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

From the Los Angeles Times

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

Kadafi slain against a backdrop of NATO support

The seven-month bombing campaign gave the Libyan revolutionaries a key weapon. It also exposed the uncertain future of the world's most powerful military bloc.

by Henry Chu and David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

October 21, 2011

Reporting from London and Washington

With the capture and death of Moammar Kadafi, NATO's aerial assault on Libya essentially ended the same way it began: with warplanes raining down bombs on him in the name of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians from his loyalists, while helping Kadafi's enemies run him to ground.

Throughout the seven-month operation, the alliance in essence served as the anti-Kadafi fighters' air force, crippling the strongman's forces and installations with relentless sorties that at times came close to killing him as well. The final assault was said to have been delivered by a French fighter jet and a U.S. Predator drone missile aiming at his convoy as he tried to flee his last stronghold in the city of Surt.

As they have throughout the campaign, NATO officials insisted Thursday that they were not targeting Kadafi himself. A senior officer in the alliance said there was no specific intelligence that Kadafi was in either of the two vehicles that were hit, which were part of the larger convoy maneuvering through the area.

PHOTOS: Moammar Kadafi | 1942 - 2011

"Those vehicles seemed to be directing the actions of the others, and they were struck. For all we know it could have been a lower-level leader," the officer said.

Though video circulating worldwide shows Kadafi surviving the air attack, the bloodied leader was left in the hands of revolutionary forces who appeared either unable or unwilling to keep him safe in the murky minutes before his death.

With Kadafi now gone, NATO is expected to end its Libya intervention within days. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said no formal decision to halt operations had been made but that with the fall of the last two major outposts of Kadafi loyalists, his hometown of Surt and the town of Bani Walid, "that moment has now moved much closer."

Since its launch in March, the aerial campaign has involved nearly 10,000 strike sorties flown by NATO warplanes, which have taken out key military installations and other government command centers.

On Thursday, leaders of several of NATO's European member nations were basking in Kadafi's demise.

"People in Libya today have an even greater chance after this news of building themselves a strong and democratic future," British Prime Minister David Cameron said outside 10 Downing St. "I'm proud of the role that Britain has played in helping them to bring that about, and I pay tribute to the bravery of Libyans who helped to liberate their country."

Cameron had taken a political risk by leading the push for NATO intervention alongside French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Even Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, once so friendly with Kadafi that he was photographed kissing the Libyan leader's hand, expressed no regret over his death.

" Sic transit gloria mundi ," Berlusconi was quoted as saying, Latin for "Thus passes the glory of the world." He added, "Now the war is finished."

But the operation also laid bare the divisions within the world's most powerful military bloc. The difficulty in getting the alliance to take united action, the halfhearted support from some key members and the desire by the U.S. to take a back-seat role have all raised questions about the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The bombing campaign and a naval embargo, launched after Kadafi had vowed to slaughter civilians in rebel-held Benghazi, went poorly at first as government fighters responded by stepping up ground attacks. But the daily pounding by NATO warplanes, especially after the Pentagon provided a small fleet of armed Predator drones, eventually helped cripple Kadafi and his remaining loyalists, without NATO suffering a single combat death.

Critics questioned whether the war was advisable for the alliance while it was engaged in a more important conflict in Afghanistan. And by August, after the anti-Kadafi forces had captured Tripoli and most of the rest of the country, some wondered if the continued airstrikes in the remaining battle zones were endangering civilians rather than protecting them. To some, the continuing assaults could be interpreted as an almost personal vendetta against a dictator who, before armed hostilities began, was being avidly courted by the West.

Several leading NATO members, including Italy and Germany, had been reluctant for NATO to get involved, one of the many signs of discord within the 28-nation alliance in March as it wrestled with whether to shoulder the responsibility of protecting Libyan civilians.

Germany abstained from voting on the U.N. resolution on the issue and withdrew troops from the Mediterranean to avoid their involvement in Libya, though Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to send more personnel to Afghanistan to compensate. Turkey, the only Muslim nation in NATO, also expressed reservations.

In the end, only eight member countries sent their fighter jets into the skies above Libya, led mostly by the British and the French. Yet even with those nations in the vanguard, it was still American hardware and software that made the difference, despite Washington's desire to take a smaller role, analysts said.

"This mission has brought some of NATO's weaknesses and divisions to the forefront," said Shashank Joshi, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, a security think tank in London. "It's shown us that European members of NATO can't function in a coherent way without incredibly extensive help from the U.S."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-nato-20111021,0,4843984.story

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

Chinese toddler's death evokes outpouring of grief and guilt

The 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systematic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province.

By midday, there were 2 million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short.

"Heaven's roads have no cars. Go in peace, little Yueyue," wrote one woman. "Your life woke up this ignorant society. Thanks to little Yueyue for letting us stop our fast-paced steps so we can wait for our soul," wrote a man, Sun Laolin.

The accident happened Oct. 13 at a market in Foshan, a city in Guangdong province. Yueyue's plight has riveted China since Sunday, when harrowing video footage from a closed-circuit camera at the market went up on the Internet showing the little girl in red trousers and a dark T-shirt toddling into the path of a delivery van.

As she lay bleeding on the road, people walked or drove by on scooters, in some cases pausing to look at the girl or swerving to avoid her, but not stopping to help or call police. She was hit by another van before a trash collector pulled her out of the road and called the mother, who had been hanging laundry at the time the girl wandered off.

Yueyue has since become a household name in China, as has her lone rescuer, trash collector Chen Xianmei, 57, an illiterate migrant from the countryside.

The case has become the Chinese equivalent of the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, whose neighbors overlooking a New York courtyard either heard or saw her being stabbed and didn't call the police. Although subsequent studies show that the neighbors weren't as passive as originally thought, Genovese's death inspired books, songs, movies and is still used as a case study in psychology books to examine the phenomenon of bystanders who fail to help.

Guangdong provincial officials, along with Communist Party youth league members, lawyers and social workers, held three days of meetings this week in the provincial capital of Guangzhou to discuss the implications of Yueyue's case.

"People are really shocked. Some were crying. We couldn't imagine that moral values have declined so much," said Zhu Yongping, a prominent Guangzhou lawyer who attended one of the meetings Friday.

He and other lawyers are trying to draft "good Samaritan" legislation that would penalize people who fail to help in a situation of this type and indemnify them from lawsuits if their efforts are in vain.

People helping have been blamed for causing accidents in several cases. The most famous was in Nanjing in 2006, when a motorist who stopped to help an elderly woman who'd fallen was penalized for hitting her with his car by a judge who ruled he wouldn't have helped if he wasn't guilty.

But people attending the meeting in Guangdong said the apathy was less of a legal than a moral problem.

"We should look into the ugliness in ourselves with a dagger of conscience and bite the soul-searching bullet," Wang Yang, a Guangdong official, was quoted telling the New China News Agency.

The publicity over Yueyue's case may already be swaying attitudes. State media prominently published stories this week about how the shopkeepers in another neighborhood of Foshan all rushed to help a small boy hit by a car Wednesday. A poll published Friday in the Shanghai Daily newspaper found the majority of respondents said they would help the child, while 40% said they would at least call police and an ambulance. Three percent said, "I would probably stay away from the trouble."

Chinese journalists have since tracked down many of the 18 people who were shown on the videotape. Most denied seeing the girl, but one woman, who was videotaped walking by with her own young daughter, admitted that she left quickly because she and her daughter were scared.

"I wanted to lift her, but there was so much blood. I was scared," the woman surnamed Lin told the Guangzhou daily, saying she felt "regretful, compassionate, painful at heart and guilty."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/toddlers-death-evokes-outpouring-of-grief-and-guilt.html

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

From Google News

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

Foreigners' Sweetener: Buy House, Get a Visa

The reeling housing market has come to this: To shore it up, two Senators are preparing to introduce a bipartisan bill Thursday that would give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 to buy houses in the U.S.

The provision is part of a larger package of immigration measures, co-authored by Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), designed to spur more foreign investment in the U.S.

Supporters of the bill, co-authored by Sen. Charles Schumer, say it would help make up for American buyers who are holding back.

Foreigners have accounted for a growing share of home purchases in South Florida, Southern California, Arizona and other hard-hit markets. Chinese and Canadian buyers, among others, are taking advantage not only of big declines in U.S. home prices and reduced competition from Americans but also of favorable foreign exchange rates.

"This is a way to create more demand without costing the federal government a nickel," Sen. Schumer said in an interview.

International buyers accounted for around $82 billion in U.S. residential real-estate sales for the year ending in March, up from $66 billion during the previous year period, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Foreign buyers accounted for at least 5.5% of all home sales in Miami and 4.3% of Phoenix home sales during the month of July, according to MDA DataQuick.

Foreigners immigrating to the U.S. with the new visa wouldn't be able to work here unless they obtained a regular work visa through the normal process. They'd be allowed to bring a spouse and any children under the age of 18 but they wouldn't be able to stay in the country legally on the new visa once they sold their properties.

The provision would create visas that are separate from current programs so as to not displace anyone waiting for other visas. There would be no cap on the home-buyer visa program.

Over the past year, Canadians accounted for one quarter of foreign home buyers, and buyers from China, Mexico, Great Britain, and India accounted for another quarter, according to the National Association of Realtors. For buyers from some countries, restrictive immigration rules are "a deterrent to purchase here, for sure," says Sally Daley, a real-estate agent in Vero Beach, Fla. She estimates that around one-third of her sales this year have gone to foreigners, an all-time high.

"Without them, we would be stagnant," says Ms. Daley. "They're hiring contractors, buying furniture, and they're also helping the market correct by getting inventory whittled down."

In March, Harry Morrison, a Canadian from Lakefield, Ontario, bought a four-bedroom vacation home in a gated community in Vero Beach. "House prices were going down, and the exchange rate was quite favorable," said Mr. Morrison, who first bought a home there from Ms. Daley four years ago.

While a special visa would allow Canadian buyers like Mr. Morrison to spend more time in the U.S., he said he isn't sure "what other benefit a visa would give me."

The idea has some high-profile supporters, including Warren Buffett, who this summer floated the idea of encouraging more "rich immigrants" to buy homes. "If you wanted to change your immigration policy so that you let 500,000 families in but they have to have a significant net worth and everything, you'd solve things very quickly," Mr. Buffett said in an August interview with PBS's Charlie Rose.

The measure could also help turn around buyer psychology, said mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri. He said the program represented "triage" for a housing market that needs more fixes, even modest ones.

But other industry executives greeted the proposal with skepticism. Foreign buyers "don't need an incentive" to buy homes, said Richard Smith, chief executive of Realogy Corp., which owns the Coldwell Banker and Century 21 real-estate brands. "We have a lot of Americans who are willing to buy. We just have to fix the economy."

The measure may have a more targeted effect in exclusive markets like San Marino, Calif., that have become popular with foreigners. Easier immigration rules could be "tremendous" because of the difficulty many Chinese buyers have in obtaining visas, says Maggie Navarro, a local real-estate agent.

Ms. Navarro recently sold a home for $1.67 million, around 8% above the asking price, to a Chinese national who works in the mining industry. She says nearly every listing she's put on the market in San Marino "has had at least one full price cash offer from a buyer from mainland China."

Corrections & Amplifications
Harry Morrison bought a four-bedroom vacation home in Vero Beach in March. He first bought a home there four years ago from Sally Daley, a local real-estate agent. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Ms. Daley sold the four-bedroom home to Mr. Morrison in March.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203752604576641421449460968.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#printMode

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

Alabama

Public safety event brings ASU community together

Alabama State University's public safety department reached out to its students Thursday with an evening focused on safety, combined with a mix of music, food and fun.

The first "Hornets in Harmo­ny" took place near the practice football field and ASU Chief of Po­lice Huey Thornton said the event was all about people embracing one another.

"The university is a community and we wanted to bring that com­munity together," Thornton said. "We want to make the students aware that the department of pub­lic safety is transforming along with the university."

An example of that transforma­tion is the department's partner­ship with agencies such as the Montgomery Police Department, District Attorney's Office and the One Place Family Justice Center. Representatives from those orga­nizations and others spoke to a crowd of hundreds about the dangers of domestic violence and date rape.

The students sat in bleach­ers and took in the words of the speakers, while munch­ing on a meal provided by the university. Hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken helped take their minds off the chilly evening weather. Oth­er highlights of the festivi­ties included performances from cheerleaders and Greek organizations.

Thornton said university officials hope to make "Hornets in Harmony" an annual event.

"We are very pleased with the number of people who came out," Thornton said. "It gives us inspiration to keep doing what we're doing."

Another aspect of the night was an opportunity for students to get to know JaLi­dia Davis, the school's com­munity policing officer. Her position was created this se­mester to bridge the gap be­tween students and campus police.

"We want to make our uni­versity a safer place that's conducive to higher educa­tion," Davis said.

Scottie Hunter, a senior communications major, said he is grateful university offi­cials created Davis' post.

"We know (the police) are there, but now we have a face to put with the police force," Hunter said.

He also said he felt like "Hornets in Harmony" was well received.

"The police may not have the best reputation with the average person, so an event that showcases a side where they work with you is a good thing," Hunter said.

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20111021/NEWS01/110210345/Public-safety-event-brings-ASU-community-together

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

Nevada

Metropolitan Police Department to receive community policing award

It was one of three agencies that received the Webber Seavy Award, the International Association of Chiefs of Police's top honor for community policing.

The award recognizes Safe Village, a partnership between law enforcement, the government and the community to reduce violent crime in West Las Vegas.

Since Safe Village began in 2006, gun crimes in West Las Vegas have steadily decreased.

Deputy Chief Gary Schofield, Capt. Larry Burns and the Rev. Willie Cherry of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church will travel to Chicago next week to accept the award.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/metropolitan-police-department-to-receive-community-policing-award-132260643.html

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

Canada

County towns top safe cities list -- County is one of the safest regions to live in Canada

Crime rates lowest: Study

According to 2010 Statistics Canada data, five of the country's eight safest communities are here. Amherstburg tops the list as the safest community with more than 10,000 people of 238 communities in the nation.

"This is generally broadbased good news for Windsor-Essex," said Ron Gaudet, executive director of the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation.

"I think we can do an awful lot with it in business attraction, retention and startups. It really speaks to the quality of life in the region."

Gaudet said quality of life is one of the top five criteria companies look for in relocation selection.

"Whether you are the CEO or parking attendant, you care about where you live," Gaudet said.

It's also easier to attract retirees to relocate if you can advertise that they can shop without fear of "not coming home," Gaudet said.

Tim Berthiaume, Amherstburg's police chief, said there isn't one single secret to the community's success.

"It's great to have the bragging rights," he said. "We are very proud of the rating."

The police work hard communicating with the community, he said. Berthiaume meets with community organizers and educators often to learn where to focus energies.

"We talk about what's going on in the community and I get direct feedback," he said.

LaSalle is the nation's third safest community. Police Chief John Leontowicz credits community policing with the town's success.

"We are being proactive in the schools," he said. "Our issues with young offenders have decreased dramatically over the past 10 years. We are with the kids from Grade 1 right up to graduation. Our rapport with the kids is much stronger than it's ever been."

He said the key to success is "being seen and being out there."

Tecumseh is the fourth safest town, with Kingsville in seventh place and Lakeshore is eighth. Essex is tied for 12th and Leamington is 77th. Windsor ranked 144th, although when the metropolitan area, which includes several suburban communities, is considered it's the seventh safest big city out of 32 in Canada.

Tecumseh Mayor Gary McNamara said he thinks the region has benefited from a provincial mandate for students to stay in school until they are 18 and credits the area's safeness on towns not cutting recreation and cultural programs during the recession.

"Crime knows no boundaries, whether you have money or not," McNamara said. "There are far more opportunities now but that's why it's critically important we continue to invest dollars in these programs. You need to give youth somewhere to channel their energies like skateboard parks and recreation facilities."

The 2010 data is based on a crime severity index and ranks 238 communities with more than 10,000 people. The crime index is the rate of offences per 100,000 people. Amherstburg had 24.4 crimes per 100,000, while LaSalle had 25.3. Tecumseh registered 27.2. crimes per 100,000, while Kingsville had 29 and Lakeshore recorded 29.9. Leamington noted 63.9 crimes per 100,000 and Windsor had 85.3.

Statistics Canada also looks at the violent nature of crimes and gives communities a different ranking based on the seriousness of the of fences committed. When violence is taken into consideration, Windsor and Leamington's rankings improve by 17 places, while Amherstburg drops one rung, Tecumseh and Lakeshore slide two spots, while Kingsville and La salle stay the same.

lle stay the same. mwolfson@windsorstar.com or 519-255-5709 or Twitter.com/WinStarMonica

HOW WE RANK

How cities with a population over 10,000 ranked based on the crime severity index in 2010, out of 238.

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/County+towns+safe+cities+list/5584913/story.html

.