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Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Woman accused in babies' deaths appears in court

PROVO, Utah (AP) — Prosecutors have been granted more time to determine what charges to file against a Utah woman accused of killing six of her babies and storing their bodies in her garage.

Megan Huntsman, 39, was in court Monday wearing a baggy prison jumpsuit, her hands and ankles shackled. She mostly stared at the ground as prosecutors asked the judge for two weeks to sort through evidence and ensure they choose the proper charges.
A state judge in Provo granted them a week after Huntsman's newly appointed attorney objected to two weeks.
Huntsman is being held on $6 million bail.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman said outside court that Huntsman remains the only suspect.
Pleasant Grove Police Detective Dan Beckstrom noted authorities are awaiting results from autopsies completed last week by the state medical examiner.
Investigators hope DNA will reveal the sex of the babies and who their parents are, though that could take months.
"There's a lot more work to do on those autopsies, and when we get that information, we'll be ready to file," Beckstrom said.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman said authorities still will have questions, but the extra week will give his office more time to make a careful, calculated decision on charges.
"We want to make sure we don't file erroneously," Buhman said. "The closer we can get to the truth of what happened, the better decisions we can make."
Huntsman's estranged husband, Darren West, discovered one of the infant corpses in the garage of their Pleasant Grove home on April 12. Police then responded and found a total of seven tiny bodies in cardboard boxes.
Police said Huntsman acknowledged that from 1996 to 2006, she strangled or suffocated six of the babies, put them in plastic bags and packed them inside boxes in the garage of her home south of Salt Lake City. She told police a seventh baby was stillborn.
Investigators believe West is the father of the babies, though they are waiting on DNA results to confirm that, Buhman said. West lived with Huntsman during the decade she says this happened, but he was in federal prison on drug charges from 2006 until January.

Prosecutors said they hope to soon meet again with West, who Buhman said has been cooperative and is not considered a suspect. After an initial interview, West obtained an attorney and has not met with investigators again.

Authorities have said they think they know Huntsman's motive, but they have declined to reveal it publicly.

Poll: Indians view rape as big problem, laws lax

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new poll shows that Indians view rape as a big problem in their country and think the criminal justice system is inadequate to deal with it.

The national survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center one year after the December 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi unleashed a wave of public anger about sexual violence in India. The results were published Tuesday.

The survey shows nine in 10 Indians agree that the crime of rape is a "very big problem." About eight in 10 say the problem is growing.

And despite some legal reforms after the Delhi case, about three in four Indians say laws are too lax and faulted police for not being strict enough in investigating rape cases.

The survey was based on 2,464 face-to-face interviews with adults across India between December 2013 and January 2014. It found the concern about rape cuts across gender and party lines, and is shared by urban and rural Indians.

According to the poll, 91 percent of men and 89 percent of women said rape was a very big issue.

The nationwide outcry following the Delhi gang rape led the federal government to rush legislation increasing prison terms for rapists and criminalizing voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women.

In September, a special fast track court sentenced four of the perpetrators of the Delhi case to death. And earlier this month, a court sentenced to death three men who raped a photojournalist inside an abandoned textile mill last year in Mumbai, India's biggest city, under a new anti-rape law. The victim of that attack survived.

The Pew poll found that only 7 percent of Indians rated the current laws as "about right" in dealing with cases of rape, and only 6 percent said the police investigated rape cases adequately. And 18 percent said the laws were too tough.

The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Lebanon sends aid to citizens trapped in Syria war

Ras al-Harf (Lebanon) (AFP) - Lebanese authorities on Tuesday sent a rare aid convoy to the town of Tufeil, an island of Lebanese territory inside Syria where thousands have become trapped in the country's war.

Tufeil is located on the northeastern tip of Lebanon, which stretches into Syria.

Though the town is Lebanese, it is impossible to reach it without passing through Syrian territory.
The town was once home to some 5,000 people, most of them Sunni Muslims, but many have fled to safety inside Lebanon as the conflict in Syria has escalated.
Ever since Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, residents of Tufeil have voted in Lebanon, but have gone to school, worked, received medical treatment and bought their goods from Syria.
But as the Syrian army, backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, scored a string of victories this year in the surrounding Qalamun area, Tufeil's Sunni residents found themselves trapped.
For weeks the town's population has been unable to leave or receive any kind of assistance, with Syrian armed forces blocking the routes into Syria.
Inside Lebanon, the villages neighbouring Tufeil are largely Shiite, where support for Hezbollah and the Syrian regime is strong, and residents accuse Tufeil of supporting Syria's Sunni-led opposition.
With concern rising about the plight of the town, Lebanon's Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq said Monday that authorities would provide assistance to Tufeil's residents, as well as to Syrians who have taken refuge there.
Mashnuq also said he had been in touch with Hezbollah in a bid to secure safe passage for the aid convoy through the Shiite village of Britel, which neighbours Tufeil in Lebanon.
An AFP journalist, who travelled with the convoy until Ras al-Harf, six kilometres (four miles) from Tufeil, said the terrain was rugged and that Hezbollah positions and flags were clearly visible.
The aid convoy comprised Red Cross vehicles, trucks transporting 1,000 food parcels, tents, 3,000 blankets, a mobile clinic, and fuel tanks, said Lebanon's High Relief Commission chief Mohammad Kheir.
According to Kheir, "1,000 Lebanese and 3,000 Syrians" are now trapped in Tufeil.

Ali al-Shum, an official from Tufeil, told AFP: "Before the (Syrian) crisis, we didn't used to distinguish between Lebanese and Syrians. We lived together."

He denied any Syrian opposition fighters had entered Tufeil.

Once the convoy arrived, television footage from the town showed hundreds gathered to receive aid, cheering and throwing flowers at the delegation.

"We need help, but we do not want to leave our land," said one beneficiary.

Another asked for the Lebanese army to deploy in Tufeil "to protect us".

Most Sherpas decide to leave Everest for season

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Most Sherpa mountain climbers have decided to leave Mount Everest, a guide said Tuesday, confirming a walkout certain to disrupt a climbing season that was already marked by grief over the 16 lives lost in Everest's deadliest disaster.

"It is just impossible for many of us to continue climbing while there are three of our friends buried in the snow," said Dorje Sherpa, an experienced Everest guide from the tiny Himalayan community that has become famous for its high-altitude skills and endurance.
"I can't imagine stepping over them," he said of the three Sherpa guides who remain buried in ice and snow after Friday's deadly avalanche. Thirteen bodies have been recovered.
The avalanche was triggered when a massive piece of glacier sheared away from the mountain along a section of constantly shifting ice and crevasses known as the Khumbu Icefall — a teacherous area where overhanging immensities of ice as large as 10-story buildings hang over the main route up the mountain.
Special teams of Sherpas, known as Icefall Doctors, fix ropes through what they hope to be the safest paths, and use aluminum ladders to bridge crevasses. But the Khumbu shifts so much that they need to go out every morning — as they were doing when disaster struck Friday — to repair sections that have broken overnight and move the climbing route if needed.
Earlier Tuesday, Nepal's government appeared to agree to some of the Sherpas' demands in the threatened boycott, such as setting up a relief fund for Sherpas who are killed or injured in climbing accidents, but the funding falls far short of the Sherpas' demands.
After the avalanche, the government quickly said it would pay the families of each Sherpa who died 40,000 rupees, or about $415. The Sherpas said they deserved far more — including more insurance money, more financial aid for the victims' families and new regulations that would ensure climbers' rights.
On Tuesday, the government's offer was modified to include a relief fund to help Sherpas injured in mountaineering accidents and the families of those killed, and to pay for rescue during accidents on the mountain. The government said it would stock the fund annually with 5 percent of its earnings from Everest climbing fees — well below the 30 percent the Sherpas are demanding. Nepal earns some $3.5 million annually in Everest climbing fees.
The insurance payout for those killed on the mountain will also be doubled to $15,620 (2 million rupees), the Ministry of Tourism said — far short of the Sherpas' demand for $20,800.
The walkout decision was made after a memorial service at base camp for the victims, Dorje Sherpa said, adding that most guides were planning to pack up and leave as early as Wednesday.
"We want to honor the members we lost and out of respect for them we just can't continue," he said.
Most attempts to reach the summit are made in mid-May, when weather is most favorable. If the Sherpas boycott the season, many climbers will have to forfeit most or all of the money they have spent to go up Everest — at a cost of $75,000 or more.
The Nepal National Mountain Guide Association will try to negotiate with the Sherpas and the government because a total boycott would harm Nepal's mountaineering in the long term, the group's general secretary, Sherpa Pasang, said.
While most climbers have to make multiple passes through the Icefall, moving up and down the mountain as they acclimatize and prepare for their summit attempt, Sherpas make the dangerous journey two dozen times or more, carrying supplies and helping clients negotiate the hazardous maze of ice.
"We look up at these chunks of ice blocks, pray and then try to get out of the area as fast as we can," said 34-year-old Nima Sherpa, who did not make the ascent this season.
Thousands of Nepali guides and porters make their livelihoods during the climbing season, when climbers rely on them for everything from carrying gear and cooking food to high-altitude guiding; without them, reaching the summit would be almost impossible.
Nearly 30 climbers have died on the Icefall since 1963, most killed in avalanches or when they were crushed by huge chunks of ice. Occasionally, things are so dangerous the guides turn away completely. In 2012, one of the best-known Everest guiding operations, Himalayan Experience, run by New Zealand mountaineer Russell Brice, canceled its climb midway through the season, saying the Icefall was simply too dangerous.
At the base camp memorial service Tuesday, Buddhist priests read religious scripts, and Sherpas and foreign climbers burned incense butter lamps and prayed for the dead. The victims' bodies were cremated on Monday.
Since the avalanche, expedition teams have declared a week of mourning. About 400 foreign climbers from 39 expedition teams were on the mountain with an equal number of Sherpa guides, along with many more support staff such as cooks, cleaners and porters in the base camp.
At least one expedition company has canceled this season's attempt for its six-member team.

"Our team members have empathy for the Sherpa community and we wish for everyone to be able to mourn their lost family and friends in peace," the Adventure Consultants Everest Expedition 2014 Team said on its website.

More than 4,000 climbers have reached the top of the world's highest mountain since 1953, when it was first conquered by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Hundreds of people have died trying.

US Supreme Court: Michigan ban on affirmative action OK

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a constitutional amendment in Michigan banning the use of race-based preferences in the admissions decisions of public universities.

Voting 6 to 2, the high court said Michigan’s Proposal 2 did not violate the US Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as charged by various groups favoring the use of affirmative action in college admissions.

The groups had challenged the affirmative action ban on grounds that it tilted the political playing field in Michigan in a way that made it significantly more difficult for racial minorities to enact the type of race-based college admissions policies that they favor.

RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about the US Constitution? A quiz.

A federal judge rejected the argument, but the full Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals embraced it by a vote of 8 to 7, striking down the Michigan ban.
In reversing that decision, the high court said the appeals court judges were wrong to “disempower” the 58 percent of Michigan voters who supported the constitutional amendment.
“There is no authority in the Constitution of the United States or in this Court’s precedents for the Judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s main opinion.
“This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it,” Justice Kennedy wrote in an 18-page opinion.
He added: “It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a 58-page dissent in which she lectured and belittled the majority justices as being “out of touch with reality.”
“My colleagues are of the view that we should leave race out of the picture entirely and let the voters sort it out,” she said.
“In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination,” she said in a dissent joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable,” Justice Sotomayor said.
“The Constitution does not protect minorities from political defeat. But neither does it give the majority free rein to erect selective barriers against racial minorities,” she said.
Sotomayor said the judiciary has a special role to play to safeguard minority rights that might be diminished or extinguished by majoritarian power.
“The Court abdicates that role, permitting the majority to use its numerical advantage to change the rules mid-contest and forever stack the deck against racial minorities in Michigan,” she said.
At the center of the case was the so-called political process doctrine, which holds that measures that make it considerably harder for a minority group to participate in the democratic process must be subjected to strict examination by the courts.
Although two of the majority justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, would have overturned the underlying legal precedents supporting the doctrine, the court’s main opinion does not do so.
Instead, Kennedy defended the democratic process. He said a holding invalidating Michigan’s constitutional amendment would have been “an unprecedented restriction on the exercise of a fundamental right held not just by one but by all in common.”
“It is the right to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, act through a lawful electoral process,” Kennedy said.
He said such precepts do not diminish the judiciary’s role to protect racial minorities from discriminatory laws or enactments. But the Michigan constitutional amendment did not amount to such discrimination, he said.
The case stems from the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the limited use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan Law School.
Three years after that 5-to-4 decision, opponents of affirmative action placed a statewide initiative on the Michigan ballot. The measure, Proposal 2, sought to amend the state constitution to prohibit public universities, colleges, and school districts from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.
Proposal 2 was adopted 58 to 42 percent.
Supporters of affirmative action filed suit to have the amendment declared unconstitutional. The litigants were led by a group called the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary.
Their lawyers argued that Proposal 2 would undercut minority enrollment at public universities in Michigan and make it much more difficult for minority students and other groups to change the policy to an approach more supportive of affirmative action.
Prior to Proposal 2, affirmative action programs were the responsibility of elected trustees at each school. Anyone who wanted to change the system could try to lobby the board members for a change.
Instead of lobbying, affirmative action opponents took the issue directly to Michigan voters in the statewide referendum to amend the state constitution.
With passage of the measure, it became significantly harder for minority students and groups to exert political influence on an equal basis with opponents of affirmative action.
Affirmative action supporters said this was a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and was a form of discrimination.
In essence, the charge was that a constitutional amendment that barred discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin was, itself, a form of discrimination.
In an opinion concurring in Kennedy’s decision, Justice Scalia said the Michigan case existed in a “jurisprudential twilight zone.”
“We confront a frighteningly bizarre question: Does the Equal Protection Clause ... forbid what its text plainly requires?” he wrote.
“In my view, any law expressly requiring state actors to afford all persons equal protection of the laws ... does not – cannot – deny to any person equal protection of the laws,” Scalia said.
He quoted Justice Harlan’s famous statement in the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson that the Constitution is colorblind. “The people of Michigan wish the same for their governing charter,” he said. “It would be shameful for us to stand in their way.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor presented an entirely different perspective.
“This case is not, as the plurality imagines, about ‘who may resolve’ the debate over the use of race in higher education admissions,” she wrote. “Rather, this case is about how the debate over the use of race-sensitive admissions policies may be resolved.”
“While the Constitution does not guarantee minority groups victory in the political process, it does guarantee them meaningful and equal access to that process,” she said.
“It guarantees that the majority may not win by stacking the political process against minority groups permanently, forcing the minority alone to surmount unique obstacles in pursuit of its goals – here, educational diversity that cannot reasonably be accomplished through race-neutral measures,” she said.
Prior to the Michigan ban, Sotomayor noted, minority enrollment at the University of Michigan stood at 12.15 percent. After the ban, by 2012, minority enrollment had dropped roughly 25 percent to 9.54 percent of the student population.

Joining Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas in the majority were Justices Samuel Alito and Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the case, presumably because she worked on the issue while serving as solicitor general prior to joining the high court.

The case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (12-682).

France says one of two hostages held in Mali probably dead

PARIS (Reuters) - A French man kidnapped two years ago in Mali by an al Qaeda-linked group is probably dead, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday after the insurgents said they had killed him.

Gilberto Rodriguez-Leal, who would be 62 now, was captured in November 2012 while camping in the region. He had crossed from Mauritania into Mali where Islamist militants had taken advantage of chaos after a coup to seize the northern two thirds of the country.

A spokesman for the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) told Agence France Presse he had been killed because France was "our enemy". He did not give any details of when or how he had been killed.

"The statement from MUJWA, responsible for his kidnapping, leads us unfortunately to believe today that Mr. Rodriguez-Leal is probably dead, even though no material proof can allow us to confirm it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said.

Officials have said for several months that the hostage had probably died as there had been no proof of life for more than a year and no demands for his release.

President Francois Hollande's office said that Rodriguez-Leal had probably died several weeks ago due to the "conditions of his detention".

"France will do everything to get the truth ... and will not leave this act unpunished," it said in a statement.

One other Frenchman kidnapped around the same time is still missing.

Serge Lazarevic was seized in November 2011 in the north of Mali by al Qaeda's North African arm AQIM. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday Paris had indications he was still alive.

Thousands of French troops intervened in northern Mali last year to prevent Islamists who seized the desert region in 2012 from extending their reach further south.
The insurgents have threatened reprisals against French targets. AQIM said last March it had beheaded one hostage. His body was found several months later.

One of MUJWA's leaders, Abu Dar Dar, surrendered to French troops in Mali in March.

(Reporting By Alexandria Sage and John Irish; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

U.S. urges North Korea to refrain from new nuclear test

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it was monitoring the Korean peninsula closely after reports that North Korea may be planning another nuclear test and it urged Pyongyang not to take any step that would threaten regional peace.
South Korean news reports quoted the South Korean government as saying on Tuesday that heightened activity had been detected at North Korea's underground nuclear test site, indicating possible preparations for another atomic test.
The reports come just before U.S. President Barack Obama is due in Japan and South Korea, where he will discuss ways to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Obama is due in Tokyo on Wednesday and in Seoul on Friday.
"We have certainly seen the press reports ... regarding possible increased activity in North Korea's nuclear test site," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "We are closely monitoring the situation on the Korean peninsula."
"We continue to urge North Korea to refrain from actions that threaten regional peace and security and to comply with its international obligations and commitments," she told a regular news briefing.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok as saying that "a lot of activity" was being seen at the Punggye-ri test site.
"So our forces are keeping in mind the possibility that North Korea may suddenly conduct a nuclear test in a short period of time, or as in previous cases, deceive us with what appears to be a nuclear test."
North Korea warned last month it would not rule out a "a new form" of nuclear test after the United Nations Security Council condemned Pyongyang for launching ballistic missiles into the sea.
TEST DURING OBAMA VISIT 'APPEARS UNLIKELY'
Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates North Korea has begun new operations at Punggye-ri, said 38 North, a North Korea monitoring website run by Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
But it said there was little evidence to suggest a test would take place during Obama's visit to Seoul. This "may be possible but appears unlikely," it said.
Increased activity had been seen in a six-week period from early March to April 19, including in an area where there were two completed tunnels, 38 North said.
"In particular, there appears to be movement of crates, boxes and materials near the entrances, possibly into the tunnels," it said.
However it added: "Recent operations at Punggye-ri have not reached the high level of intensity - in terms of vehicle, personnel and equipment movement - that occurred in the weeks prior to past detonations."
The activity "could represent an early stage of preparations for a test or may be intended for a less provocative purpose, such as conducting maintenance after a long winter" 38 North concluded.
When asked what Pyongyang meant by a "new form" of nuclear test, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations said on April 4 the world would have to "wait and see."
Nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the United States, said this month that the reference to a new form of test could mean simultaneous detonation of two or more devices as part of a program of more intense nuclear testing expected over the next few years.
While North Korea has detonated several nuclear devices Since 2006, analysts have expressed doubt it yet has the technical capability to reliably mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.
Diplomats have said it is possible the U.N. Security Council will respond to last month's North Korean missile tests by expanding a sanctions blacklist to include more North Korean entities involved in Pyongyang's missile program. But they said it could take weeks to reach agreement.
The council expanded its sanctions on North Korea after its third nuclear test in February 2013.
The United States said it held "productive" talks with China on North Korea last week, part of stepped up international diplomacy after Pyongyang's nuclear test warning.
China, North Korea's main ally, has warned against any action that could lead to the escalation of tensions.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Sandra Maler, W Simon and Mohammad Zargham)

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Tuesday, 22 April 2014

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