World/Nation Briefs 5.25.2012
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
NEW YORK (AP) — The timing couldn’t have been more symbolic: On the eve of National Missing Children’s Day, police said they’d at last cracked the case that started it — the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
After decades of inconclusive clues and stalled hopes, a former convenience-store stock clerk was arrested Thursday on a charge of murdering Etan, one of the first missing children ever to appear on a milk carton. He vanished while walking to his school bus stop alone for the first time.
Pedro Hernandez, 51, told investigators this week he lured the little boy into the shop with the promise of a soda, then led him to the basement, choked him and put his body in a bag with some trash about a block away, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Investigators hadn’t determined any motive, he said.
Kelly said there is no physical evidence. But authorities say they have a detailed, signed confession, as well as accounts of incriminating remarks Hernandez made to others.
Hernandez didn’t yet have a lawyer, police said. An arraignment was expected Friday afternoon.
———
AP NewsBreak: Maine churches taking collections to fund foes of gay marriage ballot question
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Scores of Maine churches will pass the collection plate a second time at Sunday services on Father’s Day to kick off a fundraising campaign for the lead opposition group to November’s ballot question asking voters to legalize same-sex marriages.
Between 150 and 200 churches are expected to raise money for the Protect Marriage Maine political action committee, said Carroll Conley Jr., executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine evangelical organization and a member of the PAC. Conley is also trying to drum up support for the Maine campaign from religious leaders from around the country.
It’s unusual, but not unheard of, for churches to take up collections for political causes. Maine’s Catholic diocese says it raised about $80,000 with a designated collection in 2009 in its effort to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law, which was passed by the Legislature that year and later rejected by voters. The Catholic church isn’t actively campaigning this time, instead focusing on teaching parishioners about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman Father’s Day, June 17, seemed an appropriate time to kick off this year’s fundraising campaign because of the day’s focus on family, Conley said. Additional collection-plate offerings at churches are expected in the months ahead.
‘‘The messaging we’re using is that those who are seeking to redefine marriage in Maine believe there’s no difference between moms and dads,’’ Conley told The Associated Press. ‘‘We believe those differences are relevant. We don’t think the differences in the genders are societally imposed roles, and we believe that children benefit when they’re in that ideal environment where there’s a mom and dad.’’
Protect Marriage Maine has been in contact with about 800 churches across the state and expects 150 to 200 to participate in the Father’s Day collections, Conley said. They include Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Nazarene, Church of God, Wesleyan, Evangelical Free, Advent Christian and other denominations.
———
Political and emotional backlash against swelling number of African migrants in Israel
JERUSALEM (AP) — Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently — and in an alarming new development, violently — calling for their expulsion.
Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn’t seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict.
It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants who manage to sneak in.
Over the past seven years, as many as 60,000 African migrants, most from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped across Israel’s border with Egypt, exploiting the lack of a physical barrier and widespread lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula that has been one result of the fall last year of longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Israel is erecting a barrier along the roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) of border. While this work drags on, the migrants continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a month, ragged and penniless, with some reporting being raped, tortured and extorted by the Bedouins who smuggle them through.
———
Brotherhood claims lead in polls as vote count begins in landmark Egyptian election
CAIRO (AP) — The Muslim Brotherhood has quickly staked a claim for its candidate to advance to a runoff vote, saying its exit polls showed him leading in Egypt’s landmark presidential election to succeed ousted leader Hosni Mubarak.
As vote-counting began on Thursday, exit polls by several Arab television stations also suggested the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was ahead of the pack of 13 candidates. The reliability of the various exit surveys was not known, and a few hours after the end of two days of voting, only a tiny percentage of the ballots had been counted.
But the swiftness of the Brotherhood’s claim showed its eagerness to plant its flag and establish in the public eye that Morsi had at least won entry into a second round vote. There are five prominent candidates, but none is expected to win outright in the first round. A run-off between the two leading contenders would be held June 16-17.
The first truly competitive presidential election in Egypt’s history turned into a heated battle between Islamist candidates and secular figures rooted in Mubarak’s old regime. The most polarizing figures in the race were Morsi and former air force commander and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a veteran of Mubarak’s rule.
The Brotherhood is hoping for a presidential victory to seal its political domination of Egypt, which would be a dramatic turnaround from the decades it was repressed under Mubarak. It already holds nearly half of parliament after victories in elections late last year.
———
New federal swimming pool rules to increase disabled access postponed after industry uproar
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is sidestepping an election-year confrontation with the hotel industry and other pool owners to give them more time to comply with access rules for the disabled.
The rules have been in the works since the early 1990s, but the Justice Department created an uproar among hotels, waterparks, health clubs and the like earlier this year when it said it will require many such facilities to install fixed, permanent lifts to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
After initially setting a March 15 deadline — and telling the industry it wouldn’t budge — the department has granted two extensions. After first saying it might grant a reprieve until September, Justice announced last week that pool owners won’t have to comply with the new requirements until early next year, a move that gets the controversy safely past the election.
At issue is whether hotels and other facilities will have to install fixed, permanent lifts to assist disabled people getting in and out of their pools, a move that requires hiring a contractor and tearing up the pool deck at a cost of as much as $6,000.
Many pool owners were hoping to comply with the rules by purchasing less costly portable lifts that could be wheeled out to poolside as needed. Hotel owners who already have lifts say few of their customers ever ask for them.
———
Build it and they will come: Soccer stadium seen as seed for rejuvenating notorious Haiti slum
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A local sports hero, a New York real estate developer and a well-known architect are teaming up to build a soccer stadium in Haiti’s notorious Cite Soleil, hoping to revive the seaside shantytown known throughout the hemisphere for its extreme poverty and gang battles.
Foreign investors in Haiti have largely directed their efforts at rebuilding from a devastating 2010 earthquake, focusing their funds on Port-au-Prince and the overlapping cities that make up the capital and the country’s sleepy coastlines.
But ex-Haiti soccer star Robert ‘‘Boby’’ Duval, the mastermind of the $5 million project, developer Delos LLC and architect Carlos Zapata are looking elsewhere — at a city of tin shacks and open sewage canals shunned by investors, avoided by diplomats and at one point so dangerous that U.N. peacekeepers would only enter it in armored vehicles.
The sponsors say they hope the stadium project will tackle problems that predate the 2010 disaster.
‘‘Cite Soleil was destroyed way before the earthquake,’’ said Duval. ‘‘This stadium is going to clean up Cite Soleil. It’s going to bring conscience, and I’m betting on it.’’
———
New Jersey finds NYC police surveillance of Muslims broke no state laws, can’t be blocked
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Muslim leaders in New Jersey say they are angry but uncertain what their next step will be after the state’s attorney general found that New York City police did not violate any laws in its surveillance of Muslim businesses, mosques and student groups in New Jersey.
Several mosque leaders who attended a meeting Thursday with Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said they were shocked he found no violation of state criminal or civil laws by the NYPD in operations that many Muslims considered unjustified surveillance based solely on religion.
‘‘This is a big violation of our civil rights, and we need to go to our communities and explain it?’’ Imam Mohammad Qatanani, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County said Thursday as he left the meeting. Qatanani said he would not tell his congregants to stop collaborating with law enforcement, but added, ‘‘We need from them to show us the same seriousness and honesty in building bridges with the Muslim community.’’
Chiesa had been asked by Gov. Chris Christie, who appointed him, to look into operations in New Jersey that were part of a widespread NYPD program to collect intelligence on Muslim communities both inside New York and beyond. Undercover officers and informants eavesdropped in Muslim cafes and monitored sermons, even when there was no evidence of a crime. They infiltrated Muslim student groups, videotaped mosque-goers or collected their license plate numbers as they prayed.
The result was that many innocent business owners, students and others were cataloged in police files.
———
Nearly a week after 4 killed, another wave of climbers heads for Mount Everest’s summit
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Scores of climbers were headed for the summit of Mount Everest on Friday in what is expected to another busy weekend on the top of the world.
Last weekend, four climbers died on their way down from the summit amid a traffic jam of more than 200 people scrambling to conquer the world’s highest peak as the weather worsened. A similar crowd is expected this weekend, but there have been no reports of climbers in trouble and the weather is good.
Gyanendra Shrestha, an official with Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, said he had reports that 82 climbers reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit on Friday morning.
Shrestha, who is at the base camp, said 120 climbers started the last phase of the climb on Thursday night but not all of them reached the summit. He said it was normal for some of the climbers to quit at the last treacherous part of the climb for various reasons.
There were still more climbers expected to try to reach the summit on Saturday — probably the last day of this climbing season.
———
SpaceX Dragon capsule on course for historic arrival at space station, 1st private cargo haul
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The privately bankrolled Dragon capsule approached the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday after sailing through a practice rendezvous the day before.
The unmanned SpaceX Dragon was right on track to deliver a half-ton of supplies and become the first commercial vessel to visit the space station.
‘‘It’s a great view,’’ Dutch space station astronaut Andre Kuipers said as the Dragon drew to within 900 feet, its strobe light flashing. ‘‘The solar panels are nicely lit.’’
On Thursday, the capsule came within 1 1/2 miles of the space station in a practice fly-by. It returned to the neighborhood early Friday so Kuipers and U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit could capture it with a robot arm. First, the capsule had to go through a series of stop-and-go demonstrations to prove it was under good operating control.
A collision at orbital speed — 17,500 mph — could prove disastrous for the space station.
———
Big Three-Minus-One more than enough for Miami; Wade, James lead Heat back to Eastern finals
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — With another season on the brink, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James took their two-man game to new heights.
Just like that, the Miami Heat and a Big Three-Minus-One are headed back to the Eastern Conference finals.
Wade scored 41 points, James added 28 and the Heat finished off the once-frisky Indiana Pacers 105-93 in Game 6 Thursday night, advancing to face either Boston or Philadelphia in the next round.
The way Miami’s dynamic duo is playing, it may not matter who’s got next.
‘‘They’re going to be tough to beat by anybody,’’ Indiana coach Frank Vogel said.
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NEW YORK (AP) — The timing couldn’t have been more symbolic: On the eve of National Missing Children’s Day, police said they’d at last cracked the case that started it — the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
After decades of inconclusive clues and stalled hopes, a former convenience-store stock clerk was arrested Thursday on a charge of murdering Etan, one of the first missing children ever to appear on a milk carton. He vanished while walking to his school bus stop alone for the first time.
Pedro Hernandez, 51, told investigators this week he lured the little boy into the shop with the promise of a soda, then led him to the basement, choked him and put his body in a bag with some trash about a block away, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Investigators hadn’t determined any motive, he said.
Kelly said there is no physical evidence. But authorities say they have a detailed, signed confession, as well as accounts of incriminating remarks Hernandez made to others.
Hernandez didn’t yet have a lawyer, police said. An arraignment was expected Friday afternoon.
———
AP NewsBreak: Maine churches taking collections to fund foes of gay marriage ballot question
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Scores of Maine churches will pass the collection plate a second time at Sunday services on Father’s Day to kick off a fundraising campaign for the lead opposition group to November’s ballot question asking voters to legalize same-sex marriages.
Between 150 and 200 churches are expected to raise money for the Protect Marriage Maine political action committee, said Carroll Conley Jr., executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine evangelical organization and a member of the PAC. Conley is also trying to drum up support for the Maine campaign from religious leaders from around the country.
It’s unusual, but not unheard of, for churches to take up collections for political causes. Maine’s Catholic diocese says it raised about $80,000 with a designated collection in 2009 in its effort to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law, which was passed by the Legislature that year and later rejected by voters. The Catholic church isn’t actively campaigning this time, instead focusing on teaching parishioners about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman Father’s Day, June 17, seemed an appropriate time to kick off this year’s fundraising campaign because of the day’s focus on family, Conley said. Additional collection-plate offerings at churches are expected in the months ahead.
‘‘The messaging we’re using is that those who are seeking to redefine marriage in Maine believe there’s no difference between moms and dads,’’ Conley told The Associated Press. ‘‘We believe those differences are relevant. We don’t think the differences in the genders are societally imposed roles, and we believe that children benefit when they’re in that ideal environment where there’s a mom and dad.’’
Protect Marriage Maine has been in contact with about 800 churches across the state and expects 150 to 200 to participate in the Father’s Day collections, Conley said. They include Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Nazarene, Church of God, Wesleyan, Evangelical Free, Advent Christian and other denominations.
———
Political and emotional backlash against swelling number of African migrants in Israel
JERUSALEM (AP) — Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently — and in an alarming new development, violently — calling for their expulsion.
Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn’t seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict.
It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants who manage to sneak in.
Over the past seven years, as many as 60,000 African migrants, most from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped across Israel’s border with Egypt, exploiting the lack of a physical barrier and widespread lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula that has been one result of the fall last year of longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Israel is erecting a barrier along the roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) of border. While this work drags on, the migrants continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a month, ragged and penniless, with some reporting being raped, tortured and extorted by the Bedouins who smuggle them through.
———
Brotherhood claims lead in polls as vote count begins in landmark Egyptian election
CAIRO (AP) — The Muslim Brotherhood has quickly staked a claim for its candidate to advance to a runoff vote, saying its exit polls showed him leading in Egypt’s landmark presidential election to succeed ousted leader Hosni Mubarak.
As vote-counting began on Thursday, exit polls by several Arab television stations also suggested the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was ahead of the pack of 13 candidates. The reliability of the various exit surveys was not known, and a few hours after the end of two days of voting, only a tiny percentage of the ballots had been counted.
But the swiftness of the Brotherhood’s claim showed its eagerness to plant its flag and establish in the public eye that Morsi had at least won entry into a second round vote. There are five prominent candidates, but none is expected to win outright in the first round. A run-off between the two leading contenders would be held June 16-17.
The first truly competitive presidential election in Egypt’s history turned into a heated battle between Islamist candidates and secular figures rooted in Mubarak’s old regime. The most polarizing figures in the race were Morsi and former air force commander and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a veteran of Mubarak’s rule.
The Brotherhood is hoping for a presidential victory to seal its political domination of Egypt, which would be a dramatic turnaround from the decades it was repressed under Mubarak. It already holds nearly half of parliament after victories in elections late last year.
———
New federal swimming pool rules to increase disabled access postponed after industry uproar
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is sidestepping an election-year confrontation with the hotel industry and other pool owners to give them more time to comply with access rules for the disabled.
The rules have been in the works since the early 1990s, but the Justice Department created an uproar among hotels, waterparks, health clubs and the like earlier this year when it said it will require many such facilities to install fixed, permanent lifts to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
After initially setting a March 15 deadline — and telling the industry it wouldn’t budge — the department has granted two extensions. After first saying it might grant a reprieve until September, Justice announced last week that pool owners won’t have to comply with the new requirements until early next year, a move that gets the controversy safely past the election.
At issue is whether hotels and other facilities will have to install fixed, permanent lifts to assist disabled people getting in and out of their pools, a move that requires hiring a contractor and tearing up the pool deck at a cost of as much as $6,000.
Many pool owners were hoping to comply with the rules by purchasing less costly portable lifts that could be wheeled out to poolside as needed. Hotel owners who already have lifts say few of their customers ever ask for them.
———
Build it and they will come: Soccer stadium seen as seed for rejuvenating notorious Haiti slum
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A local sports hero, a New York real estate developer and a well-known architect are teaming up to build a soccer stadium in Haiti’s notorious Cite Soleil, hoping to revive the seaside shantytown known throughout the hemisphere for its extreme poverty and gang battles.
Foreign investors in Haiti have largely directed their efforts at rebuilding from a devastating 2010 earthquake, focusing their funds on Port-au-Prince and the overlapping cities that make up the capital and the country’s sleepy coastlines.
But ex-Haiti soccer star Robert ‘‘Boby’’ Duval, the mastermind of the $5 million project, developer Delos LLC and architect Carlos Zapata are looking elsewhere — at a city of tin shacks and open sewage canals shunned by investors, avoided by diplomats and at one point so dangerous that U.N. peacekeepers would only enter it in armored vehicles.
The sponsors say they hope the stadium project will tackle problems that predate the 2010 disaster.
‘‘Cite Soleil was destroyed way before the earthquake,’’ said Duval. ‘‘This stadium is going to clean up Cite Soleil. It’s going to bring conscience, and I’m betting on it.’’
———
New Jersey finds NYC police surveillance of Muslims broke no state laws, can’t be blocked
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Muslim leaders in New Jersey say they are angry but uncertain what their next step will be after the state’s attorney general found that New York City police did not violate any laws in its surveillance of Muslim businesses, mosques and student groups in New Jersey.
Several mosque leaders who attended a meeting Thursday with Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said they were shocked he found no violation of state criminal or civil laws by the NYPD in operations that many Muslims considered unjustified surveillance based solely on religion.
‘‘This is a big violation of our civil rights, and we need to go to our communities and explain it?’’ Imam Mohammad Qatanani, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County said Thursday as he left the meeting. Qatanani said he would not tell his congregants to stop collaborating with law enforcement, but added, ‘‘We need from them to show us the same seriousness and honesty in building bridges with the Muslim community.’’
Chiesa had been asked by Gov. Chris Christie, who appointed him, to look into operations in New Jersey that were part of a widespread NYPD program to collect intelligence on Muslim communities both inside New York and beyond. Undercover officers and informants eavesdropped in Muslim cafes and monitored sermons, even when there was no evidence of a crime. They infiltrated Muslim student groups, videotaped mosque-goers or collected their license plate numbers as they prayed.
The result was that many innocent business owners, students and others were cataloged in police files.
———
Nearly a week after 4 killed, another wave of climbers heads for Mount Everest’s summit
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Scores of climbers were headed for the summit of Mount Everest on Friday in what is expected to another busy weekend on the top of the world.
Last weekend, four climbers died on their way down from the summit amid a traffic jam of more than 200 people scrambling to conquer the world’s highest peak as the weather worsened. A similar crowd is expected this weekend, but there have been no reports of climbers in trouble and the weather is good.
Gyanendra Shrestha, an official with Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, said he had reports that 82 climbers reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit on Friday morning.
Shrestha, who is at the base camp, said 120 climbers started the last phase of the climb on Thursday night but not all of them reached the summit. He said it was normal for some of the climbers to quit at the last treacherous part of the climb for various reasons.
There were still more climbers expected to try to reach the summit on Saturday — probably the last day of this climbing season.
———
SpaceX Dragon capsule on course for historic arrival at space station, 1st private cargo haul
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The privately bankrolled Dragon capsule approached the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday after sailing through a practice rendezvous the day before.
The unmanned SpaceX Dragon was right on track to deliver a half-ton of supplies and become the first commercial vessel to visit the space station.
‘‘It’s a great view,’’ Dutch space station astronaut Andre Kuipers said as the Dragon drew to within 900 feet, its strobe light flashing. ‘‘The solar panels are nicely lit.’’
On Thursday, the capsule came within 1 1/2 miles of the space station in a practice fly-by. It returned to the neighborhood early Friday so Kuipers and U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit could capture it with a robot arm. First, the capsule had to go through a series of stop-and-go demonstrations to prove it was under good operating control.
A collision at orbital speed — 17,500 mph — could prove disastrous for the space station.
———
Big Three-Minus-One more than enough for Miami; Wade, James lead Heat back to Eastern finals
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — With another season on the brink, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James took their two-man game to new heights.
Just like that, the Miami Heat and a Big Three-Minus-One are headed back to the Eastern Conference finals.
Wade scored 41 points, James added 28 and the Heat finished off the once-frisky Indiana Pacers 105-93 in Game 6 Thursday night, advancing to face either Boston or Philadelphia in the next round.
The way Miami’s dynamic duo is playing, it may not matter who’s got next.
‘‘They’re going to be tough to beat by anybody,’’ Indiana coach Frank Vogel said.
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