kimblr.com

Seven people walked up to a house in the 200 block of Ada Street to confront Mejia about a stolen lawnmower, police said.
“A group came over asking about the whereabouts of a lawnmower, whether it had been stolen or misappropriated. That’s when a fight broke out, and somewhere in that fight, the victim got shot,” San Antonio police spokesman Joe Rios said.
According to the police report, witnesses at the scene told officers there had been a fight, but no one had been shot.
Police said they later found out what really happened.
“While the officer was at the scene investigating the initial shooting, a victim showed up at SW General Hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest. That victim did die from his injuries,” Rios said.
The report also said that another witness told officers that the fight started with people throwing rocks and bottles. The person also told police that the group throwing the rocks and bottles assaulted the victim, kicking and punching him.
Police said they took two people in for questioning, but they said they have made no arrests.
“We did identify some people at the scene. We spoke to different people, and charges may be forthcoming,” Rios said.
Police said Mejia did not live at the house where the fight broke out. They said he was likely visiting friends who lived at the house.
Copyright 2008 by KSAT.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ksat.com

SEN. BARACK OBAMA ( D-ILL.): Thank you. Thank you, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, thank you. Thank you. I am fired up. I’m fired up. I am fired up to be in Michigan. I’m fired up to be in Grand Rapids.
Look at this crowd. It is unbelievable. I am so grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here. I know that we didn’t have a chance to campaign here during the primary. And I felt bad about it. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you guys about the issues. I felt guilty about not campaigning. And so, as a consequence, I decided that I would try to give you something special. I decided that, on my first full day of campaigning in Michigan, that I wouldn’t be fooling around; that I wasn’t going to just do the same old thing. But I decided that I was going to bring up one of the greatest leaders we have in the Democratic Party. Please give it up for my friend, John Edwards.
FORMER SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.: Thank you, thank you. So, the question is — thank you. Thank you. So the question is what am I doing here? You know, I was promised a jet ski. And I hadn’t gotten it yet. I am proud to be here with all of you, proud to be in Michigan, proud to be in Grand Rapids. During the course of this presidential campaign, I’ve gotten to know the candidates and the top candidates very, very well. We have all been out speaking about the causes that are so near and dear to our heart as Democrats. And now we’re here down to two amazing candidates. And before I get too far, I want to take just a minute and say a word about my friend and your friend, Senator Hillary Clinton.

washingtonpost.com

By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - “Iron Man,” the latest Marvel comics title brought to the big screen, grossed an estimated $32.5 million from its first full day in North American theaters, independent box office analysts reported on Saturday.
That tally, generated from Friday showings in some 4,100 U.S. and Canadian cinemas, put “Iron Man” on track to meet or exceed the $85 million-plus opening weekends posted by sequels to two other Marvel franchises — “Spider-Man” and “X-Men.”
“Iron Man” stars Robert Downey Jr. as a billionaire industrialist and playboy named Tony Stark who wrestles with a midlife crisis as he invents a high-tech suit of armor that transforms him into a superhero.
The movie, which cost about $150 million to make and another $75 million to market, co-stars Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow and has drawn mostly favorable reviews.
Distributed through Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures, the film is the first self-financed production from Marvel Studios and is being closely watched as the first major release of the summer movie season.
The 18-weekend stretch from May through August can account for as much as 40 percent of Hollywood’s total domestic box office receipts for a year.
Neither Paramount nor Marvel issued first-day figures for “Iron Man.”
But two box office tracking services, Media By Numbers and Box Office Mojo, both reported the film’s estimated Friday take at $32.5 million, not including receipts from Thursday night “preview” screenings in more than 2,000 theaters. Continued…

reuters.com

In the mid-1990s, Steve Armstrong confessed to the 1980 murder of a UW-Madison student for which his brother Ralph Armstrong was convicted, according to a new filing with a state appeals court. Police, it says, failed to investigate and the prosecutor took steps to destroy evidence that could have proved Ralph Armstrong’s innocence.
“[T]he state deliberately suppressed and withheld, for approximately the last thirteen years, information that a known third party confessed to the rape and murder of the victim in this case,” states the brief, filed on April 17 by Armstrong’s defense attorneys, Jerome Buting of Brookfield and Barry Scheck of New York. The brief to Wisconsin’s Dist. 4 Court of Appeals calls this confession “exculpatory evidence supporting the claim of Ralph Armstrong that he is innocent of this crime.”
It goes on to say that former Dane County assistant district attorney John Norsetter, Armstrong’s original prosecutor, was personally contacted by one of the individuals to whom Steve Armstrong confessed. But Norsetter, who retired from the office last year, allegedly not only failed to investigate or notify Armstrong’s defense attorneys of this confession, he subsequently ordered a test that destroyed evidence that could have established Steve Armstrong’s guilt.
“To even attempt such a test without telling the court or the defense about the third party’s confession was at best reckless, at worst, a deliberate attempt to manipulate the truth and frame an innocent man,” the filing states.
Ralph Armstrong, now 55, was convicted in 1981 of killing UW-Madison freshman Charise Kamps, 19, in a downtown Madison apartment; he has always maintained his innocence. In 2005, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned his conviction, after tests excluded him as the source of crime-scene DNA. The Dane County District Attorney’s Office is preparing to retry the case.
The filing (see attached document) from Buting and Scheck, the latter a nationally known criminal defense attorney and co-director of the Innocence Project at Cardoza Law School, is accompanied by two affidavits, from Texas residents Fawn Elaine Cave and Debbie Holsomback. Both give nearly identical accounts of an encounter with Steve Armstrong that took place in the summer of either 1994 or 1995. (Holsomback recalls that it was 1995; Cave says it was either 1994 or 1995.)

thedailypage.com

American writer/performer Wolfe Bowart entertained the children at Summer Hill Public School last week. He is performing at the Seymour Centre.
WORLD-FAMOUS physical theatre performer Wolfe Bowart performed for about 400 children at Summer Hill Public School last Thursday.
WORLD-FAMOUS physical theatre performer Wolfe Bowart performed for about 400 children at Summer Hill Public School last Thursday.
The children laughed during the whole show, as Bowart combined magic and physical comedy into an act that ended with him being swallowed by a giant man-eating balloon.
Bowart has performed in the US, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, the UK and his show, LaLaLuna, will be on at the Seymour Centre during the school holidays, from April 11-26.
LaLaLuna tells the story of the moon’s caretaker as he struggles to re-light the darkened moon.
Bowart has learned from Cirque du Soleil’s Denis Lacombe, and his show has received rave reviews from critics at festivals around Australia.
Half Moon performances of LaLaLuna, suitable for children aged 5-10 years old, are on at the Seymour Centre on April 21 and 22 at 10.30am, and April 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 at 1pm. Tickets are $24 for adults and $16 concession.
Full Moon shows, suitable for families, are on April 17, 18, 19, 23, 24 and 26 at 8pm or April 19 and 26 at 2pm. Cost is $45 for adults and $38 concession.
For bookings visit www.seymourcentre.com.au or www.ticketek.com.au or call 9351 7940. For details about the show visit www.LaLaLuna.com
STORIES IN THIS SECTION:

innerwestweekly.com.au

I ask who among our current-day political leaders Martin Luther King might support; the more appropriate question is who among them would have the courage to embrace a living King as eagerly as they drape themselves in the dead one’s memory. I’m drawing a blank.
Much of the commentary on the anniversary of King’s assassination focuses upon the direction he took in the last years of his life, speaking out against the Vietnam war specifically and state-sponsored violence in general, and attempting to broaden the movement that coalesced around him to include economically oppressed people of every color, not just the racially oppressed ones for whom he advocated so powerfully. He wanted to recast the political and social values of the country to the benefit not just of the disenfranchised here, but for those abroad who suffered from our own and similar military and corporate depredations.
Among the leading presidential contenders, only John Edwards brought even a fraction of King’s outrage and conscience to bear on the economic inequalities that continue to plague and, in many ways, cripple the US. None of the candidates show any sign of feeling the grief and rage King would have felt at what we have done and continue doing to the people of Iraq: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, millions more robbed of fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, many millions more robbed of their livelihood, their security and any semblance of a normal life.
Can anyone imagine Martin Luther King failing to address the debt we’ve incurred to the Iraqis? or failing to note the uses to which the hundreds of billions of US dollars and tens of thousands of US lives thrown away on the occupation could have been put? or failing to speak out in the strongest possible terms against US policies of kidnapping, torture and perpetual detention beyond the rule of law?

btcnews.com

DUBAI, 13 March 2008 — Gulf states, flush with proceeds from record high oil prices, are racing to build the world’s tallest tower.
The Kingdom has just joined the fray with a plan to build a one-mile tower in Jeddah, according to the London-based Middle East Economic Digest (MEED).
The project, which would overtake super-tall skyscrapers in neighboring Kuwait and Dubai, places the competition to build the world’s tallest tower firmly in the Gulf region.
Of all the other high-profile buildings under construction around the globe, such as New York’s Freedom Tower, none will exceed 700 meters in height.
Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Company, which is controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, will invite bids before July for contracts to build the tower in Jeddah.
Called the Burj Al-Meel or the Mile-High Tower, it will be located on the northern side of the Obhur Creek and the Red Sea. It will be spread over an area of more than two million square meters.
MEED said that although there is still secrecy over which companies are involved with the project, it is believed that Britain’s Hyder Consulting is working in a joint venture with Arup, as engineer on the project, which is expected to cost up to $10 billion. US engineering giant Bechtel has been chosen as construction manager for the project. Saudi firm Omrania is the project architect.
Kuwait has unveiled a plan to build a 1,001-meter tower. Its height is a reference to the classic work of Arabic literature, “One Thousand and One Nights.”
Three blades that will be built near the top of the tower will carry a mosque, a church and a synagogue to signify the unity of the three monotheistic religions.
The building will be one of the highlights of the City of Silk, a $77-billion project inspired by the Silk Road which aims to revive the ancient trade route by becoming a major free-trade zone linking Central Asia with Europe.

arabnews.com

Troy DeRosa, a Kenner native who was acquitted last year of three grisly execution-style killings in Metairie during a home invasion, has escaped another murder charge.
A judge Tuesday ordered DeRosa, 26, released from the second-degree murder charge in the April 2000 killing of Howard Delahoussaye, 68. Delahoussaye, a disabled horse trainer, was shot four times in his Ronson Drive home during what police said was a robbery or burglary attempt.
Kenner police booked DeRosa with first-degree murder on Sept. 21, hours after a Jefferson Parish jury acquitted him of the Nov. 23, 2003, killings in a Metairie condo in which four people were shot in the head. A fourth woman survived, and prosecutors declined to prosecute DeRosa on an attempted murder charge after a jury cleared him of the triple slaying, because the facts in both cases were the same.
After the Sept. 21 Kenner arrest, a magistrate found the evidence sufficient to hold DeRosa for second-degree murder. Tuesday’s action leaves DeRosa charged with aggravated burglary, for which he faces trial next month. He remains jailed in lieu of $500,000 bond.
“Troy DeRosa’s nightmare in the criminal justice system in Jefferson Parish is almost over,” his attorney, Jim Williams, said minutes after his client was released Tuesday from the $750,000 bond obligation on the Delahoussaye murder charge.
The charge was based on information three jailed inmates gave Kenner detectives. The inmates claimed DeRosa told them he went to Delahoussaye’s home to steal his prescription pain medication, according to a police probable cause affidavit. Delahoussaye had no legs and used a wheelchair, neighbors said at the time of the killing.
In speaking to the three inmates, “DeRosa provided details of the incident, which directly matched the crime scene,” Kenner police Detective Jesse Johnson wrote in the Sept. 21 affidavit.
By law, prosecutors had 120 days to get a grand jury indictment or file another charge. That deadline, set in Article 701 of the state’s code of criminal procedure, passed. Williams filed what’s called a 701 motion, which 24th Judicial District Judge Ross LaDart granted Tuesday.

nola.com