December, 2006 News
Victim to be Reunited With Child
Minnie Bridgers
10 Dec 2006 11:58 am
Plans are underway for an emotional reunion between a rape victim and her 7-year-old daughter.
As early as this week, the pair could be together, again, for the first time since they were torn apart last month by a violent crime.
The little girl has been in foster care for about five weeks to give her mom time to heal from critical injuries she suffered during a brutal rape.
On November 5, the mother was attacked in her Cherokee County home by [a man], while her daughter ran to a closet to hide.
Investigators say [he] raped her, beat her in the head with the butt end of a shotgun, and threatened to rape her daughter, before the woman grabbed a butcher knife and fought back.
She stabbed him so many times; he died after a long struggle.
The woman was also stabbed about 25 times. While she continues to recover physically and emotionally, friends told 11Alive News she is focused on regaining custody of her daughter.
"Right now she's dealing with one thing only, getting her family back together before the holiday. Emotionally, she's still dealing with it," said Kim Chester, Victim's Friend.
The mother, whose name 11Alive News is not using because she is a rape victim, will have to complete a psychological evaluation before regaining custody of her daughter.
That evaluation could happen sometime this week.
Doctor hits out at govt drug policies
Annie Guest
08 Dec 2006 6:45 pm
MARK COLVIN: And as you heard, there's a link between the violence in emergency rooms, and drugs. And if there is a "war on drugs", as politicians often say there is, then its frontline is in the emergency wards of Australia's hospitals.
Now a senior emergency doctor has taken direct aim at the politicians.
Royal Adelaide Hospital's Dr David Caldicott says Federal and State Government drug policies are largely populist, and don't work.
He's told a Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform that there's no scientific evidence to support the war on drugs.
Afterwards, Annie Guest asked Dr Caldicott why he thought politicians approached the drug issue in the way they did.
DAVID CALDICOTT: I think they're turning to populist knee-jerk type policies, rather than looking at real issues that cause a reduction in the drug use, the drug harm and the number of deaths caused by drugs.
ANNIE GUEST: Well, if we take Federal Government policies, the Federal Government says its "tough on drugs policy" is working and it stands by strategies of policing and interdiction, saying that they've been highly successful in relation to, in particular, cannabis and heroin.
DAVID CALDICOTT: Well, you have to ask the question of course, whether or not the reduction in heroin use in Australia is in fact to do with policing or whether it's in fact to do with the reduction in supply in Australia.
If there was such a tremendous success in policing the heroin problem, why aren't we seeing similar decreases in, say, for example, the ecstasy problem.
We aren't, in fact we see the steady march of ecstasy in consumption, all around Australia.
Panel blasts Hastert in Foley scandal
LARRY MARGASAK
08 Dec 2006 6:43 pm
Former Rep. Mark Foley was described as a "ticking time bomb" for his sexual come-ons to male pages, but Republican lawmakers and aides for a decade failed to protect the teenagers vulnerable to his advances, the House ethics committee concluded Friday. Despite that finding, the panel said no rules had been broken and no one should be punished.
The committee harshly criticized Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., saying the evidence showed he was told of the problem months before he acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former Louisiana page. It rejected Hastert's contention that he couldn't recall separate warnings from two House Republican leaders.
Overall, the evidence shows that "concerns began to arise about Rep. Foley's interactions with pages or other young male staff members" shortly after he took office in 1995, according to the committee report.
The report, prepared by a four-member subcommittee, described "a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Foley's conduct."
Lawmakers and aides "failed to exercise appropriate diligence and oversight" regarding the interactions between Foley and pages, the report said.
Although the committee recommended no punishments, it said the evidence would have subjected Foley to discipline if the Florida Republican had not resigned — taking himself out of the House's jurisdiction.
Foley received a subpoena, but his lawyer notified the committee the former lawmaker would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights if compelled to testify. The committee dropped the matter to avoid delays.
Speculating on the reason for Republicans' reluctance to act, the committee said: "Some may have been concerned that raising the issue too aggressively might have risked exposing Rep. Foley's homosexuality.... There is some evidence that political considerations played a role in decisions that were made by persons in both parties."
Judge weighs torture claim vs. Rumsfeld
MATT APUZZO
08 Dec 2006 6:02 pm
A federal judge on Friday appeared reluctant to give Donald H. Rumsfeld immunity from torture allegations, yet said it would be unprecedented to let the departing defense secretary face a civil trial.
"What you're asking for has never been done before," U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan told lawyers for the
American Civil Liberties Union.
The group is suing on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lawsuit contends the men were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.
If the suit were to go forward, it could force Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.
Rumsfeld, who leaves the Defense Department on Dec. 18, told Pentagon employees and reporters Friday that the day he learned about abuses at Abu Ghraib was his worst day in office.
"I remember being stunned by the news of the abuse at Abu Ghraib," Rumsfeld said. "And then watching so many determined people spend so many months trying to figure out exactly how in the world something like that could have happened, and how to make it right."
Lawyers for the ACLU and Human Rights First, however, argue that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional rights of prisoners.
Foreigners outside the United States are not normally afforded the same protections as U.S. citizens, and Hogan said he was wary about extending the Constitution across the globe.
3 dead, 80 at large after Cancun prison riot
Associated Press
08 Dec 2006 1:43 pm
About 1,000 prisoners rioted in a state penitentiary early Friday, overpowering guards with knives and bats. Guards fired their weapons, killing three inmates, said Red Cross official Ricardo Portugal, who received the bodies.
Hundreds of state and federal police and soldiers rushed to the prison and had most of the facility under control later Friday morning, but gangs of prisoners still roamed free in some areas.
Groups of prisoners stood on the penitentiary roof holding bats and stones and carrying banners with slogans such as "No more deaths."
Prison director Juvenal Reyes said authorities had sent a negotiator, but prisoners had refused to talk with him.
The prisoners began fighting the guards to stop a transfer of 40 inmates, including alleged prison gang leader Marcos Gallegos, to a penitentiary in the city of Chetumal, 380 kilometers (235 miles) south, Reyes said. Gallegos is serving 17 years for the rape of minors, he said.
More than 150 prisoners escaped during the clashes, but about 70 were recaptured later Friday morning, Reyes said. Police were searching residential houses near the prison to find those still at large.
Several guards and prisoners were injured in the clashes.
Traveler risk system may violate ban
MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
08 Dec 2006 3:44 am
Officials are debating whether the Homeland Security Department's computerized risk assessments of international travelers violate a specific ban that Congress imposed on the agency's spending for the past three years.
Members of Congress and privacy advocates questioned the legality of the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, risk assessments that have been assigned to millions of Americans and foreigners who entered or left the United States over the past four years.
"It clearly goes contrary to what we have in law," Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., said in an interview Thursday. He said ATS is the kind of computerized risk assessment "we have been trying to prohibit."
Department spokesman Russ Knocke said Congress had been informed many times since 2003 that ATS was being used to assess people.
Jayson P. Ahern, assistant commissioner of customs and border protection, told the AP all that passenger data is analyzed by ATS. Data on rail and some land travelers also have been assessed, he said.
ATS has operated with little public notice or understanding until a description was published last month in the Federal Register, a fine print compendium of federal rules.
The Homeland Security Department's notice said people could not see their assessments or directly challenge them. It plans to keep the assessments for 40 years and share data with state, local and foreign governments for hiring, contracting, licensing and other decisions. In some instances, data could be shared with courts and private contractors.
Sabo, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, wrote into the agency's spending bills the ban on computerized passenger risk assessments. For the past three budget years, the legislation has said no funds from the appropriations bill could be used to develop or test computerized data-mining tools "assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists."
"There is growing concern in Congress that this program invites abuse, and that the administration is plowing ahead with it in apparent violation of the law," said Leahy, a member of the counterpart subcommittee in the Senate and incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Deputy who fired had done so before
Matthew Eisley
08 Dec 2006 3:14 am
One of the New Hanover County deputies thought to have shot and killed college student Peyton Strickland in a police raid last week shot two teenage drug dealers five years ago during a confrontational traffic stop.
Cpl. Christopher Long, 34, said after the February 2001 shooting that the driver, Gregory Donnell Miller, 17, was trying to run over him, but Miller later denied it. Long shot him and his friend inside the car, Terry Lamar Green, 18.
Miller and Green were wounded.
The county's then-district attorney decided not to bring charges against Long after reviewing a State Bureau of Investigation report on the incident. He refused to release the report.
A jury convicted Miller of assault with a deadly weapon (the car) on a law enforcement officer. He and Green were convicted of possessing marijuana with the intent to sell it. Green later died in what police said was a drug-related shooting.
Following standard procedure, New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey has put Long and two other officers on paid leave while the SBI investigates the Dec. 1 shooting death of Strickland, a Durham native who was attending Cape Fear Community College.
Long, a full-time member of the sheriff's heavily armed Emergency Response Team, was most recently assigned to provide security in New Hanover public schools, Causey said. The 10-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office is paid $43,323 a year, Causey said.
State and local authorities have not yet explained exactly what happened during the raid of Strickland's home off Long Leaf Acres Drive in Wilmington or why the unarmed student was shot.
Experts: How US 'gag rule' is killing women
Stephen Leahy
08 Dec 2006 1:47 am
While world attention has focused on the HIV/Aids pandemic, public health experts say that United States political interference and declining financial support for family planning, abortion and prevention of other sexually transmitted infections has contributed to shockingly high death and disability rates in developing countries.
Approximately 500,000 women die each year of causes related to pregnancy, abortion and childbirth, 99% of them in developing countries, according to the World Health Organisation.
"These deaths would not be tolerated in other circumstances," says Dorothy Shaw, senior associate dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Countries are failing in their responsibilities and promises to fund sexual and reproductive health programmes, including supporting universal access to contraception, Shaw says. Contraception alone would dramatically reduce abortion rates, she says.
"More than 68,000 women die every year from back-alley or self-induced abortions," notes Janie Benson, vice-president of research and evaluation at Ipas, an NGO focused on increasing women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and preventing unsafe abortions worldwide.
"We need governments to decide that women's lives are worth saving," Benson says.
Changes in US policy could make a substantial contribution to improving the sexual and reproductive lives of people worldwide, according to a series of six reports coordinated by the World Health Organisation and being published in the British medical journal Lancet this week.
False values to blame for ineffective drug policy
08 Dec 2006 12:00 am
"War on Drugs" is
Deep in error;
Much akin to
"War on Terror."
Cliff Thornton, the recent Green Party candidate for governor, is a man of commendable substance and character. One of his seminal comments during the campaign was "We've got to understand that the drug war is meant to be waged, not won."
Others have said much the same about the war on terror, and all are right, but the election showed the public might at least have caught the drift about terrorism. Not so about drugs. Voters still seem ready to punish politicians who seem to be "soft."
This faulty faith in an incarceration ideology, promoted especially by the prison-industrial complex, is painfully damaging to society.
Take Hartford. New research has found one child in six there has a parent in jail. Very few of these got sentenced for stock fraud or embezzlement. White-collar criminals are from the suburbs, and mostly they just get fines and probation. The heavy sentences are reserved for drugs and related crimes. Indeed, there exists a kind of puritanical belief those of us who maintain freedom from such substances will vouch safe a place for ourselves in heaven, as long as we persecute those who have fallen.
Drug laws purposely are drawn to punish blacks and Latinos with especial harshness. Not coincidentally, we also tie in restrictions on their right to vote. In some states, there is a lifetime prohibition.
Yes, there have been improvements. While our state still over-punishes for cocaine possession, at least it's now equal for blacks and whites. Penalties used to differ greatly for possession of crack cocaine (cheaper to buy) and the powder (expensive). Eleven states - not us - also allow medical marijuana use, though the feds are thrilled to jump in and arrest sufferers anyway. And California widely offers treatment instead of jail. Still, the drug war nationally continues to fuel crime syndicates, destroy families, and breed corruption here and in Mexico.
That's a heavy price to pay for a false religion.
Medical Use of Marijuana Divides Italy
Francesca Colombo
08 Dec 2006 12:00 am
In Italy just 10 ill people have authorisation to use marijuana as therapy against pain. But that number could grow in the coming months if parliament approves a law for using this usually illegal plant for medical purposes.
Federico Fantoni, 58, is a doctor -- and a quadriplegic. For the past eight years he has used a wheelchair and suffers pain in his arms due to muscle contraction caused by his illness. To fight the pain he tried all possible medications, including opium patches, but he couldn't stand the side effects.
After learning more about the therapeutic use of marijuana (Cannabis sativa), he decided to try it. "In five hours I didn't feel any discomfort," he said in testimony for the Italian Association for Therapeutic Cannabis.
That group is part of the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine, whose objective is to improve the legal framework around the world for utilising marijuana and its pharmacological components in therapeutic applications.
The bill in Italy to legalise medical use of marijuana, presented in October by the Council of Ministers, prompted reactions in favour and against among politicians, experts and citizens.
Those opposed to medical marijuana doubt its therapeutic effects, warn about a potential increase in general use of the drug, and are calling for lawmakers to vote against the bill.
According to official figures, there are three million marijuana users in Italy, who are allowed to possess one gram for personal use. Because of the drug's psychotropic properties, and because some see its use as a gateway to more dangerous drugs, consumption of marijuana is banned in most countries.
But alternative medical clinics and patients with incurable diseases defend its use, pointing to its properties for alleviating pain.
"Doctors don't know much about the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. It has never been included in pharmacology. Italy is one of the countries lagging farthest behind in Europe when it comes to alternative cures, but we already have cases of ill people who discovered it and assure that they live better," Pietro Moretti, a consultant for the Association for the Rights of Users and Consumers, told Tierramérica.
