Anger as rapist avoids deportation

The Tories and Liberal Democrats have called for an urgent explanation from the Government over how a convicted rapist facing deportation was allowed to stay in Britain to get married.
A senior judge pointed to apparent confusion in the Home Office when making his decision over the case of Alphonse Semo, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On Monday he won a High Court battle to remain in the UK for his wedding just hours before he was due to board a plane back to Africa.
Mr Justice Collins said it was difficult to have any sympathy for Semo, who was jailed for eight years for raping a woman before throwing his victim on a rubbish tip.
The judge said the Home Office had at first agreed to let the 53-year-old, from Deptford, south-east London, get married to his long-term partner, a German national.
Then the wedding was effectively cancelled by a subsequent decision "by the same Home Office - no doubt by a different department".
The judge said he was "very reluctant" to intervene - "but it seems to me the Home Office really cannot be allowed to play hot and cold".
The judge said: "With considerable reluctance, I have to say he must be allowed to marry. That means there will be a prohibition against removing him."
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "The Home Secretary needs to explain urgently what happened in this case, with the Home Office seeming to contradict itself. Many people will be rightly angry that a convicted rapist can find ways to stay in this country when he has no right to be here."
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "The Home Secretary should have had Semo on the first flight out after his release. Until the left hand knows what the right is doing at the Home Office, we will not have a migration system fit for purpose. It's time to end the mismanagement."

David Mikael Taclino
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21 Babies Killed in China

The bodies of 21 babies have been discovered in plastic bags in a river in eastern China, and authorities suspect they were dumped there by local hospitals, state media reported.
An initial investigation showed that eight of the 21 babies wore identification tags on their feet tracing them back to Jining Medical College Hospital in Shandong province, according to the People's Daily website. The other 13 were unidentified.
Three of the eight were admitted to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when they were admitted.
Video footage posted online showed interviews with local residents who discovered the bodies covered in plastic rubbish bags floating near the shore over the weekend.
Calls to the Jining Medical College Hospital information office rang unanswered.
Some of babies shown in the video, ranging from newborns to several months old, wore bluish-green identification tags with their mother's name, their birth dates, measurements and weight, while others were found shrouded in hazardous waste bags.
An official who answered the phone at the Jining Health Bureau confirmed the news, but would not give any details.

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China Disable Google

Chinese censors have disabled all Google searches on the mainland, blocking the US company's Hong Kong servers from delivering results.
In almost every major Chinese city, users reported that trying to access Google searches returned an error page.
The hiatus began at around 5pm on Tuesday in China. Although it was still possible to access Google's websites, searches on any topic delivered an error message.
Google was unable to immediately confirm the cause of the problem, but said it was investigating. Chinese internet users blamed the "Great Firewall" for blocking Google searches. Google's email services were unaffected.
In addition, Google said its mobile search has been partially blocked in China, leaving mobile phone users unable to use the Google search function.
The developments suggest that the Chinese government is preparing to make its move against Google, after the company moved the servers of its search engine to Hong Kong last week to avoid censorship.
At first, the move seemed to be a neat solution that would allow Google to provide Chinese users with its service without having to continue to censor search results.
Sergey Brin, the company's co-founder, even suggested, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, that the idea to move to Hong Kong had come "indirectly" from the Chinese government itself.
Under the "one country, two systems" motto dreamed up by Deng Xiaoping, China's former leader, Hong Kong retains the freedom of speech and British law left behind after the UK ceded the territory to China in 1997.
However, Google's move to Hong Kong has opened the eyes of many Chinese to the fact that they are being censored by the Communist party while their cousins in Hong Kong are not.
Since Google began redirecting mainland users to its Hong Kong site last week, the company has come under criticism from the state media, which has accused it of being part of a US "plot" to destabilise China.
The Communist party has been deeply concerned by the public's reaction to Google's departure from the mainland, and the Education ministry has even asked a selection of university students to write their "thoughts" about Google.
Similar student polls are usually conducted after major catastrophes, such as the riots in Xinjiang last year or in Tibet in 2008.
Meanwhile, the government has kept a tight leash on the domestic media, forbidding newspapers from publishing anything that deviates from the party line.
Instructions from the Central Propaganda Department to newspapers and websites said: "Only use Central Government media content.
"Do not use content from other sources. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the topic of Google. Please remove text, images, sound and video that supports Google."
Only the Chongqing Evening News was able to publish a report expressing remorse about Google's exit, after using the code words "Valley Dove", which sounds like Google in Chinese.
Other Chinese reporters have been banned from Google's offices in Beijing and all content expressing support for Google on the Chinese internet has been erased.
Meanwhile, other attacks on Google include the removal of the company's page on Renren, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook, and the blocking of a translated version of the company's blog post, in which it explains the reasons for its departure from the mainland.
Other websites which partner with Google for advertising have been told not to carry links to the blog, or its Chinese version.

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Nasa To Help Toyota's Problem

U.S. auto safety regulators said on Tuesday they will tap the expertise of the country's top space and aeronautics experts to analyze Toyota Motor Corp's electronic throttles to see if they are behind the reports of unintended acceleration that have hounded the automaker.
The news that NASA scientists will join the probe came as Toyota, reeling from a recall crisis sparked by the acceleration reports, launched a task force aimed at regaining consumer trust and pledged to give its regional operations more clout to speed up decisions on quality issues.
"We are determined to get to the bottom of unintended acceleration," U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in an interview with Reuters.
The Transportation Department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is just beginning its review of Toyota's electronic throttles, which have come under heightened scrutiny following the recall of millions of Toyota and Lexus vehicles over the past six months for unintended acceleration.
CRITICISM OF NHTSA BEHIND MOVE
While the government and the Japanese automaker blame mechanical or equipment flaws for the problem, questions have been raised about whether NHTSA over the years adequately handled investigations into motorist and other complaints of possible electronic throttle problems.
Critics have said NHTSA, which at the time of congressional hearings last month on the Toyota issue only had two electrical engineers on its staff, lacked the expertise and resources to assess the company's claims that its vehicles could not fail.
The Transportation Department inspector general is investigating NHTSA's and Toyota's handling of investigations into unintended acceleration. LaHood said the department watchdog would also determine whether NHTSA has appropriate staffing and expertise to handle sophisticated investigations.
Nine NASA scientists would bring expertise in electronics, electromagnetic interference, software integrity and complex problem solving to the Toyota review, Transportation Department officials said.
LaHood has maintained that NHTSA could handle the analysis itself, but said suggestions from lawmakers at congressional hearings prompted him to consider outside help.
"We've used them before. We've heard that they may have some influence," LaHood said of his decision to ask NASA to help.
The NHTSA review is to be completed by late summer, after which the highway traffic safety agency would then determine whether a formal investigation of Toyota throttles was warranted. Such a probe would set in motion a process that could lead to a recall.
LaHood said the timetable would not likely change unless "something very dramatic" happened with the NASA work.
Other investigations dating to 2004 found no throttle defect, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration handled those cases internally.
QUALITY CONTROL PANEL CONVENES
Meanwhile in Japan on Tuesday, Toyota President Akio Toyoda, who was criticized for not acting quickly enough when the automaker's safety issues first came to light earlier this year, convened a 50-member committee on quality at the automaker's headquarters.
It marked the first meeting of Toyota's newly named regional quality officers and came at a crucial time as the world's largest automaker attempts to recapture lost sales momentum in key markets including the United States.
"We need a renewed commitment to placing customers first and to reviewing all our work processes from the customers' perspective," Toyoda, who chairs the committee, said ahead of the meeting.
In a departure from past practice, chief quality officers assigned in six designated regions will have a say when headquarters makes decisions on safety issues, in an effort to better reflect customer needs gleaned in local markets.
Third-party experts in each region, including one in North America headed by former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, will assess the steps Toyota has taken to renew its focus on quality and safety.
The initial review results are due to be released in June, Toyota said.
Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles globally in recent months. Those recalls take aim at accelerator pedals that can become stuck with condensation, pedals that can be held down by floormats and a braking glitch on its latest Prius and other new hybrids.
The quality slippage has highlighted the pressure on Toyota's stretched work force as it scrambled to keep up with soaring demand for its popular cars in the past decade.
Toyota will also expand the use in North America of event data recorders, which can record data on vehicle condition and driver operations, and work with authorities in other markets to better analyze the causes of accidents.
While a sales suspension of recalled models hit Toyota's U.S. sales hard in February, demand is expected to soar on incentives this month, leaving analysts uncertain as to how deeply the recalls will actually damage Toyota's business.

David Mikael Taclino
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"Responsible will be Caught" - Putin

Vladimir Putin vowed Tuesday to "drag out of the sewer" the masterminds of the twin suicide bombing of the Moscow subway system that killed 39 people and left scores wounded.
The powerful prime minister spoke as Russia mourned the dead from Monday's attacks; teary passengers lit candles and left carnations at both of the central stations that were hit.
The blasts shocked a country that had grown accustomed to such violence being confined to a restive southern corner — and marked the return of terrorism to the everyday lives of Muscovites after a six-year break.
As senior politicians call for the return of the death penalty, the attacks have raised fears that civil liberties may again be sacrificed under the pretext of fighting terrorism — a charge Putin faced during his eight-year presidency.
"I understand what authorities will do. They will resume persecution of opposition, there will be more censorship, political spying. There will be more riot police dispersing opposition rallies and protests. But it will not save us from terrorism," prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said in an editorial published by Grani.ru online magazine.
As president, Putin consolidated control in the wake of the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis by abolishing the election of regional governors, and came to power in 1999 promising a strong crackdown on rebels in Russia's North Caucasus.
Putin said on television Tuesday that he is sure the organizers of Monday's attacks by two women will be found.
"We know that they are lying low, but it is already a matter of the pride of law enforcement agencies to drag them out of the sewer and into broad daylight."
Many have speculated that the blasts — blamed on Muslim extremists in the Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya — were retaliation for the recent killing of separatist leaders in the area by Russian police. No claims of responsibility have been made.
The city remained on edge Tuesday, even as people began to commute on the subway again.
"I feel the tension on the metro. Nobody's smiling or laughing," said university student Alina Tsaritova, not far from the Lubyanka station, one of the targets.
The female suicide bombers detonated belts of explosives during the morning rush-hour at the stations, investigators said.
Five people remained in critical condition out of 71 hospitalized after the blasts, city health department official Andrei Seltsovsky told the Rossiya-24 state news channel. Emergency officials said later Tuesday that five bodies remained unidentified.
Some commuters said Tuesday they would try and block the events out of their mind completely.
"We have to live with this, not to think about it, especially when we're underground," said Tatyana Yerofeyeva, a Muscovite in her early 50s.
As public outrage swells, the upper house of parliament is proposing bringing back the death penalty for such crimes, a lawmaker was quoted as saying.
"This is our reaction to yesterday's tragic events," Anatoly Kyskov, the Federation Council's legal committee chairman, said in comments carried by state news agency RIA Novosti.
President Dmitry Medvedev called on chairmen from the Supreme Court and the High Court of Arbitration to propose ways to "perfect" terrorism laws.
Russia announced a moratorium on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe in 1996 and pledged to abolish it, but has not done so. The Kremlin-controlled parliament has been reluctant to fully outlaw executions, due to broad public support for the death penalty.
As Moscow mourned, plastic plaques hung in the two metro stations above rickety tables overflowing with flowers; their inscriptions promised permanent replacements. Some people were choked by tears as they laid candles.
Flags flew at half staff on government buildings, at the Kremlin, and in other cities across the vast country. Entertainment events and television shows were canceled, and services were scheduled at several churches.
Heightened transportation security remained in effect across the capital and elsewhere. Police with machine guns and sniffer dogs patrolled subway entrances.
Later, jittery authorities evacuated 45 residents of a central Moscow apartment building over a suspicious-looking object found under a police vehicle nearby, Russian media said.
Monday's first explosion took place just before 8 a.m. at the Lubyanka station in central Moscow, beneath the notorious headquarters of the Federal Security Service or FSB, the KGB's main successor agency. The FSB is a symbol of power under Putin, a former KGB officer who headed the agency before his election as president in 2000.
About 45 minutes later, a second blast hit the Park Kultury station on the same subway line, which is near the renowned Gorky Park. In both cases, the bombs were detonated as the trains pulled into the stations and the doors were opening.
The last confirmed terrorist attack in Moscow was in August 2004, when a suicide bomber blew herself up outside a subway station, killing 10 people. Chechen rebels claimed responsibility.

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Core Group Questions Obama's Call

President Barack Obama says he believes the Tea Party is built around a "core group" of people who question whether he is a U.S. citizen and believe he is a socialist.
But beyond that, Obama tells NBC he recognizes the movement involves "folks who have legitimate concerns" about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously.
In an interview broadcast Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show, Obama said he feels "there's still going to be a group at their core that question my legitimacy." But he said he didn't want to paint Tea Party activists "in broad brushes" and he hopes to win over members who have "mainstream, legitimate concerns."

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Obama Approved Bill

Finalizing two major pieces of his agenda, President Barack Obama on Tuesday sealed his health care overhaul and made the government the primary lender to students by cutting banks out of the process.
Both domestic priorities came in one bill, pushed through by Democrats in the House and Senate and signed into law by a beaming president.
The new law makes a series of changes to the massive health insurance reform bill that he signed into law with even greater fanfare last week. Those fixes included removing some specials deals that had angered the public and providing more money for poorer and middle-income individuals and families to help them buy health insurance.
But during an appearance at a community college in suburban Virginia, he emphasized the overshadowed part of the bill: education.
In this final piece of health reform, Democrats added in a restructuring of the way the government handles loans affecting millions of students.
The law strips banks of their role as middlemen in federal student loans and puts the government in charge. The president said that change would save more than $60 billion over the next 10 years, which in turn would be used to boost Pell Grants for students and reinvest in community colleges.
"I didn't stand with the banks and the financial industries in this fight — that's not why I came to Washington — and neither did any of the members of Congress who are here today," Obama said to a supportive crowd at Northern Virginia Community College. "We stood with you. We stood with America's students."
Private lenders still will make student loans that are not backed by the government, and they still will have contracts to service some federal loans. But the change reflected in the new law represents a significant loss in what has been a $70 billion business for the banking industry.
Among many other features, the new law is expected to make it easier for some college graduates to repay loans.
The government will essentially guarantee that workers in low-paying jobs will be able to reduce their payments. Current law caps monthly payments at 15 percent of these workers' incomes; the new law will lower the cap to 10 percent.
About half of undergraduates receive federal student aid and about 8.5 million students are going to college with the help of Pell Grants.
Obama was effusive in his praise for the lawmakers who stood by him on the health care and education legislation. Many of them face tough sells in their home districts over the massive health care legislation, a complex mix of crackdowns on the insurance industry, coverage expansions and insurance mandates.
He was introduced by Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president's wife, who teaches English there.

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Stephenie Meyers New Book

Attention "Twilight" fans: Stephenie Meyer has a new book coming out.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will release "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner" on June 5.
The novella is told from the viewpoint of Bree, a newborn vampire featured in "Eclipse." That's one of the books in Meyer's best-selling teen-vampire saga.
Meyer says in a statement Tuesday the novella had originally been planned for "The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide." But she says it became too long to fit into the guide.
The publisher says one dollar for each book sold in the U.S. from the first printing of 1.5 million copies will be donated to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. It supports disaster relief efforts such as those in Haiti and Chile.

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Christian Militia in US confirmed

The U.S. attorney leading the prosecution against nine suspected members of a Michigan-based Christian militia says authorities "needed to arrest them and take them down."
Barbara McQuade said Tuesday that federal investigators had been watching the group called Hutaree for some time and felt compelled to act based on an imminent threat against police.
McQuade says the "most troubling" finding was that Hutaree members plotted to make a false 911 call, kill responding officers and then use a bomb to kill many more at the funeral.
The nine face seditious conspiracy charges after weekend raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Eight appeared in court Monday.
One suspect, 21-one-year-old Joshua Matthew Stone, was arraigned Tuesday and was ordered held without bond until a hearing Wednesday.

The last of nine people charged with plotting to kill police has been arraigned in a Detroit federal court.
Twenty-one-year-old Joshua Matthew Stone was arraigned Tuesday before a U.S. District Court magistrate and was ordered held without bond until a hearing Wednesday.
Stone peacefully surrendered Monday night in Hillsdale County's Wheatland Township.
Authorities say Stone's father and seven others charged Monday were part of the Michigan-based Hutaree. They say the group plotted to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more by bombing the funeral — all in hopes of touching off an uprising against the government.
Stone was the only suspect not arrested during weekend raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.
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Sentenced Death

A judge on Tuesday sentenced serial killer Rodney Alcala to death before hearing emotional testimony from the families of four women and a 12-year-old girl he strangled in the 1970s.
The sentence was announced three weeks after a jury recomended death for the 66-year-old Alcala, who was convicted last month of five counts of first-degree murder after a bizarre and sometimes surreal trial.
After the sentencing, Bruce Barcomb, the brother of victim Jill Barcomb, begged Alcala to admit to the murders to help family members heal.
"There is murder and rape and then there is the unequivicable carnage of a Rodney Alcala-style murder," he said. "Give up your debt Rodney: all victims, all states, all occurences. Own your truth."
Alcala acted as his own attorney during the trial and unveiled a rambling defense that included questioning the mother of one of his victims, playing an Arlo Guthrie ballad and showing a clip from the 1970s TV show "The Dating Game."
After the verdict, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in Alcala's possession in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country. Authorities from New Hampshire to Washington are now trying to determine if the UCLA graduate may have killed in their states.
Alcala has been sentenced to death twice before in the 1979 murder of young Robin Samsoe, but those verdicts were overturned on appeal. Prosecutors refiled charges in that case and added the four other murders in 2006 after investigators linked them to Alcala using DNA samples and other forensic evidence.
Those cases, which had gone unsolved for decades, went on trial for the first time this year.
The 12-year-old Samsoe disappeared on June 20, 1979, while riding a friend's bike to ballet class in Huntington Beach in Orange County. Her body was found 12 days later in Angeles National Forest, where it had been mutilated by wild animals.
Alcala was arrested a month after Samsoe's disappearance when his parole agent recognized him from a police sketch and called authorities. He has been in custody ever since.
He was first tried in Samsoe's murder in 1980. Prosecutors added the murders of the four women in 2006 after investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes, including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody handprint and marker testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim's home.
Alcala was convicted on Feb. 25, and also found true special-circumstance allegations of rape, torture and kidnapping, making him eligible for the death penalty.
During the guilt phase of trial, Alcala played a seconds-long clip of himself on a 1978 episode of "The Dating Game." He said the grainy clip proved that he was wearing a gold-ball earring almost a year before Samsoe was killed.
Prosecutors said the earring, found in a small pouch with other earrings in a storage locker Alcala had rented, belonged to Samsoe and that Alcala had taken it as a trophy. They also found the DNA of another victim of Alcala on a rose-shaped earring in the same pouch.
During the penalty phase, the trial took another bizarre twist when Alcala played Arlo Guthrie's 1967 song "Alice's Restaurant," in which the narrator tries to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War by trying to persuade a psychiatrist that he's unfit for the military because of his supposed extreme desire to kill.
"I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth," the song's narrator sings. "Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean: kill, kill, kill, kill."
The song prompted Samsoe's brother to stalk out of the courtroom when it was played.
In addition to Samsoe, Alcala is charged with killing Jill Barcomb, 18, who had just moved to Los Angeles from Oneida, N.Y.; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank.

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