~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Los Angeles Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EGYPT: Rights group alleges military forced captured female protesters into taking 'virginity tests'

Female activists detained during the Egyptian army's evacuation of Tahrir Square on March 9 told human-rights organizations that they were beaten, tortured and forced to take virginity tests while in military custody.

Salwa Hosseini, 20, who was taken by soldiers to a military prison on the outskirts of Cairo, told Amnesty International that she and fellow female detainees were strip searched, photographed while naked and subjected to electric shocks. Hossein added that female guards warned the captured women they would be charged with prostitution if they didn't take medical tests to prove they were virgins.

"Forcing women to have 'virginity tests' is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women," Amnesty International said. "The Egyptian authorities must halt the shocking and degrading treatment of women protesters. Women fully participated in bringing change in Egypt and should not be punished for their activism."

The human-rights group alleges the tests were carried out by a male doctor and that one woman, who claimed to be virgin while tests proved otherwise, was beaten and given electric shocks.

"The army officers tried to further humiliate the women by allowing men to watch and photograph what was happening, with the implicit threat that the women could be at further risk of harm if the photographs were made public," Amnesty's statement added.

Journalist Rasha Azeb, another female activist detained in Tahrir Square, said she was insulted, handcuffed and beaten.

El Nadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence announced that testimonies given to them by other female captives echoed those of Azeb and Hosseini. Following the toppling of former President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, several hundred protesters decided to prolong their demonstrations in the square until what they called "all the Jan. 25 revolutionary demands" were fulfilled by the ruling Supreme Military Council.

On March 9, military forces intervened to clear the square in an incident that saw at least 100 activists detained, including more than 17 women. Many of those captured were initially taken to the nearby Egyptian museum, where they claimed to have been tortured and beaten by soldiers.

All female detainees were released on March 13 after appearing in front of a military court. A few, including Hosseini, were convicted of disorderly conduct, destroying private and public property, obstructing traffic and carrying weapons. Hosseini was sentenced to a suspended one-year imprisonment.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/egypt-military-forced-captured-female-protesters-into-taking-virginity-tests.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bill to bar prison cellphones passes key vote in California Senate

After adding the threat of jail time for prison workers caught supplying cellphones to inmates, the Public Safety Committee approves the bill.

by Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

March 23, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento -- A proposed law against taking cellphones into California prisons passed a key vote Tuesday, but the measure would exempt prison employees — considered a main source of phones used to arrange crimes from behind bars — from screening by metal detectors as they go to work.

Requiring prison guards to stand in line for airport-like security checks would cost the state millions, according to legislative analysts. That is because members of the politically powerful corrections officers union are paid for "walk time" — the minutes it takes to get from their cars, or the front gate, to their posts inside the prisons.

Amid the state's budget crisis, any proposal that would cost money is a "dead end," said Bill Mabie, spokesman for state Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), sponsor of the cellphone bill.

The Senate Public Safety Committee approved Padilla's measure, which would make smuggling a cellphone to an inmate a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. The measure now heads to the Appropriations Committee.

As written, the bill, SB 26, did not apply the threat of jail time to prison employees, but the Public Safety Committee added that provision Tuesday.

"These cellphones are being brought in primarily, it appears, by people employed by our corrections system," said committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley). "To me this is not only a very egregious offense, but a breach of public trust."

Hancock made the comments after listening to Padilla and Terri McDonald, chief deputy secretary of adult operations for California prisons, list crimes directed by inmates with smuggled cellphones, including murders, kidnappings, drug deals and witness intimidation.

The committee stripped Padilla's bill of a provision that would have added two to five years to the sentence of any inmate caught planning a crime with a smuggled cellphone. Because of the state's chronic prison overcrowding, the Public Safety Committee has a moratorium against measures that would increase the prison population.

More than 10,000 cellphones turned up behind California prison walls last year, up from 261 in 2006. The problem is so widespread that prison officials are unable to keep the devices out of the hands of even the most notorious and violent inmates. Charles Manson has been caught twice with a smuggled cellphone.

The incentive for smugglers is strong: Phones fetch as much as $1,000 from inmates. In 2008, internal investigators searched an employee's car and found 50 cellphones labeled with the names of the inmates they were destined for, according to a report by Senate staff.

In 2009, a corrections officer garnered $150,000 in a single year by smuggling phones to prisoners. He was fired but was not prosecuted because it is not against the law to take cellphones into prison, although it is a violation of prison rules for inmates to possess them.

Forty-three other states have outlawed the devices, Padilla said. And last year, President Obama signed a bill making possession of cellphones illegal in federal prisons.

Federal prison guards are required to go through metal detectors on the way in to work, according to the Senate report. "Once staff grew accustomed to the new entry screening process, the added time it took them to report to their workstations was minimized," the report says.

But the procedure comes with other costs, for a metal detector and four employees to operate it during each shift change.

Padilla, who in the past has proposed screening guards, urged Gov. Jerry Brown to include it in the negotiation of a new prison guards' work contract earlier this year. A contract agreement was struck last week, but the walk-time provision "didn't come up," said Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Personnel Administration. Details of the deal have not been released.

Brown has not taken an official position on the bill.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cell-phones-20110323,0,3153698.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

L.A.'s massage parlor mess

It's not enough to plead poverty, Los Angeles officials owe it to residents to enforce certification requirements to prevent the city becoming a haven for prostitution.

March 24, 2011

Can't Los Angeles do anything right? First it was billboards, legal and illegal, conventional and digital, that proliferated across the city as seemingly powerless officials fretted about what to do. For a while, every official action seemed to make matters worse. Then it was marijuana dispensaries that were suddenly everywhere, encouraged by inaction from City Hall. Belated attempts to regulate and police them were struck down in court. Dispensaries opened, closed and opened again.

Now it is, allegedly, prostitution, as self-described massage parlors have rapidly opened their doors within city limits, particularly in Eagle Rock and other northeastern neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The problem, as The Times' Kate Linthicum reported Wednesday, is that Los Angeles didn't keep up with a 2009 state law changing certification requirements for legitimate massage therapists. The law swept aside local regulation of therapists in favor of uniform state certification, but it allowed cities to demand that massage businesses show their state credentials. Other cities in the region required businesses to do just that, but in Los Angeles, officials merely asked the businesses if they were state certified. Presumably, many that had no state approval said "yes" because they didn't have to show any proof.

It's not enough to plead poverty. Yes, Los Angeles is under severe budget stress and has had to cut funding for the city attorney's office and other departments and agencies that otherwise might keep an eye on permitting. But the same is true of neighboring cities that still seem to muster enough attention to protect their neighborhoods.

Some may be tempted to dismiss the proliferation of massage parlors as not a big deal, on the grounds that they're merely places for consenting adults to engage in personal business, sexual or otherwise, behind closed doors. That's naive. Whether prostitution should be legal is not the issue. Currently, it's not, and Los Angeles' failure to pay attention has now made its streets the destination for massage customers from cities that no longer tolerate such establishments.

In other cities, officials are cracking down on the exploitation of women, many of them underage, whose illegal immigrant status makes them virtual slaves in the sex industry. But just as City Hall's regulatory and enforcement ineptitude drew "medical" marijuana dispensaries that brushed aside state law and engaged in straightforward sales to customers with or without medical need, massage parlors have arguably made northeast Los Angeles the region's prostitution capital. Angelenos certainly want their city leaders to bring in more jobs, but this is not what they had in mind.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-massage-20110324,0,7335628,print.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the New York Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Drug Wars Push Deeper Into Central America

by RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and DAMIEN CAVE

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Josue Oviedo looked into his sister's fading eyes as she fought to speak her last words.

“She was trying to tell me something,” he said, a day after the funeral for Daisy Oviedo Mejía, 22, who died in a storm of bullets while watching her brother play soccer a few weeks ago. “But she couldn't. I gave her mouth-to-mouth but there was too much blood.”

Ms. Oviedo, a primary school teacher who liked to dance and sing with her students, was one of four people killed that day when gunmen opened fire at a park, the second such massacre here since November. She was innocent, the authorities said, another casualty in the violence and social ills rocking Central America as criminal groups turn the region into a main artery for funneling cocaine north to the United States.

Traffickers have used Central America as a stopover point since at least the 1970s. But the aggressive crackdowns on criminal organizations in Mexico and Colombia, coupled with strides in limiting smuggling across the Caribbean, have increasingly brought the powerful syndicates here, pushing the drug scourge deeper into small Central American countries incapable of combating it.

Most of the known cocaine shipments moving north, 84 percent of them, crossed through Central America last year, according to radar tracking data from American authorities — a sharp increase from 44 percent in 2008 and only 23 percent in 2006, the year President Felipe Calderón of Mexico took office and began his assault against the drug gangs in his country.

Responding to the pressure — and opportunity — the cartels have spread out quickly. Five of Central America's seven countries are now on the United States' list of 20 “major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries.” Three of those, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, were added just last year.

At the same time, management has changed. Mexican cartels have taken over from Colombians in recent years, recruiting local gangs to help bolster shipments, increasing consumption by paying with drugs and expanding extortion and kidnapping networks to round out their enterprise.

“This is David versus Goliath,” said Marlon Pascua, Honduras's defense secretary. “And we are David fighting the giant.”

The issue took center stage when President Obama, during a visit to El Salvador on Tuesday and Wednesday, announced a plan to fight organized crime in the region by strengthening civilian institutions and providing training for local authorities, weapons and equipment.

But such promises have been made before, and many Central American leaders are frustrated by the wait. Of the $1.6 billion in law enforcement support promised under the antidrug Merida initiative announced in 2007, $258 million was assigned to Central America. Yet only $20 million of it had actually been spent by April of last year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Meanwhile, the problem continues to metastasize. American officials say the 2009 coup in Honduras kicked open the door to cartels, and this month the authorities there made a troubling find: a major cocaine processing lab, suggesting that the region was becoming not just a way station for drugs, but also a manufacturer.

Even once peaceful corners like Costa Rica are struggling with addiction, gangs and drug-money corruption. Without immediate help, said José María Tijerino Pacheco, Costa Rica's minister of public security, “the region is going to degenerate into another Mexico.”

Overmatched Defenses

The American military's map of suspected drug plane and boat traffic heading from South America to Central America last year shows scores of lines running north. On the Atlantic side is a pistol-shaped arc of flights: the handle is the Venezuela-Colombia border and the barrel is pointed at Honduras's Caribbean coast. On the Pacific side, the tracks show mostly boats — with dozens of lines heading from Colombia to an area of Costa Rica famous for fishing.

Both routes are increasingly popular: suspected drug flights to Honduras spiked to 82 last year, up from only 6 in 2006; in Costa Rica, there were 100 “maritime events,” up from just 12 five years ago.

The patterns reveal how drug traffickers exploit the region's geographic, political and economic vulnerabilities. In Honduras, the coast northeast of San Pedro Sula offers a remote, largely uninhabited rainforest that is perfect for the single-engine planes traffickers use, then hide or burn to destroy the evidence.

One former smuggler said he had little trouble moving cocaine loads for years. He said he collected pound after pound from planes and then drove it by boat or car to the Guatemala border, without once being caught.

“We always got it through,” he said, withholding his full name for fear of reprisals.

Honduran officials hardly dispute such claims, saying the radar system they would need to closely track the planes would cost $30 million, and even then, they would need helicopters and other equipment to quickly intervene. The coup only made matters worse, because the Honduran military was diverted to containing street protests and American officials suspended anti-narcotics aid in response to the political crisis.

In Costa Rica, the Pacific Coast has proven just as porous. Speedboats with contraband ply the shipping lanes, according to fishermen in Puntarenas, the country's main Pacific port. They say their radios have been crackling for years with cartel requests for food or offers of a few thousand dollars to carry drugs ashore.

That is, if the traffickers do not own the boats already. Chamber of Commerce officials in Puntarenas said that people suspected of being cartel leaders have bought at least a half-dozen fishing businesses over the past few years, coercing sales either with the barrel of a gun or by offering more than the going rate at a time when fishing yields are declining.

Mauricio Boraschi, who occupies a newly created position as Costa Rica's drug czar, said the Mexican cartels were gobbling up any legitimate business to hide their product. “They buy everything — the farms, the means of production, the transport,” Mr. Boraschi said. “It's all to move cocaine.”

At the small Coast Guard base in Puntarenas, most of the guardsmen admit they are outmatched. “It's extremely frustrating,” said Pastor Reyes González, the commander. “There is not much we can do.”

He pointed to his boats. The smaller ones, he said, were too slow to intercept the cartels' speedy skiffs. Of the unit's three larger boats, only one had a functioning engine. And that was a hand-me-down from the Americans, commissioned in 1960.

All around the country's 801-mile coastline, the story is the same. Of Costa Rica's 26 boats involved in security, only 14 function, said Mr. Tijerino, the minister of public security. Even the largest Coast Guard stations, he said, can cover only 5 percent of their territory — and even less at night because they lack proper equipment.

Costa Ricans used to joke about such limitations. The country abolished its military in 1948, and with a motto of “pura vida,” or pure life, it has spent decades cultivating an image of easygoing democratic stability.

But what had been a point of pride has now become a vulnerability — and a catalyst for requests for help.

In Costa Rica and in Honduras, as with other countries in the region, the largest seizures have come only with American assistance. Just a few weeks ago, after American radar picked up a plane near the Honduran coast, Drug Enforcement Administration helicopters with night vision gear helped pinpoint where the plane landed. Oscar Álvarez, the security minister, said its cocaine was seized, but only because the police and American agents happened to be training nearby. Even these victories can be fleeting. Last year, a single-engine plane that had been seized and stored at a military base in San Pedro Sula disappeared. Five armed men somehow slipped past guards, broke into the hangar and flew the plane away.

Consequences Pile Up

Central America is not just awash in smugglers. The region has become a major cocaine consumer, starting a few years ago when the cartels began paying people in kind. Local dealers quickly turned those payments into crack that sells for $1 a hit.

The consequences continue to multiply. Urban areas and coastal towns are experiencing more drug-related crime, while treatment centers are as overwhelmed and ill prepared as the police.

In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, all of the slots at the drug treatment center were full during a recent visit. The closest alternative was a six-hour drive away.

In Puntarenas, Costa Rica, the drug center offered a portrait of what happens when cartels infiltrate a town of 10,000 people, in a country smaller than West Virginia. Housed in an antique train depot, the center was full, as usual, with 32 struggling men.

“Demand for help has doubled since last year,” said Hanzel Mora Badilla, 26, the center's manager. “Every year, it doubles.”

He pulled out a heavy ledger identifying everyone who has passed through. Only about one in 100 get clean for good, Mr. Badilla said, so the book was mostly a casualty list of the come and gone: Fernando, 24, a carpenter addicted to crack; Miguel, 52, a fisherman addicted to crack; Marvin, 22, Juan, 37, José, 30 — page after page, name after name, each a tragedy in shaky script.

“They're zombies,” said Mr. Boraschi, Costa Rica's drug czar. Some, he added, are also dangerous.

A month ago, the Costa Rican police found a couple that had been killed in a neighborhood of Puntarenas called Progress. They were known as the area's main dealers, and the police said they were killed because they owed a debt to Mexican bosses.

But for those who knew them before they joined the cartel economy, they exemplified a wider, regional spiral.

Jesús E. Chávez, one of the Coast Guard officers in Puntarenas, said the dead dealer had been a school classmate. “He was a good kid,” he said. But, Mr. Chávez noted, drugs and money in Central America have become hard to resist.

“The narcos are hiring our good workers, people I know,” Mr. Chávez said, describing a raid in which he found himself facing a neighbor who lived three houses away.

Climbing Murder Rate

That is exactly what frightens the people and leaders of small countries like Costa Rica and Honduras. While Mexico continues to struggle with heinous violence, its murder rate is still relatively low, at 12 per 100,000 people. In Honduras, the already high murder rate has climbed rapidly and is much higher than Mexico's — at 66.8 per 100,000 people, it is the worst in Central America.

Ms. Oviedo's father, Gonzalo Oviedo, knew the statistics. He preached nonviolence in San Pedro Sula and in nearby La Lima, where his daughter lived and worked at the religious school the family runs.

Never did he imagine, he said, that his words and faith would be so tested.

“It is not easy to have hope,” he said. “What we have is desperation, anguish and fear.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/americas/24drugs.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Control Tower Unresponsive to 2 Planes in Washington

Two passenger airliners landed at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington without clearance or guidance from the airport's control tower early Wednesday, and officials were looking into the possibility that the air traffic controller on duty had fallen asleep.

One of the planes, an American Airlines Boeing 737 from Dallas, approached the airport around midnight but aborted its landing and circled the airport after pilots got no response from the tower. About 15 minutes later, a United Airlines Airbus 320 from Chicago also tried unsuccessfully to establish contact with the tower.

Both planes made contact with a regional tower that guided them in, and both landed safely, said Peter Knudson, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman.

Mr. Knudson said that it was unclear why the Reagan controller had not responded, and that the agency was looking into the possibility that the person had fallen asleep. In a statement, Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the agency was looking into “staffing issues and whether existing procedures were followed appropriately.”

Both planes followed an established procedure for landing at an airport with unstaffed towers, which occurs at some smaller airports that do not have controllers in the early morning. When the first plane, American Airlines Flight 1012, approached the airport and did not get a response from the tower, the pilots radioed a regional center — the Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities. Workers there then tried unsuccessfully to reach the tower by phone. As the plane circled the airport, its pilots tuned into the control tower radio frequency, broadcasting their position, speed and distance to alert other planes as Flight 1012 came in for a landing.

That procedure helped clue in the pilots of the second plane that arrived 15 minutes later from Chicago. Mr. Knudson said that shortly after it landed, the controller at Reagan “became responsive.”

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said he had instructed the F.A.A. to study staffing levels at other airports, and told the agency to put two air traffic controllers on duty during the midnight shift at Reagan.

“It is not acceptable to have just one controller in the tower managing air traffic in this critical air space,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/us/24airport.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Virginia: 160 Immigrants Arrested

More than 160 foreign citizens, most of them illegal immigrants with criminal records, were arrested in Northern Virginia over a three-day enforcement surge.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced the arrests in Manassas, where political leaders have faulted it for failing to aggressively enforce immigration laws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/us/24brfs-160IMMIGRANT_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Google News

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For al-Qaida, Detroit was just the cheapest flight

When an admitted al-Qaida operative planned his itinerary for a Christmas 2009 airline bombing, he considered launching the strike in the skies above Houston or Chicago, The Associated Press has learned. But tickets were too expensive, so he refocused the mission on a cheaper destination: Detroit.

The decision is among new details emerging about one of the most sensational terrorism plots to unfold since President Barack Obama took office. It shows that al-Qaida's Yemen branch does not share Osama bin Laden's desire to attack symbolic targets, preferring instead to strike at targets of opportunity. Like the plot that nearly blew up U.S.-bound cargo planes last year, the cities themselves didn't matter. It's a strategy that has helped the relatively new group quickly become the No. 1 threat to the United States.

After the failed bombing and the arrest of suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the question of why Detroit was targeted had gone unanswered. It was previously reported that Abdulmutallab did not specifically choose Christmas for his mission.

Abdulmutallab considered Houston, where he attended an Islamic conference in 2008, current and former counterterrorism officials told the AP. Another person with knowledge of the case said Abdulmutallab also considered Chicago but was discouraged by the cost. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

While the target and timing were unimportant, the mission itself was a highly organized plot that involved one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists and al-Qaida's go-to bomb maker, current and former officials said. Before Abdulmutallab set off on his mission, he visited the home of al-Qaida manager Fahd al-Quso to discuss the plot and the workings of the bomb.

Al-Quso, 36, is one of the most senior al-Qaida leaders publicly linked to the Christmas plot. His association with al-Qaida stretches back more than a decade to his days in Afghanistan when, prosecutors said, bin Laden implored him to "eliminate the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."

From there he rose through the ranks. He was assigned the job in Aden to videotape the 1998 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others, but fell asleep. Despite the lapse, he is now a mid-level manager in the organization. Al-Quso is from the same tribe as radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who had an operational role in the botched Christmas attack.

In December, al-Quso was designated a global terrorist by the State Department, a possible indication that his role in al-Qaida's Yemen franchise has grown more dangerous.

Al-Quso was indicted on 50 terrorism counts in New York for his role preparing for the Cole attack and served more than five years in prison in Yemen before he was released in 2007. On the FBI's list, al-Quso ranks behind only bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri among the most sought-after al-Qaida terrorists.

After meeting with al-Quso, Abdulmutallab left Yemen in December 2009 and made his way to Ghana, where he paid $2,831 in cash for a round-trip ticket from Nigeria to Amsterdam to Detroit and back.

Abdulmutallab, 24, is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiring with others to kill 281 passengers and 11 crew members aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. After his arrest, he admitted to the FBI that he intended to blow up the plane and later surfaced in an al-Qaida propaganda video.

Abdulmutallab initially cooperated with investigators, pulling back the curtain on some activities by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based offshoot that has quickly became al-Qaida's most active franchise. Plea discussions fell apart, however, and he's scheduled to go to trial in October while acting as his own lawyer.

One of the challenges facing U.S. intelligence officials is that much of the information they collect on terrorists comes from surveillance or informants, and the government is reluctant to reveal it. So if a terrorist is captured overseas, prosecuting him in the U.S. or persuading another country to hold him can be difficult.

A plea deal from Abdulmutallab would have resolved that dilemma. His testimony could form the basis for indictments against al-Awlaki or perhaps bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. And the U.S. wouldn't have to disclose some of its most sensitive intelligence-gathering techniques.

http://www.doaneline.com/news/national/article_de26ecb4-6de6-5d18-bf48-12724f9a277a.html

.