The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Monday, February 5, 2007 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS k wn
A41mdrerS H10mnn

THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

BAGHDAD
Suicide truck bomb
kills 132 people
Stunned Iraqis loaded coffins
onto minivans and picked through
the rubble of buildings yesterday
after a suicide truck bomber oblit-
erated a Baghdad market in a main-
ly Shiite area, killing at least 132
people in the deadliest single strike
by a suicide bomber since the war
started.
The explosion Saturday was fifth
major bombing in less than a month
targeting predominantly Shiite dis-
tricts in Baghdad and the southern
Shiite city of Hillah. It also was the
worst in the capital since a series
of car bombs and mortars killed at
least 215 people in the Shiite district
of Sadr City on Nov. 23.
Hospital officials said 132 people
were killed and 305 were wounded
in the thunderous explosion that
sent a column of smoke into the sky
on the eastbank of the Tigris River.
Heavily bandaged women, children
and men filled hospital beds, while
several bloodied bodies were piled
onto blankets on the floor of the
morgue, which was filled to capac-
ity.
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Floods worsen,
killing 20, leaving
340,000 homeless
Boats ferried supplies to desper-
ate residents of Indonesia's flood-
stricken capital yesterday as rivers
burst their banks following days of
rain. At least 20 people have been
killed and almost 340,000 forced
from their homes, officials said.
Hundreds of people scrambled
to the second floors of their houses
to escape the rising waters. Some
found themselves trapped, while
others refused to leave despite
warnings that the muddy flood
waters - running more than 13 feet
deep in places - may rise further in
the coming days.
"Jakarta is now on the highest
alert level," said Sihar Simanjuntak,
an official who monitors the many
rivers that crisscross this city of 12
million people. "The floods are get-
ting worse."
Indonesia's meteorological agen-
cy is forecasting two weeks of rain.
WASHINGTON
States take on
national driver's
license standards
A revolt against a national driv-
er's license, begun in Maine last
month, is quickly spreading to
other states.
The Maine Legislature on Jan.
26 overwhelmingly passed a reso-
lution objecting to the Real ID
Act of 2005. The federal law sets
a national standard for driver's
licenses and requires states to link
their record-keeping systems to
national databases.
Within a week of Maine's action,
lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming,
Montana, New Mexico, Vermont
and Washington state also balked
at Real ID. They are expected soon
to pass laws or adopt resolutions
declining to participate in the fed-
eral identification network.
WASHINGTON
McCain says Iraq
support of troop

hike isn't hurting
White House hopes
Arizona Sen. John McCain says
only Washington insiders believe
his 2008 presidential campaign
may be suffering because he sup-
ports President Bush's decision to
send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
"Well, I think there's that,
maybe, perception inside the
Beltway. But outside, a lot of
Republicans are rallying to this
belief that we need to have a strat-
egy that can win, and realize the
consequences of failure," McCain
said yesterday.
"Many people trust my judg-
mentbecause they've known me for
many years," he said. "Looks, it's of
secondary importance, but I think
we're doing just fine, and I think
polls indicate that."
McCain pledged to respond to
any negative attacks against him
during the race.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
0.33
Blood alcohol content of a
Maryland prison inmate who got
drunk off of Purell hand sanitizer
in October, according the Wash-
ington Post. Purell is 70 percent
alcohol. The inmate's blood alco-
hol level was more than four times
the legal limit for intoxication in
Maryland.

in New
Post-Katrina crime
brings pain to city
struggling to rebuild
By ADAM NOSSITER
and CHRISTOPHER DREW
The New York Times
NEW ORLEANS - When the
body was brought out, the two lit-
tle boys did not stop chewing their
sticky blue candy or swigging from
their pop bottles. The 18-year-old
mother wheeling her baby came
to watch, and the teenager with
the spiky hair and the bulky duffel
coat was laughing up on the worn
stoop.
Only the cries of Linda Holmes
- "Oh, Lord have mercy on me,
Jesus, oh my baby!" she said, over
and over - were a tip-off that this
was her teenage son Ronald the
man in the lab coat was laboring to
pull out of the empty apartment in
the Iberville housing project.
It was another death in New
Orleans - violent, casual, prob-
ably drug related and, by the time
the sobbing and the laughter had
faded, covered over in the silence
that is the only resolution of many
such killings here. The gurney
holding Ronald was pushed into
the coroner's van, the gawkers
stepped back from their balconies
and the police furled up their yel-
low tape. "It's messed up around
here," said the mother with the
stroller, Ariane Ellis.
There has been no arrest.
There were 161 homicides int
this city last year, and there have
been 18 so far this year, making
New Orleans by most measures
the nation's per capita murder
capital, given its sharply reduced
population. Many of the victims
and the suspects are teenagers.
About two-thirds of the deaths
have gone unsolved: The killers, in
many cases, continue to walk the
streets and are likely to kill again,
the police say.
Other cities have plenty of mur-
ders. But only in New Orleans has
there been the uniquely poisoned
set of circumstances that has led
to this city's position at the top of
the homicide charts. Every phase
of the killing cycle here unfolds
under the dark star of dysfunc-
tion: the murderers' brutalized
childhoods, the often ineffectual
police intervention, a dulled com-
munity response, and a tense rela-
tionship between the police and
prosecutors that lets many cases
slip through the cracks.
Hurricane Katrina's devasta-
tion loosened the fragile social
restraints even further, making
the city perhaps more dangerous
than ever.
The storm also pushed a teeter-
ing criminal justice system over
the edge. The evidence in hun-
dreds of criminal cases was lost,
and the flood destroyed the police
JOIN TH
NEWS@MICHI4

)rleans
crime lab, which has not been
rebuilt. Often, drugs cannot be
tested at other locations before the
deadline for bringing charges. Yet
the police are trying to stop the
violence by arresting more drug
users and street dealers, many of
whom are quickly released, spin-
ning the jail door faster than ever
and fueling the carnage.
In the Central City neighbor-
hood last June, five teenagers in a
sport utility vehicle were killed in
a drug feud. The police said the 19-
year-old suspect had been arrested
11 times in the previous 30 months.
But he had been acquitted on an
attempted murder charge, the dis-
trict attorney's office had dropped
some of the othLer charges for lack
of evidence, and he was out on bail
on drug and gun charges at the
time of the killings.
Last year, about 3,100 people
who were arrested, mostly for
drug offenses, were released from
jail or their bail obligation when
the deadlines passed for charges
to be filed, records show. That was
nearly three times the rate before
the storm. More than 500 others
were released in January alone,
including one in a murder case and
two arrested for attempted mur-
der.
In some neighborhoods,
people refer to "misdemeanor
murders," or "60-day murders,"
the length of time suspects can
be held without charges. The
police superintendent, Warren
J. Riley, often blames prosecu-
tors for refusing other cases and
the courts for letting violent sus-
pects out on bail. Though Riley
declined to be interviewed for
this article, he recently told the
local newspaper Ganbit Weekly
that lie was tired of having to re-
arrest the same people who had
been let out of jail.
"We can't be as successful fight-
ing crime as we would like to be
until the restcofthe criminal justice
system works like it's supposed to
work," Riley told the newspaper.
"We have to keep hard-core felons
in jail."
But the district attorney, Eddie
Jordan, and several judges say that
shoddy police work, and a general
mistrust of officers by witnesses
and jurors, doom many cases. Wit-
nesses also fear retaliation on the
street.
"It's an insurmountable prob-
lem," Jordan said. "By the time the
investigative report is presented
to our office, a good number of
witnesses are no longer available
or have gotten aftfid to tesify.
That's the biggest problem in mur-
der cases."
And even as city and federal
officials announce new anti-crine
measures, doubts persist.
Terry Q. Alarcon, a longtime
criminal court judge, said, "The
criminal justice system has always
had two major problems: a lack
of funding and a lack of coopera-
tion."
E DAILY.
GANDAILY.COM

PETER SCHOTTENFELS/Daily
LSA sophomore Megan Muma studies in the warmth of Cafe Ambrosia on Maynard Street yesterday while pedestrians walk
past outside in near-freezing temperatures. Statewide highs are not expected to reach aboce 20 degrees until Wednesday.

After foUr copters shot down,
L.S. pilots change tactics

BAGHDAD (AP) - The U.S.
command has ordered changes in
flight operations after four helicop-
ters were shot down in the last two
weeks, the chief military spokes-
man said yesterday, acknowledging
for the first time that the aircraft
were lost to hostile fire.
The crashes, which began Jan.
20, follow insurgent claims that
they have received new stocks
of anti-aircraft weapons - and a
recent boast by Sunni militants
that "God has granted new ways"
to threaten U.S. aircraft. Al-
Jazeera aired video late yesterday
showingone of the U.S. helicopters_

being hit in central Iraq and said it
came from an insurgent website.
All four helicopters were shot
down during a recent increase in
violence, which an Interior Minis-
try official said has claimed nearly
1,000 lives in the past week alone.
At least 103 people were killed
or found dead yesterday, most of
them in Baghdad, police reported.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told
reporters that the investigations
into the crashes of three Army
and one private helicopters were
incomplete but "it does appear
they were all the result of some
kind of anti-Iraqi ground fire..."


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