Aid pours into Haiti airport as relief workers struggle to distribute it

Desperate Haitians face a fifth day with little food, water or medical care as rubble and a ruined infrastructure prove a barrier to troops and rescue teams. Clinton arrives, meets with Preval.

By Tina Susman and Tracy Wilkinson and Mark Silva

January 17, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and Washington -- For the first time since a catastrophic earthquake shuddered across Haiti last week, there were real signs of relief Saturday, with U.S. helicopters ferrying emergency supplies from an aircraft carrier off the coast and bulldozers taking to the streets of Port-au-Prince to shove through mountains of debris.

But there also were signs of the immense problems ahead: the stench of decaying bodies rising from neighborhoods; the sprawling tent cities that have sprung up across the capital; the challenge of getting help to people in the face of the breathtaking scale of destruction and need.

U.S. officials made a concerted push Saturday to show support for the survivors of a disaster that may have left more than 100,000 people dead.

In Washington, President Obama met with his two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, whom he has designated to lead a massive private fundraising effort for Haiti.

"These two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and the world," Obama said of the former presidents flanking him in the Rose Garden. "In a moment of need, the United States stands united."

Hours later, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Haiti aboard a flight that carried an aid shipment. She is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the impoverished Caribbean nation since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake left its capital in ruins.

On a field near Port-au-Prince's airport with a view of the runway, small crowds of Haitians watched as U.S. military helicopters landed.

The airport was a frenetic hive of activity as flights arrived carrying search-and-rescue teams and cargo varying from forklifts to earth-moving equipment to food and medical aid. Crowds of civilians lined up for hours to catch charter flights out.

The U.S. military has a history of coming into Haiti at times of crisis, raising hopes among its citizens that their bedraggled country somehow will miraculously be transformed with new jobs and development and long-term security -- hopes that went unfulfilled time after time.

Nevertheless, this time there appeared to be a genuine desire to see U.S. forces come back -- but perhaps again with unrealistic expectations of the U.S. role. Scrawled in black letters across a concrete slab amid rubble was a greeting and plea: "Welcome the U.S. Marines. We need some help."

"We want them to rebuild the nation," said Charlme Prevenel, a teacher, who seemed certain that it was just a matter of days before U.S. troops were on the streets to control traffic, rebuild broken schools and hospitals, and create jobs.

"In the past, they came to take power. This time, they are coming to help," Prevenel said as a chopper thundered.

Haitian officials have said the death toll could exceed 100,000 and might reach twice that number. On Saturday, the State Department confirmed the deaths of 15 U.S. citizens: a diplomat and 14 private individuals, according to the Associated Press.

The United Nations said that the body of Haiti mission chief Hedi Annabi had been found in the rubble of its headquarters, which collapsed during the earthquake.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the bodies of Annabi's deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, and the acting police commissioner, Doug Coates, had also been found.

Rescuers digging in the rubble still held out hope of finding survivors, despite the dwindling odds. U.S. officials said search-and-rescue operations would continue over the weekend, even as the focus was shifting to humanitarian relief.

The Pentagon reported that as of Friday night, 4,200 U.S. military personnel were supporting task force operations, within Haiti and from Navy and Coast Guard vessels offshore. An additional 6,300 military personnel were scheduled to arrive through the weekend.

In Port-au-Prince, Secretary of State Clinton met with Haitian President Rene Preval and other leaders to discuss the emergency response.

Clinton said she and Preval agreed to work closely on relief work and restoring basic services, such as telecommunications, electricity and transportation. She said the two would issue a joint statement today outlining what comes next.

In remarks directed to the Haitian people, Clinton said, "We are here at the invitation of your government to help you. As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead."

With an atmosphere of desperation in Port-au-Prince, and reports of scattered looting and mob violence, Obama counseled patience as the international relief effort moves forward.

"There's going to be fear, anxiety, a sense of desperation in some areas," Obama said. But, he added, "we are going to be making slow and steady progress."

Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, have established a website -- www.clintonbushhaitifund.org -- to collect contributions from Americans and donors around the world.

Bush, who was widely criticized for his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, urged Americans to give money, saying it was the most effective answer to the immediate crisis.

"I know a lot of people want to send blankets and water -- just send your cash," Bush said. He promised to make sure "that your money is spent wisely."

As for Clinton, who is also the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, he said the earthquake would require expanding plans for long-term rehabilitation that were already underway. The U.N. has estimated that the quake damaged or flattened up to half of the buildings in hard-hit areas.

But the short-term challenge of moving people and huge aid shipments into the city through the damaged airport was proving daunting enough.

Aid groups looked for detours around the overwhelmed airport, with one runway, and quake-damaged seaport. Some were shuttling supplies overland from the neighboring Dominican Republic, but roads are poor and the going slow.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Dustin Doyle said the Air Force had taken charge of the airport to ensure that planes unloaded their cargo quickly, and then took off again to allow more planes in. France lodged a protest after two relief flights were turned away by U.S. air traffic controllers, the Associated Press reported.

"The first few days some planes just couldn't land" because of the crowded tarmac and lack of control, Doyle said. From here on, Doyle said, the U.S. Army will oversee moving the materials to a staging point either within the airport premises or somewhere nearby. From that point, he said, aid agencies will pick them up for distribution.

"We're not going to just induce rioting by taking supplies and dropping them somewhere," Doyle said. "We want everything now, now, now too, but it's just that sometimes these things take time."

But what Doyle dismissed was exactly what people outside the airport wanted to happen.

Luciana Hasboun suggested that police and U.S. troops could deliver supplies directly to the population through local committees. Leaving it to aid agencies to set up distribution sites would be a problem for the elderly and injured, and lead to fighting among Haitians for the goods, Hasboun said.

Jean Maxime Paulroc agreed, saying, "The people are crooked. The [local aid] organizations are crooked.

"They always say if someone wants something to get done, they prefer the U.S. Marines to the U.N."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-quake17-2010jan17,0,1514429,print.story

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In Haiti, many injuries beyond repair

The injured wait in the heat outside a damaged hospital in Port-au-Prince. Medical teams working in terrible conditions must take drastic measures with crushed limbs.

By Tracy Wilkinson

January 17, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

In a small stucco pavilion built as a urology clinic -- one of the few buildings in the hospital complex deemed structurally sound -- patient after patient was wheeled into the makeshift operating room on an old bed Saturday. Workers doused the walls with disinfectant as a couple of nurses prepped the wounded and gave them a bit of anesthesia. Then out came the saws.

The work was amputations.

On the grounds of the heavily damaged General Hospital, a mass of injured people, some with crudely severed limbs, moaned or stared vacantly as they waited for care by a team of Haitian and foreign doctors.

Oda Mukkuaka, a Haitian surgeon who has worked at Port-au-Prince's General Hospital for four years, helped guide the saw across the shin of a 40-year-old woman who had lost her foot after she was hit by falling debris.

Using a headlamp like those worn by miners because there was no electricity, surgical scrubs tied around his waist in the heat, Mukkuaka cleared away tissue. Once the cutting was done, he swiftly pushed metal wire into the skin, sewing shut a pocket-like fold to form the end of her stump.

Somewhat remarkably, given the nature of the work and the magnitude of the disaster, Mukkuaka, 35, seemed to take the grueling two-hour surgery in stride.

"We are used to working in a harsh environment because we are in Haiti," he said, citing shortages of supplies and the population's precarious existence. "The difference this time is the volume."

Haitian doctors seemed largely missing in action in the first days after the quake. Clinics and hospitals, if not destroyed, were mostly shuttered.

A small group of physicians continued working at General Hospital, a group of two-story green and white buildings around a patch of lawn, but it was a triage that made "MASH" look like a medical boutique in Beverly Hills.

Georges Lamarre, a tall, gaunt general practitioner, was at home when the quake struck Port-au-Prince. Within two hours, he had made his way back to the hospital and started tending to the walking wounded who staggered in. First thing: He delivered the baby of a woman who had been pulled from a collapsed building.

By midnight, five doctors were working at General Hospital; by dawn, about 20. Many doctors had died, were missing or were absorbed with saving their own families.

"We had a lot of patients that first night, but the next day it was uncontrollable," said Lamarre, 35. Most of the patients bled to death, he said. There were no antibiotics or blood supplies. "Up to this moment, there are patients out there we haven't even touched."

They included Yolanda Gehry, who brought her baby, Ashleigh, to the hospital Tuesday night.

Four days later, a doctor came by and taped up the baby's head but had not yet treated her shattered hand. Ashleigh sat in her mother's lap, sobbing disconsolately, a bloodied bandage swaddling her left hand like a mitten.

"The Haitian doctors didn't have anything to help us, so we had to wait for the foreigners," Gehry said. "I am not angry. I am waiting."

On the trash-strewn hospital grounds, flies swarmed. The injured lay on thin mattresses on the ground or on rickety beds under awnings of plastic sheets held up by sticks to provide a bit of shade in the brutal heat. Most have been there since Tuesday. It's not safe to take them into damaged buildings.

Jule Lutheran said he thought that his goddaughter's arm might have been saved if she had gotten help sooner. The 26-year-old woman, Jean Orelis, lay on a cot, her arm crudely wrapped. "We depend on God and the doctors, so we can't be angry."

In the room where the surgeries were taking place, doctors cut the leg off a 7-year-old boy named Ulysses. As he awoke, he began to moan, then cry, "Oh God! Mes ami s !" Then his cries evolved into a singsong wailing as a doctor carried him away.

Several of the Haitian doctors seemed dazed and deeply fatigued. The operations did not begin in earnest until foreign medical teams, including the Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps, arrived Saturday with supplies.

In the operating room, tables and corners were stacked high with gauze, syringes, surgical gloves, rolls of tape, IV starter kits, scissors, scalpels and other supplies. One nurse said they were already running out of sutures.

"We always need basic materials to work with," said Lamarre, the general practitioner.

"In normal times, sometimes we don't have oxygen or medicines."

Even with the help, Lamarre remained doubtful that all the people outside the doors could be treated.

He was on his way to a surgery that would cut off a woman's legs at the thighs. There were so many amputations, he said, because of the nature of crush wounds and trauma.

What is this woman's future?

The doctor raised his eyebrows.

"In Haiti?" he asked.

"These people are finished."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-hospital17-2010jan17,0,4948674,print.story

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At Haiti roadblock, a lesson in power dynamics

Frustrated by the dumping of bodies in their area near the capital, young men block traffic on a key road. The plot swells with angry drivers, bribes, U.N. troops and even U.S. choppers.

By Joe Mozingo

January 17, 2010

Reporting from Carrefour, Haiti

They built the roadblock across the highway out of whatever they could find -- burning tires, the shell of a refrigerator, a rusty bed frame, a palm tree stump, a beaten-up camper shell and eight bodies, one in a makeshift coffin, another stuffed into a suitcase.

The young men of the Carrefour suburb of Port-au-Prince then furiously interrogated drivers Saturday about what they were carrying in their cars.

They were sick of people from the earthquake-wrecked capital dumping the dead on their streets in the middle of the night.

"There were only three people who died in this area," shouted Pierre Maxim, 21. "The next day we wake up and see bodies all over."

Roadblocks are common in Haiti, ranging in mood from tense civil disobedience to outright violence.

Saturday's played out over two hours in a way that demonstrated, in almost perfect form, the dynamics of power in the country and even highlighted Haitians' troubled love of Americans.

On a hot and cloudless morning, diesel exhaust and a fine cement powder cast a gray haze over the rutted strip of Route 2, a crucial artery out of Port-au-Prince lined by crumbling cinder-block storefronts.

Patron Wilfrenz, 28, said the young men who set up the roadblock were part of the "local brigade," which protects the neighborhood in the absence of any meaningful law enforcement presence.

Such groups, under a variety of names and with varying amounts of weaponry, were empowered by populist former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They are seen as either freedom fighters or street gangs, depending on one's point of view.

They have repeatedly shut down the country, most notably during the events leading up to Aristide's ouster in 2004 and the subsequent election in 2006. Although they have been quiet lately, no one believes that they cannot mobilize in an instant.

On Saturday, about 20 of the young men, with more than a hundred others watching, became gatekeepers to the entire southern part of the country.

Around 9 a.m., a contingent of United Nations peacekeepers prepared to break up the roadblock. The Sri Lankan soldiers, based in the nearby rural town of Leogane, pulled their trucks right up to the barrier of corpses and junk. Eight of the blue helmets, armed with assault rifles, got out and screamed back and forth with the unarmed men about removing it.

Drivers on both sides of the roadblock agreed with the peacekeepers. "Let it through!" shouted a man driving a truck. Someone dragged away the camper shell. Another man ran up and shoved it back. "Block it off!" he yelled.

The eight soldiers moved in with their rifles about 9:30 a.m., barking and gesturing to get the roadblock out of the way. They eventually kicked the camper shell aside, and a few cars and U.N. vehicles got through.

Then the local brigade moved it back.

The eight peacekeepers stood about 20 feet away looking perplexed and a bit concerned. One talked on a radio. Another snapped a picture with his camera.

Two U.S. Navy helicopters circled overhead.

There was much furious screaming and gesturing between the brigade and drivers. They didn't search the cars or trucks, but they did take cash. Those who paid got through.

A Toyota Land Cruiser blasted through, and ended up pushing the palm tree trunk away. The young men stopped the SUV and recovered the stump. The posturing and yelling and slipping of cash went on until about 10:15, when the two U.S. helicopters flew in low, approaching to land.

The giant gray Hueys came from the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. There was no sign from below of their intention: Were they delivering relief, or Marines?

The crowd began to run, but not away. Hundreds poured across the highway and down a rutted dirt road to a rocky field along the shore, where a collapsed blue sloop listed in the surf.

The prop wash from the landing choppers kicked up grit and small rocks. The people kept running. They piled up at each copter door as the rotors wound down, grabbing and shouting words that the crews surely didn't understand.

The Americans didn't fly off, or open fire. They handed out boxes of bottled water.

When they had finished, they told everyone to back away, which they did, and flew off.

"They came to save our lives," said Golen Parveles, a stout man in a faded golf shirt.

Americans have had a rough relationship with Haiti since the mountainous French colony became the second free republic in the New World after the United States. In modern history, Washington supported the brutal dictatorship of the Duvaliers as part of its Cold War chess game. And three U.S. administrations -- those of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- took an inconsistent approach to Aristide and the army and paramilitaries who successively ousted him.

Still, Haiti's hopes are always aimed at the U.S.

"After God, we believe in America," said Charles Anes Adams, 34, gratefully drinking some of his water under a mango tree.

Back at the roadblock, about 80 yards away, two Haitian SWAT officers arrived and persuaded the brigade to move. "One hour! If they don't come and get the dead bodies, we're going to war!" declared Sierre Stanley, 25. "It's been three days."

They took down the roadblock, for the time being.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-roadblock17-2010jan17,0,852077,print.story

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Are pilots flying beyond their limits?

Long shifts and multiple flights can take their toll, a pilot for a regional airline says. In recent years, fatigue has been cited as a likely factor in four crashes.

By Dan Weikel

January 17, 2010

Halfway through his 13-hour shift, the Pinnacle Airlines pilot was already tired. After landing in Indianapolis, he headed to the terminal to catch a quick nap during a three-hour layover.

Once there, he discovered that the waiting areas were jammed with passengers and there was no lounge for airline crews. So the pilot found a remote corner of the building and curled up on the floor, using his black uniform jacket as a pillow.

Although airline officials generally frown on the practice, the pilot said naps in terminals were one way to fight fatigue -- something that's important when you're at the controls of a $25-million aircraft with 50 passengers aboard.

"A regional jet can go more than 500 mph. Its approach speed is 160 mph," the pilot said. "When you're tired and the workload is high, you sometimes have to fight to stay alert. You ask air traffic control to repeat calls. You can forget things."

The account from the pilot highlights what federal safety officials and independent experts say is a persistent problem in U.S. aviation: pilot fatigue.

Seven of the last nine airline crashes in the United States have involved regional carriers, and pilot fatigue was likely a factor in at least four of those incidents, according to federal safety investigators.

The most recent accident involved a Colgan Air turboprop plane that crashed in Buffalo, N.Y., last February, killing 49 people aboard and one person on the ground.

Critics say the situation has been exacerbated by the airline industry's long slump, putting pressure on airlines to cut costs by forcing pilots to work longer hours.

The Pinnacle Airlines pilot spoke to The Times on the condition he not be identified for fear of reprisals.

The account he gave of a typical workday, however, was consistent with the depiction of conditions at regional air carriers contained in years of reports by the National Transportation Safety Board, testimony in congressional hearings and statements from outside analysts.

Philip H. Trenary, chief executive of Memphis-based Pinnacle Airlines Corp., said his company has striven to be a safety leader and has met or exceeded all regulations, including federal rest requirements for crews. As such, pilots are expected to be rested when they go to work.

"I can assure you that our 5,000 employees are dedicated to ensuring the safe transport of 13 million passengers annually," Trenary told Congress during testimony last summer. "Our No. 1 guiding principle is 'never compromise safety.' "

Even so, inadequate rest has been associated with 250 fatalities in air carrier accidents over the last 16 years, according to the NTSB. Although experts say fatigue also afflicts pilots at some major airlines, since 2002 seven of the last nine crashes in the United States have involved regional carriers -- two of them Pinnacle.

NTSB officials found that pilot fatigue probably contributed to three of the regional accidents and perhaps a fourth -- the Continental Connection's flight that crashed Feb. 12 in Buffalo. That plane was operated by Colgan Air Inc., which is owned by Pinnacle.

About 70 regional airlines operate in the United States, often in partnership with major carriers. For example, a passenger taking a typical Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Fresno would start out in a roughly 200-seat Boeing 757 jet, but switch at Delta's hub in Salt Lake City to a 50-seat Canadair jet operated by the regional airline SkyWest.

Other regional carriers in the West include Horizon Air, which like Alaska Airlines is operated by Alaska Air Group Inc.; American Eagle, a unit of American Airlines' parent company, AMR Corp.; and United Express, which is operated by United Airlines' parent, UAL Corp.

Pinnacle also partners with Delta and Northwest Airlines on flights to smaller airports in the East and Midwest. In 2008, it was the sixth-largest regional carrier in the nation, according to the Regional Airline Assn.

Getting off the ground

The pilot interviewed by The Times joined Pinnacle after working several years as a flight instructor and charter pilot. His starting pay as a first officer, or co-pilot, was $1,650 a month, plus benefits.

Last year, the pilot earned about $28,000 -- less than a typical Los Angeles bus driver. For that pay, he is often on duty 12 to 13 hours a day, four days a week, flying through the South and Midwest in a Bombardier CRJ 200 -- about half the size of a Boeing 737. He makes as many as 12 takeoffs and landings a day.

For him, the opportunity to fly for a regional carrier was a major accomplishment. It took years of training and an investment of $35,000 to obtain the necessary flight credentials. It also was a break for a young man who had dropped out of high school and joined the military, where he took college extension courses that would eventually lead to a bachelor of science degree.

" 'Awesome,' I thought to myself. I was gonna fly jets," he said. " 'I'll suck it up for a couple of years, pay my dues. Then life will be good.' I was naive."

His typical work week begins and ends with a commute of at least 1,600 miles between his apartment in California and one of the company's hubs in Minneapolis, Detroit, Memphis or Atlanta. Like other pilots, he has privileges that allow him to fly for free with other carriers.

Leaving home the night before he must report to work, he travels three to six hours, sometimes longer if he has to hop a red-eye. After arrival, he tries to sleep through the early morning on a reclining chair in a crew lounge, which big airports usually offer. About 45 minutes before getting to his plane, he cleans up and buys the first of three or four large coffees he will drink during the shift.

His daily schedule, which usually starts between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., often requires him to fly four to six flights a day. On his longest days, he works into the night, flying the last "push" from a terminal's gate. At the plane's destination, he grabs a few hours of sleep at a hotel before heading back to the airport at 4:30 or 5 the next morning to pilot another flight.

Following the rules

Federal Aviation Administration regulations state that during a 24-hour period, airline pilots can be on duty up to 16 hours but cannot fly more than eight. When a shift is over, airlines are required to provide eight to 12 hours of time off, depending on the hours flown.

Pinnacle shifts fall within these guidelines, company officials say, adding that their pilots regularly fly fewer hours and spend less time on duty per day than the maximums allowed. Although there are exceptions, on-duty hours are generally limited to 13.5 a day, they say, while the average time spent flying is 5.5 hours.

But sleep experts say that the federal limits fail to take into account the effects of flight delays, jet lag, increased workload, night flights and multiple flights during a shift. Pilots also work irregular hours -- sometimes starting in the middle of the night -- which can disrupt the body's natural sleep cycle.

The Pinnacle pilot says he has seen his co-workers take short naps or have trouble staying awake while in the cockpit. A 2008 study by NASA found that about 80% of regional pilots said they had nodded off during a flight.

John A. Caldwell, a Hawaii-based fatigue consultant who has worked for airlines, the armed forces and NASA, said pilots with long hours on duty can develop sleep deficits. The lack of rest can make it hard to perform even routine tasks and trigger a phenomenon known as micro-sleeps, nodding off from a fraction of second to several seconds.

Fatigue "is an epidemic type of problem," Caldwell said. "These guys really have a tough time. Most of the studies have involved pilots on long-range flights. But the regional guys make more landings and takeoffs a day. Their schedules are a lot more unpredictable. I'm sure it is a problem for [the pilot who spoke to The Times]."

The Pinnacle pilot said his pace was so demanding that he once took a day off because he felt too tired to fly. Two weeks later, management threatened a reprimand, he said, though company policy provides for fatigue days.

Pinnacle officials deny threatening any pilot and say that when someone reports being tired the company is non-punitive and gives them advice on how to reduce fatigue. However, in recent congressional testimony, John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Assn., said that about a third of Pinnacle's pilots report being reprimanded for illness and fatigue-related absences each year. Prater, an airline captain, said the figure was based on grievances and complaints from captains and first officers.

A smaller-carrier problem

Although there are regional airlines with less-demanding schedules for pilots, Prater said fatigue appears to be more of a problem for smaller carriers than major airlines because of more serious staff shortages and labor contracts that give companies more leeway to push their pilots.

The Pinnacle pilot says evidence of fatigue can be easily found in internal company bulletins that list the safety issues that pilots report to the FAA.

One recent bulletin reviewed by The Times noted an upward trend of pilots taking off without knowing their aircraft's weight and balance figures -- numbers crucial to the way stabilizers are adjusted on a plane's tail. Improperly set controls have caused crashes.

According to the bulletin, two pilots said they did not notice the missing information during preflight checks because they were fatigued after working shifts of 11 to 13 hours.

In a separate incident, two other Pinnacle pilots complained that they were tired before their plane ran off a runway in Traverse City, Mich., while landing in snowy weather in 2007. Although the regional jet was damaged, the passengers and crew were unhurt.

The NTSB concluded that fatigue probably contributed to the pilots' poor performance, including a failure to calculate how much runway would be needed to land in bad weather.

According to the cockpit voice recorder, about an hour away from the airport, the captain told the first officer that it was "too late for this."

"I'm tired dude, just . . . worn out," one of the pilots said, using an expletive.

The Pinnacle pilot said the flying public and pilots alike would be better off if airlines opened more crew lounges and added a couple of hours to mandatory rest periods. But he is not optimistic any of that will happen, given the fact that federally mandated rest rules have not changed since the 1940s.

"I used to love flying," the young man said. "I am good at what I do, but Pinnacle and the airline industry have sucked the passion out of it for me."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover17-2010jan17,0,5798307,print.story

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JFK terminal being evacuated after security breach

From the Associated Press

January 16, 2010

NEW YORK

A terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport was evacuated Saturday after someone opened a door to a secure area and set off an alarm, officials said.

The security breach apparently involved someone who left a first class American Airlines lounge at Kennedy's Terminal 8, opened a door that was supposed to be used only by airport workers and walked through.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Steve Coleman said it was unclear whether the person was a passenger. The breach, which happened before 3:30 p.m., was recorded by security cameras, he said.

The Transportation Security Administration said its agents and Port Authority police were searching for the person who opened the door.

All travelers at Kennedy's Terminal 8 had to leave the terminal so they could be re-screened. Terminal 8 handles both domestic and international flights for American Airlines.

A spokesman for the airline, Charley Wilson, said some flights were being delayed, and some planes were waiting on the tarmac for permission to proceed to their gates.

Wilson wasn't sure how long it would take to fully reopen the terminal.

The incident is the third evacuation in five months at airports that serve New York City.

A man was charged last week with breaching security at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Jan. 3. Flights were grounded for hours and passengers were re-screened while air safety officials searched for him.

A Rutgers University graduate student from China, Haisong Jiang, 28, was charged with trespassing in that incident. His arraignment is set for Jan. 28 in Newark.

In August, a terminal at LaGuardia airport was evacuated after police tackled a disturbed man who was carrying a device that looked like a bomb but turned out to be harmless.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-naw-jfk-security-breach17-2009jan17,0,1044037,print.story

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Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' gets new death sentence for Halabja attack

From the Associated Press

January 17, 2010

BAGHDAD

Saddam Hussein's cousin "Chemical Ali" was convicted today of crimes against humanity, receiving a death sentence for his involvement in one of the worst poison gas attacks against civilians -- one of several he faces.

Families of victims in court cheered when the judge handed down the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid in a trial for the poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

Al-Majid, whose nickname comes from his role in that attack, has already received three previous death sentences for atrocities committed during Saddam's rule, particularly in the government's campaigns against the Shiites and Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s.

Other officials in Saddam's regime received jail terms for their roles in the attack.

Former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie faces 15 years in prison, as does Iraq's former director of military intelligence, Sabir Azizi al-Douri.

Farhan Mutlaq al-Jubouri, a former top military intelligence official, was sentenced to 10 years.

The jail terms were handed down following guilty verdicts on charges that included crimes against humanity.

Nazik Tawfiq, 45, a Kurdish woman who said she lost six of her relatives in the attack came to court alone to hear the sentence. She fell to her knees and began to pray upon hearing the verdict against al-Majid.

"I am so happy today," Tawfiq said. "Now the souls of our victims will rest in peace."

The killings are a particularly sore point for Iraq's Kurds. Many people in Halabja still suffer physically from the effects of the nerve and mustard gas that were unleashed on the village at the end of the Iran- Iraq War.

Some survivors feel it was unfair that Saddam was hanged for the killings of Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt, but did not live to face justice for the Halabja attack.

An estimated 5,600 people were killed in the gassing of the town. The attack was widely seen as the biggest use of chemical weapons on civilians in history.

The man known as "Chemical Ali" was previously sentenced to hang for his role in a brutal crackdown against the Kurds in the late 1980s, known as the Anfal that killed hundreds of thousands.

Courts later issued separate death sentences for his role in the 1991 suppression of a Shiite uprising and for a 1999 crackdown that sought to quell a Shiite backlash to the slaying of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr.

The earlier death sentences against al-Majid have not been carried out because they are tied to a political dispute involving al-Taie, who was also sentenced to death along with Chemical Ali in the Anfal trial.

Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, have both refused to sign the execution order against al-Taie, who signed the cease-fire with U.S.-led forces that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Al-Taie is a Sunni Arab viewed by many as a respected career soldier who was forced to follow Saddam's orders in the purges against Kurds.

The three-member presidency council must approve all death sentences, and the failure to find agreement on al-Taie delayed the execution of al-Majid as well.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has pushed the presidency council to approve the death sentences pending against al-Majid and al-Taie.

Al-Taie surrendered to U.S. forces in September 2003 after weeks of negotiations. His defense has claimed the Americans had promised al-Taie "protection and good treatment" before he turned himself in.

Many Sunni Arabs saw his sentence as evidence that Shiite and Kurdish officials are persecuting their once-dominant minority, using their influence over the judiciary.

Another reason for the delay is that the Kurds from Halabja have also been pushing to have their day in court with al-Majid.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fgw-iraq-chemical-ali17-2010jan17,0,6346691,print.story

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EDITORIAL

A poor prison plan for California

Gov. Schwarzenegger's latest proposal combines a destructive budgeting formula with an untested theory about privatization.

January 17, 2010

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed shifting female inmates out of prisons to community detention centers in 2006, the Legislature said no. When he asked lawmakers the following year to approve $10.9 billion in bonds to build new prisons while also reforming sentencing laws and parole rules, they reduced the bond package and jettisoned the reforms. Last year, when he asked them to cut the prison budget by $1.2 billion, they fell about $200 million short. We don't blame the governor for being frustrated, but we do fault him for apparently giving up.

Schwarzenegger's latest prison plan, unveiled in his State of the State address earlier this month, is less a serious policy proposal than a hunk of red meat tossed out at voters who are understandably furious about cuts in education spending. It combines a deeply destructive budgeting formula with an untested theory about prison privatization. Yet, if there ever was a time when California needed its leaders to get serious about the prisons, it's now. The skyrocketing cost of administering the corrections system is helping to drive the state to the brink of financial collapse, even as the system's overcrowded conditions and abysmal medical care are violating federal law -- and forcing the courts to demand expensive fixes that exacerbate the budget problem.

Schwarzenegger's cynical response is to pit the prisons against colleges and universities, proposing a ballot initiative mandating that the state cannot spend more than 7% of its budget on corrections or less than 10% on higher education. We've already discussed the dangers of this kind of ballot-box budgeting, which puts decision-makers in a straitjacket and is largely to blame for the state government's deficit crisis. But what has received less attention is the governor's strategy for getting the corrections budget to 7%, from its current level of about 10%: privatizing the prisons.

Many politicians, especially on the GOP side of the aisle, are attracted to private prisons, under the theory that private industry runs everything more efficiently than government. That hasn't really panned out in other states. Studies on whether rent-a-reformatories are cheaper for taxpayers than government-run prisons have had conflicting results, largely because the data are hard to compare. Opinions also differ widely on whether private prisons, which tend to have lower guard-to-inmate ratios than public lockups, experience more violence. It's safe to say that if differences exist, they aren't very big.

It's not unreasonable to think that private prisons could be more successful in California than they have been elsewhere, because prison costs here are so out of line. A series of highly generous contracts with the prison guards union, whose political contributions make it a force to be reckoned with in Sacramento, contributed to a 32% jump in the corrections budget between 2006 and 2009, until the financial crisis forced legislators to make cuts in the corrections budget last fall. California spends far more per inmate ($49,000 a year) than any other state. A shortage of guards not only leads to abuse of the overtime system -- according to a September state audit, nearly a third of base-level correctional officers make so much money working overtime that their annual salaries exceed those of managers two pay grades higher -- but the guards have negotiated such bountiful benefit packages that it's actually cheaper for the state to continue paying overtime to older officers than to hire new ones to end the staffing shortage. The audit concluded that it costs between $3,200 and $7,800 more per inmate annually to house them in a California prison than in a comparable private facility.

Yet that doesn't necessarily suggest that privatizing the prisons is a good idea -- and it doesn't come close to suggesting we could lower the prison budget to 7% of the general fund solely through privatization. California's prison population has soared in the past two decades because the voters have passed ever-tougher sentencing laws while also tying the hands of judges to give them less flexibility in setting terms. Privatization won't solve either problem.

Moreover, private prisons come with a host of complications and trade-offs. Perhaps most serious is a loss of accountability and transparency. It's already hard for the public to find out what's going on behind the barbed wire, but abusive behavior by guards, inmate violence, accounting shenanigans and other common prison woes would be even further shielded under private control. What's more, the state might only be trading one influential lobby (the prison guards) for another (private prison operators and the communities that rely on them for jobs). Creating a prison-industrial complex with a financial incentive for locking people up could distort state politics, escalate prison spending and encourage overcrowding at least as much as the current system does.

The debate over prisons is in some ways similar to the debate over education, in which free-marketeers battle organized labor over charter schools. We think charters are a worthwhile experiment that can help make public schools better -- and the same could apply to private prisons, if they're given proper oversight. California already has a handful of private lockups, but they are very low-security facilities. We'd favor a change in union contracts and state laws that would allow privatization of a few higher-security prisons, so the impacts on costs and accountability could be assessed.

In other words, Schwarzenegger has a terrific idea for a pilot program. But to suggest that such an untested and possibly dangerous experiment is the solution to our prison problems, or that it could quickly produce a dramatic drop in expenditures, is disingenuous and irresponsible. What's needed is for the Legislature to do the job it failed to do last year and approve more meaningful parole reforms to get nonviolent drug addicts out of cells and into rehab, create a commission to revisit California's draconian and ineffective sentencing laws and take other steps long recommended by criminal justice experts to reduce the inmate population.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-prisons17-2010jan17,0,340576,print.story

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From the New York Post

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Final 9/11 holdout kin fight on for 'truth' trial

By SUSAN EDELMAN

January 17, 2010

One 9/11 family is still refusing to walk away from the truth.

The relatives of Mark Bavis -- a 31-year-old pro-hockey scout killed when terrorists slammed United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center -- are the last holdouts for a trial that they say will finally expose the airlines' gaping security failures.

"We can think of no greater honor for Mark than to see improvements of current security, and airlines and screening companies being held accountable for their failures and shortcomings," the family said in a statement to The Post.

The Massachusetts clan, the last family not to take millions of dollars for their silence, wants to reveal in stunning new detail how terrorists got past checkpoints at Boston's Logan International Airport with Mace, boxcutters and jagged knives, weapons used to kill a passenger and a crew member, and gain control of the cockpit.

"We hope they take the ball and run with it as far as they can," said Alyson Low, the sister of a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, the first to hit the Twin Towers.

Nearly all the next-of-kin of 2,793 people killed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, took payments averaging $1.8 million from the federal 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.

Of the 96 families that chose instead to sue the airlines for negligence and wrongful death, 93 have since settled out of court for a total of $500 million, an average $5 million each.

And two of the last three, the families of flight attendant Sara Low, 28, and Flight 11 passenger Barbara Keating, 72, are finalizing deals.

Bavis, a Boston University hockey star, went on to coach at Harvard and join the NHL's LA Kings as a scout.

Deluged with donations after his death, his family launched the Bavis Leadership Foundation to give scholarships.

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/final_holdout_kin_fight_on_for_truth_oN11KUL22JRuppi9FRQotK

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Pentagon: Army brass failed to hold down fort

By ANDY SOLTIS

January 17, 2010

A combination of religious radicalization and too little attention being paid to internal threats has left the military vulnerable to another Fort Hood-like massacre, Pentagon officials said yesterday after releasing a report on the slaughter.

"The report raises serious questions about the degree to which the entire Department of Defense is prepared for similar incidents in the future, especially multiple simultaneous incidents," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

In particular, the military is concerned about "disaffected individuals" -- specifically those engaged in "self-radicalization," according to Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.

The probe also found that several Army officers failed to use "appropriate judgment and standards" in overseeing the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Sources said as many as eight Army officers could face discipline for failing to do anything when Hasan's erratic behavior became obvious as a medical student and during his early work as an Army shrink in Washington.

Hasan was seen as a loner passed along from office to office and job to job despite often being late or absent, sometimes appearing disheveled and performing to minimum requirements.

The study did not consider whether his Nov. 5 rampage -- which left 13 people dead and 31 wounded -- was an act of terrorism and did not look into Hasan's 20 e-mails to a radical cleric in Yemen.

But yesterday, a senior administration official said for the first time that the massacre was "an act of terrorism."

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/pentagon_army_brass_failed_to_hold_E11nAxdrFNWuLAQXDyhoMO

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Hoodwinked

January 17, 2010

The Pentagon yesterday served up a transparently bogus excuse for ignoring clear warning signs that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the Army psychiatrist who gunned down 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex., last November -- had become an Islamic radical.

According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, military brass had been too busy . . . fighting communism .

"This department is burdened by 20th-century processes and attitudes mostly rooted in the Cold War," he said, releasing the results of a Pentagon probe into the shooting.

Gates came to office with the reputation of being a stand-up guy. On this one, at least, he's nothing of the sort.

Let's be clear: A Cold War mindset had nothing to do with Fort Hood.

Army Chief of Staff George Casey made that clear almost before Hasan's gunsmoke had cleared, insisting: "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

Translation: "Diversity" is more impor tant to us than your lives -- and don't think otherwise .

And yesterday's report simply underscored the message.

No wonder no one said anything when FBI and Army investigators reportedly intercepted e-mails between Hasan and an al Qaeda-linked imam -- or when Hasan's classmates in a medical program heard him make statements justifying suicide bombing.

Sure, the Pentagon report says a mouthful about the need to share information, but it never once fingers the culture of political correctness that caused the silence.

Rather, it revels in it: Not only does the report barely mention radical Islam by name, an entire section is devoted to the emotional wellbeing of military doctors -- as if all Hasan needed was a therapist.

That's madness.

No wonder the brass decided to dump this nonsense on the Friday before a holiday weekend.

But while the Pentagon may have slipped one past the general public, you can bet the folks in the ranks noticed.

It's their lives at risk, after all.

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/editorials/hoodwinked_uoYtmjjt9RM0GlgwPhrmQM

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From the Wall Street Journal

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No Burials for Haiti's Dead

Titanyen, Haiti—Down a rocky dirt road in a valley tucked inside green, soft-rolling hills, Haiti is disposing of its dead.

Swollen and putrid, they are stacked in piles amid rebar, doors, chairs, bed frames and trash. The cadaver of one woman hangs upside down on a pile of concrete rubble, likely the same load that killed her. Another woman's body lies bloated, directly in the path of the white garbage trucks that are filing in to dump their loads of bodies and other detritus from the quake.

Within days after Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake, Haiti's government began picking up dead bodies that litter the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince, which sits about a 40 minute drive from Titanyen. On Saturday, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the government had already disposed of 20,000 bodies in mass graves.

The government is making little attempt to chronicle the victims. After dropping off his load, a driver of one of the dump trucks said there was no attempt to identify the bodies.

"We just collect them like this," he said, pointing to the back of his truck.

“It's very grim. It's very sad. But in this situation that's the best that can be done. ” Steve Yoder, administrator for Christian Aid Ministries

The disposal of the bodies will complicate matters for Haitians seeking news about loved ones. And it may make an exact final tally of the dead more difficult. But government officials say the bodies could spread disease.

"Our first concern has to be the living and not the dead," said Gabriel Verret, an economic adviser to the president. "We don't have a hangar with refrigeration with capacity to hold the bodies."

Many Haitians backed the government decision. One reason: the stench of decomposing corpses fills many streets in the capital.

"The number of bodies is so high, it's beyond the government's capacity to deal with identifying cases individually," said Miguel Lebun, 49. "It's air pollution," he said. "There is no better choice but to do this."

Mr. Lebun's destroyed home is across the street from a cemetery where officials are dumping bodies. Machinery had helped dig a pit directly in front of powder blue and turquoise tombstones erected long ago. Though Titanyen is one of the largest mass gravesites, there are many smaller ones across the city dug into hillsides and inside such cemeteries.

A graveyard for decades, bodies from death squad killings would find their final resting place here, outside of Port-au-Prince.

A small yellow bulldozer is all that marks the entrance to the Titanyen mass grave just over the hill from a blue inlet along the coast. Some cadavers didn't make it all the way there. The winding road from Port-au-Prince was dotted with mini open graves, some next to burning piles of trash. At one site, members of the Centre National des Equipment, Haiti's version of a public works department, workers blocked a car of reporters from entering.

The mass grave at Titanyen has been a graveyard for years. Just across a shrubby stretch of land, tidy white crosses marked the graves of unclaimed bodies from Port-au-Prince hospitals.

Late Saturday afternoon, as the sun was setting, a small band of missionaries stopped by the Titanyen site to pay their final respects to the people they had spent the last four days digging out in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince. The men pulled off at the mass grave on their way home in the outskirts of Titanyen and stood silently as trucks dumped their loads around them.

Steve Yoder, who is an administrator at the Menonite mission called Christian Aid Ministries in Titanyen, choked back tears as he viewed the heaps of bodies.

"This is heart-breaking," he said. "It's very grim. It's very sad. But in this situation that's the best that can be done."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959804575007782151239548.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

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From Fox News

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Thousands Protest Arizona Sheriff's Immigration Efforts

January 16, 2010

PHOENIX — 

Ten thousand immigrant rights advocates marched in front of a county jail in Phoenix Saturday in a protest that was aimed at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration efforts and was marked by a clash between a small group of protesters and police officers.

Organizers say the protest was meant to show officials in Washington that Arpaio shouldn't handle immigration enforcement, and that Congress and the Obama administration need to come up with a way for immigrant workers to come to the country legally.

The three-mile walk that started in a west Phoenix park ended by afternoon at the Durango Jail Complex, a collection of five jails, where officials played music, including a record by singer Linda Ronstadt, to drown out noise made by protesters. Ronstadt took part in Saturday's protest.

Protesters chanted "Joe must go" as they approached the jail complex. One person carried a sign that said "We are human" and bore a picture of a lawman with a wolf's face. A family of five wore T-shirts saying "Who would Jesus deport?"

For his part, Arpaio said he wasn't bothered by the protesters and that they should be directing their frustrations at Congress because it has the power to change America's immigration laws.

"They are zeroing in on the wrong guy," Arpaio said. "They ought to be zeroing in on the president."

The demonstration was peaceful until police say protesters near the end of the procession started throwing water bottles at officers. Phoenix Police Lt. Pat Hofmann said officers used pepper spray as they tried to separate protesters from an officer who was trying to take away the bottles.

People poured water onto the faces of several protesters whose eyes were irritated by the pepper spray.

Phoenix police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill added that one demonstrator struck a police sergeant on the head and chest with a flagpole. And he said an officer on horseback was assaulted as her horse was mobbed, punched and pushed. He didn't say whether any officers were injured.

Phoenix police said Saturday night that five people were arrested during the protest and taken to Maricopa County Jail. Three were booked for aggravated assault on police; another was booked for aggravated assault on police and disorderly conduct. The fifth was booked for disorderly conduct and aggravated assault on police.

Though the scene of the disturbance was cleared within minutes, the aftermath was chaotic. Protesters yelled obscenities at police officers in riot gear. One officer shook his pepper spray canister as he ordered people to keep moving. One protester wore goggles, and several others wrapped bandanas around their mouths.

Critics have accused deputies working in Arpaio's immigration efforts of racial profiling, which the sheriff denies. He says his deputies approach people when they have probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.

Ten months ago, Arpaio learned he was under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged discrimination and unconstitutional searches. He says the investigation was prompted by his immigration efforts, although federal authorities haven't provided details.

Since early 2008, Arpaio has run 13 immigration and crimes sweeps involving officers who flood a section of a city — in some cases heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other violators.

Arpaio's power to make federal immigration arrests was stripped away three months ago by officials in Washington, but he continues his immigration efforts through the enforcement of two state laws.

A federal grand jury also is investigating Arpaio and his office on allegations of abusing his powers.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583203,00.html

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Deadly Fire Leaves 4,000 Homeless in Philippines

January 17, 2010

MANILA, Philippines  — 

Fire raced through a slum near the main port in the Philippine capital, killing a 5-year-old girl, gutting hundreds of shanties and leaving 4,000 people homeless, an official said Sunday.

There were no other reports of deaths or major injuries in the Saturday night blaze at the Baseco Compound, a crowded slum along the rim of Manila Bay, Senior Fire Officer Emmanuel Gaspar said. An Associated Press photographer at the site saw people waiting to be treated for minor injuries, including wounds from glass shards.

The cause of the fire, which raged for two hours, fanned by strong winds, is still under investigation, Gaspar said. Fires in Manila's overcrowded slums are common, with the tight living conditions allowing flames to quickly spread through houses made of light materials.

Saturday's fire destroyed 500 shanties.

Amid the ashes and a few wooden posts that were left of their home, Amorsolo Villamor's family ate their breakfast of rice gruel Sunday morning, unwilling to leave the tiny patch of land where their shanty used to stand.

Villamor, his wife and three children shared the place with two other families.

He said his family decided to return to their gutted home after running from the flames because they feared that other families may stake a claim to the land if they moved to a nearby village hall that was being turned into an evacuation center.

Gwendolyn Pang, a Philippine National Red Cross official, said the victims were being housed in two evacuation centers within the compound, including a social hall.

Thelsa Biolena, the Social Welfare Department's regional director, said porridge and boxes of noodles for hot soup were distributed to the victims, and more food packs will be distributed on Monday. The Red Cross will also send food Monday, Pang said.

The 53-hectare compound that used to house a shipyard has been ravaged by huge fires before. A 2002 blaze left some 15,000 residents homeless, and a 2004 fire razed shanties of 25,000 people.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583210,00.html

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Another Gang Rape of Teenager in Calif. Community

January 16, 2010

RICHMOND, Calif. — 

Police in a city still coping with the recent gang rape of a teenager are reporting that another girl has been sexually assaulted by a group.

Richmond police Sgt. Bisa French said four males in a black Buick approached a 15-year-old girl around 5 p.m. Friday.

One suspect with a gun forced her into the car after she ignored them.

French said they drove around for several hours before stopping at an unknown location, where two of them raped her.

A police officer found her around midnight miles from the kidnapping spot.

French said police have few leads on the suspects, who were in their late teens to early 20s.

Earlier Friday, Richmond police announced a search for a seventh suspect in the October gang rape of a 16-year-old girl outside a homecoming dance.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583201,00.html

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1 Dead After Suspected Smuggling Boat Overturns off San Diego

January 16, 2010

SAN DIEGO — 

Authorities say one person has died after a boat packed with suspected illegal immigrants overturned off the San Diego coast.

Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Jackie Dizdul says 23 people were believed to be on the 30-foot boat when it overturned in the surf at Torrey Pines State Park around 4:30 a.m. Saturday.

Dizdul says one person died on the way to the hospital. Five others were hospitalized, including at least one in critical condition.

Nine others are in Border Patrol custody and eight are not accounted for. The park is closed for a search.

Coast Guard Lt. Josh Nelson says his agency has dispatched two boats and a helicopter to search for anyone who might still be in the 58-degree Fahrenheit waters.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583191,00.html

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From Parade Magazine

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