The REAL WORLD!
A Deadly U.S.-Iran Firefight
By Mark Kukis/Baqubah
The soldiers who were there still talk about the September 7 firefight on the Iran-Iraq border in whispers. At Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the main U.S. military outpost in Iraq's eastern Diyala Province bordering Iran, U.S. troops recount events reluctantly, offering details only on condition that they remain nameless. Everyone seems to sense the possible consequences of revealing that a clash between U.S. and Iranian forces had turned deadly. And although the Pentagon has acknowledged that a firefight took place, it says it cannot say anything more. "For that level of detail, you're going to have to ask the [U.S.] military in Baghdad," says Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "We don't know anything about it."
A short Army press release issued on the day of the skirmish offered the following information: U.S. soldiers from the 5th Squadron 73rd Cavalry 82nd Airborne were accompanying Iraqi forces on a routine joint patrol along the border with Iran, about 75 miles east of Baghdad, when they spotted two Iranian soldiers retreating from Iraqi territory back into Iran. A moment later, U.S. and Iraqi forces came upon a third Iranian soldier on the Iraqi side of the border, who stood his ground. As U.S. and Iraqi soldiers approached the Iranian officer and began speaking with him, a platoon of Iranian soldiers appeared and moved to surround the coalition patrol, taking up positions on high ground. At that point, according to the Army's statement, the Iranian captain told the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers that if they tried to leave they would be fired on. Fearing abduction by the Iranians, U.S. troops moved to go anyway, and fighting broke out. Army officials say the Iranian troops fired first with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, and that U.S. troops fell further back into Iraqi territory, while four Iraqi army soldiers, one interpreter and one Iraqi border guard remained in the hands of the Iranians.
The official release says there were no casualties among the Americans, and makes no mention of any on the Iranian side. U.S. soldiers present at the firefight, however, tell TIME that American forces killed at least one Iranian soldier who had been aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at their convoy of Humvees.
The revelation comes amid rising tensions over the past week since Iran captured 15 British Navy personnel in waters between Iran and Iraq. Analysts have suggested that some Iranian officials have argued against speedily returning the Brits, preferring to use them as a bargaining chip in Tehran's efforts to free five of its own officials captured by the U.S. in Erbil earlier this year. News that an Iranian soldier had been killed in a clash with American forces would do little to ease those tensions.
In the months after the incident, U.S. forces have kept up joint patrols on the Iran-Iraq border, where their movements are closely monitored by Iranian outposts. Increasingly, however, U.S. troops stationed in Diyala Province are moving to help counter-insurgency efforts in the Baqubah area, leaving a thinner American presence at the border. On some days, says Lt. Col. Ronald Ward, the U.S. commander tasked with helping Iraqi units maintain border security in the area, no U.S. troops appear there at all.

Hicks' father welcomes plea deal
By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press
CANBERRA, Australia - The father of self-confessed al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks welcomed the leniency of his son's nine-month prison sentence, but vowed Saturday to continue complaining about his son's treatment at the U.S military prison on Cuba.
David Hicks will serve his sentence in a prison in his hometown of Adelaide, Australia, after admitting to aiding terrorism in a plea deal at Guantánamo Bay that required him to state he had never been illegally treated during his five years in U.S. custody.
''I believe one of provisos was that he had to sign a form to say he wasn't badly treated,'' Terry Hicks told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. ``We know for a fact that he was, and I'm going to push that issue.''
The plea agreement also bars the 31-year-old Muslim convert from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal his conviction and imposes a gag order that prevents him speaking with news media for a year from his sentencing date.
He had previously reported being beaten and deprived of sleep during his more than five years at Guantánamo Bay, but during his sentencing hearing thanked U.S. personnel for their professionalism during his imprisonment.
Terry Hicks, a vocal critic of the U.S. military commission system, has maintained his son had only pleaded guilty because he could not get a fair trial and wanted to come home.
''It's a lot better than 12 years or seven or two or whatever they were touting throughout the night,'' Hicks said of the nine-month sentence negotiated in the plea bargain.
''At least he's back home. He's out of that hellhole,'' he said, referring to a U.S. commitment to repatriate his son within 60 days.
Before the sentence was announced, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer welcomed the conviction as ``bringing to an end a long saga.''
Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who says he has now given up Islam, was captured by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in December 2001 and was flown weeks later to the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
Downer said his government wanted Hicks to serve his full sentence.
''If any Australian gets involved in terrorist activities, they get no sympathy from us,'' he told the ABC.
Downer said he expected Hicks would leave Cuba much earlier than the 60 days allowed under the exchange agreement.
Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch ally in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism, has long rejected pressure for Hicks to be repatriated, despite legal and human rights groups condemning the military commission system as unfair.
Terry Hicks suspected his son's prohibition on speaking to the media for a year was aimed at silencing him as Howard seeks his fifth three-year term as prime minister at elections due late this year.
'John Howard will probably be putting his head up saying: `see, he's a terrorist,' '' the father said.

Reflections on Electromagnetism - Imagining A Self Aware Universe
About Albert
Submitted by Albert on 4 March 2007 - 9:51pm. Culture
I have been studying electromagnetism lately, as in the practical application of Maxwell's equations to realistic physical systems. I find it an amazing fact, that even if we assume that point charges send out their electric fields instantaneously as in deliberately ignoring the postulates of special relativity, we none the less can find the wave equation inside of Maxwell's equations, which of course equates the speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves to c, the speed of light. I must mention now that before you read further, that I would appreciate any feed back on the soundness of my logic in what you are about to read. I must preempt you now with a message, that these are the products of my musings and are prone to contain mistakes. Please find it to your pleasure to correct any haneous errors and false logic you detect in my writings.
Is it not strange that when we assumed the electric field is sent out infinitely fast, we can derive a statement saying that the electromagnetic wave, nonetheless must still propagate with finite speed.

Electromagnetism can derive the speed at which electromagnetic radiation will propagate, but it cannot predict without separate assumptions, the postulates of special relativity, that specify at what speed the electric field is "updated." What if we would have said that the electric field is sent out at a speed less than or greater than c. Supposedly we should still end up with a electromagnetic wave relation that gives the speed of the wave as the speed of light, regardless of how fast we actually "declare" the speed of light to be. If we ignore for a seond that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, does the assumption that electric fields change instananeously violate other physical principles?
Physicists are constantly trying to ignore infinities that wind their way up in problems. Often the infinities are describing forces, which leads to a concept of infinite energy, which would seem to violate our most sacred guiding post to understanding the nature of things - always follow the path of Conservation of Energy. Is violation of energy conservation what happens when we believe the electric field from a point charge is updated instantaneously?
Suppose we have two electrons a certain intial distance apart called d, that are not moving relative to each other. Each one is getting its electric field instantaneously updated. An obersver moving at constant velocity relative to the two stationary electrons observes a Lorentz contraction of the distance between the two electrons. Although we have contraction, we never said that it was due to the fact that information must travel less than c. I am saying we have experimental evidence of this effect, and in that sense we are adding it ad hoc to our theory which ignores the postulates of relativity. According to the observer the electrons are closer to each other, than the observer in the rest frames of the electrons, so they feel a greater force in one frame than the other. Now lets add another element to the setup. I am going to introduce a neutron that was really there all along, that lies on the same line as the two electrons and is the same distance away d from one of the electrons and is relatively at rest to the two electrons. The observer moving relative to the two electrons and neutron sees the whole lot of them contracted in the relative distance apart they are from each other. This observer sees the electrons closer together and so calculates a larger Coulombic acceleration, and therefore sees one of the electrons hit the neutron before the observer at rest. This theory can't preserve causality, without first stating that information about the fields must be sent at speed c relative to every reference frame. From that we can deduce the only way to remove the discontinuity in casuality in relation to the time between two oberservers moving relative to each other, is to make each observer's time separate of each other, while keeping constant instead the speed at which each reference frame sees itself send out information and at which it sees other frames send out information, i.e., c.
It is not necessarily the passge of time that all things of matter in the universe must share with each other. The one thing we have in common with everything physical in existence, with all form of matter and energy alike is the speed at which we send out information can never be greater than c. If I accept the postulates of relativity, I can have no doubt of anykind upon this matter. If any doubt shoud occur at whether or not I am existing, then I can redefine existence as the ability to confirm the postulates of relativity, that information cannot be sent out faster than the speed of light by anything. Perhaps it's the only way a universe can exist. It's the only way to keep the universe aware of itself to make the interaction of its matter meaningful by imposing causailty restrictions, by incorporating the postulates of relativity.

A FLORIDA REAL ESTATE SOAP OPERA
BY SCOTT HIAASEN
Like a phantom limb, it dangles from the shoreline off Gables-by-the-Sea: a winding six-acre strip of turtle grass and mud four feet below the surface of Biscayne Bay.
Fifty years ago, planners drew a wishful frame of home lots over the bay bottom and called this deceptively pricey patch of real estate Coral Bay.
It also has a mordant nickname: ``Gables Under the Sea.''
After 20 years in the plat books, the 18 underwater lots were corraled in a state preserve and shielded from development. The longtime owners wrote them off as worthless.
But a pair of would-be developers and a clever lawyer saw fortune in the mushy marl. They bought the fanciful lots and sold them last summer -- at a $6.7 million profit.
The buyers? Florida taxpayers.
How the state came to spend millions for this chunk of bay -- 70 years after surrendering it to begin with -- is a Florida real estate soap opera.
There's the woman scorned: an 81-year-old Georgia widow who says she was ''hoodwinked'' when she sold her submerged property for $445,000.
There's the millionaire with a dark past: a developer once convicted of stock fraud who trolls the Gulf Stream in his 50-foot yacht. His team sold the watery lots back to the state for $7.2 million.
There's an audacious lawsuit and tricky Tallahassee politics. Jousting lawyers, big-name lobbyists, a county-biologist-turned-land-speculator and a cameo from a former governor.
It's the old swampland-for-sale story turned inside out -- and a new lesson in how to get rich in real estate: Don't build a thing.
Biscayne Bay was once regarded not as something to be protected, but as something to be peddled and paved. Decades ago, the state sold huge swaths of it to developers with fantastic plans to dredge up islands and causeways all the way down to Key Largo.
That's how the Coral Bay property went into private ownership -- part of it sold in 1936, the rest in 1957.
But, though platted and zoned -- and therefore vested with development rights -- the 18 lots were still underwater, and the state eventually grew protective of the bay. In 1968, then-Gov. Claude Kirk refused to issue new dredge or fill permits.
Two years later, a Hialeah businessman named Edward Santa Maria took over the lots from his sister. The price: ''Love & Affection Between Sister & Brother & No Cash,'' according to the 1970 deed.
He hoped to build waterfront homes -- but it soon became clear that the state wouldn't allow it. ''My husband was a dreamer. I loved him dearly, but he was a dreamer,'' said his widow, Laura Santa Maria, 81.
By 1974, Edward's dream was snuffed out for good. The state created the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, preventing development in the area.
Still, Edward didn't give up. He dutifully paid the meager taxes on his underwater acreage. (The lots were valued for tax purposes at about $1,600 apiece in 2003, with a total tax bill that year of $806.44.) He once offered Coral Gables half of his property if he could build on the rest, but the city didn't bite.
In his final years, cancer tethered Edward to an oxygen tank. Convinced that the lots would someday pay off for his wife, he placed them in a trust benefiting her, said Tom Flood, the Santa Marias' son-in-law.
Laura Santa Maria never shared her husband's optimism. ''I didn't think we could sell it at all, to tell you the truth,'' she said. ``Why would anybody want it?''
But just before her husband died on Aug. 27, 2001, two people called, asking about the property: Warren Sands and Bob Robinson.
`OUT OF HEAVEN'
They agreed to buy the lots for $445,000, with a modest $5,000 deposit.
''Out of heaven falls $400,000,'' said Flood, who was a trustee overseeing the property. ``We're thinking, OK, that's a good deal.''
The contract they signed in May 2002 gave Sands and Robinson two years to obtain permits to fill in the bay and build. The developers submitted their plans to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in August 2002.
Calling the area a prime manatee habitat and citing the decades-old protections enacted by the Legislature, the DEP rejected their permits in May 2003. But the deal didn't die; Sands and Robinson bought the underwater property anyway. The sale closed in July 2004.
The Santa Maria family's lawyer, Ed Livingston, said the developers' lawyer told him they were going to file a lawsuit to overturn the DEP ruling after buying the lots.
Instead, Sands and Robinson filed a different kind of suit. In a ''takings'' claim, they argued that the state's environmental rules wrongly erased their property rights. By refusing to allow homes on the submerged lots, they argued, the state had effectively condemned the property.
The suit aimed to force the state to buy the 18 bay-bottom lots -- and Sands and Robinson wanted them priced as though they had already been turned into waterfront mansions: $21 million in all, records show.
Sands, Robinson and their lawyer declined to comment for this report.
A SURPRISE
Laura Santa Maria and her family never heard about the lawsuit. Suing the state had never occurred to them. Nine years earlier, a lawyer told Edward Santa Maria that such a claim would probably fail, because he took over the property after the state's building limits were in place.
In short, they were told, they should have known better than to buy the bottom of the bay.
''No one recommended suing the state. No one ever thought about that,'' said Flood, a Palmetto Bay mortgage company executive.
There was more that the family didn't know:
Months before buying the lots, Sands and Robinson had already begun to negotiate their resale to the state.
And by the time the Santa Marias sold their underwater property, a state appraisal had already determined that it was worth $7.2 million.
''Somebody found an angle,'' Flood said. ``Somebody saw an angle that we didn't see.''

I’m free – and it’s all because of men like John Inman
Matthew Parris Times Of London
I raise a salute to that lifesaving human compromise, the open secret. I raise a salute to a band of comrades who, each in their different ways, were the keepers through a dark age of an open secret. My salute is to a dying breed: a breed whose ranks thinned again in the small hours of Thursday morning when John Inman passed away.
Hail to them all: the ludicrous old queens; the drag artists; the pantomime homosexuals; the florid epicureans; the indulgent priests; the sensitive young men in tight trousers; and the wan aesthetes. And hail, too, to their quieter cousins: the discreetly confirmed bachelors and “he never married” brigade, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell soldiers, and the dignified loners who just preferred to stay single and wouldn’t say why. Theirs — all of theirs — to protect and guard was a precious thing: the open secret.
For gay men in the 20th century the open secret was sometimes literally a lifesaver. It was the narrowest of territories: the half-acre that lies somewhere between absolute denial and outright confession, between dishonesty and disgrace. This was a hard place to be in 1970, a narrow line to walk. If our oh-so-modern, who-gives-a-damn, 21st-century gays, of whom I am one, suppose that these men were not brave, that they were not trail-blazers, not part of the struggle, then we don’t know the half of it.
And some of us, it seems, don’t. Already I hear the cry — “living a lie”, “set back the cause”, “self-oppression”, “an insulting stereotype” — from a gay lobby that has taken about five minutes to forget what a dark age England was for us, what light an Inman, a Kenneth Williams, a Danny La Rue or, from America, a Liberace brought into it, and how outrageous, how valiant, those people were.
About five minutes to forget, too, that the people who wanted these men taken off the stage, screen and wireless, were not the gay-rights campaigners but the bigots and guardians of conservative morality. “Sexual perversion”, they said, wasn’t entertainment: it was wicked and dangerous — and bad taste. The BBC, contemplating making a series of Are You Being Served?, tried at first to insist that Mr Humphries was removed.
How fast we forget context. Always a bit of a giggle to their own era, the Inmans, La Rues and Williamses of the last century are now disowned by their newly brave inheritors: the lately and boldly Out.
John Inman’s breath had barely left his body before right-on spokesmen for that imaginary thing, the “gay community”, were berating the “self-oppression” and “stereotyping” of homosexuals that Inman’s Mr Humphries helped to reinforce. His smutty innuendo, his jokes about fairies and handbags, his limp wrist, camp wit and simpering delivery are, they claim, everything we need to shed.
Yes, they are. Of course they are. They are now. But they weren’t then. Then they were a light in the dark. Between the words, these men insinuated a wordless language of their own; they made a nonverbal statement, a shyly comical way of saying: “This is who and what I am; this is my tribe — and, look, I’m famous and life is fun.” To anxious boys like me, who didn’t even know a tribe existed, the lives and careers of these men showed we were not alone. You may say it was a pity it had to be done by double entrendre. Yes it was a pity; but whether by single, double or triple entendre, it was entendu. You could imply it, at last, and at least you could imply it and nobody would lock you up. This was a huge step forward.
Remember before you sniff at the narrow caricature of a gay man conveyed by that old, camp guard, that these were the gays who didn’t retreat into abusive relationships, dirty little broom-cupboard secrets, guilt, suicide, hatred and shame — or surprisingly often the persecution of other gay men. They were the ones who didn’t ruin women’s lives with wretched sham marriages. Whatever the half-truths and timidities of their estate, they were in some deep way being true to themselves. In the manner in which they talked, dressed and even walked, they were refusing to hide something. There is an inner honesty in this which is perhaps stronger than the honesty of signing up to a sexuality on a dotted line.
Their great achievement was to find a way, however comedic, to be themselves without becoming outcasts; and to show the world. It was desperately important to be able to do that 30 years ago.
Have modern activists no sense of history — even very recent history? Instead of thinking simply of where the gay rights movement is going, they should think too about where it has come from. Read Peter Wildeblood’s Against the Law, a personal memoir of police harassment, public humiliation, distorted evidence, a ghoulishly sanctimonious press, dismissal and an 18-month prison sentence, published (at some risk: many bookshops refused to display it) by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1955 to great public excitement, and republished a few years ago to almost complete indifference. The book seems to describe another England, remote from ours.
You need to understand that backdrop to understand how quietly brave were men like Noël Coward (who would now be called “closeted”) to go as far as they did. Believe it or not, Wildeblood has some claim to be the first writer in the English language to say he was a homosexual (as opposed to admitting to homosexual acts).
In 1955! Inman arrived only 17 years later. When Are You Being Served? entered mainstream popular culture (and before it, on the BBC Light Programme’s Round the Horne, Kenneth Williams’s and Hugh Paddick’s Julian and Sandy), the idea that homosexuality might be an amusing, unthreatening and not uncommon oddity rather than scary — a moral poison and a mortal sin — was gaining ground. Such portrayals unsoured what it was to be gay. The point about this version of the Gay Everyman, surely, was that he was likeable. You’d be pleased if he moved in next door. As the 1970s went on, a few gay activists did begin to worry about the stereotyping, but this, I believe, was a sign of how fast the times were moving.
Music hall was probably where it started. At the showy end of the spectrum, men like Inman, La Rue and Liberace helped to tease this idea further into the spotlights. Not all of these men were necessarily gay, or exclusively so. Max Miller (“What if I am?”) was not gay but flirted with the stereotype because it was becoming rather popular: it sold seats in theatres. My Nana loved Miller, loved Inman, loved La Rue, laughed like a drain at all of them.
Nana would have loved Graham Norton, too. Julian Clary and Graham Norton are probably among the last exemplars of a breed that may soon seem awfully old-fashioned. The next age may not even see the joke, but if the day should come when a new generation watches those DVDs and wonders what campery had to do with being gay, it will be partly because of, not despite, camp comic turns. Clary and Norton are the last act in a show that has helped to turn what once was seen as shame into light entertainment. Thus did the shame and the ghetto depart, taking with them (but slowly) the tagging and the typecasting.
We gays can shed these stereotypes because we have outgrown them, because we have won the space and public respect to dispense with prison clothes and walk out of the virtual ghettos in which gay people used to bunch for mutual affirmation. We don’t need to belong to a gang any more, to drink in the same pubs, congregate in the same occupations or dress or talk in ways designed to help us recognise each other, and help the outside world to guess without the unpleasantness of having to ask. We are no longer under siege. Everything can be talked about today.
But yesterday, when things weren’t said, things had to be said without words. Men like Inman found the showbiz shorthand to do it. God rest their souls.
Read John Inman’s obituary and other lives remembered

Comedy actor Inman dies aged 71
Inman had been ill for some time John Inman TV clips Actor John Inman, most famous for the comedy Are You Being Served?, has died in London aged 71, his spokesman said.
Inman made his name in the 1970s show as Mr Humphries, whose catchphrase "I'm free!" entered popular culture.
In recent years he was a pantomime regular, most often taking the role of the dame. He also made appearances in BBC comedy show Revolver in 2004.
The Preston-born actor died in hospital and had been suffering from a Hepatitis A infection for some time.
John was one of the wittiest and most inventive actors I've ever worked with Wendy Richard
The infection, usually caused by eating contaminated food, forced him to cancel the opening of a pantomime in London in December 2004.
It was initially hoped he would be able to return to the production of Dick Whittington, in which he was due to play Wanda the Cook, but he never worked again.
His manager Phil Dale said: "John was known and loved throughout the world. He was one of the best and finest pantomime dames working to capacity audiences throughout Britain.
"John was known for his comedy plays and farces which were enjoyed from London's West End throughout the country and as far as Australia, Canada and the USA."
Inman's Are You Being Served? co-star Wendy Richard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "John was one of the wittiest and most inventive actors I've ever worked with.
"He was a brilliant, brilliant pantomime dame and he was a very good all-round actor, really. He was a true professional."
HAVE YOUR SAY I bet everyone in heaven is laughing non-stop today; one of the funniest men to grace our TV's and stage. Alan Darbyshire, Wigan
Fans favourite
Are You Being Served? ran on the BBC from 1972 to 1985 and depicted the antics of the staff of Grace Brothers, an old-fashioned department store.
Mr Humphries became one of TV's best known characters, and in 1976 Inman was voted funniest man on television by TV Times readers. He was declared BBC TV's personality of the year the same year.
Trevor Bannister, who played Mr Lucas in the series, told BBC News 24: "The 'I'm free!' was something put in because that is what people in those stores really said.
"We didn't realise it would become a running catchphrase.
"It was that way about the whole show - we never realised it was going to as successful as it was."
Veteran actress and co-star Mollie Sugden, who played Mrs Slocombe, told the BBC: "It's a very sad day. As far as I'm concerned, it's the end of an era."
Confident comedian
In the last four series, Mr Humphries was given an assistant, Mr Spooner, played by Mike Berry.
"I felt like going home at the end of the day and ironing my face, he made me laugh so much! As funny as he was in front of the camera, he was funnier off.
"He was such an astute comedian as well. He would get the script and mark in pencil the best lines and how to get the most laughs.
"And he was a confident comedian, which made him generous. He would help you in delivering a line to get the most out of it, he liked to work in a good team."
'Innocent quality'
Actress Rula Lenska, who worked with him on TV and in pantomime, paid tribute to his comic style.
"It was suggestive but never in your face or aggressive. It had an innocent quality that you rarely find today.
"He was a joy to work with and even after an exhausting day in pantomime he would have time for the fans who crowded round the stage door."
Fellow pantomime dame Danny La Rue called him "irreplaceable".
The 79-year-old added: "John was wonderful in panto. The children adored him. He had a magic touch. Panto can be exhausting - but he loved it.
"He was such a fantastic and inventive actor, and he could play serious roles too. He wasn't all about that flippant catchphrase 'I'm free!' But that's what made him. When that show first started he was just one of the salesmen, but they soon saw a star."
Inman's long-term partner, Ron Lynch, is said to be "devastated" at his death.
Story from BBC NEWS

Ticket-buster attorney guns down armed attacker
BY DAVID OVALLE
A prominent Miami-Dade traffic-ticket lawyer, facing an armed robber, pulled a gun from his glove compartment and stopped his attacker dead with a volley of gunfire.
Traffic Ticket Office's Scott Hidnert was backing out of his North-Central Miami-Dade office in his black Mercedes Thursday night when the robber rushed him.
Handcuffs stuffed in his pocket and a ski mask pulled over his head, the attacker pointed his weapon at Hidnert.
''I'm lucky to be alive,'' the lawyer said.
Hidnert has been called the ''granddaddy'' of ticket defenders.
He founded a firm called Ticket Busters in 1992, one of the first to focus on misdemeanors such as speeding and running red lights.
The firm's name changed to Traffic Ticket Office three years later. Today, the firm offers legal help in Miami-Dade for $69 and up.
The incident follows two recent high-profile self-defense shootings, both fatal, neither resulting in criminal charges.
Last year, a new Florida law was enacted that loosened the standard for self-defense, allowing threatened citizens to shoot first even if attackers don't show a gun.
''I don't expect any charges. He had a gun and was aiming at me,'' Hidnert said. ``If his gun didn't jam, he would have shot me.''
Miami-Dade police spokesman detective Roy Rutland declined to discuss charges. ``The entire case is still under investigation.''
Said Miami-Dade State Attorney's spokesman Ed Griffith: ``As part of the normal procedure, we always review all of the details.''
Miami-Dade's homicide bureau didn't release the name of the slain robber.
Why target Hidnert? The lawyer said he doesn't know.
The robber's name didn't appear in a database of clients. The man, Hidnert's office believes, jumped the six-foot parking lot gate.
''He was crouched down behind a Dumpster,'' said Jonathan Bennett, office manager of Traffic Ticket Office.
Hidnert's office gave this account:
The firm had a longtime office in Miami Shores before moving in December to a nearby building, 720 NW 102nd St. It is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Although it was after closing time, staffers were waiting on a BellSouth repairman to fix their office phones, Bennett said. The repairman arrived and began work in front of the building.
About 9:45 p.m., Hidnert hopped in his black 2006 Mercedes E350, parked in the gated, well-lit parking lot. Suddenly, the gloved robber appeared.
Hidnert tried backing out, Bennett said. The electronic gate was too slow.
The man pulled the trigger of his weapon, but the gun jammed, Hidnert said. No words were exchanged.
Hidnert snapped open his glove compartment, grabbed his handgun, opened the driver's side-door and fired ''several shots,'' Bennett said.
Another robber, lurking beyond the gate, disappeared into the night.
A Miami Beach resident, Hidnert is married and has two children.
''It was a horrible experience,'' Hidnert said.
By Friday afternoon, Hidnert had returned to work.

© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.http://www.miamiherald.com

Anglican leaders rule on gay bishops
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY
Anglican leaders demanded Monday that the U.S. Episcopal Church unequivocally bar official prayers for gay couples and the consecration of more gay bishops to undo the damage that North Americans have caused the Anglican family.
In a statement ending a tense six-day meeting, the leaders said that past pledges by Episcopalians for a moratorium on gay unions and consecrations have been so ambiguous that they have failed to fully mend "broken relationships" in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.
The Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of world Anglicanism, must clarify its position by Sept. 30 or its relations with other Anglicans will remain "damaged at best."
"This has consequences for the full participation of the church in the life of the communion," the leaders said.
The meeting in Tanzania was the latest of several attempts to keep Anglicans unified despite deep rifts over how they should interpret the Bible. The long-simmering debate erupted in 2003 when Episcopalians consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Anglican traditionalists believe gay relationships violate Scripture and they have demanded that the U.S. church adhere to that teaching or face discipline.
Supporters of ordaining gays believe biblical teachings on justice and inclusion should take precedence. They have accused theological conservatives of demanding a conformity among Anglicans that never before existed. The communion was founded in the 16th century by King Henry VIII and spread worldwide by the British Empire.
Discussions at the closed-door gathering this past week were so highly charged that drafting the final statement for the 38 Anglican provinces took hours longer than expected.
In 2005, Anglican leaders had asked the Episcopal Church to temporarily stop electing gay bishops and developing official prayer services for same-sex couples.
The top Episcopal policy making body, called General Convention, responded by asking church leaders to "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration" of candidates for bishop "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church." The request is not binding.
On official prayer services, the convention rejected proposals for a churchwide liturgy for gay partners. However, a small number of U.S. dioceses have moved toward developing local prayers and some dioceses have allowed priests to conduct the ceremonies privately.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the communion, does not have direct authority to force a compromise. He said the requests contained in the document released Monday "will certainly fall very short of resolving all the disputes, but will provide a way of moving forward with dignity."
Canon Kendall Harmon of the Diocese of South Carolina, a leader among Episcopal traditionalists, said the document "is not everything I would have wanted," but he was encouraged that Anglican leaders "made specific calls with specific deadlines."
However, the advocacy group Integrity, which represents Episcopal gays and lesbians, accused the leaders of bigotry, and urged Episcopalians to lobby their bishops to reject the demands.
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who supports gay relationships, said in a brief statement after she left the meeting that talks among Anglicans must continue.
The final statement from Anglican leaders expressed worry over feuding within the Episcopal Church and the wider communion. Some U.S. parishes have left the Episcopal Church to affiliate with Anglicans in Africa. Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola has set up a network for conservative U.S. parishes as a rival to the Episcopal Church. Lawsuits have been filed over Virginia-area churches that joined with Akinola and want to take their property with them.
Anglican leaders called on all sides in the conflict to end their lawsuits and recommended the creation of a pastoral council and a special vicar to oversee the minority of conservative U.S. dioceses and parishes that feel they cannot accept Jefferts Schori's leadership. Among the goals of the plan is to create an alternative so U.S. parishes stop affiliating with overseas Anglicans - a violation of communion tradition.
Anglican leaders also released a draft set of common principles meant to allow Anglican provinces to remain independent, but recognize their actions have an impact on each other.
The proposed Anglican Covenant, which will likely be revised before it is finalized years from now, states that a church could lose full membership in "extreme circumstances" but could take steps to regain its full member status.
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