There's a storm brewing on the Web over e-mails that hackers got hold of in which some scientists at one of the world's leading research centers say things such as the need to "hide the decline" in data about temperatures. Skeptics who have doubts about whether humans are contributing to global warming are pouncing on the revelations.
The lengthy saga of former NBA star Jayson Williams, who has battled criminal charges ever since the 2002 death of a limo driver by a blast from a shotgun the ex-professional athlete was showing off, is apparently growing even lengthier.
It's being reported that the judge has indefinitely delayed a hearing scheduled for Friday at which, according to the Associated Press and Newark Star-Ledger, Williams was expected to plead guilty to an aggravated assault charge. The AP reports that "no reason was given."
Both the AP and Newark Star-Ledger reported Thursday that they had learned that Williams had agreed to plead guilty to an aggravated assault charge which carries the possibility of a three-year prison sentence.
Jayson Williams, the former NBA star, has reportedly agreed to a guilty plea for a 2002 shooting that left a limo driver dead in Williams' New Jersey mansion. Williams faces up to three years in prison.
Jayson Williams in court in October. (Kathy Johnson, Pool / AP Photo)
According to reports, including one in the Newark Star-Ledger, a source who asked not to be identified has said Williams, 41, will plead guilty to an aggravated assault charge on Friday.
The shooting occurred as Williams showed off a shotgun to visitors in the bedroom of his home at the time. The gun discharged and fatally wounded the driver, 55 year old Costas Christofi.
In an earlier trial Williams was acquitted on aggravated manslaughter charges. But the jury found him guilty of trying to hide his role in the shooting after witnesses said the former Philadelphia 76ers and NJ Nets player placed the weapon in the wounded Christofi's hands and asked them to lie about the circumstances. The jury deadlocked on a reckless manslaughter charge.
From the time we learned from NPR Daniel Zwerdling's highly informative reports shortly after the Fort Hood shootings that Maj. Nidal Hasan had a dubious record as an Army psychiatrist, it was apparent that Army officials would eventually need to explain how Hasan was allowed to get anywhere near soldiers with severe emotional and mental-health issues.
Daniel has more disturbing information that only amplifies that question. According to a report he filed for the network's newscast Wednesday:
NPR has learned that a memo is dated May 17, 2007. It's signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran. And the memo ticks off a striking list of problems over the course of Hasan's training.
For instance, Hasan proselytized to his patients. He mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.
NPR showed the memo to leading psychiatrists, who run large private medical programs. They said even if they were desperate to fill a vacancy, they would never hire a psychiatrist with an evaluation like Hasan's. One said the memo warns, in effect, that Hassan could hurt his patients, not by shooting them, but by being a reckless therapist.
Melissa Block, an All Things Considered asked Sen. Joe Lieberman on Wednesday for his reaction to the memo. Lieberman said:
... It certainly raises questions about whether he was prepared to be the kind of psychiatrist that we want treating military personnel.
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
By Mark Memmott
The Internal Revenue Service says more than 14,700 taxpayers fessed up and disclosed they had tried to hide money in offshore bank accounts during its recent amnesty program.
"To put it simply, this is a historic milestone for the nation's hardworking taxpayers," IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said on a conference call with reporters this morning. In most years, about 100 such taxpayers come forward.
Americans with foreign bank accounts had until Oct. 15 to disclose them and pay past-due taxes and penalties. In exchange, they would get amnesty from stiffer fines or criminal prosecution.
Shulman said the IRS will be collecting "billions of dollars" thanks to the program, the Associated Press reports.
Dow Jones Newswire reports Shulman also said the accounts involved were at banks in more than 70 countries.
And, Forbes writes, Shulman promises the IRS "will be scouring" the disclosures to identify financial advisers who directed clients to the tax dodges.
A 90-year-old alleged former member of the Nazi's SS "has been charged with 58 counts of murder for the 1945 killings of Jewish forced laborers in Austria," the Associated Press reports from Berlin.
According to the BBC, the man is accused of "murdering the workers in Deutsch Schuetzen, a village in eastern Austria, at the end of World War II. The court has identified the suspect only as a 'retiree from Duisburg'."
The AP, though, says that "media reports have identified him as Adolf Storms, a former member of the 5th SS Panzer Division 'Wiking'."
Bloomberg News reports that the man is "accused of conspiring with other members of his division in the March 1945 murders, according to the indictment filed in Duisburg, Germany, by prosecutors, court spokesman Stefan Ulrich said in an e-mailed statement today."
Agence France Presse writes that investigators believe 57 laborers "were stripped of their belongings before being made to kneel down in a ditch. They were then gunned down from behind."
The accused is alleged to have murdered another person shortly after.
As the day begins there are reports from Iran that one of its officials has told Reuters that neither economic sanctions nor the threat of a military attack will derail its nuclear program. And:
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told Reuters the agency's concern that Tehran may be hiding more nuclear work after it unveiled the enrichment site was an unfair political judgment beyond its mandate.
Other stories making headlines this morning include:
Hu and Obama reveiw the honor guard at the Great Hall of the People today in Beijing. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
-- The Associated Press -- "Obama, Hu Divided Over Economy, Human Rights": "President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao emerged from hours of intense talks Tuesday determined to marshal their combined clout on crucial issues, but still showing divisions over economic, security and human rights issues that have long bedeviled the two powers."
-- ABC News -- Officials Say Hasan Sought 'War Crimes' Prosecutions of American Soldiers: "Major Nidal Malik Hasan's military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to 'war crimes' during psychiatric counseling, according to investigative reports circulated among federal law enforcement officials." Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder for the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
-- The Seattle Times -- "Paul Allen Being Treated For Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma": "The Microsoft co-founder was diagnosed earlier this month with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer similar to the one that led to his early retirement from the software company in 1983." Allen is 56.
From a related story by the Associated Press: "In a memo sent to employees, the CEO of Allen's investment firm says the 56-year-old Allen received the diagnosis this month and has begun chemotherapy. The CEO, Jody Patton, noted that doctors say Allen has a relatively common form of the disease -- and that Allen survived Hodgkin's disease in the 1980s."
-- The Salt Lake Tribune -- Woman In Elizabeth Smart Case Expected To Plead Guilty: Wanda Eileen Barzee, "the 64-year-old wife of street preacher Brian David Mitchell," is expected to plead guilty today to federal charges for her role in the 2002 abduction of Utah girl Elizabeth Smart.
Contributing: Chinita Anderson of Morning Edition.
Maj. Nidal Hasan didn't have nearly the caseload of other Army psychiatrists. (U.S. Army via AP)
A theory that emerged after Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly shot to death 13 people at Ft Hood Army Base in Texas and wounded scores of other, was that he might have heard so much from his soldier-patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. of the horrors of war that, in reaction, he might have suffered a sort of sympathetic post traumatic stress disorder.
The trouble with that theory, however, is that it turns out he likely wasn't exposed to as many of those stories as was initially thought.
As NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reported for the network's newscast:
Military psychiatrists who worked with Hasan say they do know one striking fact: Hasan treated only a fraction as many soldiers who'd been to war as most of the other psychiatrists in the Army.
For most of the past two years, Hasan was on a research fellowship at the military's medical school, in Bethesda, Md. And sources there and at Walter Reed say Hasan treated almost no patients during most of that time.
Meanwhile, psychiatrists at most army medical centers were overwhelmed by troubled soldiers. Sources say Hasan did start treating patients again in late Spring of this year and then he kept treating patients at Fort Hood.
One psychiatrist told me, "Most of us have seen patients with problems like PTSD and traumatic brain injury all day, every day, for years. We haven't shot anybody."
After 11 days on the run, semi-famous French armored car driver Tony Musulin turned himself in today in Monaco, the Associated Press reports.
Last week, we reported about his disappearance -- along with the 11.6 million Euros that he was supposed to be guarding.
Later, about 9 million Euros worth of the loot was recovered. But there was no sign of the 40-year-old Musulin or the rest of the money (worth about $3.9 million).
According to the AP, when he appeared in Monaco today, Musulin "was riding a motorcycle rented in his name, had grown a beard and appeared exhausted."
Shaniya had been missing since last Tuesday. Her mother, who reported her gone, is accused of offering her for prostitution, according to court documents and police.
The mother, Antoinette Davis, 25, has been charged with human trafficking and felony child abuse, police said. Police also filed kidnapping charges against 29-year old Mario Andrette McNeill, who was seen in surveillance footage carrying Shaniya at a Sanford hotel.
Friday the 13th was definitely a very unlucky day for William Jefferson, the ex-congressman who became infamous after the Federal Bureau of Investigation found fat wads of cash in the freezer of his Washington, D.C. home.
He was sentenced Friday to 13 years (there's that number again) in federal prison. It's the longest sentence in history for congressional corruption.
NPR's Peter Overby reports the following:
Federal judge T.S. Ellis in Alexandria, Virginia handed down a sentence that's less than half of what prosecutors had wanted.
But it's still much longer than the previous record-holder -- former congressman Randy Duke Cunningham, now serving 8 years 4 months.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind, at time of his 2003 capture in Pakistan (left) and how he allegedly looked this summer in a reputed International Red Cross photo. ( AP Photo/www.muslm.net)
By Liz Halloran
Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in U.S. criminal courts was hailed Friday by their American lawyers and civil liberties activists as major step toward undoing damage to the nation's reputation caused by its treatment of terrorism suspects held in Guantanamo Bay.
"This is an enormous step forward in renewing the rule of law," Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union said during a conference call with reporters shortly after Holder's announcement.
The decision to try the alleged conspirators in New York City, part of the roll-out of the administration's effort to make good on its promise to close the prison at Gitmo, "puts us back on track, using our tried and true court system," Romero said.
But he and the lawyers also expressed disappointment that Holder decided to use controversial military commissions to try five additional high-value terrorism suspects, including the mastermind of the 2000 bombing in Yemen of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole. They are among 221 prisoners still being held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials once thought they might be able to get Nidal Hasan out of the Army for being overweight but dropped the idea. (AP Photo/Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)
From the reporting of NPR's Daniel Zwerdling, we know that supervising psychiatrists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who oversaw the work of Maj. Nidal Hasan warned him repeatedly that he wasn't measuring up.
We also know from Daniel that Hasan's Walter Reed colleagues wondered if he was psychotic because, as they told Daniel, Hasan sometimes didn't appear to be grounded in reality.
Now we learn from Daniel that some senior docs had achieved a eureka moment when they thought they had found a way to dump him: they would use his being overweight against him:
Here's what Daniel reported for the network's radio newscast:
Back in the Spring of 2007, Officials at Walter Reed decided, WE know how to get Hasan out of Army pyschiatry -- he weighs too much. As we've already reported, some of Hasan's supervisors wanted to expel him because they felt his work was so poor.
But sources say those officials worried it'd be a long and cumbersome legal process to prove that he was a bad psychiatrist. So they came up with a strategy that they knew was irrelevant but easier: Army Regulation 600-dash-9 basically says you can only weigh a certain amount, given your height. And if you're over the limit, you can't get promoted. They could potentially kick you out of the Army.
But there's a top committee that had to agree with this strategy. It's called the Graduate Medical Education Committee .. And members said You can't just get rid of Hasan, you have to give him a chance to lose weight. And he undoubtedly will. They dropped the idea.
Convicted over the summer of taking five underage girls across state lines to have sex with them, evangelist Tony Alamo was today sentenced to 175 years in prison by a judge in Texarkana, Ark.
Attorney General Eric Holder made official Friday morning what was reported by the media for hours beforehand, the Obama Administration's intention to bring the alleged 9/11 conspirators who've been held at Guantanamo for years to trial in New York.
At a press conference Friday, Holder, a former federal judge and prosecutor, expressed faith in the federal judiciary, prosecutors and New York City officials to manage a high-profile trial of self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad and other suspected terrorist detainees.
Holder said he intended to seek the death penalty for the terror suspects for their "extraordinary crimes."
He acknowledged that there would likely be political criticism of his decision but he said if observers dispassionately examined what was best for America, they would agree that trials were in the nation's best interest.
Hasan, who's been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder for the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, "won't be able to walk in the future," said retired Army Col. John Galligan, the defendant's lawyer.
The suspect was shot by police at the scene.
Update at 8:50 a.m. ET: The Associated Press now reports it has been told by Galligan that Hasan "told him that he has no feeling in his legs and doctors say the condition may be permanent."
For more of NPR's coverage of the Fort Hood shootings, click here.
As it turns out, Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley, the Ft. Hood Army Base police officer who was credited as a hero for taking down Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people, may not have actually shot Hasan.
But she will still be considered courageous in the eyes of many people for chasing the alleged gunman in order to stop the rampage.
Still, if she was incorrectly receiving credit for stopping Hasan, that's important to know. The fact that she wasn't the one to fire the shots that ended the shooting spree doesn't necessarily hurt the argument some have made that her actions argue for women in combat.
As it turns out, another officer who responded to the emergency, Senior Sgt Mark Todd, is being credited by an eyewitness for putting Hasan on his back. The New York Times interviewed Todd on Thursday.
In the interview, Sergeant Todd said he and Sergeant Munley had pulled up to the scene in separate cars at the same time. He said they began running up a small hill toward the building that held the processing center where unarmed soldiers reported for check-ups and vaccinations before deployment. The gunman was already outside, Sergeant Todd recalled.
"That's when the bystanders were pointing in his direction," he said. "And when we popped up, he was standing there, and we shouted our commands -- 'Police, drop your weapons!' -- and he just opened fire on us."
Sergeant Todd said he was slightly in front of Sergeant Munley on the hill. "Once we took fire, she broke right and I broke left," he said.
Sergeant Todd said he did not see Sergeant Munley get shot. He said he started to circle around the building, but then backtracked as panicked bystanders told him of the gunman's movements.
Opening arguments began in the trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon on Thursday. Dixon, the city's first woman mayor, is accused on state charges of stealing gift cards meant for needy families when she was president of the city council.
State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh spent about 50 minutes delivering opening remarks in the criminal theft trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon this afternoon, tracing two sets of gifts cards that Dixon is accused of taking and spending on herself.
The gift cards -- one set purchased by Doracon Contracting Inc., the other by developer Patrick Turner -- were intended for the city's needy.
"I like to believe a system, in any court, is going to be fair, impartial, just," John Galligan told reporters a short time ago. "This has not made me a happy man."
As the AP adds:
Galligan said his military co-counsel told him that charges were being read to Hasan in the hospital without his lawyers present. "I don't like it. I feel like I'm being left out of the loop," Galligan said. "I guess it's 13 charges, but I don't like to have to guess in this situation."
Update at 3 p.m. ET. Here's an audio clip from Galligan's comments to reporters:
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET: Chris Grey, a civilian spokesman for the Army's criminal investigation division, just told reporters at Fort Hood that "we still believe there was only one gunman at the scene" and that Hasan had no "scheduled appointments or command-directed activity" that required him to be at the scene -- which would appear to be a way of saying he had no good reason to be there.
Grey also just said that Hasan was shot "by two officers," one male and one female, who "arrived at the scene and both engaged the armed suspect."
Update at 1:45 p.m. ET. Here is the complete audio of Grey's statement:
All three cable news networks are now reporting that Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the lone suspect in last week's shooting rampage at Fort Hood, will be charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder.
MSNBC says an announcement will be made later today at the Army post. CNN says a news conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET.
The networks are military and government sources.
Twelve military personnel and one civilian were killed in the shooting spree. More than 30 people were injured. For more of NPR's coverage of the story, click here.
Update at 1:05 p.m. ET: At Fort Hood, officials just announced that the charges have been filed.
John Galligan, the retired colonel and former military lawyer representing alleged Ft. Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Hasan on Wednesday praised the military justice system he served in for 30 years as even better than the civilian system.
But in an interview with Melissa Block, an All Things Considered host, he sounded like a man whose mind was split on the issue.
While he spoke approvingly of the military justice system, he questioned whether his client could get a fair trial at the base where the shooting rampage occurred or have his mental status accurately assessed at military facilities.
Galligan said:
... I know enough about the military justice system to be sufficiently concerned that in a high profile case such as this, it's imperative that we be ever vigilant to ensure a fair trial.
And that ranges everywhere from ensuring that his rights against self incrimination are respected all the way to ensuring that a proper forum, one free from prejudice is available to the jury...
Everyday I get up I think more about the issues you know it presents. And they're not easy issues. And for that reason, there's no immediate, no easy answer.
I would just say that your listeners should join me in requesting that everybody make sure that we go down this road that we call military justice that we make sure that we stay on track so that we give Maj. Hasan a fair impartial hearing and trial. That's what we want not just for him. It's also what we want for each and every one of us.
All of those are issues that I'm starting to have to assess their impact on this case. Can he get a fair trial at Ft. Hood? I have my doubts. Are there issues that we're going to have to address with respect to mental responsibility? Clearly there are. And are they issues that can be properly evaluated at Ft. Hood. Again, I have my doubts. Can they be evaluated properly at Darnell, I mean Walter Reed? Maybe not.
A question we first asked on The Two-Way last week and still ask is why was Major Nidal Hasan allowed to continue to treat military patients when his colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences had serious doubts about his behavior.
Major Nidal Hasan's colleagues questioned whether he was psychotic but he was still allowed to treat Army patients. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Reporting by NPR's Daniel Zwerdling suggests the answer is that inertia may have played a role, including an unwillingness to enter the bureaucratic and legal tangle that must be navigated before an Army doctor can be removed for cause. Political correctness perhaps also was involved.
And this was despite some number of his advisers and colleagues having profound questions about him, including asking themselves and each other if he was psychotic.
Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?
"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."
Aram Hong, a juror from Woodside, Queens, said the exchanges between Cioffi and Tannin shown to the jury proved to her that the two men were working "24-7" to save the funds in the months before they collapsed. She noted a defense exhibit that showed the fund managers were working at 4 a.m.
"If this was really a fraud case, they wouldn't have worked that hard," said Hong, 27, a food and beverage director at the Iroquois Hotel in midtown Manhattan, adding that she would invest with the two men if she had the money.
Hong said another e-mail showed the defendants looking at all the components of the market, not just the negative. She said they "took the time to compare and consider all elements."
The retired Army colonel who is the attorney for the suspect in the Fort Hood killings may be familiar to many.
John Galligan, as The Washington Post writes, "defended an Army military policeman charged in the 2002 maiming death of a taxi driver who had been detained in Afghanistan. The jury in that case did not send the defendant to prison; he was honorably discharged. The case was the centerpiece of the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, in which Galligan appears and which won an Oscar."
The Austin American-Statesman reports this morning that Galligan says he's gotten some support from other defense lawyers, who agree that the rights of the suspect, Maj. Nidal Hasan, need protection. But, the newspaper says, "others questioned how he could have accepted a case involving the man accused of the deadly attack on a U.S. military post."
Galligan's view? The American-Statesman says that:
As a defense lawyer, Galligan said he has a standard answer for similar questions when he represents suspected rapists and child molesters. He said it applies to Hasan as well. "My goal is to ensure that the defendant receives a fair trial," Galligan said.
In his 30-year Army career, Galligan was at times a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney.
If there's any good news to come from the arrest of the United pilot who allegedly had too much alcohol in his system as he prepared to fly his Boeing 767 from London Heathrow to Chicago O'Hare it's that the system apparently worked.
A concerned United employee notified authorities who came aboard the aircraft and administered a breathalyzer test to Erwin Vermont Washington, 51, which allegedly showed that he was over the legal limit in England. (We have to use "allegedly" since he hasn't been convicted yet.)
He was arrested and thrown in jail. Flight 949's passengers had to be booked on other flights.
While Virginia proved again last night -- with the execution of D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad -- that it can move relatively quickly on capital punishment cases, things are apparently much different in California.
According to the Los Angeles Times, "capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue."
And now, the Times says, some inmates even view a death penalty as a good thing because conditions on death row are "more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons." The inmates get private cells, better access to telephones and can have " 'contact visits' in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions."
John Allen Muhammad, who with a younger accomplice terrorized Washington, D.C., and its surburbs in 2002 with the "D.C. sniper" attacks that left 10 people dead, was just executed by lethal injection at a Virginia prison. Death was pronounced at 9:11 p.m. ET, Virginia prison spokesman Larry Traylor just told reporters.
Muhammad, 48, as the Associated Press writes, "was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in northern Virginia. He and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, also were suspected of fatal shootings in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana and Washington state."
Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the D.C. area killings, is serving out multiple life sentences for his role in six of the D.C. area killings.
Ex astronaut-Lisa Nowak after pleading guilty to charges related to a strange attack on her rival in a love triangle, Coleen Shipman, seen in background. (Red Huber / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Here's a story some of us had nearly forgotten about. The former astronaut who drove from Texas to Florida to allegedly kidnap her rival in a love triangle was given a year's probation on Tuesday after agreeing to plead guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid felony counts.
As NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reported for the network's newscast:
Lisa Nowak was a NASA astronaut who had flown on the space shuttle just months before she made news for a different reason in February of 2007.
That's when police said she drove from Houston to the Orlando International Airport and, wearing a disguise, confronted Colleen Shipman, a woman who was dating another NASA astronaut, William Oefelein.
Nowak faced serious charges including attempted kidnapping, and was scheduled to go on trial next month. But under a plea bargain agreement, Nowak entered a plea of guilty to burglary of a car and misdemeanor battery.
She was sentenced to two days in jail, which she has already served, and one year of probation. She was also told to write a letter of apology to Shipman, who told the court that she believes Nowak was going to kill her.
Given Nowak was the butt of late-night television comedians and was also kicked out of the elite astronaut corps, she arguably has paid her debt to society.
Remembering the victims. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
By Mark Memmott
A memorial service was held this afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas, where 13 people were killed and about 40 wounded last Thursday in a shooting rampage. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist, is the lone suspect.
Families of the victims, personnel from the post and President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended and the president eulogized the fallen.
We live-blogged the service in the box below. Just click the "play" button and our updates should flow in automatically. You can share your thoughts in this post's comments thread. During the service, we won't be posting comments in the "Cover It Live" box -- so that we can concentrate on covering the event. Once the service is over, though, we'll turn on the comments function in the player as well for about 30 minutes, or for as long as the conversation seems to want to continue.
Update at 4:15 p.m. ET: As you can see in our live-blogging, there was a discussion among some Two-Way readers after the service about the coins that the president placed on each memorial to the 13 people killed (12 of whom were soldiers).
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters a short time ago that those were traditional "challenge" coins that military commanders often give out to their personnel. The president gives them to members of the military he meets.
Hours before Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad's scheduled execution, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine on Tuesday denied clemency to the convicted killer whose murder spree spread a pall of fear over the region in the fall of 2002.
Coming a day after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to issue a stay of the execution, scheduled for 9 pm ET Tuesday, Kaine's refusal to issue a clemency removes the last possible legal barrier to Muhammad being put to death. Kaine had said previously that he didn't believe a clemency was justified.
"On November 17, 2003, John Allen Muhammad was tried before a jury in the Circuit Court of Virginia Beach, Virginia and convicted of two counts of capital murder committed in Prince William County: his premeditated murder of Dean Meyers in the commission of an act of terrorism; and the premeditated murders of Dean Meyers and others within three years.
Muhammad was also found guilty of the use of a firearm in the commission of capital murder and conspiracy to commit capital murder. At the sentencing hearing on November 23, 2003, the jury sentenced Muhammad to death for the capital murders and to 23 years in prison for the other crimes. The trial court sentenced Muhammad in accordance with the jury's verdicts on March 29, 2004.
"On April 22, 2005, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed Muhammad's convictions and death sentence. The United States Supreme Court denied Muhammad's petition for a writ of certiorari on May 15, 2006.
"The trial court appointed counsel to represent Muhammad in a state habeas corpus proceeding, and on June 12, 2007, the Virginia Supreme Court dismissed this petition. On October 26, 2007, the United State District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia stayed Muhammad's scheduled execution and appointed counsel for federal habeas corpus proceedings. The district court denied and dismissed all of his federal habeas corpus claims on September 24, 2008, and on August 7, 2009 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment. On November 9, 2009, the United States Supreme Court denied Muhammad's petition for a stay of execution and a writ of certiorari.
"Muhammad's trial, verdict, and sentence have been reviewed by state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court of Virginia, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts.
Federal officials said Monday evening that alleged Ft. Hood Army Base mass killer, Major Nidal Hasan, will be tried by a military court.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reported on the reason for that move:
The decision of whether Nidal Hasan should be tried in federal or military court hinged in part on what charges would be brought against him. Were he to be tried for terrorism, federal prosecutors might want to pursue him.
But senior US officials say the fact that Hasan is an Army officer accused of killing other soldiers on an Army post mean it's appropriate for him to be tried in a military court.
FBI officials are assisting in the investigation of the shooting spree at Fort Hood. So far, the officials say, there is no evidence Hasan was directed by anyone else to carry out the massacre or that he had any conspirators.
The officials say they quote "took a look" at Hasan in recent months because of communications with an unnamed individual who espoused radical views. But their concerns did not rise to a level warranting further investigation, the officials say.
Updated-- Since this post was originally written, it's becomes known that when alleged Ft. Hood mass killer Maj. Nidal Hasan spoke Monday he invoked his right to have a lawyer. Also, his lawyer, John Galligan, a retired colonel, did speak with his client Monday.
------------------- original post below ----------------
There were some developments Monday in the aftermath of the Ft. Hood Army Base massacre last Thursday in which 13 people were shot dead and 29 were wounded.
It was reported Monday that Army Major Nidal Hasan, 39, the alleged killer, was able to speak. Neither military or hospital officials reported what he said.
Meanwhile, Hasan's family apparently retained a lawyer, retired Col. John P. Galligan who said during an interview that he was hired by the family. He also said he had informed military officials that until he meets with Hasan, there were to be no law enforcement interviews or interrogations of his client.
"We want to insure that all of his rights under the law are protected and that's my intent," Galligan said.
Meanwhile, preparations for the memorial service at Ft. Hood were well underway. The service was scheduled for Tuesday at 2 pm ET. President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and other dignitaries were scheduled to attend.
NPR, like other news outlets, will provide live coverage of the memorial service.
Scott Roeder told AP Monday he killed abortion provider Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas. ( Wichita Police Department via Getty Images)
By Frank James
The man who allegedly shot and killed a physician in Wichita, Kansas who provided abortion services, admitted to the Associated Press to the killing and said he intends to defend himself by arguing that it was justifiable homicide.
In a phone call Monday, Scott Roeder told the news service he killed Dr. George Tiller, the AP said .
An excerpt:
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Defiant and unapologetic, a man accused of shooting a Kansas abortion provider confessed to the slaying Monday, telling The Associated Press that he killed the doctor to protect unborn children.
Scott Roeder, 51, of Kansas City, Mo., spoke to the AP in a telephone call from jail, saying he plans to argue at his trial that he was justified in shooting Dr. George Tiller at the abortion
provider's Wichita church in May.
"Because of the fact preborn children's lives were in imminent danger this was the action I chose. ... I want to make sure that the focus is, of course, obviously on the preborn children and the necessity to defend them," Roeder said.
"Defending innocent life - that is what prompted me. It is pretty simple," he said.
Today, as BBC News reports, police found 9 million of the 11.6 million Euros that Musulin allegedly drove off with. The van had been found just hours after it, and Musulin, disappeared. The cash was discovered in a rented garage.
That still leaves 2.6 million Euros missing -- or about $3.9 million at the current exchange rate.
And that's a lot of money to have if you need to disappear.
Earlier, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley filed this report on the sensational case:
Author Jerome Corsi, who was among the group that "Swift Boated" Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election and more recently penned The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has another eye-catching story at the conservative World Net Daily website.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.
Here's what NPR national security/intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten tells us about Corsi's conclusion:
This claim is so exaggerated as to be without merit.
Nidal Hasan was one of 308 people whose names appear on a list of "participants" in a series of public roundtable meetings organized by the "Presidential Transition Task Force," a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University. Hasan was not himself a member of the Task Force.
Frank Cilluffo, the HSPI director, says the participants' list, published as an appendix to the Task Force report, was no more than a tally of those people who RSVP'd to a notice of the roundtable meetings, which took place between June 2008 and February 2009. "Hasan joined as a member of the audience," Cilluffo says.
When Cilluffo saw a picture of Hasan, he remembered him making a public comment during one of the roundtable meetings. "I had to cut him off, because he was going on too long," Cilluffo says. He says he can not recall what Hasan was saying.
Corsi's report, by the way, does something of a U-turn about midway through. "While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security," he writes, "there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity."
And an "editor's note" attached to Corsi's story after its publication says "Hasan is being reported as a participant in the GWU Homeland Security Policy Institute's Presidential Transition Task Force, not as a member, noting the group was a university think-tank, not part of the Obama administration official transition team."
So, he begins with a sure-to-shock conclusion -- that Hasan played a "homeland security advisory role" in the transition. Then, at a point in the story that many readers won't reach or hear about, Corsi reverses course.
One question among the many that await answers in the wake of Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood in Texas is how was it possible for the Army to let alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, treat soldiers with psychological disturbances related to their Iraq or Afghanistan deployments?
Hasan's behavior was apparently deeply troubling to his colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Not only has Hasan described as a cold, distant personality and not particularly impressive as a doctor in training, but his behavior alarmed his colleagues.
And he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out. They have grand rounds right? Dozens of doctors come into an auditorium and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, what drugs to prescribe for what condition.
Instead of that, Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran. And talked about how if you don't believe you are condemned to hell, your head is cut off, burning oil is burned (sic) down your throat.
The jury in the too-fat-too-kill murder case didn't buy a Florida man's argument that he was too overweight to have climbed the stairs at his ex son-in-law's New Jersey home to shoot him to death.
A New Jersey jury convicted Edward Ates of murder, rejecting his defense argument that his girth would have made it impossible to shoot his ex son-in-law. (AP Photo)
Edward Ates was convicted by a New Jersey jury Friday for the murder of Paul Duncsak who had a nasty custody fight with Ate's daughter.
At the time of the murder, Ates was 5 feet 8 inches tall and 285 pounds at the time of the murder in 2006. His defense team had argued that their client would have been too winded after climbing the stairs to hold a gun steady enough to shoot Duncsak.
But prosecutors said Ates, who been a good shot in the military and, more recently, had shot a snake, and therefore, certainly capable of committing the killing.
As we wrote earlier in the week, the defense and prosecution arguments in the courtroom were more colorful than most television crime-drama scripts.
2:28 p.m. ET: One person is dead and at least five other people are hospitalized after a shooting incident today at an Orlando office building that shut down part of the that city as police searched for the gunman.
Eight people have been shot at an office building in downtown Orlando. Four of the eight are in trauma condition. The building is called Legions Place.
As the story developed, we updated this post. Scroll down and read "up" if you want to see things chronologically.
Update at 2:23 p.m. ET: "The gunman has been apprehended," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer just told reporters at the scene.
The suspect was arrested at his mother's home.
One victim has died, City Police Chief Val Demings added. Five other people were injured (one apparently had a heart attack).
Update at 2:20 p.m. ET: WESH-TV in Orlando is broadcasting from overhead as police search an apartment complex where the suspect's vehicle may have been spotted.
The office building where the shooting occurred has been "cleared," an Orlando Fire Department spokesman just told reporters.
Update at 2:10 p.m. ET: The Sentinel, CNN, WESH-TV and other media report the shooting happened in the offices of Reynolds, Smith & Hill, a "facilities and infrastructure consulting firm."
Update at 2:02 p.m. ET: More shifting numbers. The Sentinel and other local media reported earlier that they had been told of two deaths. Now, the Sentinel and WESH-TV are saying there has been one fatality. Still no official confirmation from police on that.
Update at 2 p.m. ET: As happens in breaking news events, details keep shifting. The Associated Press is now reporting that Orlando Police say "at least six people were hurt."
The suspect, Jason Rodriguez. (AP/Orlando Police)
Update at 1:55 p.m. ET: Orlando Police have released an undated photo of the suspect, Jason Rodriguez.
Update at 1:32 p.m. ET: "I don't want to say if anybody is deceased," Orlando Police Sgt. Barb Jones just told reporters (from WESH-TV broadcast).
Update at 1:25 p.m. ET: As we just said, the numbers reported a short time ago suddenly jumped -- but had not been confirmed by authorities.
Orlando Police Department spokesman Sgt. Barb Jones just knocked down those reports.
There are fewer than 10 victims, she told reporters. As for the reports about fatalities, she would not discuss any of the victims' conditions.
Also on WESH-TV, Jones just confirmed that police are looking for a man named Jason Rodriguez, 40. He may be in a 2002 silver Nissan SUV, Florida license plate D11-9UX, WESH-TV reports.
Update at 1:19 p.m. ET: These numbers are even more grim that those from earlier reports.
Eyewitness News (has) learned that at least two people were killed in a shooting at a downtown Orlando office building Friday. There are as many as 17 others that were shot and transported to a local hospital.
The Sentinel and local news radio station WFLA are also saying there are two fatalities.
But neither the Associated Press nor WESH-TV are saying anyone has died. And police have not confirmed the new numbers.
Update at 1:07 p.m. ET: Police say the suspect they're looking for is a man wearing a light blue polo shirt and jeans, WESH-TV reports.
Update at 1 p.m. ET: A woman identified by WESH-TV as Sgt. Barb Jones of the Orlando Police Department just said that the first call about shots being fired came in around 11 a.m. ET. She says there are "multiple" victims, but would not provide a number. A search is on for the shooter, Jones says.
"If I knew where he went we'd be there," she says of the suspect.
Jones does not want to answer questions about the conditions of those who have been shot.
Update at 12:58 p.m. ET: Local media, including the Sentinel and WESH-TV, say a search is on for a shooter.
Update at 12:47 p.m. ET: An Orlando Fire Department spokesman tells WESH-TV that eight people have been taken to hospitals -- seven for gunshot injuries and one for a possible heart attack.
The civilian police officer who shot and wounded the gunman yesterday at Fort Hood -- bringing to an end the rampage that left 13 people dead -- is being hailed as a hero today by the post's commanding officer.
Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told CNN's American Morning that officer Kimberly Munley and her partner "responded very quickly. ... She, in an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded -- but wounded the shooter four times." It was "really a pretty amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer":
Munley is among those who remain hospitalized. She is in stable condition, according to Army officials.
ABC News says that Munley is 34 and originally from Enola, Pa.
The suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is also hospitalized.
For more of NPR.org's coverage of the story, click here.
Army officials just briefed reporters at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, where 13 people were killed and another 30 or so were wounded yesterday during a shooting rampage. Be sure to click your "refresh" button to see our latest updates.
9:15 a.m. ET. Also this morning, the commanding officer at Fort Hood spoke with The Today Show's Matt Lauer. Lt. Gen. Robert Cone confirmed that there are "first-hand" accounts that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great!") during the rampage:
7:48 a.m. ET: The briefing just wrapped up. If you scroll down and read "up", you can see things chronologically. A recap of key points: The number of wounded still in hospitals is now said to be 28, not 30 as previously reported by Army officials; it is still thought that the suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, acted alone; he remains in stable condition after being shot several times by a civilian police officer.
7:46 a.m .ET: The suspect was wearing his Army uniform during the rampage.
7:45 a.m. ET: "We had no problems with him (the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan" at the post, says Col. Steve Braverman.
Maj. Hasan. (AP Photo/Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences )
7:42 a.m. ET: All the wounded are in "stable condition."
7:40 a.m. ET: The soldiers at the scene were not armed. The "first responder" who wounded the suspect was a female police officer. She was wounded and is now in stable condition.
7:39 a.m. ET: One civilian was killed. The other fatally wounded victims were military personnel, Col. John Rossi says.
7:37 a.m. ET: The suspect's condition is "stable." Why was it originally said by Army personnel that suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was dead? "Confusion," says the briefer, Col. John Rossi.
7:35 a.m. ET: The post is operating at a "heightened level of security."
7:34 a.m. ET: About half of the wounded personnel required surgery.
7:33 a.m. ET: The number of dead remains at 13. Slight change in the number of wounded from earlier briefings -- Col. John Rossi puts that number at 28, though he may have meant that is the number still in hospitals. His exact meaning was unclear.
A 13th victim of yesterday's shooting at Fort Hood has died. The word is coming from public affairs officers at the post.
That's the most important, and saddest, update on the story since we wrapped up our live-blogging last evening.
The additional death means, authorities say, there are 30 people recovering from injuries.
Other updates to pass along:
-- The local Killeen Daily Herald says officials at Fort Hood plan to brief the news media at 7:30 a.m. ET.
-- The Washington Post reports that the suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, was "a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war." Hasan, as the Daily Herald reports, "was in stable to critical condition as of Thursday night" after apparently being shot during the rampage.
-- The Associated Press says that Hasan "is on a ventilator, unconscious and under guard
in a hospital."
-- At Fort Hood, personnel will observe a day of mourning today. Schools are open. Security remains heightened.
-- The injured have been "dispersed to hospitals throughout Central Texas, where few details of their injuries or prognoses were released Thursday evening," The Austin American-Statesman reports.
We'll pass along more news about all this as the day continues.
Update at 7:25 a.m. ET. On Morning Edition, NPR's Wade Goodwyn reported from the scene about yesterday's massacre, and NPR's Tom Gjelten talked about what's known about the suspect:
Thursday's shooting rampage at Ft. Hood gives the adjacent civilian community of Killeen, Texas, a tragic distinction.
Killeen is bordered by Ft. Hood on three sides. The town and the Army post are inextricably linked. And now they share the despair left by gunmen killing as many people as they can.
Eighteen years ago, on October 16, 1991, 35-year-old George Hennard drove his pickup truck through the window of a Luby's Cafeteria Restaurant in Killeen. He moved methodically past upturned chairs and tables, shooting people point-blank as they begged for their lives. Hennard killed 23 and wounded 20 before turning his gun on himself. It was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history until Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.
Some managed to escape Hennard's rampage. An auto mechanic threw himself through a plate-glass window and suffered deep cuts. But more than 20 others followed him to safety.
Hennard shot one woman dead then turned to her daughter and granddaughter sitting next to her and told them to run.
It was never clear why Hennard attacked. He was quoted mumbling as he fired, "Is it all worth it, what they have done to me in Texas and Belton?" He railed against women in letters and wrote "I will prevail in the bitter end."
As the military post and surrounding community struggled to respond, a sign went up on the edge of town. It simply said this: "Lord -- comfort our town in our time of loss."
(Howard Berkes is an NPR correspondent based in Salt Lake City. He covered the Luby's massacre.)
At Ft. Hood, Sgt. Anthony Sills comforts his wife. (Jack Plunkett/AP)
By Frank James and Mark Memmott
We've used this post to follow the tragic news from Fort Hood.
As of 9:45 p.m. ET, here's where things stand:
-- At least 12 people were killed today during a shooting rampage on the post.
-- Another 31 or so people were wounded.
-- The suspect, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was not killed at the scene, as was first reported by authorities there. He was shot and is now hospitalized.
-- Army officials say this does not seem to have been an act of terrorism. Hasan, according to Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, was upset about his upcoming deployment to Iraq.
-- Hasan is a psychiatrist. A cousin of his told news media outlets tonight that Hasan felt he had been harassed by others in the Army because he is a Muslim.
You can read through this post to see how the story developed (scroll down and read "up" through the post if you want to go chronologically). The Two-Way will pick up the story again in the morning.
Meanwhile, NPR.org will be staying on the story through the night. Our colleague Kevin Whitelaw is updating his report here.
Update at 9:28 p.m. ET: Lt. Gen. Bob Cone just wrapped up his news conference at Fort Hood. After revealing that major change in the story -- that the suspect is still alive -- Cone spoke of the way soldiers reacted to the carnage.
"God bless these soldiers," he said. "People tell stories of soldiers ripping their uniforms apart" to use as bandages.
Update at 9:24 p.m. ET: "His death is not imminent," Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, now briefing reporters at Fort Hood, just said of the suspect -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The suspect is not speaking with investigators, though, Cone said. Hasan is hospitalized after being shot.
Update at 9:22 p.m. ET: "I couldn't rule that out," Lt. Gen. Cone just said, but it does not appear the shootings -- which happened in two adjacent locations -- had anything to do with terrorism.
Update at 9:20 p.m. ET: The suspect was wounded by fire from a woman at the scene, Lt. Gen. Cone says. He allegedly had two semi-automatic weapons.
Update at 9:15 p.m. ET: MAJOR CHANGES IN THE STORY:
The suspect is not dead, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone just told reporters at Fort Hood.
And, he just put the death toll at 12.
He also just confirmed the name of the supect: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. There was only one shooter, Cone said.
Update at 9:07 p.m. ET: Fox News Channel is interviewing a man identified as retired Col. Terry Lee, who says he worked with the suspect at Fort Hood. According to Lee, Nidal Malik Hasan had grown increasingly upset in recent years about the wars and U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Update at 9 p.m. ET. Still no news conference at Fort Hood, but the cable news networks keep saying it will happen any minute.
Update at 8:43 p.m. ET. The Associated Press is reporting that:
Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.
The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shooting incident that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.
Update at 8:40 p.m. ET: CNN says it's been told that those who were killed by the gunman were 10 soldiers and one civilian contractor.
Update at 8:20 p.m. ET: While a Fort Hood spokesman said on CNN a few minutes ago that investigators do think there was a second shooter, NPR's Wade Goodwyn has been told by public information officer Steve Moore at the post that it is not thought there was a second shooter. Hopefully, the news conference (which was supposed to have begun 8 minutes ago) will clear up that contradiction.
Update at 8:18 p.m. ET: The Fort Hood webpage says these phone numbers have been set up as hotlines for families seeking information about their loved ones at the post:
866-836-2751 or 254-288-7570
Update at 8:08 p.m. ET: On CNN a moment ago, a Fort Hood spokesman just said a second person "of interest" has been detained, and that a news conference is expected to begin in about five minutes. (Earlier, two soldiers who had been detained were released.) It is thought that there were two shooters, the spokesman said.
Update at 8 p.m. ET: Fort Hood is no longer under a "lockdown," meaning that personnel can begin to move around again.
And the Associated Press reports this about the suspected shooter (who Army officials say died at the scene):
Military officials say Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before being transferred to the Texas base in July. The officials, who had access to Hasan's military record, said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because military records are confidential.
The Virginia-born soldier was single with no children. He graduated from Virginia Tech University, where he was a member of the ROTC and earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1997. He received his medical degree from the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001. At Walter Reed, he did his internship, residency and a fellowship.
Update at 7:55 p.m. ET. The Associated Press has posted this Department of Defense video from the scene:
Update at 7:50 p.m. ET. A prominent Washington-based Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has released a statement that reads, in part:
"We condemn this cowardly attack in the strongest terms possible and ask that the perpetrators be punished to the full extent of the law. No religious or political ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence. The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted the all-volunteer army that protects our nation. American Muslims stand with our fellow citizens in offering both prayers for the victims and sincere condolences to the families of those killed or injured."
Update at 7:40 p.m. ET: A man identified by Fox News Channel as Nader Hasan, a cousin of the alleged gunman, just told Fox that Nidal Malik Hasan "had no violent tendencies," but felt he had been harassed while in the military. His cousin had retained a military lawyer to fight harassment, Nader Hasan told Fox.
Update at 7:28 p.m. ET. The other two people taken into custody may have been released. The Associated Press just moved this "alert":
Congressman's office: 2 soldiers taken into custody in Fort Hood shootings have been released.
Update at 7:15 p.m. ET:This newsletter from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, has a photo of Nidal Hasan, thought to have been the shooter, on its third page.
Update at 7:12 p.m. ET. In a statement just released by the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says:
"I am deeply saddened by the tragic events today at Fort Hood. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the fallen, the wounded, and all those touched by this incident. There is little we can say at this point to alleviate the pain or answer the many questions this event raises, but I can pledge that the Department of Defense will do everything in its power to help the Fort Hood community get through these difficult times."
Update at 7:05 p.m. ET: Former president George W. Bush, who has visited the post often and has a ranch only about 30 miles away in Crawford, just released this statement:
Bernard Kerik, the one-time New York City police commissioner and nominee to be Homeland Security Secretary, plead guilty to eight federal counts on Thursday and faces 2-1/2 years in prison.
Bernard Kerik pleads guilty, avoids trials.(Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo)
The guilty pleas made in federal court in White Plains were part of a plea agreement Kerik reached with federal prosecutors. Among the allegations against him, he had faced charges for lying to the White House when he was being vetted for the Homeland Security post and for, when he was police commissioner, using his position to get New York City to award business to a contractor Kerik received favors from.
According to the Associated Press:
"Guilty," he said eight times in a firm voice as he appeared in the suburban courtroom.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a statement calling Thursday"a sad day," but added, "No one is above the law."
The plea agreement included the prosecution's suggestion that the crimes are punishable by 27 to 33 months in prison. It was designed to resolve three pending federal criminal trials. The
first had been scheduled to start Monday.
(U.S. District Judge Stephen C.) Robinson warned Kerik that the maximum sentence for the counts to which he was pleading was 61 years in prison; the judge said he was not bound by the terms of the plea agreement.
Kerik said he understood and told the judge he was giving up his right to appeal. He also agreed to pay about $188,000 in restitution.
"Federal prosecutors say criminal charges have been filed against 14 people, including attorneys and Wall Street professionals, in a widening $25 million insider trading case that has already snared one of the richest men in America," the Associated Press writes.
Some residents say their complaints and suspicions were ignored. Others say, though, that people in the neighborhood don't talk to each other as much as they once did. A "culture of silence" may have contributed:
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, one of the victims has been identified. The newspaper says she was "the type of person authorities say (suspect Anthony) Sowell preyed upon: women with criminal pasts and drug or alcohol problems who lived or hung out near his home."
WKYC in Cleveland has an interview with a woman who says that Sowell once attacked her:
Closing arguments were heard Wednesday in a New Jersey murder case that's gotten a lot of attention, the case in which prosecutors say the accused killed his ex son-in-law and the defendant's defense is that he couldn't have because he's too obese to have done the crime.
Was Edward Ates too obese to kill his ex son-in-law? (AP Photo)
Many people have thought this case seems like perfect Law and Order material, made-for-TV fare for sure.
Television writers wouldn't even have to be very creative; they could just use the actual court transcript of the arguments the lawyers are making in the Hackensack, N.J. courtroom.
The grisly story coming out of Cleveland continues to get worse. WKYC-TV is reporting that two more bodies were found on the property where convicted rapist Anthony Sowell lived until recently.
The new bodies bring the total to eight found in and behind the house. Sowell was arrested last week on rape charges related to an alleged September incident. Police who visited his house to arrest him didn't find Sowell but discovered the bodies. He was arrested without incident as he walked along a Cleveland street.
It turns out that the so-called DWI Recliner we've been telling you about the last couple weeks is not -- repeat is not -- a La-Z-Boy.
The Duluth News Tribune reports that the Proctor, Minn., Police Department was told by eBay that the infamous chariot -- in which a man was arrested for driving while drunk -- is not a motorized, soup-up La-Z-Boy. The furniture maker confirmed that news. According to the Tribune, Proctor Police Chief Walter Wobig "said the chair was custom-built and there are no markings or any manufacturer's name on it."
This could present a bit of a problem for the authorities. When it was being called a La-Z-Boy, the bidding topped $43,000. As of now, the high bid on "DWI Chair" is $5,200. The auction ends Thursday around 8 p.m. ET.
Proceeds will be split between the state of Minnesota, the local victims' advocacy fund, the prosecuting attorney's office and the Proctor police.
Muhammad is scheduled to be put to death in Virginia next Tuesday. His attorneys say they will file the appeal today.
Ten people were killed in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia over a three week period in October 2002. Lee Boyd Malvo, a teenager at the time, is serving a life sentence for his part in the crimes. Muhammad's death sentence is for the killing of a man at a Manassas, Va., gas station.
Muhammad's attorneys maintain he is too mentally ill to be put to death.
Two men were shot in their legs as they arrived at a North Hollywood synagogue for morning prayers, according to Los Angeles Police who are investigating the shootings as a hate crime.
Police are saying that the men were approached outside the Adat Yeshurun Valley Shephardic around 6:20 am by a shooter, a black male, who shot one man as he exited his car, then shot the second person who was nearer the temple. The shooter then fled. The victims, in their 40s, were taken to hospitals and reported to be in stable condition.
The police don't believe robbery was the motive. A 17-year old male who was in the neighborhood was taken into custody for questioning but a police spokesman said police are continuing to search for a suspect.
Meanwhile, synagogues in the area have been warned to take precautions.
A Muslim imam in Detroit was shot and killed by federal agents who were conducting a search related to suspicions about illegal guns and theft.
According to the Associated Press:
Federal authorities say a leader of what they describe as a nationwide radical Sunni Islam group has been fatally shot during an FBI raid in the Detroit area.
The U.S. attorney's office in Detroit says Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah refused to surrender during an FBI raid Wednesday and was killed in an exchange of gunfire.
Abdullah and 10 others were charged in a complaint with conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including illegal possession and sale of firearms and theft from interstate shipments.
Authorities say an FBI dog also was killed during the raid.
NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has learned something of the order of events. Abdullah shot the dog then the FBI shot him, she says.
An FBI press release says Abdullah was also known as Christopher Thomas. It identified Abdullah as the leader of a black separatist group which calls itself Ummah or "the Brotherhood."
A quick follow-up to our Tuesday post about the possibility that there was some skullduggery at the Philadelphia Inquirer National Sudoku Championship over the weekend:
Tournament officials, the Inquirer reports, "have frozen payouts of the top prize awards from Saturday's finals pending an investigation of suspected cheating."
As we reported, there's suspicion that someone named Eugene Varshavsky -- who came in third and won $3,000 -- got some outside help during a preliminary round.
NPR/New York Times puzzle guru Will Shortz is among those leading the investigation. Here's his conversation with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel about this "Sudokugate":
The word "shocking" doesn't even capture the horrific nature of the reports from Richmond, Calif., about the gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl over the weekend.
Police initially said about six young men were involved in the attack. But investigators said Tuesday that they now believe that as many as 10 assailants, ranging in age from 15 to their early 20s, committed a "slew of crimes" against the girl -- including raping her and stealing her jewelry.
The men laughed and took photos as they took turns assaulting the girl, police said.
It all happened outside a high school homecoming dance.
There's a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.
Update at 10:30 a.m. ET: The Associated Press says a fifth arrest has been made. We've updated the headline above.
University of Connecticut Police announced on Wednesday several arrests in the stabbing death of student Jasper "Jazz" Howard, a senior cornerback on the school's football team.
The police said they arrested John W. Lomax III, 21, of Bloomfield, Conn. on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. Lomax was being held on the $2 million bail.
Two other individuals were also arrested. Hakim Muhammad, 20, also of Bloomfield, was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. Jamal Todd, 21, of Hartford, Conn., was arrested on charges of pulling a fire alarm during a campus party in the student union.
Jasper was involved in an altercation after the fire-alarm was pulled and that's when the fatal stabbing occurred.
Jasper died soon after the stabbing. His death attracted national attention, coming as it did after a Connecticut victory over Louisville in which a big defensive play by Howard contributed to the outcome.
His funeral was held yesterday in Miami with more than 1,700 people attending, including his University of Connecticut teammates.
Some stories are just hard to read or hear about. Child prostitution nears the top of that list.
But it's a tragic reality. And it happens not just in undeveloped countries visited by sex tourists but in the U.S. too.
To that end, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that in the last three days as part of a series of operations conducted with state and local officers, it rescued 52 children from prostitution and arrested 700 people, including 60 pimps on state and local charges.
The youngest child prostitute was a 10-year old.
The rescues and arrests were part of Operation Cross Country IV, the latest in an effort that has stretched over years to combat the sexual abuse of children.
"I do feel badly a man died," Ronnie Sue Ambrosino, who saw her life savings disappear when Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme was exposed, tells The Palm Beach Post. "But it's another clue we'll never have."
Picower, 67, was found yesterday on the bottom of the pool at his oceanside mansion in West Palm Beach, Fla. Today, the chief medical examiner for Palm Beach County said Picower suffered a heart attack and drowned.
The Post writes that Picower and his wife Barbara:
According to attorneys investigating Madoff's phony financial empire, were part of the scheme for more than 20 years. They and their daughter, Gabrielle, made more than $5 billion in fictitious profits, according to a complaint that was filed as part of federal efforts to recover money for the victims of Madoff's scheme.
Picower's attorney maintains his client was one of Madoff's victims, not an accomplice.
Update at 2:55 p.m. ET. NPR's Greg Allen filed this report from Miami:
A suicide bomber killed seven people near a major air force complex in northwest Pakistan on Friday, while an explosion killed 17 on a bus heading to wedding elsewhere in the region, the latest in a surge of militant attacks this month.
As NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reported on Morning Edition, the 76-year-old director will likely spend considerable time in prison if he is returned to the U.S. (her report includes some graphic details about his crime):
As the Los Angeles Times says, sales was "a comic with a gift for slapstick who attained cult-like popularity in the 1960s with a pie-throwing routine that became his signature."
Other stories making headlines include:
-- The New York Times -- "Senate Leader Takes Risk Pushing Public Insurance Plan": "In pushing to include a government-run health insurance plan in the health care bill, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is taking a calculated gamble that the 60 members of his caucus could support the plan if it included a way for states to opt out."
-- Politico -- "Pelosi Lacks Votes For Most Sweeping Public Option": "Speaker Nancy Pelosi counted votes Thursday night and determined she could not pass a 'robust public option' -- the most aggressive of the three forms of a public option House Democrats have been considering as part of a national overhaul of health care. Pelosi's decision -- coupled with a significant turn of events yesterday during a private White House meeting -- points to an increasingly likely compromise for a trigger option for a government plan."
-- ESPN.com -- American League Series Goes Back To The Bronx After Angels Beat Yankees: Game six of the AL championship series is set for Saturday night in Yankee Stadium after the Angels win 7-6 Thursday night.
-- Morning Edition -- Protesters Storm BBC Over Interview With Fascist Politician. NPR's Rob Gifford reports from London:
Plaque on the Matthew Shepard Memorial Bench in Laramie, Wyo. (Andy Carpenean / AP Photo/Laramie Boomerang)
By Frank James
Individuals who are physically attacked merely because they are gay or lesbian will now be covered by an expansion of federal hate-crimes legislation the Senate approved Thursday.
The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act was appended to a must-pass $680 billion defense bill which the Senate approved by a 68 to 29 vote. Shepard was the gay college student who was robbed, tortured and fatally beaten by two attackers in 1998.
The House has already passed the bill which President Barack Obama has promised to sign.
The bill is the greatest expansion of the 1969 federal hate-crime law enacted after the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and originally aimed at preventing and prosecuting acts of violence caused by a victim's race, religion or national origin.
The late Sen. Edward Kennedy championed the legislation, as did Rep. John Conyers of Michigan who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers introduced the bill in 2001 but was never able to pass it when Republicans controlled Congress.
Rap superstar Lil Wayne is the latest prison-bound celebrity because of an illegally owned firearm.
Lil Wayne, eschewing the traditional conservative suit normally worn on such occasions, enters the Manhattan Criminal Court building on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009, a day before he officially plead guilty to illegal gun possession charges. (Louis Lanzano / AP Photo)
As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors Lil Wayne, who hails from New Orleans and whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., pled guilty Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom to attempted weapon possession. He's likely to get a year in prison.
His plea was related to a gun found on his tour bus in 2007. The Associated Press describes the incident thusly:
Police pulled over Lil Wayne's tour bus in Columbus Circle on July 22, 2007. They said they had seen and smelled marijuana smoke wafting out the door before the bus left a concert venue minutes earlier.
Police said that as an officer approached, the rapper tossed away a Louis Vuitton bag containing a gun.
The defense disputed officers' basis for searching the bus and noted that more than a dozen other people were aboard.
Attorney General Eric Holder speaks with reporters about another major series of raids against the Mexican drug cartel known as La Familia, as FBI Director Robert Muller (l) and and Acting Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart and Acting Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Director Kenneth Melson listen. (Kevin Wolf / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Law enforcement officials believe they landed another blow in their battle against Mexican drug cartels with two days of raids and arrests this week on alleged members of the crime organization known as La Familia.
The two days of raids by more than 3,000 federal, state and local law-enforcement agents and officers, resulted in the arrest of 303 people in 19 states, the Justice Department said. Authorities also confiscated "$3.4 million in U.S. currency, 729 pounds of methamphetamine, 62 kilograms of cocaine, 967 pounds of marijuana, 144 weapons and 109 vehicles."
The arrests and confiscations are part of the larger "Project Coronado" which has lasted for 44-months and led to the arrest of almost 1,200 people and seizure of more than 11.7 tons of narcotics.
"This unprecedented, coordinated U.S. law enforcement action - the largest ever undertaken against a Mexican drug cartel - has dealt a significant blow to La Familia's supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States," said Attorney General Holder. "We will not allow these cartels to operate unfettered in our country, and with the increases in cooperation between U.S. and Mexican authorities in recent years, we are taking the fight to our adversaries. We will continue to stand strong with our partners in Mexico as we work to disrupt and dismantle cartel operations on both sides of the border."
In Los Angeles this morning, more than 1,100 police officers and FBI agents are sweeping through neighborhoods as they search for about 75 members of the Rolling 40s street gang.
It's the latest high-profile move by authorities to go after the often violent gangs. Last month, more than 1,000 officers raided places were members of the Avenues gang were known to hang out.
Authorities have tentatively identified a body found in a Georgia landfill as that of 7-year-old Somer Thompson, a north Florida girl who disappeared Monday on her walk home from school, the sheriff in charge of the case said Thursday. Sheriff Rick Beseler said the tentative identification was based on clothing and on a birthmark that matched the girl's.
"I fear for our community until we bring this person in. This is a heinous crime that's been committed," Beseler said. "And we're going to work as hard as we can to make this community safe."
Investigators are interviewing known sexual offenders who live in the area around Somer's home in Orange Park, Fla., near Jacksonville.
Beseler credited Sheriff's Office investigator Bruce Owens' suggestion Tuesday that authorities check trash being picked up in Orange Park (Fla.) with the successful effort to find the body. He said Owens came to him with the idea and he assigned personnel to monitor all trash trucks and follow-up by checking out the trash that had been taken from Orange Park to the Rosemary Hill landfill in Green Cove Springs and then transferred to Folkston (Ga.).
Owens said investigators sifted through 200,000 tons of trash at Rosemary Hll and 100,000 tones at the landfill in Folkston (where the body was found).
The newspaper adds that:
Beseler encouraged anyone with information to call the Sheriff's Office at 1-877-227-6911 or Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS or email CART@claysheriff.com.
Update at 4:05 p.m. ET: The AP reports that authorities have confirmed it is Somer's body.
Because of his notoriety, there was speculation before he was sent to federal prison that convicted world-class Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff might be at risk of personal harm from other inmates once behind bars.
It's still early into his 150-year prison sentence. But so far, so good; his life so far doesn't sound hellish, at least not by prison standards.
According to the Associated Press:
Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a mob boss and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.
The snapshot of Madoff's prison life - and a contrasting picture of a former high-flying life laced with cocaine and salacious parties - are in a legal complaint filed by Burlingame, Calif.-based lawyer Joseph Cotchett, who represents about a dozen victims of Madoff's massive investment Ponzi scheme. Cotchett interviewed Madoff in July at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex near Raleigh, N.C.
Guinea is just the latest to suffer. (Schalk van Zuydam/AP)
By Mark Memmott
Some stories are hard to hear, read or see -- but important nonetheless.
This report from NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about the wave of rapes in the West African nation of Guinea during last month's military crackdown on pro-democracy advocates is one of those stories.
As she says, "the soldiers' brutal assaults on women" -- carried out in broad daylight -- have shaken French-speaking Guinea. "The people's refrain is C'est du jamais vu -- never before have we witnessed such acts."
Take note -- Ofeibea's report, done for All Things Considered, includes graphic details of the atrocities:
On today's ATC, NPR's Michele Kelemen will follow the story with a report on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's effort to focus world attention on the ongoing problem of sexual violence against women.
European Commission diplomat Margo Wallstrom tells Michele that one problem is that there aren't enough women in key positions to both document and investigate the crimes:
Alan Doss, who runs the United Nations' office in Eastern Congo, tells Michele that countries haven't answered the U.N.'s call for more women peacekeepers:
Click here to find an NPR station that broadcasts ATC.
Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik who was President George W. Bush's pick for Homeland Security Secretary before that nomination imploded, will be awaiting his trial on corruption charges in jail, a federal judge having revoked his bail.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik is in jail after his bail on federal charges was revoked for violating a court order which placed certain information under seal. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo)
Federal District Judge Stephen Robinson revoked Kerik's bail after the judge determined that Kerik violated a court order by discussing with the trustee of his legal defense fund information the court had placed under seal.
According to the Associated Press:
Kerik was being jailed to make sure he was unable to "influence witnesses or prospective jurors," Robinson said.
"My fear is that he has a toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance, and I fear that combination leads him to believe that his ends justify his means," Robinson said. "The failure of Mr. Kerik to abide by the direct order of this court ... must be appropriately addressed."
Kerik is charged with accepting apartment renovations from a construction company in exchange for recommending the company for city contracts. He has pleaded not guilty.
Defense lawyer Barry Berke said he would appeal the ruling and seek a stay, but he said he was unsure if that could be accomplished before the trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday.
A Maryland scientist who worked for several federal agencies, including the Defense and Energy departments, was arrested on attempted espionage charges for allegedly trying to sell classified U.S. information to someone he thought represented Israel.
Stewart David Nozette, 52, was charged with attempted espionage. ( NASA.gov)
The U.S. Justice Department identified the scientist as Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md. According to a Justice Department press release, besides the Energy and Defense departments, Nozette also worked for NASA.
The release added these additional details:
A criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charges Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, with attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.
Hedge fund manager Raja Rajaratnam in handcuffs after his arrest by FBI agents for alleged insider trading. (Louis Lanzano / AP Photo)
By Frank James
A hedge fund manager who is one of the richest men in the U.S. was among six investors charged by the Justice Department with making $20 million through an insider trading scheme.
Raj Rajaratnam, 52, of New York City and the managing member of Galleon Management, was arrested Friday morning by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents along with the five other defendants.
According to the U.S. attorney's press release, members of the group were overheard receiving insider information by federal agents over wiretaps and through recordings made by a cooperating witness. They allegedly then used the information not available to the public to trade in the shares of companies like Google Inc., Hilton Hotels and Advanced Micro Devices.
An excerpt from the press release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York:
For example, the CW learned from a Moody's analyst, on July 2, 2007, that Hilton was going to be taken private. The CW then informed RAJARATNAM of this fact, telling him that it was a "sure thing." Based on this information, RAJARATNAM caused Galleon to purchase hundreds of thousands of shares of Hilton stock, reaping total profits of approximately $4 million.
The case of the Texas man who may have been wrongly executed for arson-murders he didn't commit has taken another noteworthy turn as a nationally recognized arson expert has accused Gov. Rick Perry of unethical behavior in the case.
Cameron Todd Willingham. ( AP Photo/file)
The 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana, Texas has received increasing national attention it comes the closest in the modern era of the death penalty to a provable instance of an innocent man being executed.
Arson expert Craig Beyler of Baltimore has harshly criticized the Texas governor for changing the personnel of the Texas agency that has been investigating the dubious arson evidence that led to Willingham's execution and evidence in other death penalty cases.
The governor's critics believe he may have made the move to avoid a conclusion that Texas did indeed execute an innocent man.
Baltimore-based Craig Beyler, hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to examine the case, said in an e-mail that the governor should not have upended the commission, which was to have heard his report just days after Perry replaced several members. He said the governor had a conflict of interest because he approved the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana.
Anthony Marshall exits Manhattan State Supreme Court with wife Charlene,Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009, in New York. (Louis Lanzano / AP Photo)
By Frank James
The son of Brooke Astor, one of America's most famous socialites and philanthropists, was found by a New York jury to not have been that good of a son.
The 85-year old Anthony D. Marshall was convicted on numerous counts of essentially ripping off his mother's nearly $200 million fortune while she was in her dotage.
NPR's Margot Adler had this report for the network's newscast:
Anthony Marshall, Brooke Astor's only son, was convicted of grand larceny, of defrauding his mother's estate and changing her will, while she was debilitated with Alzheimers. Astor died at 105 in 2007.
Marshall is 85 and ailing, but the heaviest charge he was convicted of, carries the possibility of a one to -25 year sentence.
Estate Lawyer Francis Morrisey was convicted of forging one of Astor's wills and could serve four years in jail.
The surprise announcement of a verdict came after fears of a possible mistrial. On Monday, a juror asked to be dismissed because she felt threatened by another juror. The judge earlier in the day was going to ask for a partial verdict. But the jury convicted on almost all counts.
By a 281-146 vote, the House of Representatives this afternoon approved legislation that includes a provision extending to homosexuals the protections under federal hate crime laws.
The bill, as the Associated Press writes, would make it a crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation. Its passage comes 11 years after the beating death of Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard, for whom the legislation has been named.
Advocates attached the measure to a $680 billion defense bill. Opponents, mostly Republicans, objected -- saying that the hate crimes provision was out of place in a defense spending bill. Of the 146 "nay" votes, 131 were by Republicans. Click here to see how each House member voted.
The Senate, which also is likely to pass the measure, is expected to vote soon.
Most children are exposed to enormous amounts of violence, either directly or indirectly, according to a survey of children released Wednesday by the Justice Department.
The survey, which the Justice Department calls "the most comprehensive survey to date of children's exposure to violence in the United States," found that more than 60 percent of the children surveyed were "exposed to violence in the past year and more than 1 in 10 reported 5 or more exposures."
Other findings:
Nearly half of the surveyed children, 46.3 percent to be exact, were physically assaulted within the past year. A lot of these assaults were by siblings. The good news there, according to the survey, is that those attacks appeared to peak fairly early, when the kids who reported them were between six and nine years old.
Nearly 20 percent of children reported being bullied. It peaked during the same age range as physical assaults, six to nine. When it came physical bullying, boys were targeted more than girls though girls experienced more Internet bullying.
Meanwhile, 6.1 percent of children were sexually victimized. The years 14 to 17 were the years where it happened the most. "The most common forms of sexual victimization were flashing or exposure by a peer, sexual harassment, and sexual assault," the survey's authors wrote.
Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to announce the Obama Administration's concern for youth violence. (Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images)
By Frank James
Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan were in Chicago Wednesday to show their solidarity with a city outraged by the latest high-profile youth killing, the recent beating death of a high school honor student by a group of youths outside a community center.
Following a meeting with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, community leaders, school officials, parents and students, Holder and Duncan spoke to the assembled media. It was immediately clear the Obama Administration, like its predecessors, didn't have any ready answers to the problem of youth violence. Holder said:
Youth violence isn't a Chicago problem, any more than it is a black problem or a white problem. It's something that affects communities big and small, and people of all races and colors...
... Our responses to this issue in the past have been fragmented. The federal government does one thing, states do another, and localities do a third. We need a comprehensive, coordinated approach to address youth violence, one that encompasses the latest research and the freshest approaches.
Duncan spoke of the well-known social pathology that leads to much of the child on child violence, particularly in urban settings:
Many of our young people have lost faith in the future. They've been denied the love, support and guidance they need and grown up believing their life is not worth anything so no one else's life is worth anything either.
It's difficult to show love when you've never been loved. It's difficult to build a positive future when you don't think you'll live past the age of 18. These are problems we cannot solve just with money or by pointing fingers at each other or by looking the other way. We must engage directly with our children starting at the youngest age...
When Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan meet with local officials in Chicago today, that will intensify the national spotlight that's been on the city since video of the beating death of a 16-year-old student two weeks ago went viral on the Web.
As NPR's David Schaper reported on Morning Edition, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says he will ask the Cabinet officials for more money to hire more school-based police officers, and they will likely discuss other strategies to reduce and prevent teen violence:
In today's Chicago Tribune, though, reporters Deborah Shelton and Stephanie Banchero write that:
Every year, scores of Chicago children are shot, knifed and beaten on the city streets. Almost as frequently, new policing strategies are rolled out, anti-violence programs are launched and private and public money is thrown at the problem.
But youth violence acts like a disease, an epidemic really. And researchers and experts say the cure lies not in this haphazard treatment of the symptoms but in addressing the causes with targeted, scientific methods.
There are approaches that may help, the Tribune reporters write. One example:
Because children raised in violence tend to be more violent adults, experts point to parenting classes as one way to help break that cycle. Extensive research from one national study found that children of mothers in high-quality parenting programs had an arrest rate 60% lower than their peers.
A man with a plaster cast on his leg passes a star dedicated to celebrated film director Roman Polanski on October 5, 2009. It was unveiled on a popular walk-way in downtown Warsaw, Poland. The star bears a Polanski quote: 'Nothing is too shocking to me'. (JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
The trouble with once having fled justice is that you get a legitimate reputation as a flight risk.
That's the problem now facing filmmaker Roman Polanski, age 76, as Swiss authorities Tuesday rejected a request by his lawyers to release the famed director who has been held since late last month on a U.S. warrant related to his 1977 rape of a 13-year old girl.
A Reuters snippet:
"In our view, there is still a very high risk that he will flee and that a release on bail or other measures after a release cannot guarantee Polanski's presence in the extradition procedure," Federal Office of Justice spokesman Folco Galli said.
Polanski faces extradition to the U.S. on the fugitive warrant related to the rape, to which he pleaded guilty more than 30 years ago but fled the U.S. before he could be sentenced. He's lived in France since then, protected as a French citizen from extradition to the U.S.
But he exposed himself to extradition when in September he entered Switzerland to attend an event where he was to be honored. The Swiss arrested him on his arrival at the airport setting in motion the process for his eventual return to the U.S.
Joe Sullivan, now 33, was sentenced to life in prison without the chance for parole for a rape he committed at age 13. ( Equal Justice Initiative)
By Frank James
Is it constitutional to sentence a juvenile offender who commits an offense at age 13 to life in prison without the possibility of parole?
That's the question facing the U.S. Supreme Court this term and it's a riveting one. On one hand, a heinous crime is still a terrible crime, regardless of the age of the offender.
But a 13-year old is still a child. And it is arguably a cruel and unusual punishment to subject someone to life in prison without parole for a crime committed when he was a child.
The Equal Justice Initiative has a compelling way to frame these cases. It says 13- and 14-year olds are being sentenced to death in prison.
It's point: the U.S. Supreme Court may have said executing people for crimes they committed as juveniles is unconstitutional. But these sentences are in their own way death sentences, according to EJI which says there are 73 individuals in the U.S. who are serving "death in prison" sentences.
There's no confirmation that any gunman is actually there, but authorities have locked down the main campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa this hour so that police can search buses and possible hiding spots near the library.
The St. Petersburg Times reports that someone called the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office around 1:36 p.m. ET to report they had seen an armed person near the library.
On MSNBC a moment ago, live video from the scene showed police putting a man into a cruiser.
Update at 4:06 p.m. ET:The St. Petersburg Times now reports that while a male was arrested, "Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said the individual has told authorities it was a hoax. McElroy said the man stood up on one of the campus shuttle buses and claim(ed) to be the individual campus police were searching for. After the man surrendered, he told USF police that he was joking when he said he was the suspect, she said."
Update at 3:33 p.m. ET. It's not clear whether this is related or not, but the university just posted this alert:
White male subject seen in Cooper Hall area in black tank top, cowboy hat, carrying black puppy and large hunting knife. Officers in route.
Entire Tampa campus remains on alert. Stay inside. Lock doors. Report any suspicious activity.
UPDATE - TAMPA CAMPUS, 3:06 P.M. -- USF Police has one subject in custody and has requested the Tampa Police Bomb Team to respond regarding the subject's belongings. Check back for updates.
USF Police continuing to investigate the report of an armed subject on USF Tampa campus. The report that a subject armed with a bomb and gun in the area of the main library came in at 1:36 p.m.
USF Police have since received a report of a subject on a bus in the area of Parking and Transportation Services on the USF Tampa campus. Police are on the scene.
Elizabeth Smart testified a short time ago in Salt Lake City that after being kidnapped from her Utah home in 2002 by Brian David Mitchell he "raped her three to four times a day" throughout nine months of captivity, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Smart was 14 at the time. She's now 21. Her case got national attention from the time of her February 2002 disappearance to when she was spotted in Sandy, Utah that June.
As the Tribune writes, this is the first time since the ordeal that she has testified in a courtroom about what happened.
The Afghan immigrant at the center of an alleged terror plot aimed at transportation networks in New York City entered a not guilty plea today to a charge of plotting to use weapons of mass destruction in an attack inside the U.S.
Najibullah Zazi's attorney, Michael Dowling, told reporters at the New York City court that no one should "rush to judgment" about his client.
Meanwhile, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports that "officials close to the case tell NPR that more arrests could happen as soon as this week."
Zazi did not speak at today's court hearing. His next court appearance, Dina says, is set for Dec. 3.
Movie producer Harvey Weinstein writes in The Independent that "whatever you think about the so-called crime," film director Roman Polanski should not be forcibly returned to the United States to face judgment for his guilty plea to raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Weinstein says a deal had been worked out so that Polanski would be sentenced to "time served," and that the director only fled the country because he feared the judge was going to nix that agreement.
During a photo shoot at the Los Angeles home of his friend and Chinatown star Jack Nicholson, Polanski plied a 13-year-old girl with champagne and drugs and had sex with her.
That is grotesque. ...
Before any sentence could be imposed, he absconded like a weasel to live a princely life in France.
We started this poll yesterday. As of noon ET today, 61% said bringing Polanski back to the U.S. from Switzerland, where he was arrested Saturday, would be a waste of time. The other 39% said it would be "justice served." Suggestion: Read through the links above and then vote:
Update at 8 a.m. ET, Sept. 30: As you can see, the additional 300 or so votes added in the past day have turned the results around.
The Houston Chronicle this morning adds some sobering perspective to the kind of reporting done earlier this month by Morning Edition, which spent the better part of a week explaining the huge changes underway in the Houston metropolitan area.
Shootings of citizens by Harris County law officers already this year have overtaken the number of shootings last year, as well as the year before. As of Sept. 24, a total of 44 police shootings have occurred, up from 35 in all of 2008, and 32 in 2007.
The newspaper adds that:
The head of a city police union thinks it's the economy. A community activist blames permissive prosecutors. Prosecutors point to expanded gun rights.
Polanski (Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby) has dual French-Polish citizenship and has been a fugitive from the U.S. since shortly after his guilty plea 32 years ago.
As the Associated Press says, Polanski's victim long ago stepped forward to identify herself and to say she wants the case against him dismissed. Samantha Geimer and Polanski earlier reached a financial settlement of an undisclosed amount.
With the state legislature forced to make dramatic cuts in the prison budget and a three-judge federal panel having recently ordered California lawmakers to release as many as 40,000 inmates in response to the scandalous overcrowding of the California state prison system, it seems like an especially inauspicious time for the L.A. County district attorney's office to be spending some of our few remaining tax dollars seeing if it can finally, after all these years, put Roman Polanski behind bars.
Yesterday, the Times detailed the steps that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office took to secure the cooperation of Swiss authorities and get Polanski's arrested.
Earlier today on Morning Edition, NPR's Allison Keyes filed this report on the case:
Here's a question for the group:
Update at 11:02 a.m. ET: Polanski's lawyer says the director will fight extradition to the U.S., the AP reports.
Roman Polanski, the famous and scandalous film director, was arrested by Swiss authorities Saturday on a 31-year old outstanding federal warrant related illegal sex with a 13-year old girl.
Roman Polanski was reportedly arrested by Swiss authorities on an outstanding 31-year old warrant on charges of having unlawful sex with a minor in 1977. (Michel Euler / AP Photo)
The available details are these. Polanski, 76, who won an Academy Award for best director for 2002's "The Pianist," had entered Switzerland to receive a life-time achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival.
It was there that Swiss authorities took Polanski, who has lived in France for decades in part to avoid extradition to the U.S., into custody on the 1978 warrant.
The warrant is connected to 1977 charges that Polanski had sex with the girl he had given alcohol and sedatives to at the Los Angeles house of actor Jack Nicholson during a photo shoot for Vogue, for which he was hired to be a guest editor.
Through a plea agreement, Polanski got the charges lessened from statutory rape to unlawful sex with a minor. He turned himself in to authorities for a psychiatric evaluation and was held at Chino State Prison for 42 days.
Upon release, Polanski fled the U.S., first going to Britain, then to France where he was a citizen. Because France has the right to refuse to extradite its own citizens, Polanski has for three decades avoided extradition back to the U.S.
Terrorist suspect Najibullah Zazi will be transferred to a cell in New York City from a jail in Denver, the result of a federal court hearing that just ended in Denver.
Najibullah Zazi is to be transferred to New York City from Manhattan. (Marc Piscotty / Getty Images)
Zazi, a Denver airport shuttle bus driver who previously lived in New York, is at the center of a Federal Bureau of Investigation terrorist probe. On Thursday, he was formally indicted on charges of being part of a conspiracy to detonate bombs.
Federal investigators have said Zazi admitted to them that he trained in an al-Qaida camp in northwest Pakistan. They also said they discovered evidence that leads them to believe Zazi planned to make improvised explosive devices using hydrogen peroxide, quantities of which he bought from beauty supply stores in the Denver area.
Officials have also said they found instructions on how to make bombs in a laptop in Zazi's car and backpacks, and cellphones at residences in New York of Zazi associates.
Also arrested when Zazi was last weekend was his father Mohammed Zazi and an imam in New York City, Ahmad Afzali. The father and Afzali have since been released.
The woman who was arguably the worst of the worst among the notorious "Manson family" has died in prison, where she spent the rest of her life after being convicted of murder for her role in the infamous 1969 killings of actress Sharon Tate and seven others.
Atkins confessed to killing actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski who was hanged and stabbed 16 times; Tate's nearly full-term fetus died with her. The next night, Atkins accompanied Manson and his followers when they broke into the Los Feliz home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and killed them.
"She was the scariest of the Manson girls," said Stephen Kay, who helped prosecute the case and argued against Atkins' release at her parole hearings. "She was very violent."
As Frank said yesterday, much still isn't known about the death of Census field worker Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Ky. His body was discovered Sept. 12. Yesterday, it was reported that he was found hanged and that the word "fed" had been written on his chest.
Today on Federal News Radio, news director Ted Werbin of WHAS-radio in Louisville reported that Sparkman had told others he had been warned by a retired state trooper to be careful in rural Clay County because some people there aren't fond of anyone from the federal government.
Still, it's important to note that authorities do not yet know what happened to Sparkman.
Very disturbing story out of Kentucky. A 51-year old Census Bureau worker was found hanged near a cemetery with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest.
The Associated Press reports the following:
The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether the death was a killing or a suicide, and if a killing, whether the motive was related to his government job or to anti-government sentiment.
Sure, this Associated Press report about masked gunmen raiding a cash depot in Stockholm and then flying off with their loot in a helicopter is a fun read.
But there's something fascinating, we have to say, about listening to Sveriges Television's report about today's robbery:
Authorities, AP says, don't know yet how much money the thieves got.
Former Super Bowl star Plaxico Burress before judge Michael Melkonian for his sentencing at Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009, in New York. At right is Burress's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman. (Steven Hirsch / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Former New York Giants star Plaxico Burress and Super Bowl XLII hero was officially sentenced today to two years in prison and was immediately taken into custody to begin serving his time after a conviction related to his illegally carrying a firearm into a nightclub last November.
The self-same firearm accidentally discharged at the nightclub with the round passing through Burress' thigh then ricocheting off the floor near the night club's guard.
Burress was sentenced by a New York state trial judge who included two year's probation following his release.
The former NFL star (and perhaps future one if he follows Michael Vick's trajectory) agreed in August with prosecutors to a two year term and pled guilty to the charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon.
There was a massive assault by police this morning in Los Angeles on the Avenues gang. According to the Los Angeles Times, "roughly 1,200 heavily armed officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and several other agencies dispersed from a command post near the LAPD's training academy in Elysian Park."
The Times adds that:
Warrants in hand, they descended on dozens of homes in search of 53 alleged members or associates of the Avenues gang wanted on an array of federal charges related to extensive drug dealing, unsolved murders and other crimes.
Forty-three suspects already are in custody on unrelated charges.
The Associated Press says that:
Aside from murdering rivals, dealing drugs, graffiti tagging and other crimes, the gang is accused of making threats and carrying out acts of violence against police officers, culminating in two attacks that rocked the law enforcement community last year.
The first of these, on Feb. 21, 2008, saw Avenues gang members open fire with handguns and an AK-47 on Los Angeles police officers. Police shot back, killing 20-year-old Daniel Leon, whose nickname was 'Clever,' and injuring another man.
Then on Aug. 2, 2008, off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Juan Escalante was shot dead in front of his parents' home northeast of downtown.
Last February, NPR's Mandalit Del Barco reported about another way authorities were going after the Avenues -- destroying the gang's headquarters:
Update at 2:25 p.m. ET. Regarding today's raid, Mandalit now reports that "a 222-page indictment alleges the mostly Latino gang also intimidates African-Americans in the neighborhood. Today's arrests were part of an ongoing investigation into street gangs with ties to the Mexican mafia."
The execution of Romell Broom, already delayed by Ohio's governor a week after executioners couldn't find a suitable vein to administer the lethal cocktail of drugs, was delayed yet again by a federal judge Friday.
Romell Broom. ( AP Photo/Ohio Department of Correction and Rehabilitation)
U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost accepted the request of Broom's lawyers for a temporary injunction to delay the execution for at least ten days from Friday. The judge scheduled a hearing for a preliminary injunction on Sept. 28.
So there won't be another attempt to execute Broom as scheduled on Tuesday.
Broom was to be executed for raping and killing 14-year old Tryna Middleton in 1984. But earlier in the week, the Ohio execution team labored futilely for two hours as they tried to find a usable vein. The botched attempt led Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland to put off another attempt until next week.
Authorities in New Haven, Conn., just announced that they have arrested Yale University lab technician Raymond Clark III in connection with the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le.
The body of Le, 24, was found Sunday hidden in a wall at one of the university's laboratories.
A circuit court in Virginia has set Nov. 10 as the execution date for John Muhammad, the Associated Press reports.
Muhammad, along with Lee Boyd Malvo, killed 10 people in the Washington area in the fall of 2002 during a sniping spree that terrorized the region. His attorney has said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Yale University animal research technician who police say is a "person of interest" in the death of graduate student Annie Le has been released, the Associated Press reports.
According to the AP:
A police department spokesman, Officer Joe Avery, says Raymond Clark left the station with his lawyer at about 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Clark has not been charged in the killing of 24-year-old Le, whose body was found stuffed behind a wall Sunday in a Yale laboratory building where both she and Clark worked. Police are calling him a "person of interest."
The wire service adds that police collected DNA samples from Clark and have searched his apartment.
Update at 1:30 p.m. ET: The Connecticut state medical examiner says Le died of "traumatic asphyxiation," the AP reports.
Put this in the "how the mighty have fallen" category:
Jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford wanted former White House political adviser Karl Rove's attorney to represent him against charges he bilked investors out of $7 billion.
Sept. 8, 2009 photo shows Bessye Middleton holding a painting of her daughter, Tryna, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio who was raped and murdered by Romell Broom. (Tony Dejak / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has delayed the execution of 53-year old Romell Broom who was scheduled to die today for the 1984 rape and murder of a 14-year old.
According to the Associated Press:
Strickland ordered the weeklong reprieve Tuesday afternoon after executioners had struggled for about two hours to locate suitable veins for inserting IVs into 53-year-old Romell Broom.
Undated photo of Romell Brroom whose execution was delayed a week by Ohio's Gov. Ted Strickland after prison staff had trouble finding a vein. ( AP Photo/Ohio Department of Correction and Rehabilitation)
The team began working on Broom shortly after 2 p.m. in a holding cell 17 steps from the execution chamber.
No Ohio governor has issued a similar last-minute reprieve since the state resumed executions in 1999.
Death penalty foes have repeatedly argued that the lethal-injection procedure is inhumane and often results in minutes if not hours of stress for the condemned and the prison staff required to perform the procedure.
The Death Penalty Information Center has compiled a list of what it calls "botched executions" since 1982 with those in most recent years involving lethal injections where suitable veins couldn't be found or the needle was improperly placed. The circumstances surrounding Tuesday's failed effort to execute Broom would seem to make him a likely addition to DPIC's list.
Law enforcement agents have raided homes in Queens, New York as part of a terror investigation but NPR's Dina Temple Raston says officials haven't made any arrests.
Here's what the AP is reporting:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Authorities have raided residences in New York City as part of a terrorism investigation, and they've been briefing members of Congress about it.
New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who was briefed by the FBI, says there was "nothing imminent" that was going to happen. He described it as a "preventive" action. Schumer said he couldn't discuss it further because many of the details are classified. He did say it had nothing to do with President Barack Obama's visit to New York today.
Police confirm that searches were conducted in the borough of Queens by agents from a joint terrorism task force.
According to two intelligence officials, it's not clear what the target of any attack might have been, or who would carry it out.
They say authorities haven't found any weapons that were ready for use. But one official called the threat very real, and emphasized its urgency.
"Obviously, first of all, this conversation never took place. ... OK?"
... has to be interesting.
As CNN's report shows, the tape-recorded conversation of swindler Bernard Madoff offering advice on how to fool the feds is stunning:
The recording, made in 2005, was released by Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin. Madoff was coaching a potential witness who was going to be talking to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The 71-year-old Madoff was sentenced in June to 150 years in prison for masterminding a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that spanned decades and defrauded thousands of investors.
The hijacking of this Aeromexico flight ended peacefully with all 104 passengers deplaning. (Gregory Bull / AP Photo)
By Frank James
Update 6:57 pm -- Just to close the loop on this Aeromexico hijacking, it turned out that there was a lone hijacker, a Bolivian, Jose Flores, 44, who said he had a bomb but the threat turned out to be empty. It was a juice can. He is described by the Associated Press as a Bible-carrying, "religious fanatic." Flores told investigators that he hijacked the aircraft after a divine revelation and that Wednesday's date - 9/9/09 was 6-6-6 upside down.
Update 3:54 pm -- The cable news channels are showing passengers being taken off the plane by helmeted, armed Mexican security officers. There are reports that all passengers are off the plane. The video shows some passengers deplaning with luggage. Several men were led away with their hands behind their backs from the plane by Mexican security officials and were loaded onto an armored personnel carrier. It appears the hijacking has ended peacefully.
------------------------ original story below ----------
An Aeromexico flight with 104 passengers was hijacked at the Cancun Airport and flown to Mexico City. The three hijackers have reportedly threatened to blow up the plane unless their demands are met, one of which is to speak with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
According to Reuters:
MEXICO CITY, Sept 9 (Reuters) - An AeroMexico passenger plane was hijacked at the airport in the Mexican resort of Cancun on Wednesday and flown to Mexico City's international airport.
Transport Minister Juan Molinar told Mexican radio the aircraft had landed safely.
El Universal and Reforma websites said three men earlier seized control of the plane and threatened to blow it up unless they were allowed to speak to President Felipe Calderon.
CNN is showing live images of the airport with Mexican security forces zipping around the Mexico International Airport taxi areas and tarmac.
This will likely be another blow to Mexico's tourism industry, already harmed by constant reports of drug violence. And of course there's the question of how three hijackers could get on a flight in Cancun to begin with.
O.J. Simpson was denied release by the Nevada Supreme Court which, as expected, rejected the ex-football Hall of Famer and Hollywood actor's request that he be allowed to wait out his appeal outside prison walls. Among other reasons, the court said Simpson represented a "flight risk." Think white Ford Bronco.
O.J. Simpson mug shot, courtesy the Nevada state prison system. ( AP Photo/Nevada Department of Corrections)
A three-judge panel of the state's highest court said in its opinion:
Here, appellant was convicted of serious nonprobationable. violent offenses, committed with the use of a firearm. And, in denying bail pending appeal, the district court specifically found that appellant faced mandatory sentences and posed a flight risk. Having considered the applicable factors defined in Bergna (the relevant legal precedent) and the parties' arguments as to each factor, we are not convinced that appellant has met his burden. Accordingly, we deny the motion for bail pending appeal."
In December 2008, Simpson, 62, was sentenced to 33 years in prison with the possibility of parole after nine years for the kidnapping and robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers in 2007. His sentence gave many people the sense that Simpson had finally received a measure of justice following his 1995 acquittal for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
C.J. Stewart, Simpson's accomplice in the Las Vegaskidnapping-robbery was also denied release.
Tina Dugard, aunt of recovered kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard, held photo of her niece as a child as she read a statement at a Los Angeles FBI office. (Jae C. Hong / AP Photo)
By Frank James
When many of us first heard that Jaycee Lee Dugard was discovered, 18 years after her kidnapping, with the two daughters she had by her alleged abductor, and after living in flimsy backyard shelters, we asked what were she and her children like? Were they like members of some previously unknown primitive tribe?
In the days since her discovery, it's become clear that Dugard, now 29, was more connected to the outside world than we at first assumed. People who had visited the home of Phillip and Nancy Garrido, her alleged kidnappers, as customers of their printing business, and who saw Dugard apparently didn't find her appearance alarming.
Today we got a little more information, this time from Tina Dugard, the newly freed woman's aunt, who told reporters at a Federal Bureau of Investigation officer in Los Angeles, that Dugard's children seem surprisingly with it, considering their lives to date.
According to an Associated Press story:
Tina Dugard said her niece's daughters, ages 11 and 15, appeared to be bright and educated, even though they did not attend school.
"Jaycee did a truly amazing job with the limited resources and education that she herself had, and we are so proud of her," Dugard said.
The El Paso Timesputs the number of dead at 19 in an execution-style attack at a drug rehabilitation center just across the border in Mexico. And, the newspaper says, "the death toll could grow higher." At least six people were wounded.
The Associated Press, which at this moment puts the death toll at 17, says "the attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors' office."
Just yesterday, the El Paso newspaper reported that the mayor of Juarez "is asking the Mexican army to stay six more months in the violence-plagued city, where August ended as the deadliest month ever, with more than 300 homicides."
Police outside the drug center where the killings took place. (AP photo)
That the Securities and Exchange Commission blew it when it failed to unmask Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scam isn't exactly news but that nevertheless is one of the conclusions reached by the SEC's inspector general in a report issued today.
The news, however, was that the agency's watchdog found no evidence of inappropriate behavior, besides the aforementioned incompetence, that is, within the agency.
That was important because there had been some speculation that Madoff might have gotten a pass from the agency because of a romantic relationship between a Madoff niece and an agency enforcement official.
"We also did not find that senior officials at the SEC directly attempted to influence examinations or investigations of Madoff or the Madoff firm, nor was there evidence any senior SEC official interfered with the staff's ability to perform its work."
Holocaust Museum alleged shooter James Von Brunn in a court in an artist rendering. (Dana Verkouteren / AP Photo)
By Frank James
James von Brunn, 89, the white supremacist who allegedly shot to death a security guard Stephen Johns at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the nation's capital made his first appearance in federal court in Washington, DC today.
Von Brunn has been hospitalized ever since the June 10 incident in which he allegedly fired a rifle as Johns opened the museum door for what he thought was a benign older gentleman. Other guards returned fire, wounding Von Brunn.
An Associated Press journalist reports that von Brunn showed no obvious signs of having been wounded though he wore hospital bracelets.
And according to the AP report, von Brunn sounded like he hasn't given up the sense of grievance that led to him to the Holocaust Museum that fateful day.
A judge ordered he stay in jail while he waits for a trial.
During the 30-minute hearing, von Brunn's attorney asked that his client be evaluated to determine whether he's competent to stand trial. Von Brunn objected, at first shaking his head and then calling out "your honor." His attorney and the judge tried to stop him.
"Your constitution guarantees me a speedy and fair trial," von Brunn finally said in a halting voice.
"I'm a United States citizen and as a U.S. naval officer I swore to protect my country. I take my vows very seriously," said von Brunn, a World War II veteran who served on a PT boat.
However, the judge granted the request for a competency evaluation.
While the AP story doesn't name the judge, the Washington Post identifies him as U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton who is African American. Nothing in the reporting indicates that von Brunn openly remarked on this bit of irony.
Why did Phillip Craig Garrido serve about one-fifth of a 50-year sentence for rape -- meaning he was a free man in 1991, when he allegedly kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard?
That's just one of the disturbing questions as more is known about what apparently happened in the backyard of Garrido's home near Antioch, Calif., where Dugard was allegedly forced to live for 18 years and raise two children fathered by Garrido -- who along with his wife has been charged with 29 counts related to the kidnapping, rape and imprisonment of Dugard. They have pleaded not guilty.
Why has someone been sending laptops to a few of the nation's governors?
As CIO Today reports, Hewlett-Packard says it is aware "that fraudulent state government orders recently have been placed for small amounts of HP equipment."
Word about mystery deliveries surfaced in The Charleston Gazette last week, when it reported that West Virginia State Police "are trying to find out who mailed five unsolicited laptop computers to Gov. Joe Manchin earlier this month."
The Associated Press says the FBI is now looking into similar deliveries to governors in Vermont, Wyoming and Washington state. And HP says there were orders, which it intercepted before delivery, for six other states.
According to the AP, none of the machines that were delivered were ever turned on at any of the governors' offices.
An update on the Jaycee Lee Dugard case. The Contra Costa County Sheriff apologized today for missing the chance to free the kidnapped women three years ago when a neighbor called to report that there were children living in the backyard of the suspect Phillip Garrido, a convicted sex offender.
As anger mounted over how law enforcement missed the chance to rescue Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years as she was held by a convicted rapist, the Contra Costa County sheriff issued an extraordinary apology today for missing an opportunity two years ago to save her.
"I can't change the course of events, but we are beating ourselves up over this and are the first to do so," Sheriff Warren E. Rupf told a press conference.
Rupf confirmed that neighbors of suspect Phillip Garrido, accused of hiding Dugard in his back yard for 18 years in Antioch, called 911 Nov. 30, 2006, to warn that there were children in the home and that people appeared to be living in tents in the backyard.
But the deputy who responded never entered the house or checked the yard, Rupf said, missing "an opportunity to rescue Jaycee."
"There are a lot of reasons that go into these things," he said. "There are no excuses. I am not offering excuses."
The tragic, heart-wrenching tale of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the 11-year old who was kidnapped in 1991 and just discovered last week after being allegedly held for 18 years and raped by a convicted sex offender reminds a lot of people of the Elizabeth Smart case.
Smart was 14 when she was taken from her Salt Lake City bedroom and found alive nine months later.
There is a surface similarity, though the Dugard story is so much more horrible because of all the years that passed, and the birth of two children to the kidnapped girl, now 29.
Still, the Smart case is the only example we know of that comes anything close to the Dugard case. Thus, Elizabeth Smart and her father Ed, have been sought out by the media for interviews. For example, they appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper last night for instance and Ed was on CBS News this morning, for example.
On the CBS News Morning Show, Ed Smart rejected the idea that children who are kidnapped necessarily bond with their captors through Stockholm Syndrome as an expert said in the segment before him.
"In many cases, these children do try to escape. And after many attempts they try to survive. And that's not necessarily bonding."
Asked if someone who has experienced such a trauma can go on to have a normal life, he said:
ED SMART: "Things can never be the way they used to be but there can be a new normal for them. The thing is finding out what that new normal can be and being able to move ahead with your life."
It sounds like the plot of a made-for-TV movie. An 11-year old girl is kidnapped on her way to a school bus stop in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Her stepfather, who sees the girl pulled into a car, gives chase on a bike but of course can't catch the car. Her family gives her up for lost and likely dead. Then, 18 years later, she walks into a police station in the San Francisco Bay area.
FBI's DuGard kidnapping poster. ( FBI )
It's downright incredible. Yet this is what California law enforcement officials are saying happened in the case of Jaycee Lee Dugard. (Here's the official FBI be-on-the-lookout poster.)
NPR's Ina Jaffe reported the following:
Jaycee Dugard was on her way to school in South Lake Tahoe On June 10, 1991, when she was pulled into a gray sedan occupied by a man and a woman, according to witnesses at the time. They heard her scream, the car sped away, and she was never found, despite a nationwide search.
Dugard's mother, and a sister she has never met, have flown to Northern California to meet her. The El Dorado County Sheriff's department, says DNA tests are being conducted. Lt. Les Lovell said "We are very confident at this point in time that it is her."
He said that two people are in custody in connection with the case but gave no details.
Even if it wasn't a good story -- with sound sourcing and facts, The New York Postdid spin a good tale: "Bernie 'Dying' In Jail: Bernard Madoff Is Suffering From Cancer In North Carolina Prison."
I read the exclusive this morning, by Rich Calder: "Bernie Madoff had little to lose by confessing to masterminding the world's biggest Ponzi scheme -- he's dying of cancer, sources told The Post."
Madoff, who is serving 150 years at a North Carolina federal lockup after pleading guilty to swindling more than $65 billion, has been telling fellow inmates he does not have much longer to live.
"He's been taking about 20 pills a day for his cancer," said one inmate.
There were juicier tidbits too, about the inmates with whom Madoff has made friends -- and his new hobby:
A bare-chested Bernie has been killing time at the prison participating in Native American religious purification ceremonies held at an on-grounds 'sweat lodge,' other sources said. He accepted invitations from Native American inmates to join them at their weekly prayer services. The ceremonies involve praying, using heated rocks to induce sweat and smoking from a ceremonial pipe.
Earlier today, Ashby Jones, a reporter and blogger for The Wall Street Journal, lent his newspaper's credibility to the story. He wrote that "The Wall Street Journal this morning confirmed the news a with source familiar with the situation. Still unclear: what type of cancer Madoff has."
Well, we can put the rumors to rest -- about the cancer, the sweat lodge, and everything else.
According to The New York Times, "after receiving a numerous queries about the report, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, Traci Billingsley, released the following statement: 'While the N.Y. Post story is full of inaccuracies, and we can't specifically address all of them, we can tell you that Bernie Madoff is not terminally ill, and has not been diagnosed with cancer.'"
Colorado authorities thought Katharine Farrand Dyer had been murdered in 1954.
Now that the 84-year-old woman has been found alive in Australia -- where she's apparently been living for 46 years -- the case is once again very cold.
As The Denver Post writes, Boulder County Sheriff's Division Chief Phil West says this is a "good news, bad news" development:
"While it's a relief to know that Katharine is alive, it's also discouraging in that we are back to square one with essentially no viable candidates for who 'Jane Doe' might be," said West.
The discovery happened when two women caring for Dyer, now known as Barbara Jones, found some divorce papers in her possessions. Those papers were for a woman named Dyer. They did some Internet research and found links to stories about the murder. That led them to the Boulder sheriff's office.
The reason authorities thought Dyer had been the victim? According to the Post:
In 1954, Dyer was living at a boarding house at 1118 Washington St. in Denver. She disappeared from the boarding house on March 26, 1954. "Jane Doe" was found in Boulder Canyon just a few days later on April 8.
And as Australia's Herald Sun writes, "Dyer had lived near a man known as 'The Lonely Hearts Killer' -- Harvey Glatman -- who was later convicted and executed for several murders."
Stories about mistaken -- or forgotten -- identities seem to be in the news this week. Yesterday, we posted about the man in Seattle who had no idea who he is. Today, the Seattle Timesfollows up its reporting with much more about the "John Doe" who turned out to be world traveler Edward Lighthart.
Members of the Mexican navy stand guard beside seven tons of cocaine in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca state, Mexico on February 16, 2009. (Carlos Reyes / AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
The latest federal salvo in the drug war came Wednesday with the Justice Department announcing charges against 43 defendants, including 10 alleged leaders of Mexican drug-cartels, in federal courts in Brooklyn and Chicago.
According to the Justice Department, those indicted are responsible for distributing almost 200 metric tons, or 440,800 pounds of cocaine, into the U.S. while smuggling out of the country $5.8 billion in U.S. cash.
"Breaking up these dangerous cartels and stemming the flow of drugs, weapons and cash across the Southwest border is a top priority for this Justice Department," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "The cartels whose alleged leaders are charged today constitute multi-billion dollar networks that funnel drugs onto our streets and what invariably follows is more crime and violence in our communities. Today's indictments demonstrate our unwavering commitment to root out the leaders of these criminal enterprises wherever they may be found. We will continue to stand with our partners in Mexico to dismantle the cartels' insidious operations."
From catching the game-winning touchdown pass in the 2008 Super Bowl to shooting himself in the leg and now to pleading guilty to a weapons charge and heading off to prison for two years.
That's the career arc of former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress.
The Associated Press recaps what happened to Burress this way:
The football star and former teammate Antonio Pierce were at the Latin Quarter nightclub in late November when a gun tucked into Burress' waistband slipped down his leg and fired, shooting him in the right thigh. The bullet narrowly missed a nightclub security guard who was standing inches away, prosecutors said, lodged in the floor and was recovered by a bartender.
The gun was not licensed in New York or in New Jersey, where Burress lived, prosecutors said. His license to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Florida had expired in May 2008.
Burress could be out of prison in 20 months if he behaves, the AP adds. Now, 32, he played nine seasons -- beginning with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Today's agreement with the Swiss bank UBS that it will turn over details about 4,450 U.S. clients' accounts shows that the Internal Revenue Services is going to be "relentless" about going after Americans who it thinks are trying to evade taxes by parking assets overseas, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman just told All Things Considered co-host Robert Siegel.
If you've got one of those questionable overseas accounts and want to stay out of jail, Shulman says, fess up now. Here's some of what he had to say:
Much more will be on ATC later today. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
In what it's calling the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach that U.S. officials have ever indicted anyone for, the Justice Department charged Albert Gonzales, 28, of Miami, Fla. with leading a conspiracy to hack into computer networks and steal data linked to more than 130 million credit and debit cards.
According to the Justice Department, the companies targeted by Gonzales and his co-conspirators were Heartland Payment Systems, a New Jersey-headquartered card payment processor; Texas-based 7-Eleven Inc.; and Maine-based supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers Co. Inc.
The indictment, which details the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, alleges that beginning in October 2006, Gonzales and his co-conspirators researched the credit and debit card systems used by their victims; devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate their networks and steal credit and debit card data; and then sent that data to computer servers they operated in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. The indictment also alleges Gonzales and his co-conspirators also used sophisticated hacker techniques to cover their tracks and to avoid detection by anti-virus software used by their victims.
If convicted, Gonzales faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud conspiracy charge and an additional five years in prison on the conspiracy charge, as well as a fine of $250,000 for each charge.
Gonzales is already in U.S. custody on charges that he was responsible for hacking into computer systems used by restaurant chain Dave and Busters and TJX, whose retail stores include the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains.
Gonzales allegedly made millions of dollars by selling the stolen credit and debit card information to other crime rings. And he lived large off the criminality of which the feds accuse him.
Accused TJX hacker kingpin Albert Gonzalez called his credit card theft ring "Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin."
He spent $75,000 on a birthday party for himself and once complained that he had to manually count $340,000 in pilfered $20 bills because his counting machine broke. But while Gonzalez apparently lived high off ill-gotten gains, a programmer who claims he earned nothing from the scheme sits broke and unemployed, his career in shambles, while awaiting sentencing for a piece of software he crafted for his friend.
Second-day stories about the attack on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett over the weekend are adding some details to what happened Saturday night at the State Fair and to the picture that's emerging about the suspect.
From Milwaukee, The Journal Sentinel writes of the suspect that:
Anthony J. Peters, 20, was arguing with his ex-girlfriend's mother, whose cries for help were answered by the mayor. Telling his sister to take his two young daughters out of harm's way, Barrett confronted the man and tried to calm him. When Barrett took out his cell phone, Peters attacked him (with a pipe), authorities said. ...
West Allis Police Chief Mike Jungbluth described Peters as a "desperate man" who had threatened to shoot himself and others. He had taken a cell phone from the woman who was trying to protect her 1-year-old granddaughter from Peters, the girl's father, police said.
Peters is now in custody. The mayor is in stable condition at a local hospital. He has a fractured hand and some head injuries.
The first person to be tried and convicted for his involvement in arranging fights between mentally disabled students at a Texas state school was sentenced by a jury to three years in prison.
Jesse Salazar, an ex-worker at the Corpus Christi State School, faced up to ten years in prison for pitting hapless students against each other, a case that has gotten widespread attention.
In September 1975, the office investigated the high-profile attempted assassination of President Ford by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the violent cult-like Manson family. On September 5, Fromme -- armed with a .45 caliber handgun -- approached President Ford, who was in Sacramento to address the California State Assembly. She took aim, but was immediately seized by Secret Service agents. The Sacramento Division took over the case, investigating Fromme to make sure that she was acting alone. The case was code-named FROMFORD [175-HQ-297]. Complicating this investigation was a second assassination attempt on President Ford in San Francisco less than two weeks later by Sarah Jane Moore. Fromme was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
It just so happens that the wake for Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the long-time champion of the mentally disabled who died earlier this week, falls on the same day a Texas jury returned a guilty verdict against the first of six former state employees to stand trial for orchestrating fights between intellectually disabled persons in the state's care.
Jesse Salazar, age 26, was found guilty of helping to arrange fights between mentally disabled individuals at the Corpus Christi State School. He faces between two to 10 years in prison.
The Texas case is shameful proof that despite advances in how society deals with the mentally disabled, progress Shriver greatly contributed to as founder and animating force of the Special Olympics, there are still backwaters of the heart, lacking in compassion for those who are more vulnerable through no fault of their own.
Though Shriver is gone, her work is clearly far from done.
Authorities accused Betsey Wright, at one time a chief of staff to former-Gov. Bill Clinton and now a prisoner-rights advocate, of trying to smuggle contraband into Arkansas' death row -- including 48 tattoo needles hidden inside a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos.
She allegedly said she'd found the bag of chips with the special surprises inside in a vending machine at the prison. She is also alleged to have had a needle and tweezers hidden in a pen, a box-cutter and a Swiss Army knife, all of which are verboten under prison rules.
Wright, who was a chief of staff to Clinton in the governor's office and the deputy chair of his 1992 campaign, played an important role in trying to contain stories about alleged extramarital liaisons by Clinton. She is credited with coining the memorable phrase, "bimbo eruptions," to refer to the litany of accusations.
"They think it's me, but it's not," Wright, 66, told the Associated Press. "I certainly did not do what they have charged me with."
The National Football League today suspended Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte' Stallworth for the entire 2009 regular season because of his conviction on a DUI manslaughter charge, The Plain Dealer writes.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell notified Donte' Stallworth of the Cleveland Browns today that he is suspended without pay for the 2009 season for violating both the NFL's policy on substances of abuse and the personal conduct policy.
On June 16, Stallworth pled (sic) guilty to DUI/Manslaughter, a second degree felony in Florida, resulting from a March 14 incident in which he struck and killed a pedestrian while driving under the influence of alcohol.
Stallworth will be reinstated after the Super Bowl in February 2010. He may not participate in any team activity during the 2009 season.
How did the Brazilian TV show Canal Livre always seem to get to a murder scene first? Police say sometimes it was because former host Wallace Souza ordered the killings. He denies the charge.
ITN News has video from the show in this report:
As The Guardian reports, Souza is also now a popular politician. A state legislator, Souza "was the most voted-for politician in the last elections in the state of Amazonas and is in his third term."
Update at 2:55 p.m. ET. A few minutes ago, All Things Considered guest host Madeleine Brand spoke with The Guardian's Tom Phillips, who has been covering the story from Rio de Janeiro. He told her that police think Souza wasn't just trying to boost his show's ratings, but also was allegedly trying to bump off rivals in the drug and racketeering trades:
There will be more from Madeleine's interview with Phillips on today's edition of ATC. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
That would be Rick Pitino, the current b-ball coach at the University of Louisville and a former head coach at the University of Kentucky. The Courier-Journal's story begins this way:
University of Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino told police that he had consensual sex with Karen Cunagin Sypher at a Louisville restaurant where he'd been drinking on Aug. 1, 2003.
He also told police that he later gave Sypher $3,000 to have an abortion, according to Louisville Metro Police reports The Courier-Journal obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act.
But Pitino denied Sypher's allegations that he raped her at Porcini, after the restaurant closed, and again a few weeks later at a different location, police records show. And prosecutors who have reviewed Sypher's claims say Pitino won't be charged.
Sypher has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly trying to extort money from Pitino.
The Courier-Journal has extensive excerpts from the police interviews with Pitino and Sypher.
Bernard Madoff's former chief financial officer Frank DiPascali was ordered jailed by a federal judge on Tuesday after the Ponzi scheme accomplice pled guilty to the conspiracy charges.
U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan ordered DiPascali incarceration even though he's been cooperating with investigators, and prosecutors and defense attorneys requested that he be permitted to stay out of prison until sentencing.
Madoff, the author of the scam which resulted in thousands losing billions of dollars, is now also known as federal prisoner #61727-054. He's begun serving his 150-year federal prison term at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex. The Bureau of Prisons website gives his release date as Nov. 14, 2139.
"Less than a week before he killed three women and then himself" at a fitness center near Pittsburgh, George Sodini was investigated by Port Authority of Allegheny County police for possibly taking a hand grenade on a bus, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
The investigation turned up nothing. But, the Post-Gazette says, after the Aug. 4 killings, "investigators found writings at (Sodini's) home in which he referred to the bus incident."
A federal jury has convicted William Jefferson, the former congressman from New Orleans, of accepting and making bribes.
Jefferson became infamous and a national punchline after the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents found $90,000 in the freezer section of the refrigerator his Washington, DC-area home.
The Associated Press is reporting:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A jury in suburban Washington has convicted a former Louisiana congressman on 11 of 16 counts including bribery in a case in which agents found $90,000 in his freezer.
Former Rep. William Jefferson is accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for brokering business deals in Africa. He is a Democrat who had represented parts of New Orleans.
The jury deliberated five days before returning the verdict Wednesday. It was an eight-week trial.
Given the strength of the evidence, the conviction doesn't come as a surprise.
NPR profiled Jefferson three years ago. The piece mentions that from the earliest days of his political career, Jefferson was viewed by some as the kind of politician who would use his political position to advance himself financially. That earned him the sobriquet "Dollar Bill."
James von Brunn, the elderly white supremacist charged with killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on June 10, now also faces hate crime charges.
This appears to be some very bad news for Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's live-in personal physician who unsuccessfully tried to revive the late pop megastar. The Associated Press reports that a law enforcement official is leaking the information that Murray gave Jackson an anesthetic normally only used in hospitals for major surgeries.
From the Associated Press:
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation into Michael Jackson's death says the pop star's personal doctor administered the powerful drug that authorities believe killed him.
Jackson regularly received the anesthetic propofol (PROH'-puh-fahl) to go to sleep. The official, who requested anonymity because the probe is ongoing, told The Associated Press on Monday that Dr. Conrad Murray gave Jackson the drug the last night of his life.
Murray was with Jackson when he died June 25 and has been identified in court papers as the subject of a manslaughter investigation.
Murray's lawyer has said the doctor didn't prescribe or administer anything that should have killed Jackson.
Federal law enforcement officials announced the arrest of seven North Carolina men who are charged with planning to take part in violent jihadi attacks in Kosovo, the Gaza Strip and Jordan. The men evidently planned no domestic violence.
The indictments were unsealed today and the men appeared in federal court in Raleigh, N.C.
NPR's Ari Shapiro who covers the Justice Department reported the following on the network's newscast:
The alleged ringleader of the plot is a 39-year-old named Daniel Patrick Boyd.
He allegedly fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan between 1989 and 1992. He's also accused of training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan. Two of his adult sons were charged in this indictment.
Prosecutors say all seven of the defendants were prepared to die in violent jihad, and some recruited others to do so.
No one in this case is accused of planning to carry out attacks in the United States. Some of the men allegedly traveled to Gaza and Jordan with the hope of fighting there. Another is accused of trying to fight in Kosovo. They are not alleged to have actually engaged in jihad while they were abroad.
An Islamic extremist who plotted to assassinate then-President George W. Bush was re-sentenced to life in prison after a federal appeals court decided his earlier 30-year sentence wasn't harsh enough.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 28, who once lived in the Washington, D.C.-suburb of Falls Church, was convicted in 2005 for joining al-Qaeda in 2002 as a college student in Saudi Arabia.
Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen who was born in Houston, was defiant in court today after U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee rendered the new sentence. He told Lee:
"I would like to remind you that you too will appear before the divine tribunal with me and everyone else. That day there will be no lawyers ... If you are comfortable with that, you can decree what you will."
Evangelist Tony Alamo is led from the federal courthouse in downtown Texarkana, Ark. Friday July 17, 2009 following a day of witness testimony in his criminal trial. AP/Tanner Spendley, Texarkana Gazette
By Frank James
A federal jury in Texarkana, Ark. convicted evangelist and one-time clothing entrepreneur Tony Alamo of crossing state lines with five underage girls for the purpose of sex.
The jury took just two days to decide that Alamo had violated the Mann Act which makes it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral purposes."
The 74-year old Alamo was convicted on each count of a 10-count indictment with each count carrying a potential 10-year sentence and $250,000 fine.
Authorities are laying out their case against the 44 mayors, other public officials and rabbisarrested on corruption charges in New Jersey today and acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra just made a very blunt allegation:
"The politicians willingly put themselves up for sale," Marra said. "Corruption was a way of life" for them and they "existed in an ethics free zone."
They're accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and laundering millions.
Update at 4 p.m. ET. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston sums up the story in this report:
Update at 1:15 p.m. ET: The news conference just ended.
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET: According to the AP, "one of the suspects is accused of enticing people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and reselling for $160,000."
Update at 1:05 p.m. ET. Copies of some of criminal complaints are posted here.
Update at 1 p.m. ET: Prosecutors say the rabbis were critical to the laundering of the bribes that the politicians received. They allegedly helped turn turn bank checks into cash. As the Associated Press puts it, five rabbis allegedly "acted as crime bosses to launder money in Deal, Brooklyn, Israel and Switzerland."
"Federal authorities arrested dozens of people today in New York and New Jersey as part of a money laundering and corruption sweep,"The Star-Ledger reports. "Those arrested included several New Jersey public officials and rabbis."
The newspaper adds that among those arrested were:
Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, and Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega.
According to the Associated Press:
The federal prosecutor says arrests that are part of the money-laundering investigation include several rabbis in New York and New Jersey.
Update at 4 p.m. ET. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston sums up the story in this report:
Update at 12:55 p.m. ET: The number of people arrested, authorities now say, is 44. Earlier reports said 30 had been arrested.
Update at 12:40 p.m. ET. As he briefs the news media about the case, acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra is utterings some very quotable quotes:
-- He says the defendants laundered about $3 million in recent years.
-- The public officials allegedly accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from a "cooperating witness."
-- "The politicians willingly put themselves up for sale," Marra says. "Corruption was a way of life" for them and they "existed in an ethics free zone."
Update at 10:25 a.m. ET: According to the Star-Ledger, the mayors and council president are all Democrats. Another lawmaker who's been arrested, Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, is a Republican.
Update at 10 a.m. ET. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston passes along this statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey.
Approximately 30 arrests have occurred this morning in a two-track federal investigation of public corruption and a high-volume, international money laundering conspiracy. Among those arrested in the public corruption portion of the investigation are the Mayor of Hoboken, Peter Cammarano III, the Mayor of Secaucus, Dennis Elwell, N.J. Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, the Deputy Mayor of Jersey City, Leona Beldini, and many others.
Arrests that are part of the money-laundering portion of the investigation include several rabbis in New York and New Jersey.
A press conference is scheduled for approximately noon today at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark. Court appearances will begin at about 2 p.m. today.
The investigation involves the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school which teaches children in the Sephardic Jewish tradition, sources said. The Yeshiva has two separate divisions: a boys' school on Logan Road in Ocean Township and a girls' school on Wall Street in West Long Branch.
The school was founded more than 20 years ago by Rabbi Isaac Dwek and Raizel Dwek, the parents of real estate mogul Solomon Dwek. Rabbi Dwek was the school's president, and Raizel was its treasurer, until 2006, when their son's real estate empire began to crumble after Solomon Dwek deposited a bad $25.2 million check at a drive-through window at the PNC Bank in Eatontown.
The arrests are the result of a two-year probe that began with an investigation of money transfers by members of the Syrian enclaves in Deal and Brooklyn. Those arrested this morning include key religious leaders in the tight-night, wealthy communities.
The federal investigation then expanded into a public corruption probe.
TheRichmond Times-Dispatch writes that "missing mental health records of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho have been discovered in the home of the university clinic's former director, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press today."
There's government work, and then there's government work. Two New York State employees allegedly found a way to hole up, smoke pot and nap their way to "more than $28,400 in taxpayer-funded overtime" since 2004, the Albany Times-Union reports.
The kicker -- one of the accused men is a janitor, and the other is his boss.
State officials raided their alleged hangout in a government garage last week. "Their so-called 'man cave" . . . featured couches, a television and DVDs, a refrigerator, and rolling papers and scales to weigh marijuana," the paper reports.
Only the janitor, Gary Pivoda, 48, has been charged -- with misdemeanor counts of using drug paraphernalia and unlawfully possessing marijuana. An attorney for the boss, Louis Marciano, 50, denied the accusations. The two have been suspended.
Little guy. Mostly walks on all fours. Looks like he might have white hair on top, dark hair everywhere else. And we mean, everywhere else. Probably has bananas on his breath.
The crime? Burglary. Theft of $300 worth of plants from a garden store in Richardson, Texas.
Awhile back, my family traveled to a small city in Nevada that has a reputation as a methamphetamine scene. Methamphetamine, of course, is a potent, addictive and illegal stimulant that dealers can cook up in their kitchens. One of the tell-tale signs of its use is when the front teeth start rotting, a condition known as meth mouth. I don't know whether this one Nevada's town reputation holds true, but it did seem that the 20-somethings we met looked notably underweight and on track for early dentures.
Another consequence -- and this one's for the innocent -- is getting sick from moving unawares into a former meth lab. That's what happened to Rhonda and Jason Holt and their three children in Winchester, Tenn., the New York Times reports.
Authorities in Pensacola, Fla., have made more arrests in the killing of a wealthy Florida couple who had opened their homes to 16 children -- four biological and 12 adopted. And they're saying that the "primary motive" of the murders was robbery.
The Associated Press says the number of arrests is now up to six.
The Thursday killings have caught national attention because Byrd and Melanie Billings, the victims, had adopted children with autism, Down syndrome and other challenges, and because the attackers were caught on surveillance cameras positioned around the couple's home.
Update at 1:28 p.m. ET: The AP now also says there are seven people under arrest.
It's easy, by the way, to use that locator to ... well, locate ... a prisoner. You can search by name or by the inmate's registration number -- which in Madoff's case is 61727-054.
Interestingly, the bureau says his "release date" is Nov. 14, 2139 -- that's in 130 years. Madoff was given a 150-year sentence. He's getting credit for 20 years of "good behavior."
Of course, he would be 201 years old by then.
Update at 3 p.m. ET: Though the inmate locator webpage still has Madoff in Atlanta, USA TODAY is reporting that he's arrived in North Carolina.
Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip, Il. AP Photo/Chicago Sun-Times, Scott Stewart
By Frank James
From Chicago's south suburb of Alsip comes the very disturbing story of as many as 300 graves being opened and the bodies inside dumped so that cemetery employees could resell the plots.
The level of depravity it would take to do this is stunning. But considering how some people treat the living, maybe we shouldn't be so shocked after all.
NPR's David Shaper had the following report on the network's newscast:
The Cook County sheriff charges four people with one count each of dismembering a human body. Among those charged is the cemetery's superintendent.
The four allegedly took part in a scheme in which they would dig up graves in the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in the south Chicago suburb of Alsip, dump the bodies elsewhere in the cemetery or double bury them in other graves, and then resell the plots they dug up to unsuspecting members of the public.
4 p.m. ET: Since we first posted this entry at 2:46 p.m. ET, the story has evolved -- Nashville police have announced they're confident that former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was murdered Saturday and that the woman who killed him then committed suicide. Here's how the post has developed:
By Mark Memmott
"A state medical examiner has said that preliminary testing from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation points to the likely conclusion of murder-suicide in the deaths of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi,"The Tennessean reports.
Police are due to hold a news conference shortly about the July 4 death of the 36-year-old former NFL quarterback and the 20-year-old woman he had been dating. He was found dead from four gunshot wounds. Kazemi had a single shot to her head.
The Tennessean adds that:
Feng Li, the assistant medical examiner who conducted the autopsies, said he will wait for the investigation to be closed before he completes Kazemi's death certificate to reflect that she died of suicide.
"The results were very consistent in supporting our decision," Li aid.
Update at 4:05 p.m. ET: Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas just said that investigators believe Kazemi sat down on a couch next to McNair's body after shooting him, and "tried to stage that when she killed herself she would fall into his lap." Police believe that's what happened, but that her body subsequently slid down on to the floor.
Update at 3:50 p.m. ET: Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas just told reporters that McNair was "murdered by Sahel Kazemi and than in turn, she killed herself with a single gunshot wound to the head."
The "totality of the evidence" points to the conclusion that she shot McNair while he was asleep, and then killed herself, the chief added.
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has maintained he's innocent of any wrong-doing, but his former chief of staff has now pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
John Harris pleaded guilty to wire fraud, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, and "has agreed to act as a witness against Blagojevich."
The Sun-Times adds that:
The charge involves phone discussions Harris had with Washington D.C. advisors regarding landing financial benefits for Blagojevich in exchange for appointing senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Obama became president.
Jarrett is not accused of wrongdoing and Obama, in a report released last year, said Jarrett did not take part in any quid pro quo discussions with Blagojevich.
From approximately October 2008 to on or about December 9, 2008, in the Northern District of Illinois, Defendant, together with co-defendant Rod Blagojevich and others, participated in a scheme to deprive the people of the State of Illinois of their intangible right to the honest services of Defendant and Rod Blagojevich, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1342 and 1346.
Update at 2:25 p.m. ET. More from the plea agreement:
Harris has agreed to provide "complete and truthful information in any investigation" and that his sentence will not be imposed until "after the conclusion of his cooperation."
There is also a lot about Blagojevich in the agreement. It states that the then-governor "told Defendant (Harris) that if he could not get a position direction through President-elect Obama in exchange for picking a desired candidate, then Blagojevich would seek a position through supporters of President-elect Obama in exchange for naming someone to the Senate seat."
Neither Obama nor anyone on his then-transition staff are suspected of any wrong-doing, prosecutors have said.
South Carolina law enforcement officials are saying the man they believe to be responsible for a string of killings that terrorized Gaffney, S.C. was shot to death by police in North Carolina.
A law enforcement official from South Carolina told CNN a few minutes ago that investigators matched the ballistics of the gun recovered from the man in the North Carolina police shootout with the South Carolina killings.
Law enforcement officials haven't revealed the name of the man and are expected to have a press briefing later this evening.
"The gun recovered at the scene of the deaths of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi was purchased by Kazemi recently," The Tennessean reports, saying it has confirmed that news with Nashville police.
McNair, 36, a former star quarterback with the NFL's Tennessee Titans, and 20-year-old Kazemi were found dead Saturday. He had been shot four times. She had a single gunshot wound to the head and the gun was found under her body.
As the Tennessean adds:
Police said the possibility of a murder-suicide is still on the table, but there are several other theories of the crime still possible.
Kazemi's ex-boyfriend, Keith Norfleet, was questioned for several hours by police yesterday. (Police spokesman Don) Aaron said he is not a suspect, and there are still no suspects being actively pursued.
Composite drawing of the suspected killer. Cherokee County (S.C.) Sheriff's Department, via AP and the Spartanburg Herald Journal.
By Mark Memmott
The killer is "still on the loose" in Cherokee County, S.C., leading authorities to offer a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man suspected in the shooting deaths of five people since June 27.
Update at 2:15 p.m. ET: CNN is reporting that "police in Gaston County, North Carolina, shot and killed a robbery suspect early Monday, and then called in police from South Carolina who have been chasing a serial killer." It's possible the suspect killed in North Carolin is the man being sought in the serial killings.
The Washington Post takes a look today at the life of James W. von Brunn and writes about how the 88-year-old man suspected of killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10 went from being a "talented young commercial artist" to a "white supremacist ... infected with paranoia and virulent anti-Semitism."
It appears, according to the Post, that the "paranoia and anti-Semitism" began to surface as far back as 1942:
He claimed to have had a dispute as a college student with a Jewish man over a car von Brunn damaged while driving it. Afterward, he wrote later, "word got around that I was a Nazi."
His anger seems to have smoldered through his service during World War II, his writing indicates. His anti-Semitism grew when he came back from the war, he wrote, and found New York "the largest Jew city in the World."
Kazemi in an undated booking photo from the Davidson County (Tenn.) Sheriff's office. Associated Press
By Mark Memmott
While the Associated Press is only going so far as to say that police are not looking for any suspects, the local newspaper in Nashville is reporting that former NFL star Steve McNair was killed Saturday in an "apparent murder-suicide."
The Tennesseansays McNair, 36, was found at a condominium he rented with "several gunshot wounds, including one to the head." A 20-year-old woman, Sahel Kazemi, "was found on the floor near him with a single gunshot wound to her head," the newspaper adds. "A pistol was found near her body."
The Tennessean also writes that McNair, who is married, and Kazemi had been "dating ... for months" and that:
Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said investigators were not actively looking for suspects Saturday night but had not ruled out any scenarios. He stopped short of calling the deaths a murder-suicide, but said the police should be able to classify the deaths today after autopsies and forensic work.
At Nashville Public Radio, correspondent Blake Farmer also reports that "Metro Police are investigating what appears to be a murder-suicide involving former NFL quarterback Steve McNair."
McNair and Kazemi had been together Thursday when she was arrested on a DUI charge, the AP says. She was reportedly driving a Cadillac Escalade registered to her and McNair, the Tennessean reports. McNair was a passenger in the vehicle at that time.
Update at 4 p.m. ET. Police rule McNair's death a homicide. The AP now reports that:
Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair's shooting death was a homicide, police said Sunday, but authorities stopped short of saying it was a murder-suicide committed by the 20-year-old girlfriend found dead by his side.
McNair, 36, was shot four times, twice in the head, by a semiautomatic pistol, Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said. The woman, Sahel Kazemi, was killed by a single gunshot wound and the pistol was found under her body, Aaron said.
Police said they need to do more interviews with friends of Kazemi and McNair before they rule on whether her death was a suicide, Aaron said.
The Tennessean reports that Aaron also also said that police "can't be close-minded. ... All scenarios are on the table."
And, the newspaper quotes Kazemi's niece -- who says they were raised as sisters -- as saying Kazemi "would never kill anyone, ever."
From our original post: The AP recaps the highlights of McNair's NFL career this way:
The sentence just came in: Bogus financier Bernard Madoff, 71, has been given a sentence of 150 years in prison for swindling investors out of billions of dollars in what's thought to be the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
That was the maximum sentence Madoff faced. His lawyer had argued for much less -- 12 years in prison.
Update at 12:30 p.m. ET. NPR's John Ydstie filed this report on the verdict:
Update at 12:02 p.m. ET. Madoff is "pathetic," victim says.
One of Madoff's victims is Burt Ross, the former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J. He just told reporters outside the courthouse that Madoff's attempt to apologize today was "pathetic."
Update at 11:59 a.m. ET. Judge says $13 billion is conservative:
As he sentenced Madoff, the Associated Press reports, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said the estimate that Madoff has cost his victims more than $13 billion was conservative because it did not include money from feeder funds.
"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but
one instead that takes a staggering toll," Chin said.
Update at 11:50 a.m. ET.The New York Post does not disappoint with its headline:
nypost.com
Update at 11:43 a.m. ET. Fraud was "staggering":
As he handed down the sentence, the Associated Press writes, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin called the fraud "staggering" and noted that it spanned more than 20 years. He said "the breach of trust was massive."
Reuters says that when Chin announced his decision, "cheers and applause came from the courtroom as Madoff stood facing the judge with his hands clasped in front of him."
At 11:35 a.m. ET we got the word -- a sentence of 150 years in prison for bogus financier Bernard Madoff.
Here's how this post developed:
By Mark Memmott
As we wait for the sentencing, a question for the group:
How long should 71-year-old Bernard Madoff, who took billions of dollars from investors and kept much of the money for himself in the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, spend behind bars?
Michael Shapiro, a lawyer at the law firm Carter Ledyard and Milburn LLP, tells Reuters he expects a 30-year sentence for Madoff -- which would likely be "life" because of the convicted swindler's age.
Your vote?
We'll report back when his sentence is handed down. Be sure to click your "refresh" button.
Update at 11:35 a.m. ET: The verdict is in -- 150 years.
Update at 11:31 a.m. ET: Now that the victims and Madoff have had their chances to speak, the sentence should be handed down soon, CNN reports from the scene.
Update at 11:28 a.m. ET: "I have no excuse," Madoff has told the court and his victims according to CNN. "Saying sorry is not enough."
Update at 11:19 a.m. ET. More from Madoff: He says he "will live with this pain, this torment, for the rest of my life."
Update at 11:14 a.m. ET. Madoff is now speaking, the AP says:
"I dug myself deeper into a hole" as his scheme continued, he just said.
Update at 11:11 a.m. ET. More scorn from Madoff's victims, courtesy of the AP:
"May your jail cell be your coffin," said Michael Schwartz.
"You have left your children with a legacy of shame," said Tom FitzMaurice, who also called Madoff "an evil low-life."
Update at 10:43 a.m. ET. From the courtroom, the Associated Press writes about the statements being made by some of Madoff's victims. It adds that "Madoff, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a tie, sat and":
"Life has been a living hell. It feels like the nightmare we can't wake from," said Carla Hirshhorn.
"He stole from the rich. He stole from the poor. He stole from the in between. He had no values," said Tom Fitzmaurice. "He cheated his victims out of their money so he and his wife Ruth could live a life of luxury beyond belief."
Dominic Ambrosino called it an "indescribably heinous crime" and urged a long prison sentence so "will know he is imprisoned in much the same way he imprisoned us and others."
Dominic Ambrosino and his wife Ronnie Sue speak to the media outside Manhattan federal court this morning. Louis Lanzano/AP
Update at 10:15 a.m. ET: The wire services report that the judge has said at the start of his remarks that federal probation officials recommend a 50-year sentence. No word yet on whether the judge is taking that advice.
It's shaping up to be a pretty busy day, so let's get right to it with a look at what's coming and at the morning's top headlines.
Two stories are expected to break around 10 a.m. ET. At the U.S. Supreme Court, justices will release the final three opinions of this term. As NPR's Nina Totenberg explained on Morning Edition, the most closely watched case will be a case from New Haven, Conn., in which Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled with other appeals court judges that the city had the right to disregard a promotion test for firefighters on which minority candidates fared poorly:
Also at 10 a.m. ET, Ponzi scheme kingpin Bernard Madoff is due to be sentenced for his crimes. On Morning Edition, NPR's Jim Zarroli reported that while Madoff will appeal for a light sentence, the 71-year-old who stole billions of dollars could get what amounts to a life sentence:
As for the morning's top stories, they include:
-- The Washington Post -- In Iran, "Mousavi Faces Tough Choices": "With the opposition visibly weakening in Iran amid a government crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters have begun to use his disputed victory in this month's election to toughen the nation's stance internationally and to consolidate control internally. ... The emerging power dynamics leave (opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein) Mousavi with tough choices. Confronted with increasing political pressure over what supporters of the government say is his leading role in orchestrating riots, he can either acknowledge his defeat and be embraced by his enemies or continue to fight over the election result and face imprisonment."
-- BBC News -- Interim President Imposes Curfew In Honduras: "Interim President Roberto Micheletti has imposed an overnight curfew in Honduras, hours after being sworn in. The Congress speaker took office after troops ousted elected leader Manuel Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica. The removal of Mr Zelaya came amid a power struggle over his plans for constitutional change. Mr Zelaya, who had been in office since 2006, wanted to hold a referendum that could have led to an extension of his non-renewable four-year term."
Related story on Morning Editon -- NPR's Jason Beaubien reported that President Manuel Zelaya is vowing to stay in power:
A soldier in an armored car watches as a civilian protester stands nearby Sunday outside the presidential house in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Orlando Sierra AFP/Getty Images
A soldier in an armored car watches as a civilian protester stands nearby Sunday outside the presidential house in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Orlando Sierra AFP/Getty Images.
-- Los Angeles Times -- Legal Battles Begin Over Jackson's Estate, Children: "As Michael Jackson's father moved Sunday to assert control over his son's estate, his attorney said that the family has not been able to locate a will for the pop icon and that Jackson's mother will seek custody of his three children. ... As camps began to form for what could be extended battles over Jackson's children, his money and his legacy, the doctor who treated Jackson the day he died defended himself Sunday. Dr. Conrad Murray, through his lawyer, denied reports that he had injected Jackson with powerful painkillers before his death."
-- CNN.com -- Preliminary Autopsy Resuts Due On Billy May: Medical examiners are due to complete a preliminary autopsy Monday on Billy Mays, the man with the booming voice famous for fronting products such as OxiClean and Orange Glo in TV commercials. It is not clear if the results will be released immediately. The pitchman was pronounced dead at his home near Tampa, Florida, Sunday morning, after his wife, Deborah, found him unresponsive, Tampa police said. He was 50."
"Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond," the Detroit Free Press just reported. According to the Freep, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn then said, "The defendant now stands convicted."
As the Associated Press writes, Conyers, a Democrat, was charged with "one count of conspiracy to commit bribery for allegedly accepting two payments from a Synagro Technologies official in late 2007, including one in a McDonald's parking lot. ... Conyers' husband is John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee in Congress. He has no role in the case."
The Freep says she faces up to five years in prison.
The former medical student who stands accused of killing a young women he allegedly met after responding to a Craigslist ad she posted advertising her massage services has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges.
From Boston, where the murder occurred, the Globe says 23-year-old Philip Markoff spoke "in a clear, confident voice today" as he entered his plea in a case that has caught national attention.
Update at 12:45 p.m. ET. Courtesy of the Associated Press, here's a video clip from the court hearing:
By a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court ruled today "that an individual whose criminal conviction has become final does not have a constitutional right to gain access to evidence so that it can be subjected to DNA testing," SCOTUSBlog writes.
The decision in District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District, et al. v. Osborneis posted here. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion.
The Associated Press says that:
The decision may have limited impact because the federal government and 47 states already have laws that allow convicts some access to genetic evidence. Testing has led to the exoneration of at least 232 people who had been found guilty of murder, rape and other violent crimes.
Kerlikowske, right, with Vice President Joe Biden at the White House on March 11. Chris Kleponis/AFP/Getty Images
By Ben Bergman
When I interviewed Gil Kerlikowske, then Seattle's police chief, in 2007, I asked him if he ever watched the HBO program The Wire. He said no, he didn't have time to watch cop shows because he was busy doing the real thing.
Kerlikowske will probably have even less time for TV viewing now that he is just over a month into his new job as the nation's "Drug Czar." But even if he hasn't seen The Wire -- which his boss, President Barack Obama, has called his favorite show --- he seems to be heeding some of the lessons of the show (the drama, set in Baltimore, ended its five-year run in 2008; it's available on DVD).
"There's going to be a much heavier emphasis on prevention and also treatment," Kerlikowske told NPR's Ina Jaffe in an interview to air on Monday's Morning Edition.
"Regardless of how many people say we need stronger sentences, everybody that's in jail or prison gets out except a very few," he added. "So if we don't treat the problem they come back in worse condition than how they got there."
Kerlikowske made news last month when he told The Wall Street Journal that he doesn't care for the phrase "war on drugs."
He told NPR that, "when you talk about war, the only tools you have are force. ... As a police chief, when I'd go to community meetings and people were unhappy about drug dealers in their neighborhood they'd point the finger and say 'What are the police doing about it?' It's more than just a police problem."
Kerlikowske spoke with us yesterday in Orange County, Calif., where he was visiting to highlight the Obama administration's support for drug courts, which combine traditional criminal justice with drug and alcohol treatment programs.
The war on drugs has been called a disaster by many people, including then-senatorial candidate Obama in 2004. But despite its many failures it did have one advantage: It was an easy phrase to slap on a bumper sticker.
Kerlikowske recognizes there's a marketing challenge. In a meeting with staff at The Orange County Drug Court in Santa Ana, he asked for branding suggestions:
Click here to find an NPR station near you that broadcasts Morning Edition.
(Ben Bergman is a producer for NPR's Morning Edition based at NPR West.)
A criminal complaint filed in federal court today in Washington D.C. provides further details on the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the alleged shooter, James W. Von Brunn, including an anti-Semitic message prosecutors said they discovered in his car.
According to an affidavit, Von Brunn's message said:
"You want my weapons... this is how you'll get them... Obama was created by the Jews.
It continues in that vein. You can read the document below.
Has a racist, anti-Semitic Web site and wrote a book titled Kill the Best Gentile. In 1983, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board. He was arrested two years earlier outside the room where the board was meeting, carrying a revolver, knife and sawed-off shotgun. At the time, police said von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation's economic difficulties.
An ambulance leaves the scene. By Gerald Herbert of the AP
By Mark Memmott
A security guard and a gunman have been taken to a Washington-area hospital after a shooting incident at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum just off the National Mall in Washington, WTOP-radio is reporting.
According to the news station, police say the gunman opened fire -- hitting the guard -- before being shot by two other guards.
Be sure to hit your "refresh" button to see our latest updates:
Update at 4:40 p.m. ET : The Holocaust Museum has identified the security guard killed by the shooting at that institution today as Stephen Tyrone Johns who worked there for six years.
Here's the museum's statement:
Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns died heroically in the line of duty today. There are no words to express our grief and shock over these events. He served on the Museum's security staff for six years. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Officer Johns' family.
We have made the decision to close the Museum tomorrow in honor of Officer Johns, and our flags will be flown at half mast in his memory.
Update at 4:28 p.m. ET: NPR's Allison Keyes has confirmed with a source who is in a position to know that the security guard has died.
Update at 4:22 p.m. ET: The Associated Press now reports it too has been told by "officials" that "a security guard shot at the Holocaust Museum has died."
Update at 4:19 p.m. ET: Former Defense secretary William Cohen is on CNN now, saying that he was "30 or 40 feet away" when the shooting began. He heard at least four shots, Cohen says, but didn't see anything. "I ducked" and then got out of the area, Cohen adds.
Update at 4:16 p.m. ET: There's an archive here of the website associated with the man who's been named in news media reports as the suspect.
Update at 4:12 p.m. ET: CNN is now reporting that it also has been told by police sources that the security guard who was shot has died.
Update at 4 p.m. ET:WJLA-TV is reporting that it has been told by "high level D.C. police sources" that the security guard has died. Other news media are not saying that at this time. NPR News has not independently confirmed the report.
Update at 3:52 p.m. ET: The Washington Post says "police are confirming that the name of the suspect is James von Brunn, a white supremacist, born 1920."
The Post also says it's been told by a "police source" that "law enforcement agencies using bomb-sniffing dogs are responding to more than 100 'targets' that were listed in a notebook found in the gunman's possession."
Update at 3:42 p.m. ET: The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, has already posted quite a bit of information about the man who's been named in news media reports as the suspect.
Update at 3:38 p.m. ET: MSNBC says former Defense secretary William Cohen was inside the museum when the shooting took place.
Update at 3:31 p.m. ET: Once again saying that it has been told by "a law enforcement official" that the suspect is an 88- or 89-year-old man named James von Brunn, the Associated Press adds that it has also been told von Brunn's vehicle was found near the museum and has been tested for explosives.
(And once again, we'll note that NPR News has not independently confirmed that anyone named von Brunn is a suspect.)
A federal prison could be Richard Piccoli's home for the rest of his life after the 82-year-old western New York businessman pleaded guilty today in a Ponzi scheme that targeted Catholic clergy and the elderly.
The Associated Press reports Piccoli stole at least $17 million.
According to the Buffalo News, "authorities said hundreds of people, most of them senior citizens with modest incomes, invested millions of dollars in Piccoli's investment firm."
Instead of putting the individuals' money in "discounted real estate mortgage portfolios," as Piccoli said he would, authorities proved that he kept the money.
His prison term could be for up to 25 years, AP says.
"I don't care if he spends the rest of his life in prison. He sure didn't care what he did to us," Joann Abram, 79, of Hamburg, N.Y., told the News. She was among about 150 victims who came to a Buffalo curt today to see Piccoli enter his guilty plea.
Abdulhakim Muhammad, 23, of Little Rock, right, appears with his attorney Stephen Thomas in a Little Rock, Ark., courtroom Tuesday, June 2, 2009, where he was charged in the Monday death of a military recruiter. AP Photo/Danny Johnston
By Frank James
The lawyer for the alleged shooter of two soldiers at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark. this week has an unusual theory for why his client is in so much trouble. He went over to the dark side when he was imprisoned with Yemeni terrorists for a visa violation.
An AP excerpt:
Lawyer Jim Hensley described Abdulhakim Muhammad as an impressionable youth driven to public service in an impoverished Middle Eastern country. But teachings by "hardened" terrorists in Yemen and experiences with Afghan child refugees missing limbs drove him to become someone his parents didn't recognize, Hensley said.
"Here comes the FBI, who may be able to help this guy or save his life, and then they leave and then he's got to go back in with these hardened terrorists. He's got to survive, how do you live with that?" Hensley said. "He absolutely feels that the FBI and anyone else associated with the United States government left him to the wolves, that's for certain."
Muhammad, 23, who was formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe, is from Little Rock. There's definitely an interesting story to be dug out by reporters on how a young man from Little Rock winds up locked up in Yemen.
More fallout today from the Justice Department's mishandling of prosecutions of Alaskan lawmakers.
Attorney General Eric Holder asked a judge to release two former state lawmakers in Alaska from prison because of missteps by his department's prosecutors.
As NPR Justice correspondent Ari Shapiro reports:
This is another black eye for the Justice Department's criminal division.
Attorney General Holder said the Department's mission is to do justice, not just win cases.
Although prosecutors won this case, they did it by breaking the rules.
Two State Representatives from Alaska were convicted on bribery and extortion charges.
The corruption investigation that eventually swept up then-Senator Ted Stevens.
The Justice Department admitted wrongdoing in the Stevens trial.
Now Twitter's the place to profess your innocence.
Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was in a Washington court today. He pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to White House aides after he was nominated in 2004 by then-president George W. Bush to be secretary of Homeland Security.
In DC Federal Court today. Indicted for a third time on the same charge. Unprecedented, selective, and overreaching prosecution? You te ...
(That 140-character limit can be a pain.)
Kerik's nomination was withdrawn after reports surfaced about a nanny he employed who had immigration problems. Kerik allegedly misled the White House about his financial dealings with city contractors. He faces separate charges about all that in New York.
One of the hottest debates in the blogosphere since the murder Sunday of Dr. George Tiller has been about the things that Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly has said regarding the doctor and the late-term abortions Tiller performed over the years.
Liberal blogs, such as Booman Tribune, say that O'Reilly's rhetoric about Tiller over the years was irresponsible and stoked the anger aimed at Tiller. Conservative blogs, such as Pajamas Media, say the liberal side is guilty of "massive hyprocisy and lazy, subjective reasoining."
On last night's O'Reilly Factor, Bill said that "clear-thinking Americans" should condemn Tiller's murder and that he "knew that pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters would attempt to blame us for the crime." Here's his commentary, in which he adds that "every single tthing we said about Tiller was true":
Scott Roeder, left, being transported by police on Sunday, May 31, 2009, in New Century, Kan. AP Photo/Ed Zurga
By Frank James
Seeking to his explain his actions, the family of Scott Roeder, the man accused of killing physician Dr. George Tiller who provided controversial abortion services, says he has suffered from mental illness.
The ex-wife of a man accused in the shooting death of abortionist George Tiller on Sunday said her ex-husband had undergone a mental evaluation in the mid-1990s and that although he never thought he was mentally unstable, "everyone else did."
"He just felt these were his views," she said. "His anti-abortion rhetoric was very strong. He followed the view of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Those memories echoed a statement on Monday from Roeder's family. Scott Roeder's brother David told The Topeka Capital-Journal the family never foresaw anything like what happened Sunday.
"We are shocked, horrified and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller and the circumstances surrounding it that may have involved Scott Roeder," the statement began. "We know Scott as a kind and loving son, brother and father who suffered from mental illness at various times in his life. However, none of us ever saw Scott as a person capable of or willing to take another person's life. Our deepest regrets, prayers and sympathy go out to the Tiller family during this terrible time."
Frank Morris, of NPR member station KCUR, has a report on All Things Considered from Wichita, Kansas with more reaction to Tiller's murder.
An excerpt from his report:
Roeder's 51 years old, and pretty well known around Kansas, at least on the front lines of the abortion issue. Some of his fellow anti-abortion activists say Roeder believes in "justifiable homicide". The Wichita Eagle found a website posting where he called Tiller " the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day", arguing that Tiller quote "needs to be stopped".
(Updated, 7:28 pm -- Little Rock police identified the soldier who was killed by a shooter at a Little Rock, Ark. military-recruiting center as 24-year old William Long of Conway, also in Arkansas, according to the Associated Press.
The man arrested as the shooter was said to have "political and religious motives," according to Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas. The original post is below.)
By Frank James
Tragic story today out of Little Rock, Ark. with the report of two young soldiers being shot at a military recruiting office, with one dead at the time of this posting.
Police inspect scene of a fatal shooting outside a military recruitment office in a Little Rock, Ark., shopping center Monday, June 1, 2009. AP Photo/Danny Johnston
Officials arrested a suspect but haven't released his name or those of the victims. Nor is there anything about a possible motive.
According to news reports, the two soldiers were freshly minted, just out of Army Basic Camp, and were at the recruiting station as part of an Army program which sends new soldiers back to their communities to talk up Army life.
An excerpt from the Associated Press:
Lt. Col. Thomas F. Artis of the Oklahoma City Recruiting Battalion, which oversees the Little Rock office, said the victims had just completed basic training and were not regular recruiters. He said they were serving two weeks in the Little Rock office.
As part of the Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program, the soldiers were sent to "talk to friends, folks in the local area. They can show the example, 'Here's where I was, and here is where I am,"' Artis said.
Artis said neither of the soldiers had been deployed for combat.
The irony, of course, is that many parents of new soldiers worry about them being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, not Little Rock.
Phil Spector was sentenced today for the killing of actress Lana Clarkson to 19 years to life, a sentence that means the 69-year old music producer will likely die in prison.
Phil Spector, center, watches jurors enter the courtroom with his attorney Doron Weinberg, left, before the verdict is read his trial in Los Angeles on Monday, April 13, 2009. AP Photo/Pool, Al Seib
Spector was among the recording industry's most important producers in the 1960s, creating his trademark "wall of sound" and producing one of the greatest hits of all time, the Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost that Loving Feeling." He also produced solo efforts by John Lennon and George Harrison, including Lennon's "Imagine" album.
Here's the Associated Press story:
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Music producer Phil Spector has been sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.
A Los Angeles judge sentenced Spector on Friday to 15 years to life for second-degree murder and four years for personal use of a gun. The judge is also ordering restitution payments.
A jury convicted the 69-year-old Spector in the fatal shooting of Clarkson at his home in 2003.
A man who's been serving a life sentence for the 1986 abduction and rape of a woman in Texas is now the 20th person since 2001 to be exonerated thanks to DNA testing in Dallas County.
The Dallas Morning News says Evans is also the 19th man in the county since 2001 to have been exonerated after being convicted due to "faulty eyewitness testimony." It says that when the victim was shown photos of suspects:
Dallas police officers "were leading and encouraging" her to pick Evans out of the photo lineup, said Mike Ware, who oversees the DA's conviction integrity unit. Officers were also "enthusiastically encouraging" after the woman selected Evans.
Convicted rapist and murderer, former soldier Steven Dale Green, is led from the court building by U.S. marshals after he was given a life sentence, Thursday May 21, 2009, in Paducah, Ky. AP Photo/ Daniel R. Patmore
By Frank James
Many Iraqis are reacting badly to the life sentence a jury decided to give Steven Green, the 24-year old former U.S. soldier convicted of raping and killing a 14-year old Iraqi girl and her family.
NPR correspondent J.J. Sutherland sends the following report from Baghdad:
Green was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Not good enough for many Iraqis. They wanted death.
In 2006 Green and three other soldiers went the home of Abeer Al-Janabi. They killed the girl's mother, father and sister. Then they gang raped a girl. After raping her Green shot her in the face. Then he set her body on fire to try and cover up the crime. The other three soldiers are already serving long sentences, but they are eligible for parole.
Salim Al-Jabbouri, a Sunni politician, said that in comparison to the crime itself, the sentence is nothing. He says Green should have been tried under Iraqi law and hanged.
Some ordinary Iraqis expressed disbelief that Green would be punished at all. It's just propaganda, they said, just a show.
Convicted sex offender Juan Martin under Miami bridge Greg Allen/NPR
By Frank James
Let's agree that convicted sex offenders elicit little to no sympathy from society generally. Their crimes, especially those committed against children, are among the most abhorrent society must confront.
Nevertheless, there's something profoundly troubling about dozens of convicted sex offenders living under a bridge in Miami because of laws forbidding them to live within so many feet of locations where children typically congregate. In Miami-Dade County, it's 2,500 feet.
NPR's All Things Considered this evening featured a report by Greg Allen on the existence of a Miami tent city of sex offenders.
A question asked by a state senator seems the most pertinent. In Allen's report, Sen. David Aronberg asks: "How is it that an army of angry homeless sex offenders who are roaming our streets, how does that make us safer? It does the opposite."
Aronberg wants to replace the confusion of county and city ordinances with a new state law that would create a single 1,500-foot restriction for sex offenders, making it more likely they could find real places to live, Allen reports.
Somali pirates were all the rage, at least in the headlines, just a few weeks ago.
The media have mostly moved on. But there's still the matter of the Somali teenager, the alleged leader of the band of pirates who boarded the Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean last month. He was indicted today by a federal grand jury in New York.
As the Associated Press reports:
Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse - the only pirate to survive the siege - has been jailed in Manhattan since he was captured on April 12 and flown to the United States to face what's believed to be the first U.S. piracy prosecution in more than a century.
He was expected to enter a plea later this week on charges of piracy, conspiracy, hostage-taking and brandishing a firearm on the high seas. He faces life in prison if convicted.
U.S. prosecutors have branded Muse the ringleader of a band of four pirates who provoked the deadly drama, while defense attorneys have insisted he's a bewildered teenager snatched from obscurity. He wept last month when his lawyers failed to convince a judge he was only 15 and should be tried as a juvenile.
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![Plaxico Burress.](http://media.npr.org/assets/blogs/thetwo-way/images/2009/09/plaxico-burress-goes-to-jail.jpg?s=3")
