Week in review

WESTCHASE WINS LIBRARY -- For nearly two years, Westchase residents lobbied hard for a new library in their community. Hillsborough County commissioners rewarded their work Wednesday, voting 7-0 to build a library along Countryway Boulevard.

"This is a great merry Christmas present," said a beaming Patricia Pekala of Westchase, treasurer of the Upper Tampa Bay Friends of the Library chapter.

The Library Advisory Board had recommended a site on Race Track Road, but commissioners were unsettled by the fact it was in a proposed industrial park on a busy highway.

The Countryway Boulevard site was a favorite among Westchase residents because the property is within the development.

County real estate officials negotiated a $799,000 sales price for the Race Track Road site. The developer would also save $110,000 in impact fees that it would otherwise have to pay the county.

The Westchase site was priced at $700,000, and the county would have had to pay an additional $234,000 in assessments to the Westchase taxing district. To sweeten the deal, Westchase Community Development District members recently voted to deannex the 7.6-acre property. In doing so, they saved the county $62,000 a year in taxing district fees.

AL-ARIAN TO BE DISMISSED -- University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft said Wednesday she will move immediately to fire suspended professor Sami Al-Arian, whom federal authorities have linked to terrorists. Genshaft said the firing, a rarity in higher education, has nothing to do with academic freedom because Al-Arian's public comments were unrelated to his academic specialty of computer engineering.

Rather, she said, Al-Arian violated his employment contract by failing to make clear that remarks made in off-campus speeches reflected personal views and not those of the university. He violated an agreement with USF administrators by returning to campus after being put on paid leave, she said. Al-Arian was banned from campus after he appeared in late September on the Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor. The show's report on his ties to terrorists -- allegations he has vehemently denied -- elicited hundreds of angry phone calls to USF and at least a dozen death threats.

Genshaft made her decision after USF's board of trustees met in an emergency session and recommended Al-Arian's firing.

"The university is under no obligation to ignore Dr. Al-Arian's disregard for the university's policies and the lawful directives of its administrators," said Thomas Gonzalez, a Tampa lawyer hired by the university.

He said Al-Arian's continued employment compromises campus security, disrupts the university's orderly operation, alienates alumni and damages fundraising. That was enough for most of the trustees, who voted 12-1 to recommend his immediate dismissal.

Al-Arian was born in Kuwait and educated in Egypt. He came to USF in 1986. A few years later, he helped found the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, an Islamic think tank that was based at USF until 1995, when it was raided by the FBI.

While never detained or charged with a crime, Al-Arian was a focus of a federal investigation in the mid 1990s, when agents suspected his think tank was a front for Middle Eastern terrorists. A former head of the organization, Ramadan Abdulah Shallah, later became the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization.

Imran Ismail, a leader in the Muslim Student Association at USF, said he doesn't think it is a coincidence that Wednesday's meeting was held after finals, when most students were gone.

"We would have had 100 students at the meeting in protest," Ismail said. "A lot of students -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- feel that he has been treated unfairly."

ANTHRAX HOAX IN LUTZ -- A 21-year-old man from a town near Gainesville has been charged in connection with an anthrax hoax after officials said he mailed an envelope packed with baby powder to a friend in Lutz. The envelope was intercepted Monday morning at the Lutz post office when some of the powder leaked, prompting emergency workers to briefly quarantine the area. About 70 postal workers and 14 customers were detained for about two hours.

Investigators said they had little trouble tracking the sender: He listed a return address on the envelope.

Alachua County sheriff's officials charged Eric Jerome Scott, 21, with the threatened use of a weapon of mass destruction, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Scott lives on the outskirts of Hawthorne, a small town off U.S. 301 about 14 miles east of Gainesville. He was released from the Alachua County jail on Thursday after posting $15,000 bail.

"This is a crime that is taken very seriously," Alachua sheriff's Sgt. Jim Troiano said. "Sending (white powder) through the mail is incredibly foolish -- even young kids know that."

Investigators said they contacted Scott at his home Tuesday afternoon, and he acknowledged sending the envelope, intending it as a practical joke. He turned himself in to Alachua County deputies.

The powder's discovery Monday morning attracted response teams from a half-dozen agencies to the post office at Sunset Boulevard and U.S. 41. "It's a very costly issue as far all of the people who responded, and it's a very traumatic issue as far as the people who were involved," said Ken Tucker, regional director for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "It keeps all those resources tied up and away from their jobs."

BILLBOARD DEEMED RACIST -- The advertising company thought the client wanted to display a tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center attack. Instead, the Lamar billboard rented near Florida and Fowler avenues contained a different message. "WTC, R.I.P. Stop immigration," it read, and gave the Web site address to the National Alliance, a white supremacy group.

A Lamar official said his company was not aware of the billboard's content until being contacted by a reporter, and that displaying the message was a mistake. "I would never have allowed that board to go up had I known it said that," said Jim Maskas, general manager for Lamar Advertising in Lakeland.

Hours later, the billboard was bare.

"To exploit that tragedy, it's just reprehensible," said H. Roy Kaplan, executive director for the National Conference for Community and Justice.

William Pierce, who founded the National Alliance in 1974, said his group was merely trying to raise awareness that the immigration laws in the United States need to be changed.

LIVINGSTON BODY IDENTIFIED -- A man whose body was found in the trunk of his burning car three days after Thanksgiving has been identified as 31-year-old David Ratna Raju Rayi Jr. of Seffner. He was found dead in the trunk of his 1989 Oldsmobile Calais, which had been set ablaze at the entrance to an orange grove in Lutz.

Rayi worked for a mortgage company in St. Petersburg, authorities said. On Nov. 25, authorities received a cell phone call about 5:15 a.m. The caller reported a burning car on Newberger Road, west of Livingston Avenue. When county firefighters finished dousing the flames, they opened the trunk and found the body. Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder urged the public to call detectives if they have any information at 247-8200; or call Crime Stoppers at (800) 873-8477.

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