United States and Mexico border wall a costly failure film says

Washington’s plan to build a fence on the border with Mexico has cost $3 billion and has not deterred illegal immigrants or drug traffickers from entering the country, according to a new U.S. documentary.”The Fence” hopes to show Americans, who were divided when construction of the wall was approved in 2006, that the venture is a failure as conceived and a blemish upon the United States internationally.It argues that illegals and smugglers can easily climb over, dig under and even drive over the wall, which is only a few feet (meters) high in parts, has no razor wire, and abruptly ends in the desert.

“One of the most confounding and little-known realities of the fence is that it only covers about one third of the 2,000-mile (3,218-km) border,” said Rory Kennedy, the director and narrator.Kennedy, who is a daughter of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, spent weeks traveling along the border from California to Texas as the fence was being built in 2009. It is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Up to 500 people die every year crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, according to U.S. immigration experts and the Mexican government, a sharp jump from a decade ago. Tougher border security and the fence’s construction have forced migrants to take more dangerous, remote routes into the United States.Some 650 miles of the 670-mile wall called for under the Secure Fence Act and signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in October 2006 have been built. It contains 120,000 tons of metal and materials, ranging from railroad ties to concrete and chain link fencing.

“COMPLETE THE DANGED FENCE”

Lined in parts with stadium-style lights, cameras and roads to allow U.S. agents to patrol, the fence was partly a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. It also aims to stop terrorists from crossing over from Mexico.”This was put up to illustrate to Joe whoever up in Dubuque (Iowa) or someplace that they see a picture of this and … they think ‘oh yeah, that’ll stop them’,” Arizona ranch owner Bill Odle said in the film. “Well of course it doesn’t.”

But it remains a magnet for Republicans keen to show their get-tough credentials in the run-up to the November U.S. elections. Arizona Republican John McCain, facing his toughest re-election battle in years for the Senate, demanded that the government in May to “complete the danged fence.”Despite calls for a fence along the entire U.S.-Mexican border, the terrain, which ranges from swamps to deserts, makes that idea almost impossible and financially prohibitive.

U.S. law enforcement uses helicopters, unmanned planes and agents in watchtowers and in vehicles to monitor the area stretching from the Tijuana-San Diego crossing in California to the Matamoros-Brownsville crossing in Texas around the clock.U.S. Border Patrol agents say the wall and virtual fencing cut the number of people caught trying to cross into the United States by a quarter in the fiscal year 2009.

Immigration experts counter that the deep U.S. recession in 2008-2009 and the resulting lack of jobs in the world’s biggest economy was a bigger factor behind the drop.Even with a sluggish economy, 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States every year between 2007 and 2009, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.But critics, both in the United States and Mexico, where there was an outcry when the plan was approved, also are questioning the wisdom of spending billions on the fence during hard economic times.

Future U.S. administrations are likely to spend $6.5 billion on maintenance of the fence over the next 20 years, the United States Government Accountability Office says, although researchers at the U.S. Congress say it could be more.The documentary airs on Thursday on U.S. cable television channel HBO.(Reuters)

Secret Behind Jupiter's Giant Size

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. 120 times the size of Earth. However, recent measurements by the spacecraft reveal the planet’s core at most 10 times the size of the planet we inhabit.Recent studies found that about Jupiter, the giant planet has a core of very small compared with the size. Scientists believe, so the planet Jupiter, the largest in the Milky Way Galaxy because he swallowed the other small planets, before the swell.

As disclosed in the site of science, New Scientist, the core of Jupiter thought to have greater evaporation in a collision with a planet the size 10 times the size of Earth. This study provides new insight into a process that is fierce in the early formation of our solar system.Researchers from Peking University, China has to imitate what might happen in the event that the collision. The simulation results show, rocky planets closer to Jupiter will be demolished as it hit the giant planet’s atmosphere.

Half an hour later, the planet would fall into the core of Jupiter. Heavy elements in the core as the metal will evaporate and then mixed with hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Scientists believe this may explain why the core of Jupiter is very small but extremely dense atmosphere.Douglas Lin of the University of California, said that while the smaller planet does not bump into him, Jupiter will continue to grow into a giant planet itself.

The research team said, elements in the planet Saturn may also be caused by something similar, a collision with a smaller planet.The planets in our solar system created by collisions between dwarf planets that orbit the Sun, who was also born. In the process the impact, small planets to melt and form planets is greater.

Earth and Moon are the result of a collision between two giant planets about the size of Mars and Venus.Collision process occurs in less than 24 hours, and the temperature of the earth at that time was very high, around 7000 degrees Celsius, where rock and metal can be melted.

Paul Gray, the bassist for Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot, was found dead Monday in an Iowa hotel room

DES MOINES, Iowa Paul Gray, the bassist for Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot, was found dead Monday in an Iowa hotel room, police said.A hotel employee found Gray, 38, dead in a room at the Town Plaza Hotel in Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines, police said in a statement. Foul play isn’t suspected, and an autopsy is planned for Tuesday.

Amy Sciarretto, a publicist at the band’s record company, Roadrunner Records, confirmed Gray’s death but declined further comment. Most of the band’s members grew up in the Des Moines area.Slipknot’s self-titled debut in 1999 sold more than a million copies.

Known for its grotesque masks, trashing sound and aggressive lyrics, the band won a Grammy in 2006 for best metal performance for the song “Before I Forget.” Concert industry trade publication Pollstar ranked Slipknot 18th in its Top 20 Concert Tours list in 2009.

Andy Hall, music director of Des Moines rock station Lazer 103.3, said he’d known Gray for 10 years. He described him as a talented bass player who was also one of the friendliest, most caring people he knew.

“This is a big blow, not only to the community of Des Moines but fans of metal at large, worldwide,” Hall said. “It’s a devastating loss. Paul was a wonderful human being.”The station was planning to broadcast an hour-long tribute to Gray on Monday night.(AP)

Toyota has told dealers it will provide replacement accelerator pedals to owners

WASHINGTON, Toyota has told dealers it will provide replacement accelerator pedals to owners who are unsatisfied with their repairs under the massive recall following dozens of complaints about the fix.The Japanese automaker said in a memo obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press that if a customer is unhappy with the feel of the accelerator after the car is repaired, dealers can provide a replacement pedal at no charge. Dealers have been inserting a piece of metal into the gas pedal mechanism to eliminate friction that was causing the pedal problem on more than 4 million vehicles involved in a January recall.

“A replacement pedal should only be offered to a customer after the reinforcement bar has been installed and the customer has expressed dissatisfaction with the operation and/or feel of the pedal,” Toyota said in a memo to dealers, service manager and parts managers.

The memo, dated February 2010, said the pedal replacement “is based upon specific customer request only. Dealers are not to solicit pedal replacement.” The memo was first reported by The New York Times.

An AP analysis of government data found that more than 100 owners have complained to the government about problems with sudden acceleration after Toyota dealers fixed their vehicles. Toyota has said it is confident in its repairs and has found no evidence of other problems, such as faulty electronics.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally over sticky pedals and accelerators that can become entrapped in floor mats, tarnishing the company’s safety reputation and leading to government investigations and congressional hearings.

The memo addresses Toyota vehicles that were listed in the January recall. The vehicles include: the 2005-10 Avalon; 2007-10 Camry and Tundra; 2009-10 Corolla, Matrix and RAV4; 2008-10 Sequoia and 2010 Highlander.

“If a customer is not satisfied with the operation and/or the feel of the accelerator pedal after the reinforcement bar has been installed, please assist us by assuring a replacement pedal is provided at no charge to these customers,” the company said in the memo.

Officials with Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately comment.

A group of consumer advocates and engineers who contend Toyota has discounted potential electronic problems in problem vehicles planned to hold a news conference Tuesday on the massive recalls. Toyota has said it has found no evidence that electrical issues are behind the recalls.

Kristen Tabar, an electronics general manager with Toyota’s technical center in Ann Arbor, Mich., said in a video clip posted by the company on Monday that the automaker has eight labs in Japan that it uses to bombard vehicles with electronic interference.

She said Toyota ensures that “every system in the vehicle operates properly under those conditions.”(AP)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

WASHINGTON Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security – how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened – as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.”Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.On Sunday, Napolitano said, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano’s initial assessment.Airport security “failed in every respect,” Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked.”Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab’s brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, says Abdulmutallab’s ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana. Demuren said Monday that Abdulmutallab bought the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam on Dec. 16.

Demuren declined to comment about Abdulmutallab’s travels in the days before he boarded his Dec. 24 flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, saying FBI agents and Nigerian officials view the information as “sensitive.” He says Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab’s name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.Home Secretary Alan Johnson added that police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit through the U.K. but cannot enter the country.Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. In a statement released Monday morning, Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria said that after his “disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad,” his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for “their assistance to find and return him home.”

The family says: “It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day.”

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

Abdulmutallab’s success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.

Security experts said airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.

Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.

Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the government’s decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam.

The suspect in the fatal shooting of four police officers

Seattle, Washington The suspect in the fatal shooting of four police officers kept authorities at bay early Monday seven hours after a massive manhunt tracked him to a house in an east Seattle neighborhood.Authorities had been looking for Maurice Clemmons in connection with an “ambush” Sunday morning at a coffee shop near Tacoma in Pierce County. Four officers  three males, one female died in the attack.Authorities identified the victims as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; Officer Ronald Owens, 37; Officer Tina Griswold, 40; and Officer Greg Richards, 42. All four had been with the department since its inception, and all of them were parents.

Witnesses told police they had seen Clemmons struck in the leg by a bullet while he struggled with an officer during the attack.Early Monday, authorities started identifying Clemmons as a suspect, rather than as someone wanted for questioning.Police were not looking for anyone else, but had arrested several people who had “helped” Clemmons, said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.The night before the shootings, Clemmons had threatened to kill police officers, but witnesses did not report those threats till after the slayings, Troyer told “Good Morning America.”

About 8 p.m. Sunday, police received word that Clemmons had holed up in a home in the Leschi neighborhood.Police blocked off streets and asked residents to stay inside with their doors locked.Not knowing the extent of Clemmons’ wounds, paramedics stood by to assess his condition once the standoff ended.At 4:30 a.m., police were preparing to send a robot door-to-door in the cluster of residences that make up the property where Clemmons is believed to be hiding, said Seattle police spokesman Jeff Kappel.

Repeated attempts to make contact with Clemmons were unsuccessful, he said.Clemmons is a convicted criminal with a long rap sheet who had a 95-year prison sentence commuted in 2000 by then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, is considering a run for president in 2012.”Should [Clemmons] be found responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington state,” Huckabee’s office said in a statement Sunday night.

Clemmons, 37, of Pierce County has an “extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement.He also was recently charged in Pierce County in the assault of a police officer and rape of a child, according to the statement.Troyer said Arkansan law enforcement officials had indicated that they were willing to forgo Clemmons’ warrants in that state to avoid extraditing him if needed.Clemmons was sentenced to 95 years in prison in 1989 for a host of charges, including robberies, burglaries, thefts and bringing a gun to school.During a pretrial hearing, he hid a piece of metal in his sock, media reports at the time said. Before the start of another hearing, he grabbed a padlock off his holding cell and threw it at a court bailiff. He missed, and the lock hit his mother, who had come to bring him clothes.

Huckabee cited Clemmons’ young age — 17 at the time of his sentencing — when he announced his decision to commute the sentence, according to newspaper articles.Clemmons was paroled in August 2000, after serving 11 years of his sentence.”It was not something I was pleased with at the time,” said Larry Jegley, who prosecuted Clemmons for aggravated robbery and other charges in Pulaski County, Arkansas. “I would be most distressed if this is the same guy.”Huckabee’s office said Clemmons’ commutation was based on the recommendation of the parole board that determined that he met the conditions for early release.”He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him,” the statement said.CNN could not immediately confirm the account. But the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper reported that a year after his release, Clemmons was arrested for aggravated robbery and theft.

He was taken back to prison for parole violation. But, said the paper, he was not served with the arrest warrants for the robbery and theft charges until he left prison three years later, in 2004.His attorney argued the charges should be dismissed because too much time had passed by then. Prosecutors dropped the charges.Clemmons is thought to have moved to Washington that year, and for a while ran a pressure-washing and landscaping business. The license for the business expired last month, according to the secretary of state’s office, with which businesses have to register.In recent months, Clemmons has displayed increasingly erratic behavior, the Seattle Times reported. In May, he punched a sheriff’s deputy in the face, the paper said.In another incident, he had relatives undress, telling them families need to be “naked for at least five minutes on Sunday,” the newspaper said, citing a sheriff’s department incident report.

Clemmons also believed he was Jesus and could fly, a deputy wrote, based on conversations with family members.After serving several months in jail on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child, Clemmons was released on bond six days ago, according to the Seattle Times.Sunday’s shooting was the first for the Lakewood police department, which was created five years ago for the town of nearly 60,000. Until then, the Pierce County sheriff’s office provided law enforcement services there.The four officers were awaiting the start of their shift at a coffee shop in Parkland, a unincorporated community just south of Lakewood and about 10 miles from Tacoma.

The officers were in uniform and had marked patrol cars parked outside.The shop on Steele Street is a popular hangout for law enforcement officers and is one of 22 Forza Coffee Co. locations in Washington.”As a retired police officer, this senseless shooting hits extremely close to home to me,” Brad Carpenter, chief executive officer of Forza, said in a statement on the company’s Web site.The attack occurred without warning.”There’s not going to be a big motive other than he was upset about being incarcerated and was going to go gunning after cops in general,” Troyer told reporters.

The shooter walked past the officers to the counter as if to order coffee before he pulled the gun out of his coat and opened fire at 8:15 a.m., the sheriff’s office said.

Two of the officers were “executed” as they sat at a table, said Troyer, the sheriff’s spokesman.Another was shot when he stood up and the fourth was shot after struggling with the gunman all the way out the door, Troyer said.Two baristas and other customers inside the shop were unharmed. “Just the law enforcement officers were targeted,” Troyer said, calling the shooting an ambush.

“What happened in there wasn’t just a shooting,” he told reporters. “After, we believe, some of the officers were shot, one of them managed to fight his way with the suspect — fight his way, wrestle, fight all the way out the the doorway until he was shot and died of a gunshot wound.Witnesses told police they had seen the suspect hit by a gunshot. Investigators checked area hospitals to determine whether the gunman sought medical treatment. A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest.