Mississippi man charged with attempted use of biological weapon

By Robbie Ward

TUPELO, Mississippi (Reuters) - A Mississippi martial arts instructor was charged on Saturday with attempting to use a biological weapon after a ricin-laced letter was sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

James Everett Dutschke, age 41, was arrested early on Saturday, following searches of his home and a former business as part of the ricin letter investigation.

Dutschke was taken into custody by FBI agents at his Tupelo home shortly after midnight FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said in a statement.

He was later charged with "acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent ... ricin, and with attempting, threatening and conspiring" to use it as a weapon, according to a joint announcement by Felicia C. Adams, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, and Daniel McMullen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Mississippi.

If convicted, Dutschke faces maximum possible penalties of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

The announcement did not specify if Dutsche was being charged in relation to the ricin letters, but it said the investigation had been conducted jointly by several federal agencies including the U. S. Postal Inspection Service, and the U. S. Capitol Police.

Dutschke is expected to appear in the United States District Court in Oxford, Mississippi, on Monday.

U.S. prosecutors dropped charges on Tuesday against another Mississippi man, Elvis impersonator Kevin Curtis, who was released from jail after a search of his home in nearby Corinth revealed no incriminating evidence.

Prosecutors said at the time that the investigation had "revealed new information" but provided no details.

Dutschke's attorney, Lori Basham, did not return calls seeking comment but she told Reuters earlier in the week that her client denied having anything to do with the ricin letters.

Agents from the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as members of an anti-terrorist response team from the Mississippi National Guard, some wearing hazardous material suits, had searched Dutschke's home on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as the premises of a former martial arts studio Dutschke ran in the city.

Dutschke was cooperating with federal officials during the searches this week, the attorney said.

Agents in unmarked vehicles were stationed in streets surrounding Dutschke's home on Friday afternoon and all evening. He was arrested at 12:50 a.m. CDT (0150 EST), the FBI said.

Letters addressed to President Barack Obama and Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, were retrieved last week at off-site mail facilities before reaching their intended victims. A Mississippi state judge also received a ricin-laced letter.

The discovery added another layer of anxiety as authorities were already dealing with bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Ricin, which is made from castor beans, can be deadly to humans and is considered a potential terror weapon, particularly if refined into an aerosol form.

The case has brought extra scrutiny on the FBI almost 12 years after a 2001 letter-borne anthrax attack that killed five people and took seven years to solve. The anthrax investigation also came in the wake of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attack on the United States.

RUNNING FEUD

Dutschke's name first surfaced in a federal court hearing on Monday for Curtis where his attorney suggested her client had been framed by someone. She mentioned a running feud between Dutschke and Curtis, albeit over a number of seemingly petty issues.

Suspicion had originally fallen on Curtis because of wording contained in all three ricin letters.

"Maybe I have your attention now / Even if that means someone must die," the letters read in part, according to the affidavit. The letters ended: "I am KC and I approve this message."

The mention of "KC" led law enforcement officials to ask Wicker's staff if they were aware of any constituents with those initials, and the focus of the investigation then turned to Curtis, according to an affidavit from the FBI and the Secret Service.

In 2007, Dutschke ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate against Stephen Holland, an incumbent Democratic state representative from the Tupelo area. Holland's mother, Sadie, is the judge to whom one of the ricin-tainted letters was mailed this month.

Dutschke has told local media that he knew Curtis but had only had contact with him three times, and not since 2010.

Curtis, 45, told the Northeastern Mississippi Daily Journal that he believed Dutschke deliberately sabotaged his career as a performer by calling sponsors and telling them about Curtis' numerous prior arrests. "I lost 12 really big shows in 2011 and eight in 2012 directly linked to him," Curtis told the newspaper.

Dutschke is also musical and fronted a two-man blues band in Tupelo called RoboDrum.

"MISSING PIECES"

Curtis's brother and fellow Elvis impersonator, insurance agent Jack Curtis, worked for a time with Dutschke and says he believes the feud with Dutschke is related to his brother's efforts to publicize allegations about a black market for body parts at a local Mississippi hospital.

Kevin Curtis was fired as a janitor from North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo after raising questions about body parts he said he observed there. The hospital strongly denied the allegations.

Dutschke faces other charges related to an April 1 indictment for fondling three different children between ages 7 and 16, from 2007 to 2013, according to court records. He was released on $25,000 bond in that case.

One of Dutschke's alleged child molestation victims was 7 years old at the time and was a female student in his tae kwon do class, court documents show.

(Additional reporting by Emily Lane in Jackson, Mississippi; Writing by David Adams; Editing by Bill Trott and Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mississippi-man-targeted-ricin-letters-investigation-arrested-145219248.html

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Employment data will cap off busy week on Wall Street

Patti Domm , CNBC.com ? ? ? 9 hrs.

The Federal Reserve is expected to repeat its dovish message in the coming week, providing a potential safety net for markets facing a wave of earnings and the important April jobs report.

Dozens of S&P 500 companies report in a heavy week of earnings, which includes names like Facebook, General Motors, MasterCard and major drug companies, Merck and Pfizer.

There is also a sizable economic calendar,with ISM manufacturing data in the U.S. Wednesday, and PMI manufacturing reports for the euro zone and China on Thursday. The week ends with Friday's U.S. employment report, expected to show 150,000 new nonfarm payrolls in April, according to Thomson Reuters.

While no fresh news is expected when the Fed issues its post-meeting statement Wednesday, markets are on high alert for a possible quarter-point rate cut from the European Central Bank Thursday.

"It could be wild. It's the first week in a couple where we shift our focus to the macro," said Art Hogan of Lazard Capital Markets. "We've got PMI, the ECB, the Fed meeting and the job number. All of that could steal the show. On top of that, we have a huge parade of earnings."

The Fed is expected to reaffirm that it will continue with its quantitative easing policy, or asset purchases. It may tweak its comments to reflect a weaker economy. But there is unlikely to be any talk of "tapering" off of the Fed's $85 billion in monthly Treasury and mortgage securities purchases,which had been raised by some Fed members.

"They're in a watchful, waiting mode right now, waiting to see if the summer swoon is upon us, or whether there will be a break of the trend," said Tony Crescenzi, strategist with Pimco. "That will determine whether there's going to be talk of tapering."

(Read More: Jim Cramer: Mid-Week Selloff Ahead? )

"We're going to have to watch the payroll numbers in particular and the performance of labor-market indicators," he said, adding investors will also be watching for clues several weeks later when the meeting minutes are released. The Fed has made it clear it will base its decisions on policy moves on the economy and employment, in particular.

Stocks were higher in the past week, recovering much of the losses of the prior week. The Dow gained 1.1 percent, to finish at 14,712, and the S&P 500 gained 1.7 percent, ending at 1582 while the Nasdaq rose 2.3 percent to 3,279. The worse performing sectors were the defensive ones, which have been leading the market higher. Telecom was down a half percent. Consumer staples was off 0.4 percent and the healthcare sector was down 0.2 percent.

Analysts have been expecting a stock-market correction, but Hogan said the market may be experiencing sector corrections instead and is consolidating through sideways trading. "What we saw this week was a lot of safety plays corrected,"he said.

Commodities markets also gained in the past week, after a big sell off the week before. Gold was up 4.2 percent and West Texas Intermediate crude was up more than 5 percent.

Richard Bernstein of Richard Bernstein Capital Management said the commodities correction is a positive for stocks. "That is a reflection of what you saw in terms of rotation in large caps in the first quarter. The rest of the world is weakening more than people think," he said. But it is a positive for the U.S., as prices for things like gasoline fall, providing a break for consumers.

Bernstein said he remains bullish on the stock market. "We had a string of really good economic numbers for a while. Now we're getting a string of kind of 'eh' numbers. The big thing is that the economy continues to improve. I don' think there's been too much data that says the economy is deteriorating. It's a question of how rapidly or slowly it's decelerating," he said. The latest piece of data to disappoint, was the first-quarter GDP report,which at 2.5 percent was softer than the 3-percent growth expected.

(Read More:The Economy May Stink, but the Market Doesn't Care)

Crescenzi said the market is used to deteriorating economic data in the spring, as it has in the past three years, but this spring should be a bit better.

"Markets are expecting weakness," he said. "For markets to be affected by the seasonal swoon, the data would need to even worse than in the last few years. The weakness would have to intensify for the 'risk off' mentality to surface." But if no summer rebound materializes, as expected, that would be a big negative for markets.

Bernstein said he's fairly optimistic about the stock market. "The most important question is are corporate profits going to improve from here or not, and everything we look at says, they're going to improve. It looks to us like the trough in the growth rate in corporate earnings could be now," he said. He had previously expected earnings to trough in the second quarter.

So far, about half the S&P 500 companies have reported and 69 percent are beating earnings estimates, according to Thomson Reuters data. The revenue numbers in the first quarter have been surprisingly weak, with 58 percent of companies missing forecasts.

"As long as people worry about the economic numbers, and as long as people worry about volatility, that's what bull markets are all about. It's when people are confident the market is going up and people are confident the economy is ripping, that's when I worry about the market," he said.

What to Watch

Monday

8:30 am: Personal Income

10:00 am: Pending home sales

10:30 am: Dallas Fed survey

Tuesday

Fed meeting begins

9:00 am: S&P/Case-Shiller home price index

10:00 am: Consumer confidence

Wednesday

May Day

Monthly auto sales

8:15 am: ADP employment

10:00 am: ISM manufacturing

2:15 pm: Fed statement

Thursday

Chain store sales

7:30 am: Challenger layoff report

8:30 am: International trade

8:30 am: Productivity and costs

Friday

8:30 am: Employment report

10:00 am: Factory orders

10:00 am: ISM nonmanufacturing

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2b45605f/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Cemployment0Edata0Ewill0Ecap0Ebusy0Eweek0Ewall0Estreet0E6C9640A0A0A2/story01.htm

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Kentucky woman ordained as priest by dissident Roman Catholics

John Sommers / Reuters

Ordaining Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan (C) presents Rosemarie Smead (R), a 70-year-old Kentucky woman, to the audience after she was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest during a Celebration of Ordination at St. Andrew's United Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky April 27, 2013.

By Sofia Perpetua, NBC News

A dissident Roman Catholic group ordained a 70-year-old woman a priest in Louisville, Kentucky, during a ceremony attended by hundreds on Saturday.

About 150 women from all over the world have been ordained in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church that bans them from becoming priests.

Rosemarie Smead will be starting her own congregation and she told Reuters she is not worried about being excommunicated.

"It is a medieval bullying stick the bishops used to keep control over people and to keep the voices of women silent,? she said. ?I am way beyond letting octogenarian men tell us how to live our lives."

Smead, a former Carmelite nun with a bachelor's in theology and a doctorate in counseling psychology, wept throughout the ceremony.

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, seventy percent of U.S. Catholics believe women should be allowed to be priests.

In a statement last week, Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz called the planned ceremony by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests a "simulated ordination" in opposition to Catholic teaching.

"The simulation of a sacrament carries very serious penal sanctions in Church law, and Catholics should not support or participate in Saturday's event," Kurtz said.

Reuters contributed to this story

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b479a89/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C280C179592150Ekentucky0Ewoman0Eordained0Eas0Epriest0Eby0Edissident0Eroman0Ecatholics0Dlite/story01.htm

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Oil falls below $93 after US growth falls short

BANGKOK (AP) ? The price of oil extended losses Monday, falling below $93 a barrel after U.S. economic growth fell short of expectations.

Benchmark crude for June delivery was down 31 cents to $92.69 a barrel at midafternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 64 cents to close at $93 in New York on Friday.

U.S. economic growth accelerated to an annual rate of 2.5 percent from January through March from an anemic pace in the previous quarter. But the markets were expecting growth of 3 percent or better.

The U.S. figure followed a slowdown in China's economic growth in the first quarter, raising questions about demand in the world's biggest oil-consuming countries. Manufacturing growth in China is also slowing.

At the same time, oil supplies and production are ample, adding to pressure for the oil price to fall.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

? Wholesale gasoline was down 0.8 cent at $2.819 a gallon.

? Heating oil fell 0.3 cents to $2.863 a gallon.

? Natural gas added 3.9 cents to $4.262.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-falls-below-93-us-growth-falls-short-073341205.html

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Protesters march against first British drone base

LONDON (AP) ? Anti-war protesters are demonstrating outside a Royal Air Force base used to control drone flights over Afghanistan.

Until this week, British drones were operated only from a U.S. Air Force base in Nevada.

The Ministry of Defense announced Thursday that a new drone-operating squadron had begun operating from RAF Waddington in eastern England.

The ministry says the Reaper drones are used for "intelligence and surveillance missions," but also are equipped with missiles and bombs.

Opponents who are marching Saturday say drones make it too easy to launch deadly attacks from a distance and out of public sight.

The defense ministry says drone operators "adhere strictly to the same laws of armed conflict and are bound by the same clearly defined rules of engagement" as other RAF pilots.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-march-against-first-british-drone-133618292.html

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Grocery delivery service is greener than driving to the store

Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michelle Ma
mcma@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."

Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.

As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.

They also discovered significant savings for companies 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.

"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."

The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.

The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.

Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.

In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.

###

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu or 206-543-3747.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michelle Ma
mcma@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."

Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.

As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.

They also discovered significant savings for companies 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.

"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."

The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.

The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.

Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.

In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.

###

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu or 206-543-3747.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uow-gd042613.php

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3 Taliban bombs target Pakistani politicians

PARACHINAR, Pakistan (AP) ? Taliban bombs targeting politicians in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday killed 11 people, the latest in a series of attacks meant to disrupt next month's parliamentary election, police said.

The wave of political violence has killed at least 60 people in recent weeks, and many of the attacks have been directed at candidates from secular parties opposed to the Taliban. That has raised concern the violence could benefit hard-line Islamic candidates and others who are more sympathetic to the Taliban because they are able to campaign more freely without fear of being of being attacked.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the three attacks, plus two others against secular parties in the southern port city of Karachi on Saturday that killed four people and wounded over 40.

"We are against all politicians who are going to become part of any secular, democratic government," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The first bomb on Sunday ripped through the campaign office of Syed Noor Akbar on the outskirts of Kohat city, killing six people and wounding 10, police officer Mujtaba Hussain said.

A second bomb targeted the office of another candidate, Nasir Khan Afridi, in the suburbs of Peshawar city. That attack killed three people and wounded 12, police officer Saifur Rehman said.

The politicians were not in their offices at the time of the blasts. They are both running as independent candidates for parliament to represent constituencies in Pakistan's rugged tribal region along the Afghan border, the main sanctuary for Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the country.

Many politicians running in the May 11 election from the tribal region have their offices located elsewhere and find it hard to campaign in their constituencies because of the danger. The two who were attacked Sunday are considered to hold relatively progressive views compared to the deeply conservative Islamic beliefs of many in the tribal region.

The third attack occurred in the town of Swabi, where a bomb went off during a small rally held by the Awami National Party, which has been repeatedly targeted by the Taliban. The blast killed two people and wounded five, said police officer Farooq Khan. The two candidates targeted in the attack, Ameer Rehman and Haji Rehman, were not hurt.

The Pakistani Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years that has killed thousands of civilians and security personnel. The group's goal is to oust Pakistan's democratic government and implement a system based on Islamic law.

In mid-March, the Taliban threatened attacks against three secular parties that have earned the militants' ire by supporting military operations against them in the northwest: the Awami National Party, the Muttahida Quami Movement and the Pakistan People's Party. The Taliban have carried out at least 20 attacks against politicians and campaign workers since then, mostly from these three parties.

The violence has forced the parties to close dozens of campaign offices and has prevented them from holding large political rallies that are normally the hallmark of Pakistani elections. Many of the candidates have had to find ways to campaign from a distance, relying more on social media, advertisements and even short documentaries to rally support.

That has put these candidates at a disadvantage, and many have complained the militant violence amounts to vote rigging.

Candidates from Islamic parties and others who have advocated negotiating peace with the militants rather than fighting them have been able to campaign with much less fear of being attacked.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party, held a rally with several thousand people in the northern town of Murree on Sunday without incident. Many analysts predict Sharif's party will come out on top in the parliamentary election.

The Taliban issued a statement earlier this year requesting that Sharif and the heads of the country's two largest Islamic parties mediate peace negotiations. Sharif declined but said he was a supporter of the talks.

The parties that have been targeted by the Taliban also support peace negotiations with the militants, but only if they lay down their weapons and accept the constitution first ? conditions the militant group has rejected.

____

Associated Press Writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3-taliban-bombs-target-pakistani-politicians-172732748.html

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