DOUGLAS, Arizona (Reuters) - Manager Robin Brekhus was skeptical about her Arizona hotel's supernatural history until the day she went to the basement in search of candles during a power outage and glimpsed a figure in a long duster coat and cowboy hat in the beam of her flashlight.
"It was like he wanted me to make eye contact with him and acknowledge that I saw him," she said, recalling how she then sprinted up the steps to the spacious lobby with its Italianate columns and Tiffany & Co. stained glass mural - a new believer.
In its heyday in the early decades of the last century, the lobby of the Gadsden Hotel was known as the "living room" of the remote Arizona ranching town of Douglas, hosting cattle barons, cowboys and executives from the local copper mining industry.
While many hotels in the United States claim ghosts, staff and guests at the Gadsden have recorded scores of supernatural encounters from the top floor right down to the maze-like basement - not just at Halloween, but year round.
This Halloween, the hotel is embracing its haunted history as never before, with a visiting blues band from Tennessee set to play at a bash in the lobby. Guests can come dressed up or not, and ghosts are more than welcome.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Police in the Dominican Republic say former major league pitcher Pascual Perez has been killed in his home during an apparent robbery.
A statement from police in the Caribbean country says Perez was attacked by several people inside his home in a town west of the capital. He had been struck in the head but the cause of death has not been released. No suspects are in custody.
The 55-year-old Perez last played in the majors with the New York Yankees in 1991. He was suspended in 1992 following two positive tests for cocaine. In recent years, he has had kidney problems.
He made his major league debut in 1980 with the Pirates and played 11 seasons, including stints with the Braves and Expos.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian opposition website says at least nine female political prisoners have begun a hunger strike in protest of snap body searches and abuse by prison guards.
The kaleme.org late Wednesday said the women prisoners started the strike after female guards at Evin prison in northern Tehran carried out unannounced inspections that included body searches, beating and verbal insults of the prisoners.
Freedom fighters getting hung at Evin prison
Internationally renowned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been on hunger strike in the same prison since last week. She is protesting mistreatment by authorities.
A delegation from the European Union last week cancelled a visit to Tehran after Iranian authorities rejected its request to meet Sotoudeh and dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
The European Parliament awarded the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to both in October.
Young American men continue to slip through a terrorist recruiting pipeline from the homeland to join the ranks of jihadists half a world away in East Africa, with two going as recently as three months ago, according to federal officials.
The FBI confirmed a report by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) that in July two young men disappeared from their neighborhoods in Minneapolis and are believed to have traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, the embattled al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group.
Under "Operation Rhino," for years the FBI has been investigating what has been described as a recruiting pipeline from the Twin Cities, which boast large Somali immigrant populations, to Somalia. Both top U.S. officials and at least one prominent member of al-Shabaab said Americans account for dozens of the terror group's fighters. A 2011 Congressional report put the number around 40.
"Minnesota represented!" writes American-born rapping jihadist Omar Hammami in an autobiography posted online in May, though he claimed most of the U.S. recruits were already dead. "Those Minnesota brother[s] have almost all left their mark on the [jihad] and most have received martyrdom, while the rest are still waiting."
Kyle Loven, chief division counsel for the FBI's Minneapolis field office, said recruits going to Somalia from Minnesota "continues to be a matter of grave concern and the FBI remains fully committed to resolving this situation."
The FBI said that in the recent case, two young Minnesota men, 19-year-old Mohamed Osman and 20-year-old Omar Ali Farah, left their homes for their trek to Somalia in mid-July. Osman's family told MPR he was religious, but they were stunned when he disappeared.
"It made me mad because he didn't speak to no relative about it," Osman's cousin, Jamal Salim, said. "We're heartbroken about it because he's like our sibling. Imagine not knowing what's going on with your own brother -- how he's been feeling, who he's been talking to, and what they're telling him. We lost a brother, and I don't know how to get him back."
Earlier this month some details about how exactly young men are recruited for jihad emerged during the federal trial of a man who was convicted of recruiting more than 20 fighters for al-Shabaab in America in 2007, according to The Associated Press.
At the trial of Mahamud Said Omar, three former recruits who had survived their trip to Somalia only to return to the U.S. testified that they were talked into fighting by charismatic, devout older men who promised paradise for those who died in combat against "invaders."
Sheriff’s deputies want to know who cut the cheese.
And the meat, too.
In what seems to be the latest in a rash of crimes against meat, an employee at a Foothills Safeway reported a man with a knife in the store cutting open packages of cheese, meat and other perishables, causing $700 in damage, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department report.
The incident, earlier this month, “originated from the individual coming in and stating that he had bought meat and wanted a refund. However, he did not bring the product he wanted a refund for,” the deputy reported. The man didn’t have a receipt either and was refused a refund.
The man, who was seen on surveillance video, became angry went into the meat and deli section of the grocery store and “vandalized packaged meat and other foods for sale.”
After attacking the meat, the disgruntled man went to the frozen food section where he went after packages of sausage before moving onto the refrigerated section where he cut the cheese.
The man is described as being in his mid-60s, balding and wearing glasses.
Earlier this month, at a south side Walmart Neighborhood Market, a man unsuccessfully tried to boost a shopping cart full of beef.
In late September two incidents of meat thievery were reported to the sheriff’s department.
The first thief made off with five packages of meat from a north side Safeway.
The second wasn’t as successful. The man stole a rotisserie chicken from a display at the front of a north side Walmart, but as he peddled away on his bicycle, he dropped the chicken and lost his cowboy hat.
If you needed the services of a criminal attorney, would you hire a lawyer with no experience in criminal law, who had been suspended from the State Bar of Arizona for 120 days, had not practiced law in five years, and who was still on probation for her past misdeeds?
New Times
Tom Horne
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Add to this a DUI charge pleaded down to reckless driving, a bankruptcy, and a history of mental and physical issues that may or may not have caused the misconduct that led to the lawyer's suspension.
With that sort of record, I think most folks would pass, as there are a lot of lawyers in the sea with more of the right kind of experience and lacking black marks on their careers.
Not Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who has hired his longtime political crony Carmen Chenal as an assistant attorney general in charge of foreign extraditions at a salary of $108,000 a year.
Chenal's expertise is in construction and real estate law, and she briefly was a partner with Horne in his firm before Horne became Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2003.
In 2006, Horne hired his buddy at the Department of Education as a program specialist in special education, at a $62,947 salary, even though she had no experience in the field.
But lack of experience was the least of Chenal's problems. Just a year earlier, the Bar had suspended her law license for four months and ordered her to pay $2,500 in restitution to one of her victims, as well as foot the $1,018 bill for the Bar's investigation. She also was placed on probation for two years.
The allegations against Chenal were substantial. In one case, Chenal took part of a client's settlement money and applied it to his bill in another case without his permission.
In that second matter, Chenal's suit on behalf of her client was thrown out of court, with attorney fees in the amount of $17,037 awarded to the defendant. Chenal's client wanted her to appeal the decision, but she failed to do so. The client was so ticked off that he fired her.
In another matter, Chenal took on a domestic-relations case in Illinois. One little problem: She was not licensed to practice in Illinois. The Arizona Supreme Court hearing officer's report on Chenal's suspension noted her "unauthorized practice of law" as her "most serious violation."
But there's much more.
From 2001 to 2003, she bounced three checks for filing fees to the Clerk of the Maricopa County Superior Court.
In a medical-malpractice case, she sent a letter from one of her expert witnesses to opposing counsel, after she allegedly had "whited out" corrections the expert had made in the margins. Like bouncing checks to the clerk of court, altering such documents is a no-no.
A summary of her disciplinary history on the state Bar's website notes Chenal's bumbling in another case.
"Ms. Chenal listed a party but did not provide any allegations against the person in the civil complaint; presented claims barred by the statute of limitations; and after listing many witnesses on the disclosure statement, only one testified, and the testimony was inconsistent with that listed on the disclosure statement."
Despite the details of her suspension, Horne defended employing Chenal at the Department of Education to New Times in a 2006 article ("Changing the Chenal," April 27), describing her as a "first-rate lawyer" undone by various family issues.
"I think we're lucky to get her," he said at the time.
Interestingly, Chenal also declared bankruptcy in 2004, forcing her to sell her car to pay her debts. That might have been for the best, since she'd been charged with a DUI in 2001, which according to the record on file with the Dreamy Draw Justice Court, she pleaded down to a reckless-driving charge.
In 2002, Chenal was charged with driving on a suspended license in Carefree Municipal Court. The case was dismissed.
Of course, Horne has had his own problems, albeit in the more distant past. In 1970, his investment firm T.C. Horne & Co. went belly-up, resulting in a lifetime trading ban with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A fact he failed to disclose in his law firm's annual reports to the Arizona Corporation Commission.
So maybe Horne has a soft heart for fellow lawyers who've messed up heretofore, like Chenal. And it probably didn't hurt that Chenal has been a stalwart campaign operative for Republican Horne in more than one race.
In any case, Chenal waited five years to apply to the Bar for reinstatement.
Because she'd waited so long, she had to go through a formal reinstatement process, with evidence, witnesses, and a hearing, at which her counsel argued that Chenal should be readmitted without having to participate in the Bar's Member Assistance Program, part of the probation process in which a delinquent lawyer receives counseling and is monitored closely.
Essentially, Chenal wanted to be readmitted without doing the two years' probation she had agreed to in 2005. But the hearing revealed the extent of Chenal's past mental problems.
Chenal, her lawyer, and her doctors argued that her life spiraled out of control from 1999 to 2003. In 1999, she divorced her spouse of many years, Tom Chenal, who, oddly, is employed by Horne as the chief counsel of the AG's public advocacy division.
PHOENIX (AP) - FBI agents allege Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne left the scene of a minor automobile accident because he was having an affair with a female employee in the car he was driving and didn't want their relationship to be reported.
An FBI report released Tuesday by Phoenix police who investigated the accident said FBI agents learned during a campaign finance investigation that Horne was having an affair with the woman, Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal, and that they used her apartment as a rendezvous site.
"Though motive is not an element of the criminal statute listed above," the report said, referring to Arizona's hit-and-run law, "it stands to reason that Horne did not want any record of his presence in the parking garage of Chenal's apartment complex thus he did not leave a note."
The parking garage for Chenal's apartment complex was the scene of the accident, which occurred as Horne backed into a parked Range Rover while driving a car that Chenal had borrowed from a co-worker. Horne was cited last week on a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of a collision or unattended vehicle.
Carmen Chenal (has a Rap sheet or criminal past ) see her blog story !
(What the Hell )?
The FBI report was among documents, evidence photos and audio recordings of interviews released to The Associated Press under a public records request.
Chenal declined comment when contacted Tuesday by the AP, and Horne did not immediately return a call for comment.
