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Jason Rodriguez, suspected of killing one person and wounding five at an office in Orlando, was buried under a mountain of debt at the time he allegedly began his shooting spree. According to the Associated Press, Rodriguez told a bankruptcy judge that he owed some $90,000 in debts while making only $30,000 a year working at a Subway franchise. "I'm just going through a tough time right now. I'm sorry," he reportedly told police officers who arrested him without resistance. Rodriguez had been let go at the engineering firm Reynolds, Smith, and Hills, where the shooting occurred, in June 2007 and told reporters he went on a rampage because "they left me to rot." The firm's general legal counsel and chief financial officer, Ken Jacobson, told the AP that Rodriguez's anger was "a mystery to us" and came without warning. "It's been 2 1/2 years," Jacobson said. "We don't know where he's been or what he's done."
Two days after Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire on soldiers at Ft. Hood, numerous questions remain as to his motive and planning, beginning with whether or not he acted alone. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) told the New York Times that Army officials are investigating “if there is something more than just one deranged person involved here," while officials have so far not publicly ruled out whether Hasan may have been connected to outside persons or groups in orchestrating his attack. A law enforcement official told the Times that so far searches of Hasan's computer have turned up no direct exchanges with known terrorists. Hasan, who survived the attack and is in custody, is reportedly comatose and has yet to be questioned.
As House Democrats negotiate the final touches of a massive overhaul of the nation's health-care system, Republicans are preparing to vote en masse against the final bill. According to the Washington Post, no GOP members of the House are expected to vote for the bill despite earlier signs that some moderates, like Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), were considering defecting. Things could change down the road, however: Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), who is running for Senate in blue-state Delaware, told the Post that he may consider voting for the final bill that comes out of conference with the Senate. "Some people would like to see some kind of health-care reform," Castle said.
Survivors of the Fort Hood shooting describe a brutal scene in which suspected gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan fired into unarmed crowds at close range—but their stories also include tales of heroism. Spec. Elliot Valdez, in an interview with the New York Times, likened people at the waiting room at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center to "fish in a barrel" and said that “It’s too easy. You can close your eyes and hit eight people.” Pfc. Marquest Smith, a 21-year-old father of two who was at the center to fill out paperwork, told the Times he grabbed a clerk to the ground after the shots broke out and ran from the building once he thought the attacker had run out of ammunition. Returning to drag wounded people to safety, he found himself under fire from the gunman and only narrowly escaped. “He had his back turned toward me,” Smith said. “And when I turned to run, that’s when I started hearing rounds going past my body, hitting the wall.” Another soldier, Pfc. Jeffrey Pearsall, used his pickup truck to quickly transport victims to a nearby emergency room.
Is a Republican leader actually standing up to Rush Limbaugh or is another apology inevitable? Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the only Jewish Republican member of Congress, went after the conservative radio giant in an interview with Bloomberg News for comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler, who Limbaugh said in a recent broadcast "also ruled by dictate." Said Cantor: "Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics? No, I don't, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful." A spokesman for Cantor also decried a poster at an anti-health care rally attended by Republican leaders in Washington earlier this week, which graphically compared Holocaust victims to Americans under Democrats' health-care plan. Previous Republican leaders who have criticized Limbaugh for going too far, most notably RNC chair Michael Steele, have apologized to the radio host within days.
While a crowd of people looked on, Abas Hussein Abdirahman was stoned to death for having confessed to adultery in Islamic court in Southern Somalia. An eyewitness told the BBC that the 33-year-old “was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving." His pregnant girlfriend will not be killed until she gives birth. A 13-year-old girl was killed for adultery further south last year. Human rights groups said she’d been raped. It’s been 18 years since Somalia has had a functioning government.
The U.S. Treasury prevented Fannie Mae from selling nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits Friday because it concluded the sale would be too expensive for taxpayers. Fannie had made a deal to sell about half it’s $5.2 billion worth of tax credits to Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway and had gotten the go-ahead from its federal regulator. Because Fannie doesn’t have taxable income to offset, the credits are worthless to the company, and every quarter it must write them down as they lose value. A day earlier, Fannie had announced $520 million in losses related to the credits in the third quarter, and that more were coming unless the credits were sold. But Treasury concluded that the government would lose more tax dollars than it saved if the sale went through.
Efforts to protect Central African elephants from poachers are turning humans into an endangered species instead, the Los Angeles Times' Robyn Dixon reports. While the likable pachyderms are protected for their value in attracting tourism, local farmers in Zambia say the creatures are a constant danger, destroying crops and even killing locals by stamping their huts without warning. Villager Muyenga Katiba, 44, described one such attack in which an elephant charged at a young man and then ran over an elderly woman insider her hut, killing them both. "The boy didn't even scream," Katiba told the LA Times. "He just died quietly." Locals say they see little compensation in tourist revenues for their suffering. "When I see one of those animals, I just know it wants to kill me," said one retired railway worker who lost a house to an elephant attack.
Los Angeles police say a con man has stolen thousands of dollars in cash from traveling bands and sports teams by posing as a member of their entourage. Investigators say the man used websites and social media to dig up information on the whereabouts of the visiting athletes and artists and then smooth-talked his way into their hotel rooms. In August, the man convinced a hotel desk clerk to give him keys to the rooms of salsa musicians, from whom he stole $9,000. The next month, wearing a Chivas soccer jersey, he used the same scam to steal $10,000 from the soccer team. And in October, he snuck into a locker room and made off with $26,000 in cash and jewelry from an Israeli basketball team playing the Clippers. The man may also be the “office creeper,” who absconds with laptops from office buildings. He is still at large.
Girls Gone Wild Founder Joe Francis was sentenced by a federal judge Friday to 301 days already served and a year of probation after Francis pleaded guilty to filing false income tax returns and bribing jail workers. Francis, who turned his simple idea of filming drunken ladies on spring break into a soft-core empire, was also ordered to pay the IRS $250,000 in restitution. The judge accepted Francis’s deal on the grounds that an important witness withheld information from prosecutors.
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