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Small town up for sale, salvation

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:03:35 EST

TOOMSBORO, Ga. – Where is Kim Basinger when you need her? Much of this Middle Georgia town is for sale and Basinger, the one-time Hollywood star who 22 years ago purchased a large tract of Braselton northeast of Atlanta, would be an alluring landlord. Downtown Toomsboro has been lovingly restored to turn-of-the-century splendor with an old hotel, syrup mill, cotton warehouse and the Swampland Opera House. Asking price: $2.5 million. For a dying, no-stoplight town? Where trains no longer stop? And mangy dogs amble past the crumbling depot in the midday sun? Toomsboro looks like a backdrop for “The Walking Dead” or another post-apocalyptic cityscape devoid of people and hope. Sadly, Toomsboro could stand in for hundreds of rural communities across the nation, towns that bleed businesses, people and hope. Just about all of them, though, believe they possess a certain specialness that, once tapped, will resurrect civic life and personal fortunes. Toomsboro’s salvation, Bill Lucado says, lies with Basinger and other Hollywood types. “It would make a hell of a movie set,” said Lucado, who once owned many of the buildings and is now marketing the town for the Florida guy he sold it to.

Vatican in chaos after butler arrested for leaks

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:00:30 EST

VATICAN CITY – An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope’s own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment. The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it’s serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency. The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI’s own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff’s No. 2. “If you wrote this in fiction you wouldn’t believe it,” said Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed to the tumult with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.

Dozens of children killed in new Syria attack

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:00:41 EST

BEIRUT – Gruesome video Saturday showed rows of dead Syrian children lying in a mosque in bloody shorts and T-shirts with gaping head wounds, haunting images of what activists called one of the deadliest regime attacks yet in Syria’s 14-month-old uprising. The shelling attack on Houla, a group of villages northwest of the central city of Homs, killed more than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, the head of the U.N. observer team in Syria said. The attacks sparked outrage from U.S. and other international leaders, and large protests in the suburbs of Syria’s capital of Damascus and its largest city, Aleppo. It also renewed fears of the relevance of a month-old international peace plan that has not stopped almost daily violence. The U.N.

Subtropical storm Beryl may reach land by Memorial Day

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:00:35 EST

Subtropical storm Beryl is about to rain on the Southeast’s Memorial Day parade. A tropical storm warning was in effect along the coasts of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina on Saturday, the National Weather Service announced, as the second named storm of 2012 approached. The NWS said the storm had only minimal strength, meaning it would likely not follow the usual “rules” for tropical storms and could behave somewhat erratically. “There is still great uncertainty as to just what the wind strength and structure will be like at landfall,” the weather service said on its website. “In all likelihood, the strongest winds will be confined to the coastal areas and could occur anywhere in the warning area.” Added Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami: “It’s still a subtropical storm, meaning not all of its energy is coming from warm sources, but it makes no difference in reference to strength.” Approximately 300 miles northeast of Jacksonville, Fla., as of Saturday morning, Beryl was slowly touring the area at 9 mph and was expected to move southwest until Sunday morning, Feltgen said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Surf conditions were extremely dangerous due to the unusually high tides along the coasts of northern Florida, Georgia and up to Edisto Beach in South Carolina over the Memorial Day weekend. Beryl was expected to reach land by Sunday night or early Monday morning, bringing a storm surge and 3 to 6 inches of rain. Winds of 50 mph were expected at landfall. The news was a mixed bag for some communities in the area. “The good news is that (the storm) will fall across an area that really needs rain,” Feltgen said. The bad news? Extremely dry land can’t quickly absorb that much water. “If you get that much water that fast, I don’t care how good your drain pipes are, there will be a big possibility of flooding,” Feltgen said. The hurricane season, which officially starts June 1 and lasts six months, is off to an early start this year; Beryl follows Tropical Storm Alberto. Earlier in the week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced its predictions for the upcoming hurricane season, saying that nine to 15 named storms are likely.

SpaceX capsule captured by space station crew in historic mission

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:00:46 EST

LOS ANGELES – For the first time, a spacecraft made by a private company arrived at the International Space Station. SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon spacecraft was captured by the space station’s 58-foot robotic arm by astronaut Don Pettit aboard the space station. The linkup took place about 250 miles above northwest Australia at 6:56 a.m. PDT. “Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” Pettit confirmed. At that moment, engineers watching at SpaceX’s control center at their Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters, as well as NASA mission control in Houston, began cheering, with rounds of high-fives and handshakes. The cone-shaped capsule was grappled to the station’s arm after three days of circling the Earth. NASA is now determining when the spacecraft should dock with the station and when crew should unload the half-ton of spare parts, water and clothes. SpaceX, officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is the first private company to embark on such a mission.

NJ man charged with murdering NY boy Patz in 1979

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:00:39 EST

NEW YORK – Thirty-three years to the day after 6-year-old Etan Patz vanished without a trace while walking to catch a school bus, a man accused of strangling him and dumping his body with the trash was arraigned on a murder charge on Friday in a locked hospital ward where he was being held as a suicide risk. A lawyer for Pedro Hernandez, who was a teenage convenience store stock clerk at the time of the boy’s disappearance, told the judge that his client is mentally ill and has a history of hallucinations. Hernandez, now 51, appeared in court on Friday evening via video camera from a conference room at Bellevue Hospital, where he was admitted earlier in the day after making comments about wanting to kill himself. The legal proceeding lasted only around 4 minutes. Hernandez didn’t speak or enter a plea, but his court-appointed lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, told the judge that his client was bipolar and schizophrenic and has a “history of hallucinations, both visual and auditory.” A judge ordered Hernandez held without bail and authorized a psychological examination to see if he is fit to stand trial. Hernandez was expressionless during the hearing. He wore an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. A police officer stood behind him. The prosecutor who appeared in court, Assistant District Attorney Armand Durastanti, said it was “33 years ago today that 6-year-old Etan Patz left his home on Prince Street to catch his school bus.

UN nuclear agency finds more highly enriched uranium in Iran

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:00:30 EST

VIENNA – The U.N. atomic watchdog agency has found evidence at an underground bunker in Iran that may mean scientists there have moved closer to enriching uranium to the level needed to produce nuclear weapons. Iran, for its part, claims the slightly more highly enriched uranium was the result of a technical glitch, according to a restricted report from the International Atomic Energy Agency obtained by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau. Experts said the discovery of traces of uranium enriched up to 27 percent at the Fordow facility near the holy city of Qom is above Iran’s previously highest-known enrichment grade, about 20 percent, but may be the result of improper calibration when the centrifuges were first used. Uranium must be enriched to roughly 90 percent in order to make a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes, but has been enriching uranium to higher levels than experts believe is necessary, though still far below the level needed for weapon-grade fuel. “It is not necessarily a sign that Iran is enriching to levels beyond what it has declared,” a diplomat in Vienna said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue. Higher-than-expected enrichment has been found in the past at the Natanz facility in Iran, the diplomat said. The watchdog agency is seeking more details to assess Iran’s explanation that the more highly enriched uranium came about as a result of a technical glitch, the restricted report said. The development, which raised alarms in Washington and elsewhere, came a day after Iranian officials concluded two days of sometimes-contentious talks in Baghdad with negotiators from the five permanent members of the U.N.

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:54:08 EST