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From the Los Angeles Times

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North Korea is building new light-water reactor, 2 U.S. experts say

The report suggests North Korea is following through on a plan to build a nuclear power reactor at its Yongbyon complex.

by John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

November 21, 2010

Reporting from Seoul

Two U.S. experts have reported that North Korea is engaged in new construction at its main Yongbyon atomic complex, suggesting the secretive regime is following through on a plan to build a nuclear power reactor, a private American security institute said Saturday.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security last week released commercial satellite images taken this month showing construction of a rectangular structure, which it believes is a 25- or 30-megawatt light-water reactor.

"It's always disturbing when North Korea starts to build another nuclear reactor or facility," said David Albright, institute president. "Right now, we don't know if it's going to be used for civil purposes to make electricity or an attempt to make weapons-grade plutonium."

The institute was also briefed by two U.S. experts who recently returned from Pyongyang and who were allowed to visit the plant. North Korea said in March that it would build a light-water reactor that would use its own nuclear fuel.

The pair of experts — Siegfried Hecker, former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, and Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea — told institute officials that "the new construction seen in the satellite imagery is indeed the construction of the experimental light-water reactor," according to the institute's website.

North Korea's nuclear ambitions had been the focus of six-party talks involving China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. After stepping away last year, Kim Jong Il's regime has recently suggested that it wants to return to the bargaining table.

The U.S. and South Korea maintain that North Korea must show its sincerity to disarm before those talks can continue.

North Korea, which maintains an arsenal of atomic weapons, conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international concern and sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

After several years of denying that it was developing such technology, North Korea in 2009 acknowledged that it was in the ultimate stages of uranium enrichment.

The Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan, recently reported that North Korea was attempting to build a light-water reactor by 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder and father of Kim Jong Il.

Albright said Hecker and Pritchard would make a presentation on their findings on Tuesday at the Korean Economic Institute in Washington. He said the fact that two U.S. officials were allowed to visit the plant suggested Pyongyang was seeking to gain leverage before entering another round of nuclear talks.

"They will bring people there when they want to make a point," said Albright. "This is North Korea wanting to demonstrate something. … It's a capability that the world hasn't been focusing on. It's going to be a bit of a shock as it develops."

Light-water reactors are most often used to make electricity for civilian use but can also be used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons, Albright said.

Officials in Seoul have said that any attempts by North Korea to build a light-water reactor would violate U.N. resolutions.

"It's apparent the light-water reactor won't be done for several years, but what if the program is further along?" said Albright. "It will be a more difficult situation, no doubt about it."

He said the development would complicate the six-party talks. "It's going to pose challenge for negotiators. What position do they take? Even if they demand that North Korea shut it all down, the regime could say it's for civil purposes only and refuse.

"Then they could start the process of demanding specific concessions to get this stopped."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-centrifuges-20101121,0,5458007,print.story

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Ronni Chasen slaying has Beverly Hills on edge

Residents of the wealthy community say they're shocked that the Hollywood publicist's shooting could have occurred on their streets.

by Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times

November 21, 2010

After a wearying weekend in New York, Leslie Michelson was unloading suitcases from a taxi around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday outside his Whittier Drive home in Beverly Hills when he heard what he called "very unusual noises."

They sounded like gunshots but they couldn't be, Michelson figured. Not in the flats of Beverly Hills, the platinum-plated home of magnates and movie stars.

Hours later, Michelson was horrified to learn that he had heard the gunfire that ended the life of 64-year-old Ronni Chasen, a veteran Hollywood publicist. She had been shot multiple times on his street while driving her Mercedes-Benz home from a movie premiere after-party.

"In many ways, this shatters our sense of security and comfort in a neighborhood where this sort of thing isn't expected to happen," said Michelson, chief executive of a healthcare company. "It's extremely frightening for all of us."

Frightened. Stunned. Spooked. Beverly Hills residents have searched for the right words to describe their collective mood in the aftermath of a crime that has seemingly stumped police and fueled wild speculation about whether the shooting was the work of a gang member, a hit man or a sociopathic sniper.

"We are all in shock," said Red Richmond, a longtime Beverly Hills resident who worked with Chasen years ago at the Rogers & Cowan agency. "It has really stunned the community."

Richmond, who lives close to the shooting scene, said the slaying had shaken her composure. When the doorbell rang Thursday evening, she said, she peered out to make sure it was her usual UPS delivery man. "He said everyone is double-checking him," she said. "He, too, is watching the corners and streets. We are all on high alert."

So far, the city's police have not revealed whether they have any leads in the case. But Mayor Jimmy Delshad said police had told him that the shots appeared to have been fired from another vehicle as Chasen was heading west on Sunset Boulevard and waiting to turn left onto Whittier. Glass found at the intersection suggested that the shots shattered the passenger-side window of Chasen's car, he said.

In a news release Friday, Beverly Hills Police Chief David Snowden said detectives were "dedicated to this case around the clock." Seeking to soothe the ruffled community, he added: "I would like to assure the public that this was a rare, isolated incident and that the Beverly Hills community remains one of the safest in the nation."

Amid a greater metropolitan area where hundreds of people meet violent ends every year, Beverly Hills has historically been an oasis of security. Since 2007 the city of multimillion-dollar homes and gated estates has recorded only five homicides, according to coroner's data collected for The Times' interactive Homicide Report. In 2008, the city of about 38,000 residents had two homicides, both gunshot victims found in their homes.

Chasen's was the third Beverly Hills homicide in 2010. Katsutoshi Takazato, the 21-year-old son of a Japanese filmmaker, was stabbed to death in July at a home in Trousdale Estates. Authorities arrested Takazato's former girlfriend and a man she was dating in connection with the killing.

In May, Diane Newlander, 73, was found shot to death in her Beverly Hills home. Authorities said her husband killed her before taking his own life.

Beverly Hills Councilwoman Nancy Krasne said community members were "a little spooked it happened, but really confident the police will solve it."

Still, the shooting has been the talk of the town, and Wednesday morning an open-air Starline Tours van with a bevy of tourists stopped in front of the house where Chasen's car thudded into a light pole.

But for many, life has been proceeding normally.

Thomas Blumenthal, owner of Gearys gift shop and chairman of the Rodeo Drive Committee, said the crime was "of course very concerning." Chasen was a client, he said, and her loss was "very sad" for him personally.

But, he added, "I can honestly tell you it hasn't affected our business. It's been business as usual."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ronni-chasen-mood-20101121,0,4540518,print.story

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Flaws can cancel life insurance — after death

If a policy is less than 2 years old, companies may dispute the claim, and thousands were denied last year.

by Lisa Girion and Sandra Poindexter, Los Angeles Times

November 21, 2010

American General Life Insurance Co. markets its policies as protection for "the hopes and dreams of American families" — a promise Ian Weissberger took to heart during his losing battle with Lou Gehrig's disease.

But after the Cathedral City mortgage broker died in 2005, American General cancelled his life insurance policy and refused to pay his widow the $250,000 benefit.

The Weissbergers' premiums were paid up. There was no foul play suspected. There was no question Sheila Weissberger was the widow and sole beneficiary. And Ian's illness was diagnosed months after he took out the policy.

The problem, the insurer told Sheila Weissberger, was that Ian's application for coverage was incomplete.

American General concluded that he had failed to disclose conditions, including bipolar disorder and pulmonary disease, that, according to his doctors, he did not have.

For the company, which collected $2.3 billion in premiums last year, the amount at issue was minute. But it was no small matter for Sheila, 62, who reached a confidential financial settlement with American General earlier this year.

"I lost my house. I lost everything," she said in an interview. "It was very, very devastating."

More often than not, life insurers make good on policies, paying $38 billion in death benefits on individual policies last year. But what happened to Sheila Weissberger was not unusual. The claims of thousands of beneficiaries are denied or disputed every year — more than 5,000 last year alone — many for allegedly flawed applications, a Times review found.

Overall, the amount of money life insurers withheld from beneficiaries has more than doubled over the last decade, to $372 million last year, even as policy sales went down, according to a Times' analysis of data compiled by the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners.

Insurers can dispute claims for a number of legitimate reasons — unpaid premiums, suicide, foul play by the beneficiary. But the No. 1 reason, accounting for about two thirds of disputes last year, is "material misrepresentation." That's failing to disclose information that insurers deem important in assessing risk, and it allows insurers to rescind coverage altogether.

To stop abuses by insurers, most states long ago banned limitless rescissions, but in California and elsewhere, they are allowed during the two years immediately after a policy is signed.

Experts and consumer advocates say some insurers have turned that into a "gotcha period," seizing on flaws after claims are made that they could have looked for before issuing coverage.

"Regulators need to come down hard on companies that are rushing applications through in order to gain premium income without taking time to screen the risks, then using rescission to control payouts and increase profits," said Amy Bach, an advisor to National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners and executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit consumer group.

Industry representatives say the power to rescind policies and withhold benefits is essential and fair. Accurate information is "crucial to the agreement and to the actuarially sound pricing of the product," said Steven Brostoff, a spokesman for the trade group the American Council of Life Insurers.

Yet some companies deny benefits far more than others.

American General, which ranks 11th in national market share, withheld more money than any other life insurer — $36 million — in disputes of 79 individual death claims in 2009, including several rescissions.

The company, a Houston - based subsidiary of American International Group Inc., declined to comment on the Weissberger case. In a statement, the insurer said that its record should be considered in light of its size and that it follows "the standard that has been California law for more than 100 years."

In contrast, Minnesota Life Insurance Co., another large insurer with $2 billion in annual sales, reported no disputes last year and no rescissions for three years on individual death claims.

"A life insurance policy is a promise to pay, and we at Minnesota Life are focused on keeping our promises," said Craig Frisvold, a vice president at parent company Securian Financial Group.

The company takes an average of more than two months to vet applications and, in about a third of cases, gathers medical records to corroborate or clarify the applicants' medical histories.

"The more information you get," Frisvold said, "the less surprises there are and the less rescissions there are."

Sheila Weissberger's attorney, William Shernoff, said it is a matter of acting in good faith.

"You don't wait until a guy dies to determine insurability," he said. "That's not fair."

'Nothing was hidden'

When American General sent a medical technician to examine him 2003, Ian Weissberger did not paint a rosy picture of his health.

Then 62, Weissberger reported that he had smoked 20 to 30 cigarettes a day for 40 years; that he was taking Zocor for high cholesterol and that both of his parents had died of heart attacks, according to his application. In signing the form, he authorized the company to contact his physicians and review his medical records.

"Nothing was hidden from them," Sheila Weissberger said.

American General issued Weissberger a $250,000 policy with a monthly premium of $512.53, the "standard tobacco rate" for a man his age. A year later, Weissberger was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a nervous system disorder. Six months after that he was dead.

After her husband's death, Sheila Weissberger said, the company sent a private investigator to her door, seeking permission to pull years of medical records.

An American General claims investigator in Houston deduced from the records that Weissberger had bipolar disorder, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD, and depression but had failed to disclose these conditions on his application.

Seven months after Sheila Weissberger submitted her claim, American General denied it, sending her a $10,452 check, a refund of the couple's premiums. On the back was some fine print that would have waived her right to challenge the denial in court. She did not sign.

Ian Weissberger's primary physician, Dr. Robert McPeake, sent a letter to the company vouching for the accuracy of his patient's application. "At no time did I feel he was bipolar," the letter said.

McPeake's letter said he had prescribed an anti-depressant for routine work-related stress. The application, which was reviewed by The Times, had not asked about depression.

Another of his physicians later testified that he had mentioned COPD as a potential concern in the records, because of Weissberger's smoking, but never had diagnosed it.

American General stood by its decision, and Sheila Weissberger sued, contending American General had acted in bad faith.

Unable to afford payments on the couple's home, she moved into a $400-a-month room. Distraught, she quit her sales job and began caring for elderly people to make ends meet.

"My husband loved me very much, and he always wanted to make sure that if anything happened to him, I would be covered," she said. "Everything he thought was covered fell apart."

Shernoff and other industry critics contend that life insurance rescissions are very similar to those long employed by health insurers, a practice that ignited bipartisan outrage last year and was prohibited under the federal healthcare reform law except in cases of fraud.

Earlier this year, days before testimony was set to begin in the Weissberger case, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Tranbarger also made that link, citing a 2007 appellate court ruling in a case against health insurer Blue Shield. That court ruled that it was "patently unfair" to offer insurance, then pull coverage after a claim was submitted. "If the insured is not an acceptable risk, the application should be denied upfront, not after a policy is issued," the appellate court said.

American General, Tranbarger ruled, should be held to a similar standard: A jury should decide whether the company conducted a "reasonable" investigation of Weissberger's application before issuing coverage and, if it did not, the company would have to prove Weissberger intentionally omitted information.

The case was settled the next day.

Security for his family

A repairman in his mid-50s, Hugh Devlin wanted to make sure his daughters could get through college if anything happened to him.

An insurance agent said she could more than double his $200,000 policy with AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. without raising his premium, recalled his wife, Ivy. The couple met with the agent, who asked questions and filled out the application herself. According to a copy reviewed by The Times, Devlin reported an operation six months earlier, in December 2007, for a work-related back injury.

Equitable issued the $450,000 policy. But when Devlin died of a heart attack 18 months later, at 57, the company refused to pay the claim. Ivy Devlin said she was visiting her husband's Hugh's grave when an Equitable representative called her cellphone with the news.

"I just felt like I was abandoned," she said. "It was a hit against the family, Hughey's integrity, my integrity."

In a letter to Ivy Devlin, Equitable said Devlin had failed to disclose a follow-up hospital visit for a fever that developed the day he was discharged after his back surgery. "Had we known this information, this policy would not have been issued," it said.

The company offered to pay the amount on Devlin's original $200,000 policy. But his widow refused and sued . She argued that the second hospitalization was not hidden from the insurer; it had been part of the back surgery treatment episode. The couple had assumed that the fever was related to the surgery, but the cause was not diagnosed as far as they knew, she said.

"We signed a release for his medical records," Ivy said in an interview, "so why would we hold anything back?"

The case is pending.

Equitable collected more than $2.2 billion in premiums last year and reported withholding $12 million related to 10 disputed claims.

Without discussing the case, spokesman Chris Winans said that it's routine to examine a policy in effect for less than two years "to make sure everything's in order." The company, he said, has "a financial responsibility not to jeopardize our ability to pay claims by paying illegitimate claims based on misrepresentation or fraud."

Nearly collected

Bang Lin, a 37-year-old Irvine business owner, died in 2006 of stomach cancer, leaving a wife and two school-age children.

Had Lin died three weeks later, the two-year "contestibility" period would have been over. His family would have collected $1 million.

Instead, Metropolitan Life, the nation's largest life insurance company with $8.6 billion in annual sales, rescinded the policy, alleging misrepresentation.

The issue was not the cancer; that had been diagnosed 15 months after he took out the policy. Rather, the company alleged Lin had failed to mention in his application that he had been successfully treated years before for hepatitis B, a condition unrelated to his death.

Jean Lin sued. She said the agent had filled out the application, not her husband, and that she never asked about hepatitis. In any case, Jean Lin said the information was in her husband's medical records and the firm could easily have ordered a hepatitis B test.

The agent said in a deposition that she had asked all the required questions. The application shows a check in the "No" box next to hepatitis B, according to court papers.

A federal judge in New York, where the company is based, ruled last year that it didn't matter why the information was missing: The application submitted was false, so the company had a right to rescind. Lin's lawyer, Eric Dinnocenzo, has filed an appeal.

Though it declined to discuss the case, Metropolitan Life issued a statement saying it had disputed about 0.05% of the total number of claims filed in the last five years because of misrepresentation. Last year, the Times found, the company withheld $13.3 million overall in 82 disputes.

"In order to accurately assess the degree of risk presented, and to be fair to all current insureds, the company depends on proposed insureds to be truthful about their medical histories," the statement said.

The case could take years to resolve. In the meantime, Jean Lin has closed the family business, sold her home and moved her teen-age son and daughter into a condominium.

"I thought we had very good protection," she said. "I didn't expect that they would refuse to pay."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-life-insure-20101121,0,4197678.story

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OPINION

To find the needles, reduce the haystack

We need to take a hard look at airport security measures. There are better ways to screen for terrorists.

by Thomas E. McNamara

November 21, 2010

More than nine years into our struggle against catastrophic terrorism, we still don't know how to find the needles in the civil aviation haystack.

Aviation security has bedeviled us since 2001, in part because we have reacted to past incidents instead of planning strategically for the future. After 9/11 we banned box cutters, scissors and nail clippers; after Richard Reed we started X-raying shoes; after the 2006 London airliner plot we banned liquids over 3 ounces. And now, after a would-be bomber last Christmas hid explosives in his underwear, we are starting to peer beneath passengers' clothes with scanners.

But what is our overall strategy? Such ad hoc reactions demonstrate a lack of strategic thinking. What we are doing is not completely ineffective. But is it effective enough? And are there better methods? We cannot say because we have not yet done a full analysis or adopted a comprehensive strategy.

If we continue to simply react to the last breach of airport security, we will always lag behind terrorists' innovations. This will be costly and wasteful in lives, resources and security. A serious strategic review should examine all options, select the best strategy, then monitor, analyze and reassess it regularly. There should also be a quadrennial Homeland Security Department review.

In haystack searches, the first crucial step is to reduce the size of the haystack, so that we are searching all the hay that might contain needles without having to search the whole stack at the airport. In this case, the haystack is all the passengers traveling by air. The needles are terrorists and their weapons. Haystack reduction depends critically on identifying where we should look for the needles. We are not doing that. But there are ways of accomplishing that end while at the same time increasing security and reducing cost. Here are two ideas.

The first is to recognize that the vast majority of passengers are not terrorists. We need to deal with as many of the non-terrorists as possible before they arrive at airport checkpoints. A national, voluntary "trusted passenger" program would do that by advance background checks and biometric identity documents, which could be reviewed, renewed or revoked at any time. Privacy and civil liberties could be protected by strong privacy legislation and oversight by an independent board. Costs could be shared by passengers, airports, airlines and governments.

Although there are a couple of local, commercial programs already in place, they include only a tiny number of passengers. In a truly national program, "trusted" passengers at all airports could move through simplified, expedited check-ins with only occasional random searches.

If, eventually, half of each day's passengers were to qualify as trusted on domestic flights and a third on international flights, that would be a huge reduction in the size of the haystack. Frequent flyers and airline crews, for example, collectively go through the security routine hundreds of millions of times each year. To what purpose? Imagine what taking even them out of the stack would mean in terms of saving time, money and human resources that could then be focused on the "non-trusted" travelers.

The second idea focuses strategically on identifying the needles, the potential terrorists. Immediately after 9/11, we applied, and then abandoned, special controls on people of certain nationalities. We reacted with similar restrictions after the Christmas bombing attempt. There is no analysis showing that nationality measures are effective, and relaxing them has had no negative effects. Yet, without proof of effectiveness, we repeatedly turn to them. Race, ethnicity and nationality controls are ineffective, knee-jerk reactions. They cost millions and provide no increased security.

Instead of focusing on these factors, we need to develop a much broader profiling program that gives primacy to patterns of activities and behaviors. This profiling would not key primarily on race, ethnicity or nationality, but it would not totally ignore them either. Rather, it would rely primarily on intelligence and law enforcement and on consular, airline and other information related to an individual's recent and long-term behavior. Only after those factors were examined would others be considered. We have enough data on threatening activities and behaviors to spot "needles" more effectively. We should put more resources into behavioral profiling.

Since 2001, the federal government has studied and revised military strategy several times. It is past time to give aviation security that same kind of scrutiny with an eye to developing an effective strategy for our nation's airports.

Thomas E. McNamara served as ambassador at large for counterterrorism and as senior advisor for terrorism and homeland security in the State Department. He was ambassador to Colombia from 1988 to 1991.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcnamara-airport-screening-20101121,0,7976864,print.story

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Echoes of the Holocaust

France's national railway delivered Jews to the Nazis. It's apologized, and now wants to bid on a high-speed rail project in California.

November 20, 2010

The recent apology by SNCF, the French national railway, for transporting 76,000 Jews to Germany, where they were sent on to the Nazi death camps, doesn't save any lives or compensate any survivors. What's more, it comes about 65 years late, at a time when most of those with firsthand memories of the Holocaust have died.

Particularly distressing is the fact that the apology was apparently not prompted by regret. Rather, it seems to have been spurred by the company's desire to win multibillion-dollar high-speed rail contracts in California and Florida, contracts that were in jeopardy because of stiff resistance from survivors of the deportations and the families of those who died.

In short, it's not the ideal apology. Nevertheless, it's a significant concession from a company that has been accused over the years of failing to take full responsibility for its behavior. The reference by SNCF Chief Executive Guillaume Pepy to France's "dark hours," his blunt acknowledgment that the company's trains carried Jews and other detainees toward their deaths, and his expression of the company's "profound sorrow and regret for the consequences of its acts" can't help but feel like a victory of sorts.

That said, there's more to be done. SNCF — short for Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais — has pledged to help victims and their families seek restitution, yet there's still confusion and disagreement over whether the French government's existing reparations programs will cover all the people deported on SNCF trains. There's clearly a need for more direct and candid communication between the families and the company, which continue to talk past each other and remain bitterly at odds over a number of issues. SNCF has taken substantial steps toward disclosing its history and acknowledging the full extent of its behavior, but it may have more to reveal.

SNCF's role in the deportations emerged as an issue in California when the company expressed interest in bidding for work on the state's planned 800-mile high-speed rail system from San Diego to San Francisco. Soon after, Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) introduced, and got passed, a bill aimed targeted at SNCF that required companies to disclose their role in wartime atrocities if they submitted bids for the project. SNCF, to its credit, quickly promised to comply with the requirements of the bill, and stuck by that promise even after AB 619 was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September. This month, SNCF issued its public apology.

The company insists that it has been both fair and forthcoming. It also argues, as it has for many years, that the question of moral responsibility for the wartime deportations is muddied by the fact that they occurred during the German occupation of France. SNCF officials don't deny the company's role in carrying the deportees to the French border with Germany, but they say it was acting as an arm of the government and under direct orders from both the Nazi occupiers and the collaborationist Vichy government. Trains were requisitioned by the Nazis as soon as the occupation began in 1940, the company says. Railway employees who resisted wartime orders could have been shot.

The company's critics remain un?satisfied. Survivors and relatives of ?the deportees say they wish the apology? had been addressed directly to them, ?and that it had not relied on the argument that the company was under orders. They want to know whether SNCF intends to? pay restitution of its own — separate ?from that provided by the government of France — and some are engaged in a law?suit to force it to do so. Many see the ?company's apology as a transparent public relations ploy.

Clearly, the two sides are a long way from reconciliation. And to be honest, apologies of this sort (and even monetary reparations) are never fully satisfying. They tend to come many years too late and often under legal or political pressure.

Thousands of German companies, for instance — among them Daimler Chrysler, Deutsche Bank and Volkswagen — participated in the German Foundation, a multibillion-dollar fund established in 2000 to make amends for actions during World War II, including the use of slave labor. The fund was established in? response to multiple lawsuits. In 2005, ?JP Morgan Chase and Wachovia Corp. apologized for their ties to slavery in the United States. (In both cases, predecessor banks that ultimately became part of the modern-day companies had accepted slaves as collateral for loans, and ended up owning hundreds of slaves.) Wachovia and JP Morgan Chase didn't reveal their histories out? of a belated sense of shame but because a Chicago law required the disclosure if they wanted to participate in a lucrative redevelopment project.

Those who have been wronged by history understandably want a frank acknowledgement of what was done to them and a heartfelt apology, at the very least. Needless to say, they're disinclined to accept double-talk or blame-shifting. If SNCF wants to be considered seriously for a high-speed rail contract in California, the company must continue to reach out and work closely with survivors and families on this issue, to convince them that its remorse is sincere rather than cynical.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-apology-20101120,1,664758,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Qaeda Branch Aimed for Broad Damage at Low Cost

by SCOTT SHANE

In a detailed account of its failed parcel bomb plot last month, Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen said late Saturday that the operation cost only $4,200 to mount, was intended to disrupt global air cargo systems and reflected a new strategy of low-cost attacks designed to inflict broad economic damage.

The group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, released to militant Web sites a new edition of its English-language magazine, called Inspire, devoted entirely to explaining the technology and tactics in the attack, in which toner cartridges packed with explosives were intercepted in Dubai and Britain. The printers containing the cartridges had been sent from Yemen's capital, Sana, to out-of-date addresses for two Chicago synagogues.

The attack failed as a result of a tip from Saudi intelligence, which provided the tracking numbers for the parcels, sent via United Parcel Service and FedEx. But the Qaeda magazine said the fear, disruption and added security costs caused by the packages made what it called Operation Hemorrhage a success.

“Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us,” the magazine said.

It mocked the notion that the plot was a failure, saying it was the work of “less than six brothers” over three months. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,' ” the group wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

The magazine included photographs of the printers and bombs that the group said were taken before they were shipped, as well as a copy of the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens that it said it had placed in one package because the group was “very optimistic” about the operation's success.

The magazine also gave a detailed account of the construction and disguise of the explosives. Three private organizations that track militants' communications said they had no doubt the account was authentic. Ben Venzke, who runs IntelCenter, a Virginia company that discovered the 23-page “special issue” of Inspire on the Web on Saturday night, said the magazine showed the growing savvy of the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen in both operations and messaging.

“In the last year, we've seen a much greater sophistication from A.Q.A.P., and Inspire is sort of the tip of the spear,” Mr. Venzke said.

Mr. Venzke said that in many years of closely following terrorist groups' public statements, IntelCenter had never seen “such a detailed accounting of the philosophy, operational details, intent and next steps following a major attack.” He called it “a far cry from the days of shadowy claims and questions as to who was actually responsible.”

The magazine said that it had adopted a “strategy of a thousand cuts.”

“To bring down America we do not need to strike big,” it said. “In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect.”

The magazine repeated a claim from the group that it was responsible for the Sept. 3 crash of a U.P.S. jet in Dubai that killed the two pilots. Investigators in the United Arab Emirates concluded that the pre-crash fire was not caused by an explosion, and intelligence officials are skeptical about the Qaeda claim, noting that the group probably would have claimed it as a success at the time.

The new issue of Inspire asserts that because the Sept. 3 crash was not attributed to terrorism, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula decided to remain silent about it to increase chances that future parcel bombs would go undetected. But nothing in the magazine showed inside knowledge of what caused the crash.

The magazine has the same flashy graphics, idiomatic English and cocky attitude as were shown in the first two issues, released online in the summer and fall. Intelligence officials have said they believe it is largely the work of Samir Khan, an American citizen who moved to Yemen from North Carolina last year. It may also reflect the influence of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is now active in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula consists mainly of Saudis and Yemenis and is believed to have close ties to Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network's central leadership in Pakistan. It initially focused on plotting against the Saudi monarchy and the Yemeni government and continues to carry out attacks in the region. The group trained and equipped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last Dec. 25, and its rhetoric has increasingly echoed the central Qaeda goal of attacking the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/middleeast/21parcel.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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A Killing Set Honor Above Love

DOKAN, Iraq — Serving small glasses of sugary tea, Qadir Abdul-Rahman Ahmed explained how things went bad with the neighbors. It was not true, he said, that his brothers had threatened to drown his niece if she tried to marry the young man down the street.

“We are not against humanity,” he explained. “I told my brother, if she wants to marry, you can't stop her.”

But the couple should never have married without permission.

“The girl and the boy should be killed,” he said. “It's about honor. Honor is more important for us than religion.”

Honor killing has a long history in Iraq and here in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. But even here, this couple's case stood out because the man was killed, not the woman, and because of the political clout of the warring families.

As some Iraqi lawmakers try to crack down on honor killing, the case — in which there have been no arrests — also illustrates how difficult it can be to uproot a deep-seated tribal honor code.

More than 12,000 women were killed in the name of honor in Kurdistan from 1991 to 2007, according to Aso Kamal of the Doaa Network Against Violence. Government figures are much lower, and show a decline in recent years, and Kurdish law has mandated since 2008 that an honor killing be treated like any other murder. But the practice continues, and the crime is often hidden or disguised to look like suicide.

It was in this climate that Mr. Ahmed's niece, Sirwa Hama Amin, fell in love with her neighbor, Aram Jamal Rasool, in this village in northern Iraq.

On a recent afternoon in the home of Mr. Rasool's father, Ms. Amin, 22, showed wedding portraits of herself and Mr. Rasool: a smiling young couple in formal dress, the bride showing none of the strain that marked the pale woman displaying the photographs.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool, 27, grew up across the dusty road from each other, where each family had expanded in a string of houses so close together that their roofs nearly touched. Mr. Rasool's father, Jamal Rasool Salih, 58, a retired general in the Kurdish military, or pesh merga, helped Ms. Amin's family move to Dokan from Iran in 1993, and the two families became intertwined.

Like General Salih, Ms. Amin's brothers and uncles joined the pesh merga and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the town's dominant political party. One of Ms. Amin's brothers married the general's daughter and became his bodyguard; the general's son Aram was a regular visitor in Ms. Amin's home.

Still, when the couple fell in love a couple of years ago, they kept their passion secret, knowing their families would not approve. General Salih said he considered Ms. Amin's relatives unruly soldiers and hellcats, always shooting people. Ms. Amin's relatives mocked Mr. Rasool because he limped.

The problems started when Ms. Amin's brother caught her sending a text message to Mr. Rasool on her cellphone. In socially regimented Iraq, cellphones and the Internet have enabled lovers to communicate outside the censorious eyes of their families. But this liberation has come at a price, said Behar Rafeq, director of the Shelter for Threatened Women in Erbil. Of the 24 women in the shelter on a recent day, 15 had encountered threats or violence because of their communications on cellphones or Facebook, Ms. Rafeq said.

Ms. Amin said her male relatives threatened to drown her and took away her phone.

Mr. Ahmed, Ms. Amin's uncle, denied the threats. If the two wished to marry, he said, the appropriate way was for General Salih, accompanied by a delegation of tribal leaders, to ask for her hand. Instead, he sent surrogates.

“If someone doesn't come and ask respectfully, how can you agree to that?” he asked.

General Salih said he did not want the marriage, either.

Ms. Amin became a captive in her home. One of Mr. Rasool's brothers, Rizgar Jamal Rasool, 36, said that when he visited, he found Ms. Amin tearful and beaten, her face swollen.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool became desperate, she said, and plotted ways to kill themselves.

On Sept. 2, 2009, she sneaked out of her parents' house, walking across the roofs of the adjoining homes and down to a Toyota Land Cruiser. Mr. Rasool was waiting inside, with a grenade he had stolen from his father. “I said, ‘Let's kill ourselves,' ” Ms. Amin said. “He said, ‘No, let's only do it if they find us.' ”

Instead, the couple went to the police, explaining that they had been threatened because they wanted to marry. Mr. Rasool was held for possession of the grenade; Ms. Amin was sent to a shelter for battered women.

“He was arrested because I wanted him arrested for safety,” General Salih said. “The day they ran away, her uncle, a military captain, called me and said, ‘I'll burn your house and kill you all if you don't get the couple back today.' ”

The couple appealed to the court, and two weeks later, after submitting their paperwork, they were married.

Though Ms. Amin's family objected to the marriage, she said, they agreed to a truce: if the newlyweds promised to leave Dokan and never return, her relatives agreed not to hunt her down.

For three and a half months the couple lived in Sulaimaniya, an hour from Dokan. Then, on Jan. 2 around 9 p.m., Ms. Amin said, she was in the bathroom when she heard gunshots and her husband shouting her name.

She opened the bathroom door and saw her husband covered in blood and one of her brothers aiming a gun at her. “I saw only my brother, but someone else shot Aram,” she said. Before the smoke cleared, gunmen fired 17 bullets into Mr. Rasool's chest and 4 into Ms. Amin's leg and hip, General Salih said.

According to Mr. Ahmed, the brother who did the shooting was Hussein Hama Amin, a soldier in the pesh merga. Mr. Amin denied killing his brother-in-law but said he paid $10,000 to another brother, and to one of Mr. Rasool's brothers, to kill the couple.

“Why should she live after she has been that irresponsible about the honor of her family?” Mr. Amin said.

Ms. Amin was two months pregnant at the time.

The authorities in Kurdistan have made great strides against honor killing, said Kurdo Omer Abdulla, director of the General Directorate to Trace Violence Against Women, a government agency. “Every year we see a decrease in the statistics of violence against women,” she said.

For the two families, the killing did not resolve the conflict.

The police arrested no one. Instead, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, tribal leaders and clerics brought the families together in a formal council session in front of more than 4,000 local residents.

General Salih said he was pressed by the party to forgive his son's killers and promise not to kill them.

Ms. Amin's family was required to promise not to kill her. The two families provide conflicting accounts on whether money was also exchanged.

Her relatives said they have disowned her but would not harm her. “May God kill her,” Hussein Hama Amin said. “We will not kill her.”

In General Salih's living room, Ms. Amin dandled her 4-month-old son, named Aram after her husband. By Kurdish custom she is now disgraced and unsuitable for marriage.

She lives a few hundred feet from

the family that cast her out, in a house filled with weapons, afraid that her relatives will try to kill her. When she leaves the house, she is escorted by armed in-laws.

General Salih remains bitter at his neighbors, the party and the tribal leaders, who have refused to make any arrests.

“I'm a powerful person,” he said. “I could kill them. But I don't.”

“They should get arrested,” he said. “Instead they get salaries. There is no law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/middleeast/21honor.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Germany Seeks Suspects in Islamic Terrorist Plots

BERLIN — German law enforcement officials said on Saturday that they were looking for two suspected terrorists thought to be in or around the capital city in one of several investigations aimed at thwarting what the authorities believe are myriad plans by Islamic radicals to attack the nation.

They have information that two men entered Germany six to eight weeks ago from Waziristan, in Pakistan, and were awaiting delivery of detonators, perhaps from Turkey, to carry out an attack, a German security official said.

Aspects of this suspected plot were reported in several German news outlets on Saturday, including on ARD television, which said that the attackers “are rotating their accommodation, staying in the homes of other people, are living together, not using the telephone, not going to the mosque and making sure they are dressed in Western clothes.”

Police and government officials said this week that they had concrete information of plans for a terrorist attack by the end of the year and so have stepped up their counterterrorism efforts. The police and investigators are closely monitoring cross-border traffic and have sent heavily armed police officers and bomb-detecting dogs to transportation hubs, popular sites and government and parliamentary offices.

Even before the government said there was a high probability of an attack, law enforcement officials and terrorism experts here said they feared that terrorists were planning a Mumbai-style attack, sending small teams of armed militants to rampage through so-called soft targets.

Though this most recent warning focused on terrorists crossing into the country, terrorism experts and government officials here say they are also worried about local people — German citizens — who may be radicalized and may be laying in wait to carrying out an attack.

“The threat is nationalizing, the networks are nationalizing and our security services are having big problems coming to terms with the evolution of this new threat,” said Guido Steinberg, an expert in Islamic radicalism with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

As German law enforcement officials worked round the clock and the police were told to cancel holiday vacation plans to preserve the beefed-up security on the street, officials in Namibia announced that it appeared terrorists were not involved with planting a dummy bomb among baggage heading onto a flight for Munich.

The nation's police commander, Lt. Gen. Sebastian Ndeitunga, said a senior Namibian aviation security officer had been arrested in connection with the mock bomb found Wednesday in a laptop case at the airport there.

But, he said, the investigation was just beginning into how the device, which was made by a California company to test airport security, ended up at an airport halfway round the world.

“We're still trying to establish the motive behind this mess,” he said.

The officer was arrested after a review of closed-circuit camera surveillance, General Ndeitunga said. The suspect, whose name will be kept secret until Monday, confessed to some involvement in the case, the general said.

General Ndeitunga said the possibility that the security officer had accomplices had not been ruled out.

The general sounded angry as he told reporters on Saturday that the officer in custody had “tarnished the reputation of the Namibian security forces.”

“We do not consider this to be a joke,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/africa/21namibia.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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T.S.A. Grants Airline Pilots an Exception to Screenings

WASHINGTON — At least one group of air travelers will get a break from the body scans and pat-downs that have provoked a national outcry.

On Friday, the Transportation Security Administration announced that it would let uniformed airline pilots skip the screenings, reversing an earlier policy that everyone had to go through the screenings as part of the agency's efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. Pilots who are traveling out of uniform or not on official business will still be subject to searches, the agency said.

The full-body scans and pat-downs being performed at a number of airports have angered travelers, many of whom said the searches were invasive and likened them to virtual strip searches. Passengers have also raised concerns about the long-term effect of radiation exposure from airport scanners.

The agency said pilots would still have to pass through a metal detector at airport checkpoints and present two photo identifications that would be verified against a flight crew database.

The government ruling comes after an extensive two-year lobbying campaign by unions and organizations representing airline pilots. The groups made the argument that because their members had already been through extensive background checks by federal law enforcement officials, there was no need for the added security searches.

Those lobbying for changes in pilot screenings include Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, who gained national fame last year after safely landing a plane in the Hudson River with over 100 passengers on board.

“Allowing these uniformed pilots, whose identity has been verified, to go through expedited screening at the checkpoint just makes for smart security and an efficient use of our resources,” John S. Pistole, the agency's administrator, said in a statement.

Dwayne Baird, a spokesman for the T.S.A., said on Saturday that the ruling would apply only to pilots, and not flight attendants.

“They will still have to go through the same screening as everyone else,” Mr. Baird said.

Flight attendants and their unions have argued that they should also be allowed to bypass the pat-downs and screenings, as well.

“Flight attendants are subject to extensive background checks, so there is no reasonable explanation why this highly vetted group of aviation employees continues to be exposed to lengthy airport security lines which may affect their ability to report to the aircraft on time,” Patricia A. Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants , said in a statement this month.

Mr. Baird said he did not have any information on why flight attendants were not included in the new T.S.A. policy, even though they undergo the same background checks as pilots. He said he had no information about forthcoming changes for ordinary passengers.

Questioned on the protocol while at a NATO summit meeting in Portugal, President Obama acknowledged travelers' frustrations. “What I've said to the T.S.A. is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we're doing is the only way to assure the American people's safety,” he said. “And you also have to think through, ‘Are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive?' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/business/21tsa.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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A Park Ranger Is Shot in Utah

MOAB, Utah (AP) — Officers swarmed a rugged canyon west of Moab on Saturday searching for a man who shot and critically wounded a park ranger.

SWAT teams moved into the canyon near the Colorado River, while boats patrolled the banks and a helicopter watched from above. Sharpshooters had lined the ridges overnight as the authorities waited for sunrise to go after the gunman, said Sheriff Jim Nyland of Grand County.

The state park law officer, whose name was not released, was in critical condition after being shot three times on Friday night while patrolling the popular Poison Spider Mesa Trail, said a parks spokeswoman, Deena Loyola.

Sheriff Nyland said a man confronted the ranger in a parking lot shortly before 9 p.m. He said the ranger was shot in the arm, leg and torso.

“The park ranger was able to call in on the radio and advised that he was shot,” the Sheriff's Office said in a statement on its Web site.

Sheriff Nyland said the officer underwent surgery at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., but he did not have further details. The hospital's media department declined to comment.

The authorities are focusing on the canyon, about eight miles southwest of the shooting site and 20 miles west of Moab, because the gunman's silver Pontiac Grand Am was found nearby. They said they were not sure whether the gunman was alone.

Investigators were still piecing together what occurred but said the shooting probably happened during a traffic stop or while the gunman was parking.

The Poison Spider Mesa Trail to the south of Moab is among Utah's best-known biking runs, with riders calling it a challenging but scenic loop. It rises more than 1,000 feet into the surrounding countryside.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/us/21ranger.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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TSA has met the enemy -- and they are us

How did an agency created to protect the public become the target of so much public scorn?

After nine years of funneling travelers into ever longer lines with orders to have shoes off, sippy cups empty and laptops out for inspection, the most surprising thing about increasingly heated frustration with the federal Transportation Security Administration may be that it took so long to boil over.

The agency, a marvel of nearly instant government when it was launched in the fearful months following the 9/11 terror attacks, started out with a strong measure of public goodwill. Americans wanted the assurance of safety when they boarded planes and entrusted the government with the responsibility.

But in episode after episode since then, the TSA has demonstrated a knack for ignoring the basics of customer relations, while struggling with what experts say is an all but impossible task. It must stand as the last line against unknown terror, yet somehow do so without treating everyone from frequent business travelers to the family heading home to visit grandma as a potential terrorist.

The TSA "is not a flier-centered system. It's a terrorist-centered system and the travelers get caught in it," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University who has tracked the agency's effectiveness since it's creation.

That built-in conflict is at the heart of a growing backlash against the TSA for ordering travelers to step before a full-body scanner that sees through their clothing, undergo a potentially invasive pat-down or not fly at all.

"After 9/11 people were scared and when people are scared they'll do anything for someone who will make them less scared," said Bruce Schneier, a Minneapolis security technology expert who has long been critical of the TSA. "But ... this is particularly invasive. It's strip-searching. It's body groping. As abhorrent goes, this pegs it."

A traveler in San Diego, John Tyner, has become an Internet hero after resisting both the scan and the pat-down, telling a TSA screener: "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested." That has helped ignite a campaign urging people to refuse such searches on Nov. 24, which immediately precedes Thanksgiving and is one of the year's busiest travel days.

The outcry, though, "is symptomatic of a bigger issue," said Geoff Freeman, executive vice president of the U.S. Travel Association, an industry group that says it has received nearly 1,000 calls and e-mails from consumers about the new policy in the last week.

"It's almost as if it's a tipping point," Freeman said. "What we've heard from travelers time and again is that there must be a better way."

Indeed, TSA has a history of stirring public irritation. There was the time in 2004 when Sen. Ted Kennedy complained after being stopped five times while trying to board planes because a name similar to his appeared on the agency's no-fly list. And the time in 2006 when a Maine woman went public with her tale of being ordered by a TSA agent to dump the gel packs she was using to cool bags of breast milk. And the time in 2007, when a Washington, D.C. woman charged that another TSA agent threatened to have her arrested for spilling water out of her child's sippy cup.

TSA denied the last, releasing security camera footage to try and prove its point. But that did little to offset the agency's longtime struggle to explain itself and win traveler cooperation.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. After Congress approved creation of the agency in late 2001, the TSA grew quickly from just 13 employees in January 2002 to 65,000 a year later. In the first year, agency workers confiscated more than 4.8 million firearms, knives and other prohibited items, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But even as the new agency mushroomed, officials at the top, pressured by airlines worried that tighter security would discourage people from flying, looked to the business world for lessons on systems, efficiency and service.

TSA set up "go teams" pairing government employees with executives from companies including Marriott International Inc., The Walt Disney Co., and Intel Corp., to figure out how to move lines of people through checkpoints efficiently and how to deal with angry travelers.

But the agency was working under what Freeman calls "an unachievable mandate." Congress demanded an agency that eliminated risk. But the risks are always changing, as terrorists devise new methods and government parries. That has led to an agency that is always in crisis mode, constantly adding new policies designed to respond to the last terror plot.

President Barack Obama says he has pushed the TSA to make sure that it is always reviewing screening processes with actual people in mind. "You have to constantly refine and measure whether what we're doing is the only way to assure the American people's safety," Obama said Saturday. "And you also have to think through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive."

TSA operates on the belief that a key to foiling terrorists is to keep them guessing, agency watchers say. But it has never really explained that to a flying public that sees never-ending changes in policies covering carry-on liquids, shoes, and printer cartridges as maddening and pointless inconsistency.

"If you ask what its procedures are, how you screen people, its 'I can't tell you that because if the bad guys find out they'll be able to work around the system'," said Christopher Elliott, an Orlando, Fla.-based consumer advocate specializing in travel. "That's why a lot of what they've done has not really gone over well with air travelers. They perceive it as being heavy-handed and often the screeners come across as being very authoritarian."

Over time, TSA has settled into a pattern of issuing directives with little explanation and expecting they be followed. But increasingly fed-up travelers don't understand the agency's sense of urgency and aren't buying it.

"I don't think the law enforcement approach is going to work with the American public. You've got to explain yourself and reassure people. And they're not doing it," Light said.

That goes beyond public relations, experts say. As more and more layers are added to air travel security efforts, it creates difficult and potentially unpopular choices. But the TSA has been unwilling to openly discuss how it arrives at policies or to justify the trade-offs, highlighted by its insistence over the need for the scanners.

"They're very expensive and what they (TSA officials) should be able to do is answer if it does reduce the risk, how much does it reduce the risk and is it worth it?" said John Mueller, a professor of political science at Ohio State, who has researched the way society reacts to terrorism.

The pushback against the body scanners and pat-downs shows the agency at its worst, Elliott said, issuing a policy that wasn't properly vetted or explained, but determined to defend it.

Growing dissatisfaction with TSA has even led some airports to consider replacing the agency with private screeners. Such a change is allowed by law, but contractor must follow all the security procedures mandated by the TSA, including body scans and pat-downs.

But frustration with the TSA was building even before the latest furor. In a December 2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll asking Americans to rank government agencies, it was as unpopular as the Internal Revenue Service. Even so, a poll earlier this month by CBS News found 81 percent of Americans support the TSA's use of full-body scanners at airports. The poll, conducted Nov. 7-10, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Elliott said that better communication would probably win the TSA more cooperation. But the pushback suggests that a growing number of consumers, particularly frequent travelers, are questioning the premise at the heart of the agency's existence.

"I think at some point Americans said to themselves, maybe in their collective subconscious...there's a line here where it's not just worth it anymore," he said. "There's a growing sense that that line has been crossed."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJOHVt1tulwzq5K5_pyF-i_VSXxA?docId=6f7744f6248a43ca87afafc0adcff1a9

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Coroner: Victims were stabbed, dismembered

A Knox County mother, her son and a family friend, whose disappearance sparked a frantic weeklong search, died of multiple stab wounds.

Preliminary autopsy results released yesterday showed several stab wounds from a knife to the back and chest of each victim — Tina Herrmann, 32; her son, Kody Maynard, 11; and Stephanie Sprang, 41.

The bodies then were dismembered, said Knox County Coroner Jennifer F. Ogle. The three apparently were killed inside Herrmann's home in Apple Valley on Nov. 10.

Authorities think tree-climbing equipment was used to scale a 65-foot-tall hollow beech tree in the Kokosing Lake Wildlife Area, with garbage bags containing the remains then lowered into the cavity of the tree.

Small, nonfatal wounds also were noted. The autopsies found no signs of sexual assault, pending further investigation, Ogle said in a statement.

“The most challenging and heartbreaking thing I have had to do as coroner is discuss these findings with the families of the deceased victims,” Ogle said.

Funeral arrangements for Herrmann and Kody have been set for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at Peace Lutheran Church, 455 Clark State Rd., Gahanna.

Calling hours will be at the church from 2-4 and 6-9?p.m. Tuesday.

Funeral arrangements for Sprang had not been announced yet.

The bodies were discovered Thursday afternoon after attorneys for suspect Matthew J. Hoffman directed authorities to the tree in an area north of Fredericktown. The body of Herrmann's small dog also was found in the tree.

Herrmann's daughter, 13-year-old Sarah Maynard, also disappeared on Nov. 10 after she and her brother arrived home from school.

She was found bound and gagged in the basement of Hoffman's Columbus Road home last Sunday. She is with relatives, and authorities credited her with helping them to make a case against Hoffman. Hoffman, 30, is being held at the Knox County jail on a kidnapping charge under a $1 million cash bond.

He has not yet been charged with the killings.

The final coroner's report will be completed once the full forensic report is completed by Dr. Jeff Lee of the Licking County coroner's office. That usually takes six to eight weeks.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/11/21/coroner-victims-were-stabbed-dismembered.html?sid=101

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Deaths of three children and woman shock quiet Florida suburb

by Nina Mandell

NY Daily News

November 20th 2010

Tallahassee -- Four people were found dead in their house Saturday in a bloody scene that shocked a peaceful Florida neighborhood.

The victims were believed to be a single mom, her 6-year-old twin girls and 3-year-old son, though names were not released.

Neighbors said there had been a few burglaries in recent years, though increased police patrols had stamped out even the most minor problems in the quiet suburb.

"This is a very shocking and unusual case for us," police spokesman David McCranie said. "We are trying to find out if anyone would want to harm the family."

The bodies were found after police received a suspicious call around 10:15 Saturday morning.

McCranie said the police are trying to put together pieces of the puzzle and neighbors told reporters they are trying to grapple with the horrific news.

"I really don't believe it, that I'm not going to see those little girls running around, up and down the street anymore," neighbor Darius Mount told CNN.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/11/20/2010-11-20_deaths_of_three_children_and_woman_shock_quiet_florida_suburb.html

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