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City code enforcers nationwide are discovering the same problem -- lots of people skipping out on their heavily mortgaged homes, leaving them abandoned, stinking and overgrown.

The Arizona Republic gives you a glimpse of what is happening around in high-priced neighborhoods where people buy more than they can afford. A call to your zoning enforcement office should put you on the trail of this story.

In some cases, enforcers cannot even figure out who owns the building because the mortgage is "in transition."

Especially troublesome in some places are abandoned homes with pools that have become stagnant mosquito attractors.

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Meth House Foreclosures

I suppose things could be worse for lenders. The Denver Post tells the story of a meth house that fell into foreclosure. Landlords and lenders face this nightmare across the country.

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E-ZPass Exposes Cheaters

The Associated Press reports that E-ZPass, the electronic toll-paying system that drivers use to breeze through toll booths, is now an important tool in divorce and criminal cases.

As the AP reports:

"E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it's an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery," said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times.

Lynne Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, said E-ZPass helped prove a client's husband was being unfaithful: "He claimed he was in a business meeting in Pennsylvania. And I had records to show he went to New Jersey that night."

Generally mounted inside a vehicle's windshield behind the rearview mirror, E-ZPass devices communicate with antennas at toll plazas, automatically deducting money from the motorist's prepaid account.

Of the 12 states in the Northeast and Midwest that are part of the E-ZPass system, agencies in seven states provide electronic toll information in response to court orders in criminal and civil cases, including divorces, according to an Associated Press survey.

In four of the 12 states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, highway authorities release E-ZPass records only in criminal cases. West Virginia parkways authority has no policy. (Divorce attorneys in some cases can still obtain toll records from the other spouse rather than a highway agency.)

The Illinois Tollway, which hands over toll records, received more than 30 such subpoenas the first half of this year, with about half coming from civil cases, including divorces, according to Joelle McGinnis, an agency spokeswoman.

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority said it turns down about 30 subpoenas in civil cases every year, about half of them divorces.

Electronic toll records have also proved useful in criminal cases.

They played a role in the murder case against Melanie McGuire, a New Jersey nurse convicted in April of killing her husband and tossing his cut-up remains into the Chesapeake Bay in three matching suitcases in 2004. Prosecutors used toll records to reconstruct her movements.

Davy Levy, a Chicago divorce lawyer for more than 30 years, said toll records from I-Pass (part of the E-ZPass system) are useful in catching a spouse in a lie.

"You bring up the I-Pass records and it destroys credibility," said Levy, who has used such records two or three times for such purposes.

The E-ZPass network covers about half the East Coast and part of the Midwest, with about 2 billion charges per year. That can mean a lot of records.

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Scoping Out Your Child's Roommate on Facebook

Thanks to my friend Peggy Phillip who spotted this story and thought of you, Al's Morning Meeting readers. USA Today reports that parents are using Facebook to check out their children's college roommates. As a result, colleges are getting more requests for a change in roommates.

The paper says:

"They were getting an impression -- false or accurate -- of what the student would be like to live with," says Magda Manetas of The College of New Jersey in Ewing.

About a dozen other colleges contacted by USA TODAY report similar complaints.

Housing officials say parents who cite Facebook most frequently mention party-related content and photos as their primary concerns. Parents sometimes see cups in photos and make the leap to alcohol and drugs, Manetas says.

But Robin Berkowitz-Smith of Syracuse University says race, religion and sexual orientation are the top three concerns from parents contacting officials there.

The story continues, showing how much the Internet has changed college life:

Some students are creating groups based on residence halls and floors. In the Syracuse network on Facebook, for example, students have created groups for members of the Class of 2011 and almost every residence hall on campus. Students are sharing room numbers, floor plans for their buildings and other tips they have heard about their new home.

Some colleges allow incoming freshmen to go online to find potential roommates.

The University of Georgia has a password-protected program called the Dawg House on its website for freshmen to search for roommates, says Shay Little, director of administrative operations.

Each student fills out a profile and can search the database for matches based on his or her "ideal roommate" profile. Students also can weigh questions in the search that are more important to them.

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Al's Morning Multimedia

Here is a great example of how radio journalists can use photographs and the Web to enrich their on-the-air stories.

This radio story about a slimy fish called a lamprey -- a traditional native food -- is good on its own, but once you see the photos, you get a whole new understanding of the story. Give it a listen and a look.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

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