The death toll from Wednesday's undersea quake of 7.6 magnitude was expected to rise further after rescuers dig through the rubble in heavily populated towns of Sumatra island.
After yesterday earthquake in Indonesia west sumatera killed 467, this morning it is shaked again about 6.8-magnitude quake damaged additional buildings.
Rescuers struggled to reach survivors of the previous day's temblor, which killed at least 467 people and left thousands trapped under collapsed buildings.
"This is a high-scale disaster," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told Metro TV.
Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 and capital of West Sumatra province, became the immediate focus of relief workers.
At least 500 buildings in Padang collapsed or were badly damaged in the Wednesday evening quake, which also set off fires, said Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono.
A total of 467 people were confirmed dead and 421 seriously injured, said Tugiyo Bisri of the Social Affairs Ministry's crisis center. He said 376 deaths occurred in Padang, with rest of the deaths in four surrounding districts.
At least 80 people were missing at the 5-story Ambacang hotel in downtown Padang, said Indra, a paramedic who uses only one name. Rescuers, working in heavy rain, found two survivors and nine bodies in the hotel's rubble.
Terrified residents who spent a restless night were jolted by the fresh tremor on Thursday morning.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the inland quake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Padang at a depth of just under 20 miles (24 kilometers).
The second quake reportedly damaged 30 houses in Jambi, another Sumatran town. It was not yet clear if there were injuries, said Jambi Mayor Hasfiah, who uses only one name, like many Indonesians.
Collapsed or seriously damaged buildings in Padang included hospitals, mosques, a school and a mall. TVOne network footage showed heavy equipment breaking through layers of cement in search of more than 30 students it said were missing from the school where they were taking after-school classes.
Parents of missing students stayed up all night, waiting for signs of life under the rubble.
"My daughter's face keeps appearing in my eyes ... my mind. I cannot sleep, I'm waiting here to see her again," a woman, who identified herself only as Imelda, told TVOne, tears rolling down her face. She said her 12-year-old daughter Yolanda was in school to take science lessons.
"She is a good daughter and very smart. I really love her. Please God help her. I hope rescuers, everybody... can help her out of here. Please!" she said.
An unidentified boy told TVOne that he escaped from the top floor just as the three-story school crumpled. He said he was taking math lessons while many others were taking science courses.
Wednesday's temblor severed roads and cut off power and communications to Padang. Thousands fled in panic, fearing a tsunami. The shaking was so intense that people crouched or sat on the street in fear.
Children screamed as an exodus of thousands of frantic residents fled in cars and motorbikes, honking horns.
The quake was felt hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Malaysia and Singapore, causing buildings there to sway.
The extent of damage in surrounding areas was still unclear due to poor communications. Indonesia, a poor, sprawling nation with limited resources, sits on a major geological fault zone and is frequently hit by earthquakes.
More than 3,000 people were killed in the last big earthquake in 2006 that hit Yogyakarta, a major city on the main island of Java.
The latest quakes came in the wake of a killer tsunami Tuesday that hit islands in the South Pacific, killing at least 120 people. Geologists said the two events were not related.
The Padang quakes were along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.
Padang's mayor appealed for assistance on Indonesian radio station el-Shinta.
"We are overwhelmed with victims and ... lack of clean water, electricity and telecommunications," Mayor Fauzi Bahar said. "We really need help. We call on people to come to Padang to evacuate bodies and help the injured."
Thousands were believed trapped throughout the province, said Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry's crisis center.
The shaking felled trees and crushed cars in Padang. A foot could be seen sticking out from one pile of rubble. At daybreak, residents used their bare hands to search for survivors, pulling at the wreckage and tossing it away piece by piece.
The loss of telephone service deepened the worries of those outside the stricken area.
Hospitals struggled to treat the injured as their relatives hovered nearby.
Indonesia's government announced $10 million in emergency response aid and medical teams and military planes were being dispatched to set up field hospitals and distribute tents, medicine and food rations.
Local television reported more than two dozen landslides in the province. Some blocked roads, causing miles-long traffic jams of cars and trucks.
Indonesia Earthquake in western Indonesia very terrible, this tragedy maybe the 2nd terribly disaster after Tsunami a couple years ago. Indonesia earthquake give effect to American samoa, because after Indonesia struck by the earthquake American samoa got warning from Government, the warning is "Tsunami".
The latest information from Government Official at Jakarta have mentioned reaches 467 people died in west sumatra, Indonesia.
Tugiyo Bisri of the Social Affairs Ministry's crisis center says a total of 467 people are confirmed dead and 421 seriously injured in Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude quake.
He said Thursday that 376 deaths occurred in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province. Pasaman district accounted for 75 deaths and the other dead were from three other districts.
A major earthquake struck off the city of Padang on the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday, damaging houses, bringing down bridges and starting fires, a witness said.
It was unclear if there were any casualties.
The 7.6 magnitude quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in the city state of Singapore, 275 miles to the northeast, evacuating their staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled an earlier tsunami warning. Japan said no tsunami was expected there.
“Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here maybe because water pipes are broken and there is flooding in the streets,” said a Reuters witness in the city.
Phone lines were down.
Padang, the capital of Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world’s most active fault lines along the “Ring of Fire” where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
A 9.15 magnitude quake, with its epicenter roughly 600 km (373 miles) northwest of Padang, caused the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in Indonesia’s Aceh province, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other countries across the Indian Ocean.
The depth of Wednesday’s earthquake was measured at 85 km (53 miles), the United States Geological Survey said. It revised down the magnitude of the quake from 7.9 to 7.6.
A series of tsunamis earlier on Wednesday smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa, and Tonga killing possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying villages and injuring hundreds.
LONG HELD FEARS
Geologists have long said Padang, with a population of 900,000, may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.
“Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake,” said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute, in February.
“The entire city could drown” in a tsunami triggered by such a quake, he warned.
Several earthquake-prone parts of the country hold tsunami practice drills, and the national disaster service sends alerts via telephone text messages to subscribers.
Earthquake disaster today is going worst. There are many earthquake disaster that happen iin the world, suvh as japan, and other caountry. Tsunamis like that caused by the Samoa earthquake are among nature’s most lethal disasters. We look at some of the worst. • The highest recorded wave in history took place in 1958 in Alaska. A large (magnitude 7.9) earthquake caused 30 million cubic metres of rock to fall into Lituya Bay. This created a wave that reached 1,720ft tall; more than twice the height of the Canary Wharf Tower. Only two deaths were recorded, as it took place in a sparsely populated area.
• Three and a half billion years ago, an asteroid is believed to have crashed somewhere into the oceans. The impact caused a tsunami so huge that it swept all the way around the world several times, killing all surface life and flooding all land except the highest mountains.
It would have travelled fast enough to make it all the way around the world in just 30 hours.
• The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was caused by the second largest earthquake ever recorded – between magnitude 9.1 and 9.3, or more than twice the amount of energy as all the explosives used in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs.
The quake caused the seabed to rise several metres. The death toll is estimated at 230,000 people, the single most devastating tsunami in history. Deaths were recorded in South Africa, almost 5,000 miles from the epicentre, and in places the wave reached two miles inland.
• In 1883, a volcano on the island of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, exploded. The explosion, 13,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, blasted approximately five cubic miles of rock and ash into the air, causing the average global temperature to drop by as much as 1.2C.
The resulting tsunamis, caused by the explosion and by superheated rivers of gas and rock called ‘pyroclastic flows’ rushing into the ocean, accounted for the bulk of the official 36,417 death toll. Ships as distant as South Africa, 4,700 miles away, were rocked by the wave.
• The 1755 Lisbon earthquake caused the most lethal tsunami ever in the Atlantic ocean. The quake, the fires and waves together caused the deaths of at least 60,000 people in Portugal and Spain, and wrecked sea ports on the coast of north Africa.
The devastation caused the philosopher Voltaire to write his great work Candide, a satirical work asking how God can be benevolent and yet permit such horror.
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KISARAN, Indonesia – Indonesia's heaviest-ever newborn drew curious crowds Friday to a hospital where the boy named Akbar — or the Great in Arabic — came into the world at a record 19.2 pounds (8.7 kilograms).
Akbar Risuddin was born to a diabetic mother in a 40-minute cesarean delivery that was complicated because of his unusual weight and size, Dr. Binsar Sitanggang said.
"I'm very happy that my baby and his mother are in good health," father Muhammad Hasanuddin said Friday. "I hope I can afford to feed the baby enough, because he needs more milk than other babies."
Crowds pushed to get a peek of the extraordinary boy, who measured nearly 24 inches (62 centimeters) when he was born Monday, at the Abdul Manan hospital in the northern town of Kisaran on the island of Sumatra.
"This is fantastic," Dewi Miranti, a mother from a nearby village, said as she peered through a window with about a hundred other people. "He looks very well and is cute."
The baby's extreme weight was the result of excessive glucose from his mother during pregnancy, Dr. Sitanggang said.
"He is greedy and has a strong appetite, nursing almost nonstop," the doctor said.
The boy was the third child of Hasanuddin, 50, and mother Ani, 41, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. His two "little" brothers weighed 11.6 pounds (5.3 kilograms) and 9.9 pounds (4.5 kilograms) at birth.
The former Indonesian record holder was a 14.7-pound (6.7-kilogram) baby boy born on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, in 2007.
Guinness World Records cites the heaviest baby as being born in the U.S. in 1879, weighing 23.75 pounds (10.4 kilograms). However, it died 11 hours after birth. The book also cites 22.5-pound (10.2-kilogram) babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.
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Iran said Saturday it will allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine its newly revealed, still unfinished uranium enrichment facility as world criticism mounted over the underground site that was developed secretly.
The presence of a second uranium-enrichment site that could potentially produce material for a nuclear weapon has provided one of the strongest indications yet that Iran has something to hide — despite its repeated assertions that its program is only to generate power.
That impression was reinforced by a close aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said the site will be operational "soon" and would pose a threat to those who oppose Iran.
"This new facility, God willing, will become operational soon and will blind the eyes of the enemies," Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani told the semi-official Fars news agency.
The existence of the secret site was first revealed by Western intelligence officials and diplomats on Friday. It is located in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom, inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, according to a document sent by the Obama administration to lawmakers.
President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran on Friday of constructing a secret underground uranium enrichment facility and of hiding its existence from international inspectors for years.
Just hours before Iran said it would allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the site, Obama warned Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front and offered "a serious meaningful dialogue" over its nuclear program.
The White House responded to Iran's offer of inspections by urging Iran's complete and immediate cooperation with the IAEA.
Obama said in his address that evidence of Iran's building the underground plant "continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion" that jeopardizes global nonproliferation.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the revelation was firm proof Iran was seeking nuclear weapons.
"This removes the dispute whether Iran is developing military nuclear power or not and therefore the world powers need to draw conclusions," Lieberman told Israel radio. "Without a doubt, it is a reactor for military purposes not peaceful purposes."
Israel considers Iran a strategic threat due to its nuclear program, missile development and repeated references by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Israel's destruction.
Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads Iran's nuclear program, said on national television that inspectors from the IAEA could visit the site, though he did not specify when.
Salehi said there was nothing secret about the site and that Iran complied with U.N. rules that require it to inform the world body's nuclear agency six months before a uranium enrichment facility becomes operational.
"Under (NPT) rules, we are required to inform the IAEA of the existence of such a facility 180 days before introducing materials but we are announcing it more than a year earlier," he said.
The Iranians claim to have withdrawn from an agreement with the IAEA requiring them to notify the agency of the intent to build any new nuclear facilities and instead are now only subject to the six-month notification requirement before a facility becomes operational.
But the IAEA says Tehran cannot unilaterally withdraw from that bilateral agreement and still should have announced its plans to build the facility.
The statement by Khamenei's aide that the facility will be operational "soon" seemed to suggest that it could be ready even ahead of the 18-month figure cited by Salehi.
The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran's known industrial-scale enrichment facility, but they could still potentially help create bomb-material.
Experts have estimated that Iran's current number of centrifuges could enrich enough uranium for a bomb in as little as a year.
Washington has been pushing for heavier sanctions if Iran does not agree to end enrichment, which many nations believe is part of Tehran's drive to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is designed to generate electricity.
U.N. Secretary GeneralBan Ki-moon expressed grave concern about the facility and said "the burden of proof is on Iran," in a statement by his office.
Salehi said construction of the Qom facility was a "precautionary measure" to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from possible attacks.
"Given the threats we face every day, we are required to take the necessary precautionary measures, spread our facilities and protect our human assets. Therefore, the facility is to guarantee the continuation of our nuclear activities under any conditions," he told the television.
Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, however, told Sky News television that Iran was clearly bucking the international community's demand that it keep its activities transparent.
Blix, speaking from Stockholm, told the broadcaster that the clerical regime was clearly going against the spirit of the international community's demands.
"The revelation of a second plant shows that they are not exactly transparent, as the IAEA has asked them to be," he said. "This has not been an exercise in openness."
If Iran were developing nuclear weapons, it would be at precisely such a place, noted Mark Fitzpatrick, of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"If they were to develop a nuclear weapon they would probably do it at a clandestine facility so that they wouldn't trigger the obvious trip wire," he said.
While an actual weapon is several years away, said Paul Rogers a security expert at the University of Bradford in northern England, something rudimentary could be rigged up within a year if Iran stepped up its enrichment activity.
"If it were to re-enrich its low-grade uranium to weapons-grade for an experimental device it would take about a year," he said. "That would almost be a demonstration to show it had the capability."
The key Western powers at the United Nations have given Tehran until year's end to cease enriching uranium or face new sanctions.
On Oct. 1 diplomats from Iran, the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany will meet to discuss Tehran's nuclear program.
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VIENNA – Iran has revealed the existence of a secret uranium-enrichment plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday, a development that could heighten fears about Tehran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon and escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the West.
President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain plan to accuse Iran of hiding the facility in an address at the opening of the G-20 economic summit Friday, a senior White House official told the AP.
The official said Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will demand Tehran open the covert facility to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.
Two officials told the AP that Iran revealed the existence of the second plant in a letter sent Monday to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire confirmed receipt of the letter, saying the agency was informed "that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction." The letter said that the plant would not enrich uranium beyond the 5 percent level suitable for civilian energy production. That would be substantially below the threshold of 90 percent or more needed for a weapon.
Iran told the agency "that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility," he said. "In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible."
The officials said that Iran's letter contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.
But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Tehran and was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.
The officials who spoke to the AP — one from a European government with access to IAEA information and the other a diplomat in Vienna from a country accredited to the IAEA — demanded anonymity Friday because their information was confidential. One said he had seen the Iranian letter. The other told the AP that he had been informed about it by a U.N. official.
Iranian officials had previously acknowledged having only one plant — which is under IAEA monitoring — and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.
An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium at its cavernous underground facility outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.
Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium for a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors. But because enrichment can also produce weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will make fissile material for nuclear warheads.
The IAEA says Iran has amassed more than a ton of uranium from its older Natanz centrifuges that is less than 5-percent enriched and unsuitable for weapons use. But through further enrichment, that amount would give Tehran more than enough material to produce enough weapons-grade uranium — enriched to 90 percent and beyond — for one nuclear weapon.
U.N. officials familiar with IAEA monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities have previously told the AP they suspected Iran may have undeclared enrichment plants with the state-of-the-art centrifuges that enrich more quickly and efficiently than Iran's mainstay P-1, a decades-old model based on Chinese technology.
The revelation of a secret plant further hinders the chances of progress in scheduled Oct. 1 talks between Iran and six world powers.
At that meeting — the first in more than a year — the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany plan to press Iran to scale back on its enrichment activities. But Tehran has declared that it will not bargain on enrichment Iran's nuclear negotiator dismissed the threat of new sanctions in an interview released Friday.
Saeed Jalili said that Iran has "the right to uranium enrichment, and we will never give up this right," the German weekly Der Spiegel reported.
"We have lived with sanctions for 30 years, and they cannot force a great nation like the Iranian one to its knees," Jalili told Der Spiegel. "They do not scare us. On the contrary: we welcome new sanctions."
Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggested that Iran had little choice about disclosing the secret site ahead of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh.
"Iran undoubtedly announced it to the to the IAEA because they were afraid it would become known to the U.S. and others," he said.
Fitzpatrick said the disclosure "will add to the momentum behind a push for stronger sanctions on Iran" should the Oct. 1 talks in Geneva fail.
Jalili is to meet with European Unionforeign policy chiefJavier Solana, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns and representatives from Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
On Thursday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the Group of Eight is giving Iran until the end of the year to commit to ending uranium enrichment — a process that can produce fissile material for the core of a nuclear weapon — and avoid new sanctions.
The existence of a secret Iranian enrichment program built on black-market technology was revealed seven years ago. Since then, the country has continued to expand the program with only a few interruptions as it works toward its aspirations of a 50,000-centrifuge enrichment facility at Natanz.
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Mass. gov tells state workers not to do business with Hyatt after housekeepers fired. BOSTON (AP) -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Wednesday that he has instructed state employees to stop doing business with Hyatt hotels until it rehires 100 housekeepers it fired last month.
Hyatt Hotel Corp., citing declining revenues, laid off the Boston-area housekeepers and replaced them with lower-paid workers from a Georgia company.
In a letter to Hyatt, Patrick criticized the layoffs, citing reports that fired workers trained their replacements after being told they were vacation fill-ins.
He urged Hyatt to work with staffers, rather "than tossing them out unceremoniously."
Hyatt, in a statement, said that like many other businesses it has been forced to make difficult staffing decisions. The company said it offered the laid-off workers severance, counseling, retraining and health coverage to year's end.
Patrick met with about 30 of the workers at a union hall Wednesday night.
"I know these are tough economic times but there is a right way and a wrong way to do things and this was wrong," the governor said following the private meeting.
Serandou Kamara, 32, said she had worked five years at the hotel cleaning rooms and told Patrick how upset she was at the way she was let go.
"We are human beings. What they did to us was wrong," said Kamara, who has three children and is expecting a fourth.
Patrick acknowledged that his own administration has been forced to cut jobs due to a budget shortfall, but said he never misled state workers or asked them to train their replacements.
In its statement, Hyatt said the governor's threatened boycott of the hotel would endanger the livelihoods of 600 other employees who live and work in Massachusetts.
"We do not understand why the Governor is putting more Massachusetts jobs at risk instead of working with us to find jobs for employees affected by the realities of these unprecedented economic challenges," the company said.
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Given the hyper-sexualized advertising that Abercrombie & Fitch has long embraced, it is no surprise that the company encourages its employees to let their hair down. But is the company practicing discrimination if it won't hire a young woman who covers her head for religious reasons? Yes, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Last week the EEOC filed suit against Abercrombie on behalf of Samantha Elauf, a 19-year-old community college student from Tulsa, Okla., who is Muslim.
The suit alleges that Abercrombie "refused to hire Ms. Elauf because she wears a hijab, claiming that the wearing of the headgear was prohibited by its Look Policy," or employee dress code. The suit says that Abercrombie "failed to accommodate her religious beliefs by making an exception to the Look Policy. These actions constitute discrimination against Ms. Elauf on the basis of religion." (See pictures of being Muslim in America.)
Elauf, who had experience working in retail, interviewed for a position at a Tulsa Abercrombie Kids store in June 2008. During the interview, she wore a black hijab, or headscarf, in line with Muslim religious tradition. According to the EEOC, Elauf got word through a friend, who worked in the store, that the headscarf cost her the job. The EEOC alleges that during its investigation, Abercrombie & Fitch flatly told the agency, in a position statement, that "under the Look Policy, associates must wear clothing that is consistent with the Abercrombie brand, cannot wear hats or other coverings, and cannot wear clothes that are the color black." Elauf is suing for back pay and compensation related to emotional pain and anxiety.
"If these allegations are true," says Chuck Thornton, deputy director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, "they are serious. In this day and age, it's not acceptable. Certainly, a headscarf is part and parcel of the Islamic experience." (Read "How to Reach Teens in a Recession? Ask A[a {e}]ropostale.")
When contacted for a response, Abercrombie & Fitch issued the following statement: "We cannot comment on pending litigation. We have a strong equal-opportunity policy, and we accommodate religious beliefs and practices when possible. We are confident that the litigation of this matter will demonstrate that we have followed the law in every respect."
Was Abercrombie & Fitch within its rights to enforce its dress code? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits religious discrimination. "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire .... any individual ... because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin," the law states. The key language, says Stewart Schwab, an employment lawyer and dean of Cornell Law School, is found in a 1972 amendment to Title VII. This amendment defined "religion.
" It reads, "The term 'religion' includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate an employee's or prospective employee's religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business."
This case could hinge on a jury's interpretation of the phrase "undue hardship." If Abercrombie & Fitch had made an exception of its Look Policy for Elauf - a "reasonable accommodation" - would that move have hurt the Abercrombie brand? On the surface, that argument seems specious, at best.
Would shoppers at that Abercrombie Kids store have been so jarred by the hijab that they wouldn't have bought the company's jeans? If the company makes that case, it doesn't think much of the religious tolerance of the good folks of Oklahoma. (Read "Abercrombie & Fitch: Worst Recession Brand?")
Still, this case is far from a lock for Elauf. "You can't give a blanket statement that this clearly violates her rights," says Schwab. "Employers often win cases involving dress codes. There's a general feeling that employers are entitled to set an image in their stores." If a company sells sex - you can sometimes find a shirtless male model hanging out in front of Abercrombie stores - let's face it, head coverings aren't ideal.
No matter how the suit turns out, Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't need another headache. The company just announced more dismal sales figures: August same-store sales declined 29%. In 2004, the EEOC sued Abercrombie for limiting its hiring of minorities; that case was settled for $50 million.
A British woman sued the company for discrimination after Abercrombie's management allegedly shunted her to the stockroom for wearing a cardigan to cover her prosthetic arm. In August, a tribunal awarded her nearly $15,000. The EEOC has also sued Hollister, a teen retailer owned by Abercrombie, for allegedly firing a Pentecostal worker who asked to dress more modestly. That case is still pending.
As for Elauf, she is under attorney's orders to keep quiet about the case. But her grandfather, Ata Elauf, is clearly irked. "They put a wedge into her Americanism," says Elauf. "She grew up here speaking the language, going to school. Why did they do this? She's sort of confused."
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ISLAMORADA, Fla. – It's easy to see why bookkeeper Linda Mortimer moved to the Florida Keys 20 years ago: the impossibly blue water, the year-round sunshine, a lifestyle so laid-back that every day is like a Jimmy Buffett lyric.
What Mortimer didn't anticipate was falling in love — and then getting divorced less than two years after taking her wedding vows.
"I discovered after we got married that my husband had been divorced four times," said Mortimer, as she finished a noontime burger while sitting at the bar at the Ocean View, a local party spot and Mortimer's place of employment.
"I was his No. 5. He didn't understand why I got so upset."
Divorce is as common in the Florida Keys as fresh grouper and cold beer. Census statistics released this week show that Monroe County — which includes the cluster of 1,700 islands floating off South Florida — has the second-highest proportion of divorced residents. A little more than 18 percent of the people living in Monroe County are divorced, second only to Indiana's Wayne County, which had 19 percent. Nationwide, 10.7 percent of people over 15 are divorced.
Three of the top 10 counties the divorced call home are in Florida — rural Putnam County in Northeast Florida and urban Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast are the other two. Indiana had a total of three counties in the top 10 as well. Along with Wayne County, Floyd and Madison counties made the list.
Newly released census figures show that while the number of unmarried people continued its 10-year climb, the ranks of married people in the United States rose by nearly 6 million last year, bucking a decade-long decline. The number of divorced people rose, but only slightly.
Among the other marriage- and divorce-related findings from the census data:
• The number of unmarried people climbed to about one-third of all Americans over 15.
• Oklahoma has the highest rate of people who have been married three times or more.
• Utah and Idaho tied for the youngest median bride age, at 23.5 years old.
Residents of Wayne County, Ind., don't see why their home should be the divorce capital of America. The water tower in Richmond, Ind., the county's largest city, welcomes visitors to "A Great All-American City."
"It just doesn't make all that much sense," said Michael Jackson, an associate professor of psychology at Earlham College, a private university in Richmond. "We find it really questionable. It just sounds funny."
Indiana is one of a handful of states that don't track divorce statistics. So it's hard to tell if the percentage is caused by a large number of divorces or a large number of young single people moving out of the county to attend college, or if it's just a statistical anomaly.
Divorce counselors say the economy could be partly to blame for adding more stress to marriages. Indiana has been hit hard by the collapse of the auto and manufacturing industries. Wayne County had an average annual unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in 2008 — when the census data was collected — a rate above the state average at the time but still below many other areas of the state and country.
Tom Amyx, who owns a deli along Richmond's main street, said bad financial times shouldn't be a reason for married couples to split. He just celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary with his wife, Sherry, and says couples should tough out hard times. He said attitudes have changed about marriage, with some younger people considering it a less-than-permanent relationship that they can escape if they aren't happy.
"It's not ever about the other person anymore; it's about me, me, me," he said. "People need to make a commitment and stick to the commitment. It's not just a promise — it's a covenant. That's a very serious thing."
Amyx, who has lived in several other states, sees no reason Wayne County would top the list.
"We don't have that many people in the county," he said, "but evidently they get around."
Some folks in the Florida Keys are quick to say that it's not that people are actually divorcing in droves there — it's that divorced people come to the area to start new lives.
"The Keys are a great place to hide," said Mortimer, who is 60. When asked from what, she said: "Child support. Alimony."
A guy sitting next to Mortimer at the Ocean View bar finished his martini in a plastic cup. His chuckle nearly drowned out the Creedence Clearwater Revival song playing on the radio.
"The IRS. The CIA. Family," he said.
Others say that the party lifestyle — and a high cost of living — stresses families to the breaking point.
"This is a place of escape. A place of hedonistic abandon," said Dr. Fred Covan, a Key West therapist. "We have a condition here, we say people get Key Wasted. People come down here and do really, really stupid stuff."
Alcohol was named as a frequent culprit. People in Nevada, which at 14 percent had the highest divorce rate of any state, gave similar reasons.
Frank Lin, a divorce attorney whose firm, Lin & Associates, uses the phone number 702-DIVORCE, said Nevada laws, a 24/7 Sin City environment rich in temptation and other marriage hurdles probably combine to lead to more divorces.
"One of our clients was a bartender at the Palms and he started seeing a cocktail waitress at the Playboy Club. When I go to work, I don't have cocktail waitresses in high heels showing cleavage," Lin said. "He does — that's part of sort of his daily environment."
The most popular ad campaign in recent years promoting Las Vegas to tourists is "What happens here, stays here," and several party planners sell special divorce parties, offering the recently unmarried a guys' or girls' night out on the town.
But casino and nightclub employees aren't the only ones feeling marriage pressures, Lin said, because the rest of Las Vegas works a 24-hour cycle, too. Affairs aren't the only reason people get divorced here, he said.
"If both parties work 9-to-5 jobs, you see each other. But if one party works 9-to-5 and the other party works swing or graveyard, it's not an environment conducive to a marriage," Lin said.
Nevada's laws make it easier to get divorced compared with other states. Couples need only live in the Silver State six weeks before their marriage can be dissolved, while other states require longer residency and a cooling-off period.
Key West divorce lawyer Jiulio Margalli has noticed another trend among couples who are divorcing on the island paradise.
"What we have now is people getting divorced and fighting over who is going to take over the debt. Who's going to be saddled with the $800K mortgage that neither one could pay?" he said. "It used to be that we saw people get divorced and fight over the home. Now it's, 'Oh, my God, not only are we getting divorced, our credit is going down the tubes and we're going into foreclosure.'"
Regardless of the cause, having nearly 20 percent of the population divorced is cause for concern, said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
"It's basically a social and environmental toxin," Wilcox said of divorce.
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