Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/337169
Newsfeed WEST ALLIS, WIS. Afor- mer police officer suspected in the death of at least one of two women whose bod- ies were stuffed into suit- cases and discarded on a rural Wisconsin highway may have met the woman through a bondage website, police said Thursday. The 52-year-old security officer was arrested Wednes- day on tentative charges of hiding a corpse. The same day, detectives wearing hazmat suits removed large, brown bags of evidence and a refrigerator from the man's apartment in West Al- lis, a Milwaukee suburb. Highway workers discov- ered two suitcases contain- ing female remains June 5 in the Town of Geneva, some 50 miles southwest of Milwaukee. Police identi- fied one woman as Laura Si- monson, 37, of Farmington, Minnesota. Authorities have not released the identity of the second woman but de- scribe her as a white female with long dark hair. CRIME Ex-coparresteda er bodies found in baggage WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is asking Congress for $500 million to train and arm vetted members of the Syrian op- position, as the U.S. grap- ples for a way to stem a civil war that has also fueled the al-Qaida inspired insur- gency in neighboring Iraq. The military training pro- gram would deepen the Obama administration's in- volvement in the more than four-year conflict between rebels and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. If approved by Con- gress, the program would supplement a covert train- and-assistance program run by U.S. intelligence agencies. The Senate Armed Ser- vices Committee has al- ready approved a version of the sweeping defense pol- icy bill authorizing the De- fense Department to pro- vide "equipment, supplies, training and defense ser- vices" to elements of the Syrian opposition that have been screened. SYRIA Obama seeks $500M to train, equip rebels JUNEAU, ALASKA Wild- life officials in Alaska's cap- ital suspect a black bear might have literally crashed a child's birthday party be- fore he was shot and killed inside a different home. The bear had shim- mied onto the roof of Ali- cia Bishop and Glenn Mer- rill's home and was walking across a skylight when the bottom fell out Saturday, the Juneau Empire reported. "I heard this cracking," said Merrill, who was prepar- ing for his son's first birthday party. "And the next thing you know, there's this bear that, I mean, literally, fell right from (the skylight)." He said he and the bear were about 3 feet apart and just stared at each other in disbelief. Merrill, 45, had his par- ents take his son, Jack- son, upstairs. Bishop, 33, was standing in the kitchen behind a glass door and watched the bear help itself to some cupcakes intended for the child's birthday bash. ALASKA Bear crashes boy's birthday bash NOGALES, ARIZ. A Mexican man is in custody for alleg- edly trying to smuggle 4 pounds of metham- phetamine into Arizona in an accordion. U.S. Customs and Bor- der Protection officers say 18-year-old Eloy Rente- ria-Ortiz was arrested on Monday at the Port of No- gales after being searched at the Morley Gate cross- ing. Officers say nearly $13,600 worth of meth was found wrapped in black tape and stashed in the cen- ter of the accordion that Renteria-Ortiz was carry- ing. The drugs and instru- ment were seized and Ren- teria-Ortiz was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investi- gations. His hometown in Mex- ico wasn't released and it wasn't immediately clear Thursday if Renteria-Ortiz has a lawyer. CRIME Accordion used to smuggle drugs By Mark Sherman The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Su- preme Court unanimously struck down the 35-foot protest-free zone outside abortion clinics in Massa- chusetts Thursday, declar- ing it an unconstitutional restraint on the free-speech rights of protesters. Authorities have less in- trusive ways to deal with potential confrontations or other problems that can arise outside clinics, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Roberts noted that most of the problems reported by police and the clinics in Massachusetts occurred outside a single Planned Parenthood facility in Bos- ton, and only on Saturdays when the largest crowds typically gather. "For a problem shown to arise only once a week in one city at one clinic, cre- ating 35-foot buffer zones at every clinic across the Commonwealth is hardly a narrowly tailored solution," Roberts said. He wrote the majority opinion after ask- ing no questions — exceed- ingly rare for him — at the argument in January. Roberts noted that no other state has a similar law and that he is aware of only five cities that have created fixed buffer zones around abortion clinics: Burling- ton, Vermont; Pittsburgh; Portland, Maine, and San Francisco and Santa Bar- bara in California. The ruling also left intact a high court decision from 2000 that upheld a floating buffer zone in Colorado. While the court was unanimous in the overall outcome, Roberts joined with the four liberal justices to strike down the buffer zone on narrower grounds than the other, more con- servative justices wanted. In a separate opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia crit- icized Roberts' opinion as carrying forward "this court's practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to sup- pressing the free-speech rights of their opponents." Scalia said state and lo- cal governments around the country would con- tinue to be able to "restrict antiabortion speech with- out fear of rigorous consti- tutional review." Joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, Sca- lia dissented from the Col- orado decision and said Thursday he would have overturned it. Still, abortion rights ad- vocates lamented the new ruling and said it compro- mised the safety of women seeking abortions. "This decision shows a troubling level of disre- gard for American women, who should be able to make carefully considered, pri- vate medical decisions without running a gant- let of harassing and threat- ening protesters," said Ce- cile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Feder- ation of America. Nearing the end of its 2013-14 term, the court de- cided another potentially significant case Thursday, ruling that temporary, re- cess appointments made by President Barack Obama to the National Labor Rela- tions Board in 2012 were illegal because the Senate was not, in fact, in recess when Obama acted. In that case as well, the court was unanimous about the out- come but divided over the reasoning. The justices will meet one last time on Monday to hand down decisions in cases in- volving the Obama health law requirement that em- ployers cover women's con- traception in their employee health plans and the ability of unions representing gov- ernment employees to col- lect fees from workers who don't wish to join the union.. Reaction to the buffer- zone ruling was predict- ably mixed. Mark Rienzi, who repre- sented the protesters, said, "The government can- not reserve its public side- walks for Planned Parent- hood, as if their message is the only one women should be allowed to hear. Today's decision confirms that the First Amendment is for ev- eryone, and that the govern- ment cannot silence peace- ful speakers." Massachusetts officials who backed the buffer zone said they would try to re- craft the law to address the high court's concerns. "The fight is just begin- ning again," said state At- torney General Martha Coakley, whose office had argued before the justices. Roberts suggested that Massachusetts could enact a state version of the fed- eral law that prohibits peo- ple from blocking abortion clinic entrances. The buffer-zone case began when Boston-area grandmother Eleanor Mc- Cullen and other abortion opponents sued over the limits on their activities at Planned Parenthood health centers in Boston, Spring- field and Worcester. At the latter two sites, the pro- testers say they have little chance of reaching patients arriving by car because they must stay 35 feet not from the clinic entrances but from the driveway to those buildings' parking lots. Pa- tients enter the building through the parking lots, which are private property. Planned Parenthood provides health exams for women, cancer screenings, tests for sexually transmit- ted diseases, birth control and abortions at its clinics. The organization said that the buffer zone has significantly reduced the harassment of patients and clinic employees. Before the 35-foot zone went into effect in 2007, protesters had been able to stand next to the en- trances and force patients to squeeze by, Planned Par- enthood said. Before2007,afloatingbuf- fer zone kept protesters from approaching unwilling lis- teners any closer than 6 feet if they were within 18 feet of the clinic. The floating zone was modeled after a Colo- rado law that the Supreme Court has upheld. That deci- sionwasnotcalledintoques- tion in Thursday's ruling. Clinic officials said they are most concerned about safety because of past inci- dents of violence. In 1994, a gunman killed two recep- tionists and wounded five employees and volunteers at a Planned Parenthood fa- cility and another abortion clinic in nearby Brookline. RULINGS Highcourtvoidsbuffer rule at abortion clinics THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Anti-abortion protester Eleanor McCullen, of Boston, le , stands at the painted edge of a buffer zone as she protests outside a Planned Parenthood location in Boston. In a SYDNEY Investigators be- lieve the missing Malaysia Airlines plane flew on auto- pilot for hours before crash- ing into a remote part of the Indian Ocean, Australian of- ficials said Thursday as they announced another shift in the search area for the jet. After analyzing data ex- changed between the plane and a satellite, officials be- lieve Flight 370 was on au- topilot the entire time it was flying across a vast ex- panse of the southern In- dian Ocean, based on the straight path it took, Aus- tralian Transport Safety Bu- reau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said. "Certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean, we are confident that the air- craft was operating on auto- pilot until it ran out of fuel," Dolan told reporters in Can- berra, the nation's capital. "The basic assumption would be that if the autopi- lot is operational it's because it's been switched on," Dolan said. AVIATION MH370 may have been on autopilot for hours Criticsofruling say safety of women entering offices at risk JERRY HOLT — THE STAR TRIBUNE President Barack Obama talks with Rebekah Erler, of Minneapolis at Matts Bar before going to a town hall meeting at Minnehaha Park on Thursday. The president is in Minneapolis for the first in a series of Day-in-the-Life visits he pans to make across the country this summer. The Associated Press MINNEAPOLIS President Barack Obama, in an at- tempt to put a human face on the economic policies he and Democrats are cham- pioning, is spending a day with a Minneapolis mother who wrote the White House about her struggles to make ends meet. The president on Thurs- day began a two-day visit to Minnesota, where he plans to take part in a town hall meeting before headlin- ing a fundraiser for House Democrats in the evening. On Friday, Obama will highlight his push to in- crease the minimum wage during an economic speech at a waterside band shell. But the centerpiece of the trip is the time Obama will spend with Rebekah Erler, 36, of St. Anthony, Minnesota. The accoun- tant and mother of two preschool-age boys wrote to the president this spring about her family's strug- gles after her husband's construction business went under during the downturn in the housing market. Her note made its way into the pile of 10 let- ters from Americans that Obama reads each night. Erler wrote about how her family moved from Seattle to Minneapolis, where her husband has held a number of difficult jobs before finally landing back in the remodeling in- dustry. She said she relied on student loans to attend a community college and is now working as an accoun- tant. They were able to buy their first home last fall. But despite their achievements and hard work, Erler wrote, they are still struggling with costs of raising a family, includ- ing student loan payments, groceries and child care. Erler's letter reflected a sentiment shared by others who have written to him, Obama said in a video mes- sage, that despite working hard and taking responsi- bility for themselves and their families, many Amer- icans feel it's harder than it should be to get ahead. "What I'm hoping to do when I get a chance to see Rebekah directly is tell her that not only am I listen- ing and paying attention, but that there are actually policies out there that could end up making a difference in her life — if we can get Washington to work on her behalf," Obama said. Obama was joining Er- ler for lunch at Matt's Bar, a Minneapolis landmark lit mostly by neon beer signs that is home to the "Jucy Lucy," a burger with melted cheese in the mid- dle of the patty. The two later planned to attend a town hall meeting before making a number of unan- nounced stops in the Min- neapolis area. The White House said it's the first of a series of "Day in the Life" visits that the pres- ident plans to make over the summer. 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