Marchers protest NYPD’s frisking
Marchers protest NYPD’s frisking
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of protesters from civil rights groups walked down New York City’s Fifth Avenue in total silence Sunday, marching in defiance of “stop-and-frisk” tactics employed by city police.
The quiet was interrupted only by the tapping of feet on the pavement and birds chirping as protesters strode along Central Park from Harlem to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s town house on the Upper East Side.
For almost 30 city blocks, the march moved slowly and silently. Then, as they moved past Bloomberg’s home, the crowd erupted in protest chants. The house on East 79th Street, off Fifth, was blocked by police barricades.
“We’ve got to fight back, we can’t be silent!” a group of activists shouted as the march wound down, with a lineup of buses waiting to take protesters away.
It was not known if Bloomberg was at home when the protesters passed. Critics say the NYPD’s practice of stopping, questioning and searching people who police consider suspicious is illegal and humiliating to thousands of law-abiding blacks and Hispanics. Last year, the NYPD stopped more than 600,000 people, up from more than 90,000 a decade ago.
Later Sunday, tension increased between police officers and a group of protesters who tried to keep walking down Fifth Avenue below East 77th Street.
Police officers on scooters lined both sides of the avenue and officers on foot formed a row to keep people on the sidewalk. Several scuffles broke out between screaming protesters and officers who pushed them behind barricades on the sidewalk.
One woman was seen wrestling with police officers before being arrested.
Fire ruins most homes in history
DENVER (AP) — Additional crews were joining the fight Saturday against a wildfire in northern Colorado that has scorched about 85 square miles and destroyed at least 181 homes, the most in state history.
The High Park Fire burning 15 miles west of Fort Collins surpasses the Fourmile Canyon wildfire, which destroyed 169 homes west of Boulder in September 2010.
More than 1,630 personnel are working on the Fort Collins-area fire, officials said in a news release Saturday night. The figure represents an increase of more than 100 firefighters from a day earlier.
The lightning-caused blaze, which is believed to have killed a 62-year-old woman whose body was found in her cabin, was 20 percent contained. The fire’s incident commander said full containment could be two to four weeks away.
Fire information officer Brett Haberstick said hot and dry conditions were expected to continue, but crews have made progress in containing a 200-acre spot fire that erupted Thursday afternoon north of the Cache La Poudre River, a critical line of defense against northward growth.
“Two 20-person hotshot crews worked throughout the day to secure lines around the perimeter of this spot fire,” the officials said in a release.
Firefighters have extinguished other incursions north of the river, but the most recent one appeared to be more serious.
Search ends for missing climbers
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A shallow avalanche on Alaska’s Mount McKinley may not have killed four Japanese climbers, but the slide pushed them into a crevasse more than 100 feet deep, the National Park Service said Sunday.
Spokeswoman Kris Fister said Sunday that the search for the climbers was permanently suspended after a mountaineering ranger found the climbing rope in debris at the bottom of the crevasse.
“We believe this is their final resting place,” Fister said.
Yoshiaki Kato, 64, Masako Suda, 50, Michiko Suzuki 56, and 63-year-old Tamao Suzuki, 63, are missing and presumed dead.
The avalanche early Wednesday morning also pushed Hitoshi Ogi, 69, into the crevasse. Ogi climbed 60 feet out of the crevasse and reached a base camp Thursday.
Ogi had been attached to the other members of the team by climbing rope as they descended in an avalanche-prone section of the West Buttress Route. The rope broke in the avalanche and fall.
The group was on a section known as Motorcycle Hill at about 11,800 feet, which has a 35-degee slope. Climbers who take a required briefing on the mountain are warned of the avalanche danger there.
“This is the first time there have been fatalities,” Fister said.
The avalanche, likely caused by new snow falling on rock or hardened snow and ice, measured 200 feet wide and 800 feet top to bottom, Fisher said. It created a snow pile averaging only 3-4 feet deep.
Memoir details Edwards’ affair
Associated Press
When John Edwards faced the prospect of an indictment that could put him behind bars, he calmly told his mistress he would probably wind up in a low-security prison in Virginia more like a country club than a jail. She quickly told him she and their daughter would move there to be near him if that happened.
Rielle Hunter details their phone call just days before his indictment in her new memoir, purchased by The Associated Press ahead of its release.
“What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me,” also includes Rielle Hunter’s mixed views on Edwards’ parenting of their daughter Quinn and descriptions of Elizabeth Edwards’ outbursts. At the end of the book, Hunter says she still has romantic feelings for Edwards but doesn’t know how their relationship will turn out.
The book also provides a window into Edwards’ psyche as federal prosecutors began their case against him. Days before his indictment Hunter asked: “So if you went to jail, what kind of jail would it be? One of those country clubs?”
“He said, ‘Yeah.’”
“‘Where?’” she asked.
“‘Probably Virginia.’”
“So Quinn and I will move to Virginia. Virginia is a great state.”
The only low-security federal prison in Virginia is in Petersburg, where former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry once served time.
On the day of the indictment, the two shared a surreal phone call as a newspaper reporter banged on her door in Charlotte, while the man she refers to as “Johnny” throughout the book called her cell phone to say that he was also being pursued.
“‘I’ve got helicopters circling my house,’ Johnny said.”
New York publishers had said they were not interested in Hunter’s book, citing her negative image, so it is instead being released through a Dallas-based boutique publisher, BenBella Books, on June 26.
Federal prosecutors spent a year prosecuting Edwards, culminating in a six-week trial that ended last month. Jurors acquitted Edwards on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on five other felony counts. The judge declared a mistrial. Federal prosecutors then said in a court order earlier this month that they wouldn’t retry Edwards, and the charges against him were dropped.
Neither Edwards nor Hunter testified.
Prosecutors had accused Edwards, 59, of masterminding a scheme to use about $1 million in secret payments from two wealthy political donors to hide his pregnant mistress as he sought the White House in 2008.
The trial publicized intimate details about Edwards’ affair with Hunter as his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer. Much of the book describes their unfolding relationship and the lengths to which Hunter went to sneak in and out of Edwards’ hotel rooms, even after her contract as a videographer ended. She also describes paparazzi chases after news of their affair broke.
Hunter writes that Edwards is a doting father when he’s around their daughter but that his obligations to his other children curtail their time together. The book features several pictures of the father and daughter together, smiling. Immediately after his trial, Edwards said during a news conference — with his adult daughter, Cate, by his side — that he loved Quinn “more than any of you can ever imagine.” Quinn is now 4 and lives with Hunter in Charlotte.
“He is a great dad to her when he is with her,” Hunter writes.