By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

August 16, 2010

Reporting from Reynosa, Mexico

A new word has been written into the lexicon of Mexico's drug war: narco-censorship.

It's when reporters and editors, out of fear or caution, are forced to write what the traffickers want them to write, or to simply refrain from publishing the whole truth in a country where members of the press have been intimidated, kidnapped and killed.

That big shootout the other day near a Reynosa shopping mall? Convoys of gunmen whizzed through the streets and fired on each other for hours, paralyzing the city. But you won't read about it here in this border city.

Those recent battles between the army and cartel henchmen in Ciudad Juarez? Soldiers engaged "armed civilians," newspapers told their readers.

As the drug war scales new heights of savagery, one of the devastating byproducts of the carnage is the drug traffickers' chilling ability to co-opt underpaid and under-protected journalists — who are haunted by the knowledge that they are failing in their journalistic mission of informing society.

"You love journalism, you love the pursuit of truth, you love to perform a civic service and inform your community. But you love your life more," said an editor here in Reynosa, in Tamaulipas state, who, like most journalists interviewed, did not want to be named for fear of antagonizing the cartels.

"We don't like the silence. But it's survival."

An estimated 30 reporters have been killed or have disappeared since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against powerful drug cartels in December 2006, making Mexico one of the deadliest countries for journalists in the world.

But a ferocious increase in violence, including the July 26 kidnapping of four reporters, has pushed the profession into a crisis never before seen, drawn renewed international attention and spurred fresh activism on the part of Mexican newsmen and women.

The United Nations sent its first such mission to Mexico last week to examine dangers to freedom of expression. On Aug. 7, in an unprecedented display of unity from a normally fractious, competitive bunch, hundreds of Mexican reporters demonstrated throughout the country to demand an end to the killings of their colleagues, and more secure working conditions.

Few killings are ever investigated, and the climate of impunity leads to more bloodshed, says an upcoming report from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

"It is not a lack of valor on the part of the journalists. It is a lack of backing," said broadcaster Jaime Aguirre. "If they kill me, nothing happens."

On the popular radio talk show he hosts in Reynosa, Aguirre chooses his words carefully. He often finds himself issuing warnings to the public on which areas of the city to avoid. Listeners don't have to be told why.

It is in Mexico's far-flung states where narco-censorship is most severe.

From the border states of Tamaulipas and Chihuahua and into the central and southern states of Durango and Guerrero, reporters say they are acutely aware that traffickers do not want the local news to "heat the plaza" — to draw attention to their drug production and smuggling and efforts to subjugate the population. Such attention would invite the government to send troops and curtail their business.

And so the journalists pull their punches.

When convoys of narco hit men brazenly turned their guns on army garrisons in Reynosa, trapping soldiers inside, it was front- page news in the Los Angeles Times in April. It went unreported in Reynosa.

After two of his reporters were briefly detained by Zetas paramilitaries later that month in the same region, Ciro Gomez Leyva, head of Milenio television, announced he was imposing a blackout on events in Tamaulipas. "Journalism is dead" in the region, he wrote. The bruised, strangled body of Durango reporter Bladimir Antuna was recovered late last year with a scrawled note attached: "This happened to me for … writing too much."

Contacting reporters in the region can seem a scene out of "The Third Man," with meetings in discreet locations and discussions that involve code: The Zetas are referred to as "the last letter" (of the alphabet), while the Gulf cartel is the "three letters" (CDG — Cartel del Golfo).

Reporters and editors in Tamaulipas and Durango say they routinely receive telephoned warnings when they publish something the traffickers don't like. More often, knowing their publications are being watched and their newsrooms infiltrated, they avoid publishing anything that risks falling into a questionable category.

Or they stick to just-the-facts government bulletins that may confirm an incident but won't offer details.

"If there's nothing official, we don't print it," said an editor from a northern newspaper. "It makes me very angry. How can I bend to the demands of those people? But I have to calculate the risk."

The journalists also keep an eye on certain websites known to have affiliation with drug cartels: If they see that a shootout or a grenade attack is being reported, they know it's OK to publish the same information.

That's why the Reynosa shootout two weeks ago wasn't reported. But a car bomb at police headquarters in the Tamaulipas state capital, Ciudad Victoria, two days later got front-page play because, editors say, the dominant Gulf wanted the rival Zetas paramilitaries (presumed authors of the bomb) to look bad.

Not that regional Mexican papers are squeamish. They will publish any number of grisly photographs of severed heads and battered corpses dangling from bridges. But not information that will offend the cartel in charge.

Social media networks such as Twitter have filled some of the breach, with residents frantically sending danger alerts. And a secretive "narco blog" has started posting numerous videos of henchmen and their victims, no matter how gruesome. But, residents say, the social media too have been usurped by traffickers, who use the system to spread rumors and stoke panic.

In Durango, where more newsmen were killed in 2009 than in any other state, broadcast reporter Ruben Cardenas said journalists could no longer do their job. "It is disinformation. It is a disservice to society," Cardenas told The Times late last year.

A few weeks later, when The Times ventured into the Durango city of Gomez Palacio to report on the kidnapping and slaying of Los Angeles civic leader Bobby Salcedo, local Mexican reporters initially shared enthusiasm for the story. But after a couple of days of publishing reports, employees at one newspaper said they were ordered, presumably by Salcedo's killers, to cease. The news, attracting attention in Los Angeles and Washington, was "heating the plaza."

Durango was also the scenario of the July 26 abductions. Four journalists were covering disturbances at a Gomez Palacio prison where it had just been revealed that the warden was allowing inmates to go out at night on killing rampages.

The reporters' employers received instructions to broadcast homemade videos from one cartel that linked its rival to corrupt cops. The videos showed police who had apparently been abducted and were "confessing" at gunpoint.

Journalists around Mexico mobilized like never before, spreading the word, demanding action from authorities and staging demonstrations. Eventually the reporters were freed. Blood still seeping from his scalp, a bruised Alejandro Hernandez spoke of the ordeal: five days of torture, beatings with a plank, threats of an ugly death.

A happy ending? The men were rescued or released only after their news outlets met the traffickers' demands and aired the cartel videos. It was the latest twist: news coverage as ransom.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-narco-censorship-20100816,0,7924069,print.story

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From the Associated Press

August 15, 2010

BOSTON

A former medical student accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist apparently killed himself inside a Boston jail, where he was awaiting trial, authorities said Sunday.

Philip Markoff's body was found Sunday morning in the Nashua Street Jail after an apparent suicide, said Ed Geary, a spokesman for the Suffolk County sheriff's office. Geary said no additional information was immediately available, and an investigation had begun.

Saturday would have been Markoff's first wedding anniversary, but his nuptials were canceled after his arrest.

Markoff, 24, a former Boston University student, pleaded not guilty in fatal shooting of Julissa Brisman, of New York City, and the armed robbery of a Las Vegas woman. Both crimes happened at Boston hotels within the span of four days in April 2009. Rhode Island prosecutors also accused him of attacking a stripper during the same week.

His trial in the Massachusetts cases was expected in March.

Markoff's lawyer, John Salsberg, said he was shocked and saddened about his client's death. He would not comment further.

Markoff had met the women through advertisements for erotic services posted on Craigslist, a classified advertising Web site, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the Boston Police Department crime lab identified two blood stains taken from swabs on a handgun that was seized during a search of Markoff's apartment in Quincy, Mass. Prosecutors alleged that Markoff used the weapon to bludgeon Brisman before the victim was shot three times at close range.

Investigators also found several other items in the apartment, including four pairs of women's underwear wrapped inside of socks and hidden in a box spring.

Markoff was engaged at the time of his arrest. His fiancee, Megan McAllister, ended the relationship with Markoff after visiting him in jail, and their wedding, scheduled for Aug. 14, 2009, was subsequently canceled.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-naw-craigs-list-suspect-dead-08152010,0,5906467,print.story

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From the New York Times

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South Korea and U.S. Begin War Games

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Tens of thousands of South Korean and U.S. troops launched a fresh round of military drills Monday despite North Korea's warning that it would retaliate with a ''merciless counterblow'' for the exercises Pyongyang considers rehearsal for invasion.

The 11-day drills, dubbed Ulchi Freedom Guardian, are annual computer-simulated war games that involve about 56,000 South Korean soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and abroad, South Korea's Defense Ministry and the U.S. command in Seoul said Monday.

They follow massive joint naval drills last month off South Korea's east coast that Washington and Seoul said were a show of unity following the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March. The allies blame North Korea for the torpedo attack that killed 46 sailors. Pyongyang denies involvement.

North Korea vowed harsh retaliation for those drills as well. Pyongyang has for years threatened the South with destruction, though it has never followed through with an all-out military assault since the Korean War ended in 1953.

The Korean peninsula technically remains in a state of war because that conflict ended with an cease-fire, not a peace treaty. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea and tens of thousands more in the region.

Seoul and Washington say the routine military drills are purely defensive, while North Korea calls them preparation for an attack.

''The projected war maneuvers under the spurious signboard of 'defense' are belligerent and undisguised (North Korea)-targeted war exercises,'' Pyongyang's military said in a statement carried Sunday by the official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea's military will deal a ''merciless counterblow'' to the U.S. and South Korea, ''the severest punishment no one has ever met in the world,'' it said.

The statement did not elaborate on how the North would retaliate. South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday it was keeping a close watch on North Korea and had spotted no suspicious activity.

The Ulchi Freedom exercises are designed to improve the allies' joint capability to defend the South and respond to any potential provocations, the U.S. military said in a statement last month.

Earlier this month, South Korea also carried out its own naval drills near the tense western Korean sea border where the Cheonan warship went down, drawing a barrage of artillery rounds from North Korea.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/08/15/world/AP-AS-Koreas-Tension.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Bomb Threat Empties Lourdes Shrine

PARIS (AP) — Thousands of people, many disabled or ailing and on stretchers, were evacuated Sunday from the shrine at Lourdes in southern France after a bomb threat on the Roman Catholic holy day of Assumption.

The pilgrims returned after explosives experts scoured the area and “allowed us to determine that it was an unfounded threat,” said the shrine's chief spokesman, Pierre Adias.

About 30,000 pilgrims were at the site, whose spring water is reputed to have healing powers, when the Lourdes police received an anonymous threat that the site would be bombed on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Adias said.

The authorities read an announcement in six languages ordering everyone to evacuate just as a midday Mass was to begin.

About 900 gravely ill pilgrims were taken to a secure place while teams with sniffer dogs fanned out around the shrine, Mayor Jean-Pierre Artiganave of Lourdes said on France-Info radio.

After about five hours, the shrine reopened and ceremonies for Assumption, which marks the taking into heaven of the Virgin Mary, resumed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/world/europe/16lourdes.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Activists Take Fight on Immigration to Border

HEREFORD, Ariz. — No migrant would have dared cross from Mexico into this particular stretch of Arizona on Sunday.

Hundreds of Tea Party activists converged on the border fence here in what is typically a desolate area popular with traffickers to rally for conservative political candidates and to denounce what they called lax federal enforcement of immigration laws. The rally brought a significant law enforcement presence as well as numerous private patrols by advocates of a more secure border.

But rallies, even daylong ones, are no way to seal the border. The Obama administration insists that its statistics show that significant financing increases in the federal Border Patrol have helped bring down crime at the border and make the smuggling of immigrants and drugs harder than ever.

But the activists who gathered Sunday had a decidedly different take. The border, in their view, is still far too easy to get across and has become so dangerous that some of them brought their sidearms for protection. Organizers urged participants to leave rifles in their cars.

“Instead of finding bugs in our beds, we're finding home invaders,” said Tony Venuti, a Tucson radio host who attached a huge sign to the fence that told immigrants to head to Los Angeles, where they will be more welcome, and even offered directions for getting there.

Addressing the crowd, Sheriff Joe Arpaio , who conducts controversial sweeps in immigrant neighborhoods in Phoenix and other parts of Maricopa County, said the problem could be solved if the Border Patrol was given permission to track down migrants on the Mexican side before they crossed.

“If I had all the national TV here, I'd probably climb the fence to show you how easy it is,” Sheriff Arpaio said from the rally's stage, a flag with the words “Don't Tread on Me” flapping behind him.

Also among the speakers was Russell Pearce , the state senator who sponsored Arizona's controversial immigration law known as 1070, part of which was blocked by a federal judge last month.

The event was monitored on the Mexican side. A rally participant spotted a group of people in the rugged terrain in Mexico and alerted Border Patrol officers, who identified them with binoculars as members of Grupo Beta, a Mexican agency that aids migrants in distress.

Sheriff Larry A. Dever of Cochise County, where the event was held, said the area was a hotspot for traffickers.

“We're right at the point of the spear where human and dope smuggling takes place,” Sheriff Dever said. “These mountains are a beehive of activity.”

He said he had no doubt that migrants and drug smugglers were using lookouts to keep track of the rally.

“They know this rally is going on,” he said. “They are not fools. They're experts. They probably know more about this than we do standing here.”

J. D. Hayworth , who is challenging Senator John McCain in the Republican primary to be held later this month, used the event to question Mr. McCain's commitment to fighting illegal immigration. Trying to outflank Mr. Hayworth, Mr. McCain has made several stops in the border region recently.

The Obama administration has similarly started a defense of its border policies in recent days.

“Is there more work to be done? Absolutely. Is the problem a significant one, a challenging one for the nation? Absolutely,” John T. Morton, director of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement , said in Phoenix last week, vowing that his agency was committed to securing the border.

The rally was held on private land, not far from where a popular Arizona rancher died in late March in a killing that helped fuel the immigration debate in the state.

Cindy Kolb, a border activist who lives nearby, yelled out through the thick metal slates in the border fence, which had been decorated on the American side with tiny flags, “Hey, don't come over here anymore.”

She added: “We don't like illegals hiding under bushes when our kids wait for the school bus. This border needs to be secure.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/us/politics/16rallly.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Many veterans of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam brought home tales of heroism and valor and, unbeknownst to their loved ones, potentially explosive war souvenirs.

The police in Bangor, Me., received a call this month: a woman found a live hand grenade in a moving box, where it had probably sat for decades. She believed that it belonged to her late husband, who served in the Vietnam War and probably brought it home as a keepsake.

A bomb squad was summoned to detonate it.

“These men are passing away because they're in their 80s or 90s, and now, unfortunately, family members are unaware of the fact that they have war souvenirs,” said Sgt. Andrew Parsons of the New Hampshire State Police explosives unit. “When they find Grandpa's treasure chest and pull things out, lo and behold there's a hand grenade at the bottom.”

Calls about old ammunition and shells have become a regular occurrence for many law enforcement agencies in recent years, officials said, especially in areas with a large number of veterans or old military installations.

A few years ago someone called the Fire Department in Beverly, Mass., after realizing that a friend's doorstop was a tank shell. It was live. A bomb squad was called in.

In April, a shellfish company in New Bedford, Mass., dragged in more than 100 grenades from the ocean floor while trawling for clams.

“It's under people's radar screens until they come into contact with it, and when they do it requires a very methodical approach and mitigation of it,” said the Massachusetts state fire marshal, Stephen D. Coan.

The calls are alarming, officials said, because ammunition can become more volatile and unpredictable as it ages. People are urged to leave the explosives where they are discovered and call the police.

Many, however, do not.

“People come in with huge boxes of ammunition and dump it on the counter,” said Sgt. Paul Edwards of the Bangor Police Department. “It's all green and starting to rot.”

Local and state bomb squads often handle the calls and are not required to notify the military, said Maj. Robert J. Moore, an Army spokesman. He said the Army responded to 250 incidents involving munitions last year.

Cpl. Darrel Kandil of the Sheriff's Department in Hillsborough County, Fla., said ammunition was most often found in the spring and summer, when people are cleaning out their homes.

“As long as guys are deployed,” he said, “they're going to want to bring souvenirs home.”

Some ammunition from the wars ends up in secondhand stores and on the black market, officials said. But most of the time the calls come from people like William Pappaconstantinou, 79, who discovered a 60-millimeter shell in June while clearing his yard in Dracut, Mass.

Mr. Pappaconstantinou, a Korean War veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star, said he knew exactly what he had found and called the police.

The Dracut police responded, and the state police bomb squad destroyed the shell the next day. There are a lot of veterans living in the town, about 30 miles northwest of Boston.

“We get it all the time — an older woman calling to say there's something in the basement that belonged to her husband,” said Sgt. Mark Gosselin of the Dracut Police Department. “It's all munitions.”

Mr. Pappaconstantinou tried to bring home some Chinese guns from the war, but they were taken by his commanding officer. He did, however, keep the bullet that was taken out of his leg — it now sits in a glass jar. “Anything for a souvenir,” he said. “Those guys brought everything back.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/us/16ammo.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Charges Dropped in Killings in Buffalo

BUFFALO (AP) — A prosecutor had murder charges dismissed on Sunday against a parolee who had been accused of opening fire outside a downtown restaurant, killing four people and wounding four others.

Keith Johnson, 25, of Buffalo, was still being held in jail on a parole violation. He could be rearrested if authorities change their minds, but the prosecutor, District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III of Erie County, said the evidence did not support the murder charges, citing photo evidence and witnesses' statements.

“I'm not going to prosecute someone for a quadruple homicide unless I'm sure he did it,” Mr. Sedita told Judge Patrick M. Carney in Buffalo City Court, with Mr. Johnson sitting next to him, “and I'm not sure he did it.”

Investigators removed several security cameras from around the restaurant, the City Grill, on Saturday and viewed the images into the evening.

“We can see the race, gender, height, build, the clothing of the perpetrator,” Mr. Sedita said outside the courtroom.

The shootings occurred early Saturday after the managers of the City Grill, reacting to a dispute, decided to close the restaurant. About 2:30 a.m., the victims were leaving when a man began shooting, the police said.

Later in the day, Mr. Johnson was arrested and charged with four counts of second-degree murder.

Even after the charges were dropped Sunday, the police commissioner, Daniel Derenda, defended the arrest.

People who had been at the restaurant identified Mr. Johnson by name; one witness picked him out of a photo lineup; Mr. Johnson gave inconsistent statements and a search of his home yielded clothing with blood on it, Mr. Derenda said. Tests on the blood have not been completed, the police said.

“We acted on what we had,” Mr. Derenda said. “If we had the same information today and were given the same scenario, we would have had the same result. We acted quickly to rectify a situation where we were wrong, and we turned it around as quickly as possible.”

Mr. Johnson, who was released on parole in late July after serving two years for assault, was assigned a lawyer after the charges were dismissed. Investigators said he could be a witness in the case.

Mr. Sedita, the district attorney, said he believed that Mr. Johnson was being held in jail because being at a bar violated the conditions of his release.

A parole official could not be reached by phone on Sunday to confirm that.

Mr. Johnson's mother, Jackie Green, told The Buffalo News that her son was at the restaurant at the invitation of a friend. “He was ducking and dodging bullets like everybody else out there,” she said.

The police were pursuing several new leads on Sunday, Mr. Derenda said, and the authorities again asked that witnesses come forward. Mr. Derenda has estimated there were over 100 people at the scene when the police arrived.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/nyregion/16buffalo.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Islam in Two Americas

There's an America where it doesn't matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

But there's another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they're in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.

The first America, not surprisingly, views the project as the consummate expression of our nation's high ideals. “This is America,” President Obama intoned last week, “and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.” The construction of the mosque, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told New Yorkers, is as important a test of the principle of religious freedom “as we may see in our lifetimes.”

The second America begs to differ. It sees the project as an affront to the memory of 9/11, and a sign of disrespect for the values of a country where Islam has only recently become part of the public consciousness. And beneath these concerns lurks the darker suspicion that Islam in any form may be incompatible with the American way of life.

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes. The first America welcomed the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the second America demanded that they change their names and drop their native languages, and often threw up hurdles to stop them coming altogether. The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics.

But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment's success. During the great waves of 19th-century immigration, the insistence that new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture — and the threat of discrimination if they didn't — was crucial to their swift assimilation. The post-1920s immigration restrictions were draconian in many ways, but they created time for persistent ethnic divisions to melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism.

The same was true in religion. The steady pressure to conform to American norms, exerted through fair means and foul, eventually persuaded the Mormons to abandon polygamy, smoothing their assimilation into the American mainstream. Nativist concerns about Catholicism's illiberal tendencies inspired American Catholics to prod their church toward a recognition of the virtues of democracy, making it possible for generations of immigrants to feel unambiguously Catholic and American.

So it is today with Islam. The first America is correct to insist on Muslims' absolute right to build and worship where they wish. But the second America is right to press for something more from Muslim Americans — particularly from figures like Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the mosque — than simple protestations of good faith.

Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.

By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they'll need leaders who don't describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they'll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They'll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it's the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16douthat.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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August 16, 2010

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

He misses his children, whom he hasn't let visit him in jail, because "this is a childhood memory I don't want them to have.''

After years of working for a steady paycheck as a Bolingbrook cop, he now begs for jobs paying the equivalent of $7.50 a week just for something to do.

And yet Drew Peterson -- who is awaiting trial in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio -- says his time in Will County Jail since his arrest in May of last year has passed quickly.

"Its a funny phenomenon,'' he writes in a handwritten letter to Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed, "the days in here drag but the time flies.''

In the letter, Peterson also writes about his notoriety and how everything he says seems to get picked up by the media.

"Its not easy being a national pastime,'' he says.

The letter from Peterson was given to Sneed by a confidential source, who removed parts of the missive. The Sun-Times also edited the letter for space, but Peterson's words were left largely verbatim.

In the first installment of the letter to Sneed, which ran in Sunday's Sun-Times, Peterson wrote about his arrest and what it's like to live in a tiny cell with little contact with other people. Today he writes about missing his children and the difficult process of going to court.

Although he also jokes about his time in prison, the Sun-Times is aware of the pain the Savio family has endured while waiting for justice in the murder of their loved one.

I talk to my kids a couple of time a week and the hardest part about being in here is missing their events, birthdays and just watching them grow.

My little girl, now 5, ask me where I'm at and when are you coming home. It breaks my heart that I don't have the answer for her. I don't let my children visit me here. This is just a childhood memory I don't want them to have.

My other visits are few. I do get a lot of letters from new friends all sending encouraging words of love, friendship and hope. One lady wrote me a letter calling me her hero due to the fact I saved her from an abusive home as a police officer several years ago. . . .

I get contact visits from my lawyers to prepare my case for trial. My legs are shackled to the floor and I sit on a small round stainless steel stool.

The process of going to court can be hellish. I'm removed from my cell and POD, walked to a holding area then shackled. Placed into a transport vehicle alone. Then to the courthouse.

The vehicle is normally parked next to the courthouse jail door to avoid the press getting pictures. I remember the first time. As the vehicle went down the ramp to the courthouse door, it was parked away from the door: I was paraded in front of what looked like over 100 news cameras on the walls looking down at me. I guess they needed a "PERP WALK" to satisfy the presses need to further exploit me.

I was going to comment about the size of the two officers who escorted me into the courthouse. "I was going to go on a diet but I can just hang with these guys and look thin."

They were nice guys so I just said, "Three squares a day and these spiffy clothes and check out this bling." I heard those comments went national. Its not easy being a national pastime.

Once I'm in the courthouse I'm handcuffed, searched, and placed into a small 7x9 room awaiting court with nothing to do. After being called for court I'm re-shackled and taken to the courtroom via a small elevator. I'm kept shackled in court and not allowed to talk to or signal anyone in the room except for my lawyers.

I really feel bad for the female inmates in court. They aren't allowed any makeup and all look very stressed out.

This is the only place I have interacted with the other inmates. I normally get them laughing. I ask them how they think I would look in cornrows.

My time in court is normally short and I'm taken back to the small room where I wait for sometimes as long a 5 hours, to be taken back to my cell. I get a sack lunch with a bologna or peanut butter sandwich.

As I'm moved about the courthouse it drives the officers nuts when the other inmate call out my name or ask for autographs. I just laugh. When I'm taken back to the jail I'm shackled up again and isolated in a transport vehicle.

One time I was transported back with about 5 female inmates on the opposite side of the vehicle partition. We were all joking back and forth.

One young girl was complaining that her parents weren't coming up with her bond money. So I asked her to marry me. She said yes. I then told her to call her parents and tell them she got engaged to DREW PETERSON in the county jail. I said her parents would have her bond money that night. Big laugh.

At the jail I'm strip searched again. I laugh every time I'm told to squat and cough while naked. I'm then walked back to my pod and turned over to officers there. I normally greet my captors with "HONEY I'M HOME" and then directed to my cell.

Its a funny phenomenon the days in here drag but the time flies.

I have always been a busy man working as many as 6 jobs. I sometimes earned as much as $100 per hour. Now I'm begging for the staff here to allow me to work as a POD worker, for long hours to earn $7.50 a week worth of moon pies and or stamps just for something to do.

From time to time they place me on suicide watch but the only time I think about suicide is when they ask me if I'm thinking about suicide.

As far as my case goes, my lawyers are ready for trial. I heard that Will County State's attorney, James Glascow, had a tantrum about the Judges ruling in my case so the state is appealing to a higher court. The law says I was supposed to be freed. But like most of my other constitutional rights this too has been violated.

I can't believe I spent 32 years defending the United States Constitution with my life which now doesn't seem to apply to me.

And Hey Jim. Didn't you take and oath of office to defend the Constitution. Not to change it. To much power to much ego.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/2601688,CST-NWS-sneed16.article

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August 16, 2010

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI

Media maven Oprah Winfrey reportedly ruffled her staff earlier this year by asking them to pledge not to talk on cell phones while driving.

But Winfrey is not the only employer worried about employee cell phone use, particularly in staff cars on staff business. The use of cell phones and texting while driving has become a hot topic among fleet managers, who control use of company cars.

Chilcott's firm advises fleet managers that an employee who causes an accident while talking on a cell phone or texting in a company car can be a "big liability."

"The average claim costs $100,000 -- it could be a workers compensation claim, there could be third-party injuries," he said, adding that cell-phone related crashes cost $43 billion a year. "The best policy is put the phone down."

A company could be liable even if an accident occurs while an employee is in his own car on his own cell phone -- if the call was business-related. One firm paid a $500,000 settlement when an employee making a work call on his personal cell phone after hours killed a motorcyclist, according to published reports.

According to a recent poll of fleet managers by NAFA, a national fleet management association, 63 percent of its companies have a written policy prohibiting the use of phones and other wireless communication devices while driving. Of companies that ban the practice, 32.7 percent bar any electronic device, while 67.3 percent say employees may use hands-free but not hand-held devices.

Almost all companies with wireless policies -- 96.8 percent -- prohibit sending text messages or e-mail while driving, the survey found. The companies say they developed the policies because of concern for public safety, state or local laws, liability fears and corporate image. Most companies with a wireless policy -- 93.5 percent -- rely on an honor system to enforce it, while 6.5 percent use in-vehicle video recording.

At north suburban Abbott Laboratories, which has thousands of company cars, field sales and service employees have to take safe-driving courses, according to spokesman Scott Gilmore.

Cell phone use is a factor in one of every four motor-vehicle crashes, the Itasca-based National Safety Council estimates. The council views hand-held and hands-free use as equally dangerous, since the main distraction is cognitive -- your mind isn't on driving.

As for the stereotype of the hard-charging salesman taking care of business on the road, the NSC found that more than 70 percent of companies that prohibit the use of all wireless communication devices while driving, including hands-free phones, did not see a decrease in productivity, while more than 20 percent saw drops in crash rates.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2601804,CST-NWS-ride16.article

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NEW YORK -- A Hamas leader says Muslims "have to build" a mosque near ground zero.

Mahmoud al-Zahar said Muslims "have to build everywhere" so that followers can pray, just like Christians and Jews build their places of worship.

Al-Zahar spoke Sunday on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on WABC-AM. He is a co-founder of Hamas and its chief on the Gaza Strip.

Sen. Chuck Schumer says Al-Zahar's comments don't carry any weight because Hamas is a terrorist organization. Schumer hasn't taken a stand on the mosque.

Rep. Peter King, who opposes the mosque, says he won't respond to Hamas.

The mosque is a project of the Cordoba Initiative, an advocacy group that promotes improved relations between Islam and the West. It didn't respond to Al-Zahar's comments.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/religion/2602772,ground-zero-mosque-hamas-obama-081610.article

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Border Patrol sees spike in suicides

FORT HANCOCK, Texas -- After a bad day on the job as a Border Patrol agent, Eddie DeLaCruz went home and began discussing with his wife how to celebrate her upcoming birthday. Then he casually pressed his government-issued handgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

"It was the ugliest sound I ever heard in my life," his widow, Toni DeLaCruz, recalled of that day last November. "He just collapsed."

A month later, one of DeLaCruz's colleagues at the Fort Hancock border post put a bullet through his head, too.

Suicides including these have set off alarm bells throughout the agency responsible for policing the nation's borders. After nearly four years without a single suicide in their ranks, border agents are killing themselves in greater numbers. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that at least 15 agents have taken their own lives since February 2008 -- the largest spike in suicides the agency has seen in at least 20 years.

It's unclear exactly why the men ended their lives. Few of them left notes. And the Border Patrol seems somewhat at odds with itself over the issue.

Federal officials insist the deaths have nothing to do with the agency, which has doubled in size since 2004, or the increasingly volatile U.S.-Mexico border. But administrators have quietly undertaken urgent suicide-prevention initiatives, including special training for supervisors, videos about warning signs and educational programs for 22,000 agents nationwide.

"It's a microcosm of life," said Christine Gaugler, head of human resources for Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol. "There's no uptick. It has nothing to do with our hiring. We are just responding to the suicides that have occurred."

The agency declined to provide details of the suicides and would only confirm the number of deaths since 2008. But the AP uncovered the names, locations and dates of the suicides by reviewing public records, including those obtained from medical examiners through the Freedom of Information Act, and speaking with people close to the Border Patrol.

Sources close to the Border Patrol also provided the training video and information about what federal officials have done to address the suicides.

The 17-minute video made earlier this year is part tribute to the dead and part cautionary tale. It implores agents battling depression or stress to ask for help -- a candid suggestion for an agency that once forbid agents from appearing in uniform at the funerals of colleagues who killed themselves.

The video was made by the agency's El Paso sector following at least four suicides among its agents, and it has been embraced by other sectors. In the video, El Paso agent Edmundo Puga Jr. describes getting a call about a suicide.

"At first I get upset, thinking, 'Not another one,'" Puga said. "Or, 'Here we go again.'"

All but two of the recent deaths involved agents stationed in Texas, California or Arizona.

In interviews with the AP, Border Patrol officials and families of the dead agents pointed to both professional and personal reasons.

The job, which starts at about $37,000 a year, has changed dramatically since the hiring surge began. Two years ago, an agent at a busy border station might have processed 150 illegal crossers a day.

But stepped-up border security -- including 600 miles of fence and an even larger "virtual" fence that is monitored online -- have reduced the number of illegal crossings, as has the economic hardship of the recession.

The result is a job that went from thrilling to downright boring. Agents often spent 12-hour shifts sitting alone in Jeeps and pickups keeping watch for illegal immigrants.

"Now an agent may start his shift and sit in one position for eight hours and monitor traffic and do their work," said psychologist Kenneth Middleton, clinical director of the Border Patrol's peer-support program. "Now they've got a whole lot of time to think about other things going on in their life."

Despite the boredom, the potential for danger is constant, especially in places where the border has been wracked by a bloody drug war in Mexico.

Agents face hostility from many of the people they encounter in the desert. In June, a Border Patrol agent in El Paso shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy in the dry bed of the Rio Grande. Authorities said the teen and others were throwing rocks at the agent from the Mexican side while he was trying to arrest illegal immigrants. The incident resulted in a tense standoff between armed federal agents from both Mexico and the U.S.

The story rang familiar to Mark Monsivais, whose daughter, Julia, committed suicide in July 2009. He said people hurled chunks of concrete at the 24-year-old agent during her three years in Yuma, Ariz.

Other times, he said, his daughter complained of lagging backup patrolling a dangerous and barren stretch known as "Devil's Corridor." She worried about running into drug traffickers but more often stumbled on dehydrated migrants collapsed in the sand, their legs twitching.

"It's transparent to us, the people that are here, that the job is a definite factor. They're under an enormous amount of stress," Monsivais said.

"If they do something wrong," he added, "it's an international incident."

The job was so dangerous the family has doubts about whether it was suicide. Relatives wonder whether Julia could have been killed by shady characters she met on patrol.

Suicide rates are generally higher among law enforcement than the general population, but the Border Patrol's recent troubles put the agency even above those numbers.

The rate of suicides nationally is about 12 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Law enforcement rates are about 20 per 100,000, while the Border Patrol's pace has the agency hovering in the upper 20s to low 30s per 100,000.

Some families said working for the Border Patrol had no bearing on their loved one's suicide. The parents of 29-year-old Charles Glenn Becker, who killed himself in May 2009 in Comstock, Texas, said he was up for promotion.

But Juan Tellez, the guard who committed suicide a month after DeLaCruz last fall, didn't think a promotion was in his future. His girlfriend, Christina Vasquez, said Tellez constantly butted heads with his supervisor over schedules and assignments. Tellez desperately wanted a transfer and turned to Fort Hancock's union steward for help -- agent Eddie DeLaCruz.

DeLaCruz's suicide put her boyfriend over the edge. A month later, he stumbled home drunk, grabbed the gun from his holster and blew a hole as large as a coffee mug through his head.

Vasquez, four months' pregnant with their first child, was in the room.

"He loved being in Border Patrol," she said. "But toward the end when he was in that shift, he would call me for two hours and just go on and ramble."

Vasquez and DeLaCruz's widow agreed that the rush to double the agency's ranks caused it to overlook morale.

"The agency does run these agents to the fullest," Vasquez said. "'Protect, protect' as if they're robots and they're not. They're human beings."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2602796,border-patrol-suicides-rising-081610.article

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August 16, 2010

BY CHARLES WILSON

INDIANAPOLIS -- The nightmare began with a party: three teenage girls with a webcam, visiting an Internet chatroom and yielding to requests to flash their breasts.

A week later, one of the girls, a 17-year-old from Indiana, started getting threatening e-mails. A stranger said he had captured her image on the webcam and would post the pictures to her MySpace friends unless she posed for more explicit pictures and videos for him. On at least two occasions, the teen did what her blackmailer demanded. Finally, police and federal authorities became involved and indicted a 19-year-old Maryland man in June on charges of sexual exploitation.

Federal prosecutors and child safety advocates say they're seeing an upswing in such cases of online sexual extortion. They say teens who text nude cell phone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a vicious cycle of exploitation.

One federal affidavit includes a special term for the crime: "sextortion."

No one currently tracks the numbers of cases involving online sexual extortion in state and federal courts, but prosecutors and others point toward several recent high-profile examples victimizing teens in a dozen states:

• In Alabama, Jonathan Vance, 24, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he admitted sending threatening e-mails on Facebook and MySpace extorting nude photos from more than 50 young women in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Missouri.

• In Wisconsin, Anthony Stancl, 18, received 15 years in prison after prosecutors said he posed as a girl on Facebook to trick male classmates into sending him nude cell phone photos, which he then used to extort them for sex.

• A 31-year-old California man was arrested in June on extortion charges after authorities said he hacked into more than 200 computers and threatened to expose nude photos he found unless their owners posed for more sexually explicit videos. Forty-four of the victims were juveniles, authorities said. Prosecutors said he was even able to remotely activate some victims' webcams without their knowledge and record them undressing or having sex. AP

http://www.suntimes.com/technology/2602522,CST-NWS-sextortion16.article

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