Evening Edition is an Open Thread
1 Medvedev warns of parliamentary democracy ‘catastrophe’
by Stuart Williams, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 11:56 am ET
| MOSCOW (AFP) – Parliamentary democracy would be catastrophic for Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday, showing his suspicion of Western systems of government despite a drive to modernise the country.
Medvedev, who liberals hoped would prove a major political reformer when he took power in 2008, told a meeting of international experts that Russia’s system of government was not in need of major change. “Nothing needs to be radically changed. Not because it is not allowed, but because there is no need,” Medvedev told the meeting at a forum in the Volga city of Yaroslavl. |
2 Obama calls on Americans to unite, not divide, over Islam
by Stephen Collinson, AFP
2 hrs 57 mins ago
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – An impassioned President Barack Obama Friday warned Americans not to turn on one another over religion amid a spate of rows over Islam in US society, nine years after the September 11 attacks.
Obama also mounted a strident defense of American Muslims, paid tribute to believers fighting in US armed forces, and said US citizens must remember who their true enemies were — naming Al-Qaeda and “terrorists.” The president has vowed to forge a “new beginning” with Islam, but global tensions have spiked over a plan to build a Muslim cultural center near the felled World Trade Center in New York and a US pastor’s threat to burn Korans. |
3 US pastor puts Koran-burning on hold
by Juan Castro Olivera, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 11:22 am ET
| GAINESVILLE, Florida (AFP) – A Florida pastor at the center of a global firestorm insisted Friday he would not proceed with a planned Koran burning ceremony, but failed to stem a tide of Muslim outrage.
“Right now, we have plans not to do it,” Terry Jones told ABC news, despite saying late Thursday he could go back on a pledge to call off the incendiary gesture. Despite Jones’s assurances that the Koran burning would not go ahead as had been planned on Saturday’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks, fury built across the Muslim world. |
4 Recession has left huge hole: Obama
by Stephen Collinson, AFP
1 hr 10 mins ago
| WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said Friday the “hole” left by the worst recession in decades was “huge” and admitted the recovery had been “painfully slow,” but vowed his policies were working.
Obama appeared at a White House news conference designed to showcase his recovery plans and shore up his political standing ahead of November’s mid-term elections in which his Democrats face a Republican wave. The appearance also looked likely to feature questions about the implications of a on-hold threat by a Florida pastor to torch 200 Korans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Saturday. |
5 Nokia appoints Microsoft executive as new CEO
by Aira-Katariina Vehaskari, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 12:20 pm ET
| HELSINKI (AFP) – The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia on Friday named a new software-savvy chief executive from Microsoft to help it battle slumping profits and an eroding market share in the smartphone segment.
The Finnish telecommunications equipment giant chose relatively unknown Stephen Elop to replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who had been sharply criticised for failing to bring Nokia up to speed in a changing mobile phone market. “In late May of this year, we started a CEO search process…. We wanted to ask ourselves, and we did, who would be the best person to lead Nokia,” former chief executive and board chairman Jorma Ollila said at a press conference. |
6 Vettel sets searing Monza F1 pace
by Tim Collings, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 11:59 am ET
| MONZA, Italy (AFP) – German tyro Sebastian Vettel put a nightmare weekend in Belgium behind him on Friday when he topped the times after the opening day’s practice for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
But the Red Bull driver was reluctant to make any declarations about his pace or prospects following a tight and competitive session at the famous old Autodromo in Monza’s former royal park. “We learned our lesson last year after we got hammered quite badly here, so I think we did a step forward. But we need to be patient,” he said. |
7 Wall Street’s super traders come under fire
by Ron Bousso, AFP
Thu Sep 9, 4:26 pm ET
| NEW YORK (AFP) – A handful of traders who master stock markets using ultra-fast computers may soon face a clampdown by US watchdogs as they try to prevent freak electronic glitches.
Regulators are poised to curb so-called high frequency trading that uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze equity markets and trigger trades at lightning speed. The practice, also known as HFT, today accounts for more than half of daily US stock trade. |
8 Karzai calls on Taliban leader to join peace talks
by Sardar Ahmad, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 12:52 pm ET
| KABUL (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai Friday used his traditional message marking the Eid Muslim holiday to call on the leader of the Taliban to stop fighting and join peace talks to end Afghanistan’s long war.
Karzai also called on his Western backers, the United States and NATO allies which now have 150,000 troops in the country, to focus on insurgent sanctuaries over the border in Pakistan rather than fighting in Afghan villages. “We hope Mullah Mohammad Omar Akhund joins the peace process, gives up fratricide, gives up bombings and blasts, stops causing casualties to Afghanistan’s children, women and men,” he said, using Omar’s religious title. |
9 Gas blast, fire ravage US town, six reported dead
by Glenn Chapman, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 10:38 am ET
| SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – California firefighters were battling a huge fire still raging Friday hours after a gas pipeline exploded destroying or damaging more than 170 homes, amid reports at least six people had been killed.
The massive explosion and inferno ripped through a neighborhood in San Bruno near San Francisco, leaving residents shocked by the sudden devastation. San Bruno fire chief Charlie Barringer told the Los Angeles Times at least six people were dead, and the toll was expected to rise. CNN television reported three people had been killed. |
10 Russia mourns bombing victims as death toll rises
by Dina Teziyeva, AFP
Fri Sep 10, 8:43 am ET
| VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AFP) – The death toll from the deadliest militant strike for months in Russia’s troubled Caucasus rose to at least 17 on Friday as the troubled region of North Ossetia observed a day of mourning.
A suicide car bomber wounded more than 100 people Thursday at a busy central market in the city of Vladikavkaz in the mainly Christian Caucasus region of North Ossetia. More people died of their injuries overnight, raising the death toll, said regional health minister Vladimir Selivanov, putting the toll at 17, while Maria Gatsoyeva, a spokeswoman for regional investigators, said there were 18 dead. |
11 Obama says Koran burning can badly damage U.S. abroad
By David Alexander and Ben Gruber, Reuters
27 mins ago
| WASHINGTON/GAINESVILLE, Florida (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Friday he hoped a Florida pastor would drop a plan to burn Korans on U.S. soil, saying such an act could deeply harm the United States abroad.
News of the plan has already outraged many Muslims around the world. “This is a way of endangering our troops, our sons and daughters …. you don’t play games with that,” Obama told a Washington news conference in which he made an earnest appeal for the United States to preserve broad religious tolerance. |
12 Obama says Republicans holding recovery hostage
By Caren Bohan and Alister Bull, Reuters
1 hr 18 mins ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Friday of holding the middle class hostage and defended his efforts to stimulate the sluggish economy as he tries to reverse grim election prospects for his fellow Democrats in November.
With opinion polls showing more Americans questioning his economic leadership, Obama used a rare news conference at the White House to hammer home a campaign-style message painting Republicans as obstructionist and the party for the rich. Obama has been on the defensive as recession-weary Americans have grown skeptical about the steps he has taken to bring down an unemployment rate persistently near 10 percent. |
13 Obama taps Goolsbee as top White House economist
By Alister Bull and Caren Bohan, Reuters
1 hr 54 mins ago
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday named a member of his inner circle as top White House economist and gave a strong personal endorsement to a leading candidate to run his new consumer protection bureau.
The president said had chosen Austan Goolsbee as the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) because he was a skilled communicator who already knows the rest of Obama’s top team very well. “He’s someone who has a deep appreciation of how the economy affects everyday people, and he talks about it in a way that’s easily understood,” Obama said during a news conference to explain how his policies would boost growth and jobs. |
14 Japan PM widens lead in party leadership race
By Linda Sieg, Reuters
Fri Sep 10, 7:17 am ET
| TOKYO (Reuters) – Prime Minister Naoto Kan has widened his lead over powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa ahead in a party leadership vote, Kyodo news agency said on Friday, days before the contest that could set Japan’s fiscal priorities.
Whoever wins the September 14 vote faces the task of keeping a split Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from unraveling while struggling with a strong yen, a fragile economy, huge public debt and a divided parliament that threatens more policy deadlock. Markets are bracing for a shift toward a more stimulative fiscal policy if Ozawa, 68, wins. |
15 Special Report: Power struggles: charging tomorrow’s cars
By Gerard Wynn and Kwok W. Wan, Reuters
4 mins ago
| LONDON (Reuters) – Imagine driving across America using a fuel so new you have to carry your own supply wherever you go.
At the start of the 20th century, before the era of ubiquitous gas stations, drivers did just that as they tested the limits of cars like the Ford Model T, which ran on gasoline, kerosene or ethanol and could, if driven carefully, travel more than 150 miles on a full tank. Now a new generation of drivers is set to embark on a similar kind of experiment. Until recently, most electric vehicles, or EVs as they are often known, have had a range of just a few dozen miles, limiting their usefulness and appeal. That’s a big reason the long-talked-about era of electric vehicles has been, well, talked and talked about for so long with little real-world progress. |
16 CA crews try to reach smoldering homes after blast
By TERENCE CHEA and JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
22 mins ago
| SAN BRUNO, Calif. – Fire crews sifted through dozens of burned-out houses and tried to account for the residents Friday after a gas line ruptured and a massive fireball exploded through a neighborhood near San Francisco, killing at least four people.
Crews with dogs went house to house and officials said there could be more casualties from the Thursday evening blast. Homes were left with just chimneys standing and smoke still rose from 15 acres of smoldering wreckage. Fire officials said the blaze is fully contained, but a quarter of the homes are still too hot to search. “It was pretty devastating,” said San Bruno Fire Chief Dennis Haag. “It looks like a moonscape in some areas.” |
17 9/11 politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
3 mins ago
| NEW YORK – For almost a decade, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was marked by somber reflection and a call to unity, devoid of politics. Not this time.
This year’s commemoration of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa., promises to be the most political and contentious ever because of a proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero and a Florida pastor’s plan to burn the Quran – and the debate those issues have engendered over religious freedom. As in other years, official ceremonies are planned at the three locations the terrorists struck. President Barack Obama will attend a commemoration at the Pentagon, while Vice President Joe Biden will go to ground zero. First lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Laura Bush will travel to Shanksville to observe the ninth anniversary there. |
18 Priest sex abuse linked to 13 suicides in Belgium
By RAF CASERT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 12:13 pm ET
| BRUSSELS – Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday.
Professor Peter Adriaenssens, chairman of the commission, said the abuse in Belgium may have been even more rampant than the 200-page report suggests. “Reality is worse than what we present here today because not everyone shares such things automatically in a first contact with the commission,” he told reporters. |
19 Spanish miners in Day 9 of underground protest
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 1:27 pm ET
| INSIDE LAS CUEVAS MINE, Spain – Far, far away from a Chilean mine where 33 trapped men struggle to cope as they await rescue, 50 Spanish miners are also deep in the earth’s bowels – but by their own choice.
Friday marked Day 9 of an unusual coal miners’ protest, a sit-in staged 1,650 feet (500 meters) underground. No showers, no toilets, no Internet and soot-dusted mattresses are a small price to pay, the miners reason, in exchange for a more hopeful future for their beleaguered industry. Their strike in northern Palencia province is the culmination of a long dispute over unpaid wages and the future of an antiquated industry struggling to survive as it competes with gas-fired electrical utility plants and heavily subsidized renewable energy projects. To make matters worse, all these sources of energy are seeking aid from a government grappling with a recession, high unemployment and a debt crisis. |
20 New rules would mean fewer hours for sleepy pilots
By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 1:08 pm ET
| WASHINGTON – Some airline pilots would fly fewer hours and others would fly longer under a government proposal Friday to help prevent dangerous fatigue.
The Federal Aviation Administration plan, months away from becoming final, would set different requirements based on the time of day, number of scheduled flight segments, flight types, and time zones. Pilots would get nine hours of rest between work days, an increase of an hour. Pilots have complained that the current eight-hour rest period, which begins as soon as they leave the plane, often means only a few hours sleep. |
21 Senate urged to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
11 mins ago
| NEW YORK – Elated by a major court victory, gay-rights activists are stepping up pressure on Congress to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy this month. They want to avoid potentially lengthy appeals and fear their chances for a legislative fix will fade after Election Day.
The House voted in May to repeal the 17-year-old policy banning openly gay service members. Many majority Democrats in the Senate want to take up the matter in the remaining four weeks before the pre-election recess, but face opposition from Republican leaders. National gay-rights groups, fearing possible Democratic losses on Nov. 2, urged their supporters Friday to flood senators’ offices with phone calls and e-mails asking that the Senate vote on the measure during the week of Sept. 20. |
22 Obama: Voter anger could hurt Dems in elections
By TOM RAUM and DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writers
4 mins ago
| WASHINGTON – Facing big Democratic losses in November, President Barack Obama blamed Republicans and election-year politics Friday for thwarting his efforts to do more to spur a listless national economy. He challenged Congress to quit squabbling and quickly approve “what we all agree on” – a reprieve for expiring tax cuts for the middle class.
“Let’s work on that. Let’s do it,” he told a nationally broadcast White House news conference, his first since last May. Obama said his economic programs were helping, but “the hole the recession left was huge and progress has been painfully slow.” |
23 Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 9:30 am ET
| WASHINGTON – The U.S. was slow to take seriously the threat posed by homegrown radicals and the government has failed to put systems in place to deal with the growing phenomenon, according to a new report compiled by the former heads of the Sept. 11 Commission.
The report says U.S. authorities failed to realize that Somali-American youths traveling from Minnesota to Mogadishu in 2008 to join extremists was not an isolated issue. Instead, the movement was one among several instances of a broader, more diverse threat that has surfaced across the country. “Our long-held belief that homegrown terrorism couldn’t happen here has thus created a situation where we are today stumbling blindly through the legal, operational and organizational minefield of countering terrorist radicalization and recruitment occurring in the United States,” said the report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. |
24 Nokia dumps CEO, turns to Microsoft exec
By MATTI HUUHTANEN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 12:56 pm ET
| HELSINKI – Nokia Corp. is replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as the world’s top maker of mobile phones aims to regain lost ground in the fiercely competitive smart phone market.
The choice of a North American executive to lead a Finnish company reflects the increasing dominance of U.S. and Canadian companies in the evolution of the phone business. Apple Inc.’s iPhone has set the standard for today’s smart phones, while Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerrys are the favorite of the corporate set. More recently, Google Inc.’s Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone. |
25 Atheist billboard provokes Oklahoman Christians
By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer
40 mins ago
| OKLAHOMA CITY – Atheists in Oklahoma City have erected a billboard seeking fellow non-believers, and Satanists have scheduled a conference in a city-owned building, drawing criticism from ministers in a state where more than eight out of 10 people say they are Christians.
“It’s not a question of ‘Can you?’ It’s a question of ‘Should you?'” said Dan Fisher, pastor of the Trinity Baptist Church in Yukon. “It’s kind of like they’re poking a finger in your eye.” Nick Singer, the coordinator of a local atheists’ group called “Coalition of Reason,” recently received $5,250 from its national counterpart to erect the billboard along Interstate 44 near the Oklahoma State Fair, which opens Wednesday. Its message reads, “Don’t believe in God? Join the club.” |
26 War story: US vet who caught Japan’s Tojo speaks
By CHRIS CAROLA, Associated Press Writer
55 mins ago
| SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – John J. Wilpers Jr. went decades without publicly revealing details about his international headline-making exploits at the end of World War II, a string of silence befitting a former Army intelligence officer-turned-career CIA employee.
It took the belated awarding of a Bronze Star to the upstate New York native to finally loosen the lips of the man credited with preventing former Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo from committing suicide on Sept. 11, 1945, nine days after Japan officially surrendered. Tojo was eventually put on trial for war crimes and executed in 1948. “I never wanted it in the first place,” Wilpers, 90, said of the attention he received after capturing Tojo and again earlier this year when he finally received the medal. |
27 Rare vivid blue diamond up for sale at NYC auction
By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 20 mins ago
| NEW YORK – A two-stone ring with a rare triangular blue diamond the size of a quarter on a gold band with baguette-cut diamonds could bring at least $15 million when it is offered at auction in New York next month.
At 10.95 carats, the stone is the largest triangular-shaped fancy vivid blue diamond ever to come to auction, Christie’s told The Associated Press in advance of the Oct. 20 sale. It is paired with a 9.87-carat white diamond cut in the same shape. “Vivid blue is the strongest and purest saturation in any colored diamond,” said Rahul Kadakia, Christie’s jewelry expert. “As a vivid, this is as good as it gets.” |
28 Pa. mosque opens peacefully near synagogue, church
By KATHY MATHESON, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 5:45 am ET
| BERWYN, Pa. – A new mosque recently opened in this well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia, but not many people noticed.
That was fine with leaders of the Islamic Society of Greater Valley Forge. Amid a tense national climate for U.S. Muslims, they did not seek publicity for the happy occasion, only continued peace with their neighbors: a Jewish synagogue next door and Baptist church across the street. The Muslims’ good relations with other faiths and the town at large offers a stark contrast to American communities torn by anti-Islamic acts, including arson at the site of a planned mosque in Tennessee and a threatened Quran burning in Florida. |
29 Calm prevails in LA neighborhood after protests
By THOMAS WATKINS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Sep 10, 4:39 am ET
| LOS ANGELES – After three nights of violent protests, calm mainly prevailed over a gritty neighborhood where police fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was menacing officers with a knife.
About a hundred residents took to the streets for the fourth night in a row Thursday, but no violence erupted. Instead the crowd lit prayer candles in memory of Manuel Jaminez and dropped money in a collection box to help his family in Guatemala. Some jeered at passing patrol cars, but there was no hurling of eggs, bottles and rocks that was seen earlier in the week. |
30 HHS to insurers: Don’t blame us for your rates
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 11:07 pm ET
| WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won’t tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.
“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby. “Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They’d lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide. |
31 NY mosque investor declines Trump’s buyout offer
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 8:45 pm ET
| NEW YORK – Donald Trump offered Thursday to buy out a major investor in the real estate partnership that controls the site near ground zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-story Islamic center and mosque.
The offer, though, fell flat nearly instantly. “This is just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight,” said Wolodymyr Starosolsky, a lawyer for the investor, Hisham Elzanaty. |
32 Detroit fires add to burned, vacant landscape
By COREY WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 8:20 pm ET
| DETROIT – The homes next door and down the block from Toni Booker’s Detroit house have been vacant for months, covered in gang graffiti and stripped of anything valuable.
After a wildfire raged through her east side neighborhood this week, those same homes now are charred, some gutted. “I just want to know, will they leave it like this?” she asked. |
33 Soldier’s father: Army was warned of murder plot
By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 8:02 pm ET
| SEATTLE – The father of a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan says he tried nearly a half dozen times to pass an urgent message from his son to the Army: Troops in his unit had murdered an Afghan civilian, planned more killings and threatened him to keep quiet about it.
By the time officials arrested suspects months later, two more Afghans were dead. And much to Christopher Winfield’s horror, his son Adam was among the five Fort Lewis-based soldiers charged in the killings. |
34 In a wired world, the crises come instantly
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Thu Sep 9, 7:14 pm ET
| NEW YORK – “Advocate tolerance, and disregard the ignorant,” one book counsels. Advises the other, “Be gentle towards all, … forbearing.”
If only the writers of the Quran and the Bible had logged on to Twitter accounts. The world has always had its cranks and crackpots, its intolerance and religious bigots. But only in this wired generation has word of outrages against others’ beliefs flashed around the globe in an instant, to create instant crises. |
35 ACLU petitions for oversight of Newark police
By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 7:02 pm ET
| NEWARK, N.J. – The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the police department of New Jersey’s largest city has so many serious problems – rampant misconduct, lax internal oversight and too many cases of officers using excessive force during arrests – that the federal government needs to intervene.
The ACLU’s New Jersey chapter filed a petition Thursday asking the U.S. Department of Justice to provide an independent monitor for the 1,300-officer Newark Police Department. In a 96-page filing, the civil rights advocacy group cited 407 instances of misconduct ranging from police officers breaking a man’s jaw and eye socket during an arrest to seven deaths attributed to Newark officers. The deaths included shootings or ignoring urgent health complaints, according to the report. |
36 Emanuel would be best-known mayoral candidate
By DON BABWIN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 6:30 pm ET
| CHICAGO – If Rahm Emanuel decides to run for Chicago mayor, the White House chief of staff would easily be the best-known figure in the race, with national name recognition that few others could match and invaluable experience from helping engineer the Democrats’ takeover of the House in 2006.
But other candidates have local power bases they’ve been cultivating for years, while Emanuel has been far away in Washington. So there are doubts about his ability to put a couple of hundred campaign workers on the street to begin drumming up votes. Emanuel has to consider something else, too: The prospect of his name being dredged up at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s second corruption trial – and maybe even being called to testify – just as he is trying to convince Chicagoans to vote for him. |
37 Accused abortion doctor has notorious reputation
By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 6:29 pm ET
| BALTIMORE – In early August, three women, each of them more than four months pregnant, sought abortions from Dr. Steven Brigham at his clinic in New Jersey. Instead of turning them down, authorities said Brigham used a novel scheme to take advantage of the disparities in state abortion laws.
He started the late-term abortions in New Jersey, where he wasn’t permitted to perform them, and finished them a day later in Maryland, where the law is more permissive, authorities said. One of the abortions, however, didn’t go as planned, and Maryland officials ordered Brigham, 54, to stop practicing medicine in the state. Police raided his offices and yanked two of his colleagues’ licenses in Maryland, and New Jersey authorities are also seeking to take his license away. |
38 Pa. mayor to take immigration law to Supreme Court
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 9, 5:48 pm ET
| HAZLETON, Pa. – A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hazleton, Pa., may not enforce its crackdown on illegal immigrants, dealing another blow to 4-year-old regulations that inspired similar measures around the country. The city’s mayor pledged to take the case to the Supreme Court.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said that Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act usurped the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration. “It is … not our job to sit in judgment of whether state and local frustration about federal immigration policy is warranted. We are, however, required to intervene when states and localities directly undermine the federal objectives embodied in statutes enacted by Congress,” wrote Chief Judge Theodore McKee. |
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