Monday, April 23, 2012

AMR union to vote next week on proposal: sources

AMR union to vote next week on proposal: sources


AMR union to vote next week on proposal: sources

Posted:

A US Airways plane and an American Airlines plane share a terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington(Reuters) - The union representing seven work groups at bankrupt American Airlines will vote starting next week on the carrier's best and final contract offer, with results expected before unions testify in a hearing on the airline's request to void their contract, three sources said on Monday. American, a unit of AMR Corp, is finalizing the language of the offer, which features fewer job cuts than the 8,500 originally proposed, airline spokesman Bruce Hicks said. AMR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November, citing labor costs that were higher than its peers. ...


Al Qaeda challenges with lone wolf tactics: Canada

Posted:

CSIS Director Fadden waits to testify on Parliament Hill in OttawaOTTAWA (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's new focus on "lone wolf" tactics is making it tough for Western intelligence agencies to prevent terror attacks, the head of Canada's spy service said on Monday. In a rare admission that al Qaeda's switch to "individual jihad" was posing problems, the head of Canada's spy service said lone wolves are tough to detect because they do not belong to a larger network that might attract attention. ...


Occupy protester's tweets fair game for prosecutors: judge

Posted:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Occupy Wall Street protester, arrested during last fall's mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge, has lost his bid to stop prosecutors from subpoenaing his Twitter records. Malcolm Harris was among 700 demonstrators arrested on October 1, during a march over the span to protest economic inequality. Prosecutors had been expected to use the tweets to challenge Harris' "anticipated defense" that police officers led protesters onto the bridge before arresting them, the judge said. At the time police said demonstrators were arrested for blocking traffic on the bridge. ...

California measure to repeal death penalty qualifies for ballot

Posted:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California voters will decide in November whether to repeal the state's death penalty after activists collected the more than half a million signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot, the Secretary of State's office said on Monday. The ballot initiative, which focuses on the high cost of the death penalty, would abolish capital punishment as the maximum sentence in murder convictions and replace it with life imprisonment. ...

Man stops policeman, confesses to Oklahoma murder 25 years ago

Posted:

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A homeless man walked up to a policeman in Montana last week and confessed to involvement in the murder of an Oklahoma county commissioner 25 years ago, authorities said on Monday. "He just said he wanted to get something off of his chest," said Stan Florence, director of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. "I think it was just one of those things he carried with him for 25 years and wanted to talk to somebody about it." The man, Clifford W. ...

Arizona House votes to demand return of federally owned lands

Posted:

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona lawmakers on Monday passed legislation demanding the U.S. government relinquish to the state millions of acres of federal territory, in the latest rekindling of a "sagebrush rebellion" over control of public lands in the West. Without debate, the Republican-dominated Arizona House of Representatives easily passed a measure seeking the return of roughly 48,000 square miles of government-owned acreage in the Grand Canyon state by 2015. The bill, approved on a 35-15 vote, now goes to the state Senate for final passage. ...

Oakland police change crowd control policies after Occupy

Posted:

(Reuters) - Oakland's Police Department will significantly change how it trains officers to control large crowds following criticism over its practices during anti-Wall Street protests last year that sometimes erupted into violence, the department said on Monday. "It is our duty to protect public safety and at the same time balance the free speech rights of individual protesters with the rights of non-protesting residents," Police Chief Howard Jordan said in a statement. ...

Trayvon Martin's killer leaves Florida jail

Posted:

Neighborhood watch volunteer Zimmerman leaves the Seminole County Jail after posting bail in SanfordSANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, was released early on Monday from a Florida county jail on $150,000 bail. Wearing a brown jacket, jeans and carrying a brown paper bag, Zimmerman walked out of the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Sanford, Florida, moments after midnight after posting bail and meeting other conditions set for his release at a hearing on Friday. ...


Case of long missing New York boy still a mystery

Posted:

NYPD spokesman Paul Brown holds an original missing poster of Etan Patz during a news conference near a New York City apartment building, where police and FBI agents were searching a basement for clues in the boy's 1979 disappearance, in New YorkNEW YORK (Reuters) - The fate of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy whose disappearance in 1979 helped galvanize interest in missing children, remained a mystery after a four-day excavation of a basement area near where Patz was last seen failed to turn up any new information. Although the boy was formally declared dead in 2001, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance reopened the case in 2010 and investigators began tearing apart the basement last week looking for clothing and human remains after a cadaver-sniffing dog sensed something at the site. ...


Winter returns with a blast as snow pounds U.S. Northeast

Posted:

Ice and snow coat tulips, a result of a blast of snow and wind, along Milestrip Road in Orchard Park, New YorkBUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A spring storm struck the U.S. Northeast on Monday, dumping wet snow in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and western New York and bringing heavy rains to the Eastern Seaboard. The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings from West Virginia northward into western New York, a flood watch for central New Hampshire and eastern Maine and flood advisories for eastern Massachusetts. As much as 12 to 18 inches of snow could fall in the mountains of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, the service said. ...


Virginia woman wins $1 million - twice in same lottery

Posted:

(Reuters) - A Virginia woman found out on April 7 she won $1 million in a lottery drawing. And then she won again. Virginia Fike of Berryville, Virginia, had the good luck to buy not one but two lottery tickets from a truck stop that both turned out to be $1 million winners, matching five of the six Powerball numbers. Lottery officials presented her with a $2 million check on Friday. Fike said she found out that she had won - and won again - while sitting in a hospital room with her mother, according to a statement distributed by the Virginia lottery. ...

Prosecutors call John Edwards manipulative, ambitious

Posted:

Former U.S. Senator John Edwards arrives with his daughter Cate Edwards at the federal courthouse in GreensboroGREENSBORO, North Carolina (Reuters) - Prosecutors in the criminal campaign finance case against former Senator John Edwards described him on Monday as a manipulative politician who refused to let his affair or his mistress' pregnancy sideline his presidential ambitions. But Edwards' defense asked jurors to "follow the money," saying the nearly $1 million in illegal campaign funds he is accused of secretly accepting as he sought the 2008 Democratic nomination instead went to a former campaign aide who used the money to pay for his $1.5 million house. ...


Two arrested for booby trapping Utah hiking trail

Posted:

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - Two men have been arrested on suspicion of setting a couple of crude but potentially deadly booby traps made from sharpened sticks and rocks along a popular Utah hiking trail, police said on Monday. A U.S. Forest Service officer on foot patrol discovered the devices earlier this month after spotting a trip wire on the ground. The traps were crafted from sharpened tree limbs, rock and rope near a fort-like shelter on the Big Springs Trail in Provo Canyon, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City. "This looks like something done just for the sake of hurting someone ... ...

New Jersey troopers suspended in "joyride" scandal

Posted:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two New Jersey state troopers have been suspended without pay in connection with accusations that police escorted a high-speed caravan of unmarked sports cars down the state's Garden State Parkway, the state attorney general said on Monday. Witnesses reported seeing two State Police cars escorting dozens of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour on March 30, and weaving across the highway's three lanes, according to a report published on Sunday by the Star-Ledger newspaper. ...

Washington sues Florida city over firefighter tests

Posted:

MIAMI (Reuters) - The Justice Department sued the city of Jacksonville, Florida, on Monday, claiming its use of written tests to determine promotions in the city's fire department discriminates against African-Americans. The lawsuit followed a more than two-year investigation examining Jacksonville's record of promoting African-Americans for the ranks of lieutenant, captain, district chief and engineer dating back to 2004. It came after a separate lawsuit filed last year by two dozen Jacksonville firefighters challenging the city's promotional process. ...

Search for Arizona girl, 6, turns back to her Tucson home

Posted:

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) - The search for a missing 6-year-old Arizona girl who authorities said may have been snatched from her bedroom in Tucson entered its third day on Monday as search dogs shifted investigators' attention back to the child's home. The parents of first-grader Isabel Mercedes Celis told detectives she was last seen on Friday night when they tucked her into bed, and was found to have vanished when a family member entered her room the next morning to awaken her, police said. ...

Ilinois revenue growth fails to dent fiscal mountain

Posted:

A woman sits in the shade under a tree along the water near North Avenue Beach in ChicagoCHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois continues to face "staggering fiscal challenges" as its unpaid bill backlog grows, despite revenue growth of 3.9 percent in the first three quarters of fiscal 2012, the state comptroller said in a report released on Monday. Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, in her quarterly report, said the amount of submitted and unpaid bills increased by $1.3 billion to $5.57 billion at the close of the fiscal third quarter ended in March from the preceding quarter, while payments delays were expected to persist in the foreseeable future. ...


No bail for Texas nurse accused of killing woman, kidnapping baby

Posted:

CONROE, Texas (Reuters) - A judge on Monday denied bail for a nurse accused of fatally shooting a young mother and abducting her baby outside a doctor's office near Houston last week. District Attorney Brett Ligon said he was still considering whether to seek the death penalty against Verna D. McClain, 30, charged with murdering mother Kala Golden, 28, and kidnapping her 3-day-old baby Keegan Schuchardt on April 17. The baby was found unharmed that same evening at a home 10 miles away. District Court Judge Fred Edwards said that the crimes McClain is accused of could warrant the death penalty. ...

Mexican immigration to U.S. at a standstill: report

Posted:

PHOENIX (Reuters) - The flow of immigrants into the United States from Mexico has come to a standstill and may have reversed, bringing a stunning end to a four-decade surge of newcomers from the country's southern neighbor, according to a study released on Monday. The report by the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center found that an influx that brought 12 million immigrants to the United States since the 1970s, more than half of whom came illegally, began to slow five years ago and may have reversed in the past two years. ...

New York's Nassau County lease of sewer plant faces hurdles

Posted:

(Reuters) - New York's Nassau County taps the debt market this week, with plans to lease its sewer system for nearly $1 billion to help fill a budget hole running into obstacles. Nassau's severe and lasting fiscal problems led the state to set up a control board in 2000, preventing a bankruptcy. Since then Nassau, on Long Island's western half and one of the nation's wealthiest counties, has continued to struggle. It faces a $310 million deficit in 2012. ...

AMR fires opening shot in court battle with workers

Posted:

A US Airways Express plane takes off with the U.S. Capitol in the background at Ronald Reagan National Airport in WashingtonNEW YORK (Reuters) - American Airlines defended its plan to abandon its union contracts on Monday as its workers picketed outside a Manhattan court house, in the first day of a high-profile court battle over the bankrupt airline's labor deals. The company's parent, AMR Corp, told a judge at a hearing on its request to abrogate its union contracts, that it cannot survive without major concessions. Jack Gallagher, an attorney for AMR, said the company needs 20 percent across-the-board reductions in employee costs, half of which must come from employee benefits. ...


Complaint tests conservative group's charity status

Posted:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A conservative group that promotes legislation in state capitals is mainly a lobbying organization and should not benefit from a special tax status meant for charities, a liberal group says in a complaint to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The complaint, released on Monday, challenges the tax-law status of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charity. That status lets ALEC avoid paying taxes and lets its supporters deduct their contributions. ...

U.S. can't afford to give away air travelers' lost change

Posted:

A traveler is screened by an Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) unit, operated by a TSA security agent, at JFK Airport in New YorkWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only in Washington can it actually cost money to give away loose change. Every year people traveling through U.S. airports mistakenly leave behind about $400,000 at security screening sites. Transportation officials now apply the funds to airline security costs. A bipartisan lawmaker group wants that change to go instead to support USO Inc, a private group that greets U.S. soldiers at airports in addition to sending care packages and entertaining them overseas. But transferring the money to the nonprofit would cost U.S. ...


Search for 6-year-old Arizona girl turns back to her Tucson home

Posted:

Handout photo of Isabel Mercedes CelisTUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) - The search for a missing 6-year-old Arizona girl who authorities say may have been snatched from her bedroom in Tucson entered its third day on Monday as search dogs shifted investigators' attention back to the child's home. The parents of first-grader Isabel Mercedes Celis told detectives she was last seen on Friday night when they tucked her into bed, and was found to have vanished when a family member entered her room the next morning to awaken her, police said. ...


Mexican immigration to U.S. at a standstill: report

Posted:

A man watches a U.S. border patrol helicopter from a fence at the border between Mexico and the United States, in Ciudad JuarezPHOENIX (Reuters) - The flow of immigrants into the United States from Mexico has come to a standstill and may have reversed, bringing a stunning end to a four-decade surge of newcomers from the country's southern neighbor, according to a study released on Monday. The report by the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center found that an influx that brought 12 million immigrants to the United States since the 1970s, more than half of whom came illegally, began to slow five years ago and may have reversed in the past two years. ...


Without reforms, U.S. retirees to face dwindling funds

Posted:

Elderly couples view the ocean and waves along the beach in La JollaWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Aging baby boomers got some jolting news on Monday when the U.S. government said the Social Security retirement program is on track to go bankrupt three years earlier than expected if reforms are not made. Unless Washington politicians, who have been at war with each other over government spending priorities and federal budget deficits, can decide how to put Social Security on a sound footing, retirees' pension checks would start running out in 2033, according to an annual report. ...


MetLife in multistate deal over "Death Master" use

Posted:

The MetLife building is seen in New York(Reuters) - MetLife Inc, the largest life insurer in the United States, will pay nearly $500 million to settle a multistate investigation into unpaid claims for dead policy holders, state regulators and the company said on Monday. The investigation related to the use of the Social Security "Death Master" file, which lists people who have recently died. A number of states have accused insurers of using the list to stop making annuity payments to dead customers, but at the same time not using the list to check whether any life insurance policy holders had passed away. ...


Ex-baseball ace Clemens "trapped" in web of deceit - prosecutor

Posted:

Former baseball star Roger Clemens leaves Federal District Court in Washington D.C.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former baseball star Roger Clemens wove a web of deceit to cover up his steroid use, going so far as to lie about it in testimony before Congress, a prosecutor said at the start of ex-pitcher's second perjury trial on Monday. Proof of Clemens' steroid use includes needles and bloody swabs that independent tests have shown contain the former elite pitcher's DNA and performance-enhancing drugs, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Durham said. ...


NY insurance probe forces $262 million in payments

Posted:

(Reuters) - A New York investigation into how life insurance companies used lists of recent deaths has led to an extra $262.2 million in payments to people nationwide, the governor's office said on Monday. The New York Department of Financial Services has been looking for months at how insurers used the Social Security Administration's "death master" list. ...

U.S. watchdog blasts Medicare quality insurance project

Posted:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medicare, the U.S. healthcare program for the elderly, is spending $8.3 billion on a test project that is supposed to improve the quality of private health coverage but has mainly rewarded mediocre insurance plans, a government watchdog said on Monday. A report by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, recommends canceling the Medicare Advantage quality bonus payment initiative. The three-year project is seen as the largest-scale test of an effort to improve Medicare services to date. The watchdog agency said the U.S. ...

California measure to repeal death penalty qualifies for ballot

Posted:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California voters will decide in November whether to repeal the state's death penalty after activists collected the more than half a million signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot, the Secretary of State's office said on Monday. The ballot initiative, which focuses on the high cost of the death penalty, would abolish capital punishment as the maximum sentence in murder convictions and replace it with life imprisonment. ...

Arizona House votes to demand return of federally owned lands

Posted:

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona lawmakers on Monday passed legislation demanding the U.S. government relinquish to the state millions of acres of federal territory, in the latest rekindling of a "sagebrush rebellion" over control of public lands in the West. Without debate, the Republican-dominated Arizona House of Representatives easily passed a measure seeking the return of roughly 48,000 square miles of government-owned acreage in the Grand Canyon state by 2015. The bill, approved on a 35-15 vote, now goes to the state Senate for final passage. ...

Man stops policeman, confesses to Oklahoma murder 25 years ago

Posted:

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A homeless man walked up to a policeman in Montana last week and confessed to involvement in the murder of an Oklahoma county commissioner 25 years ago, authorities said on Monday. "He just said he wanted to get something off of his chest," said Stan Florence, director of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. "I think it was just one of those things he carried with him for 25 years and wanted to talk to somebody about it." The man, Clifford W. ...

Oakland police change crowd control policies after Occupy

Posted:

(Reuters) - Oakland's Police Department will significantly change how it trains officers to control large crowds following criticism over its practices during anti-Wall Street protests last year that sometimes erupted into violence, the department said on Monday. "It is our duty to protect public safety and at the same time balance the free speech rights of individual protesters with the rights of non-protesting residents," Police Chief Howard Jordan said in a statement. ...

Two arrested for booby trapping Utah hiking trail

Posted:

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - Two men have been arrested on suspicion of setting a couple of crude but potentially deadly booby traps made from sharpened sticks and rocks along a popular Utah hiking trail, police said on Monday. A U.S. Forest Service officer on foot patrol discovered the devices earlier this month after spotting a trip wire on the ground. The traps were crafted from sharpened tree limbs, rock and rope near a fort-like shelter on the Big Springs Trail in Provo Canyon, about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City. "This looks like something done just for the sake of hurting someone ... ...

Trayvon Martin's killer leaves Florida jail

Posted:

Neighborhood watch volunteer Zimmerman leaves the Seminole County Jail after posting bail in SanfordSANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, was released early on Monday from a Florida county jail on $150,000 bail. Wearing a brown jacket, jeans and carrying a brown paper bag, Zimmerman walked out of the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Sanford, Florida, moments after midnight after posting bail and meeting other conditions set for his release at a hearing on Friday. ...


City rejects resignation of top cop in Trayvon Martin shooting

Posted:

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The city commission in Sanford, Florida, rejected the resignation of the police chief who had stepped aside amid withering criticism over his department's investigation into the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Sanford Police Bill Lee, on leave since his temporary resignation announced March 22, had been set to resign permanently as of midnight under a separation agreement submitted to him by Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte. ...

AMR fires opening shot in court battle with workers

Posted:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Airlines on Monday kicked off a week-long court hearing on its bid to abandon union contracts, telling a judge that its bankrupt parent, AMR Corp, cannot survive without major concessions from its labor force. Hundreds of lawyers, airline workers and others filled the courtroom and two overflow rooms in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan for the start of the hearing, as other unionized workers rallied outside the courthouse. Cordoned off by police, the workers held signs and chanted for fairer work terms and against AMR's plan to cut about 13,000 union jobs. ...

AMR union to vote next week on proposal: sources

Posted:

A US Airways plane and an American Airlines plane share a terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington(Reuters) - The union representing seven work groups at bankrupt American Airlines will vote starting next week on the carrier's best and final contract offer, with results expected before unions testify in a hearing on the airline's request to void their contract, three sources said on Monday. American, a unit of AMR Corp, is finalizing the language of the offer, which features fewer job cuts than the 8,500 originally proposed, airline spokesman Bruce Hicks said. AMR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November, citing labor costs that were higher than its peers. ...


AMR fires opening shot in court battle with workers

Posted:

A US Airways Express plane takes off with the U.S. Capitol in the background at Ronald Reagan National Airport in WashingtonNEW YORK (Reuters) - American Airlines defended its plan to abandon its union contracts on Monday as its workers picketed outside a Manhattan court house, in the first day of a high-profile court battle over the bankrupt airline's labor deals. The company's parent, AMR Corp, told a judge at a hearing on its request to abrogate its union contracts, that it cannot survive without major concessions. Jack Gallagher, an attorney for AMR, said the company needs 20 percent across-the-board reductions in employee costs, half of which must come from employee benefits. ...


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