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From the Los Angeles Times

Passenger-protection rules for airlines to be issued

New regulations limit how long international passengers can be held on tarmacs, clarify trip prices and specify reimbursements for lost luggage and being bumped from flights.

Associated Press

April 20, 2011

DALLAS

Federal officials are expanding a tarmac-delay rule to prohibit airlines from holding passengers on stranded international flights for longer than four hours.

The change stems from a late-December debacle in which several planes loaded with international travelers were stuck for up to 10 hours on snowy New York runways.

That's one provision in a new passenger-protection rule to be issued Wednesday. The rule also will require airlines to refund bag fees if they lose customers' luggage, to include fees and taxes in advertised prices, and to pay passengers more if they get bumped from oversold flights.

Most of the new regulations will take effect in four months. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whose department will issue the new orders, said they were designed to make sure airlines treat travelers fairly.

"It's just common sense that if an airline loses your bag or you get bumped from a flight because it was oversold, you should be reimbursed," he said.

The new rule expands upon last year's 3-hour limit on tarmac delays for flights within the U.S. Consumer advocates complained that the rule didn't cover foreign airlines or international flights operated by U.S. ones, but their protests seemed to be ignored until the December blizzard shut down airports on the East Coast.

Several inbound flights, including ones operated by British Airways and Cathay Pacific, were stranded at New York airports with no chance for passengers to get off the plane for hours.

Transportation Department officials acknowledged the incident was a major factor in their decision to impose a 4-hour limit on tarmac delays for international flights. Airlines that break the rule can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger -- more than $10 million for a fully loaded superjumbo jet like an Airbus A380 -- although the government has never imposed anything close to the maximum.

Airlines also will be required to provide food, water, working toilets and medical care after two hours.

In comments to the Transportation Department, airline trade groups said the threat of penalties will force them to cancel more international flights if there's a chance of a long delay. They warned that with some international flights operating only once every few days, passengers could be stranded far longer under the new rule.

On refunding bag fees for lost luggage, the Transportation Department decided not to require refunds for bags delivered late. Airlines are already required to compensate passengers for the value of lost bags, regardless of whether a fee was paid to check them.

Wednesday's rule confirms another change that the regulators proposed last year - they will raise compensation for passengers bumped off oversold flights. Currently, it's up to $400 or $800 depending on how long a passenger is delayed before catching a makeup flight. Those limits will be raised to $650 and $1,330.

Last year, airlines forcibly bumped 65,000 passengers and another 681,000 took voluntary offers to give up their seats. Still, that's a tiny fraction of 1 percent of all travelers. The higher limits could give savvy travelers leverage to cut a better deal for their seats after gate agents ask for volunteers.

The new rule also requires airlines to prominently disclose all potential fees -- for checking bags, changing reservations, upgrading seats, and so on -- on their websites. Airlines will also have to include taxes and government-imposed fees in the fares that they advertise. Airlines had argued that car dealers and other businesses don't have to do that.

But in a setback for travel agents, the government declined at least temporarily to force airlines to clearly disclose all fees in their electronic connections with agents.

"Travel agents and corporate travel departments are just having to guess at the total price of a trip," said Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition. "Without information on fees, they can't comparison-shop." The Transportation Department said it would consider the issue some more.

Regulators also dropped a proposal to require that airlines include their customer-service promises in their legal contracts with passengers. While it sounds bureaucratic, consumer groups say it will be an important step in forcing airlines to live up to their promises.

Consumer advocates still hadn't seen the new rule on Tuesday but said they were assured by government officials that many of their issues would be addressed.

"There's going to be a lot of good stuff, a lot of little things that will make people feel better about traveling," said passenger-rights advocate Kate Hanni.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-airline-rules-20110420,0,2467506,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Ohio County Losing Its Young to Painkillers' Grip

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — This industrial town was once known for its shoes and its steel. But after decades of decline it has made a name for itself for a different reason: it is home to some of the highest rates of prescription drug overdoses in the state, and growing numbers of younger victims.

Their pictures hang in the front window of an empty department store, a makeshift memorial to more than two dozen lives. The youngest was still in high school.

Nearly 1 in 10 babies born last year in this Appalachian county tested positive for drugs. In January, police caught several junior high school students, including a seventh grader, with painkillers. Stepping Stone House, a residential rehabilitation clinic for women, takes patients as young as 18.

In Ohio, fatal overdoses more than quadrupled in the last decade, and by 2007 had surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death, according to the Department of Health.

The problem is so severe that Gov. John R. Kasich announced $36 million in new spending on it this month, an unusual step in this era of budget austerity. And on Tuesday, the Obama administration announced plans to fight prescription drug addiction nationally, noting that it was now killing more people than crack cocaine in the 1980s and heroin in the 1970s combined.

The pattern playing out here bears an eerie resemblance to some blighted cities of the 1980s: a generation of young people who were raised by their grandparents because their parents were addicts, and now they are addicts themselves.

“We're raising third and fourth generations of prescription drug abusers now,” said Chief Charles Horner of the Portsmouth police, who often notes that more people died from overdoses in Ohio in 2008 and 2009 than in the World Trade Center attack in 2001.

“We should all be outraged,” Chief Horner said. “It should be a No. 1 priority.”

Scioto County (pronounced sy-OH-tuh), of which Portsmouth is the seat, has made it one, bringing what had been a very private problem out into the public.

A coroner and a pharmacist are among its state lawmakers, and a bill in the state legislature would more strictly regulate pain clinics where drugs are dispensed. The most popular drug among addicts here is the painkiller OxyContin.

The county's efforts got the attention of political leaders in the state, including Governor Kasich, who declared the county a pilot project for combating addiction.

The problem is so bad that a storage company with business in the county recently complained to Chief Horner that it was having trouble finding enough job candidates who could pass drug tests.

“Around here, everyone has a kid who's addicted,” said Lisa Roberts, a nurse who works for the Portsmouth Health Department. “It doesn't matter if you're a police chief, a judge or a Baptist preacher. It's kind of like a rite of passage.”

About 10 years ago, when OxyContin first hurtled through the pretty hollow just north of town where the Mannering family lives, the two youngest children were still in high school. Their parents tried to protect them, pleading with neighbors who were selling the drug to stop. By mid-decade, they counted 11 houses on their country road that were dealing the drug (including a woman in her 70s called Granny), and their two youngest children, Nina and Chad, were addicted.

A vast majority of young people, officials said, get the drugs indirectly from dealers and other users who have access to prescriptions . Nina and Chad's father, Ed Mannering, said he caught a 74-year-old friend selling the pills from his front door. The sales were a supplement, the man said sheepishly, to his Social Security check.

“You drive down the road here, and you think, ‘All these nice houses, no one's doing any of that stuff,' ” said Judy Mannering, Nina and Chad's mother. “But they are. Oh, they are.”

Nina Mannering tried to quit, her mother said. She had a small daughter to care for. She was in a counseling program for a few months, but was told to leave when her boyfriend brought her pills. At one point, Ms. Mannering counted the number of schoolmates in four graduating classes who had died from overdoses, her mother recalled. The total was 16.

“It's like being in the middle of a tornado,” said Ed Hughes, director of the Counseling Center, a network of rehabilitation and drug counseling clinics in the county. “It was moving so fast that families were caught totally off guard. They had no idea what they were dealing with.”

In January 2010, Ms. Mannering was killed less than a mile from her parents' house. A man broke into the house where she was staying with a 65-year-old veteran who had access to prescriptions, and shot them both, looking for pills, the police said. She was 29. Her daughter, who was 8 at the time, watched.

“It was like your worst fear that could ever come true,” said Judy Mannering, who discovered her daughter's body at dusk, bathed in the light of a flickering, soundless television. Her son, Chad, served three years in prison for robbery. He is now sober.

Families are joining forces to combat the problem. Mothers whose children died from addiction have started to picket clinics that they believed were reckless with prescriptions. Last month the City Council passed a moratorium on new clinics.

“If you look at the problem, it's the darkest most malevolent thing you've ever seen,” said Terry Johnson, a former Portsmouth coroner who is now a state assemblyman. “But right now, people are feeling like they are making a difference, and that's the most important thing. We need to capture that spirit.”

The authorities have had some successes. Last month, agents raided a doctor's office and revoked his license. Another doctor from the area, Paul Volkman, is on trial in federal court in Cincinnati and accused of illegally disbursing prescription painkillers. But the drugs are legal, and it is hard to prosecute the people selling them. There are still five clinics in the county, several of them run by felons, officials said.

Chief Horner believes the problem will continue to fester without a coordinated effort by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

The state is stepping up efforts with prevention and rehabilitation, a spokeswoman for Governor Kasich said, but there are no plans to increase local financing for law enforcement, which remains, in the view of Chief Horner, woefully inadequate.

The trial of the man who shot Nina Mannering begins in June. Her mother awaits it with a mixture of dread and anticipation. For a while Judy Mannering felt so suffocated by grief that she could not leave the house, but that has passed.

Her grandchildren keep her going, as does her husband, Ed, a logger, who at 59 is still working full time, having spent their entire retirement savings on legal fees and rehab programs.

Mrs. Mannering has joined a group of other grieving mothers, who made the memorial of photographs in the store window. She has protested with them, holding up a sign with her daughter's photograph outside a clinic that dispenses pills. It was something she had never done before, but the ache of her loss gave her the courage.

“I miss her so much,” she said of Nina. “If you had 100 kids, you'll never replace the one you've lost.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/us/20drugs.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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U.S. unveils new terrorism alerts, scraps colors

WASHINGTON

Apr 20, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled a new warning system to alert Americans about specific terrorism threats, formally pushing the much-ridiculed color-coded warnings into the trash bin.

The new alerts will warn of either an "imminent threat" or an "elevated threat" with a summary of the potential threat as well as an expiration date. They could be extended, but unlike the old system there will not be an over-arching warning.

"The terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly over the past ten years," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement. In February she warned the terrorism threat was at its greatest since 2001.

Several attacks have been either disrupted or uncovered in the past few years, including an attempt by al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen last year to detonate toner cartridges packed with explosives aboard U.S.-bound cargo planes.

The color-coded system adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks was ridiculed because it failed to provide specific information about potential threats and the levels have not changed since August 2006 despite numerous attempted attacks.

It has been set at orange, or "high" for the U.S. aviation system -- a popular target for al Qaeda -- and at yellow, or "elevated" for the rest of the country. Napolitano announced plans to scrap that warning system in January.

Under the new system, an "elevated" threat will include a credible threat of terrorism while an "imminent" threat would warn of a credible, specific and impending threat.

The new alerts will include the potential geographic area and the mode of transportation or critical infrastructure potentially targeted in the threat, the Homeland Security Department said. Some alerts may only go to law enforcement or those directly affected by the threat, rather than the public.

The alerts that are published will be done through the media as well as social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The Obama administration has been slowly increasing the amount of information it has made public about threats, including warnings last year that anti-American militants may try to stuff explosives in insulated drink containers.

But other plots have gone much further. A Pakistani -born man tried to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square a year ago, but the crude bomb failed to explode and a street vendor alerted authorities.

Further, a Saudi man studying in Texas was discovered earlier this year allegedly trying to build bombs that he could detonate in New York City as well as at former President George W. Bush's Dallas home. The plot was foiled after tips from a chemical supplier and a freight company.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-security-alerts-idUSTRE73J32P20110420

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Say cheese: 'America's toughest Sheriff' lets public rate mugshots online

And now America's toughest Sheriff has come up with a new initiative to give the public a voice in law enforcement - an online Mugshot of the Day competition.

Arizona-based Joe Arpaio, known for his uncompromising stance on crime, is letting the public browse through the mugshots of those arrested each day and then vote for their favourite.

The Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff says he hopes the increased Web traffic will highlight the work of his employees.

He also says more crimes may be uncovered if the public can view the photos.

And while the new scheme may be controversial, it has the overwhelming backing of those using the site, with 4102 out of the 4964 people who have voted so far agreeing with Arpaio.

Visitors to the Sheriff's page mcso.org are greeted with the day's current most popular shot.

The top seven most popular pictures are displayed first.

Users can also sort those arrested by crime, picking via a menu ranging from sexual offences to assault.

Last month Arpaio was criticised for raiding a suspected cock fighting farm with a SWAT team, a bomb robot, two armoured vehicles, and action movie star Steven Segal.

Jesus Llovera, 42, was arrested for cockfighting after the operation involving Steven Seagal, 58, who drove a tank onto the property as he shot a reality television show.

The Sheriff also came under fire in 2008 for his controversial stance on illegal immigrants.

He was accused of dispatching teams of sheriff's deputies into Hispanic communities where they stopped and arrested anyone who could not prove he or she was a legal U.S. resident.

The tactic drew heavy criticism from Hispanic activists, local lawmakers and the Phoenix mayor, who called the crackdown on immigrants a clear case of racial profiling in which only people who looked Hispanic were targeted.

And this month an examination of Maricopa County's finances found that the sheriff's office, inappropriately spent $99 million from two jail funds over the last eight years to pay for other law enforcement operations – including immigration patrols.

The $99 million figure is an update to an estimate made in September by budget officials who said the sheriff's office was believed to have used $60 million and $80 million over four or five years from a jail tax on other purposes.

Since then, officials said they discovered that the sheriff's office had inappropriately spent money from a second jail.

The findings by county budget officials discussed at a meeting Wednesday were sent to federal prosecutors who were already investigating Arpaio on abuse of power allegations.

The mugshot initiative is just one of a long list of unorthodox methods employed by the notorious Sheriff.

According to the Maricopa County website, Arpaio served in the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1953 before working as a policeman in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas.

He rose to worldwide fame In August 1993, when he started the nation's largest Tent City for convicted inmates.

Nearly two thousand convicted men and women now serve their sentences in the temporary canvas city, sweltering in the unrelenting heat.

During the summer of 2003, when outside temperatures exceeded 43 °C, Arpaio famously said to complaining inmates, 'It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents, have to wear full body armor, and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths.'

He is also known for bringing back chain gangs to carry out road repairs, painting public buildings and even working as part time undertakers burying the county's dead.

His tough line on stealing led to perhaps his most memorable stunt, making inmates in the county's prison system wear pink underwear.

He has also banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378608/Americas-toughest-Sheriff-Joe-Arpaio-lets-public-rate-mugshots-online.html

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From the Department of Homeland Security

Secretary Napolitano Announces Implementation of National Terrorism Advisory System

April 20, 2011

NEW YORK—Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today will announce the implementation of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS)—a robust terrorism advisory system that provides timely information to the public about credible terrorist threats and replaces the former color-coded alert system.

As part of today's announcement, Secretary Napolitano will release a public guide outlining the new system to the American public, along with an example of an NTAS Alert that would be issued to the public if the government were to receive information about a specific or credible terrorist threat.

“The terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly over the past ten years, and in today's environment – more than ever – we know that the best security strategy is one that counts on the American public as a key partner in securing our country,” said Secretary Napolitano. “The National Terrorism Advisory System, which was developed in close collaboration with our federal, state, local, tribal and private sector partners, will provide the American public with information about credible threats so that they can better protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”

Under NTAS, DHS will coordinate with other federal entities to issue detailed alerts to the public when the federal government receives information about a credible terrorist threat.

NTAS alerts provide a concise summary of the potential threat including geographic region, mode of transportation, or critical infrastructure potentially affected by the threat, actions being taken to ensure public safety, as well as recommended steps that individuals, communities, business and governments can take to help prevent, mitigate or respond to a threat. NTAS Alerts will include a clear statement on the nature of the threat, which will be defined in one of two ways:

• “Elevated Threat”: Warns of a credible terrorist threat against the United States
  
  
• “Imminent Threat”: Warns of a credible, specific, and impending terrorist threat against the United States

Depending on the nature of the threat, alerts may be sent to law enforcement, distributed to affected areas of the private sector, or issued more broadly to the public through both official and social media channels—including a designated DHS webpage ( www.dhs.gov/alerts ), Facebook , and via Twitter @NTASAlerts . NTAS alerts and posters will also be displayed in places such as transit hubs, airports and government buildings.

NTAS threat alerts will be issued for a specific time period and will automatically expire. Alerts may be extended if new information becomes available or as a specific threat evolves.

On Jan. 27, Secretary Napolitano announced the new NTAS system during her “State of America's Homeland Security” address —kicking off the 90-day transition period with state and local governments, law enforcement, private and non-profit sector partners, airports, and other transportation hubs. In July 2009, Secretary Napolitano formed a bipartisan task force of security experts, state and local elected and law enforcement officials, and other key stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of the color-coded alert system. The results of this assessment formed the basis of NTAS.

DHS encourages citizens to follow NTAS Alerts for information about threats and take an active role in security by reporting suspicious activity to local law enforcement authorities through the “If You See Something, Say Something” public awareness campaign.

For more information on the National Terrorism Advisory System or to receive NTAS alerts, visit www.dhs.gov/alerts .

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1303296515462.shtm

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The 16th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing

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