ABC News Feb 2 2008

It's the blockbuster takeover bid in the Internet world: Microsoft's $45 billion bid to buy Yahoo. Microsoft is known for being aggressive, but this is the first time it has atempted a hostile takeover.

"Yahoo had been rebuffing Microsoft's overtures for the past year," said Kara Swisher, co-editor of AllThingsD.com for The Wall Street Journal. "When they refused to go along with Microsoft -- Microsoft took it public and took it hostile."



It is a maneuver that is somewhat unusual in the Internet world, which is generally thought of as being more collegial than other industries.

"You don't tend to try to do a hostile takeover in the Internet space because people just leave," Swisher said. "So it's very unusual Microsoft is attacking Yahoo in this way."

The reason for the move is simple: Microsoft is desperate to battle Google's dominance in search and in ads.

"Consumers don't realize that many of the results that search engines display to them are paid for by advertisers," said Dan Solomon, the CEO of Vermillion, an Internet strategies company based in Washington. "Advertisers spend millions and millions of dollars."

Last year Google made around $16 billion in advertising revenue, while Yahoo made only around $6 billion.

"Microsoft and Yahoo have fallen a long way behind in the search game," Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom said. "With every passing month we've seen Google's shares increase."

Even the word Google is in the dictionary -- "verb. to search for information on the Internet." So when a brand name becomes part of the lexicon, like Coke or Kleenex it makes you wonder whether another company ever really compete. Is Microsoft just too late in the game?

"The fact that they're offering such a bounty for Yahoo and their willingness to take that course of action is rolling the dice," said Ken Auletta, author of "World War: Microsoft and Its Enemies." "They're like Tom Brady trying to throw a touchdown pass."

If the deal goes through, Microsoft will gain a great brand, hundreds of millions of users and a perception that they're in the game. But before any deal goes through involving these Internet giants, federal regulators will scrutinize it very closely.

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A federal judge on Monday upheld a jury verdict finding Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church guilty of intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy for staging a protest at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder . Judge Richard Bennett of the US District Court for the District of Maryland rejected Westboro's argument that their activities enjoy absolute protection under the First Amendment:
This Court has held and continues to hold that the First Amendment does not afford absolute protection to individuals committing acts directed at other private individuals. The Supreme Court of the United States has specifically held that First Amendment protection of particular types of speech must be balanced against a state's interest in protecting its residents from wrongful injury...Maryland particularly recognizes a cause of action protecting its residents from intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from outrageous conduct. Maryland also recognizes a cause of action for invasion of privacy by intrusion upon seclusion when there is an unwarranted invasion of a person’s privacy which would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Bennett, however, reduced the jury award from $11 million down to $5 million, as the church does not have the financial ability to pay $11 million in damages.

Westboro and its leader, Rev. Fred Phelps, have staged several protests at military funerals in recent years. In 2006, President Bush signed into law the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act , prohibiting any demonstration within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of an entrance into the cemetery for one hour before and after a military funeral.

US Sen. Patrick Leahy , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Monday criticized a provision in the Bush administration's proposed $3 trillion FY09 budget that would fund the newly created Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) through the Department of Justice (DOJ) rather than through the National Archives and Records Administration as originally intended. OGIS was established under the OPEN Government Act of 2007 , signed by President Bush in December 2007. According to the CRS summary of the law, the Act:
Establishes within the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) an Office of Government Information Services to: (1) review compliance with FOIA policies; (2) recommend policy changes to Congress and the President; and (3) offer mediation services between FOIA requesters and administrative agencies as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. Authorizes the Office to issue advisory opinions if mediation has not resolved the dispute.
Leahy, who sponsored the OPEN Government Act along with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), said Monday that the FY09 budget indicates an intent to fund OGIS through the Justice Department . According to Leahy's statement :
Once again, the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress by removing the Office of Government Information Services from the non-partisan, independent office of the National Archives and Records Administration and moving it to the Department of Justice. The President signed legislation into law to establish the OGIS to respond to long outstanding FOIA requests. Now the President has repealed part of the law he signed just over a month ago. I will continue to work through the appropriations process to make sure that the National Archives and Records Administration has the necessary resources and funds to comply with the OPEN Government Act, and we will continue to work in Congress to make necessary reforms to the Freedom of Information Act.
One concern raised about maintaining the OGIS office under DOJ is that a conflict of interest would arise in cases where the DOJ is obligated to defend a government agency seeking to deny an FOIA request.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328745,00.html

Tornadoes Roar Across Southern U.S., Killing at Least 47, Injuring Hundreds

Wednesday, February 06, 2008


A funnel cloud prepares to lower to the ground as a tornado near Cordova, Tenn.

LAFAYETTE, Tenn. — Crews went door-to-door Wednesday searching debris for more victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped the roof off a shopping mall, pummeled mobile homes and blew apart warehouses as they tore across five states. At least 47 people were killed throughout the South.

The victims included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and three in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among those killed were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock. Hundreds more were injured.

The family died from trauma when their home "took a direct hit" from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.

"Neighbors and friends who were there said, 'There used to be a home there,"' Krout said.

Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old brother, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles northeast of Nashville. He died as Story and his wife tried to navigate debris-strewn roads in their pickup truck, they said.

"He never had a chance," Nova Story said. "I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me."

The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a rare spasm of winter weather that raged across the nation's midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primaries in several states. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

Before dawn Wednesday, the system moved on to Alabama, bringing heavy rains and gusty winds, causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham. Three people were killed when a reported twister struck Aldridge Grove, in the northern part of the state near Decatur, said Brenda Morgan, deputy emergency management director in Lawrence County.

An apparent tornado damaged eight homes in Walker County, Ala., and a pregnant woman suffered a broken arm when a trailer home was tossed by the winds, said county emergency management director Johnny Burnette.

"I was there before daylight and it looked like a war zone," he said.

Northeast of Nashville, a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station northeast of Nashville that authorities said could have been damaged by the storms. An undetermined number of people were reported dead.

Power was knocked out and the local hospital was running on generators. Only the emergency room had lights on.

Eight students were trapped in a battered dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., until they were finally freed. Tornadoes had hit the campus in the past, and students knew the drill when they heard sirens, said Union University President David S. Dockery.

At least two dormitories were destroyed. Dockery told NBC's "Today" that the drills and planning "saved those lives."

He said about 51 students were taken to the hospital and nine stayed through the night, but added "there are positive days ahead for them."

Well after nightfall Tuesday, would-be rescuers went through shattered homes in Atkins, a town of 3,000 near the Arkansas River. Around them, power lines snaked along streets and a deep-orange pickup truck rested on its side. A navy blue Mustang with a demolished front end was marked with spray paint to show it had been searched.

Outside one damaged home, horses whinnied in the darkness, looking up only when a flashlight reached their eyes. A ranch home stood unscathed across the street from a concrete slab that had supported the house where the family of three died.

Gov. Mike Beebe planned to tour Atkins on Wednesday.

In Memphis, high winds collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Debris that included bricks and air conditioning units was scattered on the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.

A few people north of the mall took shelter under a bridge and were washed away, but they were pulled out of the Wolf River with only scrapes, said Steve Cole of the Memphis Police Department.

In Mississippi, Desoto County Sheriff's Department Cmdr. Steve Atkinson said a twister shredded warehouses in an industrial park in the city of Southaven, just south of Memphis.

"It ripped the warehouses apart. The best way to describe it is it looks like a bomb went off," Atkinson said.

At the W.J. Matthews Civic Center in Atkins, a shelter was empty except for American Red Cross volunteers and a single touch-screen voting machine. The civic center had hosted an election precinct earlier Tuesday. Traffic was snarled on nearby Interstate 40, with tractor-trailers on their sides.

Officials do not know what started a fire at the Columbia Gulf Natural Gas pumping station near Green Grove, about 40 miles from Nashville. The blaze could be seen in the night sky for miles around, with flames shooting "400, 500 feet in the air," said Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Donnie Smith.

The couple killed with their adult daughter were in their mobile home near Greenville in western Kentucky when a tornado went through their trailer park.

On Jan. 8, tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Two died in the Missouri storms.

The $1.6 million legal malpractice claim against Duane Morris revolves in large part around whether a settlement agreement the firm helped its client reach should have provided security in the event the other side did not pay up, according to attorneys in the case.

In opening statements on Tuesday in Adlerstein v. Duane Morris, physicist Joseph K. Adlerstein's attorney, Clifford E. Haines, said Duane Morris was responsible for his client only receiving $200,000 of a $1.8 million settlement with SpectruMedix, the company he founded. And that $200,000, he said, ultimately went toward rising legal bills from Duane Morris. Haines is the name partner with Clifford E. Haines & Associates.

SpectruMedix had ousted Adlerstein from the company's three-member board, fired him and replaced him with another investor in July 2001, according to opening statements. That led to Adlerstein hiring Duane Morris attorneys out of the firm's Harrisburg, Pa., and Wilmington, Del., offices.

Duane Morris, through its attorney Nicholas M. Centrella of Conrad O'Brien Gellman & Rohn, said evidence would show that the settlement agreement would never have included security because SpectruMedix declined to guarantee payment. Centrella said the company, and its then-new investor Ilan Reich, would not agree to guarantee the settlement and Adlerstein still signed off on the deal.

The trial, expected to last about a week, is being held in Philadelphia's Commerce Court Program before Common Pleas Judge Howland W. Abramson. Seven women and one man make up the eight-member jury.

The jury did not hear in opening statements about the fee case that was brought by Duane Morris against Adlerstein when he did not pay all of the nearly $480,000 in legal fees generated by the firm's representation of him during trial against SpectruMedix and in subsequent settlement talks. That case, Duane Morris v. Adlerstein, was brought in 2003, about a year before Adlerstein filed his legal malpractice claim.

After a bench trial, then-Judge Gene D. Cohen had awarded Duane Morris $315,700 in legal fees to be paid by Adlerstein, according to an opinion in that case. That included the $280,000 that was remaining of the bill plus interest, Cohen said.

At opening statements in Adlerstein's case against the firm, Haines said his client was originally told by Duane Morris Harrisburg partner Scott Penwell -- who is no longer with the firm -- that the bills would probably be around $75,000. Centrella said testimony would show that never happened.

Prior to the start of the trial, Abramson ruled on a few motions in limine. He precluded any mention of Reich's prior felony conviction or other prior alleged conduct. Abramson said Haines' own expert did not note that Duane Morris should be held to a higher standard for its settlement negotiations when dealing with someone known to be a felon. Because the expert did not include a higher standard, the judge said he wasn't inclined to let the jury think it had to impose the higher standard after hearing that Reich was a convicted felon.

Adlerstein created what was ultimately known as SpectruMedix in 1991. The company made what Haines called DNA synthesizers.

Haines said that as with any startup, the public company went through its ups and downs over the years and Adlerstein was always looking for investors. The two board members other than Adlerstein had found a potential investor -- Reich -- but he had wanted the whole stake in the company, according to Haines.

On July 9, 2001, the two board members and Reich held a meeting to which they invited Adlerstein, he said. They told him that they issued new stock that would all go to Reich and Adlerstein was fired, according to Haines' opening statement.

Adlerstein went to corporate partner Penwell in Harrisburg who ultimately brought on a Duane Morris partner out of Wilmington who has since left the firm, litigator John Reed. SpectruMedix was incorporated in Delaware and a trial against the company was held in late 2001 before Vice Chancellor Stephen P. Lamb of the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Lamb ruled in favor of Adlerstein and gave him back control of his company, Haines said.

Lamb said, however, that he was troubled by the state of the company and its financial liability and asked the respective attorneys to propose recommendations for how the company could operate going forward, Haines said.

That request spawned mediation between the two sides. Haines said Adlerstein wanted nothing more than to keep his company, but he was getting pressure from Lamb and his attorneys to sign some sort of settlement agreement.

Adlerstein was being charged monthly, based on an hourly rate. At this point, his legal bills were about $480,000 and he had paid $65,000, according to Haines.

In February 2002, a handwritten agreement was created that said SpectruMedix would give Adlerstein $800,000 and a limited stake in the company. The agreement only needed to be formalized to go into effect, but Haines said Adlerstein started pressing his attorneys to be more specific in the agreement because they were dealing with Reich.

Centrella said in his opening statements that the deal provided for 15 percent interest in the company along with $800,000, but Adlerstein decided after he signed that he wanted to be able to independently sue the other two board members.

"As soon as the agreement was signed, Dr. Adlerstein had buyer's remorse," Centrella said.

On July 24, 2002, a second agreement was signed that provided for Adlerstein to be paid $1.2 million plus a salary of about $600,000 over five years, Haines said. Adlerstein was supposed to receive $200,000 immediately and another $200,000 every six months, Haines said.

He received the first payment, which he sent right to Duane Morris, and never received another payment from SpectruMedix.

Haines said Adlerstein couldn't sue SpectruMedix over the contract because the company would have filed for bankruptcy and Reich would have taken all of the remaining proceeds.

He said Reich declared liquidation in the fall of 2006 and sold the intellectual property behind the DNA synthesizers for $2.5 million.

"Reich got paid. Duane Morris got $200,000. Adlerstein got nothing," Haines said.

Centrella said the case is really about two decisions made by Adlerstein. The first was to reject the $800,000 settlement that did not need security because it included a promise to pay within five days, he said.

"He walked away from $800,000 cash," Centrella said.

The second mistake was to sign a settlement agreement that he knew did not provide him security, Centrella said.

Both Penwell and Reed are expected to testify in the case. Sitting at the defense table for Duane Morris was the firm's general counsel, Michael Silverman.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23037049/page/2/

Electronic searches at border prompt protests

Seizure of laptops, cameras and cellphones raising legal questions

The Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima

updated 3:59 a.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 7, 2008

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

Right to search?
Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, are filing a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by some two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, said officers do not engage in racial profiling "in any way, shape or form." She said that "it is not CBP's intent to subject travelers to unwarranted scrutiny" and that a laptop may be seized if it contains information possibly tied to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child ****ography or other criminal activity.

The reason for a search is not always made clear. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said it has tracked complaints from several members, including Udy, whose laptops have been seized and their contents copied before usually being returned days later, said Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE. Gurley said none of the travelers in the ACTE suit raised concerns about racial or ethnic profiling. And Gurley said none of the travelers were charged with a crime.

Copied log-on, password
"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

ACTE last year filed a Freedom of Information Act request to press the government for information on what happens to data seized from laptops and other electronic devices. "Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?" Gurley asked. "People are quite concerned. They don't want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going. It increases the anxiety level."

Udy has changed all her work passwords and no longer banks online. Her company, Radius, has tightened its data policies so that traveling employees must access company information remotely via an encrypted channel, and their laptops must contain no company information.

At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but "those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks," he said.

The U.S. government has argued in a pending court case that its authority to protect the country's border extends to looking at information stored in electronic devices such as a laptop without any suspicion of a crime. In border searches, it regards a laptop the same as a suitcase.

"It should not matter . . . whether documents and pictures are kept in 'hard copy' form in an executive's briefcase or stored digitally in a computer. The authority of customs officials to search the former should extend equally to searches of the latter," the government argued in the child ****ography case being heard by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

As more and more people travel with laptops, BlackBerrys and cellphones, the government's laptop-equals-suitcase position is raising red flags.

"It's one thing to say it's reasonable for government agents to open your luggage," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It's another thing to say it's reasonable for them to read your mind and everything you have thought over the last year. What a laptop records is as personal as a diary but much more extensive. It records every Web site you have searched. Every e-mail you have sent. It's as if you're crossing the border with your home in your suitcase."

If the government's position on searches of electronic files is upheld, new risks will confront anyone who crosses the border with a laptop or other device, warned Mark Rasch, a technology security expert with FTI Consulting and a former federal prosecutor. "Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded," he said. "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line."

Hollinger said customs officers "are trained to protect confidential information."

'Content of people's thoughts'
Shirin Sinnar, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, said that by scrutinizing the Web sites people search and the phone numbers they've stored on their cellphones, "the government is going well beyond its traditional role of looking for contraband and really is looking into the content of people's thoughts and ideas and their lawful political activities."

If conducted inside the country, such searches would require a warrant and probable cause, legal experts said.

Customs sometimes singles out passengers for extensive questioning and searches based on "information from various systems and specific techniques for selecting passengers," including the Interagency Border Inspection System, according to a Customs statement. "CBP officers may, unfortunately, inconvenience law-abiding citizens in order to detect those involved in illicit activities," the statement said. But the factors agents use to single out passengers are not transparent, and travelers generally have little access to the data to see whether there are errors.

Although Customs said it does not profile by race or ethnicity, an officers' training guide states that "it is permissible and indeed advisable to consider an individual's connections to countries that are associated with significant terrorist activity."

"What's the difference between that and targeting people because they are Arab or Muslim?" Cole said, noting that the countries the government focuses on are generally predominantly Arab or Muslim.

It is the lack of clarity about the rules that has confounded travelers and raised concerns from groups such as the Asian Law Caucus, which said that as a result, their lawyers cannot fully advise people how they may exercise their rights during a border search. The lawsuit says a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with Customs last fall but that no information has been received.

Kamran Habib, a software engineer with Cisco Systems, has had his laptop and cellphone searched three times in the past year. Once, in San Francisco, an officer "went through every number and text message on my cellphone and took out my SIM card in the back," said Habib, a permanent U.S. resident. "So now, every time I travel, I basically clean out my phone. It's better for me to keep my colleagues and friends safe than to get them on the list as well."

Udy's company, Radius, organizes business trips for 100,000 travelers a day, from companies around the world. She says her firm supports strong security measures. "Where we get angry is when we don't know what they're for."

[JURIST] A federal judge rejected an argument Wednesday by US Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) that an indictment against him unconstitutionally violated the Speech or Debate Clause , saying that Jefferson has "focused immunity" rather than "expansive immunity" under the clause. Jefferson had argued that grand jury testimony given by his staffers violated the Speech or Debate clause because the staffers spoke about Jefferson's former position on the House Ways & Means Committee and his involvement in trade issues. In August, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the FBI's conduct during an 18-hour raid of Jefferson's congressional offices was unconstitutional, finding the "compelled disclosure of privileged material to the Executive during execution of the search warrant" violated the Speech or Debate Clause because the FBI searched through privilege materials without giving Jefferson an opportunity to review the materials.

In June, Jefferson pleaded not guilty to charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act , including bribery, racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Jefferson is accused of accepting approximately $500,000 in bribes from numerous companies in the US and Africa and faces a maximum sentence of 235 years in prison if he is convicted on all counts. Jefferson's trial is currently scheduled to begin on February 28, but an appeal of Wednesday's ruling could delay the trial. Last January, former Jefferson aide Brett Pfeffer pleaded guilty to bribery charges for his role in the scheme.

By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Feb 9, 6:09 PM ET



BAGHDAD - A weeping Army soldier said Saturday at his murder trial that he can't remember firing the gun that killed an Iraqi civilian who had stumbled upon the hiding place where he and five other snipers were sleeping.

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Sgt. Evan Vela and several of his fellow snipers described the confused scene and their own exhaustion in the May shooting. Tears rolled down Vela's cheeks as he said in a hushed voice that he could not recall the exact moment he killed Genei Nasir al-Janabi.

"I don't remember pulling the trigger. I don't remember the sound of the shot," Vela said. "It took me a few seconds to realize that the shot came from my pistol."

The defense rested Saturday in the court-martial at Camp Victory in Baghdad. Vela is charged with murdering the civilian and planting an AK-47 automatic rifle on his body to make him look like an insurgent.

Vela and the other snipers testified that they were confused and exhausted after more than two days of trekking through rough terrain near Iskandariyah, a mostly Sunni Arab city 30 miles south of Baghdad.

They waded all night through swamps and canals, enduring such high temperatures that they were giving each other IVs to remain hydrated, they recounted. They had slept less than five hours in a 72-hour period.

On the morning of May 11, the six Army soldiers had gone to sleep inside their "hide" — a place where snipers can set up and observe targets without being seen. Then al-Janabi surprised them, they said.

After al-Janabi's son had come looking for his father and was then released by the snipers, Vela said, he heard the order to "shoot" given by Sgt. Michael A. Hensley.

Hensley, who was a staff sergeant at the time of the killing but was later demoted to sergeant, testified Friday that he ordered the man to lie on the ground and was searching him when he saw "military-aged men" who he thought were carrying weapons about 100 yards away.

Al-Janabi began yelling, Hensley said, and he ordered Vela to kill the man. That was the only way to ensure the safety of his men in hostile territory, Hensley testified.

Some soldiers corroborated the accounts of Vela and Hensley; others presented scenarios that did not match. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., who was a specialist at the time but had his rank reduced to private as part of his sentencing, said he saw no military-age men nearby, which contrasted with what Hensley recounted.

James Culp, Vela's attorney, called two medical experts Saturday to support his claim that Vela was so sleep deprived that he acted automatically after hearing an order to shoot from his commanding officer. They said he later lied about the events in part because he suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome.

Vela testified that after he shot al-Janabi, he tried to shoot him again because "he was convulsing on the ground and I thought he might be suffering."

"I just didn't want him to suffer. It was something I've never seen and I got a bit scared," Vela said.

The second shot missed the man.

Dr. Rosemary Carr Malone said that after examining Vela for 20 hours, she concluded he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder "to a reasonable degree of medical certainty."

Because of that, he immediately complied when military investigators allegedly told Vela in late June that he would not see his family again if he didn't tell them what they wanted hear, Culp said.

Culp also asked why the investigators did not record the interrogation or take notes, but instead relied on one of the two interrogators to write notes of Vela's statement into a computer.

Another defense witness, Dr. Dimitry Fomin, an Army lieutenant colonel and neurologist and specialist on sleep disorders, testified that severe sleep deprivation, such as that the snipers were enduring, caused deterioration of the reflexes and judgment.

Vela underwent sleep deprivation medical exams in Germany during the last week of January. Fomin said Vela exhibited the normal signs of a person not allowed to rest during a long period.

Hensley and Sandoval were acquitted of murder in al-Janabi's death and two other slayings, but they were convicted of planting evidence.

In addition to the rank reductions, Sandoval was sentenced to five months in prison and his pay was withheld. Hensley was sentenced to 135 days confinement and received a letter of reprimand.

Vela testified at Hensley's court-martial in late September, under a deal that bars his account of events from being used against him in this trial.

The soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military announced that five American soldiers were killed in two roadside bombings the day before. Four died in Baghdad and one in the northern Tamim province. At least 3,958 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In the city of Baqouba northeast of Baghdad, hundreds of U.S.-backed Sunni tribesman shut their offices and rallied in the streets. They demanded the resignation of a provincial police chief they accuse of sectarian bias.

The demonstration was organized by local Sunni fighters who left the insurgency to work with the Americans in ousting al-Qaida and other militants from their hometowns.

The men, whose patrols are credited with tamping down violence in their neighborhoods, have grown frustrated with the province's Shiite-dominated government. Some have been denied jobs in the Iraqi security forces, and they accuse Gen. Ghanim al-Qureyshi, the Shiite director general of police in Diyala province, of trying to maintain a Shiite majority in the department.

A spokesman for al-Qureyshi said the police chief did not want to comment on the protests.

Iraqi police arrested 31 Shiite activists in raids south of Baghdad on the third day of U.S.-Iraqi operations in an area that includes several Shiite holy cities.

The raids have raised tensions with some Shiite tribesmen and fighters who have pledged to halt attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month cease-fire for his Mahdi Army militia, but some members have broken away and violated the pledge, which expires later this month.

Fifteen of Saturday's arrests were in Karbala, a Shiite holy city 50 miles south of Baghdad. Sixteen others were arrested in a Sadrist area in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of the capital, police said.

____

Associated Press writers Lauren Frayer and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 43 minutes ago



CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt's highest civil court ruled Saturday that 12 Coptic Christians who had converted to Islam could return to their old faith, ending a yearlong legal battle over the predominantly Muslim state's tolerance for conversion.

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The court overturned an April 2007 ruling by a lower court that forbade the 12 Muslims from returning to Christianity on the grounds that Islamic law would consider that apostasy.

There is no Egyptian law against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition had taken precedent. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death — though the state has never ordered or carried out an execution on those grounds.

Judge Mohammed el-Husseini sidestepped the issue by saying the 12 should not be considered apostates since they were born Christian, said a judicial official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The judge also ordered the Ministry of Interior to list converts' former and current religious status on identification cards, which the government body had previously refused to do.

Mamdouh Nakhlah, a lawyer for the 12, described the ruling as "victory for human rights and freedom of religion in Egypt."

"This will open the door for many others to return to Christianity," Nakhlah told The Associated Press.

While lower courts have ruled in favor of conversions in the past, Saturday's ruling was the first in a high court. Government bodies have until now refused to recognize conversions away from Islam.

However, given the judge's reasoning that the men could convert because were born Christian, the ruling will not necessarily bring change for other Muslims who wish to convert. Most who convert practice their new religion quietly or leave the country.

Egyptian Christians can easily convert to Islam and many do so to obtain a divorce, which is prohibited by the conservative Coptic Church. But many change their minds or say they were converted against their will by a parent and want to become Christians again.

Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 76 million population and generally live in peace with the Sunni Muslim majority, though sectarian clashes do occasionally occur.

Two Thousand Seven Hundred Sixty-Four (2,764 ) Executions in Mexico Last Year


NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
Visit our website: http://www.nafbpo.org

Foreign News Report

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

Norte (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 2/9/08

In Chihuahua City, the state capital, Patricio Patino Arias, the Sub-Secretary for Strategic Intelligence for the "AFI" (Mex. Federal Investigations Agency) & the "Federal Preventive Police", said that 97% of victims of execution which take place in Mexico are related to organized crime. Following an increase this year in the murder of law enforcement officers of various federal, state & local agencies he asserted that these events were linked to drug or weapons trafficking or some other illegal activity linked to some cartel. He added that there were 2,764 executions in Mexico last year.
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El Imparcial (Hermosillo, Sonora) & El Universal (Mexico City) 2/9/08

The execution murder of the four local police officers in Navolato, Sinaloa (noted in yesterday's report) brought to 25 the number of law enforcement personnel who have died in that fashion in the state of Sinaloa in the last 13 months, including the case of the state's chief of investigations of the "Ministerial Police", who was riddled with 60 bullets a year ago in Culiacan.
In the equivalent period in the state of Chihuahua, 30 law enforcement officers have been murdered, 16 of them in Ciudad Juarez.
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El Informador (Guadalajara, Jalisco) 2/9/08

Thursday night on the Matamoros-Ciudad Victoria highway, state of Tamaulipas (note: this is just up and across the river from Brownsville, Texas) a Land Rover and a Hummer failed to stop when ordered by Mexican federal agents. A pursuit of about 18 miles began and included some firing from the vehicles being chased.
When stopped, the Land Rover (Florida license plate L47BA) was found to be carrying 2 AR15 rifles, 2 pistols, 13 clips, 249 rounds of ammunition, 6 cellular phones and 20,000 Colombian pesos. Two subjects were arrested.
A short while later the Hummer was found abandoned, but not empty. Inside: 29 packages of cocaine (size or weight not given), eight "communications radios", 12 grenades, 17 long barrel firearms, 20 handguns, 62 clips and 500 boxes of ammunition of various calibers, or some 25,000 rounds.
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El Porvenir (Monterrey, Nuevo Leon) 2/9/08

Officials of Mexico's "PGR" (their Dep't. of Justice) reported that 4,205 firearms, 706,170 rounds of ammunition and 518 (five hundred eighteen) grenades were confiscated in Mexico last year.
The states of Mexico with the highest organized crime activity were said to be Chihuahua, Michoacan, Jalisco, Tamaulipas and Sonora "due to the mobility of the Gulf and Sinaloa cartel members who have tried to find new markets for the consumption of drug."
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Frontera (Tijuana, Baja California) 2/9/08

The Tijuana police payroll system was recently changed. Instead of automatic deposits to a debit card, salaries are now paid by check, which requires all personnel to appear in person to sign for their check. While individuals assigned to special duties (escorts, body guards) or those temporarily handicapped were slow to collect their pay, some 200 checks remain unclaimed, leading officials to believe this new system filter may have detected a good number of "ghost" employees (note: called "aviators" or "parachutists" in local slang).
An investigation is under way.
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La Cronica de Hoy (Mexico City) 2/9/08

Tomas Gloria Requena, president of the "Agrarian Youth Vanguard", said that "more than" 350 thousand younger Mexicans fled to the neighboring country" last year and that it is alarming that they have to do so because of the lack of Mexican government support for younger field workers. He pointed out that the larger problem Mexico faces will be after the borde