XTS Network

ABECHE, Chad - Chad’s authorities brought abduction and fraud charges on Tuesday against nine French and seven Spanish nationals it accused of illegally trying to fly 103 African children to Europe.

A Chadian prosecutor said the French, members of a group called Zoe’s Ark, which said it wanted to place orphans from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur with European families, faced five to 20 years hard labor if convicted in the landlocked African state.

The French group has denied it was acting illegally.

Seven Spanish crew members of the plane chartered for the operation were charged as accessories, along with two Chadians.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has denounced “a crime against children” and demanded stiff penalties. He has suggested the children, aged 3 to 10 years old, could have been sold to a pedophile ring or used to supply human organs.

The 16 Europeans were arrested Thursday as they tried to fly the children, believed to be Sudanese and Chadian, out of Abeche in eastern Chad. A Belgian pilot has been detained separately but was not cited in Tuesday’s charges.

The case has embarrassed France, which is an ally of Deby and has a military contingent stationed in Chad.

France will provide the bulk of a European Union peacekeeping force that is to start deploying in east Chad next month to protect around 400,000 Sudanese refugees and Chadian civilians who have fled violence spilling over from Darfur.

France’s government, which has criticized the activities of the Zoe’s Ark group and opened an inquiry into illegal adoption procedures, said the accused would face justice in Chad.

The children, some believed to have come from families who fled to Chad from Sudan’s Darfur, were to be housed with host families in Europe who paid several thousand euros each.

Some of the children said their parents were still alive and they were lured from their villages on the Chad-Sudan border with offers of sweets. They are being looked after at an Abeche orphanage by U.N. children’s agency (UNHCR) officials who are trying to establish where they came from.

More than 300,000 Darfur refugees are living in camps along the Sudanese border after fleeing four years of conflict that has left more than 200,000 people dead and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

MEXICO CITY - About $10 billion in laundered Mexican drug money ends up in U.S. banks each year, Mexico’s federal attorney general said Tuesday.

Appearing before Congress, Eduardo Medina said Mexican banks receive about $1 billion from their U.S. counterparts each year, but return up to $16 billion, about $10 billion of which “does not have an explanation … and could be attributed to the flow of drug-trafficking money.”

Before ending up in the Mexican financial system, the money is laundered through cash purchases of real estate, cars, jewelry, furniture and other expensive items, Medina said.

Medina said his office is drafting a money-laundering bill that would regulate the people who are responsible for monitoring these transactions, such as notary publics in the case of real estate, as well as jewelry and car distributors.

A controversial 700-car garage proposed for Woodland Park Zoo is illegal, according to Seattle’s hearing examiner.

City officials failed to make the case that garages are common or customary in Seattle parks, Hearing Examiner Sue Tanner said in a decision that city and neighborhood leaders received Tuesday.

Tanner serves as the city’s administrative-law judge and is charged with reviewing decisions by city agencies.

Dubbed the “garage mahal” by neighborhood critics, the proposal for a four-story, $28 million structure has been hotly debated for three years. Phinney Ridge Community Council President Irene Wall called Tanner’s ruling a decisive blow.

“It really means the end of this garage proposal and back to the drawing board,” Wall said.

City Council President Nick Licata agreed. “It means the door to the negotiating room is now open; grab a seat at the table and let’s rework our drawings.”

Other city officials were not sure about next steps.

“Obviously, we’re very disappointed with this decision. We just got it and we’re evaluating it,” said zoo spokeswoman Gigi Allianic.

Spokesmen for the city’s planning department and the City Council’s parks committee chairman, David Della, said the same.

Tanner’s ruling could be appealed to King County Superior Court. The council could also change city zoning to accommodate the garage.

Licata said a zoning change is unlikely because a majority of the council asked the zoo to reconsider the garage this spring.

Although the council unanimously approved the project in 2004, five members wrote the zoo in May saying they see the garage as inconsistent with the city’s goal of “reducing our reliance on automobiles.”

Wall said the community council would not support an underground garage, which it did several years ago, nor would it support any garage. “We would encourage the zoo to look at easier fixes.”

The neighborhood group has argued the garage is too big, too costly, and would add to traffic problems. Some neighborhood residents support it.

The city owns the zoo, and the nonprofit Woodland Park Zoo Society operates it under a 20-year agreement.

The zoo society wants a garage because it can’t meet parking demands about 100 days of the year. Zoo officials expect attendance and parking needs to increase.

About 55 percent of visitors now park in the 654 uncovered stalls available at the zoo. Others park on nearby streets. The zoo has averaged a little more than 1 million visitors annually in recent years.

The city’s share of the garage cost is estimated at $12 million by city council staff. Garage users and the zoo society would pay the rest.

The zoo initially planned an underground garage on the zoo’s south side, which residents supported. But Mayor Greg Nickels scrapped it, saying it was too expensive, and backed the proposed garage on the zoo’s west side.

Wall maintains that Tanner’s decision gives all parties a reason to “step away from this cliff” and consider alternatives to the project.

“This thing just got out of hand,” she said.

There’s something about women’s events that often grates: the overuse of pink in the advertising material; the clichéd calls for empowerment; the constant entreaties to “indulge!” and “pamper!”

Please.

But, ladies, rest assured: This weekend’s CRAVEshow! in downtown Seattle doesn’t exactly fit the bill. Sure, the advertising material is pink - and, yes, there will be a booth where you can get your hair done - but this two-day expo will be more than just a glorified spa.

The “Crave” brand, which Melody Biringer founded in 2001, is best known for its quarterly “Crave parties,” girls pamper-fests, held nationwide for the past five years. Nicole Francois, a spokeswoman for Crave, says that the launch of CRAVEshow! will mark a departure from those parties, which will continue to take place.

“CRAVEshow! will address the business of a woman’s life, not just pampering and adorning her,” she says. “It’ll be deeper and more diverse.” And bigger. With 10,000 women expected to attend, the show will be about 20 times larger than the average Crave party.

Unlike the parties, CRAVEshow! will feature short lectures, one-on-one counseling sessions and educational workshops, ranging in topic from financial planning to vacation planning to planning your next dinner party. There’ll be experts on hand dedicated to helping you expand your portfolio, balance your family’s budget, or start your own business.

Marriage-counseling, life-coaching, and a sustainable-living workshop (which, among other things, will explain how to throw an environmentally conscious fiesta) will be available, too.

All the booths and workshops on the CRAVEshow! schedule are broken up into six basic subcategories, each of which implores you to improve yourself in one way or another: There’s Evolve, Explore, Connect, Sustain and - yes - Indulge and Pamper.

The event will take place in a three-story building, so you’ll be able to traipse up and down between “Evolve” (learn about continuing education) and “Pamper” (get your hair professionally curled or straight-ironed) without even putting on your coat.

Part of the first floor will be dedicated to cooking, baking, throwing parties, and - of course - sampling the gourmet goodies on hand. Local foodettes (such as Dish D’Lish’s Kathy Casey, a Seattle Times contributor, and Seattle Weekly’s Shannon Borg) will demonstrate cooking techniques and recommend a few local wateringholes.

The second floor will feature a holistic spa (run by “Habitude” founder and Seattleite Inez Gray), including an aromatherapy lab, herbal pain-relief techniques and reflexology demonstrations.

The third floor will serve as a “mini Parisian bazaar,” where local boutiques will display their wares and host an ongoing fashion show. Some of the clothing will be high-end designer garb; some of it will be more affordable, for the babe who - downstairs in the “Connect” department - learned about budgeting her finances.

The goal of the event is to provide “enlightenment,” to women, says Francois, “whether that means reaching a new level of enlightenment or buying a new pair of shoes.”

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com

Safeco disappointed shareholders Tuesday with a 24 percent drop in third-quarter profit and posted operating earnings that were 4 cents lower than analysts expected.

The Seattle-based insurer was hit by large payments in its auto business and declines in its investment portfolio.

Shares dove $2.61, or 4.3 percent, on Tuesday to $57.48 in regular trading. They climbed 20 cents to $57.68 a share in after-hours trading. Over the past 12 months, Safeco stock has traded between $54.46 and $69.15.

Safeco posted a third-quarter profit of $194.4 million on revenues that dropped by 1.3 percent to $1.64 billion.

Last year’s third quarter included a $79.7 million after-tax gain on the sale of real estate, including its headquarters near the University of Washington. Still, operating earnings, which exclude such one-time gains, were down 10.4 percent to $152.6 million for the quarter.

Safeco missed analysts’ expectations for operating earnings by 4 cents, coming in at $1.51 a share, according to Thomson Financial.

Chief Executive Paula Rosput Reynolds said in a news release that the company’s performance remains “on plan for the year. It’s a credit to our agents and employees that Safeco continues to post steady growth and profitability.”

Safeco Auto posted a pretax underwriting profit of $16.3 million, down from $80.1 million in the third quarter last year.

Safeco Property, which insures homeowners and others, had a pretax underwriting profit of $19.8 million, down from $53.1 million a year ago. Its results included $28.4 million in pretax catastrophe losses, mainly because of hailstorms in the Midwest.

It’s too early for the company to share estimates for losses from recent Southern California wildfires, Executive Vice President R. Eric Martinez Jr. said during a conference call with analysts Tuesday. He expects Safeco to issue estimates in the next couple of weeks.

Safeco’s business-insurance unit reported a pretax underwriting profit of $51 million, up from $37.1 million in 2006.

During the quarter, Safeco repurchased 7.9 million shares, or 7.6 percent of its outstanding common stock, at an average price of $58.89 a share, for a total cost of $465.3 million.

The buyback made the quarterly decline in profits per share seem less drastic - just 12.3 percent - than the actual dollar drop.

Safeco repurchased an additional 2.2 million shares through Oct. 26 of its fourth quarter.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

Safeco’s results

Dollar figures in thousands, except per share.

Sept 30

%

3rd QTR

2007

2006

CHG

Profit

$194,400

$255,700

-24.0

Per share

1.93

2.20

-12.3

Revenue

1,638,200

1,659,800

-1.3

9 MOS

2007

2006

CHG

Profit

$563,300

$663,600

-15.1

Per share

5.39

5.56

-3.1

Revenue

4,684,400

4,757,200

-1.5

Safeco disappointed shareholders Tuesday with a 24 percent drop in third-quarter profit and posted operating earnings that were 4 cents lower than analysts expected.

The Seattle-based insurer was hit by large payments in its auto business and declines in its investment portfolio.

Shares dove $2.61, or 4.3 percent, on Tuesday to $57.48 in regular trading. They climbed 20 cents to $57.68 a share in after-hours trading. Over the past 12 months, Safeco stock has traded between $54.46 and $69.15.

Safeco posted a third-quarter profit of $194.4 million on revenues that dropped by 1.3 percent to $1.64 billion.

Last year’s third quarter included a $79.7 million after-tax gain on the sale of real estate, including its headquarters near the University of Washington. Still, operating earnings, which exclude such one-time gains, were down 10.4 percent to $152.6 million for the quarter.

Safeco missed analysts’ expectations for operating earnings by 4 cents, coming in at $1.51 a share, according to Thomson Financial.

Chief Executive Paula Rosput Reynolds said in a news release that the company’s performance remains “on plan for the year. It’s a credit to our agents and employees that Safeco continues to post steady growth and profitability.”

Safeco Auto posted a pretax underwriting profit of $16.3 million, down from $80.1 million in the third quarter last year.

Safeco Property, which insures homeowners and others, had a pretax underwriting profit of $19.8 million, down from $53.1 million a year ago. Its results included $28.4 million in pretax catastrophe losses, mainly because of hailstorms in the Midwest.

It’s too early for the company to share estimates for losses from recent Southern California wildfires, Executive Vice President R. Eric Martinez Jr. said during a conference call with analysts Tuesday. He expects Safeco to issue estimates in the next couple of weeks.

Safeco’s business-insurance unit reported a pretax underwriting profit of $51 million, up from $37.1 million in 2006.

During the quarter, Safeco repurchased 7.9 million shares, or 7.6 percent of its outstanding common stock, at an average price of $58.89 a share, for a total cost of $465.3 million.

The buyback made the quarterly decline in profits per share seem less drastic - just 12.3 percent - than the actual dollar drop.

Safeco repurchased an additional 2.2 million shares through Oct. 26 of its fourth quarter.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

Safeco’s results

Dollar figures in thousands, except per share.

Sept 30

%

3rd QTR

2007

2006

CHG

Profit

$194,400

$255,700

-24.0

Per share

1.93

2.20

-12.3

Revenue

1,638,200

1,659,800

-1.3

9 MOS

2007

2006

CHG

Profit

$563,300

$663,600

-15.1

Per share

5.39

5.56

-3.1

Revenue

4,684,400

4,757,200

-1.5

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday called for the resignation of the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission after the recall of millions of Chinese-made toys.

Nancy Nord, the agency’s acting head, has been under fire in Congress for opposing Democrats’ legislation to overhaul her agency.

A commission chair who says that “… we don’t need any more authority or any more resources to do our job, does not understand the gravity of the situation,” said Pelosi, who was joined in her call for Nord’s resignation by other Democrats in the House and Senate. “I call on the president of the United States to ask for the resignation.”

Nord, in an Oct. 24 letter to the Senate Commerce Committee, said a Democratic bill doubling the agency’s funding and giving it greater authority to inspect and recall products “could have the unintended consequence of hampering, rather than furthering, consumer product safety.”

The White House also opposes the legislation passed unanimously by the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday.

The legislation would increase the number of workers at the agency to at least 500 by 2013, modernize testing facilities and increase the number of safety inspectors at U.S. ports.

Veterans Affairs pick has contractor ties

President Bush on Tuesday named a retired Army lieutenant general and executive of a company that earns much of its revenue from federal veterans programs to head the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The nominee, James Peake, 63, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was the Army’s chief medical officer for four years. If confirmed by the Senate, Peake would replace James Nicholson, who stepped down Oct. 1.

Currently, Peake is the medical director, chief operating officer and a director of QTC Management, a Diamond Bar, Calif., company that under two current contracts with the VA performs thousands of physical exams a year on veterans seeking disability assistance. Under one contract alone, QTC could earn more than $1 billion for performing those exams through 2008.

U.S. spying budget: $43.5 billion last year

Forced by law to reveal how much the nation spends on its spy agencies, the Bush administration disclosed Tuesday that the country’s intelligence budget was $43.5 billion last year, an increase of about 50 percent since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The disclosure marked the first time in nearly a decade that the U.S. government has offered even a partial glimpse of how much it spends on the CIA and the other 15 intelligence-community agencies.

Only the overall figure was provided, without breakdowns.

Federal voting official apologizes for remark

The head of the Justice Department’s Voting Section apologized Tuesday for comments he made about elderly minority voters that enraged Democratic lawmakers and civil-rights groups.

“I want to apologize for the comments I made … about the impact of voter-identification laws on the elderly and minority voters,” John Tanner told a House judiciary panel.

Tanner was criticized for comments he made this month at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles. Tanner said then that elderly minority voters were less likely to be disenfranchised by a new voter-identification law in Georgia because “minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.”

Also

The Senate approved legislation Tuesday that would provide $11.4 billion for Amtrak over six years, providing a stable subsidy for the nation’s only national passenger rail service. House action is pending.

Seattle Times news services

Late October is proving to be awards season for one Seattle poet and three Seattle publishers.

Poet Judith Roche has won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her collection, “Wisdom of the Body,” from Seattle publisher Black Heron Press.

Local publisher Fantagraphics Books has won an ABA for Brooklyn graphic novelist Gary Panter’s “Jimbo’s Inferno.” And an ABA went to University of Washington Press for Connecticut cultural analyst Jeffrey F.L. Partridge’s “Beyond Literary Chinatown.”

The American Book Award was created in 1978 to “provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.” The prizes will be presented Dec. 2 in Oakland, Calif.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times book critic

Late October is proving to be awards season for one Seattle poet and three Seattle publishers.

Poet Judith Roche has won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her collection, “Wisdom of the Body,” from Seattle publisher Black Heron Press.

Local publisher Fantagraphics Books has won an ABA for Brooklyn graphic novelist Gary Panter’s “Jimbo’s Inferno.” And an ABA went to University of Washington Press for Connecticut cultural analyst Jeffrey F.L. Partridge’s “Beyond Literary Chinatown.”

The American Book Award was created in 1978 to “provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.” The prizes will be presented Dec. 2 in Oakland, Calif.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times book critic

WASHINGTON - The real story on Wall Street isn’t that E. Stanley O’Neal, whose grandfather was born a slave, is being shoved out of the top job at Merrill Lynch, the gargantuan investment bank. More important is the fact that … well, Tom Wolfe said it best in “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” his romp through the world of hubris and high finance, with this description of the novel’s protagonist:

“On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? - three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? - had become precisely that … Masters of the Universe.”

Actually, O’Neal rose to such heights that the number of his professional peers was nowhere near 300 - more like three or four. That a black man who picked cotton as a child in Alabama could have spent the past five years as an Uber-Master of the Universe, running one of the world’s leading financial institutions, is more significant than his downfall.

Granted, the downfall has been pretty spectacular. Merrill Lynch had to disclose last week that the company took a loss of $8.4 billion in the subprime-mortgage meltdown - much greater than the damage suffered by other huge investment firms such as Goldman Sachs.

Merrill’s board of directors - most of whose members were chosen by O’Neal - has to share responsibility for that debacle; it’s not as if the board was unaware of how O’Neal was investing the firm’s money. Apparently, though, there was one thing that O’Neal failed to tell the board: that he had approached the CEO of Wachovia Corp. about a possible merger of the two companies.

That’s not the sort of thing you want your board to hear through the grapevine.

On Monday, O’Neal was reportedly negotiating the terms of his departure. If you’re worried that he’ll be destitute, dry your eyes. O’Neal has been one of the best-paid executives on Wall Street - he took home around $48 million last year - and The New York Times reports that he may get a severance package of at least $159 million.

That’s crazy money, and people don’t get crazy money unless they’re worth it. What I find striking about O’Neal’s story is that it so thoroughly demolishes the racist assumption that some people will make: that the job was somehow handed to him because of some feel-good commitment to diversity.

Puh-leeze. Diversity is about leveling the playing field, opening doors and giving people a chance. By all accounts, O’Neal rose to the top the old-fashioned way - fighting, scraping, biting, scratching.

He was hired as CEO in 2002 to shake up what was seen as a complacent, slow-moving corporate culture. He did just that, cutting nearly 24,000 jobs, eliminating corporate perks and taking the company - once known as “Mother Merrill” for its comfortable ambience and its settled predictability - into riskier and more-lucrative arenas. Such as the subprime-mortgage market.

O’Neal produced huge profits for the firm; last year, net income was a record $7.5 billion. On the job, at least, he made no attempt to be a nice guy. The Wall Street Journal reports that O’Neal would rake his executives over the coals if quarterly earnings reports showed that rival Goldman Sachs was outperforming Merrill in some area. Now that O’Neal is on his way out, of course, people who worked for him are saying things to reporters - he was aloof, he was brusque, he didn’t tolerate strong-willed subordinates - that they wouldn’t have said to his face.

It’s the classic high-flying modern Wall Street story - you claw your way to the top, make a lot of money for your stockholders, make a lot of money for yourself, hold on as long as you can. O’Neal lasted five years in the top job at Merrill, which is about the average tenure of an American CEO.

What’s really significant is that there is a Stan O’Neal. And a Dick Parsons, the African-American CEO of Time Warner, rumored to be on his way out, too, after a long and profitable run. And a Ken Chenault, the African-American CEO of American Express, who is staying put, far as I know. And a Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, widely acknowledged as the first African-American billionaire.

Just two or three generations removed from slavery, they rose to control big chunks of the American economy. They attained Master of the Universe status by being smarter and tougher than their peers - and now a much bigger cohort of black corporate executives is coming up behind them. It just goes to show what happens when you open a door.

Eugene Robinson’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com