PHOENIX,Lawsuits challenge new Arizona immigration law

PHOENIX  Anger mounted Thursday over an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration as a police officer filed one of the first lawsuits challenging the law and activists gathered outside an Arizona Diamondbacks game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, chanting “Boycott Arizona.”The lawsuit from 15-year Tucson police veteran Martin Escobar is one of two filed Thursday, less than a week after Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law that’s sparked fears it will lead to racial profiling despite the governor’s vow that officers will be properly trained.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government may challenge the law, which requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally, and makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.Escobar, an overnight patrol officer in a heavily Latino area of Tucson, argues there’s no way for officers to confirm people’s immigration status without impeding investigations, and that the new law violates numerous constitutional rights.

Tucson police spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said Escobar is acting on his own, not on behalf of the department.The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders also filed a lawsuit Thursday, and is seeking an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law. The group argues federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders, and that Arizona’s law violates due process rights by letting police detain suspected illegal immigrants before they’re convicted.

“Mexican-Americans are not going to take this lying down,” singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, said at a state Capitol news conference on another lawsuit planned by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.At least three Arizona cities  Phoenix, Flagstaff and Tucson are considering legal action to block the law. In Flagstaff, police are investigating a threatening e-mail sent to members of the city council over their opposition to the law. The author said council members should be “arrested, tried in court, found guilty of treason and hanged from the nearest tree!”

About 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago Thursday as the Cubs open a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A small plane toting a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium, and activist George Lieu said they’ve sent a letter to Cubs management asking them to stop holding spring training in Arizona.A Cubs spokesman declined to comment. Arizona manager A.J. Hinch says the team is there to play baseball.

On Wednesday, a group filed papers to launch a referendum drive that could put the law on hold until 2012, when voters could decide whether it is repealed.The legislation’s chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said he has no doubt voters will support the new law at the ballot box, which would then protect it from repeal by the Legislature. In Arizona, measures approved by voters can only be repealed at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the effect of the law continued to ripple beyond Arizona.A group of conservative state lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering pushing a bill similar to Arizona’s. In Texas, Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican, said she will introduce a measure similar to the Arizona law in the January legislative session. And Republicans running for governor in Colorado and Minnesota expressed support for the crackdown. “I’d do something very similar” if elected,” Former Rep. Scott McInnis, told KHOW-AM radio in Denver.

Denver Public Schools is banning work-related travel to Arizona. Even though school employees are in the country legally, DPS spokesman Kristy Armstrong said officials don’t want them to be “subjected to that kind of scrutiny and search.Retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu also chimed in, saying he supports the idea of a boycott of Arizona businesses, according to a letter he wrote that was posted Wednesday onTheCommunity.com, a website for Nobel peace laureates that promotes peace and human rights.

“I recognize that Arizona has become a widening entry point for illegal immigration from the South … but a solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution,” Tutu saidColombian singer Shakira planned to visit Phoenix on Thursday to meet with the city’s police chief and mayor over her concerns that the law would lead to racial profiling.(Ap)

KABUL International troops opened fire on a civilian bus early Monday in a southern Afghan city

KABUL International troops opened fire on a civilian bus early Monday in a southern Afghan city, killing four people and wounding 18, the local governor’s spokesman said.NATO was sending investigators to the scene but didn’t immediately say its troops were responsible for the shooting in Kandahar.The governor’s spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi, said the shooting occurred soon after daybreak and that international troops took 12 of the wounded to a military hospital.Ayubi said the provincial government strongly condemned the shooting.NATO spokesman Mst. Sgt. Jeff Loftin said the alliance had dispatched a team to the scene to investigate. He said the local command in Kandahar had no further information on what happened.

The top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has issued strict orders to his troops to try to reduce civilian casualties. But these still occur regularly, unleashing raw emotions that highlight a growing impatience with coalition forces’ inability to secure the nation after more than eight years of war.The support of the local population in Kandahar is seen as essential for the success of a long-anticipated allied operation to clear the biggest city in the south of Taliban insurgents.(AP)

The Pentagon says it's had no reports that the big earthquake in Chile has affected the U.S. military in the region – on land or at sea

WASHINGTON  The Pentagon says it’s had no reports that the big earthquake in Chile has affected the U.S. military in the region – on land or at sea.The Defense Department also says it hasn’t received requests yet to help with any relief effort.In cases of natural disasters, the affected country usually accepts an offer of help made by the State Department.The State Department can request that Defense Department personnel help carry out that mission.U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami, oversees the U.S. military presence in South American. Sgt. Santita Mitchell of the command’s public affairs office says the command is monitoring the situation.(AP)

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.