Saturday, October 29, 2011

Homemade haunts offer thrills

(CNN) -- What kind of people spend thousands of dollars transforming their front yard into a landscape of tombstones and singing skeletons, complete with a haunted maze and "Bone Yard Band," in the name of Halloween?

A retired kindergarten teacher and his cooperative wife, of course. At this time of year, however, Gary and Mary Server are known to neighbors as "Scary Gary" and "Bloody Mary."

Now in its eighth year, Haunted Hollow is a local attraction in Clarence Center, New York, making it one of many homegrown spooky houses to pop up across the country this Halloween season. With professional haunts costing more than $20 per person in some places, proprietors of homemade affairs say they are hosting more and more visitors each year.

"Scary Gary" and "Bloody Mary" don't ask for money to enter Haunted Hollow, but they accept donations, which they give in full to the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo. Two years ago, they raised more than $5,000, Gary Server said.

"My wife and I love Halloween. Also, since I enjoy children so much and they have been such a large part of my life as a teacher, it makes Halloween even more enjoyable to do something for them," he said.

"We call it 'family frightful.' We don't do gore or blood. It's a chance for families to spend old-fashioned, quality time together. What's better than that?"

It's not unusual for families to spend hours exploring Haunted Hollow, because there's so much to see, he said.

There's an hourly light show and a graveyard of 100 tombstones, ghouls and monsters named for their grandson, Josh. A homemade hearse contains a "Bone Yard Band" of animatronic singing skulls. A crowd favorite, Victor the Talking Skeleton, communicates to visitors from his cage with the help of a remote microphone and an infrared camera monitored by one of Server's buddies from his living room.

Do-it-yourself Halloween decorating 101

A maze in the four-car garage leads you to a caged "insane asylum" of fright flick favorites including Michael Myers, Freddie Kruger and Jason.

CNN iReporter Deanna Rodrigues visited Haunted Hollow last Saturday with her 4-year-old son and spent nearly two hours exploring. Her son's favorite attraction was the garage maze, which has an electric chair that rattles and groans and lets off smoke when you sit on it, she said.

"He had a good time. He didn't want to leave," she said. "Real live ghouls roam around the stand behind bushes and 'boo' you."

It's a large undertaking to set the scene for thousands of visitors each year. Dozens of friends pitch in and they get a little help from students who volunteer for high school credit, which is why they do it every other year, Server said.

"It's really a lot of fun but we do it every two years because it's much work. It takes us three months to get ready," he said.

Kimberly Stegman and Andrew Adkins of Springdale, Ohio, also take several months to prepare their House of Hell, a graveyard of zombies and monsters that has grow in size over the past eight years. Each year brings more visitors, Adkins said. About 300 visitors came by last weekend, not including the retirement home bus and hayride that passed by.

The house on Glen Sharon Road has also become a local legend. iReporter Greg Reese made a point of visiting Saturday after missing it last year. As he pulled his car up to the house, he was greeted by a chainsaw-wielding Jason from the movie "Halloween."

"Others down the street are starting to dress up their house because of the response," Reese said. "He obviously takes a lot of time on the creatures."

The couple don't charge visitors a fee to view the collection of 17 zombies and monsters, each of which Adkins makes by hand. This year's new addition: the infamous scene from "The Exorcist" of the possessed young girl strapped to a bed.

It was simple, really, he said. A nurse friend gave him a gown and scrubs for clothes, and he made the body out of packing foam and the bed from wood left over at work.

"The thing that cost the most was the mask of her face, which I found online. But I didn't like how it looked so I painted over it to make it look better," he said.

It's a true labor of love that goes back to childhood, when he'd construct his own tombstone decorations of cardboard for his mother's home.

"I love Halloween, it's just like Christmas," he said. "As much as I like Halloween and horror movies, I'll keep doing it until I can't anymore. I have more space in the backyard so I'll probably end up there next year."


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JoePa sets wins record

A sixth consecutive win last weekend moved Penn State coach Joe Paterno within one of becoming the all-time leader in Division I history.

While that accomplishment is on the minds of most everyone else, the 84-year-old Hall of Famer seems more concerned about avenging last season's loss to Illinois.

The 21st-ranked Nittany Lions look to extend their longest winning streak in more than three years when they face the Illini at Beaver Stadium on Saturday.

Paterno, now in his 46th season with Penn State (7-1, 4-0 Big Ten), tied Eddie Robinson for the Division I wins lead with his 408th career victory, prevailing 34-24 at Northwestern last Saturday.

Matt McGloin threw for 192 yards with two touchdowns. Silas Redd, who ranks third in the conference with 108.6 rushing yards per game, had a career-high 164 yards and a TD - his fourth consecutive 100-yard effort.

Paterno, however, remained the center of attention.

"Joe's always talked about Eddie with a great deal of respect, nothing but admiration for him," said quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno, his son. "When you're in that kind of company, that's pretty elite company."

"Joe's the kind of person that during the season - it's the seventh win, we're 7-1, we're still in first place in the conference, and we've got to work on staying there. Joe will be on the plane asking us about Illinois. He doesn't pay a lot of attention to that stuff. In the offseason, he might talk about it here and there."

While it's hard to ignore the magnitude of win No. 409, Paterno's focus remains on Illinois (6-2, 2-2), which had dropped five of six in this series before winning 33-13 at Penn State on Oct. 9, 2010.

"We got a good lickin', is what I remember. I thought they kicked our ears in. Hopefully you learn from every game, even when you lose," he said.

"Generally speaking, Illinois is the (second) best football team we've played ... It's a solid football team ... You don't just stare at any one part of their game. You've got to be ready for good solid all around squad. We've got to play a better football game than we've played all year."

The Nittany Lions' only defeat this season came against then-No. 3 Alabama, 27-11 on Sept. 10.

Paterno will try to guide Penn State to its first seven-game win streak since opening 9-0 in 2008. His starting quarterback, however, remains uncertain. McGloin likely has the upper hand over Rob Bolden thanks to last week's impressive showing.

"I just feel good that we are in a position (where we have) a couple of quarterbacks (who) I think - in different situations - can help us win a game," Paterno said.

The Illini, who opened 6-0 for the first time since 1951 and were ranked as high as No. 16, have since looked like anything but one of the better teams in the country. After falling 17-7 to Ohio State on Oct. 15, Illinois dropped out of the rankings with a 21-14 loss at Purdue last Saturday.

Coach Ron Zook's team trailed 21-0 at halftime before scoring 14 points in the fourth quarter.

"We just came out slow," receiver Hayden Daniels said. "We need to come out and play better. If we start out slow, that affects the whole game. We need to be playing hard from the get-go."

Illinois would surely love to see Nathan Scheelhaase pick up the pace. The sophomore quarterback threw for 217 yards with no touchdowns and ran for just 16 yards on 13 carries. He was also sacked four times.

"I tell him it's not all on him, it's not all his fault," Zook said. "He missed some throws, but all quarterbacks do that. It may be that he is pressing and pushing too hard, but I like this team. This is a good team.

"We're 6-2. Do we have to play better? Yeah, absolutely, you know, we've got to play better than we have the last two games. I think that's the challenge that our guys are taking. I think we've got to go out there and play, we're going to go out - we are going to go out and play loose. Let `er roll."

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- In bright white letters against a blue background, the electronic sign boards around Beaver Stadium took note of another milestone for Joe Paterno long after the stands had cleared.

"Congratulations Coach Paterno," the signs read. "Winningest Coach In Division I College Football."

It took all 60 minutes on a snowy, sloppy Saturday in Happy Valley, but JoePa broke Eddie Robinson's record with victory No. 409 as No. 21 Penn State defeated Illinois 10-7.

The Nittany Lions (8-1, 5-0 Big Ten) overcame six fumbles - losing two - with Silas Redd's 3-yard touchdown run with 1:08 to go. Penn State's only touchdown came after Illinois corner Justin Green was whistled for pass interference while breaking up a fourth-down pass for Derek Moye in the end zone.

Illinois (6-3, 2-3) drove from its 17 to the Penn State 25 on the next drive, but Derek Dimke's 42-yard field goal attempt bounced off the right upright as time expired.

Even JoePa was nervous in the press box before Penn State's last drive. Paterno coached upstairs since he's still got a sore right leg, shoulder and pelvis following an accidental preseason hit.

"Did I have any doubts," he asked rhetorically with a chuckle. "Sure I had doubts ... but it worked out anyway."

In a common occurrence over his remarkable 46-year career, Paterno was feted again with a postgame ceremony. School president Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley presented JoePa with a plaque that read, "Joe Paterno. Educator of Men. Winningest Coaach. Division One Football."

Among all coaches, Paterno now only trails John Gagliardi, still active at Division III St. John's, Minn., with 481 victories.

"It really is something I've very proud of, to be associated with Eddie Robinson," Paterno said in a brief postgame ceremony in the media room broadcast to fans still waiting in the stands 10 minutes later. "Something like this means a lot to me, an awful lot. But there's a lot of other people I've got to thank."

Start with Redd, the budding star who had a career-high 30 carries for 137 yards for Penn State, none bigger than his late TD run.

An early-season snowstorm had fans bundled up in winter parkas and hoodies. The offenses seemed to be frozen stiff.

After struggling most of the afternoon, quarterback Matt McGloin drove Penn State from their own 20 to the Illini 32 on three long completions before the pass interference call gave the Nittany Lions a second chance.

"I thought it was a good play myself," frustrated Illini coach Ron Zook said. "But obviously (the referee) thought ... I don't know, I didn't ask him."

Redd capitalized four plays later by barreling into the end zone, the crowd erupting in delight.

Jason Ford rushed for 100 yards on 24 carries but Illinois couldn't capitalize on a slew of Penn State mistakes in a defensive slugfest.

Illlinois outgained Penn State 286-209. After a quiet start, Illinois' pass rush turned up the heat in the second half, getting 2.5 sacks combined from standout ends Michael Buchanan and Whitney Mercilus.

Still, the Illini's offense wasn't much better than Penn State, but they got just got enough in the third quarter from scrambling quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase to scratch out a 10-yard touchdown pass to Spencer Harris for a 7-0 lead.

Illinois' defense held firm from there until Penn State's late TD drive.

Moye, back after missing two games because of a left foot injury, dropped a third-down pass to groans from the crowd on the winning drive. McGloin went for Moye on fourth down with 1:31 left, and the ball bounced off the receiver's hands in the end zone - but there was contact and the interference penalty gave Penn State another chance.

Zook could only wince on the sideline as a once-quiet Penn State crowd burst back to life.

"They were just able to find their receivers. They weren't able to do that all game, we pretty much got them all game," Buchanan said. "As a D-line, we weren't able to get pressure on the quarterback that we wanted to. So it was pretty much on us."

Illinois' struggling offense couldn't get untracked again early, going scoreless in the first half for a third straight game. They wasted opportunities deep in Penn State territory following fumbles by Redd at his own 37 in the first half, and quarterback Rob Bolden at the 29 late in the second half.

On that drive, Illinois receiver Ryan Lankford made a pretty tiptoe catch along the sideline from backup quarterback Riley O'Toole for a 12-yard gain to the 12. The play was upheld by replay - and fans in the student section showed their displeasure by tossing snowballs on the field.

The snowballs missed the players - much like most of the passes Saturday. McGloin was 9 of 24 for 98 yards, while Bolden missed all four of his pass attempts, all in the second quarter.

Scheelhaase finished 9 of 16 for 63 yards, and ran 14 times for 89 yards.

After the game, Paterno had one last message to the frigid fans outside before they headed to the exits in relief.

"For all the fans out there, thanks for sitting through that today," Paterno said half-jokingly, "You've got to be nuts!"


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'Dear Jamie Dimon': O.W.S. writes to bankers

Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement delivered letters on Friday at the Manhattan headquarters of some of Wall Street's biggest banks.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Occupy Wall Street is getting personal.

After railing against Wall Street greed for weeks from their encampment at Zuccotti Park in New York, a group went on the move Friday, dropping off thousands of letters addressed to Wall Street executives.

Although the protestors have based themselves at the park in Lower Manhattan, a number of the biggest "Wall Street" banks actually have their corporate headquarters in Midtown, a few miles to the north.

While bank executives did not emerge from their offices to accept the letters, group members outside the bank buildings used their "people's mic" system to ensure that their sentiments were heard loud and clear.

"Every day, the 99% are fighting to survive, and it's the hardest work you can imagine," said Maria Maisonet of Brooklyn, reading out a letter addressed to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, Citigroup's Vikram Pandit and Wells Fargo's John Stumpf.

"My nephews and my son tell me they feel like bums because, even though they're trying and trying, they can't get a job. You are the problem, not us."

After gathering around 300 people in Bryant Park, organizers broke the marchers into two groups. One traveled to the headquarters of Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley, while the other went to Citigroup and Wells Fargo, before they converged at the imposing JPMorgan Chase building.

Police formed a cordon around the group and provided security outside the bank buildings, but the march was a peaceful affair, with a singing protest outside Wells Fargo and a number of marchers in costume ahead of the Halloween weekend.

Elsewhere around the country this week, however, similar "Occupy" protests have been faced with disorder. Three protestors in Tampa were arrested Friday after members of the group allegedly shoved a police officer, while 51 people were arrested early that morning in San Diego for violating a park curfew and assembling unlawfully.

On Thursday, Oakland mayor Jean Quan apologized after police cracked down earlier this week on a protest in the city in a violent episode that left an Iraq war veteran hospitalized with a fractured skull.

Prior to the gathering in New York, organizers printed off copies of more then 6,000 letters submitted to the website OccupyTheBoardroom.com over the past few weeks and directed to Wall Street leaders.

Upon arriving at Bank of America headquarters, protestors folded copies of the letters into paper airplanes and launched them toward the entrance of the building, where they landed among the police and security guards massed outside.

At Morgan Stanley, march organizer Austin Guest left his phone number with security outside. Guest asked that it be given to CEO James Gorman, inviting him to have lunch with some of the demonstrators.

"We'll pick up the tab," Guest joked. "We've been doing it for the last few years."

The march concluded at JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) headquarters, where several marchers shared their stories before lining up to deliver their letters as bank staffers looked on from inside the building.

Mimi Pierre Johnson, from Elmont, New York, told the crowd that she had been struggling to make her mortgage payments since losing her job four years ago. In a letter directed to CEO Jamie Dimon, Johnson said that despite more than a dozen applications, Chase still has not granted her a mortgage modification.

"I am sure that if you came to Southeast Queens and saw the devastation, the vacant houses with their littered lawns and boarded-up windows, you would sing a different tune when it came to mortgage modifications," Johnson said.

"Name the time and date, Mr. Dimon, and I will personally escort you through the community." To top of page

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U.S. troops among 17 killed in Kabul

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Five troops and eight civilians were killed in central Kabul when a suicide bomber struck a vehicle in a military convoy, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Saturday.

Master Corporal Byron Greff, a Canadian, was killed in the attack, according to the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command.

A U.S. military official said earlier that 13 Americans had died, but an ISAF spokesman could not confirm that number.

The U.S. official emphasized details are continuing to unfold. A heavily damaged vehicle was believed to be an armored bus that was carrying U.S. troops from one base to another. A senior NATO official identified it as a custom-built, heavily armored Rhino.

The attack caused a "number" of NATO and local Afghan casualties, ISAF said in a statement. Four Afghans, including two students, were also killed, said Hashmat Stanikzai, spokesman for Kabul's police chief.

However, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement that initial reports indicate three civilians were killed, including two students.

He offered his sympathies to the families of the victims and said the cowardly character of the attack demonstrates "the very evil and heinous nature of the enemy."

A Taliban spokesman confirmed Saturday's attack in a text message, saying it killed "16 foreign soldiers, one civilian" and injured many others.

Taliban casualty counts are often inflated; there was no other reliable indication 16 foreigners were killed.

Stanikzai said the vehicle used in the attack appeared to be a red Toyota Corolla packed with a significant amount of explosives.

It was unclear how many people were wounded, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul expressed condolences to families and said it will continue the victims' "dedicated work on behalf of peace in this country and region."

"It's a shock. It makes you mad. It makes me angry," said U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "We are not going to let these guys win."

The attack was one of two targeting NATO-led forces on Saturday.

U.S. and coalition casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on coalition forces during training, killing three and wounding several others, ISAF said. The shooter was killed in the incident in southern Afghanistan.

The coalition did not provide any other details about the shooting, and did not disclose the nationalities of those killed.

In another suicide attack in northeastern Afghanistan, a woman in a burqa detonated herself near the nation's intelligence agency.

She tried to enter the National Directorate of Security and was shot at, but she still managed to detonate herself, said Sabour Alayar, deputy police chief of Kunar province.

Two officers and two civilians were wounded, he said, adding that the female suicide bomber was about 25 years old.

Alayar said they had intelligence of a suicide bomber looking for a target, and their security forces were on alert.

Gen. John R. Allen, commander of ISAF, condemned Saturday's attacks across the country.

"I am both saddened and outraged by the attacks that took place today against Coalition forces and the people of Afghanistan," Allen said in a statement. "The enemies of peace are not martyrs, but murderers. To hide the fact that they are losing territory, support, and the will to fight, our common enemy continues to employ suicide attackers to kill innocent Afghan fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as well as the Coalition forces who have volunteered to protect them."

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan marked its 10th year earlier this month having passed two major milestones: The Taliban has been forced out of power and Osama bin Laden is dead.

But Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of high-profile attacks in recent months that have jeopardized the peace negotiations.

September's turban bomb assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, revered by many as a father of the Mujahedeen movement that ousted the Soviets in the 1980s, appears to have dealt the biggest blow to the peace process.

Rabbani was the chairman of President Karzai's High Council for Peace, which has been trying for a year to foster dialogue with the Taliban -- a strategy that Karzai publicly abandoned following Rabbani's killing.

Nearly 2,800 troops from the United States and its partners have died during the 10 years of war, according to a CNN count.


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Islamic Jihad: Israel hits training camp

Gaza City (CNN) -- At least 10 people are dead in Gaza and southern Israel, in a wave of back-and-forth attacks between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants, according to medical and military officials.

The violence began when two Islamic Jihad commanders were among seven militants killed Saturday by Israeli strikes targeting a training camp in Rafah, Gaza, a spokesman for the militant group and medical sources reported.

The Israel Defense Forces said that more than 20 mortars and rockets were subsequently fired into their territory. A 55-year-old man was killed in the rocket attacks and 20 others were injured, according to Zaki Heler, an emergency services spokesman in Israel.

Palestinian medical sources told CNN that two people were killed in a second wave of Israeli airstrikes, launched in response to these rocket attacks.

According to Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for the Islamic Jihad, the original Israeli strikes occurred during a graduation ceremony. Two other members of his organization were injured in that attack, he said. Witnesses reported that at least 10 other people were wounded.

Afterward, Ahmed promised a "response ... inside Israel very soon."

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that one of the rockets then fired from Gaza into southern Israel struck a building in Ashdod. An Israeli man in Gan Yavne was slightly injured by shrapnel.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said it targeted a terrorist group in southern Gaza that was preparing to fire long-range rockets into Israel. The spokesman would not name the group, but said it was part of a larger organization.

The IDF said in a statement that its forces continued to respond to threats from the Gaza Strip on Saturday night, targeting armed rocket launching tripods and people preparing to launch rockets into Israel.

The Israeli airstrikes targeted the same group responsible for recent rocket attacks on the Israeli port city of Ashdod, according to the Israeli military spokesman.


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Bank of America may soften $5 debit card fee

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Bank of America is considering softening its controversial policy of charging some customers for making purchases with their debit cards, according to a person familiar with the bank's plans.

In September, the bank announced that it would begin charging most customers $5 a month if they used their debit cards to make purchases.

The fee, which would begin in January, set off a barrage of public outrage at the bank.

Now, under proposals being considered by the bank, Bank of America would offer customers new ways to avoid having to pay the fee.

Currently, only customers with certain premium accounts would be exempt from the fee.

Under the new plan, customers would be able to exempt themselves by having their paychecks deposited directly with Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), maintaining minimum balances or by using Bank of America credit cards.

Bank of America's retrenchment comes the same day that JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) decided not to impose similar fees. Chase's decision follows a test of the fee it began in two states in February.

Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) also announced late Friday that it is canceling the debit card fee tests it was planning to introduce in five states. Customers in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon will no longer see a $3 debit card fee that was scheduled for statements beginning on Nov. 15.

Bank of America is not alone in announcing a charge for debit card purchases. Sun Trust (STI, Fortune 500) and Regions Banks (RF, Fortune 500) have all imposed similar monthly charges.

The banks' decision to impose debit card fees is widely viewed as a response to the Durbin Amendment to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Enacted in July, the provision reduces the fees banks can charge merchants for debit card purchases to 21 cents from 44 cents. To top of page


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World's best vampire-spotting locations

(LonelyPlanet.com) -- Vampires and their stories seem to be enjoying an eternal renaissance in contemporary fiction and film.

Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" kicked off the modern raft of tales, and the popularity of more recent book and movie offerings like "Twilight" and "True Blood" shows that folks are, well, batty for vampire tales.

So where can you go to learn more about these creatures of the night? Discover the top destinations with this excerpt from Lonely Planet's Best in Travel.

Bran Castle, Romania

There's nothing better than going to the source, and in the case of vampire lore that's Vlad epe , legendary ruler of Wallachia, now part of Romania. epe became the scourge of the Ottoman empire and was fond of impaling entire Turkish forces sent against him. His bloodthirsty reputation inspired Irish author Bram Stoker to use him as the model for "Dracula," and thus a legend was born. Bran Castle, one of his strongholds, now houses a museum dedicated to Queen Marie of Romania. It has an impressive clifftop profile, looking like the quintessential location for a vampire movie.

Vampire Bats, Costa Rica

The vampire bat has become inseparable from the legend of the vampire. Apparently inspired by a newspaper article about these inhabitants of South and Central America, Bram Stoker wove their blood-sucking habits into his novel and the rest is history (or at least, folklore). These small bats do feed on animals' blood but rarely suck on humans, though there have been reported attacks in recent years in Brazil and Venezuela. One of the best places to see them in the wild is Costa Rica, especially within Santa Rosa National Park and Corcovado National Park.

Lonely Planet: How to travel like a kid

Mus e Des Vampires, France

Hidden away in the Les Lilas district of Paris is an enigmatic museum devoted to the vampire. Visits can only be made by appointment, but once through the forbidding red door, the visitor is treated to an eclectic collection of books, photographs, weapons, masks, models, costumes and other curios referencing the vampire legend. There's also a creepy Gothic garden out the back. The Mus e des Vampires.

Forks, Washington

When author Stephanie Meyer set her vampire novel "Twilight" in the small town of Forks, Washington, she had little idea of the wave of vampire tourism she was setting in motion. When "Twilight" went ballistic on the bookshelves, ardent fans headed for Forks, neatly arresting the slow economic decline caused by its traditional mainstay, the timber industry, losing momentum. Now vampire fans can buy undead memorabilia, go on tours to locations that resemble Edward and Bella's literary hangouts, and celebrate Bella's birthday on 13 September. Dazzled by Twilight offers three Twilight-themed tours of Forks and La Push.

Vampire Tour of San Francisco

Anyone who's read Bram Stoker's Dracula will remember Mina Harker, whom Dracula attacked with the intent of transforming her into a vampire. Given that this curse was apparently lifted once he was destroyed, you might be surprised to find Mina Harker wafting about in 21st-century San Francisco, and sporting an American accent. But every weekend you can join Mina for a vampire tour of the city's historic Nob Hill. It covers documented San Francisco history as well as speculative supernatural events, and attendees are encouraged to dress spookily. The Vampire Tour of San Francisco commences at 8 p.m. each Friday and Saturday.

Dracula Tour of London, UK

Given the British capital's starring role in the original Dracula novel, it makes sense that there should be a vampire tour of its darker nooks and crannies. This supernatural outing takes in a house in Highgate where the vampiric one apparently lived during his London sojourn. It also takes in the ghosts of Highgate Cemetery, the satanists of Highgate Woods, and other dark denizens. Curiously, the whole thing is then followed with a medieval banquet. Blood, presumably, is not on the menu. The Dracula Tour of London, run by Transylvania Live, takes place nightly except Mondays.

Pontianak, Indonesia

Vampiric creatures aren't just a Western obsession. Malaysia and Indonesia share the legend of the pontianak, supposedly the undead manifestation of a woman who has died during childbirth. This supernatural being is said to take the form of a beautiful woman, attracting men to their deaths by disemboweling them with her razor-sharp fingernails. You wouldn't really want to encounter one of these hellhounds, but if feeling brave you might visit the city of Pontianak, said to be named after the undead creature which once terrorized its men. Pontianak is the capital of the Indonesia province of West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo.

Lonely Planet: Hotels where famous people have died

Dracula's Haunts, Whitby, UK

Before "Dracula" reached London in the pages of Bram Stoker's novel, he came ashore at Whitby. The North Yorkshire seaport is famous for being the home base of 18th-century explorer Captain James Cook. However, no amount of historic circumstance can top Stoker's evocative description of the Russian schooner Demeter blown across Whitby's harbour with its dead captain lashed to the helm, crashing beneath the East Cliff before disgorging the vampire in the guise of a huge dog. As a result, Whitby has become a popular destination for vampire-fanciers. The Whitby Gothic Weekend is held twice-yearly, in April and October, and features concerts, markets and comedy nights.

"Buffy" locations, USA

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" gained vampires a big new TV audience in the 1990s. If you loved seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar stake scowly-faced evil vampires while finding time to fall in love with a reformed one then you might like to visit the locations in and around Los Angeles where the series was filmed. The series' exterior scenes at Sunnydale High School were in fact filmed at Torrance High School. Shots of the fictional University of California at Sunnydale were taken at the UCLA campus in Westwood, and at California State University in Northridge. And the vampire mansion once lived in by Angel, Spike and Drusilla is the Frank Lloyd Wright--designed Ennis House near Griffith Park. You can find a comprehensive list of Buffy locations within the IMDb entry for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"True Blood" locations, USA

Bon Temps, Louisiana, is the fictional town in "True Blood," the rightful heir to the vampire-mania stoked by Buffy. As with Buffy, the main character of the show is female, Sookie Stackhouse, who, like Buffy, falls in love with vampires. Unlike Buffy, vampires no longer hide from mainstream society -- they have 'come out of the coffin' to drink a synthetic human blood (True Blood). But vampires aren't the only supernatural citizens of Bon Temps. Werewolves, werepanthers, faeries, shapeshifters and maenads also roam its streets. While all the human characters in the series pass through Merlotte's Bar & Grill, the vampires of the show frequent Fangtasia, a bar owned by the thousand-year-old vampire Eric Northman in Shreveport, Louisiana. The actual bar used for some of the filming is located in Long Beach, California, so if you want to be a fang banger then head to Alex's Bar. Other True Blood film locations are scattered over Southern USA and California. Seeing Stars has a site dedicated to finding these sights.

Originally published as "Fangtastic! The World's Best Vampire-Spotting Locations." 2011 Lonely Planet. All rights reserved.

Lonely Planet: A day trip to Chernobyl


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Tom Verducci: Comeback Cards gave us a World Series to treasure

ST. LOUIS -- Now it can be told what St. Louis manager Tony La Russa did at the end of his worst managing night in the big leagues. He didn't stop managing after World Series Game 5 ended, a game that had been so embarrassing for him that he twice could not properly communicate which reliever he wanted throwing in the bullpen, a breakdown that once left him standing on a World Series mound and greeting one of his pitchers by saying, "Oh, what are you doing here?"

After the 4-2 defeat that came to be known as Phonegate for La Russa's telephonic troubles, La Russa called a quick team meeting in the visitors clubhouse of Rangers Ballpark. His team was one loss away from the end of its season. His message could not wait for tomorrow, an off day.

"I'm telling you guys," La Russa told them, "just keep busting your butts and in a couple of days we'll be cracking champagne at home. And you guys deserve it. We cracked champagne in Houston, in Philadelphia and in Milwaukee. This is your year, and you deserve to celebrate at home in a couple of days."

Said outfielder Allen Craig, recalling La Russa's speech, "It was definitely the right thing to say at the right time. He made sure that we knew no matter what had just happened that it was like we were a team of destiny, and our destiny was to celebrate at home."

"It's why Tony is the best," hitting coach Mark McGwire said. "He has a reason for everything he does. And here we are, cracking champagne in St. Louis."

And Phonegate?

"It's all irrelevant now," McGwire said. "Phonegate is out the door now."

With a thoroughly underwhelming 6-2 victory in Game 7 -- at least against the backdrop of 32 pressure-packed days of the purest baseball drama a fan could hope to see -- the 2011 Cardinals cemented their place in history. Team of destiny? That shortchanges the extraordinary resolve of La Russa's gang. The Cardinals will go down as one of the great comeback teams in championship history. They proved they were more than just the "hot" tournament team, as can happen in this three-round playoff system. They were ferocious in rising to multiple challenges.

On Aug. 24, the Cardinals stood 10 games out of a playoff spot with just the 12th-best record in the majors (67-63). On the last day of the season, they needed a win and a Braves loss just to get into the postseason. In the NLDS they needed to beat Roy Halladay and the Phillies in a sudden death game on the road. In the NLCS, they needed to beat the Brewers, baseball's best home team, in Milwaukee to win the pennant. Saving their greatest escape route for last, down three games to two against Texas, to win the world championship they needed to survive being one strike away from elimination not once, but twice.

There have been 107 World Series. Only the 1986 Mets and the 2011 Cardinals won the World Series after walking as close to the abyss as possible -- one strike away from losing it.

What these Cardinals and their gallant foils, the Texas Rangers, did was to elevate the World Series like it hasn't been in a decade. Albert Pujols gave us an individual performance to live for posterity with those of the Babe and Reggie. The two teams gave us the first Game 7 in nine years, breaking the longest such drought since the best-of-seven format was permanently installed in 1922. La Russa and Texas manager Ron Washington, with their 145 pitching changes throughout the postseason and their spasmodic usage of relievers, intentional walks and bunts, left managerial meat on the bones of every game to chew on. Every game seemed to have its own afterlife, a regular game of CSI World Series to get to the bottom of how a game was lost.

Above all, what the two teams gave us was the wonder of Game 6. It ranks with the Game 6 thrillers of 1975 and 1986 as among the most spectacular World Series games ever staged -- what it may have lacked in technical skill more than compensated for with an ebb and flow that was nearly dizzying. The game was a ratings phenomenon, picking up viewers with every twist and turn. Hour by hour did the ratings climb: 8.5, 11.7, 12.9, 13.2 and finally, after midnight, 15. Nobody complained that the four hours, 33 minutes of drama was too darn long.

The comeback Cards wiped out five different leads in the game. Texas found that holding them back was like trying to hold back water with your hands. David Freese won the MVP Award with two of the most clutch swings you will ever see in a World Series: a two-strike, two-run game-tying triple when an out meant a world championship for Texas, with the encore of the fourth walkoff homer when facing elimination, joining the Rushmore of series-saving homers by Bill Mazeroski, Carlton Fisk and Kirby Puckett, Hall of Famers all.

"He's got ice in his veins," McGwire said. "I truly believe it's God-given. The ability to hit under pressure, either you have it or you don't. And he has it. What he is able to do with two outs and two strikes in pressure situations is unbelievable."

Texas did score two runs in its first at-bat in Game 7, allowing for the possibility that somehow it might have recovered from the kick in the gut the previous night. But Freese -- with his third consecutive extra base hit that wiped out a lead or put St. Louis ahead -- immediately answered with a two-run double, and all life seemed to slowly leak out of the Rangers. You could virtually hear the will hissing out of them.

"I'll be honest," Texas reliever Mike Adams said, "we could have used an extra day to come back from that game. It took so much out of us. It was hard. I was spent from it and I only threw three pitches."

The continental divide of this series -- the point where the waters started flowing in different directions -- was when the Rangers held a 7-4 lead with five outs to go in Game 6 and the game in the hands of Derek Holland with closer Neftali Feliz behind him. At that juncture Craig smacked a home run, the start of an amazing stretch in which 12 of the next 20 Cardinals batters reached base and the team scored in the eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th innings as if purely on willpower.

Feliz was flattened by such a steamroller -- he had nobody on base with one out in the ninth holding a two-run lead and couldn't close the deal.

"It's only my second year closing," Feliz said. "I know there is another chance for me. The one I think about is the [Freese] hit in the ninth inning. I have to get over it. It already happened, so I have to forget it and move on."

Asked if thought he could pitch the 10th inning -- Washington asked journeyman Darren Oliver to close the World Series, a major reach given his usual role -- Feliz, who had thrown only 22 pitches, said simply, "It was the manager's decision."

Of course, the Cardinals came back on Oliver, even with two bench players and the pitcher's spot due to bat. This time Lance Berkman supplied the last-strike stay of execution with a base hit off Scott Feldman. Said Texas center fielder Josh Hamilton, "Watching the Cardinals, I feel like most teams must feel when they play us during the season: down by two or three runs, you know they are going to make a run."

"They did a good job fighting back and holding the lead," outfielder David Murphy said. "But it's hard not to think about last night [Game 6] and the way they beat us. They had to earn it and they did."

Well-earned is a fitting way to define this Cardinals championship. Like any champion, they had their share of synchronicity. As a second-place team that finished six games out of first place, they wound up with Game 7 of the World Series at home because of the NL win in the All-Star Game. Instead of sending Kyle Lohse to the hill for the ultimate game, the Cardinals made use of a timely rainstorm that wedged in another off day, making Carpenter, the ace, available for Game 7. There were the bushels full of walks issued by Texas pitchers -- "the difference in the series," Adams said. And let's not forget the accommodation of Atlanta, which suffered a collapse of historic proportions to allow the Cardinals to even dream about October in the first place. But every break meant nothing unless St. Louis could capitalize on it, and the Cardinals did at every turn. The Cardinals, like the 2010 Giants, were an average team in August that grew beastly down the stretch: 34-16 in their final 50 games, postseason included. They are a fitting champion -- hardworking, of modest payroll -- because of how these 32 days defined the inherit goodness of the sport.

Think about how baseball comsumed our consciousness over these 32 days. The Night of 162, when four games, three of them down to the last at-bat, decided the last two playoff spots. A record-tying 38 postseason games, including four sudden death games. A record-breaking 13 postseason games decided by one run.

Baseball pulled us in with no gimmickry. None of the top nine payrolls in baseball won a playoff series. The umpires did a solid job, sparing us more than a bleat here or there about instant replay. We had no controversies of large proportions, no egos run wild, no bulletin board quotes, no nonsense.

What brought us to the television and to the edge of our seats was just baseball. It's the best kind of baseball: the baseball you don't see coming. We spent the winter and a good part of the summer wondering who could stop the Phillies, Yankees and Red Sox, with the Northeast Corridor heavyweights dominating coverage and spending.

But like an undersized horse coming on in the home stretch, the Cardinals came to the fore. Who saw Freese coming? Craig? Motte?

It's the best thing about baseball, isn't it? You spend all this focus on the teams and the players with money, and yet when the roulette wheel stops it is David Freese batting against Neftali Feliz on a 1-and-2 pitch and a 96 mph fastball speeding toward the plate with a world championship on the line. With one swing, a World Series is transformed, and the moment is eternal.


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Lady Liberty turns 125

New York (CNN) -- As snow fell across New York Harbor, Isabel Belarsky clutched her mother, Clara, aboard a passenger ship that puttered toward Ellis Island and wondered what their new lives would bring.

The year was 1930. About a week earlier, the 10-year-old girl from what is now called St. Petersburg, Russia, had embarked on a transatlantic journey with her Ukrainian parents from the French port city of Cherbourg, escaping what she described as Jewish persecution at the start of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

On an island near Manhattan stood the copper colossus that would etch her first memories of the new world.

"It was a wonderful sight," she said of the Statue of Liberty, which marked its 125th anniversary Friday.

The idea for the monument is thought to have been conceived at a 19th-century dinner party among French aristocrats, historians say, who sought to pay tribute to American liberty.

And while the French gift is also widely believed to have at least in part catered to domestic politics, for many, it quickly became a symbol of hope and promise in America's post- Civil War period.

"The arrival on Ellis Island is the fulfillment that you know something good is going to happen to you," said Belarksy, now a 91-year-old widow living in a Russian enclave of Brooklyn, New York.

Her family became part of the more than 12 million immigrants processed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

Adjacent to Ellis towers Lady Liberty, measuring more than 305 feet from base to torch.

Originally, the statue was supposed to be an Egyptian peasant girl that would have stood at the entrance of Egypt's then-new Suez Canal, but plans would evolve into the Roman goddess who would instead adorn New York Harbor.

"The sculptor, (Frederic) Bartholdi, was very clever," said Edward Berenson, professor of history and director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University.

"He put (the statue) where he did because it's right at the narrows of New York Harbor, so he knew that every boat that came into New York would have to come really close to it.

People felt like they could reach out and touch it," he said.

Inspired perhaps by Egypt's colossal statues during his own travels to Cairo, Berenson noted, Bartholdi sought to build a monument of his own in a tribute to American liberty and its newfound emancipation of the slaves.

The statue rests atop a sculpted wrangling of broken chains on New York's Liberty Island.

Only years later, Berenson argues, did the monument come to symbolize immigration to the broader public, despite the structure's engraved plaque bearing the now-famous poem by Emma Lazarus, asking for the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Like many who made the perilous journey, Belarsky said, she had often wondered what kind of life was waiting for her on the shores behind the monument.

"It was quite frightening," she recalled. "The three of us, my father, my mother and I, wanted for someone to come with money or to tell us what's next."

And though a U.S. law passed six years earlier had largely restricted immigration, her father, Sidor, had managed to secure three tickets to America by way of a talent scout who visited the Leningrad conservatory where he had performed as an opera singer.

"He had such a beautiful voice," she said.

Their travel permit, however, was only temporary.

Sidor had acquired a six-month visa to teach at Brigham Young University, Belarsky said.

The young family would nonetheless settle more permanently in a west Manhattan apartment. And unlike many who eventually returned to their homelands in Europe, the Belarskys decided to leave St. Petersburg -- then known as Leningrad -- behind.

"Authorities were starting to clamp down and consolidate the social state and Soviet power around Stalin," said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "As an opera singer, you might not have wanted to start singing Soviet anthems."

So the young family left Russia without plans to return, Belarsky added.

And though many immigrants entered the United States through Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and Miami, historians say steamship companies most often cruised into New York Harbor, commonly making the Statue of Liberty the first land sighting for new arrivals.

"Everybody spoke of the golden land," Belarksy said.

" 'Come to America, where there's gold on the streets,' until they came here and they had to live in walk-up tenement houses," she said, referencing hardships often endured in overcrowded city buildings.

Immigrants also commonly faced unsanitary and unsafe work conditions on docks and in factories as America's need for industrial labor grew.

"If you think immigration is unpopular now," Berenson said, "if anything, it was even more unpopular in the 1890s and the first part of the 20th century."

Successive immigrant waves, however, still rushed to America's shores through Ellis Island and past the Statue of Liberty, often buoyed by the prospect of economic opportunity.

"I think it took a while for people to think of themselves as Americans," Berenson said. "For an awful lot of people, what they wanted was to think of themselves as whatever they were originally and as Americans too."

Anniversary celebrations of the Statue of Liberty were marked Friday by a series of official speeches and an array of webcams, provided by Earthcam, that streamed video footage from the torch.

The statue will close for renovations starting Saturday, though Liberty Island will remain open, according to the National Park Service.


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Weakened storm moves through Mexico's Yucatan

Cancun, Mexico (CNN) -- The storm known as Rina fizzled Friday as it moved over the Yucatan Channel, the strait between Mexico and Cuba, the National Hurricane Center said.

No coastal watches or warnings were in effect after Rina lost much of its punch. The storm had diminished in strength from a Category 2 hurricane that raised fears in and around some of the most popular resort communities in Mexico.

It was classified as a remnant low Friday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 30 miles an hour, the hurricane center said.

Rina's eye was about 75 miles west of the western tip of Cuba and 110 miles north-northeast of Cozumel, moving east-northeast at 5 mph.

"A turn toward the southeast is expected on Saturday, with a turn toward the south expected on Sunday," the hurricane center said in what was its last public advisory on the system.

Continued weakening is forecast for the next two days.

Rina had been expected to drop between 3 to 6 inches of rain over the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula and Cozumel through Friday, with isolated amounts of up to 10 inches, according to the Miami-based weather agency.

A storm surge of as much as 1 to 2 feet above normal tide levels along the coast was also expected, "accompanied by large and dangerous waves," forecasters had said.

Authorities took precautionary measures ahead of the storm, while numerous businesses in Cancun and elsewhere shut down.

"First we're thinking, we're stranded in Cancun; there could be worse things," said Amelie Jarvis, a tourist from Canada. "But then we noticed that everything is closed. I don't know what we're going to do."


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Friday, October 28, 2011

'Get your freak on' TSA screener faces dismissal

(CNN) -- An airplane baggage screener faces dismissal for leaving a note in a passenger's bag that said "Get Your Freak On, Girl" after discovering a vibrator.

The Transportation Security Administration "has initiated action to remove the individual from federal service," an agency spokesperson said. "Like all federal employees, this individual is entitled to due process and protected by the Privacy Act. During the removal action process, the employee will not perform any screening duties."

The agency randomly selects checked baggage for screening on flights originating in the United States. Lawyer and writer Jill Filipovic tweeted a picture of the note Monday and later blogged about it on Feministe.

"This is what TSA will do when they inspect a bag you checked and find a, um, 'personal item,' " she wrote. "Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not OK, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room."

The TSA identified and removed the employee from screening operations, the TSA said Wednesday on its blog. After completing an investigation, action was initiated to remove the individual from federal service.

"TSA views the handwritten note to be highly inappropriate and unprofessional and apologizes for this unfortunate incident," the spokesperson said. "TSA has zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior by our employees as occurred in this instance. When this is brought to our attention TSA takes swift and appropriate action."

An agency official reached out to Filipovic to apologize personally, the agency said. At this point, though, she said she wishes the story would go away.

"It's easy to scapegoat one individual here, but the problem with the note is that it's representative of the bigger privacy intrusions that the U.S. government, through the TSA and other sources, levels every day," she wrote Wednesday after learning of the employee's suspension.

"As much as this is a funny and titillating story, when I put the note on Twitter for what I thought was a relatively limited audience, I was hoping it would open up a bigger conversation about privacy rights (or lack thereof) in post-9/11 America. It unfortunately hasn't done that, and instead has turned into a media circus," she said.

"The note was inappropriate, the agent in question acted unprofessionally when s/he put in my bag, there should be consequences and I'm glad the TSA takes these things seriously. But I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why 'security' has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake."


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U.S. Army officer to be tried for alleged Afghan sport killings

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington (CNN) -- It didn't take long for Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs to make an impression on his soldiers.

Gibbs, the new leader of 3rd Platoon, part of the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade, had served a previous tour in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, and at 6 feet 4 inches and 220 pounds, towered over most of the platoon members.

Gibbs took over the platoon, stationed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in November, 2009. It was a low point for the group: A massive roadside bomb had injured their previous leader and left the team rattled. Gibbs wasn't rattled though.

And, as several of his fellow soldiers would later testify, Gibbs promised his men they would have a chance to exact revenge on the "savages," referring to the Afghan civilian population they were meant to protect.

Nearly two years later, Gibbs, 26, faces a military court martial on Friday for numerous charges, including the murder of three Afghan civilians.

He is the highest ranking soldier charged in what prosecutors say was a rogue "kill squad" that allegedly targeted Afghan civilians and made the deaths look like casualties of Taliban counterattacks.

He has also been charged with removing body parts from his alleged victims, such as teeth and fingers, to keep as souvenirs; planting "drop weapons" to fake attacks on soldiers; and intimidating several of his own unit members from speaking out against the unit's alleged murder plots and rampant drug use.

After his May 2010 arrest in Afghanistan, Gibbs showed investigators a tattoo on his lower left leg depicting crossed pistols and five skulls. He told investigators the skulls were a way to keep track of his kills in both Iraq and Afghanistan, according to investigative interview notes shown to CNN.

Gibbs has pleaded not guilty. His attorney Phillip Stackhouse did not respond to CNN's requests for comment. Stackhouse said in a preliminary hearing this summer that Gibbs acted lawfully and that other soldiers who have testified against him were unreliable witnesses.

Gibbs, a Billings, Montana, native who is married with a young son, faces life in a military prison. His trial is expected to last a week.

Twelve soldiers from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade have been charged in the case, including five with murder. Three of the soldiers charged with murder -- Spc. Adam Winfield, Pvt. Jeremy Morlock, and Pfc. Andrew Holmes -- have pleaded guilty in exchange for their testimony. Spc. Michael Wagnon has pleaded not guilty to a single charge of murder, and awaits court martial.

Several of the soldiers charged in the case documented the alleged murders through unsanctioned photographs of the bodies. In one of the photos, soldiers hold up a dead man's head and pose alongside the corpse, like a hunting trophy.

In March, these photos were obtained and published by German publication Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone magazine, generating comparisons to the Abu Ghraib scandal, and causing the Army to issue an apology.

Prosecutors have portrayed Gibbs as the kill squad's alleged ringleader. But according to testimony in the court martials of other soldiers, he didn't have to push many of the soldiers very hard to take part in the killings which he referred to as "scenarios."

"It wasn't a completely new conversation," Pvt. Jeremy Morlock testified during a July hearing. "It wasn't far-fetched. Rolling around our minds I guess."

Getting away with murder

Gibbs openly discussed how easy it would be to kill Afghan civilians and then make them appear as if they were insurgents, other soldiers have testified. They said they thought Gibbs was joking.

Morlock said the alleged "kill squad" soldiers carried out the executions spur of the moment.

"There was never anything planned," he testified. "Like this date or this time. We found an opportunity."

Video: Morlock details killing to investigator

The first "opportunity," Morlock testified, came in January 2010 during a patrol of a village called La Mohammad Kalay. Morlock told investigators that he and another soldier, Pfc. Andrew Holmes, spotted a teenage farmer named Gul Mudin alone in a field. They beckoned him closer.

"I could see his hands were empty," Holmes testified. "He didn't have a weapon."

Morlock testified he then threw a grenade and ordered Holmes to open fire. The blast ripped the man apart. Morlock testified that the grenade was "off the books" -- one that couldn't be traced back to him. It was, he said, given to him by Sgt. Gibbs.

As Mudin lay dying, Morlock and Holmes later testified, they told fellow soldiers the Afghan farmer had tried to attack them with the grenade. Against military regulations, the men posed for photographs with their "kill."

Both Morlock and Holmes pleaded guilty as part of separate plea deals with prosecutors. Morlock is serving a 24-year sentence for killing Mudin, and two other unarmed Afghan men, and Holmes was sentenced to seven years in military prison.

Holmes' mother: Where was the Army?

Morlock testified that he boasted about the shooting. Soon, word spread about the alleged "kill squad" among their fellow soldiers on base and even among some family members back home.

"People in my platoon ... can get away with murder," Spc. Adam Winfield wrote his father on Facebook on February 14, 2010. "Everyone pretty much knows it was staged."

Chris Winfield was stunned when he read his son's message. He tried to report his son's account and even, he said, called Joint Base Lewis-McChord where the division is based.

He said his warnings were not heeded.

Adam Winfield testified that he later told his father that he was afraid for his own life and not to seek any more scrutiny for the unit's alleged activities.

'They were not posing any threat to us'

In February 2010, the squad went on a mission to a village called Kari Kheyl. There, Gibbs, Morlock and Spc. Michael Wagnon entered the hut of man a named Marach Agha. They ordered Agha outside and then, according to Morlock, Gibbs turned to the other two soldiers.

"'Were we okay to go ahead and shoot this guy?'" Gibbs asked the soldiers, according to Morlock's testimony. "We said 'yeah.'"

Gibbs first fired a contraband AK-47 into a wall, Morlock said, to simulate enemy fire. Then with his M4 rifle, Gibbs shot Agha, Morlock testified. Morlock said he and Wagnon also fired rounds to make it appear as if the soldiers had been attacked first.

Wagnon is charged with Agha's killing and has pleaded not guilty.

In March 2010, while on patrol, Gibbs spotted two Afghan men who he said were carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. But what the men held was actually a shovel, Staff Sgt. Robert G. Stevens, a medic who was also on the patrol, later testified.

"They were not posing any threat to us," Stevens said. Gibbs ordered the soldiers to shoot them, according to Stevens. The medic told the court he intentionally shot 75 yards away from the Afghans, who fled.

"Sgt. Gibbs said we needed to work on our accuracy," Stevens testified, "Because it did not appear that we hit anyone."

As part of a plea deal, Stevens was sentenced to nine months in prison for that incident and for faking an insurgent attack on a nighttime Army vehicle convoy with a grenade.

After he threw the grenade, Stevens testified, soldiers in the convoy fired at nearby Afghan huts. Stevens said he did not believe any Afghans were hit. None of the soldiers in the convoy were injured by explosion.

Combat decorations awarded to the soldiers were later rescinded after investigators discovered Stevens had thrown the grenade.

Stevens testified that Sgt. Gibbs gave him the grenade hidden in a sock. Also in the sock, Stevens testified, was a human finger.

In May 2010, Gibbs, Morlock and Winfield were among soldiers on a patrol in a village called Qualaday. In the three months since writing his father on Facebook, Winfield had shifted from wanting to expose Gibbs to trying to get into the sergeant's good graces.

Winfield was afraid of his sergeant, he would later testify, and his easy talk of covering up murders in a war zone.

In Qualaday, Winfield testified, the three men singled out a man named Mullah Allah Dad, the local cleric, and led him away from the compound where he lived with his wife and children. Winfield said Gibbs ordered the man to kneel in a ditch.

"I had an idea that Sgt. Gibbs was looking for a kill," Winfield told the court. Then, with Winfield and Morlock shielded behind a low wall, Winfield said Gibbs threw a grenade at Allah Dad. The explosion, he said, ripped the cleric apart.

Morlock and Winfield next opened fire to simulate a firefight and then the soldiers planted a grenade near the man, Winfield testified.

Depressed over his role in the incident, Winfield said he grew afraid that Gibbs might want to silence him. While walking across base to talk with a chaplain, Winfield said Gibbs suddenly intercepted him.

"Sgt. Gibbs reminded me I shouldn't be talking about things I shouldn't be talking about," Winfield testified.

Winfield said Gibbs warned him that he could kill Winfield and make it look like an accident.

Meanwhile Gibbs' behavior was becoming more outlandish, other soldiers said. According to the soldiers who testified at preliminary hearings in Gibbs' case, he showed off fingers and teeth he had removed from corpses and discussed throwing candy onto roads.

The sweets would draw children who they could then run over, he allegedly theorized.

'Kill squad' unravels

The unraveling of the alleged "kill squad" came about not from targeting Afghans but after prosecutors said Gibbs organized an attack on a fellow soldier.

Three days after prosecutors say Gibbs killed Mullah Allah Dad, he and six other soldiers confronted Pfc. Justin Stoner. The soldiers were furious at Stoner for ratting them out for abusing drugs.

According to prosecutors, several of the soldiers used Stoner's room to smoke hashish they bought from Afghan translators. Stoner, according to prosecutors, was afraid he would shoulder all the blame for the drug abuse and complained to superiors

The soldiers began to beat Stoner, prosecutors charged. After the alleged stomp down, according to prosecutors, Gibbs showed Stoner fingers he allegedly cut off the corpses of dead Afghan men

The alleged threat backfired though and Stoner soon was talking about the drug abuse, the beating and killings of civilians to investigators.

Gibbs was arrested in May 2010 in Afghanistan and on Friday, he faces those charges in a military courtroom some 7,000 miles away from the Afghan villages he is accused of terrorizing.

Even though none of the soldiers' officers have been charged for participating in or knowing about the alleged kill squad, they bear some responsibility for the unit's actions, Stjepan Mestrovic, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University told CNN in an interview..

"There was a focus on body counts and aggression throughout the brigade," said Mestrovic who testified for Morlock's defense and was permitted to review documents in the case including a sealed report on what the brigade leadership knew.

Mestrovic described a "dysfunctional command climate" where officers disregarded the military's declared counterinsurgency mission of engaging and winning support with the local population.

"In this climate there was a 'kill board,'" Mestrovic said, describing the way in which units were ranked for how many Taliban they had killed. "They had a brigade commander who wanted a high body count, who was constantly preaching to search out and kill the enemy rather than what they mockingly called 'go and have tea with the village elders.' "

But prior to Gibbs' arrival, the unit hadn't had any kills, Mestrovic said, and was being pushed to be more aggressive with an enemy that preferred to ambush rather than directly engage them.

The soldiers' frustration and boredom became a toxic mix, Jeremy Morlock testified. "We lost fellow soldiers to IEDs and lived in fear of being killed by them on a daily basis. ... I just wanted to survive and come home in one piece," Morlock told the court. "I realize now I wasn't fully prepared for the reality of war as it was being fought in Afghanistan."

"Soldiers were basically left on their own," Mestrovic said. "The distinction between an enemy and a civilian broke down. They saw everyone out there as an enemy."


Source

Lady Liberty turns 125

New York (CNN) -- As snow fell across New York Harbor, Isabel Belarsky clutched her mother, Clara, aboard a passenger ship that puttered toward Ellis Island and wondered what their new lives would bring.

The year was 1930. About a week earlier, the 10-year-old girl from what is now called St. Petersburg, Russia, had embarked on a transatlantic journey with her Ukrainian parents from the French port city of Cherbourg, escaping what she described as Jewish persecution at the start of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

On an island near Manhattan stood the copper colossus that would etch her first memories of the new world.

"It was a wonderful sight," she said of the Statue of Liberty, which marked its 125th anniversary Friday.

The idea for the monument is thought to have been conceived at a 19th-century dinner party among French aristocrats, historians say, who sought to pay tribute to American liberty.

And while the French gift is also widely believed to have at least in part catered to domestic politics, for many, it quickly became a symbol of hope and promise in America's post- Civil War period.

"The arrival on Ellis Island is the fulfillment that you know something good is going to happen to you," said Belarksy, now a 91-year-old widow living in a Russian enclave of Brooklyn, New York.

Her family became part of the more than 12 million immigrants processed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

Adjacent to Ellis towers Lady Liberty, measuring more than 305 feet from base to torch.

Originally, the statue was supposed to be an Egyptian peasant girl that would have stood at the entrance of Egypt's then-new Suez Canal, but plans would evolve into the Roman goddess who would instead adorn New York Harbor.

"The sculptor, (Frederic) Bartholdi, was very clever," said Edward Berenson, professor of history and director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University.

"He put (the statue) where he did because it's right at the narrows of New York Harbor, so he knew that every boat that came into New York would have to come really close to it.

People felt like they could reach out and touch it," he said.

Inspired perhaps by Egypt's colossal statues during his own travels to Cairo, Berenson noted, Bartholdi sought to build a monument of his own in a tribute to American liberty and its newfound emancipation of the slaves.

The statue rests atop a sculpted wrangling of broken chains on New York's Liberty Island.

Only years later, Berenson argues, did the monument come to symbolize immigration to the broader public, despite the structure's engraved plaque bearing the now-famous poem by Emma Lazarus, asking for the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Like many who made the perilous journey, Belarsky said, she had often wondered what kind of life was waiting for her on the shores behind the monument.

"It was quite frightening," she recalled. "The three of us, my father, my mother and I, wanted for someone to come with money or to tell us what's next."

And though a U.S. law passed six years earlier had largely restricted immigration, her father, Sidor, had managed to secure three tickets to America by way of a talent scout who visited the Leningrad conservatory where he had performed as an opera singer.

"He had such a beautiful voice," she said.

Their travel permit, however, was only temporary.

Sidor had acquired a six-month visa to teach at Brigham Young University, Belarsky said.

The young family would nonetheless settle more permanently in a west Manhattan apartment. And unlike many who eventually returned to their homelands in Europe, the Belarskys decided to leave St. Petersburg -- then known as Leningrad -- behind.

"Authorities were starting to clamp down and consolidate the social state and Soviet power around Stalin," said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "As an opera singer, you might not have wanted to start singing Soviet anthems."

So the young family left Russia without plans to return, Belarsky added.

And though many immigrants entered the United States through Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and Miami, historians say steamship companies most often cruised into New York Harbor, commonly making the Statue of Liberty the first land sighting for new arrivals.

"Everybody spoke of the golden land," Belarksy said.

" 'Come to America, where there's gold on the streets,' until they came here and they had to live in walk-up tenement houses," she said, referencing hardships often endured in overcrowded city buildings.

Immigrants also commonly faced unsanitary and unsafe work conditions on docks and in factories as America's need for industrial labor grew.

"If you think immigration is unpopular now," Berenson said, "if anything, it was even more unpopular in the 1890s and the first part of the 20th century."

Successive immigrant waves, however, still rushed to America's shores through Ellis Island and past the Statue of Liberty, often buoyed by the prospect of economic opportunity.

"I think it took a while for people to think of themselves as Americans," Berenson said. "For an awful lot of people, what they wanted was to think of themselves as whatever they were originally and as Americans too."

Anniversary celebrations of the Statue of Liberty were marked Friday by a series of official speeches and an array of webcams, provided by Earthcam, that streamed video footage from the torch.

The statue will close for renovations starting Saturday, though Liberty Island will remain open, according to the National Park Service.


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Nurse sees cancer from both sides

(CNN) -- When new patients worry they don't know how they'll get through breast cancer, Cindy Davis puts her hand on theirs and says, "I know, but I want to tell you, I truly know, because I went through this two years ago."

"Their eyes light up and they go, 'Whoa. Really?'" says Davis, 54. "Suddenly, I'm a human being. I'm not just the nurse."

Having breast cancer didn't stop Davis from continuing her work in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. It also didn't stop Dr. Kimberly Allison, a pathologist at the University of Washington who diagnoses breast cancer, a condition that one in 8 women will have during their lifetimes.

These two women have continued their efforts toward optimizing the health of others while going through breast cancer therapy themselves. The disease has changed the way they view their jobs and allowed them to reach out to breast cancer patients in new ways.

"There have been times I've cried with the patient. You cry with them, you pray for them, you hope for them. You pray for their families. It's a tough job, but it's very rewarding," Davis said.

'Why am I doing so good?'

Davis' cancer journey began in 2000 when she was working as a case manager at a major insurance company, at age 43. Her very first mammogram caught a small stage 1 tumor. She felt upset and scared because she didn't know much about cancer at that time, but doctors reassured her that it was treatable because they'd caught it early. She had a lumpectomy, a lymph node biopsy, radiation and medication, which appeared to eliminate the disease.

Her career took her to M.D. Anderson about 10 years ago, where she worked in various divisions before arriving at the breast center, which became her favorite place to be a nurse.

While she helped others with their cancer experiences, she believed she was free of it herself until 2009, when a pain developed in her right hip that wouldn't go away. Her boyfriend told her to get it checked, but she thought she had just been working too hard or lifting too much. Finally she got an X-ray and, at the doctor's unusual request, a CT scan.

On a Saturday morning, the doctor called her in. The scan had found possible metastatic breast cancer, stage 4, in her hip. Some of the cells from the original breast tumor must have migrated there in 2000, remaining dormant for years until they started eating away at the bone.

Davis knew what that most likely meant: Death in two years.

That knowledge cast a shadow when, the day after her first chemotherapy treatment, her boyfriend took her to the outdoor wine bar where they'd had their first date. He got down on one knee, opened a jewelry box to reveal a ring, and started singing the Michael Bubl song "That's All."

"I said, 'No, you don't understand what stage 4 cancer means. You don't know what's coming and I do. It's more than you know.'" Davis recalls. "He just kept saying 'I don't care.' I love you. I don't have a life without you.' "

Dennis and Cindy Davis got married while she was having chemotherapy treatments. She wore a wig for the wedding.

Davis didn't notice her hair was falling out until the couple went on a cruise to Mexico. As she combed it, handfuls started coming out, and she began to cry. But Dennis Davis already knew, and had been cleaning it up so his wife wouldn't see.

"That's what makes you a woman: having breasts, hair, nails. When they take that way, you feel like an 'it,'" she said. "Every time you look in the mirror it's a reminder: 'I have cancer.'"

Breast cancer photographer makes women feel beautiful

Davis now relates all too well to patients. She urges them to treat themselves to nice wigs -- insurance usually pays for one -- recommending the shop where she bought her own, and the scarf shop at M.D. Anderson. Hair grows only about a half-inch a month, but some women choose to keep it short once it starts coming back in, just because it looks great, she says.

"You just got to keep your chin up and, I tell people, just try to laugh," she said. "That's how I have gotten through this: A lot of prayers and a lot of laughter."

There were days during treatment that she could barely walk; other days she'd go to work and cry all the way home over her patients and herself. Her husband suggested quitting, but, beyond the money and insurance benefits, Davis wanted to take her mind off her own problems by helping others. She sensed patients' appreciation of being able to share their experience with a nurse who was going through the same thing.

"You're not the nurse that's just spouting off, 'OK this is what we do for side effects.' You can say, 'Well, this is what I did: When my nails started changing, I put fingernail polish on.' I give them tips."

Her treatment began with paclitaxel injections (Taxol) for 12 weeks, followed by a regimen of fluorouracil, doxorubicin (Adriamycin) and cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan) that ended in December 2009. Chemotherapy appointments were Fridays at 5 p.m. so she could continue working and have the weekends to recover, although she did have to miss some work days because of chemo-related illness.

She also received the intravenous zoledronic acid (Zometa) to strengthen her bones monthly and the anti-hormone drug anastrozole (Arimidex). There were also six weeks of radiation to her right iliac bone, which she'd have early in the morning before work.

She continues to take Arimidex and receives an injection of a bone-strengthener called denosumab every other month, in addition to having regular scans and lab tests.

These days Davis' scans suggest that she has, once again, beaten cancer. She's thrilled, but can't help but feel a sense of survivor's guilt at the hospital.

"When I see my patients and one of them is doing poorly, I think, 'Why am I doing so good and they're not?" she said. "But I'll take it, whatever the reason is. I am thankful for every day."

The sunny side of chemotherapy

It was one of the bigger cancers that Dr. Kimberly Allison had seen as a pathologist. And it was in her own breast.

Allison's 7-month-old son was still breastfeeding when she noticed the upper part of one breast seemed slightly firmer than the other, and it wasn't going away. Her husband persuaded her to get it checked, even though she wasn't worried. She was only 33, and had just taken over as director of breast cancer pathology at her hospital.

"My poor colleagues had to come in and tell me the news," she said. "I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It was bizarre, not something you ever expect to happen to you, certainly not when you specialize in diagnosing something."

The large mass turned out to be stage 3 cancer, and it had taken up so much of her breast that merely removing the lump was not an option. She'd need six months of chemotherapy to shrink it before surgery.

Allison chose to have a bilateral mastectomy -- complete removal of both breasts, so she wouldn't have to worry about screening the unaffected breast so often in the future. The surgery took away all residual cancer, but she still needed to have radiation.

"My director asked me after I was diagnosed: 'So do you still want to specialize in breast cancer?'" she remembers. "'We can talk about moving you to a different field if this is going to be too hard. Do you want to do prostate instead?'"

But Allison refused to leave her work.

"I wanted to keep doing the research I was doing. I felt even more obligated to continue in breast because I knew what it was like now to go through treatment and through the whole experience from the patient side," she said.

Unlike Davis, Allison has good memories of losing her hair. In college, Allison's husband had been a member of the University of Washington's rowing team, which has a ceremony for freshmen to shave their heads. The coach was a family friend, so Allison got to lose her hair in the captain's chair.

"It was this initiation instead of crying over the sink," she said.

Cancer treatment had its low points, but it wasn't as horrific as Allison thought it would be.

Chemotherapy seemed scariest during the first visit. Over six months she was given doxorubicin (Adriamycin), nicknamed "the red devil" because of its nasty side effects and its fruit-punch color, as well as cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan) and later paclitaxel (Taxol), three drugs that Davis also received. Allison found the nurses and support staff made her feel comfortable, and she received other drugs to manage side effects.

"I tried to think of it as my spa treatment," she said of chemotherapy. And treatments became opportunities to spend quality time with her husband, who had been previously busy with a restaurant he'd opened just before her diagnosis.

Radiation involved a robotic arm shooting a laser beam into her, but each session was fast. It did give her skin problems, but "you heal and move on," she says. She also took trastuzumab (Herceptin) for a year.

"You can still, even while getting treatment, go on a hike. Go on vacation. Do the things you enjoy. You don't really have to stop living," she said.

While Allison feared leaving her children behind if she succumbed to cancer, her daughter Maddy, who is now 8, enjoyed having her parents and grandparents around more at that time. Maddy even thought her mother's baldness was cool. "She'll notice one of those little pink ribbons and she'll be like, 'Mom, chemotherapy!' like it was a good time," Allison says.

Allison's initial diagnosis was in March 2008, and she's cancer-free. The experience has made her crave patient contact, since her primary interactions as a pathologist are with physicians. She wrote a recently published memoir, "Red Sunshine," as a way to reach out to patients, and meets breast cancer survivors regularly while giving book talks. "Red sunshine" is what she renamed the "red devil" drug, reflecting her determination to view the situation in a positive light.

Today, she teaches her residents to get results out that are accurate and fast, since Allison remembers the anxiety of waiting for the report that informed her of the cancer growing in her body.

"I know what they've been through now, and I want to tell them when I'm writing up my report giving them the diagnosis I know is going to totally change their lives," she said. "I wish I could be there."


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'Get your freak on' TSA screener faces dismissal

(CNN) -- An airplane baggage screener faces dismissal for leaving a note in a passenger's bag that said "Get Your Freak On, Girl" after discovering a vibrator.

The Transportation Security Administration "has initiated action to remove the individual from federal service," an agency spokesperson said. "Like all federal employees, this individual is entitled to due process and protected by the Privacy Act. During the removal action process, the employee will not perform any screening duties."

The agency randomly selects checked baggage for screening on flights originating in the United States. Lawyer and writer Jill Filipovic tweeted a picture of the note Monday and later blogged about it on Feministe.

"This is what TSA will do when they inspect a bag you checked and find a, um, 'personal item,' " she wrote. "Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not OK, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room."

The TSA identified and removed the employee from screening operations, the TSA said Wednesday on its blog. After completing an investigation, action was initiated to remove the individual from federal service.

"TSA views the handwritten note to be highly inappropriate and unprofessional and apologizes for this unfortunate incident," the spokesperson said. "TSA has zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior by our employees as occurred in this instance. When this is brought to our attention TSA takes swift and appropriate action."

An agency official reached out to Filipovic to apologize personally, the agency said. At this point, though, she said she wishes the story would go away.

"It's easy to scapegoat one individual here, but the problem with the note is that it's representative of the bigger privacy intrusions that the U.S. government, through the TSA and other sources, levels every day," she wrote Wednesday after learning of the employee's suspension.

"As much as this is a funny and titillating story, when I put the note on Twitter for what I thought was a relatively limited audience, I was hoping it would open up a bigger conversation about privacy rights (or lack thereof) in post-9/11 America. It unfortunately hasn't done that, and instead has turned into a media circus," she said.

"The note was inappropriate, the agent in question acted unprofessionally when s/he put in my bag, there should be consequences and I'm glad the TSA takes these things seriously. But I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why 'security' has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake."


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Cain in abortion controversy again

(CNN) -- The campaign of Herman Cain again worked to clarify his stance on abortion Thursday night after the GOP presidential candidate raised new questions at a Texas campaign stop when he said he was "pro-life, no exceptions."

The "no exceptions" phrase seemed to contradict statements Cain recently made, suggesting abortion rights should be a family's decision when it came to cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother was in danger.

The campaign attempted to spell out his views Thursday in a statement obtained by CNN, but did not address any exceptions.

"I am pro-life, and believe in advancing the culture of life. My record as a pro-life candidate speaks for itself," Cain said in a statement. "Anyone who says differently is simply not telling the truth. Next question."

When pressed by CNN on his position, however, a campaign adviser said Cain follows the same policy used by the George W. Bush administration, which said abortions should be allowed in the instances of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.

"He has learned more about the issue," including the number of women affected in those instances, the adviser told CNN, explaining Cain's view.

Cain first stirred controversy last week on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." He said he was against abortion rights, but when asked about rape or incest, Cain said the government shouldn't have a say on those issues and the decision should be left to the family.

Some social conservatives slammed Cain for his remarks in the following days, prompting him to be vocal about his "pro-life" positions during campaign stops and interviews over the weekend.


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Green donors warn Obama: 'Do the right thing' on Keystone pipeline

(CNN) -- They're rich, powerful and P.O.'d.

One of them is BFF with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And they're putting President Obama on notice: stop the Keystone XL oil pipeline or else. Or else what? Well it depends on who you ask.

Take Susie Tompkins Buell, for instance. She's a major Democratic Party fundraiser and co-founder of Esprit clothing company.

This is a woman who's used to hosting political fundraisers and entertaining multimillionaires. She's often described as one of Clinton's closest friends -- donating to her 2008 presidential campaign. Back then, she led a group of holdout Clinton supporters before finally throwing her support to Obama after the '08 Democratic convention.

On Tuesday, Buell could have been rubbing shoulders with the president at a swanky $5,000-a-plate luncheon.

Instead, she joined an estimated 1,000 people out in the street protesting against the pipeline.

"If he doesn't oppose this, I certainly could not get behind him in a big way," she said Thursday. Over the years, she guesses she has raised more than $1 million for Democratic causes and candidates.

Will she be helping out Obama's re-election?

"I'm doing fundraisers for several people coming up in the next few months, but the (Obama campaign) hasn't asked me, and I haven't volunteered -- and I don't know what's to come, I really don't."

Buell wasn't the only rich and powerful political donor at Tuesday's demonstration. Michael Kieschnick, president and co-founder of CREDO Mobile and Working Assets, was there, too.

Obama's decision, he said, "will really be the clearest most unambiguous statement of whether or not he cares about protecting the Earth as he said in his campaign."

Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas. Environmentalists fear the pipeline will poison underground water supplies. Pipeline operator TransCanada says the project would pose no threat, create jobs and spur the sagging economy.

Obama has said the decision whether to begin pipeline construction rests with the State Department, but opponents say the final call is in the president's hands. The administration's decision is expected before the end of the year.

Buell said she's spoken about the Keystone issue recently with her friend the secretary of State at a social gathering a few weeks ago.

"She knows that it's important for the people to speak out," Buell said. In 2010, Clinton said the State Department had not yet completed its analysis of the pipeline's environmental effects, but it was "inclined" to "sign off" on the project.

At the demonstration Buell, who has seven grandchildren, held a poster that said, "Another outraged grandmother against the pipeline."

"I don't say that I know President Obama, but I've had several conversations with him," Buell said. "I feel that the environment is not a priority for him, and it should be."

Obama re-election campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt wouldn't respond directly to Buell's comments, but he did offer a written statement that said, "The president has done more to wean us off of foreign oil and transition the nation to a clean energy economy than any other -- investing in renewable energy and high-speed rail, building a smart grid and reaching a historic agreement with the automakers on fuel economy standards that will save us from importing millions of barrels of oil from the Middle East. When Americans compare the president's record promoting clean energy and America's energy security to those of the leading Republican candidates, who don't even believe that climate change is an issue that we need to address and would cede the clean energy market to China, there will be no question about who will continue our progress."

Political test

The environmental community sees the Keystone pipeline as more than a threat to water in the heartland. They see it as a political test of Obama's 2008 campaign promise to cut U.S. dependence on polluting fossil fuels and to slow climate change. Allowing the project to move forward, they say, makes a statement that the White House is willing to bow to the wishes of the powerful oil industry.

Kieschnick's business has donated $5 million to groups that oppose the pipeline. A self-described "big and enthusiastic" Obama supporter in 2008, Kieschnick said he made $4,400 in personal donations to the president's first campaign.

He also was among 1,200 pipeline protesters who were arrested outside the White House last summer. But Kieschnick hasn't given up hope. He still has a photo of himself with Obama hanging on his office wall.

Ex-Obama environment adviser arrested in pipeline protest

Basically, he says, if the pipeline starts going, the money stops flowing. "I would still vote for him, and I would work to defeat his opponents," Kieschnick said, "but nothing more."

It's not the first time disgruntled Democrats have threatened to withhold their support for Obama. During debt ceiling negotiations with Congress in July, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee demanded that the president press Congress to raise taxes on higher income earners and protect entitlements -- or else lose the committee's support.

Members of the group threatened not to contribute to or volunteer for the president's re-election campaign unless the White House met its demands.

Last summer, the liberal group MoveOn.org, which supported Obama in 2008, expressed frustration with the president over what it said was his inability to hold firm against Republicans in debt ceiling battles and on environmental issues.

Environmentalists acknowledge the White House has made some positive steps, including new vehicle fuel efficiency standards aimed at saving energy and cutting pollution.

But if Obama allows Keystone to go forward, they say there will be political repercussions.

Donors like IT consultant David desJardins say the campaign will have a hard time motivating its base in an election where turnout may be critical. "Even if the Sierra Club says we should still go out and support the president, people will say, 'Why should we do that when he didn't stand up for us when he really had the chance?'"

In 2008, ex-Google software engineer and philanthropist desJardins watched from the audience as Obama delivered his nomination acceptance speech promising to fight climate change and pollution.

Now Keystone offers a chance for "Obama to do the right thing, and then give a great speech about how we need to stop investing in environmental degradation and nonrenewable energy sources and start investing instead in renewable energy," desJardins said. "Then I would certainly be inspired to make a contribution."

Protest organizers admit their message has been overshadowed somewhat by the nationwide Occupy Wall Street protests. But rather than compete for media attention, the two groups have been helping each other to some extent, joining forces at protests and offering moral support, organizers said.

Nonetheless, the anti-Keystone groups are preparing a new demonstration set for November 6, a year before Election Day, when thousands of pipeline opponents plan to form a human circle around the White House.


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Police: Parents gave away 2-year-old

(CNN) -- A Cleveland couple faces child endangerment charges after giving away their neglected 2-year-old girl, authorities said.

The parents were arrested Thursday after authorities learned that they gave away the toddler 10 days earlier, according to Cleveland police reports.

Police got a tip Thursday and went to the parents' home, where they found an emaciated pit bull and fecal matter. The child was nowhere to be found, police said.

Officers learned the suspects had given the child away to friends in their neighborhood, who said they agreed to take custody of her if the couple agreed to get help for their alleged drug addiction, according to police reports.

The parents, Courtney Followay, 23, and Gavin Aldridge, 24, face charges of child endangering, obstructing official business and cruelty to animals.

When the child was given away, she had bug bites and her eyes were crusted shut, police reports said.

Officers gave the child to her maternal grandmother after she was taken to a hospital.

"I can't imagine what this child was thinking about or going through at the time," the grandmother, Theresa Cox, told CNN affiliate WJW. "That's what concerns me the most is what she went through and why she should have to go through that."


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