FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) - What would you do for a Klondike bar? Authorities said a man shoved an ice cream bar down his pants and then offered a Texaco station store owner $69 not to turn him in for shoplifting. The owner told police that a 65-year-old man tried to sneak the Klondike bar, along with packages of Ramen noodles and Famous Amos cookies, out of the store without paying Tuesday night.
When the store owner confronted the man as he tried the leave the store, the owner reported that the man pulled the flattened ice cream snack out of his back pocket and offered the owner $69 for it.
The owner called police, and the man was charged with retail theft and violation of probation charges. He was being held on $500 bail.
"Better Check Your Light Bill!"
HAYDEN, Idaho (AP) - A utility has reimbursed a northern Idaho couple nearly $2,000 after sending them someone else's gas bill for more than three years. Avista Corp. spokeswoman Debbie Simock said the company has also offered an apology to Don and Penny Fisher. "It was ridiculous," Don Fisher told the Coeur d'Alene Press. "Even in the hot months it was riding up and we were paying for it."
The Fishers said they built fires and bundled up but continued to get big gas bills for three years and three months. They said their inquiries to Avista didn't get results.
"Argue, argue, argue," the couple said.
They said they reported a fake gas leak in January to get a visit from a company representative, who discovered that meter readings in the subdivision had been crossed.
The Fishers said they had to skimp on three Christmases due to their nearly $500 in winter gas and electric bills.
"It was ridiculous," Don Fisher said. "We could not be using that much gas."
"We're very sorry that this happened," said Simock. "We're taking a look at our internal process to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Simock said the company didn't have a report of a gas leak at the home, but instead sent someone to check on problems with the meter after getting details of the problem.
The Fishers said one of their bills was for $238, while the neighbor who was paying their bill was charged $28.
"Everyone was wondering how they kept their house so warm," Don said. "And even they didn't know."
Simock said that under Idaho Public Utilities Commission rules, Avista could bill the second customer for the last six months for energy used but not charged for.
But she said the company is not going to bill that customer.
"Because the error was our fault, we are not going to rebill the customer for six months," she said.
Spokane, Wash.-based Avista serves 121,000 electric and more than 93,000 natural gas customers in Idaho.
CHICAGO (AP) - "Chemistry look what you've done to me," Donna Summer
crooned in Science of Love, and so, it seems, she was right. Just in
time for Valentine's Day, a panel of scientists examined the mystery
of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns
out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and
encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.
Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate, Wendy Hill,
dean of the faculty and a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette
College, told a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science on Friday.
In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college
students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music
experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals
oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is
associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the
chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.
Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an
indication their stress levels declined.
For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in
bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a
surprise," Hill said.
In a test group that merely held hands, chemical changes were
similar, but much less pronounced, she said.
The experiment was conducted in a student health center, Hill noted.
She plans a repeat "in a more romantic setting."
Hill spoke at the session on the Science of Kissing, along with
Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and Donald Lateiner of Ohio
Wesleyan University.
Fisher noted that more than 90 percent of human societies practice
kissing, which she believes has three components - the sex drive,
romantic love and attachment.
The sex drive pushes individuals to assess a variety of partners,
then romantic love causes them to focus on an individual, she said.
Attachment then allows them to tolerate this person long enough to
raise a child.
Men tend to think of kissing as a prelude to copulation, Fisher
said. She noted that men prefer "sloppy" kisses, in which chemicals
including testosterone can be passed on to the women in saliva.
Testosterone increases the sex drive in both males and females.
"When you kiss an enormous part of your brain becomes active," she
added. Romantic love can last a long time, "if you kiss the right
person."
Lateiner, a classical scholar, observed that kissing appears
infrequently in Greek and Roman art, but was widely practiced,
despite the spread of skin disease at that time by facial kissing.
And there was a potential for social faux pas by kissing the wrong
person at the wrong time.
Overall, the science of kissing - philematology - is
under-researcherd, Hill concluded.
---
On the Net:
AAAS: http://www.aaas.org
NEWARK, Texas (AP) - Here in the gentle hills of north Texas,
televangelist Kenneth Copeland has built a religious empire teaching
that God wants his followers to prosper.
Over the years, a circle of Copeland's relatives and friends have
done just that, The Associated Press has found. They include the
brother-in-law with a lucrative deal to broker Copeland's television
time, the son who acquired church-owned land for his ranching
business and saw it more than quadruple in value, and board members
who together have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for
speaking at church events.
Church officials say no one improperly benefits through ties to
Copeland's vast evangelical ministry, which claims more than 600,000
subscribers in 134 countries to its flagship "Believer's Voice of
Victory" magazine. The board of directors signs off on important
matters, they say. Yet church bylaws give Copeland veto power over
board decisions.
While Copeland insists that his ministry complies with the law,
independent tax experts who reviewed information obtained by the AP
through interviews, church documents and public records have their
doubts. The web of companies and non-profits tied to the
televangelist calls the ministry's integrity into question, they say.
"There are far too many relatives here," said Frances Hill, a
University of Miami law professor who specializes in nonprofit tax
law. "There's too much money sloshing around and too much of it
sloshing around with people with overlapping affiliations and
allegiances by either blood or friendship or just ties over the
years. There are red flags all over these relationships."
Copeland, 71, is a pioneer of the prosperity gospel, which holds
that believers are destined to flourish spiritually, physically and
financially - and share the wealth with others.
His ministry's 1,500-acre campus, behind an iron gate a half-hour
drive from Fort Worth, is testament to his success. It includes a
church, a private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry's $17.5
million jet and other aircraft, and a $6 million church-owned
lakefront mansion.
Already a well-known figure, Copeland has come under greater
scrutiny in recent months. He is one target of a Senate Finance
Committee investigation into allegations of questionable spending
and lax financial accountability at six large televangelist
organizations that preach health-and-wealth theology.
All have denied wrongdoing. But Copeland has fought back the
hardest, refusing to answer most questions from the inquiry's
architect, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.
Copeland's church also has invited an Internal Revenue Service
audit, which would keep information private, and has launched a
sophisticated Web site, Believers Stand United, to "help set the
record straight."
The Senate committee didn't set out to determine whether Copeland or
the others broke the law, although it could provide information to
the Internal Revenue Service if something seems flagrantly wrong, a
committee aide said. The main goal, Grassley has said, is to figure
out whether existing tax laws governing churches are adequate, which
could carry sweeping implications for all religious organizations.
The committee could subpoena Copeland if he remains uncooperative.
Neither he nor John Copeland, his son and the ministry's chief
executive officer, responded to interview requests.
But Lawrence Swicegood, spokesman for Kenneth Copeland Ministries,
said in written responses to questions that no Copeland family
members receive improper benefits through their ties to the church.
All revenue from the church's business interests - including an oil
and natural gas company it owns - go into the church, Swicegood said.
He said that Kenneth Copeland has never exercised his veto power
over board decisions, a provision meant for emergency use. Even so,
Swicegood said, the board is scheduled to meet in August to vote on
taking away that ability.
---_
Kenneth Copeland has always dreamed big.
Growing up in West Texas next to an Army air base, Copeland wanted
to fly. He also wanted to sing pop songs. He realized both ambitions
and didn't stop there.
In 1957, when he was 20, Copeland scored a Top 40 hit called "Pledge
of Love" and sang on "American Bandstand."
The journey that led to the pulpit began several years later.
Copeland had a born-again experience and enrolled at Oral Roberts
University in Tulsa, Okla. He worked as a pilot and chauffeur for
Roberts himself.
Copeland was greatly influenced by Tulsa prosperity preacher Kenneth
Hagin, locking himself in the garage with Hagin's tapes for seven
days before moving back to Texas to start his ministry in the late
1960s.
Now a 500-employee operation with a budget in the tens of millions
of dollars, Kenneth Copeland Ministries has won supporters worldwide
through its crusades and conferences, prayer request network,
disaster relief work, magazine and television program.
Kenneth Copeland Ministries is organized under the tax code as a
church, so it gets a layer of privacy not afforded large secular and
religious nonprofit groups that must disclose budgets and salaries.
Pastors' pay must be "reasonable" under the federal tax code, a term
that gives churches wide latitude.
Copeland's current salary is not made public by his ministry.
However, the church disclosed in a property-tax exemption
application that his wages were $364,577 in 1995; Copeland's wife,
Gloria, earned $292,593. It's not clear whether those figures
include other earnings, such as special offerings for guest
preaching or book royalties. Another 13 Copeland relatives were on
the church's payroll that year.
In the 1980s, Copeland's church purchased land on the shores of
Eagle Mountain Lake from the estate of a Texas oilman. Afterward, it
discovered added value underground: an oil and gas field.
Grassley, the senator leading the televangelist inquiry, has quizzed
Copeland about Security Petrol Inc., a wholly owned - and for-profit
- subsidiary of the church created in 1997 to manage that resource.
Swicegood said Security Petrol was established to protect the church
from the liability risk of oil and gas production and to minimize
interference with the church's religious activities.
No company officials - including John Copeland, its president - has
received compensation or profits from the company, and all revenue
goes to the church for general operations, Swicegood said. Reserves
from gas wells in the church's name were valued at $23 million last
year, county records show.
Speaking at a ministers' conference in January, Kenneth Copeland
accused Grassley of twisting reality to make it look like the
natural gas "was making us rich off of the ministry's property.
Bull. That's stupid."
It's not the only business venture tied to the church.
While natural gas platforms sprouted on church land, John Copeland,
a self-described "cowboy at heart," pursued a side business in
cattle and horses. Beginning in 1993, John Copeland leased church
land to run his business, El Rancho Fe, Spanish for "Ranch of Faith."
Five years later, the church separately sold John Copeland land for
his ranch and residence, Swicegood said.
Swicegood said appraisals were done to determine fair market value
for leasing and selling the land, adding that the lease benefits the
church. John Copeland must improve the land, and county officials
confirmed the church gets a roughly $100,000 annual tax break for
putting it to agricultural use. The church board approved the
transactions.
While the purchase price is not public record, the 33-acre property
would have been worth about $93,000 that year, said John Marshall,
executive director of the Tarrant Appraisal District.
The land is now valued at $554,160 by the district.
Until recently, El Rancho Fe sold registered American Quarter Horses
and three other horse breeds. On its Web site, convenient location
and the integrity of the Copeland name were used as selling points.
"We are a family you know and a family you trust," it said.
John Copeland and his wife, Marty, no longer sell horses but
continue to operate the cattle business, Swicegood said.
Ellen Aprill, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a
former U.S. Treasury Department official, said leasing and selling
land to the church's top executive raises concerns. Under IRS rules,
nonprofits can be penalized or lose their tax-exempt status if an
executive, board member or other insider receives an economic
benefit above and beyond what the organization gets in return.
"The church and its board must take great care to make sure the
payments are fair to the church," Aprill said. "The church says it
does. But is not clear how we can know."
---
Located in an office complex in a north Dallas suburb, Integrity
Media is the kind of company that plays a little-known but important
role in the world of televangelism: negotiating the purchase of
television time for Christian ministries.
Douglas Neece, the company's president, said Kenneth Copeland
Ministries is Integrity Media's biggest client, accounting for just
over 50 percent of its business.
Neece is Kenneth Copeland's brother-in-law. Neece's son, Joel, also
works for the company.
The church's board was informed of Neece's relationship to the
Copelands, Swicegood said. Their television time is bought at market
rates and the ministry gets a discount from Integrity Media, he said.
Douglas Neece said his company charges a "deeply discounted"
commission below the industry standard of 15 percent. "We earn our
money," Neece said. "That's just the way it is.
"We have nothing to hide."
The money involved is substantial. In a 1997 filing in Tarrant
County, Copeland's church said it paid a "related party" $22 million
for "telecast and mass media expense" that year and received a
discount of $1.7 million on the transaction. Similar figures were
cited for 1996.
Integrity Media, meanwhile, is the parent company to a
horse-breeding operation and real estate company that owns a
Learjet, records show. Although they are wholly owned subsidiaries
of Integrity Media, Neece played down the connections.
"The subsidiaries don't have anything to do with the media-buying
corporation," he said. "We've had several through the years, and
these things are not connected with the Copeland ministry."
Whatever the venture - whether it's buying TV time, land deals with
a church executive or natural gas wells - Kenneth Copeland
Ministries cites its 11-member board of directors as an important
check on the organization's integrity.
Kenneth Copeland serves as board chairman, and his wife, Gloria, is
a board member. Records show other members include or have included
fellow televangelists Jesse Duplantis, Mac and Lynne Hammond, and
Jerry and Carolyn Savelle; Oklahoma architect Loyal Furry; retired
Texas pastor Harold Nichols; and Arkansas businessman John Best.
As chairman, Copeland has veto power over any resolution he deems
"not in the best financial or operational interests of the Church or
not in furtherance of the nonprofit religious purposes of the
Church," church bylaws say.
Such veto power is highly unusual, say academics who study
nonprofits. Swicegood said the provision was meant to give Copeland
emergency power to prevent the church from doing anything "repugnant
to its Christian purposes and mission" - although the bylaws don't
lay that out. Swicegood said the church plans to remove that
provision and adopt others that "reflect contemporary best practices
in nonprofit governance."
Board member Best, in a written response to questions, said he's
received "100 percent accessibility to anything I wanted to see and
have always seen the highest level of integrity and honesty."
Other board members either declined comment, did not respond to
interview requests or could not be located. The church has
emphasized that board members act in the church's best interest.
Some board members, however, receive a perk that experts like Hill,
of the University of Miami, said undermines their independence.
While board members don't get salaries, some who are ministers get
paid for speaking at church events through offerings and
honorariums, Swicegood confirmed.
The sums involved are usually kept secret. But in seeking tax
exemption for its aircraft fleet in the late 1990s, the church
revealed that it paid board members a total of $87,000 in "cash
contributions" and almost $1 million in honorariums and "benefit
purposes" in 1996 and '97.
Swicegood said the church's independent compensation committee
approves all payments to board members.
Marilyn Phelan, a Texas Tech University law professor and author on
nonprofit law, said the practice could pose problems in an IRS
audit. Both the IRS and Texas state law prohibit benefits beyond
reasonable compensation for insiders, including board members, she
said. If violations are found, nonprofits can lose their tax-exempt
status and board members can face penalty taxes.
As the Senate Finance Committee considers its next step, Copeland is
not backing down. His ministry is portraying the inquiry as an
attack on religious liberty.
At the same time, it is moving forward with a big fund-raising
project: soliciting donations for new television equipment so
Copeland can be broadcast in high-definition.
---
Eric Gorski can be reached at egorski(at)ap.org. AP researcher
Rhonda Shafner contributed to this story.
KENNER, La. (AP) - First of all, police said he was speeding. Second, the 18-year-old wasn't wearing a seat belt and was driving on a suspended license. But that was the least of his troubles. According to police, when the man was pulled over on Tuesday they found a marijuana cigarette. Then they found out the car he was driving was reported stolen. Then they found $27,000 worth of stolen goods in the car.
And when officers asked about the small dog on the front seat, the man could not tell them anything about it.
But a call to the veterinarian listed on the dog's tag led to its owner, who said the pet had been stolen during a home burglary.
Detectives were unsure if the suspect remained in jail Friday.
MILWAUKEE (AP) - A Milwaukee man was accused of shooting his lawn
mower because it wouldn't start. Keith Walendowski, 56, was charged
with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and
misdemeanor disorderly conduct while armed.
According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski said he was angry
because his Lawn Boy wouldn't start Wednesday morning. He told
police quote, "I can do that, it's my lawn mower and my yard so I
can shoot it if I want."
A woman who lives at Walendowski's house reported the incident. She
said he was intoxicated.
Walendowski could face up to an $11,000 fine and six years and three
months in prison if convicted.
A call to Walendowski's home went unanswered Friday morning.
WOODBINE, Ga. (AP) - Authorities say they arrested an escaped jail inmate trying to sneak back into the lockup with cigarettes allegedly stolen from a nearby store.
Sheriff Tommy Gregory said Saturday that 25-year-old Harry Jackson had opened a door to the exercise yard and climbed the outer fence.
Deputies found a jail door unlocked early Saturday and were looking for the inmate. They spotted Jackson trying to come back in and found 14 packs of cigarettes they believe were stolen from a convenience store about a block away.
Jackson faces new charges of breaking out of jail and burglary. He was already in jail in Camden County in far southeast Georgia for charges including possession of a controlled substance and violating probation.