L.A. County officials say laws hinder child welfare reform

A review of computer systems around the country finds potential ways to improve the county's system, but officials say one key option would require revision of laws curbing what data can be shared.

By Kim Christensen

April 3, 2010

A review of computer systems around the country has yielded potential information-sharing fixes that might prevent deaths or injuries in the child-welfare system here, Los Angeles County officials said Friday, but none can be put in place without legislative changes.

Among the likely contenders to replace the county's much-maligned computer system, known as the Family and Children's Index, is a Web-based portal, similar to a search engine, that would allow authorized users to freely exchange information.

But that option, being developed in New York, and others reviewed by county officials could not be implemented without revising laws that restrict what types of information may be shared among child-welfare workers, doctors, schools and others.

"The county is held back by a system that combines aged technology with laws focused more on shielding government from liability than protecting children from abuse or neglect," Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas wrote Friday to county Chief Executive William T Fujioka, whose office spearheaded the review of 11 systems elsewhere.

The county's child-welfare system -- and those in charge of it -- have come under intense scrutiny in the last two years as deaths among children have come to light.

About 35 children whose families had been investigated by the Department of Children and Family Services have died of abuse or neglect since January 2008, according to records made public under state law. In some cases, social workers missed or ignored clear warning signs or key information.

After being told repeatedly over the years that better communication among child-welfare workers and others might have prevented some of the deaths, supervisors last year approved a plan to revamp the computer system and directed Fujioka to examine options.

In a memo to supervisors this week on the findings, the chief executive said California's Welfare and Institutions Code so limits the data that can be included in the county's computer system that key information is not readily available to those who need it most.

Even taking into account the legal restrictions, however, the county system has not met its potential. Many social workers are reluctant to tap into what data are available, for example, and most county law enforcement agencies don't participate.

Ridley-Thomas called Fujioka's report a "useful initial road map" but said reforms require urgency.

"Investigators still lack rapid access to criminal records, mental health histories or even information on which adults reside in a child's home," Ridley-Thomas said.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) is working with county officials to rewrite the law, according to Ridley-Thomas and Fujioka's memo detailing the review of systems in Pennsylvania, Indiana and New Jersey, among others.

The Department of Children and Family Services participated in the review, Director Trish Ploehn said, "and is strongly in favor of pursuing legislative reform to allow for increased communication between agencies."

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has opposed Ridley-Thomas' proposal to replace the Family and Children's Index, arguing instead for making modest, less-expensive improvements to the system.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-welfare3-2010apr03,0,6780296,print.story

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Colorado mom arrested in 'JihadJane' terror case

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez had been held and released in Ireland and was arrested when she returned to the U.S. Officials say she went to Europe with her young son to attend a training camp with 'JihadJane.

By Nicholas Riccardi

April 2, 2010

Reporting from Denver

A Colorado mother whose family said she flew to Ireland last year to join a possibly violent Islamic group was charged Friday with working with a Pennsylvania woman to attend a terrorist training camp in Europe.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, had been arrested in Ireland last month with six others on suspicion of planning to assassinate Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, whose drawing of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog outraged many Muslims. Paulin-Ramirez, from Leadville, Colo, was later released by Irish authorities.

She returned voluntarily to the United States and was arrested Friday in Philadelphia, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. It did not give details of why she returned.

Federal prosecutors added Paulin-Ramirez to a case against Colleen R. LaRose, 46, who went by the online name "JihadJane" and was charged in a sealed indictment in October with recruiting people to kill Vilks.

According to the new indictment unveiled Friday, LaRose last summer invited Paulin-Ramirez to join her at a "training camp" in Europe. The day after she arrived, Paulin-Ramirez married another participant, a man with whom she had corresponded online.

The charges against Paulin-Ramirez carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Paulin-Ramirez's mother, Christine Mott, said Friday that she had not heard from her daughter since her arrest in Ireland and had not been aware she was back in the U.S. The two became estranged last year as Paulin-Ramirez, a nursing student, became obsessed with studying Islam online and began corresponding with people her mother viewed as extremists.

Paulin-Ramirez took her 6-year-old son, Christian, to Ireland last year and taught him that non-Muslims would burn in hell, Mott said. The boy apparently returned with his mother and is now in Pennsylvania's dependency system, Mott said.

Mott, who lives on disability and said she cannot afford a lawyer, said her greatest concern was getting the child back. "He's seen his mother arrested twice," she said in a telephone interview, sobbing. "He needs to be back here and out of this madness."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-arrest3-2010apr03,0,6540014,print.story

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Moscow bomber identified as teenage widow from Dagestan

Authorities say Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova was the wife of a militant leader killed last year. A newspaper says her cohort was Markha Ustarkhanova of Chechnya, also the wife of a slain militant leader.

By Megan K. Stack

April 3, 2010

Reporting from Moscow

One of the suicide bombers who blew herself up aboard a crowded Moscow subway car this week was a teenager from the restive republic of Dagestan, Russian authorities said Friday.

The national counter-terrorism committee released only the name of the teen who set off her charge in Park Kultury Metro station as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, also given as Abdullayeva. But leaks from law enforcement sources filled out the sketch of the 17-year-old's abbreviated, violent life: The girl was the widow of Dagestani militant leader Umalat Magomedov, who was killed by federal troops last year, a source told Interfax news agency.

Amid rising public outcry, infuriated officials are pushing hard for culprits to be punished for Monday's twin blasts, which killed 40 people. Another double bombing in Dagestan two days later killed 12 people, most of them police officers.

Intelligence and other law enforcement groups have announced that they know who carried out both bombings. They have captured some of the accomplices and begun interrogations, officials say.

Although authorities said they were still trying to identify the second bomber in Monday's attack, the Kommersant newspaper said she had been tentatively identified as Markha Ustarkhanova from Chechnya, the 20-year-old widow of a militant leader killed in October.

Other details continued to filter out. Investigators have found the apartment used by the bombers' accomplices to prepare the explosives belts, an unnamed law enforcement source told Interfax. The source also said the belts were probably detonated by remote control.

President Dmitry Medvedev paid a visit to Dagestan after the second set of bombings. On Friday, he was back in Moscow, calling for militants to be run to ground, and for Russian lawmakers to consider whether the laws needed to get tougher.

"We need a model for terrorism crimes that ensures that anybody assisting [terrorists] -- no matter what they do, make their soup or wash their clothes -- will be seen as people committing a crime," Medvedev said during a meeting with heads of the parliamentary factions. "Only that will give us hope to correctly prosecute them."

Earlier in the week, Medvedev struck a slightly softer tone. He met with a human rights official and discussed the social and economic conditions driving extremism along Russia's turbulent, mostly Muslim southern edge.

Since then, his rhetoric has been drifting more in the direction of his predecessor and mentor, hard-line Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"As far as militant nests are concerned, our police will remain the same," Medvedev said Friday. "We will carry out operations and eliminate them without any hesitations."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/europe/la-fg-russia-widows3-2010apr03,0,230085,print.story

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Army linguist held captive in Iraq to be reunited with family in El Cajon

Issa Salomi, 60, the U.S. Army linguist held captive for two months by a Shiite militia group in Baghdad, is set to return to his family this weekend in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.

Salomi was released from captivity a week ago and has been at an Army medical facility at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. His ex-wife and four of his six children live in the San Diego area.

His family, besieged by reporters, issued a statement asking for privacy: "We are preparing to reunite after what has been a very trying and emotional experience. Many of us have spoken to Issa on the phone since he has been going through reintegration procedures in San Antonio over the last few days, and he has expressed so many feelings -- great joy, gratitude and, also, fatigue."

The statement says that Salomi, a naturalized American citizen who immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1991, needs rest after his ordeal:  "He has been traveling for many days and we all request peace and a chance to clear our minds in solitude. Please help us to help Issa's reintegration be as painless and smooth as possible, and refrain from contacting us directly."

The circumstances behind Salomi's kidnapping and release remain unclear. He appeared in a hostage video in which he appeared to denounce the United States. The video was released by the Iranian-backed group the League of the Righteous.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/issa-salomi-60-the-us-army-linguist-held-for-two-months-by-a-shiite-miliia-group-in-baghdad-is-set-to-return-to-his-fami.html#more

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Possible sightings of missing San Diego County family in Mexico

The FBI has joined the case of a San Diego County family of four that vanished from their suburban home earlier this year.

San Diego County Sheriff's Department officials said they examined the family's home computers and found evidence that they had been looking into information about child passports to Mexico shortly before they vanished. On Thursday, relatives of the family said on their website that there have been several potential sighting of the family in Mexico. The relatives said the FBI is checking out those reports.

The family's car was found at the U.S.-Mexico border, and a videotape shows four people who might be the family crossing into Mexico. Family members have been skeptical that the family is in Mexico and remain worried about foul play.

No one has seen or heard from the family -- Joseph McStay, his wife, Summer, and their two children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph, 3 -- since February.

Family and friends describe Joseph McStay, a 40-year-old businessman, and his 43-year-old wife as devoted parents excited by their recent move from San Clemente to a home they bought on a cul-de-sac in Fallbrook.

Authorities say they are stumped by the disappearance of a family that had no apparent financial or marital problems and no known enemies or connections to drugs or crime.

On Feb. 14, McStay's brother went to the family's home to check on them after Joseph's partner in a water fountain business said he couldn't reach him. Michael McStay found the couple's two dogs had been left unfed, and perishable food was on the kitchen counter.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/possible-sightings-of-missing-san-diego-family-in-mexico.html#more

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EDITIRIAL

The limits of 'state secrets'

A warrantless wiretapping case illustrates the risk of the 'state secrets privilege' being abused.

April 3, 2010

Four and half years after the Bush administration was caught eavesdropping on Americans without court approval, a federal judge in San Francisco has ratified a conclusion many Americans reached long ago: that the administration exceeded its legal authority in the war on terror. But U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker's ruling does more than that. It also reminds the Obama administration, which too often has echoed Bush-era positions on national security issues, that the "state secrets privilege" can cover a multitude of abuses.

The issue before Walker was whether the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and two of its lawyers, both U.S. citizens, could recover damages for electronic surveillance conducted without the warrant required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Walker ruled for the plaintiffs, despite roadblocks erected by the government.

Adopting the line of the Bush administration, the Obama administration had argued that the plaintiffs couldn't prove that they'd been bugged, and that because of the state secrets privilege, they couldn't ask a court to examine the classified documents that would corroborate that allegation -- including a document that had already, inadvertently, been publicly released. An appeals court sided with the government on the issue of the document, but separate, unclassified information presented by the plaintiffs enabled Walker to conclude that the foundation and its lawyers were unlawfully spied on.

Moreover, Walker slammed the government for invoking the state secrets privilege in a way that created a Catch-22 situation: The government argued that it was not required to respond even to public evidence of illegal wiretapping because the entire issue of whether surveillance took place was simply too sensitive and too secret to be discussed in a courtroom. "Under defendants' theory," he wrote, "executive branch officials may treat FISA as optional and freely employ the [state secrets privilege] to evade FISA, a statute enacted specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive branch abuses of surveillance authority."

Thanks to the New York Times' revelation about warrantless wiretapping, Congress subsequently tightened FISA's oversight. But strengthening FISA does not prevent the abuse of the state secrets privilege under which even judges may not examine documents that could substantiate government wrongdoing.

The Obama administration insists that it is being more cautious than its predecessor in asserting the privilege, invoking it only when it's "absolutely necessary to protect national security." There is an easy way for Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to make good on that commitment: He should decline to appeal Walker's ruling.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-nsa3-2010apr03,0,6180179,print.story

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EDITORIAL

An apology for Srebrenica

Serbian President Boris Tadic took a huge step in the right direction by officially condemning the 1995 war crime.

April 2, 2010

It is Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, most of them men and boys, were rounded up and systematically killed in the region of Srebrenica during Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's sweeping campaign to cleanse the Balkans of non-ethnic Serbs. At long last this week, the Serbian government issued an apology for the 1995 massacre in a hugely significant and politically difficult attempt to face that past.

President Boris Tadic is to be commended for pressing his countrymen to address the polarizing issue of what he called "that monstrous crime." The resolution, initially presented by his coalition, "strongly condemns the crime committed against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica," offers condolences and an apology to families of the victims, and acknowledges that "not everything was done to prevent the tragedy." The resolution provoked vitriolic debate, with supporters and opponents accusing each other of being traitors, Nazis or patsies for the European Union, and was approved in parliament by just two votes.

The carnage at Srebrenica was carried out by Bosnian Serb troops under their commander, Ratko Mladic, who is still at large and has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague on 16 counts, including genocide and crimes against humanity. He must be brought to justice if Serbia is to fully draw a line under this horrific chapter. But large segments of Serbian society do not accept responsibility for this war crime, and some don't even acknowledge that the executions took place.

Critics decried the resolution as a cynical gesture driven by economics and calculated to satisfy the European Union, which demands that Serbia come clean on war crimes before it can join. The EU included Serbia in European visa and banking agreements following the 2008 arrest of former Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is now facing trial in The Hague on suspicion of masterminding the massacre in Srebrenica. Some Bosnian Muslim leaders and relatives of the victims say the declaration is too little, too late, particularly because it failed to recognize the war crime as genocide. The Hague tribunal has declared Srebrenica a genocide, the methodical killing of people "solely on the basis of their identity," and the International Court of Justice also called the killings acts of genocide.

Still, we consider this a huge step forward, one that hopefully advances the process of reconciliation. In politics, the right thing often is done for the wrong reasons. More important is that the right thing gets done. It is never too late to address crimes of the past. This is a good and welcome start.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-serbia2-2010apr02,0,7362151,print.story

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EDITORIAL

College loans, no middleman

The government's revamping of its college lending program frees up more money for students.

April 2, 2010

The primary obstacle for young adults seeking to complete a college degree isn't that their public schools failed to prepare them or that their colleges somehow alienated them to the point of dropping out. It's money. Even solidly middle-class families can seldom cough up the more than $160,000 that private college will cost over four years. Working-class families must struggle to send their children to public colleges, which cost anywhere from several thousand dollars a year for live-at-home commuters to $25,000 a year for students at the University of California.

The federal government has spent extraordinary sums each year for student loans that helped put more Americans through college. But much of that money, it turns out, has been wasted. Unbelievably enough, the government has spent billions on interest payments to private banks instead of on needy students. This wasteful and at times scandal-plagued expenditure of taxpayer money finally ended with the approval this week of the federal budget reconciliation act. The new law will eliminate the private-lender subsidy and have the government make loans directly to students.

The change is expected to save more than $60 billion over 11 years, money that will be plowed into more student aid.

Up to now, the federal money was used to subsidize interest payments to the private lenders who actually made the loans. The government also guaranteed the loans. This has been a lucrative, risk-free profit center for private lenders, so desirable a business that they at times provided kickbacks to universities that would list them as preferred lenders. In some cases, financial aid officers at certain colleges held stock options in lending companies. After accusations by the attorney general of New York, several lenders and universities paid fines and agreed to a new code of conduct.

Any smart business leader knows that to cut costs, you cut out the middleman, yet this system persisted for years after the public became aware that billions of dollars were being spent to create banking profits rather than a better-educated nation. The profits in the student loan business were good enough for lenders to invest in lobbyists and campaign contributions, largely to GOP congressmen who now complain that the new law is a killer of private-sector jobs. In fact, the jobs were private sector only in name; they were paid for by taxpayers.

What the private lenders did provide was a range of loan packages to meet individual students' needs. There's no reason the federal government can't do the same, and for a lot more students with college dreams.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-loans2-2010apr02,0,2920652,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Don't buy live Easter season animals, health official says

Easter may spur parents to buy ducklings, chicks or bunnies for their children, but the amount of car those animals require may make them unsuitable pets for youngsters, a Los Angeles health official said today.

"Baby animals can be a great teaching tool for children, but it may be more appropriate to take a family trip to the zoo rather than bringing an animal home as a pet, said Jonathan E. Fielding, director of Public Health and health officer.

"A duckling, chick, or bunny might be cute today, but caring for an animal is a long-term commitment," Fielding cautioned. "All of these types of animals could potentially live ten years or longer, so it's important to be aware of these living creatures' special needs, proper care and handling."

Fielding also said that every year around this season, many children and adults become ill after contact with a duckling or chick, as these animals naturally shed bacteria called Salmonella.

These bacteria can cause serious and occasionally fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Symptoms of infection in otherwise healthy individuals often include fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, and abdominal cramps.

Baby rabbits, he said, require as much care, feeding and veterinary services as a dog or cat. If the rabbit is very young, it will require costly milk-replacer formula and feedings every three hours during the day and night, he said. If not properly cared for, the bunny may die quickly.

Additionally, rabbits are often frightened when moved into a new home and may kick, bite, and scratch children who are anxious to play with them, said Fielding.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Animal Services receives many abandoned ducks, chickens, roosters and rabbits every year as parents find themselves unable to care for these animals as they grow, said Fielding.

Many of these animals are also abandoned in parks, or on the street, where they may die or face abuse. Fielding urged parents who want to teach their children about spring babies or responsible pet ownership to give them non-living presents, such as stuffed animals, art supplies, books or other educational materials.

Families who are able to support an animal are urged to adopt instead of purchasing a pet. Visit www.laanimalservices.com for more information. For additional information on the Department of Public Health, go to www.publichealth.lacounty.gov

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14807799

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Iran Nuclear Ring Probed

Western Authorities Investigate China Connection in Export of French Valves

An Iranian firm closely linked to Tehran's nuclear program acquired special hardware for enriching uranium, despite sanctions intended to keep such equipment out of Iran, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

In recent weeks, the officials said, an Iranian procurement firm obtained critical valves and vacuum gauges made by a French company that until December was owned by U.S. industrial conglomerate Tyco International . The French and U.S. firms said they knew nothing of the case.

Western authorities are still struggling to understand precisely how the valves and gauges in question reached Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating the matter, according to a Vienna-based diplomat, and Western intelligence agencies also are investigating, The Wall Street Journal has learned.

A Jan. 14 email that triggered the IAEA investigation alleged that the valves moved through an intermediary representing a Chinese company based near Shanghai.

The hardware is part of a high-stakes game of cat and mouse played out on a daily basis between Iran and Western authorities determined to frustrate Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

An investigator familiar with the IAEA probe said Iran has made about 10 attempts to acquire valves used in uranium enrichment in the last two years. "Some deliveries got through, others didn't," he said. Other officials said it isn't uncommon for manufacturers' products to land in Iran without the makers' knowledge.

Policing the flow of goods, which often involves multiple foreign transhipment ports and a constantly shifting cast of middlemen, is a notoriously difficult task, but is gaining urgency as Western governments fear Tehran is inching closer to being able to make a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. is intensifying a push for China and other members of the United Nations Security Council to agree on sanctions that could clamp down more strongly on shipments headed to Iran that might break existing bans on equipment sales.

The Obama administration is focused on a mid-April goal to agree on a proposed slate of sanctions, and Chinese president Hu Jintao is attending the White House's summit on nuclear security then. China, which just hosted Iran's top nuclear negotiatior, has been the strongest holdout among member countries who can veto U.N. sanctions.

Little is known about the Iranian firm alleged to have obtained the valves, Javedan Mehr Toos. The company couldn't be reached to comment, and Iranian officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both Kalaye and the AEO were sanctioned by the U.N. in December 2006 for alleged nuclear activities. Iran says it has the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including technology that could be used to build nuclear weapons.

It couldn't be learned how many valves JMT acquired or the extent to which they represent an important advance in Tehran's ultimate ability to enrich uranium, a key step in developing a nuclear weapon. Analysts who track proliferation say the JMT case exemplifies the difficulties in keeping abreast of sanctions-busting efforts.

"What we see over and over is you have a core smuggling ring in Iran where some procurement entity within the conventional military establishment needs things, and they find companies or individuals in Iran to buy these things," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who heads Washington's Institute for Science and International Security. "Each one doesn't buy that much." Valves are a frequently sought-after component, he said.

Some of the valves obtained by JMT are used on cylinders used to transport uranium powder; others in the enrichment process. According to people familiar with the matter, the valves were produced by the French firm KD Valves-Descote, a maker of specialized hardware used primarily in the nuclear and chemical industries.

The firm, based near Lyon, was taken private in December by its French owners. It still sells its products in the U.S. under license by the Department of Energy, and in many other countries under strict export rules. Both KD Valve and Tyco said they had no knowledge of how the equipment would have reached Iran, and said they hadn't been contacted by investigators.

The IAEA and Western authorities began looking into the matter after the IAEA received the Jan. 14 email, with the subject line "For Iran Inspectors," alleging that illicit goods were being sent to Iran in a "careful and secret" way, according to a person familiar with the email.

The email named JMT and alleged the firm acquired the valves from an intermediary named Vikas Kumar Talwar representing Zheijiang Ouhai Trade Corp. of China, a subsidiary of the Wenzhou-based Jinzhou Group.

Mr. Talwar, whose nationality couldn't be learned, couldn't be located to comment. Zheijiang, which imports and exports a wide range of manufactured products from electronic cigarettes to steel pipes, didn't respond to requests to comment.

A U.S. law enforcement official said Mr. Talwar's name has come up in prior investigations of Iranian efforts to procure nuclear equipment, as has Zheijiang Ouhai. "Vikas Kumar Talwar — he's definitely a procurement agent who acts on behalf of Iranian entities," said the law enforcement official. "JMT is a known supplier to Kalaye."

Jean-Pierre Richer, president of KD Valves, said in an interview that his firm does no business with China due to the sensitive nature of the products he sells. "We have never sold to China—believe me, I wish we could," he said. Such sales would require export licenses that are difficult to obtain, he said.

Mr. Richer said he has never heard of Mr. Talwar and that KD Vales only does business with well-known customers. He said no Western authorities have contacted his firm to inquire about valve sales to Iran or China. A Tyco spokesman said the company had searched its records back to 2006 and found no record of sales to Zheijiang or Mr. Talwar.

U.S. intelligence officials declined to discuss the case. Responsibility for keeping track of companies and individuals in violation of U.S. sanctions regimes falls to the U.S. Treasury, which also acts as an informal watchdog over other international sanctions. Neither JMT, Mr. Talwar nor Zheijiang Ouhai are on the Treasury's list of companies or individuals that allegedly violate sanctions.

A Treasury spokesperson said the agency has cases involving hundreds of sanctions-busting suspects, but to comment on any pending investigation "would threaten the integrity and effectiveness of our actions."

U.S. investigators say they have seen cases of nuclear parts routed to Iran through countries like the United Arab Emirates, China, Singapore and Malaysia with relative frequency. "We probably have a dozen cases ongoing right now where we're looking into those types of allegations," said Clark Settles, a senior counter-proliferation official with Homeland Security's Immigration and Custom's Enforcement agency.

"Legitimate companies have been duped before," Mr. Settles said. "Since 2001, we've gone out to more than 18,000 companies and talked to them" about knowing who their customer really is.

Last month in Italy, police arrested seven men on charges of illegally exporting military equipment to Iran. Two of those arrested are Iranian government officials, according to a statement by the prosecutor in the case. The seven men are accused of buying sensitive goods legally in Germany and other European countries and shipping the goods to Iran via Switzerland, the U.K., Romania and the United Arab Emirates.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303450704575160242131138472.html?mod=WSJ_World_LeadStory#printMode

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U.S. Calls for Homes With Chinese Drywall to Be Gutted

Homeowners should remove potentially defective Chinese drywall from their homes to prevent health and safety problems linked to noxious emissions, U.S. regulators said Friday.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Department of Housing and Urban Development disclosed new information they said indicated that certain Chinese drywall emitted hydrogen sulfide at rates 100 times that of non-Chinese samples, far more than earlier thought.

The announcement could set the stage for Congress to compensate homeowners who face the expense of gutting their homes and replacing the drywall, officials said. One lawmaker said the U.S. should seek compensation from the Chinese government.

Chinese-made drywall, also known as gypsum or wallboard, has been under federal investigation because of complaints that the drywall emits sulfide fumes. Homeowners have complained of rotten-egg smells, corrosion of appliances and health problems such as bloody noses, headaches and respiratory issues.

A spokesman for the CPSC said there hadn't been any signs of long-term health impact from the drywall. He said there was evidence that when homeowners leave homes that contain the suspect drywall, their symptoms go away.

The agencies are still conducting a long-term health assessment on the matter.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has received more than 3,000 homeowner complaints from 37 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico alleging home damage from chemicals emitted from Chinese drywall.

Regulators said in November that there was a "strong association" between chemicals emitted by Chinese drywall and metal corrosion, and that levels of hydrogen sulfide were higher in some houses built with Chinese drywall than in those without it.

Homeowners with drywall problems had hoped those results would pave the way for the government to help them repair billions of dollars in home damage, but it was unclear who would pay.

HUD and the CPSC say there is now a strong foundation set for Congress as it considers relief options for affected homeowners. Consulting firm Towers Watson has estimated U.S. drywall damages of $15 billion to $25 billion.

"Our investigations now show a clear path forward," CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum said in a statement. "Based on the scientific work to date, removing the problem drywall is the best solution currently available to homeowners."

Most of the drywall complaints come from Florida.

"The studies find that the drywall is bad enough to require the stuff to be removed from houses," said Sen. Bill Nelson, (D., Fla.). "Now the question is: who pays for it? The way I see it, homeowners didn't cause this. The manufacturers in China did. That's why we've got to go after the Chinese government now."

Several large home builders, including Miami-based Lennar Corp., are repairing hundreds of houses they built with tainted Chinese drywall.

Lennar has set aside nearly $81 million to repair about 600 homes delivered in Florida primarily during its 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, according to its latest annual report. The builder, in turn, is seeking reimbursement from subcontractors, insurers and others.

Investigating scientists have determined there are a combination of factors in affected homes—including low levels of formaldehyde and hydrogen sulfide—that when mixed with problem drywall may be linked to the reported health problems, the CPSC spokesman said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304871704575159971085212294.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews#printMode

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On Distant Battlefields, Survival Odds Rise Sharply

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—Under a dusty hospital tent where doctors yell over the roar of jet engines, Dr. John York studied an electronic image of a blood vessel in the neck of a soldier wounded by an improvised bomb. It looked like a balloon ready to pop. Too delicate to operate on directly. Dr. York would have to try a procedure that had rarely been attempted so close to a battlefield.

Using a sophisticated X-ray machine, he snaked a tube from an artery in the soldier's leg until it reached his neck. Dr. York threaded in a feathery device that popped open and blocked blood from the ballooning artery.

Today that soldier, Specialist Chancellor Alwin, is an outpatient at the army medical hospital in Washington. His only visible scars from the January procedure are a small one near his neck and another in his thigh. His wife, Samantha, says he suffers from moods swings and lingering nerve damage, "but we are thankful he is alive," she says.

Every war brings medical innovations, as horrific injuries force surgeons to come up with new ways to save lives. During the Civil War, doctors learned better ways to amputate limbs, and in World War I they developed the typhoid vaccine. World War II brought the mass use of penicillin, Korea and Vietnam the development of medical evacuation by helicopter.

The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical experts say, are still emerging. One legacy is new ways to control bleeding before soldiers lapse into comas or their vital organs shut down. Thanks to new clotting agents, blood products and advanced medical procedures performed closer to the battlefield, wounded American soldiers are now surviving at a greater rate than in any previous war fought by the U.S.

The rising survival rate, now touching 95% for those who live long enough to get medical treatment, is in turn introducing new problems caring for patients with serious and chronic injuries, including multiple amputations and brain damage. The cost of treating such lasting injuries will be borne by the U.S. medical system for decades to come.

On the medical front lines, however, military doctors often focus just on keeping wounded soldiers alive. In Afghanistan, troops are protected by new generations of armored vehicles, bulletproof vests and helmets that often keep them from getting killed outright in firefights. That leaves doctors and medics to face a dire range of war wounds—limbs mangled and severed by explosive devices, shrapnel and bullet wounds to the face and the neck, and unseen internal bleeding.

"If you can stop the bleeding, you gain time to save a life," says Sgt. Anthony Reich, the U.S. Air Force's equivalent of a paramedic, who flies into battle zones to retrieve the wounded and bring them to Kandahar air field for treatment. "Medical textbooks are being rewritten as we speak."

Dr. York, an interventional radiologist who usually performs surgery at the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va., is especially skilled at treating internal injuries. His type of surgery—using X-rays and imaging equipment to guide catheters through veins to perform micro-operations—is comparatively rare in emergency rooms. But in the cramped Kandahar hospital, it is critical to saving lives.

Many of the cutting-edge techniques used here had been recommended by physicians years ago, but were never tested on a mass scale until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, says James Dunne, director of the U.S. Central Command's Joint Theater Trauma System at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. If Iraq was an early proving ground for methods, Afghanistan is the theater for perfecting them, he says.

Early in the Iraq war, medics supplemented old-fashioned gauze bandages with QuikClot, a clay kitty-litter-like substance manufactured by Z-Medica Corp. of Wallingford, Conn. When sprinkled into wounds, it absorbs water from blood and "stops bleeding like a clogged pipe," says Sgt. Reich, the Air Force medic.

Dr. Dunne says another important change involves blood transfusions. Doctors used to pay little attention to the age of the blood used for massive transfusions, as long as it was within a stipulated shelf life. But now the emphasis is on fresh red-blood cells, which appear to carry more oxygen and clot faster.

As a result, the U.S. military has sped up blood delivery, Dr. Dunne says. Today blood is flown from the U.S. through the coalition's Al Udeid Air base in Qatar and delivered to field hospitals in Afghanistan three and a half days after it comes out of a donor's arm.

One of the most important innovations is a reemphasis on one of the oldest medical implements on the battlefield: the tourniquet. It was frowned upon in previous years because doctors feared it could cause long-term limb damage. Servicemen are now issued a Combat Action Tourniquet, dubbed CAT, made by Composite Resources, of Rock Hill, S.C.

Two CATs are now issued to every soldier. They are easy to use because each tourniquet has a black plastic lever that tightens it. Marines often go on foot patrols with tourniquets loosely strapped high on their thighs, so they can begin cranking right away if a foot is blown off.

The military's nerve center for innovations is the Joint Theater Trauma System, set up by the Defense Department in San Antonio, Texas. It analyzes statistics on battlefield injuries to see what treatments are working. A research article from the trauma center was one reason tourniquets were issued en masse in October 2008, after a study suggested that mortality rates could be reduced dramatically if soldiers could strap on a tourniquet before arriving at the hospital.

Many new life-saving ideas come from the field, in hospitals like the shabby plywood-and-fabric one on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military base at Kandahar airport. Kandahar, a city of about 450,000, is the Taliban's main stronghold in southern Afghanistan and the region that has seen the fiercest fighting since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Last July and August, as the insurgency intensified with the warmer weather, the hospital took in nearly 170 helicopter-evacuated patients a month.

Dr. York says his most useful work is controlling bleeding in smashed pelvises, where an array of blood vessels lie along the bone and can be easily ruptured. As other surgeons work on head and leg injuries, Dr. York shoots dye into the pelvis, and if the imaging equipment picks up any bleeding, he blocks the vessels through more catheter implants.

Dr. York was at the gym one Sunday morning in February when he got word that a helicopter was bringing in two soldiers from the nearby Arghandab Valley, both injured by an improvised explosive device.

One soldier, both legs blown off, was dead when the helicopter arrived. The other, a 23-year-old infantryman, was alive but bleeding badly from a gaping wound on his left side. A scan of his pelvis showed a splintered femur and a cluster of shrapnel in his thigh.

The helicopter medic had given him a strong dose of Ketamine, a powerful anesthetic mostly frowned on in the U.S. but which the military has lately used in Afghanistan because it seems to help soldiers feel indifferent to their wounds. On the gurney in the trauma bay, the soldier sang softly to himself while doctors discussed whether his leg would have to be amputated.

Dr. York shot dye into the soldier's arteries and under a scanner saw that all the vessels down to his foot were intact. The leg, he said, could be saved. In the operating tent, the surgeons cleaned the debris from his wounds. Dr. York put a nickel-and-titanium filter into one of his veins just below the heart to keep errant blood clots from flowing into his heart and lungs, which could kill him. "There—just like a screen in a screen door," he said, watching his work on a computer monitor. "He's safe for now."

Though wounds differ, patterns are discernible, says Capt. Anne Lear, the hospital's head nurse. Most time and energy is spent researching injuries from IEDs, the Taliban's weapon of choice. Ms. Lear says blast injuries usually fall into two categories: those that dismember soldiers on foot patrol, and less visible ones that soldiers suffer while riding in armored vehicles.

The men on foot patrols, she says, often lose both legs and one arm. The way we walk, with one arm usually swinging behind the body, often shields that arm from the blast, she says.

Injuries suffered inside armored vehicles are often underestimated. Wounded troops frequently arrive by helicopter looking alert, talking loudly because their ear drums have burst. Then, suddenly, they will collapse.

Armored vehicles, even if they hold together in a blast, get thrown into the air and slam around their occupants. Even those who are strapped in may bleed internally from broken arms and elbows, fractured spines and pelvises.

When Dr. York finished treating the young infantryman, the next patient was announced: A 22-year-old sergeant who had just shot himself in the head. There were clean entry and exit wounds in his temples.

His heart was beating steadily. Dr. York said it might be a freak head wound that is survivable. But a CT scan elicited a collective groan from the doctors. The bullet had passed through the center of his brain, blowing out his pituitary gland and damaging his brain stem. Bits of bone were dispersed through his skull.

"He knew right where to put the gun," said Dr. York.

Nurses wheeled the sergeant to a small space behind some blue curtains. Within half an hour, he had stopped breathing.

The last patient that day, a 31-year-old captain in the British infantry, the Royal Anglian Regiment, arrived late. On patrol that morning, he had stepped on an IED. The blast took off both legs, his right arm and all the fingers on his left hand, except his index finger.

The captain, Martin Driver, was sedated, the stumps of his limbs wrapped tightly in gauze and a pulse monitor fixed on his one remaining finger.

The medical staff gave him massive transfusions of blood products—plasma, red-blood cells, platelets, whole blood, and two doses of an experimental clotting agent. He lost most of it to bleeding. All told, he received about four times the volume contained in an average person.

By the following evening, his wounds finally appeared to be clotting.

Just before midnight, a British medical crew arrived to put him on a plane back to England. The IED blast had thrown dust and debris into Capt. Driver's abdomen, where an infection was raging. His prospects for recovery were uncertain.

As they lifted him onto a stretcher, the captain's eyes fluttered. The British doctor spoke to him, although it was unclear whether he could hear. "I see you're blinking now, Martin," he said. "We're taking you back to Birmingham so that your family can see you. We will keep you comfortable the whole way."

They took along another box of blood for transfusions, along with a medical chart that described his transfer to England as a "mission of compassion." Capt. Driver died on March 15.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704655004575114623837930294.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3#printMode

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Mayor's Killing Is Latest Blow for Town

Robbery Gone Bad Takes Community Leader From Illinois Village Already Reeling From Poverty, Unemployment and Crime

WASHINGTON PARK, Ill.—The shooting death Thursday of the mayor here was only the latest blow for a dilapidated village of about 5,000.

Nearly half the population of Washington Park, which sits across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, lives below the federal poverty line. Just about every neighborhood is mottled with abandoned, caved-in homes. The community's most notable businesses are a collection of strip clubs where employees say prostitution is common.

Early Thursday, Mayor John Thornton was shot three times as he sat in his car. Police have arrested two suspects and are calling the homicide a robbery gone bad.

"It's not a great place to begin with," said Kim McAfee, the village's chief of detectives. "Then you have this."

The mayor's slaying is another in a stretch of hard turns this village has taken.

In the last six years the village has twice filed for bankruptcy and been victimized by three former employees who stole more than $500,000 in public money.

In 2002, a fight between a former mayor and a trustee at a village meeting ended with the mayor in the hospital and the trustee at police headquarters. In 1996, a former mayor was imprisoned for taking bribes to protect illegal gambling.

By all accounts, Mr. Thornton, 52 years old, was comfortable in the rough-and-tumble world of local politics but also was a man driven to help improve his community. The father of six children had helped revitalize several parks and raze about 100 empty homes since taking office in 2005. He also had a reputation for digging into his own pocket–literally–to lend a hand.

Lonnie Hardy, an editor of a car magazine and an area resident, said he was standing in line at a chicken restaurant with Mr. Thornton about three months ago when a man who had just placed an order said he was short a few dollars.

"[Mr. Thornton] turned around, handed him $5, didn't say anything, didn't skip a beat, just kept talking. He didn't even know him, that's just who he was," Mr. Hardy said.

On Thursday, Mr. Thornton left his overnight shift as a foreman at the Metro-East Sanitary District at about 5:30 a.m., police said. Sharon Thornton, his high-school sweetheart and wife of 36 years, said her husband's routine was to drive around the village surveying the landscape, pick up two coffees at a local gas station and come home and drink them with her on the front porch of their modest one-story bungalow. Then he would call the city sanitation department with a to-do list for the day.

A ramshackle home near a park was scheduled to be razed on Thursday afternoon, and Mr. Thornton apparently drove by to have a look, said Clyde "Stonewall" Jackson, the precinct captain from that neighborhood. At some point, a man got into the front passenger seat of Mr. Thornton's car and shot the mayor, who then drove his sedan into a tree. The man got out and ran, according to police. Mr. Thornton was pronounced dead at a hospital in nearby East St. Louis, Ill.

Mr. McAfee, the chief of detectives, said he thinks it is likely that Mr. Thornton offered the man help and was robbed, though he acknowledged that drugs are sold in the neighborhood and that questions about what Mr. Thornton was doing there will be asked.

"The toxicology report should put those questions to rest," Mr. McAfee said.

Mr. Thornton's family and friends believe he was in the neighborhood to check on an abandoned building and then stopped to offer the man help.

The murder sent ripples of sadness, but not shock, through the community. In the 1990s, Washington Park began allowing strip clubs to move here in larger numbers as the economy crumbled. By 2000, the population had fallen 25%.

There are now eight clubs in the village of about three square miles. Their presence has contributed to outsiders' perception of Washington Park as a seedy place. Several employees at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club there said they considered the town to be dangerous.

"I wasn't really surprised when I heard about the murder," said Sheila Hall, a cashier at the club who said she has come to expect random acts of violence in the area. "The ATM [in the club] charges $8 but I would never send a customer across the street to use the one at the gas station. It would be like sending lambs to slaughter."

In her living room Friday, Mrs. Thornton sat beneath a giant painting of Jesus. On a table nearby was a plaque that said, "I can do all things in Christ."On a chair across the room, the gray pinstripe suit that Mr. Thornton will be buried in hung on a chair waiting to be pressed.

She recalled how hard her husband had worked in the community, taking food out of their own refrigerator a few weeks ago when a young mother came to their house crying because she had nothing to eat. During a recent flood, she said, her husband left her alone to pump out their basement so he could help neighbors.

"I used to get mad at him because he didn't know how to rest," she said. "And now I'm just trying not to be angry that the people he was trying to take care of killed him."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303450704575160183726251788.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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FBI Warns on Extremist Letters Sent to Governors

WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning police across the country that an antigovernment group's call to remove governors from office could provoke violence.

The group called the Guardians of the free Republics wants to "restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site. It sent letters to governors demanding they leave office or be removed.

Investigators don't see threats of violence in the group's message, but fear the broad call for removal of top state officials could lead others to act out violently. At least two states beefed up security in response.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he received one of the letters but wasn't overly alarmed.

"We get all kinds of shall we say, 'interesting' mail, so it's not out of the norm," Mr. Pawlenty said Friday. "It got more attention because it went to so many governors."

As of Wednesday, more than 30 governors had received letters saying if they don't leave office within three days they will be removed, according to an internal intelligence note by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The note was obtained by fhe Associated Press.

The FBI expects all 50 governors will eventually receive such letters.

Governors whose offices reported getting the letters included Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Chet Culver of Iowa, Dave Heineman of Nebraska, Jim Gibbons of Nevada, Brad Henry of Oklahoma, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Bob McDonnell of Virginia, and Gary Herbert of Utah, where officials stepped up security in response to the letter.

In Nevada, screening machines for visitors and packages were added to the main entrance to the state Capitol as a precaution.

"We're not really overly concerned, but at the same time we don't want to sit back and do nothing and regret it," Deputy Chief of Staff Lynn Hettrick said.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said federal authorities had alerted the governor that such a letter might be coming, and it arrived Monday or Tuesday. Ms. Boyd, who described the letter as "non-threatening," said it was opened by a staffer and immediately turned over to the Michigan State Police.

Mr. Jindal's office confirmed that the governor had received one of the letters and directed questions to the Louisiana State Police.

"They called us as they do for any letter that's out of the norm," said Lt. Doug Cain, a state police spokesman. He declined to provide specifics about the letter, but said, "not knowing the group and the information contained in the letter warranted state police to review it."

The FBI warning comes at a time of heightened attention to far-right extremist groups after the arrest of nine Christian militia members last weekend accused of plotting violence.

In explaining the letters sent to the governors, the intelligence note says officials have no specific knowledge of plans to use violence, but they caution police to be aware in case other individuals interpret the letters "as a justification for violence or other criminal actions."

The FBI associated the letter with "sovereign citizens," most of whom believe they are free from all duties of a U.S. citizen, like paying taxes or needing a government license to drive. A small number of these people are armed and resort to violence, according to the intelligence report.

Last weekend, the FBI conducted raids on suspected members of a Christian militia in the Midwest that was allegedly planning to kill police officers. In the past year, federal agents have seen an increase in "chatter" from an array of domestic extremist groups, which can include radical self-styled militias, white separatists or extreme civil libertarians and sovereign citizens.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304871704575159453833700396.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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From the New York Times

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Vatican Priest Likens Criticism Over Abuse to Anti-Semitism

ROME — A senior Vatican priest, speaking before Pope Benedict XVI at a Good Friday service, compared the world's outrage at sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church to the persecution of the Jews, prompting angry responses from victims' advocates and consternation from Jewish groups.

The Vatican spokesman quickly distanced the Vatican from the remarks, which came on the day Christians mark the Crucifixion. They underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and from criticism over how it has handled charges of child molesting against priests in the past.

The pope and his bishops have denounced abuses in the church, but many prelates and Vatican officials have lashed back at news reports that Benedict failed to act strongly enough against pedophile priests, once as archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1980 and once as a leader of the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican has denied that he was at fault, and Vatican officials have variously described the reports as “deceitful,” an effort to undermine the church and a “defamatory campaign.”

Speaking in St. Peter's Basilica, the priest, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, took note that Easter and Passover fell during the same week this year, and said he was led to think of the Jews.

“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” said Father Cantalamessa, who serves under the title of preacher of the papal household. Then he quoted from what he said was a letter from a Jewish friend he did not identify.

“I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Good Friday has traditionally been a fraught day in Catholic-Jewish relations. Until the liberalizing Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholic liturgy included a prayer for the conversion of the Jews, and Catholic teaching held Jews responsible for the Crucifixion.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that Father Cantalamessa's sermon represented his own thoughts and was not an official Vatican statement.

Father Lombardi said the remarks should not be construed as equating recent criticism of the Catholic Church with anti-Semitism.

“I don't think it's an appropriate comparison,” he said. “That's why the letter should be read as a letter of solidarity by a Jew.”

Yet the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published the remarks in its Saturday edition, which appeared online on Friday evening.

Even as the priest spoke out against attacks on the church, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, head of the German Bishops Conference, said Friday that sexual abuse victims were not helped enough “out of a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church.”

The church, he said, was shaken by “the suffering inflicted on the victims, who often for decades could not put their injuries into words.” Bishops around Europe have been offering similar remarks in recent days, following a major statement by the pope on molesting in the Irish church.

Father Cantalamessa's comments about the Jews came toward the end of a long talk about Scripture, the nature of violence and the sacrifice of Jesus. He also spoke at length about violence against women, but gave only slight mention of the children and adolescents who had been molested by priests. “I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here,” he said.

Disclosures about hundreds of such cases have emerged in recent months in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and France, after a previous round of scandal in the United States.

A leading advocate for sexual abuse victims in the United States, David Clohessy, called comparing criticism of the church to persecution of the Jews “breathtakingly callous and misguided.”

“Men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims,” he said. “And to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

Another American victims' advocate rejected the Vatican's statement distancing itself from the remarks. “Father Cantalamessa chose to equate calumny against the Jewish people as the same as criticism of Pope Benedict,” said Kristine Ward, a spokeswoman for the National Survivor Advocates Coalition. “It is incomprehensible that Father Cantalamessa did this and that Pope Benedict, the ultimate authority in this church who presided at the service, did not stand during the service to disavow this connection to anti-Semitism.”

The comments also ruffled Vatican-Jewish relations, which have often been tense during Benedict's papacy.

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who was host to Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa's remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in the traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”

Abraham Foxman , the national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, attributed the remarks to ignorance, not malice. “You would think that a senior priest in the church would have a better understanding of anti-Semitism than to make this hideous comparison,” he said.

Benedict caused friction with Jewish groups in 2007 when he issued a ruling making it easier to use the Latin Mass , including that Good Friday prayer. In January 2009, he stirred outrage when he revoked the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, one of whom turned out to have denied the scope of the Holocaust.

Father Cantalamessa's remarks come after weeks of intense scrutiny of Benedict, which some in the Italian news media have seen in conspiratorial terms. Last week, the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica wrote , without attribution, that “certain Catholic circles” believed the criticism of the church stemmed from “a New York ‘Jewish lobby.”

Father Cantalamessa is a longtime fixture in the papal household, having been appointed its official preacher by Pope John Paul II in 1980. The apostolic preacher, as he also is called, gives meditations — especially during Advent and Lent — for the pope and Vatican hierarchy. The role was established by Pope Paul IV in the middle of the 16th century, and the job was later reserved for a member of the Franciscan Order of Capuchin Friars Minor.

Father Cantalamessa was also tasked to deliver a meditation on the problems facing the church and need for careful consideration to the college of cardinals shortly after the death of John Paul II, as they prepared to elect his successor. Their choice was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/europe/03church.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Airline Screening Plan Wins Tentative Praise

WASHINGTON — Aviation security experts and industry officials said Friday that new screening protocols for air passengers coming to the United States were a marked improvement over an emergency plan that has required extra screening of every passenger from 14 countries since the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.

They said that the new system promised to bring more complete and timely threat information to bear on decisions about who should be prevented from boarding an airliner.

But they also said that the impact of the changes on both the safety and convenience of air travel would not be evident for months.

Administration officials who described the basics of the new protocols on Friday said they would allow fragmentary but specific intelligence on terrorist threats — like the characteristics of new recruits for Al Qaeda — to be matched against the list of passengers who were not on any watch list.

Passengers whose personal data, travel histories and other details raise concerns would then be subjected to “secondary screening,” which can involve questioning, pat-downs and body scans.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up the Christmas flight, was not given extra screening before boarding his flight in Amsterdam despite considerable evidence that he might pose a security risk.

“These new measures utilize real-time, threat-based intelligence along with multiple, random layers of security, both seen and unseen, to more effectively mitigate evolving terrorist threats,” said Janet Napolitano , the secretary of homeland security.

Since January, Ms. Napolitano has participated in three aviation security summits, in Spain, Mexico and Japan, to consult with foreign counterparts about how to protect flights from terrorists. She said many other countries had stepped up security measures and intelligence-sharing since the near-disaster over Detroit.

The new scrutiny will be applied to every passenger on flights from overseas bound for the United States, officials said. They said the number of people identified for secondary screening was likely to decline compared with the post-Christmas focus on everyone from the 14 “countries of concern,” but would probably be higher than the pre-Christmas average.

The number of passengers chosen at random for extra screening will also increase, officials said.

The Transportation Security Administration said people flying to the United States “may want to allow additional time to get through security” and advised checking with airlines and airports abroad.

Before Dec. 25, airlines were given the no-fly list of people to be barred from flights altogether and a second “selectee” list of passengers to be subjected to more thorough screening. Those lists have been expanded considerably this year and now contain about 6,000 and 20,000 names respectively, officials said.

The new system will send the airlines additional names of passengers not on either the no-fly or selectee list but identified as possible security risks because of intelligence about threats. Only the names of the passengers selected for extra screening, not the underlying intelligence, will be shared with airlines and foreign security personnel, officials said.

Stewart Baker, who served as assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush , said the new measures were a distinct improvement on the emergency policies imposed after the Christmas bombing.

“I do think it makes sense to look at people and not nationalities,” Mr. Baker said. He said he also thought the new plan promised to do a better job of applying fresh intelligence to preflight screening.

“It's an experiment, and we'll have to see how it works,” said Mr. Baker, a Washington lawyer whose book on counterterrorism, “Skating on Stilts,” is scheduled for publication in June.

Airline industry trade groups criticized the country-based approach earlier this year, saying it failed to make efficient use of the extensive data that immigration and customs authorities in many countries already collect about air travelers.

“This is a welcome and very important first step toward creating a more intelligent security system where we start looking for bad people, wherever they may live, rather than issuing blanket indictments of entire countries,” Steven Lott, a spokesman in Washington for the Geneva-based International Air Transport Association, said of the revised protocols.

Civil liberties advocates had a cautiously positive reaction. Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, which had protested the blanket screening of citizens of mostly Muslim countries, said the new plan sounded better. She noted that the post-Christmas screening would not have singled out Richard Reid , the so-called shoe bomber of December 2001, who was a British citizen.

“We are very pleased that the administration heard our message that effective policies should focus on suspicious behavior and legitimate leads, not national origin, ethnicity or religion,” she said.

But in Europe, where privacy concerns have sometimes clashed with American counterintelligence efforts, the reaction was wary.

“Passenger name records are behavioral data,” said Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and advocate of civil liberties. “One of our main concerns has always been that this data not be used for data mining and profiling. Using behavioral data to look for patterns and making law enforcement decisions on that basis — if that is not profiling, then what is?”

Some members of Congress praised the new program but complained that they were not briefed on it in advance.

“While this new policy is a step in the right direction, I hope to work with the White House on a more coordinated rollout in the future,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The committee's top Republican, Representative Peter T. King of New York, likewise called the new measures “a significant step forward,” but he criticized the White House for what he said was a pattern of failing to share information with Congress.

A transportation security official said Mr. King had been given advance notice of the changes and offered a classified briefing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/us/03terror.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Report Faults Training of Local Officers in Immigration Enforcement Program

State and local police officers who enforce federal immigration laws are not adequately screened, trained or supervised, and the civil rights of the immigrants they deal with are not consistently protected, according to a report released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.

The report by the department's internal watchdog was a sweeping review of a program run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement . Through agreements signed with about 60 county and state police forces, the program allows local officers to question immigrants about their legal status and detain them for deportation.

The inspector general's report describes the program as haphazardly administered, with local agencies detaining and prosecuting immigrants with little oversight from federal agents and significant inconsistencies from place to place.

“In the absence of consistent supervision over immigration enforcement activities,” the report said, “there is no assurance that the program is achieving its goals.”

Top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement have said the program's priority is to deport immigrants with serious criminal records. But the inspector general found that the program lacked measures to determine whether immigrants detained by local officers were serious offenders.

Without those measures, the report says, ICE cannot be assured “that resources are being appropriately targeted” toward immigrants “who pose the greatest risk to public safety and community.”

The report is based on field inspections in the first six months of last year. In July, ICE officials acknowledged widespread criticism of the program, and asked all participating law enforcement agencies to sign new agreements that clarified its goals. In addition, ICE officials said Friday that they had been aware of the inspector general's findings since last year and had taken an array of steps to address them.

“Since the audit was conducted, ICE has fundamentally reformed the program,” said an agency spokesman, Richard Rocha, “strengthening public safety and ensuring consistency in immigration enforcement across the country by prioritizing the arrest and detention of criminal aliens, fulfilling many of the report's recommendations.”

The inspector general acknowledged many of the program's improvements. But, the report said, many of the most serious problems remained unresolved.

Based on the report, several immigrant advocate groups on Friday called for the termination of the program, which is commonly known as 287(g), after the clause in immigration law that established it.

The report found that the performance records of local officers were not thoroughly examined before they were allowed to join the program. Without adequate background checks, the report says, the program exposes Department of Homeland Security intelligence systems to “inappropriate or unauthorized access.”

Some officers received only cursory training in immigration law, the report found.

“One officer commented that after basic training, he came away with zero knowledge of how to process a case,” the report says. Inspectors found that local officers in the program were “not knowledgeable about the asylum process” and other basic tenets of immigration codes.

The report cites the case of an immigrant who had committed no offense but was the victim of a traffic accident. The immigrant was detained by the local police in a county jail until federal agents arrived to check the person's legal status.

The protection of immigrants' civil rights was “not formally included” in the training of local officers, the report found, nor was it taken into account in their performance reviews.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/us/03immig.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Weekly Address: President Obama Extends Holiday Greeting

WASHINGTON – In this week of faithful celebration, President Barack Obama used his address to offer his holiday greeting and to call on people of all faiths and nonbelievers to remember our shared spirit of humanity. All people know the value of work, health, education, and community. This week is a time to be mindful of this common bond which is at the heart of all the world's great religions.

The audio and video will be available online at www.whitehouse.gov

April 3, 2010

Remarks of President Barack Obama - Weekly Address - The White House

This is a week of faithful celebration. On Monday and Tuesday nights, Jewish families and friends in the United States and around the world gathered for a Seder to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt and the triumph of hope and perseverance over injustice and oppression.  On Sunday, my family will join other Christians all over the world in marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And while we worship in different ways, we also remember the shared spirit of humanity that inhabits us all – Jews and Christians, Muslims and Hindus, believers and nonbelievers alike.

Amid the storm of public debate, with our 24/7 media cycle, in a town like Washington that's consumed with the day-to-day, it can sometimes be easy to lose sight of the eternal. So, on this Easter weekend, let us hold fast to those aspirations we hold in common as brothers and sisters, as members of the same family – the family of man.

All of us know how important work is – not just for the paycheck, but for the peace of mind that comes with knowing you can provide for your family. As Americans, and as human beings, we seek not only the security, but the sense of dignity, the sense of community, that work confers. That is why it was heartening news that last month, for the first time in more than two years, our economy created a substantial number of jobs, instead of losing them. We have begun to reverse the devastating slide, but we have a long way to go to repair the damage from this recession, and that will continue to be my focus every single day.

All of us value our health and the health of our loved ones. All of us have experienced an illness, a loss, a personal tragedy. All of us know that no matter what we're doing or what else is going on in our lives, if the health of someone we love is endangered, nothing else matters. Our health is the rock upon which our lives are built, for better and for worse.

All of us value education. We know that in an economy as competitive as ours, an education is a prerequisite for success. But we also know that ultimately, education is about something more, something greater. It is about the ability that lies within each of us to rise above any barrier, no matter how high; to pursue any dream, no matter how big; to fulfill our God-given potential.

All of us are striving to make a way in this world; to build a purposeful and fulfilling life in the fleeting time we have here. A dignified life. A healthy life. A life, true to its potential. And a life that serves others. These are aspirations that stretch back through the ages – aspirations at the heart of Judaism, at the heart of Christianity, at the heart of all of the world's great religions. 

The rites of Passover, and the traditions of Easter, have been marked by people in every corner of the planet for thousands of years. They have been marked in times of peace, in times of upheaval, in times of war.

One such war-time service was held on the black sands of Iwo Jima more than sixty years ago. There, in the wake of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, a chaplain rose to deliver an Easter sermon, consecrating the memory, he said “of American dead – Catholic, Protestant, Jew. Together,” he said, “they huddled in foxholes or crouched in the bloody sands…Together they practiced virtue, patriotism, love of country, love of you and of me.” The chaplain continued, “The heritage they have left us, the vision of a new world, [was] made possible by the common bond that united them…their only hope that this unity will endure.”

Their only hope that this unity will endure.

On this weekend, as Easter begins and Passover comes to a close, let us remain ever mindful of the unity of purpose, the common bond, the love of you and of me, for which they sacrificed all they had; and for which so many others have sacrificed so much. And let us make its pursuit – and fulfillment – our highest aspiration, as individuals and as a nation. Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all those celebrating, here in America, and around the world.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/weekly-address-president-obama-extends-holiday-greeting

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The Fight to Stop Violence Against Women Continues

This week, the Vice President took his commitment to ending violence against women to Peoria, Illinois where he spoke at the Center for the Prevention of Abuse's Partners in Peace awards.

The 1100 member audience was mesmerized by the Vice President's story about his early efforts to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The first VAWA hearing was held on June 20, 1990, and over the next four years then-Senator Biden held moving hearings on domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

“I found out that the problem was much deeper than I imagined,” Vice President Biden said, describing three obstacles that had to be overcome: the notion that domestic violence is a family matter; a culture that blames the victim; and the belief that if the woman didn't report it, it must not have happened.

The Violence Against Women Act changed all that - sending resources to communities to improve the criminal justice response to abuse, creating tougher penalties for federal crimes, and bringing communities together to combat abuse. Since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, domestic violence has dropped by 58%.

Despite the progress being made in reducing domestic violence across the country, the Vice President noted that there are still 2 million injuries and 1400 deaths to women each year. During the Vice President's remarks on Wednesday, he said that the White House is stepping up its efforts in this arena, announcing an unprecedented $730 million in the President's proposed FY2011 budget to shore up services, help victims find housing and legal assistance, and make sure every call for help is answered.

The Vice President pledged to continue his commitment to change attitudes and to “free women from the oppressive cultural norm that causes them in any way to feel they are responsible for or contributed to their own abuse.”

As one audience member said after the speech, the Vice President was “such a fitting representative for this issue."

Lynn Rosenthal is the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/02/fight-stop-violence-against-women-continues

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Secretary Napolitano Announces New Measures to Strengthen Aviation Security

Commends Release of Administration's Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will begin implementing new enhanced security measures for all air carriers with international flights to the United States to strengthen the safety and security of all passengers—superseding the emergency measures put in place immediately following the attempted terrorist attack on Dec. 25, 2009.

These new, more flexible security protocols—tailored to reflect the most current information available to the U.S. government—will apply to all passengers traveling to the United States.

“These new measures utilize real-time, threat-based intelligence along with multiple, random layers of security, both seen and unseen, to more effectively mitigate evolving terrorist threats,” said Secretary Napolitano. “The terrorist threat to global aviation is a shared challenge and ensuring aviation security is a shared responsibility. I commend our many partners around the world who have taken steps to increase their own security measures through deployment of new technology, enhanced information sharing and stronger standards to keep air travel safe.”

These new, enhanced measures are part of a dynamic, threat-based aviation security system covering all passengers traveling by air to the United States while focusing security measures in a more effective and efficient manner to ensure the safety and security of the traveling public. Passengers traveling to the United States from international destinations may notice enhanced security and random screening measures throughout the passenger check-in and boarding process, including the use of explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, or pat downs, among other security measures.

Secretary Napolitano, in conjunction with the United Nations specialized agency International Civil Aviation Organization, has been leading a global initiative to strengthen the international aviation system against the evolving threats posed by terrorists, working in multilateral and bilateral contexts with governments as well as industry. Over the past three months, Secretary Napolitano has participated in regional aviation security summits around the world in Spain, Mexico and Tokyo, forging historic agreements with her international colleagues to strengthen the civil aviation system through enhanced information collection and sharing, cooperation on technological development and modernized aviation security standards.

Secretary Napolitano also commended today's release of the Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment as another important step in efforts to protect the nation's traveling public from acts of terrorism—conducted by the Obama administration in its first year as a thorough review of the nation's surface transportation security efforts, which cover mass transit, commuter and long-distance passenger rail, freight rail, commercial vehicles and pipelines.

The Assessment was developed through engagement with federal, state, local and tribal government partners as well as the private sector, provides a comprehensive framework of recommendations to enhance surface transportation security.

The Assessment reflects the Obama administration's commitment to coordinating surface transportation security efforts among all government partners and the private sector to enhance security; reduce risk; improve the efficiency and effectiveness of federal security capabilities; strengthen interactive stakeholder partnerships; and streamline security management coordination to protect Americans from threats of terrorism. It provides a comprehensive framework for the continued improvement of surface transportation security and identifies discrete areas of focus for the institution of changes that will make the nation safer.

The Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment is available here .

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov .

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1270217971441.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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Justice Department Launches Comprehensive Web Site for Tribal Communities

Attorney General Eric Holder today announced the redesign and enhancement of its Tribal Justice and Safety Web site: www.TribalJusticeandSafety.gov . The Tribal Justice and Safety Web site is a one-stop shop for tribal communities, developed to provide a user-friendly, updated and comprehensive resource for American Indian and Alaska Native tribal communities to help further improve public safety. The site's enhancements continue the department's commitment to increase communication and resources available to tribal governments and consortiums.

"Tribal communities have spoken and the Department of Justice has listened and responded. When I met with tribal leaders last year, during the Tribal Nations Listening Session, I pledged that the Justice Department would act quickly to address the issues they identified that could make significant improvements in tribal communities across the United States," said Attorney General Holder. "We have learned from our meetings with tribal leaders that difficulties accessing some of the Justice Department's information, especially information about grant opportunities, have been an obstacle for many communities. This new Web site will remove this obstacle, and help the Justice Department work more effectively with tribal communities to improve public safety."

The new site features an easy to navigate format and access to the latest announcements, press releases, speeches and information regarding Department of Justice initiatives in tribal communities. It also provides comprehensive resources available through the Office of Tribal Justice and the department's grant-making divisions: the Office of Justice Programs, Community Oriented Policing Services and the Office on Violence Against Women.

Access to the department's Combined Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) is also available on the Web site. Last month, the department announced the creation of CTAS, a newly streamlined grant program for federally-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal communities, governments and consortiums to apply for Fiscal Year 2010 funding opportunities.

Today's announcement is another step in the Justice Department's ongoing initiative to increase engagement, coordination and action on public safety in tribal communities.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/April/10-ag-364.html

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From ICE

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Central Ohio nurse indicted for distributing child porn online

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal grand jury here Thursday indicted a central Ohio man on six counts of distributing child pornography.

Michael D. Dunbar, 48, of Fredericktown, Ohio, is a registered nurse who has worked for home health care agencies in Knox, Richland and Franklin counties and has worked as an independent home health care worker in Franklin and Fairfield counties.

Carter M. Stewart, U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, Brian Moskowitz, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Investigations in Ohio and Michigan, and Knox County Sheriff David B. Barber announced the indictment returned today.

According to court documents, an investigator with an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in Virginia was patrolling the Internet in October 2009 looking for people distributing child pornography. The undercover officer created a private chat session with an individual identifying himself as “Patnted3”. In that session and five subsequent sessions, the individual sent the undercover officer a total of 100 digital images of prepubescent boys engaged in explicit sexual activity.

The information was shared with ICE agents, who determined that the internet address traced back to Dunbar's home in Knox County. Task Force officers, assisted by Knox County Sheriff's deputies, searched Dunbar's home on March 2, 2010, and seized his computers.

Each count is punishable by at least five years and up to 20 years imprisonment.

"Employment records indicate that Dunbar has had access to homes where children with severe disabilities lived," Stewart said. "I would like to encourage families with young children who may have been visited by Dunbar to contact the Knox County Sheriff with any information."

Stewart commended the cooperative investigation by ICE agents and Knox County Sheriff's deputies, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Hunter, who is prosecuting the case. Stewart also thanked the Ohio Board of Nursing for their cooperation in the investigation.

This investigation is part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE agents have arrested more than 12,000 individuals.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com .

This case is being prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1004/100401columbus.htm

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Austin, Texas, man sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for producing and transporting child pornography

LUBBOCK, Texas - A man from Austin, Texas, was sentenced on Friday to 327 months (more than 27 years) in federal prison, following his guilty plea in December 2009 to one count each of producing and transporting child pornography. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted the investigation with other local agencies.

James Vallejo Salazar, 25, was also sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings to serve a lifetime of supervised release following his incarceration. Salazar has been in custody since his arrest in September 2009 at his home in Austin.

According to plea documents filed, Salazar admitted that about May 2009 he met a 15-year-old girl (Jane Doe) from Big Spring, Texas, on MySpace.com, an Internet social networking website. Salazar and Jane Doe continued to communicate with each other, primarily by telephone chat (SMS, or short messaging service). When they first met, Jane Doe told Salazar she was 15 years old.

A few months later, about July 2009, the communications between Salazar and 15-year-old Jane Doe became sexual in nature. Salazar and Jane Doe began discussing plans to have her move to Austin to live with Salazar. Jane Doe would also bring her infant daughter, Jane Doe 2, who was less than a year old, to live with her and Salazar.

From late August through early September 2009, Salazar requested, via text messaging from his cell phone, that Jane Doe produce sexually explicit photographs of Jane Doe 2. Jane Doe received the messages at her residence in Big Spring, Texas.

In addition, regarding the transportation conviction, Salazar also transported child pornography, by telephone to Jane Doe in Big Spring. On Sept. 4, 2009, between 11:02 p.m., and 11:05 p.m., Salazar sent Jane Doe a computer image depicting a female child under the age of 18 engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

On Sept. 11, 2009, a search warrant was executed at Salazar's residence in Austin. He was cooperative with law enforcement agents. When questioned by ICE agents, Salazar said that he had received the sexually explicit image of the infant girl (Jane Doe 2), as he had requested, but he deleted the image after receiving it.

This case was investigated by ICE San Angelo and Austin, Texas; the Big Spring Police Department, and Texas Child Protective Services. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven M. Sucsy, Northern District of Texas Lubbock Office, prosecuted this case.

This investigation was part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers. Since Operation Predator was launched in July 2003, ICE agents have arrested more than 12,000 individuals.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

This case was also brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1004/100402lubbock.htm

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From the FBI

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Child Reunited with His Father

The FBI Salt Lake City Division's Boise Office, the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and the Boise Police Department announce that Max Gian Alcalde has been found in Nicaragua. He was reported missing in December 2008. His mother, Margaret Sanchez Mejia Dunbar Alcalde, was escorted back to the U.S. by FBI personnel and is in custody. She is charged in Ada County, Idaho with kidnapping in the second degree, a felony (Idaho code 18-4501(2)). The charges stem from a Boise Police investigation of child custody interference. Also, the FBI had obtained a federal warrant for Sanchez Mejia Dunbar Alcalde for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The process is now underway to return Sanchez Mejia Dunbar Alcalde to Idaho. Max Gian Alcalde has been reunited with his father.

On March 26, 2010 with newly developed information, the FBI contacted the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) in Managua, Nicaragua for assistance. DS personnel at its Regional Security Office in Managua, working in conjunction with the Nicaraguan National Police, traveled to Chinandega where they located Max Gian Alcalde and his non-custodial mother, Margaret Sanchez Mejia Dunbar Alcalde. As a result, the child was successfully reunited with his father in Managua with the assistance of the FBI Legat in Panama, DS's Regional Security Office, and American Citizen Services Unit of the Embassy. Margaret Alcalde agreed to return voluntarily to the United States to face arrest and prosecution.

“With agents in 285 U.S. diplomatic missions around the world, Diplomatic Security is uniquely positioned to help overseas law enforcement locate, pursue, and apprehend fugitives,” said Jeffrey W. Culver, Director of the Diplomatic Security Service. “With today's announcement, Diplomatic Security sends a strong message to criminals like Margaret Alcade: there is no safe harbor outside the United States.”

Because the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service is the most widely represented law enforcement organization in the world, DSS's capability to track and capture fugitives who have fled U.S. jurisdiction to avoid prosecution is unmatched. During 2009, DSS assisted in the resolution of 136 international fugitive cases.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is the U.S. Department of State's law enforcement and security arm. The special agents, engineers, and security professionals of the Bureau are responsible for the security of 285 U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. In the United States, Diplomatic Security personnel protect the U.S. Secretary of State and high-ranking foreign dignitaries and officials visiting the United States, investigate passport and visa fraud, and conduct personnel security investigations. More information about the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security may be obtained at www.state.gov/m/ds .

“The successful outcome of this matter reflects the tireless work on behalf of the FBI divisions here in the United States and abroad over the course of the last year,” said John H. Morton, Supervisory Special Agent in the Boise, Idaho Resident Agency. The FBI acknowledges that a number of agencies collaborated in the apprehension of Sanchez Mejia Dunbar Alcalde and the safe recovery of Max Gain Alcalde. These agencies include the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, The United States Attorney's Office-District of Idaho, FBI Boise, FBI Legal Attaché Panama, FBI Houston, and the Boise, Idaho Police Department. A special thanks to the Nicaraguan National Police for their assistance in this matter.

FBI Contact: Special Agent Juan T. Becerra, (801) 514-3672
Department of State Contact: Sarah Rosetti, (571) 345-2507

http://saltlakecity.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel10/slc040210.htm

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From the ATF

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Canines in Theater

Most people know the old cliché a dog is a man's best friend, but for members of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan that sentiment proves true everyday.

In October, while on patrol in Afghanistan, members of the 2 nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade were saved when a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ( ATF ) certified explosive detection canine assigned to the unit discovered 15 homemade, improvised explosive devices.

The patrol was at a safe distance from the IED when the dog, on its own, found the device and sat, explains Jeffrey Groh, ATF Explosives Training Branch Chief. Canines are taught to ‘sit' when they detect the scent of explosives. This allows their handler to know where the explosive material is hidden.

In recent years military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen a dramatic increase in the use of improvised explosive devices. A large number of these IED s are constructed from homemade explosives. To combat the threat of homemade explosives and save lives, the Department of Defense teamed up with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to train dogs that can detect such explosives.

In addition to training canines at the Joint Military Working Dog Development Training Center in Yuma, AZ , ATF teaches dogs how to detect homemade explosive odors. Dog handlers learn to recognize his canine's change in behavior as a result of the animal's exposure to homemade explosive odors.

Since March, ATF has put a total of 206 canines into action detecting homemade explosives in combat zones. The program has proven to be so successful ATF canine trainers project they will train over 300 canine teams in fiscal year 2010 for deployment with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The program has shown dogs are more than friends – they can also be life savers.

http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2010/03/033110-atf-canines-in-theater.html

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