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ANALYSIS: There is hope for Democrats in the South
Andy Taylor. political scienceMeningitis Patient Released From Hospital
student healthN.C. State Student Accused Of Possessing Child Pornography
Wesley Mincey, studentMan charged in courtroom scrap
Student Peace Action Network
Tailgate
Deaths Autopsy
tailgate shooting
Editorial:
A pitiful 'protest'
incident across from campus
Letter
to the editor: Faulty transmission
Schenck Forest
Letter
to the editor: Pass Schenck by
Schenck Forest
Photo:
Feet on the ground - now
students
Predicting
manure stink
Animal and Poultry W aste Management Center
Man charged in courtroom scrap
Nov. 9, 2004
News & Observer
By OREN DORELL AND BARBARA BARRETT
© Copyright 2004
RALEIGH -- An apparent supporter of three people arrested in an attack on the N.C. Republican Party headquarters tussled with two cameramen as they followed him from the Wake County Public Safety Center on Monday afternoon.
The young man shielded his face from the cameras as he left the first appearance hearing for David Reuben Hensley, Melissa Lynn Brown and Vanessa Marie Zuloaga, where he had tried to communicate with them from his front row seat. He smashed the cameras to the ground and ran.
Officials charged Asa Lincoln Collier, 18, of Cayce, S.C., with simple assault and two counts of damage to property in connection with the incident, according to a news release from the Raleigh Police Department. Officers were searching for the 5 foot 11 inch tall teen late Monday night.
Hensley, 20, Brown, 18, and Zuloaga, 24, were arrested Friday after they were detained by residents in the Cameron Village area after about 100 demonstrators smashed windows, spray painted vulgar slogans and apparently tried to torch the GOP headquarters at 1506 Hillsborough St.
Wake County District Court Judge Robert Rader officially informed each defendant of the charge against him or her -- felony malicious damaging by use of an incendiary device -- and asked each whether he or she wanted a court-appointed attorney, would supply one, or would represent himself of herself.
When each defendant was brought forward, the man in the audience, who wore a black T-shirt and had dark hair with the ends dyed reddish blond, tried to signal to them, apparently trying to communicate that each should request a court-appointed attorney.
Hensley, who had an anarchist symbol tattooed on his forearm, looked at him and took the cue. Brown did not respond to the man's coughing and tapping but requested a court-appointed attorney also. Zuloaga ignored the noise from the audience and waived her right to an attorney.
At that, the man in the audience grabbed his head.
Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker asked police for a report about Friday's incident in time to discuss it when the City Council meets a week from today.
"It's worrisome that we would be a site for this kind of attack," he said.
Friday's activities followed a legal anti-war demonstration about 5 p.m. at the N.C. State University Bell Tower sponsored by the Student Peace Action Network. Capt. Ken Mathias, who supervises the Raleigh Police Department's intelligence unit, said he knew of no connection between the legal demonstration and the later one.
About 11:30 p.m. Friday, police spotted people in masks and gloves gathering at the Bell Tower on Hillsborough Street in an impromptu parade. Mathias said a supervisor, Lt. Octavious Benifield, saw the group marching east on Hillsborough Street, carrying banners, drumming on five-gallon plastic paint cans, and hoisting a two-headed effigy of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry on a bamboo pole.
Benifield called for more units.
Officers coming to the scene noticed something amiss at the GOP headquarters and doubled back, Mathias said. They found the building sprayed with slogans, windows smashed and the effigy soaked in a flammable liquid.
Mathias said Friday's vandalism continues a pattern of illegal political protests in the Triangle in recent months.
* On Feb. 21, two men were arrested and charged with painting slogans on statues, the Capitol and other state buildings before a Neo-Nazi demonstration in downtown Raleigh.
* On June 10 and 11, protesters threw smoke bombs on the railroad tracks in Durham and triggered several automatic crossing gates, clogging traffic. They also unfurled banners from overpasses on Interstate 40 at Miami Boulevard and the Durham Freeway. The action coincided with the end of the G-8 summit at Sea Island, Ga.
Like Friday's incident, the other actions piggybacked on legal demonstrations. They also occurred under cover of dark, without warning, and were committed by masked participants clad in black.
Anarchist demonstrations have been a continuing problem in other parts of the country, often coinciding with national or world events. Incidents have occurred in Miami, Washington, Boston, Seattle and elsewhere.
Police in Eugene, Ore., for several years scuffled with protesters over issues varying from animal rights to politics to the rights of bicyclists.
"It was a significant problem," said Capt. Thad Buchanan, the former chief of the police department's Special Operations Division.
He said the agency finally dealt with the protesters by cracking down hard. In one case, a demonstration in 2000 netted about 70 arrests over two days. Every suspect was convicted of at least one misdemeanor and sentenced to a year's probation. About the same time, he said, two arsonists were convicted. One, a leader in the group, is serving a prison sentence of more than 20 years.
"Even though they're anarchists, it's a loose organization, but it's still an organization," Buchanan said.
"The only advice I can give is, if it's allowed to continue, hang on," he said. "Once they get a foothold, they won't go away."
Officers asked anyone with information about Collier to call 890-3555.
Nov. 9, 2004
NBC-17
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina State University freshman was accused of using his computer to download images of children having sex with men.
Police hope to serve an arrest warrant Tuesday for Wesley Mincey, 18, NBC 17 News' Rucks Russell reported.
Officers say hundreds of pictures and streaming videos of child pornography were found on Mincey's computer after it was seized from his dorm room. According to a search warrant, the computer contained video clips of adult men having sex with 6- and 7-year-old girls.
"It is something that is hard to deal with, but we will charge and prosecute to the fullest extent," North Carolina State Police Sgt. Jon Barnwell said.
Investigators said that two weeks ago, Mincey's roommate called police after borrowing the computer and discovering the images.
Authorities want to know if Mincey was sharing or trading his material. Officials said more charges were possible.
Mincey moved out of his dormitory, Sullivan Hall, over the weekend. Russell was unable to reach Mincey for comment, but the teen's mother said he has never been in any kind of trouble before.
Nov. 8, 2004
WNCT-TV 9
By Akila Hardy
© Copyright 2004
The Wake County coroner has released the autopsy results. Witnesses say brothers Timothy and Tony Johnson murdered Camp Lejuene Second Lieutenant Brett Harman and his friend, Kevin McCain. The shooting happened after a fight in the parking lot across from an NC State in September. The autopsy now shows Harman also had several deep cuts and abrasions. The brothers face two counts of first-degree murder.
ANALYSIS: There is hope for Democrats in the South
Nov. 8, 2004
News & Observer; Beaufort Gazette Online; Bakersfield Californian, CA
By PATRIK JONSSON
© Copyright 2004
LIZARD LICK, N.C. (CSM) - On this tiny crossroads along a fading Tobacco Row, a visitor from the North can get a quick glimpse into why the Democrats are losing ground in the struggle for the region's hearts and minds.
After President Bush's sweep of the South, some commentators have wondered aloud about this "uneducated" region and its propensity to vote against its own interests: After all, it sends the most soldiers to die in battle, yet exhibits the most gung-ho patriotism; it's the poorest pocket of the country, yet it voted against a candidate promising a big expansion of government health insurance.
But if intelligence is measured by capability for abstract thought and grasp of paradox, Mark Pierce, a Lizard Lick contractor, is a Rhodes scholar. He says there's a time-worn wisdom to the vote. Of the Northern coastal elite, he says: "I think it pretty much shows their own ignorance when they badmouth middle America."
For the Democratic Party, finding a winning formula in the South suddenly seems vital, albeit fraught with difficulties. Yet political strategists say making some inroads is not an insurmountable task.
"If a Democrat like John Kerry comes out to southwest Virginia and he tells everybody out here he's going to give him a $1,000 check, they'd never vote for it," says Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a rural strategist for the Democratic Party. "Until you get through the culture, they won't trust you and they won't believe you."
Democrats have failed to win a single Southern state in the past two presidential elections. Ten years ago, there were 17 Democratic senators from the South, but only four are returning to Washington in January. Experts see the region voting against liberal progressivism in favor of a more Jeffersonian ideal of a country of small property owners, ready to do battle to protect its values and ways.
Despite the odds, some political experts say the New South offers a unique opportunity for Democrats, as a land not at all monolithic. Humbled Democratic adviser Paul Begala last week suggested that the party would do well to swallow its pride, turn away from Washington, and scour the South and Midwest for capable and charismatic governors to help turn back the march of Republicanism.
"The South clearly has converged with the nation in many respects. We've closed a lot of gaps and we've gained more jobs than any other region," says Ferrell Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Life, Media and Politics at the University of North Carolina. "But where there still remains a difference is on cultural factors ... and Republicans more than Democrats have captured that difference."
This political powerhouse that is the South, has come to symbolize everything that is either wrong or right with politics in America today. When Democrats cast their eyes across the Mason-Dixon line after John Kerry's defeat, many surely see a foreign population - more likely to oppose abortion, gay marriage and gun control. Even the thousands of newcomers who arrive in the South each year often share the region's ideals.
"It seems the Democrats can't quite figure out how to appeal to this kind of bedrock heartland vote without betraying some fundamental principles," says Dixie sociologist John Shelton Reed, author of "My Tears Spoiled My Aim."
Figuring out the South is seen as a key to grasping an electoral majority, but not everyone says this requires impossible compromises. To Saunders, it's more than just "moral values." It's about understanding today's happy-go-lucky confederacy of evangelicals, small business owners, farmers and immigrants.
Many Democrats, he says, "think it's all about the causes, yet it's really all about the culture."
The Evangelical vote turned out to be hardly larger than 2000. But other things are going on in the South, including the rise of an entrepreneurial class benefiting from tax cuts. At the same time, Southerners, so many of whom grew out of a Democratic tradition, don't share a hatred of government.
"Even the affluent suburbanites aren't just right-wingers," says Guillory in Chapel Hill. "Now, they may go to the new nondenominational megachurch, but they also want a good public school and they want their roads paved and they want their kids to get into the good state college."
Alabama's white males may have voted almost to a man for Bush. But "one of the failings of the Democrats is to treat the South monolithically and to believe that North Carolina is Alabama and Virginia is Mississippi," says Andy Taylor, a political science professor at North Carolina State University. "If you take the states of the old Confederacy, at least two of them - Virginia and North Carolina - are more affluent, cosmopolitan, and have more of a post-industrial, high-tech, service-based economy. And in these states it won't take that much, in the right circumstances, to get a Democratic presidential candidate to win."
Competing in the region may also require some home-grown candidates - think Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. That means governorships.
"We vote for people who live close to us, people who are like us, or people who stand out," says Robert Freymeyer, a sociologist at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C.
Democrats have some stars. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, who was easily re-elected Tuesday along with a revived Democratic majority in the House, is a good example, says Guillory: "Easley's a prosecutor who put people in jail, fought the drug traffic, crashed his NASCAR into the wall, goes to church every week and yet he's a genuine Democrat."
Whichever party wins, says Saunders, "People are going to start being nice to us now and giving us proper respect."
Meningitis Patient Released From Hospital
Nov. 8, 2004
WRAL
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill freshman who was at the center of a meningitis scare is out of the hospital.
Doctors released Jonathan Parker Davis, 18, from UNC Hospitals over the weekend.
Davis contracted meningococcal meningitis last month, creating a health alert at UNC and North Carolina State University.
More than 2,000 students took preventative antibiotics. No other cases were diagnosed.
Letter to the editor: Faulty transmission
Nov. 9, 2004
News & Observer
© Copyright 2004
Regarding your Nov. 6 article "Power-line plan jolts neighbors," in which I was quoted:
Let me clear up any possible misconception that my opposition to the proposed electrical transmission line is over the resale value of my Trinity Road property. Also, condemnation compensation is unacceptable. What is acceptable? Only that state, university and Progress Energy officials tell the public why they are choosing this meandering, extra-long (4.3 mile vs. 3 mile) and twice-as-expensive ($22 million vs. $10 million) route that will negatively impact so many properties and people. Then, before it is too late, change the route. Shorten it; make it more efficient.
From the beginning I've truly believed that the lines are bad for the image of this premier area, especially Progress Energy's preferred route. Many properties will be visibly degraded and devalued by the presence and appearance of these ugly 100- to 120-foot-tall poles and their three high-power lines hanging on 10-foot arms as they circle the buildings and cross the roads.
More than 1 million North Carolinians, Wolfpack supporters and out-of-state visitors annually visit the State Fair and the athletic facilities on Trinity Road, and many employees work in the office buildings along the 4.3-mile route. But N.C. State University officials say a shorter route through Schenck Forest is off limits because hundreds of people regularly hike and walk their dogs there and because the university uses the forest for research. Are hundreds of people and animals in woods and fields more important than the "Meadowlands" of North Carolina?
John W. Wardlaw Jr.
Raleigh
Letter to the editor: Pass Schenck by
Nov. 9, 2004
News & Observer
© Copyright 2004
Regarding your Nov. 6 article "Power-line plan jolts neighbors":
Kudos to Progress Energy for respecting the importance of Schenck Forest to Raleigh and standing strong again those landowners who have "big plans to sell"!
Tina Yantes
Raleigh
Nov. 9, 2004
News & Observer
By Juli Leonard
© Copyright 2004
For a copy of this photo, contact News Services at 5-3470.
Editorial: A pitiful 'protest'
Nov. 9, 2004
News & Observer
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
The vandals who attacked the North Carolina Republican Party headquarters made only one point with their Friday spree of broken windows and and a burned effigy and some kerosene-soaked rags: Namely, when people commit this kind of potentially dangerous act, they'll face the long arm of the law, and should.
Some anarchy symbols were scrawled on a few buildings in the area, which was near the Cameron Park neighborhood, an older section of Raleigh. After 11 p.m. Friday night, a couple of hundred people kind of broke into their own little chaos. Police reported one group of a hundred or so blocked a road across of N.C. State University's Bell Tower, and another group about the same size started in on GOP headquarters. Three alleged protesters were caught by a couple of neighbors, and have been charged with causing malicious damage by use of an incendiary device. That's a felony -- serious business.
One wonders what the various protesters were thinking, assuming they were thinking at all. This much is certain: They weren't thinking much about how fortunate they are to live in a country that conducts regular, free elections and does so in a civilized manner. Freedom marches on, no matter an election's outcome.
America bears witness to all sorts of protests, some inspiring and some obnoxious, but that's reflective of the differences that can flourish and be heard. Actions such as vandalism in the name of protest, however, don't accomplish anything, and carry the possibility of injuring someone or worse. That is wrong, and it is sad.
Scientists: Plants do some very clever things
Nov. 8, 2004
Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, CA; Charlotte Observer; Biloxi Sun Herald, MS; Bradenton Herald, FL; Centre Daily Times, PA; Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, GA; Duluth News Tribune, MN; Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN; Fort Wayne News Sentinel, IN; Grand Forks Herald, ND; Kansas City Star, MO; Kentucky.com, KY; Macon Telegraph, GA; Miami Herald, FL; Monterey County Herald, CA; Myrtle Beach Sun News, SC; Philadelphia Inquirer, PA; Pioneer Press, MN; San Jose Mercury News, CA; San Luis Obispo Tribune, CA; The State, SC; Tallahassee.com, FL
By ROBERT S. BOYD
© Copyright 2004
WASHINGTON - People don't usually associate intelligence with weeds or cabbages. But plant scientists, taking advantage of new genetic information, have discovered a surprising level of what looks like brainy behavior in the vegetable world.
"It's amazing what plants can do," said Johanna Schmitt, a plant geneticist at Brown University in Providence, R.I
Plants have to do clever things since they're stuck in place and must find ways to cope with enemies and hard times. "They can't just walk away," said Leslie Sieburth, a researcher at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
To compensate for their immobility, plants have genes strung along long threads of DNA that direct them to perform some remarkable feats. Though plant behavior may seem obvious to farmers and gardeners, it's only recently that biologists are learning exactly how they work, down at the level of individual genes and molecules.
Researchers have identified genes that help plants recognize when days are growing longer or shorter. Other genes force a plant to sit through a cold winter before allowing it to blossom. Another maintains a 24-hour internal clock. Some genes help plants "remember" the experiences of their "parents," the plants whose seeds gave them birth, Schmitt said.
Plants use color and smell to lure insects that spread their pollen or to repel hungry predators. Plants aren't above using dirty tricks, such as attracting wasps to lay their eggs inside caterpillar larvae so the caterpillars won't grow up to eat them.
Some plants can solve math and logic problems of a sort. They calculate the ratio of two different hues of red light to decide when there's too much shade and they need to grow taller. When roots sense that water is short, a gene called BYPASS1 sends a signal to the stem telling it to produce fewer, smaller leaves.
"This is a logical response to drought, because leaves are the major place where water is lost," Sieburth said.
Of course, plant talents are a far cry from animal - not to mention human - mental powers. Plants don't have a brain or central nervous system. They don't have language, emotions, fall in love or suffer the pangs of guilt.
Researchers expect their work will have practical value for farmers and home gardeners.
Judith Roe, a plant geneticist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, said understanding how plants synchronize their flowering with the state of the environment will help researchers predict and manage the effect of climate change on future crops.
"Ongoing climate change is already influencing flowering time in many plants," Schmitt said. "Many British wildflowers are now blooming earlier than they did 50 years ago."
"In flowering plants, the time of flowering is probably the most critical period in their life cycle," Roe said. "At this point, they are particularly vulnerable to environmental stresses."
To figure out how plant genes work, the National Science Foundation this fall awarded a $5 million research grant to an international team of scientists headed by Schmitt. Their task is to identify the molecular mechanisms by which plants know when to grow and when to flower - two distinct stages of vegetable life that must be kept apart.
A gene called FRIGIDA, for example, prevents plants from flowering prematurely, before winter has passed. "If the gene is faulty, it may flower too soon," Schmitt said.
"Successful reproduction and the development of seeds and fruits depend on flowering at the right time," said Jo Putterill, a biologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
To make smart choices, plant genes must take in multiple cues from their environment - light, temperature, moisture, gravity, etc. - and assemble them into a meaningful whole. That's a rudimentary version of the way an animal's brain integrates various signals from its eyes, ears, fingers and stomachs.
The messages that tell a plant it's time to blossom turn on several series of genes, called "pathways," which lead to other master genes controlling the roots, stems and leaves.
"The balance of signals from these pathways is integrated by a common set of genes to determine when flowering occurs," Putterill said.
NASA is also interested in plant genetics. The space agency is financing research at North Carolina State University in Raleigh to study how plants will respond to changes in mechanical force and gravity on a spaceship, the moon or Mars. Researchers have identified 64 genes that respond to gravity, according to Heike Winter Sederoff, a botanist at N.C. State.
"When a plant is blown by the wind, flipped over or its roots are disturbed by an animal, specific genes responsible for keeping the plant stable" and roots growing respond very quickly, often within one minute of the disturbance, Sederoff reported.
Schmitt said scientists still don't understand how plants accomplish many of their clever tricks. "There are huge unanswered questions," she said. "That's what the National Science Foundation project is all about."
Nov. 8, 2004
Agriculture.com
By staff report
© Copyright 2004
Proposed state regulations for gaseous emissions from livestock and poultry facilities mean understanding which specific compounds contribute to odors and how environmental conditions and distance affect odors is gaining importance in the state of Iowa. The subject was the focus of recent research at Iowa State University (ISU) that led to the creation of mathematical formulas that can predict odor and gas concentrations under various conditions.
In the study, air samples were collected at and downwind from Iowa dairy, poultry, and swine facilities during two ten-week periods, one from May through July 2001, and the other from May through August 2002.
Odor was measured using an "electronic nose" and a Jerome meter for hydrogen sulfide concentrations. Using these tools, researchers determined how much unscented air had to be mixed with the collected air samples in order to make the odor almost unnoticeable.
The air samples they collected were analyzed using olfactometry and gas chromatography.
Most of the study's findings weren't too surprising: of the gases monitored, hydrogen sulfide was found to be most closely correlated to odors; higher temperatures and higher humidity caused stronger odors; and with other conditions equal, odors were stronger on sunny days than on cloudy days.
What is interesting is that at distances of 50 meters or more downwind from the facilities, the hydrogen sulfide measurements were generally within the limits that may become law.
Also interesting is the fact that predicting odors remains a somewhat inexact science.
"We had two facilities right next to each other, managed by the same people with the same practices," said Wendy Powers, animal scientist and lead investigator in the study.
"We would have thought they would have had similar odor and gas levels, but one was much higher than the other."
This research was sponsored by the Iowa Pork Producers Association, the Midwest Poultry Consortium, and the Animal and Poultry W aste Management Center at North Carolina State University.
The odor prediction formulas are available in the full research report from the Iowa Beef Center.