Women rescued in Cleveland happy to be home

Video: Cleveland Kidnapping Victims Ask for Privacy

A sign rests in front of a home Saturday, May 11, 2013, in Cleveland. Ariel Castro, who allegedly held three women captive for nearly a decade, is charged with rape and kidnapping. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

CLEVELAND (AP) — The three women allegedly imprisoned and sexually abused for years inside a padlocked Cleveland house asked for privacy Sunday, saying through an attorney that while they are grateful for overwhelming support, they also need time to heal.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight remain in seclusion, releasing their first statements since they were found May 6 when Berry escaped and told a 911 dispatcher, "I'm free now."

They thanked law enforcement and said they were grateful for the support of family and the community.

"I am so happy to be home, and I want to thank everybody for all your prayers," DeJesus said in a statement read by an attorney. "I just want time now to be with my family."

The women, now in their 20s and 30s, vanished separately between 2002 and 2004. At the time, they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

Investigators say they spent the last nine years or more inside the home of Ariel Castro where they were repeatedly raped and only allowed outside a handful of times. Castro, 52, is being held on $8 million bond. The former school bus driver was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

Prosecutors said last week they may seek aggravated murder charges — punishable by death — for allegedly impregnating one of his captives at least five times and forcing her miscarry by starving her and punching her in the belly.

The allegations were contained in a police report that also said Berry was forced to give birth in a plastic kiddie pool inside the home. A DNA test confirmed that Castro fathered the 6-year-old girl, who escaped the house with Berry.

After nearly a decade of being away, the three women need time to reconnect with their families, said attorney Jim Wooley.

Knight, who was the first to disappear and the last of the three released from the hospital, thanked everyone for their support and good wishes in her statement.

"I am healthy, happy and safe and will reach out to family, friends and supporters in good time."

Berry added: "Thank you so much for everything you're doing and continue to do. I am so happy to be home with my family."

The attorney said none of the women will do any media interviews until the criminal case against Castro is over. He also asked that they be given privacy.

"Give them the time, the space, and the privacy so that they can continue to get stronger," Wooley said.

Spies caught in website scandal embarrass SKorea

In this photo taken on Dec. 13, 2012, a National Intelligence Service agent covered her face with a mask sits in front of her computers as officers from police and national election commission visit her to collect evidence from her computers at her home in Seoul, South Korea. The scandal shaking up South Korea’s main spy agency is not cloak-and-dagger stuff, but the kind of low-grade trickery anyone with an Internet connection could pull off. And the target was not Seoul’s opaque rival to the north, but the country’s own people. Internet postings ostensibly from ordinary South Koreas, but actually from National Intelligence Service agents, allegedly boosted President Park Geun-hye while she was running for the job as the ruling party’s nominee. She was reportedly dubbed “the best,” while her opponent, in a play on his name, was called “criminal.” (AP Photo/Yonhap, Im Hun-jung) KOREA OUT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The scandal shaking up South Korea's main spy agency is not cloak-and-dagger stuff, but the kind of low-grade trickery anyone with an Internet connection could pull off. And the target was not Seoul's opaque rival to the north, but the country's own people.

Internet postings ostensibly from ordinary South Koreans, but actually from National Intelligence Service agents, allegedly boosted President Park Geun-hye while she was running for the job as the ruling party's nominee. She was reportedly dubbed "the best," while her opponent, in a play on his name, was called "criminal."

A police investigation conducted before the December election found no wrongdoing, but now police say at least two agents violated the law and the original investigation is itself being examined.

Dozens of Internet comments, or more, may not have affected an election that Park won by a million votes, but they have damaged public trust in a spy agency that already had a dubious record.

The agency was founded in 1961 by Park's father, longtime dictator Park Chung-hee. Agents detained, tortured and even allegedly killed his political opponents. After Park was killed in 1979 — by his spy chief, ironically enough — other abuses occurred under his successors.

In recent years, however, criticism of the NIS has centered on what it has failed to do — namely, come up with much intelligence about North Korea. It learned about Kim Jong Il's death in December 2011 two days after it occurred, when Pyongyang's state TV announced it.

The Internet comments scandal captured headlines in South Korean media late last month, when state prosecutors summoned the agency's former director, Won Sei-hoon, and raided its Seoul headquarters. Reports recalled the unfortunate fates of predecessors who ended up being arrested, imprisoned or even killed.

"The prosecution will mobilize all its capabilities to swiftly and thoroughly get the truth of the case," Prosecutor-general Chae Dong-Wook said in a meeting with top prosecution officials Tuesday, according to his office. "This case should be investigated in a way not to have any lingering suspicion."

The scandal flared about one week before the Dec. 19 election. Liberal opposition members camped outside the apartment of an NIS officer allegedly involved in illicit online campaigning, based on a tip from another agent. The officer locked herself in the apartment for two days, then came out — wearing a mask and a baseball cap to conceal her identity — to let police confiscate her computers.

The incident triggered a last-minute election debate over whether the NIS illegally engaged in politics, or whether the opposition party harassed an innocent woman.

Three days before the election, police announced the results of their initial investigation by clearing the officer of any wrongdoing, giving Park's camp a source of criticism on her main rival, Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in.

Kwon Eun Hee, a police officer who headed the initial investigation, recently told The Associated Press and other media that her bosses inappropriately interfered in the probe by pressing her team to drastically decrease the number of search words they would use in analyzing the NIS officer's computer hard disk, in an apparent effort to announce the investigation results before the presidential election.

Top police officers have denied Kwon's claim, saying there was no attempt to cover up the truth about the case, according to the National Police Agency.

Police said last month they've found that at least two agents and an ordinary citizen, who was allegedly in collusion with them, posted 100 comments on at least two websites in violation of a law banning the NIS from engaging in domestic politics. Police subsequently requested that prosecutors indict all three people, one of whom is the agent the opposition had accused before the election.

One of the websites is the online forum "Today Humor," which had more than 950,000 unique visitors last month, according to Nielsen KoreanClick.

Police found that the agents didn't violate the election law because they weren't influential enough to sway the election's outcome, as they only supported government policies and projects rather than directly criticizing Moon.

One of the comments disclosed by police praised Park's predecessor and fellow ruling party member Lee Myung-bak for making many overseas trips: "President Lee Myung-bak will make a five-day trip to Indonesia and Thailand from tomorrow. This will be his 48th overseas trip and it is overwhelmingly the largest-ever (among South Korean presidents). He is really great."

Democratic Party officials agreed the comments didn't have straightforward, bold criticism on Moon but rather tried to derogate him and support Park by slightly tweaking the spelling of their names. For instance, in their postings they called Moon Jae-in "Moon Joein," which means "Moon, the criminal," while calling Park Geun-hye "Geun-hye, jjang," which means "Geun-hye, the best," according to party officials.

The NIS has defended itself, saying the two agents were only engaged in missions to cope with North Korea's cyberwarfare by posting comments countering messages praising the North's system and spreading groundless rumors about South Korean government policies.

Opposition lawmakers and activists suspect a broader, systemic operation than has been revealed so far, involving a far larger number of NIS agents.

A nonprofit organization called Lawyers for a Democratic Society conducted an independent investigation and said NIS agents also tried to vote down posts unfavorable to Park at Today Humor, which selects the daily top comments based on votes from users.

At least four individuals created 73 IDs at the Today Humor forum since August and cast more than 1,100 votes against the posts that depicted Park unfavorably, according to Park Jumin, an attorney of the organization. They collectively expressed opposition to the posts that depicted Moon favorably, he said.

Critics attacked what they see as an attempt to affect the election, and said the work had little to do with the spy agency's job.

"How much effort had been needed to make the spy agency commit itself to its main duty? What's happening now is like having backtracked in those efforts," said Lee Cheol-hee, head of the private Doomun Political Strategy Institute in Seoul. "It's a very serious matter."

"They did something that they shouldn't do .... while little achievement on one of its main duties — North Korea intelligence — are seen," said analyst Paik Hak-soon at Sejong Institute in South Korea. "Unless it places its priority on something, that cannot help being neglected."

The NIS has been criticized for failing to learn of Kim Jong Il's death before Pyongyang announced, and for failing to predict the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island that killed four people in 2010. According to a lawmaker who attended a closed door parliamentary committee meeting, Won told lawmakers his agency had intercepted North Korean communication indicating such an attack two months before the strike, but he thought it was routine rhetoric.

In May 2011, the NIS reportedly gave an inaccurate briefing to the presidential Blue House saying Kim's son Kim Jong Un had taken a trip to China, then was slow in correcting itself to say it was Kim Jong Il making the trip, even after South Korean media picked up on the story. Kim Jong Un is North Korea's current leader.

Critics say a key reason for those alleged intelligence blunders was that former President Lee gave top NIS posts to close associates who had little intelligence expertise. Won, the former director, spent most of his career in Seoul city government.

In a recent statement, the NIS said no intelligence agency in the world knew about Kim Jong Il's death before the North's state media announced it, and that the deaths of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong became known in similar fashion. In the case of Kim Jong Il's 2011 China trip, the agency said it was aware that the senior Kim was solely traveling, but that it didn't do anything for about the inaccurate reports because it had to protect its source of the information and was considering ties with China.

Park Geun-hye has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Internet postings scandal.

Her father was not her only predecessor to use the spy agency to meddle in politics.

Under the government of President Kim Dae-jung, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and a longtime opposition leader who was kidnapped by the elder Park's agents in 1973, spy agents wiretapped the phone conversations of high-ranking officials. Two of Kim's spy masters were later convicted over the scandal and received suspended prison terms.

Some South Korean intelligence chiefs suffered worse fates. Park Chung-hee's former spy director Kim Hyung-wook, who had criticized his authoritarian leadership, mysteriously disappeared in France in 1979. In 2005, a government fact-finding commission said he had been assassinated by Eastern Europeans hired by the spy agency. Kim Jae-kyu, the spy chief who gunned down Park Chung-hee during an October 1979 drinking party, was hanged the following year.

___

AP writer Youkyung Lee contributed to this report.

Holmes asking judge to change plea to insanity

Associated Press/The Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Pool, File - FILE - In this March 12, 2013 file photo, James Holmes, left, and defense attorney Tamara Brady appear in district court in Centennial, Colo. for his arraignment. Lawyers for Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 people and injuring 70 in a Colorado movie theater, said Tuesday May 7, 2013 he wants to change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. (AP Photo/The Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Pool, File)

DENVER (AP) — The long journey toward a verdict in the deadly Colorado theater shootings enters a new and critical phase Monday when suspect James Holmes asks a judge to change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity.

The plea is widely seen as Holmes' best hope, and perhaps his only hope, of avoiding the death penalty. But his lawyers have held off until now, fearing a wrinkle in the law could cripple their ability to raise his mental health as a mitigating factor during the sentencing phase.

Two judges have refused to rule on the constitutionality of the law, saying the attorneys' objections were hypothetical because Holmes had not pleaded insanity. The defense had little choice but to have Holmes enter the plea and then challenge the law.

Holmes' lawyers announced last week that Holmes would ask to change his plea at Monday's hearing.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. They say Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student, spent months acquiring weapons and ammunition, scouting a theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora and booby-trapping his apartment.

Then on July 20, dressed in a police-style helmet and body armor, he opened fire during a packed midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," prosecutors say. Twelve people died and 70 were injured.

No motive has emerged in nearly 10 months of hearings, but Holmes' attorneys have repeatedly said their client is mentally ill. He was being treated by a psychiatrist before the attack.

The insanity plea carries risks for both sides. Holmes will have to submit to a mental evaluation by state-employed doctors, and prosecutors could use the findings against him.

"It's literally a life-and-death situation with the government seeking to execute him and the government, the same government, evaluating him with regard to whether he was sane or insane at the time he was in that movie theater," said attorney Dan Recht, a past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.

Among the risks for prosecutors: They must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Holmes was sane. If they don't, state law requires the jury to find him not guilty by reason of insanity.

"That's a significant burden on the prosecution," Recht said.

If acquitted, Holmes would be committed to the state mental hospital indefinitely.

A judge entered a standard not guilty plea on Holmes' behalf in March, and he needs court permission to change it. Recht said it's a foregone conclusion the judge will accept the new plea to preclude appeals later.

The mental evaluation could take weeks or months. Evaluators will interview Holmes, his friends and family, and if Holmes permits it, they'll also speak with mental health professionals who treated him in the past, said Dr. Howard Zonana, a professor of psychiatry and adjunct professor of law at Yale University.

Evaluators may give Holmes standardized personality tests and compare his results to those of people with documented mental illness. They will also look for any physical brain problems.

Zonana estimates he has conducted around 200 mental evaluations of criminal defendants, including some death penalty cases.

"All cases are tough," he said.

Meticulous planning, as in the scenario prosecutors laid out against Holmes, doesn't necessarily mean a defendant is sane, Zonana said.

Zonana said he helped evaluate Stephen Morgan, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2009 shooting death of Johanna Justin-Jinich in Middletown, Conn., where she was attending college.

Evidence showed Morgan planned the shooting, "but he was delusional as hell," Zonana said.

___

Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP

2 new diseases could both spark global outbreaks

Associated Press/Health Protection Agency, File - FILE - In this undated file image released by the British Health Protection Agency shows an electron microscope image of a coronavirus, part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS, which was first identified last year in the Middle East. Two respiratory viruses in different parts of the world have captured the attention of global health officials _ a novel coronavirus in the Middle East and a new bird flu spreading in China. Last week, the coronavirus related to SARS spread to France, where one patient who probably caught the disease in Dubai infected his hospital roommate. Officials are now trying to track down everyone who went on a tour group holiday to Dubai with the first patient as well as all contacts of the second patient. Since it was first spotted last year, the new coronavirus has infected 34 people, killing 18 of them. Nearly all had some connection to the Middle East. (AP Photo/Health Protection Agency, File)

LONDON (AP) — Two respiratory viruses in different parts of the world have captured the attention of global health officials — a novel coronavirus in the Middle East and a new bird flu spreading inChina.

Last week, the coronavirus related to SARS spread to France, where one patient who probably caught the disease in Dubai infected his hospital roommate. Officials are now trying to track down everyone who went on a tour group holiday to Dubai with the first patient as well as all contacts of the second patient. Since it was first spotted last year, the new coronavirus has infected 34 people, killing 18 of them. Nearly all had some connection to the Middle East.

The World Health Organization, however, says there is no reason to think the virus is restricted to the Middle East and has advised health officials worldwide to closely monitor any unusual respiratory cases.

At the same time, a new bird flu strain, H7N9, has been infecting people in China since at least March, causing 32 deaths out of 131 known cases.

WHO, which is closely monitoring the viruses, says both have the potential to cause a pandemic — a global epidemic — if they evolve into a form easily spread between people. Here's a crash course in what we know so far about them:

Q: How are humans getting infected by the new coronavirus?

A: Scientists don't exactly know. There is some suggestion the disease is jumping directly from animals like camels or goats to humans, but officials are also considering other sources, like a common environmental exposure. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus, but it's possible that bats are transmitting the disease via another source before humans catch it.

Q: Can the new coronavirus be spread from human to human?

A: In some circumstances, yes. There have been clusters of the disease in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Britain and now France, where the virus has spread from person-to-person. Most of those infected were in very close contact, such as people taking care of a sick family member or health workers treating patients. There is no evidence the virus is spreading easily between people and all cases of human-to-human transmission have been limited so far.

Q: How are people catching the bird flu H7N9?

A: Some studies suggest the new bird flu is jumping directly to people from poultry at live bird markets. Cases have slowed down since Chinese authorities began shutting down such markets. But it's unclear exactly what kind of exposure is needed for humans to catch the virus and very few animals have tested positive for it. Unlike the last bird flu strain to cause global concern, H5N1, the new strain doesn't appear to make birds sick and may be spreading silently in poultry populations.

Q: What precautions can people take against these new viruses?

A: WHO is not advising people to avoid traveling to the Middle East or China but is urging people to practice good personal hygiene like regular hand-washing. "Until we know how and where humans are contracting these two diseases, we cannot control them," said Gregory Hartl, WHO spokesman.

Q: Which virus should we be more worried about?

A: It's impossible to know. "We really don't want to play the game of predicting which virus will be more deadly than the other," Hartl said. At the moment, both are worrisome since so little is known about how they are infecting humans and both appear to cause severe disease. "Any virus that has the ability to develop the capacity to spread from human to human is of great concern to WHO," he said.

Bangladesh to allow unions for garment workers

Bangladesh agrees to allow garment workers to form trade unions in wake of building disaster

Associated Press -

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) -- Bangladesh's government agreed Monday to allow the country's garment workers to form trade unions without prior permission from factory owners, the latest response to a building collapse that killed more than 1,100 people and focused global attention on the industry's hazardous conditions.

The Cabinet decision came a day after the government announced a plan to raise the minimum wage for garment workers, who are paid some of the lowest wages in the world to sew clothing bound for global retailers. Both moves are seen as a direct response to the April 24 collapse of an eight-story building housing five garment factories, the worst disaster in the history of the global garment industry.

Government spokesman Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said the Cabinet approved an amendment to the 2006 Labor Act lifting restrictions on forming trade unions in most industries. The old law required workers to obtain permission before they could unionize.

"No such permission from owners is now needed," Bhuiyan told reporters after the Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. "The government is doing it for the welfare of the workers."

Local and international trade unions have long campaigned for such changes.

Though the 2006 law technically allowed trade unions — and they exist in many of Bangladesh's other industries — owners of garment factories never allowed them, saying they would lead to a lack of discipline among workers.

Trade union leaders responded cautiously.

"The issue is not really about making a new law or amending the old one," said Kalpana Akter of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, a group campaigning for garment workers' rights. "In the past whenever workers tried to form associations they were subjected to beatings and harassment," she said. "The owners did not hesitate to fire such workers."

In recent years the government has cracked down on trade unions attempting to organize garment workers. In 2010 Hasina's government launched an Industrial Police force to crush street protests by thousands of workers demanding better pay and working conditions.

That year police arrested at least six activists, including Akter, on charges of instigating workers to vandalize factories. They were later freed, but some charges are still pending.

The activists are also angry that police have made no headway in the investigation of the death of a fellow union organizer, Aminul Islam, who was found dead a day after he disappeared from his home in 2012.

"Islam's case is going nowhere even though police say they are investigating," said Akter.

On Sunday, the government set up a new minimum wage board that will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiky said. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals.

The wage board will include representatives of factory owners, workers and the government, he said.

The collapse of Rana Plaza has raised alarm about conditions in Bangladesh's powerful garment industry.

Bangladesh is the third-biggest exporter of clothes in the world, after China and Italy. There are 5,000 factories in the country and 3.6 million garment workers.

But working conditions in the $20 billion industry are grim, a result of government corruption, desperation for jobs, and industry indifference. Minimum wages for garment workers were last raised by 80 percent to 3,000 takas ($38) a month in 2010 following protests by workers.

Since 2005, at least 1,800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh, according to research by the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum.

In November, 112 workers were killed in a garment factory in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. The factory lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built.

The Rana Plaza owner and eight other people, including garment factory owners, have been detained in the collapse investigation. Authorities say the building owner added floors to the structure illegally and allowed the factories to install heavy equipment that the building was not designed to support.

As of Monday, rescue workers said 1,127 bodies had been recovered from the ruins of the fallen building, where thousands were working at the time of the disaster. Teams were using hydraulic cranes, bulldozers, shovels and iron cutters to uncover bodies.

"We are still removing the rubble very carefully as dead bodies are still coming up," said Maj. Moazzem Hossain, a rescue team leader.

Hossain said they are trying to identify badly decomposed bodies by their identity cards.

On Friday, the search teams received a much-needed morale boost when they found a seamstress who survived under the rubble for 17 days on dried food and bottled and rain water.

The Textiles Ministry has also begun a series of factory inspections and has ordered about 22 closed temporarily for violating safety and working standards.