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Demolition Team Tears Down Wrong House.

- Friday, March 25, 2016

 A Texas woman has been left fuming after a demolition team accidentally tore down her home.

Tornadoes had caused widespread damage to homes in Rowlett in December, leaving some in need of repair or even unsafe to live in.

Lindsay Diaz was relieved after engineers said her home was structurally sound and she and begun making repairs to the property.

On Tuesday, she returned home to find her duplex had been reduced to rubble.
 She told CBS Dallas: "Boom. Just like the tornado came through again."

Ms Diaz said when she went to speak to the demolition supervisor, he realised that his team should have torn down a duplex one block further along the street.

She claims the president of the demolition company - Billy L Nabors Demolition - has been unhelpful since the mix-up.

She told CBS Dallas: "I was hoping for an apology, I'm sorry my company did this. We'll make it better, and instead he's telling me how the insurance is going to handle it and telling me that it's going to be a nasty fight."

Speaking to WFAA,she added: "How do you make a mistake like this? I mean,this is just the worst."

The demolition company declined to comment to media news.

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Training for the End of the World as We Know It

- Saturday, October 18, 2014

A shot rings out in the Orchard Lake Campground. The crack ricochets off of evergreens and elms and oaks.  No one hits the ground, screams, or ducks for cover. None of the 600 campers even seems fazed by the blast piercing through the stagnant humidity.After all,it’s just target practice.

Welcome to prepper camp.

For four days last month, the campground—nestled in a remote part of the foggy Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina—hosted a crash course in survival. Organized by “Prepper Rick” Austin and his wife, a blogger who goes by “Survivor Jane,” the weekend attracted participants from Tennessee, California, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio, and Georgia. When the sole Yankee outs herself, one person jokingly threatens to lynch her with a paracord.

Preppers have their own language.  They carry “BOBs,” or “bug-out bags,” knapsacks stuffed with provisions necessary to “get out of dodge” when “TSHTF” (the shit hits the fan). “TEOTWAWKI” is instantly recognizable as shorthand for “the end of the world as we know it.” But that “end” means something different to everyone. They’re not all anticipating a rapture. Preoccupations range from super-viruses like Ebola to natural disasters (solar flares, hurricanes) to man-made catastrophes (an ISIS attack, socioeconomic collapse leading to utter mayhem).

Ultimately, preppers are united by the goal of not going down without a fight. Some, like Rick and Jane, fled self-described “cushy, corporate lives” after a traumatic incident—in their case, getting roughed up in a parking garage. They left Florida for a 53-acre homestead in North Carolina, where they’ve planted “gardens of survival” designed to look like overgrown underbrush. Others come from a long line of live-off-the-land folk who want to continue the lineage and become less dependent on store-bought, prepackaged foods. Most distrust the political climate here and abroad.

If a disaster happens, they fear that neighbors will turn on each other. For most preppers, densely populated areas are nightmare scenarios. “Get you a paintball gun with pepper-spray balls, then get to New Jersey, steal a car, and head for the mountains,” suggests Doug, a potbellied, disheveled man staffing the Carolina Readiness Supply tent, peddling how-to manuals and dehydrated foods. There’s a sense of righteousness, of arrogance, of smug pity for people who don’t share the same certainty about the impending descent into anarchy. Many people are proudly wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “I’ll Miss You When You’re Gone.” One presenter sums up the preppers’ rallying cry: “If someone from the city tries to come to the rural areas we’ve settled, we’ll stand on the county line with our shotguns and tell them no.”

But the people at prepper camp are rational, reasoned, and eager to share their knowledge and skills, swapping tips about purchasing things like German surplus military phones—untraceable by the NSA—or night-vision goggles for spotting a sentry standing guard in a tree. They trade tips for stockpiling antibiotics without tipping off doctors or law-enforcement officials. These preppers are impassioned, but not hysterical or anxiously raving about the end of days—very different from the sensationalized caricatures portrayed on National Geographic’s hit TV show Doomsday Preppers. And they’re not so rare as you might think: In a 2012 nationally representative survey by Kelton Research, 41 percent of respondents said they believed stocking up on resources or building a bomb shelter was a more worthwhile investment than saving for retirement.

Six white tents are lined with folding chairs set up for rapt lecture audiences. In one, the lecturer keeps his dark sunglasses on. He’s not trying to conjure an air of mystery: Dale Stewart recently burned his retinas while kayaking in South Africa and shooting footage for an upcoming IMAX movie. It’s hard to imagine this calm man with a congenial Southern drawl, beatnik white beard, black tunic, and neckerchief grappling with hippos in the Nile or tagging vicious polar bears on ice floes. Although he has a homestead in Asheville, the former rodeo clown—who also happens to have a master’s in physics—spends much of his time on solo kayaking expeditions or teaching fear-inoculation tactics to the military.

Here, Stewart is lecturing about emergency conditioning. “You can have all the great gear, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you’re not gonna make it,” he says. He poses a question that preppers reiterate again and again: How far would you go to keep your family safe? The key is figuring out what will motivate you to fight, imagining every possible horrific scenario, and fantasizing about it in lurid detail until you’ve overridden your flight-or-fight response and replaced it with a carefully choreographed plan. This method of visualizing the worst altercation is called “battle-proofing.” Stewart’s rationale: If you play the scenario out in your head, it becomes part of your retinue of experiences, and you can practice reacting.

It’s not about tuning fear out. "I hope I never lose fear," he says. "Fear is a warning that something is about to happen." Instead, Stewart wants to teach people how to harness fear as a catalyst for action. Stewart wants to teach people how to combine physical prowess with thoughtful rationality. “You can drop me pretty much anywhere on the planet, and I’d be fine,” he says. “My wife would get lost in a parking lot.”

One observer’s cell phone keeps ringing. In an ironic ode to self-reliance and resilience, the sound is the Mockingjay’s song from TheHunger Games films, which imagine what it would be like to flourish in a post-apocalyptic world.

Thunder rolls gently in the distance as two dozen attendees walk through the rain to meet Richard Cleveland at the edge of the pond. Unsurprisingly, preppers aren’t fazed by a little drizzle. Most continue to stroll the knolls as though it’s 80 degrees and sunny. Cleveland has angry, red wounds on his knees—probably a result of enthusiastic off-road foraging. The founder of the Earth School in Asheville, North Carolina, has been teaching programs about wild edibles for more than two decades. His slate-blue eyes blaze when he complains that Big Pharma won’t subsidize studies about herbal medicines—he claims that he has a number of friends who have cured their prostate cancers by infusing their diet with dandelion leaves, something the University of Windsor is looking into. The group follows his lead, scanning the ground for trampled herbs. He stoops every few feet to scoop and chomp on a plant like jewelweed, after which he elicits a jovial whoop. “Luscious!” he exclaims.

The foragers tromp past the pond, where kids in bright bathing suits splash in the shallow water or drift in kayaks, their yellow paddles and orange life vests popping against a sea of khaki, army fatigues, and black t-shirts bearing the phrase, “It Wasn’t Raining When Noah Built The Ark.” Richard points to an evergreen, encouraging people to guess its medicinal use. Turns out the tree is tsuga canadensis, or eastern hemlock: The needles can be steeped in boiled water for an emergency dose of vitamin C as a way of preventing scurvy.

At its core, prepping is about wanting to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. The preppers aren’t all brawny men whose quick-twitch muscles appear ready to activate at a moment’s notice. Some are elderly, like a well-coiffed woman in her eighties with manicured nails and wrinkled fingers stacked with onyx-and-gold costume jewelry. It’s hard to envision her swinging a gun, but she carries one in her tasteful leather purse. Others are wheelchair bound, unable to navigate the grounds’ hilly terrain on their own.

On the final evening, people bundle up in heavy sweaters and coats and pack into the main tent for the keynote lecture by Dr. William R. Forstchen, a 63-year-old novelist and professor of history at Montreat College. His novel One Second After tracks the hypothetical aftermath of a fictional electromagnetic-pulse event in a sleepy American town. The gathering has the feeling of a sermon, with an impassioned question-and-answer session conjuring an evangelical call and response. There’s a sense of solemnity, responsibility, and chosen-ness hanging in the air. There’s also a feeling of painful loneliness—ostracism from other family members, the awkwardness of explaining your cache of semi-automatic weapons to a prospective lover—temporarily assuaged by this community, where everyone understands, and agrees. “Forget about political correctness,” Dr. Forstchen begs. “You are the future of America, and America is worth fighting for.”

As the fog rolls in again and lightning crackles higher up in the mountain, the crowd retreats to tents, trailers, and cars. Suddenly, the parking lot is empty and dark, the beam of a flashlight revealing just a swath of grass at the end of a dirt road in a small Southern town.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/welcome-to-prepper-camp/381351/

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KKK neighborhood watch proposal makes Pennsylvania townsfolk uneasy

- Thursday, May 08, 2014

When a Missouri-based Ku Klux Klan affiliate dropped leaflets on residents' lawns in a southern Pennsylvania township to announce the start of a neighborhood watch, the idea of a hate group patrolling their neighborhoods made many townspeople uneasy.

But researchers from the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Policy Law Center who study the group contend the Klan's move over the last few weeks may have been more flash than substance, a last-gasp bid for relevancy by the 150-year-old white supremacist group in a nation that is leaving its movement behind.

The type of angry white men who swelled the Klan's ranks after the abolition of slavery and returned during the civil rights era of the 1960s today may instead prefer the paramilitary trappings of newer hate groups to the KKK's infamous white robes and hoods, according to the ADL.

The targeted towns in suburban Pennsylvania south of the capital Harrisburg, are hardly hotbeds of crime. FBI data from 2013 shows 19 homicides reported across the county of 437,000 residents, a rate well below the national average.

But the Klan affiliate Traditionalist American Knights contends it was called in to establish a neighborhood watch after a wave of car break-ins.

"We'll send some of our people out to train them to make sure that they are doing things properly, that they're doing everything in a law-abiding manner, not acting like vigilantes or anything," said Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the group based in Park Hills, Missouri, some 850 miles west of the Pennsylvania communities.

Ancona said members of the watch do not wear the white robes and hoods that Klan members did in the 19th and 20th centuries when they launched terrifying attacks on black Americans, Jewish Americans and others targeted for ethnic or religious persecution.

"That's part of the strength of the Klan," Ancona said. "Criminals don't know who the people on patrol are or the number of them."

But Mark Pitcavage, who studies the Klan for the Anti-Defamation League, suggested that there may be another factor that could make it hard for criminals to spot the neighborhood watch: It may not exist.

"Frankly, I don't buy it," Pitcavage said. "They have no real presence in the region. They may have a few members; they may have enough members to scrape together a small Klan rally, but not enough to operate a neighborhood watch patrol."

Ancona says the group has 1,000 members in the Pennsylvania area, a number that Pitcavage views as exaggerated: True membership may be less than 50, he estimated based on his years of tracking the activities of the KKK and similar organizations.

While the number of hate groups active in the United States increased to about 1,096 in 2013 from 708 in 2002, according to Mark Potok, senior fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center, researchers say KKK membership has decreased in recent years.

The ADL estimates that the KKK now has some 3,500 members nationwide, down from about 8,000 members 10 years ago, while the SPLC contends the number of chapters currently stands at about 163, down from 221 in 2009.

LAW ENFORCEMENT CONCERNS

Local law enforcement officials said they had not been contacted about the KKK affiliate's plans. In Camp Hill, where the group also plans to set up a watch, Police Chief Douglas Hockenberry urged residents to call 911 rather than a Missouri-based hotline if they see any criminal activity.

"We do not have a high crime rate," Hockenberry said.

While neighborhood watch groups, civilians who report crimes to police, generally serve a useful purpose and get the community involved, problems can sometimes arise. George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed unarmed teen Trayvon Martin in 2012, was a neighborhood watch member.

The Klan has long been linked to violent attacks, most recently last month when 73-year-old former KKK leader Frazier Glenn Cross shot dead three people at two Jewish community centers near Kansas City, according to prosecutors.

That image of KKK members as aging may be a factor in the group's decline, said Pitcavage, who added that disaffected white Americans looking to join hate groups have other options, including neo-Nazi groups and militias.

"The Klan is not the only option or the coolest option either," Pitcavage said.

Moves like the Pennsylvania neighborhood watch may be an attempt to recruit new members, Pitcavage said, although Ancona, the KKK leader, denied that was a motivation.

"We don't necessarily need the publicity," Ancona said. "Best recruiting occurs person-to-person. I don't know where they get their numbers from. We have members in every state except Alaska and Hawaii."

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Cuba arrests four Miami-based exiles suspected of attack plot

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Cuba has arrested four Miami-based exiles suspected of planning attacks on military installations with the goal of promoting anti-government violence on the communist-run island, the Interior Ministry said.

Anti-Castro Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles attends a ceremony to recognize opponents of the Castro government in Miami, Florida, May 22, 2009.

Labeling the suspects as "terrorists," it said in a statement late on Tuesday they were linked to Luis Posada Carriles, 86, a Cuban exile and former CIA operative living in Miami who for many years sought to overthrow former President Fidel Castro.

The April 26 arrests could antagonize the already poor relations between Washington and Havana, and the case recalled a series of plots from the exile community in Miami against Cuba.

Cuba said it would contact U.S. officials about the investigation and that the four suspects had admitted to planning the attacks. By reaching out to U.S. authorities, Cuba said it hoped to "avoid acts by terrorist organizations or elements located in that country."

The State Department said it had seen the Cuban statement but had no further information.

"The Cuban government has also not been in touch with us yet on these cases," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

The suspects were identified as Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodriguez Gonzalez, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Felix Monzon Alvarez, relative unknowns among Miami exiles.

Cuba said they were working for three others in Miami, who are well known, and who had close ties to Posada Carriles, a polarizing figure seen as a terrorist in Cuba but a hero to some anti-Castro exiles.

A lawyer for Posada Carriles denied any connection to the allegations. "No basis at all," attorney Arturo Hernandez said.

At least two of the three other so-called masterminds, Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, have been active in the militant, anti-Castro exile movement. Both pleaded guilty in 2006 to criminal conspiracy in a plea deal to avoid more serious charges of possessing machine guns, a grenade launcher and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Alvarez denied any link, saying he had never heard of the men who were arrested.

"This is just a bunch of lies," Santiago Alvarez said. "They need to shift the blame from the economic situation they are in and entertain people with stories about Miami terrorists."

Another man linked by Cuba to the plot, a well-known Miami area doctor, Manuel Alzugaray, went on Spanish-language TV in Miami on Wednesday night to deny any link to the arrested men. "I don't recognize any of their names," he told the Mega TV show, Ahora Con Oscar Haza.

The president of a local charity, Miami Medical Team Foundation, Alzugaray said he had been dedicated to humanitarian work for three decades, including sending medicines to Cuba.

A man who identified himself as Raibel Pacheco was listed as director of a short-lived and previously unknown Florida non-profit, the Fuerza Cubana de Liberacion Inc, which was created to "help the people of Cuba reconquer their democracy and their lost liberties," according to the Florida state records.

Reuters could not confirm if he was the same Raibel Pacheco named by Cuba as one of the arrested suspects.

Posada Carriles is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela in relation to the bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet in 1976 that killed 73 people. He is also suspected of involvement in hotel bombings in 1997 aimed at destabilizing Cuba and scaring away tourists.

Cuba has recently intensified its criticism of the United States for what it considers efforts to destabilize the country. It has also railed against the State Department for once again naming Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism in an annual report on April 30.

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Government says no need to park recalled GM cars

- Wednesday, May 07, 2014

There's no need to tell owners of recalled General Motors small cars to stop driving them, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Wendi Kunkel faced ignition switch issues on her 2010 Chevy Cobalt in Rockwall, Texas. Kunkel was instructed to pull everything off her keychain, which GM contends will solve the problem. But she’s still nervous about driving her car on her 30-minute one-way commute.

In a written response to two senators who asked for such an order, Foxx said engineers with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have determined it's not necessary.

GM is recalling 2.6 million small cars worldwide to replace ignition switches that suddenly can slip out of the run position and shut off the engine. That can knock out power-assisted steering and cause drivers to lose control and crash. It also disables the air bags. GM says at least 13 people have died in crashes linked to the problem. The company has admitted knowing about the problem for at least a decade, yet failing to recall the cars until this year.

The company has told owners to remove everything from their key chains, and the reduced weight will stop the switches from slipping into the "accessory" or "off" positions.

Foxx, responding to a letter from Democratic Sens. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said NHTSA engineers have examined the geometry and physics of the key, ignition switch and steering column of the GM vehicles, and they have reviewed GM's testing data.

The ignition switch of a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt.

"NHTSA is satisfied that for now, until the permanent remedy is applied, the safety risk posed by the defect in affected vehicles is sufficiently mitigated by GM's recommended action," the letter says.

The safety agency, which is part of Foxx's department, has taken measures above and beyond normal procedures in the GM case, Foxx wrote.

The recalled cars include mainly Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions that are no longer being made. GM is in the process of shipping parts to dealers but has said it won't be done with that until October. The company is offering loaner cars to any owners with safety concerns and so far has provided about 45,000.

But Blumenthal and Markey disagree and say all the cars should be parked until the switches are replaced.

"We remain extremely concerned that GM and NHTSA are not doing enough to convey the seriousness of this defect to owners of the affected cars, unnecessarily putting more lives at risk," the senators said in a statement Wednesday.

They also questioned why GM's initial recall notice to car owners said the ignition switches could malfunction while driving over rough terrain "regardless of additional weight on the key ring."

Both senators are members of a subcommittee that is looking into GM's actions involving the switches. NHTSA and the Justice Department are also investigating, and criminal charges are possible.

GM has said it has done 80 different tests at high speeds and on rough roads, and that with just the key in the ignition, the switches don't move out of the run position.

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House votes to hold ex-IRS official in contempt

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House Republicans voted Wednesday to hold a former Internal Revenue Service official in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a pair of committee hearings about her role in the agency's tea party controversy.

In this May 22, 2013, photo, then-IRS official Lois Lerner is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight Committee hearing to investigate the extra scrutiny the IRS gave to tea party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

The House also passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS.

Lois Lerner directed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. A year ago this week, Lerner publicly disclosed that agents had improperly singled out tea party applications for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny.

An inspector general's report blamed poor management but found no evidence of a political conspiracy. Many Republicans in Congress believe otherwise.

"Who's been fired over the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS? No one that I'm aware of," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday. "Who's gone to jail for violating the law? When is the administration going to tell the American people the truth?"

House Democrats said Wednesday's voting was little more than an election-year ploy to fire up the GOP base.

"Instead of passing bipartisan legislation to create more jobs, reform immigration, raise the minimum wage or address any number of issues that affect our constituents every single day, House Republicans are spending this entire week trying to manufacture scandals for political purposes," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

"Welcome to witch hunt week," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

The vote to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress was 231 to 187, with all Republicans voting in favor and all but a few Democrats voting against.

Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions at a pair of hearings by the Oversight Committee. House Republicans say she waived her constitutional right by making an opening statement in which she proclaimed her innocence.

The matter now goes to Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Federal law says Machen has a "duty" to bring the matter before a grand jury. But a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said it was unclear whether the duty is mandatory or discretionary. Machen was appointed to his job by President Barack Obama.

"We will carefully review the report from the speaker of the House and take whatever action is appropriate," Machen's office said in a statement.

The vote calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel was 250 to 168, with all Republicans voting in favor and most Democrats voting against.

Attorney General Eric Holder has denied previous requests to appoint a special counsel, saying it was unwarranted.

Three congressional committees and the Justice Department have spent much of the past year investigating the IRS over its handling of applications for tax-exempt status.

So far, the congressional investigations have revealed that IRS officials in Washington were more involved in handling the applications than the agency initially acknowledged.

However, the investigations have not publicly established that anyone outside the IRS knew about the targeting or directed it.

Cummings released a report this week saying House Oversight Committee investigators have interviewed 39 witnesses, and found no involvement by the White House and no political conspiracy by IRS officials. Instead, many IRS witnesses said they lacked clear guidance from management on how to handle tea party applications, the report said.

"Who told Lois Lerner to target conservative Americans?" Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., said at a news conference sponsored by several tea party groups. "That's what we don't know. That's what we need to know."

Lerner sat for a lengthy interview with Justice Department investigators, said her lawyer, William W. Taylor III. The interview was done "without conditions," he said.

Lerner wouldn't answer questions before the Oversight Committee because, Taylor said, committee Republicans were only looking to vilify her in front of TV cameras.

"It was clear that the majority would conduct the hearing without any sense of decorum or fairness," Taylor told reporters in March.

On Wednesday, Taylor said in a statement: "Today's vote has nothing to do with the facts or the law. Its only purpose is to keep the baseless IRS `conspiracy' alive through the midterm elections."

"Ms. Lerner has not committed contempt of Congress. She did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights by proclaiming her innocence," Taylor added.

On May 10, 2013, Lerner was speaking at a Washington law conference when she made the agency's first public acknowledgment of the tea party controversy. At the time, Lerner publicly apologized on behalf of the agency.

Most of the groups were applying for tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations. Agents were scrutinizing the applications to measure how much the groups were involved in politics.

IRS regulations say social welfare groups may engage in electoral politics, but it may not be their primary mission.

About two weeks after Lerner's public revelation, she was subpoenaed to appear at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Lerner read an opening statement, saying she did nothing wrong, broke no laws and never lied to Congress. Then she refused to answer lawmakers' further questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.


The next day Lerner was placed on paid leave. She retired from the IRS last fall, ending a 34-year career in the federal government, including work at the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission.

The Oversight Committee later ruled in a party-line vote that Lerner forfeited her constitutional right not to testify by making an opening statement. All Republicans voted in favor while all Democrats voted against.

Committee Democrats have compiled a list of constitutional experts who say the contempt case is weak. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., countered with a memo from the House general counsel's office saying there is a legal foundation for holding Lerner in contempt.

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School Stabbing Spree: 20 Hurt in Pittsburgh-Area Bloodbath

- Wednesday, April 09, 2014

 A student went on a stabbing rampage through the classrooms and halls of a high school outside Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning, authorities said. As many as 20 students were hurt, some with life-threatening injuries.





The student was in custody and being questioned by police, said Dan Stevens, a Westmoreland County emergency management spokesman. The student is a sophomore, the county confirmed to NBC News. Stevens said that the motive was unclear.

The attack happened at Franklin Regional High School, in the suburb of Murrysville, just after doors opened for the day. A student described panic in the halls.

“I was walking into the school and a stampede of people were running after me,” said the student, Kari Lee, who said several of her friends had been knifed. “They were screaming, ‘Go to your cars! Go to your cars! Someone is stabbing people!’”

Seven teenagers and an adult were taken to Forbes Regional Hospital, Dr. Chris Kauffman, the trauma director there, told NBC News. The seven were stabbed in the chest, back and abdomen, he said. He characterized some of the injuries as life-threatening but said everyone was expected to live.

At least two of the students were in surgery. Others were undergoing CT scans and X-rays and could require surgery later.

“These are quite serious injuries,” Kauffman told CNN. “These are not superficial in nature.”
Reese Jackson, president and CEO of the hospital, said that one of the victims may have saved the life of another.

“A surgeon came out and congratulated one of the victims by saying she had saved the person’s life by applying pressure to the person’s wound,” Jackson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

One hospital reported that it had a patient as old as 60.

Stevens told WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, that the first call for help from the school came at 7:13 a.m. The situation was under control by 7:30 to 7:40, he said.

Ambulances swarmed the parking lot of the high school, and nearby streets were sealed off.

The school district said that high school students and middle school students nearby were “secure,” and that elementary school had been canceled for the day. Parents were asked to report to an elementary school to pick up their children.

Students who drove to school were not allowed to drive home without a parent, according to the district.

The high school has about 1,200 students. Murrysville, about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh, is a city of 21,000. Renatta Signorini, a reporter for the Tribune Review newspaper, told MSNBC that it is a city with low crime.

She said that the schools there do not have metal detectors but have been updating their security procedures.

Gov. Tom Corbett said that he was shocked and saddened. He said he had directed the Pennsylvania State Police to help and would make other state resources available.

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Canadian eco activist pleads guilty to US arsons

- Sunday, October 13, 2013

PORTLAND, Oregon-A Canadian environmentalist pleaded guilty Thursday to setting a string of fires across the U.S. West that torched a ski resort and other buildings in what the Justice Department has called the "largest eco-terrorism case" in U.S. history.

Rebecca Rubin, who surrendered to authorities a year ago after a decade on the run, was accused of helping the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front carry out 20 acts of arson across several U.S. states between 1996 and 2001.

Rubin, 40, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of arson and conspiracy as part of a plea deal that prosecutors said could see her spend between five and 7½ years in prison. She is scheduled to be sentenced in Portland Jan. 27.


Prosecutors have said that the arson campaign stood out for the number of fires set and damage caused, which was estimated at more than $40 million. The charges against Rubin were consolidated from cases filed in Oregon, Colorado and California.

Rubin, shackled at the ankles and wearing blue prison togs, pleaded guilty of involvement in an arson attack on the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse Facility near Burns, Oregon, in 1998 and a similar facility in California in 2001. The horses were released in both incidents.

She also admitted involvement in the attempted arson of U.S. Forest Service Industries in Medford, Oregon, and pleaded guilty to eight counts of arson for the 1998 torching of a Vail ski resort in Colorado.


Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer said the Vail plan "was motivated by environment and animal welfare concerns" and that she had carried fuel up the mountain, where it was hidden in the snow for later use. She did not participate in the actual arson that took place later, he said.

Rubin did not speak in court other than to enter her pleas and to repeatedly say that she understood all the proceedings and provisions of her agreement and was not coerced.

In 2007, 10 other defendants in the group pleaded guilty to various counts and received prison terms from 37 to 156 months. Two others charged in the case remain at large.

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'Son of Sam' loophole may help killer get kids' cash

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MINEOLA, N.Y.-It's the hallmark of New York's "Son of Sam" law and others like it across the nation — convicted criminals should not be able to profit from their crimes.

But legal experts say the case of a Long Island mother who drowned her three children in a bathtub and is now seeking to cash in could succeed because of a loophole. Since Leatrice Brewer was never convicted — instead found not guilty by reason of mental disease — legal experts say she could make a plausible case to receive some of her children's $350,000 estate.

"The Brewer case is a novel circumstance," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. "The facts do seem to place her outside the scope of the law, although that does not mean there could not be other barriers to her recovering from the estate of her children."

Brewer, 33, slashed her daughter's throat before drowning her and two younger brothers in 2008, believing she was saving them from the deadly effects of voodoo. Hours after the killings, she survived two suicide attempts — swallowing a concoction of home cleaning fluids and later jumping out a second-story window.

She was found not guilty because of mental disease or defect in the deaths of the children, ages 1, 5 and 6, and was committed to a state psychiatric hospital.

A hearing before Nassau County Surrogate Court Judge Edward McCarty next month will determine if Brewer is entitled to a share of the proceeds from two lawsuits the children's fathers settled with the county; they claimed social workers failed to properly monitor the woman and children.

Caseworkers visited Brewer's apartment two days before the killings and found no one home but neglected to schedule an immediate follow-up visit. Two social workers were later suspended.

"As a human being, I am outraged and disgusted by this," said attorney Thomas Foley, who represents the father of the two slain boys. "As an attorney, I have some level of understanding of why we have to go through this charade, but it is difficult to forget we are here because of the actions of a crazy person who killed her kids."

Kenneth Weinstein, a court-appointed attorney representing any possible unknown heirs who may surface, was just as blunt: "It would stand the law on its ear if she were to receive any proceeds from her own heinous, felonious conduct."

New York was the first state to enact a "Son of Sam" law in the 1970s following the capture of notorious serial killer David Berkowitz. Its intent was to bar Berkowitz and other criminals from profiting from their crimes through the commercial exploitation of their stories.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law in 1991 for violating the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression, ruling it would have encompassed works including Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

New York revised its law in 1992, and the state Senate has passed legislation seven times since 2006 — most recently in July, albeit with little fanfare — to try to address the issue of people held not responsible because of mental disease, said the bill's sponsor, Sen. John Flanagan. Companion legislation has been proposed in the state Assembly but has yet to gain any traction. Assemblyman Charles Lavine said he was optimistic the notoriety of the Brewer case could spark passage.

More than 40 states have enacted similar Son of Sam legislation, though there have been several successful court challenges on First Amendment grounds as well, said David L. Hudson, a scholar with the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Andy Kahan, a victim's rights advocate for the Houston Police Department and a national expert on Son of Sam and related laws, said he knows of no other efforts to close existing loopholes in other states.

"Perhaps as a result of this case, others will go back and look at and consider revising their Son of Sam laws," he said.

Although legal experts agree the case would establish a precedent if Brewer succeeds, she's not expected to see any money because of a $1.2 million lien against her for psychiatric counseling and other services she has received since her arrest. Her court-appointed attorney did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Maebell Mickens, Brewer's grandmother, disputed that the woman's motivation is money, though she did not offer an alternative explanation.

"She ain't never wanted no money," Mickens told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview.

"I love my granddaughter. I love her dearly, and I miss my great-grandchildren. I long for them; my heart hurts for them every day of my life."

Mickens said she sometimes speaks to Brewer by telephone. "She misses the children; she is still in so much pain. She calls crying and longing to hold her children in her arms again.

"She was a sick girl."

Tags: Blog / Destination / Nation / US

Drugs, crime rings follow US oil boom

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BILLINGS, Mont. — The booming Bakken oil patch that's given a major boost to U.S. energy production has emerged as a new front in the fight against drug trafficking.

Trucks sit outside temporary worker housing in North Dakota.

Organized crime rings are popping up in the Northern Plains, with traffickers sensing opportunity in the thousands of men and women lured there by the hope of a big paycheck.

Law-enforcement officers across the region have teamed up to crack down on the trafficking, netting one of their most significant indictments so far this week — a dozen drug arrests in Montana and four in North Dakota.

Authorities say more arrests are in the works as part of investigations conducted through a new interagency partnership. But with drug offenses, violence and property crimes on the upswing, they face an uphill climb to reduce the spiking crime rate.

Related: Oil boom traffic taxes rural police

The changes at play in once-quiet prairie communities were demonstrated this week with the shooting of an FBI agent in the small, unincorporated town of Keene, N.D. The agent, who was not seriously injured, was executing a search warrant as part of an oil patch-centered investigation, said U.S. Attorney for North Dakota Tim Purdon.

"More people equals more money equals more crime," Purdon said, adding that the federal shutdown is making the situation worse.

"We're in this very, very serious fight against organized crime for control of the streets of the oil patch, and I've got about half of my employees home on furlough," he said. "We're in this fight now with one arm tied behind our back."

The law enforcement partnership, known as Project Safe Bakken, has been at work since last year. Montana Attorney General Tim Fox said it could not be made public until arrests and indictments were made in the cases that were unsealed this week.

A parallel effort in North Dakota in July charged 22 people with conspiracy to sell heroin and other drugs on an Indian reservation in the heart of the oil patch. Authorities linked that case to a national drug trafficking ring seeking to make inroads in the Bakken.

In the Montana case, the government alleges that 49-year-old Robert Ferrell Armstrong, aka Dr. Bob, of Moses Lake, Wash., brought in large quantities of methamphetamine from his home state and distributed them in the Bakken and elsewhere in Montana through a network of couriers.

At the time of his arrest, Armstrong also was wanted for failing to check in with a community corrections officer in Washington state, where he has a history of drug, gun and assault charges, said Washington Corrections spokeswoman Norah West.

ND farmer finds oil spill while harvesting

Armstrong and several others among the 12 people arrested face federal drug conspiracy charges that carry potential sentences of 10 years to life in prison if they are convicted.

The severity of the potential sentences reflects the volume of drugs that the ring allegedly sold, said Armstrong's public defender, Tony Gallagher. Precise quantities were not detailed in the affidavit.

Armstrong and the other defendants pleaded not guilty during initial court appearances.

Gallagher and Montana U.S. Attorney Mike Cotter said they could not discuss details of the case beyond what was in the grand jury indictment unsealed Wednesday.

"Mr. Armstrong has tendered a plea of not guilty, which puts at issue each and every charge in the indictment," Gallagher said.

This week's arrests follow sharp increases in crime across the board since the Bakken boom began about five years ago.

A review of FBI crime reports show violent crime was up 64 percent and property crimes up 63 percent in Montana's four Bakken counties between 2009 and 2012, the period for which the most complete data was available. Both categories showed decreases elsewhere in the state in those years.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox acknowledged that law enforcement agencies have been forced to play catch-up with dramatic changes in the Bakken that few anticipated a decade ago.

But Fox stressed that the economic benefits from the boom have been substantial. More than 20,000 people have poured into eastern Montana and western North Dakota since oil production began its meteoric rise in 2008. Tens of thousands more are expected in the next several years as the boom continues.

"With the good, comes some bad," Fox said. "There's a lot to be done. I'm personally committed to making sure we address the public safety issues."

Tags: Blog / Destination / Politics / US

DC crowd pushes through barriers to WWII memorial

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WASHINGTON — A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial's closing under the government shutdown.


Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to WTOP Radio. Cruz said President Barack Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown.

"Tear down these walls," the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang "God bless America" and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.

"This is the people's memorial," Palin told the crowd. "Our veterans should be above politics."

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began on Oct. 1. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

Spending a stumbling block to budget deal

Sunday's rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

Later some protesters carried barricades to the White House and rallied outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Protesters carried one sign reading "Impeach Obama."

District of Columbia police said the crowd was starting to disperse by 1 p.m. U.S. Park Police said there had been at least one arrest at the Lincoln Memorial, though no details were available.

Tags: Blog / Destination / Politics / US

Statue of Liberty reopens amid federal shutdown

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NEW YORK -Lady Liberty was once again welcoming visitors to her shores Sunday after the state agreed to shoulder the costs of running the famed statue during the federal government shutdown.

Eager sightseers stood in line in Manhattan's Battery Park, waiting for the ferry trips to the Statue of Liberty, which had been shut since Oct. 1.

Esther Athanase, a 26-year-old au pair from Le Havre, France, was using a ticket she'd booked months ago with a friend. "We have to do this," she said. "It's an American symbol. And it was a gift from France."

Ahmed Albin-Hamad, 24, a Saudi Arabian student at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, said he came to Battery Park to get a view of the statue.

"I assumed it was closed, but at least I could see it," he said. He was surprised and excited when he found out the statue had reopened.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that the state would pay about $61,600 a day to reopen Liberty Island National Park through Oct. 17. If the shutdown is not resolved by then, officials said, they will renegotiate to keep it open.

On Sunday, Cuomo said it was in the state's economic interest to make sure the statue was accessible.

"When you close down the Statue of Liberty, you close down a good portion of the tourism that comes to New York City, and that is untold millions of dollars of damage," he said.

New York has 33 sites under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, and they have been shut since Oct. 1 during the partial federal government shutdown. The sites include the statue and nearby Ellis Island, which remains closed for repairs since Superstorm Sandy last year.

Nearly 4 million people visited Lady Liberty in 2011, generating $174 million in economic activity, the park service said.

Grand Canyon opens in state-fed national parks deal

Governors in several other states have asked for authority to reopen parks within their borders, citing economic losses from closures. Arizona reopened the Grand Canyon on Saturday. Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado also reopened along with several parks in Utah, according to the parks service website.

Ferry trips from Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty resumed Sunday morning.

Tags: Blog / Destination / Stories / US

Access to food stamp system restored in 17 states affected by outage

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Access to the food stamp system was restored late Saturday following a computer failure that knocked out service to people across 17 states, preventing some from buying groceries.

In this photo taken Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010, a sign announcing the acceptance of electronic Benefit Transfer cards is seen at a farmers market in Roseville, Calif.

"Beneficiary access to programs such as SNAP, TANF and other programs has been restored to the 17 states where Xerox provides EBT service," said a statement from vendor Xerox Corp, which manages the electronic benefits transfer cards. "Re-starting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality."

The company apologized for the disruption, adding: "We realize that access to these benefits is important to families in the states we serve. We continue to investigate the cause of the issue so we can take steps to ensure a similar interruption does not re-occur."

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Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and California were a few of the states where people reported having trouble using their food stamp cards Saturday.

A company spokeswoman confirmed Saturday afternoon that the system experienced connectivity issues.

"During a routine test of our back-up systems Saturday morning, Xerox's Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system experienced a temporary shutdown. While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits," spokeswoman Karen Arena said in a statement.

Officials had advised beneficiaries to use the manual system in the meantime, which meant SNAP customers could spend up to $50 until the system is back online. 

Eliza Shook, a cashier in Clarksdale, Miss., one of the country's poorest states, told The Associated Press dozens of customers at the grocery store where she works had to put back the groceries when their cards didn't work because they couldn't pay for their purchases otherwise. 

"It's been terrible," Shook told the AP. "It's just been some angry folks. That's what a lot of folks depend on." 

A representative for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the SNAP program, said the service disruption was not related to the government shutdown.source NBC News