Mich. officers kill bear; seeks link girl’s mauling
DETROIT – Conservation officers shot and killed a black bear Sunday and plan tests to see if it is the animal that chased and mauled a 12-year-old girl as she jogged on her grandfather’s wooded land in northern Michigan, authorities say.
A bear clawed Abby Wetherell in the thigh Thursday at site 35 miles south-southeast of Traverse City in Wexford County’s Haring Township.
The attack happened in the northern Lower Peninsula. Michigan has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 black bears, but 90 percent of them live across the Straits of Mackinac in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula.
Abby screamed, and her father and a neighbor scared the bear off. She underwent surgery at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City. She was released from the hospital Sunday and is recovering at home, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said.
Recall effort targets San Diego mayor
SAN DIEGO – A campaign to oust embattled San Diego Mayor Bob Filner began Sunday, as volunteers armed with clipboards and petitions fanned out to collect thousands of signatures needed to authorize a recall election.
More than a dozen women publicly have accused Filner, a Democrat, of making inappropriate statements or sexual advances. The 70-year-old former congressman has resisted numerous calls to resign.
He is set to return to work this week after undergoing behavior therapy.
Recall organizers say they have raised more than $100,000 so far and more than 1,100 people have signed up to volunteer.
NSA reporter’s partner detained in London
LONDON – The partner of a journalist who received leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was detained for nearly nine hours Sunday under anti-terror legislation at Heathrow Airport, triggering claims that authorities are trying to interfere with reporting on the issue.
David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, was held for nearly the maximum time authorities are allowed to detain people under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, which authorizes security agencies to stop and question people at borders. Greenwald said Miranda’s cellphone, laptops and memory sticks were confiscated.
“This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism,” Greenwald said in a post on the Guardian website. “It’s bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It’s worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic.”
Greenwald has written a series of stories about the NSA’s electronic surveillance programs based on files handed over by Snowden. The former contractor fled the United States and is now in Russia, where he has received temporary asylum.
After election, Mexico continues drug war
MEXICO CIT – With the capture of two top drug lords in little more than a month, the new government of President Enrique Peña Nieto is following an old strategy it openly criticized for causing more violence and crime.
Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, a top leader of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, was detained Saturday in a military operation near the Texas border, just weeks after the arrest of the leader of the brutal Zetas cartel near another border city, Nuevo Laredo.
Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong took his post in December saying the strategy of former President Felipe Calderon to take out cartel leaders only made drug gangs more dangerous and violent. The new administration would focus less on leaders and more on reducing violence, he said.
Yet the new strategy appears almost identical to the old. The captures of Ramirez and top Zeta Miguel Angel Trevino Morales could cause a new spike in violence with battles over leadership of Mexico’s two major cartels.
Associated Press
