New Orleans mayor asks feds to review city police force

New Orleans, Louisiana (News Today) - The new mayor of New Orleans has asked the Justice Department to review the city's embattled police department.

In a letter sent Wednesday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked Attorney General Eric Holder to assign a team from the department's civil rights division to help the city address and prevent police misconduct.

"I have inherited a police force that has been described by many as one of the worst police departments in the country," Landrieu says in the letter.

"It is clear that nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans," it says. "The police force, the community, our citizens are desperate for positive change."

Landrieu, the brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, took office Monday and met with Justice Department officials Wednesday. A detailed plan for a partnership between federal officials and police is still in the works, mayor spokesman Ryan Berni said.

On Thursday, Landrieu also announced he had tapped a new police superintendent, current Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas, to lead reforms. Landrieu said Serpas, a New Orleans native with a track record of reducing violent crime, was the candidate who was "best prepared to turn around the NOPD and start delivering results on day one."

There are at least eight federal civil rights investigations of New Orleans Police Department officers, FBI Special Agent Sheila Thorne told CNN. She declined to provide further details because the investigations are ongoing.

Federal prosecutors have investigated several New Orleans police officers involved in a shooting on the Danziger Bridge four days after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005.

Two civilians were killed in that shooting -- a 19-year-old man and a severely disabled 40-year-old man. Four people were hurt.

Four former city police officers pleaded guilty in federal court to charges relating to the shooting and to an alleged cover-up of the incident. Former officer Robert Barrios pleaded guilty in April to a charge he failed to report a cover-up. His plea came after guilty pleas from three other former New Orleans police officers: Michael Lohman, Jeffrey Lehrmann and Michael Hunter.

The mayor said in his letter that most officers "honor their commitment to protect and serve each day," but an independent investigation must evaluate the department.

"The force itself has been dealt a demoralizing blow with investigations, indictments and resignations stemming from incidents in the days following Hurricane Katrina," the mayor's letter says.

Investigations of city police by the Justice Department are not uncommon, but cities themselves rarely initiate them, according to Merrick Bobb, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center in Los Angeles.

Washington, D.C., officials took a similar approach in 1999 when they asked the Justice Department to investigate whether city police were using excessive force, he said.

"I think it reflects very well on Mayor Landrieu that one of the first things he is doing is attending to the problems of the New Orleans Police Department, which for many years has been considered one of the most troubled police departments in the United States," he said.

Working with federal officials will help close the "chapter of corruption" that has plagued police, said Melanie Talia, chief executive officer of the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation.

"Civil rights violations are not the norm, but they obviously have occurred. The Department of Justice will be here to help us weed those out and put an end to it," she said.

Peter Scharf, a criminology professor at Tulane University who helped advise the mayor on his search for a new police superintendent, said officials must make significant cultural changes within the police department, including improving legal ethics and regaining the community's trust.

"People are more afraid of the police than they are of the criminals, and we have really scary criminals," he said.

More than a decade before Katrina hit, federal officials stepped in to investigate New Orleans police corruption in a wide-reaching probe that led to the arrest and prosecution of a dozen officers.

A federal jury convicted former New Orleans police Officer Len Davis and sentenced him to death in 1996 for ordering a hit on a woman after she filed a civil rights complaint against him.

Davis' arrest came after an undercover FBI operation, dubbed "Shattered Shield," which also revealed that police were extorting from drug dealers and engaging in other corrupt activities, according to an account on the website of the FBI's New Orleans division.

A dozen officers were arrested and prosecuted after the investigation, and then-Chief of Police Richard Pennington worked to improve police ethics education with the Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Marine Corps and the Louisiana State Police, the FBI website says.

But Landrieu's letter said "malfeasance by members of the Police Department" has persisted.

He told reporters in New Orleans that a partnership with the federal government fits with his goal of protecting city residents.

"This is about examining patterns and practices, thinking about excessive force, dealing with internal affairs and basically to engage in what I would consider to be transformational, systemic reform," he said.

Source : CNN

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Mom, 4-year-old rescued by swim coach, floating ottoman

(News Today) - More than 30 people have died in historic flooding in the Southeast. Neelyann Sheucraft and her 4-year-old daughter barely escaped being among them.

On Saturday, Sheucraft, a college teacher, was sitting on the couch in her Nashville, Tennessee, home, grading papers.

The rain was hitting her windows so loudly, she briefly looked up. "Wow, that's pretty fierce," she thought and went back to grading.

A few minutes later, Sheucraft heard water lapping against her house. She told her daughter, Lowell Ann, to stay put and jumped up to look outside. Her Nissan Altima was halfway underwater. She called her parents.

"'Oh, my God, this is it. My house is going to flood," she said.

"A few minutes later, the water came gushing in -- through the vents or any openings there were, I'm not sure where it was all coming in from. But the water was rising and rising and rising."

Sheucraft called 911. The operator told her to get to the highest point in the one-story house. That meant climbing on the kitchen counter.

The 38-year-old mother's adrenaline was pumping. She picked up her daughter, their two small dogs and Lowell Ann's favorite baby dolls and sat them on the kitchen counter. She then went for the attic door, trying to yank it open.

"I told Lowell Ann to be good and not to move, to hold the dogs and her dolls tight," she recalled. "She said to me after some time passed, 'Mommy, 911 is going real slow.' "

Sheucraft pried open the attic door and grabbed her daughter, the dogs, the dolls and her cell phone. She began dialing as many people as she could. She talked to her parents, who were frantically trying to call anyone they knew who could help get their daughter out.

On a hill above Sheucraft's low-lying dead-end street, neighbors were trying to work in the downpour.

"We started getting canoes out of our garages, and some of us had Jon Boats," Brian Mitchell said. "We knew that when rescue workers got there, they would need help. The current, it was so strong. It was going to take a lot of people working together."

Word that Sheucraft and her daughter were trapped reached longtime friend John Morse, a swimming coach. She said he drove to the neighborhood, parked his truck where the water was relatively low and, risking his life, dived in.

When Morse reached the house, he shouted for Sheucraft and helped her out of the attic, she said. They grabbed a floating ottoman and told Lowell Ann to lie down on it. The little girl clutched a duffel bag, with the dogs peeking out.

"I told her, 'This is going to be really scary, and it will be like nothing you've seen before, but Mommy is going to be right beside you. It's going to be OK,' " Sheucraft said.

They got out of the house, and the current hit them hard. "It was stronger than any ocean," Sheucraft said. "I didn't think I could make it very long."

Mitchell and the neighbors were readying the canoes and setting out with rescue workers. When everyone spotted the floating ottoman, rescue workers tied it off to the only thing not underwater and pulled everyone to safety.

It was a happy ending, despite the destruction of a home and thousands in repair bills. Many others in the area have not been as fortunate. As more rain is predicted for hardest-hit Nashville, authorities said that 21 people have died in Tennessee, six in Mississippi and four in Kentucky.

On Sunday, a woman in Linden, Tennessee, watched her husband and daughter drown.

Bobby Qualls had saved his son from the rushing water in their backyard, but when he went back to try to save his daughter, Kylie, they were both swept away.

"From his neck up, he was staring at me. He didn't say anything, just staring at me," Sherry Qualls told CNN affiliate WSMV. "She was screaming for her daddy to help her, and then by the time the rescue squad got her, I didn't see them anymore."

In addition to the gut-wrenching stories of lost lives are the tales of people who have lost everything they own.

On Wednesday, Hands On Nashville volunteer Jefferson Dorsey and a crew went to a trailer park in southern Antioch. During the flood, neighbors realized that an elderly man who lived there was missing, and they boated to his home.

They found him sitting in his easy chair in chest-deep water, Dorsey said. He had apparently suffered a stroke before the flood and couldn't move. The neighbors saved him.

"It was absolutely heartbreaking to dismantle his entire life," Dorsey said. "We saved what we could, but he has very little left. He hasn't been well enough to come home and see the destruction."

Laura Mitchell, Brian Mitchell's wife, said the couple has hosted four families and numerous pets in their house since the weekend. A family friend has been delivering food for everyone. But the situation is not sustainable.

"We seem to be running out of water," Laura Mitchell said. "When you turn on the water, the pipes shake. Everyone in the city has been ordered not to use water unless it's an emergency. I haven't had a shower in four days.

"This is frightening for so many people," she said. "I don't know how much longer this city can do without real help."

Source : CNN

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NFL Hall of Famer charged in rape case

(News Today) - Hall of Fame football linebacker Lawrence Taylor was charged Thursday with rape and patronizing a prostitute in a case involving a 16-year-old girl, police in Ramapo, New York, said.

Taylor's attorney said the former New York Giants star denied the charges and will fight them.

"My client did not have sex with anybody. Period," Arthur Aidala said, adding: "Lawrence Taylor did not rape anybody."

Taylor appeared at an afternoon court hearing where a judge set bail at $75,000. Taylor was not asked to enter a plea and left the courthouse after posting bail.

Seeing television cameras outside the courthouse, Taylor said, "I'm not that important" as he walked away.

Taylor, 51, was arrested in a Holiday Inn room a few hours after the alleged rape took place, according to Christopher St. Lawrence, the town supervisor and police commissioner in Ramapo, about 30 miles northwest of New York City.

Police Chief Peter Brower said Taylor was charged with third-degree rape, a felony, for allegedly engaging in sexual intercourse with someone younger than 17. Taylor also was charged with third-degree patronization for allegedly paying the underage victim $300 to have sex, Brower said.

According to Brower, the rape charge carries a possible four-year prison term, and the patronization charge, a misdemeanor, could bring up to a year in prison.

Asked whether Taylor knew that the victim was underage, Brower said "ignorance is not an excuse" for having sex with a minor.

Aidala said after the bail hearing that Taylor "is denying and preparing to fight each and every one of those charges."

Aidala said that "no violence, no force, no threat, no weapons" was involved in the case. He noted that the rape charge against Taylor was for consensual sex with a minor and said Taylor denied it.

St. Lawrence and Brower said the alleged victim, since March a runaway from New York's Bronx borough, was allegedly brought to Ramapo by a pimp on Wednesday night.

When the pimp and the girl returned to New York early Thursday, she texted an uncle who notified the New York police, St. Lawrence said.

New York police arrested the pimp and called Ramapo police, and Taylor was arrested in his hotel room at around 4 a.m., according to St. Lawrence.

The alleged victim had facial injuries that police determined occurred before she entered the Holiday Inn room, St. Lawrence said.

Detective Lt. Brad Weidel said police knocked twice on Taylor's hotel door and identified themselves before entering the room. Weidel and St. Lawrence said Taylor was cooperative with authorities.

Taylor was a 10-time All-Pro linebacker for the New York Giants from 1981 to 1993 after earning All American honors at the University of North Carolina.

A punishing tackler and pass rusher known by his initials "L.T.," he was on two Super Bowl champion teams and was inducted into the National Football League's Hall of Fame, which noted that he "redefined the way the outside linebacker position was played."

However, Taylor was twice suspended by the NFL for substance abuse and battled a cocaine addiction long after retirement, resulting in several arrests and a downward spiral that he chronicled in a 2003 autobiography.

After kicking drugs, he worked as a sports commentator and appeared as a contestant on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" in 2009. Taylor and his dance partner on the program, Edyta Sliwinska, were eliminated in the seventh week of competition.

Brower said that police found a bottle of alcohol in Taylor's hotel room but that Taylor showed no sign of inebriation. Brower said that no drugs were found in the room.

Mark Lepselter, Taylor's agent, said Taylor was very upset about the charges against him.

"He's worked very hard over the last 12 years to change perceptions about him," Lepselter said.

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Abandoned truck on bridge not a threat, NYPD says

New York (News Today) - Authorities reopened the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, formerly known as Triborough Bridge, early Thursday morning after determining that a moving truck abandoned on it did not pose a threat.

Police closed off the bridge for about two and a half hours in both directions after being made aware of the incident around 10 p.m. Wednesday.

The department's bomb squad was called to the scene after a toll booth operator who approached the U-Haul truck smelled a strong odor of gasoline, said Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.

Police X-rayed the truck, then examined it thoroughly -- including cutting a hole in the side of the truck to see whether it had an explosive device.

"There's no explosive devices of any kind on any part of the vehicle," he said.

Police will now move the truck to reopen the bridge to traffic.

"When the bridge authority officer smelled the gasoline and saw the driver running from the vehicle, all traffic on the bridge was taken off and the bridge itself was closed in all directions," Browne said.

The truck was headed to Manhattan from the Bronx when the driver abandoned it about 1,000 feet from a toll booth and ran off, witnesses told police.

Browne described the driver as a man in dark clothing carrying a white bag.

The bridge earned its former name -- Triborough -- because it connects three of New York's five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

The city has been on edge since Saturday night, when a man unsuccessfully tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

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Pakistan is 'epicenter of Islamic terrorism'

New York (News Today) - The suspect in the Times Square bombing attempt was caught as he was seeking to flee to Pakistan, a nation that analyst Fareed Zakaria calls the "epicenter of Islamic terrorism."

"It's worth noting that even the terrorism that's often attributed to the war in Afghanistan tends to come out of Pakistan, to be planned by Pakistanis, to be funded from Pakistan or in some other way to be traced to Pakistan," said Zakaria. He added that Pakistan's connection with terrorist groups goes back decades and has often been encouraged by that nation's military for strategic reasons.

Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old naturalized citizen of Pakistani descent, had recently been trained in bomb making in Pakistan's Waziristan province, according to a federal complaint filed in court Tuesday. CNN reported Tuesday that Faisal Shahzad's father is a retired vice-marshal in the Pakistani Air Force.

Shahzad was arrested around 11:45 p.m. ET Monday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport just before he was to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, by way of Dubai.

Zakaria, author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," spoke to CNN on Tuesday. Here is an edited transcript:

CNN: Based on what we know so far, what lessons can be learned from this incident?

Fareed Zakaria: This does not seem to be part of a larger and more organized effort to penetrate the United States. That doesn't mean such efforts are not under way....it does make you realize just how open we are as a country and how open we are as a society. There is always a level of vulnerability that comes from being an open society and this guy, Mr. Shahzad obviously took advantage of that openness.

CNN: Apparently he traveled to Pakistan on a number of occasions. Does that signal that Pakistan isn't vigilant enough about terrorism?

Zakaria: Well it certainly signals something that we have known for a while, which is that Pakistan is the epicenter of Islamic terrorism. ... The British government has estimated that something like 80 percent of the terror threats that they receive have a Pakistani connection.

So there's no question that Pakistan has a terrorism problem. It has radical groups within the country that have the ability to recruit people and have access to resources that makes for a very combustible mixture.

It should remind us that even when looking at the war in Afghanistan, ultimately the most important place where jihadis are being trained and recruited is not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. And there's no other part of the world where you have quite the same concentration of manpower, resources and ideology all feeding on each other.

CNN: What feeds the ideology that drives the terror effort?

Zakaria: Pakistan has been conducive to this kind of jihadis for a number of reasons. For the last three or four decades, the Pakistani government, the Pakistani military has supported, funded many of these groups in a bid to maintain influence in Afghanistan, in a bid to maintain an asymmetrical capacity against India -- in other words, to try to destabilize India rather cheaply through these militant groups rather than frontally through its army.

So it has found it useful to have these militant groups and to support them. It has always assumed that these groups will not attack Pakistanis and therefore was not a threat to Pakistan itself. And to a large extent that's true, these groups by and large have attacked people in Afghanistan, India, in the West but not in Pakistan. But that is changing, because these groups are so intermingled and often sufficiently ideological, and also because the Pakistani military is beginning to take them on.

But fundamentally the reason this has gone on is that there has been a policy of the Pakistani state and particularly the Pakistani military, to encourage these groups, to fund them, to ignore their most pernicious activities. And some of it goes back even further than four decades. In the 1965 war against India, the Pakistanis used Islamic jihadis...

And the great hope now is that finally the Pakistani government is getting serious about this. Frankly it remains a hope.

CNN: Why do you say that it's only a hope?

Zakaria: Over the last few years, it appears that the Pakistani government has begun to understand that these groups all meld together, that they are a threat to a stable and viable modern Pakistani state. But when I talk about the Pakistani government you have to realize that there are different elements in it.

The Pakistani civilian government really does understand the danger that Islamic terrorism poses to Pakistan, but the civilian government in Pakistan appears quite powerless. Most power lies with the military.

The military in Pakistan has a somewhat more complex attitude. It does believe that these militants have gone too far. It does believe that it has to take on the militants. And it has actually battled them quite bravely over the last few years.

CNN: So what's the reason for thinking the military supports militant groups?

Zakaria: It still holds within it the view that at the end of the day, the United States will leave the region and that they will have to live in a neighborhood which will have a very powerful India and an Afghanistan that is potentially a client state of India's -- and that in order to combat this Indian domination, they need to maintain their asymmetrical capabilities, their militant groups.

It is interesting to note that Ahmed Rashid, who may be the most respected Pakistani journalist, has reported on the way in which Pakistani government has thwarted and put obstacles in the way of any kind of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The message it has sent to the Afghan government is very clear. If you want to have any negotiations with the Taliban, you have to understand that since we are the critical intermediary -- since the Taliban leadership all lives in Pakistan -- the Pakistani military's terms to the Afghan government are, we want you to push back on Indian influence in Afghanistan, we want you to shut down Indian consulates in various Afghan cities.

In other words, the Pakistani government is still obsessed with the idea of an Indian domination of the region, and they're using their influence with the Taliban to try to counter Indian influence. This is the old game that the Pakistanis have played.

That's what makes me skeptical that there's been a true strategic revolution in Pakistan... There are still people who believe that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists, and some you can work with to further Pakistan's goals.

CNN: In the attempted car bombing in Times Square and the Christmas Day attempted bombing, you have two failed plots that don't appear to be highly sophisticated. Does that tell us anything about the terror groups?

Zakaria: At some level, that tells you about the weakness of the terror groups. You do not have highly organized terrorist groups with great resources and capacity that are able to plan spectacular acts of terrorism the way they were in the 1990s and on 9/11.

What you have now are more isolated, disorganized lone rangers and while they're obviously very worrying and one has to be extremely vigilant, it is also at some level a sign of the weakness of an organization like al Qaeda that it is not able to do the kind of terrorist attacks it used to.

To be sure, it's important to be very vigilant and make sure you have groups like al Qaeda on the run. But I don't know that in a free society, you will ever be able to prevent an individual with no background in terrorism who's broken no laws and is radicalized from attempting to make some kind of trouble.

Source : CNN

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Suspect in UVA student's death had previous arrest By the CNN Wire Staff

(News Today) - The suspect in the killing of a University of Virginia student was arrested in a 2008 incident in which he threatened a police officer and was shocked with a stun gun, according to a police statement.

George Huguely, 22, was arrested hours after a roommate found Yeardly Love's body in her off-campus apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Monday morning.

Huguely, who was also a UVA student until resigning after his arrest, and Love played on the men's and women's lacrosse teams, respectively.

CNN affiliate WDBJ got a police statement recounting an encounter between an intoxicated Huguely and Lexington, Virginia, Police Officer R.L. Moss.

Affidavit: Lacrosse player killed in fight after breakup

According to the statement, Moss came across Huguely as he stumbled into traffic outside of a fraternity house at Washington and Lee University in Lexington.

After ignoring the officer's calls to stop, Huguely was approached by Moss who, after speaking with Huguely, decided to arrest him for public drunkenness, the statement says.

At that point, Huguely started making threats, including death threats, against the officer, according to the statement.

"He became more aggressive, more physical towards me, started to calling me several other terms that I'm not going to state now," she told WDBJ.

Moss got into a brief "tussle" with Huguely before resorting to her stun gun to get him under control, the statement says.

At a court hearing the next month, Moss wrote she was surprised to learn that Huguely was so intoxicated that he didn't remember being shocked with the stun gun or threatening the police officer.

Court records show that Huguely pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and public intoxication, WDBJ reported. He was given a suspended jail sentence and a fine.

Source : CNN

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Incident raises questions about no-fly list

(News Today) - The no-fly list is supposed to help keep terrorists off planes, so when the Times Square car bombing suspect was able to board a flight anyway, it put the process under immense scrutiny.

The government has already made changes to the system.

On Wednesday, it began telling airlines to check updated no-fly lists within two hours of the time they are issued, not within 24 hours, as under the previous directive.

It happened after Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, was arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport late Monday after boarding a flight bound for Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

His name had been put on an updated no-fly list, which identifies people who pose a credible threat to aviation security, earlier in the day.

Shahzad made his reservation by phone as he drove to the airport just hours before the flight, investigators said. When he paid for his ticket in cash at the ticket counter, the airline had not refreshed its no-fly information, so his name did not raise any red flags, a senior counterterrorism official said.

Emirates, the airline that sold Shahzad the ticket, said it followed all the rules.

"Emirates is in full compliance with all passenger check-in procedures in the U.S. and works closely with both the Transport Security Administration (TSA) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies to update security watch lists on a regular and timely basis," the airline said in a statement.

The incident appeared to be "the quirk of time" for which backup measures exist, said Frances Townsend, a CNN national security contributor and homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.

For such cases, the system was designed to include "necessary and built-in redundancy," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said during a briefing.

If a name is added to the no-fly list and an airline misses it, U.S. Customs and Border Protection can look at a flight's final passenger manifest and identify anything that a carrier may have overlooked, Gibbs said.

To understand how the process works, air travelers should know that there are actually several lists airlines check, some of which may overlap.

There is the main no-fly list, whose purpose is straightforward: to keep known terrorists off planes, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The no-fly list, maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, contains thousands of names, and it ballooned after the failed bombing of a U.S.-bound jetliner December 25, Townsend said.

There are also several much larger watch lists maintained by various government agencies that may focus on people who have overstayed their U.S. visas or are flagged because there's concern about their affiliations, Townsend said. Some of those lists may have hundreds of thousands of names.

When you buy a seat on a plane in advance using a credit card, which is how most people purchase their tickets, your name will be put "through a scrub" -- checked against the lists -- 24 hours before your flight, Townsend said.

There's another check when you get your boarding pass, which may alert the gate agent to a possible problem. Then, about an hour or so before the plane takes off, the National Targeting Center, run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, gets the final passenger list. This is how Shahzad's name was finally flagged.

"That's why you have a secondary system with the National Targeting Center, so if something like that should happen, there's a second opportunity for the government to catch this, which is exactly what did happen," Townsend said.

"They now have that manifest of the actual people who not only bought with credit cards but have walked up and bought [a ticket] at the last minute. They have all those names, and they do a second scrub," she said.

The National Targeting Center was established in October 2001 in direct response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website.

Meanwhile, there have been questions about why it's up to the airlines, not the government, to check the no-fly list.

The main issue is that the airlines have all the necessary passenger data, so they either have to perform the check themselves or send the data to the government, a costly proposition, Townsend said. She believes that the government will ultimately end up doing the checks in the long run.

Source : CNN

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Stories of tragedy, survival surface as Tennessee flood waters recede

(News Today) - As historically high flood waters receded in Tennessee on Wednesday, dramatic stories of tragedy and survival emerged, including that of a woman who saw her husband and daughter swept away.

Sherry Qualls watched in horror as chest-deep water washed away her husband and daughter as he tried to save the girl from a rushing creek roaring through their backyard in Linden, Tennessee, on Sunday, according to CNN Nashville affiliate WSMV.

"From his neck up, he was staring at me," Qualls said of her husband Bobby. "He didn't say anything, just staring at me. She was screaming for her daddy to help her, and then by the time the rescue squad got her, I didn't see them any more."

Their bodies were found the next day, washed almost a mile away, the affiliate reported.

"He was a hero," Qualls said Wednesday of her husband, who earlier had rescued the couple's son from floodwaters. "He sacrificed himself for his kids, that's what I think."

Surveying the property where her home once stood, Qualls said it's hard to believe her husband and daughter are gone.

"Every time I drive in the driveway, I see my daughter standing at the door smiling, and him, too, and I expect them to call me and ask where I'm at," she said.

Linden is located between Nashville and Memphis in western Tennessee.

CNN iReporter Nathan Clark went to his father's house in Dickson, Tennessee -- west of Nashville -- on Saturday to help him salvage possessions as waters from a flooded creek rose on his dad's property. Clark says they got out just in time.

"The water was at the top of his truck's hood." Clark said. "If we had stayed any longer, we wouldn't have gotten out of there."

With waters receding on Wednesday, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean announced that most city government offices would reopen Thursday and that city bus service would be restored.

Nashville students will have another day off Thursday, though teachers and other staff will return to work.

"The news is largely good," Dean said at a Wednesday evening press conference. "We're making progress and we'll continue to make progress in the days ahead."

The weekend deluge in the Mid-South has swelled many rivers to historic levels, turned roads to lakes and caused at least 28 deaths. The rains were especially cruel to Tennessee, killing 19 and immersing landmarks like the Grand Ole Opry. Two Nashville residents are still missing, Dean's office said Wednesday night.

President Obama has declared six Tennessee counties major disaster areas, which makes federal funding available to affected residents.

Many area waterways remained well past flood level on Wednesday. The Cumberland River, which cuts through Nashville, stood at just over 48 feet on Wednesday evening -- about 13 feet above flood stage -- said Jim Moser, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

On Wednesday afternoon, more more than 100 Nashville firefighters and police officers were going door-to-door on foot in flood-ravaged neighborhoods, checking on residents and providing assistance. Search and rescue teams visited more than 700 homes Wednesday and will visit more Thursday, Dean's office said.

One Nashville neighborhood, Metro Center, remained closed to residents and workers Wednesday because of standing water. The city allowed some business owners and managers to survey their businesses for a few hours in the afternoon but limited access to people in trucks and SUVS and made clear that they entered the area at their own risk.

With one of Nashville's main water treatment plants still closed from flooding, the city asked residents Wednesday to use water only when absolutely necessary, telling them to put off washing dishes and to limit toilet flushing.

"Citizens are using water at a greater rate than we can treat it and pump it out to the community," said Sonia Harvat, a spokesman for Nashville's water department, in an e-mail message. City officials said Wednesday that the city would be forced to rely on bottled water unless more people started conserving.

Still, flood waters should recede significantly in the next couple of days, the National Weather Service's Moser said.

"We're not expecting a significant amount of rain through Monday," he said. "It might amount to a quarter or half inch but not enough to affect things."

After an aerial tour of central Tennessee Wednesday, Gov. Phil Bredesen warned residents to beware of con artists looking to capitalize on the flood response.

"There are always people who come in and do these scams of charging people -- and they seem to prey on elderly people an awful lot -- just charging people an awful lot to do something," Bredesen said. "(They say) 'I'm going to fix your house, you have to do it or the state's going to tear it down, and it's like $20,000. Write me a check or give me cash.' "

Source : CNN

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Remembering Kent State, 40 years later

Atlanta, Georgia (News Today) - I enrolled at Kent State University in 1967, three years before that fateful day when Kent State became synonymous with tragedy.

Unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, I joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, taking classes on military history and planning for a career in the Army.

But everything changed for me that first week of May in 1970.

It was just a few days after President Richard Nixon announced he had authorized the bombing of the Viet Cong's supply lines in Cambodia.

Seeing the action as an expansion of the Vietnam War, some of my fellow students showed their anger by staging a demonstration on Kent State's campus on May 1 that eventually found its way to downtown Kent, Ohio.

Up until then, campus unrest at Kent State had remained relatively minor compared to other schools at the time, which had regular protests stemming from the dissent of the Vietnam War and the turmoil over the civil rights movement.

ROTC students, including myself, were kind of careful around the protests, because we had been warned against the possibility of getting arrested. So we tried to observe from a distance.

As the bars were closing that Friday night, people became unruly and broke several windows. A few students were arrested, but order was eventually restored.

By itself, it wasn't much of a demonstration, but student activists seized the opportunity to make a statement the next night. A handful of protesters set fire to one of the old wooden ROTC buildings in the center of campus.

The Fire Department tried to extinguish the blaze, but after being challenged by rock-throwing protesters, the firefighters felt threatened and left.

The blaze destroyed the ROTC building where I had spent hours in class, as well as working a campus job cleaning rifles.

That same night, at the request of Kent's mayor, Ohio Gov. James Rhodes sent National Guard units to the campus. Normally it would have taken a lot longer to deploy the Guard, but the troops had already been activated to deal with an intense truckers strike in Ohio.

Rhodes was also in the middle of an election bid, and clamping down on the destructive protests was seen by many as the politically expedient thing to do.

The troops arrived on campus, many in armored personnel carriers. The images of armed troops on an American college campus immediately caught the interest of the national media.

The National Guard managed to keep the protesters under control the next day, but the stage was set for another protest at noon on Monday, May 4.

I left town that morning, but heard about the events from the national media. According to those reports:

On May 4, as the demonstrators assembled near the burned-out ROTC building, the National Guard troops ordered the protesters to disband.

While many students watched from the sidelines, a much smaller group began to taunt the Guard. Troops chased them up a hillside and down onto a practice football field on the other side of the hill.

When rocks were thrown at the troops, the guardsmen took up firing positions with their weapons pointing directly at the protesters.

After several standoffs, the troops headed back up the hill in the direction of the ROTC building. As they reached the top, they turned toward the demonstrators and opened fire.

Four students were killed and nine others were wounded by the 67 rounds fired in a 13-second volley.

The school was immediately closed and a nationwide strike involving more than 4 million students followed.

Five days after the shootings, 100,000 protesters went to Washington to demonstrate against the incident and the war.

As I watched the four days unfold, I was struck by the images I saw in person and the stories on the national news.

I heard news reports of "thousands" of student protesters, but I had only seen a few hundred in the protests before May 4. Many were like me, just watching what was going on.

It amazed me that the events unfolding at this small university could affect people's opinion of their country and their government.

I was also impressed by the dramatic photos that captured the events, including one shot by John Filo, a Kent photojournalism student.

It showed a 14-year-old girl kneeling beside the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the dead students. The photo earned a Pulitzer Prize for Filo. It also had a huge impact on the American public.

The power of the media coverage of the Kent State protests opened a whole new world for me.

For the first time I began to think about journalism. Six week later, when school reopened, I began to take my education more seriously. My grades dramatically improved, and I started focusing on a profession. I returned home to California and started taking writing and photography classes at Pasadena City College. The more I learned, the more obsessed I became with the news business.

With the help of friends working for televisions stations in Los Angeles, I learned to operate a television news camera.

Two years later, I heard about Ted Turner's new experiment in 24-hour news, and I started working for CNN's bureau in Los Angeles.

It all started with an unexpected lesson learned from a tragedy 40 years ago.

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Police scour latest evidence in Times Square bombing attempt

New York (News Terupdate) - Law enforcement officials early Monday pored through evidence, including a 20-second video, after a failed car bombing attempt in Times Square over the weekend.

The video released by authorities showed an image of a man, who police say is possibly connected to the attempted bombing, changing his shirt along a New York street. A balding man with dark hair is seen removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of the camera's view from inside a restaurant.

The investigation was focusing on examinations of a Nissan Pathfinder where the attempted homemade bomb was placed. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Sunday that the vehicle was being combed for fingerprints, hair, fibers and other evidence that may help identify who was responsible.

Police were also combing through hours of surveillance footage in the area for possible clues.

Of the video, Kelly said it "shows a white male in his 40s, in Shubert Alley, looking back in the direction of West 45th Street" in a "furtive manner."

"He also was seen shedding a dark-colored shirt, revealing a red one underneath. He put the darker one into a bag that he was carrying," he added.

Kelly acknowledged that the actions of the man "could be perfectly innocent."

Asked whether police had a video showing a man getting out of the Nissan, Kelly answered, "no."

The video was captured about a half block from where police said the Pathfinder containing bomb-making materials was found Saturday evening on West 45th Street in the city's iconic Times Square area.

iReport: Were you there? Share pics, videos

The police also have a videotape from a Pennsylvania tourist who believes he may have caught the suspect's image on camera, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.

Kelly said Sunday that a New York police bomb squad blew open a large gun locker found in the Pathfinder, revealing eight bags of an "unknown substance" and a pressure-cooker-type metal pot containing a "bird's nest of wires and M-88 firecrackers."

Preliminary tests later determined the substance to be "nonexplosive grade fertilizer incapable of blowing up," according to Browne. Some types of fertilizer can be used in bomb-making.

The gun locker was one of many items found in the rear of the Pathfinder after a T-shirt vendor alerted a nearby police officer to smoke coming out of the vehicle.

Officials removed three propane tanks weighing between 15 and 17 pounds from the SUV, Kelly said, comparing them to the kind typically used on backyard barbecues. One of the tanks had more M-88 firecrackers attached to the side, Kelly said, some of which detonated inside the vehicle.

Also found in the vehicle's back seat were two full five-gallon gasoline containers, Kelly said. Between those gasoline containers was a "16-ounce can filled with between 20 and 30 M-88 devices," he said, adding that two clocks on the floor of the car's back seat were connected by wires to the can containing the firecrackers, and possibly to the gun locker as well.

Had the car bomb detonated, Kelly said it would have caused casualties and a "significant fireball."

Times Square evacuation captured on iPhone

"I'm told the vehicle itself would have at least been cut in half," he said. "You have large numbers of pedestrians in that area, so, yeah, we were lucky that it didn't detonate."

Browne added that the materials found were "capable of producing human casualties and broken windows," but did not have enough force "to take down a structure, in the opinion of NYPD bomb experts."

Officials did not immediately know how the bomb would have been detonated, but Kelly offered a few hints into its design.

"(We believe) the timers would ignite the can of explosives and that would cause the five-gallon cans (of gasoline) to go on fire and then explode the propane tanks and have some effect on that rifle box," Kelly said.

Meanwhile, Times Square returned to its bustling self Sunday, even as questions remained about the source of the attempted car bombing.

In a purported Pakistani Taliban video that surfaced on the internet Sunday, the group took responsibility for the foiled attack, though Kelly said Sunday afternoon that "we have no evidence to support this claim."

The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, said in the video that the attack was revenge for their leaders killed by American forces, and for United States and NATO interference in that part of the world.

Another claim of responsibility e-mailed by an individual to a local New York news station is being investigated, Kelly said.

Kelly called the foiled attack "a sober reminder that New York is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm."

President Obama, speaking from Venice, Louisiana, where he was monitoring a massive oil slick creeping toward the Gulf Coast, promised "to see that justice is done" in the failed car bombing.

"Since last night, my national security teams have been taking every step necessary to ensure that our state and local partners have the full support and cooperation of the federal government," he said. "We're going to do what's necessary to protect the American people, to determine who's behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done."

In an advisory sent to local and national law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security wrote, "There is no information to indicate that this was anything more than a single incident. Additionally, there is no reporting suggesting targeting of other specific locations."

Police officers did a search for secondary devices in the area and found none, Kelly said after the discovery of the Pathfinder.

Another angle of the investigation involved the license plates found on the vehicle.

Authorities said that the Connecticut license plate on the front of Pathfinder did not belong to that car, but to a pickup truck that was last reported at a junkyard.

Following that lead, police were spotted at an automobile used parts company, Kramer's Used Auto Parts of Stratford, Connecticut.

Kelly said that the plate found on the rear of the Pathfinder was also registered to a different vehicle, which was located in an auto repair shop in Connecticut, where its matching plate was also found.

The Pathfinder's vehicle identification number had been removed from the dashboard, but officials recovered it from another location on the car, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Kelly said officials have identified the registered owner of the Pathfinder, but were not yet making his name public.

A New York police official told CNN the owner lives in the tristate area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Read more about the discovery of the car bomb

The lockdown of the popular New York attraction began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday after a T-shirt vendor -- a Vietnam veteran -- saw the SUV, found it suspicious and alerted a mounted police officer.

Officer Wayne Rhatigan peered inside and noticed a box with smoke coming out and smelled gunpowder. Authorities immediately evacuated the area.

Rhatigan, a 19-year NYPD veteran, and vendor Lance Orton were called "heroes" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday.

"We're very lucky that people like Wayne and ... Lance Orton saw something and did something about it, and that's what we all have to do," Bloombergsaid outside Blue Fin restaurant in Times Square, where he later dined with Rhatigan in a show of the safety around the area.

"There are some people around the world that find our freedoms so threatening that they're willing to kill themselves and others to prevent us from enjoying it, but we're not going to let them win," Bloomberg said.

Rhatigan said that after smelling the gunpowder he thought, "Uh oh, this is a little bit more than just a parked car and a cigarette in the ashtray."

He said that despite the potential danger, there wasn't time to be scared as he and other officers sought to set up a perimeter and evacuate passers-by.

"It's what we do, this is our job," Rhatigan, 46, said outside the restaurant.

Source : CNN

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Eleven dead as record flooding engulfs Tennessee

(News Terupdate) - Flooding from two days of heavy rain in Tennessee is thought to be responsible for at least 11 deaths there, the Nashville and state emergency management offices said Sunday.

The Mayor's Office of Emergency Management in Nashville announced Sunday night that it had confirmed five fatalities in Davidson County -- which encompasses Nashville -- thought to be flood-related.

Earlier Sunday, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said it had confirmed seven flood-related fatalities throughout the state, including -- at the time of that announcement -- one in Davidson County.

Up to 20 inches of rain has fallen in parts of the state since Saturday and more was expected Sunday.

The rains have washed out major roads, caused evacuations, and prompted dam failures. In Nashville, Tennessee, alone, more than 600 people were rescued from the water this weekend, Mayor Karl Dean said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.

iReport: Experiencing the Tennessee floods? Send photos, video

"All of our major creeks and the Cumberland River are near flood level, if not at flood level," Dean said, referring to the waterway that bisects Nashville. "The ground is entirely saturated, and the rain continues to fall. There's nowhere for the water to go."

The western two thirds of Tennessee has seen between 6 and 20 inches of rain since Saturday, with flooding spreading to Kentucky on Sunday.

Video: Nashville resident captures 'practically a class two rapids' on her neighborhood streets

Dean said Sunday that more rain has fallen in Nashville in the last 24 hours than has ever been recorded in the city.

"We are still at this point in rescue stage and will be until the water begins to subside," he said.

Dean urged residents to stay home Sunday and, if they could, to skip work on Monday, when Nashville schools will be closed.

The floods shut down parts of several interstates around Nashville on Saturday and Sunday, including interstates 24, 40 and 65.

An emergency shelter set up at Nashville's Lipscomb University was at capacity with approximately 200 people, Dean said Sunday. The Red Cross reported approximately 400 people in 22 shelters throughout Tennessee.

The floods left 36,000 houses around Nashville without power on Sunday and led to the evacuation of three area nursing homes, affecting over 250 patients, Dean said.

While some streams around Nashville were starting to recede on Sunday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was planning to release dammed upstream water Sunday night, which could cause more flooding around Nashville, city emergency management chief Stephen Halford said.

The water needed to be released to keep the Army Corps equipment safe, Halford said.

The National Weather Service issued a civil emergency message Sunday to central and western Tennessee, telling people to stay off roads because too many are closed and people are getting stranded.

The National Weather Service also issued a flood emergency Sunday for much of central Kentucky -- where tens of thousands were trying to get home after this weekend's Kentucky Derby -- and in south central Indiana.

In Louisville, Kentucky, the National Turnpike and Gene Snyder Freeway were closed on Sunday.

In addition to flooding fatalities, one Tennessean died over the weekend in a tornado in Hardeman County, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said Sunday.

Source : CNN

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At least 5 dead in Tennessee flooding; tornado warnings in Arkansas

(News Terupdate) - Severe flooding killed at least five people in central Tennessee on Saturday, officials said, as floodwaters inundated roads, highways and homes in and around the Nashville area.

The National Weather Service also said 33 of 75 counties in Arkansas are under a tornado warning, and 25 counties in Tennessee are under a tornado watch.

Two people were killed Saturday when floodwaters swept them away as they tried to seek safety on the roof of their SUV about 80 miles northwest of Nashville, Stewart County emergency management spokesman Clint Mathis said.

Three more people were reported dead in counties near Nashville, Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Jeremy Heidt told CNN.

Between 6 and 10 inches of rain has fallen in 12 hours in the area, causing "extremely dangerous" flooding, the National Weather Service said.

"This is one of the most severe rain events Nashville has ever experienced," Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said in a statement.

Dean said more than 50 water rescues had been conducted Saturday, and more were under way.

"I urge all Nashville residents to stay home and stay off the roads," Dean said.

At least 2,000 people were displaced after two levees broke in Millington, a small city near Memphis, Millington Police said.

Video from CNN affiliate WZTV showed more than a dozen vehicles submerged in several feet of swift-moving water on I-24 in Nashville.

Rescue workers helped drivers escape as water surrounded their cars, CNN affiliate WSMV reported. The floodwaters pushed a home off of its foundation and into the middle of I-24.

Video from WZTV showed a school annex building floating down the interstate before breaking into pieces.

WSMV: Section of I-24 closed by massive flooding

Officials are advising residents to stay off roads, as many have become impassable.

Janel Lacy, a spokeswoman for the Nashville mayor's office, said that in addition to I-24 in Davidson County, 20 other local roads were closed.

CNN iReporter Andrew Ellis sent in a video of a "raging river" of water rushing over an open field where people usually play soccer and golf in Lexington, Tennessee.

"The flooding brought the town to a standstill. No one could get in and no one could get out," he said. "Many homes, vehicles and entire neighborhoods either were or still are under water."

CNN iReporter Jennifer Alter said her dad helped her push her car out after she got stuck on Christmasville Road in Jackson, Tennessee, on the way to work early Saturday morning.

"We went back to check it a few hours later and the road was gone," she said.

Lacy said one shelter had opened at Lipscomb University, and officials planned to open others.

The rain is expected to continue into Sunday morning, she said.

Heidt said floodwaters were expected to crest around 11 p.m. CT (midnight ET) Saturday.

The weather service has reported record flooding at Mill Creek, near Antioch, Tennessee.

Source : CNN

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Al Qaeda tape allegedly of suicide bomber who killed 7 CIA officers

(News Terupdate) - Radical militant Islamist websites posted a new video Friday containing an audio message purported to be by Humam Al Balawi, the Jordanian doctor turned suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in eastern Afghanistan in December.

The audio message, which was produced by as-Sahab, al Qaeda's media arm, is played over a picture of Al-Balawi and English subtitles with on-screen text that reads: "A message that was delivered on the night before his martyrdom operation against the American intelligence in Khost."

For nearly 30 minutes, the speaker in the message makes various arguments addressing those who are "undecided" and "hesitant" to join the armed fight, or jihad, against Western forces in Muslim lands.

In the message titled "O Hesitant One, It Is An Obligation," the speaker talks about "heroic stories," sometimes using personal references such as, "I lived among you for such a long time." In other passages, he speaks to those who may have "hidden" love for jihad. Near the end of his message, the speaker challenges those "undecided brothers" by appealing to their "manhood and chivalry."

"We shall send you coded messages" through media outlets to continue the call for jihad, he said.

The message was alleged to have been recorded on December 29, 2009. Al-Balawi struck the U.S. base the following day.

Source : CNN

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2 held on terror charges in New York

(News Terupdate) - Two New York men accused of providing material support to al Qaeda overseas appeared in federal court for the first time Friday afternoon.

Wesam El-Hanafi and Sabirhan Hasanoff, both U.S. citizens, were indicted for allegedly conspiring to provide computer advice and assistance, services and currency to al Qaeda, said Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney in New York, in a news release.

In a brief hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, before U.S. Magistrate Judge T. Rawles Jones Jr. on Friday, both men signed papers saying they were the people named in a federal indictment, but they did not enter a plea, and no details about their arrests were discussed in open court.

U.S. marshals will transport the men to the Southern District of New York, where they are expected to appear in a federal court in Manhattan at an unspecified date, Bharara said.

A federal law enforcement source said El-Hanafi and Hasanoff were arrested overseas in a country that "did not want to be identified as being helpful in any way to the U.S." The source would not disclose the country.

The source said the men were taken to federal court in Virginia for their first appearance because it was the easiest location to fly them into the United States.

The federal indictment unsealed Friday says the men were "engaged in planning and perpetrating a federal crime of terrorism against the United States, citizens and residents of the United States, and their property" but does not detail any specific plans for terrorist action.

"The indictment does not contain allegations about an active plot against the United States. The investigation continues," Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said.

In the indictment, prosecutors allege that in February 2008, El-Hanafi met with two members of al Qaeda in Yemen, where he received assignments and instructions on operational security measures after swearing an oath of allegiance to al Qaeda.

The indictment alleges that Hasanoff "performed assignments for al Qaeda" in New York in August 2008. It provides no details.

It also says he received $50,000 in November 2007 from an unnamed co-conspirator who in June 2008 pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. That month, according to the indictment, El-Hanafi directed the co-conspirator to "perform tasks" for al Qaeda, and Hasanoff instructed him "not to fill his United States passport with stamps to retain the passport's value to al Qaeda."

New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday that the NYPD Terror Task Force assisted federal agencies with the investigation. He said the suspects are accused of "material support" for al Qaeda, including sending watches to terrorists abroad from New York, but declined to provide further details.

The indictment says El-Hanafi purchased seven Casio digital watches online and had them delivered to his Brooklyn home in April 2009 but does not specify who the watches were for or why he ordered them.

"As alleged in the indictment, Wesam El-Hanafi and Sabirhan Hasanoff conspired to modernize al Qaeda by providing computer systems, expertise and other goods and services," Bharara said.

El-Hanafi, 33, is a U.S. citizen who was born and lived in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Hasanoff, 34, is a dual citizen of the United States and Australia who also resided in Brooklyn, according to the indictment.

El-Hanafi and Hasanoff are each charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which would carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison upon conviction.

Source : CNN

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Thai forces, protesters clash in Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand (News Terupdate) - Thai security forces fired on crowds of anti-government protesters just outside the capital, Bangkok, Wednesday as tensions flared in the latest round of confrontations between the two groups.

"This is a very tense and intense standoff," CNN's Arwa Damon reported. "There is row upon row of riot police."

Live ammunition and rubber bullets were being used by security forces, according to Damon.

The Erawan rescue agency said eight protests were injured in the clashes. One soldier was killed by friendly fire, authorities said.

Riot police and government troops had massed along a major highway to stop the progress of an anti-government convoy headed toward a location where demonstrators have gathered in the past.

Security forces and riot police were trying to disperse protesters, while the demonstrators along other portions of the highway stood in the way of troop reinforcements.

Rainfall cooled the conflict for a time, stopping the advance of riot police and government troops.

iReport: Are you there? Share your story, images

Under government rules of engagement that have been published, troops are allowed to used tear gas on demonstrators that come with 100 meters (just over 100 yards), and live ammunition on those that come within 30 meters (about 100 feet).

Thousands of anti-government protesters have brought Thailand's capital to a standstill as they seek to unseat Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government, which they say is illegitimate and undemocratic -- accusations that Abhisit on Monday called "unfounded."

The demonstrators -- known as "Red Shirts" because of their clothing -- support Thaksin Shinawatra, who was prime minister from 2001 to 2006, before he was ousted in a bloodless coup.

More than two dozen civilians and military personnel have died since protesters began occupying key tourism and shopping areas in Thailand's capital.

Explainer: What are the protests in Thailand about?

The latest fighting came as the British Foreign Office warned British citizens against traveling to Thailand unless absolutely necessary, citing the ongoing political unrest there.

"This advice reflects our concern that violence could break out during the increasingly volatile political crisis," the Foreign Office said in a message posted on its website Wednesday.

Last week, the U.S. State Department issued a similar advisory for Americans.

Source : CNN

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Report details allegations of torture at Iraqi secret prison

Baghdad, Iraq (News Terupdate) - A report released Tuesday by a human rights group details allegations of horrific torture and abuse at a secret prison in Iraq where detainees say they were routinely beaten, shocked and sodomized by their interrogators.

The report by Human Rights Watch was based on interviews conducted Monday with 42 prisoners who had been held at a secret facility in west Baghdad's old Muthanna airport since late 2009.

The men were among 300 detainees who were transferred in recent weeks to another detention center after the existence of the Muthanna prison was revealed, Human Rights Watch said.

Allegations of torture and abuse at Muthanna were first reported by The Los Angeles Times on April 19. Amnesty International has urged Iraqi officials to investigate the claims.

CNN could not immediately reach U.S. or Iraqi officials for comment on the Human Rights Watch report Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said three Iraqi army officers have been arrested in the alleged abuse after the Times report surfaced.

Tuesday's report by Human Rights Watch said the Muthanna prison operated under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, citing unidentified sources.

"What happened at Muthanna is an example of the horrendous abuse Iraqi leaders say they want to leave behind," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. "Everyone responsible, from the top on down, needs to be held accountable."

Al-Maliki told the Times he was unaware of any abuse and ordered the prison shut down after the allegations were revealed to him by human rights officials earlier this month.

"Prime Minister al-Maliki's claim that he was unaware of abuses cannot exonerate the authorities from their responsibilities and their duty to ensure the safety of detainees," Amnesty International said in a statement calling for accountability in the wake of the Times report.

Detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch this week said that while at the secret facility, they were handcuffed, blindfolded and hung upside down using two bars, one placed behind their calves and the other against their shins. They said they were then kicked and beaten with heavy cables by their interrogators, who also are said to have placed plastic bags over detainees' heads to close off their air supply.

"They would suffocate me with a bag until I passed out and would wake me with an electric shock to my genitals," one unidentified detainee told Human Rights Watch. "Even after they forced me to confess that I killed 10 people, the torture never stopped."

Detainees said they were called terrorists and Baathists by their interrogators during such beatings, a reference to Saddam Hussein's former regime. Detainees said they were forced to sign fake confessions, with the promise the abuse would stop. However, many said it persisted, according to the report.

Detainees also described to Human Rights Watch multiple incidents of alleged sexual abuse. The detainees said interrogators and security officials sodomized them using broomsticks and pistol barrels or forced other prisoners to molest one another. Some of the men said they were forced to perform oral sex on prison officials.

Human Rights Watch said such torture was conducted for hours at a time every three or four days.

More than 430 men were held at Muthanna before they were transferred to other facilities.

The men were arrested by the Iraqi army between September 2009 and December 2009 in raids around the northern city of Mosul, Human Rights Watch said.

Source : CNN

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Obama pushes wind power in Iowa visit

Fort Madison, Iowa (News Terupdate) - President Obama took his renewable energy push to the heartland Tuesday, trumpeting the merits of wind power during a visit to the state that launched him on the road to the White House a little over two years ago.

Obama's visit to the Siemens wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Fort Madison, Iowa, was the latest stop in his "White House to Main Street" tour, part of his pitch to middle-class workers hurt by the economic downturn.

"Lately, we've been able to report some welcome news after a hard two years. Our economy is finally growing again," Obama told workers at the plant.

But "times are still tough for middle-class Americans, who had been swimming against the current for years before the economic tidal wave hit."

While in Iowa, the president also toured an organic farm in Mount Pleasant and was scheduled to host a town hall meeting at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa.

"The country that leads the clean energy economy will be the country that leads the 21st century global economy," Obama said at the Siemens plant. "I don't accept second place for the United States of America. That's why our energy security has been a top priority for my administration since the day I took office."

The president cited his controversial $862 billion economic stimulus plan, which passed over solid GOP opposition early last year. The measure helped reverse the economic downturn and will create or save more than 700,000 jobs by 2012, he claimed.

It will do so in part by funding larger investments in renewable energy projects, according to the administration. Obama claimed that, if the proper investments are made, wind could generate up to 20 percent of America's energy two decades from now.

"Wind power isn't the silver bullet that will solve all our energy challenges," he said. "There isn't one. But it is a key part of a comprehensive strategy to move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels to one that relies on more homegrown fuels and clean energy."

Republicans have repeatedly slammed the economic stimulus plan, characterizing it as a pork-laden bill that failed to prevent unemployment from rising.

Obama is scheduled to spend Tuesday night in Des Moines, Iowa, resting up for stops Wednesday in Illinois and Missouri.

It was just a month ago that Obama spoke at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, to tout the health care reform bill he had just signed into law. In May 2007, the then-presidential candidate chose Iowa to unveil his health care plan, which the White House says "launched a grass-roots campaign for reform that led directly to the legislation passed" by Congress last month.

Obama made his first trip as president to Iowa on April 22, 2009. He marked Earth Day in Newton by announcing an initiative to lease federal waters for the purpose of generating electricity from wind and ocean currents.

Obama's victory in January 2008 in his party's Iowa caucuses boosted him into front-runner status along with Hillary Clinton in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, a fight he won when Clinton dropped out in June.

Obama ended up winning the state by 10 points, a switch in fortunes for the Democrats. Four years earlier, President George W. Bush narrowly won the state.

But the political climate has changed for the president and for the Democrats since those heady days of 2008. Iowans are now divided on the job Obama is doing in the White House.

According to a KCCI-Research 2000 poll conducted two months ago, 49 percent of Iowans approved of the president's performance in office, with 46 percent saying they disapprove. The same survey indicated that 35 percent of Iowa voters thought the country was headed in the right direction, with six in 10 saying it was headed the wrong way.

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Homicide suspect leads cops on interstate chase

(News Terupdate) - A homicide suspect led authorities from two states on a 130-mile chase Tuesday morning and then surrendered following an hours-long standoff that closed a North Carolina interstate during morning rush hour, police said.

Arthur Duval Mims, 45, of Duncan, South Carolina, was taken into custody after the incident, said Sgt. Jeff Gordon, spokesman for the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

Highway Patrol Trooper Kevin Hennelly said Mims went to his estranged wife's home and shot her along with a 16-year-old girl before setting the house on fire.

About 3:18 a.m. ET, authorities in Duncan responded to a report of a shooting at a Spartanburg County, South Carolina, residence, according to a statement issued by the sheriff's office.

Officers found that Mims' stepdaughter, who had been shot, had run to a neighbor's home to ask for help, and the neighbor called 911.

Authorities entered the home and saw smoke coming from an area near an upstairs bedroom, the statement said. A body was found in the bedroom.

Mims' estranged wife was the one killed, Hennelly said, but authorities do not know whether she died from the gunshot or in the fire. The teenager was hospitalized, authorities said. The motive for the incident was unknown.

Duncan is about 14 miles west of the city of Spartanburg. Mims fled the scene in a white pickup before authorities arrived, the statement said. It was unclear how the police chase began.

The suspect traveled north on Interstate 85 and entered North Carolina, where authorities from that state picked up the chase, Gordon said. At one point, authorities used spike strips on the interstate in an attempt to stop the suspect's vehicle. Two of the vehicle's tires deflated, but the suspect continued northbound, Gordon said.

The vehicle stopped at mile marker 91 near Lexington, more than 30 miles north of where the spike strips had been deployed, Gordon said. But the suspect refused to surrender, triggering a standoff that closed both sides of I-85 for a two-mile stretch starting just before 5 a.m. ET, authorities said.

The Davidson County Sheriff's Department deployed its special response team, and negotiators tried to talk the suspect out of the car, Gordon said. He surrendered about 8:30 a.m. ET. The interstate was reopened shortly afterward.

Mims was alone in the vehicle, Gordon said. He faces charges of murder, assault and battery with attempt to kill and arson, according to the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.

The interstate closure "did back up traffic, there's no doubt," Hennelly said, but authorities diverted vehicles onto nearby U.S. 52.

"If it was going to happen, it happened in a place where we could detour it very easily," he said.

Source : CNN

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Cleanup begins after twisters kill 12 in South

Yazoo City, Mississippi (News Terupdate) - Massive cleanup efforts got under way Monday after several tornadoes ripped through the South, killing at least 12 people -- 10 in Mississippi -- and leaving a swath of devastation in the region, from Louisiana to Alabama.

A 3-month-old baby and two other children were among the fatalities. Dozens more were injured, and scores of homes leveled.

Were you affected by the tornado? Send in photos, video

The tornado devastated neighborhoods from Mississippi's central western border with Louisiana northeastward to Alabama. It sheared roofs off houses, overturned cars, snapped hundreds of trees and plunged large parts of the state in darkness as it toppled power lines.

Five of the dead were from Choctaw County in north-central Mississippi; four were from Yazoo County, north of Jackson; and one was from Holmes County, also in north-central Mississippi, said spokesman Greg Flynn of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

The storm roared on into Alabama, where authorities said it killed two people -- including a man whose car hit a tree in Etowah County, said Yasamie Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

In Walker County, a woman died after hitting her head while entering a storm shelter, Richardson said.

The National Weather Service on Monday gave the tornado that ravaged parts of Mississippi a preliminary rating of speeds of up to 170 mph. Yazoo was one of the hardest-hit counties.

Coverage from CNN affiliate WAPT-TV: Astro star rushes home to help

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said he will request emergency federal aid on Monday. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were scheduled to arrive Monday, anticipating an application for a disaster declaration, authorities said.

Barbour, who was in Yazoo City where his home is located, called the twister "gigantic" and said that in places it "seemed to be to be several miles wide."

The same storm system that unleashed Saturday's twister delivered severe weather to other parts of the South on Sunday, with tornadoes hitting Alabama and South Carolina.

The tornado traveled 150 miles across Mississippi, starting in the western part of the state and moving northeast before weakening as it moved into Alabama.

On Sunday, a tornado in Darlington County in northern South Carolina overturned at least four mobile homes, toppled trees and downed power lines.

Three people were hospitalized with minor injuries, according to Linwood Epps of the county's emergency management agency. He said that an elementary school was damaged, with part of its roof missing.

Alabama's emergency management officials confirmed a tornado touched down Sunday in Marshall County in the state's north.

At least one mobile home park and some homes in Albertville were destroyed, said CNN affiliate WAFF-TV in Huntsville, Alabama.

The tornado was part of a broad band of storms that stretched from Missouri to the Florida Panhandle.

Saturday's twister struck Louisiana before it moved into Mississippi. A Tallulah, Louisiana, police dispatcher said a chemical plant in the town had been damaged, but gave no further details.

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Rescuers comb debris for survivors after Mississippi tornado

Yazoo City, Mississippi (News Terupdate) - Rescue crews in Mississippi continued to search for survivors Sunday from a powerful tornado that ripped through the state a day earlier, killing 10 people, injuring dozens of others and leveling scores of homes.

Two children and a 3-month-old baby were among the victims.

Two sisters, 9 and 14, were killed inside a mobile home, Choctaw County Coroner Keith Coleman told CNN.

The tornado tore a path nearly a mile wide and decimated neighborhoods as it raked cities from the central western border with Louisiana northeastward to Alabama. It leveled a church, sheared roofs off houses, overturned cars, snapped down hundreds of trees and plunged large swaths of the state in darkness as it toppled power lines.

The same storm system that unleashed Saturday's twister delivered severe weather to other parts of the South on Sunday, with tornadoes hitting Alabama and South Carolina.

On Sunday, a tornado in Darlington County in northern South Carolina overturned as many as four mobile homes and toppled trees and downed power lines.

Three people were hospitalized with minor injuries, according to Linwood Epps of the county's emergency management agency. He said that the local Cain Elementary school was damaged, with part of its roof missing.

The National Weather Service on Sunday gave the Mississippi tornado a preliminary rating of at least 3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale of 0-5, with wind speeds of up to 160 miles per hour and a preliminary path width of one and a half miles.

Were you affected by the tornado? Send in pics, video

Ron Sullivan, a store owner in Choctaw County, said he was lucky to be alive after the storm hit around midday Saturday. "They always talk about you hearing the train," Sullivan told CNN. "There was no train. There was a bomb."

He said two customers were walking toward the door of his store when the tornado struck and that "when they opened the door, it hit and blew me back."

"The only thing that went through my mind were two things -- 'Please don't let anything else fall on me' and 'I hope my wife is OK,' " Sullivan said.

The hardest-hit counties were Yazoo and Choctaw, where assessment and rescue crews continued operations Sunday, though a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said there weren't any specific reports of people trapped inside the rubble.

Authorities had recorded at least 681 homes damaged across six counties, according to MEMA spokesman Greg Flynn.

The agency was reporting 33 injuries, but it hadn't received counts from Yazoo and Choctaw counties.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said he has not yet requested emergency federal aid but plans to do so on Monday. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were scheduled to arrive Monday, anticipating an application for a disaster declaration, Flynn said.

Nearly 80 Mississippi National Guard troops, including 50 military police, had been deployed to Choctaw and Yazoo counties, MEMA reported. Forty highway safety patrol troops were also sent to the affected areas.

Five of the dead were from Choctaw County, in the north central part of the state; four were from Yazoo County, north of Jackson; and one was from Holmes County, also in north central Mississippi, said Flynn.

Barbour, who was in Yazoo City where his home is located, called the twister gigantic and said that "in places (it) seemed to be to be several miles wide."

Only 38 people stayed overnight in shelters in Yazoo City, Flynn said, adding that most of the affected were able to stay with family or friends.

Mississippi residents shared stories of tragedy and survival on Sunday.

"You could just feel the glass and debris flying in and cutting you," said Stacy Walker, who took cover in a hair salon in Yazoo City where she worked. "It felt like minutes and minutes. but I'm sure it was just seconds the time that it lasted."

Walker made it out safe but later learned that a high school friend died protecting her children.

Dale Thrasher was inside Yazoo City's Hillcrest Baptist Church when it was flattened by the tornado. "I went in the sanctuary and got under the pulpit table and the whole building fell around me," he said. His injuries: "Three little scratches."

In all, 12 counties reported injuries, with some of the injured airlifted to a level one trauma center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

Local coverage from CNN affiliate WAPT

President Obama has "been briefed on the tragedy in Mississippi and the situation is being followed by the White House," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

Mississippi residents reported that the path of the twister was a half-mile to a mile wide, said Mark McAllister, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Jackson.

CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras said the twister had traveled 150 miles across Mississippi, starting in the western part of the state and moving northeast before weakening as it moved into Alabama.

Early Sunday morning, Alabama's emergency management officials confirmed a tornado touched down in Marshall County in the state's north.

At least one mobile home park and some homes in Albertville were destroyed, said CNN affiliate WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama.

On Sunday, Nancy Brooks surveyed the damage to her Albertville home, which was extensive. Part of home's roof was blown off, and debris littered the floors, which were now barely visible.

Brooks awoke to the sound of the incoming tornado, only to witness a moment later a large tree branch rip into her bedroom just feet from where she sleeps.

"I'm very lucky, I'm very fortunate," she said, as friends helped her begin the cleanup process.

Saturday's tornado was part of a broad band of storms that stretched from Missouri to the panhandle of Florida, Jeras said.

Source : CNN

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