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March 13, 2011

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Japan faces soaring number of feared dead

One police official says the toll could hit 10,000 in his prefecture alone. The reeling nation also contends with a possible meltdown in at least one reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Dozens are believed to have been exposed to radiation.

The number of missing and feared dead in Japan's epic earthquake soared Sunday as a reeling nation struggled to contain an unprecedented nuclear crisis, pluck people in tsunami-inundated areas to safety, quell raging blazes and provide aid to hundreds of thousands of frightened people left homeless and dazed.

A police chief in the battered Miyagi prefecture told disaster relief officials that he expected the death toll to rise to 10,000 in his prefecture alone, the Kyodo News Agency said.

As the second full post-quake day dawned, authorities said about 400,000 people had been forced to flee the giant swath of destruction -- more than half of them evacuees from the area surrounding the Fukushima nuclear complex, 150 miles north of Tokyo. The crisis intensified as officials reported that three of the six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant were in trouble, and that for second day in a row, a building housing one of the reactors could explode.

Photos: Scenes from the earthquake

Videos of the earthquake

With punishing aftershocks continuing to jolt the quake zone, the Japan Meteorological Agency revised the magnitude of the earthquake to 9.0, Kyodo News agency said. The upgrade made the quake one of the largest ever recorded in terms of magnitude.

Los Angeles Times

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Japan earthquake shifted Earth on its axis

Scientists in Pasadena say data from the temblor will show how Earth is deformed during massive earthquakes at sites where one plate is sliding under the other, including the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Friday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan shifted Earth on its axis and shortened the length of a day by a hair. In the future, scientists said, it will provide an unusually precise view of how Earth is deformed during massive earthquakes at sites where one plate is sliding under another, including the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

The unusually rich detail comes from an extensive network of sensors that were placed at sites across Japan after that country's Kobe earthquake of 1995, a magnitude 6.8 quake that killed more than 6,000 people because its epicenter was near a major city.

"The Japanese have the best seismic information in the world," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Survey, at a Saturday news conference at Caltech in Pasadena. "This is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever."

Already, just over 36 hours after the quake, data-crunchers had determined that the temblor's force moved parts of eastern Japan as much as 12 feet closer to North America, scientists said — and that Japan has shifted downward about two feet.

Jones said that USGS had determined that the entire earthquake sequence — including associated foreshocks and aftershocks — had so far included 200 temblors of magnitude 5 or larger, 20 of which occurred before the big quake hit. She said the aftershocks were continuing at a rapid pace and decreasing in frequency although not in magnitude, all of which is to be expected.

Los Angeles Times

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Japan quake preparedness no match for 8.9

In a nation where earthquake drills are part of the culture, human emotion nevertheless took over when the quake and tsunami struck.

Earthquakes dwell deep in the Japanese imagination.

No country may be better prepared for a major earthquake than Japan. Seismic standards for construction are among the strictest in the world. From a young age, Japanese learn to dive under desks to protect themselves in a quake. The nation has a state-of-the-art tsunami warning system.

That preparation undoubtedly saved many lives Friday, when a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off Japan's main island, shaking buildings in a large swath of the country and sending a 30-foot tsunami onto a populated stretch of coast.

But an uncomfortable truth may emerge from this quake, which killed hundreds of people and caused damage that could mount into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The lesson is that there's only so much that disaster preparedness can do. At some point, humans — even those in an affluent society with 21st century technology and peerless infrastructure — respond to deeper need to panic or flee.

The scenes from Japan captured the almost incomprehensible power of one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The tsunami swept away houses, cars and ships like so much debris in a storm channel. Roads split apart; buildings buckled. And faces registered the shock and bewilderment of people whose disaster training vaporized in the violence of the moment.

Los Angeles Times

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Proposals Could Make It Harder to Leave Prison

Danny Bell sat on a brick ledge outside the plain, beige Greyhound station a block from the prison complex in Huntsville and, from behind dark shades, soaked in the sights and sounds of a world he had not seen in more than two decades.

Mr. Bell spent 21 years in prison for murder, the result of “a youth of ignorance,” he said. He was arrested in 1989 at age 24 and left prison March 4 at age 45 with $100 in his pocket and a bus ticket to Dallas to see his favorite girl: his grandmother. “She ain't gonna let me out of her sight,” Mr. Bell said, flashing a wide smile with one missing front tooth and another capped in gold, with a star cutout in the center.

Even if it meant a job taking out the trash at McDonald's, Mr. Bell said, he was determined to stay out of prison. “You go through too much,” he said.

But like many of the nearly 130 men who walked out of the Walls Unit that day, Mr. Bell had only a vague notion of how to re-enter the free world. He would stay with his grandmother, take any work he could find and get a lawyer to sue the state for keeping him locked up too long — a paperwork mix-up by the state, he said, kept him behind bars an extra 17 months. “I always said to myself I wanted to work with teenagers,” Mr. Bell said, thinking aloud about what kind of career he might like to have.

Bill Kleiber has met and prayed with thousands of Danny Bells in the decade since he got out of prison and started working with the Restorative Justice Ministries Network in Huntsville to help other ex-convicts. They come out hoping never to return, but find few resources to keep them from repeating the mistakes that got them there to begin with.

New York Times

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COMMENTARY: Women's Day slipped by too quietly considering oppression

International Women's Day

STOP THE HORROR

International Women's Day went by this week with nary a mention in the media, much less the kind of front page recognition that comes with other people's “Days” – though you gotta love Steven Tyler for giving it a shout out during American Idol on Wednesday night.

Any “Day” for women with global scope cries out for an answer to the question, “Is there an issue of such global magnitude, it deserves to be prioritized for special attention on International Women's Day?”

There are plenty of issues from which to choose: Domestic and sexual violence, unequal pay, “honor” killings, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking, etc. Some countries have bigger problems than others but even in the United States where we hold ourselves out as having the best legal system on the planet, women are too often brutalized with impunity. Just last month, it was reported that 344 sexual assaults were reported to New Hampshire police in 2006, but very few were prosecuted – and only 13 ended in conviction.

If this is what the best legal system has to offer – just imagine the unconscionable things going on in nations with far fewer resources, struggling economies and cultures where women are coerced into subjugation through laws that legitimize unfair treatment.

Enterprise News.com

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Red Cross warns of hoax emails concerning missing Japanese earthquake victims

The International Red Cross, Red Crescent has warned email users to be vigilant of hoax emails purporting to be from, or in aid of, victims of the Japanese earthquake.

The warning was posted on the International Red Cross, Red Crescent's FamilyLinks web service website.

This is a free service from the Red Cross, Red Crescent organisation which attempts to connect family and friends who have been separated due to the earthquake and tsunami. It is similar to Google's People Finder.

You may receive fraudulent e-mails regarding missing persons. If a stranger contacts you asking for money, please notify us immediately by E-mail.

Sociable.co

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March 12, 2011

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Obama offers quake-ravaged Japan any assistance needed

Speaking at a Washington news conference, President Obama says the U.S. is marshaling forces to help deal with the aftermath of the magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan. U.S. ships carrying aid are en route, and the Air Force has delivered coolant to a damaged nuclear plant.

President Obama on Friday offered earthquake-ravaged Japan any assistance needed to cope with the massive 8.9 temblor that has devastated the Asian nation, including technical aid to cope with a damaged nuclear power plant that has led to the evacuation of thousands for fear of a radiation leakage. U.S. Air Force planes have already delivered coolant to the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced.

Photos: Scenes from the earthquake

No radiation leakage has been detected, but pressure inside a reactor at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant rose after the cooling system was knocked out by the quake Friday afternoon Japan time, according to the plant's parent company, Tokyo Electric Power."Obviously we have to take all necessary precautions," Obama said at a Washington news conference at which he talked about assistance being provided to Japan. Obama said the Defense Department was marshaling U.S. forces in the Pacific to deliver relief and help with evacuations. One U.S. aircraft carrier was already off the coast of Japan and another was en route to the disaster scene, the president said.

Videos of the earthquake

At least 45 countries have assembled relief teams, including 68 search-and-rescue operations, and were awaiting Japan's direction on where to deploy, said Elisabeth Byrs of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that the world body was ready to help Japan in any way necessary, including humanitarian assistance, and was closely monitoring aftershocks throughout the day.

Los Angeles Times

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California tsunami advisory enters second day; boats, docks damaged in Ventura Harbor

A tsunami advisory remained in effect along Southern California's coast Saturday as the National Weather Service reported continued wave surges that caused new damage. The Weather Service urged people to stay away from beaches and piers.

Tidal gauges are still reporting surge activity at all points along Southern California, the NWS said in a statement. At Ventura Harbor, officials said the surges combined with high tide to break a dock in half, sink a 16-foot boat and break a few other boats from their moorings. Friday afternoon on Catalina Island, swells toppled about 10 boats and loosened pier moorings. Officials have not said how long the tsunami advisory would last.

The Coast Guard called off the search Friday for a man who was swept out to sea near Crescent City, a town of 7,500 people 20 miles south of the Oregon border. The man had been taking photographs with two friends at the mouth of the Klamath River when they were pulled into the ocean. The friends were able to swim to safety.

Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in four counties, citing "conditions of extreme peril to the infrastructure and the safety of the persons and properties within the counties of Del Norte, Humboldt, San Mateo and Santa Cruz."

Los Angeles Times

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Will Angelenos learn from the Japan quake?

The Japan earthquake is a warning and a reminder that we live in earthquake country too.

As many of us watched the coverage of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Friday, we were staggered and horrified by the images of death and destruction. The magnitude 8.9 quake is the largest to hit Japan in more than 150 years and the seventh largest in recorded history. The tsunami produced even greater damage and loss of life. The final figures won't be known for many days, yet it seems clear that hundreds and possibly thousands of people are dead, injured or missing, and the economic toll will be in the millions. The quake will have a severe effect on the Japanese economy, the third largest in the world, and it is already having a global effect.

Despite the catastrophic effects that the quake has on Japan, it could have been far worse. Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, and it has better building codes and better civic preparedness than just about any other nation. The Japanese take their earthquakes very seriously and do far more drills and inspections than Californians. Yet even some of their earthquake-resistant structures could not survive the shaking of a quake this big, just as their buildings and overpasses failed catastrophically during the 1995 earthquake in Kobe. From all accounts, there were adequate tsunami warnings in most regions, but those people closest to the offshore earthquake had almost no time to react or flee, and there was nothing they could do when the huge waves swept inland carrying big fishing boats and tons of debris.

Los Angeles Times

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LAPD limits impounding of unlicensed drivers' cars

Previous policy for sobriety checkpoints had been criticized by immigration advocacy groups.

Under criticism that it was unfairly targeting undocumented immigrants, the Los Angeles Police Department on Friday announced changes to its rules for impounding cars of unlicensed drivers at sobriety checkpoints.

Previously, LAPD officers at such checkpoints followed stringent protocols that called for them to impound a car whenever the driver was found not to have a valid license, regardless of whether the driver had been drinking.

Those rules have drawn the ire of immigration advocacy groups that said they disproportionately targeted undocumented immigrants, who are not able to obtain licenses legally in nearly all U.S. states. Once a vehicle is impounded, law enforcement agencies often require it to remain locked up for at least a month and charge the owner hefty fees to release it.

The new LAPD guidelines soften the department's stance somewhat. Police will be required to make an attempt to contact the registered owner of the stopped vehicle. If the owner is a licensed driver and can respond to the checkpoint in "a reasonable period of time," the officers will release the car to him or her. If the owner is unlicensed, officers will permit another person who is a licensed driver to take the car.

If no one with a license is available, police will impound a vehicle. In any case, police will issue a citation to the unlicensed driver.

Los Angeles Times

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Human Rights Advocates Vanish as China Intensifies Crackdown

BEIJING — Teng Biao is no stranger to the wrath of the Chinese authorities.

One of a handful of lawyers in China pressing for human rights and the rule of law, he has been repeatedly detained, beaten and threatened with death.

But this latest spell of detention — he has been held by Beijing security officers for three weeks, with no word from him or his captors — has struck a new chord of anxiety in his wife and friends.

“This time is really strange,” said his wife, Wang Ling. “In the past, they held him only a few days, and we knew for what reason. But this time, I've been told nothing. No news, no calls, no result so far. I have no idea at all.”

Mr. Teng is one of many prominent rights defenders and advocates who have disappeared and are being detained, some with no legal authority, in what critics say is one of the harshest crackdowns in many years. The detainees' relatives and supporters say previous periods of confinement did not last this long and in such total silence. The crackdown is part of a broader push to enforce social stability that has grown more intense in the past three weeks.

This is an especially uneasy time in China, with anonymous calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” similar to the uprisings in the Middle East popping up on some Chinese-language Web sites. That has coincided with the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and a consultative legislature in Beijing. Security officers have also clamped down on foreign journalists in the strictest such action in recent memory.

New York Times

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Muslims on Capitol Hill Find Hearings Dispiriting

One otherwise innocuous day of his childhood, Suhail A. Khan clicked the family television onto an episode of “Schoolhouse Rock.” The screen filled with a drawing of the Capitol in Washington, the American flag flapping above the portico. On the steps hunched a rolled-up piece of paper that, in cartoon style, had limbs, a face and a voice.

“I'm just a bill,” sang the paper, which represented an item of proposed legislation. “Yes, I'm only a bill. And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey to the capital city.”

Mr. Khan thought back to that unlikely presentiment in 1995, as he completed his own journey to the Capitol, entering as a staff member for Tom Campbell, a Republican elected to the House of Representatives from Northern California. The child of Indian immigrants, the grandchild of uneducated strivers, Mr. Khan marveled that he — “someone with a funny name and no connections or money” — could be doing something so important.

As he set about helping Representative Campbell push forward the Contract With America, a conservative agenda that Mr. Khan heartily endorsed, he also came to realize he just might be the only Muslim on the Hill. Eventually, he met a Muslim aide to a Texas congressman, and the two of them would regularly pray in a Capitol stairwell.

Word of mouth did its work and by 1997, Mr. Khan and a dozen other Muslim staff members were holding the Friday juma service in a nearby Congressional office building. Then, around 1998, Newt Gingrich as speaker assigned the Muslim worshipers their own conference room for services. And even as Mr. Khan moved on to the White House to serve President George W. Bush, he regularly attended juma in the Capitol.

“When we work in a building that represents democracy for the world,” Mr. Khan, 41, and now a fellow at a policy organization, said in a telephone interview this week, “we want to show it's about religious freedom, including for me, personally.”

New York Times

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A Legal Privilege That Some Lawmakers See Broadly

PHOENIX — The majority leader of the Arizona State Senate scuffled with his girlfriend during an argument on the side of the road late one night recently. He hit her and she hit him, according to the police, but the two suffered dramatically different fates.

The majority leader, Scott Bundgaard, told Phoenix police officers that he was a state senator, and he cited a provision of the Arizona Constitution that gives lawmakers limited immunity from arrest, the police said. Police Department lawyers were consulted, and they ordered that Mr. Bundgaard be uncuffed and released.

Aubry Ballard, Mr. Bundgaard's girlfriend of about eight months, on the other hand, was arrested for domestic violence and spent the night in jail.

Just how protected lawmakers should be from prosecution is an issue that many states grapple with, said Steven F. Huefner, a law professor at Ohio State University who studies the issue.

He said the privilege, which is included in the United States Constitution and in many state constitutions, was designed to protect lawmakers from civil matters that would interfere with their legislative duties. “The legislative privilege should not become a get-out-of-jail-free card or escape-from-ever-being-put-in-jail card for state legislators,” he said during a presentation on the issue during the National Conference of State Legislators Summit last year.

The special treatment that Mr. Bundgaard received, and the domestic violence accusations against him, have drawn considerable criticism here, with some of the senator's colleagues and women's groups calling on him to resign, or at least step down from the Senate leadership.

New York Times

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Facebook Users Who Are Under Age Raise Concerns

SAN FRANCISCO — The fake ID has gone digital, and spread to elementary school.

Across the nation, millions of young people are lying about their ages so they can create accounts on popular sites like Facebook and Myspace. These sites require users to be 13 or older, to avoid federal regulations that apply to sites with younger members. But to children, that rule is a minor obstacle that stands between them and what everybody else is doing.

Parents regularly go along with the age inflation, giving permission and helping children set up accounts. They often see it as a minor fib that is necessary to let their children participate in the digital world.

Plenty of people fudge the truth about their age, whether to buy beer or project a younger image to potential mates. But researchers and other critics say allowing children to break the rules sends the wrong message. And, they argue, it sets children loose in a digital world they may not be prepared for — exposing them to the real-life threats of inappropriate content, contact from strangers and the growing incidents of bullying by computer.

“Not only are kids lying about their age, but more often than not, parents teach them to lie about their age,” said Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft.

Ms. Boyd said this ran counter to the goal of getting parents more constructively involved in children's online activities, which was one aim of the legislation that spawned the age restrictions in the first place.

New York Times

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Honor Giffords, learn CPR

First aid and CPR skills of bystanders helped save the lives of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of a mass shooting in Tucson earlier this year. So the American Red Cross Grand Canyon Chapter is offering free training in those skills on March 19.

Red Cross chapters at more than 100 locations across the country will do the same on Gabrielle Giffords Honorary Save-a-Life Saturday.

Training will last 45 minutes to one hour and will include instruction in hands-only CPR, controlling external bleeding and managing shock.

For a list of locations and times and an online registration form, go to www.arizonaredcross.org/savealifesaturday. Those unable to attend can also visit www.redcross.org/savealife to see lifesaving skills being taught.

Safeway and Walgreens are sponsoring the free training. “We can think of no better way to honor Congresswoman Giffords and the other Tucson victims than to equip a greater number of citizens with life savings skills,” said Safeway Chairman and CEO Steve Burd.

East Valley Tribune.com

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UPDATE On The Number Of Missing People In Japan

Heartbreaking : While the death toll remains in the low hundreds right now (officially) it seems sure to spiral much higher.

According to the Kyodo News Agency, via BBC. the official missing persons tally is around 88,000.

It's well known that a lot of people are simply stranded in the cities, including Tokyo, and in many cases the people are probaby safe. It's not clear how they're included in the number.

Click here to see terrifying video of the tsunami

Olathe Police Use New Technology to Alert Community

OLATHE, KS - If you live in Olathe, you can now get up to date information about wanted persons, traffic alerts, missing people and criminal activity in your neighborhood and around the city all free of charge. "With technology being what it is and the need to keep in contact with our community being so important, we felt that it was critical that we find a tool to do that in real time," said Sergeant John Roland with the Olathe Police Department.

Nixle is a new, web-based communication system that allows police to send out customized messages to residents via cell phone, text or e-mail messages. There are four types alerts, advisories, community messages and traffic advisories. "It's important to keep in contact with our community and provide them with as much up to date information as possible and also to help us in solving crimes as well and helping the community over all," said Roland.

He said it gives the police department that many more sets of eyes to help out in the community. And by doing so Roland said it will improve safety and police response time. Several police departments across the country are using Nixle but few are taking advantage of it around the metro. People can sign up for a specific neighborhood within a quarter mile of their home or the entire city. Roland says the ultimate goal is for the police department and Olathe citizens to work together to help prevent, reduce and solve crime.

Click here for a list of cities in the metro that use Nixle.

Click here to sign up.

FOX 4 KC.com

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The White House Celebrates Emergency Preparedness for People with Disabilities

Many of you may remember us marking the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act this past July in a wonderful and moving event at the White House. On that day, we reflected on how far this historic law brought us in living up to our civil rights promises for all Americans – and how far we still have to go to make sure that every person in this country – regardless of their race, background, income and whether or not they have a disability – has equal access to all of the opportunities our great nation has to offer.

As the President put it better than anyone: “To move America forward. That's what we did with the ADA. That is what we do today. And that's what we're going to do tomorrow -- together.” And today marked another historic day in this effort as FEMA and the National Disability Rights Network came together, along with other leaders and advocates from across the disability community, to sign a memorandum of agreement – an agreement that solidifies a partnership in working together to make sure we are planning for and meeting the needs of people with disabilities before, during, and after disasters strike.

It sounds like common sense, but the unfortunate truth is that for years the needs of people with disabilities were more of an afterthought during disasters. Not enough was done to make sure that shelters planned for the access and functional needs of individuals who might require wheelchairs to be replaced or beds at a certain height if it was necessary to evacuate during a disaster. Residents who were blind or deaf, and those with intellectual disabilities didn't have access to critical information about evacuation routes or other warnings. And in some cases, accessible transportation for people with disabilities just wasn't factored into planning at all. This was largely due to a simple lack of coordination and upfront planning for the whole of community.

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ICE, ATF arrest police chief, mayor and trustee of New Mexico town

8 others were indicted in firearms trafficking case as part of a multi-agency investigation

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - The police chief, mayor and a trustee of the village of Columbus, N.M., were among 10 people arrested March 10 for their roles in a firearms-trafficking ring, which was the focus of an investigation by special agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

A federal grand jury in New Mexico indicted 11 members of the trafficking ring on firearms and smuggling charges. The criminal enterprise was based in Columbus, a small border village across from Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico.

The defendants charged in the 84-count indictment include Columbus Police Chief Angelo Vega, Mayor Eddie Espinoza, and Blas Gutierrez, village trustee in Columbus. Defendant Ignacio Villalobos has not been apprehended and is considered a fugitive.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and the U.S. Attorney's Las Cruces Branch Office participated in the yearlong investigation.

ICE

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March 11, 2011

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Magnitude 8.9 earthquake rocks Japan

The quake triggers a tsunami that threatens much of the Pacific. In Tokyo, all trains are halted and black plumes of smoke rise over the skyline. Initial reports say dozens have died; scores are reported missing.

The worst earthquake in generations struck off the northeast coast of Japan on Friday, setting off a devastating tsunami that swallowed swaths of coastal territory and fanned out across the Pacific Ocean, threatening everything in its path.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake -- the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the biggest in Japan in 140 years -- struck at 2:46 p.m. local time, shaking buildings violently in Tokyo for several minutes and sending millions fleeing for higher ground.

Initial reports say dozens have died, though that number is expected to rise dramatically as more aftershocks and waves batter the region. Japanese media is reporting scores of people missing, likely buried under rubble or swept away by waves as high as 33 feet.

Nearby islands are bracing for the tsunami and warnings have been issued for 53 countries including ones as far away as Colombia and Peru.

Japanese television showed aerial footage of an ominous 13-foot muddy wave washing across land along the northeastern coast near the epicenter, which appears to have sustained the worst damage.

Los Angeles Times

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Tsunami warning issued for northern and central California and Oregon; Southern California on watch

A tsunami warning has been issued for the central and northern California coast and Oregon, the National Weather Service announced early Friday.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, an emergency warning system announcement for a tsunami warning was braodcast just after 1 a.m. Waves could begin arriving in Crescent City, Calif., at 7:23 a.m. and the Bay Area shortly after 8 a.m.

A lower-level tsunami advisory was issued for the Southern California coast south of Point Concepcion, which includes southern San Luis Obispo County and the counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego.

According to the weather service, those living in tsunami warning areas near the beach or in low-lying regions “should move immediately inland to higher ground and away from all harbors and inlets, including those sheltered directly from the sea."

"Those feeling the earth shake, seeing unusual wave action, or the water level rising or receding may have only a few minutes before the tsunami arrival and should move immediately. Homes and small buildings are not designed to withstand tsunami impacts.”

Los Angeles Times

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Mexico lawmakers demand answers about guns smuggled under ATF's watch

A legislator says at least 150 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by guns trafficked by smugglers being tracked by U.S. agents from the ATF. The charges may exacerbate already rocky U.S.-Mexico relations.

Lawmakers in Mexico are demanding an investigation into a U.S. law enforcement operation that allowed hundreds of weapons to flow into the hands of Mexican drug cartels amid claims from a ranking legislator that at least 150 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by guns trafficked by smugglers under the watch of U.S. agents.

U.S. authorities say manpower shortages and the high number of weapons sold resulted in their losing track of hundreds of guns, from pistols to .50-caliber sniper rifles, though a federal agent deeply involved in the Phoenix-based operation said it was "impossible" that U.S. authorities did not know the weapons were headed for Mexico.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has acknowledged that at least 195 weapons sold in Arizona under Operation Fast and Furious have been recovered in Mexico, traced as a matter of routine via serial numbers after their recovery from crime scenes, arrests and searches.

The Mexican lawmaker did not say how the new casualty statistics were calculated. But the estimates, which could not be independently confirmed, provide troubling new fallout from an investigation in which guns sold to suspected smugglers in the U.S. already have been linked to the deaths of two U.S. law enforcement agents.

Los Angeles Times

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Let police pursue criminals, not immigrants

A federal immigration enforcement program aimed at dangerous criminals needs to be retooled or abandoned.

California reached a milestone late last month when federal immigration officials quietly announced that all 58 counties in the state are now participating in Secure Communities, a controversial program created to track and deport dangerous criminals.

Unveiled in late 2008, Secure Communities is billed as a showpiece of immigration enforcement. Under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, state and local police must check the immigration status of people who have been arrested and booked into local jails by matching fingerprints against federal databases for criminal convictions and deportation orders.

But today, Secure Communities is mired in problems. About 60% of the 87,534 immigrants deported under the program had minor or no criminal convictions, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's statistics, even though the program was aimed at dangerous criminals.

Moreover, state and local law enforcement agencies are growing increasingly uneasy about participating in a program that they say thwarts their ability to work with communities with large immigrant populations. Police are concerned that taking on the role of enforcer makes it more difficult to build trust in immigrant communities that are already fearful of reporting crimes or providing crucial information. A report released last week by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based research group, found that police chiefs across the nation worry that checking suspects' backgrounds against databases that include immigration warrants is blurring the lines between public safety and immigration enforcement.

Los Angeles Times

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Domestic Terrorism Hearing Opens With Contrasting Views on Dangers

WASHINGTON — A Congressional hearing on Thursday addressing homegrown Islamic terrorism offered divergent portraits of Muslims in America: one as law-abiding people who are unfairly made targets, the other as a community ignoring radicalization among its own and failing to confront what one witness called “this cancer that's within.”

Attacked by critics as a revival of McCarthyism, and lauded by supporters as a courageous stand against political correctness, the hearing — four hours of sometimes emotional testimony — revealed a deep partisan split in lawmakers' approach to terror investigations and their views on the role of mosques in America.

Republicans drilled down with questions about whether Muslims cooperate with law enforcement, and singled out a Washington-based advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, casting it as an ally of terrorists. Representative Peter T. King , a Long Island Republican and the Homeland Security Committee chairman who convened the session, declared it a “discredited group,” an assertion the organization's executive director, Nihad Awad, dismissed as “political theater.”

Democrats sought to put the spotlight on the lone law enforcement witness, Sheriff Leroy D. Baca of Los Angeles, who testified that Muslims do cooperate, and they cited a Duke University study that found that 40 percent of foiled domestic terror plots had been thwarted with the help of Muslims.

“A Muslim is on the panel! A Muslim has testified!” thundered Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, the Texas Democrat, referring to two of the witnesses — a line that brought a chorus of supportive guffaws from those watching on television in an overflow hearing room. She went on, “And so I question, where are the uncooperative Muslims?”

New York Times

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Idaho Rancher Revealed as Gangster From Boston

MARSING, Idaho — Enrico Ponzo was never a proper mobster, a “made man” in the vernacular of the underworld. He was a renegade, prosecutors say, part of a violent faction intent on ousting the bosses of the powerful Patriarca crime family in Boston in the early 1990s.

When a wide-ranging indictment came up against him and 14 others in 1997, Mr. Ponzo was charged with crimes that included attempted murder and extortion. But he was also listed as the target of a contract killing planned by one of the other defendants. While most everyone else in the case went to prison, Mr. Ponzo was not arrested — he had been missing since 1994.

Jeffrey John Shaw, known as Jay, was never a natural rancher. The accent from back East and his inexperience with cattle gave him away quickly as another newcomer reinventing himself in the West. “He wore bib overalls and straw hats,” said Brodie Clapier, a neighbor and a longtime rancher. “People did wear bib overalls here — in the 1930s.”

But no one pried. After all, Mr. Shaw was quick to help move your furniture or fix your computer. He was trusted to manage the irrigation system people depended on for water, and he was responsible with the money they paid him to do it. In time, as he began raising two children and 12 cows on his 12 acres, prosecutors say Jay earned a stature no mob boss could ever confer on Enrico. He became a remade man.

After tracking him down in a manner they declined to describe, and watching him for more than a week, federal marshals arrested Mr. Ponzo on Feb. 7 as he drove down the rural road where he has lived for the past decade. Soon after, Jay Shaw's friends were stunned to see him in court in Boise, his ever-present hat and goatee gone, admitting he was Mr. Ponzo, someone they had never heard of, someone living on the lam, living a lie, for nearly two decades.

New York Times

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9 Fort Hood Officers Reprimanded

The Army is reprimanding nine officers for leadership failures in connection with the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and their failure to detect problems with the accused shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

The Army said in a statement that although no single event led directly to the shootings, certain officers failed to meet expected standards.

A Pentagon review last year found that Major Hasan's supervisors expressed concerns about his questionable behavior and poor judgment but that they continued to give him positive evaluations.

New York Times

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What Is the Terrorism Threat Now?

Introduction

Emotional testimony filled Thursday's Congressional hearing on what Representative Peter King describes as the radicalization of American Muslims.

Critics have attacked the hearing, the first in a series, as reminiscent of McCarthyism in stoking anti-Muslim fears. In the opening session, Mr. King, a New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, insisted that the Congressional investigation must go forward as "the logical response to the repeated and urgent warnings" from the Obama administration about domestic terrorism.

Are law enforcement agencies having a hard time identifying homegrown terrorist threats? What have we learned in the past 10 years about tracking such groups?

New York Times

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Some in Texas town blaming young girl in assault

CLEVELAND, Texas — A meeting Thursday night that was billed as a way to discuss concerns some have about the investigation into a series of alleged sexual assaults on an 11-year-old girl turned into a forum that many used to blame the girl police contend is the victim of heinous attacks.

Many who attended the meeting said they supported the group of men and boys who have been charged in the case. Supporters didn't claim that the men and boys did not have sex with the young girl; instead they blamed the girl for the way she dressed or claimed she must have lied about her age — accusations that have drawn strong responses from those who note an 11-year-old cannot consent to sex and that it doesn't matter how she was dressed.

Other people in this small town about 40 miles northeast of Houston said earlier this week they were outraged by the attacks. The age of consent in Texas is 17 and ignorance of a girl's age is not a legal defense.

"She's 11 years old. It shouldn't have happened. That's a child," Oscar Carter, 56, who is related to an uncle of one 16-year-old charged in the case, said in an interview earlier in the week. "Somebody should have said what we are doing is wrong."

Police say the girl was sexually assaulted during several attacks last year. Authorities have arrested 18 people, including two of Cleveland's star high school athletes and adults with criminal records. They face assault and abuse charges.

Suspected Pirates Indicted in Yacht Killings

Fourteen men accused of seizing a yacht and killing its American crew last month in the Arabian Sea were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Norfolk, Va., on piracy and kidnapping charges. If convicted of piracy, they face a mandatory life sentence.

The men—13 Somalis and one Yemeni—were captured by U.S. Navy Seals who stormed the 58-foot Quest four days after it was hijacked while sailing from India to Oman. Navy officers negotiated for the release of the American sailors. The four were killed before the assault force could storm the ship.

The men were indicted on one count of piracy, one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and one count of the use of a firearm during a crime of violence. They weren't charged with murder, but the indictment stated that "at least three of the defendants on board the Quest intentionally shot and killed" the U.S. citizens.

U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said the investigation would continue and that "additional future charges are possible." He noted that the other charges include hefty sentences: up to life in prison for kidnapping and a minimum of 30 years for the weapons charges.

The American sailors—Scott and Jean Adam, Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle—were completing an around-the-world voyage, and just days before the attack had separated from a group of fellow sailors to chart their own course toward Oman. The Adams owned the yacht.

Wall Street Journal

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Texas farmers say drug war making job dangerous

LA JOYA, Texas—As Texas farmhands prepared this winter to burn stalks of sugarcane for harvest along the Rio Grande, four masked men on ATVs suddenly surrounded the crew members and ordered them to leave.

Farmer Dale Murden has little doubt they were Mexican drug traffickers.

"They hide stuff in there," Murden said of the dense sugarcane crops, some as high as 14 feet. "It was very intimidating for my guys. You got men dressed in black, looking like thugs and telling them to get back."

Texas farmers and ranchers say confrontations like these are quietly adding up. This month the Texas Department of Agriculture, going beyond its usual purview that includes school lunches and regulating gas pumps, launched a website publicizing what it calls a worsening situation "threatening the lives of our fellow citizens and jeopardizing our nation's food supply."

However, some Texas Democratic lawmakers say the danger is being wildly overstated, and U.S. Border Patrol officials said they are not aware of landowners in the Rio Grande Valley facing increasing threats.

The launch last week of ProtectYourTexasBorder.com also left the state somewhat embarrassed after the site's message board quickly filled with postings calling for vigilante justice and the killing of illegal immigrants. The postings have since been removed.

Mercury News

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Secretary Napolitano and Canada Public Safety Minister Vic Toews Announce Release of Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment

Washington, D.C. – Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews today announced the public release of the Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment, highlighting the United States' and Canada's commitment to identifying and mitigating potential threats of terrorism and transnational organized crime along the shared border. This fulfills their July 2010 pledge of public release of this assessment.

The Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment is a part of a shared vision for border security that Secretary Napolitano and Minister Toews outlined during meetings held throughout 2010, and reflects their mutual commitment to working together to safeguard both nations' vital assets, networks, infrastructure and citizens.

"The United States and Canada have a long history of productive collaboration," said Secretary Napolitano. "The Joint Border Threat and Risk Assessment reflects our ongoing commitment to enhancing security along our shared border while facilitating legitimate travel and trade that is critical to the economies of both countries."

The Assessment addresses a range of security issues, including terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal immigration. It also reflects the commitment to work together to protect our borders and shared critical infrastructure from terrorism and transnational crime articulated by President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in February. Their historic declaration – "Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness" – sets forth how the United States and Canada will manage our shared homeland and economic security.

"The Government of Canada is committed to a safe, secure and efficient border. This is vital to Canada's economy and to the safety and security of all Canadians," said Minister Toews. "Canada and the U.S. are working closely to ensure that our shared border remains open to the legitimate movement of people and goods, and closed to those who would do either country harm."

Dept of Homeland Security

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ICE, CBP seize 11,000 pounds of marijuana in Nogales

Joint effort prevents $6.6 million in narcotics from reaching streets

NOGALES, Ariz. - U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) Office of Field Operations interdicted a large drug smuggling attempt on Monday - seizing more than 11,000 pounds of marijuana in Nogales, Ariz.

During the course of an ongoing investigation, HSI agents in Nogales became aware of two trailers laden with marijuana that smugglers were attempting to move through the Mariposa Port of Entry. Agents identified one of the suspect vehicles near Industrial Park Drive, and then alerted CBP officers at the port of entry to be on the lookout for a second trailer. Agents followed the first vehicle to Bell Road, where the driver pulled over to unhook the trailer. Agents approached the driver and obtained consent to search the vehicle. A search of the trailer revealed a false compartment. A CBP canine unit responded to assist and positively alerted to the trailer.

At the port of entry, CBP officers identified the second trailer and referred it for further inspection. An X-ray revealed a false compartment in the front of the trailer and CBP K-9 positively alerted to the trailer. Further inspection revealed the compartment matched the one found in the first trailer.

"This team effort is a credit to the strong partnerships shared by DHS agencies like ICE and CBP in Arizona," said Matt Allen, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in Arizona.

The first trailer contained a total of 260 bales of marijuana weighing 6,013 pounds. The second trailer seized at the port of entry contained a total of 244 bales of marijuana weighing 5,686 pounds. Combined, the trailers contained 11,699 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of $6.6 million.

ICE

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March 10, 2011

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Rep. Peter King opens Muslim 'radicalization' hearing, saying it 'must go forward'

New York Congressman Peter King says not to hold the controversial hearing would be a 'craven surrender to political correctness.' Concerns have been raised that the hearing could stigmatize Muslim Americans and increase hostility worldwide between Muslims and the U.S. government.

In opening his congressional hearing on the "radicalization" of Muslims in the United States, Rep. Peter King on Thursday forcefully pushed back against critics who contend his inquiry demonizes an entire community and threatens national security.

"I remain convinced that these hearings must go forward. And they will," King told a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill. "To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this committee -- to protect America from a terrorist attack.

"Despite what passes for conventional wisdom in certain circles, there is nothing radical or un-American in holding these hearings," said King, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.

King, a Republican congressman from New York whose district was heavily effected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, convened the hearing because of what he termed a growing threat of homegrown terrorism among Muslim men in the United States.

"Today, we must be fully aware that homegrown radicalization is part of Al Qaeda's strategy to continue attacking the United States," King said. "Al Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim community for recruitment. Today's hearing will address this dangerous trend."

King cited the plots to bomb Times Square and the subways in New York, as well as the shootings in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, among others, as examples.

Los Angeles Times

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Rep. Peter King's hearing on American Muslims a 'very personal' quest

The Republican's plan to hold a hearing on radicalization in the U.S. Muslim community has drawn criticism. But he says he is driven by the deep feelings that Sept. 11 inspires for him and members of his Long Island, N.Y., district.

For Rep. Peter T. King, Sept. 11 was personal. It was personal, he says, for everyone in his Long Island district, which was home to dozens of the police, firefighters and financial workers who died at the World Trade Center.

And despite concerted nationwide criticism of the Republican's plan to hold a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday on radicalization in the U.S. Muslim community, King says in his district he has nearly universal support.

"Everyone is telling me to go ahead with it," King said in an interview, adding that he thinks his district is a good place to measure public opinion in the U.S. on such issues. "My district, I think it is a good barometer. Nobody in my district didn't know somebody who was killed on Sept. 11. It is still very personal."

Critics have questioned King for his approach to a hearing that some argue goes too far, lumping in all Muslim Americans with the religious extremists who would do harm to America. The hearing, critics argue, will do nothing to stem domestic terrorism and may in fact hurt King's cause by further alienating the very community that law enforcement agencies rely on to prevent attacks.

"To the extent that these hearings make American Muslims feel that they are the object of fear-mongering, it will only serve Al Qaeda's ends," said Richard Clarke, a counter-terrorism advisor to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

In holding the hearing, King wants to highlight what he sees as an unwillingness by Muslim leaders to aggressively prevent radicalization of young men and engage in robust cooperation with law enforcement to prevent attacks. Two family members of young American men seduced by Islamic extremism are expected to testify to their frustrations at the lack of assistance they received from local religious leaders to counteract their loved ones' radicalization.

Los Angeles Times

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Brutal 1985 stabbing of aspiring model leads L.A. County detectives to Las Vegas man

Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives hope to extradite a Las Vegas man accused in the 1985 slaying of an aspiring model.

A cold case squad made the arrest Wednesday after picking up the case of the unsolved stabbing of the Long Beach woman.

Stafford Joel Spicer, 59, was apprehended by Los Angeles County cold-case sheriff's homicide investigators in Las Vegas, where he was living.

Authorities said Spicer was served with an arrest warrant at his home in connection with the killing of Joanne Marie Jones, who was 23 when she disappeared April 29, 1985. Her body was found in June of that year in a remote area of Azusa Canyon east of Highway 39.

At the time, Spicer was arrested by Long Beach police after he was spotted driving Jones' Chevrolet Camaro. He was later released for lack of evidence, the Sheriff's Department said.

The case was reopened in 2009 by the department's cold-case unit, which uncovered new DNA evidence, according to authorities.

The unit's motto is "Time is on our side," Capt. Mike Parker said. "Homicide cases," he said, "are never closed until they are solved."

Los Angeles Times

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DNA and death row

The significance of this week's Supreme Court decision is that prisoners can now sue under a civil rights law to press their claims for DNA evidence.

The Supreme Court this week had good news for a Texas death row inmate: He can sue a district attorney who won't give him access to DNA evidence that might clear him. The 6-3 decision, which opens a new avenue of appeal for condemned prisoners, is welcome. But it falls short of what the court should do to make DNA evidence available to every prisoner who requests it.

Henry Skinner was convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her two sons in 1993. He says he was in an alcoholic haze during the killings and that his girlfriend's uncle was probably the killer. At his trial, he declined to seek access to DNA evidence that might have exonerated him.

Later, Skinner changed his mind and, using a Texas law, tried to obtain DNA testing. But he was rebuffed by the courts because the state law, among other restrictions, penalized prisoners who hadn't sought DNA evidence earlier.

The significance of this week's decision is that prisoners can now sue under a civil rights law known as Section 1983 to press their claims instead of being limited to habeas corpus suits, a traditional avenue of appeal that Congress has made more difficult to pursue. Hurdles remain, but the court has allowed some suits designed to obtain DNA evidence.

But the court needs to go much further. As a matter of simple justice, every prisoner, not just death row inmates, ought to have access to DNA testing when it offers the potential of exoneration. So important is such evidence that the court should use an appropriate case to rule that the Constitution's due process clauses require DNA testing, and without conditions of the sort Texas imposed.

Los Angeles Times

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10 Face Charges in Mexico Killings

MEXICO CITY — Ten members of a Mexican drug gang working on both sides of the border have been charged in the murders last year of a pregnant American Consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate employee in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Court documents unsealed Wednesday in El Paso revealed federal charges against a total of 35 people the authorities said were linked to the Barrio Azteca gang.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. described the gang as a transnational criminal organization with a “militaristic command structure” and revenues linked to extortion and drug sales in the United States.

At a news conference in Washington, he said the charges, stemming from arrests in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, “reaffirm the fact that this Justice Department, and this administration, will not tolerate acts of violence against those who serve and protect American citizens.”

Noting that 7 of the 10 murder defendants are in Mexican custody, he added that “at every level of government and law enforcement, we are working with our Mexican counterparts more effectively than ever before.”

That cooperation is currently being tested in another high-profile investigation: American and Mexican authorities are pursuing the killers of a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jaime J. Zapata, and the wounding of a second agent last month in a shooting outside Mexico City.But the emphasis on tight links in law enforcement also appears against a backdrop of tensions between the two countries. The recent shooting has led some members of Congress to question Mexico's standard policy of refusing to allow American agents to be armed, while Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has responded bitterly to leaked diplomatic cables in which American officials criticized the competence of Mexican authorities in the fight against cartels.

New York Times

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Police in Los Angeles Step Up Efforts to Gain Muslims' Trust

LOS ANGELES — Sgt. Mike Abdeen, on duty in the county Sheriff's Department, got a call last year from a Muslim father who was worried about his son. The young man had grown a full beard and was spending a lot of time alone in his room, on the computer. The father was worried that perhaps his son had fallen in with Islamic extremists, and wanted Sergeant Abdeen to look into it.

The sergeant approached the young man after Friday Prayer, talked with him over coffee and kept in touch over the next few months. It turned out that the youth was hardly a budding terrorist; he was just a spiritual searcher, a recent college graduate who had grown a beard to express his Muslim identity.

For Sergeant Abdeen, a Palestinian-American who runs a pioneering sheriff's unit charged with forging connections between law enforcement and local Muslims, the episode was a sign of progress. Until recently, a concern like this would probably have gone unreported because of the fear some Muslims have about talking to law enforcement.

“If the father didn't trust us to do the right thing, he wouldn't call us,” the sergeant said.

The question of whether American Muslims do, or do not, cooperate with law enforcement agents in preventing potential terrorist attacks is at the heart of Congressional hearings that begin Thursday in Washington. The hearings have been called by Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, N.Y., and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He says that American Muslims do not cooperate, and that he will call witnesses who will prove it.

New York Times

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Rhode Island Town Fights the Release of a Child Killer

The impending early release of a convicted child killer has stirred outrage in Rhode Island and sent state officials scrambling for alternatives to freeing him.

The prisoner, Michael Woodmansee, was sentenced to 40 years for the 1975 murder of Jason Foreman, a 5-year-old neighbor in the tranquil coastal town of South Kingstown. In 1982, the police found the boy's shellacked bones in Mr. Woodmansee's bedroom, along with a journal that they said contained gruesome details of the crime.

But because of a state law that shortens the sentences of inmates with good behavior and prison jobs, Mr. Woodmansee, 52, is to be released in August after serving only 28 years. Jason's father, John Foreman, has threatened to kill Mr. Woodmansee if he is set free, and others have planned a rally at the Rhode Island Statehouse to protest the so-called earned time law.

Mr. Woodmansee was 16 when Jason vanished in May 1975, never coming home from an afternoon of outdoor play. The case went unsolved until 1982, when Mr. Woodmansee was charged with the attempted murder of a 14-year-old paperboy, and confessed to luring Jason into his home and stabbing him.

A. T. Wall, the state corrections chief, said Wednesday that psychiatrists started evaluating Mr. Woodmansee this week to determine if he meets the “very narrow” standards for involuntary commitment after his release. “In this case our options are slim,” Mr. Wall said. “We are also looking for other settings that might provide him with some form of shelter and treatment even if he does not meet the standard for commitment.”

New York Times

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14 suspected pirates to appear in federal court

(CNN) -- Fourteen suspected pirates indicted for the February hijacking of a yacht that led to the deaths of four Americans are set to appear in federal court Thursday. Thirteen Somalis and one Yemeni will make their first court appearance in Norfolk, Virginia, at 2:30 p.m ET, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.

The men face piracy, kidnapping and firearms charges, according to office spokesman Peter Carr. They were indicted Tuesday. According to U.S. officials, the four Americans -- ship owners Jean and Scott Adam, along with Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle -- were found shot after U.S. forces boarded their vessel.

Their ship, Quest, was being shadowed by four U.S. warships after pirates seized it off the coast of Oman in February. U.S. forces responded after a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a U.S. Navy ship about 600 yards away -- and missed -- and the sound of gunfire could be heard on board, according to U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Mark Fox.

The men were found to be in possession of several assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, according to the indictment. They tossed additional weapons into the ocean as U.S. forces approached, it said. It was the first time in recent history that Americans have been killed in a suspected pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden, Carr said.

CNN

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Obama: Bullying 'is not something we have to accept'

President Obama opened a White House conference on school bullying today by saying that all Americans -- parents, teachers, coaches, and people in general -- have a responsibility to make sure children are not threatened or intimidated by their peers.

Bullying is not "a harmless rite of passage," but can have "destructive consequences for our young people" -- from poor grades to suicide.

"Sometimes we've turned a blind eye to the problem," Obama said.

About 150 students, parents, and teachers are attending the conference, discussing their experiences and possible ways to prevent bullying moving forward.

"No family should have to go through what these families have gone through," Obama said. "No child should feel that alone."

Obama said bullying is frequently targeted as "kids that are perceived as different," from the color of their skin to sexual orientation. "It's not something we have to accept," Obama said.

The president also said his big ears and unusual name made him a target: "I wasn't immune. I didn't emerge unscathed."

USA Today

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Colo. authorities search for Texas couple's 2 boys

MONUMENT, Colo. -- Colorado authorities are searching for two boys who have been missing for most of the last decade whose adoptive parents from Texas have been receiving government checks to support the boys, even though they were not living with the couple.

An El Paso County sheriff's spokeswoman said Wednesday that 58-year-old Edward Bryant and 54-year-old Linda Bryant are in jail on $1 million bail each.

They have not been charged in the disappearances of Austin Eugene Bryant and Edward Dylan Bryant.

Austin may have disappeared as early as 2003, when he was 7, and Edward may have disappeared in 2001, when he was 9.

The Bryants lived in the Monument area near Colorado Springs between 1999 and 2005 and most recently lived in the Dallas area.

Associated Press

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Gang Rape of 11-Year-Old Girl Sparks Racial Tensions in Texas Town

New Black Panthers Rally Is Moved Because of a Death Threat

The alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by at least 18 boys and young men has sparked shame and outrage in a tiny Texas town, but it has also stirred racial tensions that threaten to split the East Texas hamlet. All of the defendants arrested are African-American and the girl is Hispanic.

The hardscrabble town of Cleveland, which is 45 miles from Houston, has fewer than 8,000 residents and since the saw mill closed the biggest employers are Wal-Mart and a nearby prison. In a town this small, everyone is a neighbor, but that small town ambience is being severely strained.

The rape allegedly occurred last November, and the list of suspects has been growing as arrests keep coming. It's not clear whether more arrests are in the works. The suspects range in age from 14 to 26, include stars on the high school's basketball team as well as the son of a school board member.

But as the investigation drags on, the shock and indignation has been tinged with an undercurrent of racial tension. "I feel sorry for the little girl. I feel sorry for everyone involved...the city is in turmoil," Inez Dickerson said.

ABC News

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Violent Border Gang Indicted

Members Charged in Consulate Murders

Thirty-five leaders, members, and associates of one of the most brutal gangs operating along the U.S.-Mexico border have been charged in a federal indictment in Texas with various counts of racketeering, murder, drug offenses, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

Of the 35 subjects, 10 Mexican nationals were specifically charged with the March 2010 murders in Juarez, Mexico of a U.S. Consulate employee and her husband, along with the husband of another consulate employee.

The indictment was announced today at a press conference in Washington, D.C., by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry, and other representatives. All commented on the cooperation American officials received from their Mexican counterparts. Said Henry, "We may stand on opposite sides of the border, but we stand together on the same side of the law."

Seven of the 10 charged with the U.S. Consulate murders —and two other indicted defendants —are in custody in Mexico. Three remain at large, including Eduardo Ravelo, currently one of the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. We're offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading directly to his arrest.

The Barrio Azteca began in the late 1980s as a prison gang but has since expanded into a transnational criminal organization with approximately 3500 members, including 600 active members located in West Texas and Juarez, Mexico. Barrio Azteca gang members can also be found throughout state and federal prisons in the U.S. and Mexico.

FBI

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March 9, 2011

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Cole bombing suspect to face military tribunal at Guantanamo

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of a U.S. destroyer in a Yemen port that killed 17 sailors, will be the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried by military commission during the Obama administration.

The first captive at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be charged in a military tribunal during the Obama presidency is expected to be one of the prison's most notorious inmates — Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole that killed 17 sailors.

And his case, beset with Nashiri's allegations of torture and mistreatment, is fraught with complications for the administration, which this week reversed course and announced it would maintain the George W. Bush legacy of holding military tribunals inside the Caribbean fortress.

There are 172 prisoners there now, down from 245 when President Obama took office in January 2009. Forty percent of them are Yemenis, mostly low-level fighters with loose connections to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and yet they may present a risk if returned home, which has become rife with Islamic militant groups.

Four dozen other men are considered too dangerous to send home but difficult to prosecute because their cases are too flimsy for prosecution in the military system.

So it is Nashiri who poses the first test for the Obama administration in the minefield of military tribunals, in which the Bush administration was dogged with accusations of unconstitutional maneuvering and misguided justice.

But legal experts said Tuesday that legal changes made the process fairer and granted more of a semblance of due process for detainees.

Los Angeles Times

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2 Sikhs shot in Sacramento area; $30,000 reward offered

A $30,000 reward has been offered in the case of two elderly men who were shot -- one fatally -- while they took an afternoon walk in the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove.

Police found Surinder Singh, 65, and Gurmej Atwal, 78, on the sidewalk about 4:30 p.m. Friday, each with multiple gunshot wounds to the upper torso. Singh was pronounced dead at the scene and Atwal remains hospitalized in critical condition.

The case has puzzled investigators and left the Northern California Sikh community reeling with fear and anger.

Elk Grove police are investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime, in part because the men wore traditional Sikh turbans. But detectives have yet to find any evidence of such a crime, a spokesman said.

“The city of Elk Grove is a marvelously diverse community and the possibility that one of our valued community groups might have been targeted because of their national origin or religion is of grave concern,” Elk Grove Police Chief Robert M. Lehner said in a statement over the weekend.

Los Angeles Times

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Prostitution crackdown in Hawthorne leads to 25 arrests

Twenty-five people have been arrested during a crackdown on prostitution in Hawthorne over the last three weeks, police said Tuesday. Arrested were 11 suspected prostitutes, one suspected pimp and 13 alleged “johns,” officials said.

Increased enforcement began Feb. 21 after numerous complaints from the community about illegal activity on Imperial Highway between Inglewood Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, said Lt. Gary Tomatani of the Hawthorne Police Department.

Hawthorne is seeking “stay away” orders for each of the suspected prostitutes and the pimp, prohibiting them from returning to the area. Judges have already granted the orders on four of them, Tomatani said. The others are being processed through the courts.

Thirteen men, including six from Hawthorne, were taken into custody. One of the men offered drugs in exchange for sex, Tomatani said. However, the man did not have any narcotics on him.

Hawthorne police will continue their anti-prostitution operations throughout the year. Anyone with information about prostitution-related activity can call the department at (310) 349-2700 .

Los Angeles Times

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Crack-down hits distracted drivers

More than 60 drivers busted for using hand-held phones while behind the wheel.

GLENDALE — One by one, Police Det. Ashraf Mankarios on Saturday blew his whistle and directed motorists who had been spotted using hand-held cellphones over to a growing line of cars.

They too had been pulled over to find an officer and a ticket waiting.

The vehicles were exiting the Ventura (134) Freeway on the South Glendale Avenue off-ramp where police had set up a enforcement operation, part of a growing effort to clamp down on distracted driving in Glendale.

Most motorists immediately put down their phones when they saw the officer, but by then, it was too late.

The lead officer radioed a description of the violation and vehicle to Mankarios, who then walked out into the busy street, blew his whistle and signaled the driver to the curb.

On Saturday, officers issued 66 citations to motorists for using their cellphones while behind the wheel. Another eight motorists were cited for texting while driving, while five others were cited for speeding and road violations.

“It's getting quite prevalent,” Sgt. Dennis Smith said of distracted driving. “I think we need to do something to stem the tide.”

Los Angeles Times

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Mexico: Former Police Chief Seeks Asylum in the U.S.

A woman who took the job of police chief in a border town riddled with drug gang violence has asked for asylum in the United States, officials said Tuesday.

The woman, Marisol Valles García, who was 20 when she was named police chief of Práxedis G. Guerrero in October, left with her whole family, including her baby son, last week, said Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, a Chihuahua State human rights investigator.

A spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that Ms. Valles García was in the United States.

New York Times

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Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town

CLEVELAND, Tex. — The police investigation began shortly after Thanksgiving, when an elementary school student alerted a teacher to a lurid cellphone video that included one of her classmates.

The video led the police to an abandoned trailer, more evidence and, eventually, to a roundup over the last month of 18 young men and teenage boys on charges of participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in the abandoned trailer home, the authorities said.

Five suspects are students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member. A few of the others have criminal records, from selling drugs to robbery and, in one case, manslaughter. The suspects range in age from middle schoolers to a 27-year-old.

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It's just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

The allegations first came to light just after Thanksgiving, when a child who knows the victim told a teacher she had seen a videotape of the attack on a cellphone.

New York Times

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3 Law Officers Are Shot in St. Louis; One Dies

ST. LOUIS — A deputy federal marshal was killed and two other law officers were wounded in a shootout early Tuesday while trying to serve an arrest warrant at a house in South St. Louis. The man named in the warrant was pronounced dead at the scene.

Deputy United States Marshal John Perry, who was shot in the head, died Tuesday night at Saint Louis University Hospital, The Associated Press reported. Another deputy marshal was shot in the ankle and was in fair condition.

A St. Louis police officer sustained a graze wound to his face and neck, a Police Department spokeswoman said. He was treated at a hospital and released.

A spokeswoman for the Marshals Service identified the gunman as Carlos Boles, 35.

The spokeswoman, Lynzey Donahue, said the warrant for Mr. Boles contained charges relating to the assault of a law enforcement officer and the possession of a controlled substance. Court documents show that Mr. Boles, whose criminal record stretched back to 1993, pleaded guilty to five felonies.

Shortly before 7 a.m., officials said, two officers from the Police Department and eight from the Marshals Service were trying to serve the warrant when they discovered several children inside the house. After escorting the children outside, the officers began searching for Mr. Boles, who officials said opened fire when they encountered him.

New York Times

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DNA links Ohio felon to 2 Cleveland murders, 7 years apart

(CNN) -- A DNA investigation following the discovery of 11 bodies in a Cleveland home has linked a second man to serial killings in the area, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

"This is wild stuff," said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason. "One serial killer leads us to another one."

After the bodies were found at the home of Anthony Sowell in 2009, Cleveland's Cold Case Unit launched a DNA investigation into victims found within a 3-mile radius of the property. The unit matched two cases to felon Joseph Harwell, who is currently serving time on a separate murder charge, Mason said.

Both the victims allegedly tied to Harwell, 27-year-old Mary Thomas and 33-year-old Tondilear Harge, were found raped and fatally strangled, seven years apart from one another. Thomas was three to four months pregnant at the time of the attack, a release by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office says.

Harwell is indicted on 14 counts, including charges of aggravated murder, rape, and kidnapping, according to the prosecutors office.

Believing there could be more victims related to the ones found in the Sowell home, "we kind of drew a circle around his residence," Mason said.

"There are missing pieces. I don't believe that everybody (Sowell) killed, he put in his house," Mason said. "There's a lot of missing girls that would fit that description."

CNN

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Pimps prowl Eugene for girls to lure into sex slavery

EUGENE, Ore. - Hundreds of women and girls are sold into sex slavery in Lane County each year, according to an undercover police officer who investigates human trafficking in Eugene.

"I mean, probably way too many to count," said Sgt. Curtis Newell.

"It's a lot bigger problem than I think most people in the community realize," Newell said. KVAL News did not show his face on TV or online because he works undercover under assumed names.

The crime of human trafficking is grossly under-reported, according to Newell and Alex Gardner, Lane County's district attorney. Both law enforcers were part of a panel of experts invited to speak at the Eugene Hilton on Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Eugene Zonta Club.

Gardner said girls are lured into sex trafficking by pimps over a period of time.

"They have come to see in that period of time that law enforcement is essentially toothless," Gardner said.

KVAL.com

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March 8, 2011

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U.S. agents short-staffed and under the gun in Mexico

A lack of resources, a policy against arming agents and staffers who don't speak Spanish hamper U.S. agents trying to stem the flow of weapons to drug cartels, say current and ex-staff members.

U.S. authorities in Mexico charged with stemming the flow of U.S. weapons to drug cartels have been hampered by shortfalls in staffing, agents with limited Spanish skills and the difficulty of recruiting new agents to the dangerous posting because they can't officially carry weapons, current and former staff members say.

Facing new accusations that investigators with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed buyers to funnel high-powered assault weapons into Mexico, a senior agent posted to Mexico before 2010 said the agency had not fielded the resources necessary to block mass movements of weapons across the Southwest border.

These movements have come under scrutiny amid revelations that ATF investigators delayed for months the arrests of suspected cartel gun buyers, allowing the flow of hundreds of weapons to Mexico in the hope of catching bigger buyers. The policy has outraged many agents and prompted a Senate investigation.

On Monday, most of the architects of the Phoenix-based operation, known as "Fast and Furious," were called to Washington to discuss the operation. Acting ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson announced he would ask a panel of police professionals to review the bureau's firearms trafficking strategies.

Rene Jaquez, a former ATF attache in Mexico City and deputy attache in Ciudad Juarez, said Monday that agents in Mexico did not have the resources to effectively run down gun smugglers. "I can tell you from my perspective as the former country attache in Mexico … that ATF has not taken seriously its role in the international affairs program as far as Mexico is concerned," Jaquez said in an interview. Jaquez said ATF field offices in Mexico were so short-staffed that agents were either forced to spend most of their time on paperwork or didn't have necessary backup to safely do street work.

Los Angeles Times

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Obama to resume military trials for Guantanamo detainees

The decision is a sign of difficulty Obama is having keeping a campaign promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Obama administration is resuming military trials for terrorism suspects detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — another step back from Obama's 2008 campaign promise to close the prison.

The president also announced Monday that he was setting new review guidelines for the prisoners that he said would "broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice, provide oversight for our actions, and ensure the humane treatment of detainees" — all signals that the White House does not foresee the facility being closed any time soon.

At the start of his presidency in January 2009, Obama banned filing new military tribunal charges against Guantanamo Bay prisoners, a move praised by human rights organizations, who said the conditions at the facility and the military commissions there were a violation of the Geneva Conventions. But subsequent congressional actions blocked funds for transferring detainees to civilian federal courts, in effect preventing the White House from mothballing the prison.

With 170 detainees still at Guantanamo and more terrorism suspects likely to be captured and sent there, pressure was building for new military prosecutions. "We can expect to see a new round of charges come out real soon, possibly in days or weeks," one administration official said.

Obama left open the possibility that some of the detainees would still be transferred to federal courts, where the proceedings would be more open and the prisoners would receive civilian legal protections.

"I strongly believe that the American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against Al Qaeda and its affiliates," Obama said. "And we will continue to draw on all aspects of our justice system … to ensure that our security and our values are strengthened."

Los Angeles Times

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Serial killer Rodney Alcala linked to unsolved 1977 slaying

Investigators in the Bay Area believe they've linked the unsolved 1977 slaying of a young woman to convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala.

Pamela Jean Lambson, 19, went missing in 1977 after a trip to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco to meet with a man who'd offered to photograph her. According to her mother, Jean Lambson, her daughter met the long unidentified photographer at an Oakland A's baseball game, where he gave the teen his business card.

Her body was found soon after near a Marin County trail. For more than 30 years, her killing went unsolved until last year, when Marin County sheriff's investigators reopened the case after getting word from authorities in Southern California about the prosecution of Alcala.

Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on "The Dating Game" and was described by one detective as a "killing machine," spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He was arrested in 1979 in connection with the slaying of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl.

Twice he was sent to death row for Robin Samsoe's murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. Last year he was convicted again for that killing and for the murder of four women in Los Angeles County. In January, investigators in New York said they believed he was linked to two other killings.

Los Angeles Times

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California foster-care system: Secrecy that hurts kids

Assemblyman Mike Feuer of Los Angeles has introduced a bill to open California's dependency courts to the public.

In California today, 60,000 children are wards of the state's foster-care system. They have been abused or neglected by their parents or guardians, and foster care is intended to be a crucial lifeline.

Instead, kids thrown into the maw of a well-meaning but often callous bureaucracy continue to suffer. Some die or are abused. They are three times more likely to end up in jail than to graduate from a four-year college. And their fates are controlled by officials who take them from their homes, assign them to new ones and reunite them with parents who brutalized them — all in secret.

The tragic confluence of family abuse and official negligence, hidden from the public by a culture of secrecy, has persisted for years despite pleading by advocates inside and outside the system. Thankfully, it may soon change.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), one of the state's most conscientious legislators, has introduced a bill to open the state's dependency courts, where these cases are heard, to the public.

His proposal got its first public airing last week at a remarkable hearing in Sacramento in which witness after witness testified to a broken system. Judges handle the cases of 700 children at any one time. Lawyers consult with their clients in court but otherwise barely know them. Social workers — some expert and experienced, others new and unprepared — make decisions of life-wrenching significance: where a child lives, whether she can see her parents, where she should go to school. The typical dependency hearing, in which those issues are debated and resolved, lasts a mere 12 minutes.

Los Angeles Times

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Russia Faces 3-Year Race to Secure Site of Olympics

SOCHI, Russia — Less than 250 miles separate the skating arenas being built here for the 2014 Winter Olympics and the home of a suicide bomber who killed 37 people at a Moscow airport in January. A little farther on is Chechnya, site of two civil wars and a still seething Muslim insurgency. In a neighboring region, three tourists on a ski trip were shot to death recently, and local resorts were closed as soldiers searched in vain for the assailants.

The host nations for the Olympic Games inevitably worry about terrorism. But a glimpse at a map shows why the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held in this Russian resort on the Black Sea, seem to be facing security concerns unlike any Games in recent memory.

Sochi lies at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, the same region that since the Soviet collapse two decades ago has yielded so much turmoil in Russia. In fact, skiing events will be held on those mountains, albeit to the west of the majority-Muslim provinces that have spawned extremist groups.

It is not only internal strife. The city of Sochi directly abuts Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions of Georgia that set off a brief war between Russia and Georgia in 2008. (The Olympic Park itself is only about five miles from the border.)

Abkhazia has declared its independence, with staunch support from Russia and its military, and senior Georgian officials have responded by calling for a boycott of the Olympics.

New York Times

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Absent Police Chief Is Fired in Mexico, Ending an Experiment

MEXICO CITY — An experiment in law enforcement in a drug-ravaged border town ended Monday when the 20-year-old police chief was fired after failing to turn up for work.

The police chief, Marisol Valles García, a college criminology student, had been hired in October after nobody else would take the job. To avoid provoking the drug gangs warring for control of the area, she did not carry a gun or wear a uniform, and made it clear that she would leave major crimes to higher authorities.

Last week, she had asked for a three-day leave to care for her baby son, and there was speculation that she had been threatened. But when she did not show up for work on Monday, the mayor of Práxedis G. Guerrero, a small town near Ciudad Juárez, fired her.

Nobody knows for certain where she is, or whether there she had been threatened. Andrés Morales Arreola, the municipal secretary, said she appeared to have left town with her family.

Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, a state human rights ombudsman, said a witness saw her safely cross a bridge into El Paso last week. But noting the threats law enforcement officials face — a previous police chief had been beheaded — he criticized the mayor for “an act of abandonment.”

Town officials, however, were not alarmed. “We're confident that she is safe in some place,” Mr. Morales said. “If there were some kind of situation, we would have known about it. That kind of news just flies.” In its statement, the mayor's office said it “wished her the best in any future projects she may take on.”

New York Times

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Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message

FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:

As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of Long Island, will conduct hearings Thursday in Washington on a similar theme: that the United States is infiltrated by Muslim radicals. Mr. King was the first guest last month on a new cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT! and a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.

New York Times

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Justices Allow Inmates to Sue for DNA Testing

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for inmates to sue for access to DNA evidence that could prove their innocence.

The legal issue in the case was tightly focused and quite preliminary: Was Hank Skinner, a death row inmate in Texas, entitled to sue a prosecutor there under a federal civil rights law for refusing to allow testing of DNA evidence? By a 6-to-3 vote, the court said yes, rejecting a line of lower-court decisions that had said the only proper procedural route for such challenges was a petition for habeas corpus.

In her opinion for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized the narrowness of the ruling. Allowing Mr. Skinner to sue, she said, was not the same thing as saying he should win his suit.

Justice Ginsburg added that a 2009 decision, District Attorney's Office v. Osborne, had severely limited the kinds of claims prisoners seeking DNA evidence can make. The Osborne decision, she wrote, “left slim room for the prisoner to show that the governing state law denies him procedural due process.”

The case decided Monday, Skinner v. Switzer, No. 09-9000, arose from three killings on New Year's Eve in 1993. Mr. Skinner contends that he was asleep on a sofa in a vodka-and-codeine haze when his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons were killed that night. Mr. Skinner says that an uncle of Ms. Busby, Robert Donnell, who has since died, was the likely killer.

Prosecutors tested some but not all of the evidence from the crime scene. Some of it pointed toward Mr. Skinner, who never denied that he was present, but some did not. His trial lawyer, wary of what additional testing might show, did not ask for it.

In the years since, prosecutors have blocked Mr. Skinner's requests to test blood, fingernail scrapings and hair found at the scene. In their Supreme Court briefs, prosecutors accused Mr. Skinner of playing games with the system, dragging out his case and seeking to impose unacceptable burdens on government resources and the victims' dignity. They added that testing would be pointless because “no item of evidence exists that would conclusively prove that Skinner did not commit the murder.”

New York Times

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Flailing After Muslims

It has often been the case in America that specific religions, races and ethnic groups have been singled out for discrimination, demonization, incarceration and worse. But there have always been people willing to stand up boldly and courageously against such injustice. Their efforts are needed again now.

Representative Peter King, a Republican from Long Island, appears to harbor a fierce unhappiness with the Muslim community in the United States. As the chairman of the powerful Homeland Security Committee, Congressman King has all the clout he needs to act on his displeasure. On Thursday, he plans to open the first of a series of committee hearings into the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism and the bogus allegation that American Muslims have failed to cooperate with law enforcement efforts to foil terrorist plots.

“There is a real threat to the country from the Muslim community,” he said, “and the only way to get to the bottom of it is to investigate what is happening.”

That kind of sweeping statement from a major government official about a religious minority — soon to be backed up by the intimidating aura of Congressional hearings — can only serve to further demonize a group of Americans already being pummeled by bigotry and vicious stereotyping.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, was among some 500 people at a rally in Times Square on Sunday that was called to protest Mr. King's hearings. “To single out Muslim-Americans as the source of homegrown terrorism,” he said, “and not examine all forms of violence motivated by extremist belief — that, my friends, is an injustice.”

To focus an investigative spotlight on an entire religious or ethnic community is a violation of everything America is supposed to stand for. But that does not seem to concern Mr. King. “The threat is coming from the Muslim community,” he told The Times. “The radicalization attempts are directed at the Muslim community. Why should I investigate other communities?”

New York Times

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EDITORIAL

Peter King's Obsession

Not much spreads fear and bigotry faster than a public official intent on playing the politics of division. On Thursday, Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is scheduled to open a series of hearings that seem designed to stoke fear against American Muslims. His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.

Mr. King, a Republican whose district is centered in Nassau County on Long Island, says the hearings will examine the supposed radicalization of American Muslims. Al Qaeda is aggressively recruiting Muslims in this country, he says. He wants to investigate the terror group's methods and what he claims is the eagerness of many young American Muslims to embrace it.

Notice that the hearing is solely about Muslims. It might be perfectly legitimate for the Homeland Security Committee to investigate violent radicalism in America among a wide variety of groups, but that doesn't seem to be Mr. King's real interest.

Instead, he is focusing on one group that appears to have obsessed him since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, resulting in slanders and misstatements that might have earned him a rebuke from his colleagues had they been about any other group. More than 80 percent of the mosques in America are run by extremists, he has said, never citing real evidence. Too many American Muslims are sympathetic to radical Islam, he said.

Most pernicious, he has claimed that American Muslims have generally refused to cooperate with law enforcement agencies on terrorism cases. He has cited no evidence for this, either, but a study issued last month by Duke University and the University of North Carolina found just the opposite. The American Muslim community has been the single largest source of tips that have brought terror suspects to the attention of authorities, the study found. (It also found that the number of American Muslims found or suspected to be part of terror operations dropped substantially in 2010.)

New York Times

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Father: I will kill my 5-year-old son's murderer

Plea bargain deal could allow to be released early for good behavior

The father of a five-year-old boy slain in 1975 has vowed to murder the man who did it "as aggressively and painfully as he killed my son" if he is released from prison early.

John Foreman told WPRO-AM radio that he blamed himself for accepting a plea deal that saw Michael Woodmansee convicted of the second-degree murder of his son Jason in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Woodmansee was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 1982, but the plea bargain deal allowed him to be released early for good behavior. This could happen as soon as August, the Providence Journal reported.

"I do intend, if this man is released anywhere in my vicinity, or if I can find him after the fact, I do intend to kill this man," Foreman added. "I cannot think, I cannot sleep. All I think about is trying to find a way to get this man to kill him," he told WPRO-AM.

MSNBC

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Demeanor of rape suspect surprises detectives

The detectives who had been hunting the East Coast Rapist for 14 years finally walked into an interview room in Connecticut to confront their suspect late last week. They were ready to face a combative, ruthless predator.

What they found instead was a mild, passive, talkative and even weak man, according to several law enforcement officials. Serial rape suspect Aaron H. Thomas talked about "uncontrollable urges" that he said led him to commit the crimes but did not indicate any sense of responsibility for more than a dozen attacks allegedly linked to him by DNA he left behind, the officials said.

He told detectives he had been following media coverage of the case and suspected police were closing in. After his arrest Friday in New Haven, Conn., a prosecutor said in court, Thomas had asked, "Why haven't you picked me up sooner?"

"You're expecting this big confrontation," said Mark Pfeiffer, a Fairfax County detective who began working on the case in 1999 and interviewed Thomas after his arrest. "You always try to envision what he's going to be like. Then you see this weak person."

Thomas, 39, an out-of-work truck driver with ties to the Washington area, appears to have had few close relationships in his life, detectives said. Much about him remains unknown, but he was living with a girlfriend in Connecticut, has a young child and often visited family in Virginia.

Police say they have used DNA to link Thomas to 12 rapes and other attacks on women since 1997. The crimes spanned four states, including Virginia and Maryland. Most of the assaults occurred within a few miles of where Thomas lived at different points in his life.

Washington Post

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March 7, 2011

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Mexico's drug war disappearances leave families in anguish

Thousands of people have vanished without a trace – some caught up in violence, others for no reason anyone can fathom. Relatives remain in agonized limbo.

Reporting from Mexico City

They had scraped together money for a vacation in the port city of Veracruz. Four couples, owners of small fruit and taco shops, from the quiet state of Guanajuato.

After checking in to their hotel and spending the day by the pool with their children, the husbands wandered off, still in their shorts, to buy ice at a nearby 7-Eleven. Maybe they decided to pop into a bar, one the hotel guard recommended.

At first, the wives weren't too worried when the men didn't come back. Even the next morning, the women figured they had tied one on and slept it off somewhere. They took their children on a tour of the city. But by nightfall, the wives became nervous, and as cellphone calls went unanswered, they became terrified.

Where were their husbands?

That was nearly a year ago. The four men have not been seen since. Their families have received no ransom demand, no information, no clues whatsoever. Their bodies have not turned up.

"It was as if the earth swallowed them," one of the wives said in an interview.

In a chilling byproduct of the drug war raging in Mexico, thousands of people have disappeared. Not killed, as far as is known; not taken for ransom. Simply vanished, leaving families desperate and broken, and a society confused and frightened.

Los Angeles Times

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White House seeks to reassure Muslims

Ahead of congressional hearings into homegrown Islamic terrorism, an Obama national security advisor tells one group: 'Muslim Americans are not part of the problem. You're part of the solution.'

Reporting from Sterling, Va.

The White House took a preemptive step to defuse an emerging controversy Sunday, sending out a top aide to reassure American Muslims that the U.S. government doesn't see them as a collective threat.

Denis McDonough, deputy national security advisor to President Obama, addressed a largely Muslim audience days before congressional hearings into homegrown Islamic terrorism. The hearings, which sparked protests in New York on Sunday, will be led by Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

In his speech to members of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, McDonough said, "The bottom line is this: When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem; you're part of the solution."

Earlier Sunday, King told CNN's "State of the Union" that Al Qaeda terrorists were "attempting to recruit within the United States. People in this country are being self-radicalized."

The Obama administration is clearly worried that the hearings, which begin Thursday, could open a rift with Muslim leaders, whose cooperation is needed to foil terrorist recruitment. A message from McDonough's speech was that the Muslim community is vital to a larger strategy of preventing the radicalization of American youths.

"Our challenge, and the goal that President Obama has insisted that we also focus on, is on the front end: preventing Al Qaeda from recruiting and radicalizing people in America in the first place," McDonough said. "And we know this isn't the job of government alone. It has to be a partnership with you — the communities being targeted most directly by Al Qaeda."

Los Angeles Times

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The loyalty dance

The U.S. has a history of forcing minorities to try to prove their patriotism, something almost impossible to do. Yet, Rep. Peter T. King is about to begin such a dog-and-pony show with American Muslims.

Dance, monkey, dance.

That's what the United States has long shouted at immigrants and ethnic groups suspected of being disloyal. The nation asks its newcomers to perform in meaningless ways to "prove" they belong here.

The dancers change, but not the dance. Because the U.S. is continually incorporating immigrants, the perceived threat of betrayal is constant. This week, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) will call the tune on Capitol Hill, with hearings meant to test the loyalty of American Muslims.

But proving loyalty in the affirmative is not so easy. The primary proof is in what people don't do: The loyal ones are those who don't stab you in the back, don't sell you out.

And loyalty — an abstract attachment to a person, institution, cause or nation — like any abstraction is hard to measure. Proving it — especially by pronouncement in front of a Senate committee — is a little like proving that you're sorry. You can apologize all you want, but at some point the offended party is just going to have to trust you mean it.

But that doesn't keep self-appointed arbiters of national loyalty such as King from popping up from time to time to make minorities dance.

As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King is ostensibly investigating the radicalization of American Muslims. From all accounts, what the gruff Long Islander seeks is a show trial in which American Muslims will have the opportunity to make, in his words, "full throated, intense" denunciations of all terrorist activities. In other words, he wants them to prove their loyalty to the United States.

Los Angeles Times

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No Crime, but an Arrest and Two Strip-Searches

Albert W. Florence believes that black men who drive nice cars in New Jersey run a risk of being questioned by the police. For that reason, he kept handy a 2003 document showing he had paid a court-imposed fine stemming from a traffic offense, just in case.

It did not seem to help.

In March 2005, Mr. Florence was in the passenger seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled it over for speeding. His wife, April, was driving. His 4-year-old son, Shamar, was in the back.

The trooper ran a records search, and he found an outstanding warrant based on the supposedly unpaid fine. Mr. Florence showed the trooper the document, but he was arrested anyway.

A failure to pay a fine is not a crime. It is, rather, what New Jersey law calls a nonindictable offense. Mr. Florence was nonetheless held for eight days in two counties on a charge of civil contempt before matters were sorted out.

In the process, he was strip-searched twice.

“Turn around,” he remembered being told while he stood naked before several guards and prisoners. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.”

The treatment stung. “I consider myself a man's man,” said Mr. Florence, a finance executive for a car dealership. “Six-three. Big guy. It was humiliating. It made me feel less than a man. It made me feel not better than an animal.”

New York Times

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Obama Considers Tapping Oil Reserve

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to rapidly rising gasoline prices brought on by turmoil in the Middle East, the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, said on Sunday.

“It's something that only has been done on very rare occasions,” Mr. Daley said on “Meet the Press” on NBC, adding, “It's something we're considering.”

Administration officials have sent mixed signals about the possibility of opening the reserve, which would add supply to the domestic oil market and tend to push down prices.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the administration was monitoring prices, but he has been reluctant to endorse more aggressive steps.

“We don't want to be totally reactive so that when the price goes up, everybody panics, and when it goes back down, everybody goes back to sleep,” he said.

A few days earlier, Mr. Chu said the administration was watching the situation closely, but it expected oil production that had been lost in Libya would be made up by production elsewhere.

Administration officials continue to emphasize the critical need for long-term steps to reduce oil use, like improving the fuel economy of cars and promoting battery-powered vehicles.

New York Times

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Texas legislature introduces pro-undocumented worker law

Undocumented nannies, housekeepers or lawn caretakers in the state of Texas can perhaps breathe easier about deportation. While new legislation in the Texas House of Representatives would make it a state crime to hire undocumented workers, it excludes those employed in single-family households — in other words, them.

The bill, introduced by state GOP Rep. Debbie Riddle, is the first of its kind in the country. It's unique in that while it appeases those who want more stringent immigration laws, it doesn't subject Texas households to the rule that would mainly apply to businesses and large employers.

Critics of the bill say it's hypocritical. Supporters charge it's needed in a state where the Hispanic population continues to climb swiftly.

Though it remains stuck in political limbo, the bill reflects a wider push toward implementing tougher anti-immigration laws at the state level. More than 100 immigration-related bills are pending in the Texas legislature alone, including those that would give state and local police officers the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, make English the official language and prevent undocumented students from getting in-state tuition and scholarships.

States across the country, including Georgia and Oklahoma, where the legislatures debated immigration bills this week, have been mulling controversial Arizona-style immigration laws.Thirty-seven states are considering tougher immigration bills, with multiple bills pending in some states.

“The mere fact that Arizona law has sprung up in over 24 other states within a few months of passage, I believe, is historic,” said William Gheen, president and spokesman of Americans for Legal Immigration, a group that supports stricter immigration laws.

Hispanic Ohio

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It took 2 decades for Mo. woman to find her sister is dead. Now she wants killer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It took two decades for Stephanie Clack to find out that her big sister who disappeared in 1987 is dead. Now she wants to know who killed her.

"This just eats at me, you know," Clack said. "It's been a year in October since we found her, and DNA came back to prove it's her. ... and nobody wants to get up and investigate this."

The body of Clack's sister, Paula Beverly Davis, was found on an Interstate U.S. 70 entrance ramp on Aug. 10, 1987, in Montgomery County, Ohio, about two days after Clack last saw her at the family's home outside Kansas City. Investigators couldn't identify the body then, but determined the 21-year-old woman had been strangled.

The case remained a Jane Doe homicide investigation in Ohio until last year.

That was when Clack learned about NamUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a Department of Justice repository that tracks missing people and unidentified remains. Clack entered some of Davis' identifying characteristics, and eventually got a match on the remains in Ohio. DNA tests then proved the remains there were Davis'.

Last summer, the family interred the remains at a cemetery near their home outside Kansas City.

Since then, Clack has been calling detectives in Ohio and Jackson County, Mo., and has been frustrated by what she considers a lack of enthusiasm for the case.

The Republic

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