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From Los Angeles Times

IRAN: Intelligence ministry claims to arrest 30 alleged CIA spies

Iran claimed a major intelligence victory over the United States on Saturday, saying it uncovered and dismantled what it called a "complex espionage and sabotage network" and arrested 30 people allegedly spying for the CIA.

It claimed that it also arrested 42 others in connection to the alleged spy network, the website of Iran's state-owned Press TV website reported .

According to a statemenet by the intelligence ministry published on the website of the semi-official Mehr news agency (link in Persian) the network was run by CIA agents via U.S. embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Malaysia.

"Due to the massive intelligence and counterintelligence work by Iranian intelligence agents, a complex espionage and sabotage network linked to America's spy organization was uncovered and dismantled," said a statement from the intelligence ministry read on state TV.

There was no immediate response by U.S. officials.

In the Iranian regime's shadowy worldview, foreign "agents" and "spies" are constantly working to undermine its supposedly noble goals. But the detailed nature of Saturday's announcement was unusual.

Iran claimed the arrests were conducted by an elite squad belonging to the Iranian intelligence ministry in various sting operations, according to the statement. The nationalities of those arrested were not immediately clear, nor when the arrests were made.

"Elite agents of the intelligence ministry in their confrontation with the CIA elements were able to arrest 30 America-linked spies through numerous intelligence and counterintelligence operations," the statement said.

Mehr cited the intelligence minsitry as saying the spy network was active simultaneously in several undisclosed countries and under the cover of labor recruitment agencies. "The elites, educated and naive people were recruited to get visas, residency permits, education abroad and employment," the agency quoted the intelligence ministry as saying.

"Thanks to the sincere endeavor of your children by collecting intelligence through infiltrating in the network and by penetrating in the network through double agents, we managed to disband the network and arrest the 30 spies in and outside of the country," the statement said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/05/iran-arrest-30-spies-cia-intelligence-us-network-middle-east-islam-obama-.html

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Al Qaeda wanted to attack tankers, Bin Laden files show

The material suggests the terrorist network had considered maritime strikes that could raise oil prices and hurt the U.S. economy, officials say. The government has alerted the energy industry.

by Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau

May 21, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Material seized when Osama bin Laden was killed show that Al Qaeda considered attacking tanker ships and other marine infrastructure last summer in an effort to force up the price of oil and damage the U.S. economy, according to U.S. officials.

The files don't suggest an attack at sea is imminent, or that terrorist planning progressed since last year, said Matt Chandler, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. But the FBI and Homeland Security officials issued an alert Friday to law enforcement and the energy industry.

Chandler said the alert urged "random screening, personnel briefings describing possible threats, procedures for reporting suspicious activities and the need for vigilance."

Another U.S. official said the intelligence added details to previously known information on Al Qaeda's interest in targeting the oil and natural gas industry.

The latest haul from Bin Laden's vast trove of documents and computer files emerged as President Obama traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to thank the intelligence community for its role in the hunt for Bin Laden and the May 2 raid that killed him in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Obama met privately with senior officials and about 60 spies and analysts who were most closely involved in the chase. He then spoke to about 1,000 employees who jammed the lobby. On the marble wall behind him were 102 stars that memorialize CIA officers killed in the line of duty.

Obama praised the analysts and case officers, most of whom who toil in anonymity, for "never giving up" on finding Bin Laden, and for keeping it secret as intelligence mounted that they may have located his compound.

"The work you did and the quality of information you provided made the critical difference," he said. The president said the clandestine operation would be studied "for generations to come."

The CIA was sharply criticized in Congress for providing inaccurate intelligence to President George W. Bush during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and some critics said the agency slanted its analysis to please the Bush White House.

Obama, in contrast, praised the CIA for collecting more intelligence and re-examining assumptions after it first began focusing on the Abbottabad compound last August.

"You didn't bite your tongue and try to spin the ball," he said. "You gave it to me straight, every time."

Obama drew chuckles when he said U.S. Navy SEALs not only killed Bin Laden, but "walked off with his files," and that "many of you are working around the clock" analyzing the material.

"Today every terrorist in the Al Qaeda network should be watching their back," Obama said. "We are going to pursue every lead."

It was Obama's third visit to CIA headquarters as president.

In another development, a missile fired by a drone aircraft controlled by the CIA killed four militants on the ground in North Waziristan region of Pakistan, according to news reports citing Pakistani intelligence officials. It was the seventh such attack since Bin Laden was killed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-cia-20110521,0,3677075,print.story

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From the New York Times

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States Seeking New Registries for Criminals

Lawmakers around the country are pushing for online registries, like those used for sex offenders, to track the whereabouts of people convicted of a wide variety of crimes, from arson and drunken driving to methamphetamine manufacturing and animal abuse.

State senators in Illinois are considering a law to create the nation's first registry for first-degree murderers. In Maine, legislators are debating an online registry of drunken drivers. And proposals to register animal abusers have been put forward in several states; one such registry, in Suffolk County on Long Island, will become operational next week.

Under a canine version of Megan's Law, Virginia even registers dangerous dogs, including Elvis, a cat-killing collie in Roanoke whose bad acts are among those listed on the state's database.

Advocates for online registries, many of them searchable by the public, argue that people have a right to know about potentially dangerous offenders in their midst and that the benefit of alerting parents, neighbors and others in a community outweighs any privacy concerns.

But as the registries proliferate, so do questions about their value. Critics say that while the registries are attractive to politicians who want to appear tough on crime, they often do little more than spread fear and encourage vigilantism.

The monitoring systems cost money at a time when recession-strapped states can ill afford the extra expense, the critics say, and their effectiveness is dubious: Sex offender registries, for example, have had little success in reducing repeat crimes, studies suggest.

Wayne Logan, a professor at Florida State University College of Law and the author of a recent book on registration and notification laws, likens the registries to “legislative catnip.”

“You'd be hard pressed to find a more politically popular movement in recent years,” he said. “Whether it's actually good public policy is a distinct and independent question from whether it's politically popular and makes us feel good.”

Mr. Logan noted that once passed, the laws were difficult to remove because politicians did not want to seem to diminish the suffering of victims. Instead, they are added “like Christmas ornaments on a tree, year after year.”

The New York State Senate voted 57 to 4 on Tuesday for a violent offenders registry. In Illinois, the murderers registry bill passed the House in April by a 97-to-1 vote. The legislation is now before the Senate.

Representative Monique Davis, the lone member of the Illinois House to oppose the law, said that although she favored the state's sex offender registry, “I just don't think that a murderer registry is of much value to anyone except those getting paid to set it up.”

She noted that the recidivism rate for murder was very low to begin with and that the state, facing a deficit of more than $4 billion, could not afford the cost of another registry.

But voting against such a measure, she said, is “very difficult to do, because sometimes the public perceives you as being soft on crime.”

Representative Dennis Reboletti, the main sponsor of the House bill, said that it “would allow not only law enforcement, but also the community to know who resides here, who our family members are associating with and who our children are dating.”

“These are people who are lying in wait,” Mr. Reboletti said in a phone interview. “It's cold. It's calculated. It's planned over time. And it's one of the most evil things that somebody can do on this earth.”

The inspiration for the murderers' registry, as for many such laws, was a high-profile crime, the 1998 murder of Andrea Will, an 18-year-old freshman at Eastern Illinois University who was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, Justin Boulay. Convicted before Illinois adopted a truth-in-sentencing law, Mr. Boulay was paroled from prison after serving half of a 24-year sentence, a turn of events that Ms. Will's mother, Patricia Rosenberg, said she saw as “a slap in the face.” She was even angrier when Mr. Boulay promptly moved to Hawaii to join the medical school professor he had married while in prison.

“I felt like I had to do something because I never felt justice was served,” Ms. Rosenberg said in a recent phone interview.

She consulted with Mr. Reboletti on the idea for the legislation, known as Andrea's Law. The law would require registration for 10 years after the offender is released from prison. It would affect 300 to 500 convicted first-degree murderers on parole in Illinois, Mr. Reboletti said, and 3,000 more who at some point will be released from prison.

A spokesman for the Illinois State Police, which would establish and maintain the registry, said the cost would depend on whether it could be built onto the state's existing registries for sex offenders and child murderers, as some legislators have proposed, or would have to be created from scratch.

In Maine, concerns about cost have also been raised about the registry for drunken drivers. State Representative Gary Plummer, a Republican, said establishing any new registry was “prohibitively expensive.”

“I haven't even gotten to the point of considering is it fair to put people on this type of registry, when we don't have the resources” to do it, he said of the drunken driver bill, adding that he had also opposed proposals for arsonist and animal abuser registries as too costly.

Perhaps the biggest question about criminal registries is how effective they are in preventing offenders from committing future crimes.

Jill Levenson, an associate professor of psychology at Lynn University in Florida, who has written extensively about sex offender registries, has noted that Department of Justice figures suggest that only 13 percent of new sex crimes are committed by known sex offenders, and that such crimes are at least six times more likely to be committed by other types of offenders who do not appear on any sex offender registry.

Only a handful of studies have so far examined the effect of registry and notification laws for sex offenders on recidivism, Dr. Levenson said, but “so far, the vast majority of those studies do not show a decrease in repeat sex offenses that can be attributed to sex offender registry or notification.”

Murderers have among the lowest rates of recidivism. Only about 1.2 percent of convicted murderers go on to commit another murder within three years of their release; roughly 35 percent commit other types of crimes within the same time period.

But in Ms. Rosenberg's view, if even one murder is prevented by notifying the public it is worth it.

“Would it be more plausible if you thought they would commit four, five, six, seven murders?” she asked. “I think any life, one life, is worth saving.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/us/21registry.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Honolulu grapples with daunting homelessness problem ahead of major economic summit

HONOLULU — The laid-back tropical paradise seen in postcards and tourists' photos of Hawaii has a less pleasant flipside: homeless people sleeping in tents near Waikiki Beach, men splayed out next to public bathrooms, drug addicts and drunks loitering at an oceanside park.

With President Barack Obama hosting a major Asia-Pacific economic summit in Honolulu in November — one that will draw dozens of heads of state and focus international attention on the tourist mecca — state leaders have begun pressing for solutions to solve a homelessness problem that's as deeply entrenched in Hawaii as nearly anywhere in the country.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie recently announced a hotline to find homeless people who may need help. He also gave details Tuesday on a 90-day plan to increase mental health care services, repair shelters, and move the chronically homeless into permanent housing.

Abercrombie simply called it a “happy coincidence” that his plans would be in place in time for the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, stressing that solving the homelessness issue is one his top priorities.

But his administration has also acknowledged the summit gives it reason to act now.

“We still are focused on solving this problem because it's our moral obligation to solve this problem. On the other hand, it's a handy deadline before which we want to have some progress to show our community and the international community,” Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz said.

Hawaii has the third-highest ratio of homeless people to residents of any state, better only than Nevada and Oregon, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Most of Hawaii's unsheltered live in Honolulu, including those who spend their days and nights on the beaches, parks and streets of Waikiki, the famed neighborhood of white sand and hotels where the APEC conference will be held.

Several hundred homeless are estimated to live in the district. At a Waikiki park fronting the ocean one recent morning, several slept in tents on the grass and in the shade under trees. A group of about eight gathered at a bench to attend a Bible study session. One man slept splayed out on the ground next to park bathrooms.

Ivan Tandberg, a visitor from Calgary, Alberta, said that while the homeless didn't bother him much, it wouldn't look good to have so many people living on the streets next to a high-profile international conference.

“I'm sure Obama won't want to see a bunch of them around. It's not going to impress other world leaders,” Tandberg said as a homeless person napped nearby.

Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle said the city is working hand-in-hand with the state and he hopes the 90-day plan will make a difference before the conference begins.

Carlisle said there were limits to what the city could do, but an increased police and security presence around Waikiki will mean “more eyes to see what's going on” and this may lead to more homeless being picked up if they appear to be a danger to themselves or others.

“Some of them are violent, some of them are mentally ill, some are so intoxicated you can't roust ‘em. And that's something we simply just can't tolerate during this particular period of time,” Carlisle told a security conference last year. “We've got to make sure that corridor in Waikiki is free of those problems.”

Hawaii officials have tried to solve the problem in the past. Abercrombie's predecessor, Gov. Linda Lingle, called for the building of new shelters and transitional housing; those are actively used, but there are still just as many people on the streets. Honolulu has tried to close off parks to the homeless by shutting them down for renovations but that merely pushed people to other parks and sidewalks.

The latest efforts combine heightened efforts by outreach workers to help homeless along with reductions in the incentives to live out in the open. One part of the governor's plan is to ask church groups not to feed people in parks and instead to feed them in shelters.

Part of Honolulu's homeless problem is rooted in the pairing of some of the nation's highest housing costs with below-average wages and the fact that the gorgeous year-round weather makes it easier for people to live out in the open.

The nonprofit National Housing Conference says fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Honolulu was $1,704 in 2009 — second only to San Francisco. And yet the city's average weekly wage was $834, less than the national average of $870, according to the most recent federal data.

Steven Rente, 56, moved to the streets after he lost his $10-an-hour job as a security guard. He thought about going to a shelter, but it has bedbugs and rules, he said. So he sleeps at a bus stop at night and spends his days at a Waikiki park.

“They think we're drug addicts or alcoholics or whatever it is,” said Rente, who was born in Oahu. “I don't do that. The only reason I'm out here is because I lost my job.”

Also playing a part are new arrivals who come dreaming of a life in paradise, only to discover it's hard to find jobs that pay enough to cover the high cost of living. Some spent their savings to fly here because it's better to be homeless where the weather is so nice. Still others, particularly those from Pacific island nations, travel to Hawaii to receive critical medical care that's not available at home.

A 2010 University of Hawaii survey showed 13 percent of those receiving homeless outreach services in Honolulu had been in Hawaii for less than a year.

Marc Alexander, the governor's coordinator on homelessness, said the issue ultimately can only be addressed person by person since everyone's situation is different. Solutions range from job training to providing psychiatric care to, in the long-term, making more affordable housing available.

“It really is going to require a multifaceted approach. There is no magic bullet. There is no one great project that we can come up with that's going to immediately take care of everything,” he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/honolulu-grapples-with-daunting-homelessness-problem-ahead-of-major-economic-summit/2011/05/20/AFdhst7G_print.html

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14-year-old's sentence upheld

.