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MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 Vol. 165, No. 180 ©Princeton Publishing Inc., Princeton, Ind. 47670 Single Copy 75¢, Home Delivery 49¢

CClarionPrinceton Daily

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Staff and wire reports

PRINCETON—The Wabash Riv-er was at its projected 32.9 crestlevel and steady Sunday morning,according to National Weather Ser-vice data, while the White River atHazleton was at 28.1 feet andsteady, and the Patoka River atPrinceton was at 23.9 feet andsteady Sunday.

The National Weather Service ispredicting 1.75 to 4.5 inches morerain through Tuesday. Flood warn-ings continue along the Ohio,Wabash and other area rivers.

The Wabash was within inchesof the train bridge tracks at Mt.Carmel, but backwater on the eastside of the bridge along Ind. 64appeared to have slightly receded.

Gibson County remained undera travel advisory, with water overseveral county roads, but the Gib-son County Red Cross shelter wasclosed Friday evening.

Crews are continuing to rein-force a levee protecting a drinkingwater plant in historic New Har-mony, while elsewhere officials arehoping the expected rains the nextfew days don't make things worse.

Posey County Emergency Man-agement Director Larry Robb saidSunday the levee is being moni-tored for weak spots. He says peo-ple in the county continue to movebelongings to higher ground.

In Evansville, VanderburghCounty Emergency ManagementAgency director Sherman Greersays authorities are taking a wait-and-see approach. He says theflooding is going down and he'shopeful rains won't cause waters torise again.

The National Weather Service ispredicting 1.75 to 4.5 inches morerain through Tuesday. Flood warn-ings continue along the Ohio,Wabash and other area rivers.

Indiana Homeland Securityreported Friday that in the pastweek, some 102 jail inmatesworked with volunteers and localofficials to sandbag at seven com-munities, including Hazleton.

Nearly 3,000 tons of sand wereprovided in 100,000 sandbags usedto protect property.

Indiana Dept. of Transportationplaced some 200 “road closed/highwater” signs and barricades at 36state highway closure sites, includ-ing Ind. 64 east of Oakland Cityand Ind. 65 north of Princeton ear-lier in the week.

Rains expectedto prolongarea flooding

DDaaiillyy CCllaarriioonn//AAnnddrreeaa HHoowweeAnita Waldroup picks out three pink azaleas at the Gibson County Chamber of Commerce azalea sale Friday morning. Organizers saidabout half of the 400 plants were sold in the first couple of hours of the event, hosted to promote participation in the multi-county Aza-lea Trail.

Azalea fever

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Repub-lican Gov. Mitch Daniels, whoplans to announce within weekswhether he'll run for president,insists the massive legislativevictories he won this week wereaimed at moving Indiana for-ward, not building a White Housecampaign.

"If I switch from oatmeal tocornflakes, someone would say itwas a move to the Iowa caucus,"Daniels told reporters Saturday, aday after the legislative sessionended. "This is an agenda forIndiana's future. That's all we'vecared about."

But the sweeping proposalsthat the GOP-controlled General

Assembly gave Daniels fit rightin to a national agenda conserva-tives support.

Indiana's new two-year $28 bil-lion budget spends less than ittakes in, gives a refund to taxpay-ers if the state takes in morethan it needs and leaves the statewith $1 billion in reserves. Law-makers also approved a bill to cutthe corporate income tax by 25percent.

Indiana will create the nation'smost expansive private schoolvoucher program and aims toexpand charter schools to givefamilies more education options.Daniels signed a bill into law Sat-urday creating merit pay for

teachers, and previously signedlegislation restricting their col-lective bargaining rights.

Social issues weren't on theagenda pushed by Daniels, who'sknown as a fiscal hawk, but theLegislature approved a bill totighten abortion restrictions andmake Indiana the first state tocut off funding to Planned Par-enthood and other abortionproviders. Daniels plans to signthe bill, boosting his imageamong social conservatives.

"The governor's been portrayedas somewhat of a moderate. Thissession may change that," saidRep. Terry Goodin, D-Austin.

House Minority Leader Patrick

Bauer, D-South Bend, said the2011 legislative session was a"complete disaster" and a reflec-tion on why one party shouldn'tcontrol everything. Democratstried to mitigate Daniels' agenda— fleeing to Illinois for fiveweeks to boycott labor and educa-tion proposals — but Danielscame out of the divisive sessionwith nearly every item checkedoff his to-do list.

Bauer said he expects Danielsto run.

"I have no doubt that he's notonly running for president, hehas a good shot at the nomina-tion," Bauer said. "He's gettingfurther right."

Daniels to decide on White House bid within weeks

By Frank Phillips, editorThe Paper of Montgomery County

The dispatcher who did notsound the weather sirens when atornado warning was issued onApril 19 has been terminated,another dispatcher on duty thatnight received a one-day suspen-sion and the officer in charge ofthe uniform division was verballyreprimanded, Police Chief KurtKnecht said.

Around 9:45 p.m., April 19, theNational Weather Service issued atornado warning for MontgomeryCounty.

The written policy and trainingall dispatchers undergo clearly

states that when the NationalWeather Service issues a tornadowarning, the dispatchers on dutyare to sound the weather sirens,Knecht said.

Instead of following the policy,dispatcher Janet Clark called theMontgomery County EmergencyOperation Center. Knecht said.

Jeff Cornell was on duty at theEOC that night. He told Clark thelocal weather spotters had notseen any tornadoes, said Emer-gency Management Director FredDavis on Thursday.

"He called it exactly right, or Iwould have reprimanded him,"Davis said. "We do not tell the dis-patchers to sound the sirens. The

National Weather Service does."Information from the dispatch-

ers, copies of the radio traffic andother information was given toKnecht on Tuesday.

After reviewing the information,Knecht terminated Clark, who wasthe senior dispatcher on duty, gavethe second dispatcher, Art Chris-man, a one-day suspension, andgave a verbal reprimand to Lt. JimSessions, the officer in charge ofthe uniform division that night,because Knecht said Sessionsshould have been aware of the sit-uation even though he waspatrolling the streets and was outof the office during the storm.

Clark's termination was not sole-

ly on the basis of failure to followpolicy and sound the sirens butbecause she had a history of notfollowing orders and had receivednumerous verbal and writtenwarnings and had received morethan one suspension due to neglectof duty.

Her last suspension was late lastyear. Following that suspensionshe was ordered to go through aretraining program which includ-ed the policy to be followed in caseof threatening weather, Knechtsaid. Chrisman received a one-daysuspension because he had not vio-lated policies in that past and hewas the second dispatcher, Knechtsaid.

Dispatcher fired for not sounding weather warning

WASHINGTON (AP) — Theglowering mastermind behindthe Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks,Osama bin Laden,was killed in afirefight in Pakistan led by theUnited States, President BarakObama announced to the nationlate Sunday night on nationaltelevision networks.

A small team of Americanscarried out the attack and tookcustody of bin Laden's remains,

the president said in a dramaticlate-night statement at the WhiteHouse.

Obama said that bin Ladenwas killed in a firefight about aweek ago and that U.S. officialshad been waiting on the resultsof DNA tests to verify the identi-ty of the body.

"Justice has been done," thepresident said.

The development comes just

months before the tenth anniver-sary of the Sept. 11 attacks onthe World Trade Centers andPentagon, orchestrated by binLaden's al-Qaida organization,that killed more than 3,000 peo-ple.

The attacks set off a chain ofevents that led the United Statesinto wars in Afghanistan, andthen Iraq, and America's entireintelligence apparatus was over-hauled to counter the threat ofmore terror attacks at home.

Al-Qaida organization was alsoblamed for the 1998 bombings of

two U.S. embassies in Africa thatkilled 231 people and the 2000attack on the USS Cole thatkilled 17 American sailors inYemen, as well as countless otherplots, some successful and somefoiled.

Former President George W.Bush, who was in office on theday of the attacks, issued a writ-ten statement hailing bin Laden'sdeath as a momentous achieve-ment.

"The fight against terror goeson, but tonight America has sentan unmistakable message: No

matter how long it takes, justicewill be done," he said.

Few details were immediatelyavailable of the operation thatresulted in bin Laden's death,although the president said noneof the Americans involved washarmed.

New York Mayor MichaelBloomberg says the killing of theterrorist leader doesn't lessen thesuffering Americans experiencedat his hands the day the WorldTrade Center was destroyed butis a "critically important victory"for the nation.

Osama bin Laden killedU.S. has the body of dead terrorist leaderwho orchestrated the 9/11 attacks

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