QUOTE OF THE DAY
“With the marathon coming, our officers are taking it seriously. The safety of the public is utmost.”
Boston Police Superintendent Randall Halstead, the day after officers arrested a man who they said was carrying a rice cooker in a backpack near the marathon’s finish line Article, this page
Firm’s fine over Snowden’s email upheld
RICHMOND, Va. - A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a contempt of court citation against an email service provider used by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Dallas-based Lavabit Inc. and its owner, Ladar Levinson, were barred from raising key issues on appeal that they did not pursue in the district court.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton sanctioned Levinson for initially refusing to give federal authorities the technical assistance they needed to track the encrypted email of a target of a criminal investigation. The appeals court’s opinion did not name the target.
Levinson also did not mention Snowden or any particular investigation when he closed his company last August.
In June 2013, the government obtained a court order for the encryption keys that would allow investigators to track the target’s email traffic but not allow access to content.
Levinson refused to comply, and Hilton found him in contempt and imposed a $5,000 daily fine in early August. Two days later, Levinson provided the keys.
Bench deportations fall 43% since ’09
New deportation cases brought by President Barack Obama’s administration in the nation’s immigration courts have been declining steadily since 2009 and judges have increasingly ruled against deportations, leading to a 43 percent drop in the number of deportations through the courts in the past five years, according to Justice Department statistics released Wednesday.
The steepest drop in deportations filed in the courts came after 2011, when the administration began to apply more aggressively a policy of prosecutorial discretion that officials said would lead to fewer deportations of illegal aliens who had no criminal record.
At the same time, the share of cases in which judges decided against deportation and for allowing illegal aliens to remain in the United States has consistently increased, to about one-third last year from about one-fifth in 2009.
The lower numbers from the courts contributed to a drop in overall deportations last year, when enforcement agents made 368,644 removals, a 10 percent decrease from 2012.
Latest bodies bring mudslide’s toll to 39
EVERETT, Wash. - The death toll from the mudslide that hit the Washington town of Oso last month has risen to 39, officials said Wednesday.
The Snohomish County medical examiner’s office said it was identifying the three bodies most recently discovered and notifying families. The sheriff’s office said it had removed one name from the missing list, which previously had stood at seven.
Officials didn’t say whether one of the most recently recovered bodies led to the change in the missing list.
One body was found Monday and two were found Tuesday in the southeast corner of the debris field where the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers has erected a berm in the past week, said Koshare Eagle, a spokesman for the incident management team.
The 3,000-foot-long berm, made of 20,000 tons of rock, gravel and dirt, acts like a levee and allowed standing water to be pumped back into the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River so searchers could enter the area, the Corps said.
Judge stays ruling on Ohio’s gay unions
CINCINNATI - Ohio officials must immediately recognize the same-sex marriages of four couples who sued over the state’s gay-marriage ban, a federal judge said Wednesday, while staying the broader effects of his ruling to avoid “premature celebration and confusion” in case it’s overturned on appeal.
Judge Timothy Black stayed his ruling ordering Ohio to recognize the marriages of gay couples who wed in other states pending appeal in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. The appeals process likely will take months.
Had Black not issued the stay, all married gay couples living in Ohio would have been able to immediately begin obtaining the same benefits as any other married couple in the state.
In explaining the stay, Black said that although he doesn’t think the state’s appeal will succeed, there is still a chance the 6th Circuit could overturn his decision.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/17/2014