Al's Morning Meeting

The typical annual effective percentage rates on payday loans range from 391 percent to 443 percent, according to a study released last month by the Center for Responsible Lending. Payday lenders get around state usury laws by characterizing the cost as a fee rather than an interest rate.

The study found that 66 percent of payday borrowers take out five or more payday loans a year, and nearly one-third of payday borrowers get 12 or more loans each year.

"Sixty-seven percent of payday-loan locations are within one-quarter mile of high-poverty areas," the report says, "compared to credit unions at 51 percent, and banks at 34 percent."

Most of the money payday lenders make is due to what is known as a "rollover," Uhlick says. That is when the customer cannot repay the loan and fee in the allotted two weeks and opts to pay only the fee and write another check for the amount of the initial loan, plus another fee. State law allows three rollovers after the initial loan.

"I won't say payday lenders are directly targeting a certain demographic," District 25 state Rep. Manuel Alvarez said, "but they are making it much easier for low-paid people to get into a debt they can't handle."

The rise in the state's bankruptcy rate from 2000 to 2003 is partly due to payday loan customers not paying off their loans in the first two weeks, Alvarez said. He is introducing a bill that aims to eliminate the rollover.

X-rated businesses like the Lion's Den Adult Superstore in Abilene are increasingly common on the nation's rural Interstate highways, where they find relatively cheap land, few zoning restrictions and a steady stream of potential customers.

William Corcoran, an economics professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said the rise of rural adult businesses doesn't mean overall demand is going up.

"I think they're just moving out of big cities and areas where they're being harassed," he said. "Litigation sucks away their profits more than anything."

Peter Fisher, professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Iowa, said the rural sites offer more anonymity for customers, who have less chance of being spotted by acquaintances. And Fisher said the owners of adult businesses realize: "Look, here's no zoning, and we can get some Interstate traffic, too."

"The film unambiguously portrays Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob as the ones responsible for the decision to crucify Jesus," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "We are deeply concerned that the film, if released in its present form, could fuel the hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism that many responsible churches have worked hard to repudiate."

"The plot line is remarkably brief. The biblical writers had no interest whatever in the kind of thing that interests Mel Gibson. He has taken on, after all, the greatest drama in human history, the crucifixion of the Jew who claimed divinity and persuaded much of the civilized world to accept his word. Matthew handles the whole thing -- from the order given down by Pilate, to the expiration of Jesus -- in less space than is taken by this newspaper column.

In that account, one line is spoken that most grievously offends several Jewish critics who have seen the two-hour film. The moment comes when Pilate attempts to free Jesus, on the grounds that he has not been proved guilty of anything. A colloquy ensues, Pilate vs. "the Jews" who are clamoring for Jesus' death. Pilate declares, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person. You see to it." Matthew 27:25: "And all the people answered and said, `His blood be on us and on our children.' "

That curse is not recorded in the three other Gospels' accounts of the Crucifixion. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, comments, as reported by The Christian Science Monitor, that "a tremendous number of Jews never turned against Jesus during Holy Week," and records that "the Gospel use of the phrase `the Jews' referred to Jesus' Jewish opponents, not all Jews. It was a common construction of writing of the time."

But Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, believe that the language that includes the tribal curse should be removed from the film, which Mel Gibson actually thought to do in one version of it. (The Passion is still being edited.) Their more general objections are to the depiction of the murderous, bloodthirsty Jewish mob, as feeding a negative stereotype of Jews. "Do I think it will trigger pogroms?" said Foxman. "I don't think it will. But will it strengthen and legitimize anti-Semitic feelings? Yes, it will."

"An article about the film in The New Yorker magazine last September indicated Gibson would keep a biblical verse out that upsets Jews and has been used to justify anti-Semitism: "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25). That verse was not included in a version of the film The Associated Press saw last month.
But Rabbi James Rudin, a longtime interfaith expert for the American Jewish Committee, a New York-based public policy group, Rabbi David Elcott, the organization's director of interreligious affairs, and Foxman all said the verse was now in the film.

"Approximately 8,000 snakebites occur each year in the U.S. alone. Historically, the standard of care for a snakebite has been a technique known as "incision and suction," involving cutting the skin around a bite and sucking out the blood. However, in recent years, researchers have discovered this once-popular technique actually puts people at risk of damage to the surrounding tissues from the cut.

American Indians and Alaska natives are more likely to smoke than any other group in the United States, with 40 percent of adults defined as smokers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

People of Chinese descent were the least likely to smoke, with just 12 percent reporting that they had smoked a cigarette in the past month, said the agency survey, which was released on Thursday. The survey of 74,000 youths ages 12 to 17 and 133,000

"This gives us a good snapshot of some information that we and other tobacco control communities have been looking for," Mr. London said in a telephone interview.

One in four older teenage girls will suffer at least one major depressive episode within the next four years, says a Canadian university study released Monday. It has long been known females between 13 and 65 are twice as likely as males to suffer from depression, said psychologist Nancy Galambos of the University of Alberta, lead author of the study published in the latest edition of the International Journal of Behavioral Development.

But the level of depression Galambos and her team found among girls in their late teens was quite unexpected, the Globe and Mail reported.

The researchers monitored the mental health of 1,322 teenagers -- 648 boys and 674 girls -- between the ages of 12 and 19 over the course of four years.

They found 25 percent of girls between 16 and 19 experienced at least one major depressive episode within that four-year period.

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