Russian cargo vessel misses space station
A faulty radio link forced an unmanned Russian cargo ship to abort its docking at the International Space Station on Friday, U.S. and Russian space officials said.
The glitch between the two vehicles occurred about 25 minutes before the Progress ship was due to automatically park itself at a berthing slip on the station's Russian Zvezda module.
Instead, Progress floated past the station at a safe distance of about 2 miles, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias, adding that the six-member Russian-American crew was never in any danger.
Interfax quoted the station's commander, cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, as telling Russian mission control that the Progress was "spinning uncontrollably" before disappearing from view.
But Russian space agency deputy head Vitaly Davydov later said the ship was not out of control.
"The Progress ship and the international space station are in working order and reliable communication with them is being maintained," Davydov said on state-run Rossiya-24 television.
The Progress M-06M blasted off on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, packed with 2.5 tonnes of cargo including fuel, food, water, equipment and spare parts for life-support gear.
At the time the radio link was lost, the station commander was trying to activate a backup docking system aboard the space station, NASA said.
Russian flight controllers did not know what impact, if any, the manual docking system setup had on the communications equipment.
No additional docking attempts will be made for at least two days, the space agencies said.
The ship was the 38th Progress vehicle sent to the orbiting space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations.
In addition to Skvortsov, the station's crew includes cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Fyodor Yurchikhin, and NASA astronauts Doug Wheelock, Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Shannon Walker.
Legal facts :
Lakeside contains many well preserved historic buildings. In 2001 Chris Thomas documented all the homes and buildings within the gates of Lakeside, and counted a total of 890, although more have been built since then along the Oak Avenue extension and still others as in-fill projects. The community is largely residential with a small business/shopping area near Central Park. The Lakeside Association owns and operates a number of large assembly buildings:
Hoover Auditorium (Third St. between Walnut and Central) South Auditorium (Sixth St. between Walnut and Central) Orchestra Hall (corner of Second and Walnut) Wesley Lodge (Fifth St. between Walnut and Central) C. Kirk Rhein Jr.Center for the Living Arts(corner of Sixth and Walnut) WoHoMis Lodge (corner of Central and Fifth)
Places of Worship: Bradley Temple (corner of Cedar and Third) Lakeside United Methodist Church (corner of Fifth and Central) Chapel in the Woods (outdoor space along Maple past Seventh) Hoover Auditorium (Third St between Walnut and Cantral)
There is also a small local museum, Heritage Hall, at the corner of Maple Avenue and Third Street.
The fountain at Lakeside Hotel was built by the late landscaper Robert L. Barna, and two of his sons Jimmy J. Barna (Landscape/Architect), and Steven C. Barna.
Diver dies while working on rig unrelated to spill
A waste services company says a diver performing maintenance on a client's rig in the Gulf of Mexico, unrelated to the massive oil spill, has died after an underwater accident.
A statement from Chicago-based Veolia Environmental Services North America says the diver was working at a depth of about 250 feet from the company's Normand Clipper vessel when "what might have been an underwater explosion" happened about 11:30 a.m. CDT Friday.
Veolia says rescue teams retrieved the diver but paramedics weren't able to resuscitate him.
The company didn't specify the client. But Margaret Cooper with Houston-based Chevron U.S.A. confirms a Veolia contractor died while performing maintenance on a Chevron rig that had been damaged by a hurricane in recent years.
Legal facts :
Lakeside is a gated community from the end of June through Labor Day. To enter Lakeside during the summer Chautauqua season, individuals must pay a gate fee, which helps support maintenance and improvements in town. Activities that are provided as part of the gate fee include sport and water sport activities, as well as Christian-themed activities and worship, in keeping with the area's history. There is a program every night in the spacious Hoover Auditorium, twenty-six shuffleboard courts, tennis courts, and all kinds of children's activities. The summer calendar includes some activities for which there is an extra charge, such as miniature golf, movies at the Orchestra Hall theater, and a historical tour of homes. Lakeside also has a large pier jutting into Lake Erie, which offers fishing, swimming, kayaking, and sailing. Lakeside also features a handful of unique stores. Additionally, the dining opportunities in the area are varied, including numerous types of cuisine and a variety of settings. The miniature golf course opened in 1963 and was recently renovated in 2008.
Lakeside is also the home of both the prestigious annual international shuffleboard competition and the national competition.
Moynihan, as Nixon aide, warned of global warming
Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.
Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention.
There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo.
"This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit," he wrote. "This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter."
Moynihan was Nixon's counselor for urban affairs from January 1969 — when Nixon began his presidency — to December 1970. He later served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before New York voters elected him to the Senate.
Moynihan received a response in a January 26, 1970 memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration's Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at.
"The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between," he wrote. "One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise."
Heffner wrote that he would ask the Environmental Science Services Administration to look further into the issue.
Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and had an interest in the environment. In one memo, Moynihan noted his approval of the first Earth Day, to be held April 22, 1970.
"Clearly this is an opportunity to get the President usefully and positively involved with a large student movement," he wrote to John Ehrlichman, Nixon's adviser on domestic affairs.
Moynihan's memo was among 100,000 documents released Friday.
The documents also include about 5,000 pages of now unclassified national security records on the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, correspondence between Nixon and then-British Prime Minister Edward Heath and back-channel Soviet-Israeli relations.
Legal facts :
In 1873, Lakeside began as a small tract of cleared land, a campsite where Christian revivals often took place. The deed to part of what is now Lakeside was purchased by the Central Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church. Financial backers and organizers included Rev. Richard P. Duvall, who at one time had done missionary work for relocated Sac and Fox Indians in Oklahoma; B. H. Jacobs, a Danish immigrant who owned a store in nearby Port Clinton and who was a Civil War veteran; and Samuel R. Gill, twenty-seven years of age, who had grown up on the Marblehead peninsula.
Throughout the remainder of the 1800s, Lakeside remained a camp area, and very few cottages were erected. However, in 1874, a dormitory-style building called Pilgrim's Rest was built. May 1875 saw the beginning of work on the Hotel Lakeside.
Today, Lakeside is a "Chautauqua," a word that implies a resort that combines religious observation, summer education, recreation and cultural opportunities.
Apple says iPhones overstate signal strength
Apple Inc came clean on Friday about an embarrassing software glitch that overstates network signal strength in its hot-selling iPhone, as complaints mounted about the phone's wraparound antenna.
Apple admitted its signal strength miscalculation dates back to its original 2007 iPhone. It promised to fix the glitch in a few weeks, but did not directly address concerns that its antenna design causes reception problems for iPhone 4, its newest phone.
Apple's apology -- a relative rarity from the company known for its marketing savvy -- marked the third time in less than three weeks it had to apologize to customers of iPhone 4.
"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong," Apple said in an open letter to customers published on Friday.
Since the iPhone 4 hit stores on June 24, consumers have complained about cellphone reception problems when they hold the phone in a certain way. Even while just standing in one place, a rapid decline in the number of signal bars can be observed depending on how the phone is gripped.
Apple has already been sued by iPhone customers in at least three complaints related to antenna problems on the iPhone 4.
Rival Motorola Inc has made a thinly veiled dig at the iPhone's problems. In ads for its Droid X phone, Motorola promised users can "hold the phone any way they like."
Apple said that "gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars." It said this problem is not limited to iPhone, but also plagues phones from Nokia and Research In Motion Ltd, as well as phones with Google Inc Android software.
But Apple conceded iPhone 4 consumers complained of a far bigger than normal drop in signal bars.
The iPhone 4's antenna is an unusual design in that it circles the entire perimeter of the device. Phone makers typically try to place the antenna in places the user is less likely to touch in order to make a call.
But with iPhone 4, unless you put a insulating cover around the antenna, the design seems to make it difficult to avoid touching it and unwittingly degrading reception by absorbing electromagnetic waves that carry phone calls, analysts say.
Kenneth Dulaney, a long-time cellphone analyst suggested that Apple's notoriously strict control of information ahead of its product launches may have hurt the ability of its engineers to test the device in as many situations as possible.
"It could be that some of Apple's secrecy could be reducing the number of test cases they expose the device to, therefore some of these problems show," said Dulaney.
As a result of user complaints, Apple said it will update its software to in coming weeks using a formula recommended by AT&T Inc, the exclusive U.S. provider for iPhone.
This should give users a more accurate display of signal strength at any given time, the company said.
Apple said that, when users noticed a dramatic drop in the number of signal strength bars on their phone's display, it was likely due to weak network coverage in that area.
"Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don't know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars," Apple said.
AT&T deferred questions about the letter to Apple. It declined comment on any implication that its network performance, which has faced a lot of criticism, could be even worse than users thought.
Apple has already apologized for website delays when it started online iPhone 4 pre-orders June 15. It then apologized for store shortages after the device hit shelves.
Despite the complaints Apple says iPhone 4 is its most successful phone launch ever, with sales of 1.7 million by the end of June 26.
Apple analysts said the popularity of the record-selling device will likely not be hurt by the technology problem.
"The demand is so far past what they're able to supply right now, the impact would have to be massive to hurt sales numbers," said Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves, who does not see consumers being upset enough about the phone's problems to decide against buying the device.
Another analyst, Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw, said consumers may be forgiving since Apple is "pushing the technology envelope" with a new antenna design.
Apple shares closed off 0.6 percent at $246.94 on Nasdaq and AT&T shares fell 0.2 percent to $24.29 on New York Stock Exchange. AT&T rival Verizon Wireless is widely expected to be added to Apple's iPhone distribution in 2011.
Legal facts :
Lakeside is a private community in northern Ohio, United States, on the shores of Lake Erie. It was formed in 1873 by members of the Methodist Church and remains a church-affiliated vacation resort. It is one of only a few continuously operating Independent Chautauquas that persist in the 21st century. It is located in Ottawa County's Danbury Township, near the town of Marblehead.
iPhone 4 “Reception Problems” Due to Bad Math
Whoops! So it turns out the big iPhone 4 "death grip" hooplah was just an arithmetic error. Amazing this slipped by in testing, but at least it's quite a relief for Apple and over a million customers that a massive recall won't be required. It's pretty funny how big of a deal everyone made this out to be though. Since I got my iPhone 4, anyone that has spotted it says something along the lines of the following two things almost without fail: "Oooh the screen is beautiful!" and "So does it drop calls like crazy, or what?"
For the record, I have never experienced the bar dropping phenomenon and call quality and reception is far better than on my 3G (though AT&T has always left something to be desired in that area). I am liking these "Letters from Apple" lately though. Sure they're glorified press releases, but they give it that personal, Appley touch. Kind of like how Apple Store employees handed out ice cream and water to line-goers on the 24th.
So anyway, surely this means we can stop seeing the ever-sensationalizing media complain about the iPhone 4 right? Apple said it themselves, if you don't like it, send it back.
Legal facts :
The Lakeside Association Police Department was dissolved in 1994 due to personnel issues. The Sheriff's Deputies assigned to the Lakeside Police Department became "Lakeside Security Officers". The Sheriff's Office continued to patrol the community but it was under contract by providing one deputy through 1995. Danbury Township,Ohio Police supplied police protection after this through 1997 by having a roving patrolman in the community. After 1998 the Association continued to provide their own protection through its Lakeside Security Department. Former Lakeside Police, radios, computers, and misc. equipment was soon utilized by the department. Early in 1998 the department had two patrol cars, and several officers patrolling. This was the most staff ever employed at once in the history of the Department. Today the Lakeside Security Department no longer holds the traditions of the past. Security personnel are unarmed and uniformed with shorts and polo-shirts and patrol in golf carts and pick-up trucks.
Goodbye Kin, Sidekick and ‘Social Phones’
That idea will soon become irrelevant, and here's why:
Social networking is clearly a hot trend in smartphones. Palm's WebOS phones led the pack with Synergy, a program that lumps contacts from e-mail, messaging applications and social networks into one view, while also merging instant messages and SMS into a single feed. Then came Motorola's Motoblur, a user interface that merged Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other networks into a single feed on the homescreen.
Now, it seems like everyone's getting on board. HTC's Sense interface gained Friend Stream, whose function is self-explanatory. Motorola's Droid X won't back Motoblur specifically, but something like it. Down the line, you'll see Windows Phone 7's People Hub, a running feed of status updates and photos from friends. Even the buttoned-up BlackBerry is joining the fun, as the BlackBerry 6 operating system will include a "social networking feeds" application.
The problem is that smartphones require expensive data plans that turn off people who want less. The Kin, which Microsoft called a "social phone," was an outright failure largely because its $30 monthly data plan didn't sync with the Kin's lack of features. The Sidekick had special price tiers that included data and text, and it had a long and healthy run -- last year's data snafu notwithstanding.
Increasingly, it's becoming possible to get a smartphone for the same monthly cost as a Sidekick. Earlier this month, AT&T put an end to unlimited smartphone data plans, but it also introduced a low price tier of $15 per month for 200 MB of data. That's not ideal for watching video or streaming music, but it can certainly handle Facebook and Twitter, thereby making smartphones more accessible than ever. Other networks may follow AT&T; Verizon is already considering it.
Even if T-Mobile gives the next generation of Sidekicks a special monthly rate, it won't look much different than the low price tier AT&T offers. Therefore it'll have to compete with all other social network-friendly smartphones. So I'm not surprised that a rumored follow-up to the Sidekick, said to be coming in May and called the "Sidekick Twist," sounds a lot like a smartphone, with Android 2.1, a 1 GHz processor and 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display.
To put it all another way, the line between smartphone and feature phone is blurring, and phones that try to split the difference will get lost in the obscurity.
Legal facts :
Lakeside Police were responsible for patrolling the Association streets and property bordering Marblehead and Danbury Township, Ottawa County, Ohio, and they were also called at times to assist local police departments in Marblehead Danbury Township. The non-sworn personnel or Lakeside Security Guards performed most of the community building checks, patrols, and other non-law enforcement duties for the Association. Also community parades were escorted by both Lakeside Security and Lakeside Police. In 1989 the department was the first in the area to use computers and the software DataManagerPC for police report writing. This gave the department a tech-edge till 1995. After changes in the department in 1998 the computer system was again reinstituted till 2000.
Antenna Expert: Apple is Right, iPhone 4 Signal Woes Overblown
Apple on Friday issued a carefully worded statement admitting that, yes, there's something wrong with the iPhone 4; but, no, it's not the alleged problem you've heard about.
While Apple fessed up to using a flawed formula to calculate the number of bars of signal strength displayed on the iPhone, it also defended the iPhone 4's much-maligned antenna design, calling the handset's wireless performance "the best we have ever shipped."
Corporate denial at its worst? Not so, says Spencer Webb, president of AntennaSys, an antenna design, integration, and consulting firm. Webb on Friday ran preliminary tests on the iPhone 4's antenna and reached the same conclusion as Apple: Everything's (mostly) okay.
"My conclusion is that all the hype has been just hype," Webb says. "It's not any more sensitive to hand position that was the first-generation iPhone--and probably many other phones on the market."
Some users report that when they hold the iPhone 4 tightly and cover the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band, signal strength can drop 4 or even 5 bars. That, they claim, is evidence of the phone's flawed antenna design.
Webb and a colleague decided to run their own tests, which he admits were brief and subjective. "This was a non-scientific test, but it was done by two engineers who deal with RF devices for a living," he says.
First, they placed a call on an iPhone 4 while holding the handset from the top. They then switched to the infamous "grip of death"--holding the bottom of the phone tightly with two hands.
"We succeeded in taking a five-bar display and reducing it to one bar by doing that," Webb says. "But the call remained solid and never dropped."
Next, they took Webb's first-generation iPhone (from 2007) and repeated the experiment: "We got the exact same results." Their findings, he says, support Apple's contention that nearly all of today's cell phones are susceptible to human interference.
"(G)ripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by one or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones," Apple said in its statement.
Webb also took a piece of electrical tape and wrapped it around the iPhone's metal band where the hand was causing interference. He then repeated the experiment above. "There was absolutely no difference between having the electrical tape and not having it," he reports.
Webb says he's agreed with Apple's stance from the beginning, and has written as much in his blog. He plans to do more iPhone antenna testing next week and publish the results. He's confident his findings will concur with what he's seen thus far.
"Any handheld radio device is going to suffer the same way if you put your hand over the antenna," he says. "You're going to cause a reduction in performance, period. That's not a news flash."
Well, if that's the case, why all the controversy now?
"Over the years we've gone from cell phones that were bricks with antennas popping up the top, to flip phones with retractable antennas, to phones with bumps for antennas, to phones that are rectangular monoliths that don't have any external antenna protrusion at all," he says.
The latest design means that today's consumer "doesn't have an antenna consciousness. All of a sudden, we're discovering, 'Oh my gosh, there's this antenna, and we can cover it with our hands and it affects performance.'"
Legal facts :
The Lakeside Association Police Department is a special security police formed at the beginning of the twentieth century to patrol and provide security for the private association and Chautauqua community of Lakeside, Ohio, United States. The two patrolman employed were invested with full police powers under the Ohio Revised Code, and were given authority to enforce chautauqua rules and regulations. In the 1950s the police force was dissolved and police protection was then the responsibility of the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office. A special division for Lakeside was formed for the Sheriff's Deputies assigned to the commumity. This division was later called the Lakeside Association Police Department. The department was headed by a Chief Deputy, and staffed by two Sheriff's Deputies and two non-sworn personnel employed by the Association who were titled Lakeside Security Guards.
Worker in trouble for snarky iPhone-Evo video
When Brian Maupin made two snarky online videos poking fun at zealots of the iPhone and the Evo phone, he thought it was just a good way to vent some of the frustrations inherent in selling smart phones.
His employer, Best Buy, thought otherwise, even though the retailer, which sells both phones, isn't mentioned in either video. The company was mentioned, though, in videos Maupin had made earlier.
Maupin, who's been selling phones at a Best Buy store in Independence since 2007, said Friday he was suspended from his part-time job after posting two YouTube videos that slam fans of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4 and HTC Corp.'s Evo 4G.
Maupin, 25, said he was told Thursday he had a "choice to either quit or the HR people can decide what they want to do." He said he would not quit and was told he could be fired over the matter.
The flap arose after Best Buy found out about two short animated videos Maupin made. The videos depict a "Phone Mart" salesman extolling the virtues of the Evo to an iPhone devotee, who can't be talked out of the decision to buy an iPhone. The salesman, using loads of expletives, continues to try to show the Evo as a superior product.
"I don't care," the iPhone wonk says repeatedly.
That video has so far gotten more than 1.6 million views. Maupin, who said he doesn't have a "vendetta against iPhones," made a follow-up video targeting Evo buyers. That video, which had racked up nearly 340,000 views, holds up the iPhone as the better device.
Maupin said the company was also upset by earlier videos he had made pointing out some of the travails that come with selling small electronics — think warranties and less-than-brilliant customers. Those videos did mention Best Buy, and Maupin said he has taken them down after the company complained. Those videos weren't widely seen at first, but drew more attention after the iPhone-Evo videos were posted.
"The earlier ones were just kind of inside jokes. Crazy customers," he said. "They took it that I was bashing the company, and stockholders were going to be upset."
Best Buy spokesman Justin Barber said in an e-mail Friday that the company was still deciding how to proceed with Maupin, whom he called an "aspiring filmmaker."
"This is an important situation for us because it involves balancing our social media guidelines with a commitment to creating a supportive environment for our employees," Barber said. "That's why our investigation into this matter will take some time before it's concluded, and why we look forward to seeing Brian back on the job come Monday."
Maupin, who uses a Palm Pre, said he didn't mean any harm with the videos.
"All the entry-level people thought it was hilarious," he said. "Maybe corporate should laugh at themselves."
He said he appreciates hearing about Best Buy's careful consideration of the matter, though the company had not contacted him Friday. Yet he said he's not sure he'll be back on the job Monday. He said he's been looking for a new job for awhile — and now has the full motivation to do so.
Legal facts :
The Identification Division maintains the official record of all individuals convicted of felonies in the state of Ohio. In addition, BCI operates the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which allows law enforcement to conduct criminal record checks in an expedited manner. There is also a system, called WebCheck, that allows some civilian agencies, such as schools and hospitals, to conduct criminal records checks over the World Wide Web.[1]
6 dead in Mexico in floods caused by Alex
The death toll in Mexico from flooding caused by former Hurricane Alex has risen to six, authorities said Friday.
Nuevo Leon state Civil Defense Director Jorge Camacho said the victims died in and around the northern city of Monterrey.
President Felipe Calderon toured damaged areas of the city where the force of flood waters had tossed and flipped cars and pickup trucks, and nearly buried houses in mud and rocks.
Calderon said 1,200 soldiers had been dispatched to help in relief efforts.
The city was hit by heavy rain on Thursday that swelled the Santa Catarina river, which is normally dry.
The flooding damaged bridges in Monterrey as well as railway tracks in the region.
Alex hit Mexico's Gulf coast on Wednesday as a Category 2 hurricane before weakening into a tropical storm while moving inland. It dissipated on Thursday.
Alex had earlier battered Central America, causing flooding and rock-slides that killed two people in Guatemala and two in El Salvador.
Legal facts :
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) is an investigative law enforcement agency for the U.S. state of Ohio. The department was founded on July 9, 1921. It began as a minor records keeping facility in conjunction with the Department of Public Welfare. A few years later, it was moved to the Department of Mental Hygiene and Corrections. The Department of Corrections originally housed BCI in the basement of London Prison Farm until a fire in the 1930s. During those early years, inmate labor performed most of the work. Interestingly, archives show these inmates reviewing, indexing and sorting fingerprint records. In the 1940s, BCI also had a printing press, and used inmate labor to produce the book entitled, "The Science of Fingerprint Classification: As Taught and Used in the Ohio State Bureau of Identification and Investigation." Criminal investigations on a very small scale were carried out by the laboratory division. In 1959, an 11,350-square-foot (1,054 m2) structure was erected in front of London Prison Farm. At the same time, the Investigations Division was formally added, investigative field agents were hired and the name was changed from Bureau of Criminal Identification to Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation. In 1963, BCI was taken over by the Attorney General's Office and was given a broader range of activities. In 1972, Attorney General William Brown reorganized BCI into five separate divisions: identification, laboratory, investigations, administration, and data systems. In 1998 under the tutelage of former Attorney General Betty Montgomery, a $20.3 million dollar, 122,000-square-foot (11,300 m2) facility was erected which allowed BCI to be more visible to the community and expands its assistance to law enforcement. Since 1999, the Bureau has grown to staff more than 300 employees within its four main divisions: laboratory, investigations, administration, and identification.
Mexican murder suspect: US consulate infiltrated
The drug-cartel enforcer told an unsettling story: A woman who worked in the Mexican border's biggest U.S. consulate had helped a rival gang obtain American visas. And for that, the enforcer said, he ordered her killed.
Nonsense, says a U.S. official, who said Friday the motive for the slaying remains unknown.
The employee, Lesley Enriquez, and two other people connected to the U.S. consulate in the city of Ciudad Juarez were killed March 13 in attacks that raised concerns that Americans were being caught up in drug-related border violence.
Jesus Ernesto Chavez, whose arrest was announced Friday, confessed to ordering the killings, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the Federal Police. Pequeno said Chavez leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel.
Enriquez and her husband were killed in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, as they drove toward a border crossing. Chavez also is accused in a nearly simultaneous attack that killed the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate.
Pequeno said Chavez told police that Enriquez was targeted because she helped provide visas to a rival gang.
A U.S. federal official familiar with the investigation said Friday that after the killings, U.S. officials investigated possible corruption involving Enriquez and found none. The official was not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the motive behind the killing remains unclear.
Officials with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City declined to comment. At the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler law enforcement "continues to work closely with our Mexican counterparts to bring to justice individuals involved in these murders."
U.S. Embassy officials previously said that Enriquez was never in a position to provide visas and worked in a section that provides basic services to U.S. citizens in Mexico.
Mexican police provided no further details from Chavez's confession on how Enriquez might have helped provide visas to a drug gang.
Enriquez was four months pregnant when she and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, were killed by gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle after the couple left a children's birthday party. Their 7-month-old daughter was found wailing in the back seat.
Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee of the consulate, also was killed by gunmen after leaving the same event in a separate vehicle.
Chavez told police that gunmen opened fire on Salcido because the two cars were the same color and the hit men did not know which one Enriquez was in, Pequeno said.
Investigators also have looked at whether Redelfs may have been targeted because of his work at an El Paso County jail that holds several members of the Barrio Azteca, the gang believed to be responsible for the attacks. Pequeno said Chavez belongs to Barrio Azteca, which works for the Juarez cartel on both sides of the border.
In March, U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement officers swept through El Paso, picking up suspected members of the gang in an effort to find new leads in the killings. A suspect detained in Mexico shortly after the shooting confessed to acting as a lookout as the Azteca gang supposedly hunted down Redelfs, but he was never charged and was released without explanation.
Officials also have speculated that both attacks could have been a case of mistaken identity.
More than 23,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug gangs in 2006.
Much of the violence stems from rival drug- and migrant-smuggling gangs vying for power, including a firefight Thursday that left 21 people dead and at least six others wounded about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the Arizona border.
The shootings took place in a sparsely populated area near the border city of Nogales that is considered a prime corridor for migrant and drug smuggling. Sonora state prosecutors said all those killed were gang members.
Gangs often fight for control of the routes they use to smuggle drugs and people across the border, and also abduct migrants from each other. The violence near the Arizona border is one reason given for a controversial law passed in April requiring police there to ask people about their immigration status in certain situations.
The turf war between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, meanwhile, has made Ciudad Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. More than 2,600 people were killed last year in the city of 1.3 million people.
And on Friday, the Mexican army warned that drug cartels are using vehicles painted in military colors or with military emblems "to make it look as if they belonged to Mexican army." A Defense Department statement mentioned four instances in four different states where such vehicles had been detected.
Chavez, 41, served five years in a Louisiana prison on drug distribution charges, according to Mexico's central intelligence database. He was detained in Mexico in 2008 by the Mexican army on drug trafficking allegations and released, only to be promoted within the Azteca gang, Federal Police said.
Chavez was arrested along with five suspected gang associates who are accused of carrying out killings or providing support. Six assault rifles, a sub-machine gun and ammunition were seized.
Aside from the killings related to the U.S. consulate, Mexican police say Chavez also confessed to participating in the Jan. 31 killing of 15 youths at a party that was mistaken as a gathering of drug-gang rivals. That massacre fueled outrage over innocents killed.
The State Department, meanwhile, announced new travel restrictions Friday for U.S. government employees working away from the border in Mexico and Central America. As of July 15, they and their families are barred from crossing anywhere along Texas' border, north or south, because of safety concerns. The U.S. government continues to urge Americans to exercise extreme caution or defer unnecessary travel to certain parts of Mexico.
Legal facts :
This is a list of law enforcement agencies in the state of Ohio. Numbering in all almost 800 agencies, in addition to statewide agencies, Ohio has (as of 2007) 88 county sheriff's departments with county-wide jurisdiction, 249 agencies serving incorporated municipalities classified by the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) as cities, at least 395 agencies serving incorporated municipalities classified as villages (populations under 5,000 persons at most recent census), and at least 48 township agencies serving unincorporated but developed areas of urban counties, all subject to the same training, certification, and reporting requirements. In addition a number of state, county, district, and metropolitan agencies are classified by statute as law enforcement agencies within their areas of jurisdiction (such as park rangers), and 15 university police departments have full arrest powers under the ORC.
