A1A South

The national economy continues to look weak, but the Jacksonville area seems to be doing better than the rest of the country, according to forecasting gauges released Thursday.

The Index of Leading Economic Indicators for the Jacksonville area rose by 1.12 points in March to 112.62, the University of North Florida’s Local Economic Indicators Project reported. LEIP also said Thursday that after originally reporting an increase in February, revised data shows that the forecasting index actually declined by 0.36 points that month. But even with the revised February data, LEIP’s index is still a full point higher than it was in March 2007.

UNF economist Paul Mason, who coordinates LEIP, said the increase in the index despite weakness in the housing market and rising fuel prices “is perplexing, but certainly not undesirable.”

Source: Jacksonville.com

That would match my (admittedly) unscientific observations, but the fuel prices and increased prices of everthing transported is putting a big crimp on the folks with low and fixed incomes.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — A new police report says Jonathan Tave held a corrections officer prisoner in the jail law library and sexually attacked her for an hour.

The victim told police he stripped her naked, assaulted her, let her get dressed — and then did it all again a second time.

The details contained in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office report are very disturbing.

The horrifying report says Tave held a “handmade knife up against her throat” as she worked in the law library.

She went for her radio, but Tave stopped her “by pulling her away from it.”

He pulled her into one of the library aisles, and “pulled all her clothes off of her, ripping her uniform shirt in the process.”

With the “knife to her throat,” the report says Tave forced her to the floor and raped her… and then forced her to perform “oral sex” on him.

She managed to reach her pepper spray, but Tave “grabbed it away from her.”

She pulled her “cell phone” from her pants on the floor, but Tave smashed it, the report says.

She told police “that when he was done, he dressed her back up in her uniform, and told her to relax”.

But he got angry again and “told the victim that he had nothing to lose.”

“He dragged her to the window area of the room and pulled her clothes off of her again,” the report says.

She told police he raped her again. And, again, he forced her to perform oral sex at knifepoint.

All the while, he “beat the victim on her face with his fists.”

After the second attack, the report says he “dressed the victim again and demanded her jail keys.” Then tried to hide evidence and clean the area.

When Tave left, the officer ran to the control room. Tave was able to ride an elevator down to the mezzanine floor, before officers grabbed him.

The officer told police the attack lasted an hour.
Tave now faces 11 new potential charges:

- four sexual battery charges
- aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer
- kidnapping during a felony
- possession of a concealed weapon by a convicted felon
- two counts of evidence tampering
- two counts of depriving an officer of means of protection or communication

All of those potential charges are felonies.

The State Attorney’s Office will decide which of those charges to formally file.

The head of the State Attorney’s Special Assaults Unit, Julie Schlax, told First Coast News that she will personally handle the case.

She says she expects to file several charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Tave is set to go to trial in less than two months on murder charges. If he’s convicted, he will automatically be sentenced to life in prison.

Source: First Coast News

Additional information at News4Jax.

So, a guard can be beaten and raped for an hour? If she’d have been killed, I wonder how long it would have taken before anybody would have noticed?

BERKELEY – The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California’s forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. It provides, for the first time, evidence of how the epidemic unfolded in this state.

“In this paper, we actually reconstruct the Sudden Oak Death epidemic,” said Matteo Garbelotto, UC Berkeley associate extension specialist and adjunct professor, and principal investigator of the study. “We point to where the disease was introduced in the wild and where it spread from those introduction points.”

The study, scheduled to appear later this month in the online early edition of the journal Molecular Ecology, also shows that the pathogen is currently evolving in California, with mutant genotypes appearing as new areas are infested. These findings suggest that movement of infected plants between different regions where Sudden Oak Death is established should be minimized, said Garbelotto.

Garbelotto will present these findings today (Wednesday, April 16) at the annual meeting of the California Oak Mortality Task Force, a coalition of research institutions, public agencies, non-profit organizations and private industry formed to coordinate management, research, outreach and policy efforts surrounding Sudden Oak Death disease in California. Garbelotto is a member of the task force.

The researchers analyzed genetic markers of nearly 300 samples of the fungus-like pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, taken from 14 forest stands in Humboldt, Sonoma, Marin, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. The sites were chosen to represent the geographic range of Sudden Oak Death infestation and included newly infected areas as well as regions that had relatively old infestations. Samples from the wild were compared with an additional 15 P. ramorum isolates collected from nurseries in 12 states.

From the samples, the researchers identified 35 unique strains of the pathogen. A computer analysis further revealed how those strains were related to each other. The study found that all strains were originally derived from three basal strains that were most prevalent in the samples and common in all sites.

Armed with that information, the researchers then plotted out which regions were linked to the basal strains to create a history of the epidemic.

Two sites emerged as the origin of the basal strains: Bean Creek in Santa Cruz County, located just outside a nursery that had been shut down because of its Sudden Oak Death infestation, and the Bolinas Ridge site in Marin County’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area on Mt. Tamalpais, only 5 kilometers from the site where the disease was first observed in California. The basal strains also matched those found in the nursery samples.

Source: UC Berkeley News

Oh, no. I hope this won’t kill all the oak trees like Chestnut Blight (also introduced on imported nursery stock).