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www.togetherwesoar.orgThis is the logo for a group running an anti-charter schools campaign, known as SOAR.

MOBILE, Alabama – As fighting is renewed over whether Alabama should allow charter schools, it is unclear who is behind a major new campaign opposing them.

A group known as SOAR – Sound Options for Academic Reform – ran television ads, sent out full-color mailers and launched a website to press its case against charter schools.

Charter schools are independently operated public schools that have more freedom than traditional schools in areas such as teacher tenure and curriculum. Alabama is one of 11 states without charter schools, but many believe there’s enough support in the Republican-controlled Legislature to bring them here, possibly this session.

The SOAR mailer lists a phone number, 1-800-4ALKids. When the Press-Register called that number, a man said the number was for a company named Pronto Connections. Asked about SOAR, he said, ”Maybe they made a mistake. That’s not at this number.”

The Press-Register also sent an email to SOAR via its website, www.togetherwesoar.org, but has received no reply. The website lists as the group’s address a post office box in Montgomery.

SOAR’s television ads feature a teacher in her classroom saying: ”Charter schools will take almost $200 million a year from neighborhood public schools. That’s money from this classroom, these kids.” The ad encourages people to call their lawmaker and speak against charter schools.

Representatives of the Alabama Education Association teachers union, which is opposed to charter schools, would not say whether the AEA is supporting the ads.

The Press-Register checked advertising records at a local television station, and found that the AEA had bought $17,697 worth of ads in the Mobile market during the month of February.

”If it is us, I don’t know about it,” said Danny Goodwin, a director of the AEA’s Mobile County office.

The NAACP has also spoken against charter schools. And the School Superintendents of Alabama group opposes charter schools unless they are authorized by local school boards and funded with new revenue streams.

The contents of the SOAR mailer came into question during a Mobile County school board meeting Wednesday.

Board member Judy Stout – who prefers giving local schools some of the freedoms that charter schools enjoy, rather than opening charter schools here – said that the group was putting out misinformation.

For example, the mailer states that a Stanford University study found that 83 percent of charter schools were ”failing,” while 17 percent were ”passing.”

The study involving students at 2,403 charter schools actually found that 46 percent were performing the same in math as their counterparts in regular public schools, 17 percent were doing better, and 37 percent were doing worse.

”You can’t get into an argument and expect to gain ground with unfactual information,” Stout said.

Gov. Bob Riley and some Republican lawmakers tried to open the way for charter schools in 2010, but could not get enough backing.

Gov. Robert Bentley also favors introducing charter schools in Alabama. He told a meeting of Press-Register editors on Friday that it was important to ”give that a trial, to see how it does.”

Jabari Mosley was arrested by DEA agents in Birmingham after a federal grand jury in Arizona indicted him on drug trafficking charges. (Special/Shelby County Sheriff’s Office)

SHELBY COUNTY, Alabama — A Shelby County man who claims federal agents wrongly seized nearly $900,000 from his safe after he asked a locksmith to open it is now in jail because lawmen say they caught him with more than 1,600 pounds of marijuana.

Jabari Mosley, 33, is being held without bond in the Shelby County Jail awaiting extradition to Arizona, jail records show.

DEA agents from Birmingham arrested Mosley last week after a federal grand jury in Arizona indicted him on drug trafficking charges in connection with a 2010 traffic stop that turned up 1,655 pounds marijuana hidden inside a limousine he was pulling on a trailer. The drugs had a wholesale street value of rough $3 million.

Mosley made headlines in 2010 when DEA agents seized $894,000 from his safe after he took it to a lock and key store in Birmingham to get it opened.

The money — packaged in seven clear plastic bags that held 99 bundles of money held together by rubber bands — was seized after the locksmith alerted police to the large sum of cash inside and there was a positive alert by a drug-detection dog, according to federal court records.

Mosley, however, filed a lawsuit to get back his money, claiming he didn’t commit a crime and that he had been saving up money for 10 years from his real estate investments and automotive business.

“This (arrest) should dispel any ideas that we just picked his name out of a phone book and took his money,” said Greg Borland, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA’s Birmingham district office.

The money seizure happened in May 2010.

During the subsequent investigation, Phoenix, Ariz., DEA agents on Nov. 12, 2010,  stopped a 2008 Ford F-450 pickup truck driven by Mosley and registered in the name of a business owned by Mosley, according to court records.

The pickup was towing a car hauler containing a 1999 Lincoln Limousine. DEA agents found 1,655 pounds of marijuana in the limousine and about $11,600 in cash on Mosley.

Agents seized the marijuana, limousine and cash. That same day, in connection with the same investigation, DEA agents in Birmingham executed a search warrant at Mosley’s home in Chelsea.

Agents found $25,000 in $100 bills inside an “air pump” box in the rear storage area of a Dodge Magnum car.

The cash represents, according to one court document, “moneys furnished or intended to be furnished in exchange for a controlled substance, proceeds traceable to such an exchange, or moneys used or intended to be used to facilitate such an exchange.”

“A review of Mosley’s employment history indicates that Mosley does not earn enough in legitimate income to accumulate a total of $931,400 in cash” which includes the $894,800 and $25,000 seized in Alabama and the $11,600 in Arizona, according to one court document.

Federal prosecutors in Birmingham filed lawsuits seeking to have the $894,800 and $25,000 permanently forfeited to the U.S. government.

Mosley has fought the seizures of the money and filed a civil lawsuit against Alabama Lock & Key and the locksmith for initially calling Birmingham police after discovering the cash.

Mosley’s arrest last week came after he was recently indicted for the 2010 case.

A federal judge has halted action in the civil cases pending resolution of Mosley’s criminal matters.

Borland said agents have maintained all along the money likely came from criminal wrongdoing.

“There are people who believe we find people with a lot of money and then just go out and take it,” he said. “We had information he was a drug dealer and that’s what we do — investigate drug dealers.”

News staff writer Kent Faulk contributed to this report.

Alabama Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey presents a trophy to the Fort Payne High School team which won the state’s first Real World Design Challenge in Montgomery, and their coach/science teacher Jackie Jennings, right. Also shown is Alabama State Sen. Shadrack McGill, R-Woodville, on back left. (Submitted photo)

Fort Payne High School in Dekalb County won the first Alabama Real World Design Challenge while Team Aviation Challenge representing the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville took second place and North Jackson High of Stevenson was third.

The results of the event was announced today in Montgomery. The winners were chosen by a panel of expert judges who made their choice after viewing final reports submitted by seven teams from throughout Alabama.

The Real World Design Challenge is an aerospace and engineering design competition that empowers high school students with real world experiences required for success for today’s jobs and careers. The competition began in 2008, but this is the first time Alabama schools have entered the event.

Alabama Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey praised the teams for their work during the announcement of the winning teams.

“All of the teams stepped up to the challenge this year and proved that Alabama’s schools are not to be underestimated,” said Ivey. “Each design submitted was magnificent and I enjoyed viewing them. These students have far exceeded our expectations for this challenge. This is just the beginning of Alabama’s Real World Design Challenge, a real-world educational program I am confident will grow each year.”

This year’s engineering challenge was to design a personal light sport aircraft within the engineering software provided to the schools. The craft had to be efficient, low-carbon-emission and environmentally friendly. It was also required to hold two team members and fly 200 miles in less than two hours at a minimum cruise altitude of 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL).

In addition to the top three schools, other schools submitting a design project were Grissom High School in Huntsville, Bob Jones High in Madison, Austin High in Decatur and Booker T. Washington High School in Tuskegee.

Every school taking part in the challenge will be allowed to keep the $1 million in professional engineering software it received at no charge.

Fort Payne High School will represent Alabama in the national competition in Washington, D.C., April 20-23.

The Network Operations Center at Baron Services, located on Research Drive in Cummings Research Park. (The Huntsville Times/Dave Dieter)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — A “revolutionary” weather warning system will alert users’ cell phones of approaching dangerous weather using technology developed by Huntsville-based Baron Services.

Gov. Robert Bentley, at a press conference scheduled to begin today at 1 p.m., will unveil Alabama SAF-T-Net — a system patented by Baron Services, a high-tech weather company, to provide text and email alerts to those who sign up for the service.

And that service will be available for free to users, according to Baron Services President and CEO Bob Baron. His company is financing the multi-million dollar endeavor on behalf of the state, Baron said.

SAF-T-Net is a result of a review of the April 27 tornadoes that killed at least 250 people in Alabama with the goal of enhancing safety for the state from threatening weather.

Alerts will also be available via land lines, Baron said, but the information available will be less than via cell phones.

“If we were going to build the best possible service, what would it be?” Baron told The Times earlier this week. “And this is what we came up with.”

SAF-T-Net will allow users to register up to four addresses. And when severe weather threatens, the users will receive notification.

The alerts go beyond the customary warnings from the National Weather Service, Baron said, because there are storms that might not rise to the level of severe by weather service definition.

“Even if it’s not a severe thunderstorm or a tornado but if it’s a big lightning storm and you’ve got kids on the playground, it’s important,” Baron said. “If you’re on the golf course, it’s important. If you’ve got a car outside and there is hail in the storm, you need to get the car under cover.”

The benefit of SAF-T-Net, Baron said, is that it provides warnings or alerts on an individual basis.

“We really are focused on just tapping folks on the shoulder when it really matters to them,” Baron said.

When the weather service issues a formal county-wide tornado or severe thunderstorm warning, users of SAF-T-Net would be alerted only if they are in the specific polygon warning area designated by the weather service.

For instance, a tornado warning in Madison County might only threaten the Hazel Green-Meridianville area but users in New Hope would not be alerted because they do not fall into that specific area of concern.

“I think this is revolutionary in nature,” Baron said. “I think it can be an example for the other (49) states.”

Baron said the goal is for SAF-T-Net to grow statewide but it shouldn’t be considered a replacement to all other available weather information. The value of SAF-T-Net, however, is priceless in Baron’s eyes.

“The more we looked at it, the more we realized if there was going to be something we could do that would stand out and be a true answer to what the state needed, it couldn’t be charged for,” Baron said.

“There couldn’t be a price tag associated with it. As far as the citizens of the state getting a cell phone or land line message, you are then charging for safety, which just didn’t feel right to us.”

Follow me on Twitter @paul_gattis or email me at paul.gattis@htimes.com.

Giglio, Italy (AHN) – Divers found eight more bodies Wednesday while searching the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship off the tiny island of Giglio on Italy’s Tuscan coast.

The bodies, including that of a 5-year old Italian girl, were found on one of the passenger decks. According to Italy’s civil protection agency, which is over seeing the rescue operation, three of the bodies were recovered after a few hours of being sighted by fire department divers. The bodies are those of a woman, a girl and a man. The divers were not immediately able to recover the other bodies due to worsening weather in the area.

The bodies were transported to a hospital on the mainland for identification. Before Wednesday’s discovery, 15 people were reported as still missing.

Including the missing, who are all presumed dead, and the bodies already recovered, the death toll in the cruise ship accident stands at 32.

The Concordia was carrying some 4,200 passengers and crew when it struck a reef of Giglio, a tiny fishing island, on Jan 13. The ship took on water and soon lay on its side.

The ship’s captain is under house arrest while under investigation for alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship while passengers and crew were still onboard.

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Supreme Court responded to a call by Congress this week for the nine justices to follow a standard set of ethics rules for federal judges. The Supreme Court responded in a letter by saying “no.”

“The Court does not plan to adopt the Code of Conduct for United States Judges through a formal resolution,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

The rules for federal judges require disclosure of financial holdings and any conflicts of interest that imply they should remove themselves from a case.

Roberts said the Supreme Court already follows the rules so it does not need a formal declaration to adopt them.

Leahy and four other Democratic senators suggested in a letter to Roberts that adopting the rules formally would ensure transparency of government.

“We hope to increase public trust and confidence in all of our institutions, including the Supreme Court,” wrote Leahy, Richard J. Durbin (IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Al Franken (MN). The senators said they “do not intend to question or impugn the ethics of any individual justice” by their request.

However, relying on their constitutional guarantee of separation of powers, the Supreme Court decided it did not need to follow the senators’ suggestion.

In other words, accusations in Congress that the Supreme Court is uncooperative with Congress look like they will continue, according to legal analysts.

The ethics rules by themselves are not the issue as much as the divisiveness between lawmakers and the Supreme Court. Members of Congress have been trying to rewrite laws to get around Supreme Court rulings they believe incorrectly interpret what lawmakers intended.

One of the most obvious examples is the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court removed many of the restrictions on campaign financing and advertising.

The Supreme Court said First Amendment free speech protects the rights of private citizens to support their preferred political candidates.

The Senate responded with a proposal for a constitutional amendment that would give Congress authority to regulate campaign financing.

The proposed amendment says, “Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to federal elections.”

Another case that continues to irritate lawmakers is the 2010 ruling in Skilling v. United States, in which the Supreme Court limited criminal prosecutions under the honest services fraud statute to bribes and kickbacks.

Members of Congress say they intended the honest services fraud statute to apply to any kind of deceit by businesses that defraud customers.

Disputes between Congress and the Supreme Court are raising concerns now because the court is scheduled to rule on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law soon. The law extends health care to many people who were ineligible previously but also requires all Americans to purchase health insurance.

Many states oppose the law, saying the health insurance requirement violates individual citizens’ right to choose how they spend their money.

Leahy’s disagreement with the Supreme Court on ethics rules is hardly the first time the Senate Judiciary Committee has complained about the justices’ decisions. During a July 2008 hearing, Leahy accused the Supreme Court of substituting its own will for the laws passed by Congress.

“I’m more concerned about the rights of people,” Leahy said during the hearing.

He made the comment during a discussion of the court’s ruling in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker.

The Supreme Court ruled that punitive damages paid to about 32,000 plaintiffs could be no more than the property damage or monetary loss they could prove. They could not get punitive damages intended to punish the wrongdoers.

The ruling reduced the damages Exxon Mobil needed to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound from $2.5 billion to $507 million.

Leahy said, “If Congress had wanted to cap punitive damages for disasters that impact thousands of Americans, it could have but it did not.”

NY, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – A knee injury will cost New York Knicks guard Iman Shumpert a chance to compete at the upcoming NBA Slam Dunk contest.

The Knicks also missed his defense in their most recent game, a loss to the Nets, which dropped the team below .500.

Utah Jazz forward Jeremy Evans will replace Shumpert in the lineup for the NBA event.

Shumpert, who is listed as day-to-day is averaging 10.3 points and 3.4 rebounds per game for the 16-17 Knicks, who are battling for a playoff spot after coach Mike Dantoni inserted Jeremy Lin into the team’s lineup.

Tampa, FL, United States (AHN) – A Florida deep-sea recovery company that found sunken treasure worth more than $500 million must return the booty to the Spanish government.

The treasure is from a 19th century Spanish warship that a British fleet sank off the coast of Portugal in 1804 while the ship was returning to Spain from Peru.

Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration found the gold and silver from the galleon of the ship Our Lady of Mercy. The treasure consists of 17 tons of coins and other items. It is the biggest sunken treasure ever recovered.

On Friday, a federal judge in Tampa ruled that the treasure must be turned over to Spain by Feb. 24. The governments of both Spain and Peru fought in court against Odyssey to claim property rights to the treasure.

A judge earlier ruled that the treasure belonged to Spain and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn that decision.

The Friday hearing was to set the date for turning over the treasure and to decide if Spain had to reimburse Odyssey Marine Exploration for its costs of preserving and storing the treasure. The judge ruled that Spain did not have to reimburse the company for those costs.

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Precious metals continued to move higher Wednesday following Tuesday’s Greek debt deal in which euro zone finance ministers approved a second bailout for the ailing Mediterranean country.

While the deal isn’t expected to solve Europe’s debt problems, investors were able to sigh in relief that a messy and chaotic debt default will not disrupts markets–for the time being, anyway.

Gold ended higher by $32.60 Tuesday, settling at $1757.10 a troy ounce. The white metals, platinum and palladium also enjoyed strong gain. Silver, the gray metal, finished the day sharply higher.

The upward momentum in the commodities spilled over into Wednesday.

Comex April gold futures staged a late day move to finish the U.S. trading session on Wednesday at a fresh three month high. April gold last traded up $13.30 at $1771.80. Spot gold was last changing hands up $9.70 at $1,770.50.

Platinum jumped $39 to $1,721, palladium rose $12.30 to $719 and silver eked out a nickel gain to $34.34.

Investors plunged into gold as a safe-haven buy following rising tensions in the Persian Gulf following the recent news Iran halted oil shipments to some European countries. The other metals, used in the industrial production of a variety of goods and services, continued their ascent on renewed hopes that a global economic slowdown is not on the near horizon.

Profit taking may ease some of the recent gains, but precious metal bugs see the upward trend continuing.