Man killed by explosive called eccentric

COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) — A neighbor says a man killed by a homemade explosive at his California home was an eccentric who distributed rambling anti-government pamphlets around his quiet neighborhood.

Police say 16 neighbors remained evacuated Monday as a bomb squad searched the Costa Mesa home.

Authorities say at least three homemade explosives, including at least one pipe bomb, were found and detonated.

The man, whose name wasn't released, died Sunday night. Police haven't said whether the blast was accidental or a suicide.

Neighbor Donna Swift says the longtime resident would ride his bicycle around town, distributing pamphlets proclaiming government conspiracy theories. She says police took him for a mental exam about 11 years ago but he never seemed threatening.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

A man was blown up in his California home and at least 16 neighbors were evacuated as authorities found and destroyed other explosive devices, police said Monday.

A bomb squad descended on a quiet street of ranch homes in the Orange County city of Costa Mesaafter the 52-year-old man died in a Sunday night blast.

An ambulance had been called about 90 minutes earlier when neighbors saw the man lying on his front lawn and he refused offers of help.

Police were called about 7:30 p.m. after neighbors heard the explosion, and the man was found dead at his home.

Police suspect he was killed by some sort of homemade explosive.

At least two other explosive devices were later found at the home, police Sgt. Jerry Hildeman said.

Neighbors from surrounding homes were evacuated and remained out of their homes Monday morning. They will be allowed to return when the house is declared safe, police said.

The FBI, an Orange County Sheriff's Department bomb squad and other agencies responded to the scene.

Photos of victim in Arias trial take center stage

PHOENIX (AP) — Defense lawyers and the prosecutor in the Jodi Arias trial had a series of sharp exchanges Monday over allegations of attorney misconduct and whether digitally enhanced photos of the victim should be presented for the jury as it decides whether to convict the former waitress and aspiring photographer of murder.

The arguments between prosecutor Juan Martinez and defense lawyer Kirk Nurmi showed how acrimonious the trial has become between the two sides after more than three months of testimony.

Nurmi claimed that the prosecutor committed misconduct by bullying a key defense witness. Martinez used the words "voodoo" and "fantastical" to describe a last-minute defense effort to admit digitally enhanced photos of the victim.

"This isn't second grade. It's a court of law," Nurmi said.

The jury was not present as the judge heard arguments on several issues.

The one that elicited the most colorful response was a defense effort to allow jurors to see enhanced images of Travis Alexanderjust before he was stabbed and shot to death.

Arias took several photographs of Alexander on the day he was killed in 2008 in his suburban Phoenix home. A defense expert claims that he can see a reflection of a person in the eye of Alexander in one digitally enhanced image. Nurmi said the image shows Arias with both hands on the camera — and not holding a knife that she used to kill Alexander.

The splotchy image is impossible to interpret with the naked eye, and Martinez ripped the defense team for trying to introduce it as evidence. He said he sees what he thinks is Alexander's dog in the reflection. He said other people might see completely different things, whether it's different breeds of dogs or even gophers.

"It's the state's position that this is really voodoo," he said.

The judge did not immediately rule on whether to allow the images.

Arias has said that she killed Alexander in self-defense, fearing for her life.

Prosecutors claim it was premeditated murder that should result in a death sentence. The defense is hoping to spare Arias' life, and get an unlikely acquittal or a conviction on a lesser charge and a prison term.

The lawyers went at it again later in the day as the judge denied another defense mistrial motion. Nurmi said Martinez engaged in misconduct by posing for photos with fans who have been gathering at the courthouse on a daily basis to witness a trial that has a large global following with its many salacious elements. Nurmi also claimed that Martinez bullied a key defense witness with an aggressive line of questioning.

Martinez ridiculed Arias' team for repeatedly pressing for mistrials in a case that has cost taxpayers more than $1.4 million for her defense.

"Perhaps they can add a few more pennies to the kettle that they have," he said.

Judge rules in favor of lesbians suing Hawaii B&B

FILE - In this Dec. 19, 2011 file photo, Diane Cervelli, left, and Taeko Bufford, right, and walk past Waikiki beach in Honolulu. A Hawaii First Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of the Southern California couple who sued Aloha Bed & Breakfast for discrimination in 2011, Lambda Legal announced Monday, April 15, 2013. In 2007, Diane Cervelli and Taeko Bufford tried to book a room at the bed and breakfast because it’s in Hawaii Kai, the same east Honolulu neighborhood where the friend they were visiting lived. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

HONOLULU (AP) — A judge has ruled a Hawaii bed and breakfastviolated the law when two women were denied a room because they're gay.

The Hawaii First Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of a Southern California couple who sued Aloha Bed & Breakfast for discrimination in 2011, Lambda Legal announced Monday. In 2007, Diane Cervelli and Taeko Bufford tried to book a room at the bed and breakfast because it's in Hawaii Kai, the same east Honolulu neighborhood where the friend they were visiting lived.

When Cervelli specified they would need one bed, the owner asked if they were lesbians. Cervelli responded truthfully and the owner said she was uncomfortable having lesbians in her house because of her religious views, the lawsuit said.

The bed and breakfast violated the state public accommodations law and is ordered to stop discriminating against same-sex couples, according to the ruling dated April 11. The public accommodations law prohibits establishments that provide lodging to transient guests from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, race, color, ancestry, religion, disability and sex —including gender identity or expression.

Jim Hochberg, a Honolulu attorney representing the bed and breakfast's owner said Monday the ruling doesn't consider her First Amendment rights. "The public needs to be aware of this decision because it has far-reaching consequences," he said.

The Hawaii Civil Rights Commission joined the lawsuit.

"The court's decision is based on Hawaii's strong state civil rights laws which prohibit discrimination," commission Executive Director William Hoshijo said. "When visitors or residents are subjected to discrimination, they suffer the sting of indignity, humiliation and outrage, but we are all demeaned and our society diminished by unlawful discrimination."

__

Follow Jennifer Sinco Kelleher at http://www.twitter.com/jenhapa

China points finger at U.S. over Asia-Pacific tensions

Reuters/Reuters - Members of the People's Liberation Army guard of honour stand with red flags during an official welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing April 15, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's defense ministry made a thinly veiled attack on the United States on Tuesday for increasing tensions in the Asia-Pacific by ramping up its military presence and alliances in the region, days after the top U.S. diplomat visited Beijing.

China is uneasy with what the United States has called the "rebalancing" of forces as Washington winds down the war in Afghanistan and renews its attention further east.

China says the policy has emboldened Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in longstanding territorial disputes with Beijing.

China faces "multiple and complicated security threats" despite its growing influence, the Ministry of Defense said in its annual white paper, adding that the U.S. strategy meant "profound changes" for Asia.

"There are some countries which are strengthening their Asia Pacific military alliances, expanding their military presence in the region and frequently make the situation there tenser," the ministry said in the 40-page document, in a clear reference to the United States.

Such moves "do not accord with the developments of the times and are not conducive towards maintaining regional peace and stability", ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters.

The official People's Liberation Army Daily went further, saying in a commentary on Monday that China needed to beef up its defenses to deal with a hostile West bent on undermining it.

"Hostile Western forces have intensified their strategy to westernize and split China, and employed every possible means to contain and control our country's development," it said.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the re-orientation of U.S. foreign policy towards Asia as he ended a trip to the region dominated by concerns about North Korea's nuclear program.

While China has been angered by North Korea's behavior, including its third nuclear test in February, it has also made clear it considers U.S. displays of force in response to Pyongyang's behavior to be a worrisome development.

China is North Korea's most important diplomatic and financial backer -- the two fought together in the 1950-53 Korean war -- although the ministry's Yang would not be drawn on the subject aside from repeating a call for peace and dialogue.

JAPAN "MAKING TROUBLE"

China's own military moves have worried others in the region, too.

China unveiled another double-digit rise in military expenditure last month, to 740.6 billion yuan ($119 billion) for 2013, and is involved in protracted and often ugly disputes over a series of islands in the East and South China Seas.

"On the issues concerning China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, some neighboring countries are taking actions that complicate or exacerbate the situation, and Japan is making trouble over the Diaoyu Islands issue," the white paper said.

Japan's government said it had lodged a protest with Beijing about that comment. "There exists no territorial issue to be solved over the Senkaku", Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko said in Tokyo.

The dispute with Japan over the uninhabited islands, which China calls the Diaoyu and Japan calls the Senkaku, has escalated in recent months to the point where China and Japan have scrambled fighter jets and patrol ships shadow each other.

The waters around the islands in the East China Sea are rich fishing grounds and have potentially huge oil and gas reserves.

Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines also have conflicting claims with China in parts of the South China Sea. China lays claim to almost the whole of the sea, which is criss-crossed by crucial shipping lanes.

The U.S. shift comes as China boosts military spending and builds submarines, surface ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles as part of its naval modernization, and has tested emerging technology aimed at destroying missiles in mid-air.

China has repeatedly said the world has nothing to fear from its military spending, which it says is needed for legitimate defensive purposes in a complex and changing world, and that the sums spent pale in comparison with U.S. defense expenditure.

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Kiyoshi Takenaka in TOKYO; Editing by Paul Tait and Alex Richardson)

Hundreds arrested in Nigeria immigrant raids

In this photo taken Friday, April. 12, 2013 women walk past people buying second hand clothes at Katangua market in Lagos, Nigeria. The buses crammed full of young men leave each afternoon from this busy market in Nigeria’s largest city, some with bruises around their faces and defensive wounds to their arms. The immigrant labor that makes Katangua Market in Lagos thrum along each day between piles of secondhand clothes and down narrow dirt alleyways remains in fear after a series of raids by Nigerian authorities in recent days. Immigrant workers here and elsewhere, those largely from neighboring Niger to the north, find themselves targeted by security agencies anxious about a growing Islamic extremist insurgency in Nigeria that could spread southward. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

In this photo taken Friday, April. 12, 2013. Muslim men sell second hand clothes at Katangua market in Lagos, Nigeria. The buses crammed full of young men leave each afternoon from this busy market in Nigeria’s largest city, some with bruises around their faces and defensive wounds to their arms. The immigrant labor that makes Katangua Market in Lagos thrum along each day between piles of secondhand clothes and down narrow dirt alleyways remains in fear after a series of raids by Nigerian authorities in recent days. Immigrant workers here and elsewhere, those largely from neighboring Niger to the north, find themselves targeted by security agencies anxious about a growing Islamic extremist insurgency in Nigeria that could spread southward. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The buses crammed full of young men leave each afternoon from this busy market in Nigeria's largest city, some with bruises around their faces and cuts on their arms.

A series of raids by Nigerian authorities in recent days has brought fear to Katangua Market in Lagos, where immigrant labor makes the market thrum amid piles of secondhand clothes, shoes, purses and other accessories that are laid along narrow dirt alleyways. Immigrant workers, who come largely from neighboring Niger to the north, are finding themselves targeted by security agencies anxious about a growing Islamic extremist insurgency in northern Nigeria that could spread southward.

Nigeria's porous borders and corrupt bureaucracy allow people to enter the country, giving extremists the chance to freely move and avoid capture. But those same borders give those living in poverty in neighboring countries a chance to earn money. Now even immigrants with proper travel documents worry they'll be rounded up as well.

"If they come here and arrest me and I don't have my papers, I don't know what's going to happen," said Abdu Tanimu, a leader of Nigeriens working in the market. "I don't know what's going on out there."

Immigration raids have happened before and even have a place in the slang of oil-rich Nigeria, home to more than 160 million people. The colorful recycled plastic bags carried by travelers in the region are known as "Ghana-Must-Go," a reference to when Nigeria kicked out Ghanaians and other immigrants in 1983 as oil prices collapsed and the country's economy cratered.

Today, immigrants make up much of the menial labor workforce in Lagos. Nigeriens push wheelbarrows and carry goods on their heads in markets, while others serve as gate guards and night watchmen in commercial properties and residential estates. Young men from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana and other nations also crowd into the city, looking for jobs.

While some carry a proper passport and work permit, the majority of immigrants simply cross the border without papers. Some pass through with a payment of less than $1 to immigration officials. Others simply drive through the unpatrolled sandy stretches of the Sahel into Nigeria.

That loose arrangement is now being challenged, however, by a growing wave of shootings, bombings and kidnappings carried out by Islamic extremists in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north. Since 2010, the extremists' guerrilla campaign has killed at least 1,548 people, according to an Associated Press count. Authorities and civilians increasingly fear that violence could spread into Lagos and Nigeria's largely Christian south, potentially destabilizing the nation.

"Now that there's insecurity in the country, those of them who came in here without the regular traveler certificate are the ones being sent out of the country," said R.O. Odupeyin, the Lagos state comptroller of the Nigeria Immigration Service. In recent weeks, the service has deported some 345 Nigeriens and 11 Ghanaians, Odupeyin told the AP. Another 22 Malians have been arrested and handed over the United Nations refugee agency as French and Malian forces continue to fight Islamic extremists there, Odupeyin said.

However, critics point to the fact that nearly all those arrested in connection with extremist groups come from Nigeria and are not foreigners. That means while those arrested may have violated immigration laws, the arrests have little value in Nigeria's current fight against the radical Islamic extremist network Boko Haram and others.

"The Nigerian government knows the Boko Haram," said activist Declan Ihekaire, a Nigerian. President Goodluck Jonathan "once told Nigerians openly that he has members of Boko Haram within his Cabinet and if that is correct, the government should look for Boko Haram where they know they are — not going to all these market places (arresting) poor people."

Soldiers, police officers and Nigeria's domestic spy agency repeatedly have raided Katangua Market, a sprawling maze of shops where tons of clothes from the Western world — some likely donated — are resold. In the latest raid on April 9, authorities arrested 251 suspected illegal immigrants, Lagos state police spokeswoman Ngozi Braide said. While some have been released, others remain held at state government headquarters in Lagos, likely to be handed over to the immigration service for deportation.

Signs of the raid on the market remained days later.

Yushau Ibrahim stood near the metal door that security forces broke down, his still-bleeding hand wrapped in a sling made out of a man's black tie. Ibrahim said police officers beat him and stole nearly $10,000 he held for local moneychangers. Other merchants said officers stole money from them as well, something Braide denied. He said that during the raid, young boys sleeping in the local mosque jumped down and ran when authorities began firing sporadic gunshots.

The police arrested immigrants who couldn't immediately show their stamped passports. That worries Tanimu, who has children who were born and only have lived in Nigeria. Once, authorities arrested his 15-year-old son and for a while refused to release him.

"He was born here. He doesn't know anywhere else," Tanimu said in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria and neighboring countries. "They wanted to take them back to Niger. My worry was where are they taking him to? Is he going to look for his parents in a place he doesn't know?"

___

Associated Press writers Sunday Alamba and Lekan Oyekanmi contributed to this report.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .