“Queens Man Under Watch, but Not Under Wraps, in Terror Case - New York Times” plus 4 more

Queens Man Under Watch, but Not Under Wraps, in Terror Case - New York Times
Roadway run-ins - ESPN.com
Asbury Automotive Group Schedules Release of Third Quarter Financial ... - Earthtimes
Relay Scam Continues to Hit Southern Arizona Businesses - Tucson Citizen
'Red Dawn' filming explodes with gwakers, effects - Detroit Free Press

Queens Man Under Watch, but Not Under Wraps, in Terror Case - New York Times

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 02:26 PM PDT

They are easy to miss at first glance, but they are there, every day. Late Tuesday afternoon, two law enforcement agents sat in a gray sedan, parked in a bus stop, steps from a seven-story apartment building on 41st Avenue in Flushing, Queens.

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Naiz Khan, a former coffee cart vendor from Afghanistan, has been under constant surveillance by the F.B.I.

"I'm happy to see the security, the protection," said Hector Castillo, 66, a retiree who has worried a bit since the building he has lived in for 35 years became part of a terrorism investigation. "I hope God helps the authorities resolve this situation."

The "situation" for the building, and for the F.B.I. agents outside, is what to make of Naiz Khan, the Afghan immigrant who lives on the fifth floor. He is a former coffee cart vendor, a prospective cabdriver looking for work, and for the past few weeks, a person under constant surveillance.

Last month, when Najibullah Zazi, a man the authorities have charged with planning a Qaeda-connected terrorist attack, came to New York, he spent a night at Mr. Khan's apartment. In two subsequent raids of Mr. Khan's apartment, the authorities seized a scale, a calculator and nine backpacks, suggestive, they say, of a possible bomb plot.

Mr. Khan, 26, says it is all a matter of misunderstandings and coincidence: He is not a terrorist, just someone who happened to lend a hand to an old friend. But, in addition to the searches, he has been questioned several times by the authorities, and when he traveled to ABC News several days ago for an interview, one of many he has given, the agents trailed him and waited patiently downstairs, the network reported.

Additional arrests in the case are expected, the authorities say, perhaps soon, though it is unclear whether investigators consider Mr. Khan a target in that regard. If they do, he presents, as Mr. Zazi did, something of an unlikely profile: a voluble man who salutes America in his remarks and who has volunteered several times to talk with the F.B.I.

For many Afghan immigrants who live on the tree-lined streets around Masjid Hazrat Abubakr, the Queens mosque that Mr. Zazi attended, this has been a time for tight lips. Attendance at the mosque plummeted after the Joint Terrorism Task Force stormed four apartments in the neighborhood on Sept. 14, searching for evidence of a bomb plot. People in the already insular community expressed fear of being associated with Mr. Zazi.

Mr. Khan, on the other hand, has stood out in his openness. With the Mets gone, he may be the most interviewed person in Flushing these days.

"Our homes have been destroyed," he said recently, sitting in the living room of the apartment he shares with four other men. "If we go back to Afghanistan, Taliban will kill you for being American. In Pakistan, we don't have a good life. Now they say we are terrorists here? Where should we go?"

Mr. Khan is likely to remain in some kind of limbo while investigators untangle the strands of what officials have called one of the most serious domestic terrorism cases in years. The other cases generally presented as more discreet affairs: Agents were not in full view; people of interest were seldom known and did not routinely appear on television; and there was seldom the same lull as appears to have emerged in this case, which ripened so rapidly at the outset.

Mr. Khan, who said he had not noticed the surveillance, said in an interview that he had postponed an annual three-month trip to visit his wife and two children in Pakistan in case the F.B.I. had further questions. He cannot get his old coffee cart job back — it was filled in anticipation of his departure — so he is looking for work and spending a lot of time with reporters.

The scale, he tells them, he never saw before. The backpacks, he says, are not evidence of plans to build portable bombs, as in the Madrid and London attacks, but were gifts to his uncle, who hoped to take them to relatives in Pakistan.

The provenance of the bags is far from neat: The uncle, by Mr. Khan's account, got them from a relative, who got them from a friend, who is business partners with a man who used to be the driver for a Midtown wholesaler, who went out of business with hundreds of extra bags. The bags were delivered en masse to Lincoln Auto Repair in the Bronx more than a year ago, according to the shop's operator, Jalat Khan.

"We were giving them out in the street here," said Mr. Khan, who said he is no relation to Naiz Khan. Carlos Mota, 41, who works at the car wash next door said: "There were a lot of people there who took bags. They gave me one and I said, 'Give me two more, because I have three kids in Santo Domingo.' "

Majeed Babar contributed reporting.

Roadway run-ins - ESPN.com

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 02:19 PM PDT

First, the good news: there are more deer roaming the country now than at any time in the nation's history. The bad news: a lot more of them are getting hit by cars these days, which doesn't make deer, drivers or insurance companies happy.

According to State Farm Insurance, the country's largest auto insurer, the number of collisions involving deer and vehicles keeps creeping up. Its latest findings were based on a two-year study period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009, when an estimated 2.4 million deer-vehicle collisions occurred. That figure represented an increase of more than 18 percent over the previous study period.

On average, there was one collision every 26 seconds, though the vast majority of such accidents took place from November through January, when deer are either preoccupied with mating or just out looking for their next meal.

Pavlov's dogs would have nailed it down a long time ago: Cross a busy highway and chances are you're going to get nailed by something big, hard and moving fast. Deer still haven't figured it out. When it comes to cars and collisions, they're as hapless as rabbits in headlights or armadillos on a Southern road.

If you don't want to run the risk of hitting a deer with your truck or automobile, best stay out of West Virginia, where the odds of hitting a deer on the highway are 1 in 39. That figure is based on a formula that incorporates the number of vehicles on the road relative to the number of deer-vehicle collisions.

Hawaii is the place to go if you're tired of dodging deer; the chance of hitting one in the Aloha state are 1 in 9,931, according to State Farm. You're more likely to slam into a feral hog in Hawaii, or be swept from the highway by a lava flow from one of its active volcanoes. In the lower 48, Arizona is the safest. There, the chances are only 1 in 1,892.

That West Virginia is the leading state for deer-vehicle collisions shouldn't come as a big surprise. Except for the paved part, the whole state is a virtual deer park. An estimated 1 million whitetails inhabit the state, or one for every two people. Michigan drivers have the second best chance of being involved in deer-vehicle collisions. There, the odds of hitting a whitetail are 1 in 78.

Michigan also has the distinction of being second only to Pennsylvania in the number of deer-vehicle collisions. In 2008, 61,010 such mishaps were reported in the state, mainly in the heavily populated southern counties.

Pennsylvania ranked No. 1 with more than 105,000 collisions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008. The Keystone State also ranked third in the likelihood-for-deer-collision standings with a 1-in-94 rating, followed by Iowa and Montana (each at 1 in 104).

Too much of a good thing?

According to State Farm spokesman Dick Luedke, there are about 150 fatalities a year in the U.S. due to deer-vehicle collisions and about 10,000 drivers and/or passengers suffer injuries as a direct result. The average vehicle repair cost amounts to about $3,000.

In a sense, the general increase in the number of deer-vehicle collisions is a reflection of the success of deer management efforts in the country. It also raises a question that more citizens are asking these days in a country where there are between 25 and 30 million deer, and counting: How many deer are too many?

Deer hunting was once a major point of contention among hunters, wildlife managers and animal rights groups, with the rest of the population wavering from side to side. Now the general public, or at least that segment that travels by highway and pays insurance premiums, might be rallying firmly to the side of hunting.

"Hunting is the best way to control deer populations, but it's not that simple," says Curtis Taylor, head of wildlife resources for West Virginia's Division of Natural Resources. "Here is West Virginia, hunter access and attitudes are the real key. A lot of the land is privately owned and hunting is either prohibited or controlled by families or clubs and the number of deer taken can vary widely from property to property.

"Basically there three kinds of deer hunters here: Those who just want to shoot a trophy buck, those who just want to kill any buck, and those who just want to kill a deer and get some meat," Taylor said. "So on some land, there aren't enough does killed, even though we've liberalized seasons and bag limits in many counties. Also, there are a lot of deer in metropolitan areas where hunting isn't allowed, which gets the deer population out of whack. We've got lots of deer, but deer have to be managed wherever there is habitat."

Getting help from hunters

West Virginia isn't the only state where deer-vehicle collisions are forcing states and municipalities to take a second look at hunting as a control device. Some examples:

• In Pennsylvania and other states where buck and doe seasons once were kept separate, antlered and antlerless seasons have been overlapped in some areas to encourage hunters to shoot more does if such opportunities present themselves.
• Cities from Charleston, W.V., to Helena, Mont., from Kansas City to St. Paul, Minn., now routinely schedule state-managed bowhunts to take out nuisance deer within city limits. Even townships in staunchly anti-hunting New England communities have established special bowhunts, or engaged companies such as White Buffalo that specialize in reducing nuisance deer.
• States where most hunting land is privately owned, such as Ohio and Kansas, are creating or expanding walk-in hunting programs that reward landowners who allow deer hunters on their property. Usually, tax breaks or cash payouts incentivize the landowner.
• Fifty years ago, in many regions even seeing a deer was a rarity; now we hope that we don't, at least not while we're behind the wheel of the family sedan. In places where hunters once were considered pariahs, they're now being heralded as possible saviors to the folks weary of crashing their cars into Bambi. And considering the amount of money deer hunters shell out to purchase licenses, equipment, fuel, accommodations and food, hunting deer is a lot more cost-effective than hitting deer.

How to avoid roadway deer

• Pay attention to deer-crossing signs and slow down. Such signs are often erected after deer-vehicle collisions occurred in a particular stretch of road, or frequent sightings were reported to public transportation officials.
• During the winter, deer are most active at dusk and the first few hours of darkness. If you're in deer country, be especially watchful then.
• Keep on high-beam headlamps to help illuminate rights-of-way on either side. If a deer is standing in the middle of the road ahead, seemingly frozen by the bright headlights, alternately dim and brighten them. Sometimes it works to make the deer move instantly, but not always.
• If one doe crosses the road, look for others to come. Does often travel together, or single does might be followed by yearlings. During the rut, a buck might be trailing the single doe that just crossed your path.
• Save yourself. If hitting the deer is your best option, go for it. If a collision is imminent, swerve only if the rights-of-way are open and relatively flat and there's not much chance the vehicle will flip or run into a tree or oncoming vehicle.

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Asbury Automotive Group Schedules Release of Third Quarter Financial ... - Earthtimes

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 02:05 PM PDT

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Relay Scam Continues to Hit Southern Arizona Businesses - Tucson Citizen

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:53 PM PDT

For the third time since March, a Tucson automotive repair facility has notified BBB that they were contacted by a scammer using a relay service intended to assist persons who are hearing impaired.

Since this scam seems to keep popping up around Southern Arizona, we thought we would run down the slightly different forms it can take.

- In early September, BBB received a call from Jimmy's Broadway Automotive Service after they received a call via Telecommunication Relay Service (TRS) from someone who said they wanted to have their car shipped to the shop for repairs. Using TRS, the scammer offered to pay Jimmy's over the phone with a credit card.

However, there was catch: Jimmy's was to forward the money from the credit card transaction to the shipping company to pay for transportation of the car. Jimmy's told BBB that although the scammer "tried diligently" to lure them in for about 15 minutes, ultimately the call raised too many red flags and they refused the offer.

- On June 30, BBB received a call from Canyon RV Center, in Tucson, saying they had been contacted by someone using a relay service to inquire about buying $4,000 worth of parts. The caller used the name "Lisa Marie" and claimed a Yuma address.

She emailed the business a credit card number and attempted to make arrangements for someone to pick the parts up when the order arrived. The business owner became suspicious when he noticed that a passport provided as identification by the scammer was tampered with, and refrained from ordering the parts. Several days later the bank notified him that the credit card the scammer provided was stolen.

- In March, BBB reported a man had contacted a different Tucson auto repair facility via a relay service and told them he was going to have his car towed to their facility and he wanted to wire money directly into the business' account. When the business owner started asking questions the caller hung up.

Recently, KVOA News in Tucson aired a segment on relay scams, specific to Canyon State RV. You can also check out this BBB video giving the rundown on relay scams.

If you receive a similar call don't provide account information to the caller, don't order any supplies, and be wary of any of payment the caller offers. Do try to get as much information as possible and contact your BBB at 520-888-5353 or info@tucson.bbb.org .

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'Red Dawn' filming explodes with gwakers, effects - Detroit Free Press

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT

That big boom near Woodward and Mack today was an explosion staged for the filming of Red Dawn.

Flames and debris erupted from a long-closed auto repair shop around 1:30 p.m. It was all done for the remake of the 1984 film that featured a young Patrick Swayze.

Clusters of passersby gathered to watch as the Red Dawn crew got ready for the big moment. Throughout the morning and the early afternoon, Woodward Avenue was dotted with military-looking vehicles and extras in military uniforms.

Jackie Hirst, 39, a lab supervisor whose office is nearby, came out to watch some of the filming. She said the building used for the scene was spruced up over the past few weeks and turned into a Tuffy muffler shop for the scene.

Its kind of neat. Weve been having posters put up in the lab saying its coming, if you hear an explosion, dont worry, its safe, said Hirst.

Red Dawn has been filming since last month at various locations in metro Detroit. Shooting is expected to continue through early December. The cast includes many young actors on the verge of stardom, including Chris Hemsworth (who was in the new "Star Trek" movie), Josh Peck (the TV series "Drake & Josh"), and Adrianne Palicki ("Friday Night Lights").

There also was a staged explosion Monday in downtown Detroit for the movie. Like the original, the reboot of Red Dawn is expected to include plenty of action and adventure.

We try to have some big explosion every few days on this movie, quipped producer Tripp Vinson.