The OFFICAL News Thread

[Shelacious]

Abercrombie & Fitch accused of discrimination in hiring
Suit claims retailer avoids employing minorities on sales floor
Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...7/MN296873.DTL


Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer that appeals to the college set with blond-haired, blue-eyed models, was sued on Monday for racial discrimination, accused of favoring whites for its sales floor jobs.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that Abercrombie discriminates against Hispanics, Asians and blacks in its hiring as it seeks to project what the company calls the "classic American" look.

Abercrombie, whose upscale casual clothes have made it one of the hottest companies for teenagers and college students, is accused of favoring whites by concentrating its hiring on certain colleges, fraternities and sororities.

Several Hispanic and Asian plaintiffs said in interviews that when they applied for jobs, store managers steered them to stockroom jobs and away from the sales floor because they did not project what the company called the "A & F look."

That look, these plaintiffs said, is overwhelmingly white, judging from the low percentage of minority members who work on the sales floor and from the company's posters and quarterly magazine, which overwhelmingly features white models.

In an affidavit, a former assistant manager of an Abercrombie store in Boston said that of the 110 employees there, two or three were black, one was Hispanic, and the other 106 were white.

"It's quite clear that they go to great pains to make sure all of their managers and assistant managers know what they're looking for and what those managers will be judged on: Does your work force fit our all-white image?" said Thomas A. Saenz, vice president for litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Eduardo Gonzalez, a junior at Stanford University, said that when he applied last August to the Abercrombie store in Santa Clara, a manager said he should apply for the stock room or an overnight position.

"It was like, wow, they're pushing me to the only nonvisible jobs, they don't want me to be seen in public," Gonzalez said. "And it was weird: all the store's posters were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed."

A spokesman for the New Albany, Ohio, clothier, which has about 600 stores and 22,000 employees, said Monday that the company would not comment because it had not yet seen the legal papers.

Several plaintiffs said that top managers often visited stores and examined pictures of employees to determine whether they conformed with the Abercrombie & Fitch look. Often, the legal papers say, store managers approach attractive white customers who have the "look" and urge them to apply for sales jobs.

Juancarlos Gomez-Montejano, who worked in sales at an Abercrombie in Santa Monica, said that after a corporate official visited his store, he and four other minority sales workers were terminated, told that the staff was too large. A few weeks later, he said, the store hired five white fraternity members from UCLA.

He complained to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, which filed the lawsuit along with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein.

The lawyers are asking for an unspecified amount in back wages and punitive damages.

[Peaches-n-Cream]

This is a link to a very long article about Jessica Lynch. http://www.msnbc.com/news/927609.asp

[xok85xo]

don't come between a man and his porn..

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

[Shelacious]

* Hue and cry on whiteness studies classes **
An academic fields take on race stirs interest and anger, as Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post.

http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports...ews/928992.asp

[CatStarESP4]

Check this out, it's rather scary!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030620/80/e2urf.html

Bitch boss" remark no way to win job

LONDON (Reuters) - One called her boss a "bitch from hell" while another admitted "lying through his teeth" at interview.


Both the job candidates were -- not surprisingly -- turned down after prospective employers discovered their candid comments on a public website.


The London recruitment firm who revealed the cases warned on Friday that employers were increasingly scouring the Internet to check what candidates are really like behind the rosy image they seek to project in CVs and interviews.


"One media sales executive aged 24 had a job offer withdrawn after a quick check on www.friendsreunited.co.uk revealed that the applicant only planned to stay in London for a few months before embarking on a world tour," London's Media Contacts said.


As well as missing out on the jobs they were aiming for, the frankness of some also cost them their current employment.


"Another candidate, an account manager, 26, for a well-known PR agency was forced to resign when she described her boss as a "Bitch from Hell" and her employer as "a bunch of cowboys", Media Contacts said.


In a third case, a senior sales executive seeking a move also ended up getting the sack after boasting to the Friends Reunited site, set up to keep old school pals in touch, that he lied at interview and his CV was "a masterpiece of fiction."


"People should think carefully what they say about employers -- past and present -- and what they say about themselves in any public domain," Media Contacts' recruitment consultant Gordon Cherrington said. "Having fun...is a good thing, though negativity in any form, rarely reflects well on the writer."

[The1calledTKE]

Playboy's centerfold measurements change depending on the state of the economy.....

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - "Boom or bust" may take on new meaning as researchers theorize a link between U.S. economic conditions and subtle changes in Playboy centerfold physiques.

According to researchers, a comparison of the faces and figures of Playmates of the Year from 1960 to 2000 suggests men may prefer stronger-looking women in hard times, and softer, more vulnerable types when bull markets resume.

"In short, we want someone to have fun with when times are good, and we want someone to take care of us -- and themselves -- when times are bad," said psychology researcher Dr. Terry F. Pettijohn II, of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania.

The study, co-authored by undergraduate student Brian Jungeberg, was presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, in Atlanta.

Previous research has suggested that ideals of beauty and sexual attractiveness change between cultures and over time. A handful of studies have discerned a slight trend toward thinner bodies among both Playmates and Miss America contestants over the past few decades.

However, according to Pettijohn, his study is the first to consider "how social and economic conditions may have influenced these changes."

In their research, Pettijohn and Jungeberg created an annual "hard times measure" by tracking changes in U.S. statistics on unemployment, marriage, homicide and other factors for the years 1960 through 2000.

Then, using clear, front-on photographs of Playboy Playmates of the Year for each of those 40 years, the two researchers made precise measurements of key face and body dimensions.

Comparing models over the years, the researchers discovered that, in hard times, Playmates tended to be slightly older, heavier and taller, with larger waists and bigger waist-to-hip ratios. Smaller eyes -- a feature linked to "stronger" faces -- were also predominant.

As an example, Anna Nicole Smith, the fullest-figured Playmate of the Year ever -- graced Playboy's pages in 1993, which Pettijohn called one of the "worst" years on record in terms of economic and social factors.

On the other hand, during more affluent periods the average Playboy subscriber's fancy appeared to turn to softer, more girlish types. Playmates of the Year during "good times" tended to be younger, shorter, thinner models, with smaller waists and bigger eyes.

The boom years of the early 1960s, for example, produced both the youngest-ever Playmate of the Year (18-year-old Donna Michelle, 1964) and the lightest (102-pound June Cochran, 1963), according to Pettijohn.

These trends came as no surprise to Pettijohn, who said the findings are in line with psychology's "environmental security hypothesis," which posits that people look to potential mates for support in tough times and more carefree fun when the living is easy.

"People who we are attracted to is a product of how secure we feel in our current environment," he told Reuters Health.

But since Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner has always chosen the Playmate of the Year, might trends in Playmate measurements simply reflect changes in 'Hef's personal tastes?

Pettijohn is doubtful.

"Playboy regularly asks for reader input on the issue, including submitting letters, mailing voting cards, calling a hotline, or voting online," he said. "We assume that Mr. Hefner takes public opinion into consideration."

[Eirene_DGP]

Originally posted by Shelacious
* Hue and cry on whiteness studies classes **
An academic fields take on race stirs interest and anger, as Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post.

http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports...ews/928992.asp

Shelacious, thanks for posting the link to that article...That was excellent.

[honeychile]

I just heard that Sen. Strom Thurmond passed away.

For those of you who didn't know, his second wife, Nancy Moore, was an Alpha Delta Pi.

I found the Yahoo article very interesting, as it seems that he tried to make up for his racist beginnings.

[moe.ron]

Story

Man Sells Fake Bronze, Gets Paid in Counterfeit
Fri Jun 27, 7:14 AM ET HANOI (Reuters)

- A Vietnamese man who used cow fat and paint to pass off a lump of iron as valuable black bronze found buyers -- but was paid $64,000 in counterfeit bills.

A justice official said 12 people involved in both frauds were arrested and were undergoing trial in southern An Giang province.

Eight were accomplices of the accused metal fraudster, while three were involved in the alleged counterfeiting, the prosecutor said.

State-run Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported that Huynh Van Gat confessed he had painted a one kg iron lump with cow fat and black paint and tried to pass it off as black bronze and sought to sell it for one billion dong ($64,683). Black bronze is used in making jewelry and ornamental objects like statues.

A group of three business people from Ho Chi Minh City who were negotiating to buy the black bronze, which is valued on the market at around $1 million, bought a printer to produce 900 million Vietnamese dong ($58,214) to pay for the deal.

Gat and his accomplices were arrested a few days later when local shops tipped off the police about the fake dong.

The men told the police they didn't know the money was counterfeit and revealed where it came from -- leading to the arrest of the others.

The justice official said the trial would last several days.

Counterfeiting money carries a penalty ranging from three years in prison to death by firing squad in communist Vietnam.

($1=15,460 dong)

[The1calledTKE]

Video Shows Fatal Toughman Fight

POSTED: 12:26 p.m. EDT June 25, 2003
UPDATED: 5:37 p.m. EDT June 27, 2003

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A woman who died after entering a Toughman boxing match was hit repeatedly in the head even after she walked on wobbly legs to her corner to end the match, a videotape of the match shows.

The tape shows Stacy Young, a 30-year-old mother of two, taking several blows to the head and being unable to defend herself, the St. Petersburg Times reported in Wednesday's editions. The tape includes shouts from the crowd for the fight to stop.

Sarasota Police are investigating the fatal June 14 match. Young was declared brain dead two days after the match, which she'd entered on a whim and was the first time she'd ever boxed.


The Times reported the tape shows Young heading to the safety of her corner. Her opponent, 20-year-old Sarah Kobie, follows Young and throws three punches to Young's head.

Young collapsed and suffered a seizure in the ring, while her family -- including her young daughters -- watched from the audience.

Such a move wouldn't be allowed in a sanctioned amateur boxing match, but Toughman competitions play by their own rules. The matches are supposed to be illegal in Florida, but Toughman promoter Art Dore has continued to stage them because of loopholes in the state law.

Dore was the announcer at the Sarasota match, at one point calling the bout "a real cat fight," the videotape shows.

"Nasty women. Nasty women," Dore yelled over the public address system.

Dore did not return a call for comment Wednesday from his Bay City, Mich., headquarters.

The Times did not identify the source of the videotape, but reported that Sarasota police also have a copy.

Young was clearly outmatched from the opening bell, the newspaper reported. She tried to fight back, but her punches either fell short or failed to ward off Kobie. Toward the end of the third round, Young could no longer keep her hands up, the videotape shows.

Young was the fourth person to die in a Toughman bout in the last nine months. She is the first woman to be killed in the 24-year history of the competitions.

Kobie, who has an unlisted telephone number, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Sarasota County commissioners voted Tuesday night to draft an ordinance to ban Toughman contests. The Toughman competition had been held in publicly owned Robarts Arena at the county fairgrounds.

"I think we ought to lead the way on this thing," said Commissioner David Mills. "I think a lot of people are looking to us to fix it."

A state lawmaker has also introduced legislation to close the loopholes that allowed Toughman competitions to be staged without meeting the same strict standards for referees and ringside doctors as amateur boxing matches. Lawmakers, however, are not likely to vote on that measure -- which would make it a felony to violate Florida's boxing laws -- soon.

Wednesday, the American College of Sports Medicine called on state and national lawmakers to demand safety standards and reform for Toughman-type boxing contests.

Robert C. Cantu, a head and neck injury specialist and chairman of the group's task force on boxing safety, said many who participate in Toughman events simply aren't trained to properly defend themselves against potentially fatal punches.

That situation is further exasperated by Toughman putting fighters with some experiences in the ring with novices and allowing untrained or inexperienced referees and fight doctors to monitor the match.

"Allowing mismatched people off the street to fight with no such safeguards we feel is deplorable," Cantu said. "Boxing is not something to be entered into lightly under any circumstances."

The doctors group said if Toughman competitions are to exist, they should be governed by the same rules of amateur boxing and include such safeguards as extensive medical exams for fighters and training standards for referees and fight doctors.

[AXO Alum]

(This came to me via email - I did some research and found it to be true -- however, since this was the most comprehensive info I could find (in one place) I decided to copy and paste the email. If you go to the link provided in the article, it will take you to the same place -- AXO Alum....)


A project of the American Family Association


Tuesday, July 1, 2003
Pampered Chef consultants quitting over abortion support
Dear Heidi,

A growing number of Christian, pro-life mothers are leaving
lucrative careers with a national kitchenware company because of the new
owner's support of abortion.

"The Pampered Chef" is one of the nation's largest and
fastest-growing kitchenware companies. Mostly stay-at-home moms who sell the
products from home have driven the company, founded in 1980 by professing
Christian and stay-at-home mother Doris Christopher. The company boasts more
than 67,000 "Kitchen Consultants" and sales of $700 million annually.

But now, according to Citizen magazine, many Christian mothers
are walking away from the company because Pampered Chef's new owner,
billionaire Warren Buffett, is a huge supporter of abortion. His Buffett
Foundation, using company profits, has donated tens of millions of dollars
to abortion-related causes.

Citizen reports that Buffett's conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway,
Inc. -- owners of such well-known names as Dairy Queen, See's Candy, and
Fruit of the Loom -- has funneled millions of dollars to the Foundation. The
Foundation, in turn, last year donated at least $11 million to pro-choice
and "reproductive-rights" groups.

Among those recipients are international abortion-provider
Planned Parenthood, the Population Council -- chief promoter of RU-486 in
the U.S. -- and International Projects Assistance Services. IPAS,
beneficiary of a five-year, $20 million commitment from the Foundation in
1999, is the principal manufacturer of the suction pumps used in abortions.
According to Business Week, that financial backing permitted IPAS to double
its capacity to produce and distribute "manual vacuum aspirators (MVAs)."

According to Citizen, the exodus of Pampered Chef distributors
who are pro-life is gaining steam. It says resignations of top-selling
distributors are catching the attention of company officials. Among those
who have decided to quit the company is Tammy Gillespie of Tupelo,
Mississippi. She excludes Buffett from her decision.

"It's not between me and Warren Buffet, it's between me and
God," Gillespie says. "I cannot bow before the Lord when I get to heaven and
have Him look me in the eye and say, 'You knew that your money was going to
fund abortion.' And that's why I'm quitting the Pampered Chef."

Gillespie says the decision was not a difficult decision for her
and her husband to make. "We searched God's Word and found a ton of
scriptures that I believe that God led us to find and know exactly where God
stands," she says.

"The Book of James it says if you know what to do and you don't
do it, it's a sin. So if you know where God stands on something and you
choose not to do it because of finances or because you like the product,
it's sin."

She says there was never any hesitation on her part about
quitting a company that helps finance the killing of innocent babies.
Citizen quotes a West Virginia mom and a 33-year-old Arizona mother of three
who both also have resigned from The Pampered Chef over its financial
support to abortion-related causes,

Buffett purchased The Pampered Chef in September 2002 and
remained under the management of Mrs. Christopher at that time.


ACTION NEEDED
AFA encourages you to forward this information to current
Pampered Chef Consultants, and to friends and family who have or may
purchase Pampered Chef products.

Additional research:


a.. Online version of this alert -
http://www.onemillionmoms.com/email/...hef070103.html
b.. The Website For Pampered Chef Consultants And Customers
Who Are Committed To Protecting Life

c.. Warren Buffet: No Project Too Controversial

d.. How Profits From The Pampered Chef Fuel The Abortion
Industry (The material at this site refutes a "defense" letter by Pampered
Chef Founder and Chairman Doris K. Christopher)

e.. Pampered Chef Consultant petition

f.. Shareholders Urge Billionaire to Stop Bankrolling Abortion
and Population Control

g.. Pampered Chef website contact page
PS: Don't forget! Forward this to your family and friends.
Thanks!

[CutiePie2000]

Singer Barry White Dies at 58
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._mu/obit_white

LOS ANGELES - Velvet-voiced R&B crooner Barry White (news), renowned for his lush baritone and carnal lyrics that oozed sex appeal on songs such as "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," died Friday morning, his manager said.



White, who had suffered kidney failure from years of high blood pressure, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center around 9:30 a.m., said manager Ned Shankman. He was 58.


White had been undergoing dialysis treatment and had been hospitalized since last September.


His work epitomized seductive disco music, also known as "make out" music. The heavyset musician enjoyed three decades of fame for songs like "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" and "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me."


White's canyon-deep, butter-smooth vocals and throbbing musical tempos emphasized his songs' sexually charged verbal foreplay. His 1975 song "Love Serenade" began with the purring, first-person lyrics: "I want you the way you came into the world/ I don't want to feel no clothes ..."


Although his popularity peaked in the 1970s, White received belated recognition for his work in 2000 when he won his first two Grammys (news - web sites) for best male and traditional R&B vocal performance for the song "Staying Power."


Born Sept. 12, 1944, in Galveston, Texas, to a single mother, White and his younger brother, Darryl, spent most of their childhood in South Central Los Angeles. He said he had a lifelong love for music. During his early teenage years, he began singing in a Baptist church choir and was quickly promoted to director.


In 1990, White told Ebony magazine that his voice changed overnight from the squeaky tones of a preadolescent to the rumbling bass that made him famous.


"It scared me and my mother when I spoke that morning," he said. "It was totally unexpected. My chest rattled. I mean vibrations. My mother was staring at me, and I was staring at her. The next thing I new, her straight face broke into a beautiful smile. Tears came down her face and she said, 'My son's a man now.'"


He was jailed at age 16 for stealing tires, a punishment he credited with helping him straighten out his life and dedicate his efforts to music.


Inspired by the Elvis Presley (news) song "It's Now or Never," White joined the Upfronts soul group as bass singer and cut six singles. For several years, he stayed away from performing and focused on work behind the scenes as a songwriter and producer.


He married a childhood sweetheart, identified only as Mary in his autobiography, and fathered four children with her before they separated in 1969 and later divorced.


White discovered the female trio Love Unlimited — which included his future second wife, Glodean James — and produced their million-selling 1972 single "Walkin' in the Rain With the One I Love."


The next year, White returned to performing with the song "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby," which topped the R&B chart and hit No. 3 on the pop chart.


He is credited by some for helping launch the disco phenomenon with his orchestral "Love's Theme" in 1973, which he conducted with his group, The Love Unlimited Orchestra.


In 1974, his album "Can't Get Enough" climbed to the top of the pop charts on the strength of the signature hits "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" and "You're the First, the Last, My Everything."


That year he also married James. The couple had four children together and collaborated on the 1981 album "Barry & Glodean," which featured the songs "I Want You" and "You're the Only One for Me." They divorced in 1988, but he said they always remained good friends.





White suffered a family tragedy in 1983 when his brother, Darryl, was shot and killed in a dispute with a neighbor over change from a $20 bill. In his 1999 autobiography, "Love Unlimited: Insights on Life and Love," Barry White said music likely spared him a similar fate.

After working on more than a dozen albums in the 1970s, his career waned over the next decade as he attempted small comebacks with the albums "The Right Night & Barry White" (1987) and "The Man is Back!" (1989.)

He enjoyed a larger resurgence with 1994 album "The Icon Is Love," and his ballad "Practice What You Preach" became his first No. 1 hit in 17 years. Toward the end of the 1990s, his songs were regularly featured on the Fox comedy series "Ally McBeal (news - Y! TV)" and he made an appearance on the show as himself.

His single "Staying Power," off a 1999 album of the same name, won White two Grammys and proved he hadn't tamed his libidinous lyrics. "Put on my favorite dress, the one that oozes sexiness," he cooed in the title track's opening lines.

That year White's chronic blood pressure problem forced him to cancel several live performances with the group Earth, Wind & Fire and he was briefly hospitalized.

White's survivors include eight children, grandchildren, and his companion Catherine Denton.

[CatStarESP4]

This story has to be read several times to understand!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030704/80/e3pix.html

Snail mail, email and now ... whale mail?

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The small Pacific island state of Vanuatu has opened what it says is the world's first underwater post office.


Planted on the seabed under three metres (9 ft 10 in) of turquoise sea in the Hideaway Island marine sanctuary, the fibreglass kiosk is manned by postal workers in diving gear and sells waterproof postcards.


"Marine life and water are very important to Vanuatu and tourism is pretty important so we just thought we'd see what we could do to boost tourism, do something different and have a bit of fun," Ian Hollins of Vanuatu Post told Reuters on Friday.


"When you're out snorkelling it's quite an easy duck dive and you're there," Hollins said from the tropical state of 80 islands and 190,000 people, 2,250 km (1,400 miles) northeast of Sydney.


The submarine post office is open for one or two hours a day, depending on how busy it gets, and has a special underwater franking machine that embosses the plastified postcards.

[GMUBunny]

No one in my hometown is too happy about this, but I guess it's gonna happen either way...

Even in Chesapeake, picking unbiased Malvo jury will be hard

Lee Boyd Malvo


By JOHN HOPKINS, The Virginian-Pilot
© July 4, 2003 | Last updated 1:43 AM Jul. 4

CHESAPEAKE -- The fate of Lee Boyd Malvo will be in the hands of 12 Chesapeake residents -- all of whom must be at least 18 years old and have a driver's license or a voter registration card.

Selecting a jury won't be easy, legal experts say.

Candidates will have to pass muster during careful examinations by prosecutors and defense attorneys who will be searching for any signs of bias.

The stakes are particularly high because the 18-year-old defendant, if found guilty, could be sentenced to death.

Malvo is the younger of two men accused of killing 10 people in a series of sniper attacks in the Washington area last fall. His trial in Chesapeake, scheduled to begin Nov. 10, is for three felony charges in connection with the killing of Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot in Fairfax County.

The 47-year-old FBI analyst, a mother of two, was leaving the store with her husband when she was shot in the head Oct. 14, 2002.

Malvo's trial was to take place in Fairfax County. This week, however, Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane M. Roush ordered the trial moved 200 miles south to Chesapeake to ensure that Malvo receives a fair trial.

The trial, Roush wrote in her decision to change venues, should be outside the Washington-Richmond corridor, ``where many citizens lived in fear during the month of October.''

But even in Chesapeake it will be ``extremely difficult,'' to find people who know nothing about the crime, said Franklin A. Swartz, a Norfolk lawyer with 37 years of experience as a defense attorney and prosecutor. The selection may boil down to those Chesapeake residents capable of making an extraordinary effort to put aside what they've already seen, heard and feared.

``Will they still be able to present an open mind? That is a psychological test of the human spirit because it would be very difficult for any human being, after seeing the tragedies from these brutal murders, to exclude that from his thought process,'' Swartz said.

From the beginning of the selection process, residents who are asked to serve cannot ignore the court. When a legal summons is delivered, usually by mail, they are required by law to respond.

Chesapeake officials said Thursday that they couldn't discuss the jury-selection process -- including how many prospective jurors may need to be called to find a panel of a dozen as well as a handful of alternates.

The city's jury coordinator builds a pool of jury candidates from voter registration and Department of Motor Vehicles records, according to Ken Mittendorff, chief information officer for the Virginia Supreme Court.

By comparison, Fairfax County uses only voter registration rolls, which some attorneys argue excludes many minorities and residents of lower socioeconomic status from jury pools.

Malvo's lawyers have argued that Fairfax County's voter rolls do not reflect the area's ethnic and racial diversity, effectively denying the black defendant a jury of his peers.

The outlook for a diverse jury is somewhat better in Chesapeake, where 27 percent of the city's 199,184 residents are black. Fairfax has a 8.6 percent black population, according to the U.S. Census.

While the trial is expected to draw worldwide media attention, no public statement has been made about whether the Malvo jury will be sequestered or will be able to go home each night. The trial is expected to last two months.

``Generally, the judges don't like to sequester jurors because it disrupts their lives,'' Swartz said. ``But in a case of this magnitude, it will be the judge's call.''

Amy Singer, a nationally recognized jury consultant from Florida, said strong media attention in murder trials often makes it easier for defense attorneys to narrow the list of potential jurors. In such cases, lawyers have the benefit of jury questionnaires to detect undesirable people in the jury pool.

Singer, president of Trial Consultants Inc., has been an adviser in many high-profile trials, including cases involving Michael Jackson, the tobacco industry and Firestone.

In Chesapeake, ``They're going to be asking people whether or not they believe in the death penalty,'' Singer said. ``People who say they don't believe in it will be knocked off the jury.''

But people often will lie to be a part of a high-profile trial, she said.

After 25 years as a consultant, Singer said, she has learned how -- with careful questioning and observation of body language -- to weed such candidates out of the jury pool.


Reach John Hopkins at 222-5221 or e-mail john.hopkins@pilotonline.com

[SATX*APhi]

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...R&SECTION=HOME

Jul 9, 4:25 PM EDT

Popular Clownfish Can Change Sex, Size

By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA
AP Science Writer

Scientists could have written an R-rated, gender-bending plot twist to Disney's "Finding Nemo": Clownfish have a natural ability to change their sex.

Clownfish, the aquarium pet of choice since the release of the animated movie, live in such a rigid social structure in the wild that if one of the dominant breeding adults is removed, the size, status and even sex of the other clownfish change rapidly to return the group to the status quo.

"If the female of the group dies, the male changes sex and becomes the breeding female," said Cornell University evolutionary biologist Peter Buston, "while the largest non-breeder becomes the breeding male."

Some other species of fish are known to do the same thing.

The study of the exotic reef dwellers, named for their outrageous colors, appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Buston observed 97 groups of clownfish living on reefs in Papua New Guinea.

Buston did not address how the fish change sex.