As the tide of acceptance swells nationwide, gay marriage advocates in gathered more than 85,000 signatures, far more than the requisite 57,277 signatures, Secretary of State Charles Summers said on Thursday.

Opponents have 10 days to challenge the signatures.

Maine‘s legislature passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage in 2009, but it was overturned that same year in a statewide referendum, 53 percent to 47 percent. Supporters say polls show they would now win a statewide vote by as much as 10 percent.

“It’s going to be challenging,” David Farmer, a spokesman with Equality Maine, a gay rights group, told Reuters on Friday.

“We’ve been working hard since 2009. We’ve spoken to 40,000 people one-on-one to change their minds and we believe those efforts will pay off,” Farmer said.

Opponents of the measure say they are not surprised the measure will come to a vote again given how close the results were in 2009. No U.S. state has ever approved same-sex marriage in a referendum.

“It is unfortunate that citizens will be subjected to this divisive issue again,” Bishop Richard Malone of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland said in a statement.

“The church will remain firm in her constant teaching that marriage is exclusively the union of one woman and one man,” Malone said.

The campaign comes as a federal appellate court has upheld a ruling that could force the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a group opposed to same-sex nuptials, to disclose the names of donors who helped it finance a $1.8 million effort to overturn the 2009 law.

“NOM intends to vigorously fight this attempt by same-sex marriage advocates to impose gay marriage in Maine,” the group’s president, Brian Brown, said in a recent statement.

“Maine voters rejected gay marriage barely more than two years ago. What part of ‘no’ don’t gay marriage advocates understand?”

After recent victories for same-sex marriage proponents in Washington, California and Maryland, Maine will be one of a number of battleground states for national groups supporting and opposing same-sex marriage this year. North Carolina and Minnesota voters will consider constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage this year.

Earlier this year Washington’s legislature legalized same-sex marriage effective June 7. Maryland’s legislature gave final approval on Thursday to a bill doing the same, and Governor Martin O’Malley has vowed to sign it so it can take effect in January.

Despite this, opponents are likely to be able to gather enough signatures in both states to force a referendum on the issue in November, said Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign.

Same-sex couples can currently marry in the District of Columbia, New York, Iowa and four New England states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire.

In California, opponents are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its decision to uphold a lower court’s overturning of a voter-approved gay marriage ban.

(Editing By Barbara Goldberg and Paul Thomasch)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/maine-gets-enough-support-gay-marriage-referendum-200446837.html

The authority vested in towns and cities in New York to regulate use of their land extends to prohibitions on drilling, acting state Supreme Court Justice Donald Cerio ruled on Friday, dismissing arguments by a landowner who had already sold leases on almost 400 acres.

“Municipalities are not preempted … from enacting local zoning ordinances which may prohibit oil, gas and solution drilling or mining,” Cerio wrote. “The state maintains control over the ‘how’ of (drilling) procedures while the municipalities maintain control over the ‘where.’”

Jennifer Huntington, a dairy farmer, argued the town of Middlefield‘s ban was pre-empted by a state law designed to create a uniform regulatory scheme for the oil and gas industry. Cerio disagreed, holding that nothing in the legislative history of the law and its numerous amendments suggested state lawmakers intended to stop towns from barring heavy industry.

Middlefield is about 70 miles west of the state capital, Albany.

Cerio’s ruling was similar to a decision released on Tuesday that dismissed a bid by gas company Anschutz Exploration Corp to overturn a drilling ban in the Ithaca, New York, suburb of Dryden.

In that decision, Supreme Court Justice Phillip Rumsey held state law was crafted to regulate industry in such a way that “protects the rights of all persons.”

The rulings come as the state Department of Environmental Conservation prepares a final report on the safety of fracking, which is currently not allowed in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to make a final decision on the issue later this year.

Fracking is a process in which chemical-laced water and sand are blasted deep below ground to release oil and natural gas trapped within rock formations. It has allowed companies to tap a wealth of new natural gas reserves in other states, but critics say the procedure has polluted water and air.

Middlefield’s attorney, David Clinton, was not immediately available to comment, but said earlier on Friday that victories in his case and in Dryden could have statewide implications.

“For the last year or so, the gas industry has been threatening (towns), ‘you’re going to lose in court, so don’t even waste your money,’” said Clinton. “So (the Dryden decision) certainly emboldens other towns.”

Huntington’s lawyer, Scott Kurkoski, did not immediately return a request for comment, but said earlier this week that a ruling in favor of the town could chase drilling companies from the state.

The case is Cooperstown Holstein Corp. v. Town of Middlefield, New York State Supreme Court, Otsego County No. 011-0930.

(Reporting by Dan Wiessner; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/2nd-york-state-judge-upholds-fracking-ban-towns-003932153.html

Flanagan dedicated much of his life to ministering to orphans and troubled youth, and is best remembered for establishing in 1917 the Omaha orphanage Father Flanagan‘s Boys Home.

The archdiocese will formally open the canonization process — which is often lengthy — with a March 17 prayer service at Boys Town’s Immaculate Conception Church.

Flanagan, who died in 1948, was known for believing that every child could be a productive citizen if given love, a home, an education and a trade, and accepted boys of every race and creed. He is quoted as saying, “There are no bad boys. There is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking.”

His story was told in the 1938 film, “Boys Town,” starring Spencer Tracy, who won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Flanagan.

The canonization process to sainthood starts in the archdiocese and goes to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints in Rome and to the pope. To be canonized a saint, at least two miracles associated with Flanagan must have been performed after his death.

Reverend Steven Boes, national executive director of Boys Town, said in a statement that Flanagan is receiving recognition he deserves.

“Though the process will be investigating proven miracles associated with Father Flanagan, we know that miracles occurred every day in his work to heal children in mind, body and spirit,” he said. “These everyday miracles still occur as Boys Town continues Flanagan’s work by saving children and healing families today.”

Flanagan was born in 1886 in County Roscommon, Ireland. He came to the United States in 1904 and was ordained in 1912. He toured the United States discussing his views on juvenile delinquency.

After World War Two, President Harry Truman asked Flanagan to travel around the world for discussions about children orphaned and displaced by the war. During a tour of Europe, he died of a heart attack in Berlin, Germany, on May 15, 1948. He is buried in the chapel at Boys Town.

The canonization process has the potential to inspire the more than 230,000 Catholics in northeast Nebraska, said Deacon Tim McNeil, chancellor of the archdiocese, in a statement.

“If Father Flanagan becomes sainted, it would send a message to Nebraskans,” McNeil said. “If he could live a holy and exemplary life in Omaha, why can’t we all?”

(Editing by David Bailey and Paul Thomasch)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/sainthood-campaign-planned-boys-town-founder-214954119.html

Stepped-up oil and gas development in northwestern North Dakota and northeastern Montana is punctuating the landscape with drilling rigs, trucks and hastily erected barracks, known as “man camps,” to house thousands of mostly male workers crowding into small communities where residents once greeted each other by name and left their homes and cars unlocked.

Even as oil and gas companies pour hundreds of millions of tax dollars into those states, leaders of boomtowns like Williston, North Dakota, and neighboring Sidney, Montana, say they are ill-equipped to cope with the rapid influx of people, traffic, construction, crime and soaring demand for housing.

“If it had been gradual … but that’s not how a boom works; the thing happens overnight,” said David Montgomery, a Williams County commissioner whose district encompasses Williston, where the population has swelled to an estimated 20,000 from 14,000 in 2010.

In Sidney, Montana, about 45 miles southwest of Williston, officials have been scrambling to keep pace with oil and gas activity that is expected to double the population – from 5,000 to 10,000 – in five years and add an estimated 774 new students to the public school system.

The town was unprepared for a months-long spike in crime that culminated January 7 with the abduction and violent death of a local high school math teacher, Sherry Arnold, according to Mayor Bret Smelser.

“Sherry’s case brings all of this into focus,” he said.

Two men, Lester Vann Waters, 47, and Michael Keith Spell, 22, are charged with aggravated kidnapping in the disappearance of Arnold, who authorities believe was snatched off the street as she jogged near the suspects along a truck route in Sidney.

According to the sworn statement of the prosecutor overseeing the investigation, Waters was looking for a woman to abduct and kill when he strangled Arnold, 43, in a crack cocaine-induced frenzy in the back of his Ford Explorer.

The prosecutor’s affidavit says Spell confessed to helping bury Arnold in a shallow grave. Her body has not been recovered.

Court documents say the two men had come from Parachute, Colorado, a city that has experienced economic ebbs and flows linked to oil shale, to find work in Williston.

OVERWHELMED IN WILLISTON

Thousands of high-paying jobs have prompted the unemployed and under-employed from cash-strapped states across the nation to flock to the Williston area.

The energy boom is tied to a vast oil shale formation that stretches across parts of North Dakota, Montana and Canada. The Bakken formation contains the largest known reserve of light sweet crude in North America and is the source of 113 million barrels of oil produced in 2010 in North Dakota. The sparsely populated state ranked behind only Texas, Alaska and California among U.S. oil producers.

The Bakken was discovered in 1951, but development – which has occurred off and on since then – accelerated about three years ago along with the advent of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The production-boosting technique injects large amounts of water, chemicals and sand underground to crack rocks or dense sands holding fuel.

Senior citizens on fixed incomes and other residents unable to meet monthly rents that can skyrocket from $300 to $3,000 have been pushed out of the community even as some oilfield workers living in their cars – despite annual salaries that can top $100,000 – have joined a local health club to gain access to the facility’s showers.

Fast-food and retail chains have been hard-pressed to retain workers amid the lure of higher-paying, plentiful energy jobs, and long lines have become commonplace in motels, restaurants and grocery stores. Business also has climbed at the two strip clubs in the city.

“It will never be the same – but that’s progress,” said Montgomery, a native.

FEAR AND FIREARMS

Evidence in Sidney and in Williston suggests worries about the downsides of the energy boom are displacing the optimism that came with ramped-up production and revenues.

“Without Sherry, we had some people looking and thinking, ‘We may need to re-think this,’” Smelser said. “With her death, people are saying, ‘We really do need to re-think this.’”

Having suffered the gravest harm, the city is now looking for a heftier share of the taxes paid by energy companies so that Sidney can augment its law enforcement and other municipal services, the mayor said.

The farming community enrolled 101 new students last year with no additional revenues to offset the increase, said Dan Farr, superintendent of Sidney schools.

“We have received families from every state in the union, and the culture in the classroom has changed,” he said, adding that teachers have logged long hours restructuring lessons and lesson plans to encompass varying degrees of academic ability.

Talk in town since Arnold vanished has centered on “how are we going to protect ourselves,” said Joanna Hughes, co-owner of a Sidney consignment store that carries firearms.

In the span of a year, the shop has doubled the number of handguns and rifles it stocks, and sales are soaring, she said.

The sense of foreboding has not stopped at the state line.

“There is a lot of fear in northwest North Dakota right now, especially with what’s happened to Mrs. Arnold,” said Montgomery, the county commissioner from Williston.

Utah State University sociologist Richard Krannich said years-long studies of boomtowns in the West show a sharp rise in negative consequences such as crime and the fear of crime in the earliest phases of a boom.

“But we also saw the recovery once the initial phase ended and the workforce stabilized, the pressure on local services eased and infrastructure caught up with demand,” he said.

That recovery can’t come too soon for some.

“When I look at Sidney, as opposed to a large city where crime happens frequently, these things aren’t supposed to happen in small-town USA,” Farr, the school superintendent, said.

(Editing by Steve Gorman)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-oil-shale-boom-puts-big-squeeze-small-182411290.html

Democratic Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has not said whether he will sign or veto the measure advanced by the Republican majority state Senate and House when it gets to him.

Under the proposal, “If you are anywhere you can legally be, you can defend yourself against a criminal,” said Republican Senator Gretchen Hoffman, the Senate sponsor. “If I am on the street … and I feel imminent danger of physical harm, I should be able to act with equal or greater force.”

Several state law enforcement groups opposed the measure, including the vast majority of the 300-plus members of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

Speaking for the association, Champlin Police Chief David Kolb told reporters the bill would provide a loophole that becomes a defense for murder, citing his own adventure sneaking into a neighbor’s yard to pick apples at 10 years old.

Kolb said he entered the yard with stealth and illegally, and under the proposed law, the property owner would be allowed to presume he posed a threat of death or great bodily harm and could use force, even possibly deadly force.

“That’s one example where perhaps the intention is good, but the devil is in the details,” Kolb said. “In this case, and in that specific example, this really does create a loophole and a defense for what I would consider cold-blooded murder.”

The Minnesota County Attorneys Association was concerned the bill could make it harder to prosecute serious violent crimes, Ramsey County prosecutor Rick Dusterhoft said.

Law enforcement would be required to presume a person involved in an altercation under the circumstances covered was acting reasonably and could not make an arrest until an investigation was performed, he said.

Nearly all U.S. states expressly permit the use of deadly force when people reasonably believe they or another person faces imminent danger of serious harm, according to data provided by the National Council of State Legislatures.

Most states also permit the use of deadly force to defend one’s home, though many limit the circumstances.

The proposed Minnesota law would extend the definition of dwelling beyond the house to include a porch, deck and enclosed yards. A car, mobile home, boat or tent also would be included.

Prosecutors also oppose a section of the bill to allow visitors to Minnesota who have carry permits from any other state to be armed in Minnesota. Minnesota recognizes permits from states with a similar background and training process.

The measure went through an extensive Senate debate before it was approved 40 to 23 largely on party lines Thursday. The proposal must return to the majority Republican state House for a vote on small changes as soon as Monday.

It does not appear Republicans would have enough votes in the legislature to override a Dayton veto.

Republican Senator Julianne Ortman, who lives in a Minneapolis suburb, said she does not own a gun and would never allow one into her house, but supported the bill and its presumption that a person can act in self-defense under certain limited circumstances.

“This bill is not really about what happens in the exchange in the use of force,” Ortman said. “It is really about what happens in the court of law afterwards.”

Democratic Senator John Marty said the bill could lead to unintended consequences, such as protecting drug dealers and gang members.

“This isn’t criminals versus victims,” Marty said. “This is an extra defense that the criminals shouldn’t have and the others don’t need.”

(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Paul Thomasch)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/minnesotas-controversial-deadly-force-bill-advances-214918215.html

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/goodyear-recalls-41-000-wrangler-silent-armor-tires-000654794.html

Theresa Erickson pleaded guilty in August to a wire fraud conspiracy charge stemming from what authorities said was essentially an adoption mill that skirted state laws requiring surrogate mothers in California to sign contracts with their prospective clients before becoming pregnant.

She was sentenced to five months in federal prison and nine months of supervised home confinement, as well as a $70,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Erickson also was ordered to pay up to $400,000 in restitution.

Authorities said Erickson and two co-defendants collected fees from couples who thought they were paying in advance for parental custody of babies born to surrogate mothers and available for adoption because a surrogate’s original clients had backed out of their contract.

In fact, the surrogate mothers had become pregnant through embryo implantations performed on them in the Ukraine as part of a scheme to create “an inventory of unborn babies” for unsuspecting U.S. couples desperate for an infant of their own, according to federal prosecutors.

Erickson, 43, admitted to filing false documents with the San Diego County Family Court to make the babies’ supposed surrogacy arrangements acceptable to the court.

Had the babies been born without the faked surrogacy contracts and then placed with the families, those placements should have been treated as adoptions, which carry other requirements and costs.

Prosecutors said individuals who paid fees of up to $100,000 each to gain custody of children in at least 12 faked surrogacy deals did not understand the legal complexities involved.

The surrogate mothers themselves were also unwitting participants, with some of them ultimately blowing the whistle on the scheme.

As part of her plea agreement, Erickson admitted to earning about $70,000 in total profit from her illegal actions over a six-year period.

“The surrogacy laws were enacted to protect both unborn babies and parents seeking children,” U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said in a written statement. “Out of sheer greed, Erickson preyed upon people’s most basic need: to raise a child.”

Erickson was a nationally renowned attorney specializing in surrogacy and adoption issues who appeared on numerous television networks over the years, including ABC, NBC, CNN and the Fox News Channel.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Tim Gaynor)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/prominent-lawyer-sentenced-baby-selling-scheme-044511347.html

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/rfk-son-faces-charges-maternity-ward-tussle-152308168.html

Dharun Ravi, 19, faces 15 counts of invasion of privacy, witness and evidence tampering and bias intimidation, a hate crime, in New Jersey’s Middlesex County Court.

He rejected an earlier plea deal and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted in the case that captured the attention of the public and brought up questions about bullying, teen suicide and privacy in the digital age.

Ravi’s lawyers on Friday said their client may have behaved childishly, but he did not commit any crime.

Ravi used a webcam on September 19, 2010, to watch Tyler Clementi, who was kissing another man in their dormitory room – a video that a witness testified showed little more than two indistinct figures.

Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge three days later. Ravi is not charged with causing Clementi‘s death.

“Someone once said never take away another person’s dignity. It means everything to them and nothing to you,” prosecutor Julia McClure told the jury.

“This isn’t about Dharun Ravi having to like Tyler Clementi’s sexual orientation … but it is about having the decency to respect it and to respect Tyler’s dignity and privacy,” she said.

In his opening statement, defense attorney Steven Altman emphasized Ravi’s youth, saying: “He’s a boy, childish, at times immature. He was 18.”

Ravi and Clementi shared the dorm room, he noted in an apparent strategic effort to undermine the invasion of privacy charge by noting that Ravi was looking into his own room.

He also noted that Ravi made no recording of the incident nor did he put it online.

“That viewing lasted 2 to 5 seconds,” the defense attorney said. “Nobody saw anything.”

Four friends of Ravi’s appeared as witnesses, including Austin Chung, who testified that Ravi had not mentioned any problems with his roommate.

“He actually told me that Tyler was a nice guy,” he said.

Witness Cassandra Cicco, one of a handful of students who saw the video, said it was not considered a big deal in the dorm.

“All of us were, like, oh, that happened, and that was the end of it,” she said.

Members of the Ravi and Clementi families were in court for the first day of testimony. Ravi, dressed neatly in a dark suit and tie, watched attentively from the defense table.

Experts say it may be difficult to prove the incident was a hate crime. For such a conviction, prosecutors must prove Ravi attempted to intimidate Clementi for being gay. Both were freshmen at the time.

Another student, Molly Wei, also was originally charged in the case, accused of watching the tryst along with Ravi. She has entered a plea deal that requires her to testify against Ravi.

Testimony was scheduled to resume on Monday.

(Editing By Ellen Wulfhorst and Paul Thomasch)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/opening-statements-begin-rutgers-student-suicide-182246440.html

The program, which was first announced Feb. 1, allows underwater homeowners in rural areas to refinance their homes with lower interest rates, similar to a program President Barack Obama announced earlier this month — although as Vilsack points out, the USDA‘s program does not rely on the approval of Congress.

“We’ve already obligated this money,” Vilsack said.

To be eligible for the USDA program, homeowners must have either a direct loan with the USDA or a USDA guarantee on a commercial bank mortgage.

Officials say the new program will cut through red tape normally seen with bank refinancing and save borrowers hundreds of dollars a month. To be eligible, borrowers must have made their mortgage payments on time for 12 consecutive months. There are more than 20,000 borrowers eligible in Florida and some 237,000 nationwide, according to the USDA, all in rural areas.

“We’re trying to make this as easy as possible,” Vilsack said.

He said that if more underwater loans are refinanced, then fewer homeowners will face foreclosure.

“This will preserve not only an opportunity for these families to save a little money, but it will preserve the value of neighborhoods, also,” he said.

Under the new pilot program, a homeowner could knock three or four percentage points off their mortgage interest rates if they refinance — and they wouldn’t have to go through an appraisal, inspection or credit report.

Similar to the federal Housing and Urban Development, the USDA does make and guarantee home loans, only for those living in rural areas. Vilsack said the agency has facilitated about 465,000 home loans nationwide.

In contrast, Obama’s housing proposal faces a major hurdle in Congress. The program would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion, depending on participation, and the administration proposes to pay for it with a fee on large banks.

On Friday in Orlando, Vilsack will also announce that the USDA is accepting applications from lenders to help finance the construction, acquisition and rehabilitation of affordable multi-family rental housing for rural residents. The USDA also has money available to help low income residents secure affordable rental housing.

___

Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush .

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/usda-help-thousands-rural-homeowners-103047063.html

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, have come to light as the NYPD fends off criticism of its monitoring of Muslim student groups and its cataloging of mosques and Muslim businesses in nearby Newark, N.J.

The NYPD’s spokesman, Paul Browne, forcefully defended the legality of those efforts Thursday, telling reporters that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.

The new documents, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, show how the NYPD’s roster of paid informants monitored conversations and sermons inside mosques. The records offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as “mosque crawlers,” gleaned from inside the houses of worship.

For instance, when a Danish newspaper published inflammatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in September 2005, Muslim communities around the world erupted in outrage. Violent mobs took to the streets in the Middle East. A Somali man even broke into the cartoonist’s house in Denmark with an ax.

In New York, thousands of miles away, it was a different story. Muslim leaders preached peace and urged people to protest lawfully. Write letters to politicians, they said. Some advocated boycotting Danish products, burning flags and holding rallies.

All of that was permissible under law and protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. All was reported to the NYPD by its mosque crawlers and made its way into police files for Kelly.

“Imam Shamsi Ali brought up the topic of the cartoon, condemning them. He announced a rally that was to take place on Sunday (02/05/06) near the United Nations. He asked that everyone to attend if possible and reminded everyone to keep their poise if they can make it,” one report read.

At the Muslim Center of New York in Queens, the report said, “Mohammad Tariq Sherwani led the prayer service and urged those in attendance to participate in a demonstration at the United Nations on Sunday.”

When one Muslim leader suggested planning a demonstration, one of the people involved in the discussion about how to get a permit was, in fact, working for the NYPD.

“It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists,” said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents.

The lawsuit is known as the Handschu case, and a court order in that case governs how the NYPD may collect intelligence.

Eisenstein said the documents prove the NYPD has violated those rules.

“This is a flat-out violation,” Eisenstein said. “This is a smoking gun.”

Browne, the NYPD spokesman, did not discuss specific investigations Thursday but told reporters that, because of the Handschu case, the NYPD operates under stricter rules than any other department in the country. He said police do not violate those rules.

His statements were intended to calm a controversy over a 2007 operation in which the NYPD mapped and photographed all of Newark’s mosques and eavesdropped on Muslim businesses. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said he was never told about the surveillance, which he said offended him.

Booker and his police director accused the NYPD of misleading them by not revealing exactly what they were doing. Had they known, they said it never would have been permitted. But Browne said Newark police were told before and after the operation and knew exactly what it entailed.

Kelly, the police commissioner, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have been emphatic that police only follow legitimate leads of criminal activity and do not conduct preventive surveillance in ethnic communities.

Former and current law enforcement officials either involved in or with direct knowledge of these programs say they did not follow leads. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret programs. But the documents support their claims.

The effort highlights one of the most difficult aspects of policing in the age of terrorism. Solving crimes isn’t enough; police are expected to identify would-be terrorists and move in before they can attack.

There are no universally agreed upon warning signs for terrorism. Terrorists have used Internet cafes, stayed in hostels, worked out at gyms, visited travel agencies, attended student groups and prayed at mosques. So the NYPD monitored those areas. In doing so, they monitored many innocent people as they went about their daily lives.

Using plainclothes officers from the squad known as the Demographics Unit, police swept Muslim neighborhoods and catalogued the location of mosques. The ethnic makeup of each congregation was logged as police fanned out across the city and outside their jurisdiction, into suburban Long Island and areas of New Jersey.

“African American, Arab, Pakistani,” police wrote beneath the photo of one mosque in Newark.

Investigators looked at mosques as the center of Muslim life. All their connections had to be known.

David Cohen, the NYPD’s top intelligence officer, wanted a source inside every mosque within a 250-mile radius of New York, current and former officials said. Though the officials said they never managed to reach that goal, documents show the NYPD successfully placed informants or undercovers — sometimes both — into mosques from Westchester County, N.Y., to New Jersey.

The NYPD used these sources to get a sense of the sentiment of worshippers whenever an event generated headlines. The goal, former officials said, was to alert police to potential problems before they bubbled up.

Even when it was clear there were no links to terrorism, the mosque informants gave the NYPD the ability to “take the pulse” of the community, as Cohen and other managers put it.

When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed on Oct. 11, 2006, when their small plane crashed into a Manhattan high-rise apartment, fighter planes were scrambled. Within hours the FBI and Homeland Security Department said it was an accident. Terrorism was ruled out.

Yet for days after the event, the NYPD’s mosque crawlers reported to police about what they heard at sermons and among worshippers.

At the Brooklyn Islamic Center, a confidential informant “noted chatter among the regulars expressing relief and thanks to God that the crash was only an accident and not an act of terrorism,” one report reads.

“The worshippers made remarks to the effect that ‘it better be an accident; we don’t need any more heat,’” an undercover officer reported from the Al-Tawheed Islamic Center in Jersey City, N.J.

In some instances, the NYPD put cameras on light poles and trained them on mosques, documents show. Because the cameras were in public space, police didn’t need a warrant to conduct the surveillance.

Police also wrote down the license plates of cars in mosque parking lots, documents show. In some instances, police in unmarked cars outfitted with electronic license plate readers would drive down the street and record the plates of everyone parked near the mosque, former officials recalled.

“They’re viewing Muslims like they’re crazy. They’re terrorists. They all must be fanatics,” said Abdul Akbar Mohammed, the imam for the past eight years at the Masjid Imam Ali K. Muslim in Newark. “That’s not right.”

___

Associated Press writers Chris Hawley and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

___

Online:

View the NYPD documents: www.ap.org/nypd

NYPD Informant summaries of Danish cartoons: http://apne.ws/zVwtCt

NYPD New Jersey mosque targeting: http://apne.ws/wsrSvN

NYPD Informant summaries of plane crash: http://apne.ws/xB9kVM

___

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org

Follow Apuzzo and Goldman at http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo and http://twitter.com/goldmandc

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/records-detail-mosque-spying-nypd-defends-tactics-085512809.html

Spain’s ambassador to the United States, Jorge Dezcallar de Mazar, was expected to watch when the two Spanish military C-130s take off from MacDill Air Force Base with 594,000 silver coins and other artifacts aboard, packed into the same white plastic buckets in which they were brought to the U.S. by Tampa, Fla.-based Odyssey Marine Exploration in May 2007.

The planes were scheduled to depart around 12:30 p.m. Friday. The coins arrived at the base from a secure storage facility in Sarasota and were loaded onto the planes Thursday evening, MacDill authorities said Friday morning.

Spanish officials said last week the planes would leave by Friday, and MacDill authorities planned a news conference on the base Friday morning with the ambassador and other officials. The planes were expected to be already loaded with pallets holding the white plastic buckets filled with coins.

Odyssey made an international splash when it discovered the wreck of the galleon, believed to be the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, off Portugal’s Atlantic coast near the Straits of Gibraltar. At the time, the coins were estimated to be worth as much as $500 million to collectors, which would have made it the richest shipwreck haul in history.

The ship was believed to have had 200 people aboard when it was sunk in the attack while nearing the end of a long voyage toward home.

Spain was going ahead with efforts to move the treasure despite a last-ditch, longshot claim to the treasure by Peru.

On Thursday, the Peruvian government made an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block transfer of the treasure to give that nation more time to make arguments in federal court about its claim to being the rightful owner.

Peru says the gold and silver was mined, refined and minted in that country, which at the time was part of the Spanish empire. The appeal was directed to Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not indicate when he would respond.

U.S. courts had previously rejected claims by descendants of the Peruvian merchants who had owned the coins aboard the Mercedes.

“Peru is making the same arguments that have been rejected at every level of the U.S. courts,” said James Goold, a Washington attorney who represents the Spanish government. “There’s absolutely nothing new in it.”

The head spokesman for Peru’s embassy in Washington, Rodolfo Pereira, declined to comment Thursday on the appeal.

Odyssey — which uses a remote-controlled submersible to explore the depths and bring the tiniest of items to the surface — had previously argued that as the finder it was entitled to all or most of the treasure. The Spanish government filed a claim in U.S. District Court soon after the coins were flown back to Tampa, contending that it never relinquished ownership of the ship or its contents. A federal district court first ruled in 2009 that the U.S. courts didn’t have jurisdiction, and ordered the treasure returned.

Odyssey had argued in federal court that the wreck was never positively identified as the Mercedes. And if it was that vessel, the company contended, then the ship was on a commercial trade trip — not a sovereign mission — at the time it sank, meaning Spain would have no firm claim to the cargo. International treaties generally hold that warships sunk in battle are protected from treasure seekers.

Odyssey lost every round in federal courts trying to hold on to the treasure. In a court hearing Feb. 17, the company was ordered by a federal judge to give Spain access to the treasure this week to ready it for transport. Odyssey said it would no longer oppose Spain’s claims. Meanwhile, the court also ordered that Odyssey had to turn over some coins and other artifacts that are still in Gibraltar.

The company has blamed politics for the courts’ decisions since the U.S. government publicly backed Spain’s efforts to get the treasure returned. In several projects since then, Odyssey has worked with the British government on efforts to salvage that nation’s sunken ships, with agreements to share what it recovers.

The company has said in earnings statements that it has spent $2.6 million salvaging, transporting, storing and conserving the treasure. But it is not expected to receive any compensation from the Spanish government for recovering it because the European nation has maintained that the company should not have tried to do so in the first place.

Goold previously has likened the salvage of shipwrecks for profit to diving for souvenirs on the wreck of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In Madrid, the Spanish Culture Ministry recently said the coins are classified as national heritage and — as such — must stay inside that country where they will be exhibited in one or more Spanish museums. It ruled out the idea of the treasure being sold to ease Spain’s national debt in a country grappling with a 23 percent jobless rate and a stagnant economy.

___

Follow Mitch Stacy on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/mitchstacy .

___

Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/shipwreck-treasure-trans-atlantic-voyage-near-end-145719359.html

Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor denied the request of Murray’s attorneys to release him on bail while he appeals his four year sentence. Pastor called Murray a flight risk and a danger to society if he ever practiced medicine again, the Associated Press reported.

Murray, 59, was not present at the hearing.

The former doctor of the King of Pop has been serving his four year sentence in solitary confinement at the Los Angeles County Jail.

Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for injecting Jackson with a lethal amount of the drug propofol.

Despite receiving the maximum sentence, Murray will likely serve only half of his four-year jail sentence due to a recent change in California law that allows non-violent felony offenders to serve their time in county jail instead of state prison.

Officials from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said the cardiologist would more than likely be released in two years due to factors such as jail overcrowding.

After Murray’s November sentencing, District Attorney Steve Cooley said he was considering asking the judge to modify the sentence so Murray’s crime could be reclassified as a serious felony, which would send him into the state prison system where he would serve the entire four years of his sentence.

“This is going to be a real test of our criminal justice system to see if it’s meaningful at all,” Cooley said at a news conference after the sentencing.

At Murray’s sentencing, Pastor rip into the doctor calling his treatment of Jackson a “cycle of horrible medicine” and “medicine madness.”

Murray treated Jackson like a “medical experiment,” the judge said, which factored into his decision to hand down the maximum sentence.

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Article source: http://gma.yahoo.com/michael-jacksons-doctor-conrad-murray-denied-bail-174644561--abc-news.html

According to police reports, 47-year-old Eric Scott of Milton, Fla., had been knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking them to call 911, saying he needed medical assistance. When officers from the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s office arrived, Scott allegedly began to walk away from them while cursing to himself, before throwing his flash light at a nearby mailbox and screaming “over and over” at the officers to shoot him.

He already had several self inflicted injuries to his hands and blood coming from his nose, police Sgt. Scott Haines told ABC News.

Police allege that as they waited for emergency responders to arrive, Scott, then detained in handcuffs, began to scrape his teeth across the hood of their patrol car, digging through the paint down to the metal. Scott was transported to a local hospital, where he continued to ask police and hospital workers to kill him. Scott was released from the hospital but could still face charges of criminal mischief and resisting an officer without violence.

Scott displayed numerous symptoms of using bath salts including “erratic behavior, confusion, loss of direction, and aggression towards law enforcement,” according to police reports.

“We unfortunately have to deal with [suspects on bath salts] pretty frequently and all of his actions were consistent with someone who was on that,” Haines told ABC News.

WATCH: ’20/20′ Investigation: Bath Salts, a Deadly, Legal High?

A woman who answered the phone at Scott’s residence — and who could be overheard passing along questions to someone else in the room — told ABC News Scott claimed he was not on bath salts.

“Just beer and vodka,” she said.

DEA Announces Emergency Ban on ‘Bath Salts’

Last June, an investigation that aired on ABC News “20/20″ revealed the dangers of the then-legal bath salts, which have been linked to violent, sometimes deadly outbursts by users.

“They’re selling time bombs,” Louisiana Poison Control Center Director Dr. Mark Ryan told ABC News during the investigation. “We’ve had some people show up who are complaining of chest pains so severe that they think they’re having a heart attack. They think they’re dying… They have extreme paranoia. They’re having hallucinations. They see things, they hear things, monsters, demons, aliens.”

The synthetic drug, which has since been placed under an emergency ban by the DEA while a bill to permanently ban it awaits a vote by the Senate, has been linked to a number of bizarre episodes over the past year, including a New Orleans woman’s arm being devoured by a flesh-eating disease in January and a West Virginia man dressed in women’s underwear slaying a goat last May.

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Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/man-bites-car-bath-salts-blame-203350949--abc-news.html

Crowd disperses at Florida mall. (TheBigLead.com)

Not again. In a situation reminiscent of the craziness that broke out in December when Nike released its retro version of a popular Air Jordan basketball shoe, police were called in late Thursday to break up a crowd that had gathered at the Florida Mall near Orlando in anticipation of the release of a new limited edition, glow-in-the-dark Nike shoe.

More than 100 officers in riot gear were needed to disperse several hundred people who law enforcement officials said became unruly as they waited for the $220 Nike Galaxy Air Foamposite Ones to go on sale. There were no arrests or injuries reported. The launch of the shoes were timed to coincide with this weekend’s NBA All-Star Game festivities in Orlando. The game is on Sunday night.

A similar scene played out at a Washington, D.C.-area mall early Friday where fans waited to get the coveted Nike Foamposite Galaxy shoes. Police in Hyattsville, Md., made one arrest, as the crowd there was estimated at over 100.

Early Friday, Foot Locker announced that it was canceling the shoe’s release at certain malls and stores. “Our priority is the safety of the community,” Foot Locker said in a statement.

But Gionvanni Mecado, a 14-year-old from Kissimmee, Florida, told the Orlando Sun-Sentinel he’s not buying the cancellation drama.

“I don’t even believe them,” Mercado told the paper.

Nike has had problems with riotous crowds before. In December, Nike’s retro Air Jordans release caused fights to break out at malls across the country. In Seattle, cops used pepper spray to subdue what they said were unruly sneaker-heads.

“Mobs are one thing,” Stephen Douglas wrote on TheBigLead.com. “Sneaker mobs are another. Nike needs to start making enough sneakers for everyone and stop releasing them at midnight.”

See video of the sneaker-triggered melee below:

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Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/nike-foamposite-galaxy-shoe-release-causes-rioting-florida-161202536.html

The opening statement by defense lawyer Steven Altman contrasted with the statement by prosecutor Julie McClure who rejected the suggestion that Ravi‘s efforts to watch Clementi‘s date with a man — and invite others to watch it — in September 2010 was just a prank. Instead, she said it was planned, malicious and criminal.

Clementi, 18, later killed himself by leaping off the George Washington Bridge after what McClure alleged was an invasion of his privacy and disregard of his dignity by Ravi.

Ravi is charged with invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering, and hindering arrest.

In a New Jersey courtroom filled with both Clementi’s and Ravi’s family members, Altman said no images of Clementi and the other man were ever broadcast, transmitted, or recorded, and that Ravi was not homophobic or bigoted and never bullied Clementi.

“You’re going to see evidence that Dahrun is not homophobic, not anti-gay. Evidence that he never recorded, never broadcast images of his roommate. He never harassed his roommate, or ridiculed or spoke negatively about his roommate. He thought he was nice guy and had no problem with him,” Altman said.

Instead, Altman said, the jury should keep in mind that Ravi was a “boy” who was 18 at the time and who occasionally acted immaturely when discussing his roommate’s perceived sexuality among his friends.

“He might be stupid at times, but he’s 18 years old and he’s certainly not criminal,” Altman said.

The Middlesex County, NJ, prosecutor, in her opening statement, alleged that Ravi had indeed acted criminally. McClure said Ravi targeted and ridiculed Clementi for being gay and having a gay encounter—the basis for the charges of bias intimidation against Ravi.

McClure described the events of Sept. 19 and Sept. 21, 2010, when Clementi asked Ravi if he could have the room to himself because he was having a friend over. Ravi went to another student’s dorm room, where he remotely activated his webcam pointed at Clementi and Clementi’s guest, and watched the two men kiss.

“Even that, though, was not enough. Within minutes of viewing those live video images, he didn’t say ‘I’m shocked, ‘I didn’t think that’s what I expected to see, I’m embarrassed.’ No, he sent out a message, an announcement via his Twitter account, a public twitter account, friends outside of Rutgers,” McClure said.

The prosecution accused Ravi of publicly ridiculing Clementi, disregarding both Clementi’s privacy and his dignity. McClure charged that it was clear that Ravi was targeting Clementi because he was gay.

When Clementi asked for the room a second time two days later, Ravi agreed, which McClure described as a “trap,” and that he sent out “another public announcement.”

“He’s seeking to brand Tyler as different from everybody else, as gay, to set him up for contempt and ridicule,” she said. “These acts were not a prank, not an accident, not a mistake, and certainly were not good natured… These acts were purposeful, intentional, planned. I would suggest to you beyond that they were mean spirited, malicious, and criminal.”

Ravi was dressed in a dark suit and occasionally fingered the knot in his tie during the early moments of the trial. He followed sidebars by intently listening in on earphones, and watched as the prosecution called their first witness, Austin Chung.

The trial began with the judge excusing one of the 16 jurors, reducing the panel to 15. The judge said only that the juror, identified as Mr. Alvarado, had “learned he had to amend an answer to a questionnaire… That’s all I have to say.”

The chain of events set off by Ravi’s webcast–including postings on social media, complaints to Rutgers administrators, and finally Clementi’s suicide–became the focal point of a national campaign to stop cyber-bullying and homophobic bullying among students.

“Pressure from gay rights groups, and global media attention made this case one that had to be prosecuted,” former New Jersey prosecutor Robert Honecker told ABC News. “Yet the charges themselves are very difficult to prove.”
Ravi, now 20, faces up to 10 years in state prison if he is convicted on all the counts.

Rutgers Webcam Spying Trial Opening Statements

He rejected a plea deal in December that would have allowed him to serve no jail time, but require him to perform 600 hours of community service and receive counseling. The state also assured Ravi, an Indian citizen, they would recommend to immigration officials that he not be deported.

“The fact that the prosecution offered this plea deal in the first place indicates that they are worried that they might have a tough time in court,” said John Fahy, another former New Jersey prosecutor familiar with the case.

“Simple answer, simple principal. He’s innocent. He’s not guilty,” Altman said. “That’s why.”

Fahy says the trial boils down to a jury having to determine whether Ravi is “a malicious homophobe,” as prosecutors contend, or merely “a dopey prankster,” as his lawyer will likely portray him.

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Article source: http://gma.yahoo.com/rutgers-webcam-spying-case-stupid-not-criminal-lawyer-175800459--abc-news.html

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-salvadoran-defense-minister-deported-u-judge-043324202.html

“Because I’m a Christian I believe in comprehensive, common-sense, humane immigration policy,” the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the New York-based National Latino Evangelical Coalition, told a conference of evangelical leaders in Birmingham.

“Hospitality is not at the margins of scripture. Jesus wasn’t kidding around when he said, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’” Salguero said at the G92 South Immigration Conference at Samford University.

Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah have all passed “omnibus” immigration crackdowns since Arizona blazed the trail in 2010 with a law requiring police to check the status of all those they arrested and suspected of being in the country illegally — a measure since blocked by a court.

The conference, whose name is derived from the 92 references in the Old Testament to “ger,” Hebrew for stranger or immigrant, brought together evangelical Christians, legal experts and ethicists “to respond to immigration issues in a biblical way.”

“We are called to welcome the stranger, that’s what scripture tells us. We’re not asking people to break the law, we’re asking to reform a broken law,” Salguero said of federal immigration policies. “It’s a complex, complicated issue, but its not unsolvable.”

Alabama’s immigration law, passed in June, requires police to detain people they suspect of being in the United States illegally if they cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason, among other measures.

Parts were blocked by a U.S. Appeals court, including a provision that permits the state to require public schools to determine the legal residency of children upon enrollment. But the court left most of the law untouched.

The state law “pretty clearly was designed to make life unlivable and enlists all Alabamians in making life unlivable” for illegal immigrants, said David Smolin, a professor of constitutional law as Samford’s Cumberland School of Law who addressed the conference. “It’s clearly a test case, to push to see how far states can go.”

President Barack Obama made a campaign promise in 2008 to push through a comprehensive immigration overhaul, tightening border and workplace enforcement, and easing a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants who paid fines, learned English and went to the back of the line, but has failed to deliver it.

Alabama Republicans who support the state’s immigration law say it will help create jobs for legal residents by driving out undocumented workers and their families, pegged at 75,000 to 160,000 people by the Pew Hispanic Center.

While the Alabama Legislature is considering modifying its law – after gaffes including the arrests last year of two foreign autoplant workers legally present in the state – a spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Robert Bentley said the governor had no intention of repealing it.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the conference “there are about half a million Hispanic Americans” who are Southern Baptists, about 40 percent of whom are in the country illegally. Fifty-nine percent of them are from Mexico, he said.

“This should not surprise us. There is no other border in the world with as big a gap in living standards on opposite sides as there are on the U.S. and Mexican sides of our border,” he added.

The forum in Birmingham was the second in what organizers say will be a series of evangelical church conferences on immigration around the nation.

(Editing By Tim Gaynor)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/evangelical-leaders-call-immigration-overhaul-020226603.html

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/ny-police-defend-surveillance-newark-muslims-011026215.html

The two aircraft, an AH-1W Cobra and a UH-1Y Huey, both attached to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, were conducting nighttime training operations when the accident occurred about 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

The five Marines aboard the Huey and the two aboard the smaller Cobra attack copter perished in the crash, said First Lieutenant Maureen Dooley, a spokeswoman for the 3rd Marine Wing, based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in Southern California.

She said no other aircraft were flying with the two stricken copters, which collided over the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range in the southeastern California desert just west of the Arizona border. No one on the ground was involved in the accident, Dooley added.

The two helicopters, although part of Miramar’s 3rd Marine Wing, were both based at nearby Camp Pendleton, and six of the Marines killed were from Pendleton. The seventh was from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, close to the crash site.

Television images showed a scorched debris field in the desert where the helicopters fell.

“Our airfield operations folks were contacted immediately and we began dispatching Marines to the scene to actually find out what’s going on,” Marine Gunnery Sergeant Dustin Dunk said.

The Marines said the incident was under investigation and declined to say if initial information suggested what caused the accident.

Dooley said weather and other environmental conditions did not appear to be factors in the crash, but she said she was unable to comment on whether the flight crews were using night-vision equipment at the time of the collision.

U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of several politicians expressing their condolences, issued a statement lamenting the deaths and saying they were a reminder of the sacrifices of the U.S. military after a decade of war.

Marine Corps Air Station Yuma lies in desert 2 miles west of Yuma, and the rugged terrain around the installation has made it an important training ground for Marines deploying to Afghanistan.

More than a dozen military personnel have been killed in recent years from accidents involving the same types of helicopters that crashed on Wednesday night, most of them based in the San Diego area.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman, Phil Stewart and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/seven-u-marines-killed-arizona-helicopter-collision-141442322.html