Senator blocks Air Force officer's nomination

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. senator remains steadfast in blocking the nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, tapped to serve as vice commander of the U.S. Space Command, over serious concerns with Helms' decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who first put a hold on the nomination in April, said she met with Helms and Air Force officials yet still had reservations.

"At a time when the military is facing a crisis of sexual assault, making a decision that sends a message which dissuades reporting of sexual assaults, supplants the finding of a jury, contradicts the advice of counsel and further victimizes a survivor of sexual assault is unacceptable," said McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCaskill's hold effectively prevents the Senate from approving Helms' nomination.

In February 2012, Helms rejected the recommendation of legal counsel and overturned the conviction of an Air Force captain who had been found guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a female lieutenant.

McCaskill explained her objections in a statement in the Congressional Record on Thursday.

"Lt. Gen. Helms has a record of more than thirty years of distinguished military service, in which she became the first American military woman in space, among other significant achievements. Her career is to be celebrated," McCaskill said. "However, I continue to have deep concerns with Lt. Gen. Helms' decision, while a commander and courts-martial convening authority, to overturn the jury verdict of a military court martial in which the jury found an Air Force officer guilty of sexual assault. She made this decision against the advice of her staff judge advocate."

The Helms' situation echoes another Air Force case that has outraged members of Congress and prompted them to move swiftly on legislation that would strip commanders of the authority to overturn convictions.

Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, overturned a conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Wilkerson had been found guilty last Nov. 2 of charges of abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault and three instances of conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. The incident had involved a civilian employee.

Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal from the service. But after a review of the case Franklin overturned the conviction.

Via Yahoo News!

TSA stands by officers after pat-down of elderly woman in Florida

A 95-year-old woman was held up by TSA officers at a Florida airport, her daughter saysThe agents forced the cancer-stricken woman to take off her adult diaper, she addsThe TSA insists its officers "acted professionally and according to proper procedure"The woman's daughter says those procedures should be changed

(CNN) -- The Transportation Security Administration stood by its security officers Sunday after a Florida woman complained that her cancer-stricken, 95-year-old mother was patted down and forced to remove her adult diaper while going through security.

Reports of the incident took hold in social media, with scores of comments on the topic and reposts appearing hourly on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

The TSA released a statement Sunday defending its agents' actions at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport.

"While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner," the federal agency said. "We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure."

TSA pat downs 6-year-old child

Jean Weber told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield on Sunday that the security officers may have been procedurally correct, but she still does not believe they were justified, especially given her mother's frail condition.

"If this is your procedure -- which I do understand -- I also feel that your procedure needs to be changed," she said.

Weber said the two were traveling June 18 from northwest Florida to Michigan, so her mother could move in with relatives before eventually going to an assisted living facility.

"My mother is very ill, she has a form of leukemia," Weber said. "She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel."

While going through security, the 95-year-old was taken by a TSA officer into a glassed-in area, where a pat-down was performed, Weber said. An agent told Weber "they felt something suspicious on (her mother's) leg and they couldn't determine what it was" -- leading them to take her into a private, closed room.

Soon after, Weber said, a TSA agent came out and told her that her mother's Depend undergarment was "wet and it was firm, and they couldn't check it thoroughly." The mother and daughter left to find a bathroom, at the TSA officer's request, to take off the adult diaper.

Weber said she burst into tears during the ordeal, forcing her own pat-down and other measures in accordance with TSA protocol. But she said her mother, a nurse for 65 years, "was very calm" despite being bothered by the fact that she had to go through the airport without underwear.

Eventually, Weber said she asked for her mother to be whisked away to the boarding gate without her, because their plane was scheduled to leave in two minutes and Weber was still going through security.

By this weekend, the 95-year-old woman -- who was not identified by name -- was doing "fine" in Michigan, where her niece and her family "was treating her like royalty because they love her so much."

"My mother is a trouper," Weber said.

This is not the first time that the TSA's pat-downs of passengers have come under fire, nor the first time that the agency has rallied behind its officers and policy.

Last year, the administration announced it was ramping up the use of full-body scanning and pat-downs to stop nonmetallic threats, including explosives, from getting on planes. The goal is to head off attacks such as the one allegedly attempted in Christmas 2009 by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who allegedly had a bomb sewn into his underwear on a flight from the Netherlands to Michigan.

The TSA estimates that only 3% of passengers are subjected to pat-downs -- and then only after they have set off a metal detector or declined to step into a full-body scanner. Yet the new policy has triggered an uproar online and in airports, from a relatively small but vocal number of travelers who feel their rights and privacy were being violated.

But the federal safety agency hasn't backed down, making some adjustments but no major changes to its policy.

"Every traveler is a critical partner in TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe," Administrator John Pistole, who ordered the new approach, said last fall. "And I know and appreciate that the vast majority of Americans recognize and respect the important work we do."

More recently, outrage erupted over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old passenger last April at New Orleans' airport. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows the girl protesting the search by a female security officer at first, though she complies quietly while it is underway.

Pistole addressed this controversy at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting last week, explaining the pat-down was ordered because the child had moved while passing through a body imaging machine. He told committee members that "we have changed the policy (so) that there'll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down."

The next day, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said that the new policy -- which will apply to children age 12 and younger -- is in the process of being rolled out. It will give security officers "more options," but does not eliminate pat-downs as one of them.

"This decision will ultimately reduce -- though not eliminate -- pat-downs," Soule said.

CNN

Libyan officers flee by boat to Tunisia: report (Reuters)

TUNIS (Reuters) – Nineteen police and army officers were among a new group of Libyan refugees who arrived in Tunisia by boat this week, the Tunisian news agency TAP reported on Friday.

The boat carrying a total of 49 refugees arrived on Thursday in the port of El Ketef by the Libyan border, the latest in a string of boat arrivals there since the start of an uprising against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi four months ago.

Dozens of Libyan officials, including the foreign minister and the top energy official, have fled since February when a revolt began against the 41-year rule of Gaddafi.

Earlier this week TAP quoted three senior army officers who arrived at the same port on Wednesday as saying the death toll from the conflict exceeded 15,000. It did not say how the officers obtained that toll.

Gaddafi has repeatedly vowed on state television broadcasts to fight until the end. His government says its military capability has not been seriously undermined by defections.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunisia; Editing by Mark John and Peter Graff)

Yahoo! News

China PLA officers call Internet key battleground (Reuters)

BEIJING, Jun (Reuters) – China must make mastering cyber-warfare a military priority as the Internet becomes the crucial battleground for opinion and intelligence, two military officers said on Friday, two days after Google revealed hacking attacks that it said came from China.

The essay by strategists from the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Sciences did not mention Google's statement that hackers apparently based in China had tried to steal into the Gmail accounts of hundreds of users, among them U.S. officials, Chinese rights activists and foreign reporters.

Google said on Wednesday that the attacks appeared to come from Jinan, capital of China's eastern Shandong province, home to a signals intelligence unit of the People's Liberation Army.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday dismissed Google's statement as groundless and motivated by "ulterior motives."

The essay by two PLA scholars, Senior Colonel Ye Zheng and his colleague Zhao Baoxian, in the China Youth Daily nonetheless stressed that Beijing is focused on honing its cyber-warfare skills, and sees an unfettered Internet as a threat to its Communist Party-run state.

"Just as nuclear warfare was the strategic war of the industrial era, cyber-warfare has become the strategic war of the information era, and this has become a form of battle that is massively destructive and concerns the life and death of nations," they wrote in the Party-run paper.

The Chinese military has been conducting simulated cyber battles pitting the "blue army" against "red teams" using virus and mass spam attacks, the PLA newspaper Liberation Army Daily said last month.

Last year, contention over Internet policy became an irritant between Beijing and Washington after the Obama administration took up Google's complaints about hacking and censorship from China. Google partly pulled out of China, the world's largest Internet market by users, after the dispute.

So far, neither Google nor Washington has outright blamed China for the hacking attacks. Both governments have sought to steady their relations after last year's turbulence, and they may want to avoid another escalating feud.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that the "allegations are very serious."

DOMINO EFFECT

The PLA scholars, Ye and Zhao, said China has its own fears about the Internet being wielded as a tool for political challenges, and pointed to the anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world as an alarming example.

"The targets of psychological warfare on the Internet have expanded from the military to the public," they wrote.

The Internet "has become the main battleground of contention over public opinion," they said, citing the "domino effect" across the Middle East and north Africa.

China's ruling Communist Party fears it could become one of those dominoes, despite robust economic growth and stringent domestic security and censorship.

In February, overseas Chinese websites, inspired by the "Jasmine Revolution" across the Arab world, called for protests across China, raising Beijing's alarm about dissent and spurring a burst of detentions of dissidents and human rights lawyers.

Three Chinese dissidents told Reuters their Google email accounts had been infiltrated, although eight others who were contacted said they had no problems.

China has also tightened censorship of the Internet, and it already blocks major foreign social websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The PLA scholars said the threats to China come from more than sophisticated intelligence operations on the Internet.

"Cyberware is an entirely new mode of battle that is invisible and silent, and it is active not only in wars and conflicts, but also flares in the everyday political, economic, military, cultural and scientific activities."

The latest Google hacking attempt follows a series of high-profile hacking cases, including an attack on the U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin. A U.S. official familiar with progress on the investigation said there was increasing suspicion that attack originated with "someone in China."

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Yahoo! News

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Report: Marine never fired on SWAT officers who fatally shot him

Deputies fire more than 70 shots during a drug raid near TucsonJose Guerena is hit more than 20 timesHe never took his weapons off safety, report saysOfficers remain on active duty; no legal action has been takenFor more on this story, see CNN affiliate KGUN9.com

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff's Department shows.

The revelation was contained in an internal investigation released by the department Thursday.

Jose Guerena died May 5 after a SWAT team descended on his home in a Tucson suburb with a search warrant. His home was one of four believed to be associated with a drug smuggling operation in the area.

A video released Thursday by the sheriff's department shows the uniformed SWAT team pulling up outside his house, sounding their sirens, banging on the front door -- before kicking it in -- and opening fire shortly after entering the home.

Watch video on CNN affiliate KGUN9

Officers fired more than 70 shots, the investigation showed. Deputies said they opened fire after Guerena, 26, gestured at them with an AR-15 -- a semiautomatic rifle.

Some of the officers said they believed that Guerena fired on them, but the investigation showed that no shots were fired from the weapon and it was never taken off the safety position.

Initial news reports indicated that he had been struck by more than 60 bullets. However, CNN has seen an initial report from the medical examiner that details 22 bullet wounds.

A lawyer representing the deputies defended their actions.

"They absolutely responded how they were trained. They responded within Arizona laws, within the law throughout the nation," attorney Mike Storie said.

"If you are faced with that type of deadly threat, you're allowed to respond."

Guerena served in Iraq and was discharged from the Marines five years ago. He was working for a mining company in the Tucson area.

But authorities allege he also was involved in drug smuggling, strong-armed robberies and human smuggling.

A search of the home after the shooting revealed nothing illegal, although officers found weapons and body armor.

The five deputies involved in the shooting remain on active duty. No criminal charges have been filed and no disciplinary action taken.

The findings of the investigation are detailed in a five-inch thick report, including a 60-page statement from Guerena's wife, Vanessa, who was in the home at the time of the shooting along with a young son.

In addition to the video, the sheriff's department also released audio of Guerena calling 911 to get medical attention for her husband. Audio of the SWAT team's radio conversations was also included.

She has retained a lawyer, but no legal action has been taken.

"We just learned that the sheriff's department has released voluminous amounts of information in respect to this incident," said Guerena attorney Chris Scileppi. "We will review the documents and CDs, and will make ourselves available for comment in the near future."

CNN's Ed Payne contributed to this report.

CNN

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2 Chicago police officers face sexual assault investigation

Two Chicago police officers are accused of playing strip poker and sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman. STORY HIGHLIGHTSChicago police suspend officers pending investigationChicago TV station WLS reports officers assaulted a 22-year-old womanThe station cites a police report that states woman initially agreed to sex and strip pokerThe woman later ran from her apartment screaming for help, WLS reportsRELATED TOPICSChicagoCriminal InvestigationsRead more about this story from CNN affiliate WLS.

(CNN) -- Two Chicago police officers are under investigation for alleged sexual assault and have been "relieved of their police powers," according to a statement released Thursday by the city's police department.

Chicago's top law enforcement officer on Thursday called their actions "inappropriate."

"You can't justify it," Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard said Thursday. "What they did, allegedly have done, was inappropriate and was against the law."

Investigators refused to provide further details about the incident. However, CNN affiliate WLS-TV reported Thursday that the alleged attack on a 22-year-old woman took place Wednesday morning after she accepted a ride home from the on-duty officers.

WLS attributed the information to a police report on the incident.

According to the report cited by WLS, the woman initially did not reject sexual advances from the officers. The report stated that the woman had sex with one of the officers in the passenger seat of a department SUV.

The three later played strip poker at her apartment, according to the report cited by WLS. The woman told investigators she was too afraid at first to refuse sex with the officers, but later ran out of the apartment screaming for help, according to the report cited by WLS.

Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Tom Byrne told reporters that neither officer has been charged.

"At this point in time it is an active ongoing criminal investigation, but we also need to have the evidence worked up prior to any charging," Byrne said.

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