Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Puppeteer who fantasized online about cannabalism arrested for child porn, conspiring to kidnap


By Kari Huus, NBC News

Pinellas County SO
Ronald William Brown, 57, of Florida was arrested after police uncovered graphic Internet chats in which he talked about abducting, murdering and cannibalizing children.
A Florida puppeteer known for community involvement was arrested and charged with conspiring to kidnap a child and possession of child pornography, according to a criminal complaint filed in a federal court in Tampa court on Friday.
A day earlier, federal and local agents arrested Ronald William Brown, 57, after uncovering graphic Internet chats in which he talked about abducting, murdering and cannibalizing children, referring specifically to his interest in a boy attending his church, the complaint says.
In a search of Brown's computer investigators came across pornographic images of children, including some of boys in bondage and others in which the subject appears to be dead, according to the 29-page complaint.

Brown, who lived alone in the Whispering Pines mobile home park in Largo, had ties to many organizations in the Tampa Bay area, including the Gulf Coast Church, the Pinellas County School District, the Christian Television Network, the city of Largo, and Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services, the Tampa Bay Times reported. All said Brown had been hired or volunteered as a performer, instructor or mentor, according to the report.  According to the documents, Brown admitted to fantasizing about killing, dismembering and cannibalizing children, but said it was just a fantasy and that he would never hurt anyone.  A Homeland Security investigation of Michael Arnett, a suspect in Kansas City, led authorities to Brown, the complaint said.  It said Arnett, who allegedly possessed pornographic images of children, including some who appeared to be decapitated, engaged in lengthy online chats with Brown and others about killing and canabalizing children.  The documents include extensive excerpts from his discussions with Brown, obtained from Yahoo through a subpoena in which Brown muses about killing a particular child. In the court filing, the child's name is replaced with “C” to protect his identity.
"Maybe I can tell him that he’s a big boy now and he can take it. I could give him a choice on how he wants to go," wrote uelime, an online name used by Brown in a chat dated April 23, 2011, in one excerpt included in the complaint.
"That would be nice of you :)," responded calf_keeper2, the online identity of Michael Arnett, the complaint alleges. "Give him choices/ all which end up in him being cut up and eaten."
"I could ask him how he wants each cut of his body to be done and then label it for him with a black marker," uelime replies.
The complaint says that Brown told investigators in an interview that Arnett had traveled to Tampa and attempted to contact him, but that he did not respond because "he had no desire to do anything."
Arnett was arrested in May and charged with two counts related to the production, distribution and possession of child pornography.
Agents were still investigating claims that Arnett made to Brown that he had cannibalized a child, according to the Times report, citing Ross Feinstein, spokesman at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

An attorney speaking to reporters on Brown’s behalf on Tuesday told reporters he believes Brown is innocent and the conspiracy charge won't hold up because Brown never actually met with Arnett, the Times reported.  

Miracle baby of the Aurora tragedy



University of Colorado Hospital
Baby Hugo was born at 7:11 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

AURORA, Colo. – He’s the tiny miracle after the tragedy of Aurora.
Hugo Jackson Medley was born at 7:11 a.m. local time on Tuesday, according to University of Colorado Hospital spokesman Dan Weaver. Both mother and child are doing well.
His mother, Katie Medley, escaped the Colorado movie theater attack uninjured, but her husband, Caleb, is in the same hospital in a medically-induced coma fighting for his life.
High school sweetheartsHigh school sweethearts, Katie and Caleb Medley started dating during their senior year in the small town of Florence, Colo., according to their close friend Michael West, who has become their family spokesman.
“You could just tell that out of everyone in the world, these two were meant for each other,” West wrote on a website dedicated to Caleb that he created to raise money to cover his friend’s medical bills. As of Tuesday afternoon, the website has had 2,600 donors who have given about $90,000.















Katie Medley, who was nine-months pregnant when she was at the movie theater where the Aurora shooting happened, delivered her son, Hugo, on Tuesday morning. Her husband, Caleb, right, is in critical condition in the hospital from gun shot wounds sustained during the attack.
In eighth grade, Caleb, now 23, decided he wanted to be a standup comedian. So after he and Katie, 21, got married they moved to Denver, where he could chase his dream.
In an Internet video titled “Caleb Saves the Internet: Saving the One Nighter,” he chronicles life on the road as a struggling comic.
He jokes about staying in a seedy motel room with a busted deadbolt and stains on the wall. But Caleb was making progress. Last Wednesday night, he performed stand up at the New Faces Contest at Comedy Works South in Denver, according to the Denver Post. He did well enough to advance to the next round of a comedy festival.
It was to be a big week for the couple. Not only was Caleb getting comedy gigs, but he was about to become a father. Katie, a veterinary student, was nine months pregnant and her doctor planned to induce labor on Monday, July 23.
One last date night
Katie and Caleb decided to treat themselves to one last night out before they needed a babysitter. Even though she was nine months pregnant, they were huge Batman fans and they were not going to miss opening night.

NBC's Kate Snow reports on the shooting suspects court appearance Monday, as well as the status of some of the shooting victims, including Caleb Medley.
"They had Batman apparel on. They waited for this movie for over a year,” said David Sanchez, Katie Medley’s father.
“They were having the normal opening night movie experience,” their friend Michael West wrote, recounting a conversation he had with Katie. “They stood anxiously in line, spent too much on popcorn and soda, suffered through the movie trailers and watched the beginning of the movie. That is when evil struck.”
“I thought it was a prank at first or someone playing along with the movie,” Katie told him, West writes. “Then he opened fire.”
Caleb was shot in the face. He was put in the back of a police cruiser and driven to University of Colorado hospital. The website says he has lost his right eye, suffered brain damage and is in a medically-induced coma.
Katie’s father, Sanchez, was at the Arapahoe County courthouse Monday to see the man he blames for ruining what was supposed to be a joyous time for the family. He said his daughter had asked him to come since she was in no state to attend herself.
“When it’s your own daughter and she escaped death by just mere seconds, I would say, it really makes you angry,” he told a group of reporters outside the courthouse where the shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes made a brief appearance Monday.
Asked about his son-in-law, Caleb, he said, “He's in critical but stable condition, so we're praying for him. I think the main concern is him right now, and the baby being born.”  Like many of the young 20-somethings at the movies that terrible night, the Medleys have no health insurance, according to their friend West.  “Caleb and his family have no insurance, and these hospital bills are going to be well into the hundreds if not thousands if not millions. Caleb and Katie will be struggling with these hospital bills for the rest of their lives,” West wrote on the website.  In two remarkable stories of survival, one woman saves the life of her best friend, and a father protects his son's girlfriend after she was badly wounded. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.





Sunday, July 22, 2012

Bulgaria official: Suspected suicide bomber carried fake Michigan license

Burgas airport security cameras caught the alleged terrorist wandering around a terminal minutes before he boarded a bus filled with tourists and allegedly blew himself up. Police are now trying to identify who he was with the help of DNA analysis. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports.

Updated at 1:37 p.m. ET: SOFIA, Bulgaria -- A bombing that killed at least seven people and injured dozens on a bus full of Israeli tourists was most likely a suicide attack, Bulgarian officials said Thursday. The suspected attacker was carrying a fake Michigan driver's license, they added.
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the suspect appeared on security camera tape near the bus for nearly an hour before the attack that gutted the airport in Burgas, a popular gateway for tourists visiting the Black Sea coast
"We have established there was a person who was a suicide bomber in this attack (on Wednesday)," Tsvetanov told reporters. "This person had a fake driving license from the United States, from the state of Michigan. He looked like anyone else -- a normal person with Bermuda shorts and a backpack."
Bulgarian media reported Thursday that former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mehdi Ghezali was believed to be the suicide bomber. However, U.S. intelligence officials later denied the reports.
Video footage showed the suspect wearing checked shorts and a blue T-shirt. He appeared to be Caucasian with long dark curly shoulder-length hair under a dark blue baseball cap.

The bomber was said to be 36 years old and had been in the country for between four and seven days before the attack, Reuters reported.
Officials are still trying to determine how the alleged bomber triggered the explosion.
"He either had turned with his backpack toward the bus when he exploded it or pretended he was one of the group putting his backpack in the baggage compartment under the bus," according to a Bulgarian official with knowledge of the investigation who spoke with the New York Times. "Video footage clearly shows him in the airport earlier wandering back and forth, following the group, looking nervous."
Seven people, including five Israeli tourists, were killed Wednesday after a bomb exploded on a bus in Bulgaria. The suspected attacker was carrying a fake Michigan driver's license, officials say. TODAY's Natalie Morales reports.
Authorities had managed to obtain DNA samples from the fingers of the suspected bomber, Tsvetanov said.
Officials did not release the name that appeared on the fake driver's license.
Prime Minister Boiko Borisov added: "We worked on this with colleagues from the FBI and CIA. They said that there is no such person in their database."
According to the Associated Press, officials lowered the death toll to seven, including the suspected bomber, after mistakenly reporting that someone had died overnight.
Bulgarian security services had received no indications of a pending attack. However, Israel accused Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants of responsibility.
Iran denied it was behind Wednesday's bombing.
Mangled metalThe tourists had just arrived in Bulgaria on a charter flight from Israel and were on the bus in the airport parking lot when the blast tore through the double-decker. Body parts were strewn across the ground, mangled metal hung from the vehicle's ripped roof and black smoke billowed over the airport.
ts boarded buses to go to their hotels, a massive explosion killed at least six. Police don't yet have any answers, and nobody has claimed responsibility. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports.
"It felt like an earthquake and then I saw flying pieces of meat," said Georgi Stoev, an airport official. "It was horrible, just like in a horror movie."
On Thursday, the airport in Burgas -- a city of some 200,000 people at the center of a string of seaside resorts -- remained closed and police prevented people from approaching.

Ehud Barak accused the Tehran-backed Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah of carrying out the bombing. "The immediate executors are Hezbollah people, who of course have constant Iranian sponsorship," Barak told Israel Radio.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said Iran, the Jewish state's arch-enemy, was behind the attack and that "Israel will react powerfully against Iranian terror."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev linked the arrest of a foreigner in Cyprus earlier this month on suspicion of plotting an attack on Israeli tourists there with the Bulgaria bombing.
"The suspect who was arrested in Cyprus, in his interrogation, revealed an operational plan that is almost identical to what happened in Bulgaria. He is from Hezbollah ... this is a further indication of Hezbollah and Iran's direct responsibility," he told Reuters.
Bangkok blasts wound Iranian attacker, 4 others
The blast occurred on the 18th anniversary of a bomb attack at the headquarters of Argentina's main Jewish organisation that killed 85 people and the Argentine government blamed on Iran, which denied responsibility.

BGNES via AFP - Getty Images
Smoke rises over Burgas airport following a Wednesday's blast.
Israeli officials had previously said that Bulgaria, a popular holiday destination for Israeli tourists, was vulnerable to attack by Islamist militants who could infiltrate via Turkey.
Israeli diplomats have been targeted in several countries in recent months by bombers who Israel said struck on behalf of Iran.
'Inexcusable'Although Tehran has denied involvement, some analysts believe it is trying to avenge the assassinations of several scientists from its nuclear program that the Iranians have blamed on Israel and its Western allies.
Israel and Western powers fear Iran is working towards a nuclear bomb but it says its uranium enrichment work is strictly for peaceful ends. Both Israel and the United States have not ruled out military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.
"The attack is terrible and inexcusable," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. "It is a time to act responsibly. We have no information of our own. We urge caution in starting to assign blame."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Colo. shooting suspect's pic released, family makes statement


It’s hard to imagine who would massacre a movie theater of innocent people, especially after hearing the panicked 911 calls, but we may now have a face to go with the name. @DenverChannel has tweeted a picture of James Holmes, the suspect in this morning’s tragic Aurora, Colo., shootings, which has left at least 12 dead and dozens injured. The image was reportedly sent to the outlet by the University of Colorado Denver, where Holmes, 24, was said to have been an ex-graduate student in the neuroscience program in the School of Medicine.
Holmes’ family, which has asked for privacy while it tries to “process this information,” has issued a statement through the San Diego Police Department saying that their “hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and the family and friends of those involved.” [Source]

12 shot dead at 'Dark Knight Rises' screening in Aurora, Colorado



NBC's Pete Williams reports the Colo. gunman identified as James Holmes carried two pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun into the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," and said authorities are looking into how he was able to get in through the theater's emergency exit.




Updated at 11:11 a.m. ET: Twelve people were killed and at least 50 others wounded early Friday when a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire during a midnight premier screening of the latest Batman movie near Denver, authorities and witnesses said.
The apartment of the suspect in custody, named as 24-year-old James Holmes, had been booby-trapped with what police described as sophisticated explosives or flammable material and officers were trying to determine how to defuse the device or devices, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said. The area had been evacuated, and police were expected to remain on the scene "for hours or days," he said.
The victims of the cinema shooting were being treated in at least six hospitals included a 6-year-old. The youngest person treated was a 4-month-old baby, who has been released. The oldest reported patient is 45.Authorities said the gunman had appeared at the front of the theater during the film and released a canister of tear gas. Witnesses told reporters that the gunfire erupted during a shootout scene in "The Dark Knight Rises."  "It was mass chaos," witness Jennifer Seeger told TODAY. The gunman shot the ceiling and then "he threw in the gas can, and then I knew it was real."  "I told my friend, 'We've got to get out of here,' but then he shot people trying to go out the exits," she recalled. She said the shooter made his way up the aisle, shooting as he went, saying nothing.  Jennifer Seeger, who was inside the Aurora, Colo., movie theater where a gunman opened fire early Friday, describes the scene of the shooting as "mass chaos."  Oates initially told journalists that 14 people had been killed but the figure was later lowered to 12.  The shooting occurred in the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center. Aurora is a suburb less than 10 miles east of downtown Denver.
NBC station KUSA-Denver cited a witness as seeing a black-clad 6-foot-tall man wearing a riot helmet, goggles and bullet-proof vest.

/
As many as 12 people were killed and 50 injured at a shooting at the Century 16 movie theatre in Aurora, Colo. early Friday during the showing of the latest Batman movie.
However, many people attended the film dressed in Batman-related costumes.
Watch live video from KUSA
Witnesses said the gunman entered the theater through an emergency exit door.
The suspect was found in possession of a gas mask, Oates said. Ammunition was found in the suspect's car, police said.


Former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt tells Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd "this was a pre-planned event."
The shooter had three weapons -- an assault-type rifle and two handguns, officials told NBC News. Holmes' car has Tennessee plates but authorities said he lived locally.

Police name alleged gunman in Colorado theater shooting
Police said there was no evidence of additional suspects.
"We're pretty confident he acted alone," officer Frank Fania told TODAY.
An FBI official told NBC News that the agency was working with local authorities on the investigation, but that there was no early indication of a link to terrorism. Holmes was not on any federal law-enforcement watch lists, authorities told NBC News.
President Barack Obama cut short a campaign visit to Florida to return to Washington ahead of schedule.
He called for reflection after the attack. "There are going to be other days for politics," Obama said during an abbreviated appearance in Fort Myers, where he led a moment of silence on behalf of the victims and their families.

At least 12 people were killed early Friday when at least one gunman opened fire at a midnight screening of the summer blockbuster "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo. NBC's Matt Lauer reports.
'Get us some damn gas masks'Police raiding the theater in the hunt for the suspect had to ask for gas masks."Get us some damn gas masks for theater 9, we can't get in it," one officer radioed back to emergency dispatch during the operation, according to an excerpt aired on KUSA.  Moviegoers described scenes of chaos and terror inside the movie theater.  Seeger told TODAY there were "a lot of children" in the theater.  "When I ... tried to escape, there was a little girl, 12 or 13, just laying lifeless on the stairs," she said.  "I got terrified. I didn't know what to do, like a deer in the headlights. I jumped into the aisle and curled up into a little ball waiting for him to go away," she told TODAY.  "I have never been more scared then the moments where we were all trapped in the theater, helpless. Unable to get out at all," another moviegoer, Rachel Fedeli, Aurora Police respond to the shooting at the Century 16 Movie Theater early Friday.  More on this story from breakingnews.com  Tanner Coon, who was in the theater with a friend and the friend's 12-year-old brother when the shooter came in, said he told them to "get down" when he heard the gunshots. The shooter fired off about 20 rounds and there was then a pause and a "period of quietness when everybody started running out," Coon said.

"I slipped on some blood and landed on a lady. I shook her and said we need to go. There was no response so I presume she was dead," Coon said.

Former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt tells Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd "this was a pre-planned event."
Another eyewitness, Alex Milano, told KUSA that he "saw at least four, maybe five people limping, slightly wounded. ... I saw one girl covered in blood.
"I don't know whose little girl that was, but my heart goes out to them. ... A cop came walking through the front door ... holding a little girl in his arms and she wasn't moving, she wasn't moving," the young man, whose voiced cracked as he spoke, told KUSA.
Colorado shooting survivor: 'He pointed the gun right at me'
'I thought it was pretty much the end of the world'Roland Jones, 28, said he first thought the smoke and sounds of gunshots were all part of the film's special effects.
Tanner Coon, 17, describes seeing flashes of gunfire, which he thought were fireworks, amid the chaos of trying to escape the shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater as he was "trying to calm" his friend's 12-year-old brother.
"I thought it was pretty much the end of the world," Roberts told the Denver Post.
Tammi Stevens, who son was inside the cinema when the shooting started, told the Post he saw a man walk into the theater wearing body armor.
"You let your kids go to a late night movie ... you never think something like this would happen," Stevens told the newspaper.
The injured were being transported to several local hospitals, police told NBC.Natalie Goldstein, of Children's Hospital Colorado, said the facility was treating six patients from the shooting, ranging in age from 6 to 31.PhotoBlog: More images from the scene of the shooting in AuroraJustin Bentzinger, a house supervisor at the Swedish Medical Center, told NBC News they were treating three patients. Two were in critical condition, the third was in fair condition.  Corbin Dates was inside the Colorado movie theater where a gunman opened fire during a midnight showing of Kalena Wilkinson, a public information officer for Denver Health, said six patients were taken to that hospital, with one in critical condition and the other five in "fair" conditions.Tracy Weise, of the public relations department at Aurora Medical Center, told NBC News they had treated 15 patients, four of whom have been released. Of those still being treated, four remain in critical condition, Weise said.
Further local coverage from KUSAJacque Montgomery, a spokesperson for University of Colorado Hospital, told NBC News that they were treating 20 patients from the shooting.
At least three people had been treated for chemical exposure, KUSA reported.




Hundreds of witnesses who have not been injured have been taken to Gateway High School for a debriefing, local media reported.  Friday's incident was the worst mass shooting in the United States since the 2007 shooting on the Virginia Tech campus, in which 33 people, including the gunman, died.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999. Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton, about 15 miles west of Aurora, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.
Paris premiere canceled
"The Dark Knight Rises," starring Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway, is the latest in the popular Batman action movie franchise. Theatres around the world began showing it at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.
Warner Bros. canceled the Paris premiere of the film, which was scheduled for Friday evening.
"Warner Bros. and the filmmakers are deeply saddened to learn about this shocking incident. We extend our sincere sympathies to the families and loved ones of the victims at this tragic time," the studio said in a statement.



Monday, July 16, 2012

Man Calls Cops After Buying Fake Crack


After a man called police to inform them that he had been duped into buying $100 worth of fake crack cocaine, he and another man were tossed in jail.

Police arrested 50 year old Keith Ross, and 43 year old Edward Parr, after the two argued over the sale of bits of soap, police said. The incident began on Saturday about 11 a.m. when Houma, La. police said Ross was harassing people for money and threatening them with a screwdriver.

After issuing Ross, seen above, a summons on a charge of aggravated assault, police were called to a motel on New Orleans Boulevard where Parr informed them that he was sold fake crack cocaine by Ross.
Parr told police Ross sold him the fake drugs and fled with his $100. It turns out that Ross had sold Parr a small plastic bag with bits of soap, Parr was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to purchase crack cocaine. Officers then found Ross and arrested him on charges of distribution of fake crack cocaine and theft under $300.

SOURCE: blackmediascoop.com

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

AIDS in Black America


  • PBS 'Frontline' documentary examines the devastating – yet largely preventable – impact of HIV and AIDS among African-Americans.
Endgame: AIDS in Black America

Black America's Disproportionate HIV Burden

Nel Davis’s story opens the gripping new PBS Frontline documentary "Endgame: AIDS in Black America," (written, directed, and produced by Renata Simon and airing Tuesday, July 10), an exhaustive examination of the disease in the African-American community. Black Americans such as Davis “face the most severe burden of HIV of all racial/ethnic groups in the United States,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although blacks make up roughly 14 percent of the U.S. population, in 2009, they accounted for a disproportional 44 percent of new HIV infections, CDC data published in August 2011 shows. One in 16 black men today will be diagnosed with HIV at some point in their life. Two-thirds of new HIV cases in women are in black women. Among adolescents, blacks account for 70 percent of new cases.
The numbers are indeed staggering — and even more so when you consider that HIV-AIDS is an almost entirely preventable disease.

Criminalization of Drug Offenses vs. Public Health

The devastating effect of HIV-AIDS in black America cannot be blamed on any one factor. Public health mistakes, cultural stigma and a lack of coordination by authorities have all combined to complicate matters.
Going back to the early days of HIV-AIDS, at the beginning of the 1980s, the first five AIDS patients treated at UCLA Medical Center (the first hospital to identify the new disease) were white gay men. The sixth and seventh patients, however, were black. But the misconception quickly arose and spread that the new killer virus affected only white homosexual males — a critical error that 30 years later still thwarts attempts to control AIDS.
Even more devastating, however, was how the disease emerged, said Robert Fullilove, associate dean for community and minority affairs at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York. As the 1980s progressed, rising unemployment and despair in poor black communities fueled a booming drug problem, particularly injection drugs. As drug use increased, so did drug-related crime.
Under pressure to respond, authorities chose to criminalize drug use rather than address the underlying social issues. Among other things, President Ronald Reagan's federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 made it illegal to possess syringes. In Frontline's "Endgame," Fullilove points out how users shared needles to avoid arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia. HIV spread quickly among injection drug users, and then to their partners, and then to partners of those partners and beyond — in an ever-widening web of infection.
The harsh 1980s drug laws put an unprecedented number of black men in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. In some communities, as many as 50 percent of young black males were incarcerated. This, too, created unintended consequences — but this time for black women. With so many men in prison, according to the Frontline documentary, men in the community could dictate the rules of sexual play. If a man wanted unprotected sex, he was likely to get it, which unfortunately spread the virus more widely among women.

The Cultural Stigma of AIDS

Many local and national leaders failed to respond, despite the fact that AIDS was wreaking havoc throughout black communities. HIV-AIDS was just one of a long list of vital issues for black leaders to tackle, including education, housing and jobs. Other leaders were ignorant of the problem. “I think we thought about AIDS as affecting only white people, and then only white gay people, and there were no black gay people,” recalls Julian Bond, veteran 1960s civil rights activist, Georgia state representative, and chairman emeritus of the NAACP, in the documentary.
Even the traditional bulwark of social support and activism in the African-American community, the black church, has done little to address the AIDS crisis. In "Endgame," Phil Wilson, president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, recalls an eye-opening moment while he was addressing the Black Ministerial Alliance about AIDS. One minister jumped up and shouted, “We’re not going to let them blame this one on us.” The frantic desire that AIDS not become another "black problem" in the eyes of American society has severely hampered prevention and treatment efforts, Wilson says.
An African-American aversion to hanging your dirty laundry in public didn't help. “You don’t tell other folks how poor you are. You don’t tell other folks that you can’t pay the rent. You don’t tell other folks that so and so is sick. And you certainly don’t tell other folks that there’s a gay son," he says. "And you don’t tell other folks that someone in the family has AIDS. It’s all about those things that you think are ways to protect yourself — going all the way back to slavery, that the slaves kept secrets ... some of that cultural baggage travels with us.”
These cultural views reinforce homophobia as well. “The African-American community and a lot of communities have stigma around being gay,” says Bay Area AIDS activist Jesse Brooks, who is gay, in the film. “I had an uncle, and I remember being in the car with him and he pointed to an obviously gay man and said, ‘I hate them!’ And this is my uncle, who was my favorite uncle, and it crushed me. And so it also led me to not want to open up about who I am, and for me to be ashamed about who I am.”
Last Updated: 07/06/2012


Monday, July 2, 2012

Scammers striking at the gas pump


6/29/2012 6:20 PM ET
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Thieves are 'skimming' credit card and debit card numbers using devices planted in card readers at the pumps. The fraud is high-tech and hard to detect.

Image: Buying gas © Somos Image, Corbis
Using a debit card to buy gas can save you a few cents a gallon at some stations. It can also give bad guys easy access to your bank account.
Gas stations are proving to be a weak link in efforts to combat debit and credit card fraud. Outdated technology and poor security allow criminals to install skimmers that capture account numbers and PINs. If you swipe your card at a compromised pump, the captured information can be used to create a clone of your card that can be sold to other criminals or taken on fraudulent shopping sprees.
Organized rings of thieves operate on a large scale. A Los Angeles man named Aleksandr Goukasian was convicted in June of participating in one such ring that stole 38,000 account numbers from gas pumps in California, Nevada and Texas. The credit and debit cards were used to siphon $100,000 from users' accounts. The gang collected PINs and ZIP codes in addition to account numbers, federal authorities said.
Liz Weston
Liz Weston
Security experts said the size of the fraud wasn't surprising. What was unusual was that a ringleader was actually caught, since so much of this type of crime goes unprosecuted.
The low risk of getting caught isn't the only enticement for evildoers. Gas pumps are tempting targets because:
● One master key opens thousands of pumps. Only a handful of companies manufacture gas pumps, said fraud expert Avivah Litan of Gartner Research, and a single key typically opens that company's pumps, making it easy for crooks to install skimmers. A friend who works at a gas station or an attendant willing to accept a bribe is all a thief needs to get access. "If you get the physical key," Litan said, "then you can open all the gas pumps made by that manufacturer."


● Gas pumps are usually unattended. Sometimes the bad guys pose as maintenance technicians, but skimmers can be installed relatively quickly out of sight of gas station employees. Since the skimmers are installed inside the pumps, they can be hard, if not impossible, to detect from the outside.
● Gas stations are resisting investing in more secure technology. A gas pump doesn't need to have a skimmer installed for your information to be at risk. Older models don't even encrypt your PIN, so it's sitting "in the clear," Litan said, available to anyone who knows how to hack into the machine. Newer gas pumps not only feature encryption but also have unique keys, eliminating the "universal access" problem. Upgrading to the newer models costs gas station owners and franchisees up to $20,000 per pump, however. "Visa and MasterCard have been trying to get the gas industry to invest in better technology," Litan said, but push back from the stations has led the card networks to repeatedly put off requiring the upgrades.