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Big party no cause for celebration in Sandy Springs

It cost him a night in jail, but Anthony Epps appears to have a future in party promotion -- just not in Sandy Springs

The future is less certain for two Atlanta-area law enforcement officers hired as security guards for Epps' Halloween bash, held at a vacant Powers Ferry Road mansion and attended by roughly 1,000 revelers. It's the fourth such unauthorized gathering held within the past few months at some of the nascent north Fulton city's swankiest addresses.

"We don't want to get a reputation," said Sandy Springs Councilwoman Karen Meinzen-McEnerny, who represents the district where the parties occurred. "Sandy Springs isn't the place for this stuff."

Police shut down the Powers Ferry Road party after receiving numerous complaints from neighbors. The chaos wasn't contained to the recently constructed mansion that has yet to serve as anyone's residence, Sandy Springs police spokesman Steve Rose said. It extended to a nearby grocery store, which was unknowingly serving as a pick-up point for a party shuttle bus.

"The report says the officers went to 6300 Powers Ferry, in the parking lot of the Publix Store, and found about 500 cars," Rose said. "The lot was described as ‘mass confusion,' so the officers had to sort out the traffic problems at the shopping center."

Meanwhile, the bash continued.

"It was the biggest party I've ever seen," said Kathy Battaglia, who lives across the street. "There were cars parked on both sides of the street, buses going back and forth. And there were probably more people outside the house than inside. The noise was unbelievable."

The crowd consisted mostly of students from Georgia State and West Georgia universities, where the party was heavily promoted. Fliers hinted at an MTV-esque ode to material excess, minus the flamboyant celebrities or spoiled Sweet 16 birthday girls. The $20 admission didn't cover alcohol, sold inside without the necessary permits.

"We wouldn't have approved it," Rose said.

And that could spell trouble for the promoter's brother, Rockdale County sheriff's Sgt. Brian Epps, one of two local law enforcement officers hired to provide security. Jodi Shupe, a spokeswoman for the Rockdale Sheriff's Office, said Epps has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an internal investigation.

It's unclear whether Clarkston Police Chief Tony Scepio, whom Rose said was hired by the promoter to provide security, will face any penalties. Scepio told WSB-TV that he was there to pick up his niece.

"It was pretty obvious this was an illegal party," Rose said.

Clarkston Mayor Lee Swaney said he hasn't discussed the controversy with Scepio, who did not return calls seeking comment.

"I don't think the chief had anything to do with it," Swaney said. "But I will find out and take whatever action is required."

Sandy Springs officials say they are going to rigorously enforce existing noise and parking regulations to curb what appears to be a budding nationwide trend. The San Diego Sheriff's Department recently recruited Neighborhood Watch groups to help curb a rash of all-night rave parties being held in foreclosed homes.

"I think the economy is playing a role here," Meinzen-McEnerny said.

It certainly padded the wallet of Anthony Epps, who grossed $20,000 for the Halloween hullabaloo. He faces only a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct because he had the owner's permission to hold the party.

"Too much promotion and too little planning," Rose said.

Phil Skinner

Sandy Springs police say an illegal party with up to 1,000 people took place at this unoccupied house.

Woman attacked by 200 pound chimpanzee talks to Oprah

The Will to Live

Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates

Given the state moratorium on executions and an appeals process that can last for decades, inmates can expect to live a long time, and with privileges other prisoners lack.

White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence.

It wasn't remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all.

Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night, capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue.

"This is a dramatic reaffirmation of what we've already known for some time, that capital punishment in California takes way too long," Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the law-and-order Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, said of Johnson's bet that he will live a long life on death row. "This guy certainly feels like it's worth the risk."

Statistics suggest that Johnson may be correct in his calculations.

California has the nation's largest death row population, with 685 sentenced to die by lethal injection. Yet only 13 executions have been carried out since capital punishment resumed in 1977 and none of the condemned have been put to death since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago. Five times as many death row inmates -- 71 -- have died over that same period of natural causes, suicide or inside violence.

Though death row inmates at San Quentin State Prison are far from coddled, they live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have "contact visits" in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions. They have about the only private accommodations in the state's 33-prison network, which is crammed with 160,000-plus convicts.

Death row prisoners are served breakfast and dinner in their cells, can usually mingle with others in the outdoor exercise yards while eating their sack lunches, and have exclusive control over the television, CD player or other diversions in their cells.

"Death row inmates probably have the most liberal telephone privileges of anyone in state custody," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, explaining that they need ready access to their attorneys and can often make calls from their cells over a phone that can be rolled along the cellblock.

The condemned wear the same jeans and chambray-shirt prison garb, eat the same food as prepared in other prisons and enjoy the same access to mail-order and canteen goods paid for by their families, as long as they maintain good behavior, Thornton said.

Those on death row are also allowed more personal property inside their cells, to accommodate their voluminous legal documents without infringing on the 6 cubic feet of snacks and entertainment devices allowed each prisoner, said Lt. Sam Robinson, spokesman for San Quentin.

"It's not that he thinks conditions will be better; they are better," Johnson's attorney, Michael Molfetta, said of his client's request for death row. Johnson, 46, figures that he will be close to 70 by the time his appeals are exhausted, Molfetta said, "and he says he doesn't care to live beyond that."

Johnson was convicted last month of first-degree murder with special circumstances in the March 2002 killing of former gang associate Scott Miller. Johnson, a "shot caller" in the white supremacist Public Enemy Number One gang, was found guilty of orchestrating Miller's execution-style murder for having revealed gang secrets in a television interview.

On Oct. 29, Johnson's jury decided that he should be sentenced to death. Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel is expected to impose the execution order when he formally sentences Johnson on Nov. 23.

As an "L-WOPP," a prisoner sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, Johnson could have been sent to any maximum-security facility in the state, where other Level IV offenders share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell, a sink and a toilet. Gang leaders are often sent to the special housing unit at Pelican Bay State Prison, where they live in isolation with few of the comforts allowed elsewhere.

It costs the state about $49,000 a year to house each prisoner, according to corrections department statistics. Thornton said her department has never put a figure on the cost for "more staff-intensive" death row housing, but a state commission of experts last year estimated that the additional security and legal spending for capital inmates costs taxpayers $138,000 per death row prisoner each year.

Legal analysts say Johnson's request for a death sentence highlights how delays in executions could undermine any deterrent effect of California's death penalty.

"If you accept the premise that the death penalty is about retribution, about punishing someone for intolerable acts, you might argue that it is completely inappropriate to grant someone's request to have a death penalty imposed because it is more suitable or convenient for him," said Kara Dansky, executive director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University. "It does seem to weaken the position of those who say the death penalty is a justified mode of punishment."

Laurie Levenson, a former prosecutor now teaching criminal law at Loyola Law School, said Johnson is probably correct in gauging that he'll be better off on death row.

"We have a perverse system, given that we have a death row but we don't really have executions," she said. Convicts seeking death sentences "don't really feel like they are making life-and-death decisions."

Executions have been on hold in California for almost four years, following a federal judge's orders for review and reform of lethal injection procedures. Those orders came after concerns were raised that some of those executed by the three-shot sequence might not have been rendered unconscious by the first injection. That could expose the condemned inmate to pain from the final shot that would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in 2006, when he ordered the state to correct the alleged deficiencies.

New protocols were proposed earlier this year but are pending approval by corrections officials still sorting through thousands of comments and challenges, and are facing at least another year of procedural hurdles ahead of Fogel's review.

Bank Accidentally Sells Couple’s Home

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.kpho.com/video/21583335/

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20091110/NEWS01/911109984

Serena Williams: 'I didn't do that drugs thing because of Venus'

As she publishes her autobiography, Serena Williams – the No 1 woman tennis player in the world – on her relationship with her sister, and how she is no stranger to heartbreak or controversy.

Elizabeth Grice
Published: 7:00AM GMT 11 Nov 2009

Serena Williams, pictured in London Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

Maybe I’ve blundered into the wrong suite at the Dorchester Hotel, one where there’s a fashion shoot underway. Hair and make-up people are darting about making imperceptible adjustments to a vision of pure glamour. The contents of a couple of large suitcases are spilling over into the lobby, and roses in cellophane are everywhere.

The focus of everyone’s attention is a black supermodel at the far end of the room, Amazonian curves straining the seams of a little grey two-piece. When she smiles for the photographer, the effect is like an extra lightbulb going on. Make that two.

It is the Serena Williams smile, big, wide, exotic. When she comes down from her five-inch heels she is still high as rainforest tree. I wince in anticipation of being crushed as she holds out the hand that can deliver a 130-mph serve and has made her – for the fifth time in her career – the No 1 woman tennis player in the world. But she is all feminine decorum. The voice that bawled out a lineswoman during the US Open in September is no more than a purr, lost in the soft furnishings.

These are awkward times for Serena and for tennis. She’s facing a fine and possible ban from the Australian Open in January because of her tirade against the line-judge during her semi-final defeat to Kim Clijsters. Incensed by a bad call, she threatened to “shove this ball down your ------- throat” , with some finger-jabbing to reinforce the point. “I was 100 per cent, unequivocally wrong,” she drawls softly. “It was absolutely not professional. I didn’t react correctly. Spiritually. I let myself down and I have apologised to her. I’m not perfect. I’ll make another mistake – as you will – but making the same mistake isn’t cool. I’ve learnt a lot from that experience.”

She pleads the “200 per cent passion” she puts into the game, and says she was spooked by a bad call made against her two years ago at the same event. “I thought: is this coincidence? What is going on? Is it for real? I don’t give foot faults.” Her view is that a career shouldn’t be defined by one unguarded moment. Not hers, not Andre Agassi’s.

Agassi’s autobiographical confession that he took crystal meth and then lied to the tennis authorities when he tested positive for the drug is still rocking her profession. “It’s weird. I don’t understand it,” she says. “When I heard I didn’t know what to think and I still don’t. But I don’t believe it should define his career. A career is a whole timepiece, a whole period.”

Her bemusement and unreadiness to condemn a fellow professional seem perfectly genuine. “That whole drugs thing freaks me out,” she says, squirming. “I don’t even know what crystal meth is. I’ve never seen it on the LA scene. Tennis is, for me, a pure sport. I get tested randomly all the time.”

But Serena is the risk-taker, the more experimental of the fabled Williams sisters. She credits her older sister with keeping her on track.

“I didn’t do that drugs and wild life thing because of Venus. She led by example. When I was younger, she was my protector, my bodyguard, my everything. She always looks out for me. She is such a good person. I couldn’t have asked for a better older sister.”

Her classy win against Venus in the year-end championships at Doha recently raises again their mysterious, inter-connected supremacy. Do they really fight to the death? How is it they never get bored with playing one another? What is it that preserves their uncanny interdependence and separateness from the rest of the tennis world? Serena says when she faces her sister in a tournament – she won her 11th Grand Slam singles title against Venus at Wimbledon this year – she puts aside sisterly feelings.

“I have to be selfish. When I play her now I just look at the ball. I try to focus on winning. And when it’s over, it’s over. She doesn’t like to lose. I don’t gloat. I’m happy to win but a tiny bit of me feels sorry because I also want her to win. I have to ask: will it matter who wins this in 10 years’ time?”

She and Venus share a house in Florida but Serena, who flirts with the idea of being an actress, also has a flat in LA. The sisters are worth millions. In five days in Doha, Serena added another £950,000 to her bank balance. She claims that, apart from her fashion indulgences (she is starting her own label), she is frugal to the point of paranoia. “I hear my Dad saying: 'Don’t make money like other athletes and then go broke’.”

Both Agassi and the Williams sisters were shaped by controlling fathers. Agassi’s admission that he hated tennis “with a dark and secret passion” strikes her as unsurprising. “It would be lying to say I loved tennis every second of my life. There are moments when you say: 'I hate this. I don’t want to be here.’ But deep down, I absolutely can’t be anywhere else. I’ve never felt that intense hate he’s felt for the game and I give him kudos for sticking through it.”

In the “gloomy funk” that engulfed her after the violent death of her sister Yetunde, Serena admits growing to resent tennis and a lifetime of pleasing other people. “It’s like tennis had become a job for me instead of a passion, a joy, a sweet release,” she writes in her autobiography, Queen of the Court. She tried to play her way out of grief but it didn’t work. For months she didn’t leave her apartment in Los Angeles except to go to therapy. Even her father, whom she adores and calls “a genius” for what he did to raise two international tennis stars, was shut out. “For the first time, tennis couldn’t solve anything for me. My whole life had been tennis, tennis, tennis and here I desperately wanted something more.”

Yetunde was shot in a car with her boyfriend in Compton, California, the tough neighbourhood where the five sisters grew up. The bullet was apparently meant for him. Serena lost a mother-figure and best friend. “No words of comfort, no pieces of scripture, no amount of faith can swallow up the hurt of something like this or help you absorb the news. It was really hard to tell my mom and my sister. I was adrift for a while. We all were. It’s something you never get over. None of us could talk without crying. We still cry.”

The family are staunch Jehovah’s Witnesses, so by religion as well as colour they are conspicuously apart from most of the tennis circuit. Although the sisters have become icons of African-American achievement, the number of black faces in the stands are still depressingly few. “We’re trying to open doors,” Serena says. “But it’s gradual.”

Serena’s usual method of deflecting questions about her personal life is to say she’s dating her racquet.

This time, tugging at strands of freshly straightened hair, she admits her boyfriend is the rapper and actor Common (who sent the roses) but not with any enthusiasm. “He does his thing; I do mine. Maybe we’ll meet somewhere in between.”

She says she doesn’t want to be one of those “me, me, me” athletes whose career is everything. “It’s important to have a good balance.” Plan A, she says, was to have children before the age of 30, but as she’s 28 already “I need to come up with a Plan B.”

Life after tennis is a big fixation. “I can’t play tennis for ever. It will be someone else’s turn. Someone bigger and better. When that happens, I don’t want to sit at home one day and look at Venus across the couch and be, like, what next? So I have a back-up plan.”

Her many interests – fashion designing, jewellery, acting, scriptwriting – make her an easy target whenever she’s off form. Tennis Times sneered earlier this year: “Serena Williams seems to think she can take over the world one little bit at a time.”

Does she care? The answer is on the cover of a “naked athletes” issue of ESPN magazine, where she is enjoying being nude. “As you all know,” she blogs, “I am not a size zero but I love my body. This opportunity allowed me to showcase my body as a form of art. I was so flattered. To choose me, AHHHH!!!”

So Serena is a supermodel after all, aspiring to the sexy, old-Hollywood image reminiscent of Dorothy Dandridge, Lauren Bacall or Marilyn Monroe. The risks? She just laughs and says if you look really, really closely, you can see her underwear.

Only three or four years ago, Serena Williams was being likened to a dying supernova. “People had written me off,” she says. “Serena Williams was done. I was 24 years old! When people tell me what I can’t do, I do better. What makes a real champion is someone that can fall and dust themselves off and get up.”

Her one remaining goal is to beat Billie Jean King’s record of 12 Grand Slam singles titles. “That would be amazing. But I’ve done great, regardless.”

Man Arrested For Falsely Telling Police He Had Committed Murder

“Several officers with the department responded “Code 3” (running full speed with lights and sirens) to the scene,” a statement read.

Officials said Johnson then told officers he had not killed anyone and explained he was as-saulted earlier and that he thought the police would get to the scene quicker if he reported he had killed someone.

Officers arrested Johnson for the false report and booked into the Smith County Jail on the misdemeanor crime.

Officers did take a report from Johnson concerning the assault and will investigate that case.

Tyler Police Department Public Information Officer Don Martin said giving a false claim to police is not a common occurrence.

“This is not the norm and especially to this degree. We’ve had people report false crimes, but for someone to call saying they have committed a homicide just to get us there quicker is not the norm,” he said.

Martin said Monday night’s incident could have proved deadly because officers rushing to the scene could have had an accident or the suspect could have been injured by officers responding to what they believed was a scene with a shooter.

“During a call like that they’re all in the frame of mind they have an active shooter who has killed someone. They don’t know what the person is thinking or what might happen,” he said.

Martin said if a person is a victim of a simple assault which has occurred and the suspects are gone, then it is not an immediate response. However, if the assault is aggravated and someone is seriously injured or threatened with serious injury, then it is a priority call.

Smith County records show Johnson has been arrested multiple times on charges, including felony drugs and theft.

LINK TO PHOTO:

http://www.tylerpaper.com/

Pilot about to fly from London to Chicago was allegedly drunk

Chicago Tribune

November 10, 2009 12:16 PM 

A United Airlines pilot was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport Monday on charges that he was about to fly 124 passengers to Chicago while drunk.

The pilot was arrested by London Metropolitan Police after he failed a breathalyzer test. He was released on bond, according to British media.

United did not identify the pilot but said he has been "removed from service."
Airline spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said United Flight 949 was scheduled to depart London at 12:05 p.m. London time for O'Hare International Airport. It was carrying 124 passengers and 11 crew members.

The passengers, who already were on board, were put on other flights to Chicago, she said.

McCarthy referred all questions about the pilot and the circumstances of his arrest to British authorities. She did not know his length of service with United. British media reported his age as 51.

The airline released a statement that said: "Safety is our highest priority and the pilot has been removed from service while we are cooperating with authorities and conducting a full investigation.

"United's alcohol policy is among the strictest in the industry and we have no tolerance for violation of this well-established policy."

Tracy Wilkinson

LA Times

November 10, 2009

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Women play a bigger role in Mexico's drug war

Addiction, the economy and the lure of living well have sucked many into the narcotics underworld. The trend threatens the foundations of Mexican society.

Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico - In the story making the rounds here in Mexico's drug capital, the setting is a beauty parlor. A woman with wealth obtained legally openly criticizes a younger patron who is married to a trafficker. The "narco-wife" orders the hairdresser to shave the first woman's head. Terrified, the hairdresser complies.

Urban legend or real? It almost doesn't matter; it's the sort of widely repeated account that both intimidates and titillates. And it highlights a disturbing trend: As drug violence seeps deeper into Mexican society, women are taking a more hands-on role.

In growing numbers, they are being recruited into the ranks of drug smugglers, dealers and foot soldiers. And in growing numbers, they are being jailed, and killed, for their efforts.

Here in Sinaloa, the nation's oldest drug-producing region and home to its most powerful cartel, the wives of drug lords were long viewed as trophies with rhinestone-studded fingernails and endless surgical enhancements.

Now wives -- and mothers and daughters -- are being used by male traffickers because women can more easily pass through the military checkpoints that have popped up along many drug-transport routes.

As Mexico has become a nation that also consumes drugs, women have become addicts, which sucks them into the narcotics underworld.

Mexico's worst economic crisis since World War II is also helping to fuel the trend; for desperate women, dealing and smuggling are often seen as a more "dignified" job than prostitution, said Pedro Cardenas, a Sinaloa state public security official in charge of prisons.

Drug violence that preys on women, in a patriarchal, macho society such as that of Sinaloa, has become an urgent problem in the last year, which has seen more killings than ever before, said Margarita Urias, head of the Sinaloa Institute for Women.

The trend could ultimately pose a threat to the stability of family structures in Mexico, a country where the woman is usually the glue holding a family together.

"It is a social cancer contaminating women who weren't touched before," Urias said.

"When we are so vulnerable, how do we educate and bring up our children? When insecurity overwhelms us, how do we inject values into our homes? How can we remain immune?"

He's free, she's not

Veronica Vasquez curses her drug-smuggling husband.

He wasn't at home the night the army came calling. She didn't have time to dispose of the bags of cocaine he had hidden in the bedroom. Now she's serving five years in the crowded prison in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, and he's still free.

"I am paying for his crime," said Vasquez, 32. "But I knew what he was doing."

Vasquez, who has two children, lost not just her freedom but all the trappings of the good life she enjoyed. The jewelry and designer handbags and fancy sunglasses, all within easy grasp without really having to work very hard.

"It is all gone," she said. As for her husband: "He is dead to me."

Carmen Elizalde was caught transporting 220 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Mexico. Nabbed on the Honduran border with Guatemala and sentenced to 18 years in prison, she says the deal was her husband's doing. She'd been duped, she said, into going along on what he portrayed as a vacation in Panama. But she didn't ask many questions either.

"Truth is, I didn't want to examine his activities," said Elizalde, 49, a mother of two with a smooth, plump face and perfectly arched eyebrows. "He was giving us a good life, and I didn't care where the money came from."

Mirna Cartagena blames no one but herself. She wanted the quick, easy money. For $1,000, all she had to do was put about 7 pounds of cocaine in her suitcase and board a bus from Culiacan to Mexicali, a city that sits on the border with California. Police pulled her from the bus about halfway along the route, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"It was a matter of necessity and ignorance, of not thinking of alternatives," Cartagena, 31, said with a toss of her long, curly hair, peering from behind sunglasses.

Nearly a quarter of the inmates in the Culiacan prison are female; nationally, it's 5%. The most dramatic change is the type of conviction. A decade ago, the vast majority of women in prison were there for theft or "crimes of passion," such as the killing of a spouse or lover.

Today the statistics have been turned upside down: The majority are incarcerated for crimes related to drug trafficking, Cardenas said, and 80% of first-time inmates are addicts or users.

In the bloody battles to dominate the drug trade, the traditional codes among traffickers that left families untouched have largely broken down. Being a narco-wife is not the armor it once was.

Golden sandals

Maria Jose Gonzalez seemed to have everything going for her. Her curvaceous looks won the crown at the Sun Festival beauty pageant. She had a budding career as a singer with hopes of a recording deal. And she must have had some smarts too, because she had studied law.

The 22-year-old's body was found dumped along a road on the southern edge of Culiacan last spring, near a sign that warns, "Don't throw trash." Nearby was the body of her husband, Omar Antonio Avila, a used-car salesman. She had been shot in the head; he was blindfolded and his hands handcuffed behind his back. Her eyes were open, staring skyward. She wore golden sandals.

The road where they were discovered is frequently used to dump the murder victims that haunt Culiacan. The road meanders into bushy countryside, winding around the back wall of an affluent residential community with its own man-made lake popular with people on jet skis. Wooden crosses and tiny shrines mark where bodies have appeared. The area is known as La Primavera. Springtime.

Authorities suspect that Gonzalez and her husband got mixed up with the Sinaloa cartel, members of which may have blamed them for the loss of 9 tons of marijuana in an army raid shortly before the couple were slain.

Zulema Hernandez ended up in prison on armed-robbery charges. There she met Mexico's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, who was serving out a sentence until he famously escaped in 2001 by bribing guards and hiding in a bundle of outgoing laundry.

While the two were doing time in the Puente Grande maximum-security prison outside Guadalajara, Hernandez, in her early 20s, became Guzman's mistress.

"After the first time, he sent to my cell a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of whiskey," Hernandez told Mexican author Julio Scherer for a book he wrote on prisons. "I was his queen."

She told another reporter in 2002 that she became pregnant by El Chapo but miscarried after being beaten by guards.

By the time she was released in 2003, Hernandez had apparently picked up some of her lover's tricks of the trade: She was arrested less than a year later with 2 tons of cocaine.

Lawyers supplied by El Chapo helped her file a peculiarly Mexican injunction used to stop many a prosecution, and she was free again in 2006. She quickly became the Sinaloa cartel's agent in Mexico City, authorities said, transporting cocaine into the capital's neighborhoods -- relatively new terrain for the organization.

Last December, her body was found in the trunk of a car outside Mexico City. She had been shot in the head. Carved into her breasts, stomach and buttocks was the letter Z, symbol of the notorious gang of hit men called the Zetas, archenemies of El Chapo. She was 35.

A year earlier, the fugitive Guzman had married his third wife the day she turned 18: Emma Coronel, another beauty pageant winner, who is one-third her husband's age. At one point, she was reportedly seen around Culiacan, frequenting the hair and nail salons that cater to narco-wives and other young women who emulate the style: glamorous 'dos and fingernails longer than toes, bejeweled or painted with elaborate designs or pictures of cartoon characters. More recently, she was said to be in hiding.

On average in Sinaloa this year, a woman was killed every week in what authorities believe to be gangland hits.

Two women driving on a state highway last month were intercepted by two carloads of gunmen and pulled from their vehicle as their horrified children watched. Their bullet-scarred bodies, heads wrapped in plastic bags, were found a few hours later. One was believed to be a wife of one of the Sinaloa cartel's top kingpins, Victor Emilio Cazares.

The allure persists

Despite the risks, the drug world life continues to appeal to a subset of young women, generating its own lore, especially here in Sinaloa.

Two days before Christmas, federal police arrested Miss Sinaloa, the state's reigning beauty queen, and seven men, all of whom were paraded before television cameras and accused of trafficking cocaine. A cache of high-powered weapons and tens of thousands of dollars were seized from their vehicle.

Laura Zuñiga, 23, was never charged and went free after 38 days under a form of house arrest. Tagged "Miss Narco" by the Mexican media, Zuñiga acknowledged that her boyfriend was the brother of a big trafficker, but she said her beau was not involved in the business, although she wasn't sure what he did for a living.

She was stripped of a title she had won in an international contest. But she remains Miss Sinaloa.

For many women, joining this life is not a matter of choice. They are press-ganged, pushed by parents seeking wealth and influence, or don't know what they're getting into, said Urias, the women's institute official. And escape is rarely an option.

A few women have managed to flee drug-trafficking husbands, and have taken refuge in a shelter whose location is a tightly held secret.

Teresita tried for four years to get away from a husband who beat her, cheated on her and partied endlessly with his drug-dealing friends.

"He was high all the time," she said in an interview at the shelter. The Times agreed not to publish her last name.

She went to the police and the courts, but no one helped. After one particularly bad beating, she gathered up her two children and moved in with her sister.

But her husband followed her, threatened to burn the house down and shot out the outside lights. The goons who worked with him menaced Teresita and her family.

Teresita, a 28-year-old brunet with large, almond-shaped eyes, had known her husband since she was 16. Her sister had married his brother. But drugs and the business had changed him.

She finally became convinced that he would kill her and kidnap the children and found her way to the agency that runs the shelter. There she has remained with her children, trying to learn how to use a computer and other skills that will help her rebuild her life.

But most of the women who have left narco-husbands have to be transferred out of the state and sometimes out of the country to really be safe.

Teresita has a simple wish: "I just want to be in a place where I am not afraid to walk outside."

Drug war's new blood

Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / September 25, 2009   An inmate at the Culiacan prison hangs laundry in a cellblock hallway. Nearly a quarter of the prisoners at the facility are female, and most are serving time for crimes related to drug trafficking, an official said.

4:36 a.m. Nov. 10, 2009

Updated: 7:27 a.m.

Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has leukemia

The NBA's all-time leading scorer has a rare form of the disease, but he says it is manageable with medication and that his long-term outlook is good.

Broderick Turner

LA Times

November 10, 2009

Cough into your mobile phone for instant diagnosis

Your mobile phone may soon be able to diagnose respiratory illnesses in seconds when you cough into it.

Tom Chivers

Telegraph U K

12:44PM GMT 09 Nov 2009

But will it ask you to turn your head to one side as well? Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

Software being developed by American and Australian scientists will hopefully allow patients simply to cough into their phone, and it will tell them whether they have cold, flu, pneumonia or other respiratory diseases.

Whether a cough is dry or wet, or “productive” or “non-productive” (referring to the presence of mucus on the lungs), can give a doctor information about what is causing that cough, for example whether it is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection.  

Health workers can distinguish the different kinds of cough by sound. Now, it is claimed, the new software will do the same, and will save patients a trip to the surgery – or tell them when they are at risk of serious illness.

Suzanne Smith of STAR Analytical Services,  the firm behind the research, says: "Why haven't we been measuring coughs?

"It’s the most common symptom when a patient presents, and we are relying on doctors and nurses with good old technology from the 19th century."

Coughs typically last around one-quarter of a second, comprising a sharp intake of breath, a silent exhalation and then the complex burst of sounds that makes the cough noise.

Healthy, voluntary coughs tend to be slightly louder than the involuntary coughs of an ill person. And after the initial explosive sound, there are subtleties like vibrating vocal cords and mucus that reveal information about what is happening in the patient’s respiratory system.

The software would compare the patient’s cough to a pre-recorded database of coughs, containing the sounds of all respiratory diseases from people of both sexes and various ages, weights and other variables.

Currently the STAR team has a database of several dozen patients, but they estimate they will need a total of around 1,000 before the software will be reliable.

The software is currently run on a computer, but it is anticipated that it could be rewritten as a smartphone application.

Doctors are optimistic about the new software’s applications. Dr Jaclyn Smith, a doctor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester who specialises in cough measurement, told Discovery.com: "If they can find certain parameters to use coughs to diagnose disease that could be fabulous.

"It could really improve disease diagnosis and help improve people's access to health care."

STAR has been given a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant of $100,000 (£60,000) to pursue the research, which is expected to be particularly useful in developing countries where pneumonia is a leading cause of death in children.

Recession's good news: Cities see burglaries fall

DON BABWIN

Associated Press Writer

3:15 p.m. CST, November 9, 2009

CHICAGO - Ever since he was laid off in March, Frank Beil has been on the lookout.

He keeps an eye out for cars moving slowly down the street or strangers walking along the sidewalk of his suburban Chicago neighborhood. He wonders about the times he answers the phone and the caller hangs up.

"You don't know if that might be people staking you out, finding out if you're home or not," said the 71-year-old hospital chaplain from Glenview.

Beil is watching for burglars, and police nationwide credit him and those like him for one of the few bright spots of the recession: The number of home burglaries is falling in some cities and towns.

"With a lot more unemployed people, a lot more people are staying home, and they see more in their neighborhood," said Sgt. Thomas Lasater, who supervises the burglary unit of the police department in St. Louis County, Mo., where authorities recorded a whopping 35 percent drop in burglaries during the first six months of 2009.

The trend is showing up in communities big and small.

In Minneapolis, the number of burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year dropped more than 15 percent compared with the same period last year, and more than 25 percent compared with that period in 2007. In Boston, the 2,199 burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year is 335 fewer than in the same period last year.

Aurora, a city of 170,000 outside Chicago, had 560 burglaries through the end of September, a 15.5 percent decrease from the same period last year. And in Shelby, N.C., a town of 21,000, the number of burglaries through August was 23, compared with 60 for the same time last year.

In many cities, other crimes including homicide, robbery and rape have been dropping for several years, according to FBI statistics. But burglary stands out because it was actually rising between 2007 and 2008, and experts expected that trend to continue as the recession dragged on and unemployment rose.

The phenomenon has surprised both police and crime researchers. "We were thinking, 'Here we go,"' said Theo Glover, deputy police chief in Rockford, a struggling manufacturing community in Illinois that consistently has the state's highest jobless rate, hitting 16.9 percent in August.

Instead, Rockford had 1,849 burglaries through mid-October, or more than 400 fewer than in the same period last year.

A national total of this year's burglaries will not be available from the FBI until late next year, but experts said the anecdotal evidence from individual cities paints an unexpected picture.

Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied crime trends, said rates typically rise during a recession, especially property crimes.

"We've seen that in every single recession in the U.S. at least since the '50s," he said. "I would have expected by now some upward movement in burglary numbers."

The burglary rate has, in fact, climbed this year in some cities, including Houston, San Jose and Chicago. But in Chicago, the rate is climbing at a slower clip than it did last year. And in Houston, this year's slight increase comes after a substantial drop in burglaries between 2007 and 2008, the first full year of the recession.

In other places where burglary rates already were dropping, they are falling even faster. That includes Los Angeles, where the number of burglaries in the first three quarters of 2009 fell 6 percent, compared with 1 percent during the same period in 2008. In Phoenix, there were 429 fewer burglaries in the first nine months of 2008 -- and 4,000 fewer in the first nine months of this year.

Some police believe the falling price of copper and other scrap metals -- a target of burglars who strip the metal from vacant homes -- may have contributed to the trend. But they say that alone would not explain why burglaries are dropping so steeply in so many places.

Phoenix police detective James Holmes believes his city's 14 percent drop in burglaries in the first nine months of this year mostly reflects a stepped-up effort to target habitual burglars and expand neighborhood watch programs. But he said residents clearly are paying more attention, and more people are home to keep watch.

"We are getting a lot more calls of suspicious activities in our neighborhoods," he said.

In some cases, homeowners are even thwarting burglars. It happened in February in Bellevue, Wash., when would-be burglars broke into a home not knowing that -- as they stacked televisions, a computer and other valuables by the door -- the home's owner was not only unemployed, but in the basement.

Then they looked outside and saw that the getaway van they had left idling outside was gone.

"I drove to a friend's house up the street," said Patrick Rosario, the 33-year-old homeowner who took off in the van after he crept outside. The burglars couldn't believe what happened. "My neighbor drove by and saw their faces and they had big O's for mouths."

L.A. church opens doors to people, pets

  WESTCHESTER, Calif. (KABC) -- For some local churches, filling the pews can be a challenge. So, to boost attendance, a local church decided to create a new service not just for people but their beloved dogs as well.

The Rev. Tom Eggebeen looks out over a small flock of parishioners at Sunday evening service, but he's hoping that will change.

His new idea to boost attendance is to invite the entire family, and that means bringing the family dog.

"It's a very simple worship service, we sing a hymn or two, there's prayers, but it's primarily the presence of the entire family if you will, even the four-footed members," said Eggebeen.

"Dogs with long fur and no fur, blondes and brunettes," listed Eggebeen.

So at 5 p.m. every Sunday, the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Westchester holds a canine service complete with doggie beds, special prayers and an offering of doggie treats.

Some even wear their Sunday best, and church goers say the idea just might keep them coming back to worship.

"I grew up going to church with my grandpa, to Catholic church, and then I saw this, and I thought this might be a great way to get back in to going to church every week," said Vicky Rambow, a service attendee.

"He sure loves coming. He sure loves seeing the other dogs here and the people here are all dog lovers and are very nice to him. So he experiences an environment of love and friendship," said Phil Leonardyee, another service attendee.

Many people share a deep bond with their dogs, and Eggebeen hopes this service will strengthen the church's connection to the community. So far, the response has been very uplifting.

"The overwhelming amount of positive response pouring in by e-mails and phone calls from all over has just astounded everyone including me. We touched a chord. We've touched a chord," said Eggebeen.

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7107512