In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade -- altogether

The proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars would chip away at Utah's $700-million shortfall. He's since offered a toned-down version: Just make senior year optional.

By DeeDee Correll

February 15, 2010

Reporting from Denver

At Utah's West Jordan High School, the halls have swirled lately with debate over the merits of 12th grade:

Is it a waste of time? Are students ready for the real world at 17?

For student body president J.D. Williams, 18, the answer to both questions is a resounding no. "I need this year," he said, adding that most of his classmates felt the same way.

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican's assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.

"My parents are against it," Williams said. "All the teachers at the school are against it. I'm against it."

Buttars has since toned down the idea, suggesting instead that senior year become optional for students who complete their required credits early. He estimated the move could save up to $60 million, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The proposal comes as the state faces a $700-million shortfall and reflects the creativity -- or desperation -- of lawmakers.

"You're looking at these budget gaps where lawmakers have to use everything and anything to try to resolve them," said Todd Haggerty, a policy associate with the National Conference of State Legislatures. "It's left lawmakers with very unpopular decisions."

In Utah, the opt-out proposal could prove more politically feasible.

"The bottom line is saving taxpayer dollars while improving options for students," said state Sen. Howard A. Stephenson, a Republican and co-chairman of the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee. "The more options we give to students to accelerate, the more beneficial it is to students and taxpayers."

But some education officials say they don't think the plan represents a change.

"We've always had an option in place for early graduation," said Debra Roberts, chairwoman of the Utah Board of Education, adding that it was OK to give students the choice to graduate early, but that they shouldn't be pushed to leave.

About 200 students a year take advantage of early graduation, said Brenda Hales, state associate superintendent.

Buttars, who did not respond to calls for comment, has said he would offer incentives to encourage students to graduate early.

Last week, his proposal met with approval from some who praised his efforts to cut costs, if not the plan itself.

"In a really hard economic time, we have to think of new options," said Aleta Taylor, a South Jordan mother of seven, adding that she needed more specifics before supporting the plan.

Whether the plan proves viable, it does raise a valid point about "senioritis," said William Sederburg, the state commissioner of higher education. "The thing that Sen. Buttars tapped into is that too many seniors take the senior year off," he said.

As far as high school senior Williams is concerned, 12th grade is as rewarding as a student wants to make it.

"Senior year hasn't been a waste for me," said Williams, who writes for his school paper, plays lacrosse, sings in two choirs and takes college-level courses. "If you're the type of kid who will slack off, you'd find a way to do that in sophomore or junior year anyway."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-utah-school15-2010feb15,0,1369560,print.story

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Dangerous caregivers not on list

A federal database fully available to hospitals March 1 is missing disciplinary records from states.

By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

February 15, 2010

More than two decades ago, Congress set out to stop dangerous or incompetent caregivers from crossing state lines and landing in trouble again.

It ordered up a national database allowing hospitals to check for disciplinary actions taken anywhere in the country against nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and other licensed health professionals.

On March 1 -- 22 years later -- the federal government finally plans to let hospitals use it. But the long-awaited repository is missing serious disciplinary actions against what are probably thousands of health providers, according to an investigation by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times.

Some of the missing cases involve providers who have harmed patients -- a nurse, for instance, whose license was pulled after she injected a patient with painkillers in a drugstore parking lot and improperly prescribed methadone to an addict who later died of an overdose.

The omissions took federal health officials by surprise. Only last month, a spokesman for the agency that oversees the database told reporters that "no data is missing." Another official said the agency had been "constantly" checking its data against state licensing board websites.

But Friday, the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) acknowledged that records were missing. She said her agency had launched a "full and complete" review to determine what is wrong and how to fix it.

"We take this very seriously," administrator Mary Wakefield said.

The new information will still go online as planned -- but with a warning that it is incomplete, she said.

Wakefield and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter Friday to the nation's governors asking for their immediate help fixing gaps in the database. It was a matter of "protecting the safety of patients across this country," they wrote.

This summer, the letter said, the federal government will begin publicly listing any state agencies that do not report properly. Wakefield's agency also plans to hold training sessions for state officials and conduct audits to help ensure compliance.

The government for two decades has kept a database of disciplinary actions against doctors and dentists. In 1999, state boards were required to begin filing reports on all other health professionals whose licenses were revoked or restricted.

Yet many states have filed sporadically, if at all. They've faced no penalties.

Reporters compared the total number of disciplinary actions that various states reported to the federal government -- detailed on the HRSA website -- to the states' own records, some of which were posted online. The discrepancies were glaring.

The federal government's site does not include a single report of discipline against any of the thousands of psychiatric technicians or occupational therapists in California.

Yet the website for the California board overseeing psychiatric technicians cites 84 who received severe sanctions in the last two years alone. Among them are two who surrendered their licenses after failing to help a woman who was choking to death on a paper towel and a third convicted of possessing child pornography.

Similarly, the occupational therapy board lists 40 disciplinary actions over five years.

Leaders of both state boards acknowledged that they hadn't been reporting disciplinary cases to the federal government but said they intended to do so in the future.

Judging from the federal numbers, no pharmacist has been disciplined in South Dakota or New Hampshire, and only one each in Alabama, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee. But a search of those states' websites showed hundreds of sanctions.

Reporters found at least nine states that appear to have submitted incomplete records on registered nurses.

Indiana didn't report hundreds of disciplinary actions in 2004 and 2005 -- including the nearly 100 nurses who were indefinitely barred from caring for patients. In one case, a nurse had put a knife to a co-worker's throat.

It's difficult to quantify how much data is missing. In each state, multiple boards oversee various health practitioners. Each has different rules and methods for meting out discipline. Some don't make the information public, and others said they didn't know the number of actions they'd taken.

Troubled professionals can have licenses in multiple states, so checking with just one state's board might not turn up disciplinary actions elsewhere. Moreover, state regulators can be slow to share information with one another, and some professionals hide past sanctions.

Several directors of state licensing agencies said they had assumed that their cases were being reported to the federal government.

Sean Gorman, the director of Indiana's nursing board, learned from reporters that hundreds of his state's actions against nurses had not been. That prompted Indiana to audit compliance by all of the state's health boards.

In Ohio, William T. Winsley, executive director of the pharmacy board, said he had no idea that only one of his state's pharmacist cases had been reported. At his board's November 2009 meeting alone, it pulled the licenses of five, including one who ran an Internet pill mill that dispensed nearly 1.5 million drug doses without valid prescriptions.

The database has had a long and fitful history.

In 1986, amid concerns that doctors were racking up malpractice accusations and then moving freely to other states, Congress called for a central repository of disciplinary actions against them. The next year, lawmakers expanded the requirement to include all healthcare workers.

The idea was to create a one-stop clearinghouse that hospitals and other eligible employers could check. The National Practitioner Data Bank was up and running quickly on doctors and dentists, but a series of logistical, technological and financial hurdles delayed its expansion. Some 280,000 nurses and other practitioners are to be added March 1.

Federal officials predict that the new information will be searched more than 123,000 times annually by health employers and others. The database is not open to the public.

Hospital industry officials said they welcomed the database but emphasized that it's just one tool for screening potential hires, along with criminal checks, drug tests and reference calls.

With an incomplete database, however, employers could be given "a false sense of security that somebody who may be really dangerous isn't, because their name isn't there," said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.

The federal government has had plenty of time to make it right, said Wolfe, whose Washington-based group advocates for patient safety. "It's really just embarrassing."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-database15-2010feb15,0,6004182,print.story

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$57.7-million fence added to an already grueling illegal immigration route

Some question the cost, effectiveness and environmental effect of erecting a fence on Otay Mountain, where those who hiked three days up a steep, arid peak were often met by border agents anyway.

By Richard Marosi

February 15, 2010

Reporting from San Diego

The border barrier dips and curves, zigs and zags, hugging the mountain's contours like a slimmed-down version of the Great Wall of China.

Among the costliest stretch of fencing ever built on the U.S.-Mexico border, the 3.6-mile wall of steel completed last fall is meant to block trafficking routes over Otay Mountain, just east of San Diego.

People seeking to enter the country illegally have hiked the scrub-covered, tarantula-infested peak for years, trying to get to roads leading to San Diego.

"We're no longer conceding this area to smugglers," said Jerome C. Conlin, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

But critics are bewildered. Why, they ask, would people determined to scale a rugged, 3,500-foot peak be deterred by an 18-foot-high fence? They also point out that the Department of Homeland Security deemed it unnecessary in 2006.

"I think it's a Bush-era boondoggle that will have almost no consequence in terms of stemming the flow of immigration," said Char Miller, director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College. "It was a political decision that took in no account of the environment itself, and in the process damages what was once a pretty remarkable landscape."

The $57.7-million project is one segment in the massive expansion of border infrastructure approved by Congress during George W. Bush's presidency. Homeland Security has erected fencing in small towns, remote valleys and high-desert mesas from the Pacific Ocean to Texas.

At about $16 million a mile, the Otay Mountain barrier cost about four times as much as similar border fencing built during this expansion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The Border Patrol's San Diego sector was already one of the country's most heavily fortified frontiers before the mountain fence was constructed, with about 40 of the sector's 60 miles lined with vehicle or pedestrian barriers.

The fencing shifted immigrant flows to remote areas in the backcountry east of San Diego. But some migrants decided to climb Otay Mountain because of its proximity to a warehouse district in San Diego and its easy access on the Mexican side, where the Tijuana-Tecate toll road lies only a few hundred yards away.

Immigrants dropped off at staging grounds off the toll road headed up steep trails into the U.S. Their hikes through canyons and over the arid peak could take up to three days. With limited road access on the mountain, agents simply waited for people to descend to make arrests.

The lack of fencing did not seem to be a problem, said then-U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Richard Kite, interviewed in a 2006 article in the Arizona Daily Star. At Otay Mountain, "you simply don't need a fence. It's such harsh terrain it's difficult to walk, let alone drive," Kite said. "There's no reason to disrupt the land when the land itself is a physical barrier."

The agency said it changed course after reevaluating conditions in the area. Daryl Reed, a current Border Patrol spokesman, said strategies are in constant flux depending on quickly shifting migrant flows and smuggler activity.

"As we continue in our mission, we're always reevaluating situations," Reed said. "We're always going to adapt and change."

One analyst suggested that pressure from Congress to complete about 700 miles of fence led federal officials to approve some questionable projects.

"There's no question that there's tactical justification for certain fencing, but when you set up a target like that, it inevitably means that they're going to build fencing where the tactical justification is weak, and this sounds like one of those places," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But others doubted that border authorities would spend resources in an area that didn't need it.

"If there were other better places to build fencing, then I'm confident the Border Patrol would build it there," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

When the federal government broke ground last year, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said the project would damage the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Portions of the fence and the 5-mile access road lie in the federally protected area.

The federal government, trying to expedite construction of border fencing, waived more than 30 environmental laws in 2008, including the Wilderness Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and others that environmentalists said applied to the Otay area.

Contractors had to cut roads, remove boulders, bulldoze hillsides and remove about 530,000 cubic yards of rock to build the Otay fence, which consists of steel posts 4 inches apart topped with metal plates.

It's not clear whether the fence has been a deterrent.

Since the barrier's completion in October, illegal activity has declined and there have been few signs of people trying to cut or breach the fence, authorities say.

"Having this fence here is definitely going to slow them down. . . . It increases our probability of catching them," said Conlin, the Border Patrol spokesman.

But others say the fence's effectiveness hasn't been truly tested because fewer immigrants have been attempting to cross anywhere on the border due to the economic slowdown.

The funding, they said, could have been better spent hiring more agents or building infrastructure in other areas.

When the economy improves, the mountain will once again draw immigrants, fence or no fence, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego.

"It seems to me, if someone is able to climb the mountains in the Otay Wilderness, a 15-foot wall will not make a difference," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fence15-2010feb15,0,5685622,print.story

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OPINION

Mexico's killing fields

Dozens of Mexican journalists have been killed since 2004. Mexico says it is concerned, but little has changed. Foreign reporters publicizing Mexican colleagues' work might offer a shield.

By Tony Cohan and Tamsin Mitchell

February 15, 2010

Last Nov. 2, the body of Jose Bladimir Antuna Garcia, crime and security affairs reporter for the newspaper El Tiempo de Durango, was found in front of a hospital in the central Mexican city of Durango. Antuna, 39, had been abducted on his way to work earlier that day. He was declared to have died of "asphyxia from strangulation," though according to some reports, his body also bore bullet wounds to the head and abdomen.

A note found next to his body reportedly read: "This happened to me for giving information to soldiers and for writing too much."

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist. From January 2004 to December 2009, a total of 27 writers -- 26 print journalists and one author -- were slain, seven of them in 2009 alone. Five others have disappeared. Last month, two more Mexican journalists were killed. Few if any of these crimes have been properly investigated or prosecuted.

International PEN, the worldwide writers' organization, believes it likely that these journalists were targeted in retaliation for their critical reporting, particularly on drug trafficking. Though organized-crime groups are believed to be responsible for many attacks against journalists, government officials and the police are also believed to have played a role in some.

In the week before his death, Jose Antuna had broken a story about police corruption in Durango and had also been investigating the unsolved killing of another journalist at his newspaper, Carlos Ortega Samper, who was abducted and killed in May 2009. Antuna had received repeated death threats starting in 2008 and was the target of an apparent assassination attempt in April 2009. Despite reporting the latter to the Durango state public prosecutor's office, Antuna was not provided with any protection and continued to receive threats.

On May 26, the same day that another Durango-based journalist, Eliseo Barron Hernandez, was found dead after having been kidnapped from his home, an anonymous call was reportedly made to El Tiempo's offices saying that Antuna would be next. The caller identified himself as a member of Los Zetas, a paramilitary group reportedly linked to a drug cartel.

Last February, Mexico's human rights record was scrutinized for the first time by the United Nations under the Universal Periodic Review. Numerous member states took the opportunity to express concern about the shocking violence faced by journalists in the country and the apparent impunity of their attackers.

The Mexican government took the international community's recommendations seriously and promised to better protect journalists, investigate threats and violence against them more vigorously, and ensure that the investigation and prosecution of such crimes would become a federal rather than a state matter.

A year later, little has changed. Since the U.N. review, eight more print journalists have been slain in Mexico and another has disappeared. A number of these journalists were threatened before their killing or disappearance, and yet apparently none had been offered police protection or other measures to ensure their safety. In none of these cases has the perpetrator been brought to justice.

In a recent article on the dangers of being a journalist in Mexico, the award-winning Mexican investigative journalist and activist Lydia Cacho criticized the Mexican mainstream media for failing to reflect the true reality of the country, leaving the international community uninformed. Cacho called on foreign journalists to fill this gap by writing about the violence faced by their Mexican counterparts, "because talking about us protects our life and allows us to go on investigating and reporting."

So, let's not be silent about Mexico's killing field for journalists. Let's call President Felipe Calderon and the Mexican state to account for the 34 Mexican writers who since 2004 have paid the ultimate price for "writing too much."

Tony Cohan is the author of the travel narratives "On Mexican Time" and "Mexican Days"; Tamsin Mitchell is Americas researcher and campaigner for the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cohan15-2010feb15,0,1674273,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Insurance rate hikes appear to be few but can affect many

To critics, a 39 percent hike in health insurance for some Californians foretells skyrocketing rates for the rest of us. Not so, says the company, arguing the increase only hits a relatively small number of people and the economy is to blame.

But the rhetoric from both sides distorts the reality.

It's true that hikes like the one by WellPoint Inc. apply only to people who buy individual insurance and are unlikely to spread to the majority of Americans covered through their employers. But such hikes also hit a huge number of Americans who mostly went unmentioned in the furor - the 46 million with no insurance at all.

That's because for most people who don't get insurance through their jobs and do not qualify for government assistance, the only option is buying individual policies like the ones in WellPoint's Anthem Blue Cross plan, often with high deductibles.

Raise prices, and people without insurance are even less likely to buy it - healthy people especially. Meanwhile, older and sicker customers pay more and more, running up high health bills in a shrinking pool.

That conundrum is at the heart of a disagreement that has frozen Democratic health reform efforts in Congress. Reform bills would require most of the uninsured to buy coverage, an idea many Americans detest as heavy-handed government.

But without sharing costs across the broadest cross-section of consumers and prohibiting insurers from charging people different premiums depending on their health status, the result is a scenario very much like Anthem's.

"I know the American people get frustrated in debating something like health care because you get a whole bunch of different claims being made by different groups and different interests," President Barack Obama said earlier this week in addressing the Anthem hike. "But what is also true is that without some action on the part of Congress, it is very unlikely that we see any improvement in the current trajectory ... The current trajectory is more and more people are losing health care."

Anthem will postpone its plan to raise rates for some California residents who buy insurance on their own, after reaching a deal Saturday with state regulators. The new rates were supposed to start on March 1. Anthem will delay the hike until May 1, giving the state time to review the increase with the help of an outside consultant.

Only about 5 percent of non-elderly Americans have individual insurance, compared with 60 percent who are covered by their employers. The remainder is almost evenly divided between those whose care is shouldered by government and those without any insurance at all.

The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance at big companies rose 7 to 10 percent this year, said Tom Billet of Towers Watson, a benefits consulting firm. Preliminary estimates for next year call for roughly the same increase - much lower than the ones set out by Anthem and other individual insurers.

"The individual market is sort of its own animal, so to speak," he said.

At first glance, WellPoint's rate hike affects only a small group - some of the 800,000 people in California who buy its individual coverage. But it's also about many more, since just about any American is - or, given the uncertainties of the economy, can be - a candidate for individual coverage at any time.

Millions in group plans have lost jobs and the insurance they count on as a benefit. People in individual plans are trying to keep up with escalating premiums. Some without insurance do so to save money, but as they get older may decide it's not worth the risk.

WellPoint defended the hike as a response to the economy. More consumers are tight on money and, as a result, those who are younger and healthier are dropping out or taking on pass on individual insurance, leaving a pool of less healthy people requiring more costly care. Without younger, healthier consumers, Anthem said, the remaining customers had to shoulder the costs of their own care.

"The result is an insured pool that utilizes significantly more services per individual than under better economic times," the company wrote in a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, defending the hike.

"The economic thing makes some sense, no doubt about it," said Gary Claxton, an expert on the private insurance market at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "If people don't have as much money there are not going to be as many people who can afford to buy insurance ... and the ones who are more likely to do that will always be the healthier ones."

But Will Dow, a professor of health economics at the University of California, says the rate hike reflects an individual insurance market that is fundamentally broken. Anthem has a reputation for cherry-picking healthier consumers and trying to shake sicker ones, he said.

"Individuals who are in ill health and don't have access to an employer-provided health insurance policy are subject to the mercies of this market, which does not work well for sick people," Dow said.

That problem is not limited to California or the economic environment of 2010. In Oregon, multiple insurers have convinced state health officials that rising costs justified big jumps in rates the last few years. In Maine, Anthem's request to raise rates for some people by up to 38 percent last year and 24 percent this year have angered some politicians and consumers.

Lou Herchenroeder, a pastor in Westfield, Ind., who learned in December that the premium on his Anthem policy would jump 31 percent, is frustrated. He said he's seen increases like this a few times over the past six years. In fact, he got into the high-deductible plan two years ago because premiums in his other plan rose too much.

But the cumulative increases are taking their toll. Herchenroeder said his family is healthy, with no chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure, although he just had his gall bladder removed. But at 53, he yearns for the days when insurance was a choice he could afford.

"If I was in my 20s, I wouldn't have a plan like this," he said. "I'd take my chances."

But the sick don't really have the option of dropping coverage. Pre-existing conditions allow other insurers, who otherwise would provide competition, to decline to cover these individuals.

Jeanne Morales of EncinoZZDN, Calif., was outraged when United HealthCare Inc. jacked up the premium of the PacifiCare individual plan covering her and her husband. Back-to-back hikes in October and November raised the couple's monthly premium from about $1,450 month to $2,432, a combined increase of 68 percent.

Morales wants to drop the policy, but says there's no where else to go. She had a partial hysterectomy to remove a non-cancerous ovarian cyst a month ago. She said her insurance broker told her she has to wait at least a year to be symptom free before she can even think about finding another individual insurance product.

"That's all there is to do. There's just not any choices," she said. "We have thought about just not carrying insurance at all, but it's scary for us."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14402158

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Australia Jails Five Over Terror Plot

SYDNEY -- An Australian court Monday sentenced five Muslim men to prison terms of 23 to 28 years after convicting them of preparing for terror attacks on unspecified targets by stockpiling explosive chemicals and firearms.

Justice Anthony Whealy of the New South Wales Supreme Court said he had little hope that the men, aged 25 to 44, could be rehabilitated, saying they were motivated by "intolerant, inflexible religious conviction" and had shown contempt for the Australian government, its leaders and laws.

The men were found guilty last October on charges linked to preparing for a terrorist act between July 2004 and November 2005. The men Australian-born or naturalized citizens with Muslim immigrant backgrounds had all pleaded not guilty to the charges.

They had stockpiled explosive chemicals and firearms, though it was not established where they would target.

During the trial, a former associate of the suspects testified that the group had considered bombing an Australian Rules football final in Melbourne in 2005 that was attended by almost 92,000 people. Prosecutors said they had also discussed killing former Prime Minister John Howard.

Whealy has restricted the media from publishing the men's names. One of the men participated in a terrorist-run paramilitary training camp in Pakistan, and three others attended similar camps in New South Wales to prepare for an attack.

"One particular feature of this trial was the fact that a considerable volume of extremist material was held by each offender in common with the other conspirators," Whealy said, noting that was "powerful evidence" that they jointly held extremist views.

The men had faced a maximum penalty of life in prison. The judge allowed for parole after the men serve from 17 to 21 years in prison.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704613204575066412337233560.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews#printMode

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From the Washington Times

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U.S. hunts for English-speaking bombers

by Eli Lake

U.S. and allied counterterrorism authorities have launched a global manhunt for English-speaking terrorists trained in Yemen who are planning attacks on the United States, based on intelligence provided by the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing after he began cooperating.

U.S. officials told The Washington Times that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, facing charges as a would-be suicide bomber, revealed during recent cooperation with the FBI that he met with other English speakers at a terrorist training camp in Yemen. Three U.S. intelligence officials, including one senior official, disclosed on the condition of anonymity some details of the additional bomb plots.

Said one official: "It's safe to say that Abdulmutallab is not the only bullet in the chamber for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," the Islamist terrorist group based in Yemen.

"Farouk took a month to get operational. Once he left [training in Yemen], it did not take very long," the official said.

Information about the bomb plots was shared with the FBI after Mr. Abdulmutallab's family traveled from Nigeria to help coax the former student into cooperating, after a period of about five weeks when he refused to help authorities.

The FBI interrogated Mr. Abdulmutallab for 50 minutes after he was arrested on Christmas Day at Detroit Metro Airport upon his arrival on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Officials said the homemade bomb sewn into his underwear failed to detonate but burned him. Had it detonated, the bomb could have killed 289 people aboard the flight.

Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen absorbed in 2008 the largely defeated branch of the group in Saudi Arabia. The group has made threats against the United States, and the Obama administration has authorized drone strikes in Yemen against the group and its leaders.

The data about the additional terrorist plots is thought to be one factor behind alarming congressional testimony two weeks ago from senior U.S. intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

Mr. Blair said he was "certain" that it was al Qaeda's priority to attempt an attack on the United States within three to six months.

The increased threat of terrorism emanating from Yemen was outlined in a majority staff report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made public last month. The report warned that U.S. criminals were migrating to Yemen for terrorist training.

"U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials say that a significant threat to U.S. interests could come from American citizens based in Yemen," the report said. "Most worrisome is a group of as many as three dozen former criminals who converted to Islam in prison, were released at the end of their sentences, and moved to Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic."

The Yemen-based al Qaeda group's chief ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki, is reported to have helped radicalize Mr. Abdulmutallab after he traveled to Yemen from Britain, ostensibly to study Arabic.

Al-Awlaki was also in contact with Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the officer accused of killing 13 of his fellow service members during a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5.

Al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, has established a Web presence in English for al Qaeda, something the terrorist organization had lacked until recently. Most of al Qaeda's chat rooms, considered hotbeds for Internet radicalization, are in Arabic.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview, "For an extended period of time, we have known they have wanted to radicalize and recruit English-speaking people because they recognize these individuals had easier access into the United States."

"I am not at all surprised by that. I was not surprised by the Christmas Day bomber. I am not surprised at all that there are those that believe that there are other English speakers out there," Mr. Hoesktra said.

Mr. Hoekstra and his Senate intelligence committee counterpart, Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican, have said publicly that it was a mistake for the FBI to read Mr. Abdulmutallab his constitutional rights as a criminal after he was detained in Detroit. When he was arrested, a high value interrogation group that the Obama administration had established for questioning terrorists was not completely operational.

The White House has defended the decision to treat Mr. Abdulmutallab as a criminal on the grounds that the suspect's family has coaxed him into cooperating, something that likely would not have occurred had he not been afforded access to counsel.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/15/english-speakers-trained-to-attack-us//print/

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From Fox News

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Alleged University Shooter Was Suspect in Harvard Professor Bomb Attempt

February 14, 2010

FOX News

An Alabama professor accused of shooting six colleagues was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in December of 1993, the Boston Globe reported.

Amy Bishop and her husband James Anderson were questioned by authorities after a package with two bombs was sent to Dr. Paul Rosenberg, the newspaper reported.

When Rosenberg saw the long, thin package had wires and a cylinder inside, he and his wife called police and ran from their Newton, Mass. home Dec. 19, 1993, the Globe reported.

Two 6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries were found in the package.

The new information comes a day after information surfaced that Bishop killed her brother. The 1986 shooting was ruled accidental and no charges were filed against her.

Bishop, who has four children, was arrested soon after the violent Friday shooting at the University of Alabama and charged with capital murder. Other charges are pending. Her husband was detained and questioned by police but has not been charged.

Three of her colleagues were killed in shooting, and a 9 mm handgun was found in the bathroom of the building where the shootings occurred.

Bishop, a rare woman suspected of a workplace shooting, had just months left teaching at school in Huntsville because she was denied tenure.

Several months after a federal investigation into the Harvard medical professor's attempted bombing a prime suspect was identified, but never named.

An unnamed law enforcement official told the Globe Sunday the suspect was Bishop, and her husband.

At the time, Bishop was a Harvard doctoral student working at the same hospital as Rosenberg.

The official told the Globe Bishop was suspected because she was allegedly concerned she was going to be given a bad evaluation from the professor on her doctorate work.

Her house was searched and she and her husband were questioned, but the U.S. attorney's office in Boston never brought charges against the couple, the Globe reported.

Click here to read more on this story from the Boston Globe

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,585854,00.html

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Ohio Give $1.1M to Man Wrongly Convicted of Rape

February 14, 2010

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio  — 

Ohio has agreed to give $1.1 million to a man who spent nearly 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

Fifty-four-year-old Robert McClendon was released in August 2008 after he was cleared by DNA testing. McClendon says he's grateful for the settlement, but it doesn't make up for the time spent in prison.

McClendon has been living in an apartment in Columbus with his son. He says he plans to buy a house, a car and invest the rest of the money.

The settlement still needs to be approved by the Ohio Court of Claims.

McClendon was convicted in 1991 of abducting and raping a female relative. A private lab agreed to conduct DNA tests after he and other inmates were profiled by The Columbus Dispatch in a series that exposed flaws in the state's DNA testing system.

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