Fourth Amendment Rulings Have Expanded Police Search Power in New Technologies. Next Up: A GPS Case at the Supreme Court. Sunset Strip bookie Charlie Katz suspected the feds had bugged his apartment, so he would amble over to a pay phone outside where Carney's hot dog joint now stands to call in his bets to Boston and Miami. It was 1965, a time when phone booths had four glass walls and a folding door, allowing Katz to seal himself off from eavesdroppers. Or so he thought. [continues 1184 words]
Federal Judges Call Conditions 'Appalling' and Unconstitutional. A Reduction Plan Is Due by Mid-September. California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September. The order cited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's own words when he proclaimed a state of emergency in the corrections system in 2006 and warned of substantial risk to prison staff, inmates and the general public, saying "immediate action is necessary to prevent death and harm." [continues 1132 words]
Frank Lucero says his pleas for glaucoma medication were ignored at Chino prison. Then his left eye 'just exploded.' Now he is suing the state. A nubby black cloth covers the sole window in Frank Lucero's Hemet living room, casting a perpetual dusk over his refuge, a space as cramped as the prison cells where he spent a decade. He can't bear the light. Even an overcast day on the sprawling range shadowed by the San Jacinto Mountains brings on headache, dull pain in his right eye and ghostly sensations in the empty socket of his left. [continues 1163 words]
MALPASSE, Haiti - Three beefy men wearing wraparound sunglasses and gold chains leaned against their SUV at this remote border crossing with the Dominican Republic. As one of them muttered into a walkie-talkie, four Haitian policemen pulled up looking like they meant business. The SUV's back hatch was opened. The cops eyeballed its load of opaque plastic-wrapped bundles. One officer picked up a package the size of a bread loaf, appraising its weight with his forearm. Then the police and the bejeweled trio knocked fists in solidarity, traded vehicles and drove off toward the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. And thus ended the drug bust that wasn't. [continues 745 words]
Drug-Running Has Soared in the Country, Made Vulnerable by Poverty, Isolation and Police Corruption. MALPASSE, HAITI -- Three beefy men wearing wraparound sunglasses and gold chains leaned against their SUV at this remote border crossing with the Dominican Republic. As one of them muttered into a walkie-talkie, four Haitian policemen pulled up looking like they meant business. The SUV's back hatch was opened. The cops eyeballed its load of opaque-plastic-wrapped bundles. One officer picked up a package the size of a bread loaf, appraising its weight with his forearm. [continues 1473 words]
`Free State' In Denmark Feeling Growing Pains COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Don't trust anyone over 30. That was the student-revolutionary refrain around the time a few dozen longhaired malcontents seized an abandoned Copenhagen military fortress in 1971 and proclaimed the free state of Christiania. But as Europe's most famous counterculture commune turns the Big 3-0 this summer, many among the now 700-plus residents admit that they have traded idealism and principle for heat and indoor plumbing. From chirping cell phones to modern waterfront homes no less lavish for being illegal, Christianites are looking decidedly Establishment these days. [continues 643 words]
Magazine Appeals To Macho Drinkers MOSCOW -- In this haven of hard drinking and heavy smoking, where vices are still valued as the measure of a real man, the inaugural edition of Men's Health magazine in Russian has hit newsstands with musings on the virtues of vegetables, suave conduct at business lunches and tips for tasteful selection of a New Year's gift for the boss. But what serves as a guide to good health and savoir-faire in Western countries has to tailor its message to Russians whose appetite for advice on clean living is swiftly sated. [continues 333 words]
