LOCAL/STATE The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 19, 2002 - 3A CRIME Project projection Freshly dug hole alerts police to possible death The Ann Arbor Police Depart- ment and Department of Public Safety investigated a three-foot by six-foot area freshly-dug this week- end at Bandameer Park, west of the M-14 bridge and next to the Huron River. AAPD officers asked for a K-9 unit to search the area for a possible dead body, but it turned out to be a false alarm. The canines did not alert officers to any human scent, and no problems were found. Fire starts in 'U' building, report finds damages A fire started Tuesday afternoon on the second floor of the Adminis- trative Services Building at 1009 Greene St., DPS reports state. The fire started in a Natural Choice water cooler. Though it did not spread, the surrounding room suffered some damage, the report states. * Missing teen from Northwood goes found in ER A teenager was reported missing early Sunday morning from North- wood IV on North Campus but later returned home, intoxicated. An ambulance transported the teenager to the University Hospital Emergency Room, according to DPS reports. Woman reports money as stolen, finds it on self A woman reported that $40 had been stolen from her while at Uni- versity Hospital, believing the theft had occurred sometime over the " weekend. According to DPS reports, further investigation found that the money was not stolen but was with the woman. Man on Diag sent to ER, cited for, open intoxication A person was found drunk and slumped over a bench on the Diag early Tuesday morning with a blood alcohol content of .3. Police reports state the subject had also taken Vicoden, a prescrip- tion painkiller. He was transported to the emer- gency room by the Huron Valley Ambulance and cited for an open intoxication offense. Woman sees man masturbating in Nichols Arboretum A caller reported that she saw a person, described as a white male about 40 years old wearing a white T-shirt and no pants, masturbating in Nichols Arboretum Tuesday afternoon. She returned to her off-campus home and then called DPS, but the suspect had left the area and was not located. Bees nest causes injuries in North Campus vicinity A resident of Northwood IV on North Campus reported Tuesday that there was a bees nest in the wooded area near her home. The caller stated that her son had been stung about a dozen times and requested that pest management take care of the problem. She declined medical attention for her son. AAPD awaits warrant for retail fraud suspects A subject reportedly stole a book from Michigan Book and Supply Tuesday morning. Two suspects were stopped by the AAPD and were released pending a warranf. They also were advised they were trespassing and were escorted away from the area. Pines stolen from Nation focuses on Granholm's state campaignl JONATHON TRIEST/Daily A shot taken from the projection booth of the Madstone Theater showcases the film "Nowhere to Run," which was playing at the venue. Mi0chigan unemployment rates decrease in August DETROIT (AP) - Jennifer Granholm, the Democratic nominee for Michigan governor, is the "it" candi- date of 2002. Her front-running campaign is attracting national attention. News accounts spotlight her alluring mix of brains (she's a Harvard Law School graduate), movie-star looks (she spent several years in Los Angeles as an aspiring actress) and Clintonesque people skills. "Everybody falls in love with her," laments a top adviser to Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus, her Republican opponent, who trails in the polls by double digits. Granholm At a boisterous rally here last week, former President Bill Clinton praised her as articulate, charismatic, compe- tent and strong, and he compared her favorably to another "attractive, blond- haired" woman - his wife, Hillary, a US. senator from New York. For months, analysts have been pro- moting this as the "year of the woman" in gubernatorial contests. But prospects for a major breakthrough appear to be fading. Serious female contenders have fiz- zled in large states such as Illinois and Florida, where former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno apparently lost last week's primary to a neophyte. National Democratic strategists are privately worried about the perform- ance of Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whose run for governor has drawn international media coverage but only a middling response from voters. Predictions that a record-setting number of women would be nominat- ed for governor this year have not been borne out. The number of female governors - five - might well increase after the November elections but probably will not double, as some had forecast. The shifting fortunes of other can- didates have served to highlight the sudden rise of Granholm, 43, who, if elected, would make Michigan the largest state with a sitting female governor. Although she's running in just her second race for public office (she was elected attorney general four years ago), she has shown that she can win support from women, baby boomers and younger voters, in particular. She also has done u nusually well for a Democrat in the more conservative western and northern portions of Michigan. She set fund-raising records in dis- patching two heavyweight rivals - a former governor and the former No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House - by a surprisingly large margin in last month's primary. If Granholm wins this fall, she would seem to offer Democrats some- thing both parties have been desperate- ly searching for: a woman who could add luster to a national ticket. A political moderate and abortion- rights Catholic from a large swing state, Granholm could automatically find her name on the short list of future vice presidential possibilities. She might even have had presidential appeal for moderate and conservative Democrats eager to find a female alternative to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Except for this: her "constitutional impediment," as Granholm puts it. Her Canadian parents moved the fam- ily to California from British Colum- bia when she was 4, and she became a naturalized citizen at 18. Only a native-born American can become president. "It's kind of a relief" that the road to the White House isn't open to her, Granholm said in an interview. "I'm running for governor to be the best darn governor Michigan ever had, and that's my ambition." Longtime watchers of state politics describe her as the hottest political property to emerge in Michigan in decades. Craig Ruff, who once served as an aide to a Republican governor of Michigan, says that like Bill Clinton, Granholm is an electrifying personality with "aerobic listening skills" who causes those who come in contact with her to "melt away." "You're just captivated," said Ruff,. an independent analyst. "It isn't just the body language and the empathy and the good looks and the well-dressed appearance. LANSING (AP) - As teenagers left their summer jobs for school last month, Michigan's unemployment rate dropped to 6.2 percent, the state said yesterday. August's unemployment rate is down 0.4 percentage points from July's 6.6 percent, the state Department of Career Development said. But it remained higher than the national rate of 5.7 percent. Last month's state unemployment rate was 0.7 percent- age points higher than in August 2001, when it was 5.5 percent, the department said. The number of people employed in August dropped by 7,000 from July, and unemployment declined by 22,000. Patrick Anderson, principal of the Anderson Economic Group of Lansing, said he doesn't believe 29,000 people left the labor market last month. "You could read this as very encouraging," he said about August's lower unemployment rate, "and it may be encouraging after we get this confirmed. There's not another one-month period where we had this kind of change. I don't think it could happen." Jim Rhein, a labor market analyst for the Department of Career Development, said the drop in unemployment doesn't necessarily indicate that an economic recovery is underway. Instead, he said the state simply saw a larger decline than usual in the number of teenage workers that might have been counted as unemployed during the summer but are now back in school. * *NEED A Syphilis WASTE TIJ MASS M outbreak reported in Detroit SCEP DETROIT (AP) - The city is facing SPORTSGR the nation's worst syphilis epidemic, MN Y I primarily because the city and state did M IG a poor job of tracking the disease's $2 prevalence in the late 1990s, health experts say. A 2 Detroit had 245 new cases of syphilis Ne sa this year as of July 30, and that number is likely to grow to 500 by year's end, T e a said Loretta Davis-Satterla, director of Seth's Sun the Michigan health department's $4 Import Rd HIV/AIDS-Sexually Transmitted Dis- $2 Do Eq ease division. Davis-Satterla said she's been Te hno informed by the federal Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention in Atlanta w edn that when new national statistics are released next month, Detroit will top the Name TI list for the number of reported syphilis cases per capita in 2001. "Certainly, we consider this to be more I than just an outbreak, which are generally Show E time-limited and controlled," said Davis- $2.50 Pint Satterla, whose department works closely N, , with city and federal officials to eradicate Thum! the disease in Detroit. "Right now, Detroit is experiencing $2.50 P endemic syphilis and ongoing transmis- Killians ~ sion," she said. "To have ongoing trans- $ji mission and to have reached the number D JOH we've reached in Detroit, we would and .. do consider it an epidemic and will treat Fri it as such." This week, one state-supervised Grill o health department worker in Detroit Lunch ; was fired, and another resigned, said Davis-Satterla. She declined to discuss Japptq kco'L o specifics of the personnel moves, saying $1.75 Hienek only that "the changes were made to bring about an overall improvement" in SATUI eradication efforts. The centuries-old, sexually transmit- ted disease may appear first as a sore, "The jobless rate decline in August primarily reflected fewer persons, particularly youth, in the job market," said Barbara Bologna, director of the Department of Career Development. Although last month's unemployment rate is down from July, Rhein said the state's unemployment rate has been essentially unchanged since November 2001. "We had a little bit of a spike for June and July, but 6.2 is pretty much the average so far this year," he said. Seasonably adjusted payroll jobs in Michigan dropped by 10,000 last month to 4.5 million, the state said. The service industry lost 8,000 jobs and manufacturing lost 6,000 jobs. Government employment - which includes teachers - increased by 4,000 positions. Payroll jobs are down 41,000, or 0.9 percent, so far this year, the department said. Most of those job losses were in manufacturing and retailing. Manufacturing losses represented the state's greatest weakness last month, Rhein said. Typically, there are auto plant layoffs in July while companies change models and workers are rehired in August. "There was some recovery from July, but it wasn't quite as strong as it normally would be," Rhein said. The average weekly earnings for manufacturing jobs in Michigan last month were $836.80, a drop of $7.20 over the month and of $5.70 over the year. But workers put in more time last month than a year ago, averaging 43.9 hours last month compared to 42.8 hours in August 2001. WAY TO ME? 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