Word: forte
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last week's bankruptcy hearing wore on -- in anticipation of PTL's corporate-reorganization plan due in October -- no fewer than 18 investigators from the Justice Department, the U.S. Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service pored over mountains of the ministry's financial records at its headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C. The officials were readying material for a federal grand jury hearing, scheduled to begin in Charlotte, N.C., on Aug. 17. The focus, according to sources close to the investigation: the possibility of criminal tax fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud by Jim Bakker and other PTL leaders...
...further. Within weeks of losing his grip on power at the Fort Mill ministry, Bakker began denouncing Falwell as a usurper. A solid core of Bakker loyalists at PTL apparently believes him. One complicating issue is that Falwell is a Fundamentalist, a group that rejects the faith healing and speaking in tongues practiced by the Pentecostal PTL faithful. Amid last week's emergency pitch for donations, Falwell disclosed an apparent plot by dissident PTL members to sabotage his fund-raising efforts. During the funding telethon, PTL lines were jammed by crank and obscene calls. Falwell eventually announced that no pledges...
...been supervising $300,000 worth of renovations to their Gatlinburg, Tenn., home, which they bought for $148,000. Hammer in hand, Bakker greeted two TIME correspondents at the house, high above the resort town in the Great Smoky Mountains. Both Jim and Tammy vowed either to return to Fort Mill or to begin their own ministry, perhaps in California. For an hour Bakker defended himself as a "visionary" who had a "dream to build something very special for God's people." He asked, "Even if Jim and Tammy did everything we're accused of, does that give Jerry Falwell...
...Army knows the deadly capability of viruses for biological warfare. That may be why military prosecutors are now among the first lawmen in the country to see the AIDS virus as a weapon and its willful transmission as a crime. At Fort Huachuca, Ariz., last week, Private First Class Adrian G. Morris Jr., a clerk-typist at the garrison headquarters, faced a court-martial on charges that include aggravated assault. Reason: Morris allegedly had sex with two soldiers, one male, one female, although he knew an Army screening had shown him to be an AIDS virus carrier...
...Mexican border. The lone survivor, Miguel Tostado Rodriguez, 21, told how he promised to pay $400 to a "coyote" (the term for smugglers who grow wealthy by sneaking Mexicans into the U.S.) for help in rafting the Rio Grande and hiding in a freight train headed for Fort Worth. All but two of his 18 companions had agreed to make similar payments. Those two were guides, working with the coyote...