Match #1
AP: Reported on 8/17/2010
Texas executes gang leader for murder of 2 girls
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer
HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The leader of a former gang of Houston teenagers who raped and murdered two young girls walking home from a neighborhood party 17 years ago was executed Tuesday in Texas.
Peter Anthony Cantu, 35, was strapped to a gurney in the Huntsville Unit prison death chamber and administered a lethal injection at 6:09 p.m. CDT. He took a single deep breath before slipping into unconsciousness, then was pronounced dead eight minutes later as relatives of his victims, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, looked stoically through a window a few feet from him.
Asked by the warden if he had any last statement, Cantu replied: "No." He never looked at the witnesses, including his victims' parents.
"Nothing he would have said to me would have made any difference," Adolfo Pena, who lost his daughter in the attack, said after watching Cantu die. "He did a horrendous crime to these two girls. He deserved to die and 17 years later, he died. Not soon enough.
"It's been a long time coming," said Pena, who wore a T-shirt bearing pictures of both girls.
Two of Cantu's fellow gang members were put to death earlier, Derrick O'Brien in 2006 and Jose Medellin in 2008. Two other members avoided the death chamber when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed executing those who were under 18 at the time of their crime. A sixth person convicted in the case was 14 years old at the time of the attack and is serving a 40-year prison term, the maximum sentence for a juvenile in Texas.
Cantu declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared. In recent years, he stayed clear of trouble and was classified among the best-behaving inmates on death row.
"He has matured remarkably," his appeals lawyer, Robin Norris, said. "He's a guy who fully accepts his responsibility."
"Nobody wants to hear that but it's the absolute truth," trial lawyer Robert Morrow, who remained in touch with Cantu over the years, said.
Trying to make it to Pena's home before an 11:30 p.m. curfew in June 1993, Jennifer, 14, and Elizabeth, 16, took a shortcut after leaving the party that led to a railroad bridge near where the gang members were hanging out drinking and initiating a new member. The group spotted the girls and grabbed Pena, who screamed. Ertman tried to help her friend.
What happened next was "a feeding frenzy," according to Donna Goode, a former Harris County assistant district attorney who was one of Cantu's prosecutors.
The girls were gang raped for more than an hour and forced to perform oral sex. They were kicked, had teeth knocked out and hair pulled out. Their ribs were broken. A red nylon belt was pulled so tightly around Ertman's neck the belt snapped. Shoe laces were used to strangle Pena.
"You're talking about absolute brutality — strangled with hands, strangled with ligatures, belts, shoestrings," Don Smyth, Goode's prosecution partner, recalled. "And just to be sure, they were stomped on their faces and their throats were crushed.
Goode said the evidence showed Cantu was the ringleader, "kind of the alpha male of the group."
Morrow said the victims were "so sympathetic and rightly so. I don't think anybody on our side would disagree with that."
A tip led authorities to the bodies. A day later, Cantu's brother, upset after hearing the teens gloat about having fun with the girls, provided the tip to police that led to the arrests of the six.
Cantu was the first of five to be tried, convicted and sentenced to die.
Speaking from the death chamber four years ago, O'Brien, 31, called his involvement in the murders "the worst mistake that I ever made in my whole life."
Medellin, 33, who was born in Mexico, similarly apologized before he was put to death.
Jennifer's father, Randy Ertman, who witnessed all three executions, said before Cantu was put to death Tuesday that the apologies meant nothing to him, that it was too late for apologies.
"It don't bother me a bit," he said of witnessing. "It's crazy. But you've got to be mentally prepared ... to get through it. Whatever you throw at me, I can take it. I have to think that way. It's hard but I can take it."
Ertman said if the death penalty was intended as a deterrent, all five members who had been sentenced to die should have been hanged from trees outside Houston City Hall years ago.
"That would be a deterrent," he said.
All of Cantu's appeals had been exhausted and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a plea to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Cantu's execution was the 16th this year in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state.
Match #2
AFP: Reported on 8/16/2010 (Time Event-1)
Activist sues Nokia Siemens in US over Iran cell monitoring
Tue Aug 17, 8:54 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – An Iranian activist is suing Nokia Siemens before a US court, accusing the firm and its parent companies of supplying the Iranian government with technology it used to spy on dissidents.
Moawad & Herischi, the Maryland firm that filed the suit Monday, said Isa Saharkhiz alleges "human rights violations committed by the Iranian government (were carried out) through the aid of spying centers which were provided by Nokia Siemens Networks."
The firm said Isa Saharkhiz, an Iranian journalist and political dissident, was arrested "as a result of the surveillance and monitoring of his cell phone communications in the aftermath of disputed 2009 presidential election in Iran."
"Since his arrest, Iranian officials have tortured Mr. Saharkhiz and subjected him to other inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment. Currently, his health is deteriorating, suffering from untreated injuries caused by torture, resulting from Iranian authorities withholding necessary medical care."
The suit, filed before a federal court in the US state of Virginia, targets Nokia Siemens Networks and its parent companies Nokia, a Finnish telecoms firm, and Siemens AG, a German engineering giant.
It calls on Nokia Siemens Networks "to cease all unlawful support of intercepting centers of the Iranian government," asks the firm "to help secure the release of Mr. Isa Saharkhiz through the use of their connections with the Iranian government.
"Lastly, the suit seeks relief that would prevent defendants from harming others in the future in other similarly situated countries like Iran."
In March, Iranian Nobel Peace prizewinner Shirin Ebadi said Western firms were undermining opposition to the Iranian government.
"Unfortunately, a certain number of firms support the Iranian regime in its repression and censorship," the exiled Iranian feminist told France Culture radio.
"It's clearly the case with Siemens and Nokia when they send the Iranian state software and technology that it can use to monitor mobile telephone calls and text messages," she said.
Even before Ebadi's accusation, Nokia Siemens had denied that a system it sold Tehran in 2008 was capable of bugging calls or spying on the Internet.
After her charges, the company insisted that networks supported by its technology could in fact boost freedom of expression.
"We, as a company, in no way approve of the misuse of telecommunication equipment," Nokia Siemens Network spokeswoman Riitta Maard told AFP in March.
"We believe that communication and mobile phone technologies play a significant role in the development of societies and the advancement of democracy," she said.
Match #3
AFP: Reported on 8/17/2010
Romania orders tit-for-tat expulsion of Russian diplomat
Tue Aug 17, 3:17 pm ET
BUCHAREST (AFP) – Romania ordered the tit-for-tat expulsion of a Russian diplomat on Tuesday, a day after a Romanian embassy official was told by Moscow to leave Russia for spying.
The Romanian foreign ministry said in a statement it "has informed Russian authorities of its decision to declare persona non grata a diplomat in the Russian embassy in Bucharest of the same diplomatic rank."
The foreign ministry did not provide any more details on the identity of the expelled diplomat.
Russia's FSB security agency said on Monday it had detained a Romanian diplomat for spying, and ordered him to leave the country within 48 hours.
The FSB named him as Gabriel Grecu, who was accredited as the first secretary at the Romanian embassy in Moscow, and said he had been caught trying to receive secret military information and had "spying equipment" on him.
Romania accused Russian authorities of a "serious violation" of diplomatic protocol by detaining their diplomat.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns the serious violation by the Russian authorities of the Vienna conventions on diplomatic protocol of 1961 by the detention during the day of August 16 of a Romanian diplomat accredited to Moscow and the completely inadequate treatment to which they subjected him," it said in a statement.
The ministry added that Grecu would leave Russia within the 48-hour deadline set by Russian authorities.
Relations between Russia and Romania, now a NATO member, have grown more tense since Bucharest's decision to host three batteries of interceptor missiles as part of a planned US defence shield in Europe.
In February, Russia said it has "serious questions regarding the true purpose of the US missile system," and denounced the lack of transparency by Bucharest and Washington on the issue.
Romanian officials, like the Americans, have numerous times reassured Moscow the system is purely defensive.
"The current episode is just one event in a bilateral relationship that unfortunately has not evolved as some of us would have liked ... and which is in a bad state," said the chairman of the Romanian Senate's national security committee, Teodor Melescanu.
"We should seriously try to build a pragmatic relationship" with Russia, said Melescanu, a member of the opposition Liberal Party.
The Romanian diplomat's expulsion also comes shortly after the biggest spy swap between Russia and the United States since the Cold War in July, after Washington busted a group of 10 Kremlin spies and deported them in return for four Russians accused of spying for the West.
Match #4
AP: Reported on 8/17/2010 (Time Event-1)
Spain becomes latest country to take on Google
MADRID – Spain is investigating Google over its "Street View" mapping feature, becoming the latest country to tangle with the Internet search giant over concerns it violated people's privacy while taking shots of city streets.
Madrid Judge Raquel Fernandino has issued a subpoena for an Oct. 4 appearance by a Google representative, Google Spain spokeswoman Marisa Toro said Tuesday, adding that the company will cooperate with Spanish authorities.
The judge is acting on a complaint filed in June by a private Internet watchdog and technology consultancy called APEDANICA.
In an order released Monday, the judge said she is probing whether Google committed a "computer crime," according to APEDANICA attorney Valentin Playa.
The Spanish probe is the latest opened up since Google acknowledged in the spring that the technology used by its "Street View" cars had also inadvertently recorded fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks for the past four years.
The Mountain View, California, company said it collected such data from public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, but it maintains it never used the data and it hasn't broken any laws.
Google also is facing investigations or inquiries over this practice, which it says it has discontinued, in the United States, Germany and Australia.
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