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From the Los Angeles Times

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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.

by Carol J. Williams

Los Angeles Times

March 11, 2011

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.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fgw-japan-quake-assistance,0,5803320,print.story

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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."

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

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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.

by Donald R. Prothero

March 11, 2011

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.

The Sendai quake is a warning and a reminder that we Angelenos live in earthquake country too. Anyone who has lived in this area for more than a few years has experienced at least a few small quakes, and those of us who are long-term residents remember the 1971 Sylmar quake, the 1987 Whittier quake, the 1994 Northridge quake and others. The scientific community has studied the major faults in our region for years. Scientists have been digging trenches in ancient lakebeds near fault lines to find evidence of how often earthquakes occur on each major fault. They have detailed computer models of how the next big quake will affect us and which areas are most vulnerable. Their conclusions have been stated time and time again: Several of the faults in our region are overdue for major quakes. The latest forecasts say there's a 99.7% chance of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Southern California in the next 30 years, and a 46% likelihood of a much more powerful magnitude 7.5 quake (still hundreds of times smaller than the Sendai quake) in the next 30 years. The San Andreas fault is capable of an even larger one.

It's not a question of whether we're due for a catastrophic quake, but when . Although California building codes are among the most stringent in the United States (thanks to what the 1933 Long Beach quake, which destroyed nearly all of our unreinforced masonry buildings), they don't begin to match the standards demanded in Japan. Just consider the high overpasses where the 5 and 14 Freeways meet — which fell in the 1971 Sylmar quake; their replacements fell in the 1994 Northridge quake — and you begin to realize just how vulnerable our infrastructure is. And those quakes were only 6.6 and 6.7 in magnitude — thousands of times weaker than the Sendai quake.

Thus, the news from Japan is not only a sobering reminder that we are also in the cross hairs; it is a warning that we must take the threat seriously. Seismic engineers have been advocating clear-cut standards for construction, some of which are followed but much of which are ignored. Most engineering experts tell us that we have neglected the infrastructure and earthquake safety issues for too long. We continue to put it off because of budgetary issues and the current bad economy. But when the next Southern California quake happens as predicted, we will all be looking back and pointing fingers of blame at "penny wise and pound foolish" people who did not spend the money that would have saved even far more money — and many lives.

On a more personal level, each one of us needs to take these warnings seriously and pull our heads out of the sand. Does your house have an earthquake kit for the long days without water, power, food and easily obtainable cash? Has your house been made as safe against earthquakes as possible? Those who ignore these warnings now will regret it later when the next Big One hits.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-prothero-quake-20110312,0,5285564,print.story

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LAPD limits impounding of unlicensed drivers' cars

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

by Joel Rubin and Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times

March 12, 2011

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.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said that since he took over the department more than a year ago, the checkpoint policy had "stuck in my craw as one of the things we weren't doing the right way." Beck said he decided to make the change after immigration rights advocates raised the issue with him anew in meetings this week.

"I'm tired of casting the net so wide," he said. "This is the right thing to do. There is a fairness issue here … and we're trying to balance the needs of all segments of our community and keep the roads safe."

The new rules, Beck said, were an attempt to mitigate somewhat "the current reality, which is that for a vast number of people, who are a valuable asset to our community and who have very limited resources, their ability to live and work in L.A. is severely limited by their immigration status."

The change, which the department announced in a news release late Friday afternoon, is likely to anger groups that support strict enforcement of immigration laws. Efforts to contact representatives of several of those groups for comment were unsuccessful.

The issue of impounds has become a controversial topic in recent years. Police in the small cities of Bell and Maywood have been accused of systematically targeting undocumented immigrants when impounding cars in an effort to boost municipal revenues.

Ron Gochez, a member of the steering committee for the Southern California Immigration Coalition, expressed limited praise for the LAPD's change but questioned why the department needed to impound a car if the driver had not been drinking.

"It's a step in the right direction, but it still falls short of what we're asking for," he said. "We're not against checkpoints. We want checkpoints to happen, we want drunk drivers off our streets. We just don't want people to be losing their cars who aren't drunk."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd-tow-20110312,0,4080540,print.story

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From the New York 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.

The United States took a strident tone with China this week, chastising it over the wave of detentions.

“The United States is increasingly concerned by the apparent extralegal detention and enforced disappearance of some of China's most well-known lawyers and activists, many of whom have been missing since mid-February,” Philip J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We have expressed our concern to the Chinese government over the use of extralegal punishments against these and other human rights activists.”

Chinese officials have avoided questions about the detentions and specific detainees. The overseas edition of People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, said in an editorial about China and the Middle East uprisings on Thursday: “A number of people with ulterior motives both inside and outside China are conspiring to divert the troubled waters toward China. They have used the Internet to fan the flames, hoping to whip up ‘street politics' in China and thereby sow chaos in China.”

China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, said Friday that 17 Chinese had been detained in connection with the calls for a so-called Jasmine Revolution (a term borrowed from the Tunisia uprising) and were being investigated for crimes. Among them is Ran Yunfei, a writer and blogger from Sichuan Province. Such investigations often result in criminal prosecution.

The group has also documented scores of other detentions and disappearances across China. Some people are missing, and some are under “soft detention” in their homes, an increasingly common form of confinement.

Zhang Jiannan, the founder of a popular Internet forum who was active on Twitter , was detained last week and put under criminal investigation, a friend of his said Friday. The forum, 1984bbs.com, was shuttered last fall. It was not clear why he was seized or of what crime he was suspected.

Among those who have “been disappeared” into an extralegal vacuum, as liberal Chinese describe it, are six lawyers who often take on rights cases. They are Tang Jitian, Jiang Tianyong and Mr. Teng from Beijing; Liu Shihui and Tang Jinglin from Guangzhou; and Li Tiantian from Shanghai. Mr. Tang was taken away on Feb. 16, and Mr. Jiang and Mr. Teng both vanished on Feb. 19. Gu Chuan, an activist writer in Beijing, also disappeared during that period. That round of detentions took place after a group of lawyers and rights advocates met in Beijing on Feb. 16 to discuss the case of Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer under strict house arrest in rural Shandong Province.

The detainees have probably been kept so long because the calls for a Jasmine Revolution began percolating on the Internet that same week, and then the meetings of the National People's Congress and consultative legislature opened on March 5.

Relatives and supporters say they hope the detainees will be released after the legislative sessions end Monday, but scholars say that the use of extralegal detention has been widening, in conjunction with a rollback of legal rights, and that the long disappearances could be a new status quo. The targets are often the tiny fraction of China's 170,000 lawyers who push for legal reform and enforcement of the Constitution.

“What's disturbing with some of these lawyers or ex-lawyers, the government seems to be increasingly treating them lawlessly,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a professor at New York University who studies China's legal system.

“I think it's all part of the accelerating trend,” he added. “It started with the 17th Party Congress in fall of 2007. You had a new party line, one that was much tighter. They're looking for a comprehensive method of social management. There's a new formula.”

Eva Pils, an associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that the long silences were unusual and that “there's a very great concern about the treatment during their period of enforced disappearance.”

Perhaps the most serious recent case is that of Gao Zhisheng, a rights lawyer who spoke of being pummeled with electric batons and burned with cigarettes during one round of detention in 2007. He has since been subjected to further enforced disappearances, the latest beginning in April 2010.

Mr. Teng, the Beijing lawyer, wrote an essay in December about being beaten during a brief detention that month. At one point, he said, a plainclothes officer said to a policeman: “Why waste words on this sort of person? Let's beat him to death and dig a hole to bury him in and be done with it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/world/asia/12china.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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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.”

So this week, despite his political affinity for conservatives and Republicans, Mr. Khan has found himself indignant and appalled. Representative Peter T. King, a conservative Republican from Long Island, has convened hearings into what he says is the radicalization of American Muslims and the supposed refusal to cooperate with law enforcement officials.

If these hearings are meant to draw some bright line between “good” and “bad” Muslims, between “moderates” and “radicals,” then that point has been lost on Mr. Khan and many of the Muslims who work on Capitol Hill. Republican and Democrat, Sunni and Shia, convert and born Muslim, they echo a common revulsion.

“It's saddening that faith has become a partisan issue,” Mr. Khan said. “It's disappointing that some people have attempted to exploit fears and real threats to demonize a whole faith community.”

While the King hearings are raising the specter of American Muslims as an enemy within, the proof of American Muslim patriotism exists literally beneath the Capitol dome. Two Muslims, Representatives Keith Ellison of Minnesota and André D. Carson of Indiana, serve in Congress. About 100 Muslims work for Congress in capacities like information technology, policing and legislative research.

Five years ago, some of them formed an association of Muslim Congressional staff members, which is now led by Assad R. Akhter, 30, deputy chief of staff to Representative William J. Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey. The association's annual iftar dinner, when the daily fast of Ramadan is broken, has drawn as many as 1,000 participants, many of them not Muslim.

Last March, almost exactly a year before the start of the King hearings, the Muslim chaplain of Duke University delivered the prayer opening the day's House session, making him only the third Muslim clergyman ever accorded that honor.

“I cannot express the kind of joy I felt,” recalled Abdullah T. Antepli, 38, the chaplain. “I was dancing in the clouds for a couple of weeks.”

The events of the last year have brought him rudely back to earth. In Mr. Antepli's view, the vitriolic opposition to a Muslim community center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan and the widely publicized threat by an obscure Florida minister to burn Korans built up an outcry against American Muslims that the King hearings have raised to a level of official governmental legitimacy.

“It shows the ugliness will not go away with one prayer, one gesture,” Mr. Antepli said. “This year has been the most difficult of my life, and I think my pain and grief is representative of six to eight million solid citizens and taxpayers.”

Those emotions strike especially acutely at Muslims on the Hill. While they represent a minuscule portion of the Congressional work force, which numbers roughly 15,000, most saw their positions there as proof of American tolerance and meritocracy.

“For the most part, you're talking about young people who were born and raised here,” said Jameel Aalim-Johnson, 47, who was chief of staff to Representative Gregory W. Meeks of Queens from 1998 through 2008. “Their identity as Americans is as much as their identity as Muslims. They see this as their home.”

As a veteran of countless Congressional hearings, Mr. Johnson sought to distinguish between a necessary inquiry into homegrown terrorism and the broad-based suspicion of an entire religious community. “When we address crime and drugs, we address it as the problem itself,” he said, “not as an ethnic or racial or religious group of people responsible for that problem.”

Suhail Khan, meanwhile, has not entirely lost the idealistic vision of Washington that “Schoolhouse Rock” entranced him with all those years ago.

“I am hopeful this is a short-term phenomenon,” he said of the climate stirred by the King hearings. “When we look at the history of our country, and how groups like Catholics, Jews, Mormons and Japanese-Americans were the subject of demonization, our country ultimately rose above that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/us/politics/12religion.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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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.

Intent on holding onto his job, Mr. Bundgaard, 43, denied that he invoked legislative immunity after the police responded to his roadside brawl with Ms. Ballard on Feb. 25. He said that Ms. Ballard, 34, hit him after accusing him of dancing the rumba too closely with another woman in a local charity version of “Dancing With the Stars.” He said that he did not hit Ms. Ballard at all and that he passed a polygraph.

Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a police spokesman, said in an interview that the senator specifically invoked Article 4 of the State Constitution, which says lawmakers are “privileged from arrest in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, and they shall not be subject to any civil process during the session of the Legislature, nor for 15 days before the commencement of each session.”

Ms. Ballard has accused her ex-boyfriend — both of them say the relationship is over — of hitting her first as they drove in his gold Mercedes on State Highway 51 north of downtown Phoenix. They have accused each other of throwing personal items out of the window of the moving car, which Mr. Bundgaard eventually pulled over near the median.

After he hired a public relations consultant to present his version of events, Ms. Ballard went on local television to give her side of the story. “The officer came over, the sergeant, and said, ‘Look, I hate to do this to you, it's not fair, but I'm going to have to take you off to jail. He's been granted immunity; he's a senator,' ” she said.

Police departments around the country treat legislators' privileges in various ways.

In 1999, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia pulled out a copy of the United States Constitution after a traffic accident and pointed out the section that stated that members of Congress “shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest.” He later backed down and had an aide ask the police in Fairfax County, Va., to issue him a citation.

In Arizona, State Representative Mark DeSimone was cited for misdemeanor assault for hitting his wife in the face in 2008, The Arizona Republic reported. The charge was dropped after he resigned and agreed to undergo counseling.

At other times, the paper reported, lawmakers have faced no penalty. That was the case in 1988 when the police released State Senator Jan Brewer, who is now Arizona's governor, after discovering she was a lawmaker. She had been involved in a car crash and had stated that she had been drinking.

A group of Democratic lawmakers have demanded that Mr. Bundgaard, the Arizona Senate's No. 2 Republican, resign. The Senate president, Russell Pearce, has stood by his Republican colleague, saying that he considered Mr. Bundgaard to be the “victim” in the case. At a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday, Republicans declined to remove Mr. Bundgaard from his leadership position.

The local news media reported that Mr. Bundgaard accused Ms. Ballard of reaching for a gun he kept in the car, an accusation that did not make it into the police report and that Ms. Ballard denied.

Senator Ron Gould, a Republican and chairman of the Senate ethics panel, recently implied to reporters that he would have gone after Mr. Bundgaard if Ms. Ballard had been his daughter. “Something would have happened,” Mr. Gould said.

Mr. Bundgaard has spoken of the events on the Senate floor and has said he thinks it is time for the archaic notion of legislative privilege to go. “I am not above the law,” he said.

Mr. Bundgaard has not been formally charged, but the police say they intend to present the case to prosecutors. “The only thing that kept him out of jail was that he invoked his immunity,” Sergeant Thompson said. “He will have to answer these charges.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/us/politics/12immunity.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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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.

At the same time, the practice is hard to stop, say Web sites and federal officials. Sites try to catch under-age users — “We are not burying our head in the sand,” said Joe Sullivan, the chief security officer at Facebook — but verifying a young person's age over the Internet is a task that ranges from tricky to near impossible.

Cristina Flores, 44, a nurse in San Francisco, said she had decided to allow her 11-year-old son to get onto Facebook rather than deny it to him and risk that he would sign up behind her back. Besides, she said, she did not realize there were any age restrictions on the site.

“It's not like there's a legal age limit for being on the Internet,” Ms. Flores said.

Her son Jake said he had told Facebook that he was 15: “I just picked something random.”

In one of Jake's fifth-grade classes at Commodore Sloat Elementary school, 15 of the 30 students said they had Facebook accounts.

“And you should see all the third-graders who are on,” said Aundrea Kaune, the class's teacher. Last year, she went onto Facebook and was shocked by how many students from the school were there.

“It's lying — and about age,” Ms. Kaune said. “What happens when they want to drink beer?”

The risks for under-age members of social networks are not theoretical. Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer of Myspace, who now runs an Internet safety consulting business, recounted a recent incident from his business. In New York State, he said, an 11-year-old boy accepted a friend request on Facebook from a girl in his class. But the girl's account was fake, and the person behind it began posting images of the boy on sex-oriented sites, along with nasty comments.

When the boy's images started showing up in Google searches, the school suspected that he had posted them and summoned his parents. Other children began picking on him.

“It can be a living nightmare for an 11-year-old who just wanted to hang out with his friends,” Mr. Nigam said.

In 2006, 31 percent of 12-year-olds in the United States were using social networks, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. That figure grew to 38 percent by mid-2009, when the survey was last conducted.

ComScore, a firm that measures Internet traffic, estimates that 3.6 million of Facebook's 153 million monthly visitors in this country are under 12. Some of those visitors may not have Facebook accounts and may simply be visiting public pages, comScore said. (It reached that figure by cross-referencing its own traffic analysis with household demographics.)

Internet companies have set up the rules against under-age users because they must comply with the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, passed in 1998, which says Web sites that collect information from children younger than 13 must obtain parental consent.

Obtaining that consent is complex and expensive, so companies like Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, reject anyone who tries to sign up using an age below 13. Google, Facebook and Yahoo all declined to talk about how many children jump the barriers, but they say they try to enforce the rules.

Mr. Sullivan of Facebook said the company blocked new registrations or deleted the accounts of thousands of under-age users every day.

But some children's advocates say these companies are not publicly owning up to the scope of the problem.

“There is no question that Facebook has to be aware that they have a very large number of under-13 members on the site,” said Larry Magid, a co-director of ConnectSafely, a nonprofit group that provides information to parents and children.

Mr. Magid and other researchers say the social networks fail to provide under-age users with tools that might protect them.

“Facebook has no resources to help the younger kids, and that's not good,” he said.

Facebook does have measures to protect older teenagers from predators, but children who pretend to be older than 18 are bypassing even those safeguards, which place restrictions on how widely minors can share information and who can contact them on the site.

The Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with enforcing the child protection act, acknowledges the problem. But Mary K. Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the commission, said there was no good solution.

In 2008, state attorneys general concerned about child predators helped set up a task force to research online age verification. It concluded that creating a reliable system would be extremely difficult.

“I don't think anyone knows how to prevent a kid from lying about their age,” Ms. Engle said.

Victoria Lai, 14, a ninth grader at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco, is a repeat offender.

“The first one was Yahoo, in second grade,” said Victoria. “I did it to play games.” She followed up by faking her birth date to join Myspace, Facebook and YouTube. “I always say I was born in 1986, not 1996, because it's just one number different. Easy to remember.”

In Victoria's fifth-period honors English class, all 32 students said they had faked their birth year to gain access to one site or another.

Victoria's father, Brian Lai, an airline mechanic, said young people “have to have experience using the Internet. It's the future.” He said Victoria told him she was going onto the sites, and he told her: “It's not good to lie, but you can make an exception.”

Jerry Ng, Victoria's 14-year-old cousin, agreed. “It's one thing to lie to a person,” he said. “But this is lying to a computer.”

Jerry and Victoria said they were using the sites responsibly: chatting with friends, checking out videos and playing games. And Victoria said her fib had caused only one real hiccup; she appears to be stuck with her incorrect age. After she turned 13, she tried unsuccessfully to turn her birth date back to her real one.

“It wouldn't let me,” she said. “So I guess I'll just leave it at that."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/technology/internet/12underage.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Honor Giffords, learn CPR

March 12, 2011

Staff reports East Valley Tribune

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.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/our_community/article_05cb6bf6-4c30-11e0-8f80-001cc4c03286.html

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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

by Bob Hess, FOX 4 News

Meagan Kelleher, Web Producer

March 11, 2011

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.

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-olathe-police-use-new-technology-to-alert-community-20110311,0,5525556.story

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From the White House

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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.

Under the leadership of President Obama and Administrator Fugate, we are changing all of this. We have taken several concrete steps already. And as Administrator Fugate said at today's MOA signing – we must plan for the whole of community up front, with FEMA as just one part of the emergency management team. Today's agreement helps strengthen the relationship that Administrator Fugate and his team have already developed with the National Disability Rights Network and other key stakeholders. It will help FEMA do two critical things:

• First, it helps us plan for the needs of the entire community, for any disaster. That means planning for the needs of people with disabilities, young children, seniors, and all members of the “real” community.
• Second, it's another step toward bringing the collective resources of the entire community to the table to help meet those needs.

President Obama put it best during his remarks seven months ago. Equal access and equal opportunities are common principles, no matter who you are. And they need to apply to every aspect of our lives, whether at school, at work, in our homes, or when an emergency happens. Today was another important step forward in that journey. And tomorrow, we begin again.

Heidi Avery is Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security on the National Security Staff.

From ICE

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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.

Ten of the 11 defendants were arrested without incident Thursday morning by teams of federal, state and local law enforcement officers. Vega, Espinoza, Gutierrez and seven other defendants are scheduled to make their initial appearances March 11 in the federal courthouse in Las Cruces.

Federal agents also executed 10 search warrants at eight residences, a business, and at the Columbus Police Department.

"Identifying and arresting individuals involved in criminal activities, especially weapons and drug trafficking, in our Homeland is a national security priority for ICE," said Manuel Oyola-Torres, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in El Paso. "ICE HSI special agents will continue working shoulder-to-shoulder with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to stop the flow of drugs, weapons and other contraband across the U.S.-Mexico border."

This investigation has been designated as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) program. The principal mission of OCDETF is to identify, disrupt and dismantle the most serious drug trafficking, weapons trafficking and money laundering organizations, and those responsible for the nation's illegal drug supply.

The indictment alleges that, between January 2010 and March 2011, the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to purchase firearms for illegal export to Mexico. During this 14-month period, the defendants allegedly purchased about 200 firearms from "Chaparral Guns," a store owned and operated by defendant Ian Garland.

According to the indictment, the defendants purchased firearms favored by the Mexican Cartels, including AK-47-type pistols, weapons resembling AK-47 rifles but with shorter barrels and without rear stocks, and American Tactical 9mm pistols. The defendants allegedly obtained firearms from Chaparral Guns by falsely claiming they were the actual purchasers of the firearms, when in fact they were acting as "straw purchasers" who were buying the firearms on behalf of others.

During the investigation, law enforcement officers seized 40 AK-47-type pistols, 1,580 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition, and 30 high-capacity magazines from the defendants before they crossed into Mexico. The indictment alleges that 12 firearms previously purchased by the defendants later were found in Mexico and were traced back to these defendants. As part of the investigation, efforts were made to seize firearms from defendants to prevent them from entering into Mexico, and no weapons were knowingly permitted to cross the border.

U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales of the District of New Mexico, said, "Gutierrez, Espinoza and Vega were duty sworn to protect and safeguard the people of Columbus, N.M. Instead, they increased the risk of harm that the people of Columbus face every day by allegedly using their official positions to facilitate and safeguard the operations of a smuggling ring that was exporting firearms to Mexico. Today's indictment reflects our unwavering resolve to ensure safety along our Southwest border, and to expose and prosecute corrupt officials who seek to profit at the expense of the citizenry they are sworn to protect."

Charges Against Defendants:

• Ignacio Villalobos, 24, of Columbus: conspiracy and firearms smuggling;
• Blas Gutierrez, 30, of Columbus: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, firearms smuggling;
• Eddie Espinoza, 51, of Columbus: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, and firearms smuggling;
• Angelo Vega, 40, of Columbus: conspiracy;
• Ian Garland, 50, of Chaparral, N.M.: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, and firearms smuggling;
• Alberto Rivera, 40, of Columbus: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, and firearms smuggling;
• Miguel Carrillo, 30, of Columbus: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, and firearms smuggling;
• Ricardo Gutierrez, 25, of Columbus: conspiracy, making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms, and firearms smuggling;
• Manuel Ortega, 25, of Palomas, Mexico: conspiracy and firearms smuggling;
• Vicente Carreon, 26, of Columbus: conspiracy and firearms smuggling; and
• Eva Lucie Gutierrez, 21, of Las Cruces: conspiracy and making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms.

John E. Murphy, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, and his El Paso Branch Office staff also assisted with the investigation. The Chihuahua State Police in Palomas, Mexico, and the Secretariat of Public Security in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, also supported the case.

The U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), New Mexico State Police, the Las Cruces Police Department, the El Paso (Texas) Police Department, and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies also assisted.

An indictment is only an accusation. All criminal defendants are entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1103/110311lascruces.htm

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