Philadelphia-bound Turkish ship detoured, searched after report of bomb

Philadelphia- The captain of a Turkish merchant ship headed into Philadelphia harbor falsely told a Coast Guard inspector the vessel had a bomb on board Thursday, forcing officials to order the ship to turn around, an FBI spokesman said.

Yildirim Bayazer Tumer, 46, became agitated when members of the Philadelphia Coast Guard boarded the ship for a routine inspection Thursday morning, said Barry Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office.

Tumer told an officer that there was a bomb on board that was set to blow up when the ship docked at the port of Philadelphia, Maddox said.

Tumer was charged late Thursday with making a false statement to a federal official, a felony. He was expected to have an initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Maddox said.

The ship, which was carrying steel, will continue to be held off the coast of Delaware until port officials and the Coast Guard complete their investigation.

"We're taking things like these very seriously, especially people who are in charge of commercial vessels," Maddox said.

Palestinian activist dies of heart attack in Philadelphia after giving an emotional speech



PHILADELPHIA -- Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a Palestinian activist who sued the federal government for allegedly holding him longer than its standards allow, died of a heart attack Wednesday after giving a speech in Philadelphia, officials said. Abdel-Muhti, 56, had just spoken at the Philadelphia Ethical Society when he collapsed, said his attorney, Shayana Kadidal. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

To immigrant rights advocates and critics of the Bush administration's handling of civil liberties after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Abdel-Muhti became a symbol of the dragnet that took more than 1,200 people, mostly Arabs and south Asians, into custody.

Adbel-Muhti was born in 1947 in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank of Jordan.

He came to the United States in the early 1970s, but overstayed his visa, finding work as a vendor and advocating Palestinian causes. The government tried to deport him in 1975, but could not because Israeli officials could not find his name on a list of residents of the occupied territories, according to court documents.

The government again tried to deport him in 1993, but was again unable to find a country willing to take him, and released him on a $15,000 bond in 1994. He was to appear before an immigration judge in 1995, but missed his court date because, he said, he was being treated in a hospital emergency room at the time.

Because of the missed hearing, an immigration judge ordered him deported. But he remained free until April 2002, when federal agents seeking to question him as part of the investigation into the World Trade Center attacks took him into custody at his apartment in Queens.

He was held in New Jersey until a federal judge in Harrisburg, Pa., ordered him to be released earlier this year, saying the government did not prove he was to blame for the fact he had not been deported.

 
 

Philly DJ icon cries Foul
WOGL's Hy Lit sues Oldies station for Age Discrimination

PHILADELPHIA -- A DJ who was one of the city's hottest during the golden age of rock 'n' roll has sued the oldies station where he works, accusing it of age and disability discrimination.

Hy Lit claims WOGL-FM has been cutting his salary and his hours over the past four years as he became more hindered by the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Lit, 71, said his pay has been slashed repeatedly since 2000, when he was making $140,000 a year. In 2002, the suit claims, WOGL fired him as a full-time employee and made him a $900-a-month "independent contractor" working without benefits.

Lit, who lost his prime weekday afternoon shift in 2001, is now on the air for two hours on Sunday nights.

Parkinson's disease has impaired Lit's muscle control and made it difficult for him to stand, but hasn't hurt his voice, the suit said.

The suit, filed in Philadelphia, names WOGL; the station's general manager; the station's corporate owner, Infinity Broadcasting; and its parent company, Viacom Inc., as defendants.
A spokeswoman for Infinity Broadcasting said she was unaware of the lawsuit and declined to immediately comment.

Lit began his career in 1954 as the host of "Rock and Roll Kingdom" on WHAT-AM and spent years as a top jockey at WIBG-AM.

PA Governor Rendell Signs Film Production Tax Credit Into Law


PHILADELPHIA, July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell today signed into law legislation providing a 20 percent Film Production Tax Credit for film-production expenses incurred in Pennsylvania.

"Filmmakers continue to discover that Pennsylvania is an ideal location for film production," Governor Rendell said after signing House Bill 147 at the Prince Theater in Philadelphia. "With widely diverse locales and innovative benefits, Pennsylvania is dedicated to helping filmmakers make their projects a reality."

In 2003, filmmakers and their projects injected more than $107 million into Pennsylvania's economy. Small and large businesses, hotels and restaurants all benefit from the jobs, workers and tourists that filmmaking can attract.

The credit is available for feature films, television series and television shows of 15 minutes or more in length intended for a national audience. Sixty percent of total production expenses must be incurred in Pennsylvania.

Steven Hawking: I was wrong
From correspondents in London

AFTER almost 30 years of arguing that a black hole swallows up everything that falls into it, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking did a scientific back-flip today.The world famous author of a Brief History of Time said he and other scientists had got it wrong - the galactic traps may in fact allow information to escape.


"I've been thinking about this problem for the last 30 years, and I think I now have the answer to it," Mr Hawking told the BBC Newsnight program.

"A black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information about what fell inside. So we can be sure of the past and predict the future," he said.

The findings, which Mr Hawking is due to present at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin on July 21, could help solve the "black hole information paradox", which is a crucial puzzle of modern physics.

Exactly what happens in a black hole - a region in space where matter is compressed to such an extent that not even light can escape from their immense gravitational pull - has long puzzled scientists.

They initially posited theories that the holes were like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything in their path.

Mr Hawking revolutionised the study of the holes when he demonstrated in 1976 that, under the strange rules of quantum physics, black holes are capable of radiating energy.
He calculated that once black holes form they effectively start to "evaporate" away, radiating energy and losing mass in the process.

But by conjuring up the so-called "Hawking radiation", the Cambridge mathematician, who is crippled by motor-neurone disease, also created one of the biggest conundrums in physics.
That conundrum about the fate of what enters a black hole became known as the "information paradox".

According to current theory, Hawking radiation contains no information about the matter inside a black hole, and once the black hole has evaporated, all the information within it is lost.
However this conflicts with a central tenet of quantum physics, which says that such information can never be completely wiped out.

Mr Hawking said that the recapturing the information had important philosophical and practical consequences.

"We can never be sure of the past or predict the future precisely," he said. "A lot of people wanted to believe that information escaped from black holes but they didn't know how it could get out."


Mr Hawking did not elaborate on the BBC program how the information could be extracted from the black hole. Curt Cutler, from the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, which is chairing the meeting in Dublin, told New Scientist magazine that Mr Hawking asked at the last minute for permission to address the conference.

"He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," Mr Cutler said.

If Mr Hawking succeeds in making his case, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) made with John Preskill, also of Caltech.

The terms of the bet were that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden and can never be revealed". Mr Preskill bet against that theory.

The forfeit is an encyclopaedia, from which Mr Preskill can recover information at will.
The Associated Press

John Kerry Campaigns in Philadelphia
 
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry chose a home on a quiet tree-lined street in suburban Philadelphia  as the first stop of his "Front Porch Tour," a planned four-month foray into neighborhoods across the country. 

From the front porch of Bill and Mary Kay Bowden, Kerry spoke to some 120 people from the neighborhood and nearby towns about his platforms on taxes, the economy, education, health care, the environment and the war in Iraq, and urged the enthusiastic crowd to help him "reclaim democracy in the United States."   

 

 

Philadelphia man auctioning off his own home, from his living room, with much success...

Philadelphia-AP -- Realtors? Who needs realtors. At least that's what Philadelphia resident Tom Farr is thinking today.This afternoon, Farr will be auctioning off his own home to the highest bidder. And while (b) billions of dollars worth of real estate is sold by auctioneers each year, the idea of an individual doing it himself is a unique one.

The 63-year-old Farr is holding the auction in his own living room in the Bella Vista section of the city. He says he's not sure what to expect.

By Friday afternoon, Farr had received six legitimate bids. He says one was from Germany and that the highest one was for 500-thousand dollars.

Farr says he knows that the conventional wisdom is you wait until the last minute, so he's trying his hand at patience.