police, and Sandusky is charged with child sex abuse. All maintain their innocence.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiff said Sandusky gave him gifts, travel and privileges after meeting him through his charity in 1992. The abuse began shortly afterward, the suit said.

Anderson described Penn State and the charity as entwined institutions, and he charged that both failed to ensure that children were safe when they took part in trips and activities. He declined to say which bowl game the boy attended.

Sandusky took one boy he molested to the Alamo Bowl in Texas in 1999 and threatened to send him home when he resisted his advances, the grand jury said.

The bowl proved to be Sandusky's last game as Penn State's defensive coordinator. Once Paterno's heir apparent, Sandusky left after Paterno told him he would not get the head coaching job.

John Doe's lawsuit seeks a minimum of $400,000 in damages for sexual abuse, negligence, emotional distress and other claims. The accuser long thought he was the only victim and was mired in guilt and self-loathing, the lawyer said.

"Now that I have done something about it, I am feeling better and going to get help and work with the police," the accuser wrote in his statement.

Anderson declined to specify what sexual acts his client says took place, but he called them "severe." Nor would he say which police agency his client contacted Tuesday.

Police in Philadelphia and State College said they were not aware of such a complaint. The attorney general's office, which led the grand jury investigation, and state police said they could not disclose if a report was filed.

A university spokeswoman said police have received two complaints since Sandusky's arrest, the most recent from a prison inmate in Oklahoma, and both have been turned over to the attorney general's office. Anderson said his client John Doe is not that Oklahoma inmate.

By Anderson's count, the grand jury report lists 17 adults made aware of complaints or suspicions about the coach over the years, including those who knew of a 1998 complaint that Sandusky had showered with a Second Mile boy. Police pursued that mother's complaint and compiled more than 100 pages of investigatory notes, but no charges were filed.

Had John Doe known about that, he might have come forward to a parent or counselor years ago, Anderson said.

"Why were so many people, for so long, making choices that protected the institutions and not the children?" Anderson asked. "It's not just about Penn State, it's about all of us."

___

AP writer Genaro C. Armas contributed to this report from State College.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_sp_ot/us_penn_state_abuse

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Asia pilot gap grows as airlines order new jets (AP)

HONG KONG ? Fast-growing Asian and Middle Eastern airlines have signed orders recently for hundreds of new airplanes ? now they face the problem of finding enough pilots to fly them. For safety-conscious travelers, that means sticking with the big, well known airlines who can afford to lure the best staff as the scramble to fill the cockpit intensifies.

While there have been warnings for several years of a pilot shortage in Asia, the latest orders add to the urgency. The region is forecast to account for the lion's share of global aircraft deliveries over the next two decades as demand for air travel surges amid strong economic growth. It's also forecast to need the largest number of new pilots and the widening shortage of experienced staff is raising safety concerns and playing havoc with flight schedules.

"Quite a number of carriers are increasing their orders. So where are the pilots coming from? The shortage is going to manifest itself certainly as we go into next year because there'll be a lot of planes coming in then, so these guys are going to have a hard time finding the pilots to fly them," said Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Standard & Poor's.

Last month, Indonesia's Lion Air ordered 230 Boeing Co. 737s with options for 150 more. Qatar Airways ordered at least 55 jets from Airbus SAS while Emirates ordered 50 Boeing 777s. From 2011 to 2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion.

To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, the International Civil Aviation Organization forecasts Asia will need 229,676 pilots over the next two decades, up from 50,344 in 2010. In the most likely scenario, Asia will be short about 9,000 pilots a year because it will need about 14,000 but have capacity to train only about 5,000.

"Never in human history have we seen a time when 2 billion people will enter the middle class and demand air travel. That time is now," said William Voss, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Flight Safety Foundation.

Some airlines are already acting.

Emirates has announced plans to set up a dedicated $109 million flight training center in Dubai that will be able to train up to 400 students at a time. Earlier this year, Canadian flight-training company CAE Inc. said it was expanding its training center in Zhuhai, China that it runs jointly with China Southern Airlines.

But Roei Ganzarski, Boeing's chief customer officer for flight services, warns that recruiting pilots will be a long-term problem for the aviation industry. "We've already heard of a few airlines that have either reduced their operations or even grounded their airplanes because they don't have enough people to fly them."

Training a commercial airline pilot takes time ? up to three or four years. Trainees must obtain a Private Pilot's License and then a Commercial Pilot's License. Then they need an Air Transport Pilot's License ? the advanced credential required to fly a commercial airliner ? which involves logging about 1,500 flying hours. It's an expensive and time-consuming entire process that rookies starting from scratch will need two to three years to complete.

Once they're hired by an airline as a first officer, candidates will need more time for additional conversion training for the type of aircraft they'll be flying, which could take another year.

Aviation industry executives say small airlines will be hit hardest because they can't compete with big, rich carriers such as Dubai-based Emirates, the Middle East's biggest airline.

Capt. Alan Stealey, senior vice president for flight operations, said Emirates isn't facing problems recruiting its target of 600 pilots this year, up from about 400 or 450 in past years.

Emirates lures staff with generous salaries and benefits. First officers earn tax-free annual salaries averaging $95,000 while captains get about $135,000 as well as free housing, medical benefits and tuition fees.

Emirates also operates some of the world's newest, most advanced jets ? another draw for recruits.

"We're an airline of choice from a pilot's point of view," said Stealey. "The shortage will not be in carriers like Emirates," but rather will hit smaller, regional carriers hardest, he predicted.

The crash of an Air India Express jet in May 2010 highlighted the problems smaller airlines are facing. An investigation blamed the Serbian pilot for the disaster in which a Boeing 737 operated by the national carrier's low-cost arm crashed while landing at Mangalore's airport, killing 158 people.

The probe found that the pilot slept through more than half the flight and woke up disoriented when it was time to land the aircraft.

India's pilot shortage has been driven by fierce demand as a slew of carriers have started up in the past decade and expanded rapidly. Pilots complain that they don't have enough rest time between flights, a violation of international aviation safety practices.

Indian airlines have been forced to look abroad for staff, which comes with its own problems as some Eastern European pilots had difficulties with English ? the international language of aviation.

By hiring pilots from countries where English isn't spoken widely, "you have to accept that there's potential for confusion, or less comprehension," said Gideon Ewers, a spokesman for the U.K.-based International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations.

Airlines across Asia have been recruiting foreigners. China has at least 1,300 foreign flight captains, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. Garuda Indonesia and Korean Airlines have also been forced to hire foreign pilots. In China, state media quoted an American pilot for Spring Airways complaining he had to rely on his Chinese first officer to communicate with air traffic controllers who wouldn't or couldn't speak English.

Experts say while some smaller airlines are forced to hire pilots on short-term contracts, they don't have as much control over the quality of the pilot's training and experience as big airlines with cadet programs do. The result is that while airlines may have crews that meet the minimum training requirements, some airlines will have crews that are excellent but others are "dangerously marginal," said Voss.

At airlines where safety and training standards are closely followed, the pilots in the cockpit "correct the missteps and correct problems on the spot. All of those little corrections eventually define the safety culture of that airline," said Voss.

"If the crews are all on six-month contracts, that doesn't happen. Risky behavior goes unchallenged, professionalism decays, and disaster inevitably follows."

A potentially even graver shortage looms of maintenance personnel, aviation groups say. Boeing forecasts that Asia will need a quarter-million new technicians over the next two decades, up from about 46,500 now.

"It is a more difficult problem to solve," said Voss,"since the job is very unattractive and harder to train."

___________

AP Business Writer Adam Schreck in Dubai, Aviation Writer Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and AP Writer Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report.

___________

Follow Kelvin Chan at twitter.com/chanman

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_bi_ge/as_asia_pilot_shortage

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Unemployment rate drops to lowest since 2009 (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The unemployment rate, which has refused to budge from the 9 percent neighborhood for two and a half frustrating years, suddenly dropped in November, driven in part by small businesses that finally see reason to hope and hire.

Economists said there was a long way to go but liked what they saw.

The rate fell to 8.6 percent, the lowest since March 2009, two months after President Barack Obama took office. Unemployment passed 9 percent that spring and had stayed there or higher for all but two months since then.

The country added 120,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs five months in a row ? the first time that has happened since April 2006, well before the Great Recession.

"Something good is stirring in the U.S. economy," Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.

It clinched one of the best weeks in stock market history. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 37 points and 825 for the week. The only better week was in October 2008, when stocks lurched higher and lower during the financial crisis.

The report showed that September and October were stronger months for the job market than first estimated. For four months in a row, the government has revised job growth figures higher for previous months.

Unemployment peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009, four months after the Great Recession ended. It dipped to 8.9 percent last February and 8.8 percent last March but otherwise was at or above 9 percent.

Obama, who faces a re-election vote in less than a year and a presidential campaign that will turn on the economy, seized on the decline to argue for expanding a cut in the tax that workers pay toward Social Security.

The tax cut reaches 160 million Americans and will give most households $1,000 to $2,000 this year. It will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress acts. Republicans and Democrats have supported an extension but differ on how to pay for it.

The Senate on Thursday defeated plans from both parties. Republicans had proposed paying for the cut by freezing the pay of federal workers through 2015. Democrats wanted to raise taxes on people making $1 million or more a year.

"Now is not the time to slam the brakes on the recovery, right now it's time to step on the gas," Obama said Friday.

Inside the unemployment report, one of the most closely watched indicators of the economy's health, were signs of improvement for small businesses, which account for one of every two jobs in the private sector.

The government uses a survey of mostly large companies and government agencies to determine how many jobs were added or lost each month. It uses a separate survey of households to determine the unemployment rate.

The household survey picks up hiring by companies of all sizes, including small businesses and companies just getting off the ground. It also includes farm workers and the self-employed, who aren't included in the survey of companies.

The household survey has shown an average of 321,000 jobs created per month since July, compared with an average of 13,000 the first seven months of the year.

When the economy is improving or slipping into recession, many economists say, the household survey does the better job of picking up the shift because it is more likely to detect small business hiring.

"We might finally be seeing new business creation expand again, which is critical to the sustainability of the recovery," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, a financial services company.

The National Federation of Independent Business, a small business group, said Friday that its own survey of small companies shows that more of them are planning to add workers than at any time since September 2008, when the financial crisis struck.

LogicBoost, a Washington, D.C., software consulting firm with 19 employees, has hired a sales worker and a marketing worker in the past three months and planned to post an opening for a software engineer Friday.

"Business is going gangbusters," CEO Jonathan Cogley said. "It would be great if the economy were stronger. I think we'd be growing even faster."

Outside Detroit, Grace Dersa opened the Frank Street Bakery this week with her husband. They took the $60,000 gamble after seeing signs that the local economy is improving. They, too, plan to add a worker soon.

"When we go to a restaurant here, there's a 30-minute to two-hour wait. Homes are selling in this area," Dersa said. "People are spending."

Indeed, Americans dropped a record $52.4 billion over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. A separate report from MasterCard found spending was up almost 9 percent from last year.

The unemployment report was the latest encouraging indicator for the economy. Other reports this week have shown that factories are producing more, construction is growing, and people are buying more cars.

The accelerating debt crisis in Europe has loomed over the economy for months. An economic collapse there would hammer sales of American exports. And if the crisis causes banks to stop lending money, the world economy would suffer.

But there are signs that Europe is moving toward a solution. Earlier this week, six central banks around the world made it easier for commercial banks overseas to borrow American dollars to do business. The coordinated action calmed financial markets and bought time for politicians to work something out.

The leaders of Germany and France appear to be pushing for stronger rules to make sure European governments are responsible with their budgets, an approach designed to save the euro currency from collapse.

European leaders meet next Friday for a crucial summit on the matter.

In the United States, about 13.3 million people are counted as unemployed. Private employers added 140,000 jobs in November, while governments shed 20,000. Governments at all level have cut almost a half-million jobs this year.

More than half the jobs added last month were by retailers, restaurants and bars. Professional and business services also rose. Those tend to be higher-paying jobs ? engineers, accountants and high-tech workers.

Still, more than 300,000 people stopped their job searches last month, so they were no longer officially counted as unemployed. That accounts for some of the drop in the unemployment rate.

The so-called underemployment rate, which counts people who have given up looking and people who are working part-time but want full-time jobs, did fall ? to 15.6 percent from 16.2 percent.

But even with the recent gains, the economy isn't close to replacing the jobs lost in the recession. Employers began shedding workers in February 2008 and cut nearly 8.7 million jobs for the next 25 months. The economy has regained about 2.5 million.

And most people aren't getting raises. Average hourly pay slipped 2 cents last month to $23.18. In the past year, wages have risen 1.8 percent, but inflation has risen twice as fast, eroding buying power.

It had appeared that Obama would face voters next fall with the highest unemployment of any sitting president seeking re-election since World War II. That was the 7.8 percent faced by Gerald Ford when he ran and lost in 1976.

Getting unemployment down to that level would take stronger and consistent job growth. It takes about 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.

Ronald Reagan faced 7.2 percent unemployment in 1984 and trounced Walter Mondale. Unemployment was 7.8 percent when Obama took office in January 2009.

The economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in July, August and September. Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, estimates growth will speed up to 2.5 percent in the last three months of the year, but slow to 1.5 percent in 2012.

___

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy

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TLC's T-Boz files for bankruptcy again

TLC member T-Boz has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year. According to documents filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the singer owes creditors $768,642.99, mainly from mortgages on her $1.2 million house.

She has filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection, which enables people with regular income to create a plan to repay their debts. She entered a similar bankruptcy protection filing with the United States Bankruptcy Court of Northern District of Georgia in February, but it was dismissed the following month.

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Though TLC have had ten Top 10 singles and four multi-platinum albums, the documents reveal that T-Boz only earns an average of $1,200 per month in royalties from those records. Nevertheless, her total assets are $1.716 million, she takes in around $11,700 per month in income, and her monthly expenses are $8,821.

Photos: Random Notes

The singer believes that she could have avoided bankruptcy if she had been able to collect $250,000 in child support from her ex-husband, Mack 10, and $22,500 in debts from Mark Jefferson.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45491600/ns/today-entertainment/

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AT&T Fires Back at the FCC Over T-Mobile Merger Bashing [At&t]

Police: officers shoot woman stabbing her child

(AP) ? Police officers shot and killed a woman in an Atlanta home when she didn't comply with orders to stop stabbing her young daughter, who also died, authorities said Monday.

Police and fire rescue personnel were called to the home Monday afternoon and were told an 8-year-old boy had been assaulted by his mother and thrown out a window, said an Atlanta Police spokesman, Maj. Keith Meadows.

Meadows said witnesses told officers the mother was alone inside the home with her young daughter. He said officers entered the house and found the mother sitting in a chair, stabbing the child.

Two officers drew their service weapons and ordered the woman to drop a knife, firing at her when she did not comply, Meadows said. He said between 10 and 16 shots were fired.

Police spokesman Carlos Campos said the stabbing victim was dead at the scene, while the 8-year-old boy was hospitalized in stable condition with apparently minor injuries. Police said they did not know if the daughter had been struck by a bullet, and did not know a motive for the attacks on the children.

Campos said the officers involved in the shooting will be placed on a routine administrative leave during the investigation.

Neighbor Lela Smith told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the family had lived in the home about a year and a half. She said the child who died was nearly 5 years old.

The mother's name was not immediately released.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-28-Police-Mother%20Shot/id-8d1954f30f104e71a1dc761a689c729a

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China sentences 113 in tainted pork scandal (AP)

BEIJING ? China's state news agency says more than 100 people including 77 government employees have been sentenced in a scandal involving pork tainted with a banned chemical. At least one person was given the death penalty.

Several farms in Henan province were found to be using the fat-burning drug clenbuterol ? a banned chemical that makes pork leaner but can harm humans.

Xinhua News Agency says the main culprit, Liu Xiang, was convicted of harming public safety and sentenced to death, with the execution delayed for two years. Such sentences often are later commuted to life imprisonment.

Clenbuterol can cause nausea, dizziness and heart palpitations. Pig farmers like to use it because it yields leaner meat, which fetches a higher price.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111126/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tainted_pork

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Barry Lando: Egyptian Military: State Within a State

On Friday, Washington added its voice to Egyptians demanding that the Egyptian military give way to civilian rule. It's instructive, however, to consider why the Egyptian brass are so reluctant.

Their resistance stems not just from a fear of an ultimate takeover by radical Muslims. There is also the fact that real civilian rule could spell an end to the system of massive military corruption and patronage that has gone on for decades in Egypt, a system that has given the military unimpeded control over a huge sector of the Egyptian economy: "a state within a state" as a well-informed Egyptian friend of mine puts it.

That's the state that's now being challenged.

For years, Egypt's top military ranks have enjoyed a pampered existence in sprawling developments such as Cairo's Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, bonuses, new cars, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices. In other areas, top officers are able to buy luxurious apartments on generous credit for 10 percent of what those apartments are actually worth.

But we're not just talking about sensational official perks. Many of Egypt's brass are notoriously corrupt. Vast swathes of military land, for instance, were sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo -- with little if any accounting.

Other choice military property ran on the Nile Delta and Red Sea coast boasted idyllic beaches, and exquisite coral reefs. In return for turning the land over to private developers, military officers became key shareholders in a slew of gleaming new tourist developments.

The reason Egypt's military became so involved in non-military activities was because, after peace was signed with Israel in 1975, the military lost much of its raison d'etre, as did its military factories. The problem, though, was how to keep those factories going and employ the hundreds of thousands of young men who would otherwise flood the domestic market?

The answer was the military would also produce for the civilian market. Thus the generals came to preside over 16 enormous factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to heaters, clothing, doors, stationary pharmaceutical products, and microscopes. Most of these products are sold to military personnel through discount military stores, but large amount are also sold commercially.

The military also builds highways, housing developments, hotels, power lines, sewers, bridges, schools, telephone exchanges, often in murky arrangements with civilian companies.

The military are also Egypt's largest farmers, running a vast network of dairy farms, milk processing facilities, cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fish farms. They've plenty left from their huge output to sell to civilians through a sprawling distribution network.

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the military are just naturally more efficient that civilians. Hard not to be "more efficient" when you are able to employ thousands of poorly paid military recruits for labor.

Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. And upon retiring, top military officers are often rewarded with plum positions running everything from factories and industries to charities.

Whatever the number, Robert Springborg, who has written extensively on Egypt, says officers in the Egyptian military are making "billions and billions and billions" of dollars."

But there's no way to know how efficient or inefficient the military are, nor how much money their vast enterprises make, nor how many millions or billions get skimmed off since the military's operations are off the nation's books. No real published accountings. No oversight. Just as there is no civilian oversight of the entire military budget, and that's the way the current military regime have said they aim to keep things

Of course none of the above is a surprise to U.S. officials who dole out some 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to the Egyptian Army, and hope that sum and the neat weapons it provides will keep the army in line. [One of the most detailed studies of the military's non-military activities was done by a U.S. military researcher at Fort Leavenworth.]

A perceptive look into all this comes via a 2008 U.S.diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The writer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo ticked off the various businesses the military was involved in, and considered how the military might react if Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak, were to lose power.

The military would almost certainly go along with a successor, the cable's author wrote, as long as that successor didn't interfere in the military's business arrangements. But, the cable continued, "in a messier succession scenario, it becomes more difficult to predict the military's actions."

Thus, the messier scenario today.

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Follow Barry Lando on Twitter: www.twitter.com/barrylando

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-lando/egyptian-military_b_1114132.html

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