Harvard student tried to dodge exam with bomb hoax, FBI says

Buildings on Harvard University's campus were evacuated for hours Monday, interrupting final exams. Steve Cooper of NBC station WHDH of Boston reports.

By M. Alex Johnson and Tom Winter, NBC News

A Harvard student was charged Tuesday with making a hoax bomb threat just so he could get out of a final exam.
Eldo Kim, 20, of Cambridge, Mass., was scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court. He could face as long as five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine if convicted of communicating the bomb threat that cleared four large buildings Monday.
In an affidavit filed included with the criminal complaint, the FBI said Kim admitted sending the bogus threats out of "a desire to avoid a final exam." The exam he was trying to duck wasn't specified.

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The affidavit said Kim emailed bomb threats to several Harvard offices, including the campus police and the student newspaper, about 8:30 a.m. ET Monday. He said he acted alone and picked the addresses at random from the university's website, according to the affidavit.

Under a subject line reading "bombs placed around campus," the messages read: "shrapnel bombs placed in science center, sever hall, emerson hall, thayer hall, 2/4. guess correctly. be quick for they will go off soon," according to the complaint.

He said he chose the word "shrapnel" because "it sounded more dangerous" and wrote "2/4. guess correctly" to slow the evacuation, according to the affidavit.  "Kim was scheduled to take a final exam in Emerson Hall, a building on the Harvard campus, at 9:00 a.m. on December 16, 2013. Kim stated that he was in Emerson Hall at 9:00 a.m. when the fire alarm sounded and the building was evacuated," it said, adding: "According to Kim, upon hearing the alarm, he knew that his plan had worked." 

Each of the buildings was evacuated, and investigators found no explosives, but all morning exams were postponed. Because the four buildings are clustered together near Harvard Yard, the historic center of campus was closed.

Kim took several steps to hide his identity, but in the end, it was the WiFi that got him, the FBI said.
Kim said he sent his messages using a temporary, anonymous email account routed through the worldwide anonymizing network Tor, according to the affidavit.
So far, so good. But to get to Tor, he had to go through Harvard's wireless network — and university technicians were able to detect that it was Kim who was trying to get to Tor, according to the affidavit.

This story was originally published on Tue Dec 17, 2013 6:29 PM EST

Shooting at Reno medical center leaves two dead, two wounded

KRNV

Police cars are parked outside of the Reno Medical Center, where a shooting occurred on Tuesday.

By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

A gunman opened fire inside a Nevada medical office on Tuesday afternoon, killing one person and wounded two others before killing himself, officials said.
The wounded victims were in surgery, and one of them is a doctor, the Nevada Department of Public Safety said.
The gunman killed himself after firing off several rounds in the Center for Advanced Medicine and Neurology on the Renown Medical Center complex at about 2 p.m. local time on Tuesday, police said.
“We have two people confirmed deceased in the building, two others injured,” Reno Police Department’s Deputy Chief Tom Robinson told reporters.
Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Gail Powell told The Associated Press that the wounded doctor is a woman, but she had no information on the other victims or the gunman.
The motive for the attack remained unclear.
The medical center was put on lockdown amid the chaos of the shooting scene as police, including SWAT team vehicles, surrounded the sprawling medical complex and closed off a three-block area near downtown Reno.
Gov. Brian Sandoval said on Twitter that he and his staff were monitoring the situation and his thoughts and prayers were with those affected by the tragedy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Police: Pa. Newlyweds Killed Man For Thrills

AP Photo: The News-Item, Larry Deklinski

Police officers lead Elyett Barbour from District Justice Benjamin Apfelbaum's office in Sunbury, Pa., after being charged in the stabbing death of Troy LaFerrara, 42, of Port Trevorton, Pa.

1 day ago By Associated Press

Police say a newlywed couple used Craigslist to lure a Pennsylvania man to his death because they wanted to kill someone together.

SUNBURY, Pa. — A couple married for just three weeks lured a man to his death with an ad on the Craigslist website because they wanted to kill someone together, police said.
Elytte Barbour told officers before his arrest Friday night that he and his wife, Miranda, had planned to kill before, but their plans never worked out until last month when Troy LaFerrara responded to an online posting that promised companionship in return for money, authorities said.

AP Photo: The News-Item, Mike Staugaitis

Miranda Barbour, left, is led into District Judge Ben Apfelbaum's office in Sunbury, Pa.

"They had tried to kill others before this victim but the plan didn't work out so they continued to try to find someone," police wrote in an affidavit.
Elytte Barbour, 22, and Miranda Barbour, 18, face criminal homicide charges in LaFerrara's death. His body was found Nov. 12 in an alley in Sunbury, a small city about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia. The couple had recently moved to nearby Selinsgrove from Dunn, North Carolina.
According to Sunbury police, Elytte Barbour told inves
tigators he hid under a blanket in the backseat of the couple's SUV as his wife picked up LaFerrara at a mall Nov. 11. He told police that, on his wife's signal, he wrapped a cord around LaFerrara's neck, restraining him while Miranda Barbour stabbed him.

Gallery: Crimes committed through Craigslist
The 42-year-old Port Trevorton man was stabbed about 20 times, police said.
Miranda Barbour was charged Tuesday, a day after police first contacted her. She initially denied knowing LaFerrara, but her story evolved as investigators gathered evidence, including the discovery that the last call received by the victim's cellphone was made from her number, according to a police affidavit.

AP Graphic

The affidavit said Miranda Barbour acknowledged meeting the victim in Selinsgrove and driving with him to Sunbury, where they parked. She said LaFerrara groped her and she took a knife from between the front seats and stabbed him after he put his hand around her throat, according to the affidavit.
Barbour told investigators "that they committed the murder because they just wanted to murder someone together," police said in the affidavit.
Police said Miranda Barbour had told them she purchased cleaning supplies at a department store after stabbing LaFerrara, then picked up her husband and took him to a strip club for his birthday. On Friday, police said, Elytte Barbour told them he was the one who had purchased the cleaning products, an account investigators said was backed up by surveillance footage.
Following his wife's arrest, Elytte Barbour told The Daily Item of Sunbury that Miranda Barbour, whom he married Oct. 22, regularly hired herself out as a "companion" to men she met on various websites, a business venture he said he supported because it didn't involve sexual contact.
Barbour said his wife made anywhere from $50 to $850 by meeting with men for such activities as having dinner together or walking around a mall. The ads she placed on websites including Craigslist all said upfront that sex was not part of the deal, he said.
"She is not a prostitute," he said. "What she does is meet men who have broken marriages or have no one in their lives, and she meets with them and has delightful conversation."
Elytte Barbour didn't have an attorney at his arraignment Friday night. Telephone messages left for his wife's public defenders Saturday were not immediately returned.
Sunbury police Chief Steve Mazzeo told The Daily Item that investigators will also be looking into the death of a man with whom Miranda Barbour had a 1-year-old child. He would not elaborate.

Egypt's marriage crisis: Sons and daughters too broke to be married, waiting for adulthood

Tara Todras-Whitehill / for NBC News

Ahmed Gamal, a 24-year-old political activist who lives in Assiut, Egypt, says he's very concerned about his marriage prospects. "It's not a new Egypt until I have enough money to get married," he said.

By Lauren Bohn, Contributor, NBC News

ASSIUT, Egypt – A 24-year-old political activist working ten-hour shifts at an accounting firm in Assiut, one of the poorest areas of Egypt, says he can explain why his country hasn’t had a true revolution.
“It’s not a new Egypt until I have enough money to get married,” said Ahmed Gamal, laughing with friends who have started placing bets on who will be the first among them to tie the knot. “It’s a country of boys waiting to be men.”
Gamal is the local director for the April 6 Youth Movement, one of the groups that helped organize the 2011 protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak. He said that aside from fighting what he calls “the return of the old regime,” saving enough money for marriage is his generation’s biggest battle. But in a country choked by a crippled economy, inflation, and soaring unemployment, many Egyptians simply can’t.

According to American University professor Diane Singerman, a typical marriage in Egypt cost around $6,000 in the late 1990s – a daunting sum given the average per capita income was $1,490 in 2000.  In 2006, a survey found marriage costs had increased 25 percent. For those living below the poverty line in areas like Assiut, a region of 3.5 million on the Nile approximately 225 miles south of Cairo, marriage expenses are 15 times annual household costs.  “I found a girl I wanted to marry…but it’ll take me around seven years to save enough money to propose,” Gamal said, calculating that he needs to save about 5,000.  “But she can’t wait for me, and will accept another proposal," Gamal lamented. "So now, I’m crying over her. It’s all impossible in Egypt.”

Tara Todras-Whitehill / for NBC News

Egyptian women gather outside a university in Assiut, Egypt. Many young people are concerned about their marriage prospects in the new post-revolution Egypt.

Traditionally, approximately two-thirds of total marriages costs are covered by the groom and his family. Those costs go far beyond the cost of the actual wedding: they include the couple’s housing (parents often purchase an apartment, or put down enough to cover rent for a long period), jewelry for the bride, and electronic appliances like TVs and refrigerators. Women are expected to purchase less expensive furnishings and lighter elements of décor.

Rania Salem, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies the consequences of high marriage costs in Egypt, said that a groom on average has to save his entire earnings for about three and a half years to finance his share of costs, while the average bride has to save for six months for hers. But given the paucity of well-paid jobs now, men have to wait longer.
For women, the process can be frustratingly passive; singlehood beyond a certain age is a ticket to social stigmatization.

“Everyone is struggling right now, so it’s hard to find a man my family will say has enough money,” said Salma Hamdeen, a 24-year-old teacher. Her family has already started accumulating her “gehaz,” a trousseau consisting of kitchenware and linens for her marital home. “But I want to marry soon, I want to be a woman…if you aren’t married by your late twenties, people will think something is wrong with you.”

Chronic state of 'waithood'Across Assiut, disintegrated campaign posters and faded revolutionary graffiti stand as crumbling relics of a revolution gone by, a grim museum charting little more than unmet expectations.

With a chronically bloated public sector, Egypt doesn’t have enough government jobs for a flood of graduates who are otherwise unqualified for private sector jobs. The country’s public education system remains deplorable, it ranked last in primary education on the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Global Competitiveness Report. And unless one has "wasta," connections to get a job, the grim cycle of unfulfilled potential is rarely broken.

“Of course, I want my children to be educated, get a job, have a nice life,” said 56-year-old Galal Abdeen. He is trying to find a wife for his son, Abdullah, who works at a rundown hotel in Assiut. “But they have to get married first. He’s not a man, she’s not a woman, until then.”

In Egypt's conservative society, marriage is also the institutional and cultural gateway for societal recognition and sexual activity, Singerman explained. She has coined the phenomenon “waithood” to describe the prolonged adolescence and purgatory that Egyptians linger in until they have enough money to marry.
“If young people continue to feel like perpetual adolescents – disempowered, excluded from society, and economically vulnerable –the region will suffer economically and politically,” said Singerman, noting that 60 percent of the region’s population is under the age of 25.

Some analysts speculate “waithood” contributes to an even more frustrated and disempowered generation in waiting, one that proved a pivotal force behind the country’s initial uprising.                                                  Tara Todras-Whitehill / for NBC News  Young people in a cafe in Assiut, Egypt.  “The inability to marry is an overlooked crisis that keeps escalating in Egypt,” said Madiha El-Shafty, a professor at the American University in Cairo. “It’s not hard to understand how this mass frustration can lead to intense religiosity, and how it can contribute to the country’s rampant issue of sexual harassment.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                     "But it’s a cultural problem at the end of the day,” she said. “And that’s why it’s hard. You need to change the minds of people, to lower and change marital expectations.... Why do parents place so much pressure? Why do lives only begin at marriage?”  When marriage, and specifically the cost of housing, becomes more affordable, Singerman said “waithood” may be alleviated. But without a political will to address Egypt’s systemic economic and social woes, Egyptians like Gamal, who have been protesting the past three years for social justice and dignity, will remain in societal limbo unable to command their own destinies.

“The post-uprising moment was a hopeful one, with a lot of potential for young people who saw their marital trajectories tied up in the country’s political and economic circumstances,” said Salem, the professor.
“They were hopeful that public housing and other services would be reformed, which would help them in the marriage project,” she said. “But there’s much less hope for improved circumstances today.”

'We need our own revolution'Back in Assiut, while sleepy cafes throbbed with scores of young men all dressed up with nowhere to go, Gamal explained his plans to open a restaurant with his friend (who is also trying to get married). It's a risky endeavor, he conceded, but one he hopes will be profitable.
“When you live in Egypt, you learn to wait. But the young men of Egypt…we need our own revolution,” he laughed nervously, sitting in a café plastered with portraits of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s military chief who is both hailed as an arbiter of Egypt’s security and criticized for ushering in a period of hyper-nationalism.
“Though if the past few years proved anything…it’s that we’re not very good at revolutions.”