MAJOR LEAGUERS LAUNCH MINOR LEAGUE TEAM
Former baseball greats Don Mattingly and Cal Ripken Jr. are helping to bring minor league baseball to Evansville, Ind., in 2004.
They will own minority shares of a Class-A team that plays in the South Atlantic League as the South Georgia Waves, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
"To be part of this project in my hometown is such a great feeling," Mattingly said.
Ripken already owns the Class-A Aberdeen IronBirds of the New York-Penn League. His company, Ripken Management and Design, also advises minor league teams on how to find potential owners.
(Thanks to UPI's Ron Colbert in Washington)
WHAT TO DO WITH A SPY PLANE
A Miami woman jilted by a Cuban spy has bought an aging Russian-built biplane at auction for $7,000 but now has to figure out how to profit from it.
The yellow Antonov AN-2 Colt arrived in Key West Nov. 11 when 11 Cuban citizens used it to defect to this country.
Since Ana Margarita Martinez did not pay cash, she starts off ahead of the game. The money was taken from a $27 million judgment against Cuba as compensation for her sham marriage with Cuban spy Juan Pablo Roque.
Similar aircraft are believed to be worth between $30,000 and $60,0000, depending on their condition but since the Federal Aviation Administration limits their flying operations in the United States, most are owned by aircraft collectors.
(Thanks to UPI's Les Kjos in Miami)
POLICE HAVE SUSPECT IN FRANKLIN HOUSE FIRE
Prosecutors have put off filing charges in the arson fire that destroyed a suburban Detroit home belonging to singer Aretha Franklin.
Investigators turned over a three-volume report to prosecutors concluding the fire had been set in at least three places, using common charcoal lighter fluid or something very similar.
The report identified a suspect, but while police were seeking an arrest warrant they refused to identify a specific person.
Franklin is not a suspect in the fire, which destroyed a 10,000-square-foot house she used for storage purposes.
INTERNET JOB SEARCH SURVEY SURPRISING
Sixty-one percent of people surveyed say when searching for a job they did not use the Internet.
Surprisingly, the generation that came of age with computers -- 18 to 34 -- was less likely to use the Internet than their older peers, aged 35-54, 35 percent to 45 percent.
While men and women use the Internet in equal numbers, race was a factor in the national poll: 40 percent of whites vs. 30 percent of African-Americans used the Internet for job hunting.
The survey was commissioned by Bernard Haldane Associates, the career management firm. It also found of those who did use the Internet for job hunting, fewer than 4 percent actually found work through Internet sites.
