LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two young men have were arrested Friday in the killings of two Chinese graduate students who were shot to death near the University of Southern California campus last month, police said.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Javier Bolden, 19, and Bryan Barnes, 20, were arrested on suspicion of the murders. Barnes was arrested at a home near campus Friday afternoon, and Bolden was arrested a few hours later in Palmdale, Beck said. Both were being held without bail.
Ming Qu, of Jilin, and Ying Wu, of Hunan, were shot April 11 while sitting in a BMW about a mile away from the USC campus. Both students were 23 years old.
The motive was still under investigation, Beck said, but the “evidence points to a street robbery.”
Beck said investigators believed the killings of Wu and Qu were part of a larger string of crimes committed in Los Angeles.
“Forensic evidence recovered at the scene linked them to two other attempted homicides,” Beck said. Material evidence directly linked both suspects to Wu and Qu, he added.
The deaths sent shockwaves through the school, which has the largest number of international students of any U.S. university. Roughly 19 percent of the school’s 38,000 students are from overseas, including 2,500 from China.
After the shooting, Wu was found in the BMW’s passenger seat and Qu was on the steps of a nearby house where he collapsed while trying to summon help, police said.
USC’s campus is located in an urban center a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles. It is across the street from county museums and not far from the Staples Center arena and a gentrifying area of Victorian homes. Yet it is also known as an area that had faced high crime and gang activity.
The victims’ parents filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging the university made false claims about safety in the “frequently asked questions” section of its online application.
The 15-page lawsuit accuses USC of hiding behind the word “urban” and not saying the school is in a high-crime residential area. It also notes that Chinese students in particular would interpret “urban” to mean USC is in a safe area.
“The ‘urban’ representation misled Chinese students, including Ming Qu, into believing the area is safe since in China, the more urban the area, the safer the area,” the lawsuit states, claiming USC understood this is how Chinese students would interpret the description.
USC lawyer Debra Wong Yang said the university was deeply saddened by the deaths but found the lawsuit to be baseless.
The school and city police announced new security measures after the slayings and promised more video cameras, escorts and patrols.
The additional security will include sending over 30 more officers to the department division that handles the USC area, and the university will pay for four additional officers to patrol the student residential neighborhoods, Beck said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Civil rights leaders and relatives of Trayvon Martin and a slain California teenager joined together at a Los Angeles rally Thursday, urging justice and tolerance and called for action to stop the violence.
A photo of Martin wearing a hooded sweatshirt sat at the podium at the West Angeles Church of God in Christ with the word “Justice” written in red below his face. Martin was wearing a hoodie when he was shot on Feb. 26.
“There are Trayvons all over this country,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told the cheering crowd. “What kind of world are we living in that we can put a black man in the White House, but a black man can’t walk through a gated community?”
Martin was shot to death Feb. 26 as he walked on a rainy night in a Florida gated community.
Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton thanked the crowd, which donated thousands of dollars in cash and checks, to a foundation in her son’s name in a collection led by Sharpton, who contributed $500 himself.
“Be encouraged, I am encouraged. I believe justice will be served,” said Fulton.
Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, added that he made a vow to his son that he would not let Trayvon’s life be taken in vain.
Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in Martin’s death. Zimmerman claims self-defense, but Martin’s family claims he targeted the unarmed teen mainly because the teen was black. Zimmerman’s parents are white and Hispanic.
Comedian Paul Rodriguez, who grew up in Compton, said Latinos and blacks shouldn’t be divided by the Martin death and called for unity.
“They’re afraid of us because they don’t know us” Rodriguez said. “Let this not separate us.”
Kendrec McDade, a 19-year-old college student, was unarmed when he was shot to death last month by Pasadena police who were responding to what turned out to be a false report of an armed robbery.
“When they took something from me that made me want to give them a piece of my mind,” McDade’s father Kenneth McDade told the crowd. “Kendrec didn’t have nothing bad in his body,” McDade said.
McDade’s family has filed a claim against the city of Pasadena and five officers, alleging that poorly trained officers killed the teen.
Claudia Harrison, 53, said she had never attended a civil rights rally before Thursday night’s rally and said she was motivated by her son.
“I have a son. This could have easily happened to my son,” said Harrison, her voice breaking with emotion on the last word.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Police at a California college pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting, authorities said.
“Let us in, let us in,” protesters shouted on video posted online Tuesday. “No cuts, no fees, education should be free.”
Santa Monica College students were angry because only a handful were allowed into the meeting and, when their request to move the meeting to a larger venue was denied, they began to enter the room, said David Steinman, an environmental advocate.
Two officers were apparently backed up against a wall, and began using force to keep the students out of the room. Steinman said both officers used pepper spray. “People were gasping and choking,” he said.
Marioly Gomez said she was standing in a hallway outside the meeting with several hundred other students who wanted to get into the meeting. “I got pepper-sprayed without warning,” she said.
“It was the judgment of police that the crowd was getting out of hand and it was a safety issue,” college spokesman Bruce Smith said. He said he believed it was the first time pepper spray had been used to subdue students on campus.
The new plan involves the formation of a nonprofit foundation that would offer core courses for about $600 each, or about $200 per unit — about four times the current price. The extra courses at the higher rate would help students who were not able to get into in-demand classes that filled up quickly.
The program is designed to cope with rising student demand as state funds dwindle. The move has raised questions about whether it would create two tiers of students in a system designed to make education accessible to everyone.
Lawyers for the college researched the issue and concluded that it passed legal muster, school officials say.
Trustee Louise Jaffe said during the meeting that she doesn’t believe the students want to listen. “We spoke for four hours and we weren’t understood,” she said.
Trustee David Finkel called on campus officials to look into Tuesday evening’s events. “I think it gave the college a black eye, which I know it didn’t deserve and certainly didn’t need,” he said.
Video of a similar incident at University of California, Davis, in November drew worldwide attention. In that footage, an officer doused a row of student protesters with pepper spray as they sat passively. It became a rallying point for the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Firefighters were called to the Santa Monica campus around 7:20 p.m. Five people were evaluated at the scene and two were taken to a hospital. Their conditions were not known, but the injuries were not believed to be serious, fire officials said.
Community colleges statewide have lost $809 million in state funding over the past three years, causing schools to turn away about 200,000 students and drastically cut the number of classes offered.
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Associated Press writer Whitney Phillips in Phoenix contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Four computer storage devices containing personal information for about 800,000 adults and children in California’s child support system — including their names and Social Security numbers — were lost by IBM and Iron Mountain Inc., officials announced Thursday.
There’s a chance the information from the California Department of Child Support Services won’t be accessible because a specialized machine is needed to run the cartridges the data is stored on, and special hardware and software are needed to read it, said Christine Lally, a spokeswoman for the state’s Office of Technology Services.
“(A data cartridge) is definitely not something that you or I could just pop into our laptop,” Lally said.
The cartridges also contained addresses, driver’s license numbers, names of health insurance providers and employers for custodial and non-custodial parents, and their children.
The department has notified all those possibly affected by the March 12 data loss via mail, and has notified the three major credit reporting agencies, the state attorney general’s office and the state Office of Privacy Protection.
The agency’s interim director, Kathleen Hrepich, says the incident won’t affect the processing of child support cases.
The backup storage cartridges had been sent to IBM’s facility in Boulder, Colo., as part of a disaster simulation, so the technology company could test whether it could run the state’s child support system remotely.
The cartridges are believed to have been lost in transit, somewhere between Boulder and Sacramento, Lally said.
The state contracts with Iron Mountain to provide secure transportation services. But Iron Mountain doesn’t fly, so the data storage company had FedEx transport the cartridges.
“We believe that the container was not properly secured, thus allowing the container to open and then spill out,” Lally said.
IBM did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
Thursday’s announcement isn’t the first time massive amounts of personal information entrusted to IBM has been lost.
Last March, IBM informed insurer Health Net that the company could not find drives containing information for 1.9 million enrollees. The lost information included financial information, Social Security numbers and health histories.
The state’s contract with IBM for the disaster services contract began August 1, 2008, and expires July 31, 2012.
“Obviously, the California state agency picked IBM because it trusted its expertise in securing highly sensitive personal data,” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
“Unfortunately, we can’t assume that our sensitive personal information is safeguarded to the extent that it should be,” Givens said.
The San Diego-based organization tracks data breaches and estimates at least 550 million personal records have been breached since it began tracking them in 2005.
The child support department is recommending that those affected by the breach place a fraud alert on their credit cards, get copies of their credit reports and take other appropriate steps to protect their identities.
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Online: www.childsup.ca.gov
State regulators shouldn’t have sent health insurers a memo on how to handle complaints about autism treatments because it was tantamount to issuing a regulation without it being properly vetted, a judge has ruled.
In the mixed decision filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, Judge Robert H. O’Brien said the state Department of Managed Health Care erred in issuing the memo, but it has a right to want licensed practitioners to provide treatment to autistic children.
The Dec. 30 ruling came as a result of a lawsuit brought by Consumer Watchdog. The consumer advocacy group claimed the state was allowing insurers to delay coverage for Applied Behavioral Analysis, an intensive form of treatment that can cost $70,000 a year.
The lawsuit alleged that insurers lobbied the Schwarzenegger administration to get out of obligations to parents of autistic children by sending a memo calling for treatment providers to be licensed and referring complaints to the department instead of independent mediators.
O’Brien suggested Consumer Watchdog could back a bill on the matter of treatment providers being licensed, saying its remedy is with the Legislature and not through a court order.
In a statement, Pamela Pressley, litigation director for Consumer Watchdog called on the administration of newly sworn-in Gov. Jerry Brown to “close an insurer-sized loophole opened by the Schwarzenegger administration in a back room deal with insurers.”
DMHC Director Cindy Ehnes defended her department’s commitment to quality care from licensed providers. In a written statement, she said “we are following the correct course to ensure that patients continue to get the services to which they are entitled under their health coverage.”
A leading producer of pornography says at least five companies have halted production in Southern California’s multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry after an actor tested positive for HIV.
The actor’s identity and gender have not been released by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, the clinic where the case was discovered.
Vivid Entertainment Group founder Steven Hirsch says at least five companies have shut down production as the industry awaits more news and testing. More companies are expected to follow suit.
Hirsch would not name the other companies.
Vivid and Wicked Pictures on Tuesday announced production halts as a precaution to protect actors.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry has been left reeling after another positive HIV test for a porn actor.
The revelation Tuesday led to two of the industry’s biggest companies shutting down production and a scramble to find partners who may have been exposed by the actor, whose identity and gender have not been released.
The actor was a patient of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a San Fernando Valley clinic that caters to pornographic actors.
Clinic spokeswoman Jennifer Miller told the Los Angeles Times that efforts are under way to notify individuals who may have had sexual contact with the actor. Miller did not return calls or e-mail from The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Wicked Pictures and Vivid Entertainment told the Times that they stopped production as a precaution when the positive test was revealed.
Los Angeles County public health officials and state occupational health officials have said the widespread lack of condom use on porn sets puts performers at risk for contracting HIV and other diseases. Adult film producers say viewers find them to be a turnoff.
Last year, a woman tested positive for HIV immediately after making an adult film, and in 2004, an HIV outbreak affecting several actors spread panic in the industry and briefly shut down productions at several California studios.
Porn actors are required by law to test negative for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases within 30 days of going to work on a film.
State workplace safety officials at Cal/OSHA are considering strengthening rules designed to prevent transmission of disease through bodily fluids to specify the use of condoms in the adult entertainment industry.
Currently, the same laws that call on health care professionals to wear gloves and other protective barriers when dealing with patients applies to the adult film business, but the laws don’t make specific provisions for porn.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said his organization has been advocating for a tightening of the rules, and the adult entertainment industry and AIM clinic would “do everything in its power to prevent us from knowing who was impacted.”
Weinstein said the latest case is the ninth HIV-positive adult film star to be treated at the AIM clinic since the 2004 outbreak.
Chief Counsel for Cal/OSHA Amy Martin said the clinic has been uncooperative in providing state regulators with key information by citing a patient’s federal right to medical privacy.
But the clinic has even refused to provide redacted copies of employment histories for infected actors, which would allow the state to investigate porn production companies without naming the sick patients, Martin said.
HIV is spread most often through sexual contact, but can also be contracted through sharing contaminated needles for drug use, infected blood products, or babies born to or breast-fed by infected women. It is the cause of AIDS, an immune disease that gradually destroys the body’s ability to fight illness.
In this photo provided by David Steinman, Nnaemeka Alozie, campaign manager for Steinman, reacts with milk on his face after being sprayed with pepper spray during a protest on Tuesday, April 3, 2012, in Santa Monica, Calif. Campus police pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after Santa Monica College students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting Tuesday evening, authorities said. (AP Photo/Courtesy David Steinman)(Credit: AP) 