Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="KitanaVorr" data-source="post: 894540" data-attributes="member: 9167">Wednesday, December 18, 2002Houston Chronicle - Wednesday, December 18, 2002BusinessNewly released documents show Enron Corp. planned to duck Canadian taxes and report higher earnings on its paper and pulp business in 2001, lawmakers said Tuesday. The chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said an Enron deal known as Slapshot was created solely to evade taxes. At a recent hearing on the issue, J.P. Morgan said the lawyers who reviewed the deals said they were legal. It said it put up $1 billion for one day to help the Canadian division of Enron's paper and pulp business create an elaborate deal; that ultimately allowed it to deduct interest and principal on a $375 million loan. The deal produced $60 million in Canadian tax deductions and boosted Enron's bottom line by $65 million. MetropolitanArea Gangs have become more active lately.  Today a six year old child was accidentally shot at playground just outside of Fifth Ward when tension between two gangs, the Lobos and the Panthers, erupted into violence.  The child is in Herman hospital with critical wounds.  The child’s mother declared to reports that she would seek help to move out of this neighborhood immediately.  “It’s just not safe here anymore,” one resident declared in tears when he heard the news.  “We just got to get out before we can.” Fifth Ward a very proud neighborhood with an incredible history wracked with both tragedy and triumph has seen the latest in the series of gang outbreaks in the last two weeks.HealthMore outbreaks seem to be happening around the bayou area where the mosquitoes are breeding on the Bayou River.  West Nile is now a round-the-clock threat to Harris County residents after the discovery of the virus in a hard-to-kill mosquito that bites during the day, often chasing down its prey. The potentially deadly virus was previously found in Texas only in the meek, nighttime-biting Culex mosquito. It's now been detected in a pool of Asian tiger mosquitoes trapped south of Hermann Park. The discovery is particularly worrisome because people are 100 to 1,000 times more likely to be bitten by an Asian tiger mosquito than a Culex mosquito, said Ray Parsons, head of the Harris County Mosquito Control Division.  The Culex more or less drifts from one meal to the next at night, but the Asian tiger aggressively zeroes in on its victims during the day.  In addition, conventional spraying methods that control the Culex don't work against the Asian tiger. Pesticide-spraying from trucks or planes is impossible because high daytime temperatures force the chemical mist to float up, not down where it can reach mosquitoes. Spraying for Culex occurs at night. SportsThe Indiana Pacers and Houston Rockets square off tonight at Compaq Center with the Pacers coming to the game after a disappoint loss to the Dallas Mavericks.FilmThe Lord of the Rings sequel debuts today with much anticipation.</blockquote>

Verification