Billy Currington posts bail after threat charges

Country music star Billy Currington lives in Nashville, Tennessee, but is a native of Rincon, Georgia.Billy Currington turned himself in to authorities Thursday, the district attorney's office saysCurrington allegedly threatened bodily harm against a boat captain in GeorgiaThe 70-year-old boat captain told police he feared for his life after the incidentCurrington's country hits include "People Are Crazy" and "That's How Country Boys Roll"

(CNN) -- Country singer Billy Currington -- charged with threatening a charter boat captain who the performer allegedly thought sped too fast by his dock in coastal Georgia -- turned himself in to authorities, a district attorney's spokesman said.

Currington, 39, was released on bail a few hours after arriving at the sheriff's department in Chatham County, Georgia, on Thursday afternoon, county district attorney's spokesman Daniel Baxter said.

A grand jury in Savannah handed up a two-count indictment Wednesday accusing Currington of terroristic threats for allegedly threatening bodily harm against Charles Harvey Ferrelle last week. An elder abuse charge was included because Farrelle is 70 years old.

The police report, obtained by CNN affiliate WSAV, says Ferrelle filed a criminal complaint saying "he feared for his life" after Currington screamed at him and followed him in a boat.

Ferrelle, a charter boat captain, was giving a boat tour around Tybee Island, Georgia, when he passed by Currington's property on April 15, the report said. Currington yelled at the boat from shore and then jumped in his own boat and followed as Ferrelle went to his slip at a nearby dock, it said.

Currington threatened that "he was going to f--k Mr. Ferrelle up," the police report said.

"If I hadn't gotten into my slip fast enough, I believe he would have run me over," Ferrelle told an investigator.

Currington and his representatives did not immediately respond to CNN requests for comment. But the singer posted a message to fans through his Twitter account: "hey guys, I wanted to thank everyone for the huge amount of support that I have received already. Unfortunately, I can't comment on this situation as this is an ongoing legal matter. It means a lot to me to have your support during this time."

Although Currington resides primarily in Nashville, he is a native of Rincon, Georgia, which is about 35 miles inland from Tybee Island.

Currington's hit country songs include "Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right," "Good Directions," "People Are Crazy," "That's How Country Boys Roll," "Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer," and "Let Me Down Easy."

CNN's Alan Duke, Denise Quan and Jane Caffrey contributed to this report.

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Country artist indicted on terroristic threat charges

Billy Currington and his band perform at the 2010 Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, California.Billy Currington allegedly threatened bodily harm against an elderly man"I can't comment on this situation as this is an ongoing legal matter," Currington tweetsCurrington's country hits include "People Are Crazy" and "That's How Country Boys Roll"

(CNN) -- Country singer Billy Currington is a wanted man, indicted on charges of making terroristic threats and the abuse of an elderly person by a Georgia grand jury.

The indictment accused Currington, 39, of threatening bodily harm against Charles Harvey Ferrelle in Tybee Island, Georgia, on April 15.

The elder abuse charge was included because Farrell is older than 65, the indictment said.

A Savannah judge issued a bench warrant for Currington's arrest after the indictment was handed up by a Chatham County grand jury that "found sufficient evidence" against him, District Attorney Meg Heap said Wednesday.

The prosecutor did not give any other details about the allegations.

Currington and his representatives did not immediately respond to CNN requests for comment, although the singer did post a message to fans through his Twitter account: "hey guys, I wanted to thank everyone for the huge amount of support that I have received already. Unfortunately, I can't comment on this situation as this is an ongoing legal matter. It means a lot to me to have your support during this time."

While it is unclear if there is a connection, Currington tweeted this two days after the alleged incident: "harrassing artists often at their home by boat should be illegal. thas all i know."

Although Currington mostly lives in Nashville, he is a native of Rincon, Georgia, which is about 35 miles inland from Tybee Island.

Currington's hit country songs include "Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right," "Good Directions," "People Are Crazy," "That's How Country Boys Roll," "Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer," and "Let Me Down Easy."

CNN's Denise Quan and Jane Caffrey contributed to this report.

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Chavez: Venezuela is no threat, Obama is a 'good guy'

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez denied on Friday that Venezuela was a threat to anyone, after U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama for playing down the risk posed by the socialist leader.

Obama told a Spanish-language television station in an interview screened this week that Chavez's actions over recent years had not had a serious impact on the national security of the United States.

Romney said Obama's comments were "stunning and shocking" and showed a pattern of weakness in the Democratic president's foreign policy.

In an interview with a local Venezuelan television station on Friday, Chavez dismissed the allegations he posed any danger.

"The Venezuela of today is no threat to anyone," he said.

"It has all been a hoax by the imperialists and global far right: that uranium is being enriched in Venezuela, that we're setting up missiles here, that we're supporting terrorism."

Whenever there were efforts to improve relations between Washington and Caracas, Chavez said, they were criticized by powerful "snipers" who issued threats in the U.S. media.

Chavez, whose stridently anti-Washington politics are highly popular in his OPEC nation, has expanded ties with Iran while the United States and other nations have increased their pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Iran denies Western charges it wants to build nuclear weapons. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Caracas in January, he and Chavez lavished praise on each other, mocked U.S. disapproval and joked about having an atomic bomb.

Late last year Obama told a Venezuelan newspaper the United States had no intention of intervening in Venezuela's foreign relations - but he believed the government's ties with Iran and Cuba had not benefited the Venezuelan people.

TWO CANDIDATES

With both Chavez and Obama running for re-election this year, Chavez struck a conciliatory tone, saying the latest comments by his U.S. counterpart needed to seen in context.

"Obama is campaigning. He's a candidate. I hope the real revolutionaries understand well. I think that Barack Obama - aside from 'the president' - is a good guy," he said.

Chavez is trying to appeal to the third of Venezuelans who may not have decided yet who to vote for in the October 7 election, when he will seek a new six-year term despite undergoing three cancer operations in Cuba over the last year.

That means being more moderate. Chavez also cited his friendship with Juan Manuel Santos, the conservative leader of neighboring Colombia, as proof of his benign influence on Latin American affairs.

"The president of Colombia has said it, twice: Chavez is a factor of stability for the region, a factor of peace, a facilitator of integration. That is Chavez's role."

Obama's campaign team has accused Romney, the likely Republican nominee in the November 6 election, of playing into the Venezuelan president's hands by giving him the international attention he wanted.

Chavez frequently lauds Fidel Castro's communist-led revolution in Cuba, and Romney's comments could cheer Cuban-American voters in Florida, where many oppose Castro and Chavez.

There was a window to improve ties between Caracas and Washington after Obama took office in 2009 and promised more engagement with foes. Chavez toned down his tirades against the "Yankee empire" and shook hands with Obama at a summit.

But within months, Chavez said the U.S. leader was disillusioning the world by following his predecessor George W. Bush's foreign policies, and he cranked up his rhetoric again.

On Friday, Chavez said Obama's troubles began with that handshake. "They fell on him: saying he's a socialist, a communist. ... The personal war against Obama started, including looking for a way to get him out of office by any means."

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore; editing by Mohammad Zargham and Todd Eastham)

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Uzbek man gets more than 15 years for Obama threat

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — An Uzbek man who came to America pursuing an Ivy League medical degree but wound up working seven days a week at a mall kiosk in Alabama was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison Friday for plotting to kill President Barack Obama.

U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon imposed the sentence on Ulugbek Kodirov, 22. He had faced up to 30 years in prison.

Written and oral court pleadings showed Kodirov, whose parents are professionals who worked for the government in his native Uzbekistan, was accepted to study medicine at Columbia University in New York but never enrolled because his English was too poor.

He later moved to Alabama for a job and worked at the massive Riverchase Galleria in suburban Hoover, where the defense said he used his laptop and free wi-fi service to connect with extremists who turned him against the United States.

Wearing an orange jail uniforms and leg chains, Kodirov apologized in halting English.

"I am truly sorry for every mistake that I have done," he told the judge.

Defense attorney Lance Bell argued that Kodirov — who had the equivalent of a nursing degree in his native country before he moved to New York — had accepted responsibility for his actions and was trying to straighten out his life. He said Kodirov wasn't "a big, bad terrorist."

"I'm not calling him a victim, but he's a victim to a degree of social media," Bell said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Whisonant said Kodirov would have tried to kill Obama and a foreign group would have taken credit had he not been arrested a year ago.

"This case is an example of how our youth can be radicalized by the propaganda and lies on the Internet," Whisonant told the judge.

Kodirov pleaded guilty in February to threatening to kill the president, providing material support to terrorism and unlawfully possessing a firearm. He said he came up with the plan to kill Obama as he campaigned for re-election after communicating over the Internet with a man he believed to be a member of an Uzbek Islamic group the United States classifies as a terrorist organization.

Members of the Islamic community in Birmingham helped in the case against Kodirov, prosecutors said.

A complaint said Kodirov contacted an unidentified person trying to buy weapons in early July 2011, and that person became a confidential source for the government. Accompanied by the witness, Kodirov purchased a Sendra M115A1 automatic rifle from an undercover agent at a Birmingham-area motel and made a final threat against the president, authorities said. The agent also gave Kodirov four hand grenades with the powder removed.

Authorities said Kodirov was in the country illegally because he obtained a student visa but never enrolled in school. He faces deportation after his release; Bell said he could be killed when he returns home for his actions.

The defense argued Kodirov was lonely and turned to the Internet for entertainment and companionship after moving to Alabama, where few people speak his native language. He was able to communicate with other believers in Islam over his laptop computer, they said.

A sentencing memorandum submitted by his defense attorney said Kodirov began viewing jihadist websites and YouTube videos. After communicating with Muslim men, "came to the belief that Americans were killing his people in cold blood."

"Ulugbek then developed an anti-American attitude along with losing trust in Americans," said the document. Kodirov's beliefs changed after his arrest when he learned when he learned stories he had been told were lies, Bell argued.

Located in central Asia, Uzbekistan and was once part of the former Soviet Union. It is slightly larger than California and the vast majority of its population is Muslim.

Islamic terrorists have been linked to sporadic violence in the country for more than a decade, according to the State Department.

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The Biggest Threat to Deficits (The Motley Fool)

Earlier this year, Rep. Paul Ryan released a budget proposal offering a best-of-both-worlds promise: Taxes can be cut and the budget can be balanced without massive, immediate spending cuts.

How? Assume the unemployment rate will fall to 2.8%, and effectively stay there forever.

The awkward assumption turned heads, but it also highlighted two important points: A forecast can say whatever you want it to if you use the right assumptions, and the unemployment rate is one of the most important variables in any budget forecast.

"Why" is simple. When unemployment rises, tax revenue falls as fewer workers pay income taxes and business profits drop. Spending also jumps as the costs of unemployment benefits and food stamps rise. Add the two together, and increasing unemployment has been one of the largest contributors to the yawning federal budget deficit in recent years. When comparing 2007's budget deficit with today's figures, roughly half of the increase comes from lower tax revenue and higher unemployment benefits. It's a big deal.

And think about it: If unemployment has been one of the biggest factors affecting the budget deficit over the past few years, it will undoubtedly be one of the biggest factors over the coming years.

That's where things could get hairy. The budget-deficit forecasts over the next 10 years are bad enough: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a cumulative deficit of about $7 trillion over the next decade.

But that projection assumes the unemployment rate will fall to around 5% by 2015 and stay there for the rest of the decade. Sure, that could happen. But it's not hard to make the case that unemployment may stay much higher (more on that in a second). If it does, throw current forecasts out the window. Future deficits will be astronomically higher than now expected.

The CBO used to calculate the effect a 1% change in unemployment could have on budget deficits, but it stopped about a decade ago when deficits turned into surpluses (the focus then became how to spend more and take in less, in contrast to today). Adjusting those old estimates to account for today's larger economy, you get a very rough, frightening, estimate: Every 1% increase in the unemployment rate could add about $200 billion a year to the budget deficit. Over a decade, we're talking trillions of dollars.

Here's another way to think about it: At current estimates, the CBO assumes that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP will equal about 20% in 2015, up from about 15% today. That 5% increase is based almost entirely on the idea that unemployment will fall dramatically. If it doesn't, every 1 percentage point they're off by adds $180 billion a year to deficits. Tack on the same amount for higher unemployment benefits.

Bottom line: A crude, back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if unemployment averages 7% between 2012 and 2021 -- instead of the 5.2% currently projected -- the budget deficit could be $2 trillion to $4 trillion higher than now envisioned.

Why might unemployment stay that high? The economy is awful, for one, and the history of post-financial-crisis recessions shows it tends to stay awful for years as consumers and businesses pay down debt.

But it's much more than that. The 5% unemployment figure the CBO predicts we will revert to is in line with what used to be our economy's "natural" unemployment rate, or the highest employment can get before inflation ramps up enough to spark a recession. When things improve, the unemployment rate usually gravitates toward 5% -- likely why the CBO picked the number.

But there's good reason to believe that the scars of the past three years have pushed that natural unemployment higher. Wharton professor Justin Wolfers recently noted that, in Europe, high unemployment tends to stick around for a generation. In America, it's typically been a short-term phenomenon. Why the difference? He explained:

"Typically in the United States, if you're unemployed you're unemployed for three months. You get back to work. You didn't lose many skills. In Europe, folks are unemployed for a year, two years.

"Today in the United States, people are starting to get unemployed six months and 12 months. They're losing contact with the world of work. And so the problem is that, even when the economy comes back, it's not clear that these folks are necessarily going to be in contact with the labor market, able to pick up jobs even when the economy generates them. ...

"I'm terrified that if we leave millions of people out there decreasingly engaged with the world of work, structural unemployment may become an American problem in ways it has been a European problem."

More than 6 million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer -- by far the largest proportion since the Great Depression. The longer these folks remain unemployed, the harder it will be for them to regain employment even when jobs return. Skills atrophy, potential employers look down on you, and morale drops to a point of hopelessness. Add to this that tomorrow's jobs increasingly require specialized skills, and a flatter world means competition for jobs transcends continents, and the employment future for millions of Americans is truly dreadful. Edmund Phelps, who won a Nobel Prize in economics, thinks the new natural rate of unemployment is closer to 7.5% than the old 5%.

Most deficit discussion centers around the fact that the current projections are bad, and we need to take steps to make them better. That might be the wrong perspective. The projections are bad, and the top priority might be ensuring they don't get worse. Anyone in Washington serious about deficits over the next 10 years would focus on one thing and one thing only: jobs.

Check back every Tuesday and Friday for Morgan Housel's columns on finance and economics.

Fool contributor TMFHousel. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Home building rises, foreclosures a threat (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. home building and permits for future construction rebounded strongly last month from February's weather-depressed levels, but a glut of housing on the market will make further gains difficult.

Housing starts rose 7.2 percent to an annual rate of 549,000 units from an upwardly revised 512,000-unit pace in February, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

The rise marked a bounce back after an 18.5 percent drop in February when severe winter weather restrained activity.

Although the increase beat Wall Street's expectations for a 549,000-unit pace, economists said it did not signal a decisive shift in construction, which continues to be dragged down by stiff competition from a flood of foreclosed properties.

"The rebound in housing starts in March does little to hide the fact that home building activity remains close to rock bottom," said Paul Dales, a senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

"With both the demand and need for new homes still very low, housing starts aren't going to enjoy a more meaningful recovery for a few years yet."

Residential construction accounts for about 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, and the latest data suggest it would do little, if anything, to lift the economy in the first quarter. Investment in home building grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2010.

Faced with a poor market, builders have shown little appetite to break ground on new projects. An index of builder sentiment in April, released on Monday, slipped a notch with builders viewing sales conditions now and in the next six months as unfavorable.

LIGHT AT END OF TUNNEL?

Housing starts have declined about 76 percent from their 2006 peak of 2.27 million units, but some economists see light at the end of the tunnel.

"Even though there remains a huge glut of unsold properties inhibiting construction activity, that glut is diminishing. There is a relative scarcity of new properties," said Richard DeKaser, an economist at Parthenon Group in Boston.

"Though used properties ... are super-abundant and are a very effective competitor for new properties ... some people put a premium on new homes and at some point that scarcity is likely to result in improved construction."

According to the National Association of Realtors, new home prices have been running 45 percent higher than prices for existing homes. That premium is historically about 15 percent, and the unusually wide spread indicates previously owned homes are currently selling well below the cost of construction.

U.S. financial markets were little moved by the data as investors focused on other issues ranging from solid earnings from banking giant Goldman Sachs to European debt worries and concern over the United States' credit outlook.

Groundbreaking for single-family homes rose 7.7 percent last month, while construction of multifamily units climbed 5.8 percent.

New building permits advanced 11.2 percent to a 594,000-unit pace last month, rebounding from a record low in February.

The rise in permits reflected a 25.2 percent jump in the multifamily segment to the highest level since January 2009, likely reflecting growing demand for rental properties.

Permits to build single-family homes rose 5.7 percent.

(Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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