Nation roundup for August 7
Pa. man charged with killing 3: Town stole my home
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SAYLORSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A disabled junk dealer feuding with local officials over his debris-strewn property packed a rental car with guns and ammunition before opening fire at a town meeting and killing three men, authorities said Tuesday.
Rockne Newell, 59, had lost his property this year in a court fight over complaints that he lived in a storage shed, built an illegal culvert and used a bucket outside as a toilet.
At his arraignment on homicide charges Tuesday morning, a judge asked Newell if he owned any real estate.
“They stole it from me. That’s what started all this,” he replied.
Newell allegedly used a Ruger Mini-14 rifle to blast a barrage of gunfire through a wall into the meeting room Monday night in Ross Township, about 85 miles north of Philadelphia, before entering the room and shooting a supervisor and four residents, two of whom survived.
Newell then retreated to the car and picked up a revolver, authorities said. When he returned to the meeting room, the 5-foot-10, 240-pound suspect was tackled by two men and shot in the leg during the scuffle, officials said.
“I wish I killed more of them!” Newell shouted when state Trooper Nicolas De La Iglesia arrived on the scene before 8 p.m., according to the trooper’s affidavit.
Two men died at the scene and the third, Ross Township zoning officer David Fleetwood, died after being flown to Lehigh Valley Medical Center. Fleetwood, 62, also served as a supervisor in nearby Chestnuthill Township, the coroner said.
Officials identified the slain residents as Gerard J. Kozic, 53, and James V. LaGuardia, 64, both of Saylorsburg.
At the hospital an hour later, Newell told police he had gone to the meeting in hopes of finding the township officials in one place.
“He intended to shoot the solicitor and supervisors and thought that he would then be killed,” police said in the affidavit.
Newell was about to fire his .44 Magnum revolver when the township’s parks and recreation director, Bernie Kozen, and resident Mark Kresh wrestled him to the ground, Monroe County Coroner Bob Allen said at a news conference.
“Two very courageous individuals positioned themselves in a way that they were able to jump on this subject as he came through the door,” State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said. “This could have been much worse.”
The two survivors were released from the hospital, along with Newell.
Terry Doll, who lives near Newell, said he was well-known as a “kook,” an intelligent man whose unpredictability stoked fear in some neighbors.
“When I found out about the shooting, we all looked at each other and said his name,” said Doll, 58, who has lived in her house for more than 30 years. “We certainly always hoped that he would have never done something like this.”
About 15 to 18 people had been at the meeting, including a Pocono Record reporter covering his first Ross Township meeting.
“The thing that got my attention: plaster flying out, blowing out through the walls. Witnesses would later tell me they saw pictures exploding away from the walls,” reported Chris Reber said in an account to his editors.
In June, the newspaper published an article describing an 18-year fight between the township and Newell over his property, which includes an old camper filled with wooden pallets, a leaning garage close to collapse and a propane tank inside an old dog house.
Township supervisors voted in February 2012 to take legal action against Newell for alleged zoning and sewer regulations. In October, he set up a fundraising page online to try to raise $10,000 for legal fees.
“Ross township took me to court & the court ruled I have to vacate my home of 20 years,” Newell wrote on the page. He said he lived on $600 a month in Social Security benefits and had no money to clean his property.
Newell told the newspaper he was unemployed for years after an injury from a crash and had nowhere else to go.
The state Department of Environmental Protection had ordered Newell in March to stop dredging on the property and restore the creek.
“He wasn’t happy about the situation, but he was cooperative,” department spokeswoman Colleen Connolly recalled.
Newell didn’t enter a plea at his arraignment on three homicide counts and two counts each of attempted homicide and aggravated assault. He was given a form for a public defender, but he did not request a lawyer. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Aug. 19.
Russell Kresge, a township supervisor who lives down the road from Newell and attended Monday night’s meeting, found it difficult to discuss what happened.
“This is a little township that always ran super,” he said from his front porch, a friendly Rottweiler by his side. Kresge’s wife said the dog could sense something was wrong with her master and was shedding abnormally.
President George W. Bush has stent procedure
Former President George W. Bush successfully underwent a heart procedure in Dallas on Tuesday after doctors discovered a blockage in an artery during his annual physical, Bush spokesman Freddy Ford said.
“At the recommendation of his doctors, President Bush agreed to have a stent placed to open the blockage,” Ford said. “The procedure was performed successfully this morning, without complication, at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.”
Bush, 67, was expected to be discharged Wednesday and resume his normal schedule the following day.
The blockage was discovered Monday during Bush’s physical at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, where the nation’s 43rd president lives.
Bush was described as being “in high spirits” and eager to return home.
“He is grateful to the skilled medical professionals who have cared for him,” Ford said. “He thanks his family, friends, and fellow citizens for their prayers and well wishes. And he encourages us all to get our regular check-ups.”
Stents are mesh scaffoldings that prop open arteries typically clogged by years of quiet cholesterol buildup. About half a million people have stents inserted in the U.S. each year, generally involving an overnight stay in the hospital.
Doctors usually guide a narrow tube through a blood vessel near the groin up to the heart, inflate a tiny balloon to flatten the blockage and insert the stent. Sometimes, they insert it through an artery in the wrist to lower the risk of bleeding.
Doctors often recommend first trying medication to treat a clogged artery. More severe blockages, particularly in several arteries, may require bypass surgery. Arteries can reclog, so patients often are put on heart-friendly diets or medication.
White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that President Barack Obama was briefed on Bush’s procedure and “obviously wishes him well.” He didn’t believe Obama and Bush had spoken, Carney said.
Bush is known as a fitness buff. In 1993, before he was elected Texas governor, he ran the Houston Marathon in a respectable 3:44.52.
While in the White House, he frequently used a quarter-mile jogging path on the south lawn. Bush was known to run about three miles four days a week, and cross-trained with swimming, free weights and an elliptical trainer. When doctors found his knees were getting damaged, he turned to mountain biking.
Since leaving office, Bush hosts and leads an annual 100-kilometer mountain bike ride with about 20 wounded military veterans. This year’s ride was near Waco and his Central Texas ranch. He’s also led a group of vets on bikes similarly through Texas’ rugged Big Bend National Park.
But while Bush doesn’t have a history of heart trouble, he has needed medical attention several times.
In May 2004, toward the end of his first term, Bush fell from his mountain bike during a 17-mile ride. He was wearing a helmet and mouthguard but sustained scrapes and scratches to his face, hand and knees. In July 2005, he crashed his bike again while on a slick pavement in Scotland and suffered some bruises and scrapes to a hand and arm.
In 2002, he briefly lost consciousness while watching a football game on TV at the White House and hit his head. The incident was blamed on him not feeling well and an improperly eaten pretzel.
In 1998 and 1999, while governor of Texas, he had two benign colonic polyps removed. In 2002, while president, he had a follow-up colonoscopy and invoked a section of the 25th Amendment temporarily transferring presidential powers to Vice President Dick Cheney. The colonoscopy showed no signs of cancer.
Can Amazon CEO ship online savvy to Wash. Post?
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is revered as one of the brightest minds in corporate America, but even he is still puzzling over how to reverse the financial slide threatening The Washington Post and other major U.S. newspapers.
Nevertheless, Bezos is determined to face the challenge, raising hope that his $250 million purchase of The Washington Post announced Monday will provide the newspaper industry a template for making the leap from the printed page to digital devices.
“The marriage between the newspaper industry and technology has never been consummated, but it could happen at The Washington Post now,” said media analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell Inc.
Although Bezos bought The Post with his own money, most experts believe he is likely to tether the newspaper to Amazon.com Inc.’s products. He might also infuse the newspaper with some of the concepts that helped turn the Seattle company from an online book store into a multi-dimensional business that sells a multitude of merchandise and runs data centers that power other websites around the world.
“Just having his brain in the room will force people to confront digital in a way they haven’t before,” predicted Jerry Ceppos, a former newspaper editor who is now dean of mass communications at Louisiana State University.
Bezos, 49, made it clear that he has no magic formula for turning The Post around. The newspaper is the anchor of a division that lost $54 million at The Washington Post Co. last year while generating revenue of $582 million — 39 percent less than it did in 2005.
“There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy,” Bezos wrote in a Monday letter sent to Post employees after his surprise acquisition was announced. “We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”
According to an Amazon spokesman, Bezos wasn’t available to be interviewed Tuesday about his plans for the Post.
Amazon’s nearly two-decade history under Bezos’ leadership suggests the Post is likely to try things that other newspapers steeped in tradition have never dared to attempt.
“Ever since he was a little kid, it got deeply ingrained into Jeff that experimentation is the answer to everything,” said Hal Gregerson, who interviewed Bezos for his 2011 book, “The Innovator’s DNA.” ”Exploring the edges is one of Jeff’s counter-intuitive skills. If you go back to when he started Amazon, he was paying attention to something out of the corner of his eye and turned it into something that others didn’t see.”
It’s impossible to predict the bright ideas Bezos might explore, partly because reviving the Post would probably take years to pull off. Experts are floating a host of ideas. Bezos could, for instance, deploy the technology that Amazon uses to recommend books, movies and music to consumers to enable the Post to automatically tailor digital news packages to each reader’s interests. He might impose more fees to read the Post’s content online. At the same time, he might bundle free subscriptions as part of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet or for consumers who buy Amazon’s “Prime” service for free shipping. He could even include special offers in the printed edition for discounted or free Amazon.com deliveries.
The Post and other newspapers might not be around that much longer, unless radical changes are made. Some of the biggest newspapers already have had to seek refuge in bankruptcy court to reshuffle their finances during the past five years and the outlook still looks grim. Based on his recent conversations with publishers, analyst Doctor believes revenue is likely to continue to slip for the next five years, too.
Newspapers have been suffering because their main source of revenue — advertising sold in their print editions — has been falling sharply during the past eight years as marketers discovered they could target their messages at prospective customers more effectively through Google’s search engine, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other digital outlets.
Most newspapers have intensified their focus on their own digital editions during the past few years, but still haven’t been able to overcome this fundamental problem: digital ads typically sell for 10 percent to 50 percent less than print ads.
That gap is the chief reason that the annual print ad revenue at U.S. newspapers has plummeted 60 percent in just seven years, dropping from $47.4 billion in 2005 to $18.9 billion last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Over the same stretch, the industry’s digital ad revenue has climbed from $2 billion in 2005 to $3.4 billion last year.
The financial hole is so deep that it will be difficult for even a savvy Internet executive like Bezos to find a workable solution at The Post, said Christopher Harper, a journalism professor at Temple University.
“It’s not really a business deal, it’s almost an investment in a nonprofit,” Harper said.
It’s one Bezos can easily afford to make. The purchase price works out to just 1 percent of Bezos’ estimated $25 billion fortune. In the U.S., the median charitable contribution works out to nearly 5 percent of annual discretionary income, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Bezos is also in a better position to absorb ongoing losses at The Washington Post than the newspaper would have been had it remained part of a publicly held company under pressure to deliver better returns for a larger pool of shareholders.
“One of the smartest things is moving toward private ownership,” said Ellen Shearer, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. “I think that’s what a lot of papers need right now, particularly The Post.”
It’s likely that some of his ideas will fail, but that probably won’t bother Bezos. In his inaugural letter to Amazon shareholders in 1997, Bezos emphasized, “It’s all about the long term.” He has attached that proclamation to each annual letter he’s written since.
Indeed, it took Amazon nearly a decade before it turned its first annual profit. Even now, the company doesn’t make as much money as most analysts think it should, partly because Bezos is continually investing in new ideas and equipment that he believes will make the business even more lucrative. The strategy has worked well so far, gracing Amazon.com with a market value of $137 billion.
“One thing that Bezos seems to be is patient,” said Jeff South, a former newspaper editor and reporter who is now a journalism professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “He was with Amazon, losing money quarter after quarter. He seemed to say ‘we know what we’re doing, it’s going to take time.’ Hopefully, that can transfer to newspapers.”
After getting to know Bezos while interviewing him for his book, Gregerson is convinced the Post purchase is a case of business mixing with personal passion.
“Jeff loves books, he loves journalism, he loves writing, he loves ideas and he love to make things happen,” Gregerson said. “That’s a quality 90 percent of executives don’t have. They don’t love the essence of what they are doing as much Jeff does. I don’t know what answers he will have in terms of a 10-year plan for the Post, but I think there is a good probability that he will figure something out.”
Late-payment rate on mortgages fell in 2Q
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Homeowners are doing a better job of making timely mortgage payments, a trend that brought down the national late-payment rate on home loans in the second quarter to the lowest level in five years.
The percentage of mortgage holders at least two months behind on their payments fell in the April-June quarter to 4.09 percent from 5.49 percent a year earlier, credit reporting agency TransUnion said Tuesday.
The latest rate also declined from 4.56 percent in the first three months of the year.
The last time the mortgage delinquency rate was lower was the third quarter of 2008, a time when home prices were sliding and the U.S. economy was in recession.
Five years later, U.S. home sales and prices are rising, fueled by moderate but stable job gains, still-low mortgage interest rates, few homes for sale and a slowdown in foreclosures.
Low mortgage rates have made it possible for more homeowners to refinance and lower their monthly payments. And rising home prices have helped homeowners who were “underwater” on their mortgage — when they owed more than the home is worth — return to positive equity. That, in turn, has opened the door for those borrowers to qualify for refinancing.
“So as prices come up, more and more of those people come off the cusp and are actually able to take advantage of those low rates,” said Tim Martin, TransUnion’s group vice president of U.S. housing.
The rate of late payments on home loans has been steadily improving over the past four quarters.
The second-quarter mortgage delinquency rate represents the biggest quarterly decline on record for TransUnion, whose data go back to 1992.
Even so, the mortgage delinquency rate is still above the 1 percent to 2 percent average historical range, an indication that many homeowners still are struggling to make their payments.
Before the housing bust, mortgage delinquencies were running at less than 2 percent nationally. They peaked at nearly 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.
The late-payment rate in the April-June quarter improved in every state, with Arizona posting the biggest annual decline. The state’s mortgage delinquency rate was for the quarter was 3.6 percent, down about 42 percent from the second quarter last year.
California, with a rate of 3.6 percent, and Colorado (2.3 percent) also had steep annual declines in the rate of late payments.
Florida had the highest mortgage delinquency rate in the nation at nearly 9.9 percent, even though it declined about 27 percent from a year earlier.
TransUnion, which draws its data from a sample of 27 million consumer records, anticipates the national mortgage delinquency rate will continue to decline in the third quarter, finishing below 4 percent.
“We’re still a long way from what we’d call normal,” Martin said.
Stocks slide on Wall Street; American Eagle drops MATTHEW CRAFT,AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Warnings of weaker profits helped pull the stock market down on Tuesday, despite some positive economic news.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index had its biggest drop since June 24. The S&P lost 9.77 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,697.37. All 10 sectors in the S&P 500 fell.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 93.39 points, or 0.6 percent, to close at 15,518.74. The Nasdaq composite dropped 27.18 points, or 0.7 percent, to 3,665.77.
American Eagle plunged 12 percent after the retailer slashed its earnings forecast in half late Monday, blaming weak sales. The company said cutting prices on clothing to lure in shoppers was hitting its profit margins. American Eagle dropped $2.40 to $17.57.
Two of American Eagle’s rivals also slumped. Abercrombie & Fitch lost $2.09, or 4 percent, to $49.57. Urban Outfitters lost $1.20, or 3 percent, to $42.47.
Most companies have reported better results during the second-quarter earnings season, but sales have slowed. A growing number of companies, including eBay and Marriott, have told analysts to lower their expectations for the coming quarters. The overall picture has left investors with little reason to cheer.
“Earnings have been moving up, just not spectacularly,” said Cam Albright, director of asset allocation at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors. “We’d be much happier to see better revenue growth than what we’ve seen.”
Analysts expect companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to post earnings growth of 4.4 percent in the second quarter. But revenue is on track to shrink 0.6 percent.
Major indexes headed lower from the opening bell Tuesday, bottomed out around 11 a.m. then slowly recovered some of their losses. The Dow was down as much as 138 points.
IBM fell the most in the Dow following reports that the company would require some workers to take time off this month as hardware sales slow. Credit Suisse also cut its rating on the company. IBM dropped $4.51, or 2 percent, to $190.99.
In economic news, the government reported record U.S. exports in June and new data was released showing that home prices are rising sharply.
The stock market remains near record highs. The S&P 500 index closed above 1,700 points for the first time last week and rose five of the past six weeks. The S&P, a benchmark for most stock mutual funds, is up 19 percent this year, ahead of its 13 percent gain in 2012.
Speculation that the Federal Reserve could start easing off its support for the economy helped knock commodity prices down Tuesday. Charles Evans, who votes on the Fed’s policy as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said the Fed could start scaling back its bond buying later this year.
Gold fell $19.90, or 2 percent, to $1,282.50 an ounce, while silver sank 19.7 cents, or 1 percent, to $19.523 an ounce.
Traders often buy gold in the belief that the Fed’s efforts would weaken the dollar and spur higher inflation, driving prices for gold and other precious metals higher. Hints from Fed officials that the bank may change course this year have battered commodity prices.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was unchanged from late Monday at 2.64 percent.
Among other companies in the news:
— The Washington Post Co. rose $24.30, or 4 percent, to an even $593 after the company announced late Monday that it would sell its namesake newspaper to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
— CVS Caremark sank $1.73, or 3 percent, to $59.89 after the drugstore operator lowered its earnings target for the year.
— Molson Coors Brewing gained $3.18, or 6 percent, to $53.26. The company reported better earnings and revenue than analysts had expected, helped by sales in central Europe. Molson bought the Czech Republic-based brewer StarBev last year.
