Brazilian police arrested 10 heavily armed men and rescued 35 people who had been held hostage for almost two hours at a five-star hotel in one of Rio de Janeiro's

Brazilian police on Saturday arrested 10 heavily armed men and rescued 35 people who had been held hostage for almost two hours at a five-star hotel in one of Rio de Janeiro’s richest neighborhoods.The gunmen, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, were driving in several cars on a scenic road along the ocean when they met with police patrols.

A shootout followed in Rio’s Sao Conrado neighborhood and the hooded suspects escaped into the Intercontinental Hotel, which last year hosted the World Economic Forum on Latin America. A woman bystander was killed and two police officers were hurt in the exchange of gunfire, police said.”I have never seen so many criminals together. All of them were wearing the same outfit, like uniforms, and were on the streets shooting into the open air,” a resident who witnessed the event and asked not to be named told Reuters. “It was a war zone.”TV images showed suspects wearing black bullet-proof vests and hiding behind a garbage truck during the shootout with police, before running into the hotel.

Colonel Lima Castro, a spokesman for Rio’s military police, said the 35 hostages were freed without harm. Police swept the entire hotel and arrested 10 people.Violent crime is a major concern in Rio, where heavily armed drug gangs control its many slums. The sprawling city is Brazil’s biggest tourist destination and will host the 2016 Olympic games, as well as be a venue for the 2014 World Cup.(Reuters)

Arizona police officials warned officers not to use race or ethnicity when enforcing the state's new immigration law

PHOENIX Arizona police officials warned officers not to use race or ethnicity when enforcing the state’s new immigration law, saying that the country is watching their every move.In a new training video released Thursday, the officials said opponents of the law may secretly videotape officers making traffic stops, trying to ensnare them and prove that they’re racially profiling Hispanics.”Without a doubt, we’re going to be accused of racial profiling no matter what we do on this,” Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villasenor tells officers on the video from Arizona’s police licensing board. The video is designed to teach officers how to determine when they can ask a person for proof they’re in the country legally.Officers can consider that someone doesn’t speak English well, is wearing several layers of clothing in a hot climate or is hanging out in an area where illegal immigrants are known to look for work, according to the video.

They can take into account that a person doesn’t have identification, tried to run away, is traveling in an overcrowded vehicle, or seems out of place and unfamiliar with the area.But the stakes for making a mistake are high: Officers can be fired if they start asking questions because of a person’s race, then lie about it later, the video warns.”It is also clear that the actions of Arizona officers will never come under this level of scrutiny again,” said Lyle Mann, executive director of the training agency. “Each and every one of you will now carry the reputation for the entire Arizona law enforcement community with you every day.

“Arizona’s law, sparked by anger over a surging population of illegal immigrants in the border state, generally requires officers enforcing another law to question a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.Officers are told that the law applies only to a stop, detention or arrest – not when a person flags down an officer. Police are not required to ask crime victims or witnesses about their status, and anyone who shows a valid Arizona driver’s license is presumed to be in the country legally.The law restricts the use of race, color or national origin as the basis for triggering immigration questions.

But civil rights groups and some police officials argue that officers will still assume that illegal immigrants look Hispanic.Arizona’s 460,000 illegal immigrants are almost all Hispanic. Yet Arizona also has nearly 2 million Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or legal residents, about 30 percent of the state’s population.In the training video, an expert advises officers to ask themselves whether they’d reach the same conclusion about a Hispanic person’s immigration status if the subject were white or black.”If any officer goes into a situation with a previous mindset that one race or one ethnicity is not equal to another’s, then they have no business being a law enforcement officer in this state,” Arizona Police Association president Brian Livingston says in the video.

The video and supporting paperwork will be sent to all 170 Arizona police agencies.Police bosses will decide the best way to teach their forces. There is no requirement that all 15,000 Arizona police officers complete the training before the law takes effect July 29.Gov. Jan Brewer ordered the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board to develop the training when she signed the law April 23.Opponents have challenged the measure as unconstitutional and have asked that a federal court block it from taking effect. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton plans to hear arguments on the request later this month.

President Barack Obama on Thursday called the law an understandable byproduct of public frustration with the government’s inability to tighten the system, but also said it is ill-conceived, divisive and would put undue pressure on local authorities.

The law was passed in part with the lobbying muscle of unions representing rank-and-file police officers who argued that they should be allowed to arrest illegal immigrants they come across.It was opposed by police bosses who worried it would be expensive to implement and would destroy the trust they’ve developed in Hispanic neighborhoods. (AP)

Az Promises of Fairness ''Ring Hollow to Many Latinos''

Randal Archibold, who has led the paper’s slanted, whitewashed coverage of Arizona’s fierce illegal immigration fight, again focused the feelings of the minority, not the majority of Americans, talking to Latinos in Phoenix for Friday’s “Arizona Law Is Stoking Unease Among Latinos.” His concluding verdict: “many Latinos remain unconvinced.”Among those Archibold interviewed was someone who “spray painted himself white and wrote on his body, ‘Am I reasonably suspicious?'” (Monica Almeida captured the image for the Times.) Who could fail to be swayed by such an argument?  When Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, giving police departments broad power to make immigration checks, she sought to allay concerns from Hispanic citizens and legal residents that they would be singled out for scrutiny.

“We have to trust our law enforcement,” Ms. Brewer said. “It’s simple reality. Police officers are going to be respectful. They understand what their jobs are. They’ve taken an oath, and racial profiling isn’t legal.”Those words ring hollow to many Latinos, including Jesus Ruiz, 25, a college student in Mesa, Ariz., who, like many Latinos here, believes that all too often the police view them suspiciously and single them out for what they consider questionable stops or harassment.

In one stop in 2004, Mr. Ruiz said, an officer pulled him over for speeding 10 miles over the limit and went on to question him on where he was going to school and whether he lived with his parents, and finally asked for his Social Security number.“I was thinking, is he supposed to be asking me for that and all these questions for a speeding ticket?” said Mr. Ruiz, who spray painted himself white and wrote on his body, “Am I reasonably suspicious?” at a recent protest against the new law, which goes into effect in late July.But it is not just young people.

Archibold then told an anecdote from a Phoenix judge who has been pulled over twice for traffic infractions, but not given a ticket, which somehow adds up to…something or other.Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, says that twice since he became a judge in 2006, the police have pulled him over, alleging minor traffic infractions. Even though Judge Padilla, 60, did not disclose his occupation, he ended up not receiving a ticket. He said his complaints to the police department led to sensitivity training for the officers.

Though the law isn’t even being enforced yet, Archibold managed to collect reports of immigrant harassment:

Already, he said, there are anecdotal reports that some police departments in the state are asking people for their papers. He said his department had received a picture of a patrol car near a Border Patrol vehicle, as if proximity proved that officers were already collaborating to carry out the law.Between rehashing recent incidents showing “tensions between law enforcement and some Latinos” in Arizona, talk of lawsuits and “roundups” of illegals, and a cameo by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Archibold didn’t get to any supporters of the law (who are the clear majority both in Arizona and nationwide) until paragraph 31 out of 37).

Still, many Arizonans who support the law believe racial profiling concerns are overblown or a smokescreen to hide a belief that borders should be wide open.Archibold concluded with this less than shocking statement: “But many Latinos remain unconvinced.”A sidebar article by Larry Rohter (a fiercely pro-Obama reporter from the 2008 campaign) offered the less than earth-shattering news that some leftist musicians are boycotting Arizona in protest of the law, led by Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine.

Michigan lawmaker believes the state's law enforcement officers need the authority to arrest illegal immigrants

LANSINGA Michigan lawmaker believes the state’s law enforcement officers need the authority to arrest illegal immigrants and is drafting legislation similar to Arizona’s new immigration law.Rep. Kim Meltzer, R-Clinton Township, said her bill would allow police to request proof of citizenship from people who are stopped and questioned on another offense, such as a traffic violation or selling fraudulent identity documents. Officers would have the authority to arrest people who can’t prove their legal status.”We have borders in place for a reason,” Meltzer said. “Everyone should play by the rules.”

Meltzer, who’s a candidate for state Senate in the August primary election, said racial profiling — a key fear among opponents of Arizona’s law — would not be tolerated. She said a driver’s license would be reasonable proof that a person was legally living in the U.S.The Arizona law approved last month empowers local police to question anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. It has triggered a heated national debate, touched off protests and prompted some states to look at their own laws.

Meltzer said that when the federal government ignores its border patrol responsibilities, it presents “a financial liability for our states, local communities and schools.”Her plan has already garnered strong reaction.”This is absolutely unacceptable,” said Emily Diaz-Torres, executive director of the new Macomb Hispanic and International Service Center in New Haven. “If it’s anything like the Arizona law, we will definitely fight it.”

Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, said the group would fight Meltzer’s bill in the Legislature and in court if necessary.”We don’t want an Arizona-style bill. It encourages racial profiling,” Weisberg said, adding that such a law would put Michigan out of step with other states.

But Ken Grabowski, legislative director for the Police Officers Association of Michigan, said a law giving local police more authority is “probably something that needs to be done.””In many instances, if police find someone who is here illegally, they take them to the local (Immigration and Naturalization Service) office, and the person is given an appearance notice for a later date. But nobody ever shows up. It’s a farce,” he said.

There is no official estimate of the number of illegal immigrants in Michigan, state demographer Ken Darga said, adding that the counting process “is pretty imprecise.”Meltzer said Michigan law enforcement officers have been left with the responsibility to protect the state against those who sneak across the U.S.-Canadian border.Federal border officials allocated about $20 million a year ago for 11 cameras to be set up along the St. Clair River to watch for illegal immigrants crossing from Canada.

100,000 marchers to rally for immigration rights in downtown Los Angeles during the annual May Day event Saturday

The Los Angeles Police are preparing for as many as 100,000 marchers to rally for immigration rights in downtown Los Angeles during the annual May Day event Saturday.LAPD officials are preparing for a surge in the number of participants in the wake of an outcry over a controversial new Arizona law that requires police to check the legal status of people they suspect of being illegal immigrants.Deputy Chief Jose Perez Jr. said that police initially estimated no more than 60,000 people would participate in the May Day march to Los Angeles City Hall. But Perez said those numbers were revised after organized labor and immigrant rights groups informed authorities they expect far more people.“We are looking for an orderly crowd,” Perez said. “Organizers are also looking for an orderly crowd for this to be a success.”

Marchers are permitted to walk north on Broadway from Olympic Boulevard and eventually gather at City Hall. In addition to the downtown march, police are preparing for small gatherings in MacArthur Park and Westwood. Perez said the department does not provide details about the number of officers it would have on hand, but said it would be a citywide maximum deployment.The LAPD wants to avoid any repeat of the May Day 2007 melee in MacArthur Park. That year a contingent of the department’s elite Metro Division officers were videotaped wielding batons and shooting less-than-lethal rubberized bullets in an attempt to disperse the mostly peaceful crowd after a small group of agitators confronted police.

Dozens of protesters and journalists were injured as officers cleared the park. In the aftermath, the department issued a scathing report and the city settled litigation for more than $13 million.Planning for this year’s march has been in the works for months, police said. With a tight budget the department had to insure that a massive number of officers were available to work the May 1 rally.In this year’s planning, march organizers and other groups have expressed concern about how the LAPD will approach the marchers, who would include illegal immigrants.

Police, however, have assured marchers that the department will continue to be guided by Special 40, which prohibits officers from initiating action against people solely to discover their legal status. “It shows the fear and emotion behind this [the Arizona law], Perez said.First established three decades ago by then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, the order has been embraced by Chief Charlie Beck, who calls the rule an important key to build trust and relationships with immigrant communities.

explosions that rocked the business area in Bangkok on Thursday night killed three people and wounded more than 70

Bangkok – A series of explosions that rocked the business area in Bangkok on Thursday night killed three people and wounded more than 70, said Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban.”Three people were killed and more than 70 others injured,” said Thaugsuban told reporters.

Five grenades were fired in the direction of mass pro-government demonstrators, who were face to face with the masses “Red Shirt”, a group of anti-pemerntah protestors, in the heart of the Thai capital, said several officials and eyewitnesses.Meanwhile, the Red Shirt group denied responsibility for a series of deadly grenade attack on Thursday night.”Whoever is doing these attacks want people to think that the M79 was done by the Red Shirt. We never attack people who are innocent,” said a leader of anti-government protest movement, Jatuporn Prompan.

He rejected government accusations that the grenades were fired with the M79 grenade launcher from the Red Shirt area in the direction of pro-government demonstrators who gathered at nearby locations.Red Shirt launch mass anti-government rally in Bangkok in mid-March that sparked fierce clashes with security forces on 10 April, which killed 25 people and wounding more than 800. ( AFP)

Police arrested a man for the murder of a Sun City employee after positive fingerprint matches

Police arrested a man for the murder of a Sun City employee after positive fingerprint matches, Northwest police said on Saturday.“The suspect’s fingerprints match those found on the crime scene,” said Superintendent Lesego Metsi. The 28-year-old was arrested in Bothaville in the Free State on Friday night. He was employed by a gardening services company which worked for Sun City. He is positively linked with the murder of Sun City employee Colleen van Eck, age 59, last Sunday. She was beaten, strangled and apparently thrown against the wall in her flat in the Northwest resort’s employee compound. It is unclear how he gained access to Van Eck’s flat, Metsie said. Four people were arrested in possession of Van Eck’s cellphone in Ledig, a town near Sun City.

They appeared briefly in court and were released on a warning to appear in court later. No evidence was found linking them directly to the murder. Their arrest however lead directly to the arrest of the man in Bothaville, Metsi said. He also had a stolen cellphone which was not connected to the murder. It is uncertain if anything other than Van Eck’s cellphone was stolen because she lived alone, Metsi said. Northwest public safety MEC Howard Yawa commended the police “for a breakthrough in the investigation.” The man will appear in the Mogwase Magistrate’s Court on Monday on a charge of murder.

Scanners force trade-off between privacy, security

the security gate at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO  As Ronak Ray hunted for his flight gate, he prepared for the prospect of a security guard peering through his clothes with a full body scanner. But Ray doesn’t mind: what he gives up in privacy he gets back in security.”I think it’s necessary,” said Ray, a 23-year-old graduate student who was at San Francisco International Airport to fly to India. “Our lives are far more important than how we’re being searched.”Despite controversy surrounding the scans, Ray’s position was typical of several travelers interviewed at various airports Wednesday by The Associated Press.Airports in five other U.S. cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors. In addition, the scanners are used at 13 other airports for random checks and so-called secondary screenings of passengers who set off detectors.

But many more air travelers may have to get used to the idea soon. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 150 more full body scanners to be installed in airports throughout the country in early 2010, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.Dutch security officials have said they believe such scanners could have detected the explosive materials Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria is accused of trying to ignite aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day.Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 full body scanners, but none were used to scan Abdulmutallab when he boarded. In Europe and the U.S., privacy concerns over the scanners’ ability to see through clothing have kept them from widespread use.

The technology was first used about two years ago to make it easier for airport security to do body searches without making physical contact with passengers.The idea of an electronic strip search did not bother Judy Yeager, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., as she prepared to depart Las Vegas. She stood in the full-body scanner Wednesday afternoon and held her arms up as a security official guided her through the gray closet-sized booth.”If it’s going to protect a whole airplane of people, who gives a flying you-know-what if they see my boob whatever,” Yeager said. “That’s the way I feel, honest to God.”George Hyde, of Birmingham, Ala., who was flying out of Salt Lake City with his wife, Patsy, on Wednesday after visiting their children and grandchildren in Park City, Utah.”I’d rather be safe than be embarrassed,” Hyde said. Neither he nor his wife had been through a body scanner before.”We’re very modest people but we’d be willing to go through that for security.”

Trevino said the TSA has worked with privacy advocates and the scanners’ manufacturers to develop software that blurs the faces and genital areas of passengers being scanned. In all cases, passengers are not required to be scanned by the machine but can opt for a full body pat-down instead.At Salt Lake City International Airport, fewer than 1 percent of passengers subjected to the scanner chose the pat-down since the machine was installed in March, said Dwane Baird, a TSA spokesman in Salt Lake City.On Tuesday, some 1,900 people went through the scanner and just three chose not to, he said.Critics of the scanners said the option to opt out was not enough.”The question is should they be used indiscriminately on little children and grandmothers,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock of California. McClintock co-sponsored a bill approved by the House 310-118 in June prohibiting the use of full body scanners for primary screenings. The bill is pending in the Senate.

He said the devices raised serious concerns regarding constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.”There’s no practical distinction between a full body scan and being pulled into a side room and being ordered to strip your clothing.”To further protect passenger privacy, security officers looking at the images are in a different part of the airport and are not allowed to take any recording devices into the room with them, Trevino said. The images captured by the scanners cannot be stored, transmitted or printed in any way.But the TSA still has some public relations work ahead of it, judging by the reactions of passengers in Albuquerque, N.M., who were worried about what would happen to their images once they were scanned.”Are they going to be recorded or do they just scan them and that’s the end of them? How are these TSA people going to be using them? That’s a real concern for me,” said Courtney Best-Trujillo of Santa Fe, N.M., who was flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The six airports where full body scanners are being used for what TSA calls “primary screenings” are: Albuquerque, N.M.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami, Fla.; San Francisco; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Tulsa, Okla.The remainder of the machines are being used for secondary screenings in Atlanta, Ga.; Baltimore/Washington; Denver, Colo.; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Los Angeles; Phoenix, Ariz.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Ronald Reagan Washington National; and Detroit, Mich.

Though most passengers interviewed by The Associated Press felt security trumped other concerns, Bruna Martina, 48, a physician from the coast of Venezuela, said the scanners still made her feel uncomfortable.”I think there has to be another way to control people, or to scan them, but not like this,” she said as she headed back home after a vacation in Miami with her husband and two sons. She also does not think the scanners will thwart another attack.”They’ll find another way,” Martina said. “There is always somebody cleverer than the rest.”(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.

Wildfire Burning Near 241 in Anaheim Hills

ANAHEIM Gusty winds are fanning a wildfire that has burned 20 acres near State Route 241 in the Anaheim Hills area of Orange County.The fire was reported around 9:55 p.m. Tuesday near the Windy Ridge Toll Plaza on the east side of the 241.The 241 was ordered shut down in both directions from 91 Fwy south to Santiago Canyon Road.Firefighters were making a stand against the fire from the freeway, which was being used as a command post and a fire break.’Thirty engines and about 90 firefighters were on the scene.Officials called for more firefighting resources, but firefighting helicopters and aircraft can’t fly in dark and smoky conditions.The fire is burning on the east side of the freeway, Fire Authority Capt. Greg McKeown said.Crews are trying to keep the fire on the road’s east side because there are homes on the west side, less than a mile from the road.Downslope winds are throwing up embers, which could start spot fires, McKeown saidSo far, no structures are threatened and no evacuations have been ordered.Gusty winds are fanning the blaze and the area is under a red flag warning of high fire danger.ustained winds of 32 mph and gusts to 53 mph are fueling the fire, said Steve Vanderburg of the National Weather Service.The area burning is about two miles south of where the Freeway Complex fire burned last year.

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