Tag: Human welfare

FBI: Polygamous leader had 20 wives, many of them minors

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The leader of small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents show.

Samuel Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left to start his own small offshoot group. He was supported financially by male followers who also gave up their own wives and children to be Bateman’s wives, according to an FBI affidavit.

The document filed Friday provides new insight about what investigators have found in a case that first became public in August. It accompanied charges of kidnapping and impeding a foreseeable prosecution against three of Bateman’s wives — Naomi Bistline, Donnae Barlow and Moretta Rose Johnson.

Bistline and Barlow are scheduled to appear in federal magistrate court in Flagstaff on Wednesday. Johnson is awaiting extradition from Washington state.

The women are accused of fleeing with eight of Bateman’s children, who were placed in Arizona state custody earlier this year. The children were found last week hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Spokane, Washington.

Bateman was arrested in August when someone spotted small fingers in the gap of a trailer he was hauling through Flagstaff. He posted bond but was arrested again and charged with obstructing justice in a federal investigation into whether children were being transported across state lines for sexual activity.

Court records allege that Bateman, 46, engaged in child sex trafficking and polygamy, but none of his current charges relate to those allegations. Polygamy is illegal in Arizona but was decriminalized in Utah in 2020.

Arizona Department of Child Services spokesman Darren DaRonco and FBI spokesman Kevin Smith declined to comment on the case Tuesday. Bistline’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Barlow’s attorney declined to comment. Johnson didn’t have a publicly listed attorney.

The FBI affidavit filed in the women’s case largely centers on Bateman, who proclaimed himself a prophet in 2019. Bateman says he was told by former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs to invoke the “Spirit of God on these people.” The affidavit details explicit sexual acts that Bateman and his followers engaged in to fulfill “Godly duties.”

Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex abuse related to underage marriages.

Criminal defense attorney Michael Piccarreta, who represented Jeffs on Arizona charges that were dismissed, said the state has a history of trying to take a stand against polygamy by charging relatively minor offenses to build bigger cases.

“Whether this is the same tactic that has been used in the past or whether there’s more to the story, only time will tell,” he said.

The office of Bateman’s attorney in the federal case, Adam Zickerman, declined to comment Tuesday.

Bateman lived in Colorado City among a patchwork of devout members of the polygamous FLDS, ex-church members and those who don’t practice the beliefs. Polygamy is a legacy of the early teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the mainstream church abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.

Bateman often traveled to Nebraska where some of his other followers lived and internationally to Canada and Mexico for conferences.

When Bateman was arrested earlier this year, he instructed his followers to obtain passports and to delete messages sent through an encrypted system, authorities said.

He demanded that his followers confess publicly for any indiscretions, and shared those confessions widely, according to the FBI affidavit. He claimed the punishments, which ranged from a time out to public shaming and sexual activity, came from the Lord, the affidavit states.

The children identified by their initials in court documents have said little to authorities. The three children found in the trailer Bateman was hauling through Flagstaff — which had a makeshift toilet, a couch, camping chairs and no ventilation — told authorities they didn’t have any health or medical needs, a police report stated.

None of the girls placed in state custody in Arizona disclosed sexual abuse by Bateman during forensic interviews, though one said she was present during sexual activity, according to the FBI affidavit. But the girls often wrote in journals that were seized by the FBI. In them, several of the girls referenced intimate interactions with Bateman. Authorities believe the older girls influenced the younger ones not to talk about Bateman, the FBI said.

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Associated Press writer Sam Metz in Salt Lake City contributed to this story.

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December 7, 2022
FBI: Polygamous leader had 20 wives, many of them minors

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The leader of small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents show.

Samuel Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left to start his own small offshoot group. He was supported financially by male followers who also gave up their own wives and children to be Bateman’s wives, according to an FBI affidavit.

The document filed Friday provides new insight about what investigators have found in a case that first became public in August. It accompanied charges of kidnapping and impeding a foreseeable prosecution against three of Bateman’s wives — Naomi Bistline, Donnae Barlow and Moretta Rose Johnson.

Bistline and Barlow are scheduled to appear in federal magistrate court in Flagstaff on Wednesday. Johnson is awaiting extradition from Washington state.

The women are accused of fleeing with eight of Bateman’s children, who were placed in Arizona state custody earlier this year. The children were found last week hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Spokane, Washington.

Bateman was arrested in August when someone spotted small fingers in the gap of a trailer he was hauling through Flagstaff. He posted bond but was arrested again and charged with obstructing justice in a federal investigation into whether children were being transported across state lines for sexual activity.

Court records allege that Bateman, 46, engaged in child sex trafficking and polygamy, but none of his current charges relate to those allegations. Polygamy is illegal in Arizona but was decriminalized in Utah in 2020.

Arizona Department of Child Services spokesman Darren DaRonco and FBI spokesman Kevin Smith declined to comment on the case Tuesday. Bistline’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Barlow’s attorney declined to comment. Johnson didn’t have a publicly listed attorney.

The FBI affidavit filed in the women’s case largely centers on Bateman, who proclaimed himself a prophet in 2019. Bateman says he was told by former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs to invoke the “Spirit of God on these people.” The affidavit details explicit sexual acts that Bateman and his followers engaged in to fulfill “Godly duties.”

Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex abuse related to underage marriages.

Criminal defense attorney Michael Piccarreta, who represented Jeffs on Arizona charges that were dismissed, said the state has a history of trying to take a stand against polygamy by charging relatively minor offenses to build bigger cases.

“Whether this is the same tactic that has been used in the past or whether there’s more to the story, only time will tell,” he said.

The office of Bateman’s attorney in the federal case, Adam Zickerman, declined to comment Tuesday.

Bateman lived in Colorado City among a patchwork of devout members of the polygamous FLDS, ex-church members and those who don’t practice the beliefs. Polygamy is a legacy of the early teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the mainstream church abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.

Bateman often traveled to Nebraska where some of his other followers lived and internationally to Canada and Mexico for conferences.

When Bateman was arrested earlier this year, he instructed his followers to obtain passports and to delete messages sent through an encrypted system, authorities said.

He demanded that his followers confess publicly for any indiscretions, and shared those confessions widely, according to the FBI affidavit. He claimed the punishments, which ranged from a time out to public shaming and sexual activity, came from the Lord, the affidavit states.

The children identified by their initials in court documents have said little to authorities. The three children found in the trailer Bateman was hauling through Flagstaff — which had a makeshift toilet, a couch, camping chairs and no ventilation — told authorities they didn’t have any health or medical needs, a police report stated.

None of the girls placed in state custody in Arizona disclosed sexual abuse by Bateman during forensic interviews, though one said she was present during sexual activity, according to the FBI affidavit. But the girls often wrote in journals that were seized by the FBI. In them, several of the girls referenced intimate interactions with Bateman. Authorities believe the older girls influenced the younger ones not to talk about Bateman, the FBI said.

———

Associated Press writer Sam Metz in Salt Lake City contributed to this story.

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December 6, 2022
Will Smith’s ‘Emancipation’ role taught him lesson post-slap

LOS ANGELES — While filming “Emancipation,” Will Smith routinely drew inspiration from the words “sacred motivation” that were written on the front page of a script. But the Oscar winner heavily leaned on the phrase even more in recent months, as he tried to overcome the backlash to his Oscars slap and banishment from the ceremony.

“It’s like when you can locate and center yourself in your divine purpose, you can withstand anything and everything,” Smith said of the phrase that greeted him when he took on the lead role in Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation,” which is currently in theaters and will be available to stream Friday on Apple TV+. “Sacred motivation” became like a theme for him and his castmates, Smith said.

The film, completed months before Smith strode onto the Oscars stage and slapped presenter Chris Rock for a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, was a grueling shoot. Inspired by an iconic 1863 photo of the scarred back of “Whipped Peter,” Smith portrays the character Peter — a man who attempts to escape slavery while he uses his wits to dodge slave hunters and brave alligator-infested Louisiana swamps in his quest for freedom.

The photos of “Whipped Peter” were taken during a Union Army medical examination that first appeared in Harper’s Weekly. An image known as “The Scourged Back” showed countless mutilated whip marks on Peter’s bare back that were delivered by his enslavers. The photo contributed to the growing opposition to slavery.

Smith said his character taught him a lesson in overcoming adversity after he faced condemnation, memes and a 10-year Oscars attendance ban. The “slap” seemingly overshadowed his own biggest career milestone, which came later in the night: winning his first-ever Academy Award, best actor for “King Richard.”

The backlash rocked Smith, but Peter ultimately helped steer him back on track too.

“Peter has absolutely helped me through these last few months, just reestablishing within myself in what my purpose is in this world,” Smith said in a recent interview, one of his first since the Oscars. He has repeatedly apologized for his behavior after accepting his ban.

Normally, “Emancipation” might earn Smith some serious Oscars buzz. He’s still eligible for nominations and awards, but can’t personally accept them. Given backlash to “The Slap,” Smith mainly hopes that audiences will still watch Fuqua’s film.

“This movie was so grueling. Literally across the board, everybody had to devote a hefty amount of suffering to what you see on that screen,” Smith said. “So my greatest wish, and I guess I can talk about my greatest fear, is that my team would be penalized for my actions. I’m out with this film that I love and strictly want my people to get their flowers.”

Fuqua knows Smith made a mistake, but he hopes audiences can move past it. The director believes the story about Peter’s search for freedom, fighting to get back to his family and being a catalyst in highlighting the horrific side of slavery in “Emancipation” is much bigger than “The Slap.”

“Peter’s story is so inspiring, especially as a Black man. We go through a lot of things daily, just being Black,” said Fuqua, known for directing “Training Day,” “Equalizer” films and “The Magnificent Seven.” He said his new film tackles how certain elements of racism in America that still occur today.

“For me, it’s a mistake,” Fuqua said of Smith striking Rock on live television. “Hopefully everybody can get back on track and God bless everyone. But we’re talking about 400 years of brutality.”

Bingwa, who plays Peter’s wife Dodienne, credits Smith’s ability to endure the adversity while pushing forward through it.

“It’s in line with the film. I imagine it’s been a tough period,” said Bingwa, who hopes audiences can learn more about Peter’s determination to return home after making a promise. “I don’t want to speak on Will’s behalf, but he’s been an inspiration to so many for so long. I love seeing him with his head held high. Everyone can learn from his experience. I just love the way you took it on the chin, you’re wearing it and walking forward. We’re all human.”

While promoting the film, Smith held private screenings for several influential figures including Rihanna, Tyler Perry, Dave Chappelle, LeBron James and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates along with students at Morehouse College. He garnered a great amount of support from those individuals, giving him somewhat a sigh of relief.

Each time Smith harkened back to Peter’s story, the more he became empowered to share his character’s journey.

“I feel very comfortable in this current situation with this project, with these people,” he said. “I feel cleansed. I feel purified and transformed in many ways. And as one of the lessons from Peter is, ‘Suffering leads to salvation.’ So I am comfortable taking my medicine.”

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December 6, 2022
Minnesota board accepts anti-drug aid for minority students

FARIBAULT, Minn. — A southern Minnesota school district voted Monday to accept a $1.1 million state grant meant to help curb drug use among students of color, after a pair of board members had delayed accepting the money last month by arguing it could discriminate against white students.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that only one member of the seven-person Faribault school board voted against accepting the funding Monday, at a meeting that drew a crowd so large that district officials had to set up an overflow room.

Board Member Richard Olson, who also objected to the funding in November, argued that the grant “does not help all students.”

“This will pass. I know that. But it does not have my support,” he said.

Six members of the public urged the board to adopt the grant. Martha Brown, a substitute teacher, said: “This should be a no-brainer.”

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the board’s previous vote shook his faith in the district’s ability to serve students of color.

“I not only urge you to vote for it, but I’m also concerned as we move forward that you’re not keenly interested in making sure all of our students are successful,” he said.

In November, four of the board’s members had been deadlocked in a vote after Olson and another member argued that programs specifically for students of color were unfair to white students.

The district serves Faribault, a city of 24,000 people less than an hour’s drive south of Minneapolis. About 73% of the city is white, but it also has significant Latino and Black populations, including a Somali American community. More than 60% of the school district’s students are people of color.

The district applied for the grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services after a mother from the Somali community approached the school board last summer with concerns about drug use among youth in her community. The funding is meant to address drug use among Black, Indigenous and other students of color.

The department said in a statement that its data, as well as conversations with community members, show Black, Indigenous and other communities of color require dedicated efforts to address disparities in access to treatment for addiction.

In the past, funding measures for stopping drug abuse among students have been accepted without objections. But that wasn’t the case on Nov. 21.

“Would we ever go after a grant that only targeted whites with hopes that it would trickle down to our BIPOC community? Would we do the opposite? And I don’t think we would,” Board Member LeeAnn Lechtenberg said at the November meeting. Lechtenberg said she had reconsidered her objections after receiving assurances from community groups that no student struggling with substance abuse would be excluded from services.

Before Monday’s vote, Superintendent Jamie Bente urged board members to accept the grant.

“I will go for any grant that helps any student. And if it leaves out a certain group, then we will look for money to help that group as well,” he said.

The funding would allow the district to hire a project coordinator, media consultant and youth coordinator, as well as pay six local organizations to survey the community on the best way to prevent drug use.

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December 5, 2022
Report blasts Virginia schools’ handling of sex assaults

LEESBURG, Va. — A special grand jury convened at the direction of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has issued a scathing report against a northern Virginia school system accusing it of mishandling a student who sexually assaulted classmates at two different high schools last year.

The grand jury report accuses the Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent of lying to the public to cover up what occurred, and authorities of ignoring multiple warning signs that could have prevented an assault.

“It is our considered judgment that (the second assault) never should have occurred,” the grand jury states in the report. “Had any one of a number of individuals across a variety of entities spoke up … then the sexual assault most likely would not have occurred. But nobody did.”

Youngkin issued an executive order on his first day in office in January requesting an investigation of the school system’s conduct in connection with the assaults. The school system sought to quash the investigation, calling it politically motivated. But the Virginia Supreme Court ruled earlier this year it could move forward.

The school system’s conduct became a major issue in the 2021 gubernatorial campaign, as Youngkin cited Loudoun schools as an example of administrators who placed social justice initiatives above student safety and educational fundamentals.

The assaults received outsize attention because the student who was convicted in both attacks is a biological male who wore a skirt in one of the attacks, playing into a national debate over how schools should treat transgender students and whether they should be allowed to use restrooms different than their biological sex.

The report also accuses school administrators and lawyers of stonewalling the special grand jury’s investigation. The report notes that school board members went out of their way in testimony to describe the assailant’s attire as a kilt rather than a skirt, something the report suggests was a coordinated effort by the school system’s legal team to push a coordinated narrative about what occurred.

A school system spokesman said the district would issue a statement responding to the report later Monday.

The first assault occurred in a girls’ bathroom stall at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021. The student was charged in juvenile court and barred by court order from returning to Stone Bridge. Administrators then transferred him to nearby Broad Run High School, where the second assault occurred in October 2021.

The grand jury report accuses the school system superintendent, Scott Ziegler, of lying about the assault at a school board meeting in June 2021, after the first assault occurred.

As the school board debated policies governing transgender students and whether they can use the restroom of their preference, a school board member asked Ziegler if the schools had a problem with sexual assaults occurring in bathrooms.

Ziegler responded that “to my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults in our restrooms.” But emails show that Ziegler had been informed of the Stone Bridge assault and in fact had sent an email to board members informing them of the incident.

The report says teachers at both schools warned administrators of the student’s disturbing conduct weeks before each assault occurred. Even the student’s grandmother spoke up and warned the student’s probation officer, referring to her grandchild as a “sociopath,” according to the report.

Two weeks before the first assault, a teaching assistant wrote an email to another teacher and administrator noting that the boy sat on girls’ laps during study hall “and seems to have a problem with listening and keeping his hands to himself.”

The email resulted in a call to the student’s mother, but the grand jury report shows administrators seemed as concerned with whether the teaching assistant followed proper protocol in reporting her concerns as they were about the student’s conduct.

And the report faults administrators for passing the student off to Broad Run with insufficient communication about the risk he posed. At Broad Run, an art teacher reported to the principal that girls in the class were uncomfortable because the student was following them. Separately, he asked multiple students about posting nude photos online, according to the report.

The only punishment was an admonishment and requiring him to “write on a piece of paper that he would not commit such conduct again,” according to the report.

Attorney General Jason Miyares, whose office conducted the investigation, thanked grand jurors and said he looks “forward to the positive change in LCPS resulting from their work.”

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December 5, 2022
Girl killed, another badly injured in Germany knife attack

BERLIN — German police said a 14-year-old girl died and a 13-year-old girl was seriously injured after they were attacked by a man with a knife on their way to school Monday.

Police in the southwestern city of Ulm said first responders resuscitated the older girl before she was rushed to a hospital following the attack at about 7:30 a.m. in the nearby town of Illerkirchberg.

“Despite all efforts by the doctors she died there,” police said in a statement. The younger girl remains in the hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries, they said. Both victims had German citizenship.

A 27-year-old man was arrested by officers inside a refugee shelter near the scene of the attack. The man, who was found with injuries and a knife, is of Eritrean origin, police said. Two other men also were detained.

Investigators were trying to determine a motive for the attack and whether the suspect and the girls knew each other before it happened.

Germany’s top security official expressed shock at the attack.

“I grieve with the girl who was killed and hope fervently that the injured recovers her health,” Interior Minister Nanct Faeser said on Twitter. “My thoughts are with their families at this time.”

In their statement, police urged people to refrain from stoking suspicion against refugees, asylum-seekers and other foreigners.

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December 5, 2022
Authorities: Migrant paraglided over Melilla border to Spain

Spanish authorities are looking for a person who paraglided over a border fence from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Melilla in what appeared to be a new and creative way to migrate irregularly to European territory.

Two citizens reported seeing the paraglider Thursday afternoon, according to Eder Barandiaran, a press officer for Spain‘s government delegation in Melilla, one of two Spanish territories in North Africa.

The flyer ran off after landing, leading authorities to suspect the individual was a migrant trying to reach Europe. The person’s identity and nationality remain unknown, but images of the paraglider circulated on social media Thursday.

The Melilla border has been at the center of a scandal after 23 people died there in June during an attempt by hundreds of migrants and refugees to force their way in, resulting in a stampede. Moroccan police launched tear gas and beat men with batons, even when some were prone on the ground.

Spanish authorities have also been accused of unlawfully pushing back some migrants to Morocco, allegedly violating their right to seek asylum.

Several media investigations based on videos and photos of the June incident found that some of the deaths may have taken place on Spanish soil, which Spain’s interior minister has repeatedly denied.

Of the more than 29,000 migrants who crossed into Spain by land or sea without authorization so far this year, some 1,300 did so through Melilla, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.

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Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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December 2, 2022
Judge to decide on Florida face-biter insanity plea

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former college student who randomly killed a Florida couple in their garage six years ago and then chewed on one victim’s face finally goes on trial Monday, with a judge deciding whether he goes to prison for life or to a mental hospital.

Austin Harrouff, 25, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first-degree murder and other charges for his August 2016 slayings of John Stevens, a 59-year-old landscaper, and his 53-year-old wife, Michelle Mishcon Stevens, who had retired after working in finance.

The former Florida State University student has waived a jury trial, meaning Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer will decide whether Harrouff was insane when he killed the couple, and seriously injured the neighbor who came to their aid.

The trial has been delayed by the pandemic, legal wranglings and Harrouff’s recovery from critical injuries suffered while drinking a chemical during the attack. It will be in Stuart, an hour drive north of West Palm Beach, and last about three weeks.

Prosecutor Brandon White did not respond to a call and email seeking comment. Harrouff’s lead attorney, Robert Watson, declined comment.

Under Florida law, defendants are presumed sane. For Harrouff’s defense to succeed, Watson must show that he had a severe mental breakdown that prevented him from understanding his actions or that they were wrong by “clear and convincing evidence.” Harrouff has said he was fleeing a demon when he attacked the couple.

If convicted, Harrouff will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; prosecutors waived the death penalty.

If Harrouff is ruled insane, Bauer will commit him to a secure mental hospital until doctors and a judge agree that he is no longer dangerous. That would also effectively be a life sentence, said Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor, because “it’s highly unlikely” that doctors and a judge would risk releasing a killer as notorious as Harrouff.

Two mental health experts, one hired by prosecutors and one by the defense, examined Harrouff and found that he suffered an acute psychotic episode during the attack. They also found that he couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong.

Prosecutors then hired a second expert who said Harrouff was sane, but recently withdrew him saying he has serious health issues. They now have a third expert who believes Harrouff was on a drug that didn’t appear in post-arrest tests, but has not examined him.

Lea Johnston, a University of Florida law professor, said that only about 1% of felony defendants try an insanity defense because the bar to succeed is so high. About a quarter of those succeed, usually in a pretrial deal where prosecutors agree that the defendant’s mental illness meets the standard.

She said for insanity defenses that reach trial, defendants who waive a jury have the most success. Judges understand the system, she said, while jurors often worry that defendants acquitted by reason of insanity will be released sooner. They also may question whether treatment at a mental hospital works.

“There is decades of research showing that (the public) is biased against the insanity defense and it is widely misunderstood,” she said.

Harrouff’s attack made national headlines because of its brutality and randomness; he did not know the victims. He was a 19-year-old with no criminal record — a former high school football player and wrestler who was studying exercise science. He stripped nearly naked and attacked the couple in their open garage with tools that he found there. When police arrived, Harrouff was biting chunks off John Stevens’ face.

It took took several officers, an electric stun gun and a police dog to subdue Harrouff. Officers didn’t shoot him because they feared hitting Stevens.

Harrouff nearly died from chemicals he drank in the garage, which burned his digestive system.

Investigators found he purchased some hallucinogenic mushrooms a few days before the attack, but friends said he destroyed them and no trace was found in his blood. He also did Google searches for “how to know if you are going crazy.”

Harrouff’s parents, who are divorced, and others said he had acted strangely for weeks. His parents had set up an appointment for him to be evaluated, but the attack occurred first.

His father, Wade Harrouff, told TV psychologist Phil McGraw that on the night of the slayings his son left a restaurant where they had been eating without explanation. He walked two miles (three kilometers) to his mother’s house and tried to drink cooking oil. Mina Harrouff stopped him, but he poured the oil into a bowl with Parmesan cheese and ate it.

She brought him back to the restaurant. Wade Harrouff, a dentist, told McGraw he grabbed his son and said, “What is wrong with you?” He said his son raised his fist, but Wade Harrouff’s girlfriend told him to stop and he left.

The restaurant’s security video shows Austin Harrouff calmly exiting about 45 minutes before the attack. His mother, before knowing of the attack, called 911 and told the dispatcher her son seemed delusional, claiming to have superpowers and that demons were in her house.

But it was too late — Harrouff walked or ran the four miles (six kilometers) to the Stevens’ home.

Austin Harrouff told McGraw he was escaping a demon he called Daniel and only has vague recollections of the slayings.

He said he encountered Michelle Stevens in the couple’s garage. She screamed, and “then it’s a blur.”

“I don’t remember what she said — I just remember being yelled at,” Harrouff said. He said he grabbed a machete, but doesn’t remember why he killed her and her husband.

“It’s like it happened, but I wasn’t aware of it,” Harrouff said.

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November 27, 2022
Mexican asylum seekers set their sights north — on Canada

MONTREAL — Pedro Meraz says living in Colima, Mexico, was like living in a war zone, with shootings, burning cars and dismembered bodies being left outside of schools.

When his wife Rocio Gonzalez, a 28-year-old lawyer who worked with abused women, began receiving death threats from a cartel and the local authorities ignored her pleas for assistance, they knew they had to leave.

“They knew where we lived and what car we drove,” said Meraz, 41, who taught at The University of Colima, near the Pacific Coast and about 300 miles (485 kilometers) west of Mexico City. “Feeling that you are going to lose your life, or one of your daughters, I don’t mind starting from scratch.”

The family is part of a surge in the number of Mexicans who have requested asylum in Canada this year. Due to the relative ease of obtaining asylum in Canada compared to the U.S., visa-free travel between Mexico and Canada, and the threat of violence back home, more than 8,000 Mexican nationals have sought refugee status in 2022. That’s almost five times as many as last year and more than twice as many as in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions that accompanied it.

The vast majority of them are flying in to Montreal, which has many direct flights to and from Mexico.

Among them is Viviana Tapia Gonzalez, a human rights activist and mother of four from Aguascalientes, about 265 miles (425 kilometers) northwest of Mexico City, who said she left Mexico in January after being attacked by the military. She said her work with the families of missing and murdered women and girls made her a target.

“Death threats were constant,” she said. “I thought it was the last option I had to be safe. I work for many causes and help many people. I did not want to stop helping, but I must also protect (and) take care of myself.”

Tapia Gonzalez has been living in a Montreal women’s shelter while awaiting a decision on her asylum claim, which she fears might get rejected.

If her claim is turned down, she wouldn’t be alone.

In the first nine months of 2022, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, an independent tribunal that investigates and decides asylum cases, finalized more than 2,700 claims by Mexican asylum seekers. Of those, 1,032 were accepted, 1,256 were rejected; and the remaining 400-plus were either abandoned, withdrawn, or had other outcomes, said Christian Tessier, an IRB spokesperson.

In Canada, claimants must meet the United Nations’ definition of a “convention refugee,” meaning they are outside of their home countries and have a well-founded fear that they would be persecuted if they returned based on their race, religion, political opinions, nationality or affiliation with a social group. Otherwise, they must prove that they need protection and can’t safely return to their home countries without risking torture, cruel or unusual punishment, or death.

Despite the risk of rejection, though, the surge in Mexicans seeking refugee status in Canada persists.

The Welcome Collective, a Montreal-based charitable organization that provides essential goods to new asylum seekers, said half of the group’s current clients came from Mexico — a 300% increase compared with earlier this year.

“They had to run away because of violence and other humanitarian reasons. To find a better place for their children,” said Flavia Leiva, the group’s volunteer and social outreach coordinator.

As for what is causing the increase in applicants, Leiva suggested that social media is playing a role.

“There have been YouTubers and some videos on TikTok talking about how easy it is to come to Canada,” she said.

At least one YouTube video that was published 10 months ago and made for a Mexican audience explains the Canadian immigration process in Spanish and has more than 4 million views.

It has been harder for Mexicans to seek asylum in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. A U.S. public health rule that suspends the right to seek asylum on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately hard on Mexicans. Title 42 authority has been used to expel migrants more than 2.4 million times since it was introduced in March 2020.

Further adding to Canada’s allure is that Mexicans haven’t needed a visa to travel to the country since the Canadian government lifted the requirement in late 2016.

Leiva also suggested that more Mexicans might be choosing to come to Canada instead of the United States because they think it’s safer.

“In the U.S., they are put in cages, the conditions are not as good,” Leiva said. “People do not feel safe or protected.”

Meraz said he and his family decided that Canada would offer them the best chance to start over.

“My wife investigated the existence of international treaties to protect people who are at risk,” he said.

He referenced Canadian policies and regulations protecting women and children in addition to the country’s comparatively low crime rate.

“The U.S. was never in our minds, since there is a lot of violence … attacks where many innocent people die,” said Meraz. “Canada, statistically, has a very low rate of violence and its quality of life is much better than the USA.”

He said his family chose Montreal instead of some other Canadian city because of logistics, though he’s having second thoughts.

“If you were to ask me right now if I would choose another place, then maybe,” said Meraz, noting that he and his family must now learn French.

Hayet Mohammed, who manages the French language program at Carrefour Solidarité Anjou, a nonprofit that helps newcomers settle in Quebec, said not only is obtaining refugee status easier in Canada, but there are plenty of resources for asylum seekers once they arrive.

“They can work as soon as they have their refugee status and are entitled to (French) courses given by the (Ministry of Immigration in Quebec) which gives them financial assistance and finally, there are many work opportunities, and they are not at risk of finding themselves unemployed,” said Mohammed.

“Being a newcomer myself with my little family, there is no other country that gives immigrants so many facilities in terms of training, work and child benefits. All these things make people leave their countries of origin and come to make their lives here, thousands of miles away from their families,” she said.

———

Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

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November 27, 2022
Judge to decide on Florida face-biter insanity plea

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former college student who randomly killed a Florida couple in their garage six years ago and then chewed on one victim’s face finally goes on trial Monday, with a judge deciding whether he goes to prison for life or to a mental hospital.

Austin Harrouff, 25, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first-degree murder and other charges for his August 2016 slayings of John Stevens, a 59-year-old landscaper, and his 53-year-old wife, Michelle Mishcon Stevens, who had retired after working in finance.

The former Florida State University student has waived a jury trial, meaning Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer will decide whether Harrouff was insane when he killed the couple, and seriously injured the neighbor who came to their aid.

The trial has been delayed by the pandemic, legal wranglings and Harrouff’s recovery from critical injuries suffered while drinking a chemical during the attack. It will be in Stuart, an hour drive north of West Palm Beach, and last about three weeks.

Prosecutor Brandon White did not respond to a call and email seeking comment. Harrouff’s lead attorney, Robert Watson, declined comment.

Under Florida law, defendants are presumed sane. For Harrouff’s defense to succeed, Watson must show that he had a severe mental breakdown that prevented him from understanding his actions or that they were wrong by “clear and convincing evidence.” Harrouff has said he was fleeing a demon when he attacked the couple.

If convicted, Harrouff will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; prosecutors waived the death penalty.

If Harrouff is ruled insane, Bauer will commit him to a secure mental hospital until doctors and a judge agree that he is no longer dangerous. That would also effectively be a life sentence, said Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor, because “it’s highly unlikely” that doctors and a judge would risk releasing a killer as notorious as Harrouff.

Two mental health experts, one hired by prosecutors and one by the defense, examined Harrouff and found that he suffered an acute psychotic episode during the attack. They also found that he couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong.

Prosecutors then hired a second expert who said Harrouff was sane, but recently withdrew him saying he has serious health issues. They now have a third expert who believes Harrouff was on a drug that didn’t appear in post-arrest tests, but has not examined him.

Lea Johnston, a University of Florida law professor, said that only about 1% of felony defendants try an insanity defense because the bar to succeed is so high. About a quarter of those succeed, usually in a pretrial deal where prosecutors agree that the defendant’s mental illness meets the standard.

She said for insanity defenses that reach trial, defendants who waive a jury have the most success. Judges understand the system, she said, while jurors often worry that defendants acquitted by reason of insanity will be released sooner. They also may question whether treatment at a mental hospital works.

“There is decades of research showing that (the public) is biased against the insanity defense and it is widely misunderstood,” she said.

Harrouff’s attack made national headlines because of its brutality and randomness; he did not know the victims. He was a 19-year-old with no criminal record — a former high school football player and wrestler who was studying exercise science. He stripped nearly naked and attacked the couple in their open garage with tools that he found there. When police arrived, Harrouff was biting chunks off John Stevens’ face.

It took took several officers, an electric stun gun and a police dog to subdue Harrouff. Officers didn’t shoot him because they feared hitting Stevens.

Harrouff nearly died from chemicals he drank in the garage, which burned his digestive system.

Investigators found he purchased some hallucinogenic mushrooms a few days before the attack, but friends said he destroyed them and no trace was found in his blood. He also did Google searches for “how to know if you are going crazy.”

Harrouff’s parents, who are divorced, and others said he had acted strangely for weeks. His parents had set up an appointment for him to be evaluated, but the attack occurred first.

His father, Wade Harrouff, told TV psychologist Phil McGraw that on the night of the slayings his son left a restaurant where they had been eating without explanation. He walked two miles (three kilometers) to his mother’s house and tried to drink cooking oil. Mina Harrouff stopped him, but he poured the oil into a bowl with Parmesan cheese and ate it.

She brought him back to the restaurant. Wade Harrouff, a dentist, told McGraw he grabbed his son and said, “What is wrong with you?” He said his son raised his fist, but Wade Harrouff’s girlfriend told him to stop and he left.

The restaurant’s security video shows Austin Harrouff calmly exiting about 45 minutes before the attack. His mother, before knowing of the attack, called 911 and told the dispatcher her son seemed delusional, claiming to have superpowers and that demons were in her house.

But it was too late — Harrouff walked or ran the four miles (six kilometers) to the Stevens’ home.

Austin Harrouff told McGraw he was escaping a demon he called Daniel and only has vague recollections of the slayings.

He said he encountered Michelle Stevens in the couple’s garage. She screamed, and “then it’s a blur.”

“I don’t remember what she said — I just remember being yelled at,” Harrouff said. He said he grabbed a machete, but doesn’t remember why he killed her and her husband.

“It’s like it happened, but I wasn’t aware of it,” Harrouff said.

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November 26, 2022
Armed guards a fixture outside pot farm before 4 were slain

Armed guards were a fixture outside the marijuana growing operation in rural Oklahoma where four people were slain execution-style.

The mail carrier “was met with guns pretty much all the time,” Jack Quirk, the owner of the local paper, All About Hennessey, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Why are there guards anyway? You know, if it’s a legit farm, what’s the deal?”

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation announced Tuesday that the suspect in the weekend killings, Wu Chen, was taken into custody by Miami Beach police and brought to the Miami-Dade County Detention Center.

He was arrested “after a car tag reader flagged (the) vehicle he was driving,” the bureau said. The suspect will be charged with murder and shooting with intent to kill and faces extradition to Oklahoma. No attorney has been assigned to him yet.

Authorities said the victims — three men and one woman, all Chinese citizens — were shot dead, “executed” on the 10-acre (4-hectare) property west of Hennessey, a town about 55 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City. A fifth victim who is also a Chinese citizen was wounded and taken to an Oklahoma City hospital.

The survivor had been shot twice, said Quirk, who showed up when crews were setting up a landing zone for a medical helicopter and watched them load up the man.

The victims had not yet been identified publicly, and officials were still working to notify next of kin, police said.

“The suspect was inside that building for a significant amount of time before the executions began,” OSBI said in a news release earlier Tuesday. “Based on the investigation thus far, this does not appear to be a random incident.”

Oklahoma voters legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and the industry quickly boomed thanks to an open-ended law that put in place fewer restrictions than in other states.

In March, voters will decide whether to legalize recreational use of the drug.

Maryland and Missouri approved recreational marijuana in this month’s midterm elections, bringing the total number states that allow recreational use to 21. Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota voters rejected legalization proposals in the midterms.

Quirk said he’s heard from residents who think the marijuana farms in Oklahoma are poorly regulated.

“They weren’t prepared for what comes along with this stuff,” he said. “This particular facility is a great example of that … they were doing questionable things that the neighbors feel weren’t checked on.”

He said the majority of the workers spoke no English and he never saw them off of the property. That has led locals to raise concerns about the working conditions, Quirk said.

Porsha Riley, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, said there is an active license for a medical marijuana grow business at the location.

The operation was put up for sale earlier this year for just under $1 million. The listing described it as having several thousand square feet of indoor grow space, as well as two separate living quarters.

Tami Amsler-ZumMallen, the listing agent for the property, said the listing had expired. She said the brokers had told her not to comment.

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control has targeted criminal growing and trafficking of marijuana for the black market in recent years. But agency spokesman Mark Woodward said Tuesday it was too soon to say that was a focus of this investigation.

None of the 14 marijuana growing operations in the Hennessey area responded to email inquiries from The Associated Press, and officials would not identify which one operated at the site of the shootings.

The deaths at the marijuana farm were the third mass killing in Oklahoma in a little over a month. On Oct. 27, six children were killed in a suspected murder-suicide in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow, and on Oct. 14, the bodies of four men who’d gone missing were found dismembered in an Oklahoma river.

According to a database run by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, the United States has now had 40 mass killings so far this year. In just the past week, six were killed in the break room of a Walmart store in Virginia and five were slain at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub. The database defines a mass killing as at least four people killed, not including the killer.

———

Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press writers Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas and Peter Orsi in Denver contributed.

———

Follow AP’s coverage of marijuana: https://apnews.com/hub/marijuana

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November 23, 2022
Dominican sugar imports tied to forced labor rejected by US

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it will detain all imports of sugar and related products made in the Dominican Republic by Central Romana Corporation, Ltd. amid allegations that it uses forced labor.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigation found that the company allegedly isolated workers, withheld wages, fostered abusive working and living conditions and pushed for excessive overtime, the agency said in a news release.

“Manufacturers like Central Romana, who fail to abide by our laws, will face consequences as we root out these inhumane practices from U.S. supply chains,” said AnnMarie Highsmith with the CBP’s Office of Trade.

A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately return a text message seeking comment. La Central Romana, which has long faced those types of accusations, is the Dominican Republic’s largest sugar producer.

The announcement was cheered by activists who have long decried the treatment of tens of thousands of workers who live and work on sprawling sugarcane fields, many of them Haitian migrants or descendants of them.

“This is needed to improve their situation,” Roudy Joseph, a labor rights activist in the Dominican Republic, said in a phone interview. “We’ve been asking for improvements for decades.”

The Associated Press last year visited several sugarcane fields owned by Central Romana where workers complained about a lack of wages, being forced to live in cramped housing that lacked water and restrictive rules including not being allowed to grow a garden to feed their families since transportation to the nearest grocery store miles away was too costly.

Joseph noted that at least 6,000 workers also are demanding pensions they never obtained despite paying their dues.

Sugarcane workers also have organized several protests this year to demand permanent residencies after working for decades in the Dominican Republic as the country cracks down on Haitian migrants under the administration of President Luis Abinader in a move that has drawn heavy international criticism.

Central Romana produced nearly 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of sugar in the harvest period that ended last year after grinding more than 3.4 million tons (3 million metric tons) of cane, according to the company.

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November 23, 2022
Jury: NCAA not to blame in ex-USC football player’s death

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday rejected a claim by the widow of a former USC player who said the NCAA failed to protect him from repeated head trauma that led to his death.

Matthew Gee, a linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad, endured an estimated 6,000 hits that caused permanent brain damage and led to cocaine and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him at age 49, lawyers for his widow alleged.

The NCAA said it had nothing to do with Gee’s death, which it said was a sudden cardiac arrest brought on by untreated hypertension and acute cocaine toxicity. A lawyer for the governing body of U.S. college sports said Gee suffered from many other health problems not related to , such as liver cirrhosis, that would have eventually killed him.

The verdict could have broad ramifications for college athletes who blame the NCAA for head injuries.

Hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits have been brought by college players against the NCAA in the past decade, but Gee’s is the first one to reach a jury alleging that hits to the head led to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease known by its acronym, CTE.

Alana Gee said the college sweethearts had 20 good years of marriage before her husband’s mental health began to deteriorate and he became angry, depressed and impulsive, and began overeating and abusing drugs and alcohol.

Attorneys for Gee said CTE, which is found in athletes and military veterans who suffered repetitive brain injuries, was an indirect cause of death because head trauma has been shown to promote substance abuse.

The NCAA said the case hinged on what it knew at the time Gee played, from 1988-92, and not about CTE, which was first discovered in the brain of a deceased NFL player in 2005.

Gee never reported having a concussion and said in an application to play with the Raiders after graduating that he had never been knocked unconscious, NCAA attorney Will Stute said.

“You can’t hold the NCAA responsible for something 40 years later that nobody ever reported,” Stute said in his closing argument. “The plaintiffs want you in a time travel machine. We don’t have one … at the NCAA. It’s not fair.”

Attorneys for Gee’s family said there was no doubt that Matt Gee suffered concussions and countless sub-concussive blows.

Mike Salmon, a teammate who went on to play in the NFL, testified that Gee, who was team captain his senior year, once was so dazed from a hit that he couldn’t call the next play.

Gee was one of five linebackers on the 1989 Trojans squad who died before turning 50. All displayed signs of mental deterioration associated with head trauma.

As with teammate and NFL star Junior Seau, who killed himself in 2012, Gee’s brain was examined posthumously at Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center and found to have CTE.

Jurors were not allowed to hear testimony about Gee’s deceased teammates.

Gee’s lawyers said the NCAA, which was founded in 1906 for athlete safety, had known about impacts from head injuries since the 1930s but failed to educate players, ban headfirst contact, or implement baseline testing for concussion symptoms.

Attorneys had asked jurors to award Alana Gee $55 million to compensate for her loss.

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November 22, 2022
Wave of sex abuse lawsuits seen as NY opens door for victims

ALBANY, N.Y. — Sexual assault victims in New York will get a one-time opportunity to sue over their abuse starting Thursday, under a new law expected to bring a wave of allegations against prison guards, middle managers, doctors and a few prominent figures including former President Donald Trump.

For one year the state will waive the normal deadlines for filing lawsuits over sex crimes, enabling survivors to seek compensation for assaults that happened years or even decades ago.

Advocates say the Adult Survivors Act is an important step in the national reckoning over sexual misconduct and could provide a measure of justice to people who may have needed time to come forward due to trauma, embarrassment or fear of retaliation.

“I feel like I’ve been in jail for almost three decades,” said Liz Stein, 49, who says she was abused by the millionaire and notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when she was a young woman. “And it’s more than time for me and the other victims to be free of that prison that we’ve been in, and for the people who are accountable to be held accountable.”

The law is modeled after the state’s Child Victims Act, which opened a two-year window in 2019 during which almost 11,000 people sued churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions over abuse they said they suffered as children.

Most states that have opened such windows did so only for people abused as children, though New Jersey’s included adults.

New York will begin accepting electronic filings on Thanksgiving Day, six months after the law was signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Lawyers say they have been getting calls from people considering lawsuits, mostly women.

“I think there will be a lot of women who will say, ‘I think that’s me. Because I think what happened at that Christmas party in 1998 wasn’t right. And I couldn’t tell anybody about it at the time.’ And they want to tell somebody about it,” attorney Jeanne Christensen said.

Legal action has already been promised on behalf of hundreds of women who say they were sexually abused while serving sentences at state prisons.

Other cases could come from college students assaulted by professors, athletes abused by coaches or workers assaulted by bosses.

A lawsuit against Trump is expected from E. Jean Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine who says he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Trump denies the allegation, saying Carroll made it up to sell a book. Carroll is already suing Trump for defamation, saying his denials and disparaging comments to the media damaged her reputation.

Claims can be made against negligent institutions and the estates of dead people. Some are expected from women who were inspired to come forward by the #MeToo movement, only to be told that too much time had passed to take legal action.

It’s unclear there will be as many lawsuits as were filed under the Child Victims Act. That law attracted many lawyers because of the possibility of verdicts against deep-pocketed institutions involved in caring for or educating children.

Stein’s lawsuit, to be filed by her lawyer, Margaret Mabie, will be against Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, and other parties. Stein was working at a shop in Manhattan in 1994 when she met Maxwell, who introduced her to Epstein.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls. Maxwell’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019 after his arrest on sex trafficking charges.

In addition to the high-profile claims, there will be “many, many more” cases that don’t get publicity, said Liz Roberts, CEO of the victim assistance nonprofit Safe Horizon. Roberts said that for many survivors, just telling their story can be healing.

“I’m just finding my voice, and I’m learning how powerful that can be,” said Laurie Maldonado, one of scores of women who say they were molested during examinations by New York City gynecologist Robert Hadden.

Hadden surrendered his medical license after being convicted in 2016 on sex-related charges in state court. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of sexually abusing many young and unsuspecting female patients for over two decades.

The medical institutions that employed Hadden, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian, have already resolved claims by 225 women, including one group of 147 that recently settled for $165 million. They said in a statement that they remain open to settling other claims “irrespective of the Adult Survivors Act.”

While the Child Victims Act received a lot of publicity when its window opened in 2019, some advocates are worried too few people are aware of the one opening for adults.

Safe Horizon last week launched a public awareness campaign featuring survivors, including a public service announcement and a news conference in Times Square.

“We’re just keenly aware that a year is a short time,” Roberts said.

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November 21, 2022
Ohio’s Intel project triggers housing fears in tight market

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Intel’s announcement earlier this year of a $20 billion manufacturing operation bringing thousands of jobs to rural Ohio was greeted as an economic boon.

But behind that enthusiasm lurked a pressing question.

“Where are we putting everybody?” asked Melissa Humbert-Washington, vice president of programs and services at Homes for Families, which helps low-wage workers find housing in a region already suffering a major shortage.

Intel says its initial two computer chip factories will employ 3,000 people when the operation is up and running in 2025. The project is also expected to employ 7,000 construction workers. And none of that includes the hundreds of additional jobs as Intel suppliers move in, along with the expected boom in the service sector.

Such housing challenges are playing out across the country as companies increasingly come under fire for failing to consider the shelter needs of their new employees or the impact big developments will have on already tight housing markets.

Experts agree that years of underbuilding dating to the Great Recession of 2008 has caused widespread housing shortages. Nationally, the country is short about 1 million homes, according to Rob Dietz, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders. The National Apartment Association estimates a rental shortage of about 600,000 units.

“We have underbuilt housing by millions of homes over the past 15 years,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy. “So when a big company comes into a community that is supply constrained, the demand that they’re going to inject … is going to affect home prices and rental prices because there’s more demand than supply.”

For a big company’s impact on housing, look no farther than Intel’s own operations in Chandler, Arizona, which grew from a small agricultural city of about 30,000 in 1980 when the company built its first factory to a high-tech metropolis of 220,000 today. That was accompanied by tremendous housing growth, and today Chandler is running out of developable land, with nearly 95% of the area built out with residential, office, industrial and retail projects, according to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

Housing is also more expensive in Chandler, with a median home sale price of $525,000 compared to $455,000 in greater Phoenix, and median rents of $2,027 compared to $1,950 in Phoenix.

The challenge for areas like rural Ohio is that they don’t have local employees to build or staff a large project, said Mark Stapp, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University. There’s neither the housing nor the infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of new arrivals, increasing housing prices and possibly forcing existing residents out.

“It’s economic development. It’s going to employ people. But you are probably going to have to bring a lot of people into the area,” he said. And “those jobs require housing.”

“If you don’t recognize that and don’t properly plan infrastructure, land use policies and manage that growth, it can be a big problem. The great opportunity turns into a big problem.”

In central Ohio, the Intel site is rising on hundreds of acres of rural land once occupied by farm fields and modest homes where large business parks have also sprung up near major thoroughfares. The region has averaged about 8,200 building permits per year for both single-family and multi-unit buildings, even as job and population growth estimates predating the Intel project called for more than twice that, according to the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio.

“We’re not building enough of anything,” said the group’s executive director Jon Melchi. Central Ohio, with about 2.4 million residents today, will grow to at least 3 million by 2050, the group said.

The central Ohio shortage includes the “missing middle” of workforce housing, or homes up to $250,000, said Tre’ Giller, CEO and president of Metro Development, one of Ohio’s largest apartment developers. A recent Zillow search showed only about 570 listings for homes $250,000 or less in the area.

The housing pressure is especially intense for low-wage workers. Central Ohio already has about 71,000 households considered “severely rent burdened” — families spending more than half their income on housing, said the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio. The region has only 34 affordable units available for every 100 low-rent households, it said.

The problem is even more severe in Licking County, home to the future Intel plants, where more than one in five renters are considered severely rent burdened.

Affordable housing is crucial for the low-wage workers who keep the economy running, from pre-school teachers to medical assistants, said COHIO executive director Amy Riegel. But housing also has to be viewed on a spectrum: Without enough higher-end properties to purchase, buyers will snap up rentals, which then shuts out workers of limited means.

“Housing is definitely an ecosystem,” Riegel said. “If you add housing at one end, and don’t take care of the other end, it has an impact and a ripple effect through the whole system.”

On the Nov. 8 ballot, Columbus voters approved a $200 million bond issue aimed at increasing the city’s affordable housing stock for homeowners earning less than $50,000 annually. “We simply do not have enough places for people to live,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said in announcing the issue in July.

Janna Sharrett is grateful for her apartment in an affordable housing complex in suburban Columbus as the region braces for Intel’s arrival and its real estate impact. The 60-year-old customer service rep works from home and earns just $14.94 an hour. Her rent on the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her dog, Bella, and cat, Daisy, is $695.

The $6.5 million, 28-unit building where Sharrett lives was developed by Homeport, a Columbus-based nonprofit that works to expand affordable housing. Sharrett moved in two years ago seeking relief from a $1,000 rent payment, and today isn’t sure what she’d do without it.

She worries about the needs of people like herself as the region grows through projects such as Intel.

“Rent is outrageous. Prices of homes are outrageous. And my income is not outrageous,” Sharrett said.

Across the country, a growing number of companies are responding to housing concerns by rolling out ambitious plans for thousands of units of new housing — though efforts fall far short of actual needs.

In 2021, Amazon launched its $2 billion Housing Equity Fund to create over 8,000 affordable homes across three regions where it operates: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2019, Apple said it would commit $2.5 billion toward easing California’s housing crisis, one of a number of initiatives by high tech companies. This month Walt Disney World picked a developer to construct affordable housing on 80 acres of its land in Orange County, Florida.

Intel, too, looks forward to partnering with Ohio community leaders to prepare for the increased housing demand over the next few years, said Intel spokesperson Linda Qian, without providing details.

Experts say it’s in Intel’s best interest to contribute toward alleviating the region’s housing shortage. Employers in greater Columbus already blame high worker turnover and reduced productivity on long commute times, according to a report by the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio.

“Without the housing product it can easily stifle the workforce needs of Intel and others,” said Jamie Green, a Columbus-based planning consultant.

As the Intel project unfolds, it highlights the challenges ahead, said Leah Evans, president and CEO of Homeport, which developed Sharrett’s affordable apartment complex.

“This just brought to light that for every one job you create, you’ve got a commute and you’ve got a housing unit” need, Evans said. “You have to be thinking about all those things.”

———

Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

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November 19, 2022
Ohio’s Intel project triggers housing fears in tight market

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Intel’s announcement earlier this year of a $20 billion manufacturing operation bringing thousands of jobs to rural Ohio was greeted as an economic boon.

But behind that enthusiasm lurked a pressing question.

“Where are we putting everybody?” asked Melissa Humbert-Washington, vice president of programs and services at Homes for Families, which helps low-wage workers find housing in a region already suffering a major shortage.

Intel says its initial two computer chip factories will employ 3,000 people when the operation is up and running in 2025. The project is also expected to employ 7,000 construction workers. And none of that includes the hundreds of additional jobs as Intel suppliers move in, along with the expected boom in the service sector.

Such housing challenges are playing out across the country as companies increasingly come under fire for failing to consider the shelter needs of their new employees or the impact big developments will have on already tight housing markets.

Experts agree that years of underbuilding dating to the Great Recession of 2008 has caused widespread housing shortages. Nationally, the country is short about 1 million homes, according to Rob Dietz, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders. The National Apartment Association estimates a rental shortage of about 600,000 units.

“We have underbuilt housing by millions of homes over the past 15 years,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy. “So when a big company comes into a community that is supply constrained, the demand that they’re going to inject … is going to affect home prices and rental prices because there’s more demand than supply.”

For a big company’s impact on housing, look no farther than Intel’s own operations in Chandler, Arizona, which grew from a small agricultural city of about 30,000 in 1980 when the company built its first factory to a high-tech metropolis of 220,000 today. That was accompanied by tremendous housing growth, and today Chandler is running out of developable land, with nearly 95% of the area built out with residential, office, industrial and retail projects, according to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

Housing is also more expensive in Chandler, with a median home sale price of $525,000 compared to $455,000 in greater Phoenix, and median rents of $2,027 compared to $1,950 in Phoenix.

The challenge for areas like rural Ohio is that they don’t have local employees to build or staff a large project, said Mark Stapp, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University. There’s neither the housing nor the infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of new arrivals, increasing housing prices and possibly forcing existing residents out.

“It’s economic development. It’s going to employ people. But you are probably going to have to bring a lot of people into the area,” he said. And “those jobs require housing.”

“If you don’t recognize that and don’t properly plan infrastructure, land use policies and manage that growth, it can be a big problem. The great opportunity turns into a big problem.”

In central Ohio, the Intel site is rising on hundreds of acres of rural land once occupied by farm fields and modest homes where large business parks have also sprung up near major thoroughfares. The region has averaged about 8,200 building permits per year for both single-family and multi-unit buildings, even as job and population growth estimates predating the Intel project called for more than twice that, according to the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio.

“We’re not building enough of anything,” said the group’s executive director Jon Melchi. Central Ohio, with about 2.4 million residents today, will grow to at least 3 million by 2050, the group said.

The central Ohio shortage includes the “missing middle” of workforce housing, or homes up to $250,000, said Tre’ Giller, CEO and president of Metro Development, one of Ohio’s largest apartment developers. A recent Zillow search showed only about 570 listings for homes $250,000 or less in the area.

The housing pressure is especially intense for low-wage workers. Central Ohio already has about 71,000 households considered “severely rent burdened” — families spending more than half their income on housing, said the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio. The region has only 34 affordable units available for every 100 low-rent households, it said.

The problem is even more severe in Licking County, home to the future Intel plants, where more than one in five renters are considered severely rent burdened.

Affordable housing is crucial for the low-wage workers who keep the economy running, from pre-school teachers to medical assistants, said COHIO executive director Amy Riegel. But housing also has to be viewed on a spectrum: Without enough higher-end properties to purchase, buyers will snap up rentals, which then shuts out workers of limited means.

“Housing is definitely an ecosystem,” Riegel said. “If you add housing at one end, and don’t take care of the other end, it has an impact and a ripple effect through the whole system.”

On the Nov. 8 ballot, Columbus voters approved a $200 million bond issue aimed at increasing the city’s affordable housing stock for homeowners earning less than $50,000 annually. “We simply do not have enough places for people to live,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said in announcing the issue in July.

Janna Sharrett is grateful for her apartment in an affordable housing complex in suburban Columbus as the region braces for Intel’s arrival and its real estate impact. The 60-year-old customer service rep works from home and earns just $14.94 an hour. Her rent on the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her dog, Bella, and cat, Daisy, is $695.

The $6.5 million, 28-unit building where Sharrett lives was developed by Homeport, a Columbus-based nonprofit that works to expand affordable housing. Sharrett moved in two years ago seeking relief from a $1,000 rent payment, and today isn’t sure what she’d do without it.

She worries about the needs of people like herself as the region grows through projects such as Intel.

“Rent is outrageous. Prices of homes are outrageous. And my income is not outrageous,” Sharrett said.

Across the country, a growing number of companies are responding to housing concerns by rolling out ambitious plans for thousands of units of new housing — though efforts fall far short of actual needs.

In 2021, Amazon launched its $2 billion Housing Equity Fund to create over 8,000 affordable homes across three regions where it operates: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2019, Apple said it would commit $2.5 billion toward easing California’s housing crisis, one of a number of initiatives by high tech companies. This month Walt Disney World picked a developer to construct affordable housing on 80 acres of its land in Orange County, Florida.

Intel, too, looks forward to partnering with Ohio community leaders to prepare for the increased housing demand over the next few years, said Intel spokesperson Linda Qian, without providing details.

Experts say it’s in Intel’s best interest to contribute toward alleviating the region’s housing shortage. Employers in greater Columbus already blame high worker turnover and reduced productivity on long commute times, according to a report by the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio.

“Without the housing product it can easily stifle the workforce needs of Intel and others,” said Jamie Green, a Columbus-based planning consultant.

As the Intel project unfolds, it highlights the challenges ahead, said Leah Evans, president and CEO of Homeport, which developed Sharrett’s affordable apartment complex.

“This just brought to light that for every one job you create, you’ve got a commute and you’ve got a housing unit” need, Evans said. “You have to be thinking about all those things.”

———

Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

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November 19, 2022
Ohio’s Intel project triggers housing fears in tight market

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Intel’s announcement earlier this year of a $20 billion manufacturing operation bringing thousands of jobs to rural Ohio was greeted as an economic boon.

But behind that enthusiasm lurked a pressing question.

“Where are we putting everybody?” asked Melissa Humbert-Washington, vice president of programs and services at Homes for Families, which helps low-wage workers find housing in a region already suffering a major shortage.

Intel says its initial two computer chip factories will employ 3,000 people when the operation is up and running in 2025. The project is also expected to employ 7,000 construction workers. And none of that includes the hundreds of additional jobs as Intel suppliers move in, along with the expected boom in the service sector.

Such housing challenges are playing out across the country as companies increasingly come under fire for failing to consider the shelter needs of their new employees or the impact big developments will have on already tight housing markets.

Experts agree that years of underbuilding dating to the Great Recession of 2008 has caused widespread housing shortages. Nationally, the country is short about 1 million homes, according to Rob Dietz, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders. The National Apartment Association estimates a rental shortage of about 600,000 units.

“We have underbuilt housing by millions of homes over the past 15 years,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy. “So when a big company comes into a community that is supply constrained, the demand that they’re going to inject … is going to affect home prices and rental prices because there’s more demand than supply.”

For a big company’s impact on housing, look no farther than Intel’s own operations in Chandler, Arizona, which grew from a small agricultural city of about 30,000 in 1980 when the company built its first factory to a high-tech metropolis of 220,000 today. That was accompanied by tremendous housing growth, and today Chandler is running out of developable land, with nearly 95% of the area built out with residential, office, industrial and retail projects, according to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

Housing is also more expensive in Chandler, with a median home sale price of $525,000 compared to $455,000 in greater Phoenix, and median rents of $2,027 compared to $1,950 in Phoenix.

The challenge for areas like rural Ohio is that they don’t have local employees to build or staff a large project, said Mark Stapp, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University. There’s neither the housing nor the infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of new arrivals, increasing housing prices and possibly forcing existing residents out.

“It’s economic development. It’s going to employ people. But you are probably going to have to bring a lot of people into the area,” he said. And “those jobs require housing.”

“If you don’t recognize that and don’t properly plan infrastructure, land use policies and manage that growth, it can be a big problem. The great opportunity turns into a big problem.”

In central Ohio, the Intel site is rising on hundreds of acres of rural land once occupied by farm fields and modest homes where large business parks have also sprung up near major thoroughfares. The region has averaged about 8,200 building permits per year for both single-family and multi-unit buildings, even as job and population growth estimates predating the Intel project called for more than twice that, according to the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio.

“We’re not building enough of anything,” said the group’s executive director Jon Melchi. Central Ohio, with about 2.4 million residents today, will grow to at least 3 million by 2050, the group said.

The central Ohio shortage includes the “missing middle” of workforce housing, or homes up to $250,000, said Tre’ Giller, CEO and president of Metro Development, one of Ohio’s largest apartment developers. A recent Zillow search showed only about 570 listings for homes $250,000 or less in the area.

The housing pressure is especially intense for low-wage workers. Central Ohio already has about 71,000 households considered “severely rent burdened” — families spending more than half their income on housing, said the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio. The region has only 34 affordable units available for every 100 low-rent households, it said.

The problem is even more severe in Licking County, home to the future Intel plants, where more than one in five renters are considered severely rent burdened.

Affordable housing is crucial for the low-wage workers who keep the economy running, from pre-school teachers to medical assistants, said COHIO executive director Amy Riegel. But housing also has to be viewed on a spectrum: Without enough higher-end properties to purchase, buyers will snap up rentals, which then shuts out workers of limited means.

“Housing is definitely an ecosystem,” Riegel said. “If you add housing at one end, and don’t take care of the other end, it has an impact and a ripple effect through the whole system.”

On the Nov. 8 ballot, Columbus voters approved a $200 million bond issue aimed at increasing the city’s affordable housing stock for homeowners earning less than $50,000 annually. “We simply do not have enough places for people to live,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said in announcing the issue in July.

Janna Sharrett is grateful for her apartment in an affordable housing complex in suburban Columbus as the region braces for Intel’s arrival and its real estate impact. The 60-year-old customer service rep works from home and earns just $14.94 an hour. Her rent on the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her dog, Bella, and cat, Daisy, is $695.

The $6.5 million, 28-unit building where Sharrett lives was developed by Homeport, a Columbus-based nonprofit that works to expand affordable housing. Sharrett moved in two years ago seeking relief from a $1,000 rent payment, and today isn’t sure what she’d do without it.

She worries about the needs of people like herself as the region grows through projects such as Intel.

“Rent is outrageous. Prices of homes are outrageous. And my income is not outrageous,” Sharrett said.

Across the country, a growing number of companies are responding to housing concerns by rolling out ambitious plans for thousands of units of new housing — though efforts fall far short of actual needs.

In 2021, Amazon launched its $2 billion Housing Equity Fund to create over 8,000 affordable homes across three regions where it operates: the Puget Sound in Washington state; Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2019, Apple said it would commit $2.5 billion toward easing California’s housing crisis, one of a number of initiatives by high tech companies. This month Walt Disney World picked a developer to construct affordable housing on 80 acres of its land in Orange County, Florida.

Intel, too, looks forward to partnering with Ohio community leaders to prepare for the increased housing demand over the next few years, said Intel spokesperson Linda Qian, without providing details.

Experts say it’s in Intel’s best interest to contribute toward alleviating the region’s housing shortage. Employers in greater Columbus already blame high worker turnover and reduced productivity on long commute times, according to a report by the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio.

“Without the housing product it can easily stifle the workforce needs of Intel and others,” said Jamie Green, a Columbus-based planning consultant.

As the Intel project unfolds, it highlights the challenges ahead, said Leah Evans, president and CEO of Homeport, which developed Sharrett’s affordable apartment complex.

“This just brought to light that for every one job you create, you’ve got a commute and you’ve got a housing unit” need, Evans said. “You have to be thinking about all those things.”

———

Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

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November 19, 2022
Some return to war-battered hub of Palestinian life in Syria

BEIRUT — Syria’s largest Palestinian camp was once bustling with activity: It was crowded with mini-buses and packed with shops hawking falafel, shawarma and knafeh nabulsieh — a sweet concoction of cheese and phyllo dough.

Kids played soccer and brandished plastic guns until men with real guns came in when Syria descended into civil war. Over the past decade, fighting devastated communities across the country, including the Yarmouk camp, on the outskirts of the capital of Damascus.

Today, Yarmouk’s streets are still piled with rubble. Scattered Palestinian flags fly from mostly abandoned houses, the only reminder that this was once a major political and cultural center of the Palestinian refugee diaspora.

Two years ago, Syrian authorities began allowing former Yarmouk residents who could prove home ownership and pass a security check to come back.

But so far, few have returned. Many others have been deterred by fear they could be arrested or conscripted by force. Others no longer have houses to come back to. Still, with the fighting having subsided in much of Syria, some want to see what’s left of their homes.

Earlier this month, the government opened up Yarmouk for a rare visit by journalists to highlight its push for returnees. The occasion: the launch of a new community center, built by a non-government organization.

One of those who have returned is Mohamed Youssef Jamil. Originally from the Palestinian village of Lubya, west of the city of Tiberias in present-day Israel, he had lived in Yarmouk since 1960. He raised three sons in the camp, before Syria’s war broke out.

The 80-year-old came back a year and a half ago, with government approval to repair his damaged house. Of the 30 or 40 families who used to live on his street, there are now four. Many buildings that were not leveled by bombs were looted, stripped of windows, electric wiring — even faucets.

“I’m staying here to guard it from thieves,” he said of his home.

Nearby, the right half of Mohamed Taher’s house has collapsed, while he is repairing the still-standing left half. “There is no electricity,” the 55-year-old said, though in some parts of the camp there is water and the sewer system works.

Yarmouk was built in 1957 as a Palestinian refugee camp but grew into a vibrant suburb that also attracted working-class Syrians. Before the 2011 uprising turned civil war, some 1.2 million people lived in Yarmouk, including 160,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.

As of June, some 4,000 people returned to Yarmouk, UNRWA said, while another 8,000 families received permission to return over the summer.

The returnees struggle with a “lack of basic services, limited transportation, and largely destroyed public infrastructure,” UNRWA said. Some live in houses without doors or windows.

The U.N. agency said returns to Yarmouk increased, in part, because the camp offered free housing. At a recent press conference, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said an increasing number of Palestinian refugees in Syria are “basically going back into rubble just because they cannot afford anymore to live where they were.”

In the past, Palestinian factions in Syria sometimes had a complicated relationship with Syrian authorities. Former Syrian President Hafez Assad and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat were bitter adversaries.

However, Palestinian refugees lived in relative comfort in Syria, with greater socioeconomic and civil rights than those in neighboring Lebanon.

Yarmouk’s Palestinian factions tried to remain neutral as Syria’s civil war broke out, but by late 2012, the camp was pulled into the conflict and different factions took opposing sides in the war.

The militant group Hamas backed the Syrian the opposition while others, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, fought on the Syrian government’s side.

In 2013, Yarmouk became the target of a devastating siege by government forces. In 2015, it was taken over by the extremist Islamic State group. A government offensive retook the camp in 2018, emptying it of remaining inhabitants.

Sari Hanafi, a professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut who grew up in Yarmouk, said those returning are doing so because of “absolute necessity.”

“The others who don’t return — it’s because it’s an unlivable place,” he said.

A young man from Yarmouk living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon agrees. With Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government still firmly in place, he said that if he went back, he “would always be living in anxiety and without security.”

“Someone who returns to the camp, or to Syria in general, is no longer thinking, ‘How much freedom will I have?’ He is thinking, ‘I just want a house to live in,’” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, fearing for the safety of his relatives back in Syria.

At the community center’s opening, the governor of Damascus, Mohamed Tarek Kreishati, promised to clear the rubble and restore utilities and public transportation.

But there’s a long way to go to convince people to go back, said Mahmoud Zaghmout from the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, aligned with the Syrian opposition.

Yarmouk lacks “hospitals, bakeries, gas distribution centers and basic consumer and food items,” Zaghmout said.

There are those who hope Yarmouk will be restored to its past glory, like Suheil Natour, a Lebanon-based researcher and member of the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He pointed to Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camp Ein el-Hilweh, which was razed by Israeli forces in 1982 and later rebuilt. Yarmouk can also be “one day a very flourishing symbol of revival of the Palestinian refugees,” he said.

Others are skeptical. Samih Mahmoud, 24, who grew up in Yarmouk but now lives in Lebanon, said not much remains of the place he remembered.

He said he’s not attached to the buildings and streets of Yarmouk. “I’m attached to the people, to the food, to the atmosphere of the camp,” he said. “And all of that is gone.”

———

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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November 16, 2022
Texas to execute man for killing ex-girlfriend and her son

HOUSTON — A Texas inmate seeking to stop his execution over claims of religious freedom violations and indifference to his medical needs is scheduled to die Wednesday evening for killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her 7-year-old son more than 17 years ago.

Stephen Barbee, 55, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the February 2005 deaths of Lisa Underwood, 34, and her son Jayden. Both were suffocated at their home in Fort Worth. They were later found buried in a shallow grave in nearby Denton County.

Barbee’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution, arguing his religious rights are being violated because the state prison system, in the wake of a ruling by the high court on what spiritual advisers can do while in the execution chamber, did not create a written policy on the issue.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court said states must accommodate the wishes of death row inmates who want to have their faith leaders pray and touch them during their executions. Texas prison officials didn’t formally update their policy but said they would review inmates’ petitions on a case-by-case basis and would grant most reasonable requests.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt in Houston issued a preliminary injunction, saying the state could only execute Barbee after it had published a clear policy on spiritual advisers that protects an inmate’s religious rights. Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Hoyt’s injunction, saying it was overbroad.

On Tuesday, Hoyt issued a new injunction focused specifically on protecting Barbee’s rights. The Texas Attorney General’s Office immediately appealed to the 5th Circuit, which would have to make a ruling before the Supreme Court could take up the issue.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a previous court filing that Barbee’s claims are moot as state prison officials are allowing his spiritual adviser to touch him and pray aloud during his execution.

Also Tuesday, Hoyt denied a separate request by Barbee’s attorneys for an execution stay over claims the inmate’s right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment would be violated. His lawyers say Barbee has physical constraints that limit the movement of his shoulders and arms and he would experience “intolerable pain and suffering” if he is executed in the normal manner with his arms outstretched on the gurney so that IV lines can be placed to deliver the lethal injection.

In a court filing from earlier this month, lawyers with the Texas Attorney General’s Office assured Hoyt that prison officials would make accommodations for Barbee and allow his arms to remain bent and if needed would find another location to place the IV lines.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously declined to commute Barbee’s death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant a four-month reprieve.

Prosecutors said Barbee killed his ex-girlfriend and her son because he didn’t want his wife to know Underwood was seven months pregnant, presumably by him. DNA evidence later revealed Barbee wasn’t the father. Underwood owned a Fort Worth bagel shop, which was named after her son. She and her son were reported missing after failing to show up at a baby shower.

Barbee confessed to police he killed Underwood and her son but later recanted. Barbee said the confession was coerced and has since maintained he is innocent and was framed by his business partner.

His trial, including sentencing, took less than three days to complete in February 2006.

Barbee is set to receive a lethal injection on the same day as Arizona plans to execute Murray Hoope r for killing two people during a home robbery in Phoenix on New Year’s Eve 1980. Hooper is set to be executed at 11 a.m. CST on Wednesday.

If Barbee is executed, he would be the fifth inmate put to death this year in Texas. He is the last inmate scheduled for execution this year in the state.

———

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

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November 15, 2022
Family says Egyptian hunger-striking activist drinking water

CAIRO — Egypt’s imprisoned hunger-striking activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah has started drinking water again, his family said Monday, in the first communication from the prominent dissident in over a week amid fears for his life.

The announcement came in a letter the family received from Abdel-Fattah through the prison authorities, dated on Saturday. Last Thursday, the authorities said they had “medically intervened” in Abdel-Fattah’s case, without providing details and raising concerns that he was being force-fed.

Abdel-Fattah’s Lawyer, Khaled Ali, was blocked three times from visiting him in prison since news of the medical intervention was announced, despite being granted permission from Egypt’s state prosecutor.

One of Egypt’s most prominent pro-democracy campaigners, Abdel-Fattah had intensified his hunger strike on Nov. 6, at the start of the U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, to draw attention to his case and those of other political prisoners. He began a partial hunger strike in April limiting his intake of food to only 100 calories a day.

Then, he stopped taking food altogether and later stopped drinking water to coincide with the start of the summit. The announcement of the medical intervention last Thursday raised fears among the family that he could die in prison.

Laila Soueif, Abdel-Fattah’s mother, told The Associated Press that the letter did not mention his hunger strike, but the family’s assumption was it was ongoing.

“He didn’t ask for food,” she said. “He asked for … salts and vitamins,” said Soueif.

Prison authorities had allowed Abdel-Fattah to communicate with his family through weekly letters. Monday’s letter is the first proof of life the family received since he began refusing water eight days ago.

Every day since he stopped drinking water, Soueif has been waiting outside the prison of Wadi el-Natroun, north of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, seeking proof of her son’s life. On Monday, Ali, the lawyer, was also there, waiting to be allowed to see Abdel-Fattah.

Later Monday, an extract of Abdel-Fattah’s letter was posted on Facebook by a group lobbying for his release. In it, he confirms “he is drinking water” and “receiving medical attention,” without revealing any other specifics.

On Twitter, one of Abdel-Fattah’s sisters, Sanaa Seif, confirmed the letter was in her brother’s handwriting.

Abdel-Fattah’s hunger strike has drawn attention to Egypt’s heavy suppression of speech and political activity. Since 2013, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government has cracked down on dissidents and critics, jailing thousands, virtually banning protests and monitoring social media.

Abdel-Fattah rose to prominence during the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings — known as the Arab Spring — that swept through the Middle East. In Egypt, the uprising toppled the country’s long-time autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.

Abdel-Fattah has been imprisoned several times and spent a total of nine years behind bars, becoming a symbol of Egypt’s sliding back to an even more autocratic rule under el-Sissi.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told the AP that President Joe Biden raised Abdel-Fattah’s case during his meeting with el-Sissi on Friday at the climate summit. Sullivan could not provide any update on Abdel-Fattah’s condition.

At the summit, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also raised the activist’s case in their talks with el-Sissi. Abdel-Fattah gained British citizenship earlier this year through his mother who was born in London.

At the climate summit, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, talked down the global attention surrounding Abdel-Fattah’s well-being and said on Saturday that the priority of the conference should be focused on “the existential challenge related to climate change.”

Also Saturday, Sanaa Seif, took part in a protest march in Sharm el Sheikh that saw hundreds of activists demand action on climate change, human and gender rights. The protesters have called for the release of Abdel-Fattah and all political prisoners detained in Egypt.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said it was investigating allegations of misconduct by Egyptian police at the summit, following claims that attendees were being photographed and filmed at an event at the German pavilion.

In a statement Sunday provided to the AP, the U.N. climate office confirmed that some Egyptian security officers were working in the part of the venue designated as United Nations territory.

Several human rights groups have accused Egypt of using the climate summit to whitewash the country’s poor human rights record.

Ahead of COP27, the Egyptian government sought to improve its international image, releasing dozens of high-profile detainees under presidential pardons in recent months and establishing a new “strategy” to upgrade the country’s human rights conditions.

Amnesty International in September described the strategy as a “shiny cover-up” meant to gain favor with foreign governments and financial institutions.

Egypt is among the world’s worst jailers of journalists, along with Turkey and China, according to 2021 data produced by the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that as many as 60,000 political prisoners are incarcerated in Egyptian prisons.

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This story has been corrected to say that Abdel-Fattah’s sister took part in a protest march by climate activists but did not lead it.

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November 14, 2022