Nation roundup for March 14

Police: Driver kills 2, hurts 23

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A suspected drunken driver barreled through police barricades and drove down a crowded street at the South by Southwest festival early Thursday morning, killing two people and injuring 23 in an act authorities say was intentional.

The driver struck multiple pedestrians at about 12:30 a.m. on a block filled with concertgoers, continued down the street and hit and killed a man from the Netherlands on a bicycle and a woman from Austin on a moped, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference Thursday. The driver crashed and tried to run away, but he was shocked by a stun gun and taken into custody.

“When somebody acts intentionally, it’s very difficult to stop. You have a car here. You have a police officer that was forced to jump out of the way,” Acevedo said Thursday.

Witnesses said the scene was chaotic. Multiple acts performed at two side-by-side nightclubs on the street as part of the annual music, film and interactive conference that draws tens of thousands to Austin each year.

Hours later, a pool of blood was still in the crosswalk with a trail leading to the sidewalk, bits of broken taillight mingled in and a medical glove nearby.

Death toll rises in NYC explosion

NEW YORK (AP) — Rescue workers using dogs and thermal-detection gear searched the rubble Thursday for victims of a gas explosion that killed at least seven people, while investigators tried to pinpoint the leak and determine whether it had anything to do with New York’s aging gas and water mains, some dating to the 1800s.

At least five people were unaccounted for after the deafening blast Wednesday morning destroyed two five-story brick apartment buildings in East Harlem. More than 60 people were injured.

Fire and utility officials said that if the buildings were plagued in recent days or weeks by strong gas odors, as some tenants claimed, they have no evidence anyone reported it before Wednesday.

Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said experts would first try to reach the basement — still under rubble — to examine heating units, meters and other equipment that might hold clues to the blast. Then they will work their way toward the street, where Con Edison has a gas main consisting partly of cast iron from 1887.

“We can only get conclusive evidence when the fire is out, when the rescue is completed, and we really get a chance to look at all the facts,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Aging infrastructure — crumbling bridges, highways, water mains and gas lines — has become a major concern in recent years, especially in older cities in the Northeast, and has been blamed for explosions, floods and other accidents. But many cities say they just don’t have the money to fix the problem.

Drug sentencing changes urged

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday endorsed a proposal that would result in shorter prison sentences for many nonviolent drug traffickers, saying the change would rein in runaway federal prison costs and create a fairer criminal justice system.

Holder’s backing for a U.S. Sentencing Commission proposal to lower the guideline penalties is part of a broader Justice Department effort to lessen punishment for nonviolent drug dealers. He has been pressing to ease long mandatory sentences and has called for greater discretion for judges in sentencing.

“This focused reliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable — it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate,” Holder said in an appearance before the Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that establishes sentencing policies.

In a country where nearly half of all federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes, the harshest penalties should be reserved for violent drug defendants and criminals with long rap sheets, Holder said. Holder directed prosecutors in August to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences.

He has also said he also wants to divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community-service programs and to expand a prison program to allow the release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. Bipartisan legislation pending in Congress would give judges more discretion in sentencing defendants for drug crimes.

The attorney general last year asked the commission to consider reductions in the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug crimes. The commission responded with a proposal in January that would tie many drug offenses to shorter sentencing ranges.

The effect, the Justice Department says, would be to reduce by 11 months the average sentence of a drug dealer and would trim the federal prison population by roughly 6,550 inmates at the end of five years. The proposal would affect about 70 percent of drug trafficking offenders.

“I understand that people feel a sort of tension in this notion that we’re going to spend less, we’re going to put people in jail for smaller amounts of time, and yet you’re going to tell me that we’re going to be more safe,” Holder said in response to a question about whether the proposal could compromise public safety. “And yet, the empirical studies that I have seen, and which I have faith in, indicate that if done appropriately those are in fact the results that you can get.”

The commission was not expected to vote on the proposed change until at least April, but Holder planned to instruct prosecutors in the meantime not to oppose sentencing recommendations in line with the newly proposed ranges.

Holder’s announcement won support from groups including Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the American Civil Liberties Union, which decried what it called the “failed, racially biased war on drugs.” But a national association of prosecutors is opposing the proposal, arguing that mandatory sentences have been helpful in securing cooperation from defendants and witnesses and that the majority of federal prisoners “have been very bad actors for a long time.”

“Rewarding convicted felons with lighter sentences because America can’t balance its budget doesn’t seem fair to both victims of crime and the millions of families in America victimized every year by the scourge of drugs in America’s communities,” Raymond Morrogh, the top prosecutor in Fairfax County, Va., and the director-at-large of the National District Attorneys Association, said in prepared remarks.

Thursday was Holder’s second appearance before the Sentencing Commission.

Senate bill would expand child care, boost safety

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed legislation to require child care providers who care for children from low-income families through a government voucher program to undergo criminal background checks, know first aid and CPR and get other training.

The bipartisan legislation, which passed by a 97-1 vote, would also require annual state inspections of child care centers. At issue is the $5 billion-plus spent annually to help provide care to 1.6 million children, many of whom are in single-parent households. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, cast the “no” vote.

Supporters of the legislation, designed to expand access to federally subsidized child care and improve its quality, say such care is a vital means to allow parents of modest means to stay in the workforce.

“For working families who live below the poverty line, the cost of childcare can eat up more than 30 percent of their monthly income,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “For single parents, if you have only one income, it is an even bigger burden.”

The bill would require providers to meet a range of health and safety standards, including first aid, CPR and prevention of child abuse and sudden infant death syndrome. The bill also would require annual inspections of licensed programs and require that day-care centers be inspected before they are opened. Nine states, including California, Massachusetts and Minnesota, do not require annual inspections.

The program sends block grants to states to help them provide vouchers to help low-income parents pay for child care. Costs have risen sharply since the program was consolidated under the 1996 welfare reform law.

The low-profile measure came to the Senate floor after the chamber has experienced much partisanship and rancor in recent years and has gotten away from routine floor debates and an open legislative process in which lawmakers are free to offer amendments. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that “smaller bills like this one … generate good feelings on both sides of the aisle. They show younger members that we really can legislate; they haven’t seen too much of that because there hasn’t been too much. And it helps break down the mistrust.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said other bipartisan candidates for floor action include legislation backed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lee, to ease federal mandatory minimum sentence laws for non-violent drug offenses and legislation by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to boost energy efficiency.

Thursday’s measure would add flexibility so that smaller fluctuations in income don’t disqualify parents from receiving subsidies and makes it easier for homeless families to qualify even though they may have lost access to some required documents. It is also aimed at making sure day care workers are trained in CPR, fire prevention, and sanitation practices and ways to prevent sudden infant death syndrome. It also encourages better nutrition practices and more exercise at child care centers.

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