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From the Los Angeles Times

Funeral protests could upend common view of free speech As the Supreme Court starts a new term, justices will decided whether hurtful words aimed at the grieving families of dead U.S. troops are protected by the 1st Amendment. by David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau October 4, 2010 Reporting from Williamsburg, Va. More than 500 mourners walked quietly through rows of flags and into a white chapel on a recent Saturday afternoon to honor a dead soldier.

But before entering the church parking lot, the mourners drove past an unusual demonstration. Scores of flag-waving bikers and students stood near the corner, surrounding three women holding brightly colored signs. They read: "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "God Hates Fags" and "You're Going to Hell."

Shirley Phelps-Roper and her two daughters are determined to go where they are not wanted and to spread their message that U.S. soldiers are fighting to promote tolerance of homosexuality. Their funeral pickets have prompted new laws across the nation to keep them away from grieving families.

When the Supreme Court opens its new term this week, the justices will be confronted with a potentially momentous question. Are vile and hurtful words always protected as free speech, even when the target is a private person, not a public figure?

The case of Snyder vs. Phelps, in which a jury in Maryland awarded the father of a dead Marine almost $11 million in damages against the Phelps family after a funeral incident in 2006, is one of two major 1st Amendment issues to be heard this fall.

The justices also will decide whether California and other states can limit the sale of violent video games to minors. So far, such laws have been struck down on free-speech grounds.

And the court will rule on other major issues, including whether employees can be forced to reveal their private lives in order to work on government jobs and whether states can punish employers who hire illegal immigrants.

The ruling on the funeral protesters could upset the common view that the Constitution protects wide-open free speech on the streets and on the Internet. In the past, the high court's great pronouncements on the 1st Amendment have protected protesters and publishers who clash with the government or with public officials.

The Phelps case poses a different issue. They have not gone just to the Pentagon or the White House to protest the sending of soldiers to war. Instead, they have picketed grieving families and derided the parents for having raised their young men to "serve the devil."

"We are saying you must obey God," Phelps-Roper said amid the counter-protesters last week. "He is punishing you for disobeying."

Her elderly father, Fred Phelps, founded the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., and in recent years, his daughters and granddaughters have traveled the country to spread his "fire and brimstone" message.

Albert Snyder, the father of the dead Marine, admitted he did not see the protesters or their signs on the day of his son's funeral, except in the television coverage. A few weeks later, however, he read a screed posted by Phelps-Roper on her website that denounced "satanic Catholicism" — the Snyders are Catholics — and accused Snyder and his wife of raising their son Matt to "defy his creator."

Snyder sued and alleged an intentional infliction of emotional distress. The trial judge upheld the jury's verdict, but reduced the $10.9 million damages to $5 million.

Last year, however, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the entire verdict and said the Phelpses' signs and messages were "constitutionally protected" speech.

To the surprise and dismay of 1st Amendment champions, the Supreme Court voted to hear the father's appeal and to decide whether a private figure can sue if he is the "target of hateful speech."

"It would be a sweeping change" if the court were to uphold Snyder's lawsuit, said Robert Corn-Revere, a 1st Amendment lawyer in Washington. "Where do you draw the line between public and private?" he asked, if protesters on a public street can be sued because their message is hurtful.

A ruling in favor of the Marine's father also could have a big effect on the Internet, because bloggers often attack non-public figures with mean and hurtful comments.

Nonetheless, Stanford University law professor Michael McConnell thinks the court will say the Constitution does not shield the Phelps family. Snyder "is not a public figure. He is a private person" who was the target of a hateful protest, McConnell said.

Stephen McAllister, former dean of the University of Kansas School of Law, says he too thinks the high court will lean in favor of upholding the lawsuit. "This is not just about punishing an offensive message. It is about their methods and tactics. They chose a private funeral and a grieving family to publicize their message," he said. "It is targeted to cause severe emotional distress."

The case will be heard Wednesday.

Taylor Reveley, president of the College of William and Mary, spoke at the funeral for Weaver. He described the protest as troubling but best left ignored. "They had no impact. They were kept well away from the church," he said.

He compared the protesters to the Florida minister who gained worldwide attention for threatening to burn the Koran. "If these people didn't get any publicity, they would go away. But we are much better off as a society if we let people protest, even if their views are abhorrent," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-new-term-20101004,0,603726,print.story

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Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery in Iraq or Afghanistan. Among the possible reasons for fewer such awards: The nature of combat has changed.

Why so few Medal of Honor awards? The Pentagon is under pressure to explain why the number for Afghanistan and Iraq is far fewer than in previous wars. by David Zucchino and Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times October 4, 2010 Reporting from Durham, N.C., and San Diego Even after President Obama approved Medal of Honor awards last month for two soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, the number of such honorees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is far lower than for previous conflicts. Military veterans and at least one member of Congress have challenged the Pentagon to explain the discrepancy, and some critics have accused the military of politicizing the awards process. A study last year by the Army Times newspaper found that from World War I through World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the number of Medal of Honor recipients ranged from 23 to 29 per million troops. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been barely one award per million troops. Only eight Medal of Honor awards have been approved for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan, compared with 464 during World War II.

Just one of the medals for bravery in Afghanistan or Iraq was to a living recipient, Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta, whose award was announced by the White House on Sept. 10. Rob Miller, 24, a weapons specialist from Wheaton, Ill., will receive the award posthumously on Wednesday.

Established in 1861, the Medal of Honor has been awarded 3,470 times, including 1,522 from the Civil War, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Under military regulations, the medal is awarded to a service member who "distinguishes himself or herself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life or her life above and beyond the call of duty." The rules also require "incontestable proof" of the deed.

One explanation for the relative paucity of recipients is the changing nature of warfare.

"The Taliban fight like Apaches and rarely close against Americans [equipped] with superior firepower," said Bing West, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, former assistant secretary of Defense and author of books about Marines in Iraq.

As one battlefield historian has written, "It's hard to be a hero against an IED," or homemade bomb.

Nevertheless, some veterans say, many service members have performed extraordinary acts of valor in Afghanistan and Iraq.

" The Pentagon has created almost an impossible standard," said Joseph A. Kinney, a Vietnam veteran who has testified before Congress about the Medal of Honor.

Kinney and other veterans say the Pentagon has become overly cautious in the face of high-tech forensics, a skeptical news media and more second-guessing. The medals process was tarnished when the Pentagon was caught creating false narratives to justify medals awarded in the high-profile cases of Army Ranger Pat Tillman and Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

Kinney said the Pentagon checks Medal of Honor candidates, nominated by each branch of service, for past disciplinary violations, messy divorces, questionable personal habits, immigration violations and other background issues. And because a few Medal of Honor winners in Vietnam later protested against the war, Kinney said, the Pentagon also worries about nominees' political leanings.

"They don't want an award winner embarrassing them later," Kinney said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Eileen Lainez, said the Defense Department was "aware of no basis for such claims."

"The criteria for the [medal] are longstanding and have not changed for the current conflicts," she said in an e-mail. "Nominations go through no more or less scrutiny than in the past."

Lainez said increased dependence on "stand-off" weapons, such as drones and manned attack aircraft, coupled with modern surveillance techniques, produced fewer "individual combat actions" most likely to produce heroic actions.

At the insistence of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Alpine), a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, a provision was added to the Pentagon budget bill last year requiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates to explain the selection process and why so few Medals of Honor have been awarded. That report is expected by year's end.

Duncan also asked Gates why awards for seven of eight honorees from Afghanistan and Iraq have been posthumous. The Army history center says nearly half of the Medal of Honor awards during World War II — 43% — went to living recipients, as did 29% for Korea and 37% for Vietnam.

Marines have been especially aggressive in questioning the awards process.

Among Marines, no case has been more controversial than that of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who was nominated by the Marine commandant for the Medal of Honor for smothering a grenade in Fallouja, Iraq, saving the lives of several comrades. Marines who witnessed Peralta's actions insisted that although he was gravely wounded, he made his heroic gesture willingly. But some forensic experts disagreed, contending that he was already brain-dead and his act mere involuntary muscle movement.

Some veterans raised the possibility that Peralta's onetime status as an illegal immigrant played a part in the decision, according to the Army Times study.

Lainez, at the Pentagon, said Gates asked five independent reviewers to study Peralta's nomination. Each one "independently concluded that the evidence did not meet the exacting standard necessary to support award" of the medal, she said, adding that Gates agreed after careful consideration.

Referring to the Peralta review, Gates said the Medal of Honor selection process must be without dispute or disagreement. Those comments left some military brass wondering whether advancements in forensic science and skepticism by war correspondents toward official battlefield narratives have made Gates and other decision-makers reluctant to bestow the award.

To Hunter, the award is more than a medal; it's a message to the nation.

"It's important that those service members who risked their lives, sacrificing their own safety to protect others, receive the recognition they deserve and continue inspiring the next generation of Americans," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-1004-medal-20101004-1,0,6395916.story

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$69 million in California welfare money drawn out of state

Las Vegas tops the list with $11.8 million spent at casinos or taken from ATMs, but transactions in Hawaii, Miami, Guam and elsewhere also raise questions. Officials say budget cuts hinder investigations.

By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

October 4, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento

More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami.

State-issued aid cards have been used at hotels, shops, restaurants, ATMs and other places in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services. Las Vegas drew $11.8 million of the cash benefits, far more than any other destination. The money was accessed from January 2007 through May 2010.

Welfare recipients must prove they can't afford life's necessities without government aid: A single parent with two children generally must earn less than $14,436 a year to qualify for the cash assistance and becomes ineligible once his or her income exceeds about $20,000, said Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services.

Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Orbitz.com Sunday started at $419 — more than 80% of the average monthly cash benefit for a single parent of two on CalWorks, the state's main aid program.

"How they can go somewhere like Hawaii and be legit on aid … they can't," said Robert Hollenbeck, a fraud investigator for the Fresno County district attorney's office. "This is money for basic subsistence needs."

The $387,908 accessed in Hawaii includes transactions at more than a thousand big-box stores, grocery stores, convenience shops and ATMs on all the major islands. At least $234,000 was accessed on Oahu, $70,626 on Maui, $39,883 on Hawaii and $22,170 on Kauai.

The list includes $12,433 spent at the upscale Ala Moana shopping center, $3,030 spent at a group of gift shops next to Jimmy Buffett's Beachcomber restaurant on Waikiki Beach and $2,146 withdrawn from ATMs on the island of Lanai, home to a pair of Four Seasons resorts and little else.

"If it's on Lanai, that should trigger an investigation," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. "California taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their own jobs, are subsidizing other people's vacations. That's absurd."

Of the nearly $12 million accessed in Las Vegas, more than $1 million was spent or withdrawn at shops and casino hotels on, or within a few blocks of, the 4.5-mile strip. The list includes $8,968 at the Tropicana, $7,995 at the Venetian and its Grand Canal Shoppes, and $1,332 at Tix 4 Tonight, seller of discount admission for such acts as Cirque du Soleil.

Although many Las Vegas casinos block the use of welfare cards in ATMs on gambling floors, more than $34,700 has been spent or withdrawn from the ATM at a 7-Eleven in the shadow of Steve Wynn's new Encore casino and a couple of blocks south of Circus Circus.

The store's owner, Rupee Chima, knows the California welfare cards well. He said the people using them don't look like high rollers. "They're not coming in with Rolexes," he said.

And it's possible, he noted, to pack a bunch of people in a car, drive four hours from Los Angeles and share a room at a down-market casino hotel for a relatively frugal vacation.

Californian Omar Mikhail, dining at Encore, said his parents paid their rent with welfare aid when they immigrated to the Bay Area from Afghanistan in the early 1980s. They would never have dreamed of driving to Las Vegas with their monthly check, he said.

"When I hear something like that, it's so disheartening," he said.

The data show addresses of stores and ATM locations where the cards have been used and the amounts of the transactions by year. They do not reveal the identities of the welfare recipients or show how many users visited a given retailer.

Of the $1.5 million accessed in Florida, $13,109 was spent or withdrawn in South Beach, most of that at bars and restaurants along trendy Lincoln Road. More than $7,000 was withdrawn from ATMs a few hours north, at Walt Disney World.

The data also show $16,010 withdrawn from 14 cruise ships sailing from ports around the world — Long Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing. Eight sail primarily from Miami.

The out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1% of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered, and advocates note that there are legitimate reasons to spend aid money outside of California. From the data provided, it cannot be determined whether any of the expenditures resulted from fraud.

"I think when somebody hears it's in a fancy hotel in Hawaii or Vegas, it's too easy to assume the [welfare recipient] is visiting that place and it wasn't somebody who stole their card," said Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

There is no rule preventing welfare recipients from leaving California, as long as they get clearance from their county case worker to be absent from the program's 32-hour-a-week job training requirement. County investigators, who state authorities say are responsible for rooting out fraud and abuse, typically don't question a recipient's whereabouts until transactions on a welfare card show that he or she has been gone for more than 30 days.

"If it's a one-time thing in Miami, we would never check that out," said John Haley, commander of the financial crimes division of the San Diego County district attorney's office, who said 24% of all new welfare applications in his jurisdiction contain some form of fraud. "We look for patterns of abuse."

In Los Angeles County, investigators hadn't been checking until a recipient was gone for three months, said Department of Public Social Services Director Philip Browning. The inability to do more was "really just a resource issue," he said.

Following questions from The Times, Browning said investigators would start inquiring once the data show that a recipient has been gone for more than 30 days.

Many recipients travel to other states in an emergency such as a death in the family, investigators say. But with government resources scarce, it's difficult to sort those cases from incidents of abuse.

An anti-fraud unit in Orange County, which won praise from state officials last year for saving the state millions, has since had to slash its budget and lay off 15 investigators, said Paul Bartlett, commander of the county district attorney's Bureau of Investigation.

Those cuts saved $900,000 in operating expenses but allowed "an estimated $9.6 million in suspected fraud payments out the door," according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released in May.

A state audit last year found that none of California's 58 counties was adequately following up on information that could help root out fraud, including monthly computer matches that list clients who are receiving duplicate aid from other states, those who are ineligible because they're in prison and others who have died.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-welfare-20101004,0,3895423,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Frenzy of Rape in Congo Reveals U.N. Weakness

LUVUNGI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Four armed men barged into Anna Mburano's hut, slapped the children and threw them down. They flipped Mrs. Mburano on her back, she said, and raped her, repeatedly.

It did not matter that dozens of United Nations peacekeepers were based just up the road. Or that Mrs. Mburano is around 80 years old.

“Grandsons!” she yelled. “Get off me!”

As soon as they finished, they moved house to house, along with hundreds of other marauding rebels, gang-raping at least 200 women.

What happened in this remote, thatched-roof village on July 30 and continued for at least three more days has become a searing embarrassment for the United Nations mission in Congo. Despite more than 10 years of experience and billions of dollars, the peacekeeping force still seems to be failing at its most elemental task: protecting civilians.

The United Nations' blue-helmets are considered the last line of defense in eastern Congo, given that the nation's own army has a long history of abuses, that the police are often invisible or drunk and that the hills are teeming with rebels.

But many critics contend that nowhere else in the world has the United Nations invested so much and accomplished so little. What happened in Luvungi, with nearby peacekeepers failing to respond to a village under siege, is similar to a massacre in Kiwanja in 2008, when rebels killed 150 people within earshot of a United Nations base.

“Congo is the U.N.'s crowning failure,” said Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues,” whose advocacy group, V-Day, has been working with Congolese women for years.

She blamed poor management, bad communication and racism. “If the women being raped were the daughters or wives or mothers of the power elites,” she said, “I can promise you this war would have ended about 12 years ago.”

United Nations officials admitted that the peacekeepers failed to respond fast enough to Luvungi, though they said the primary responsibility fell on the Congolese Army, which continues to be in grievous disarray.

“I felt personally guilty and guilty toward the people I met there,” said Atul Khare, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, who recently visited Luvungi. “They told me, ‘We've been raped, we've been brutalized, give us peace and security.' Unfortunately, I said, that is something I cannot promise.”

Within peacekeeping circles, Congo is becoming known as “the African equivalent of Afghanistan,” said Annika Hilding-Norberg, a director at the Peace Operations Training Institute in Virginia, because of the conflict's enduring violence and complexity.

Luvungi, a village of about 2,000 people, is a crucible where so many of Congo's intractable problems converged: the scramble for minerals; the fragmentation of rebel groups; the perverse incentives among armed groups to commit atrocities to bolster their negotiating strength; the poverty that keeps villages cut off and incommunicado; and the disturbing fact that in Congo's wars, the battleground is often women's bodies. United Nations officials call the sexual violence in Congo the worst in the world.

A sense of menace hangs over this entire area, even the government-controlled outposts.

And people in the Luvungi area are now taking no chances. After the rapes, the United Nations set up a small base here, and just the presence of 20 or so peacekeepers in an abandoned mud-walled cinema draws countless refugees from surrounding areas to camp out at night around them.

During escorted trips to markets, thousands of villagers trudge up the hills behind a handful of Indian peacekeepers in trucks, begging the peacekeepers to drive “pole, pole” — or “slowly, slowly” — so as not to leave the slightest gap or opportunity for armed men to drop down from the jungle wall.

This area is spectacularly rich in gold, tin ore and fertile land, which is partly why it has been so bitterly contested by rebel groups and renegade army divisions. Surging brown rivers slice through the jungle, which is decorated with pink hibiscus flowers and birds of paradise. Rumbling up a road here is like driving through a greenhouse.

In mid-July, the Congolese Army contingent stationed in Luvungi suddenly pulled out, leaving the people here unguarded. The United Nations later learned that the soldiers had marched off to Bisie, where there is a huge tin ore mine — and illegal taxes to be extorted.

“This place was a total void,” said Maj. Radha Krishnan, an Indian peacekeeper.

Shortly after the rapes that month, the government ordered mines in eastern Congo temporarily closed, to starve armed groups of income. But the government does not control many of the mines or, for that matter, much of the area.

“The government's able to dominate only the road,” explained Lt. Col. R. D. Sharma. “The rest,” he said, sweeping his hand over the treetops, “is the negative forces.”

The negative forces stormed into Luvungi on Friday, July 30, around 8 p.m. According to United Nations reports there were around 300 men, a mix of Rwandan rebels who have been terrorizing eastern Congo for years and fighters from a new Congolese rebel group, Mai Mai Cheka, which has been vying for attention as the government tries to absorb more rebels into the army.

Paradoxically enough, the effort to integrate certain rebel groups into the Congolese Army — intended to help stabilize the region — may have supplied a motivation for the rapes, analysts say. The more fearsome and powerful an armed group can appear, the more concessions it can extract in negotiations.

“These guys are trying to boost their ranks, to colonel or general,” said Lt. Hamisi Delfonte, a police officer in Walikale, about a two-hour drive from Luvungi.

The other day, several government soldiers suddenly unshouldered their rifles, clicked off their safeties and started chasing a man in camouflage pants through the middle of town. All heads swiveled in the same direction. Children broke away. “They're going to kill that guy,” someone said.

But the soldiers did not shoot, and it was soon clear why. The fleeing man was an army major who had just pulled the pin on his grenade. It all stemmed from a dispute over 50 cents. The man was eventually talked down and arrested.

The Indian peacekeepers at the base nearest Luvungi, in Kibua, about 11 miles away, said that they started hearing reports of an attack on the following Sunday, but that they had been tricked many times before. Often, truck drivers claim a certain area is under attack, the peacekeepers said, when in fact they simply want a United Nations escort to the next town to ensure that no one steals their minerals.

Because there is no cellphone service in the area or electricity, it is not always simple to know when there is an attack. The United Nations, which has around 18,000 peacekeepers in Congo, is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages.

On Aug. 2, that Monday, the peacekeepers agreed to escort truck drivers through Luvungi. Indian officers said that they saw ripped-up mattresses and clothes strewn along the road — evidence of looting — but that the villagers did not say anything about mass rapes.

“Sometimes,” Colonel Sharma said, “the women here are ashamed to tell a soldier, especially a male soldier, that they've been raped. And we don't have any female soldiers.”

Several women in Luvungi said that after they were raped, the rebels hollered into the night, as if they were celebrating. Mrs. Mburano lay bleeding on her floor, listening.

“I know, I still look sick,” she said, though her cloudy eyes tried to smile as she spoke. “Just a few vegetables, that's all I've eaten, since I was demolished.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/africa/04congo.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Vagueness of Alert Leaves Travelers Frustrated

The State Department travel alert issued on Sunday in response to reports of a threat by Al Qaeda was anything but precise.

Where is the threat? Europe. What is the target? Subways, railways, aircraft, ships or any “tourist infrastructure.”

What should Americans in Europe do? “Be aware of their surroundings” and “adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling,” the department advised.

The alert's vagueness, issued after days of discussion inside the Obama administration, embodied the dilemma for the authorities in the United States and Europe over how to publicize a threat that intelligence analysts call credible but not specific.

The authorities do not want to be accused of hiding what they know. Nor do they want to panic the public unnecessarily.

The result in this case seemed frustrating for some travelers and counterterrorism specialists.

“My parents told me about the threat today on Skype, but I told them, ‘Why are you telling me?' ” said Sara Popovich, 20, from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., who is studying in London. “I'm here already, and I have to ride the Tube.”

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said the alert conveyed little useful information.

“Usually they're at least country-specific,” Dr. Hoffman said. “This one is an entire continent. I'm not sure what it says, beyond the fact that the world's a dangerous place, and we already knew that.”

President Obama met with his national security team on Friday night and Saturday morning, White House officials said. A White House spokesman, Nicholas S. Shapiro, said that while the State Department had decided to issue the alert, it came in response to Mr. Obama's insistence that “we need to do everything possible to disrupt this plot and protect the American people.”

Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, told reporters on Sunday that the advisory was not intended to discourage Americans from traveling, but merely to urge “common-sense precautions,” including vigilance about unattended packages and loud noises, and moving away quickly if something is “beginning to happen.”

An American counterterrorism official said Sunday that the vagueness of the alert accurately reflected analysts' uncertainty about the imminence of an attack and the target of any plot.

“The threat to Europe is credible and of concern, but — as the general nature of the threat alert issued today suggests — the complete picture of possible terrorist plotting there hasn't yet emerged,” said the official, who spoke about the classified intelligence on condition of anonymity.

Frank J. Cilluffo, a former Bush administration homeland security official now at George Washington University, said the State Department was wise to issue the alert. “I err on the side of sharing the information, since a vigilant citizenry can help prevent an attack,” he said.

The decision to warn travelers came as officials in Europe and the United States were assessing possible plots originating in Pakistan and North Africa, aimed at Britain, France and Germany. On Sunday, the British government raised the threat of terrorism to “high” from “general” for Britons in France and Germany.

American intelligence officials said last week that they were pursuing reports of possible attacks against European cities.

Some information about the suspected plot came from a German citizen of Afghan origin captured in Afghanistan in July. The German, Ahmed Sidiqi, 36, from Hamburg, had traveled to the Waziristan region of Pakistan and received weapons training, according to European officials.

The officials said Mr. Sidiqi told investigators he had met in Pakistan with a high-level Qaeda operative, identified as Younis al-Mauretani, who told him Osama bin Laden wanted attacks carried out in Europe.

In addition, the officials said, several British residents of Pakistani background were detained in Islamabad and Lahore in Pakistan recently and had offered similar information.

Officials in Britain, France and Germany took note of the American alert and made no objection.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in France, where the Eiffel Tower was briefly evacuated in recent days, said the alert was “in line with the general recommendations we ourselves make to the French population.”

In Britain, the terrorism threat has sharpened a debate in London about whether to equip Scotland Yard with battlefield-style automatic weapons.

In a talk last month, Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, the British internal security agency, warned of overstretched investigators and said there was a “serious risk of a lethal attack.”

Mr. Evans says Britain appears “increasingly to have imported from the American media the assumption that terrorism is 100 percent preventable and any incident that is not prevented is seen as a culpable government failure.” He called such an attitude “nonsensical.”

Some Americans in Europe on Sunday took the State Department alert in stride.

Rachel Swaine, 30, an administrator at Boston University , visiting Paris for the first time with her mother, Betsy, 63, of Glen Gardner, N.J., said a friend had told her of the terrorist threat.

“I honestly think that the French will not let anything happen to the Eiffel Tower,” she said.

Her mother added that she had been living near New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. “We were terrified, but we have been able to avoid attacks, and it should be the same here.”

She added: “You can't let that ruin your life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/europe/04security.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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More States Allowing Guns in Bars

NASHVILLE — Happy-hour beers were going for $5 at Past Perfect, a cavernous bar just off this city's strip of honky-tonks and tourist shops when Adam Ringenberg walked in with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol in the front pocket of his gray slacks.

Mr. Ringenberg, a technology consultant, is one of the state's nearly 300,000 handgun permit holders who have recently seen their rights greatly expanded by a new law — one of the nation's first — that allows them to carry loaded firearms into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.

“If someone's sticking a gun in my face, I'm not relying on their charity to keep me alive,” said Mr. Ringenberg, 30, who said he carries the gun for personal protection when he is not at work.

Gun rights advocates like Mr. Ringenberg may applaud the new law, but many customers, waiters and restaurateurs here are dismayed by the decision.

“That's not cool in my book,” Art Andersen, 44, said as he nursed a Coors Light at Sam's Sports Bar and Grill near Vanderbilt University. “It opens the door to trouble. It's giving you the right to be Wyatt Earp.”

Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.) The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense.

Experts say these laws represent the latest wave in the country's gun debate, as the gun lobby seeks, state by state, to expand the realm of guns in everyday life.

The rulings, which overturned handgun bans in Washington and Chicago, have strengthened the stance of gun rights advocates nationwide. More than 250 lawsuits now challenge various gun laws, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, called for guns to be made legal on campuses after a shooting last week at the University of Texas, Austin, arguing that armed bystanders might have stopped the gunman.

The new laws have also brought to light the status of 20 other states — New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts among them — that do not address the question, appearing by default to allow those with permits to carry guns into establishments that serve alcohol, according to the Legal Community Against Violence, a nonprofit group that promotes gun control and tracks state gun laws.

“A lot of states for a long time have not felt the need to say you could or couldn't do it,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “There weren't as many conceal-carry permits out there, so it wasn't really an issue.” Now, he said, “the attitude from the gun lobby is that they should be able to take their guns wherever they want. In the last year, they're starting to move toward needing no permit at all.”

State Representative Curry Todd, a Republican who first introduced the guns-in-bars bill here, said that carrying a gun inside a tavern was never the law's primary intention. Rather, he said, the law lets people defend themselves while walking to and from restaurants.

“Folks were being robbed, assaulted — it was becoming an issue of personal safety,” said Mr. Todd, who added that the National Rifle Association had aided his legislative efforts. “The police aren't going to be able to protect you. They're going to be checking out the crime scene after you and your family's been shot or injured or assaulted or raped.”

Under Tennessee's new law, gun permit holders are not supposed to drink alcohol while carrying their weapons. Mr. Ringenberg washed down his steak sandwich with a Coke.

But critics of the law say the provision is no guarantee of safety, pointing to a recent shooting in Virginia where a customer who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon shot himself in the leg while drinking beer at a restaurant.

“Guns and alcohol don't mix; that's the bottom line,” said Michael Drescher, a spokesman for Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, who vetoed the bill but was overridden by the legislature.

The law allows restaurant and bar owners to prohibit people from carrying weapons inside their establishments by posting signs out front. But many restaurateurs are reluctant to discourage the patronage of gun owners, often saying privately that they do not allow guns but holding off on posting a sign.

“I've talked to a lot of restaurants, and probably 50 to 60 percent of them have no clue what's going on,” said Ray Friedman, 51, who has created a Web site listing the firearms policies of area restaurants.

Previously, states like Tennessee did not allow its residents to carry concealed weapons unless they had a special permit from the local authorities. That began to shift in the mid-1990s, as the gun lobby pushed states to adopt policies that made permits for concealed weapons more accessible.

The new law passed with broad legislative support, despite opposition from the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and the Tennessee Hospitality Association.

So far, the law has been challenged only once. Filed by an anonymous waiter, the complaint contended that allowing guns into a tavern creates an unsafe work environment for servers. His complaint was denied by the state's Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

“A loaded concealed weapon in a bar is a recognized hazard,” said David Randolph Smith, a lawyer who represents the waiter and is preparing to appeal the decision. “I have a right to go into a restaurant or bar and not have people armed. And of course, the waiter has a right to a safe workplace.”

Down at Bobby's Idle Hour, however, Mike Gideon said he did not believe that guns in bars were unsafe. As he sipped a beer in the fading afternoon light, Mr. Gideon, who characterized his 19-gun collection as “serious,” said that having a few permit holders around made any public space safer and that he boycotts any business that does not allow him to carry a weapon.

“People who have gun permits have the cleanest records around,” said Mr. Gideon, 54. “The guy that's going to do the bad thing? He's not worried about the law at all. The ‘No Guns' sign just says to him, ‘Hey, buddy, smooth sailing.' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04guns.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Suicides Put Light on Pressures of Gay Teenagers

FRESNO, Calif. — When Seth Walsh was in the sixth grade, he turned to his mother one day and told her he had something to say.

“I was folding clothes, and he said, ‘Mom, I'm gay,' ” said Wendy Walsh, a hairstylist and single mother of four. “I said, ‘O.K., sweetheart, I love you no matter what.' ”

But last month, Seth went into the backyard of his home in the desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., and hanged himself, apparently unable to bear a relentless barrage of taunting, bullying and other abuse at the hands of his peers. After a little more than a week on life support, he died last Tuesday. He was 13.

The case of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after a sexual encounter with another man was broadcast online, has shocked many. But his death is just one of several suicides in recent weeks by young gay teenagers who had been harassed by classmates, both in person and online.

The list includes Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old from Greensburg, Ind., who hanged himself on Sept. 9 after what classmates reportedly called a constant stream of invective against him at school.

Less than two weeks later, Asher Brown, a 13-year-old from the Houston suburbs, shot himself after coming out. He, too, had reported being taunted at his middle school, according to The Houston Chronicle. His family has blamed school officials as failing to take action after they complained, something the school district has denied.

The deaths have set off an impassioned — and sometimes angry — response from gay activists and caught the attention of federal officials, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who on Friday called the suicides “unnecessary tragedies” brought on by “the trauma of being bullied.”

“This is a moment where every one of us — parents, teachers, students, elected officials and all people of conscience — needs to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms,” Mr. Duncan said.

And while suicide by gay teenagers has long been a troubling trend, experts say the stress can be even worse in rural places, where a lack of gay support services — or even openly gay people — can cause a sense of isolation to become unbearable.

“If you're in the small community, the pressure is hard enough,” said Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which is based in New York. “And goodness knows people get enough signals about ‘how wrong it is to be gay' without anyone in those communities actually having to say so.”

According to a recent survey conducted by Ms. Byard's group, nearly 9 of 10 gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual middle and high school students suffered physical or verbal harassment in 2009, ranging from taunts to outright beatings.

In Mr. Clementi's case, prosecutors in New Jersey have charged two fellow Rutgers freshmen with invasion of privacy and are looking at the death as a possible hate crime. Prosecutors in Cypress, Tex., where Asher Brown died, said Friday that they would investigate what led to his suicide.

In a pair of blog postings last week, Dan Savage, a sex columnist based in Seattle, assigns the blame to negligent teachers and school administrators, bullying classmates and “hate groups that warp some young minds and torment others.”

“There are accomplices out there,” he wrote Saturday.

In an interview, Mr. Savage, who is gay, said he was particularly irate at religious leaders who used “antigay rhetoric.”

“The problem is that kids are being exposed to this rhetoric, and then they go to the school and there's this gay kid,” he said. “And how are they going to treat this gay kid who they've been told is trying to destroy their family? They're going to abuse him.”

In late September, Mr. Savage began a project on YouTube called “It Gets Better,” featuring gay adults talking about their experiences with harassment as adolescents.

In one video, a gay man named Cyrus tells of his life as a closeted teenager in a small town in upstate New York.

“The main thing I wanted to come across from this video is how different my life is, how great my life is, and how happy I am in general,” he says.

Glennda Testone, the executive director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, said their youth programs serve about 50 young people a day, often suffering from “bullying, harassment or even violence.”

“The three main groups of pivotal figures are family, friends and their schoolmates,” she said. “And if they're feeling isolated and like they can't tell those people, it's going to be a very rough ride.”

Here in Fresno, in California's conservative Central Valley, groups like Equality California have been more active in trying to establish outreach offices, particularly after an election defeat in 2008, when California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

In Tehachapi, in Kern County south of here, more than 500 mourners attended a memorial on Friday for Seth Walsh. One of those, Jamie Elaine Phillips, a classmate and friend, said Seth had long known he was gay and had been teased for years.

“But this year it got much worse,” Jamie said. “People would say, ‘You should kill yourself,' ‘You should go away,' ‘You're gay, who cares about you?' ”

Richard L. Swanson, superintendent of the local school district, said his staff had conducted quarterly assemblies on behavior, taught tolerance in the classroom and had “definite discipline procedures that respond to bullying.”

“But these things didn't prevent Seth's tragedy,” he said in an e-mail. “Maybe they couldn't have.”

For her part, Ms. Walsh said she had complained about Seth's being picked on but did not want to cast blame, though she hoped his death would teach people “not to discriminate, not be prejudiced.”

“I truly hope,” she said, “that people understand that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04suicide.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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When Home Has No Place to Park

LOS ANGELES — Every day, Diane Butler and her husband park their two hand-painted R.V.'s in a lot at the edge of Venice Beach here, alongside dozens of other rickety, rusted campers from the 1970s and '80s. During the day, she sells her artwork on the boardwalk. When the parking lot closes at sunset, she and the other R.V.-dwellers drive a quarter-mile inland to find somewhere on the street to park for the night.

Their nomadic existence might be ending, though. The Venice section of Los Angeles has become the latest California community to enact strict new regulations limiting street parking and banning R.V.'s from beach lots — regulations that could soon force Ms. Butler, 58, to leave the community where she has lived for four decades.

“They're making it hard for people in vehicles to remain in Venice,” she said.

Southern California, with its forgiving weather, has long been a popular destination for those living in vehicles and other homeless people. And for decades, people living in R.V.'s, vans and cars have settled in Venice, the beachfront Los Angeles community once known as the “Slum by the Sea” and famous for its offbeat, artistic culture.

Yet even as the economic downturn has forced more people out of their homes and into their cars, vehicle-dwellers are facing fewer options, with more communities trying to push them out.

As nearby neighborhoods and municipalities passed laws restricting overnight parking in recent years, Venice became the center of vehicle dwelling in the region. More than 250 vehicles now serve as shelter on Venice streets, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“The only place between Santa Barbara and San Diego where campers can park seven blocks from the beach is this little piece of land,” said City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes Venice. “Over the years, it's only gotten worse, as every other community along the coast has adopted restrictions.”

In the past, bohemian Venice was tolerant of vehicle-dwellers, but, increasingly, the proliferation of R.V.'s in this gentrifying neighborhood has prompted efforts to remove them.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” said Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association, a group of residents devoted to removing R.V.'s from the area. “It's time to give us some relief from R.V.'s parking on our doorsteps.”

A bitter debate has raged between residents who want to get rid of R.V.'s and those who want to combat the problems of homelessness in the community by offering safe places to park and access to public bathrooms. Last year, residents voted to establish overnight parking restrictions, but the California Coastal Commission twice vetoed the plan.

However, a recent incident involving an R.V. owner's arrest on charges of dumping sewage into the street has accelerated efforts to remove vehicle-dwellers. Starting this week, oversize vehicles will be banned from the beach parking lots; an ordinance banning them from parking on the street overnight could take effect within a month.

While Mr. Rosendahl supported parking restrictions, he has also secured $750,000 from the city to pay for a pilot program to house R.V.-dwellers. Modeled after efforts in Santa Barbara and Eugene, Ore., the Vehicles to Homes program will offer overnight parking for vehicle-dwellers who agree to meet certain conditions, with the goal of moving participants into permanent housing.

“For people who want help, we'll support them,” Mr. Rosendahl said. “The others can take their wheels and go up the coast or somewhere else, God bless them. It's not our responsibility to be the only spot where near-homelessness is dealt with in the state of California.”

While some have expressed interest in the program, many said they did not want to subject themselves to curfews and oversight or had no means or desire to return to renting. Mr. Ryavec believes few will participate.

“I will not debate that some people are mentally ill, indigent or drugged out,” Mr. Ryavec said. “But my stance is that the bulk of these people are making a lifestyle choice.”

Still, according to Gary L. Blasi, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an activist on homeless issues, most people choose to live in vehicles only when the alternative is sleeping in a shelter or on the street.

“The idea of carefree vagabonds is statistically false,” Professor Blasi said. “More often, these are people who lived in apartments in Venice before they lived in R.V.'s. The reason for losing housing is usually the loss of a job or some health care crisis.”

Even if all the vehicle-dwellers in Venice wanted to participate, the pilot program will accommodate only a small fraction of them. In Southern California, though, there may not be anywhere else R.V.'s can legally park. According to Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, ordinances banning R.V.'s have spread from metropolitan areas into the suburbs as vehicle-dwellers venture farther afield in search of somewhere to sleep.

“Communities are now forming a patchwork of ordinances, which virtually prohibits a geographic cure to the situation,” Mr. Donovan said. “If you're in a community and they tell you to leave, you can't just go to the next community, because they establish similar ordinances, especially in California.”

Mr. Donovan said vehicle-dwellers often end up on the street after their vehicles are towed or become inoperable. When his organization surveyed tent camps in California, they found that many residents had come from R.V.'s.

Vehicle-dwellers in Venice are now considering their options, but few expressed any intention of leaving.

“They can keep throwing more laws at us, but we're not just going to go away,” said Mario Manti-Gualtiero, who lost his job as an audio engineer and now lives in an R.V. “We can't just evaporate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04rv.html?pagewanted=print

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Lax and Lethal

EDITORIAL

The high price Americans pay for weak gun laws — no matter where they live — is made painfully clear in a new study prepared by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston.

The study examines the source of guns confiscated at crime scenes across the country during 2009. A large number of these guns, 43,000 in all, originated with out-of-state gun dealers. Among the states with the worst record of exporting crime guns were Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and Alaska.

Each of these states exports crime guns at a rate more than double the national average. All have weak gun laws. They generally fail to require background checks for handgun sales at gun shows. They tend not to require state inspection of gun dealers, or require owners to report lost and stolen guns to police.

The study finds that states that have enacted strong restrictions export crime guns at only about one-seventh the rate of those with lax laws. It relied on data available only after Congress loosened restrictions — put in place with support from the gun lobby — that barred public release of information tracing the flow of guns.

There are sensible steps that could help, like closing the loophole in federal law that permits gun traffickers and other unqualified purchasers from obtaining weapons without background checks at gun shows. The National Rifle Association persists in blocking that, and is pressing to loosen gun restrictions even further.

There are 12,000 gun murders a year in this country, many committed with guns flowing into states with the strongest gun laws from parts of the country with the weakest ones. Stanching that flow — with tough national and state laws — is a matter of life or death.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04mon3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Rally targets violence as crime rate drops

8 FEWER MURDERS | Weis 'encouraged' but 'not satisfied'  

October 4, 2010

BY FRANCINE KNOWLES

As Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis released preliminary crime statistics Sunday morning showing a 2.3 percent decline in murders, downtown and North Side community groups prepared to rally for action to stop violence against youth.

Weis said there were 343 murders committed from January through September, eight fewer than last year at this time. The drop puts the city on pace with 2007, a year in which the murder total was the lowest in the city since 1965, Weis said.

Overall crime in the city dropped 4.5 percent, he said. In nearly every category, crime was down, and for the 21st straight month, crime dropped overall and in violent and property offenses.

Violent crime fell more than 11 percent in September.

"I am encouraged by the overall numbers and the significant drop in violent crime," Weis said. "But I'm certainly not satisfied. Residents should not fear violence in their communities, and we refuse to accept violence as a way of life in any part of our city."

A similar message was delivered by organizers and attendees at a "Silence the Violence" rally in support of youth Sunday afternoon.

"People say let's hope it doesn't hit my block, or hit my house," said St. Sabina's pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who addressed the rally in the courtyard of Fourth Presbyterian Church downtown. "If it hits any house, if it hits any child, we all have to mourn, and we all have to be outraged.

"I'm glad the [violent crime] statistics are down," he said in a Chicago Sun-Times interview. "I don't want us to get excited because it's better. We get excited when it's over. I'm not going to be happy until the statistics are zero."

Pfleger shared stories at the rally of children asking him to pray that they don't get shot going to school. Joseph Walker, grandfather of late honor student Derrion Albert, brutally beaten to death by a mob of youths as he walked home from school last year, told of children looking out the window at school trying to find a safe route home.

"That's a tragedy," he said.

Mark Walsh of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, told rally attendees that each year, 3,000 children die from gun violence and 3,500 children are expelled for bringing a gun to school.

The rally sends a message that downtown and North Side groups don't view violence against youth as a West Side or South Side problem but one that hurts the entire state, said Pfleger. It's a problem that requires the entire community to play a role in solving, from police to parents, to churches, to legislators to businesses, he said.

It also requires helping change the mind-set of many young people, said Tio Hardiman of CeaseFire Chicago, who addressed the group. He said CeaseFire successfully mediated roughly 320 conflicts that could have led to violence from January through August this year.

"It's about changing the thinking as it relates to violence," he said in an interview after the rally. "Too many people think that violence is OK and that it's the only way to respond to petty conflict. CeaseFire is all about behavioral change."

Attendees at the event were encouraged to attend a Springfield rally Nov. 17 and support groups working to stop the violence.

Other crime statistics released Sunday showed:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2769456,CST-NWS-Crime04.article

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European militants said to be in terror training in Pakistan

October 4, 2010

BY KATHY GANNON

ISLAMABAD -- Dozens of Muslim militants with European citizenship are believed to be hiding out in the lawless tribal area of northwestern Pakistan, Pakistani and Western intelligence officials say, training for missions that could include terror attacks in European capitals.

Officials have used phone intercepts and voice tracking software to track militants with ties to Britain and other European countries to areas along the Afghan border. Al-Qaida would likely turn to such extremists for a European plot because they can move freely in and out of Western cities.

A senior official of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, told the Associated Press that there are believed to be "several dozen" people with European citizenship -- many of Pakistani origin -- among the Islamic extremists operating in the lawless border area.

Britain's communications monitoring agency, the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ, estimates there are as many as 20 British-born militants in the border area, especially in the North Waziristan district that has been the focus of recent missile strikes carried out by unmanned aircraft operated by the CIA.

In addition, a spokeswoman with Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office said last week that there is "concrete evidence" that 70 people have traveled from Germany to Pakistan and Afghanistan for paramilitary training, and that about a third of them have returned to Germany.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2769664,CST-NWS-pak04.article

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Japan warns about terror in Europe; tourists chill

October 4, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS -- Japan issued a travel alert for Europe on Monday, joining the United States and Britain in warning of a possible terrorist attack by al-Qaida or other groups, but tourists appeared to be taking the mounting warnings in stride.

The Foreign Ministry in Tokyo urged Japanese citizens to be cautious when using public transport or visiting popular tourist sites -- issuing another blow to Europe's tourism industry, which is just starting to recover from the global financial crisis.

European authorities -- especially in Britain, France and Germany -- tightened efforts to keep the public safe in the wake of warnings by officials that the terrorism threat is high and extra vigilance is warranted.

Last week, a Pakistani intelligence official said eight Germans and two British brothers were at the heart of an al-Qaida-linked terror plot against European cities, but the plan was still in its early stages, with the suspects calling acquaintances in Europe to plan logistics. The official said the suspects were hiding in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region where militancy is rife and where the U.S. has increased its drone-fired missile strikes in recent weeks.

Security officials say terrorists may be plotting attacks in Europe with assault weapons on public places, similar to the deadly 2008 shooting spree in Mumbai, India. European officials have provided no details about specific targets.

On Monday, French police arrested a 53-year-old man suspected of links to a bomb threats including one Friday at a Paris railway hub, an official with knowledge of the investigation said on condition of anonymity. The suspect, who was not identified, was detained southwest of the capital for possible links to a phone-in threat at the Saint-Lazare train station.

French authorities recorded nine bomb alerts in the capital in September, including two at the Eiffel Tower -- a threefold increase from a year earlier. No explosives were found.

The U.S. State Department alert Sunday advised the hundreds of thousands of American citizens living or traveling in Europe to take more precaution about their personal security. The British Foreign Office warned travelers to France and Germany that the terror threat in the countries was high.

Business travelers and tourists arriving Monday at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport from the United States said they were aware of the new warnings but weren't changing their plans.

"I'm very happy to be here in France. I think we're very safe, and I trust the French government to keep us safe," said James O'Connell, a 59-year-old from Pittsburgh, arriving in Paris for a 7-day vacation.

Karen Bilh, a 39-year-old traveler, arrived in Paris from Cincinnati.

"We'll pay extra caution and if there's terror threats, we'll listen to police in the area. We're excited about the trip," she said.

Travelers taking the Eurostar trains between London and Paris were similarly determined not to let the warnings disrupt their plans.

Jennifer D'Antoni, who owns a retail clothing store in Britain, was in Paris to celebrate her birthday.

"I had a wonderful time and I'll come back again. In fact, I wish I was here for another day because I didn't get to see everything. We are just going to be a bit more cautious getting on the train," she said.

Yet Germans -- authorities and citizens alike -- were not convinced of the need for concern.

"I think it is quite exaggerated," said Marian Sutholt, 25, of Berlin. "If you worry all the time, you actually live up exactly to what the terrorists want. So you should take things as they come and not worry too much. Hopefully nothing will happen."

But John Gooley, a tourist from Portland, Oregon, was more cautious.

"Berlin is an amazing city, its a beautiful city, but I'd probably recommend staying in smaller cities," he said Monday. "I am still happy to travel all throughout Europe, but for right now I might avoid Paris, Berlin, London."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2770214,european-terror-warning-100410.article

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