U.S. moves to protect Guam amid 'clear danger' from North Korea

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a "precautionary move," as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea posed a "real and clear danger" to the U.S. military base on the western Pacific island, as well as to allies and other U.S. territory.

North Korea has named Guam and Hawaii as potential targets in bellicose statements in recent weeks, which have increased tension on the Korean peninsula and prompted a series of U.S. military moves aimed at beefing up the American presence in the region and reassuring allies that the United States will come to their aid in the event of an attack. In its latest statement, issued early Thursday, the North Korean military said it was ready to attack the United States using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons.

The decision to send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to Guam came after Pentagon officials were questioned in recent days about whether the island — a U.S. territory — has been covered by the U.S. missile defense system. The system includes ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California as well as warships capable of shooting down missiles.

North Korea has "ratcheted up their bellicose, dangerous rhetoric, and some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat," Hagel said Wednesday in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington.

Areas at risk include South Korea and Japan, as well as Guam, Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States, he said. "We have to take those threats seriously."

Despite the concern, North Korea has not demonstrated that its missiles have the range to hit Guam or Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland. Nor is it known to have a nuclear warhead small enough to be carried on its missiles.

But a senior U.S. official said the decision to send the interceptors to Guam came because of growing concern that North Korea improved the range of its ballistic missiles, possibly giving them the ability to hit the island. He asked not to be identified because he was discussing sensitive intelligence assessments.

Asked about Guam last month, Undersecretary of Defense James Miller said the U.S. missile defense system "provides coverage of not just the continental United States, but all the United States." But some analysts note that the U.S. military's own maps show that Guam is not within the geographic reach of the ground-based interceptor.

Guam, in the Pacific between the Philippines and Hawaii, is home to Andersen Air Force Base and U.S. Naval Base Guam.

Defense officials said Guam was still covered by U.S. warships in the Pacific equipped to shoot down ballistic missiles. Sending the ground-based system to Guam beefs up the U.S. defense. The so-called THAAD system, which the Pentagon said would arrive in Guam "in coming weeks," includes a truck-mounted launcher, interceptor missiles, a tracking radar and a fire-control computer system.

The system shoots interceptors designed to hit ballistic missiles in the final phase of their flight as they descend toward their targets.

"I hope the North will ratchet this very dangerous rhetoric down," Hagel said. "There is a pathway that's responsible for the North to get on a path to peace." But, he added, "you don't achieve that responsibility and peace and prosperity by making nuclear threats and taking very provocative actions."

david.cloud@latimes.com

Special correspondent Jung Yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Radar shows U.S. border security gaps

WASHINGTON — A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in Afghanistan has found a new use along the U.S. border with Mexico, where it has revealed gaps in security.

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.

The number of "gotaways," as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.

RELATED: Is the border secure?

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The new tally of unlawful border crossings could complicate White House efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform after Congress returns from recess next week.

The Obama administration contends America's borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico in early May, and efforts to maintain rigorous border security — to stop economic migrants moving north and American-made weapons flowing south — are likely to be among his priorities in discussions with Mexico's newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The new system is called Vader, for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar. It was borrowed from the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has been deployed in Arizona since March 2012.

PHOTOS: Securing the border with Mexico

Michael Friel, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Vader remained in a "preliminary testing phase." He also said the method used in the agency's internal reports to compare apprehensions to arrests was flawed because it didn't include people who were detained after the airborne radar had left the area.

Officials warn that the radar would not work well near border towns and areas where migrants and smugglers can quickly load into a car and blend into highway traffic.

"There is no silver bullet in border technology," Friel said.

The tests have gone well enough that the agency has asked Congress to allocate money to purchase two more Vader systems. Each system costs about $5 million per year to maintain and operate.

The Pentagon's internal research and development group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, helped design the Vader to aid U.S. forces in spotting insurgents burying improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. Two of the systems are in use there.

The radar is sharp enough to detect and track individuals on foot from a Predator five miles overhead. It uses a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-contrast black-and-white images and to follow scores of moving targets in real time. The processed signals are transmitted from the drone to a ground station, where the figures are displayed as moving dots on a detailed map.

"It's a match made in heaven for border security," said a former U.S. law enforcement official.

He said the radar had helped Border Patrol agents watch migrants and smugglers gathering on the Mexican side of the border before they start trekking north. But not all of the agents are happy to get a precise head count for the first time of how many people they are missing.

"The rank-and-file guys are afraid it will make them look bad," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not public.

The system is being tested along with military-grade camera towers and surveillance blimps developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan in an effort to provide more accurate coverage of remote border areas.

Most of the Vader flights have focused on a stretch of border flanked by desert and the craggy Baboquivari Mountains west of Nogales, Ariz. The radar is used three or four days a week, for eight to 12 hours a day.

"That is the kind of technology we would like to see all across the border," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a telephone interview.

McCaul said he was briefed on the Vader during a visit to the border in Arizona on Feb. 18. He is writing a bill that would compel the Department of Homeland Security to write a national strategy that accurately measures the effectiveness of border security efforts.

"You can't measure what you can't see," he said. "There is an awful lot we're not seeing."

Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington with close ties to the White House, said linking immigration policy to illegal border crossings is a "political gimmick" designed to delay any real reforms.

No matter how many border agents or high-tech systems are deployed on the border, Fitz said, "you are never going to get to the point where you can raise the 'Mission accomplished' banner."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic whose gladiatorial "thumbs up, thumbs down" assessments turned film reviewing into a television sport and whose passion for independent film helped introduce a new generation of filmmakers to moviegoers, has died. He was 70.

Ebert, who had battled cancer in recent years, died Thursday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He had undergone several surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his thyroid and salivary glands, ultimately losing his jaw to the disease, and was hospitalized in December for a broken leg.

While his cancer diagnosis and the resulting treatments forced him to pull back from criticism in 2006, he remained active as a writer and maintained a powerful presence on social media sites that included his award-winning blog, Roger Ebert's Journal.

RELATED: Fans, celebrities react to death of film critic Roger Ebert 

Earlier this week he had announced that he would be stepping back from writing reviews.

In May 2008, he had returned to writing movie reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times but essentially said goodbye to the TV show that made him famous. Cancer had robbed him of his voice, and Ebert refused to face another surgery that could restore it.

As the longtime and prolific critic for the Sun-Times, he wrote reviews while co-hosting -- originally with Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune -- a popular nationally syndicated TV show that, in the 1980s, was known as "At the Movies."

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

Ebert was the first movie critic to win journalism's most prestigious award, collecting his Pulitzer in 1975, but he had the greatest impact through his TV forum, which began that same year on Chicago public television.

A complete obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

ALSO:

Phil Ramone, pop producer to stars, dies

Latin world mourns Cuban film producer Carlos Vives

Paul Williams, pioneering chronicler of rock music, dies

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

U.S. moves to protect Guam amid 'clear danger' from North Korea

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a "precautionary move," as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea posed a "real and clear danger" to the U.S. military base on the western Pacific island, as well as to allies and other U.S. territory.

North Korea has named Guam and Hawaii as potential targets in bellicose statements in recent weeks, which have increased tension on the Korean peninsula and prompted a series of U.S. military moves aimed at beefing up the American presence in the region and reassuring allies that the United States will come to their aid in the event of an attack. In its latest statement, issued early Thursday, the North Korean military said it was ready to attack the United States using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons.

The decision to send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to Guam came after Pentagon officials were questioned in recent days about whether the island — a U.S. territory — has been covered by the U.S. missile defense system. The system includes ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California as well as warships capable of shooting down missiles.

North Korea has "ratcheted up their bellicose, dangerous rhetoric, and some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat," Hagel said Wednesday in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington.

Areas at risk include South Korea and Japan, as well as Guam, Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States, he said. "We have to take those threats seriously."

Despite the concern, North Korea has not demonstrated that its missiles have the range to hit Guam or Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland. Nor is it known to have a nuclear warhead small enough to be carried on its missiles.

But a senior U.S. official said the decision to send the interceptors to Guam came because of growing concern that North Korea improved the range of its ballistic missiles, possibly giving them the ability to hit the island. He asked not to be identified because he was discussing sensitive intelligence assessments.

Asked about Guam last month, Undersecretary of Defense James Miller said the U.S. missile defense system "provides coverage of not just the continental United States, but all the United States." But some analysts note that the U.S. military's own maps show that Guam is not within the geographic reach of the ground-based interceptor.

Guam, in the Pacific between the Philippines and Hawaii, is home to Andersen Air Force Base and U.S. Naval Base Guam.

Defense officials said Guam was still covered by U.S. warships in the Pacific equipped to shoot down ballistic missiles. Sending the ground-based system to Guam beefs up the U.S. defense. The so-called THAAD system, which the Pentagon said would arrive in Guam "in coming weeks," includes a truck-mounted launcher, interceptor missiles, a tracking radar and a fire-control computer system.

The system shoots interceptors designed to hit ballistic missiles in the final phase of their flight as they descend toward their targets.

"I hope the North will ratchet this very dangerous rhetoric down," Hagel said. "There is a pathway that's responsible for the North to get on a path to peace." But, he added, "you don't achieve that responsibility and peace and prosperity by making nuclear threats and taking very provocative actions."

david.cloud@latimes.com

Special correspondent Jung Yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Radar shows U.S. border security gaps

WASHINGTON — A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in Afghanistan has found a new use along the U.S. border with Mexico, where it has revealed gaps in security.

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.

The number of "gotaways," as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.

RELATED: Is the border secure?

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The new tally of unlawful border crossings could complicate White House efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform after Congress returns from recess next week.

The Obama administration contends America's borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico in early May, and efforts to maintain rigorous border security — to stop economic migrants moving north and American-made weapons flowing south — are likely to be among his priorities in discussions with Mexico's newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The new system is called Vader, for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar. It was borrowed from the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has been deployed in Arizona since March 2012.

PHOTOS: Securing the border with Mexico

Michael Friel, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Vader remained in a "preliminary testing phase." He also said the method used in the agency's internal reports to compare apprehensions to arrests was flawed because it didn't include people who were detained after the airborne radar had left the area.

Officials warn that the radar would not work well near border towns and areas where migrants and smugglers can quickly load into a car and blend into highway traffic.

"There is no silver bullet in border technology," Friel said.

The tests have gone well enough that the agency has asked Congress to allocate money to purchase two more Vader systems. Each system costs about $5 million per year to maintain and operate.

The Pentagon's internal research and development group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, helped design the Vader to aid U.S. forces in spotting insurgents burying improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. Two of the systems are in use there.

The radar is sharp enough to detect and track individuals on foot from a Predator five miles overhead. It uses a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-contrast black-and-white images and to follow scores of moving targets in real time. The processed signals are transmitted from the drone to a ground station, where the figures are displayed as moving dots on a detailed map.

"It's a match made in heaven for border security," said a former U.S. law enforcement official.

He said the radar had helped Border Patrol agents watch migrants and smugglers gathering on the Mexican side of the border before they start trekking north. But not all of the agents are happy to get a precise head count for the first time of how many people they are missing.

"The rank-and-file guys are afraid it will make them look bad," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not public.

The system is being tested along with military-grade camera towers and surveillance blimps developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan in an effort to provide more accurate coverage of remote border areas.

Most of the Vader flights have focused on a stretch of border flanked by desert and the craggy Baboquivari Mountains west of Nogales, Ariz. The radar is used three or four days a week, for eight to 12 hours a day.

"That is the kind of technology we would like to see all across the border," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a telephone interview.

McCaul said he was briefed on the Vader during a visit to the border in Arizona on Feb. 18. He is writing a bill that would compel the Department of Homeland Security to write a national strategy that accurately measures the effectiveness of border security efforts.

"You can't measure what you can't see," he said. "There is an awful lot we're not seeing."

Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington with close ties to the White House, said linking immigration policy to illegal border crossings is a "political gimmick" designed to delay any real reforms.

No matter how many border agents or high-tech systems are deployed on the border, Fitz said, "you are never going to get to the point where you can raise the 'Mission accomplished' banner."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic whose gladiatorial "thumbs up, thumbs down" assessments turned film reviewing into a television sport and whose passion for independent film helped introduce a new generation of filmmakers to moviegoers, has died. He was 70.

Ebert, who had battled cancer in recent years, died Thursday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He had undergone several surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his thyroid and salivary glands, ultimately losing his jaw to the disease, and was hospitalized in December for a broken leg.

While his cancer diagnosis and the resulting treatments forced him to pull back from criticism in 2006, he remained active as a writer and maintained a powerful presence on social media sites that included his award-winning blog, Roger Ebert's Journal.

RELATED: Fans, celebrities react to death of film critic Roger Ebert 

Earlier this week he had announced that he would be stepping back from writing reviews.

In May 2008, he had returned to writing movie reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times but essentially said goodbye to the TV show that made him famous. Cancer had robbed him of his voice, and Ebert refused to face another surgery that could restore it.

As the longtime and prolific critic for the Sun-Times, he wrote reviews while co-hosting -- originally with Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune -- a popular nationally syndicated TV show that, in the 1980s, was known as "At the Movies."

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

Ebert was the first movie critic to win journalism's most prestigious award, collecting his Pulitzer in 1975, but he had the greatest impact through his TV forum, which began that same year on Chicago public television.

A complete obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

ALSO:

Phil Ramone, pop producer to stars, dies

Latin world mourns Cuban film producer Carlos Vives

Paul Williams, pioneering chronicler of rock music, dies

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Rutgers coach used gay slurs, threw basketballs at players [Video]

A video taken during Rutgers men's basketball practices shows Coach Mike Rice verbally abusing his student athletes with gay slurs and throwing basketballs at his team. (Al Bello / Getty Images / March 13, 2013)

By Matt Wilhalme

April 2, 2013, 4:27 p.m.

Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice's job is in jeopardy after the release of a video that shows the coach using gay slurs, physically pushing and grabbing his players, and throwing balls at his Scarlet Knights team during practices.

In the video obtained by ESPN, Rice can be seen repeatedly belittling and shoving his players. He is also observed targeting a player's head with a basketball and kicking another.

Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti, who according to the Associated Press was first shown the video in late November, originally suspended the coach for three games, required he attend anger management classes and fined Rice $50,000. Now he is considering firing the coach after the widespread release of the recorded abuse.

Former director of Rutgers player development Eric Murdock, who was terminated by Rice and Pernetti in July, told ESPN the coach's actions resulted in the transfer of at least three players.

Murdock also said he first showed the video, taken at practices between 2010 and 2012, to the athletic director in December.

ALSO:

USC players excited about the hiring of Andy Enfield

Kevin Ware of Louisville tweets he'll 'be back by next season'

Watch Andrew Wiggins make bigger name for self with monster dunk

The Associated Press contributed to this report

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

U.S. moves to protect Guam amid 'clear danger' from North Korea

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a "precautionary move," as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea posed a "real and clear danger" to the U.S. military base on the western Pacific island, as well as to allies and other U.S. territory.

North Korea has named Guam and Hawaii as potential targets in bellicose statements in recent weeks, which have increased tension on the Korean peninsula and prompted a series of U.S. military moves aimed at beefing up the American presence in the region and reassuring allies that the United States will come to their aid in the event of an attack. In its latest statement, issued early Thursday, the North Korean military said it was ready to attack the United States using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons.

The decision to send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to Guam came after Pentagon officials were questioned in recent days about whether the island — a U.S. territory — has been covered by the U.S. missile defense system. The system includes ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California as well as warships capable of shooting down missiles.

North Korea has "ratcheted up their bellicose, dangerous rhetoric, and some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat," Hagel said Wednesday in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington.

Areas at risk include South Korea and Japan, as well as Guam, Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States, he said. "We have to take those threats seriously."

Despite the concern, North Korea has not demonstrated that its missiles have the range to hit Guam or Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland. Nor is it known to have a nuclear warhead small enough to be carried on its missiles.

But a senior U.S. official said the decision to send the interceptors to Guam came because of growing concern that North Korea improved the range of its ballistic missiles, possibly giving them the ability to hit the island. He asked not to be identified because he was discussing sensitive intelligence assessments.

Asked about Guam last month, Undersecretary of Defense James Miller said the U.S. missile defense system "provides coverage of not just the continental United States, but all the United States." But some analysts note that the U.S. military's own maps show that Guam is not within the geographic reach of the ground-based interceptor.

Guam, in the Pacific between the Philippines and Hawaii, is home to Andersen Air Force Base and U.S. Naval Base Guam.

Defense officials said Guam was still covered by U.S. warships in the Pacific equipped to shoot down ballistic missiles. Sending the ground-based system to Guam beefs up the U.S. defense. The so-called THAAD system, which the Pentagon said would arrive in Guam "in coming weeks," includes a truck-mounted launcher, interceptor missiles, a tracking radar and a fire-control computer system.

The system shoots interceptors designed to hit ballistic missiles in the final phase of their flight as they descend toward their targets.

"I hope the North will ratchet this very dangerous rhetoric down," Hagel said. "There is a pathway that's responsible for the North to get on a path to peace." But, he added, "you don't achieve that responsibility and peace and prosperity by making nuclear threats and taking very provocative actions."

david.cloud@latimes.com

Special correspondent Jung Yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Radar shows U.S. border security gaps

WASHINGTON — A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in

has found a new use along the U.S. border with

, where it has revealed gaps in security.

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.

The number of "gotaways," as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The new tally of unlawful border crossings could complicate White House efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform after Congress returns from recess next week.

The Obama administration contends America's borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico in early May, and efforts to maintain rigorous border security — to stop economic migrants moving north and American-made weapons flowing south — are likely to be among his priorities in discussions with Mexico's newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The new system is called Vader, for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar. It was borrowed from the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has been deployed in Arizona since March 2012.

Michael Friel, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Vader remained in a "preliminary testing phase." He also said the method used in the agency's internal reports to compare apprehensions to arrests was flawed because it didn't include people who were detained after the airborne radar had left the area.

Officials warn that the radar would not work well near border towns and areas where migrants and smugglers can quickly load into a car and blend into highway traffic.

"There is no silver bullet in border technology," Friel said.

The tests have gone well enough that the agency has asked Congress to allocate money to purchase two more Vader systems. Each system costs about $5 million per year to maintain and operate.

The Pentagon's internal research and development group, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, helped design the Vader to aid U.S. forces in spotting insurgents burying improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. Two of the systems are in use there.

The radar is sharp enough to detect and track individuals on foot from a Predator five miles overhead. It uses a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-contrast black-and-white images and to follow scores of moving targets in real time. The processed signals are transmitted from the drone to a ground station, where the figures are displayed as moving dots on a detailed map.

"It's a match made in heaven for border security," said a former U.S. law enforcement official.

He said the radar had helped Border Patrol agents watch migrants and smugglers gathering on the Mexican side of the border before they start trekking north. But not all of the agents are happy to get a precise head count for the first time of how many people they are missing.

"The rank-and-file guys are afraid it will make them look bad," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not public.

The system is being tested along with military-grade camera towers and surveillance blimps developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan in an effort to provide more accurate coverage of remote border areas.

Most of the Vader flights have focused on a stretch of border flanked by desert and the craggy Baboquivari Mountains west of Nogales, Ariz. The radar is used three or four days a week, for eight to 12 hours a day.

"That is the kind of technology we would like to see all across the border," Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a telephone interview.

McCaul said he was briefed on the Vader during a visit to the border in Arizona on Feb. 18. He is writing a bill that would compel the Department of Homeland Security to write a national strategy that accurately measures the effectiveness of border security efforts.

"You can't measure what you can't see," he said. "There is an awful lot we're not seeing."

Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington with close ties to the White House, said linking immigration policy to illegal border crossings is a "political gimmick" designed to delay any real reforms.

No matter how many border agents or high-tech systems are deployed on the border, Fitz said, "you are never going to get to the point where you can raise the 'Mission accomplished' banner."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

American teens getting early start on heart disease risk, survey says

The proportion of American adolescents who exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet and are free of risk factors for future heart disease is "alarmingly low," says a major new survey of teen health. The comprehensive five-year assessment of teens' health status warns that the "disconcertingly high" rate of poor health habits among the nation's youth "may contribute to unacceptably high rates of adult-onset cardiovascular disease" as this cohort matures into adulthood.

The new survey, published Monday in the American Heart Assn.'s journal Circulation, culled data on teens from a yearly gauge of the nation's health called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). From a representative sample of American adolescents--4,673 kids between the ages of 12 and 19--NHANES captured each subject's body-mass index, dietary intake details, physical activity levels, smoking behavior, blood pressure, total cholesterol and fasting blood glucose levels. Each subject was assigned a cardiovascular health index number on the basis of this mix of signposts.

In one of the study's most striking findings, virtually none of the teens surveyed ate a diet considered "ideal" from the standpoint of preventing cardiovascular disease. The ideal diet consisted of 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables and three 1-ounce servings of whole grain daily, at least two servings of fish weekly, and less than 450 calories' worth sugar-sweetened beverages per week.

Among males, 90% followed diets that were considered "poor" and 10% had dietary habits that were considered "intermediate." Among girls, 86% had poor diets, and 14% had dietary habits considered intermediate. Boys were far likelier than girls to have poor or intermediate levels of blood pressure and fasting glucose, but girls were likelier to have less-than-ideal cholesterol readings.

Overall, Mexican American males and non-Latino black females fared most poorly in the survey. Almost half of African American girls were overweight or obese, and 60% had physical activity levels that were less than ideal. More than 40% of Mexican American boys were overweight or obese, and just as many had less-than-ideal levels of physical activity.

This all bodes poorly for the future of the nation's health, wrote the authors, who were led by Christina M. Shay of the University of Oklahoma's School of Public Health.

Though children are generally born in a "state of ideal cardiovascular health," the new study makes clear that poor habits established in childhood can powerfully redirect an individual's health trajectory. "Substantial evidence indicates that atherosclerosis has its origins in childhood," the authors of the new study assert.

In children as young as 6 years old who died of causes not related to heart disease, pathologists have detected fatty streaks in the large arteries in autopsies. By early adulthood, atherosclerosis--a narrowing of the arteries with fatty build-up--begins to turn into calcified coronary plaque. And by middle age, heart disease can be at an advanced stage.

In a "clinical perspective," the American Heart Assn. calls the prevalence of early cardiovascular risk factors "unacceptably high." The editors note that overconsumption and too little exercise have become features of the American landscape, and physicians have been unable to turn around bad habits, while insurers have done little to support preventive behavior change. Nothing short of a social movement will turn things around, they add.

"Broad social and cultural changes that infiltrate the entire population will be necessary to evoke changes in youth behaviors that will favorably influence cardiovascular health," American Heart Assn. writes.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More