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Once their espionage cases are resolved, some former North Korean spies find that life in the South can be pretty good. They write books, land TV gigs, work for think tanks and in general benefit from their new home's fascination with their old homeland.

In this April 11, 2014 photo, Won Jeong-hwa wipes a tear during an interview at her apartment in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea.

Won Jeong-hwa is not one of those spies.

A year after finishing a five-year espionage sentence for using sex to obtain military secrets and plotting to assassinate intelligence officers, Won is a 40-year-old single mother eking out a living on an $800 monthly government subsidy.

Her espionage work is not taken seriously enough in South Korea for her to cash in on her past, yet she's also too notorious to find an ordinary job. She says she has been fired from several waitressing and cleaning jobs after employers learned about her past, which she had attempted to conceal.

"I've thought about killing myself many times," Won said in a recent interview at her small apartment in Gunpo, just south of Seoul.

She has two big strikes against her. There are allegations that she was merely a low-level informant whose deeds were inflated by South Korean officials eager to make Pyongyang look bad, and by reporters digging for a sexy story. Additionally, the sexual nature of her crimes carries a stigma in this conservative country.

Won was imprisoned in 2008 after a court ruled that she posed as an ordinary North Korean defector, then used sex to extract secrets from South Korean military officers. The media began calling her "North Korea's Mata Hari" in reference to an exotic dancer from the Netherlands who used sex to obtain military secrets during World War I.

North Korea accused South Korea of cooking up a spy scandal to tarnish Pyongyang's image and said Won was a criminal.

After Won was released, she was a popular guest on TV talk shows where she spoke about her harsh, elite spy training. She said she disobeyed Pyongyang's orders to assassinate two South Korean army intelligence officers with poison.

She also talked about how she fell in love with a junior army officer — the "man of my life." He was later imprisoned for passing her secrets including a list of North Korean defectors even after learning she was a spy.

The attention caused South Korean media to revisit her case. Some reporters questioned the value of her espionage work, and raised suspicions based on testimony by North Korean defectors who said they knew Won and her family members in the North.

Won's 2008 court verdict said she was trained at a special operations unit in Pyongyang and was a daughter of an agent killed on a spy mission in South Korea in 1974. But Won's stepfather, Kim Dong-soon, who came to South Korea in 2007, said in an interview that Won's biological father was an ordinary laborer who died of a heart attack, and that Won was a high school dropout who had nothing to do with special operations forces. Won denies Kim's allegations.

In the verdict and in interviews, it was said that North Korea first sent Won to South Korea in 2001 to take photos of the exteriors of U.S. military installations and to collect South Korean newspaper editorials about North Korea. People dubious of Won's elite status consider that low-level spy work.

Some defectors who met Won before her 2008 arrest say she was often incoherent and unprofessional and could not have been a highly trained spy.

"I believe that she was exploited as an informant. ... She wasn't even worth being called a spy," said Kim Yong-hwa, a defector-turned-activist. He said he once rejected Won's request to meet with a high-profile North Korean defector because she rambled too much.

A key debunker of Won's espionage record is Won herself. She has said in media interviews that she was pressured by prosecutors to provide false testimony, particularly about her use of sex in spy work.

The trial verdict and an investigation by prosecutors said she slept with numerous men, including South Korean officers and her boss at an agency where she worked. Won said she used sex as a spying tool only once, to steal personnel management-related documents from an army major's home computer.

She said she couldn't resist pressure by prosecutors who gave her alcohol and urged her to confess during questioning. They "manufactured (the story of) my relations with men," she said. "I'm not a Mata Hari."

Prosecutors have dismissed Won's claims.

South Korea has a history of forgiving former spies and assassins, though they are still sometimes ostracized. Their careers in the media often depend on whether they were involved in high-profile cases that captured global attention, and whether they followed Seoul's propaganda line against the North.

Won said a prosecutor told her during her questioning that she could make a new start in the South by following in the footsteps of Kim Hyon-hui, a North Korean agent sentenced to death for bombing a South Korean jet in 1987, killing all 115 passengers aboard. Kim was later pardoned and wrote a best-selling autobiography. She often appears on TV to speak critically of North Korea.

Several other North Koreans who once attacked the South now embrace it. One of the 31 North Korean commandos who launched a brazen mission to assassinate South Korea's president in 1968 is now a Christian pastor who lectures about the North. A North Korean crew member of a submarine that ran aground in the South, and who was captured alive after a massive manhunt that left 25 other comrades dead or missing, is a lecturer for the South Korean navy. A spy arrested after a deadly shootout in 1995 works for a think tank run by the South's spy agency and wrote a book about his mission.

Won, on the other hand, feels trapped. No South Korean TV station wants her as an expert because of reports that she may not have been an elite spy. Finding work unrelated to her past is also impossible, she said, because no one wants to hire an unskilled woman with a criminal espionage record.

One of the jobs she gained and quickly lost was at a noodle restaurant. She said a former colleague later told her the boss had been worried she would poison the food.

The army officer Won fell in love with has been released, but they are no longer in touch. Nor is the father of her 12-year-old daughter in the picture: She said he is a South Korean businessman she met in China, where she had been assigned to find and repatriate North Korean defectors before she was sent to South Korea.

Won said the government assistance she gets was not enough for her to even buy a school uniform for her daughter. A center that helps female ex-inmates gave one to her.

Many defectors shun her. She said her neighbors once asked that she move, and that her daughter's friends have been told by their parents to stay away from the girl.

"I've told my daughter she should go to an orphanage because she'd be happier living there," Won said, sobbing. "I want to move to a country where no one knows me."

Police are investigating another body part found in a Long Island town.

The discovery Thursday comes a day after authorities found a severed arm in the yard of a Hempstead home.

Homicide detectives in Nassau and Suffolk counties are investigating.

They're trying to determine if the body parts are connected to a partially dismembered body found Tuesday in a municipal parking lot in Bay Shore, about 25 miles east of Hempstead.

Those remains were found by two people who were walking to the Fire Island ferry terminal about a half-mile away.

Tuesday's discovery led Suffolk County police to search the nearby Gilgo Beach area where 10 sets of human remains were found in 2011.

Police say there are no known links between the Bay Shore body and Gilgo, but they're investigating as a precaution.

Twice last year, Alix Tichelman found herself alone with a man suffering from a drug overdose. The first time she called 911. The second time, police say, she just walked away.

Alix Tichelman, left, of Folsom, Calif., confers with public defender Diane August during her arraignment in Santa Cruz Superior Court in Santa Cruz, Calif., July 9, 2014.

Tichelman, 26, faces manslaughter charges in California after police say the alleged high-priced prostitute calmly collected her things and left as Google executive Forrest Hayes lay dying on his yacht in November following a heroin overdose. About two months earlier in Georgia, she made a panicked call to 911 as her boyfriend Dean Riopelle, owner of a popular Atlanta music venue, suffered an overdose in their home.

Tichelman was never charged in Riopelle's death, but police said Thursday they're going to re-examine that case.

"Both subjects in these cases died of heroin overdoses so there's just several factors we want to look at to make sure that we didn't miss anything," Milton police Capt. Shawn McCarty said.

Police in California say Tichelman had many clients in the wealthy Silicon Valley, but it wasn't clear how long she may have been involved in prostitution. Police there also said that, after Hayes' death, she had done online searches for how to defend herself legally after administering a lethal dose of heroin.

No one answered the door Thursday at the two-story home in the upscale Folsom, California, neighborhood listed as the address for Tichelman's father. The front door was damaged, with a broken door handle and scuff marks on the wood.

A message taped to the door and dated July 8 read, "Please no visitors or media or other contact with the residents, respect our privacy and our property."

Neighbor Brad Parks, who lives three doors down, said the family moved in a year or two ago. He said he didn't know much about the parents and had seen Alix Tichelman just two or three times, most recently about two weeks ago.

Numerous social media postings, photos and other articles online suggest Tichelman was pursuing a career as a fetish model and a life with Riopelle — one photo posted on her Facebook page shows her displaying a diamond "promise ring" given to her by Riopelle.

Riopelle and Tichelman had been dating for about two and a half years and lived together, said Riopelle's sister, Dee Riopelle.

In a 2012 interview with a fetish magazine, fIXE, under the pseudonym AK Kennedy, Tichelman describes herself as a model, writer and makeup artist.

She also said she was interested in bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, or BDSM. She said she and Riopelle would go to clubs, with her wearing a collar and leash.

Photos that accompany her interview show her in sexually suggestive poses wearing a variety of skimpy outfits, including a studded leather jacket with thigh-high fishnet stockings.

Riopelle was the lead singer of a rock 'n' roll band called the Impotent Sea Snakes, known for its wild stage shows and sexually explicit lyrics. Online videos show the band performing at a massive music festival in Germany, with members dressed in drag. Riopelle, under the stage name "13," is wearing a long, pink wig, a leopard-print jacket, platform boots and tight pants.

Back in Georgia, Riopelle also was known for owning the Masquerade, an Atlanta music venue that is a popular destination for rock, punk and metal acts. Housed in a former mill, the venue is composed of three levels: "heaven" upstairs; "purgatory" on the main floor; and "hell" downstairs.

He was also known for his love of monkeys, as evidenced by his well-kept property in Milton. Just to the right of Riopelle's home stand large animal enclosures, which include a barrel strung up by rope and fencing extending to the top.

Riopelle went to the University of Florida and got a degree in construction engineering. But when he was told by a boss to cut his hair and wear a bigger tie, he decided engineering wasn't for him, his sister said. He opened his first bar, also called the Masquerade, in the historic Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, his sister said. About 25 years ago, he moved to Atlanta and opened the Masquerade there.

Over the years, he also opened several sports bars and a fetish bar, his sister said.

"He was very, very wise when it came to business sense," Dee Riopelle said. "Everything Dean touched turned to gold."

In September, however, he and Tichelman's lives took a dark turn. On Sept. 6, a drunken Tichelman called police, saying Riopelle threw her to the ground, according to a police report. Riopelle told officers that she had taken pills and drank alcohol, and had been stage diving and exposing her breasts that night at the Masquerade. He said he took her home because he did not approve.

Riopelle also told officers that she bit him on the finger and threatened to hit herself and tell police Riopelle had beaten her. A neighbor confirmed hearing Tichelman say that. She was charged with battery and arrested; Riopelle was not.

Less than two weeks later, a panicked Tichelman called 911, saying her boyfriend had overdosed on something and wouldn't respond. She told a dispatcher that his eyes were open but that he was unconscious, describing his breathing as "on and off." In the 911 tapes released Thursday, she can be heard saying, "Hello, Dean? Dean, are you awake?"

Tichelman tried for five minutes to revive him before calling 911, according to a police report. She said she had been in the shower when she heard a crash and came out to find Riopelle unconscious. Tichelman said she did not know how much drugs Riopelle had taken, but that he had been on a "bender the last few days," according to the police report.

Riopelle died at a hospital a week later. An autopsy report listed his death as an accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol. Tichelman had told the dispatcher that he had been taking painkillers and drinking.

Police say surveillance video from the Google executive's yacht shows Tichelman's next deadly encounter with heroin in California, on Nov. 23.

Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark gives the following account from the video:

Tichelman prepares the heroin to a liquid and injects it into Hayes' arm. Shortly after, Hayes clutches his chest, near his heart. Tichelman tries to prop him up, but he then loses consciousness.

Tichelman then starts picking up her belongings, including the needle, and cleans up a counter while stepping over Hayes several times. During that time, Tichelman calmly drinks a glass of wine and surveys the scene.

Tichelman then goes outside the cabin of the boat on the dock, looks back inside, then pulls down a window blind, closes a door and leaves.

"Never does she call 911 or call out to others in nearby boats for help. She never tries to administer any aid to him," Clark said. "She is more concerned about getting herself out and concealing evidence than helping Mr. Hayes."

Clark said that investigators learned that Tichelman later did online searches "on how to defend herself after giving a lethal dose of heroin."

Investigators also learned Tichelman planned to leave California late last month, possibly for Georgia, and maybe even leave the country, Clark said.

A suburban Atlanta man jailed on charges he murdered his 22-month-old son by intentionally leaving the child strapped in an overheated car to die has been fired from his job at Home Depot Inc, the company said Thursday.

Justin Ross Harris looks on at the Cobb County Magistrate Court in Marietta, Georgia, July 3, 2014.

A spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based home improvement chain confirmed that Justin Ross Harris, 33, of Marietta, Georgia, had been terminated from the company, which had employed him as a computer specialist.

But the spokeswoman, Catherine Woodling, declined to give a reason for the company's action.

“We don't discuss the details of individual personnel matters,” Woodling said.

At a preliminary court hearing last week, a police detective testified that Harris was exchanging nude pictures over the Internet with women other than his wife while his son, Cooper, was strapped in a car seat on June 18 in the Home Depot parking lot, dying from the heat.

Harris told police he forgot to drop Cooper off at the daycare center on his way to work and only discovered the child after he left the office that afternoon and was driving to a movie theater.

Prosecutors, however, said Harris deliberately left Cooper in the car to perish because he wanted to live a “child free life.” A judge ordered Harris to remain jailed without bond, ruling there was probable cause for felony murder and child cruelty charges against him.

Harris’ wife, Leanna, has not been charged in the case, but Atlanta attorney Lawrence Zimmerman confirmed to Reuters Thursday that he has been retained to represent her. Zimmerman declined further comment.

Cobb County police spokesman Michael Bowman would neither confirm or deny on Thursday that Leanna Harris is a suspect.

“She has been interviewed, and this case is still active and fluid,” Bowman said.

Authorities said Cooper Harris died of heat stroke. Results of toxicology tests on the child were normal, police said Thursday.

A man accused of killing six members of his ex-wife's family, including four children, after forcing his way into their suburban Houston home collapsed in court twice Friday as a prosecutor read out details of the crime.

Ronald Lee Haskell appears in court on Friday, July 11, 2014, in Houston.

A shackled Ronald Lee Haskell was standing before a state district judge during a probable cause hearing when he fell to the ground. Deputies lifted him to his feet and the 33-year-old Haskell stood for about another minute before collapsing again.

He was then lifted into a chair and wheeled from the courtroom.

"His face, he obviously lost blood in his face, and his knees buckled," said Haskell's attorney, Doug Durham. "He's scared. I think he has a limited mental capacity of what's going on."

Before the collapses, Haskell had acknowledged with a quiet "Yes" a couple of questions put to him by State District Judge Mark Kent Ellis about his legal rights. Ellis ordered Haskell held without bond.

"Maybe reality is finally setting in," said Tammy Thomas, the lead Harris County assistant district attorney in the case. "It's not television, this is not fiction. He is facing his consequences."

Thomas said she expected a grand jury to issue a capital murder indictment as a result of Wednesday's fatal shootings of Stephen and Katie Stay and four of their children, ranging in age from 4 to 14.

Authorities have said Haskell was searching for his ex-wife, Katie Stay's sister, when he came to the home in the northern Houston suburb of Spring.

He tied up the family and put them face-down on the floor before shooting each in the back of the head, according to investigators. The family had refused to say where Haskell could find his ex-wife.

The couple's 15-year-old daughter survived by playing dead after she was shot and told police Haskell was planning to shoot other relatives, according to court documents. She suffered a fractured skull when a bullet grazed her head but was able to call 911 and provide Haskell's identity and description.

Police located Haskell's car and took him into custody after a three-hour standoff.

Durham, appointed by the court to represent Haskell, said his focus will be Haskell's mental condition "and whether he was legally responsible at the time of his conduct."

"I think the evidence is going to show ... he is a troubled individual and he has a history of mental illness," Durham said. "Unfortunately, the delivery of the health care has failed in this system."

Thomas said that strategy was not surprising, "because there aren't many explanations otherwise for him to grasp." But she said the probable cause in the case showed a "determined effort involved, the planning, the conscious decisions."

She said she would present evidence to a grand jury to seek a capital murder indictment and a decision on the death penalty would be made later by elected District Attorney Devon Anderson.

Katie Stay's father, Roger Lyon, said in a statement issued Thursday through the Harris County Sheriff's Office that his hospitalized granddaughter was expected to make a full recovery.

Stephen Stay was a real estate broker. Katie Stay was a helpful presence around the neighborhood, planning Halloween and Christmas parties for children, said neighbor Viri Palacios. Katie Stay also went to Utah last fall to help her sister escape her relationship with Haskell, neighbors said.

A divorce decree issued in February shows Haskell and Melanie Kaye Haskell were married in California in 2002. They separated in 2013.

Haskell had been jailed in 2008 on charges of assault and domestic violence in Logan, Utah. Those charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal, according to Logan authorities. Last year, Haskell was served with a protective order from his ex-wife. It was dismissed after the couple filed for divorce, online court records show.

Haskell's mother also had reported an argument with her son July 2 at her home in San Marcos, California, during which Haskell physically restrained her when she tried to leave the house to call for help, the San Diego County sheriff's office said Thursday. Haskell left after a few hours, and his mother contacted 911, the statement says. She later obtained a restraining order against her son, according to the statement.

The nomination has to be confirmed by the Senate.

U.S. President Barack Obama has officially nominated John Tefft as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia.
The nomination has to be confirmed by the Senate.

Moscow has consented to Tefft’s appointment, a diplomatic source told ITAR-TASS earlier this week.

“Russia has given its official agreement with the appointment of John Tefft as the new head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Moscow,” the source familiar with the situation said.

Tefft served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from November 2009 till August 2013. In 200-2003, he headed the American diplomatic mission in Lithuania and in 2005-2009 in Georgia. In 1996-1999, he was deputy U.S. ambassador in Moscow.

In February of this year, his predecessor, Michael McFaul, resigned from his ambassadorial post in Moscow citing personal and family reasons and left Russia on February 26.

John Tefft

A total of 26 people have been arrested on weapons, drug and other charges after an investigation that began with the accidental killing of a 5-year-old girl by a Grants Pass man using a military-style rifle as a crutch to get up from a couch, authorities said.

This June 27, 2013 police photo from the Josephine County Sheriff's Office shows Jon Andrew Meyer, Jr., who is being held on charges of manslaughter, assault and unlawful possession of a machine gun in the death of a 5-year-old girl.

The investigation uncovered a ring in southern Oregon that specialized in "straw" purchases of weapons, buys designed to conceal the ultimate recipient, the Grants Pass Daily Courier reported.

The man convicted in the girl's killing, Jon A. Meyer Jr., 30, was involved in such a purchase, touching off the investigation revealed Wednesday in a statement from the Jackson County sheriff's office.

Five more people are being sought. The investigation involved federal state and local agencies.

The child, Alysa Bobbitt of Shady Cove, was visiting at a Grants Pass apartment with her mother in June 2013.

Meyer was below in the living room of his apartment when the gun went off, sending a burst of bullets through the ceiling, hitting the girl and seriously wounding a woman.

In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Meyer pleaded guilty in 2013 to manslaughter and other charges and was sentenced to six years in prison.

After Meyer was sentenced, the Daily Courier reported that federal authorities were investigating the background of the rifle, which fired in an automatic mode either because of a malfunction or because it had been illegally tampered with.

The statement from investigators Wednesday said some of the guns purchased by the ring ended up at crime scenes in California. It said two murder plots were uncovered.

During the investigation, authorities seized rifles, handguns and a variety of drugs.

Other charges contained in the state and federal indictments include racketeering, attempted murder, assault and promoting prostitution.

A Pennsylvania high school substitute English teacher has been charged with having sex with two 18-year-old students days before they graduated.


The attorney for 26-year-old Tiffany Leiseth, of Moon Township, didn't immediately return a call for comment.

Eighteen-year-olds can legally consent to sex in Pennsylvania, but police say she committed a crime because the encounters with the male students occurred when Leiseth still had a teacher-student relationship with them.

New Brighton schools Superintendent Joseph Guarino contacted police after he learned of the incidents. Police determined the students had sex with Leiseth in late May, after she invited them home on separate days.

Leiseth no longer works for the district. She is charged with two felony counts of having sexual contact with a student and one count of providing alcohol to a minor.

A soccer player accused of punching a referee and fatally injuring him during a weekend game in a Detroit suburb has been charged with second-degree murder, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Bassel Abdul-Amir Saad, 36, had been charged with assaulting referee John Bieniewicz, 44, during a game in Livonia, Michigan, but the charges were upgraded following his death, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement.

"The entire soccer world mourns with the family upon the death of John Bieniewicz," Worthy said. "This is especially tragic because it happened as the World Cup dominates our television screens."

Prosecutors said Saad became upset at Bieniewicz, a long time soccer referee licensed at all levels, when the referee was about to eject him from an adult league game on June 29. Bieniewicz died two days later.

The Wayne County medical examiner determined that Bieniewicz had died from blunt force trauma to the neck and ruled his death a homicide. Saad has been held on a $1 million bond since the referee's death, prosecutors said.

Saad's lawyer has said there were questions about the circumstances of the incident and the cause of the man's injuries.

Basel Abdul-Amir Saad.

The suspect in the deaths of two women whose bodies were found in suitcases dumped along a rural Wisconsin highway resigned his job as a police officer to avoid discipline amid allegations of stalking, lying and abuse of power, according to personnel records released Wednesday.

Steven Zelich walks at the Walworth County courtroom for his preliminary hearing on July 3, 2014, in Elkhorn, Wis.

Multiple women told investigators with the West Allis Police Department that Steven Zelich showed up at their work while on duty, pestered them for dates and used his position to get personal information, including home phone numbers. Several women told investigators they feared for their safety or that of their children.

"Over the last few months, a very distinct pattern has developed," then-Chief Dean Puschnig said in a draft of charges dated Aug. 8, 2001. "Every complaint is very similar in nature and involves young women. He has engaged in inappropriate actions with a known prostitute. While he has been on duty in his police uniform, Officer Zelich has asked numerous young women to go on dates with him. All of these women have felt intimidated and pressured into giving out their phone numbers and other personal information because he is a police officer in uniform."

Zelich resigned less than two weeks later to avoid charges being filed with the city's Police and Fire Commission. The move allowed him to later pass criminal background checks and obtain a private security license from the state.

Zelich was working a security officer when he was arrested June 25, weeks after the bodies of Jenny Gamez, a 19-year-old college student from Cottage Grove, Oregon, and Laura Simonson, 37, of Farmington, Minnesota, were found in the discarded suitcases.

A detective testified last week that Zelich said he killed the women accidentally during rough sex and stored their bodies for months in his home and car before dumping them. He has been charged with two counts of hiding a corpse in Walworth County, where the suitcases were found. Authorities have said they expect homicide charges to come in the counties where the women died.

Zelich, 52, worked for the West Allis Police Department for about 12 years. He had reprimands and short suspensions for accidents, neglect of duty and other issues. Then in May 2001, a prostitute complained that Zelich had knocked her to the ground during a struggle in his apartment when he was off duty. Zelich claimed the woman had tried to steal from him and he was trying to get his money back.

He received a 20-day suspension, and police launched an internal investigation after receiving reports from other women Zelich had tried to date.

A 22-year-old hair stylist complained in June 2001 that Zelich had been stopping by her salon almost every day to ask her out, parking his squad car behind her vehicle so that she couldn't leave. Weeks later, a 19-year-old student told police that Zelich stopped her when she came out of school, warned her about parking in a private lot and then asked her for a date. Four days later, a strip club owner told police that Zelich had been coming to the bar while on duty and asking out dancers.

A dancer at a different club told police that she had moved three times in eight years, in part to avoid Zelich.

"Each time this would happen Officer Zelich would have her new unlisted telephone number and address," Lt. Thomas Baker wrote in a memo. "He would call her at home and would send her birthday cards, greeting cards, and Christmas cards."

Police later determined that Zelich had run the woman's license plate at least 10 times between 1999 and 2000.

Puschnig, who is now the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee, declined to comment on why Zelich was allowed to resign rather than face charges.

"It would be up to the new police chief to comment," he said.

West Allis Police Chief Charles Padgett and current and past presidents of the West Allis Police and Fire Commission did not immediately respond to phone messages.

Zelich's public defender, Travis Schwantes, said he also had asked for his client's personnel records but hadn't yet received copies and therefore couldn't comment on the contents.

Suspected gunman in suburban Houston standoff after 5 dead, 2 children wounded in Harris County, Texas shooting
The shooting happened near Spring in northern Harris County on Wednesday afternoon. The two children were flown to a hospital.
 Five people were shot dead and two children were wounded in a brutal shooting Wednesday afternoon at a home in suburban Houston, according to reports.

The gunman fled and police tracked him to a gray sedan, which led dozens of patrol cars on a slow-speed chase until being trapped in a cul-de-sac in northern Harris County near Spring.

Dozens of police are holding the suspected killer, still in the car, at gunpoint during a standoff. Police are evacuating homes around the scene.
 It’s unclear what condition the children are in, but they were both flown to the hospital. It’s unclear what sparked the massacre on Leaflet Lane near Interstate 45 and Cypresswood, KTRK reported.

The shooting happened near Lemm Elementary School.

More than 100 young campers sang songs, read stories and prayed in an open-air pavilion, as they did each night at the River Valley Ranch camp. Then, the sky began to darken and a light rain began to fall.

A gate to River Valley Ranch camp in Manchester, Md., is shown Wednesday, July 9, 2014.

A supervisor at the Christian summer camp decided to cut the evening short Tuesday and, to be on the safe side, get the children to shelter 150 yards away. As the kids filed onto a wooded path toward one of the camp's main buildings, a storm that Camp Executive Director Jon Bisset said was "the most violent and localized" weather event he'd ever seen, rapidly formed over the hill.

It began with a black cloud, then sunshine, then another black cloud overhead, Bisset said his staff told him. A powerful, relentless wind tore through the area for only 30 seconds. Then came light rain and a rainbow.

By then, whole trees had been downed, eight children on the path were injured and one boy was killed.

In the wake of severe weather that swept through the East Coast, the camp community struggled Wednesday to recover from the "sickening and tragic" event, Bisset said. The path from the pavilion was littered with tree limbs and debris; one large tree beside the road was snapped in half, its trunk splintered. At the top of the path, the cabins were deserted, except for a few brightly colored towels still hanging off the edges of their porches.

Emergency workers took the injured children to four hospitals: Johns Hopkins and Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster and Hanover Hospital in nearby Pennsylvania. Selena Brewer, a spokeswoman for Carroll Hospital Center, said five campers brought there were either been treated and released or transferred to other hospitals. The eight children suffered mainly cuts and broken bones, Bisset said.

Authorities were not yet releasing the name of the 12-year-old boy, who was killed by a fallen tree. He was one of 114 children, ages 7 to 12, who were in the camp's Arrowhead Woods and Fort Roller groups and who were at the pavilion. He had attended the camp in previously.

Amy Bettwy, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the weather service issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the area including Carroll County at 5:06 p.m. Tuesday, effective until 11 p.m.

The weather service then issued two severe thunderstorm warnings that included Carroll County, and Manchester itself. The first warning was issued at 6 p.m. and encompassed the western part of the county, but its edge included Manchester, Bettwy said. The second warning was issued at 6:39 p.m. as the storm moved eastward. The Carroll County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that the children were injured just before 7 p.m.

Bisset said Wednesday that he did not know if staffers had checked the forecast, but they regularly monitor the weather. He said the camp will review its procedures for handling severe events.

"It's the summertime — there are thunderstorms that come through all the time and we have protocol for what to do in case of weather," Bisset said.

The staff followed that protocol, by moving the children to a secure location as soon as they saw a storm approaching, he said. But the storm came too quickly and too violently and struck right where the children were. "It was freak accident," he said.

"In a normal thunderstorm situation, you have time to act," Bisset added. "The children were not far from safety."

Bisset said he and the staff at the 500-acre camp contacted Tuesday night the parents of every child at its Arrowhead Woods campus, which is for ages 7 to 9, and its Fort Roller campus, which is for ages 9 to 12. By Wednesday afternoon, all those campers had been picked up and those campuses were closed.

Staff delivered the news to the older campers housed at the main River Valley Ranch campus about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, as their session remained open. Shortly afterward, a group of teenage girls stood on a path, crying, praying and comforting each other.

"It's so tragic," said Bisset. "We're here to help kids grow and mature and nurture them spiritually, and this goes against what we're trying to do. There just aren't any answers as to why this happened."

President Barack Obama, seeking to keep a humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border from becoming a deeper political liability, pushed back Wednesday at critics who have cast his administration's response to the influx of unaccompanied children as slow and ineffective.

Guatemalan migrant Gladys Chinoy, 14, waits along with more than 500 other migrants on June 20 after the freight train they were traveling on suffered a minor derailment, outside Reforma de Pineda, Chiapas state, Mexico.

To those pressing Obama to visit the border during his two-day trip to Texas, he retorted: "This is not theater. This is a problem."

Among Obama's harshest critics has been Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate who is mulling another run for the White House. Perry greeted Obama upon his arrival in the state, then discussed the situation at the border with him privately and during a larger meeting with local officials and faith leaders.

Obama cast his meeting with Perry as "constructive" and argued that he is already seeking to do much of what the governor is calling for, including sending additional resources to the border to make the deportation process more effective.

"Bottom line is that there's nothing the governor indicated he'd like to see that I have a philosophical objection to," Obama said.

Perry, in a statement released after his meeting with Obama, made no mention of having any areas of agreement with the president.

"Five hundred miles south of here in the Rio Grande Valley, there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding that has been created by bad public policy, in particular the failure to secure the border," he said.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday said he is not visiting the U.S. border while in Texas because he is “not interested in photo-ops” and urged Congress to approve funding to deal with the surge of minors illegally streaming into the country.

“There is nothing that is taking place down there that I am not intimately aware of and briefed on,” Obama said. “This isn’t theater, this is a problem. I’m not interested in photo ops.”

Obama met with local politicians and religious leaders in Dallas, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to discuss the influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border. The White House has asked for $3.7 billion to deal with the crisis, a request that has been panned by some Republicans who say the president’s policies are to blame for migrant children believing they can stay in the country illegally.

The president has been criticized for going to Texas to fundraise but not visiting the border, where officials say 57,000 unaccompanied minors have been picked up since October. The White House has rebuffed the criticism, saying other administration officials have been sent to survey the Rio Grande Valley and the president is closely monitoring the situation.

Obama said Perry, who has been one of the president’s chief critics on the issue of immigration, had suggestions he was “not philosophically opposed to” and even urged the president to act on his own without approval from Congress.

“He suggested maybe you just need to go ahead and act and that might convince Republicans that they should go ahead and pass the supplemental,” Obama said. “And I had to remind him I am getting sued right now by Mr. Boehner, apparently, for going ahead and acting instead of going through Congress.”

Obama said he would consider deploying national guard to the border, but said a permanent solution can only occur when Congress passes immigration reform.

Domino's pizza manager Andy Ritchie has taken a lot of orders, but never one quite like this: to feed an entire plane full of hungry, delayed passengers, stuck on the tarmac.

File picture shows a Frontier Airlines plane on the tarmac at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

It was about 10:30 pm on Monday when the pilot of the Frontier Airlines flight called in, said Ritchie, manager at the pizza chain in the western US city of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The pilot wanted to feed all 160 passengers and crew to make up for the delay, so Ritchie and his two employees whipped up around 35 pizzas and sent them to the plane.

"We took them up to the front desk at the airport and they escorted our driver to the back and they handed the pizzas directly to the flight attendants," Ritchie told AFP.

The plane was en route from Washington when it was diverted to Cheyenne while it waited for bad weather to clear in Denver, US media said.

The plane, which was already hours behind schedule, sat on the ground at the small airport for about two hours, and there was no food on board.

Eventually, one passenger told a Denver affiliate of Fox, the pilot made an announcement.

"He said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Frontier Airlines is known for being one of the cheapest airlines in the US, but your captain is not cheap,'" Logan Marie Torres recounted to the news station.

"'I just ordered pizza for the entire plane.'"

Ritchie confirmed that it was the pilot who paid by credit card for the order, which was several hundred dollars, though he could not specify whose card it was.

Former vice presidential candidate demands Congress 'do its job'.

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Sarah Palin makes the case, in an exclusive with Breitbart, that we can no longer ignore the rampant lawlessness of this president and the effect it is having on this nation. She writes “the federal government is trillions of dollars in debt, many cities are on the verge of insolvency, our overrun healthcare system, police forces, social services, schools, and our unsustainably generous welfare-state programs are stretched to the max.”

She also hammers obama over the borders, arguing that Obama’s opening of the borders to a flood of illegals is “deliberate.”

She says it’s time to say “no mas” and impeach the president:

    President Obama’s rewarding of lawlessness, including his own, is the foundational problem here. It’s not going to get better, and in fact irreparable harm can be done in this lame-duck term as he continues to make up his own laws as he goes along, and, mark my words, will next meddle in the U.S. Court System with appointments that will forever change the basic interpretation of our Constitution’s role in protecting our rights.


    It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.

    The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.

Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, “no mas.”
Click over to Breitbart to read the full article.

Top Obama administration officials told senators Wednesday they're struggling to keep up with the surge of immigrants at the southern border, acknowledging they've been overwhelmed as children show up by the tens of thousands from violence-torn Central America.

In this June 25, 2014 file photo, a group of immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally are stopped in Granjeno, Texas.

"We have not been what I would say successful yet" in ensuring that the unaccompanied kids are processed by the Border Patrol as quickly as required, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"The children continue to come across the border. It's a very fluid situation," Fugate said. "Although we have made progress, that progress is oftentimes disrupted when we see sudden influxes of kids coming in faster than we can discharge them, and we back up."

Gil Kerlikowske, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said that the number of children picked up since October now stands at 57,000, up from 52,000 in mid-June, and more than double what it was at the same time last year.

The situation, Kerlikowske said, "is difficult and distressing on a lot of levels."

The testimony came a day after President Barack Obama appealed to Congress to give him $3.7 billion in emergency spending to deal with the crisis, which has become a political test for his administration as it sparks fierce debate on Capitol Hill and beyond.

The president was in Texas Wednesday for a fundraising trip, but he resisted calls to visit the border. Instead Obama planned to meet in Dallas with faith leaders and Texas officials, including Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

The crisis gave Republicans a fresh opportunity to question the administration's competence even as it complicated the debate over the nation's fractured immigration laws.

Republicans at Wednesday's hearing slammed Obama administration policies, blaming his efforts to relax some deportation rules for contributing to rumors circulating in Central America that once here, migrant kids would be allowed to stay.

"We're trying to stop human trafficking. Are we actually increasing it?" asked Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., noted that a high percentage of the children fleeing El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are able to succeed in their goal of staying in America because they're issued notices to appear at court hearings in the distant future, and many never do.

"Your odds are pretty good," McCain said. "There is ample incentive for them to come to this country."

Republicans insisted that the best way to deter the flow of migrants would be to deport the kids faster. Johnson criticized a campaign of ads the administration is mounting in Central America telling people not to come here.

"They will do nothing ... nothing that planeloads upon planeloads of children would do," Johnson said.

The Obama administration says it wants more flexibility to turn the kids around more quickly, since current law requires minors from countries other than Mexico or Canada to go through the court system in what is often a lengthy process. But immigrant advocates and some Democrats are balking at that idea, arguing that it would jeopardize the children's legal protections and put them at risk.

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it's changing its priorities in order to respond to the crisis. Juan Osuna, director of the executive office of immigration review, testified that deportation cases involving unaccompanied child immigrants and parents traveling with children would be moved to the top of court dockets. That means lower priority cases will take even longer to wend through a court system where there's currently a backlog of more than 360,000 pending deportation cases.

Obama's emergency spending request would add more judges to the court system, but elsewhere on Capitol Hill Wednesday Republicans raised questions about it. House Speaker John Boehner was noncommittal about whether the House would vote on it.

"If we don't secure the border, nothing's going to change. And if you look at the president's request, it's all more about continuing to deal with the problem," Boehner told reporters. "We've got to do something about sealing the border and ending this problem so that we can begin to move on with the bigger question of immigration reform."

Obama's decision to skip a border visit was providing more fodder for the Republicans and the handful of Democrats who say the president hasn't responded quickly and forcefully enough to the mounting crisis.

Perry, a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2016, has been scathing in his criticism of Obama, saying the White House has failed to respond to his repeated warnings about a flood of minors at the border. But Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House was not worried about the optics of the president traveling to Texas without visiting the border.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 9, 2014, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on the problems with the increased rise in apprehensions at the Southern border.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005.

Former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin leaves the courthouse in New Orleans.

Nagin was convicted Feb. 12 of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various projects. The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business.

The 58-year-old Democrat had defiantly denied any wrongdoing after his 2013 indictment and during his February trial.

Until his indictment in 2013, he was perhaps best known for a widely heard radio interview in which he angrily, and sometimes profanely, asked for stepped-up federal response in the days after levee breaches flooded most of the city during Katrina.

Nagin was a political newcomer when he won election as New Orleans' mayor, succeeding Marc Morial in 2002. He cast himself as a reformer and announced crackdowns on corruption in the city's automobile-inspection and taxi-permit programs. But federal prosecutors say his own corrupt acts began during his first term, continued through the Katrina catastrophe and flourished in his second term.

He drew notoriety for impolitic remarks, such as the racially charged "New Orleans will be chocolate again" after the city's African-American population plummeted post-Katrina, and his comment that a growing violent crime problem "keeps the New Orleans brand out there."

Moments before sentencing, a subdued Nagin made a brief statement, thanking the judge for her professionalism.

He made no apologies. "I trust that God's going to work all this out," he said.

After the sentencing Nagin smiled and hugged supporters as he walked out of the courtroom with his wife, Seletha, and other family members and friends.

Nagin is to report to the federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, in September.

Nagin was alleged to have received roughly a half million dollars.

She noted character references showing him to be a devoted son, husband and father. And she said, despite his crimes, Nagin displayed "a genuine if all too infrequent" desire to help New Orleans and its residents after the 2005 catastrophe.

Most government pre-sentence reports and recommendations were not made public but a filing by defense attorney Robert Jenkins ahead of the sentencing hearing indicated prosecutors were pushing for a sentence of 20 years or more under federal sentencing guidelines.

Jenkins said that would amount to a virtual life sentence for the former mayor. Jenkins said Nagin's family needs him, there is no danger of Nagin committing more crimes and that the crimes for which Nagin was convicted constituted an aberration from an otherwise model life.


Prosecutors said the schemes that led to Nagin's conviction included two family members: His two grown sons were never charged with a crime but they were part of the family business that received free granite from a contractor. They also said that what Jenkins calls an "aberration" was behavior that spanned six years and involved multiple contractors.

Officials in central New York said four people are dead and four homes have been destroyed in building collapses amid severe thunderstorms that rolled through the region.

Debris is visible at Goff Road in Smithfield, N.Y., following severe storm on Tuesday, July 8, 2014.

A spokesman for the Madison County emergency management office said the deaths were reported just after 7 p.m. Tuesday in the hard-hit community of Smithfield, located between Syracuse and Utica. No further details were immediately available.

Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley did not identify the victims. He told The Post-Standard he was still notifying their families.

The storm destroyed four homes, ripping one from its foundation and tossing it onto another house, the newspaper reported. Three other houses nearby also were damaged.

Riley said in a television interview that the rubble at the Smithfield site was being searched and that neighbors were being interviewed.

"We got our search dogs out right now looking around," he said. "We're just picking up parts of the house to see if anybody is underneath them."
Riley said he plans to talk more about the storm damage and deaths at a news conference Wednesday morning.

National Weather Service meteorologist Joanne LaBounty said investigators will be in the area to determine if a tornado touched down.

The spokesman for the emergency management office said there was widespread damage in the towns of Sullivan and Lenox, between Syracuse and Utica.

A fireman walks through a debris field off Goff Road in Smithfield, NY., follow a storm on Tuesday, July 8, 2014.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama's continuing quest to break free from the constraints of the White House brought him to a crowded pizza restaurant, a pool bar and face-to-face with a man wearing a horse head mask.

President Barack Obama has a beer at Wynkoop Brewing Co. with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper -on right-President Barack Obama plays pool at Wynkoop Brewing Co. with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, rear, on Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Denver.

Shortly after arriving in Denver, Obama headed to the Wazee Supper Club for dinner with local residents who had recently written him letters. It was a carefully orchestrated event aimed at projecting an image of the president connecting with real Americans.

But after his meal, Obama decided to break from the script. He took off by foot down 15th Street, a cadre of anxious Secret Service agents by his side, and started shaking hands with the dozens of people who had gathered on the sidewalks.

President Barack Obama plays pool at Wynkoop Brewing Co. with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, rear, on Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Denver.

There were kids eager for a picture with the president and adults who held up their hands for a high-five or fist bump. Then there was the man wearing the horse head. The reasons for his sartorial choice remained unclear.

Obama increasingly has been showing his frustration with the restrictive White House security bubble and referring to himself as a "bear on the loose." In recent weeks, he's been hitting restaurants in Washington and vowing to spend more time with the public outside of the nation's capital.
After his 10-minute stroll, Obama hopped back into his armored limousine for a short drive to his next destination, Wynkoop Brewing Co., which was founded by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

The governor — a Democrat facing re-election this fall — was waiting for Obama inside. They headed to the bar where they ordered two Rail Yard Ales, then headed upstairs for a game of pool.

As Vanilla Ice's classic song "Ice Ice Baby" played in the background, Obama sank the eight-ball to claim victory over Hickenlooper. And on at least this occasion, Obama wanted to make sure the media were nearby.

He turned to the traveling press corps and said, "Did you record that?"

President Barack Obama has a beer at Wynkoop Brewing Co. with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Denver.