Fugitive John McCluskey is arrested by U.S. marshals in eastern Arizona.

Arizona escapee caught at campground John McCluskey and his fiancee, who is also his cousin, are arrested after a forest ranger spots them. The two are suspects in the slaying of a couple in New Mexico. From the Associated Press August 19, 2010 PHOENIX - After nearly three weeks on the run, an escaped state prison inmate and his fiancee who were targets of an intense nationwide manhunt were captured Thursday at an Arizona campground after an alert forest ranger spotted the suspicious couple, along with their stolen vehicle hidden in the trees. John McCluskey, 45, and Casslyn Welch, 44, who also is the inmate's cousin, were taken into custody by several law enforcement officers about 7:15 p.m. at a campsite at the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-inmate-caught-20100820,0,7794308,print.story

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By Kim Geiger, Tribune Washington Bureau

August 20, 2010

Reporting from Washington

More than a quarter of public middle and high school students say both gangs and drugs are present at their campuses, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Those roughly 5.7 million students nationwide are also more likely than their counterparts at private and religious schools to smoke, drink and use drugs, said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and founder of the center, which has been surveying youth for the last 16 years.

Califano said the survey illustrated "a trajectory of tragedy for millions of children and their parents."

Forty-six percent of teens report gangs at public schools, compared with just 2% of teens at private and religious schools. Forty-seven percent of public school teens said drugs are used, stored or sold at school, compared with 6% of private school students.

The "most disturbing finding," Califano said, is that 1 in 3 middle school students say drugs are used or sold at their school — a 39% increase since last year.

Not everyone reacted with alarm.

David J. Hanson, a professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam and a longtime critic of surveys by Califano's group, said Califano was "making much ado about nothing, because if we compare 2010 to 2001, there's been no change" in middle school numbers.

In 2001, 31% of public middle school students said drugs were present at school, compared with 32% in 2010. Similarly, though Califano noted a "steady rise" since 2006 in students who report the presence of drugs at their high school, Hanson said that when compared with 2001, there again had been no change.

The annual survey, timed to coincide with the back-to-school season, was conducted in April and was based on responses from more than 2,000 students and 456 parents from across the country who were surveyed by phone or over the Internet.

Hanson, who reviewed the survey and its methodology, said numerous data points were "simply deceptive," because they relied on second-hand information, some of which was supplied by students whose parents could see or hear their responses. The tendency of students to report what they have heard at school but not seen skews the portrait of what actually is occurring, he said.

Califano said his organization expected that some students might have underreported their own use of substances or alcohol.

Students from Southern California and other areas in the Southwest were among the most likely to report gang activity, Califano said.

He said students at schools where drugs and gangs were present were almost 12 times more likely than private school students to use tobacco, three times more likely to use alcohol and five times more likely to use marijuana.

Students consistently rate drugs, alcohol and tobacco as the "top concern" facing their age group, Califano said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gangs-and-drugs-20100820,0,4661184,print.story

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Judge Hector Palomares during the retrial for Antonio Zuniga, seen behind the window and bars.

In late 2005, a young street vendor in the crowded Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City was picked up by police, hauled to jail, and told: "You did it."

Just like that, Antonio Zuniga was accused of the murder of a man he had never met. No physical evidence implicated him in the death, and multiple witnesses saw him elsewhere at the time of the killing. Yet, in Mexico's Kafkaesque criminal justice system -- where police are pressured to slap charges on anyone in order to secure convictions -- Zuniga was presumed guilty from the start.

There are no jury trials in Mexico, so a judge found the 26-year-old rapper and break dancer guilty and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Just like that, his life screeched to a halt.

Zuniga might still be wrongly incarcerated were it not for the efforts of a lawyer couple carrying video cameras, Roberto Hernandez and Layda Negrete. Struck by luck time and again, they found a tiny procedural error that allowed Zuniga to get a retrial. The presiding judge allowed the two to record the proceedings. The result is the 2009 documentary " Presumed Guilty ," a stirring and often shocking examination of the built-in failures in Mexican justice.

The documentary premiered internationally at last year's Toronto Film Festival and in Mexico at the Morelia Film Festival, where it won the best documentary award and left moviegoers cheering or in tears. Last month a shortened version of the film began airing on PBS stations in the United States. Now, the filmmakers tell La Plaza, talks are underway to secure a wide release of the film on Mexican screens, which could happen as soon as this winter. 

Hernandez, reached this week at UC Berkeley where he and Negrete are working toward doctorates in public policy, said it is essential that everyday viewers in Mexico are exposed to the film.

"Civil society is putting pressure on the wrong places," Hernandez said. "Civil society wants the death penalty and wants the crime surge to stop. Whenever a judge releases someone from prison, they automatically presume the person is guilty and that there was some corruption."

He added: "Anyone who sees this film will realize they have some misconceptions about justice in Mexico."

Hernandez and Negrete have worked for a decade for justice reform in Mexico, first conducting surveys of inmate populations in Mexico City for the research center CIDE . Their findings were astounding: 93% of prisoners never saw an arrest warrant, 92% of charges are based solely on witness testimony and without physical evidence, 95% of trials end in guilty verdicts, and 71% of inmates are fed by their  families.

When they presented their findings before prosecutors and judges in Mexico, Hernandez and Negrete found their data were met with skepticism. "It's the normal reaction from a world not accustomed to statistics," Hernandez said. "People tend to remember more salient events or the rare events than the routine. It was scary, that they didn't trust any of this."

So the lawyers decided to pick up video cameras. They first produced a short documentary titled " The Tunnel ," which galvanized media and political support for a judicial reform movement in Mexico. In April 2006, as the two were "packing our boxes leaving for Berkeley," Hernandez and Negrete got a phone call. A relative of Zuniga's had seen the lawyers in the news and pleaded with them to take on Zuniga's case.

The pair "decided to get involved right on the spot," Hernandez said. "The first thing I filmed were the eyewitnesses in the marketplace."

In the tense and violent climate of Mexico's drug war, President Felipe Calderon signed a judicial reform package in June 2008 that toughened some aspects of the justice system but, crucially, made presumption of innocence replace presumption of guilt. The filmmakers behind "Presumed Guilty," however, say implementation is slow, and many more people like Zuniga are languishing in prison unjustly.

Zuniga was acquitted by an appeals court and released from the bleak and overcrowded Reclusorio del Oriente prison in April 2008, after 842 days behind bars. But the viewer gets the sense from watching the film that his freedom would not have been won without the presence of video cameras and dogged lawyers. The realization is chilling.

"Last time I saw him was at my daughter's birthday party a couple months ago," Hernandez recalled. "We broke a pinata together. Sometimes I see it, and I think, 'I can't believe we pulled it off.' "

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2010/08/presumed-guilty-documentary-mexico.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LaPlaza+%28La+Plaza%29

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An Iraqi soldier mans a checkpoint in Baghdad. With the departure of U.S. combat troops, the country's security shifts increasingly to Iraqi forces.

No rejoicing in Iraq as U.S. combat mission ends Iraqis are apprehensive and bitter about the departure of the last U.S. combat brigade amid the growing violence and political divide in their country. By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times August 20, 2010 Reporting from Baghdad Iraqis danced in the streets when U.S. troops withdrew from their cities a little over a year ago. After the last American combat brigade trundled across the border into Kuwait early Thursday, reversing a journey that began more than seven years ago, there was no rejoicing. Instead, a mood of deep apprehension tinged with bitterness is taking hold as Iraqis digest the reality that the American invaders whom they once feared would stay forever are in fact going home, when their country is in the throes of a deep political crisis that many think could turn increasingly violent.

"I'm not happy at all. I'm worried. They're leaving really early," said Wissam Sabah, a carpet seller in one of Baghdad's shopping districts. "We don't have a government and we don't know what is going to happen next. Maybe we will go back to civil war."

"The situation is getting worse every day. The politicians are inflaming the situation, there is a battle between them, and I am 100% certain it will be reflected in the streets."

U.S. combat operations in Iraq won't officially end until Aug. 31, the deadline set by President Obama for the reduction of the force to 50,000 troops involved in what the military calls "stability operations."

But with the departure to Kuwait this week of the last combat brigade this week, the formal battle mission is now essentially over. In coming days, 2,000 more troops from units scattered around the country will depart, bringing the number remaining down to the 50,000 promised by the president.

The U.S. military emphasizes that it is a sizeable number of troops, and that they will be equipped with considerable firepower. Fighter jets and attack helicopters will remain, as will about 4,500 Special Forces members who will continue to carry out counter-terrorism missions alongside Iraqi counterparts.

The soldiers staying behind have been rebranded from combat troops into six advise-and-assist brigades, which will focus on mentoring Iraqi security forces until the Dec. 31, 2011, deadline for the departure of all U.S. forces under the terms of a 2008 security agreement with Iraq.

But many Iraqis worry that the time is wrong for a troop reduction whose date was a result of Obama's campaign promise to bring troops home. Parliamentary elections in March that were supposed to cement Iraq's fledgling democracy have instead triggered a deeply destabilizing political standoff between factions that got roughly similar numbers of votes and now cannot agree on who should be in charge.

"Some people think it's a run-out. An irresponsible withdrawal," Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman said, echoing Obama's pledge to bring about a "responsible withdrawal" of U.S. troops. "This is about what's going on in America, not about what's going on on the ground."

On the ground, there has been no dramatic deterioration in security, at least not yet. But many Iraqis are concerned about the recent uptick in the number of shootings and assassinations across Baghdad and in the still troubled provinces.

A rash of assassinations of judges, traffic policemen, senior civil servants and members of the Iraqi security forces has stirred fear that insurgents are more ubiquitous than had been thought. A suicide bombing Tuesday in Baghdad targeting army recruits, in which 63 people died, called into question the Iraqi security forces' ability to take care of its own, let alone the safety of civilians.

"I'm surprised they're going because the situation is really uncertain, really tense," said Mohammed Khalid, 22, whose toy shop is lined with blond-haired dolls dressed in pink and a fearsome array of plastic rifles, pistols and automatic weapons.

"The Americans should stay until the Iraqi army can control Iraq," he said.

The effect of the withdrawal may be more psychological than real. U.S. and Iraqi officials point out that American troops have for the last year played little part in securing the urban centers where the insurgency is most active. U.S. troops were redeployed to the outskirts of the cities in June 2009 under the terms of the 2008 security agreement, and Iraqi forces have been in charge of urban areas since then.

Gen. Babakir Zebari, chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, predicted that the shift in the American mission would have no major effect, and said he was confident that the Iraqi security forces could continue to maintain stability.

"Aug. 31 is not going to be very important," he said in a recent interview. "This withdrawal is gradual. It has been going on since last year. And up till now we have had no problems."

A group of Iraqi soldiers standing guard beside their U.S.-supplied Humvee on a major Baghdad street didn't seem so sure.

One of the soldiers, when asked whether he thought security would deteriorate without U.S. combat forces, replied, "Of course, because we have no government." The soldier, who refused to give his name because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, made it clear he wasn't happy to see the Americans go.

"I wish they had taken me with them," he said. "I don't want to be here."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-unease-20100820,0,6664066.story

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From the New York Times

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In Iraq War, Soldiers Say They Had a Job to Do

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. Lucas C. Trammell, a tank gunner with the Third Infantry Division, fought his way into Baghdad in 2003. He was back in 2005, abandoning the tank for foot patrols in a very unsafe Ramadi, and again in 2007 as bodyguard for a battalion commander in Baghdad.

He has killed the enemy and lost friends. He has sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. (“The Army's gotten a lot better about letting you put your hand up,” he explained.)

He is back in Iraq for a fourth time, part of a force of only 50,000 no longer engaged in combat as of Aug. 31. He is one of thousands of soldiers and officers for whom the legacy of Iraq, like Afghanistan, has been a recalibration of what it means to be an American at war today.

The Third Infantry Division has spent more than four years in all in a war that has lasted seven and a half — and may not yet be over. These soldiers, far more than any other Americans, bear the personal and professional burdens of a conflict that has lost what popular support it had at home.

To those fighting it, the war in Iraq is not a glorious cause or, as the old advertisement put it, an adventure.

These days it is no longer even a divisive national argument like Vietnam. It is a job.

Even with the formal cessation of combat operations this month, it is a job that remains unfinished — tens of thousands of troops will stay here for at least another year — and one that, like many jobs, inspires great emotion only among those who do it.

“A lot of people at home are tired of this,” said Staff Sgt. Trevino D. Lewis, sitting outside a gym at Camp Liberty, the dusty rubble-strewn base near Baghdad's airport and coming to a point many soldiers made. The people back home can tune out; they cannot.

“The way I look at it, it's my job,” he said, recounting and dismissing the shifting rationales for the war, from the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to the establishment of democracy in the Arab world. “It's my career.”

The sense of duty among those who serve here, still strong, is nonetheless tempered by the fact that the war is winding down slowly — or, as one officer put it, petering out — with mixed results.

The invasion has left behind a democracy in an autocratic part of the world, but a troubled young one with uncertain control over its security and destiny.

“Do I think the kids running around here have a better future?” Sergeant Trammell said one evening in Camp Karbala, just outside the holy Shiite city of the same name.

“To be honest, I don't really care,” he said. “As a nation, was it the right thing to do? In the end of the day, when I look back on it, I haven't lost a soldier in my squad. That's what's important to me.”

For the soldiers and officers of the Army's Third Infantry Division, the war in Iraq has become something no one really envisioned when the division crossed the Kuwaiti border on the night of March 19, 2003: a routine.

In Vietnam, draftees served for a year and went home; the professional soldiers of the all-volunteer military fought in Grenada, Panama or the Persian Gulf war with the knowledge they would return quickly, hailed as heroes.

These soldiers in Iraq just kept coming back. They are veterans of not one war, but in essence four, each shadowing the shifting arc of Iraq itself: from the “shock and awe” invasion to the bloody sectarian conflict that followed, from President Bush's “surge” in 2007 to President Obama's denouement .

Of dozens of soldiers interviewed over the course of their deployments, many said the war was worth the personal sacrifices they made — or the far greater sacrifices of those wounded or killed — but not all did.

For some, the war over time lost the sense of national purpose, or national sacrifice, that might help assuage the hardships of those being asked to fight it.

“I missed the birth of my kid,” Sgt. Christopher L. Schirmer said matter-of-factly as he stood guard outside the fortified town hall in Ash Shura, a village in northern Iraq where the embers of insurgency never fully died. He also said his marriage broke up.

Inside, his company commander drank tea and listened to a local official complain about politics, security, the perfidious media and the need for a bank.

Soldiers like Sergeant Schirmer are volunteers, banking their tax-free salaries and enjoying the most lucrative benefits any military has ever offered.

Most don't seek sympathy, and they complain no more than anyone would who lived and worked in gravel-strewn camps in dust and searing heat.

Sergeant Schirmer wears a remembrance of the greater price others have paid: a bracelet engraved with the name of Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith and the date he died, April 4, 2003, and earned the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Schirmer was there that day and spoke to him as he died.

“I want a normal life,” he said, “enjoy the things Iraq has paid for.”

From the intensity of combat during the invasion and the turbulent years that followed, the missions in Iraq today are far more peaceful, reflecting the shift from combat to the advisory role that 50,000 troops will still carry out until the end of 2011.

While soldiers still clear roads of improvised bombs and patrol rural areas in search of insurgents, today's missions most often involve meetings with local officers or bureaucrats.

The military call them K.L.E.s, for “key leader engagements.”

“It's almost not worth the trip,” said Staff Sgt. Rodney F. Martin, who is in Sergeant Schirmer's squad, then based south of Mosul. “It's more politics now.”

Sergeant Martin tried to leave the Army after his second tour in Iraq, but was forced to stay by the policy known as “stop loss.”

Third Infantry's First Brigade was in fact the last unit in the Army to be exempted from the policy, which was rescinded as the personnel pressures on the military eased with the troop drawdown in Iraq, from a high of 170,000.

By the time Sergeant Martin could leave, though, he had re-enlisted — “The finances weren't so good,” he explained — and now he's back. “I think we've done all we can do now,” he said. “I'm a little burned out.”

Some of the younger soldiers complain, too. Roughly half of any of Third Infantry's battalions are new recruits, coming to Iraq for the first time.

Some pine for the action of the invasion or the surge or Afghanistan, bored by the relative calm of today's Iraq.

“I tell them, ‘How we got to this point wasn't easy,' ” Sergeant Martin said.

Even as the election gave way to a political stalemate that remains unresolved, the withdrawal proceeded apace.

By summer, Third Infantry's First Brigade, the American force that seized Saddam Hussein International Airport in early April 2003, began to leave the bases that sprouted around Baghdad afterward and remain to this day.

The latest, in July, was Joint Security Station Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad in an area once known as the Triangle of Death.

Under strict orders, shaped by Congress, they had to inventory everything they took and everything they left behind: tents, generators, air-conditioners and even the blast walls.

“Four thousand nine hundred and eighteen,” Lt. Jonathan C. Baker said of the concrete barriers. He knew because he had to count them.

Among the things removed was a memorial to those sacrifices, which once stood outside the camp's operations center, listing dozens of soldiers killed there since 2003.

The company's orders were explicit: document all the memorials and ship home the ones that could be moved.

One unofficial memorial remained: fading paint on a blast wall commemorating two sergeants and four specialists from Troop E of the 108th Cavalry, part of the Georgia National Guard, who were killed there during the unit's 2005-2006 deployment.

Time and the elements had worn the names all but illegible.

The wall could not be moved, but the orders were to erase any traces of the American military's presence on what is now an Iraqi base.

Two days later a light blue patch covered it.

“From our vantage point, it's a victory here,” Capt. Alex Zerio, a battalion staff officer overseeing the transfer, said, the base nearly deserted. “You can see. We're out of here.”

For all the support of the nation's leaders and the public for the uniform they wear, if not for the war itself, none of the soldiers who serve in Iraq have returned home to victory parades.

“It's not going to be like V.E. Day or V.J. Day,” Master Sgt. Noel R. Sawyer said as he prepared to go on a patrol west of Mosul earlier this year.

“Rather than being a defining moment, it's going to peter out,” he said of the end of the war. “In a way, it sucks, but it's a good thing.”

As his armored vehicle rumbled out of the main American base in Mosul, Forward Operating Base Marez, a sign at the gate warned: “Complacency Kills. Stay Alert. Stay Alive.”

A blue sign on his MRAP, an armored vehicle designed to withstand improvised explosives planted on roadside — a vehicle that didn't exist when the war began — said, “We're on the road with the permission of the Iraqi police.”

Both signs were indications, symbols, of how much the war has changed, how much it has wound down already.

Iraq remains dangerous, with American soldiers at risk of attack every day, but since the fourth deployments began late last year, the Third Infantry has lost only 14 soldiers, mostly to accidents. Over all 44 American troops have died this year in Iraq, a fraction of the 4,415 killed since 2003.

With combat operations already largely over — with the exception of counterinsurgency raids by American and Iraqi special forces — the soldiers of the Third Infantry have served largely as trainers and advisers.

“It's like, are you O.K.?” Sergeant Sawyer said, describing the gradual transition of passing authority to Iraq's beleaguered security forces.

He stepped back, like a father taking his hands off a child's bicycle, “Are you O.K.? Are you O.K.?”

He stepped back again, grinned widely and raised his thumbs.

The irony is that for many soldiers and officers, the end seems like a victory, if a subdued one, measured in the progress that has been made since the worst days of violence.

“We're not doing this for a victory parade,” said Col. Roger Cloutier, commander of the First Brigade, which after the official end of combat will oversee security for much of Baghdad.

Even so, a parade of a sort was on his mind, his own sense of what has been accomplished after the worst bloodshed in 2006 and 2007.

“When I go to downtown Baghdad, and I'm stuck in traffic, and I'm not jumping curbs, and going against traffic, I'm driving in traffic like everyone else — and I'm looking to my left and right, and there's a guy selling fish,” he said at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a base on Baghdad's outskirts.

“He's got a fish cart. He's cooking fish. And there's a watermelon stand and then there's an electronic store right next to it, and people are everywhere. And I'm sitting in traffic and I'm going, ‘Man, this is unbelievable.' That's a victory parade for me.”

He then talked about his children, ages 9, 14 and 16, sounding very much like a father who had spent much of their young lives overseas.

“I want my family to be able to look at me and say, you know what — I'm getting emotional, guys — when America called, we as a family sacrificed,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/middleeast/20legacy.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Saudi Hospitals Are Asked to Maim Man as Punishment

CAIRO (AP) — A Saudi Arabian judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man's spinal cord as punishment for his attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, the brother of the victim said Thursday.

The victim, Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed after a fight more than two years ago and subsequently lost a foot. Mr. Mutairi asked a judge in northwestern Tabuk Province to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker under Islamic law, his brother Khaled al-Mutairi said by telephone from the province.

Khaled al-Mutairi said that one of the hospitals, in Tabuk, said that it was possible to damage the spinal cord, but that the operation would have to be done at a more specialized facility.

Saudi newspapers reported that a second hospital, in the capital, Riyadh, declined, saying it could not inflict such harm.

Administrative offices of two of the hospitals and the court in Tabuk were closed for the Saudi weekend beginning Thursday and could not be reached for comment. A copy of the medical report from King Khaled Hospital in Tabuk said the same injury Mr. Mutairi suffered from could be inflicted on his attacker using a nerve stimulant, and inducing the same injuries in the same locations.

Saudi Arabia enforces strict Islamic law and occasionally metes out punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye for an eye. But King Abdullah has been trying to tamp down extremist ideology, including religious decrees issued by unauthorized clerics.

The query by the court, among the most extreme to have been made public in the Saudi kingdom, highlights the delicate effort to balance a push to modernize the country with strict interpretations of religious traditions.

“We are asking for our legal right under Islamic law,” said Khaled al-Mutairi, 27. “There is no better word than God's word, an eye for an eye.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/middleeast/20saudi.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Don't Drop Out of School Innovation

HOW much evidence does the government need before trying something new in the troubled realm of public education? Should there be airtight proof that a pioneering program works before we commit federal money to it — or is it sometimes worth investing in promising but unproven innovations?

Last month, the Senate subcommittee that allocates federal education money weighed in on one such promising innovation, slicing, by more than 90 percent, the $210 million that President Obama requested for next year for his Promise Neighborhoods initiative.

Mr. Obama first proposed Promise Neighborhoods in the summer of 2007, pledging that, as president, he would help create in 20 cities across the country a new kind of support system for disadvantaged children, paid for with a mix of private and public money. In a single distressed neighborhood in each city, Mr. Obama explained , high-quality schools would be integrated into a network of early-childhood programs, parenting classes, health clinics and other social services, all focused on improving educational outcomes for poor children.

The Obama administration requested and received from Congress $10 million for the program for fiscal year 2010, and the Department of Education used that money to create a national competition for up to 20 Promise Neighborhoods planning grants . Although the grants were capped at a modest $500,000, the response to the program was overwhelming — 339 nonprofit groups and institutions of higher education from across the country formed coalitions, raised matching funds and filed applications.

Promise Neighborhoods was inspired by the example of the Harlem Children's Zone , which over the last decade has compiled a solid, though still incomplete, record of success in the 97 blocks of central Harlem where it operates. Students at the group's two charter elementary schools, mostly low-income and almost all black or Hispanic, have achieved strong results on statewide tests, often exceeding average proficiency scores for white students. Last year, 437 parents completed Baby College, the Zone's nine-week parenting class, and 99 percent of the children graduating from the prekindergarten entered kindergarten on grade level. This fall, more than 200 students from the Zone's afterschool programs will enroll as freshmen in college.

The central argument against fully financing the Promise Neighborhoods initiative, given voice in recent weeks by various policy groups, journalists and bloggers, is that despite such promising data, the Zone has not yet proved itself.

This case was made most forcefully in a report from the Brookings Institution that came out a week before the Senate committee's vote . The report acknowledged that the charter schools at the heart of the Zone have, indeed, substantially raised test scores for the children enrolled in them.

But the report also argued that the scores are not as high as those at some other charter schools in Manhattan and the Bronx that don't include the kind of coordinated system of early-childhood programs, family support and neighborhood improvements offered by the Harlem Children's Zone.

It is no coincidence that charter schools in and near the Harlem Children's Zone have earned such impressive results. Over the last few years, thanks in part to intensive recruiting by the New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein, Harlem and the Bronx have become a mecca for a highly successful class of charter schools, all run, to some degree, on the model of the nationwide, nonprofit Knowledge is Power Program: extended hours, energetic young teachers, an emphasis on discipline and character-building, as well as heavy doses of reading and math.

These schools embody the attractive theory that we might be able to erase the achievement gaps between black and white children and between poor and middle-class children with nothing more than new and improved schools. But despite their robust test scores, there continue to be debates over whether these charter schools work for the most disadvantaged children in neighborhoods like Harlem, and no one has yet demonstrated whether the KIPP model could succeed at the scale of an entire school system.

Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, premised his organization on the idea that schools like KIPP's, though needed, are not enough on their own. To solve the problem of academic underperformance by low-income children, he argues, we must surround great schools with an effective system of additional services for poor families.

These two strategies — call them the KIPP strategy and the Zone strategy — are not fully in opposition; they borrow ideas and tactics from each other. But they do represent distinct theories, both new, both promising and, at this point, both unproven.

So, at this moment of uncertainty and experimentation, should the federal government wait, as critics of Promise Neighborhoods suggest, until ironclad evidence for one big solution exists?

Or should it create a competitive research-and-development marketplace to make bets on innovations, the way the government did during the space race and in the early days of the Internet, and allow the most successful strategies to rise to the top? In his 2007 speech, Mr. Obama made it clear that he envisioned Promise Neighborhoods as precisely this kind of laboratory. “Every step these cities take will be evaluated,” he proposed, “and if certain plans or programs aren't working, we will stop them and try something else.”

A certain skepticism with regard to innovation is always wise, especially in public education, where highly touted new programs often turn out to be disappointments. The problem is that for low-income and minority Americans, the status quo is a deepening calamity. The New York state test results released last month showed that the gap in reading scores between black and white elementary- and middle-school students grew from 22 percentage points in 2009 to 30 points in 2010, while the math gap grew from 17 points to 30 points.

In May, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that in the nation's high-poverty schools, the average graduation rate for 12th-grade students fell from 86 percent in 2000 to 68 percent in 2008, while the rate in low-poverty schools remained stable at about 91 percent.

The declining prospects of the country's poor and black students can't be blamed on belt-tightening by Congress. In fact, the budgets for the two main federal programs designed to improve the performance of low-income children, Title I and Head Start, have risen steadily for the last 40 years, through Republican administrations and Democratic ones. According to a new report by Educational Testing Service , the combined Title I and Head Start budgets grew in inflation-adjusted dollars from $1.7 billion in 1970 to $13.8 billion in 2000. This year's budget was $21.7 billion.

Head Start, which provides preschool programs to poor families, is a prime example of the Senate committee's true attitude toward evidence-based decision-making. In January, the Health and Human Services Department released a study of Head Start's overall impact . The conclusions were disturbing. By the end of first grade, the study found, Head Start graduates were doing no better than students who didn't attend Head Start. “No significant impacts were found for math skills, pre-writing, children's promotion, or teacher report of children's school accomplishments or abilities in any year,” the report concluded.

And how did the Senate panel react to this dismal evidence? They set aside $8.2 billion for Head Start in 2011, almost a billion dollars more than in 2010. Of course, the fact that Congress spends billions of dollars each year on unproven programs does not itself argue that the government should start spending hundreds of millions of new dollars on new unproven programs. But it does undercut the argument that federal education dollars should be reserved only for conclusively proven initiatives.

Children who live in the 300-plus low-income neighborhoods that are pursuing Promise Neighborhoods support are, on the whole, stuck. Every year, their schools and Head Start centers receive more federal money, and every year, things in their neighborhoods get worse. Rather than stick with the same strategies and hope things somehow magically change, Congress should find more room in the budget to support the Obama administration's declared approach: to try new strategies and abandon failed ones; to expand and test programs with strong evidence of success, even if that evidence is inconclusive; and to learn from mistakes and make adjustments as we go.

Paul Tough, a former staff editor at The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20tough.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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August 20, 2010

By Fran Spielman

It's one thing to count the number of homeless people living on the streets of Chicago. It's quite another to convince them to identify themselves and answer detailed questions about their desperate straits.

More than 120 volunteers will hit the streets and homeless shelters next week to try and do just that. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., they'll attempt to create, what Mayor Daley calls a “name registry” of homeless Chicagoans.

It's all part of the city's voluntary participation in the 100,000 Homes Campaign — a nationwide effort to house 100,000 of America's “most vulnerable” homeless individuals and families by 2013.

“You don't just treat ‘em as a number … They're not just a faceless person. You're trying to identify these people as human beings. ... They have a name. They are somebody. They have done something in their life. You have to know that,” Daley told a news conference at Deborah's Place, 2822 W. Jackson.

“I don't want someone just to lay there — in a car, under a bridge, underneath a viaduct or just laying in a park and no one knows that person is somebody. ... Something has happened to them. They have fallen. We should help them.”

Mary Ellen Caron, commissioner of the city's Department of Family and Support Services, said the so-called “vulnerability index” goes far beyond the “anonymous” January, 2009 head count that identified roughly 800 people living on the streets.

“We are identifying people and there are a lot more personal questions about their physical and mental state,” Caron said.

She predicted that the survey would identify 300 “medically-vulnerable households, including veterans, seniors, youth and people with mental illness and chronic medical conditions.”

Once identified, those people would then be moved as quickly as possible to the network of housing created by the city and social service agencies, housing that comes with an array of support services.

Nancy Radner, CEO of the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness, said the canvass will target “people who we didn't already get off the streets and those people in the shelters who've been there a while and we can't get ‘em out.”

“We're gonna survey them. We're gonna take their picture, if they'll let us. We'll put them in a data base we haven't had before and we'll focus on them,” Radner said.

Daley said he firmly believes people will cooperate with the survey because, “We're trying to help them.”

Stephanie Day, a recovering drug addict now living at Deborah's Place, is not so sure.

“Some people choose to live on the street because they don't want the responsibility of paying rent, obtaining income, dealing with people and daily issues,” said Day, who lived in her car and in abandoned buildings while battling drug and alcohol addiction.

“Those people won't answer the questions. They'll take the easy way out and continue living free and on the street.” On the eve of his 2003 re-election, Daley established an ambitious goal of ending homelessness in Chicago by 2012 and embraced a plan to make it happen.

It called for shifting the focus away from shelters and toward permanent housing with a bottomless network of social services to “rebuild souls.”

Since then, the city claims to have added roughly 6,600 units of permanent housing for the homeless.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/2617116,homeless-name-registry-081910.article

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SAN FRANCISCO -- A hijack threat halted an American Airlines flight just before takeoff Thursday, leaving the New York-bound jet sitting on the tarmac for several hours while it was searched and passengers were removed for extra scrutiny.

The FBI later determined that the telephoned threat wasn't credible, but in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and a series of airline scares in the past year, the incident still rattled nerves as it played out live on national TV.

Police were investigating who called in the hijacking threat and what their motivation might have been.

Although passengers described the scene aboard the Boeing 767 as calm, a witness said a man and a woman sitting in the back row were taken off in handcuffs. But they were quickly released and allowed to rebook their flights.

The couple confirmed to an Associated Press reporter that they were the ones who had been removed from the plane but declined to identify themselves. They said authorities explained they were picked at random for questioning.

But a fellow passenger suggested the couple may have been targeted because of their appearance. Michael Anderson, 20, said he remembered seeing the couple as he was checking in for the flight to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and saw them carrying passports from Pakistan.

"It definitely seems like it was racial profiling, based on what they look like physically and the fact they are Pakistani. It seems like this was a false accusation," said Anderson, a Yale University sophomore who was heading back to school.

American Airlines Flight 24, with 163 passengers and a crew of 11, was already running 2 1/2 hours late when it pulled away from the gate at 10 a.m. Minutes later, it was being dispatched to a remote stretch of tarmac at San Francisco International Airport where it sat for two hours. Passengers were taken by buses to a terminal for further security checks.

"There was no fear in the cabin at all," passenger Michael Kidd told the AP. "It was pretty calm. Even with the frustration of having to sit there, there were no raised voices."

Passengers with Internet access searched the Web for details about the incident. Passengers were allowed to go to the bathroom one at a time, Kidd said, with flight attendants admonished anyone who tried to get to their overhead luggage.

Police eventually entered through the back door and arrested the two passengers. Others on board were taken off the plane six at a time and put on a buses. San Francisco Police Department officers used security wands to screened them and their carry-on luggage.

"The two passengers were taken off the plane separately, but we cannot discuss the specifics why," said FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler.

The couple declined to discuss the possibility that they may have been targeted because of their appearance. "Of course we're upset, but I guess we can't blame them," the woman told the AP. "They're just doing their job."

Kidd said he and his wife did not believe the couple had been racially profiled based on appearances alone. The man wore a Los Angeles Lakers jersey and the woman was wearing a beret, and they looked like typical Californians, he said.

The threat report originated from clerk at a business in Alameda, a city across San Francisco Bay from the airport, said Lt. Bill Scott. The clerk called police shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday and said the business had received an anonymous phone call "making a threat specifically about Flight 24," Scott said.

Schadler said officials acted quickly and the Transportation Security Administration ordered the plane away from the main terminal.

"We take any threat against an airline or potential terrorist activity very seriously," he said. "You treat them like it's real until proven otherwise because the cost of failure is so high."

It was the latest in a line of airplane scares in the past year, including the attempted Christmas bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner by a Nigerian. In April, a Qatari diplomat who was on his way to an official visit with an imprisoned al-Qaida sleeper touched off a bomb scare in Colorado by slipping into an airline bathroom for a smoke.

One of the four hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, was bound for San Francisco.

Passenger Randy Cohen, 50, of New York said he lived across street from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

Cohen said the atmosphere on the plane was generally calm even though passengers got little explanation about why the plane had been diverted. But he said rumors about a hijacking or bomb threat began floating around among passengers connected to the Internet. "It was like, man, this can't happen again," Cohen said.

At the same time, via its Twitter feed, American Airlines reassured a passenger sending out tweets from aboard the aircraft.

"Hang in there," the airline said, "the authorities are taking care of things."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2617632,plane-grounded-san-francisco-threat-081910.article

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From ICE

SALT LAKE CITY - A total of 158 gang members and individuals with gang ties, including many with prior criminal records, are facing new criminal charges or deportation following a four-month, multi-agency anti-gang surge spearheaded by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) that represents the largest operation of its kind ever carried out in the state.

The arrests are the result of a coordinated effort by the new ICE-HSI-led Operation Community Shield Task Force (OCSTF) made up of personnel from ICE and five local law enforcement agencies, including the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force, and the police departments of South Salt Lake, Midvale, Ogden and St. George. Utah is one of the first ICE-HSI offices in the nation to establish an OCSTF, along with Dallas, Texas; St. Paul, Minn.; and Charlotte, N.C. The aim of the task forces is to leverage ICE's global reach and broad legal authorities with the unique capabilities of other law enforcement agencies to combat the growth and proliferation of transnational criminal street gangs.

At a news conference Thursday morning, the Utah U.S. Attorney, the Special Agent in Charge for ICE-HSI in the Rocky Mountain region, and representatives from the other agencies participating on the task force detailed the results of the operation that involved criminal and administrative immigration arrests in 23 communities statewide, as well as in neighboring West Wendover, Nev.

"This joint operation brings together local and federal resources to target individuals who are in the country illegally and committing crimes in our communities," U.S. Attorney Carlie Christensen said. "The federal cases we are prosecuting as a result of this operation involve individuals who were previously deported and are now back in Utah communities involved in criminal activities. Prosecuting these individuals deters and disrupts gangs and directly and positively impacts the quality of life in our communities. As such, these cases remain a priority for the U.S Attorney's Office."

Of the gang members and gang associates arrested during the enforcement action, 93 are facing prosecution on federal and state criminal charges ranging from solicitation to commit aggravated murder and forcible sexual abuse to drug and firearms violations and re-entry after deportation. A re-entry conviction is a felony that carries a potential penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Individuals currently facing state charges will be referred for federal immigration charges once the state charges are resolved.

"The record number of arrests during this anti-gang operation is a direct result of the teamwork by the newly established task force and the extraordinary support we received from the numerous other law enforcement agencies involved," said Kumar Kibble, special agent in charge of ICE-HSI in the Rocky Mountain region. "This effort shows our collective resolve in Utah to attack and dismantle these dangerous criminal organizations. For too long, street gangs here and elsewhere have used violence and intimidation to hold communities hostage - as this operation shows, now it's the gang members who have something to fear."

Among the gang members facing federal criminal charges is a 28-year-old documented member of the Surenos-Alley Boys street gang who was previously deported to Mexico in March 2006. Jose Daniel Gil-Velasco was taken into custody by ICE-HSI agents in Provo, Utah, on Aug. 6. Gil-Velasco has a lengthy criminal record, including prior convictions for aggravated assault (two counts), carrying a concealed dangerous weapon and attempted theft. Gil is charged federally with re-entry after deportation.

Also facing re-entry after deportation charges is Juan Menchaca-Poban, 26, a member of the Toonersville Rifa 13 street gang, whose criminal history includes prior arrests for retail theft and drug possession, as well as a felony conviction for distributing a controlled substance. Menchaca-Poban was taken into custody by the Salt Lake Metro Gang Unit and ICE-HSI agents in Salt Lake City on June 3. At the time of his arrest, Menchaca-Poban was wanted on an outstanding state criminal warrant for narcotics distribution. Upon completion of his state sentence, Menchaca-Poban will be presented for federal prosecution for felony re-entry after deportation.

Of the 158 gang members and gang associates arrested during the operation, 125 are foreign nationals from the following five countries: Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. The group includes 31 individuals who have been previously deported from the United States. The foreign nationals who are not being prosecuted on criminal charges are being processed for removal. A number of them have already been deported to their native countries.

The enforcement action focused on individuals with ties to more than 50 street gangs in four of the state's major metropolitan areas: Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden and St. George. The operation commenced in the Salt Lake City area in early April and culminated last week with arrests in and around Provo, Utah. Below is a break down of the arrests by community.

In addition to the members of the Community Shield Task Force, numerous other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies assisted with the operation. Those agencies include: the U.S. Marshals Service; the Utah Highway Patrol; Utah Adult Probation and Parole; the Washington County Drug and Gang Task Force; the Salt Lake Metro Gang Task Force; the sheriffs' offices in Summit, Cache, Washington and Iron counties; and the police departments in Brigham City, Logan City, Tremonton, Santa Clara, Hurricane, Ivins, La Verkin, Orem, Cedar City and Wendover, Nev.

The Utah enforcement surge is part of ICE-HSI's ongoing anti-gang nationwide initiative known as Operation Community Shield. Since Operation Community Shield began in February 2005, ICE agents nationwide have arrested more than 18,000 gang members and gang associates, including more than 350 individuals in Utah.

Under Operation Community Shield, ICE-HSI is using its powerful immigration and customs law enforcement authorities in a coordinated, national campaign against criminal street gangs across the country. As part of the effort, HSI's National Gang Unit identifies violent street gangs and develops intelligence on their membership, associates, criminal activities and international movements to deter, disrupt and dismantle gang operations.

Transnational street gangs have significant numbers of foreign-born members and are frequently involved in human and contraband smuggling, immigration violations and other crimes with a connection to the border.

To report suspicious activity, call ICE's 24-hour toll-free hotline at: 1-866-347-2423 or visit www.ice.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1008/100819saltlakecity.htm

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From the FBI

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FUGITIVE HUNTERS Task Force Targets Violent Offenders 08/19/10 It's 5:30 a.m. in Los Angeles. The sun has yet to come up over the palm trees and skyscrapers, but at a downtown coffee shop, members of our fugitive task force are already at work. A lead has come in on a 33-year-old security guard wanted for assault with a deadly weapon—the man allegedly stabbed his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend—and a team of special agents and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department is deciding on a plan of action.

Members of our Los Angeles Fugitive Task Force review the case, sharing pictures of the subject, his rap sheet, and—most importantly—information about his car. The subject's black Honda sedan is reportedly parked near his ex-girlfriend's apartment, which means he is likely nearby.

“Chasing fugitives is like a chess match,” said Special Agent Scott Garriola, a 22-year veteran of the Bureau who has been working these cases for more than a decade. “You try to anticipate their actions and get one step ahead of them,” he explained. “Will they flee the state or the country, or will they lay low close to home? Do we talk to their mothers and girlfriends? Or do we use a different approach and follow a paper trail?”

The FBI is known around the world for its fugitive program—our Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list was established 60 years ago—and we work with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners as well as international organizations like Interpol to capture criminals on the run. We have task forces similar to the L.A. fugitive team at many of our field offices.

Garriola has tracked his share of Top Ten fugitives. He was the lead investigator for Top Tenner Emigdio Preciado, who attacked police officers and was captured last year in Mexico. Garriola is also the case agent for a current Top Ten fugitive, Joe Luis Saenz.

Not every fugitive makes the Top Ten list, however—or the headlines.  And the L.A. task force doesn't just work high-profile cases. “We prioritize by how bad the offender is and how strong the leads are,” Garriola said.

Today's subject is a case in point. The man is not a serial killer or a terrorist, but he is wanted for a violent felony, and the tip about his car has proven to be accurate. By 6:30 a.m., the team—dressed in street clothes and driving unmarked vehicles—has set up surveillance on the car and the ex-girlfriend's residence a block away.

Now it's a waiting game. “There's a lot of down time,” Garriola said, sitting in his car, a picture of the subject displayed on his dashboard. “Our work involves hours of waiting around and then a couple minutes of adrenaline rush” when a target is located and arrested.

More than four hours after the stakeout began, a man in a blue windbreaker is spotted walking toward the Honda. The team radios come to life. “This looks like our guy,” a detective said. “Affirmative,” another replied.

As the subject approaches the car, the team swiftly converges—some on foot, others in cars. A strong show of force convinces him to give up quietly. He is quickly handcuffed and taken to jail.

Garriola estimates there are tens of thousands of outstanding warrants in the California legal system, and a great many of them are for violent offenders. “The task force has no shortage of work,” he said.

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/august10/fugitives_081910.html

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From the DEA

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DEA Heads First-Ever Nationwide Prescription Drug Take-Back Day

AUG 19 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Drug Enforcement Administration and government, community, public health and law enforcement partners today announced a nationwide prescription drug “Take-Back” initiative that seeks to prevent increased pill abuse and theft. DEA will be collecting potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs for destruction at sites nationwide o n Saturday, September 25 th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time. The service is free and anonymous, no questions asked.

This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Many Americans are not aware that medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are increasing at alarming rates, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, many Americans do not know how to properly dispose of their unused medicine, often flushing them down the toilet or throwing them away – both potential safety and health hazards.

“Today we are launching a first-ever National Prescription Drug Take-Back campaign that will provide a safe way for Americans to dispose of their unwanted prescription drugs,” said Michele M. Leonhart, Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “This effort symbolizes DEA's commitment to halting the disturbing rise in addiction caused by their misuse and abuse. Working together with our state and local partners, the medical community, anti-drug coalitions, and a concerned public, we will eliminate a major source of abused prescription drugs, and reduce the hazard they pose to our families and communities in a safe, legal, and environmentally sound way.”

“With this National Prescription Drug Take-Back campaign, we are aggressively reaching out to individuals to encourage them to rid their households of unused prescription drugs that pose a safety hazard and can contribute to prescription drug abuse,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler.  “The Department of Justice is committed to doing everything we can to make our communities safer, and this initiative represents a new front in our efforts.”

“Prescription drug abuse is the Nation's fastest-growing drug problem, and take-back events like this one are an indispensable tool for reducing the threat that the diversion and abuse of these drugs pose to public health,” said Director of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske. “The Federal/state/and local collaboration represented in this initiative is key in our national efforts to reduce pharmaceutical drug diversion and abuse.”

Collection sites in every local community can be found by going to www.dea.gov. This site will be continuously updated with new take-back locations. Other participants in this initiative include the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; the Partnership for a Drug-Free America; the International Association of Chiefs of Police; the National Association of Attorneys General; the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy; the Federation of State Medical Boards; and the National District Attorneys Association

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/pressrel/pr081910.html

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