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Blog and Media Roundup, Monday, February 2, 2009; News Roundup
Topic Started: Feb 2 2009, 05:11 AM (790 Views)
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1086420.cfm?

Rolling Hills buyout going as hoped
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg@heraldsun.com
Feb 2, 2009

DURHAM -- The city's buyout of homeowners at the Rolling Hills project is unfolding as officials had hoped, with deals complete or under contract with the owners of 33 of the 51 privately owned parcels on the site.

Community Development Department Associate Director Larry Jarvis said the deals to date have consumed the $2.7 million elected officials initially authorized for the effort.

Administrators have estimated that the buyouts in their entirety would cost about $6 million. They intend to go to the City Council "in the next month or so" to ask for additional spending authority, Jarvis said.

Officials in the Community Development Department hope to continue wheeling money into the effort as homes in a different city housing project, Eastway Village, sell to private owners.

The city tied up a good bit of its housing money in building Eastway and is gaining the flexibility to use it on other projects as the new units there sell.

Phase 3 of the Eastway project is almost ready to hit the market, and officials are optimistic the new units will find buyers.

"It's not exactly the greatest housing market in the world, true, but the first phases sold very well," Jarvis said. "And with the assistance we're able to offer [buyers], it's still one of the best bargains in town."

The poor economy has, however, has contributed to delays in planning the replacement of Rolling Hills.

The private-sector developer the city's working with on the project, St. Louis-based McCormack Barron Salazar, has been able to line up some but not all of the $325,000 it needs to begin planning.

"Economic conditions" have made lenders reluctant to step up, Jarvis said.

It appears possible McCormack Barron Salazar could ask city officials to fill the void.

"We've asked them to give us a recommendation on how we might move forward," Jarvis said. "We left it open for them to suggest what their recommendation is."

The biggest single land purchase at Rolling Hills closed just before Thanksgiving and transferred 11 units to the city.

Their previous owner was former state Rep. Pete Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg. The deed for the sale specified he was to receive $671,600, but county tax stamps indicated that the deal closed for $673,000.

Cunningham bought eight of the units in 1999, another in 2002 and the rest in 2003. Tax stamps for those acquisitions show he paid $468,000 for them.

County tax assessors last year valued the 11 units at $660,912.
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1086363.cfm

Nonprofit that employs councilman seeks action on building
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
gronberg@heraldsun.com
Feb 2, 2009

DURHAM -- A city councilman's employer is putting pressure on Durham administrators to do something about a burned-out building that straddles a downtown block between west Parrish and Main streets.

Andrea Harris, president of the N.C. Institute of Minority Economic Development, wrote council members last Tuesday to ask that they push for "immediate visible action to demolish or rebuild this property."

Harris -- whose staff includes City Councilman Farad Ali -- complained that there's been almost "a decade of inaction" on the property since it burned down early this decade.

The fire left only the shell of the building. The damaged interior isn't visible from the street, but it is from the upper floors of the institute's headquarters just across West Parrish Street.

Harris isn't happy about the lack of progress because building inspectors ordered its former owners in 2005 to repair it or tear it down. "We still look at the ruins of this building every day," she complained in her e-mail.

Ali forwarded Harris' e-mail to City Manager Tom Bonfield, who in turn sought comment from Downtown Durham Inc. President Bill Kalkhof and said he'd ask the Neighborhood Improvement Services Department and the City/County Inspections Department to "jointly review it ... from a structural and code-compliance standpoint."

Kalkhof in his reply noted that the building is slated to become part of Greenfire Development's plan to build a new skyscraper financed in part by a city incentives deal.

The city and Greenfire have agreed on the general terms of the incentives but haven't finished talks on a contract. Kalkhof noted that because the city's point man in the talks, former Assistant City Manager Alan DeLisle, has left Durham government for another job, it's not clear when the contract will be finished.

Kalkhof also warned that a move by either the city or Greenfire to demolish the building would likely trigger controversy -- or, as he phrased it, "a community discussion" -- with local preservationists who at the very least want its faâ??ßade preserved.

One preservationist, blogger Gary Kueber, has questioned whether the 2005 ruling on the building was intended to put pressure on the building's then-owners to cooperate with Greenfire's skyscraper plan. The owners eventually did sell the building to Greenfire.

Harris in an interview emphasized that she doesn't particularly care whether the building is torn down or not. She just wants to see action, soon.

"All I'm pushing for is wherever the city can give us some support and guidance and support to help the Greenfire initiative along, fine," she said. "Rebuilding or demolition is not my area of expertise."

Ali -- who admitted to being caught "in the middle" -- said the complaints are coming because the building's appearance has hurt the institute's attempts to promote business in the area.

"This has been our visual: a burned-out building," Ali said. "It's responsible for [Harris] to ask, 'What is the plan, what is the timeline.' She's not asking the question in a spirit of [being an] adversary, she's asking in a spirit of collaboration."
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1086306.cfm

CRIME LOG
Feb 2, 2009

Murder suspect faces charge

DURHAM -- The suspect in one of Durham's most notorious homicides landed back in jail Friday after police charged him with assaulting a woman.

Holly Martez Lyons, 19, of 609-17 Reservoir St., was held in the Durham County Jail without bond. An arrest warrant filed by the Durham Police Department alleged he struck the woman "on the face with an open hand."

Lyons has been in and out of jail since being accused two years ago of killing 14-year-old Tavisa Cartnail and of shooting and partially blinding Cartnail's sister Naketta.

The two were shot as they rode down Driver Street in a sports utility vehicle. Authorities have said they believe Lyons was trying to ambush a rival gang member.

Lyons was held in jail for months on a murder charge but got out early in 2008 after Superior Court Judge Ronald Stephens reduced his bond, put him on 24-hour house arrest and told him to avoid further tangles with the law.

He landed back in jail last fall after allegedly leading police on a car chase through part of east Durham. Superior Court Judge Ken Titus let him out again in October and said that he was to remain home 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Prosecutors at the time indicated that the murder case against Lyons had sprung leaks because a key witness had changed his story. State Bureau of Investigation analysts also weren't able to find any physical evidence tying him to the scene of Cartnail's slaying.
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http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/

Monday, February 02, 2009
January Events in the Case

A summary from a quite busy January:

Duke's decision to sue one of its insurance carriers boomeranged; in an explosive filing, National Union revealed that the University has already spent more than $5 million on its defense--and that it notified its carrier of possible civil liability not when Crystal Mangum first made her allegations but instead the day after Nifong received DNA evidence almost certainly proving that Mangum's fanciful claims were wholly false. In other words: Duke appears to have recognized as early as March 30, 2006 that a civil suit likely would come not from Mangum but from its own students.

Durham inaugurated a new "minister of justice" who at best misled voters and at worst outright lied about her role in the lacrosse case. To make her priorities clear, new DA Tracey Cline invited as her special inauguration guest someone that the State Bar disbarred for prosecutorial misconduct. Cline also refused to endorse the findings of the Attorney General's investigation into the lacrosse case.

Cline also previewed a potential purge of her office--and didn't list ethics as among the top three criteria that she desired in potential assistant district attorneys.

Duke promoted to a deanship the third member of the Group of 88.

In 2008, the four leading Democratic presidential candidates were an African-American (Obama), a woman (Clinton), a Hispanic (Richardson) and a white male (Edwards). Yet, according to Huffington Post's campaign contributions database, the race- and gender-obsessed Bill Chafe and Tim Tyson donated money to . . . the white male. Will the equally race- and gender-obsessed Group of 88'er Grant Farred now label them "secret racists," as he did the Duke students who dared to register to vote in Durham?

Richard Brodhead's predecessor, Nan Koehane, offered excuses for Brodhead's performance in the lacrosse case, and fantastically suggested that, during her tenure as president, she had attempted to address the "root of the problem" exposed in the case. In fact, of course, problems such as faculty groupthink and the University's cavalier attitude toward the due process rights of students had grown much worse during Keohane's time in office, and no evidence exists that she had ever attempted to address them, either at their root or in any other form.

In legal developments, two discouraging developments for the civil suit team of Duke, Durham & Nifong. In Pearson, the Supreme Court gave lower courts more fleixibility in addressing claims of qualified immunity. In Van de Kamp, as Liestoppers noted, the Court reaffirmed that a prosecutor doesn't get absolute immunity for actions (as occurred with Nifong in the lacrosse case) undertaken in a police or investigatory capacity.

Not deterred, Nifong attorney Jim Craven filed an 11-line motion to dismiss the civil suit against his client. The falsely accused players' attorneys had little difficulty in responding. Perhaps, as one reader cleverly suggested, Craven would have had better luck (at least he would have received points for creativity) had he shortened his 11-line response to a haiku:

Fails to state a claim
No standing for injunction
D.A. is immune

The newest book on the case, Race to Injustice, combines impressive legal analysis with, unfortunately, essays that read as if caricatures of Group of 88 musings.

And the Wall Street Journal reported that Bob Steel's misleading remarks about Wachovia might cost him more than merely a spot on CNBC host Jim Cramer's "wall of shame."

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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2009/02/01/n-y-times-urges-springsteen-go-rogue-super-bowl-denounce-corporate-fat-

Araton chipped in with his own financial expertise (and Bruce Springsteen fandom) in his Super Bowl column from Tampa, "At the Half, It's B-r-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-c-e." Araton, whose liberal huffing backfired in 2006 when he assumed the guilt of the Duke lacrosse players before the case against them collapsed, revealed himself to be a liberal fanboy for Springsteen rivaling leftist media critic Eric Alterman and urged the lefty rocker to make the fat cats squirm.
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http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2009/02/02/News/Police.Arrest.Man.For.West.Robberies-3607954.shtml

Police arrest man for West robberies
By: Julia Love
Posted: 2/2/09
The Duke University Police Department arrested a suspect responsible for a spate of residential burglaries during the month of January Saturday morning, Maj. Gloria Graham confirmed.

DUPD officers apprehended Yohannes Berhe after a burglary in Wannamaker Quadrangle, but they had been on his trail for more than two weeks, Graham wrote in an e-mail. DUPD had devoted all of its attention to arresting Berhe after the year's first residential burglary Jan. 15, when two dorm rooms in Kilgo Quadrangle were robbed in the early morning, she noted.

"Our investigators took these crimes very seriously and were determined to find out who was responsible," Graham said. "We knew that as long as this individual was out on the street, public safety was being compromised and more incidents would occur."

DUPD obtained a warrant for Berhe's arrest Jan. 29 after he robbed the Duke Diet and Fitness Center. Over the course of their investigation, officers obtained information about Berhe's car. Shortly after the burglary Saturday, officers spotted Berhe's vehicle and found items stolen from Wannamaker Quad inside, clinching their case against the suspect, Graham said.

Berhe is being held on a $50,000 bond for one count of second degree burglary, one count of felony larceny, one count of second degree trespass and one count of misdemeanor larceny for the Wannamaker Quad and Duke Diet and Fitness Center incidents, Graham said. DUPD also worked closely with the Raleigh Police Department to secure warrants for crimes Berhe committed in its jurisdiction.

But police believe that Berhe is also responsible for several other on-campus robberies that took place in January and plan to charge him for these incidents as well, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said. Duke officials suspect that Berhe is responsible for all crimes that took place on campus over the last few weeks, Moneta noted.

In addition to the Kilgo and Wannamaker quad robberies, two apartments were robbed on Central Campus near Erwin Road late Friday afternoon, DUPD disclosed through a DukeAlert Friday.

Moneta said Duke saw a spike in residential crime in January, but he attributed the increase solely to Berhe's "one-person burglary ring."

"Let me be clear, we've not seen an increase in crime," Moneta said. "We saw an increase in residence crime attributed to one person. The good news is as the police believe he was responsible for all of [the crimes] then it should come to a halt.... We've had a very safe academic year. In general, we've seen fewer perpetrators preying on students."

Trespassing in the dormitories has been a more pressing problem this year than in years past, Moneta added.

A man unaffiliated with the University was arrested Nov. 10 for trespassing in Crowell Quadrangle three days after he was jailed for sleeping overnight, showering and laundering his socks in Bell Tower Residence Hall. One week later, DUPD suspected that "two suspicious males" who entered Randolph Residence Hall may have been responsible for a theft in the dormitory that evening.

Graham said she does not know whether the man arrested Saturday was connected to these earlier incidents, adding that DUPD has not documented an increase in trespassing on campus this year.

Administrators are considering ways to enhance security in the residence halls, Moneta said. DUPD confirmed that Berhe was responsible for multiple on-campus robberies by reviewing video surveillance footage, Graham said. Officials believe that most trespassers this year gained access to the dormitories by tailgating behind residents who had swiped in.

"It's still relatively easy for someone to come in as someone else is going out," Moneta said. "I think we can do as much as we can to ask students to be alert to that, but I'm also interested in ways we can improve technology."

The campus is most vulnerable to crime at the beginning of each semester, when "criminals looking for quick cash see college students as vulnerable, as having a little bit of extra cash," Moneta said.

But despite the recent trespassing incidents, Moneta emphasized that the Duke community has enjoyed a relatively safe winter, noting that the University has not seen many muggings or outside robberies.

Wannamaker Quad residents observed the man testing residence hall doors early Saturday morning and contacted DUPD, leading to the suspect's arrest, Moneta said. In an e-mail sent to undergraduates Saturday, Moneta thanked the residents for their vigilance and urged students to continue to be proactive about their safety.

Graham commended DUPD investigators for Berhe's arrest and noted that the force is committed to improving over last year's total of 25 residential robberies.

"Our goal is to make sure that our residential burglary incidents are less than 2008's, even though we had a rough start during the month of January," she said.
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http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2009/02/02/News/Two-Central.Apartments.Burglarized-3607955.shtml

Two Central apartments burglarized
By: Toni Wei
Posted: 2/2/09
Two Central Campus apartments were broken into through sliding patio doors and burglarized Friday morning.

The first burglary was discovered at 11:45 a.m. Friday by a Duke University Police Department security officer. He had noticed an opened patio door in the apartment in the 1901 Erwin building. Inside was a sleeping student who apparently had not been aware of the incident.

"[The first burglary] was actually found by our security officer that was patrolling Central Campus during the day," DUPD Lt. Thomas Gustafson said.

He added that one of the sliding doors may not have been locked securely.

Police then responded to an incident in an 1809 Erwin building apartment whose sliding door had been locked but was forced open.

"[The burglars] were able to push the whole sliding door off track and reach in and unlock the door," Gustafson said.

No one was hurt in either of the two burglaries, but various electronics, including a microwave and a digital camera, were reported stolen.

No suspects have yet been apprehended, and DUPD is encouraging students to lock their doors at all times and to report any suspicious activity.

"We're trying to do extra patrols over in that area," Gustafson said. "But I don't know if Central housing has anything else that they can offer to secure these doors."

Aaron Graves, associate vice president for campus safety and security, said in a press statement that the crimes were unusual in nature.

"This is pretty brazen to do this early in the morning," Graves said in a statement.
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Quote:
 
Police arrest man for West robberies
By: Julia Love
Posted: 2/2/09
The Duke University Police Department arrested a suspect responsible for a spate of residential burglaries during the month of January Saturday morning, Maj. Gloria Graham confirmed.

DUPD officers apprehended Yohannes Berhe after a burglary in Wannamaker Quadrangle, but they had been on his trail for more than two weeks, Graham wrote in an e-mail. DUPD had devoted all of its attention to arresting Berhe after the year's first residential burglary Jan. 15, when two dorm rooms in Kilgo Quadrangle were robbed in the early morning, she noted.

"Our investigators took these crimes very seriously and were determined to find out who was responsible," Graham said. "We knew that as long as this individual was out on the street, public safety was being compromised and more incidents would occur."

DUPD obtained a warrant for Berhe's arrest Jan. 29 after he robbed the Duke Diet and Fitness Center. Over the course of their investigation, officers obtained information about Berhe's car. Shortly after the burglary Saturday, officers spotted Berhe's vehicle and found items stolen from Wannamaker Quad inside, clinching their case against the suspect, Graham said.

Berhe is being held on a $50,000 bond for one count of second degree burglary, one count of felony larceny, one count of second degree trespass and one count of misdemeanor larceny for the Wannamaker Quad and Duke Diet and Fitness Center incidents, Graham said. DUPD also worked closely with the Raleigh Police Department to secure warrants for crimes Berhe committed in its jurisdiction.


How can this be? Because I know, direct from President Brodhead himself, that the DUPD has no resources to investigate, cannot get warrants, and must leave everything in the hands of the DPD.

And I know from the responses in the lawsuits that DUPD has no jurisdiction anywhere, not even over Duke students...
:confus:
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http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3767


Hate Crimes: The Importance of Lady Justice's Blindfold


From the desk of Thomas Landen on Wed, 2009-01-28 11:14

(snip)

One of the famous victims of hate crime legislation in Europe is Brigitte Bardot. Last June the former sex symbol, once considered to be the very icon of France, was given a two-month suspended prison sentence and fined €15,000 by a court in Paris. Mrs. Bardot was convicted for “instigation of hatred” towards the Muslim community because in December 2006 she had sent a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Interior Minister of France, to demand that Muslims anaesthesize animals before slaughtering them. In the letter she said, referring to Muslims, that she was “fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits.” Harboring and expressing such sentiments is a crime in France.

(snip)

Dieudonné M’Bala is one of France’s new icons. He is a French comedian who is known for his anti-Semitism. Mr. M’Bala claims Jews are “a mafia that controls everything in France” and harbors feelings about Jews which are similar Mrs. Bardot’s feelings about Muslims: France is under the thumb of the Jews, who are destroying it and imposing their values. In 2004 Mr. M’Bala was taken to court in Paris for violating French laws against incitation to racial or religious hatred, but the court ruled that he was not violating the law. Why did Mrs. Bardot get a suspended prison sentence and a fine of €15,000, while Mr. B’Bala went free? Because Mrs. Bardot and Mr. M’Bala are no longer equal under the law.

(snip)

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http://www.johnincarolina.com/

Monday, February 02, 2009
Follow-up to: Plaintiffs will questionNifong press contacts before Mar. 27, 2006

Readers' Note: Yesterday in Plaintiffs will question Nifong's press contacts before Mar. 27, 2006, I promised to provide some additional documentation regarding why attorneys for the greiviously wronged Duke lacrosse players and their families would do that during the discovery part of the suits they've against Nifong and others.

The post that follows - N&O publisher's response to Nifong as anonymous source questions - was published Feb. 18, 2007. It provides a good deal of additional documentation for yesterday's post.

I want to thank people who've commented here and at Liestoppers Meeting.

I'll have more to say by way or response to their comments in a post this evening.

John
******************************************************

Many of you know I recently sent Raleigh News & Observer Publisher Orage Quarles III the following email. You'll find his response just below it as well as a few comments of mine.

John
___________________________________________

Dear Mr. Quarles:

This links to a post which includes the following email:
http://johninnorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2008/02/to-n-publisher-re-nifong-as-anon-source.html


Dear Mr. Quarles:

I’m an N&O subscriber and blog as John in Carolina.

For many months I’ve been posting concerning claims by Ruth Sheehan that then DA Mike Nifong was an anonymous source for her March 27, 2006 column “Team’s silence is sickening.” For example, in Nifong an N&O anonymous source (Post 1) 7/29/07 and Nifong an N&O anonymous source (Post 2) 8/1/08.

I’ve inquired of reporters and editors about that and other uses the N&O may have made of Nifong as an anonymous source for your Duke lacrosse coverage.No reporter or editor would speak about the matter until recently when, in response to the email in this post - What's really hurting the N&O , Ted Vaden he sent me the email you’ll find in this post: N&O editor's response re: Nifong an anonymous source.

You'll see Vaden’s email avoided my questions and contains statements which are prima facie false.

On Feb. 6 I sent Vaden another email and a link to this post: Is the N&O public editor's job about the truth?

I once again laid out all the material relating to the N&O’s use of Nifong as an anonymous source and asked again the questions I’ve been asking for many months.I ended my email, which I also posted for JinC readers, with this:

Given all of the foregoing, Editor Vaden, it's difficult to see how a reasonably responsible public editor would claim Sheehan is saying anything other than Nifong was an anonymous source for her March 27 column; or that she is saying anything other than Nifong's source information was passed to her by journalist(s) she reached by phone at the N&O.

I hope you will now give me and all other N&O readers full and frank answers to the questions I've been asking about the N&O's use of Nifong as an anonymous source in March 2006.

Isn't that the kind of service a public editor is supposed to provide readers?

If you can't provide that service, please direct me to someone at the N&O or the McClatchy Company who can?

I'll publish your response in full at my blog.

Thank you for your attention to this document.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

I’ve not heard anything back from Vaden.

I ask that you review the documentation and questions in my post and then direct me to the person at the N&O or in the McClatchy Company who can provide full and frank answers to what Ruth Sheehan has said and the questions I’ve asked.

I’m sorry to impose on you, but I’ve tried every other way to get responses from the N&O which should have been given to readers long ago.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I’ll publish your response in full at my blog.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

*************************************************************

Mr. Quarles has responded as follows:

Dear John in Carolina.

We do not provide anonymous source information.

Sincerely,

Orage Quarles III

*****************************************

Folks, that's an interesting answer from a publisher who's been given documentation and citations of extensive statements one of his news columnists made to a book author who put the columnist's statements in quotation marks; the statements having to do with other N&O staffer(s) passing to Sheehan information from Nifong which Sheehan says convinced her to cancel the column she'd already prepared and instead write a column based on Nifong's source material but maintaining his anonymity.

It's also interesting that Quarles said nothing about document copies and citations I provided him which reveal the N&O's public editor made statements to a reader and blogger which are prima facie false.

I plan to respond to Quarles in a day or so.

You thoughts are welcome.

Posted by JWM at 9:11 AM 0 comments
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http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/national_world&id=6636381

Phil says six more weeks of winter
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http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1390917.html

Macy's to cut 7,000 jobs, slash dividend

snip
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http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1390938.html

BB&T says execs won't get 2008 bonuses

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http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4449760/

Durham to host award lunch despite cost concerns

Durham will proceed with its annual employee-recognition luncheon, City Manager Tom Bonfield said, despite concerns raised by a City Council member over the event's cost.

Bonfield sent a letter to Councilman Eugene Brown, saying canceling the recognition lunch would harm employee morale without saving much money.

Brown last week suggested that the taxpayer-funded lunch should be scrapped because of the city's tight budget. He estimated the event would cost more than $45,000, including $31,500 in lost productivity.

City officials said the Feb. 10 lunch at the Durham Marriott would cost about one-third of that, noting the 219 employees honored at the event would either make up lost work or would have someone cover their duties for them.

"Without question, the utilization of all public resources must be prudent and efficient and is an even more important practice as the city enters generally (uncharted) waters at this time of fiscal distress and economic downturn," Bonfield wrote to Brown. "While some public reaction to (canceling the event) as a cost-conscience action may seem positive, the negative signal sent to employees ... who will be expected to perform at significantly improved efficiencies in the coming years as programs and budgets are reduced will likely impact service delivery at significantly higher costs than the initial direct savings, which is estimated at less than $3,000 because of contractual commitments and recognition awards and gifts having already been acquired."

Bonfield said the city would re-evaluate the cost of the lunch as a budget for the 2009-10 year is developed.

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http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6636644

World's largest drugmaker to make massive cuts

REASEARCH TRIANGLE PARK (WTVD) -- GlaxoSmithKline is expected to cut between 6,000 and 10,000 of its workforce worldwide.
The United Kingdom-based pharmaceutical company and world's largest drugmaker has a facility in the Research Triangle Park.
It is not known if those workers will be affected.
According to published reports, a company spokesperson would only say the company is implementing an ongoing restructuring program.
Glaxo attributes the slowing development pipeline of products and competition from cheap, generic manufactures as reasons for the cuts.
The company is due to release its fourth-quarter results Thursday and has not commented publicly about the impending cuts.
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