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From Los Angeles Times

Four airports to test expedited screening for frequent fliers

The idea is to pre-screen travelers who pose little security risk, making the process faster for all passengers. Participating airports are in Atlanta, Miami, Detroit and Dallas.

by Hugo Martín, Los Angeles Times

July 18, 2011

A plan to let pre-screened frequent airline passengers — such as business travelers — bypass the regular airport security checkpoints and instead zip through an expedited screening process will be tested this fall in Atlanta, Miami, Detroit and Dallas.

Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole announced the details of the test program in a conference call with airline executives last week.

The idea behind the pilot program is to pre-screen travelers who pose little risk and remove them from the general screening lines, making the process for all passengers move faster.

The program initially will be open only to a small number of people, including some frequent fliers and U.S. citizens who have been pre-screened to travel abroad under existing U.S. Customs and Border Protection programs, Pistole said.

During the test phase, the expedited screening lines will include frequent fliers from Delta Air Lines flying from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County airports. American Airlines frequent fliers will be eligible for the program at Miami International and Dallas/Fort Worth International airports. The program will be free to participating passengers.

Expedited screening lanes have been promoted by business travelers and the travel industry. But critics have called for the TSA to come up with a new security process that moves faster for all low-risk passengers, not just frequent fliers and business travelers.

Pistole didn't say how long the pilot program would last or when it might be expanded to other airports.

• No bag-check fee on lost bags

Under new passenger protection rules that take effect next month, airlines must refund your checked-baggage fees if your bag is lost.

But the new rules adopted by the U.S. Transportation Department leave it up to the nation's airlines to determine when a bag is declared lost — or merely delayed.

Because the agency does not require airlines to reimburse baggage fees when luggage is delayed, some passenger advocates fear that airlines will try to get around the new law by simply declaring that every misplaced bag is delayed, not lost.

Checked-baggage fees — ranging from about $15 to $45 for the first bag — are a big money maker for the airline industry, generating $3.4 billion for the nation's airlines in 2010.

But airline representatives say the new law that takes effect Aug. 23 should cause no major problems because the nation's airlines receive less than four reports of lost, delayed or damaged bags for every 1,000 passengers. Airlines already are obligated to compensate you for lost or damaged luggage.

Steve Lott, a spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., the trade group for the nation's largest airlines, said he is sure that airlines won't use delay tactics to avoid reimbursing the checked-bag fees.

"No airline is going to let this drag on for weeks and months," he said. "Most airlines know their systems well enough that after a reasonable time, they will reach an agreement with their passengers."

Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, a nonprofit advocacy group for airline passengers, does not share Lott's confidence. She fears airlines will use the vague language in the law to avoid paying back the fees. "I have zero faith that the airlines will reimburse the money," she said.

The U.S. Transportation Department warned last week that it could fine airlines that don't resolve lost baggage claims in a timely manner.

"We regard a carrier's ignoring baggage claims or making consumers wait an extended time for final action to be an unfair and deceptive practice, and will take enforcement action," agency spokesman Bill Mosley said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-20110718,0,894659,print.story

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Family of U.S. agent slain in Mexico demands to know gun source

The lawyer for Jaime Zapata's family says U.S. officials refuse to answer questions about whether the weapons used were linked to the Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.

by Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

July 17, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Five months after U.S. immigration agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death by a Mexican drug cartel, his family is demanding to know whether the weapons were purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico under the now-defunct Fast and Furious operation.

The family complains that U.S. authorities in Washington and Texas have refused to answer crucial questions about the Feb. 15 ambush on a four-lane highway in northern Mexico.

"What happened with Jaime needs to come out," the family's lawyer, Raymond L. Thomas of McAllen, Texas, said in a telephone interview Sunday. "And the likelihood that these were Fast and Furious guns is certainly plausible."

Mexican authorities have announced nine arrests in the high-profile case. Among them was Jesus Rejon Aguilar, a Zetas cartel leader who was captured near Mexico City this month.

In Washington, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is seeking information on the Zapata slaying.

Nelson Peacock, assistant secretary for legislative affairs for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the immigration and customs agency, told Issa in a letter Friday that investigating Zapata's killing was a priority.

"Like you, the department wants to ensure that his murderers are brought to justice," Peacock wrote.

Issa and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are leading a broader investigation into who in the Obama administration approved and monitored the anti-gun-running operation, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Phoenix.

Started in November 2009, the operation was intended to track U.S. weapons smuggled across the border so that law enforcement could disrupt the cartels' gun-running networks and ease the drug violence in Mexico.

Instead, nearly 200 of the firearms were found at crime scenes in Mexico. Two AK-47 assault rifles purchased during the operation were recovered after Brian A. Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol officer, was shot and killed in December in Arizona.

Zapata, a 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, was based in Laredo, Texas. He and fellow agent Victor Avila were on the Pan-American Highway in Mexico when they were stopped by at least eight men in two vehicles. The Americans identified themselves and the attackers opened fire, killing Zapata and wounding Avila.

In March, ATF officials in Texas told reporters that one of the weapons believed to have been used in the assault — a Romanian-made AK-47 — was bought in October at a Texas gun shop. The shop purportedly sold 40 firearms that wound up with the Zetas cartel.

On June 14, Thomas, the Zapata family lawyer, asked the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and Homeland Security agents for FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration documents on the Zetas cartel and the slaying, and for an inspection of the bullet-riddled vehicle.

"Where did the guns come from that were used in his murder?" he wrote. "Who provided the guns?"

Federal officials said they could not discuss it, he said.

Thomas said he asked to speak with the wounded agent, Avila, but was turned down. He also wants to know whether Zapata was armed.

Thomas said Zapata's father was a Vietnam veteran awarded two Purple Hearts, and that several of the slain agent's siblings work in law enforcement.

"They are all patriots who have dedicated themselves to protecting our country," he said. "So it's very hard for them to be pushed into a position that the U.S. government is stonewalling them."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guns-cartel-20110718,0,1794984,print.story

Public health: Not vaccinated? Not acceptable

What should we do about people who decline vaccination for themselves or their children and put the public at risk by fueling the resurgence of nearly eradicated diseases?

by David Ropeik

July 18, 2011

What does society do when one person's behavior puts the greater community at risk? We make them stop. We pass laws, or impose economic rules or find some other way to discourage individual behaviors that threaten the greater common good. You don't get to drive drunk. You don't get to smoke in public places. You don't even get to leave your house if you catch some particularly infectious disease.

Then what should we do about people who decline vaccination for themselves or their children and put the public at risk by fueling the resurgence of nearly eradicated diseases? Isn't this the same thing: one person's perception of risk producing behaviors that put others at risk? Of course it is. Isn't it time for society to say we need to regulate the risk created by the fear of vaccines? Yes, it is.

The evidence is overwhelming that declining vaccination rates are contributing to outbreaks of disease. Take just one example, measles. The World Health Organization reports outbreaks in countries where vaccination rates have gone down, including France (7,000 cases so far this year, more than in all of 2010), Belgium, Germany, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Macedonia and Turkey. There have already been 334 measles cases in England and Wales this year, compared with 33 all of last year. The U.S. has seen 118 cases as of mid-May, compared with 56 cases a year from 2001 to 2008.

Small numbers, you say? True, but consider their cost (beyond the suffering of the patients), as illustrated in this case published this year by the Oxford Journals. When a woman from Switzerland who had not been vaccinated for measles visited Tucson in 2008 and became symptomatic, she went to a local hospital for medical attention. This initiated a chain of events that over the next three months led to at least 14 people, including seven kids, getting measles. Seven of the victims caught the disease while visiting healthcare facilities. Four people had to be hospitalized. The outbreak cost two local hospitals a total of nearly $800,000, and the state and local health departments tens of thousands more, to track down the cases, quarantine and treat the sick and notify the thousands of people who might have been exposed.

Fueling that outbreak? None of the victims had been vaccinated or had "unknown vaccination status," and remarkably, 25% of the workers in the healthcare facilities where the patients were treated had no immunity to measles (either they had not been vaccinated or the antibodies from an earlier vaccination could no longer be detected). One healthcare worker got the disease and gave it to two other people.

That's just one example of the growing threat to public health caused by people worried that vaccines will cause autism and other harms, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In many places, particularly in affluent, liberal, educated communities (San Diego, Marin County, Boulder, Colo.,), unvaccinated people are catching diseases that vaccines can prevent, like measles, whooping cough and meningitis. In 2010, as California suffered its worst whooping cough outbreak in more than 60 years (more than 9,000 cases, 10 infant deaths), Marin County had one of the lowest rates of vaccination statewide and the second-highest rate of whopping cough. A 2008 study in Michigan found that areas with "exemption clusters" of parents who didn't vaccinate their kids were three times more likely to have outbreaks of whooping cough than areas where vaccination rates matched the state average.

And this is a risk to far more people than just those who have opted out of vaccination. People are getting sick who have been vaccinated but the vaccine either doesn't work or has weakened. Infants too young to be vaccinated are getting sick, and some of them are dying horrible deaths from whooping cough after exposure in communities where "herd immunity" has fallen too low to keep the spread of the disease in check.

Unvaccinated people who get sick and visit doctor's offices or hospitals increase the danger for anyone else who uses those facilities. Outbreaks are costing the healthcare system millions of dollars, and local and state government (that's taxpayer money, yours and mine) millions more as they try to chase down each outbreak and bring it under control to protect the public's health. Your health, and mine.

No one doubts the honest passion of those who fear vaccines. And for some people, no amount of communication or dialogue or reasoning will stop them from worrying. But risk perception is ultimately subjective, a combination of the facts and how those facts feel, and sometimes our fears don't match the evidence. The dangers that sometimes arise because of the way we perceive risk must be managed too. But we must act in the face of this threat to public health.

There are many potential solutions, each fraught with pros and cons and details that require careful thought and open democratic discussion.

This is not about creating more government to intrude further into our lives. This is about calling on government to do what it's there for in the first place: to protect us from the actions of others when as individuals we can't protect ourselves. It is appropriate, and urgent, that we act to protect public health from those whose choices about vaccines are putting the rest of us at risk: We make them stop.

David Ropeik is an instructor at Harvard University and the author of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ropeik-vaccines-20110718,0,669289,print.story

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