The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 3A NEWS BRIEFS " DETROIT Court orders Detroit ex-mayorto pay $300,000 to city Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lied again to the citi- zens of the city he once led, a judge said yesterday as he ordered the disgraced official to pay more than $300,000 in restitution within 90 days or face further punishment. During a restitution hearing, Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner had harsh words for the ex-mayor and convicted felon, calling his conduct "reprehensi- ble" and accused him of showing "contempt" for Detroit. "You have not been credible in this courtroom and again you have not been honest," Groner said. Kilpatrick was silent during the hearing, shaking his head on occasion as the judge made his ruling. LANSING, Mich. Unemployment rate drops to 14.6 percent A Michigan's unemployment rate improved in December for the third straight month, drop- ping slightly to 14.6 percent, state officials said yesterday. The new rate was down from a national high of 14.7 percent in November. The state jobless rate peaked for the year in September, when it hit 15.3 percent. Modest recalls of laid-off auto workers and a slower pace of job loss in the service sector helped stahilize Michigan's unemploy- ment rate in the second half of 2009. The state spent the first " half watching its rate climb as the national recession worsened and General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC went through bankruptcy, causing Michigan to lose more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs. But the losses, which averaged 33,000 jobs a month in the first half of the year, slowed to 2,000 a month in the second half. ANSONIA, Conn. Angry man kidnaps 4Gwha tossing_ -- teenager Police said a prank turned potentially dangerous when a man angry about a snowball hitting his car allegedly pulled a knife on a group of youths and kid- napped one of them. No one was injured. Joshua Good, 25, was to be arraigned Monday in Superior Court on charges including first- degree kidnapping, threatening and reckless endangerment. The kidnapping charge carries 10 to 25 years in prison. Police said a group of youths was throwing snowballs near Colony Park Friday night when Good's car was hit. Police say Good threatened the youths with a knife and forced a 13-year-old boy into his car. Authorities say Good drove the boy home and didn't hurt him. Good posted $150,000 bail. He didn't immediately return a phone message yesterday. BEIJING * Chinese teen. praised as hero for killing local official When Li Shiming was stabbed, through the heart by a hired assassin, few of his fellow villag- ers mourned the local Communist Party official many say made their lives hell by seizing land, extort- ing money and bullying people for years. Instead, villagers in the north- ern town of Xiashuixi have made Li's teenage killer something of a local hero. More than 20,000 people from the coal-mining area petitioned a court for a lenient sentence. "I didn't feel surprised at all when I heard Li Shiming was killed, because people wanted to kill him a long time ago," said vil- lager Xin Xiaomei, who says her husband was harassed for years by Li after the two men had a per- sonal dispute. "I wanted to kill Li myself, but I was too weak." The murder trial has again cast a harsh light on abuses of power by communist cadres and the frustration many ordinary Chi- nese feel with a one-party system that sometimes allows officials to run their districts like personal fiefdoms. - Compiled from Daily wire reports Democrats see Mass. message: Jobs, jobs, jobs After surprise loss in Mass., Dems push for greater emphasis on the economy WASHINGTON (AP) - Wound- ed in Massachusetts, frustrated Democrats yesterday urged the White House to focus on jobs and the economy - not the health care overhaul that's now at risk = and pressed President Barack Obama to more forcefully make their case against Republicans ahead of potentially disastrous elections this fall. On the day after the improbable Senate election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama and his Democratic Party raced to re-evaluate their midterm election strategy, adjust their health care approach and assuage an angry electorate. The embarrassing defeat to the GOP in a Democratic stronghold was a bitter end to the president's first year in office, and it triggered furious party soul- searching. "I would like the Democratic Party as a whole including its lead- er, the president, to speak clearly about the differences and to define those differences," Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chair- man of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, told The Associ- ated Press. And it's not just about Republicans and Democrats, he said: "We have to do a much-better job ofbothengagingand delivering to independent voters." Obama himself owned up to a failure to communicate. In a year of hopping from crisis to crisis, he told ABC News, "we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values." Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it more simply, assessing the message Massachusetts sent. "Economy, economy, economy," she said. "We need a jobs bill. We need short-term, focused strategies to create jobs, real fast," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. "If the dominantmes- sage isn't about jobs and spending, we'll be making a difficult chal- lenge exponentially more diffi- cult." At the Capitol, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., declared, "If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them." week's earthquake. shift tent city on Monday in Port au Prince, Haiti, that was set up for people displaced by last Americanls eager to adopt orphaned Haitian children Two killed in Calif. storm evacuations Officials say road to adoption lengthy to prevent pari'ents from selling kids MIAMI (APJ - Tammy Gge cries every time she turns on the TV and sees the devastation in Haiti. And'thongtrnheahemdy has three daughters, she didn't hesitate when her husband suggested that they adopt from Haiti. "That's all he needed to say," she said. Gage and her husband Brad are among many Americans express- ing interest in adopting children who have been left orphans from the quake last week. Adoption advocacy groups are reporting doz- ens of calls a day. "The agencies are being flooded with phone calls and e-mails," said Tom Difilipo, president and CEO of the advocacy group Joint Council on International Children's Services. "The response is 'Can we help with these children by adopting them?"' The need is vast. Even before last Tuesday's deadly magnitude- 7.0 earthquake, Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, had 380,000 orphans, according to UNICEF. There is no.counting children newly orphaned by the quake, but aid groups estimate the number in tens of thou- sands. "Everybody here and in the world wants to do something. I think it's a way that people are opening up their heads and their hearts," said Mary Ross Agosta, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami, which has offered temporary housing for children until they are either placed with extended family, put in foster care or adopted. This week, 54 orphans arrived in Pittsburgh after a mission that involved officials in the White House, the State Department and the Depart- ment of Homeland Security. The orphans were being cared for at Children's Hospital of Pitts- burgh. So far, seven children have been placed with their adoptive families. "We have received quite a few phone calls, including one from as far away as Alaska," said Clare Kushma, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Pitts- burgh. She estimated the num- ber of calls as close to 100, but is referring people to the Allegh- eny County's Department of Human Services for adoptions. The road to adoption is a long one. The orphans coming to the U.S. now are children who either had already established a relationship with potential par- ents in the country, or who were certified as orphans before the quake but hadn't been placed with parents yet, said Chris Bentley, a U.S. Citizen and titnigration Services spokesman. Before new adoptions can occur, officials need to establish that the children are identified by the Hai- tian government as orphans; there have been reports of families sell- ing their children to adoption bro- kers. And potential families need to he cleared, too. "All this is a2-year process mini- mum," Difiliposaid. "Somefamilies ht faedive yers" ,-- New solutions may be enact- ed for these orphans, though, said Mary Robinson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption. Her advocacy group has gotten an offer from Puerto Rico to serve asa rest- ing place for children until they are adopted. State Department spokesman Darby Holladay said the orphans are one of the highest priorities for the U.S. government. "We are looking at each and every orphan case individually and we are working around the clock with officials of both Homeland Security and the Haitian govern- ment to find solutions," he said. He said the U.S. Embassy in Haiti has processed immigrant visas for 46 orphan children whose cases were ready for processing. In addition, there have been 100 humanitarian waivers for orphans. The Department of Home- land Security has also set up an e-mail on Haitian adoptions, haitianadoptions(at)dhs.gov,where people can get queries answered about ongoing adoptions. Bentley also said there will be a task force to help Haitian children come into the U.S. for adoption. Gage, 38, of Stanberry, Mo., said her oldest daughter texted her the-phone number of the National- Council for Adoption while on the school bus. The family knows that adoption can take a long time, but plans to stick it out. "Of course the sooner, the better, but I know kind of the process," she said. Gage and her husband Brad had discussed adopting before, but she was moved by the devastation in Haiti. "Really, I wanted to get on the next flight out and help these people," she said. UNICEF will now work to find children who are alone and deter- mine whether they are orphans or have become separated from family, New York-based spokes- man Patrick McCormick said. 'If they have relatives, the agency will work to reunite them. Alternative and longterm choices such as inter- national adoption would be options only after that. Strong winds and heavy rain forces locals to leave homes LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. (AP) - A third powerful Pacific storm pounded Califor- nia with heavy rain and snow yesterday, forcing evacuations of hundreds of homes below wild- fire-scarred mountains, shutting a major interstate and unleashing lightningstrikes on two airliners. Fierce winds howled along the coast and in the mountains, and forecasters warned of rainfall rates as high as la!0 inches an hour on soil already saturated from two days of wild weather that caused urban street flooding in coastal cities, spawned a damaging tornado and toppled trees, killing two people. Despite stern pleas from authorities and door-to-door calls by police officers and sheriff's deputies, some residents refused to comply with evacuation orders issued for Los Angeles-area foot- hill communities below the steep San Gabriel Mountains where 250 square miles of forest burned in a summer wildfire. Rick and Starr Frazier put their faith in concrete barriers and a 2-foot-high wall of sandbags on the perimeter of their home in La Can- ada Flintridge. "Look at our house, we're pretty well fortified here," Starr Frazier said. "If any rain or mud or any- thing comes down;it'll be blocked by our barricades and we're very well stocked with food and water." When they told Los Angeles County deputies they weren't leav- ing, the deputies asked them to fill out forms stating they'd been advised of the danger. They also were warned it might not be pos- sible to rescue them. While most others in the Fra- ziers' community appeared to be complying, officials in nearby Los Angeles reported only about 40 percent compliance by residents of 262 homes in that jurisdiction. Police Chief Charlie Beck sternly urged the rest to go. $10, --.5 Think you know where to find the Best Dessert? Do you have the Best Pick-up Line? Is your landlord the Best? 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