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Palestinian official: Western Wall not Jewish
Amplify’d from www.usatoday.com
Palestinian official: Western Wall not Jewish
By Gali Tibbon, AFP/Getty Images
Backdropped by the Dome of the Rock, Israelis and tourists pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's old city on November 21, 2010. Israel's cabinet backed plans to invest millions of shekels in a five-year project to develop the Western Wall plaza, in a project branded by the Palestinians as "illegal."
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Decades of archaeology have shown that the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, was a retaining wall of the compound where the two biblical Jewish Temples stood 20 centuries ago. The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest site, is built atop the ruins.
The latest claim about the Temples, echoing positions taken in the past by Palestinian leaders including the late Yasser Arafat, underlined the deeply held, conflicting beliefs that must be untangled if a peace accord is to be reached between Israel and the Palestinians.
Al-Mutawakil Taha, deputy minister of information in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority that rules the West Bank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his five-page study published on a Palestinian government website reflected the official Palestinian position.
Part of the report disputes that the Western Wall was a retaining wall of the Temple compound, discarding centuries of documentation and archaeology.
"This wall has never been a part of what is called the Jewish Temple," the report claimed. "However, it was Islamic tolerance which allowed the Jews to stand before it and cry over its loss."
The report concludes that since Jews have no claim to the area, it is holy Muslim territory and must be part of Palestinian Jerusalem.
Both sides say the clashing narratives are political. Israel captured Jordanian' occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war after Jordan joined in the Arab states attack on Israel, and annexed it. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as the capital of their future state.
"Of course it's a political position," Taha said.
Taha said he wrote the report after Israeli officials on Sunday approved a five-year renovation plan for the Western Wall area.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev described the report as "incitement" by denying the historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
Einat Wilf, a legislator from the moderate Israeli Labor Party, a part of the governing coalition, said Palestinians "are stupidly trying again and again to somehow create an alternative reality in which the Jewish people are a strangers in this land."
After Israel seized control of east Jerusalem, it cleared away shacks built next to the Western Wall and built a wide, open plaza there.
In contrast, Israel turned over administration of the hilltop itself, with the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine, to the Muslim Supreme Council, or Waqf, while Israel maintained overall security control.
Plans that won preliminary approval in earlier, failed peace negotiations envisioned dividing Jerusalem along ethnic lines — leaving Israel in control of Jewish neighborhoods while Arab sections would be part of the Palestinian state — but no formula emerged for the disputed hilltop.
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Where's Molly? Younger Sister Who Disappeared 47 Years Earlier
Amplify’d from www.cbsnews.com
Where's Molly?
It Wasn't Until His Parents Died That Jeff Daly Learned What Happened to His Younger Sister Who Disappeared 47 Years Earlier
Play CBS Video Video Brother Seeking Sister Asks "Where's Molly?"
John Blackstone tells the tale of Jeff Daly, a man who searched to find his long-lost sister after 47 years of separation and went on to make the film "Where's Molly" documenting his quest.
Jeff Daly and his sister Molly in the 1950s, before she disappeared from his family. (CBS)
But then, the pictures change . . . and a family secret was born.
"I would often look at a photo, and I'd say, 'Tell me again who's this,'" said Jeff Daly. "'Well, that was Molly.' 'Where Molly now?' 'She's not here anymore.'"
When older brother Jeff was 6, Molly disappeared. For a while Jeff asked constantly: "Where's Molly?"
He stopped asking after being told repeatedly by his mother he had to forget his baby sister.
"I was fairly, you know, fairly well brainwashed," Daly said. "I think I can say that Molly never crossed my mind for 20 years, maybe 30 years. I mean, she effectively had been shoved away. I'm told I can't do anything more. So, when I hit my teenage [years], my 20s, my 30s, I never really thought about Molly."
That is, until someone else from his past came back into his life.
Cindy Thompson grew up with Jeff in Astoria, ore. The two even dated in middle school. They met again, in 1994, after their 25th high school reunion.
"I had not seen him in probably 25 or 30 years," said Cindy. "And just naturally thought that he had contact with his sister."
"And one of the first things she said to me was, 'How's your mom? How's your dad? And what's Molly doing?' And I almost fell off the chair," Jeff said. "'How, how do you remember Molly?'"
"I said, 'Everybody knew about Molly,'" Cindy said. When Jeff asked her what she knew about his sister, Cindy replied, "Well, she was sent away. I don't know where she went. And I never heard what happened to her. Is she still alive?"
Jeff didn’t know. He said it almost ended his relationship with Cindy right there: "Cindy was so upset saying, 'How could you not know where your sister is? How do you not know how she's doing?'"
Jeff and Cindy's relationship grew, and they got married. But it would take another ten years before the mystery of Molly's disappearance began to unravel.
And it was only after Jeff's parents, Sue and Jack, passed away . . .
"When my father died, Cindy said, 'Time's up. I'm gonna find Molly,'" Jeff recalled. "And we actually found in his wallet a little card that was sort of a cheat sheet. It had his parents' birthdays and Social Security numbers. It had mine. It had Molly's name, Molly's Social Security number and her birth date."
Turns out, Jack Daly also kept a file hidden away about his only daughter. And within 24 hours of Jack's death, the mystery of "Where's Molly" was solved.
Cindy Daly started making phone calls, and on her third call she found the group home in Hillsboro, just outside of Portland, where Molly was actually living.Three days later, Jeff Daly reunited with the sister he last saw when she was just shy of her third birthday.(CBS)
Molly was now a 49-year-old woman.
(Left: Jeff Daly and his sister Molly today.)
"I wasn't sure what to expect," Jeff said. "But the first time I saw her, it was pain. I felt pained that I hadn't seen her. I knew that I was wrong."
"Knew that you were wrong not trying to find her sooner?" asked Blackstone.
"Yeah, that here, indeed, is this individual that has personality, and she's my sister. And I let her go for 47 years without ever being part of our life."
Because Molly couldn't tell Jeff and Cindy about those missing 47 years, they set about filling in the details, which brought them to the institution where Molly was sent back in 1957: the Oregon Fairview Home.
Fairview has now been closed for almost a decade. The buildings where Molly and thousands of other children lived are in decay. But a film that shows what life was like here in the 1950s gave Cindy and Jeff a disturbing look at how Molly spent her childhood here.And the last thing Jeff and Cindy expected to see in the beginning of "Fairview 1959" was Molly herself, at age 5.(CBS)
"When we saw that, we crumbled," Jeff said.
At the time, the film was meant to be a testament to the state-of-the-art care given to patients with intellectual disabilities.
Fairview, founded in 1907, was originally named the "Oregon State Institution for the Feeble-Minded." And it was hardly alone. By 1962, there were 123 state institutions around the country.
James Trent, a professor at Gordon College and the author of a history of America's treatment of those once called "mentally retarded," says Molly's parents undoubtedly acted on what was common advice in the 1950s.
"After World War II in the early '50s, you increasingly had physicians who would tell parents to put their children almost immediately in institutions after they were born if they had an apparent disability," Trent said.
"Most physicians would tell them for the good of the other children in the family, for the good of the stability of the family, it was best to put the disabled child in a state institution," said Trent.
Jeff Daly says that was the way it was done with his sister: "The doctors told my parents, 'It's okay. Let Molly go to Salem. She'll be in an institution. She'll be better off there.'"
But as the Fairview film painfully illustrates, Molly was not better off.
Jeff says that while Molly had some minor disabilities, he believes that when she went into the institution she became "institutionally retarded."
"The environment created her, forced her into being what everybody else in an institution was, which were people surviving," he said.
In combing through Molly's records, the Dalys discovered that, despite the family mandate to forget her, through the years, Molly did have some family visitors.
"My mom went there once from what we understood," Jeff said. "We just found a little note in her records that mother had visited. But, other than that, she didn't visit."
"Was it shame that kept your mother from doing this?" Blackstone asked. "Was it just that she didn't want to acknowledge even Molly's existence?"
"I just have a hard time understanding," Jeff said. "To send her away and say, 'No more conversation. She is not part of our lives. We're not gonna talk to her about it.' So, whether that's shame? It's a horrible dilemma I think that my mother had to go through."
And at first, Molly's father visited often, until Fairview's staff advised him to stop, because Molly would become inconsolable after he left.
But Jack Daly found an ingenious way to continue seeing his daughter . . ."He did go back," said Jeff. "It was only a way that I suppose my dad could have figured out. He went back as a clown."(CBS)
Jeff's father - an executive at the Bumblbee Seafood Company - founded a troupe called the Astoria Clowns in 1957, the very year Molly was sent away. The troupe traveled around Oregon, marching in parades and entertaining children wherever they went.
And they visited Fairview.
"He was able to have this relationship with Molly in disguise: Painted face, an orange wig, wearing the clown outfit," said Jeff. "But he was able to still get back there and see his daughter."
By profession, Jeff was a freelance cameraman who sometimes worked for CBS News. Now, he's made a film called "Where's Molly" about the search for his sister. He hopes his story encourages others to reunite with siblings lost because of the wisdom of earlier times.
He's failed, however, to convince his own younger brother, Tim, to spend time with Molly.
"I've not only lost my brother now, but, he's missing - he's missing out on a great opportunity to have a sister," Jeff said.
For Jeff, finding his sister has done much more than solve a mystery . . . according to his wife Cindy, he's changed immensely. "He has, as one person said it, 'filled a hole in his soul.' And it really did."
"I have family," Jeff said. "I've lost some family. But I've got family. And I think that the family that I have now needs me, and I'm glad to be there for her. That's the beauty of it. It's a lovely reward to be able to give back and to take care of your little sister."
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Former Dallastown police chief accused of falsifying records
Amplify’d from www.ydr.com
Former Dallastown police chief accused of falsifying records
It began with a brutal murder.
David and Lorraine Donivan were killed in late December 2005 in Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- their bodies found in their business, a furniture warehouse. David Donivan had been stabbed 32 times. His wife's body had 10 stab wounds and was gutted. A former employee, Edward Dashnaw, was convicted April 2, 2007, after a three-month-long trial, according to news reports.
William Donivan attended the trial. David was his brother.
After the trial, he signed up with the state's Survivors Speaker Bureau, established by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency's Office of Victims' Services. That, and his background as a state police officer, former police chief in
Dallastown and private investigator, led to him getting a job with the Office of Victims' Services investigating claims for compensation filed by crime victims.
"My family knows what it's like to be a victim of crime," Donivan, 60, said on the porch of his West Manchester Township home.
He went to work for the agency in September 2008. His job entailed reviewing claims and investigating to see whether victims or their families who had filed for compensation were entitled to it. The agency's policies forbid it from granting compensation to victims who were engaged in criminal activity at the time of the crime.
By March 2009, Donivan was out of a job.
And he was facing felony charges of falsifying records to deny crime victims
compensation.
He says he did nothing wrong, that he had done his job and in the cases cited in charges, did what he could do to prevent victims' compensation money from going to criminals or their families.
"I'm not perfect, but everything I did at victims' compensation, I did to help people, to help the victims of crime," he said.
It's a complicated case. But at the heart of it, according to the state Attorney General's office, is whether Donivan falsified documents to deny the families
of crime victims benefits from the Office of Victim's Services.
Donivan has a different view. He believes the case is about whether the Office of Victims Services has given money to people who were victimized while they were committing a crime.
Under the state's regulations, crime victims qualify for compensation if they report the crime promptly, cooperate with police and were not committing a crime at the time. The example often cited is a drug dealer shot while selling drugs.
Donivan said in the cases in which he is charged with falsifying records the victims were engaged in illegal activity. But because police didn't charge them, he said, the office determined that their claims should be paid.
It would have been difficult to
charge the victims in the cases he denied. They are all dead. The claims had been filed by their families.
On Nov. 23, 2008, Donald Royster was shot and killed in the Strip District in Pittsburgh. Royster had a criminal record -- including drug charges, possessing an unregistered handgun and possessing body armor. He was shot with two different weapons.
Royster's family filed for compensation and that's where Donivan came in. He called the Pittsburgh detective assigned to the case, Thomas Leheny.
Here is where versions of the story diverge.
Donivan said Leheny told him he didn't take the Office of Victims Services forms seriously because the office's investigators were "rubber-stampers." The detective told him, according to
Donivan, that police didn't trust the office because it had often provided compensation to criminals. Leheny further told him that the victim was the head of a drug ring in the city's Hill District and that his murder was a hit.
Donivan wanted the office to reject the claim made by Royster's family.
According to the affidavit of probable cause filed to support the charges against Donivan, his boss at the office, Lynne Shiner, asked Donivan to document his conversation with the detective, a request that, Shiner noted, made Donivan uncomfortable. Later, when Shiner asked Donivan's supervisor for the notes of the conversation, they were found to be missing from the file. Donivan told her, according to the affidavit, that he had removed
the notes because he didn't want to "sell Detective Leheny out."
He later provided documentation, but the new version indicated that Leheny was "only joking," according to the affidavit.
Later, the affidavit states, Leheny told Shiner that Donivan's account of their conversation was "entirely false." He also told Shiner that it was apparent from their conversation that Donivan was trying to get information to deny the claim. Leheny added that Royster had not been involved in criminal activity at the time of his murder.
The other cases involved the same crime. On Sept. 2, 2008, Jose Rivera and Kenneth Lockwood were executed on the second floor of an auto-parts store in Philadelphia.
The store was a known drug house. Rivera and Lockwood were found with their hands duct-taped behind their backs and bags over their heads, each shot, point-blank, in the back of the head. Their families filed for compensation.
According to court records, Donivan told his superiors that a Philadelphia police officer, Kathy Battle, told him that a confidential informant had told police the murders were the result of a drug rip-off gone bad. He said Battle told him that the informant told police that men who were going to steal a drug shipment arrived at the address too soon and killed Rivera and Lockwood.
Battle, a victims' assistance officer in the city's homicide unit, later told investigators that she never told Donivan about any confidential informant and that police did not have one in this case. Even if one existed, she said, police procedure would prohibit her from revealing that information. The homicide detective assigned to the case confirmed that, court records stated.
Battle further told investigators that she did inform Donivan that the Rivera and Lockwood had criminal records, but she did not say anything about a drug shipment or any criminal activity at the time of the men's deaths.
Donivan said last Saturday that that may be true, that he did speak with Battle, but that he got the information about the confidential informant and the drug shipment from an undercover cop. He said the case was suspicious from the beginning -- the drug house, the fact that Rivera and Lockwood had criminal records, the report that the man who found the bodies called his father, owner of the auto-parts shop, before calling police.
The undercover cop told him that the case was one of a drug rip-off gone bad.
And that would be reason to deny the claims filed by the victims' families.
The charges, Donivan said, were filed because he opposed compensating people for being victims of crime while engaged in criminal activity. He said the office often awards compensation to criminals or their families. In some cases, he said, the compensation is awarded because police decline to file charges against victims -- in homicide cases, it's impossible.
He said he had gone to an investigative reporter in Harrisburg and was planning to blow the whistle when the charges were filed.
"I wasn't going to change what I believe in," he said. "I believe it's wrong to give victims' money to criminals."
The case, in Dauphin County court, won't go to trial until sometime next year, his lawyer, York attorney Joanne Floyd, said.
The Office of Victims' Services declined to discuss the case. Spokeswoman Tara Mead said the office is obligated to pass on cases such as this to the state attorney general's office for prosecution. The state attorney general's office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Donivan, though, did speak out.
"I'm going to fight this," he said. "I'm going to do the best I can to expose what they've done. I'm not going to roll over and go away."
About the Office of Victims' Services
The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency's Office of Victims' Services compensates crime victims and their families to help them survive the financial impact of crime.
The agency reported in its latest annual report that it had distributed nearly $14.2 million to victims or their families in the fiscal year of 2008-2009. The money is intended to help pay for medical bills or other expenses, including, in cases involving homicides, funeral costs.
The money comes from fees collected from those convicted of crimes and from a state allocation.
-- Source: Office of Victims's Services annual report for 2008-2009 fiscal year.
The charges
William Donivan, a former state trooper, chief of police of Dallastown and private investigator, faces four charges:
--- Tampering with public records or information.
--- Tampering with records or identification.
--- Unlawful use of a computer.
--- Unsworn falsification to authorities.
Donivan denies the allegations.
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Governor Rendell Vetoes Three Bills
Amplify’d from www.wgal.com
Governor Rendell Vetoes Three Bills
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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US troops in convoy kill Iraqi civilian driver
Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com
US troops in convoy kill Iraqi civilian driver
BAGHDAD – U.S. troops who thought they were under attack killed an Iraqi airport employee Sunday as he drove near a military convoy on his way to work, officials said.
The driver, identified by colleagues as Baghdad International Airport worker Karim Obaid Bardan, failed to heed repeated signals to slow down or turn on his headlights as he neared the military convoy, said U.S. and Iraqi security officials.
"As a result, the vehicle was perceived as a threat and a decision was made to engage it with small-arms fire in order to stop it and to protect the convoy from a possible attack," said Army Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
"Iraqi drivers know that they must use caution and avoid threatening behavior when approaching military vehicles," Johnson said.
The shooting comes a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said U.S. troops would not be needed in Iraq beyond a December 2011 withdrawal deadline already in place between the two nations.
An Iraqi policeman confirmed the driver did not stop or slow. Two other Iraqi officials said the pre-dawn shooting happened near a security checkpoint on the road to the airport and described the shooting as a mistake.
All three Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The shooting is under U.S. investigation, and Johnson said the military "deeply regrets" the driver's death.
Such so-called "escalation of force" self-defense shootings were common in the years immediately after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and inflamed tensions between American forces and Iraqis who saw them as occupiers. But the tactic has been less frequent since U.S. soldiers scaled back their presence around Iraq, starting in June 2009, when they stopped patrolling cities without Iraqi forces with them.
Meanwhile, in a shocking killing north of Baghdad, police said gunmen wearing Iraqi security forces uniforms invaded the home of a Sunni sheik in a pre-dawn raid and shot him and his 15-year-old son.
A police officer in the village of al-Meshahda, about 31 miles (50 kilometers) north of the capital, said Sheik Abdul Kerim Talab Mutlak al-Halbussi was a leader of the local Sahwa, or Awakening council. The councils are the government-backed Sunni militias that joined forces with the United States against al-Qaida in one of the turning points of the war.
Two other people in the house were wounded in the shooting, said the police officer. A local hospital official confirmed the casualties. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
Also, two high-profile officials were killed in separate attacks Sunday night in Baghdad, police officials said. The training and development director of the Sunni Endowment, a publicly funded religious organization, was killed when a bomb hidden on the underside of his car exploded. And an Iraqi army brigadier general was slain in a drive-by shooting.
___
Associated Press Writer Mazin Yahya contributed to this report.
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Alaska Considers Suing Obama Over Plan to Save Polar Bears
Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com
Alaska Considers Suing Obama Over Plan to Save Polar Bears
In this photo provided by Philomena Keyes, a polar bear is seen in the lower Yukon River on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 near the village of Emmonak, Alaska. (AP)
Alaska is considering mounting a legal challenge to President Obama's plan to set aside 187,000 square miles in the state as a "critical habitat" for polar bears, a move that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell questioned the decision, saying the designation was not supported by sound science or good economic analysis.
"This additional layer of regulatory burden will not only slow job creation and economic growth here and for our nation, but will also slow oil and gas exploration efforts," he said in a written statement on Wednesday. "We are especially concerned regarding the limited consideration given to the additional economic information the state provided."
Parnell said the state is considering its options, including a lawsuit against the designation.
The total designation, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles, or 8.3 million acres, less than in a preliminary plan released last year.
Tom Strickland, assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the Interior Department, said the designation would help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change.
"This critical habitat designation enables us to work with federal partners to ensure their actions within its boundaries do not harm polar bear populations," Strickland said. "We will continue to work toward comprehensive strategies for the long-term survival of this iconic species."
Designation of critical habitat does not in itself block economic activity or other development, but requires federal officials to consider whether a proposed action would adversely affect the polar bear's habitat and interfere with its recovery.
Nearly 95 percent of the designated habitat is sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska's northern coast. Polar bears spend most of their lives on frozen ocean where they hunt seals, breed and travel.
Sean Parnell and the state's oil and gas industry had complained that the preliminary plan released last year was too large and dramatically underestimated the potential economic impact. The designation could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic activity and tax revenue, they said.
Parnell said Wednesday that the state is pleased that existing manmade structures will be exempted from critical habitat considerations. But, he said the state is disappointed it was not consulted on many other recommendations.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said reductions included in the final rule were mostly due to corrections that more accurately reflect the U.S. border in the Arctic Ocean. Five U.S. Air Force radar sites were exempted from the final rule, as were Native Alaskan communities in Barrow and Kaktovik, Alaska.
The Interior Department has declared polar bears "threatened," or likely to become endangered, citing a dramatic loss of sea ice. Officials face a Dec. 23 deadline to explain why the bears were listed as threatened instead of the more protective "endangered."
Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has filed a lawsuit to increase protections for the polar bear, hailed the designation of critical habitat.
"Now we need the Obama administration to actually make it mean something so we can write the bear's recovery plan -- not its obituary," she said.
Siegel called for the administration to impose a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in bear habitat areas. "An oil spill there would be a catastrophe," she said. "That seems like an understatement."
The Arctic Slope Regional Corp., which advocates for Alaska Native business interests, said in a statement that the decision disproportionately impacts Alaska Natives and called the designation the "wrong tool" for conserving the polar bear because it does nothing to address climate change.
"The burden of the impacts will be felt by the people of the Arctic Slope," said Tara Sweeney, vice president of external affairs for ASRC, which is based in Barrow, Alaska. "This is a quality of life issue for our people."
Kara Moriarty, deputy director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said the action would hurt oil and gas exploration in Alaska by creating more delays and added costs to projects in what already is a high-cost environment, she said.
"The companies and the industry will be required to go through more permitting and create mitigation measures without a direct benefit to the polar bear or oil and gas development," Moriarty said. "The Fish and Wildlife Service has found over and over again our activities pose no threat to the polar bear."
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