Feds had arrested robbery suspect
PHOENIX – The Secret Service says a man suspected in bank robberies in Mississippi and Phoenix over the last week was arrested in 2010 after making online threats against the president.
Secret Service spokesman Max Millien said Sunday afternoon that Mario Edward Garnett was living in Oklahoma City at the time of the arrest. Millien would not say how the case was resolved.
Garnett was fatally shot by a detective just after leaving a Phoenix bank with a bag of money Saturday morning.
The FBI says Garnett is the same man accused in the shooting death of a Mississippi police officer and the wounding of another just after a bank robbery in Tupelo on Dec. 23.
Lawmakers dispute Snowden’s boasts
WASHINGTON – Members of Congress said Sunday they weren’t impressed with Edward Snowden’s recent publicity blitz calling for an end to mass surveillance and declaring that he’s already accomplished his mission.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California acknowledged that Snowden has kindled an important public debate, but he said the former National Security Agency leaker should have stayed in the United States to demonstrate the courage of his convictions.
Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Snowden’s release of classified documents jeopardized the safety of troops in Afghanistan and gave nations such as China and Russia valuable insight into how America’s intelligence services operate. “That’s who the messenger is,” Rogers said.
The two, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” were responding to Snowden’s recent comments from Russia in a 14-hour interview with The Washington Post that he was working to make the NSA better, not tear it down. Snowden also made remarks in a video provided to a television station in the United Kingdom.
2 hikers rescued after N.H. avalanche
MOUNT WASHINGTON, N.H. – Two hikers who triggered an avalanche on Mount Washington that carried them 800 feet over rocks, cliffs and ice were rescued early Sunday morning and treated for nonlife-threatening injuries, officials said.
The two were separated from a pair of fellow hikers, missed a turn on a trail because of low visibility and unknowingly entered an avalanche area known as “the Lip,” triggering the avalanche that carried them to the bottom of Tuckerman Ravine, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Colleen Mainville.
Mainville said the avalanche occurred at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, and the call for help came in just after 8 p.m.
The injured and disoriented hikers climbed about 200 feet before they were met by rescuers and they were able to hike down with assistance to shelters on the mountain, Mainville said. They were transported by a U.S. Forest Service snowcat to awaiting ambulances about 2 a.m. Sunday.
Nativity features Trayvon Martin instead of Jesus
CLAREMONT, Calif. – A Southern California church nativity scene is featuring a bloody Trayvon Martin in place of the infant Jesus in an effort to stir a community conversation about gun violence.
The nativity scene on the lawn of the Claremont United Methodist Church – which shows Martin in a hoodie, slumped over and bleeding – was created by 57-year-old congregant and artist John Zachary.
Zachary, who in the past has created installations addressing homelessness and poverty, said he wanted to make the Nativity relevant to modern times and generate a community conversation, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.
Zachary said he chose to focus on the Florida teenager whose shooting death captured the nation to draw a parallel to the dark times in which Jesus was born.
Cold homes heat power controversy in Michigan
Power outages stretched into a second week Sunday for thousands of Michigan residents, darkening the moods of power customers victimized by a pre-Christmas ice storm.
About 3,200 Lansing Board of Water and Light customers were among those who remained without power Sunday morning, hours after angry and frustrated residents rallied outside an East Lansing elementary school. Many also appeared at a utility news conference Saturday, shouting questions and demanding to learn how much longer they must live in cold, dark homes, on friends’ couches or in hotels.
The storm blasted across the northern United States and Canada just days before Christmas, at its peak leaving more than 500,000 without power in Michigan alone. Hundreds of thousands of people in the region spent the holiday without power. Several thousand people remain without power, mostly in Michigan and Maine.
Associated Press and USA TODAY
