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From the Los Angeles Times

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'Fusion centers' gather terrorism intelligence – and much more

Designed to share data and head off attacks, the 72 offices in the U.S. are starting to worry civil libertarians.

By Ken Dilanian, Tribune Washington Bureau

November 15, 2010

Reporting from Baltimore

About a year ago, a police officer in Maryland noticed a truck loaded with plastic pallets driving down a main road in the early morning. He normally wouldn't have given it a second look, but the officer had seen a bulletin from the state's "coordination and analysis center" advising that such thefts were costing bakeries and grocers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sure enough, the pallets were stolen.

Cracking down on pallet thieves wasn't quite the mission envisioned for "fusion centers," 72 facilities across the country that were started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks to improve information-sharing and threat analysis among local law enforcement.

The centers, which have received $426 million in federal funding since 2004, were designed as an early warning system against the next attack. Lately, amid the recent uptick in homegrown plots, the Homeland Security Department has been touting fusion centers as a means of thwarting domestic terrorism.

But it turns out that homegrown terrorism pales in frequency and fatalities compared with typical street crime, so many of the centers have begun collecting and distributing criminal intelligence, even of the most mundane kind.

In the process, Homeland Security Department officials say, the centers are developing a system to receive, sort and share crucial information. And they say it's too soon to judge the program, which is likely to grow in importance as a tool in detecting terrorism before it erupts.

"I'm a big supporter because of their potential," said Mohamed Elibiary, a Texas-based Muslim activist who advises the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. "If you want the government to function effectively, you need proper information sharing and analysis."

Critics argue that the centers are another potential intrusion on citizens' rights, and that having 72 of them guarantees bureaucratic overkill. Many centers make extensive use of private contractors. And the methods used are inconsistent from one to the next, raising questions about whether some of them are performing vital work.

"We thought if we just threw the name out there, built a bunch of them, we'd feel a lot better," former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said this month at George Washington University. "And I frankly think there's too many of them. We still don't have quite the protocol we need to make sure that they're effective."

Homeland Security Department officials say that by the end of the year, all 72 fusion centers will have to demonstrate competency in four key areas, showing that they are able to receive classified threat information from the federal government; analyze that information in a local context; disseminate it to local agencies; and gather tips from the public.

Civil liberties activists point to a series of privacy and civil rights flaps associated with fusion centers. They say the public is kept in the dark about what databases analysts are searching, what information they are gathering and what drives their priorities.

Information sharing is "a laudable goal," but "is this worth the risk to privacy and civil liberties?" asked Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We certainly have a long history of police intelligence powers, so we know that this is a problematic approach to policing."

Fusion centers don't conduct criminal investigations. Instead, analysts, who are borrowed from federal, state and local agencies, dive into dozens of databases to develop threat assessments and make sense of emerging trends.

The Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center has fielded more than 2,000 tips and leads this year, director Leslie Gardner said, half of which were substantive enough to forward to the FBI-led task force that investigates terrorism crimes.

Homeland Security Department officials and fusion center officers say they pay close attention to civil and privacy rights.

Analysts at the centers don't run names without "reasonable suspicion," a decades-old law enforcement standard, officials say, and they don't have access to such records as credit card transactions without a court-approved search warrant.

There have been lapses. A Texas fusion center drew criticism last year for urging law enforcement to monitor Muslim and antiwar "lobbying groups."

"I really believe that [abuses] are the exception, not the rule," said Bart Johnson, who supervises fusion centers for the Homeland Security Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The agency requires each fusion center to have a privacy and civil liberties policy, he said.

That's necessary because analysts have access to a variety of commercial and government databases that can produce a stream of personal information, including unlisted phone numbers and other details not readily available to the public.

That can be useful. In 2008, after the poison ricin was found in a Las Vegas hotel, "We get a call [from police] that a guy came into our hospital and said, 'I'm making ricin, I think I'm gonna die,' and then he left," said Ronald Brooks, who heads the Northern California fusion center in San Francisco.

The man left a phone number but not a name. Computer searches on the number led them to the man. "It turned out there was no ricin; he was mentally ill," Brooks said.

"Nobody knew who to call, so they called us," he said. "That's the beauty of fusion centers. When you harness the power of eyes and ears of 18,000 state and local and tribal departments — 840,000 cops … that's a lot of eyes and ears on the ground."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has started an initiative, tried first in Los Angeles, under which fusion centers will feed "suspicious activity reports" from local agencies into a nationwide database, allowing analysts to hunt for patterns.

More than two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in areas now covered by such reporting, which is designed to take note of behavior that is not illegal but "may be indicative of intelligence gathering or pre-operational planning related to terrorism," Homeland Security Department documents say.

"This isn't TV," said Harvey Eisenberg, the federal prosecutor who runs the Maryland center. "There will be people who slip through the cracks. But are we better equipped to find some of the people we wouldn't have found before? Absolutely."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fusion-centers-20101115,0,833710,print.story

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Former graffiti painters find an outlet for their art

The Graff Lab, founded by artist/musician Ricardo Guerrero in the Pico-Union neighborhood, aims to transform street taggers into skilled artists. There is only one rule: No gangsters.

By Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times

November 14, 2010

The afternoon sun sears Louie Mesa as he stands on cracked pavement in a black ball cap, black T-shirt and dark jeans. The sweat on his brow doesn't seem to bother him. He's savoring his canvas.

The battered wall in front of him may be a hodgepodge of bright colors and scattered patterns from taggers past, but on this slate Mesa sees a dream.

He's been in this spot for hours, arriving at 9:30 a.m. after a restless night, painting from memory a piece of art that has been sketching itself out in his mind for days. He's illustrated his name with block letters and filled it in with silver paint and airy patterns.

Mesa said it was his third visit to the Graff Lab in the Pico-Union neighborhood, a weekend program that aims to transform street taggers into skilled artists. The Graff Lab offers space on walls that wrap around the office complex of the Pico Union Housing Corp. There is only one rule: No gangsters.

"It's not defacing property; it's an art form," said founder Ricardo Guerrero. "They can be whatever they want, but when they cross through those doors, they are an artist."

Mesa, a 32-year-old from San Gabriel, had been a tagger not for the art but for the thrill. He said he was enthralled by the rush that came from evading the law. He was caught tagging and had to give it up. As it turned out, he longed for a creative outlet.

"I didn't touch paint for two years, because I didn't want to get caught up in the streets again," Mesa said. "I [had] to leave that street stuff, and, in reality, I'm still doing what I love doing."

It was taggers like Mesa whom Guerrero had in mind when he launched the Graff Lab four years ago. By then, the Belmont Tunnel, a de facto safe place for graffiti, was no longer available. Art programs were being cut in schools. Potential artists, he said, had no legal place for "outward expression."

Guerrero, the social director for the Pico Union Housing Corp., persuaded his boss — who happens to be his sister — to give him a back wall at the agency's headquarters so he could start a small program for neighborhood residents.

The Graff Lab has grown into a group of a few dozen regulars ranging in age from teenagers to thirtysomethings. On a recent Saturday, some came from as far away as the San Gabriel Valley. They use nearly every paintable surface in the office complex. Guerrero said he would "like to build these artists, make a name for them."

Toward that end, he has brought in accountants to teach lab regulars how to handle finances and professional artists to help them transition into different media. Guerrero asks for small donations to help fund the classes.

Residents say the Graff Lab has improved the appearance of a community that is weary of gangs and the tags they leave behind. "It does make a difference for the neighborhood — there's not a lot of writing on the streets anymore," said Kendor Aguilar, a 33-year-old tattoo artist and shopkeeper who grew up in the area.

"You used to see graffiti all over, and now most of it is over there," Aguilar said, gesturing toward the Graff Lab.

Weekends at the lab are laid-back. The clank and hiss of spray cans is drowned out by Ice Cube blaring from a parked car.

Jony Tolentino, 31, of Los Angeles said he sees a future, if not a career, in art. He said he spends money on paint and supplies the way others do on booze and drugs. But this is a passion without bounds.

"The only way you're limited," he said, "is if you don't have enough spray cans to pump out your art."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-graffiti-20101115,0,2197336,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Cholera Deaths Up in Haiti, With Worst to Come

MEXICO CITY — The death toll in Haiti's cholera epidemic has reached more than 900, the government reported Sunday, as aid groups rushed soap and clean water to a disaster-wracked population to fight the disease.

The Ministry of Health reported that as of Friday, there had been 917 deaths and more than 14,600 were hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms. That is up from the 724 deaths and 11,125 hospitalizations reported a few days before.

The disease has been found in 6 of Haiti's 10 provinces, known as departments, and is most severe where it originated, in Artibonite, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the deaths.

Several epidemiologists have said the disease has not peaked and will likely worsen and break out in other regions of the country, with United Nations health officials estimating about 270,000 may be sickened in the coming years. Several new cholera treatment centers are springing up in the capital and other areas.

“The trend is increasing and it is propagating from department to department,” Roc Magliore, the Ministry of Health's epidemiologist, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. He referred questions to the ministry's director general, Gabriel Timothee, who could not be reached.

Hospitals in Port-au-Prince, where more than one million earthquake refugees live in congested, squalid tent encampments, are overflowing with patients exhibiting cholera symptoms, and the death toll there has reached 27. The disease was first reported in the capital on Nov. 8.

President René Préval, at a conference on the disease on Sunday in Port-au-Prince, urged people to wash their hands frequently and drink only potable water, The Associated Press reported. But even before the earthquake, most of the population lacked access to clean water and sanitation.

Cholera, a bacteria that thrives in feces-contaminated water, causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can dehydrate and kill its victims in hours without treatment. The rate of severe cases, about 30 to 40 percent, is far higher in Haiti than the 25 percent in a typical outbreak because of extreme poverty, unsanitary conditions and the fact that cholera has not been there for 40 years.

“When we go around and give advice about hygiene, they say, ‘Let me have soap, I can't afford it,' ” said Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, an agency that is distributing water purification tablets and cleaning supplies.

On Friday, the United Nations requested $164 million from humanitarian agencies and donors to put in place a strategy to help the government respond to the disease. The largest piece of the plan is $89 million for clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

Officials in the neighboring country, the Dominican Republic, say they are limiting markets on the border and taking other steps to ensure cholera does not reach that country, where thousands of Haitians live and work.

A suspected case turned out not to be cholera, the country's health minister said Sunday, according to a Dominican newspaper, Listin Diario, which said the Dominican Republic is prepared to treat 7,500 to 10,000 cholera patients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/americas/15cholera.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Arizona Becomes 15th State to Approve Medical Marijuana

PHOENIX (AP) — By a narrow margin, Arizona voters have approved medical marijuana for people with chronic or debilitating diseases.

The decision makes Arizona the 15th state to have approved a medical marijuana law. California was the first in 1996, and 13 other states and the District of Columbia followed.

The ballot measure on the issue, Proposition 203, won by just 4,341 votes out of more than 1.67 million ballots counted, according to final tallies announced on Saturday.

The approval came as something of a surprise. At one point on Election Day, the measure trailed by about 7,200 votes. The gap gradually narrowed until it edged ahead during counting on Friday. The final tally was 841,346 in favor and 837,005 opposed.

“We really believe that we have an opportunity to set an example to the rest of the country on what a good medical marijuana program looks like,” said Andrew Myers, campaign manager for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project.

The Arizona measure will allow patients with diseases including cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C and any other “chronic or debilitating” disease that meets guidelines to grow plants or to buy two and a half ounces of marijuana every two weeks.

The patients must obtain a recommendation from their doctor and register with the Arizona Department of Health Services. The law allows for no more than 124 marijuana dispensaries in the state.

Backers of Proposition 203 argued that thousands of patients faced “a terrible choice” of suffering with a serious or even terminal illness or going to the criminal market for marijuana. They collected more than 252,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot, nearly 100,000 more than required.

The measure was opposed by all of Arizona's sheriffs and county prosecutors, the governor, the state attorney general and many other politicians.

Carolyn Short, chairwoman of Keep AZ Drug Free, the group that organized opposition to the initiative, said her group believed that the law would increase crime around dispensary locations, lead to more people driving while impaired and eventually lead to legalized marijuana for everyone.

She said that the major financial backer of the new measure, the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, makes its ultimate goal clear: national legalization.

“All of the political leaders came out and warned Arizonans that this was going to have very dire effects on a number of levels,” Ms. Short said after votes for the measure pulled into the lead late Friday. “I don't think that all Arizonans have heard those dire predictions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/us/politics/15arizona.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Free headlights help bicyclists make it through the darkness

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI

November 15, 2010

Now that darkness is rolling in at 4:30 p.m., the Active Transportation Alliance has been providing free headlights to bicyclists who don't have one.

"We're doing it because it's the law," said Ethan Spotts, spokesman for the alliance.

"The law is you have to have a white headlight and a red back reflector. It's a really important safety feature," he said.

The alliance raised $5,200 give away 500 bike lights this year.

A promotion with Groupon's G-Team secured 300 donations from the public, and the law offices of James Freeman provided a match.

Active Trans gave out 200 lights at a Chicago intersection last Wednesday and plans a similar effort this Wednesday.

Active Trans won't disclose the location because it doesn't want people who already have lights to show up just to get a freebie.

"We're doing it for people who don't have headlights," Spotts said.

More than 20 percent of all reported bike crashes in Illinois took place after dark last year.

Active Trans points out that bike crashes are more likely to occur with reduced visibility and that failure to use a light might also hinder legal action after a crash, even if the vehicle driver is otherwise at fault.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2893620,CST-NWS-ride15a.article

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Free headlights help bicyclists make it through the darkness

BY MARY WISNIEWSKI

November 15, 2010

Now that darkness is rolling in at 4:30 p.m., the Active Transportation Alliance has been providing free headlights to bicyclists who don't have one.

"We're doing it because it's the law," said Ethan Spotts, spokesman for the alliance.

"The law is you have to have a white headlight and a red back reflector. It's a really important safety feature," he said.

The alliance raised $5,200 give away 500 bike lights this year.

A promotion with Groupon's G-Team secured 300 donations from the public, and the law offices of James Freeman provided a match.

Active Trans gave out 200 lights at a Chicago intersection last Wednesday and plans a similar effort this Wednesday.

Active Trans won't disclose the location because it doesn't want people who already have lights to show up just to get a freebie.

"We're doing it for people who don't have headlights," Spotts said.

More than 20 percent of all reported bike crashes in Illinois took place after dark last year.

Active Trans points out that bike crashes are more likely to occur with reduced visibility and that failure to use a light might also hinder legal action after a crash, even if the vehicle driver is otherwise at fault.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/2893620,CST-NWS-ride15a.article

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From the Washington Examiner

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'Naked scanners': Lobbyists join the war on terror

The degradations of passing through full-body scanners that provide naked pictures of you to Transportation Security Administration agents may not mean that the terrorists have won -- but they do mark victories for a few politically connected high-tech companies and their revolving-door lobbyists.

Many experts and critics suspect that the full-body "naked scanners" recently deployed at U.S. airports do little to make us more secure, and a lot to make us angry, embarrassed and late. For instance, the scanners can't see through skin, and so weapons or explosives can be hidden safely in body cavities.

But this is government we're talking about. A program or product doesn't need to be effective, it only needs to have a good lobby. And the naked-scanner lobby is small but well-connected.

If you've seen one of these scanners at an airport, there's a good chance it was made by L-3 Communications, a major contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company's behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D'Amato to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park's L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse.

The scanner contract, issued four days after the Christmas Day bomb attempt last year, is worth $165 million to L-3.

Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan's lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price's appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted "Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems."

An early TSA contractor for full-body scanners was the American Science and Engineering company. AS&E's lobbying team is impressive, including Tom Blank, a former deputy administrator for the TSA. Fellow AS&E lobbyist Chad Wolf was an assistant administrator at TSA and an aide to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who sits on the Transportation and Defense subcommittees of Appropriations. Finally, Democratic former Rep. Bud Cramer is also an AS&E lobbyist -- he sat on the Defense and Transportation subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.

The full-body scanners have caused an understandable uproar. Even before the devices were rolled out, they sparked predictable mischief: During training on the scanners, a group of TSA workers noted and mocked the genitalia of the guinea-pig employee sent through the scanner. The guy soon beat down one of his mockers and was arrested for assault.

After assurances by contractors and the TSA that the nude images of the scanners' subjects weren't being stored and saved, the U.S. Marshals Service admitted that it had stored thousands of such images.

Homeland Security insists that the "naked scans" are optional, but if you're randomly selected for one and you "opt out," you're subject to a very intimate frisk.

There's good reason to doubt these scanners significantly reduce the chance of a successful terrorist attack on an airplane. Deploying these naked scanners was a reaction to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas 2009, but the Government Accountability Office found, "it remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon Mr. Abdulmutallab used."

But there's a deeper question to ask: how far are we willing to go to prevent weapons or bombs from getting on airplanes? In the past decade, terrorists on airplanes have killed just about 3,000 people -- all on one day. Even if the Christmas Day bomber had succeeded, the number would be under 3,500.

Those are horrible deaths. But in that same period, more than 150,000 people have been murdered in the United States. We haven't put the entire U.S. on lockdown -- or even murder capitals like Detroit, New Orleans and Baltimore.

While reducing the murder rate to zero is very desirable, we also understand that the costs, in terms of liberty and resources, are too great. But when it comes to air travel, 9/11 seems to have stripped away our ability to put things in perspective.

Politicians feed into that paranoia with their rhetoric. And lobbyists and government contractors feed on the paranoia.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/_Naked-scanners__-Lobbyists-join-the-war-on-terror-1540901-107548388.html

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Va. closer to using new DNA-matching technique

Virginia could soon move ahead with a new DNA-matching technique used in only two other states, after the Virginia State Crime Commission takes up the issue Monday.

The commission is scheduled to hear a presentation on familial DNA, which identifies suspects by linking crime scene DNA to the DNA of relatives whose profiles are in criminal justice databases.

The crime commission makes recommendations to the General Assembly on public safety matters. The commission will consider whether legislation is necessary to proceed with familial DNA, what implementation would involve and how much it could cost, said Kristen Howard, the executive director.

Critics say familial DNA testing could invade privacy, burden investigators and target minorities. But Virginia prosecutors and the state's Board of Forensic Science have backed the technique.

Locally, Prince William County prosecutors are pushing to use familial DNA to solve the case of the “East Coast Rapist,” who has raped 19 women, including two Dale City teenagers in October 2009. And the parents of slain Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington are raising awareness about the technique because they want it used to search for their daughter's killer, whose DNA is also linked to a 2005 Fairfax sex assault.

The commission on Monday will hear from Mitchell Morrissey, the district attorney in Denver. Colorado and California are the only states using familial DNA. It has led to an arrest in the “Grim Sleeper” serial killer case in Los Angeles and a conviction in a Colorado car break-in case.

“We hope to show them that it works,” Morrissey said. “If you sit down and put together a policy, you can do this in a constitutional and legal way that protects people's privacy.”

Dan Harrington, Morgan's father, said he will speak during the public comment portion of Monday's meeting.

“There's a DNA link between the two cases,” he said. “We need to use all the tools possible.”
Pete Marone, director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, said his department can conduct the tests, but whether to do so is a policy issue.

He said he wants the commission to make a decision on how to move forward.

“I think we do need some kind of direction on the types of crimes that we're going to apply it on,” Marone said. He said the department has also begun researching and pricing software vendors, in anticipation of the go-ahead to pursue familial tests.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Va-closer-to-using-new-DNA-matching-technique-107615058.html

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From Google News

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Ohio Family Vanishes: Only Daughter Found Alive

Matthew Hoffman Charged With the Kidnapping of Sarah Maynard; 3 Others Still Missing

A 13-year-old Ohio girl who was reported missing along with her two members of family and a friend last week was found alive Sunday in a home 10 miles from where she was last seen.

A SWAT team found Sarah Maynard in the basement of 30-year-old Matthew Hoffman's Mount Vernon, Ohio home, Knox County Sheriff David Barber said at a news conference Sunday.

Barber said Sarah was bound and gagged but alive.

"We were hopeful of finding more than one" of the missing people in Hoffman's house, Barber said Sunday. "But the information we had was that Sarah would definitely be found in that house."

Barber said Sarah is currently in the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. She has been interviewed but the details were not released.

Authorities arrested Hoffman on kidnapping charges. Additional charges are expected to be filed and a court hearing is set for today.

Police believe Sarah was "under Hoffman's control" since her disappearance last Wednesday.

But there's still no sign of her 10-year-old brother Kody, their mother, 32-year-old Tina Hermann, and friend 41-year-old Stephanie Sprang.

"As of right now, we have no one we're aware of who is deceased so it continues as a missing persons investigation," Barber said.

The alarming disappearance prompted an Ohio college to go on lockdown Thursday night as police warned of a "potentially dangerous person in the vicinity."

A college spokesman, however, told The Associated Press that the lockdown was purely precautionary and administrators did not believe students were ever at risk.

Hoffman's Connection?

Investigators have determined that Hoffman is not the ex-boyfriend of either Herrmann or Sprang, but they are investigating whether there is another connection, the sheriff said.

"At this time, whether he's connected to the family or whether he connected himself to the family ... a lot of that remains to be seen as the investigation continues," Barber said.

Neighbors described Hoffman as "weird" and "very different."

Dawna Davis, 35, who lives next door to him, told The Associated Press that she told her children to stay indoors when he was out.

"He would sit and listen to us up in a tree. He had a hammock and he would sit there and listen to us," she said. "He was just different. He was very different."

Hoffman, 30, has served prison time in Colorado for arson, authorities said .

Mysterious Disappearance

Sarah and her brother were last seen at school on Wednesday.

When their mother didn't turn up for work at local Dairy Queen, her boss called police.

They found the house littered with beer cans and blood. Authorities said DNA testing on blood found in the home was expected to begin today.

A search of the home revealed it to be in "unusual condition" for a place where woman and children lived, Barber said, but did not specify what that meant.

Hermann's boyfriend, Greg Borders told the Columbus Dispatch that the couple lived together but were in process of breaking up.

"We were both going to go our separate ways," he told the paper. "We were fairly civil, as civil as you can be living in the same house when you're broken up."

He said he last heard from her Wednesday via text message. He is currently not considered a suspect.

Herrmann's ex-husband Larry Maynard told WBNS-TV that a co-worker went inside the home and saw blood and things out of place before calling police.

Barber and other sheriff's deputies would not comment to ABCNews.com.

A spokesman for the FBI field office in Cincinnati said the agency was aware of the incident, but could not comment on whether it would cooperate in the investigation.

Sprang's car was found outside Herrmann's home Thursday.

Herrmann's pickup truck was at the home Wednesday when the boyfriend reported her missing, Barber said, but it was found abandoned Thursday night at nearby Kenyon College.

Police alerted the college that they believed the car may have been left there by a person involved in the group's disappearance.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-family-vanishes-teen-daughter-found-alive/story?id=12148269

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Stowaway incident highlights need for Coast Guard presence

NEW BEDFORD — Mayor Scott W. Lang said the capture of two Palestinian stowaways aboard a Liberian freighter on Saturday highlights the need for the Coast Guard to return to the city's port.

"This is just another reason why we want them back on the water," the mayor said late Sunday afternoon, explaining that he has been trying to get the Coast Guard to return to New Bedford since 2006.

"We're the number one fishing port in the country and one of the top working waterfronts. I would love to have the Coast Guard back here."

Coast Guard officials could not be reached for comment Sunday night.

Lang said he has expressed his preference for the Coast Guard to return to New Bedford many times to Capt. Verne B. Gifford, commander of Sector Southeastern New England, and will do so the next time he sees him.

The Coast Guard left New Bedford in September 2003 after fighting rum runners and drug smugglers, and protecting fishermen for more than a century from the port.

In the hopes of improving homeland security while expanding its more traditional missions, the Coast Guard relocated the Tahoma and the Campbell, two 270-foot cutters from New Bedford, to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

The Coast Guard said at the time that the move would allow it to expand its coastal security mission while continuing fisheries enforcement and search-and-rescue missions.

The two Palestinian stowaways were still yet to be identified Sunday, but were in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Ross Feinstein, an ICE spokesman.

Federal officials said that the stowaways posed no threat to national security. Feinstein said they were trying to make their way to Canada and the investigation is continuing as a stowaway/human smuggling investigation.

Feinstein and Ted Woo, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, both declined Sunday to answer any other questions about the incident.

The 455-foot-long Liberian freighter, Prince of Sounds, bound for New Bedford with a cargo of citrus fruit, was searched by law enforcement agencies for explosives and weapons Saturday before it was allowed to enter the city's port following the discovery of the stowaways on Thursday in a forward crane pedestal by a boatswain's mate on the freighter.

The New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge was shut down for several hours Saturday afternoon for the operations.

The Coast Guard was not able to board the ship until Saturday because of bad weather.

Police swept the ship with bomb-sniffing dogs and a state police dive team checked the hull for any "abnormalities."

A security guard stationed behind a locked gate at Maritime Terminal prevented access except to authorized personnel Sunday afternoon to the terminal, where the freighter was docked.

Kristen Decas, executive director of the Harbor Development Commission, said Sunday that workers are off-loading 2,500 pallets of clementines from North Africa from Prince of Sounds.

She said that, weather permitting, the freighter is scheduled to leave New Bedford on Tuesday.

Lang said Prince of Sounds is one of about 35 ships that will use the city's harbor in the next few months to off-load cargo.

Decas said Sunday a ship has been off-loading cargo over the weekend at State Pier and is scheduled to leave today; two additional ships are waiting to come into the port.

"We have what we consider to be an active shipping week," she said.

Lang said each ship represents an "economic stimulus" for the city and the region, or about $250,000 between salaries, supplies and fees.

The arrival of so many cargo ships in the coming months is the reason Lang said he wants "a factual accounting" of the stowaway incident aboard Prince of Sounds.

He added the thorough handling of the stowaway incident sends a clear message that officials will be vigilant when cargo ships arrive in the port of New Bedford.

The mayor said he is certain city officials can find dock space if the Coast Guard is willing to return to New Bedford and could probably also find space at the Greater New Bedford Airport for its helicopter and jets.

"I have no doubt about that," he said.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101115/NEWS/11150304

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From MSNBC

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Jeff Bridges speaking at the National Press Club

The Most Significant Thing He's Ever Done Jeff Bridges joins the campaign to publicize and stamp out childhood hunger. by Eleanor Clift November 12, 2010 It's all the rage in Washington, the search for common ground, and if there's one thing everybody agrees with, it's that children shouldn't go hungry in America. Back in the day when senators of opposing parties thought it was their job to work together, Republican Bob Dole and Democrat George McGovern, no shrinking violets when it came to partisan politics, paired up to expand the school lunch program and establish the federal feeding program for women, infants, and children—known as WIC—that is rightfully enshrined as a sacrosanct program whatever administration is in power.

The reforms they put in place in the 1970s have been heralded, but the work they started is far from over. There are nearly 17 million children living in “food-insecure homes,” actor Jeff Bridges told the National Press Club on Thursday, in his new role as national spokesman for the No Kid Hungry Campaign, which is dedicated to stamping out childhood hunger by 2015. Bridges had met that morning with two Obama cabinet officials, Agriculture's Tom Vilsack and Education's Arne Duncan, but he has never met President Obama, and says he tries to steer clear of partisan alliances.

“Poverty is a very complex issue, but feeding children isn't,” he said, unveiling an initiative that suits today's political and economic climate because it requires no new money, or program. Federally funded programs are in place but only half the kids eligible for a government-funded breakfast receive it, and only 15 percent of kids eligible for assistance during the summer get it. Bridges has signed on with Share Our Strength, a nationally recognized nonprofit, in what he says is “like a public-relations assignment,” to publicize the gap and get governors to commit to closing it.

In his prepared remarks, the ruggedly handsome and silver-haired Bridges seemed a bit uncomfortable at first, putting on and removing his glasses and reaching for water. Losing his place at one point, he quipped, “Let me back up—in movies, you can say ‘Take 2.'” When he was asked his biggest challenge as a famous person, he paused for what seemed like an eternity and then, visibly choked up, said, “This is the most significant thing I have ever done.” My first reaction was, this guy's a very good actor. But hearing him out and talking with him after the speech, I found him to be a very real, no B.S. kind of guy. “My profession is getting into other people's shoes,” he said, explaining his empathy for parents who can't provide for their children, and adding, “I have another kind of hunger, a hunger to contribute.”

His late father, Lloyd Bridges, star of the “Sea Hunt” television series, remains an important touchstone in his life. He learned from him the value of establishing good habits, which Bridges recalls as he recounts his visit to a D.C. public charter school just blocks from the White House where the kids are eating salad from the garden they created. If kids grow up eating pizza pockets, that's what they'll have a taste for as adults, he says, pointing out that hunger and obesity are “two sides of the same coin.” The campaign to end childhood hunger is more about the availability of food than its quality, but Bridges is clearly taken with what he saw at the Elsie Stokes public school, where they hired a chef to shop and prepare food, and found that they saved money. “Let's make a documentary and share it with other schools,” he exclaims.

Bridges has been involved in the hunger issue for a long time, and in 1983 helped found the End Hunger Network, which among other things staged the Live Aid concerts in 1985 and produced the movie “Hidden in America,” about a father who can't provide for his children, starring his brother, Beau Bridges. Asked to be more specific about what triggered his interest in the issue, Bridges revealed that it goes back to “est” and the controversial human-potential movement headed by Werner Erhard, who challenged his followers that once they knew the facts—that widespread hunger could be overcome—they shouldn't look to others to solve the problem but should take action themselves.

Erhard has kept a low profile since his heyday in the 1980s, last appearing on “Larry King Live” in a 1993 program titled “Whatever Happened to Werner Erhard?” One of the tenets of est (which is Latin for “it is,” and stands for Erhard Seminar Training) is to ban the word “try” from your vocabulary, so there's no escape hatch when you make a commitment. In my interview with Bridges following his speech, he showed me photos of his wife when he first met her on a shoot in Montana when she was 20 years old and making beds and serving food at a dude ranch. She had two black eyes and a broken nose, and he figured he could rescue her from a violent boyfriend. She said no when he first asked her out, and it turned out there wasn't a boyfriend, it was a car accident, but Bridges was persistent, and they've been married for 33 years.

He seemed puzzled when challenged about “celebrity fatigue”—too many Hollywood types touting worthy causes. “Celebrities shouldn't get involved?” he mused. “I don't have a set sound bite for that one.” Nor should he. With his history of involvement, he's no newcomer to the decades-old problem of children going hungry in America.

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