How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
News
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris has released a new report that outlines the growing prevalence of the crime of human trafficking in the state, the increasing involvement of sophisticated transnational gangs in perpetrating the crime and the modern technologies that traffickers use to facilitate it.
Harris released “The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012” at the Human Trafficking Leadership Symposium, hosted by the University of Southern California in partnership with Humanity United.
Leaders from law enforcement, victim service groups, non-government organizations and other groups convened to discuss the report and consider best practices in the fight against forced labor and sex trafficking.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Mexico Attorney General Marisela Morales Ibáñez provided keynote remarks at the symposium.
“Human trafficking is a growing threat because criminal organizations have determined it is a low-risk, high-reward crime. We are here to change that calculus,” said Harris. “We must counter the ruthlessness of human traffickers with our resolve, innovation and collaboration. Law enforcement must continue to get trained, gather data and work to shut down the human trafficking operations in our state.”
California law enforcement and service providers have committed to cracking down on this rapidly-evolving crime.
The report finds that from mid-2010 to mid-2012, California’s nine regional anti-human trafficking task forces provided training to 25,591 law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, victim service providers and other first responders.
During the same period, the task forces identified 1,277 victims, initiated 2,552 investigations, and arrested 1,798 individuals for the crime.
California – the nation’s most populous and diverse state and the world’s ninth largest economy – is one of the nation’s top four destination states for trafficking human beings.
Despite public perception, 72 percent of trafficked human beings in the state cite the United States as their country of origin, with the remainder coming from foreign countries.
The report also describes the evolving challenges California faces in addressing this crime, which has become a $32 billion-a-year global industry.
Among the key findings in the report, organized criminal networks and street gangs are increasingly responsible for trafficking persons into and throughout the state.
The prevailing wisdom among these criminals is that human trafficking is more profitable and has a lower risk of being detected than drug trafficking.
In addition, new innovations in technology make it possible for traffickers to recruit victims and perpetrate their crimes online.
However, technology is also key to successful enforcement as the Internet, social media and mobile devices provide new avenues for identifying perpetrators, reaching out to victims and raising public awareness about human trafficking.
Harris earlier this year convened a Human Trafficking Work Group to update the first Human Trafficking in California report, released in 2007 by the California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force, as a result of the state’s first anti-trafficking law (AB 22, Lieber).
The 2012 Work Group included more than 100 representatives of state, local and federal law enforcement, state government agencies, victim service providers, nonprofit groups, technology companies and educational institutions.
The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012 reflects the Work Group discussions held during three day-long meetings in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as supplemental research and investigation by the California Department of Justice.
Key highlights from The State of Human Trafficking in California 2012
From mid-2010 to mid-2012, California’s nine regional human trafficking task forces identified 1,277 victims, initiated 2,552 investigations, and arrested 1,798 individuals.
In the same two-year period, California’s task forces provided training to 25,591 law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, victim service providers, and other first responders.
Several non-governmental organizations have also trained judicial officers, airport personnel, social service providers, pro bono attorneys, and retail businesses, among others.
The variety of individuals who have been trained underscores the pervasiveness of human trafficking and the important role that governmental and non-governmental actors play in detecting trafficking and assisting victims.
Seventy-two percent of human trafficking victims whose country of origin was identified by California’s task forces are American. The public perception is that human trafficking victims are from other countries, but data from California’s task forces indicate that the vast majority are Americans.
Labor trafficking is under-reported and under-investigated as compared to sex trafficking. 56 percent of victims who received services through California’s task forces were sex trafficking victims. Yet, data from other sources indicate that labor trafficking is 3.5 times as prevalent as sex trafficking worldwide.
Local and transnational gangs are increasingly trafficking in human beings because it is a low-risk and high, renewable profit crime. It is critical for federal, state, and local law enforcement and labor regulators to collaborate across jurisdictions to disrupt and dismantle these increasingly sophisticated, organized criminal networks.
A vertical prosecution model run outside routine vice operations can help law enforcement better protect victims and improve prosecutions. Fostering expertise about human trafficking within a law enforcement agency and handling these cases outside routine vice operations can prevent erroneously viewing trafficking victims as perpetrators.
Early and frequent collaboration between law enforcement and victim service providers helps victims and prosecutors. Victims who receive immediate and comprehensive assistance are more likely to help bring their traffickers to justice.
Traffickers are reaching more victims and customers by recruiting and advertising online. Traffickers use online advertising and Internet-enabled cell phones to access a larger client base and create a greater sense of anonymity. Law enforcement needs the training and tools to investigate trafficking online.
Technology is available to better identify, reach, and serve victims. Tools like search-term-triggered messages, website widgets, and text short codes enable groups to find victims online, connect them with services, and encourage the general public to report human trafficking.
Alert consumers need more tools to leverage their purchasing power to reduce the demand for trafficking. Public and private organizations are just beginning to create web-based and mobile tools to increase public awareness and educate consumers about how to help combat human trafficking.
Human trafficking involves the recruitment, smuggling, transporting, harboring, buying, or selling of a person for purposes of exploitation, prostitution, domestic servitude, sweatshop labor, migrant work, agricultural labor, peonage, bondage or involuntary servitude.
While human trafficking often involves the smuggling of human beings across international borders, numerous Americans are trafficked around the United States ever year.
Human trafficking strips people, especially women and children, of their freedom and violates our nation’s promise that every person in the United States is guaranteed basic human rights.
For more information on the trafficking of human beings and to view the report online, go to www.oag.ca.gov/human-trafficking .
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have identified a body that is very probably a planet wandering through space without a parent star.
This is the most exciting free-floating planet candidate so far and the closest such object to the Solar System at a distance of about 100 light-years.
Its comparative proximity, and the absence of a bright star very close to it, has allowed the team to study its atmosphere in great detail.
This object also gives astronomers a preview of the exoplanets that future instruments aim to image around stars other than the Sun.
Free-floating planets are planetary-mass objects that roam through space without any ties to a star. Possible examples of such objects have been found before, but without knowing their ages, it was not possible for astronomers to know whether they were really planets or brown dwarfs – “failed” stars that lack the bulk to trigger the reactions that make stars shine.
But astronomers have now discovered an object, labeled CFBDSIR2149, that seems to be part of a nearby stream of young stars known as the AB Doradus Moving Group.
The researchers found the object in observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and harnessed the power of ESO’s Very Large Telescope to examine its properties.
The AB Doradus Moving Group is the closest such group to the Solar System. Its stars drift through space together and are thought to have formed at the same time.
If the object is associated with this moving group – and hence it is a young object – it is possible to deduce much more about it, including its temperature, mass, and what its atmosphere is made of. There remains a small probability that the association with the moving group is by chance.
The link between the new object and the moving group is the vital clue that allows astronomers to find the age of the newly discovered object.
This is the first isolated planetary mass object ever identified in a moving group, and the association with this group makes it the most interesting free-floating planet candidate identified so far.
“Looking for planets around their stars is akin to studying a firefly sitting one centimeter away from a distant, powerful car headlight,” said Philippe Delorme, Institut de planetologie et d’astrophysique de Grenoble, CNRS/Universite Joseph Fourier, France, lead author of the new study. “This nearby free-floating object offered the opportunity to study the firefly in detail without the dazzling lights of the car messing everything up.”
Free-floating objects like CFBDSIR2149 are thought to form either as normal planets that have been booted out of their home systems, or as lone objects like the smallest stars or brown dwarfs.
In either case these objects are intriguing – either as planets without stars, or as the tiniest possible objects in a range spanning from the most massive stars to the smallest brown dwarfs.
“These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process,” said Delorme. “If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”
These worlds could be common – perhaps as numerous as normal stars [6]. If CFBDSIR2149 is not associated with the AB Doradus Moving Group it is trickier to be sure of its nature and properties, and it may instead be characterised as a small brown dwarf. Both scenarios represent important questions about how planets and stars form and behave.
“Further work should confirm CFBDSIR2149 as a free-floating planet,” concluded Delorme. “This object could be used as a benchmark for understanding the physics of any similar exoplanets that are discovered by future special high-contrast imaging systems, including the SPHERE instrument that will be installed on the VLT.”
LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday, several more witnesses testified in the trial of an East Coast man accused of shooting to death a Maine couple in early 2010.
Robby Alan Beasley, 32, is on trial for the January 22, 2010, murders of Frank and Yvette Maddox, who had come from Augusta, Maine, to work with Beasley in growing marijuana.
The Maddoxes’ bodies were dumped alongside Morgan Valley Road, not far from where Beasley is alleged to have shot them, believing they had stolen marijuana from his Lower Lake apartment.
His friend, Elijah Bae McKay, 30, whose testimony wrapped up on Thursday, is Beasley’s alleged accomplice, and has admitted to loaning Beasley the 9 millimeter handgun used to kill the couple and helping him get rid of evidence after the shootings.
First on the stand Friday was Lake County Jail Correctional Officer James Dunlap, who testified to finding the words “Elijah McKay is a rat punk bit snitch New England” scratched on the painted metal door of a jail holding cell on the night of May 18, 2010.
Dunlap said graffiti that included the words “New England” was found in several of the cells in the jail where Beasley had been housed.
Heather Tomchick, a DNA analyst with the Department of Justice’s Sacramento crime lab, briefly testified to testing multiple items for the case.
Elvin Sikes testified to taking the Maddoxes in mid-December 2009 after Beasley had kicked them out.
He said the couple were planning to return to Maine in early January and already had their bags packed.
When Sikes first met the couple, he wasn’t aware that they were drug users, otherwise he said he wouldn’t have let them stay in his spare room. He said he later learned they were doing pain pills.
When they disappeared Jan. 22, 2010, and didn’t return, “I thought it was kind of weird,” Sikes said.
Sikes said Frank Maddox admitted to him that he took part in thefts, and had stolen marijuana. Maddox told Sikes he had ripped off his friend – the only person he called his friend was Beasley – and had taken marijuana Beasley was holding for someone else.
Shortly before the couple disappeared, Frank Maddox asked to wash his Toyota pickup in Sikes’ driveway. He told Sikes that he needed to take his friend to the airport; Beasley had told McKay that he planned to lure the couple into giving him a ride to the airport on the pretense that he needed to return to Maine due to a death in the family.
Testimony on Friday also was given by Roderick Hilliard, the code enforcement officer who had red-tagged the Maddoxes’ pickup, which Beasley and McKay had left on Jerusalem Grade Road.
Art Trety, who lives near where the pickup was abandoned, testified to seeing it parked there for several weeks before it was moved farther down the road.
Wade Holley, who lives on Jerusalem Grade, said he first saw the pickup parked in the Jerusalem Grade Road area in late January. The following month it had been moved to Noble Ranch Road. By that time in was in very bad condition, and had been vandalized and stripped.
He inquired with a tow company about the truck, and they said it would be crushed if they took it, so they advised him to take it if he wanted.
Holley said he and a friend “went and got it and we shouldn’t have.”
He towed it to his house, where it was dismantled. Later, after they saw pictures of the pickup in the newspaper, Holley and his father called the sheriff’s office, which was seeking information on the vehicle.
When the sheriff’s office came to his home, they took photos and the remains of the vehicle, and also took a statement from Holley and his father. Neither were prosecuted.
With the courts on furlough next week, testimony in the case won’t continue until 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – On Friday Gov. Jerry Brown appointed three members to the 49th District Agricultural Association, Lake County Fair Board.
The appointments went to Paul Marchand and Doug Rhoades, both of Kelseyville, and Meyokeeskow Marrufo of Upper Lake.
The fair board positions do not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation.
Marrufo was reappointed, and has served on the fair board since 2007. Both Marchand and Rhoades are new appointees.
Marrufo, 41 has been environmental protection agency director of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians since 2011. She held multiple positions at the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians from 1999 to 2010, including interim environmental director, energy coordinator and cultural resource manager.
From 2004 to 2006 Marrufo was owner of the Native Ways Gift Shop. She held multiple positions at the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act from 1999 to 2004, including director and project assistant. She is a Democrat.
Marchand, 64, has been an independent emergency physician and contractor since 1985 and owner of Highland Springs Equestrian Center since 2005. He is a founding member of the Lake County Horse Council and Lake County Dressage Society.
Marchand also is a member of the Castle Air Museum, Antique Automobile Club of America and Sierra Club. He earned a Doctor of Medicine degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is registered decline-to-state.
Rhoades, 59, has been a private practice attorney since 1997. He held multiple positions with the Lake County Sheriff's Office from 1976 to 1997, including sergeant and deputy sheriff.
Rhoades was a member of the Kelseyville Unified School District Board of Trustees, the Lake County Peace Officers Association, the Northern California Training Officers Association and the California Association of Police Training Officers. He earned a Juris Doctorate degree from Empire College School of Law. Rhoades is a Democrat.
The Lake County Fair Board of Directors will hold its next regular meeting beginning at 4:45 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, at the fair administration office, 401 Martin St., Lakeport.
Action items include board officer nominations and elections.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – The American Red Cross continues to provide food, shelter, relief supplies and comfort to many people still struggling in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Given the extensive scope of the damage, this is likely to be the most massive Red Cross response in the U.S. in the past five years, Red Cross officials said.
More than 5,800 Red Cross workers from all 50 states are supporting shelters, providing food and water, and driving through neighborhoods to distribute meals and supplies.
About 90 percent of these workers are volunteers. Residents’ needs are far from over, as discouraged and frustrated people clean out their homes and struggle with housing and emotional issues.
Locally, the Red Cross has deployed 33 volunteers so far, including Regional CEO Tim Miller. Some volunteers are extending their standard two-week volunteer period, because it is so important to them to ease the suffering of those affected by the storm.
In partnership with the Southern Baptist Convention, the Red Cross has served 5.6 million meals and snacks from kitchens and feeding sites in New York and New Jersey. Last night, the Red Cross and other organizations housed about 1,800 people in 16 shelters.
The Red Cross has distributed water, food and relief supplies in more than 300 Red Cross feeding trucks as well as rental cars, trucks and other vehicles. This includes two emergency response vehicles from Sonoma and Lake counties.
The organization also has provided more than 57,000 health services and emotional support contacts, handed out more than 1.7 million relief items, helped people in 10 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and worked with more than 50 national partner organizations and more than 1,300 partner volunteers.
The Red Cross needs the public’s help now. To donate, the public can:
- Visit www.redcross.org or (local site) www.arcsm.org ;
- Call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767);
- Text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation;
- Send or hand-deliver financial donation to American Red Cross, Sonoma, Mendocino, & Lake Counties, 5297 Aero Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95403;
- Send to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.
The Red Cross is unable to accept items such as diapers, blankets, or food. Goodwill or The Salvation Army may be able to accept such items.
If someone needs to find a shelter, they can download the Red Cross Hurricane app, visit the Red Cross Web site, call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767), or check local media outlets.
People can let their loved ones know how they are by using the “I’m Safe” button on the Red Cross Hurricane App which can be found in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for Android by searching for American Red Cross.
People can also register on the Red Cross Safe and Well website to let loved ones know they are OK.
To register, visit www.redcross.org or call 1-800-RED-CROSS (1-800-733-2767).
By combining the power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature’s own natural “zoom lenses” in space, astronomers have set a new record for finding the most distant galaxy seen in the universe.
The farthest galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. But it offers a peek back into a time when the universe was 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years.
The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, was observed 420 million years after the big bang, the theorized beginning of the universe. Its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.
This find is the latest discovery from a program that uses natural zoom lenses to reveal distant galaxies in the early universe.
The Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is using massive galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies behind them. This effect is called gravitational lensing.
Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015.
Without the cluster’s magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy.Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope.
The cluster’s gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would that enabled astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence.
“This cluster does what no manmade telescope can do,” said Postman. “Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy.”
MACS0647-JD is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy. An analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide.
Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide.
For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.
“This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy,”said the study’s lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments.”
The galaxy was observed with 17 filters,spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Coe, a CLASH team member, discovered the galaxy in February while poring over a catalogue of thousands of gravitationally lensed objects found in Hubble observations of 17 clusters in the CLASH survey.But the galaxy appeared only in the two reddest filters.
“So either MACS0647-JD is a very red object, only shining at red wavelengths, or it is extremely distant and its light has been ‘redshifted’ to these wavelengths, or some combination of the two,” Coe said. “We considered this full range of possibilities.”
The CLASH team identified multiple images of eight galaxies lensed by the galaxy cluster. Their positions allowed the team to produce a map of the cluster’s mass, which is primarily composed of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of the universe’s mass.
“It’s like a big puzzle,” said Coe. “We have to arrange the mass in the cluster so that it deflects the light of each galaxy to the positions observed.”
The team’s analysis revealed that the cluster’s mass distribution produced three lensed images of MACS0647-JD at the positions and relative brightness observed in the Hubble image.
Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object’s identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs, and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.
The paper will appear in the Dec. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
Redshift is a consequence of the expansion of space over cosmic time. Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths. Coe estimates MACS0647-JD has a redshift of 11, the highest yet observed.
Images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope played a key role in the analysis. If the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in the Spitzer images. Instead, the galaxy barely was detected, if at all, indicating its great distance. The research team plans to use Spitzer to obtain deeper observations of the galaxy, which should yield confident detections as well as estimates of the object’s age and dust content.
MACS0647-JD galaxy, however, may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object’s light into thousands of colors.
Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team’s extensive analysis.
“All three of the lensed galaxy images match fairly well and are in positions you would expect for a galaxy at that remote distance when you look at the predictions from our best lens models for this cluster,” Coe said.
The new distance champion is the second remote galaxy uncovered in the CLASH survey, a multi-wavelength census of 25 hefty galaxy clusters with Hubble’s ACS and WFC3.
Earlier this year, the CLASH team announced the discovery of a galaxy that existed when the universe was 490 million years old, 70 million years later than the new record-breaking galaxy. So far, the survey has completed observations for 20 of the 25 clusters.
The team hopes to use Hubble to search for more dwarf galaxies at these early epochs. If these infant galaxies are numerous, then they could have provided the energy to burn off the fog of hydrogen that blanketed the universe, a process called re-ionization. Re-ionization ultimately made the universe transparent to light.