Flash floods kill more than 500 in Philippines (AP)

ILIGAN, Philippines ? Tropical Storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating a wide swath of the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed at least 521 people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees.

With nearly 500 people missing, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and top military officials were to fly to the worst-hit city of Cagayan de Oro to help oversee search-and-rescue efforts and deal with thousands of displaced villagers, as the weather began to clear and floodwaters receded. Among the items urgently needed are coffins and body bags, said Benito Ramos, who heads the government's disaster-response agency.

"It's overwhelming. We didn't expect these many dead," Ramos said.

Edmund Rubio, a 44-year-old engineer, said he, his wife and two children scrambled to the second floor of their house in Iligan city as raging floodwaters engulfed the first floor, destroying his TV set and other appliances and washing away his car and motorcycle.

Amid the panic, he heard a loud pounding on his door as his neighbors living in nearby one-story houses pleaded with him to allow them into one of his second-floor rooms. He said he brought 30 of his neighbors into the safety of the second floor of his house, which later shook when a huge, floating log slammed into it.

"It's the most important thing, that all of us will still be together this Christmas," Rubio told The Associated Press. "There was a nearby shantytown that was smashed by water. I'm afraid many people there may not have been as lucky as us."

Army officers reported unidentified bodies piled up in morgues in Cagayan de Oro, where electricity was restored in some areas, although the city of more than 500,000 people remained without tap water.

Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwendolyn Pang told the AP that at least 521 people had died in the floods, mostly children and women, and that 458 others were reported missing.

The death toll will most likely rise because many villages remain isolated and unreached by overwhelmed disaster-response personnel. The worst-hit cities were Cagayan de Oro, where at least 239 people died, and nearby Iligan, where Red Cross aid workers reported 195 dead, Pang said.

"Our fear is there may have been whole families that perished so there's nobody to report what happened," Pang said. "Many areas remain isolated and strewn with debris and unreached by rescue teams."

Tropical Storm Washi started to blow away toward the South China Sea on Sunday after slamming into the western province of Palawan, allowing the weather to clear and disaster-response contingents to intensify search-and-rescue work.

Most of the victims were asleep Friday night when raging floodwaters cascaded from the mountains with logs and uprooted trees after 12 hours of rain from the late-season tropical storm in Mindanao. The region is unaccustomed to the typhoons that are common to the north of the Philippine archipelago.

Both Iligan, a bustling industrial center about 485 miles (780 kilometers) southeast of Manila, and Cagayan de Oro were filled with scenes of destruction and desperation.

A swollen river sent floodwaters gushing through neighborhoods that do not usually experience flooding. A man floated in an inner tube in muddy water littered with plastic buckets, pieces of wood and other debris. Ten people in one home stood on a sloping roof, waiting for rescuers even as water still flooded the lower floors.

Local television footage showed muddy water rushing in the streets, sweeping away all sorts of debris. Thick layers of mud coated streets where the waters had subsided. One car was thrown over a concrete fence and others were crushed and piled atop each other in a flooded canal.

Benito Ramos, who heads the government's Office of Civil Defense, attributed the high casualties in Mindanao "partly to the complacency of people because they are not in the usual path of storms" despite four days of warnings by officials that one was approaching.

Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of local police, reservists, coast guard officers and civilian volunteers were mobilized for rescue efforts, but they were hampered by the flooded-out roads and lack of electricity.

Authorities recovered bodies from the mud after the water subsided. Parts of concrete walls and roofs, toppled vehicles and other debris littered the streets.

Rescuers in boats rushed offshore to save people swept out to sea. In Misamis Oriental province, 60 people were plucked from the ocean off El Salvador city, about six miles (10 kilometers) northwest of Cagayan de Oro. Coast guard boats and other rescuers were scouring the waters off Iligan for survivors or bodies that may have been swept away to sea.

In just 12 hours, Washi dumped more than a month of average rains on Mindanao. Forecaster Leny Ruiz said records show that storms that follow the same path as Washi come only once in about every 12 years.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that the Obama administration offered its "deepest condolences" for the devastation in the southern Philippines.

"The U.S. government stands ready to assist Philippine authorities as they respond to this tragedy," the statement said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those affected."

___

Jim Gomez reported from Manila. Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111218/ap_on_re_as/as_philippines_storm

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Coming soon: pick airline seatmates via social networks

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plans to launch a service in 2012 that will enable you to pick who you sit next to on an airplane by visiting their Facebook or LinkedIn pages. "Meet & Seat" will be an opt-in service (similar to that already toyed with by Malaysia Airlines), so you can still fly anonymously -- as anonymous as air travel gets these days, anyway. It could be great for making friends or developing business contacts on your next international flight, or it could make for some really awkward conversation too. "So, your Facebook profile says you like Justin Bieber?"

Coming soon: pick airline seatmates via social networks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time short for S&P to end 2011 higher (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? With two weeks left in the trading year, the euro zone debt crisis will remain the primary impediment to pushing the S&P 500 index into positive territory for 2011.

Uncertainty over progress in the region, along with the potential for credit rating downgrades on euro zone countries, have kept investors on edge and market volatility high.

Even with a fairly busy U.S. economic calendar, which includes a batch of data on the housing market, the final reading on gross domestic product and durable goods orders, markets will focus on developments from Europe.

"What everybody is going to look at is the same thing they've been looking at -- every time a German official opens their mouth we get crushed," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Santa Claus is out there. But we've got to see something."

The benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX)(.INX) is down about 3 percent for the year and would need to climb above 1,257.64 in order to end higher for the year.

A rally by stocks on Friday fizzled, and the market ended with only modest gains after the latest credit warning about possible downgrades of European nations. For the week, the Dow fell 2.7 percent, the S&P lost 2.9 percent and the Nasdaq was down 3.5 percent.

Italy's prime minister urged European policymakers on Friday to beware of dividing the continent in the effort to contain the debt crisis, warning against a "short-term hunger for rigor" in some countries, in a swipe at Germany.

Stocks have been whipsawed as investors weigh the threat from the euro zone crisis against modest improvement in U.S. economic data and stocks that many regard as cheap.

"There do appear to be some improving economic indicators domestically, but it's hard to see how they win the day if Europe continues to be a big concern. It's not like the valuations are at such bargain-basement prices that it becomes a one-way bet," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.

As volumes begin to dry up and market moves become more exaggerated during the holiday period, the volatility may help lift the stock market into the plus column.

CHANCE OF RALLY

"Can you see an upside rally? Certainly, because you are going to have some asset managers in the end who are going to try and just push it so the market ends at the very least flat on the year, if not higher," said Ken Polcari, managing director at ICAP Equities in New York.

"If there is going to be a rally at all, it will happen on light volume because there will be fewer and fewer participants. When there is less volume, you do have the ability to have those exaggerated moves, but people will take advantage of that."

Volatility in individual shares could also be affected by corporate earnings preannouncements. There have been 97 negative earnings preannouncements issued by S&P 500 corporations for the fourth quarter, compared to 26 positive preannouncements, resulting in a negative-to-positive ratio of 3.7. That's the highest in 10 years, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Companies that have provided outlooks in recent weeks include DuPont (DD.N), Intel Corp (INTC.O), United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) and Texas Instruments Inc (TXN.N).

Unexpected management shakeups could also be on the horizon and increase the tumult in stocks. Both Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N) and the New York Times Co (NYT.N) saw high-level executives suddenly leave their posts.

But stock movements next week will ultimately be dictated by actions taken in Europe, with the light volume exacerbating market swings.

"The only thing that is going to be of any interest is certainly the continuing headlines on Europe, whether or not they come any closer to what looks like a potential agreement," said Polcari.

"You may get a little bit of a push to the 1,250 to 1,270 range, but much beyond that I don't see why it would go any higher unless you get some explosive announcement out of Europe."

(Reporting By Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/bs_nm/us_usa_stocks_weekahead

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Apple's A5 Processors Are Made on a $3.6bn Samsung Production Line [Apple]

Apple and Samsung aren't exactly best friends. Which is why it's quite amusing to find out that Apple's A5 processor is built on a $3.6 billion Samsung production line in Texas. More »


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'Batman' star Bale tries to visit China activist

In this photo taken on Monday, Dec. 12, 2011, English actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists during an interview on the red carpet as he arrives for an event of the Zhang Yimou-directed new movie "The Flowers of War" in Beijing, China. Academy Award winner Christian Bale, in the midst of promoting a film he made in China some critics have called propaganda, got stopped trying to visit a blind activist living under house arrest, with a CNN camera crew in tow. CNN posted footage of a scuffle between Bale and the activist's guards on its website Friday, Dec. 16. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this photo taken on Monday, Dec. 12, 2011, English actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists during an interview on the red carpet as he arrives for an event of the Zhang Yimou-directed new movie "The Flowers of War" in Beijing, China. Academy Award winner Christian Bale, in the midst of promoting a film he made in China some critics have called propaganda, got stopped trying to visit a blind activist living under house arrest, with a CNN camera crew in tow. CNN posted footage of a scuffle between Bale and the activist's guards on its website Friday, Dec. 16. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

British actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists during an interview on the red carpet as he arrives for the Zhang Yimou-directed new movie "The Flowers of War" in Beijing, China, Monday, Dec. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this photo taken on Monday, Dec. 12, 2011, English actor Christian Bale, center, is led by security guards upon arrival on the red carpet for an event of the Zhang Yimou-directed new movie "The Flowers of War" in Beijing, China. Academy Award winner Christian Bale, in the midst of promoting a film he made in China some critics have called propaganda, got stopped trying to visit a blind activist living under house arrest, with a CNN camera crew in tow. CNN posted footage of a scuffle between Bale and the activist's guards on its website Friday, Dec. 16. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

(AP) ? "Batman" star Christian Bale, in the midst of promoting a film he made in China that some critics have called propaganda, was physically stopped by government-backed guards from visiting a blind activist living under house arrest ? with a CNN crew in tow to record the scuffle.

CNN posted footage of the confrontation on its website Friday.

The run-in and publicity is likely to cause discomfort in China's government-backed film industry, which hopes Bale's movie "The Flowers of War" will be a creative success at home and abroad. The star's actions are sure to focus attention on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, guarded around the clock by burly, aggressive security men who have blocked dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see him in the past.

Bale was to leave China on Friday and his representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year's "The Fighter," traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village in eastern China where Chen, the blind lawyer, lives with his family in complete isolation.

They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in Shandong province by unidentified men.

The video footage shows Bale asking to see Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was carrying.

"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.

Chen's case has been raised publicly by U.S. lawmakers and diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no response from China.

CNN said Bale first learned of Chen from news reports when he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," China's official submission this year for best foreign language film Oscar.

"Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure ... and as such it is in the interest of CNN's global viewers to hear from him," CNN said in a statement. "Mr. Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen."

Chen, a self-taught lawyer who was blinded by a fever in infancy, angered authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses by overzealous authorities trying to meet population control goals in his rural community. He was imprisoned for allegedly instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated.

Although now officially free under the law, he has been confined to his home in the village eight hours' drive from Beijing and subjected to periodic beatings and other abuse, activists say.

While Bale's visit focuses new attention on Chen's case, CNN's role raises questions about activism and advocacy among reporters, said David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of Hong Kong.

"It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it all came together. It raises questions about where the lines are drawn," Bandurski said.

The incident also drew strong interest ? most of it highly positive ? on social networking sites such as Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo.

Having their star's name pinging across the Internet in connection with such a politically sensitive subject puts promoters of "The Flowers of War" in a bind. The film opens in China on Friday and next week in the United States.

Directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, it is also the most expensive Chinese movie ever made, at $94 million, some of which came from the state-owned Bank of China.

The movie centers on the 1937 sacking of the eastern city of Nanjing, a central event in China's pre-revolutionary "century of humiliation" and has been described by some critics as hewing to official propaganda portraying Chinese as heroic victims and Japanese as one-dimensional cartoon villains.

While China has the world's third-largest film industry ? both in box office and output ? it has made relatively little global impact. Story lines are often heavily influenced by the ruling Communist Party, whose culture commissars must approve scripts and have final say over whether a film gets released.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-16-AS-China-Christian-Bale/id-af5b0e72851e4b5fb00784dce3ca34db

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GOP senators say Bernanke plans no Europe bailout (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has assured Republican senators that the Fed does not intend to bail out Europe from its debt crisis, according to participants in the meeting Wednesday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Bernanke told the group that he did not "have the intention or the authority" to provide bailout support to Europe.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said Bernanke had offered this assurance "multiple times" during the closed-door meeting, which lasted about an hour.

"I think people walked away knowing he has no intentions whatsoever of furthering U.S. involvement in the crisis," Corker told reporters.

Lawmakers in both parties have expressed sharp opposition to any U.S. support for Europe that might put taxpayer money at risk, especially after the uproar that followed the $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial institutions beginning in 2008.

Bernanke was invited to meet with GOP senators by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Republican conference. The session came after a similar discussion Bernanke held with Senate Democrats on Oct. 20.

Senators said Bernanke told them that the Fed was studying developments in Europe and their possible impact on the U.S. economy.

"He's very concerned," Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters. "He did say, if they can't get their fiscal situation under control, it could affect us. A collapse over there would be detrimental to us."

Fed policymakers held their final meeting of the year Tuesday. In a statement afterward, they portrayed the economy as slightly healthier despite risks from the European crisis. The Fed held off on any new steps to boost U.S. growth.

In its statement Tuesday, the Fed warned of risks to the economy from strains in global financial markets, a reference to Europe's problems

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bernanke_europe

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Atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens dead at 62 (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on Thursday at the age of 62.

Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the esophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.

"Christopher Hitchens - the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant - died today at the age of 62," Vanity Fair said.

A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir "Hitch 22" last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.

As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.

In his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism. He argued that religion was the source of all tyranny and that many of the world's evils have been done in the name of religion.

The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York to work as a journalist in 1981. He settled in Washington the following year, initially as correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.

Hitchens was not one to mince words. In his book on Bill Clinton "No one left to lie to", he called the former U.S. president a "rapist" and a "con man." He once referred to Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a "fanatical Albanian dwarf."

The author of 25 books - including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell - and countless articles and columns, Hitchens never lost his biting humor.

'CANCER ELITE'

"I'm a member of a cancer elite. I rather look down on people with lesser cancers," Hitchens said in an interview with CBS "60 Minutes" aired on March 6, 2011.

In a 2010 interview with Reuters, Hitchens dismissed criticism that he moved from left to right and helped former U.S. President George W. Bush sell the 2003 war with Iraq to the American public with what turned out to be bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

"Saddam was an enemy of the civilized world and he should have been taken out a long time before," Hitchens said of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "I have no regrets about that at all."

The 2001 attacks on the United States by Islamic fundamentalists in hijacked passenger planes made Hitchens ever more critical of the role of religion in the world, and led him to appreciate the merits of American democracy.

"I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion," he wrote.

Hitchens is survived by his wife, Carol Blue; their daughter, Antonia; and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia, Vanity Fair said.

In his last essay on www.vanityfair.com, dated "January 2012," Hitchens said his illness made him question the saying attributed to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that "Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger."

A painkiller injection just before typing the article titled "Trial of the Will," Hitchens wrote, caused "numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my 'will to live' would be hugely attenuated."

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/us_nm/us_christopherhitchens

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Feds issue scathing report against Ariz. sheriff

FILE - In a Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 file photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio discusses the latest in the document release on his office's handling of many sexual assault cases over the years in El Mirage, Ariz., during a news conference, in Phoenix. Federal authorities plan to announce their findings Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 in a civil rights investigation of Arpaio, who has been accused of using discriminatory tactics in its signature immigration patrols. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

FILE - In a Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 file photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio discusses the latest in the document release on his office's handling of many sexual assault cases over the years in El Mirage, Ariz., during a news conference, in Phoenix. Federal authorities plan to announce their findings Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 in a civil rights investigation of Arpaio, who has been accused of using discriminatory tactics in its signature immigration patrols. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Protesters Sergio Juarez, right, and Rafael Guerrero, both of Phoenix, wait to get into a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011, in Phoenix. Roughly 100 opponents of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio turned out at the meeting to urge the officials to call for Arpaio's resignation amid reports of botched sex-crime investigations and other problems in his department.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

FILE - In a Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011 file photo, protesters hold up signs calling for the removal or resignation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, during a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting, in Phoenix. Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011. Federal authorities plan to announce their findings Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 in a civil rights investigation of Arpaio, who has been accused of using discriminatory tactics in its signature immigration patrols.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Department of Justice Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas E. Perez announces the department's findings following an investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, lead by controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 in Phoenix. The Justice department says it has reasonable cause to believe Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that violates federal and Constitutional law. (AP Photo/Paul Connors)

Department of Justice Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas E. Perez, left, gestures as he announces the department's findings following an investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, lead by controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio, during a news conference, as Deputy Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Roy Austin, right, looks on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011 in Phoenix. The Justice department says it has reasonable cause to believe Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that violates federal and Constitutional law. (AP Photo/Paul Connors)

(AP) ? A scathing U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday found that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office carried out a blatant pattern of discrimination against Latinos and held a "systematic disregard" for the Constitution amid a series of immigration crackdowns that have turned the lawman into a prominent national political figure.

Arpaio struck a defiant tone in response to the report, calling it a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration that will make Arizona unsafe by keeping illegal immigrants on the street. "Don't come here and use me as the whipping boy for a national and international problem," he said at a news conference.

The government found that Arpaio's office committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including unjust immigration patrols and jail policies that deprive prisoners of basic Constitutional rights.

The Justice Department's expert on measuring racial profiling found the sheriff's office to be the most egregious case of profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, said Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division.

"We found discriminatory policing that was deeply rooted in the culture of the department, a culture that breeds a systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections," Perez said.

The report will be used by the Justice Department to seek major changes at Arpaio's office, such as new policies against discrimination and improvements of staff and officers. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement to make the changes. If not, the federal government will sue him, possibly putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in federal funding for Maricopa County.

The fallout from the report was swift. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it is severing its ties with Arpaio, stripping his jail officers of their federal power to check whether inmates in county jails are in the county illegally, a move that was meant to speed up deportation.

Homeland security officials also are restricting Arpaio's office from using a program that uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants.

Arpaio has long denied the racial profiling allegations, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of them are illegal immigrants. He called the report "a sad day for America as a whole."

"We are going to cooperate the best we can. And if they are not happy, I guess they can carry out their threat and go to federal court," Arpaio said.

Arpaio said the decision by Homeland Security to sever ties will result in illegal immigrants being released from jail and large numbers. They will go undetected and be "dumped on a street near you. For that, you can thank the federal government," the sheriff said.

The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field. Arpaio ultimately decided to endorse Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who denounced the findings Thursday as politically motivated.

Arpaio has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration. He began aggressive sweeps in immigrant neighborhoods long before the state Legislature passed a 2010 law that cracks down on illegal immigrants and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

While widely popular among conservatives nationwide, Arpaio faces numerous problems at home that have him facing almost-daily calls to step down.

Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad. The squad launched investigations of officials, lawyers and judges who ran afoul of Arpaio, and the cases all collapsed.

Arpaio has also been under pressure from his opponents to resign in the last week after an Associated Press article brought new attention to his office's bungling of sex crime and molestation cases in a predominantly Hispanic Phoenix suburb. His office said more than 400 sex-crimes investigations had to be reopened after the department learned of cases that hadn't been investigated adequately or weren't examined at all.

Officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations ? with victims as young as 2 years old ? where the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. The cases were originally reported by The Arizona Republic and other local media and received national attention in the last week.

Thursday's report said federal authorities will continue to investigate whether the sex crimes are being properly looked at; complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos; and whether the sheriff's office failed to provide adequate police services in Hispanic communities.

The report took the sheriff's office to task for launching immigration patrols, known as "sweeps," based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes.

Federal authorities single out Arpaio himself and said his office has no clear policies to guard against the violations, even after he changed some of his top aides earlier this year.

The report also said he and some top staffers tried to silence people who have spoken out against the sheriff's office by arresting people without cause, filing meritless lawsuits against opponents and starting investigations of critics.

One example cited by the Justice Department is former top Arpaio aide David Hendershott, who filed bar complaints against attorneys critical of the agency along with bringing judicial complaints against judges who were at odds with the sheriff. All complaints were dismissed.

The anti-corruption squad's cases against two county officials and a judge collapsed in court before going to trial and have been criticized by politicians at odds with the sheriff as trumped-up. Arpaio has defended the investigations as a valid attempt at rooting out corruption in county government.

The civil rights report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency's immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.

A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio's immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops ? almost all involving Latino drivers ? that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad's stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Deputies are encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in targeted locations. Latinos who were in the U.S. legally were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city ? in some cases, heavily Latino areas ? over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio's office.

Police supervisors, including at least one smuggling-squad supervisor, often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to fellow sheriff's managers, deputies and volunteers in his posse. One such email had a photo of a mock driver's license for a fictional state called "Mexifornia."

The report said that the sheriff's office launched an immigration operation two weeks after the sheriff received a letter in August 2009 about a person's dismay over employees of a McDonald's in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City who didn't speak English. The tip laid out no criminal allegations. The sheriff wrote back to thank the writer "for the info," said he would look into it and forwarded it to a top aide with a note of "for our operation."

Federal investigators focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio's jails.

Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.

The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.

Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish and pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicate their legal rights without language assistance.

The Justice Department said it hadn't yet established a pattern of alleged wrongdoing by the sheriff's office in the three areas where they will continue to investigation: complaints of excessive force against Latinos, botched sex-crimes cases and immigration efforts that have hurt the agency's trust with the Hispanic community.

___

Associated Press Writer Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-16-Arizona%20Sheriff-Civil%20Rights/id-d141ceb193cd49a8b18541187b3ae23d

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Country Star Rodney Atkins Arrested for Domestic Violence

Country singer Rodney Atkins has filed for divorce from his wife of more than a decade, Tammy Jo Atkins. But what's even sadder are the events leading up to the divorce: Tammy claims that Rodney tried to smother her with a pillow, then attacked her in front of their 10-year-old son, Elijah.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/country-star-rodney-atkins-arrested-domestic-violence/1-a-411381?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acountry-star-rodney-atkins-arrested-domestic-violence-411381

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