Mourners light candles for Omaha mall victims

Mourners lit eight red candles and five blue ones Thursday for each of those killed or injured one day earlier after a troubled young man opened fire in a department store before taking his own life.
The ceremony was held at St. John’s Church on Creighton University’s campus, where The Rev. Roc O’Connor read the names of the victims aloud, KETV-TV reported.
"We can see the light in the midst of darkness. We can encounter hope in the midst of despair," the Rev. Andy Alexander said.
At least three of those killed and injured were Creighton alumni and had developed deep roots in the area.
"This is something that is going to hit home for everyone who lives here," mourner Robyn Eden told KETV-TV. "Small community — regardless of how many people live here. This is a small town."
President Bush offered sympathy Thursday to the families of the victims.
“I was in Omaha just before the shooting took place, and I know what a difficult day it is for that fine community,” said Bush, who had traveled to the area to attend a Republican fundraiser and was on his way back to Washington when the shootings took place.
“The victims and their loved ones are in the prayers of Americans,” Bush said. “The federal government stands ready to help in any way we can, and the whole nation grieves for the people of Omaha.”
Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey also expressed shock and sadness at the Westroads Mall shooting at a news conference Thursday.
“Today, we are still reeling form the events that few have ever imagined would take place in Omaha,” he said. “We will not accept this evil act to occur in our community.”
Victims rememberedPolice identified the eight murder victims Thursday morning after notifying families. The victims ranged in age from 24 to 66, and were both employees and customers.
The customers killed were Gary Scharf, 48 of Lincoln and John McDonald, 65, of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The employees killed were Angie Schuster, 36, of Omaha; Maggie Webb, 24; Janet Jorgensen, 66 of Omaha; Diane Trent, 53 of Omaha; Gary Joy, 56 of Omaha; and Beverly Flynn, 47, of Omaha, police said.
Scharf’s ex-wife described him as loyal and honorable.

Omaha mall reopens with increased security

OMAHA, Neb. - With extra security on hand and holiday shoppers waiting at the doors, the Westroads Mall reopened Saturday morning, three days after a gunman killed eight people and himself at the mall’s Von Maur store.
A makeshift memorial of flowers, notes and poems covered about two-thirds of the bottom steps of the entrance gunman Robert Hawkins used to enter the Von Maur department store. On display were eight foam snowflakes, each with a picture of a victim.
The store, however, remained closed. Yellow holiday lights brightened the exterior, but black tarps draped the inside of the doors. Wreaths sat on tripods just outside, and a note from management said the stOutside the mall, two Red Cross vans and a Salvation Army unit were set up near the food court entrance.
Early shoppers faced wind chill temperatures of only two degrees above zero before trickling into the food court or the mall proper, as retailers started raising their security gates at 8 a.m.
Marge Andrews, 49, said there was a very different feeling in the mall Saturday compared to her regular walks there with a friend. She and her husband John, 51, had come to buy sporting goods for their son and clothes for their daughter.
“I come out here almost every morning, and (today) it was kind of just an eerie feeling of, I don’t know, quiet,” said Andrews.
“It doesn’t feel like a Christmas feeling,” her husband said.
Also Saturday, Hawkins' family released a statement in which they said they hope the community can heal.
"The Hawkins family extends its sincerest condolences to all those impacted by this senseless and horrible event," the statement read. "While no words can ease the pain and grief, our family prays that at some time, in some way, our community can be healed in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy." ore will reopen soon. No date was given.

Police alarmed at candy in cocaine-like packs

A new mint candy is posing problems for police officers, who say it bears a striking resemblance to street cocaine.
“Anything like this ... is going to give an advantage to the criminals, narcotics users, narcotics dealers," Austin, Texas, police Sgt. Richard Stresing said of Ice Breakers Pacs — tiny, blue, dissolvable packets of white mint powder that look startlingly like heat-sealed dime bags of cocaine.
The new product — which was introduced by Hershey Co. in September at the annual All Candy Expo in Chicago — is bound to make officers’ jobs harder out on the streets, said Sioux City, Iowa, police Lt. Marti Reilly.“Obviously, it’s going to require law enforcement to do a lot of field-testing on candy,” Reilly said. “When you see it in the street, you wouldn’t know it from a controlled substance because it’s packaged an awful lot like that.”
Hershey rejected the police claims.
“The product is clearly labeled with product identification, ingredients and nutritional information and is clearly branded as an Ice Breakers item,” the company said in a statement. It did not respond to questions about whether Hershey planned to change the packaging.
‘They’ve all been full of cocaine’The candy does come in a standard plastic package, with an Ice Breakers label, but that’s not the problem, officers said. The problem is with what’s inside.
“You are kidding me,” said Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse of the Dallas police. “I’ve been on the streets 15 years, and I’ve seen a lot of these, and they’ve all been full of cocaine, and you’re telling me this one’s full of candy? Wow.”
Janse said the packets looked so much like cocaine bags that drug dealers would be able to use them “to hide their drugs from us now, I’d be willing to bet.”
Brett Kaiser of Dallas, the parent of two youngsters, said he was worried that the candy could confuse children, too, leading to serious consequences.

Tropical nations hope Bali meeting can lead to incentives for retaining trees

As 12,000 people gathered in Bali this week to begin framing a global response to Earth's warming climate, efforts to close a deal that would slow destruction of tropical forests appear to be the best prospect for a concrete achievement from the historic assemblage.
But the deforestation issue is also Exhibit A for the disputes that have made climate negotiations lengthy and divisive despite widening agreement that global warming is real and largely man-made. While scientific dispute over what causes global warming has ended, the debate over how to address it has just begun.
Deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Each year, tropical forests covering an area at least equal to the size of New York state are destroyed; the carbon dioxide that those trees would have absorbed amounts to 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, aboSplit between developing, wealthy nationsThe bargain is being championed by a dozen of the world's developing countries at the conference, whose ultimate goal is to map out a two-year path aimed at forging a global system for imposing and enforcing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
But the hoped-for compromise -- which would give financial rewards to poor nations that slow or halt the destruction of their forests -- could still founder amid divisions over who bears how much responsibility for slowing climate change -- and who should pay for it.
Developing countries that profit from logging or expanded farming and construction are seeking incentives and assistance for preserving their forests or slowing the rate of destruction. But many developed countries do not want to pay other nations for actions that are not taken, and they worry that it would be hard to measure the amount of avoided deforestation.
"The problems tend to start when you get down to the small print," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty organization that oversees international climate negotiations.
Deforestation aside, much of the focus on the Indonesian island will be on the large print. "If things go wrong in Bali, I think we are in deep trouble," said de Boer.
Planning beyond KyotoThe goal is to come up with climate accords that would take effect after the expiration in 2012 of the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated a decade ago. Under that treaty, a cap-and-trade system for limiting and creating a market for emissions is in effect in Europe and has become a multibillion-dollar-a-year business.
"It will be a process to get to a mandate to get a protocol," said Dirk Forrister, a managing director of Natsource LLC, a firm that invests in projects that produce marketable credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But government officials are also trying to leave Bali with some concrete achievements, and preserving the world's forests ranks as one of the most likely prospects.
"It's the area of climate-change negotiations that offers the most promise of cooperation between developing and developed countries, which is why it's so attractive to people on both sides," said Duncan Marsh, director of international climate policy for the Natureut the same as total U.S. emissions.

The Golden Compass

Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) lives in a parallel world in which human souls take the form of lifelong animal companions called daemons. Dark forces are at work in the girl's world, and many children have been kidnapped by beings known as Gobblers. Lyra vows to save her best friend, Roger, after he disappears too. She sets out with her daemon, a tribe of seafarers, a witch, an ice bear and a Texas airman on an epic quest to rescue Roger and save her world.
Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) lives in a parallel world in which human souls take the form of lifelong animal companions called daemons. Dark forces are at work in the girl's world, and many children have been kidnapped by beings known as Gobblers. Lyra vows to save her best friend, Roger, after he disappears too. She sets out with her daemon, a tribe of seafarers, a witch, an ice bear and a Texas airman on an epic quest to rescue Roger and save her world.
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Movie review: 'Golden Compass' a thoughtful fantasy world

Unlike screen adaptations of the "Harry Potter" books, or the Disneyfication of "The Chronicles of Narnia" - movies that anyone can enjoy without giving them a second thought - "The Golden Compass" introduces a world of myth and mystery that requires patience and a certain mental aptitude to figure out.
It's a place fraught with parallel worlds and Animal Planet fashion accessories. Where else are you going to find Sam Elliott - in full cowboy hat and twang - speaking to an up-armored white bear who sounds like (and is) Ian McKellen?
If you are Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), the 12-year-old orphan who is the story's heroine - not to mention the movie's heart and soul - how you find all these remarkable things, and navigate the movie's tricky terrain is with an Alethiometer. That's the official name for the golden compass that guides Lyra through Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, first published in England in 1995, two years before J.K. Rowling's "Potter" series began.
An Alethiometer is the global-positioning equivalent of a watch that tells you it's two freckles past a hair Eastern elbow time. Not terribly useful. Unless, of course, you are able to discern from a compass heading that appears to include a picture of a bear and a picture of a lightning bolt that you should set out immediately for the Arctic Circle.
This is the sort of thing that Lyra does with comparative ease, closing her eyes and becoming engulfed in a cloud of golden dust. Deciphering the compass's clues remains infernally difficult for the rest of us, which is why Lyra is soon being spoken of as some sort of "chosen one." Among other story elements, that term has set off a backlash against the film by church groups who believe Pullman's books to be anti-religion.
Lyra is the whip-smart-but-rebellious ward of Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), who is apparently some sort of Indiana Jones of a dimension visible only to him. He wants Jordan College to fund his exploration of these parallel worlds, and before decamping for parts unknown to await the movie's inevitable sequel, Asriel introduces us to the Kingdom of the Ice Bears. He even shows some faculty geezers a picture of dust coming from the sky. Obviously, the grant application process works a little differently in England.
The school's master is the one who gives the world's last Alethiometer to Lyra, and he does so with apparent confidence that she will figure out how to use it. "It tells the truth," he says, handing the contraption over to her easy as you please, as if it were made of Fruit Roll-ups instead of solid gold. "This lets you glimpse things as they are."
He's pretty sure she'll need some kind of lie detector, and for good reason. He has just agreed to allow Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), the gold-plated moll of the Magisterium - a mysterious, power-hungry order that seems to have a grudge against all children - to take Lyra with her to Norway. Shimmering across a long dining hall in gold lamé and platinum blond hair, Kidman looks as if she just stepped out of a remake of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," a wicked virago vision of Marilyn Monroe with plumped lips.
The adaptation of Pullman's book is by Chris Weitz ("About a Boy"), who is parsimonious about revealing the secrets of the Magisterium. When Lyra asks Mrs. Coulter what the Magisterium is, as the two of them soar across London in a red and gold zeppelin, Mrs. C replies that the evil order tells people what to do, but "in a kindly way."
It doesn't take a golden compass to know that's a whopper, but the movie quickly removes all doubt about the group's villainy by installing inter-galactic bad guy Christopher Lee as its First High Councilor. The only conceivable casting clue less subtle than that would be if they'd hired Darth Vader for the part.
In its own way, "The Golden Compass" is a sequel of sorts, coming from the same studio that produced "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Some of the action set pieces at the Arctic Circle may remind you of the "Rings" movies, and while Weitz lacks Peter Jackson's obvious operatic flair for fantasy, the big action scenes work on their own terms.
Kidman probably isn't the ideal choice for Mrs. Coulter; she seems to have trouble conveying some of the character's ambiguity. Craig is a marquee name with very little to do, and as a result, many of the best performances are vocal: McKellen brings the great bear Iorek roaring to life, and Freddie Highmore is sweet as Lyra's daemon, one of the animal companions every human has.
The movie's strongest selling point is Lyra herself, not just a welcome change from all the boy seekers of knowledge and truth in the "Harry Potter" and "Rings" pictures. She gets plenty of help from Elliott's cowboy aviator Lee Scoresby, the friendly witch Serafina (Eva Green) and an unforgettable bear.
Lyra has more pre-pubescent girl power than any screen heroine since "Whale Rider," and there is enough fire in Dakota Blue Richards' first film performance to make you eager for the next installment in the series

Santa Clara County public school leaders don't mirror ethnicity

The Mount Pleasant school district in East San Jose came under fire recently for not having a single Latino principal even though 74 percent of the students are Latino.
But Mount Pleasant is hardly alone.
A Mercury News analysis of the ethnic makeup of Santa Clara County's public school administrators found that most of the county's 32 school districts with a large majority of Latino, Asian and African-American students are mostly led by white principals and vice principals.
In five large selected districts where white students make up 50 percent or less of the student population, more than 80 percent of principals and vice principals are white, the analysis shows. In one of those school districts where minorities make up almost two-thirds of all students, Campbell Union Elementary, all but three of 17 administrators are white.
The analysis paints a picture familiar to school districts across the state. It is one that resonates in particular with Latinos, who have become California's largest single group of students but are poorly represented among administrators.
While the number of Latino administrators in California has grown over the years, the increase has not kept pace with the burgeoning number of Latino students in public schools.
State figures on all administrators - the pool includes superintendents, principals, vice principals, administrative assistants, driver education coordinators and various kinds of employees - showthat more than two-thirds, or 69 percent of public school administrators statewide, are white; 17 percent are Latino, 8 percent African-American and 4 percent Asian. To get a truer picture of the top administrators who interact regularly with students, the Mercury News analyzed only the numbers and ethnic makeup of principals and vice principals in Santa Clara County.
Latino leaders and advocates for diversity argue that having more Latino principals and vice principals will be important to help bridge the lagging achievement of Latino students, who now make up 48 percent of California's 6.2 million public school students. Demographers say they will become the majority in 2010.
"When you look at who's sitting in our classrooms, we should be reaching out to folks who can be those role models," said Fernando Elizondo, a former principal and retired Salinas school superintendent who is now executive director of the California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators, or CALSA. The state program pairs emerging Latino administrators with school principals.