Drug Felons Illegally Receiving Welfare Benefits

State officials say a preliminary investigation has found that more than 1,000 convicted drug felons in Marion County may be illegally receiving state welfare benefits.


Convicted drug felons are not allowed to receive welfare benefits. The recent investigation by the state Family and Social Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cross-checked Indianapolis-area welfare rolls with drug conviction databases to find illegal welfare recipients. Officials say they are now expanding the investigation statewide.


Officials say more investigation is needed to confirm the findings in Marion County before turning over the information to authorities for possible prosecution.


Governor Daniels awarded three people for their work in the investigation Monday.


"It is my judgement and moral responsibilty of everyone in public life to make certain that no tax dollar taken from the Hoosier by the power of the state is ever missspent," Daniels said.

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Teen arrested after incident at security checkpoint

An Indianapolis teenager spent the night in jail after causing an airport security breach.


The breach happened Sunday evening at Indianapolis International Airport. Airport Screeners spotted a fake gun on the teenager as he tried to get through security, but that's not all they found.


At no time did the teenager make any threats, and airport police say the incident never compromised public safety. Airport Police arrested 19-year-old Carlo Delay Sunday for disorderly conduct at an airport, a Class D felony.


Delay escorted his mother Sunday night to catch a flight on Airtran. He obtained a pass to go through the security checkpoint with his mother. During pat down a TSA security screener noticed Delay was wearing an armored vest. They also found a plastic handgun on him.


"The product that he had was a replica handgun. He misrepresented himself. Upon questioning his answers were not appropriate for the airport. It's not against the law to wear a bullet resistant vest but when you take a number of factors and the totality we felt it was appropriate that the incident required further investigation," said Bill Reardon, airport police chief.


Carlos Delay spent the night in jail but a judge granted him early release around 4:00 am. Delay told Eyewitness news in a telephone interview that taking the fake gun and vest to the airport was "a big mistake."


Delay may be part of a police cadet program. They take part in simulated bioterrorism and defense training. Police suspect this was his way of protecting his mother at the airport, but not a good idea at all.

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City announces 1,200 jobs at airport facility

Wellpoint, Inc. announced Monday plans to create 900 life sciences jobs in Indianapolis.


Wellpoint was joined by Mayor Bart Peterson, Governor Mitch Daniels and representatives of the Indianapolis Airport Authority to announce the jobs, which are described as "high-tech, high-wage life sciences" positions.


Wellpoint says the jobs are part of its expansion of its specialty pharmacy business. There will also be an expansion of the company's managed care Medicaid operations, which will create 300 additional new jobs. Most of those positions will also be located in Marion County.


The new jobs will go into the maintenance center site formerly used by United Airlines at the airport. The 300-acre site includes a 248-acre structure that houses 12 hangars as well as office, storage and workshop space.


The Indianapolis Airport Authority took over the IMC in 2003 after United declared bankruptcy. The city and Airport Authority have been looking for tenants to replaced United ever since.


The deal includes an 11-year lease. The jobs include: pharmacy technicians, registered nurses, registered pharmacists, business analysts and data analysts.


WellPoint will open its new facilities, which will primarily serve as a prescription fulfillment center with more than one million shipments per year, by the end of the first quarter 2007 and will phase in operations throughout the year.

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Parents of boy killed at Wal-Mart store to sue

The parents of a boy killed by a falling mirror plan to sue Wal-Mart.


Three-year-old Christopher Antonio was at a Wal-Mart Super Center on West 86th street in July when a six-foot mirror fell on him. The boy died from his injuries. He would have turned four Tuesday.


Attorneys for the family claim thousands of shoppers at Wal-Mart and similar "super stores" have suffered serious injuries in recent years because of unsafe equipment and falling merchandise.


The boy's parents and attorneys plan to hold a news conference about the lawsuit at 1:30 this afternoon. This story will be updated with their comments later.

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Danger in Toyland

San Francisco's ban on toxic toys - including such classics as the rubber ducky - highlights the lurking danger of plastic contaminants.


They line the nursery section of children's toy stores like brightly colored candies: rubber duckies for bathtime, chewable rings for teething, soft-covered books for pawing and mouthing. Parents shopping for their babies can be forgiven if they assume that everything on those shelves is 100% child safe. So why did the city of San Francisco issue a ban last week on the sale of certain plastic toys aimed at children under 3? And why are activists warning holiday shoppers in the most alarming terms against buying them?


"Sucking on some of these teethers and toys," says Rachel Gibson of Environment California, a nonprofit, "is like sucking on a toxic lollipop." At issue are contaminants in plastics used to make the toys. Environmentalists have long argued that some of these chemicals can leach out and harm children, pointing to animal studies that link the substances to birth defects, cancer and developmental abnormalities. Those warnings are hotly disputed by the chemical industry and toy manufacturers, which cite stacks of scientific studies that have found the plastics to be safe at federally approved levels. But the issue has gained traction on the strength of new evidence from independent and university-sponsored studies. The European Union has banned some chemicals in toys since 1999, and now half a dozen state legislatures are considering similar laws.

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5 years later, WTC mail keeps coming

It's the kind of holiday mail that might have been tossed aside, discarded like any other piece of junk mail: a special offer for a facial at a local spa.


Only the address on the letter no longer exists. And the woman the letter is addressed to died more than five years ago in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.


Hundreds of pieces of mail destined for the former trade center still arrive every day at a post office facing ground zero — the relics of the unfinished lives of Sept. 11 victims.


Telephone bills, insurance statements, wine club announcements, college alumni newsletters, even government checks populate the bundles of mail. Each bears the ZIP code once reserved exclusively for the twin towers: 10048.


"I guess sooner or later they'll realize the towers aren't back up," said letter carrier Seprina Jones-Sims, who handles the trade center mail. "I don't know when."

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Pinochet undergoes emergency angioplasty

Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator whose regime was responsible for widespread killings and other abuses, suffered a heart attack Sunday and underwent an emergency angioplasty that his son said "virtually rescued him from death."


A spokesman for Pinochet said he received last rites, and a doctor treating him described the 91-year-old's heart attack as "life-threatening." A small group of Pinochet supporters, mainly women, arrived at the hospital, some holding portraits of the former ruler, who has been under house arrest and charged with human rights abuses.


Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio, said his father had been "virtually rescued from death" with the angioplasty, in which the doctors introduce a catheter to a patient's blocked artery and inflate a small balloon to enlarge it, thus restoring blood flow to the heart.

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Losing Lebanon to Civil War? ? ? ?

Once a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, Lebanon is veering toward civil war. Here's what went wrong.


It's never a good sign for a country when the Prime Minister and most of his Cabinet members spend their days barricaded in an Ottoman-era compound. That's what Fouad Siniora and Lebanon's other top officials have done since Nov. 21, when gunmen assassinated Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel in broad daylight.


Siniora's worries go beyond his personal safety. With Lebanon still trying to recover from last summer's 34-day war between Israel and the Shi'ite militant group Hizballah, the government has seen its authority undermined, renewed meddling from the country's neighbors and the growing assertiveness of Hizballah. Organized by Hizballah and its allies, about 800,000 protesters—a rather grand figure in a country of just 3.8 million—gathered in the center of Beirut last Friday to demand the resignation of Siniora. At the time, Lebanon's leader was in his barracks, surrounded by machine guns and barbed wire.

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Today in history - Dec. 4

Today is Monday, Dec. 4, the 338th day of 2006. There are 27 days left in the year.


Today's Highlight in History:


On Dec. 4, 1783, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.


On this date:


In 1816, James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States.


In 1875, William Marcy Tweed, the "Boss" of New York City's Tammany Hall political organization, escaped from jail and fled the country.


In 1918, President Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.

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Today in history - Dec. 4

The Associated Press

Today is Monday, Dec. 4, the 338th day of 2006. There are 27 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Dec. 4, 1783, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.

On this date:

In 1816, James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States.

In 1875, William Marcy Tweed, the "Boss" of New York City's Tammany Hall political organization, escaped from jail and fled the country.

In 1918, President Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles Peace Conference.

In 1942, U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time in World War II.

In 1965, the United States launched Gemini 7 with Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Navy Cmdr. James A. Lovell aboard.

In 1978, San Francisco got its first female mayor as City Supervisor Dianne Feinstein was named to replace the assassinated George Moscone.

In 1986, both houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.

In 1991, Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest held of the Western hostages in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity.

In 1991, Patricia Bowman testified at William Kennedy Smith's trial in West Palm Beach, Fla., that Smith had raped her the previous Easter weekend. (Smith was acquitted.)

In 1991, the original Pan American World Airways ceased operations.

Ten years ago: The Mars Pathfinder lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and began speeding toward Mars on a 310 million-mile odyssey. (It arrived on Mars in July 1997.)

Five years ago: Stepping up reprisals for suicide bombings by Palestinian militants, Israel unleashed air strikes; three missiles hit near Yasser Arafat's office as the Palestinian leader worked inside. The United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility for recent deadly suicide attacks in Israel. The Olympic flame began a 46-state, two-month journey from Atlanta, host city of the 1996 Summer Games, to the opening ceremony of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

One year ago: Members of the former Sept. 11 commission said the U.S. was at great risk for more terrorist attacks because Congress and the White House had failed to enact several strong security measures. Show business legends Robert Redford, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Julie Harris and ballerina Suzanne Farrell headlined the annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C. Croatia won its first Davis Cup title.

Today's Birthdays: Actress-singer Deanna Durbin is 85. Game show host Wink Martindale is 72. Actor-producer Max Baer Jr. is 69. Actress Gemma Jones is 64. Rock musician Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) is 64. Singer-musician Chris Hillman is 62. Rock singer Southside Johnny Lyon is 58. Actor Jeff Bridges is 57. Rock musician Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd; the Rossington Collins Band) is 55. Actress Patricia Wettig is 55. Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson is 51. Country musician Brian Prout (Diamond Rio) is 51. Rock musician Bob Griffin (The BoDeans) is 47. Rock singer Vinnie Dombroski (Sponge) is 44. Actress Marisa Tomei is 42. Actress Chelsea Noble is 42. Actor-comedian Fred Armisen is 40. Rapper Jay-Z is 37. Actress-model Tyra Banks is 33. Country singer Lila McCann is 25. Actress Lindsay Felton is 22. Actor Orlando Brown is 19.

Thought for Today: "There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it." — Diana Trilling, American author and literary critic (1905-1996).

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