Community remembers officer's killer
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- The mayor lashed out Monday at residents for memorializing a man who killed a police officer over the weekend.
A temporary memorial was on display in the Jersey City neighborhood where Lawrence Campbell lived. It included candles, balloons and messages from friends of the man who police said ambushed 23-year-old officer Melvin Santiago early Sunday at a drugstore.
Campbell's widow, Angelique Campbell, told News 12 New Jersey that she was sorry for Santiago's family but that her husband should have killed more officers if they were planning to kill him. She later apologized for the comment.
On Monday, Mayor Steven Fulop said the memorial and her comments aren't representative of the city as a whole.
"There are people in every single community who just don't value life and this is highlighted by a situation like this," Fulop said. "There's a lot of reasons for that -- some of it is decades of how they perceive police, some of it's jobs, some of it's socioeconomics -- but at the end of the day we're dealing with it today. When you talk about that situation, yes, it's ignorant, yes it's disgusting, but this represents a lot of the challenges we have."
Vets' benefits to cost $1.14 billion more
WASHINGTON -- Benefits for U.S. military veterans will cost an extra $1.14 billion in the next five years without management improvements in an agency already criticized for health care delays, according to an inspector general's report.
The Department of Veterans Affairs inaccurately processed about one-third of the benefit claims during a two-month review and failed to make a final decision on claims for almost 6,900 veterans, according to testimony from the VA's Office of Inspector General.
The Veterans Benefits Administration, an arm of the VA that oversees $73 billion in annual claims, "continues to have notable weaknesses in financial stewardship," Linda Halliday, assistant inspector general, said in testimony released Monday in advance of a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing in Washington.
Former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned in May after the disclosure that some VA hospitals kept phony records to hide delays in treating veterans. As many as 35 veterans on a secret list in Phoenix died while awaiting health care, acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson has said. The agency has a $160 billion budget.
Bin Laden aide wins reversal on 2 counts
PHILADELPHIA -- Osama bin Laden's former public relations manager shouldn't have been tried by a military commission for conduct that wasn't considered a war crime before 2006, the full U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington said Monday, upholding an earlier ruling of a three-judge panel.
The court threw out Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul's 2008 conviction on charges of solicitation for terrorism and providing material support to terrorists before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ruling that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 didn't authorize retroactive prosecution of conduct that previously wasn't classified as a war crime. The seven-judge panel upheld 6-1 al Bahlul's conviction for conspiracy.
The ruling is the latest setback for U.S. officials seeking to try terror suspects at the base at Guantanamo in Cuba. In June, a military judge held a hearing on allegations by defense attorneys for five Guantanamo prisoners accused in the Sept. 11 attacks that the FBI sought information on confidential communications with their clients. Before that, hearings of the 9/11 defendants had been plagued by innumerable delays, and no trial is in sight.
Medicaid deadline nears for states
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A half-dozen states with backlogs for Medicaid enrollees were facing a federal deadline Monday to create plans for getting those low-income residents enrolled in health coverage.
The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent letters dated June 27 to Alaska, California, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Tennessee asking those states to address gaps in their eligibility and enrollment systems that have delayed access to coverage for poor and disabled people.
The letter was sent months after the first national sign-up drive under President Barack Obama's health care law.
The letters stated that those states had 10 days to come up with a response plan, but health advocates say there is no clear deadline for actually clearing the backlog.
The federal government "will remain in close contact with states to monitor their progress to ensure that they are facilitating Medicaid enrollment for those individuals eligible," agency spokesman Marilyn Jackson said in a statement.
-- COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS
A Section on 07/15/2014