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From the Los Angeles Times

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South Korea defense minister ousted; North warns of new attacks

North Korea warns of a 'second and third' attack after killing four, injuring 20 on a disputed island. Meanwhile, China expresses concern about U.S.-South Korean naval exercises set to begin Sunday.

by John M. Glionna and Ethan Kim

Los Angeles Times

November 25, 2010

Reporting from Seoul

South Korea's disgraced defense minister resigned Thursday amid growing criticism in the wake of a deadly North Korean artillery barrage, setting the stage for sweeping changes in the South Korean military establishment.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young's resignation came as lawmakers blasted the government of President Lee Myung-bak for its slow response to Pyongyang's attack on an island outpost Tuesday that killed four people and injured 20. Lee accepted the resignation just hours after promising to send more troops to the disputed maritime border between North and South.

The drama within Lee's Cabinet ended a tense day that saw North Korea warn that it may attack again and Beijing voice concern over U.S.-South Korean naval exercises set to begin Sunday. If further provoked, North Korea "will deal without hesitation the second and third strong physical retaliatory blow," read a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The joint drills, which will involve a flotilla of U.S. ships, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington, will "send a clear message to the North," a South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei questioned the timing of the exercises, saying officials "have noted the relevant reports and express our concern."

A day earlier, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called on all sides to exert "maximum restraint" but didn't mention North Korea by name or set blame for the attack.

As the U.S. and South Korea pressured China to help curb North Korea, Russian officials Thursday also sought calm, saying they hoped the U.N. Security Council would weigh in soon on the attack.

"I hope that in the coming days the council will express its opinion and that this will help to calm the situation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

Although South Korean lawmakers overwhelmingly supported a resolution to condemn North Korea's attack, the 261-1 vote stopped short of demanding retaliation.

The North's shelling barrage occurred on tiny Yeonpyeong Island, a commercial fishing and military outpost whose sovereignty has long been in dispute between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Few observers in Seoul were surprised at Kim's departure, which came eight months after the sinking of a South Korean warship killed 46 sailors. Seoul said the ship was struck by a North Korean torpedo; Pyongyang has denied involvement.

At the time, Kim offered to resign but was allowed to keep his post. This time, however, the Lee administration accepted his resignation.

Officials said the military also planned "across-the-board" revisions to its policy involving the use of force and would scrap a 2006 plan to scale down the armed forces' presence in the region.

"Our existing rules of engagement have been assessed as rather passive, focusing on preventing the escalation of a conflict," said Hong Sang-pyo, a presidential spokesman.

Lawmakers bashed the military's slow response to the attack. After Pyongyang fired 170 shells at the island, South Korean forces waited 10 minutes before firing 80 shells at northern artillery positions.

Lee on Thursday instead tried to focus on the North Korean threat.

"We should not release our sense of crisis in preparation for the possibility of another provocation by North Korea. A provocation like this can recur anytime," he said at an emergency Cabinet meeting.

In other retaliatory measures against the North, Seoul slashed aid and canceled family reunions that had resumed after a lapse of several years. Seoul had sent 5,000 tons of rice, 3 million packs of instant noodles and 3,000 tons of cement in flood aid in the last three months alone.

For its part, North Korea on Thursday continued to blame the U.S. and South Korea for the artillery bombardment, insisting that South Korea fired first and that it shelled the island in defense.

Pyongyang said the U.S. bore responsibility for recent hostilities with its refusal to sign a pact officially ending the Korean War, which has been sought by the North. "The U.S., therefore, cannot evade the blame for the recent shelling," read the North Korean statement.

South Korean media reported Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his youngest son, Kim Jong Eun, visited the North's artillery base just hours before the start of shelling, disputing theories by some analysts here that the decision to attack was made by a rogue military commander.

Later in the day, Seoul officials reiterated that the North Korean leader had called for the attack. "This provocation was carefully coordinated and planned by Kim Jong Il. Any single gunshot by North Korea will be commanded by the 'Dear Leader' and his third son," a senior government official said.

Analysts predicted that the four-day joint naval exercises would further escalate tensions.

"There is a possibility of a second North Korean attack, perhaps even as soon as the start of the naval exercises on Sunday," said Cheong Seong-chang, an expert on North Korean politics at Seoul's Sejong Institute.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-koreas-clash-20101126,0,7178120,print.story

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Federal officials find another drug-smuggling tunnel

U.S. authorities on Thursday found a sophisticated tunnel used to smuggle drugs between Mexico and San Diego, the second such discovery in the region in less than a month.

The half-mile passage runs from a residence in Tijuana to a warehouse in San Diego's Otay Mesa area, the San Diego Tunnel Task Force said in a statement.

Federal border patrol, drug enforcement, immigration and customs enforcement agents in the task force arrested several suspects and seized an undetermined amount of marijuana in a tractor-trailer on U.S. soil, the statement said.

The statement said authorities believed more marijuana was being stored in the tunnel. Agents were working with the Mexican military on the investigation.

Officials said they would release more details Friday afternoon.

Earlier this month, federal agents made one of the largest marijuana seizures in the United States when they confiscated 20 tons of marijuana they said was smuggled into the country through a tunnel connecting warehouses on each side of the California-Mexico border. Mexican authorities seized more than four tons of pot from the warehouse south of the border.

The secret passageway ran the length of six football fields and had lighting, ventilation and a rail system to send loads of illegal drugs from Mexico into California.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/federal-offficials-find-another-drug-smuggling-tunnel.html

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Murder suspect arrives in U.S. after deportation from Australia

An Alabama man who served prison time in Australia for his wife's drowning death during their honeymoon returned Thursday to the U.S., where he faces murder charges that could carry a much stiffer punishment.

Gabe Watson, 33, arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday morning after he was deported on a commercial flight from Melbourne, Australia. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said Watson was accompanied by two Immigration Department staff and three Queensland state police officers. Watson cleared customs within an hour and was taken away in handcuffs.

He was booked at a local police substation after his arrival, said Los Angeles police Lt. Aaron McCraney. Watson will probably make a court appearance in Los Angeles before being sent to Alabama.

Alabama hopes to arrange to bring Watson back to the state early next week, said Atty. Gen. Troy King. King said Australian authorities showed too much leniency to Watson, who served an 18-month sentence in that country after pleading guilty last year to manslaughter. Tina Watson, 26, drowned in 2003 while scuba diving with her husband of 11 days.

Gabe Watson had been in immigration custody since completing a prison sentence earlier this month. Australia, a staunch opponent of capital punishment, delayed his deportation until it received a pledge that U.S. authorities would not seek the death penalty.

“The Australians extorted from the state and the victim's family to water down our justice, just like they watered down theirs,” King said.

Gabe Watson will not fight extradition to Alabama because he wants to be home with friends and family, said his attorney, Brett Bloomston. Bloomston accused the prosecutor of grandstanding and trying to emotionally sway the grand jury by convening its session on the seven-year anniversary of Tina Watson's death.

“His goal has been to get to Birmingham to get home to his family, to answer these charges immediately upon release of his custodial sentence in Australia,” Bloomston said.

Prosecutors said Watson was indicted by an Alabama grand jury on capital murder in the course of kidnapping and capital murder for pecuniary gain. The charges were sealed until Watson reached the United States, and King refused to discuss the evidence in the case in detail.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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From the New York Times

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In a Land of the Aging, Children Counter Alzheimer's

(Video on site)

SEONGNAM, South Korea — They were stooped, hobbled, disoriented, fumbling around the house. They got confused in the bathtub and struggled up stairs that seemed to swim before them.

“Oh, it hurts,” said Noh Hyun-ho, sinking to the ground.

“I thought I was going to die,” said Yook Seo-hyun.

There was surprisingly little giggling, considering that Hyun-ho, Seo-hyun and the others were actually perfectly healthy 11- to 13-year-old children. But they had strapped on splints, weighted harnesses and fogged-up glasses, and were given tasks like “Doorknob Experience” and “Bathroom Experience,” all to help them feel what it was like to be old, frail or demented.

“Even though they are smiling for us, every day, 24 hours, is difficult for them,” Jeong Jae-hee, 12, said she learned. “They lose their memory and go back to childhood.”

It is part of a remarkable South Korean campaign to cope with an exploding problem: Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. As one of the world's fastest-aging countries, with nearly 9 percent of its population over 65 already afflicted, South Korea has opened a “War on Dementia,” spending money and shining floodlights on a disease that is, here as in many places, riddled with shame and fear.

South Korea is training thousands of people, including children, as “dementia supporters,” to recognize symptoms and care for patients. The 11- to 13-year-olds, for instance, were in the government's “Aging-Friendly Comprehensive Experience Hall” outside Seoul. Besides the aging simulation exercise, they viewed a PowerPoint presentation defining dementia and were trained, in the hall's Dementia Experience Center, to perform hand massage in nursing homes .

“ ‘What did I do with my phone? It's in the refrigerator,' ” said one instructor, explaining memory loss . “Have you seen someone like that? They may go missing and die on the street.”

In another striking move, South Korea is also pushing to make diagnoses early, despite there being scant treatment.

“This used to be hidden” and “there is still stigma and bias,” said Kim Hye-jin, director of senior policy for the Health and Welfare Ministry. But “we want to get them out of their shells, out of their homes and diagnosed” to help families adjust and give patients “a higher chance of being taken care of at home.”

Hundreds of neighborhood dementia diagnostic centers have been created. Nursing homes have nearly tripled since 2008. Other dementia programs, providing day care and home care, have increased fivefold since 2008, to nearly 20,000. Care is heavily subsidized.

And a government dementia database allows families to register relatives and receive iron-on identification numbers. Citizens encountering wanderers with dementia report their numbers to officials, who contact families.

To finance this, South Korea created a long-term-care insurance system, paid for with 6.6 percent increases in people's national health insurance premiums. In 2009, about $1 billion of government and public insurance money was spent on dementia patients. Still, with the over-65 population jumping from 7 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2018 to 20 percent in 2026, dementia is straining the country, socially and economically.

“At least one family member has to give up work” to provide caregiving, said Kwak Young-soon, social welfare director for Mapo District, one of Seoul's 25 geographic districts. Because South Korea encourages people to work well past retirement age, families may also lose dementia sufferers' incomes.

Most families no longer have generations living together to help with caregiving, and some facilities have long waiting lists, but “we can't keep building nursing homes,” Mr. Kwak said. “We call it a ghost. It's basically eating up the whole house.”

Dementia Epidemic

South Korea is at the forefront of a worldwide eruption of dementia, from about 30 million estimated cases now to an estimated 100 million in 2050. And while South Korea's approach is unusually extensive, even in the United States, the National Alzheimer's Project Act was introduced this year to establish a separate Alzheimer's office to create “an integrated national plan to overcome Alzheimer's.” Supporters of the bill, currently in committee, include Sandra Day O'Connor, whose late husband had Alzheimer's.

South Korea also worries that dementia, previously stigmatized as “ghost-seeing” or “one's second childhood” could “dilute respect for elders,” Mr. Kwak said. “There's a saying that even the most filial son or daughter will not be filial if they look after a parent for more than three years.”

So the authorities promote the notion that filial piety implies doing everything possible for elders with dementia, a condition now called chimae (pronounced chee-may): disease of knowledge and the brain which makes adults become babies. But South Korea's low birth rate will make family caregiving tougher.

“I feel as if a tsunami's coming,” said Lee Sung-hee, the South Korean Alzheimer's Association president, who trains nursing home staff members, but also thousands who regularly interact with the elderly: bus drivers, tellers, hairstylists, postal workers. “Sometimes I think I want to run away,” she said. “But even the highest mountain, just worrying does not move anything, but if you choose one area and move stone by stone, you pave a way to move the whole mountain.”

South Korea is even trying to turn a crisis into a business opportunity. The Aging-Friendly hall, financed by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, encourages businesses to enter “silver industries,” producing items for feeble elderly people, from chopsticks that are easier to pick up to automated harnesses that hoist people from bed, sliding along a ceiling track, and deposit them onto toilets or living room couches.

College students visit the hall and don blue 3-D glasses for “Dementia Experience” video journeys following people disoriented on streets or seeking bathrooms.

Throughout South Korea, Mrs. Lee leads “dementia supporter” training, arguing against longtime practices of chastising or neglecting patients, and advocating for preserving their skills and self-esteem.

One tip: give demented relatives “a washing pan and washboard” and say, “ ‘The washing machine's terrible — we need your help' ” washing clothes, she told 200 senior citizens interested in nursing home jobs or family caregiving advice. If patients say, “ ‘I'm good at making soy soup,' but forget ingredients,” guide them step by step, she advised. Otherwise, “They may make it into salt soup, and everyone will say, ‘Oh, this is terrible, you stop doing it.' ”

Even the youngest are enlisted. Mr. Kwak, the local government official, arranges for nursery school classes to play games with nursing home patients, saying that it destigmatizes dementia and that patients who “regress to earlier days” may “find it easier to relate to young children.”

And Dr. Yang Dong-won, who directs one of many government-run diagnostic centers in Seoul, has visited kindergartens, bringing tofu. “This is very soft, like the brain,” he said, letting it crash down. Now, “the brain is destroyed.”

“Dementia is very bad for you, so protect your brain,” he said, with exercise, “not drinking too much sugar,” and saying, “ ‘Daddy, don't drink so much because it's not good for dementia.' ”

At a Dementia March outside the World Cup Soccer Stadium, children carried signs promoting Dr. Yang's Mapo district center: “Make the Brain Smile!” and “How is Your Memory? Free diagnosis center in Mapo.”

The Mapo Center for Dementia perches at a busy crossroads of old and new, near a university and a shop selling naturopathic goat extracts. It has exercise machines out front and a van with pictures of smiling elderly people.

Even people without symptoms come, Dr. Yang said. They are “eased by hearing, ‘You do not have dementia and can visit two years later.' ”

Cha Kyong-ho's family was wary of getting him tested. “Dementia was a subject to hide,” said his daughter, Cha Jeong-eun. “I worried his pride would be hurt going through this kindergarten experience.”

But when “my mother asked him to get ingredients for curry rice, he came back with mayonnaise,” she said. And one day, Mr. Cha, 74, a retired subway official, could not find his way home. “I was like, ‘Where the hell am I?' ” he said.

Ultimately, he visited Mapo's center, finding the testing challenging.

“Sometimes I don't remember what I read, or I can see it with my eyes and my brain is processing it, but I cannot say it out loud,” he said about the questions. “How can my brilliant brain remember everything? Jeez, it's so headachy.”

Checking his ability to categorize items, Dr. Yang asked, “What do you call dog and tiger?”

“I call them dog and tiger.”

“Pencil and brush?”

“Oh, there's a word for that.”

“Airplane and train?”

“I feel embarrassed I don't know.”

“You have a lot of loss of memory,” Dr. Yang said. “This is the very beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease.”

He suggested that Mr. Cha get a government-subsidized brain M.R.I. to confirm the diagnosis, and said drugs might delay symptoms slightly. He recommended Mapo's free programs “to stimulate what brain cells he has.” These include rooftop garden “floral therapy,” art classes making realistic representations of everyday objects, music therapy with bongos sounding “like a heartbeat.”

Mr. Cha sighed.

“I think,” he said, gesturing toward his brain, “that something's wrong with this, just a little bit.”

Students as Helpers

Schools offer community service credit, encouraging work with dementia patients, whom students call grandmas and grandpas. Teenage girls do foot massage at the Cheongam nursing home, which is run by Mrs. Lee, the Alzheimer's Association president, for women without sons to care for them. (In South Korea, sons' families traditionally shoulder caregiving responsibilities.) During one massage session, 16-year-old Oh Yu-mi rubbed a patient's toes, saying: “I'm doing the heart. The heel is the reproductive system. It will help them excrete better.”

Another girl doing foot massage, Park Min-jung, 17, was shaken to realize that dementia could explain why her grandfather recently grabbed a taxi and circled his old neighborhood seeking his no-longer-existent house. “He used to be very scary to me,” she said, but training made her feel that “I can do things for him.”

A patient wept as the girls left, upsetting 16-year-old Kim Min-joon, the massage group's leader. She said social workers suggested being less effusive to patients, so the girls' leaving would be less traumatic: “If there is love or affection of 100 grams, cut it up into 1 gram each” and distribute it over “100 visits, not all at once.” But “I'm not good at controlling that,” Min-joon said. Even at school, “The feeling of their touch remains with me.”

A boys' high school selects top students to help at Seobu Nursing Center, doing art therapy and attempting physical therapy with dances and “balloon badminton” (the racket is pantyhose stretched on a frame). The boys write observations to help Seobu adjust programs.

At school, they wrote questions on the blackboard: “Problems and solutions of communicating with the elderly. Ways to improve and execute exercise routine. How to make sure we're all on time.”

“They don't comprehend my words,” said Kim Su-hwan, 16.

“Maybe we should get closer to their ears,” suggested Kim Jae-kyeum.

Maybe “some of us could massage them,” said Su-hwan. “You do that, Su-hwan,” snickered Jae-kyeum.

“Smile at them more,” another student said. “Some of us look like we don't want to do this.”

For Kim Han-bit, 16, the program is intensely personal. Han-bit was 13 when his grandmother, who practically raised him, got Alzheimer's, and “I would just feel it was annoying and walk out of the room,” he said. “She would ask to do an activity, and I would say, ‘What business do you have doing that?' It was my responsibility to feed her, give her drinks, wash her face. But I even resisted and fought back,” he said. When she died, he added, “I couldn't let out tears.”

The dementia caregiving program had made him “wonder why I wasn't able to do that with my own grandma, and I think I should do better in the future to compensate for all my wrongdoing,” he said. “I could have taken care of my grandmother with a grateful feeling. If only I could have.”

Recently, he worked to engage Lee Jeong-hee, a patient half his height with missing teeth who laughed, but spoke incoherently.

“When I come next time,” he said tenderly, “please remember me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/health/26alzheimers.html?_r=1&hp

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North Korea Issues Warning as Artillery Fire Rattles Island

SEOUL, South Korea — Tension mounted on Friday near a South Korean island bombarded this week by North Korea as Pyongyang's military again fired artillery, this time in what appeared to be a drill on its own territory. The North's state-run media warned that a planned United States-South Korean military exercise could push the Korean Peninsula closer to “the brink of war.”

Meanwhile, South Korea struggled with the domestic political fallout from Tuesday's deadly attack, which exposed the weakness of South Korean defenses and brought public criticism of President Lee Myung-bak for failing to retaliate more forcefully. On Friday, he appointed a new defense minister, after the last one resigned Thursday for failing to keep forces at ready in an area that has seen repeated military clashes with North Korea.

North Korea's state-run news agency lashed out at South Korean and American plans to hold a joint training exercise on Sunday in Yellow Sea waters near the island.

The exercises are to include the American aircraft carrier George Washington. Using its characteristically bellicose language, the Korean Central News Agency said that the North's army was “getting ready to give a shower of dreadful fire and blow up the bulwark of the enemies.”

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage war exercises targeted against” the North, the dispatch warned.

The arrival of the George Washington is intended as a warning to the North and a show of support for its ally, South Korea, following the Tuesday attack, the first by North Korea to strike civilians since the 1950-53 Korean War.

On Friday morning, the United States made another show of solidarity when the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, visited Yeonpyeong island to survey the damage from the hour-long bombardment, which killed four South Koreans — two civilians and two marines.

But North Korea remained defiant, firing off artillery rounds right after the general's visit. The rounds did not fall in South Korean territory but rattled nerves on the island nonetheless. A spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, Kwon Ki-hyeon, said the shots appeared to stay within North Korean territory, suggesting they were part of a drill — or perhaps an effort to spook the South Korean garrison on the small island, which sits within sight of the North Korean mainland.

News flashes of the artillery sounds set off a brief wave of alarm in Seoul, where the Tuesday attack has stirred anxiety and outrage because it harmed civilians. Residents gathered in front of television screens or paused in their tracks to check cellphone screens for updates.

The events this week have raised concerns in Seoul that the North may respond violently during Sunday's naval exercises. Some media reports cited parallels between the K.C.N.A. report Friday and a warning issued by North Korea hours before Tuesday's artillery barrage, which the North said was in response to a South Korean military maneuver held near the island earlier Tuesday.

While reading the reclusive North's intentions can be a challenge, experts said the Friday report was more vaguely worded, suggesting that it was intended as a broad warning to the United States and South Korea not to stray too closely to North Korean territory.

“It is a message that North Korea will not yield if it believes the joint military training infringes on its sovereignty,” said Kim Keun-shik, a professor of international relations at Kyungnam University.

To thwart another North Korean attack, the South Korean president, Mr. Lee has ordered reinforcements to the 4,000 troops now on Yeonpyeong and four nearby islands as well as more heavy weapons. But his government has come under intense domestic criticism for what has been depicted as an inadequate retaliation for Tuesday's attack, which South Korean troops on the island responded to with a smaller artillery counterattack.

Stung by the criticism, Mr. Lee replaced his defense minister, appointing Kim Kwan-jin, a former chairman of South Korea's joint chiefs of staff. Earlier on Friday, South Korean officials named another appointee for the spot, but then withdrew the name when he apparently failed to pass an internal vetting process.

South Koreans have begun to get their first look at the damage to Yeonpyeong's small fishing town from reports by South Korean journalists describing a scene of devastation with dozens of homes burned out or flattened by the hour-long attack.

Television footage showed streets in the island's main fishing port deserted by all but stray dogs after most civilians had evacuated the island. The island's garrison of marines remained on high alert, with South Korean officials saying they were on the lookout for a reaction from North Korea to Sunday's military exercise.

While the island is heavily fortified with artillery batteries and machine gun nests, South Korean officials said its forces were unable to fully respond to Tuesday's attack because they have been trained and equipped to thwart a North Korean amphibious assault, not fight off a prolonged artillery bombardment.

While the garrison did shoot back with 155-millimeter cannons, officials in the Blue House, South Korea's version of the White House, said plans are afoot to reinforce the garrison with other types of heavy weaponry.

In his visit to the island, General Sharp expressed sympathy for those killed and said many lives appeared to be saved by the quick response of local civil defense officials, who herded townspeople into bomb shelters. He also called on North Korean People's Army to refrain from further attacks and to hold talks on the incident.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/world/asia/27korea.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Kristin Hermeler, 29-years-old, took her own life last week in Colorado.

Twins' Suicide Pact and the Columbine Connection by Robert Mackey Reuters November 22, 2010 Twin sisters from Australia, who complained of bullying as teenagers, might have chosen to shoot themselves at a gun range outside Denver last week because of its proximity to Columbine High School, site of the 1999 massacre that became a global news event.

The connection to the rampage emerged on Saturday, when a Denver television station reported that the sisters had contacted a classmate of the two gunmen who embarked on the deadly rampage in the months after the shootings.

KCNC-TV, a CBS affiliate in Denver, obtained a letter that Kristin Hermeler sent to Brooks Brown, a classmate of the two Columbine students who killed 12 people before turning their guns on themselves, in June, 1999. The station also reported that investigators had discovered a magazine cover about the Columbine shootings among the twins' possessions in their hotel room in Colorado.

The Hermeler twins were 18 at the time of the Columbine massacre, which was carried out by Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17. Their classmate, Mr. Brown, had appeared on television after the murders to describe how he had been threatened by Mr. Harris before the shootings but had given him another chance to be friends.

In two letters from Ms. Hermeler to Mr. Brown, reproduced on The Denver Post's Web site, she thanked him, “for not judging and for accepting Eric and Dylan who were, from what I have heard, rejected and victimized by so many others.” She also wrote, “As someone who has been rejected, victimized and ostracized in their life, I would like to thank you.”

According to Mr. Brown, Ms. Hermeler also told him that she and her sister had been bullied, the Denver newspaper reported. In another letter, Ms. Hermeler wrote:

The Oprah Winfrey Show, which had you and your family on, aired in Australia on the 28th June. In this show you said that, like Eric and Dylan, you felt like everyone hates you. Words could never tell you how sorry I am that you feel like anyone hates you. It completely baffles me as to why anyone would hate someone when they don't know them, it sickens me. The only reason that I can think of in, as Charles Spence said, at Princess Diana's funeral, that goodness “is threatening to those on the opposite end of the moral spectrum.”

Australia's Sydney Morning Herald reported that the sister who survived was asked about Columbine “during her emotional two-hour interview with Araphaoe County Sheriff's office investigators last Thursday.” The newspaper added: “This was after a copy of a Time magazine cover showing both the killers and victims of the Columbine massacre was found in their luggage. In an early police account, she was said to have responded that she did not care about it and that it happened a long time ago.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/twins-suicide-pact-and-the-columbine-connection/?pagemode=print

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OPINION

The Real Threat to America

LONDON — The full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs that are fast becoming the norm at U.S. airports — just in time for Thanksgiving! — do at least provide the answer to what should be done with Osama bin Laden if he's ever captured: Rotate him in perpetuity through this security hell, “groin checks” and all.

He'll crumple fast and wonder that 19 young guys in four planes could so warp the nervous system of the world's most powerful nation that it has empowered zealous bureaucrats to trample on the liberties for which Americans give thanks this week.

In his stupor, arms raised as his body gets “imaged,” arms outstretched through “enhanced” patting, bin Laden might also wonder at just how stupid it is to assemble huge crowds at the Transportation Security Administration's airport checkpoints, as if hundreds of people on planes were the only hundreds of people who make plausible targets for terrorists.

It seems Abdulmutallab, a name T.S.A. agents must now memorize, is to blame. Abdulmutallab is the failed Nigerian “underwear bomber” of last Christmas. He joins the failed shoe bomber and failed shampoo-and-bottled-water bombers in a remarkable success: adding another blanket layer of T.S.A checks, including dubious gropes, to the daily humiliations of travelers.

Whether or not these explosive devices were ever actually operable remains a matter of dispute, just as it remains a mystery that the enemy — if as powerful as portrayed — has not contrived a single terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11. What is not in doubt is an old rule: Give a bureaucrat a big stick and a big budget, allow said bureaucrat to trade in the limitless currency of human anxiety, and the masses will soon be intimidated by the Department of Fear.

Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's notorious secret police chief, once said, “Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.” The T.S.A. seems to operate on the basis of an adapted maxim: “Show me the security check and I'll find you the excuse.”

Anyone who has watched T.S.A. agents spending 10 minutes patting down 80-year-old grandmothers, or seen dismayed youths being ordered back into the scanner booth by agents connected wirelessly to other invisible agents gazing at images of these people in a state of near-nakedness, has to ask: What form of group madness is it that forsakes judgment and discernment for process run amok?

I don't doubt the patriotism of the Americans involved in keeping the country safe, nor do I discount the threat, but I am sure of this: The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year. One of the people pushing them most energetically is Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security.

He's the co-founder and managing principal of the Chertoff Group, which provides security advice. One of its clients is California-based Rapiscan Systems, part of the OSI Systems corporation, that makes many of the “whole body” scanners being installed.

Chertoff has recently been busy rubbishing Martin Broughton, the wise British Airways chairman who said many security checks were redundant — calling him “ill-informed.” Early this year Chertoff called on Congress to “fund a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems.”

Rapiscan and its adviser the Chertoff Group will certainly profit from the deployment underway (some of the machines were bought with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Americans as a whole will not.

Rapiscan: Say the name slowly. It conjures up a sinister science fiction. When a government has a right to invade the bodies of its citizens, security has trumped freedom.

Intelligence has improved beyond measure since 9/11. It can be used far more effectively at airports. Instead of humiliating everyone, focus on the very small proportion of travelers who might present a threat.

You can't talk down fear simply by calling terrorists “violent extremists,” or getting rid of the color-coded terrorism alert system, as the Obama administration has done. During the Bosnian war, besieged Sarajevans had a word — “inat” — for the contempt-cum-spite they showed barbarous gunners on the hills by dressing and carrying on as normal. Inat is what Americans should show the jihadist cave-dwellers.

So I give thanks this week for the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

I give thanks for Benjamin Franklin's words after the 1787 Constitutional Convention describing the results of its deliberations: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

To keep it, push back against enhanced patting, Chertoff's naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

Still Not Free

In September, Sarah Shourd was freed from Iran's infamous Evin prison, but she's not really free. Her fiancé, Shane Bauer, and their friend, Josh Fattal, are still languishing in a tiny cell in Tehran.

Ms. Shourd, Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal were arrested in July 2009 while they hiked along Iran's border with Iraq. Iranian officials claimed that the three crossed into Iran to spy but have never offered any proof. In New York City this week, Ms. Shourd said “there was no indication” of a border where they ran into trouble. She earlier told The Times that they had crossed into Iran inadvertently — and only because a border guard of unknown nationality gestured for them to approach.

Iran's leaders claim that the case is in the hands of the judiciary, but there is no doubt that it is being manipulated for political ends. Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal were to finally go on trial this month, but the proceedings have now been postponed until February. They have never been allowed to meet privately with their Iranian lawyer, making it hard to plan a defense.

This game has gone on long enough. Whatever dispute Tehran has with Washington, ordinary citizens should not be used as political pawns. The conditions under which they are being held are abusive and arbitrary. Prisoners are supposed to be permitted visits and phone calls with family. The Americans have been allowed one call and one visit from their mothers.

Last week, there was a hopeful sign: Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's High Council for Human Rights and a member of a politically influential family, told NBC News that the hikers might not be spies after all. He said that he hoped the case could be resolved before trial.

Finally, even Iranian officials are acknowledging that the case is baseless. They should send Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26fri4.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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SC man accused of threatening to shoot president

The Associated Press

November 26, 2010

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- A South Carolina man has been arrested and accused of threatening to kill President Barack Obama.

WYFF-TV reported that a sworn statement from the Secret Service says 78-year-old Michael Stephen Bowden of Woodruff was arrested earlier this month. The Secret Service says Bowden told a nurse at a Veterans Affairs clinic in the northwestern part of the state that he was thinking of killing the president.

Agents say they found three handguns and a rifle under Bowden's bed, and a dozen other guns in the house.

WYFF reported Bowden was in the Navy for four years and was a former New York City policeman and fire captain.

Kerry Bowden says the family didn't know his father had suicidal tendencies in April until the agents arrived Nov. 16.

Bowden will undergo a mental evaluation. It was unclear if he has an attorney.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/26/AR2010112601326_pf.html

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Search Halted for Missing Student Jenni-Lyn Watson, 20

With Few Leads, Investigation Approaches One-Week Milestone

Police halted the ground search Thanksgiving Day for a young New York woman who went missing almost a week ago, after coming from college for the holiday break.

Over the course of the past two days, D'Eredita said, search teams have covered more than 600 acres, focusing on a swath of land where Watson was believed to have been last, according to cell phone records.

Police are asking local residents to call with any tips, regarding anything that might seem out of the ordinary, or information pertaining to a dark colored pickup truck last seen near Watson's home.

Some 600 students attended a vigil Wednesday night at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., for the pretty and popular ballet dancer.

Neighbors said it was not like the young woman to be out of touch with her family for so long.

"She's a ballerina, a wonderful student, keeps in touch with her family, loves her family. It's very out of character for her not to contact anybody," Stacey Kinahan told ABC affiliate WSYR.

Since her disappearance, Watson's friends and family continue to hand out more than 1,000 missing person fliers daily.

A Facebook group has been created to help find Watson. It now has more than 17,000 members.

Watson was last seen at home Friday morning with her parents and 17-year-old sister. When they returned home Friday afternoon, Watson was gone, along with her cell phone. Watson's purse, wallet and house keys were still at home.

Sheriff's Dept. Says to Stay Clear of Search Area

Authorities are urging people to call if they have information but not to look for Watson on their own, saying it would interfere with the investigation.

Jenni-Lyn's mother, Jackie Watson, delivered the same message in a written statement: "Thank you for all of the offers of help and assistance. It is greatly appreciated. At this time, we ask that you respect the advice of the Sheriff's Department and do not go near the designated search area. Professionals are covering that part of the search. However, what you can do is check any property you own, to include buildings, basements, sheds or places that you do not normally spend time in.

Police would not confirm if they had a suspect in the case.

Friends say they would not give up searching for Watson.

"I'm hoping that someone will see Jenni-Lyn's photo, recognize seeing her in the past day or two or three because it's been four, and report it immediately to the Sheriff's Department and it will be a good lead to bring her back home," Kinahan told WSYR.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/search-halted-missing-student-jenni-lyn-watson-20/story?id=12244752

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It May Be Time for Trains, Ships and Mass Transit to Use Body Scanners, Napolitano Says

November 25, 2010 | FoxNews.com

In an interview on "Charlie Rose" that aired Monday, Napolitano said terrorists will "continue to probe the system and try to find a way through" when asked what terrorists will be thinking in the future.

"I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime," she said. "So what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?"

Napolitano's comments came as outrage grows over what some call intrusive X-ray scans and pat-downs that the Transportation Security Administration has used to screen airline passengers.

The full-body scanners show a person's contours on a computer in a private room removed from security checkpoints. But critics say they amount to virtual strip searches. Some have complained that the new enhanced pat-downs are humiliating and intrusive, too.

TSA officials say the procedures are necessary to ward off terror attacks like the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane last Christmas, allegedly by a Nigerian man who stashed explosives in his underwear.

And the procedures may be on the rise. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, authored a bill in September that would allow testing of body scanners at certain federal buildings.

Despite attempts online to organize Thanksgiving travelers for a protest dubbed "National Opt-Out Day" on one of the busiest days of the year, very few passengers opted out of the full-body scans.

Napolitano has defended the screening procedures and criticized the protests.

"I really want to say, look, let's be realistic and use our common sense," she said last week, explaining that the screening technology has been in development since before the failed Christmas Day bombing attack last year.

"This is not about the government itself," she said. "We all have a role to play in security."

"And so I really regret some groups saying, 'Well, we don't want to be a part of that,'" she added. "I regret it because it's not what we're all about. What we're all about is shared responsibility."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/25/body-scanners-headed-trains-ships-mass-transit/

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Breaking the cycle of crime

Advocates: Offering support for juvenile offenders can turn lives around

Kids who have gotten into trouble with the law and spent time behind bars aren't exactly poster children for today's youths, says Indiana Juvenile Justice Task Force head Bill Glick.

They have trouble finding jobs. They often lack education. Many of them end up back in prison.

But Glick and supporters of the Indianapolis-based statewide agency think youngsters who have been through the juvenile justice system need a helping hand despite reductions in taxpayer support over the years. Doing so, they say, can help the state save money in the long run.

"For our kids, it boils down all too often to the fact that nobody wants to pay for their services. We know there are effective front-end solutions; we just can't provide the services without community generosity coming in," Glick said.

The task force is counting on such generosity during a fundraiser Thursday at the Jazz Kitchen in Broad Ripple. It also hopes to raise awareness of the agency and its efforts to help kids after they get out of prison.

More than 1,200 young people are released back into society from Indiana juvenile correction facilities every year.

"These young people need advocates," Glick said. "We're the only agency in the state and one of only a couple dozen in the country that focuses our attention on the needs and rights of kids that are in the system."

The group says its efforts have shown results. A 2004 study found that fewer than one-quarter of juveniles who went through the task force's Aftercare for Indiana through Mentoring program were re-incarcerated after three years. That compares with 60 percent recidivism for juvenile offenders who did not get that kind of help.

The AIM program costs about $1,500 per juvenile. The at-home counseling services cost about $60 a day.

Taxpayers spend about $170 a day to incarcerate a juvenile.

"We know it's a tough economy, but what we are trying to do is keep your neighborhood safe and provide real rehabilitative services for kids who have wound up in the deep end of the system," Glick said.
Another of the group's projects is training young people in job and business skills. The New Path Designs print shop is gearing up for the holiday season, and the youths have designed and are selling Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa cards, Glick said.

Susan Strange knows how difficult it can be for young people to find help after release from prison. She took what she calls a "tour" of state juvenile detention facilities while she was dealing with her son's legal problems about seven years ago.

"These kids have no one," said Strange, 60. "If they get out and all they have is their past, then they will be living off the taxpayers -- maybe forever."

Strange went from being a client to joining the board of the task force, which provides mentoring, counseling and home-based family therapy to Indiana's incarcerated youths.

"We're trying to provide a positive future. We're trying very hard for them not to return to the streets," she said.

Strange's son Andrew, 25, was sent to the Department of Correction at age 14. The Hamilton County resident visited her son as he bounced to facilities as far away as Wabash and South Bend.

Andrew Strange benefited from the mentoring and other services provided by the task force, Strange said.

"A lot of good does come from it," she said. "It can't be the system working alone. It has to be the system working with the family and with organizations like the Juvenile Justice Task Force."

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