A soldier and investigators work at the site where a vehicle exploded outside the Televisa network in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Victoria. Another possible car bomb exploded outside a police station in San Fernando, also in Tamaulipas state and near the site where the bodies of 72 slain migrants were found this week.

Mexico massacre investigator missing; blasts hit TV and police stations An official investigating this week's massacre of 72 migrants was missing, while possible car bomb explosions rocked a TV station and police station in the same violence-torn state of Tamaulipas. By Ken Ellingwood Los Angeles Times August 27, 2010 Reporting from Mexico City A law enforcement official investigating this week's massacre of 72 migrants in northern Mexico was missing Friday, while possible car bomb explosions rocked a television station and police station in the same violence-torn state.

New Orleans after Katrina

Five years after the devastating hurricane, New Orleans is making progress, but more needs to be done.

August 28, 2010

Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines, causing the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Waters flowing over or through shattered levees flooded an estimated 80% of New Orleans, driving out more than half the population and devastating the local economy.

Scenes from the flood are being replayed across television networks and websites this week, reminding Americans about the multiple governmental failures that helped cause and prolong the suffering. The coverage is also providing a snapshot of where New Orleans stands today — a city that has been reformed politically and reinvigorated institutionally, yet remains scarred and underpopulated.

Notable reforms include depoliticizing property assessments and levee maintenance, turning over much of the public school system to charter operators that have dramatically improved students' performance, ousting corrupt public housing officials and demolishing failed projects, and starting to clean up the city's notorious criminal justice system. At the same time, the Army Corps of Engineers has been overhauling the levees, a $15-billion initiative that is scheduled to be completed next year, and the city is finally moving ahead on more than $1 billion in long-awaited infrastructure improvements.

Other indicators provide a more mixed view. The enormous amount of construction work being done has kept the unemployment rate lower than in the rest of the U.S. The poverty rate has dropped in the city too (largely because many of the displaced poor resettled in neighboring parishes), but it's still far higher than the national average. Blight, which was a problem long before Katrina, has been significantly reduced. Yet the city's percentage of vacant or abandoned buildings continues to be the highest in the country. And its crime problem has gotten worse.

The city's population post-Katrina has increased steadily — it had 162,000 residents in June 2010, or 80% of its June 2005 population — but not evenly. According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, 30 of the 73 neighborhoods had regained at least 90% of their pre-Katrina residents, while 22 were still missing at least 30%. Three-fourths of the inhabitants of the Lower 9th Ward, which was flattened by floodwaters that toppled the levees next to the Industrial Canal, have yet to return.

The neighborhoods with lower return rates are a hodgepodge of restored and damaged buildings, a situation that arose in part from the decision by city leaders not to take a systematic approach to rebuilding after Katrina. Not that they didn't try — they did. But fierce public backlash to the initial redevelopment plan led them instead to grant building permits to property owners with little regard to the condition of their neighborhoods.

A more fundamental challenge in New Orleans is that many home and apartment owners simply haven't had the wherewithal to rebuild. Some have been stopped by the long wait for insurance payments and state-administered construction grants, others by the daunting paperwork requirements or the loss of their jobs in the successive shocks of Katrina and the recession. Now the state's Road Home program, which has provided nearly $8.6 billion in aid to rebuild, elevate or buy damaged homes, is winding down, and property owners who haven't tapped those funds are no longer eligible.

The best hope for homeowners and neighborhoods that are still struggling may be the community groups that emerged after Katrina to promote redevelopment and the volunteers who continue to contribute money and labor to New Orleans. A good example is Make It Right, a nonprofit led by actor Brad Pitt that plans to build homes in the Lower 9th Ward for 150 families. Make It Right is concentrating its resources in one corner of the city, trying to overcome blight by rebuilding entire blocks rather than fixing scattered houses.

A number of neighborhood groups are taking a similarly focused approach, but volunteer efforts across the city haven't been coordinated strategically. By better directing volunteers' energy and pairing it with new Mayor Mitch Landrieu's initiative to raze more abandoned buildings, the city can create more blight-free clusters that serve as the core of rebuilt neighborhoods. It's crucial that New Orleans make the most of the help it's receiving, given how much work remains to be done. The city is well along the path toward a new New Orleans, but it will take years to complete the journey.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-katrina-20100828,0,6520475,print.story

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Migrant misery, in Mexico

The illegal trek north through Mexico is treacherous and leaves those making it at the mercy of predators.

August 27, 2010

The bullet-riddled bodies of 72 Central and South Americans reportedly slain by drug traffickers in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas shine a light on the dark truth known to undocumented migrants: The illegal trek north through Mexico is treacherous, and those who undertake it put themselves at the mercy of vicious predators. Even before they reach the potentially fatal desert crossing into the United States, thousands of migrants each year face kidnapping, extortion, sexual assault and murder — crimes that often go unreported and unsolved.

An Ecuadorean survivor of the massacre has told officials that the victims were gunned down after refusing to pay or work for the Zetas, the dominant cartel in the region. This would be consistent with reports that drug cartels are diversifying into the lucrative human trafficking business, collecting fees of up to $7,000 a head from relatives in the United States while often forcing migrants to carry drugs with them across the border. But many questions remain unanswered, not the least of which is why the traffickers would kill such valuable prey.

The case is the latest evidence of the well-documented violence against migrants that Mexican officials have been unwilling or unable to confront. Amnesty International has described an "epidemic" of abuses against migrants. In 2009, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission issued a report concluding that 9,758 illegal immigrants had been kidnapped in a six-month period ending in February of that year, including at least 57 children. Among the states with the most cases: Tamaulipas.

Migrants are assaulted and thrown off speeding trains. Some simply disappear. Human rights organizations estimate that as many as 6 in 10 women and girls are sexually assaulted on the journey. The crimes go unreported because the victims are in Mexico illegally or, according to human rights activists, because Mexican police and other authorities are participating in them.

The Tamaulipas massacre underscores the failure of the Mexican government to provide vulnerable migrants with the protection and due process required by international law and the Mexican Constitution. Clearly, those who make this journey do so out of desperation, or they wouldn't take such risks. In the view of this page, violence is one of the principal arguments for establishing a safe and legal avenue for migrants to seek work in the United States. Mexicans rightly complain about the new immigration law in Arizona and discrimination against undocumented workers in the United States, but they also must take responsibility for the violence and end impunity for the crimes against migrants in Mexico.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-mexico-20100827,0,4180716,print.story

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From the New York Times

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U.N. Congo Report Offers New View on Genocide Era

A forthcoming United Nations report on 10 years of extraordinary violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo bluntly challenges the conventional history of events there after the 1994 Rwandan genocide , charging that invading troops from Rwanda and their rebel allies killed tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, including many civilians.

The 545-page report on 600 of the country's most serious reported atrocities raises the question of whether Rwanda could be found guilty of genocide against Hutu during the war in neighboring Congo , but says international courts would need to rule on individual cases.

In 1994, more than 800,000 people, predominantly members of the ethnic Tutsi group in Rwanda, were slaughtered by the Hutu. When a Tutsi-led government seized power in Rwanda, Hutu militias fled along with Hutu civilians across the border to Congo, then known as Zaire. Rwanda invaded to pursue them, aided by a Congolese rebel force the report also implicates in the massacres.

While Rwanda and Congolese rebel forces have always claimed that they attacked Hutu militias who were sheltered among civilians, the United Nations report documents deliberate reprisal attacks on civilians.

The report says that the apparently systematic nature of the massacres “suggests that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage.” It continues, “The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces.”

The existence of the United Nations document, titled Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003, was first reported by the French daily newspaper Le Monde. But participants in the drafting of the report have described its progress and difficulties over a period of seven months to The New York Times, which obtained the most recent version of the report.

The Rwandan government responded angrily to the report, calling it “outrageous.” The topic is extremely delicate for the government, which has built its legitimacy on its history of combating the genocide in Rwanda. Political figures there have been accused of perpetuating a “genocide ideology” for making claims that are similar to the report's.

“It is immoral and unacceptable that the United Nations, an organization that failed outright to prevent genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent refugees crisis that is the direct cause for so much suffering in Congo and Rwanda, now accuses the army that stopped the genocide of committing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said Ben Rutsinga of the Office of the Government Spokesperson.

The release of the report appears to have been delayed in part over fears of the reaction of the Rwandan government, which has long enjoyed strong diplomatic support from the United States and Britain. There is concern in the United Nations that Rwanda might end its participation in peacekeeping operations in retaliation for the report.

“No one was naïve enough to think that inspecting mass graves in which Rwandan troops were involved would make Kigali happy, but we have shared the draft with them,” said a senior official at the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, which oversaw the investigation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings had not been officially released.

He said: “Voices have said, ‘Can't we just delete the genocide references? Isn't this going to cause a lot more difficulties in the region?' But these voices have not carried the day.”

The United Nations document breaks the history of 10 years of violence in Congo into several periods. It begins with the final years of the three-decade rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko , marked by attacks on a Tutsi minority in the country's far east, and violent raids on Rwandan territory from United Nations-administered refugee camps that housed roughly a million Hutu who had fled Rwanda after the genocide. These raids were conducted by elements of the defeated Hutu national army, and the Hutu Interahamwe militia, both principally involved in the genocide in Rwanda.

The report also covers two other time periods: the Second Congolese War, from 1998 to 2001, when the armies of eight African states vied for control of the country, and 2001 to 2003, when foreign armies partially withdrew, leaving a tentative peace. Congo continues to suffer major atrocities, including the rape of thousands of women by armed groups.

The report contains a chilling, detailed accounting of the breakup of Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire at the start of the war in October 1996, followed by the pursuit of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees across the country's vast hinterland by teams of Rwandan soldiers and their Zairean rebel surrogates, the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo. Those forces were led by Laurent Kabila , who took over as president the next year, and who was the father of Congo's current president, Joseph Kabila .

The report presents repeated examples of times when teams of Rwandan soldiers and their Congolese rebel allies lured Hutu refugees with promises they would be repatriated to Rwanda, only to massacre them.

In one such episode, advancing Congolese rebel fighters and Rwandan troops summoned refugees to a village center, telling them they would be treated to meat from a slaughtered cow to strengthen them for their trek back to Rwanda. As the Hutu began to register their names by prefecture of origin, a whistle sounded and soldiers opened fire on them, killing between 500 and 800 refugees, the report said.

In other instances, as survivors scrambled desperately through thick rain forest in a country as large as Western Europe, extermination teams laid ambush along strategic roadways and forest paths, making no distinction between men, women and children as they killed them.

Although the report does detail attacks when there were military targets, notably at Tingi Tingi, a Hutu camp in Maniema Province, such targets are extremely rare in the report.

An element of the report that could help determine any judgment of genocide concerns the treatment of native Congolese Hutu. The report suggests they were singled out for elimination along with Hutu refugees from Rwanda and Burundi. The report asserts that there was no effort to make a distinction between militia and civilians, noting a “tendency to put all Hutu people together and ‘tar them with the same brush.' ”

Pascal Kambale, a prominent longtime Congolese human rights lawyer who was consulted by the United Nations investigators, said: “The ex-F.A.R. fighters were said to be hiding behind the refugee populations, but the truth is that the attackers were targeting both the Rwandan Hutus and the Congolese Hutus,” referring to the Hutu-led Rwandan militia, F.A.R. in its French initials. “Entire families were killed, whole villages were burned, and in my view this remains the most heinous crime that happened during these 10 years.”

Timothy Longman, the director of the African Studies Center at Boston University , said that people in eastern Congo had long charged they were victims, too. “The reason it didn't get more attention is that it contradicted the narrative of the Rwandan Popular Front as the ‘good group' that stopped the genocide in Rwanda,” he said.

As early as 1997, the United Nations began investigations into reports of possible crimes against humanity involving extermination of Hutu populations by the Congolese rebel forces and their Rwandan backers, but Laurent Kabila, as president, refused access to areas where atrocities were believed to have been committed, and the investigation was abandoned. A senior United Nations official said that the investigation was given new life when three mass graves were discovered in North Kivu Province by United Nations workers in 2005.

“Yes, this is stupendously overdue,” the official said. “But Laurent Kabila had been killed, there was a peace process and a new government in place in the Congo, and I guess you could say that's when the U.N. woke and said, ‘Hmm, we can accomplish something here.' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/africa/28congo.html?_r=1&ref=world

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U.S. Weighs Possibility of North Korea Engagement

WASHINGTON — The last time a former American president traveled to North Korea on a rescue mission — Bill Clinton , a year ago — he was feted by its leader, Kim Jong-il , who seized on the visit to reach out to the Obama administration. This week, Mr. Kim chose to go to China during a visit by former President Jimmy Carter to free another jailed American.

Whatever the motivation for Mr. Kim's snub, analysts said it underscored the deep freeze between North Korea and the United States. The State Department greeted the news on Friday that Mr. Carter had secured the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes by warning other Americans not to go to North Korea, saying they risked “heavy fines and long prison sentences with hard labor.”

Even as it keeps up its tough tone, however, the United States has begun weighing a fresh effort at engagement with Mr. Kim's government, officials and analysts briefed on the deliberations say.

Such an overture would come “several moves down the chessboard,” a senior official said, and would be preceded by additional pressure tactics. But it suggests that the administration has concluded that pressure alone will not be enough to move North Korea's ailing, reclusive dictator.

At a high-level meeting last week on North Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton solicited ideas from outside experts and former officials about the next steps in policy toward the North. The consensus, even among the hawks, was that the United States needed to resume some form of contact with Mr. Kim, according to several people who took part.

Mrs. Clinton, these people said, expressed impatience with the current policy, which is based on ever more stringent economic sanctions and joint American-South Korean naval exercises — both in response to the sinking in March of a South Korean warship, for which South Korea blamed the North.

Among those advocating a fresh overture is Stephen W. Bosworth, the special envoy for North Korea. He visited Pyongyang, the North's capital, in December to explore the prospect of talks, but the administration could not decide whether to schedule a follow-up meeting, and then the warship was torpedoed.

“The question is, what are we going to do now?” said Joel S. Wit, a former State Department negotiator with North Korea who founded a Web site, 38 North , which follows North Korean politics. “The answer is re-engagement. There aren't any other tools in the toolbox.”

Far from abandoning pressure tactics, officials said, the United States is likely to increase them. In July, it announced new measures aimed at choking off sources of hard currency for the government and its allies. Mrs. Clinton sent a senior adviser, Robert J. Einhorn, to Asia to drum up support for the sanctions. The military, defying threats from North Korea and anger from China, has held several days of joint drills with South Korea in the Yellow Sea.

“We don't want to go down the old road and repeat the experiences of the past,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council . “We are looking for behavior change by the North Koreans.”

Still, there is growing concern, even among hawkish analysts, that pressure, without any dialogue, raises the risk of war. Some critics also contend that there is little evidence the sanctions have forced the North to retreat from its nuclear program or its belligerence toward South Korea.

Mr. Kim's deteriorating health, and the succession struggle it has set off, have increased the pressure on the administration to reach out, in the view of some analysts. While some officials argue that the United States can wait out the political transition, others fear that heightening the confrontation with North Korea could foreclose future opportunities for contact.

As Victor Cha, a former Bush administration official who was responsible for North Korea, put it, “If they look like they're preparing for war, there's no opportunity to talk to the new leadership.”

The administration, analysts said, is also losing confidence in China's willingness to press the North. During a visit to Beijing in May, Mrs. Clinton invested a lot of energy in trying to persuade Chinese officials to accept the South Korean government's finding that the North had sunk its ship. Her efforts were futile: Beijing never accepted the North's culpability and it blunted Seoul's drive for a United Nations statement condemning the attack.

Symbolically, analysts said, Mr. Kim's choice of a trip to China over a meeting with Mr. Carter highlighted North Korea's economic and political dependence on Beijing. China has long pushed for the United States to talk to the North, and reopening a dialogue could help ease the tension between Beijing and Washington. One problem for the administration is the form and content of talks. Few analysts have much enthusiasm for the six-party format, under which North Korea has negotiated over its nuclear program with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But the talks are probably necessary to retain support of allies like South Korea and Japan.

Another problem is that the administration has been uncompromising in its demands. Officials have repeatedly said that the United States will not negotiate until North Korea agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons . Their fear is that the North will extract concessions, as it did during the Bush and Clinton administrations, only to test another nuclear bomb.

An option, experts said, would be to engage North Korea on issues other than the nuclear program. But others said the issue was unavoidable. For now, the administration offers a more pragmatic strategy. “Americans should heed our travel warning and avoid North Korea,” said the State Department's spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “We only have a handful of former presidents.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28diplo.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Japanese Officials Reveal Execution Chambers

TOKYO — The Japanese government opened up its execution chambers to the public for the first time on Friday, taking journalists on a tour of Tokyo's main gallows. The insides were stark: a trapdoor, a Buddha statue and a ring for the noose.

The opening of the chambers was a bid by Japan 's justice minister, Keiko Chiba, to stir debate over a practice that is widely supported here.

Of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, only the United States and Japan use capital punishment. Japan currently has 107 inmates on death row, and no pardon is allowed. From 2000 to 2009, Japan sentenced 112 people to death and executed 46.

“I called for proper disclosure in the hope that it spurs debate over the death penalty and criminal sentencing,” Ms. Chiba, who opposes the death penalty, said at a news conference this month.

In July, Ms. Chiba approved — and witnessed — the hangings of two inmates convicted of murder, saying she was carrying out her duties as justice minister. Afterward, she said she still opposed capital punishment and ordered that journalists be given a tour of the facilities. She also promised to create a panel of experts to discuss the death penalty, including whether it should be stopped. The panel meets next month.

Japan has long been criticized by human rights activists for its capital punishment system. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors civil and political rights, has urged Japan to consider abolishing the death penalty, citing the large number of crimes that entail the death sentence, the lack of pardoning, the solitary confinement of inmates and executions at advanced ages and despite signs of mental illness.

Japan also has a 99 percent conviction rate, a figure critics attribute to widespread use of forced confessions. A series of false convictions have surfaced in recent months, including one of a 63-year-old man who had served 17 years of a life sentence for the murder of a 4-year-old girl. He was released after prosecutors admitted that his confession was a fabrication made under duress and DNA tests showed he was innocent. Critics say there is a high possibility that some of those on death row are innocent.

Inmates on death row are not told when they will be executed until the last minute — a procedure Japanese officials say prevents panic among inmates — and their family members and lawyers are informed only afterward, as are the news media.

Inmates can remain on death row as long as 40 years, though executions over the past decade have occurred on average after about 5 years and 11 months on death row, according to the public broadcast channel NHK. The Justice Ministry has refused to disclose how it makes decisions to go ahead with executions.

A large majority of Japan's population supports capital punishment. A recent government survey showed that 86 percent of respondents are in favor of state executions for the worst crimes.

“Any debate should take into account the lifelong suffering that the victims' families must bear,” said Isao Okamura, whose wife was murdered over a work dispute in 1997, in an interview with NHK.

All executions are carried out by hanging. Foreign news outlets, including The New York Times, were excluded from the visit, despite repeated requests to take part.

According to accounts in local news outlets, journalists were taken to the execution site in a bus with closed curtains, because its exact location is kept secret. There are seven such sites across Japan, the Justice Ministry said.

The journalists were led through the chambers, one by one: a chapel with a Buddhist altar where the condemned are read their last rites; a small room, also with a Buddha statue, where a prison warden officially orders the execution; the execution room, with a pulley and rings for the rope and a trapdoor where the condemned inmate stands; and the viewing room where officials witness the hanging.

The inmate is handcuffed and blindfolded before entering the execution room, officials said. Three prison wardens push separate buttons, only one of which releases the trapdoor — but they never find out which one. Wardens are given a bonus of about $230 every time they attend an execution.

Satoshi Tomiyama, the Justice Ministry official who later briefed the foreign news outlets and others excluded from the tour, said that wardens take the utmost care to treat death row inmates fairly and humanely.

The Buddha statues can be switched with an altar of the indigenous Japanese Shinto religion for followers of that faith, he said. For Christians, the prison provides a wooden cross. Inmates are given fruit and snacks before their execution, and sentences are not carried out on weekends, national holidays and around the New Year.

Mr. Tomiyama read a statement from a warden who carries out executions but did not identify him by name. Executions “are carried out somberly, and the tension is enough to make my hand shake,” he quoted the warden as saying.

Human rights activists criticize the conditions in which the inmates are made to await their death. They are held in solitary confinement in a cell about 50 square feet, which they leave only to exercise and bathe, both alone. They can request Japanese chess sets, but they must play alone. They are able to purchase newspapers and books, though the prison censors some of the content; articles about last month's executions were blacked out in newspapers given to death row inmates. Relatives can visit, but friends cannot.

Kanae Doi, a lawyer who heads Human Rights Watch Japan , said she welcomed Japan's steps toward more transparency. But “the death penalty should not be enforced by a majority opinion,” she said.

“Apart from Japan and the United States, the other countries in the world that carry out capital punishment are those accused of other grave human rights violations,” Ms. Doi said. “Japan should be ashamed to be on that list.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28tokyo.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Few Details Given as 4 Canadians Are Held in Terrorist Plot

TORONTO — The charges are sweeping. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that three Canadians, among them a physician, were plotting to blow up targets in Canada and funnel funds to Afghanistan to insurgents fighting against Canadian soldiers.

But even as the police arrested a fourth man on Friday in what they call Project Samosa , they resisted making public many details of what the men were accused of planning or doing. Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper , talked ominously, however, about the threats of terrorism the case represented.

After Khurram Syed Sher, a pathologist from London, Ontario, appeared to be formally charged in an Ottawa court, even his lawyer, Anser Farooq, said that he knew almost nothing about the specifics of the case.

Dr. Sher, whose remarkably unsuccessful tryout for “Canadian Idol” developed a following on YouTube after he was arrested Thursday, was charged with conspiracy to facilitate a terrorist offense. Misahuddin Ahmed, a 26-year-old X-ray technician, faces the same charge. In addition to the conspiracy charge, Hiva Alizadeh, 30, of Ottawa, was also charged with financing a terrorist plot and possessing explosives with intent to kill and injure. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police offered no information about the fourth person who was arrested. He was released later on Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

“This group posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the national capital region and Canada's national security,” Chief Superintendent Serge Therriault of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said at a news conference.

The police have emphasized that the group, which they have had under surveillance since September 2009, was some months away from initiating any sort of action. The arrests were made this week, they said, to prevent one of the three men from traveling to deliver funds to insurgents in Afghanistan.

The police did reveal, however, that they seized about 50 circuit boards that could be used to remotely detonate bombs. Under criminal law, such circuitry is deemed to be an explosive.

If, as the police charge, these men were involved in a terrorist plot, they fit a different profile from that of the 18 men arrested in Toronto in 2006 . That group was filled with young, disaffected men.

Both Dr. Sher, who was a pathologist, and Mr. Ahmed are married, have children and led middle-class lifestyles. Neither was known for espousing radical Islamist views. Less is known about Mr. Alizadeh who was born in Iran and recently moved to Ottawa from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Only 11 of the 18 people arrested in 2008 were convicted. It also became apparent during trials that much of that group's activity was pushed along by well-paid police informants.

Because of that, Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International in Canada, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the recent arrests.

“The main lesson here is that there can easily be a great deal of hysteria,” Mr. Neve said. “But there have been previous cases that have collapsed or proved not to be as advertised.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/americas/28canada.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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On Anniversary of Katrina, Signs of Healing

NEW ORLEANS — This city, not that long ago, appeared to be lost. Only five years have passed since corpses were floating through the streets, since hundreds of thousands of survivors sat in hotel rooms and shelters and the homes of relatives, learning from news footage that they were among the ranks of the homeless.

For most of the last year, in many parts of the city, the waters finally seemed to be receding.

In November, a federal judge ruled that much of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina was a result of the negligence of the Army Corps of Engineers , vindicating New Orleanians, who had hammered this gospel for four years. In January, the federal government cleared the way for nearly half a billion dollars in reimbursement for the city's main public hospital, an acceleration of funds that led to the announcement this week that nearly $2 billion more would be coming in a lump-sum settlement for city schools.

The end of Mayor C. Ray Nagin 's second term in May marked the departure of the last member of the Katrina triumvirate, following former Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and former President George W. Bush . Mr. Nagin's successor, Mitch Landrieu , won election by a convincing margin, and immediately requested a federal overhaul of the city's deeply troubled Police Department.

And of course the Saints. It is nearly impossible to overstate the impact of those delirious few weeks around Super Bowl Sunday. The victory in February was, as many here say, the “anti-Katrina.”

Then came the summer of the spill, a new jolt of anxiety and fear, and a discovery, for many New Orleanians, of just how draining the last five years had been.

“I don't think the reservoir had been filled yet and now you're hit again,” said the Rev. Vien Nguyen, an energetic leader in the city's Vietnamese community who was reassigned from his parish this summer for a quieter job in the church tribunal at the office of the archdiocese. “You can run on fumes, but after a while they run out.”

It has been a week of special television retrospectives, official visits and expert panels, optimistic pronouncements and skeptical caveats. President Obama is scheduled to be in town on Sunday, and a host of cabinet officials are coming throughout the week. The city itself has announced a subdued ceremony on Sunday night, including a tolling of the bells of St. Louis Cathedral and a candlelight vigil for the dead.

All of this has prompted mixed feelings among residents, who are both tired of the yearly ritual of the national news media and concerned that the rest of the country has moved on. Besides, there is work to be done.

The city is largely optimistic, and with good reason. A master plan has finally been adopted, and the mayor recently announced a list of long-stalled recovery projects. The city's large-scale experiment in urban education is progressing — nearly two-thirds of the public school students attend charter schools , the highest percentage in the country — and federal, state and local officials have found a way to keep financing a widely praised network of community health clinics. But much of the news depends on where you are standing.

Entrepreneurs are starting businesses here at a rate far higher than the national average, and more restaurants are open now than before the storm. Meanwhile, large areas of the city still lack a supermarket.

A Balancing Act

Of all the indicators, two numbers, which are directly related, stand out. According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center , a nonprofit research group, more than 50,000 of the city's houses — about 27 percent — remain vacant, the highest proportion of any city in the country. And there are roughly 100,000 people who have not returned since the storm.

From the first year, the city has had to navigate a natural tension between the rights of the returned and the rights of the displaced. Those who have come back to streets of decaying houses and overgrown lawns want to see their neighborhoods thrive again. Those who have not come back — and plan to — often say they need more time and resources to repair their homes. That balance is only growing more complicated as the years pass and the federal rebuilding money dwindles.

The city's current population remains a matter of debate, though the most commonly used estimate is 355,000, around three-fourths of the population before the storm, as of July of last year. There is little reliable information about the displaced, who inhabit a sort of shadow city; it is not even known how many want to return. They are staying in Las Vegas or Atlanta or Baton Rouge, staying at a sister's or a brother's, staying in abandoned houses in town. They have settled down elsewhere, attracted by easier lives, or they have been stranded by New Orleans' drastically higher post-storm rents, the dearth of subsidized housing or the still-broken support networks of extended family.

Rebuilding Neighborhoods

Those who returned found a void of local leadership and set out to rebuild the city from the ground up. The rebound has not been citywide but piecemeal, neighborhood by neighborhood, from Lakeview to Broadmoor to Holy Cross , fueled by newly formed associations and old social clubs, energized residents and out-of-state volunteers, idealists and handymen. Many have become staunch advocates for their corners of the city, collecting local data, organizing committees and even, in the case of the Vietnamese community, drawing up their own local master plan.

A study by the Brookings Institution and the Community Data Center found that New Orleanians have become much more likely than other Americans to attend a public meeting. It also found that they are much less likely to feel that most people can be trusted.

Much of the city's organic recovery took place in defiance of an engineered, top-down rebuilding plan that was proposed in those first few months after the storm, prompting a dispute that has never been resolved. Those who proposed a smaller city to match a smaller population, and one concentrated on higher ground, view that period as a missed opportunity, looking at the current problems as reminders of the virtues of consolidation.

“That you would end up with a major blight problem was absolutely predictable,” said Janet R. Howard, executive director of the Bureau of Governmental Research , a nonprofit advisory group here. “You come to a point where you have to get beyond the political question to the actual question.”

She attributed the failure of such a plan, in part, to Washington's unwillingness to finance a major redesign with enough money to buy out homeowners in large sections of the city.

But the disillusionment goes both ways. Residents in neighborhoods outside of the center, like Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward, still remember in anger that decisions were being made about the future of the city by those who had been able to return quickly — white people, for the most part — without the participation of the citizens whose neighborhoods would be most drastically affected, if not eliminated altogether. They remember learning, while still scattered around the country, that they would have four months under the proposal to defend the very existence of their neighborhoods. For many, the anger of that period is what led to the robust civic engagement that the city now celebrates. And it has not gone away.

“When you're sleeping thinking everything's O.K., they're up and they're planning,” said Pearl Cantrell, 62, a resident of New Orleans East. “We've got to sleep in shifts.”

This month, Mr. Landrieu arranged a meeting in the eastern part of the city, a relatively new area of ranch house subdivisions that was home to much of the city's black middle class and was deluged after Katrina. The east has felt neglected since the storm — “economic sanctions,” Ms. Cantrell said — and residents arrived by the hundreds to express their concerns.

Some Hard Truths

Among the immediate demands was a solution to the area's widespread blight, the abandoned houses and untamed lawns on block after block. It has been five years, people at the meeting said. It is past time to starting repossessing vacant houses, so these neighborhoods can move on.

“You can't feel sorry no more,” said Aaron Broussard, who has become a dedicated evangelist for his subdivision in a far eastern section of the city. “That attitude is what's keeping this city in a blight situation.”

Mr. Broussard, 47, rebuilt a few days at a time, raiding his savings, rolling over his and his wife's 401(k)s and taking out a loan. He understands the hardships people are facing in returning, he said. He faced them, too. But “it's time to say: ‘All right. You had your time.' ”

That is legally the case for many. Road Home, the state-run, federally financed program that gave out grants to those whose homes had been damaged or destroyed, is based on a contract. A homeowner who chose to use the grant to rebuild in the city had three years to do so (many others sold their homes to the state, which is charged with keeping them in shape or handing them to the city for redevelopment). Those covenants began expiring this year, yet, to the frustration of residents across the city, thousands of properties have not shown any sign of rebuilding progress.

Many of these homeowners are not planning to return, their decaying properties left to hold back neighborhoods that are struggling to recover.

This week the mayor's office announced an aggressive series of measures, including fines and demolition, intended to tackle the city's widespread blight.

But there are countless others who received a sum from the Road Home program that fell far short of their rebuilding estimates, who were bilked of tens of thousands of dollars by smooth-talking contractors or who had an experience like that of 59-year-old Michael Dupont. Mr. Dupont could not prove that his family owned the house in which he grew up and in which his mother spent her 49 years of marriage, a house that his great-grandfather bought in the 1920s.

“We ain't never been nobody sticking out our hand for government assistance,” said Mr. Dupont, a former truck driver. “But now that we need a little help, they're slapping us down.”

The Duponts, who were planning to demolish the house and rebuild in its place, received no Road Home money at all because of the title problem. This year, they discovered, to their surprise, that the city had demolished the house. Mr. Dupont, whose mother is living in a nursing home in a nearby city and waiting to return, was sent a $30,000 bill for the work.

Nonprofit groups like the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center , which is helping Mr. Dupont, tick off long lists of Katrina evacuees who have faced similar problems. The center has sued the state and federal agencies, claiming the entire Road Home grant-calculating formula was discriminatory against blacks.

A judge ruled this summer that the case likely had merit. But he said that he did not have jurisdiction to order retroactive relief, especially after nearly $9 billion had already been handed out. Only 3,000 potential grant recipients remain out of roughly 130,000, and now they are in limbo as the litigation proceeds.

Last year, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development created a $20 million program in which nonprofit organizations are enlisted to work with those who have had a difficult time returning, a way of providing additional resources without duplicating benefits. The state began handing out additional compensation grants to poor homeowners as well. But officials acknowledge the money is not infinite.

“The program was never designed to make people whole,” said Robin Keegan, the director of Louisiana's office of community development, which oversees the Road Home program. “That would have taken a lot more money. Hard decisions had to be made. It's very hard to hear that message now.”

In the office in his newly refurbished home in the Lower Ninth Ward, Charles Brimmer, a 61-year-old building contractor, considered the hard truths. There are many who want to return and they should be able to come back, he said. But it is difficult at this point to see how they will be able to make it.

Mr. Brimmer now mows the empty lots around his house for free. He is not sure how long he will keep doing that.

He leaned back in his chair and recalled the morning after the storm, five years ago, when he and a dozen family members stayed at the house of his father-in-law, a neighborhood man by the name of Fats Domino.

“Everything you ever owned was washed away in two hours,” Mr. Brimmer said. “Everything tangible is gone. All you have left is a vivid memory. And over time that goes away, too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/us/28katrina.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Cops to gangs: Stop the killing -- or else

SECRET MEETING | Weis, top aides warn leaders that heat will be intense if violence continues  

August 28, 2010

BY FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter/fmain@suntimes.com

When Labar "Bro Man" Spann rolled into Garfield Park Conservatory in his wheelchair, he thought he was headed to a routine parole meeting.

Then, he saw Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis, other top law enforcement officials and the reputed leaders of several West Side street gangs.

The meeting, it turned out, was anything but routine.

The lawmen were there to deliver a message.

"They said they would get us if we don't stop the killing," Spann said.

A police spokesman declined to comment on the under-the-public's-radar gathering, which was part of something called the Chicago Gang Violence Reduction Initiative.

"Every law enforcement agency was there to show we're on the same team," one law enforcement source said. "It's a new approach. We're telling these guys: 'You got to cut the violence -- or else. The first gang that kills somebody, we will go full barrel after your whole gang.' "

When one of those gangs is involved in a killing, sources said, authorities plan to make their leaders' lives miserable, doing everything from towing their cars for parking violations, to ramping up parole visits, to pulling them over repeatedly for traffic stops.

But there's also a carrot to go with that stick: The authorities also plan to help gang leaders by getting them information about jobs, the source said.

The Aug. 17 meeting was the first in what's supposed to be a series prompted by continuing street violence but also by the succes of the approach in Boston and other cities, sources said.

Spann, 31, is a Four Corner Hustlers member who has been a leader of the gang and who now uses a wheelchair because he was wounded in a shooting, according to police. He's on parole for armed robbery, communicating with a witness and bringing drugs into a penal institution.

Spann said his parole agent strongly suggested he attend the meeting -- but didn't say he was going to be meeting with Weis and other local and federal officials.

"It was a gimmick," said Spann. "They told us we had to go to a meeting because of our parole."

Spann insisted that he's not a gang chief. And he bristled at the warning that Weis and the others delivered, saying, "They want to lock us up for something we didn't do."

Jettie "Bo Diddley" Williams, a reputed gang leader, also attended the meeting. Williams, also a parolee, stood up at one point and said "he will not pay for what other people do," according to Anthony Spann, who drove his nephew Labar Spann to the conservatory.

Williams, 50, who couldn't be reached for comment, is listed by the Chicago Crime Commission as a leader of the Traveling Vice Lords gang. His rap sheet includes convictions for attempted murder and armed robbery.

"There were five or six leaders of the West Side gangs," Anthony Spann said. "They told them that, 'If one of the Gangster Disciples come up dead by the Four Corner Hustlers, we will come after you.' That don't sound like justice."

Some law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition they not be identified further, wondered whether the gang members in the meeting have the power to stop violence. The gang leadership structure on the streets of Chicago has broken down with the federal imprisonment of top leaders over the past 20 years, they said, and young gang members with guns often don't respect elders like Williams and Spann anymore.

"They don't even respect their own parents," Anthony Spann agreed. Older gang members, he said, "don't have total control on the streets no more."

He said his nephew isn't active in the gang any longer. "He is sitting back. He tells guys, 'I am not putting my life out there for none of ya'll.' I don't know if it's wisdom or his being older and spending years in jail."

But law enforcement authorities said they believe Labar Spann is still active in the gang and was a top leader when he was behind bars. He was paroled last October.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2648058,CST-NWS-gangs29.article

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370 immigrants arrested in Feds' Midwest sweep

'Will not tolerate those who come unlawfully and take to a life of crime'  

August 28, 2010

BY DEANNA BELLANDI

Federal officials announced Friday that they had arrested 370 immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally or convicted of other crimes as part of a three-day Midwest roundup that included 35 arrests in Chicago.

Those arrested were legal immigrants with convictions that made them eligible for deportation; illegal immigrants who had been convicted of other crimes; immigration fugitives wanted for being in the country illegally, and people who had been deported and come back.

"These are not people we want freely roaming our streets," said John Morton, director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, said at a news conference in the Loop.

The operation involving local law enforcement and federal agencies ended Thursday. Arrests were made in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio, officials said.

Those arrested were from more than 50 countries, including Iraq, India, Kenya, Syria, Togo, Bosnia, Canada and Vietnam, and some had been convicted of crimes involving drugs and sexual offenses, ICE officials said. It was the latest in a series of similar enforcement operations ICE has been conducting nationwide since last year.

"We will not tolerate those who come here unlawfully and take to a life of crime," Morton said.

Darryl McPherson, U.S. marshal for the northern district of Illinois, said there are often misconceptions about enforcement actions. "We don't target individuals, we target crimes. We pursue fugitives for the crimes they commit, not for the gender or race they represent," McPherson said.

Speaking on another matter, Morton said ICE has dismissed some immigration cases involving people who were eligible for immigration benefits such as asylum or a green card or who were married to an American citizen. He said a review of such cases was going on nationwide.

"It's a waste of government resources to pursue an immigration removal proceeding against somebody who's likely going to be granted a benefit to stay in the country," he said.

He dismissed the suggestion the measure was any type of backdoor amnesty.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2647570,CST-NWS-immig28.article

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From the White House

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Weekly Address: President Obama: As the Combat Mission in Iraq Ends, We Must Pay Tribute to Those Who Have Served

WASHINGTON – In this week's address, President Obama pledged to uphold the sacred trust the nation has with its troops and veterans as the combat mission in Iraq comes to an end.  The administration is building a 21st century VA, making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.  The President also encouraged Americans who want to send our troops and veterans a message of thanks to visit www.whitehouse.gov and upload a message.

The full audio of the address is HERE . The video can be viewed online at www.whitehouse.gov .

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House

August 28, 2010

On Tuesday, after more than seven years, the United States of America will end its combat mission in Iraq and take an important step forward in responsibly ending the Iraq war.

As a candidate for this office, I pledged I would end this war.  As President, that is what I am doing.  We have brought home more than 90,000 troops since I took office.  We have closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of bases.  In many parts of the country, Iraqis have already taken the lead for security.

In the months ahead, our troops will continue to support and train Iraqi forces, partner with Iraqis in counterterrorism missions, and protect our civilian and military efforts.  But the bottom line is this: the war is ending.  Like any sovereign, independent nation, Iraq is free to chart its own course.  And by the end of next year, all of our troops will be home.

As we mark the end of America's combat mission in Iraq, a grateful nation must pay tribute to all who have served there.  Because part of responsibly ending this war is meeting our responsibility to those who have fought it.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now make up America's longest continuous combat engagement.  For the better part of a decade, our troops and their families have served tour after tour with honor and heroism, risking and often giving their lives for the defense of our freedom and security.  More than one million Americans in uniform have served in Iraq – far more than any conflict since Vietnam.  And more than one million who have served in both wars have now finished their service and joined the proud ranks of America's veterans.

What this new generation of veterans must know is this: our nation's commitment to all who wear its uniform is a sacred trust that is as old as our republic itself.  It is one that, as President, I consider a moral obligation to uphold.

At the same time, these are new wars; with new missions, new methods, and new perils.  And what today's veterans have earned – what they have every right to expect – is new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service when they come home.

That's why, from the earliest days of my Administration, we've been strengthening that sacred trust with our veterans by making our veterans policy more responsive and ready for this new century.

We're building a 21st century VA, modernizing and expanding VA hospitals and health care, and adapting care to better meet the unique needs of female veterans.  We're creating a single electronic health record that our troops and veterans can keep for life.  We're breaking the claims backlog and reforming the process with new paperless systems.  And we are building new wounded warrior facilities through the Department of Defense

But for many of our troops and their families, the war doesn't end when they come home.  Too many suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – the signature injuries of today's wars – and too few receive proper screening or care.  We're changing that.  We're directing significant resources to treatment, hiring more mental health professionals, and making major investments in awareness, outreach, and suicide prevention.  And we're making it easier for a vet with PTSD to get the benefits he or she needs.

To make sure our troops, veterans, and their families have full access to the American Dream they've fought to defend, we're working to extend them new opportunity.  Michelle and Jill Biden have forged a national commitment to support military families while a loved one is away.  We've guaranteed new support to caregivers who put their lives on hold for a loved one's long recovery.  We're funding and implementing the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which is already helping some 300,000 veterans and their family members pursue their dream of a college education.

And for veterans trying to find work in a very tough economy, we've devoted new resources to job training and placement. I've directed the federal government to hire more veterans, including disabled veterans, and I encourage every business in America to follow suit. This new generation of veterans has proven itself to be a new generation of leaders.  They have unmatched training and skills; they're ready to work; and our country is stronger when we tap their extraordinary talents.

New care.  New opportunity.  A new commitment to our veterans.

If you'd like to send our troops and veterans a message of thanks and support, just visit whitehouse.gov.  There, you'll find an easy way to upload your own text or video.

Let them know that they have the respect and support of a grateful nation.  That when their tour ends; when they see our flag; when they touch our soil; they'll always be home in an America that is forever here for them – just as they've been there for us.  That is the promise our nation makes to those who serve.  And as long as I'm Commander-in-Chief, it's a promise we'll keep.  Thank you.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/28/weekly-address-president-obama-combat-mission-iraq-ends-we-must-pay-trib

From ICE

ICE arrests 370 convicted criminal aliens, fugitives in enforcement surge throughout 10 Midwestern states

CHICAGO - In the largest operation of its kind ever carried out throughout the Midwest, 370 convicted criminal aliens and immigration fugitives have been arrested following a three-day targeted enforcement operation by agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

During the operation, which ended Thursday evening, ICE officers located and arrested 347 aliens with prior criminal convictions including nine gang members and 16 convicted sex offenders. More than 56 % of the criminal aliens taken into custody had prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, such as armed robbery, drug trafficking, child abuse, sexual crimes against minors, aggravated assault, theft and forgery In addition, 51 of the individuals ICE officers took into custody were immigration fugitives, aliens with outstanding orders of deportation who had failed to leave the country.

Arrests were made in the following 10 Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

This Midwest operation is the latest in a series of similar Cross Check operations around the country. The first Cross Check occurred in December 2009, and ICE has since conducted Cross Check operations in 37 states, including in California, Texas, Virginia and Arizona, as well as regional operations in the Southeast, Northeast and now the Midwest. All together, ICE has arrested 2,064 convicted criminals, fugitives, and aliens who have illegally re-entered the United States after removal around the country.

At a news conference in Chicago on Friday, ICE Director John Morton announced the results of the enforcement action, which involved more than 350 ICE agents and officers, as well as personnel from the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), along with local law enforcement partners throughout the 10 states.

"The record number of arrests made during this operation is a direct result of excellent teamwork among federal agencies who share a commitment to protect public safety," said ICE Director John Morton. "ICE is focused on arresting convicted criminals who prey upon our communities, and tracking down fugitives who scoff at our nation's immigration laws. The results of this operation demonstrate ICE's commitment to those principles."

Because of their serious criminal histories and prior immigration arrest records, at least 21 of those arrested during the enforcement surge have been accepted for federal prosecution for re-entering the country illegally after they had previously been deported. A conviction for felony re-entry carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

The arrestees include:

• A 23-year-old man from Laos convicted of criminal sexual conduct involving the rape of a child.
  
  
• A 25-year-old from Mexico and member of the Latin Kings gang who was convicted of theft, drug trafficking, and criminal mischief.
  
  
• A 24-year-old Ukrainian convicted of theft, receiving stolen property, drug possession, assault, forgery, and disorderly conduct.
  
  
• A 24-year-old Liberian convicted of dealing cocaine, sexual abuse of a minor, and theft.

The foreign nationals detained during the operation who are not being criminally prosecuted will be processed administratively for removal from the United States. Those who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, are subject to immediate removal from the country. The remaining aliens are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal in the near future.

Of those arrested, 339 were male and 31 were female. They represent 56 different nations, including countries in Latin America, Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

This week's special enforcement action was spearheaded by ICE's Fugitive Operations Program, which is responsible for locating, arresting and removing at-large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives - aliens who have ignored final orders of deportation handed down by the nation's immigration courts. ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs) give top priority to cases involving aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety, including members of transnational street gangs and child sex offenders.

The officers who conducted this week's operation received substantial assistance from ICE's Fugitive Operations Support Center (FOSC) located in Williston, Vt. The FOSC conducted exhaustive database checks on the targeted cases to help ensure the viability of the leads and accuracy of the criminal histories. The FOSC was established in 2006 to improve the integrity of the data available on at large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives nationwide. Since its inception, the FOSC has forwarded more than 550,000 case leads to ICE enforcement personnel in the field.

ICE's Fugitive Operations Program is just one facet of the Department of Homeland Security's broader strategy to heighten the federal government's effectiveness at identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens from the United States. Other initiatives that figure prominently in this effort are the Criminal Alien Program, Secure Communities and the agency's partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies under 287(g).

Largely as a result of these initiatives, ICE has so far this fiscal year removed a total of 142,526 criminal aliens from the United States, which is a record number.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1008/100827chicago.htm

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