National News - ABC News Radio

• More Minorities than Whites Having Babies in the US
  

  Comstock Images/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- For the first time since it began keeping records, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday that more babies are being born collectively to Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed races than to white families.
  
  During the 12-month period that ended in July 2011, births of minority babies reached 50.4 percent compared to 49.6 percent for non-Hispanic whites.
  
  It’s expected that whites will remain the majority until mid-century.  However, William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, described the ongoing shift to The New York Times as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”
  
  Census Bureau figures reveal there are nearly 350 U.S. counties in which whites are no longer in the majority.  Minorities have become the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, as well as large metro areas that include New York, Las Vegas and Memphis.
  
  This changing face of the nation has already started a generational divide, with young minorities on one side and older white people on the other.

  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Study Questions Execution of Possibly-Innocent Texas Man
  

  Carlos Hernandez (L), and Carlos De Luna (R). (Corpus Christi Police Department)(NEW YORK) -- A brutal murder, two similar-looking suspects, and a death sentence.  For Jim Liebman, these three ingredients became the catalyst for exposing one of the judicial system's greatest risks: executing an innocent person.
  
  In a new book-length study written by Liebman, a Columbia law professor, and six of his students, and published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the decision to execute Carlos De Luna for the 1983 murder of a Corpus Christi gas station attendant is called into question again and again.
  
  "This case, because it is such an everyday case, a very commonplace case, an 'everycase' if you've got problems in this kind of case that no one was paying attention to.  It contributes to the wider debate about what the risks [of the death penalty] are to human life," Liebman told ABC News.
  
  De Luna was arrested in 1983 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, a brutal killing in which Lopez was stabbed to death by a Hispanic man shopping in the convenience store where she worked.  But throughout his arrest, trial and time on death row, De Luna insisted it was Carlos Hernandez, a friend of his from Corpus Christi, who looked uncannily similar to De Luna, who'd actually killed Lopez.
  
  Liebman, who set out to examine whether the judicial system had put seemingly-innocent criminals to death, spent five years investigating the details of the De Luna case.  He and his team of investigators and students talked to more than 100 witnesses, combed through 20 feet of documents and compiled a 400-plus page narrative case study of the Lopez murder.  To back up their assertions, the team put the study online, with hundreds of footnotes and links to original documents and primary source materials so that people could come to their own conclusions about the two Carloses.
  
  Liebman's students arranged to have the study published in a special issue of the Human Rights Law Review, which will be devoted entirely to the De Luna narrative.  The decision to publish their findings as a nonfiction narrative story, rather than as an academic paper, was made to try to bring a more general readership to the story of Carlos De Luna.
  
  "My hope is that this will bring more readers to the story and potentially a broader category of readers, including college students around country and even the public," Liebman said.
  
  During its investigation, the team found a mountain of evidence that convinced them De Luna was innocent.  They talked to Hernandez's family and friends, who made it seem as if it was "common knowledge" in Corpus Christi that Hernandez had bragged about making De Luna his "fall guy," Liebman said.
  
  While prosecutors pushed forward with the case against De Luna, Hernandez allegedly confessed multiple times, including just weeks after Lopez's death.
  
  Liebman and his students also found glaring mistakes about how police and prosecutors had treated the case, including contamination of the crime scene by investigators.
  
  De Luna maintained his innocence throughout his trial, his time on death row and in his last words before he was executed in 1989.
  
  Hernandez went on to be arrested more than a dozen times, including for the murder of a different woman, killed by a knife similar to the one used in Lopez's killing.  The charges were dropped because of prosecutorial delay, according to Liebman's study.
  
  Hernandez died in prison in 1999 of liver disease, and the case will never be reopened, Liebman acknowledged.

  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Video Reveals Torture of Horses Trained to Win Championships
  

  Humane Society of the United States(NEW YORK) -- Large numbers of the famed Tennessee Walking Horses have been tortured and beaten in order to make them produce the high-stepping gait that wins championships, an ABC News investigation has found.
  
  "All too often, you have to cheat to win in this sport," said Keith Dane of the Humane Society of the United States.
  
  In the most recent example, an undercover video made by an investigator for the Humane Society, documents the cruelty of one of the sport's leading trainers, Jackie McConnell of Collierville, Tenn.
  
  The video led to a federal grand jury indictment of McConnell and was seen publicly for the first time Wednesday night on the ABC News program Nightline.
  
  The tape shows McConnell and his stable hands beating horses with wooden sticks and using electric cattle prods on them as part of a training protocol to make them lift their feet in the pronounced gait judges like to see.
  
  In another scene, McConnell oversees his hands as they apply caustic chemicals to the ankles of the horses and then wraps them with plastic wrap so the chemicals eat into the skin.
  
  "That creates intense pain and then the ankles are wrapped with large metal chains so the horses flinch, or raise their feet even higher," said Dane of the Humane Society.
  
  McConnell is expected to enter a guilty plea to one count, according to his lawyers.
  
  He declined to comment, or apologize for his acts, when approached by ABC News this week outside his home.
  
  Leaders of the Tennessee Walking Horse industry maintain that such brutality is rare and that trainers do not have to cheat to win championships, which can add millions of dollars to the value of horses.
  
  "They do not have to cheat to win," said Dr. Steve Mullins of the group called SHOW, which oversees inspections of horses before major events.  "You don't have to do this kind of junk to win. ... And we are terribly against this stuff."
  
  The industry group maintains that the vast majority of horses are not subjected to the cruel practice of "soring."
  
  But a random inspection by the agents of the Department of Agriculture at last year's annual championship found that 52 of 52 horses tested positive for some sort of foreign substance around front hooves, either to cause pain or to hide it.
  
  Dr. Mullins told ABC News there could be innocent explanations for some of the foreign substances found by the inspectors. 

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  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Counterterrorism Director Addresses Terror Threats, Media Leaks, Wiretapping
  

  Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, broadly addressed counterterrorism issues speaking before the American Bar Association’s standing Committee on Law and National Security Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
   
  Olsen used his speech to push for renewal of sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will expire at the end of the year. Recently Olsen and FBI Director Robert Mueller have been saying the impact of not renewing the FISA amendments would leave the U.S. defenseless in the counterterrorism realm by not being able to intercept certain overseas communications.
   
  Olsen said that core al Qaeda leaders are having difficulty communicating with operatives. Repeating the analysis of Mueller and other top intelligence community officials Olsen cited AQAP as the most active and dangerous of the al Qaeda affiliates.
   
  Olsen said that the intelligence community is taking action to locate AQAP’s bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, noting the bomb maker is “a very important person for us to find out where he is and to take appropriate action.”
   
  On the issue of homegrown terrorism Olsen said the intelligence and law enforcement community face “real obstacles on the homegrown side,” citing the difficulty in detecting lone extremists who may not provide typical warning indicators of terrorist activity.
   
  In a question-and-answer session, Olsen also addressed the issue of media leaks relating to the recent bomb plot and called it “devastating.” “Leaks do endanger people’s lives...that is not an exaggeration,” Olsen said.
   
  One reporter questioned Olsen about his preference for using drones to neutralize terrorist threats, or if he favored capture and interrogation. Olsen responded saying, “I have a strong preference for gaining intelligence. That is our goal...we need to always take advantage of whatever opportunities we have to interrogate."
   
  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Pentagon Faces New Enemy: 10,000 Honey Bees?
  

  Digital Vision/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- There were chuckles all around the Pentagon Wednesday as an alert notice appeared on computers warning building employees a swarm of bees had parked themselves outside an entrance to the building. The swarm of about 10,000 European honey bees landed on the branch of a small tree just outside the Pentagon's Mall Entrance.
  
  By coincidence, a short time later a fire alarm led to the evacuation of a portion of the building. On the way out of the building a Pentagon employee was overheard saying, “I wonder if it’s the swarm of bees?”
  
  Turns out, the two events were not connected, but they piqued journalists' interest in the “hive” of activity at the entrance.

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  A short time later, another building notification told building employees that bee specialists had been called in to deal with the bee swarm at that entrance.
  
  Some amateur beekeepers who work at the Pentagon and who, after seeing the internal alerts had shown up to assist the local beekeeper, called to resolve the situation. The beekeeper cut off a portion of the branch and placed it in a cardboard box with the expectation that most would follow their queen bee into the box.
  
  Air Force Lt. Col. Craig Bucher was one of the amateur beekeepers who had arrived to help.  With the bees safely in the box, he planned to take them home and share them with fellow bee enthusiasts.
  
  “Now that we have the hive," Bucher said, “I’m in touch with others in the area who would really jump at the opportunity to incorporate it in their home.
  
  “I’m going to take this hive home with me and then put the word out to someone who can hopefully give them a good home,” he said.
  
  Bucher explained that the swarm of bees had likely split off from another hive and followed a new queen bee to look for a new home.  He said that typically a mature hive would have between 30,000 to 50,000 bees so the Pentagon swarm might have numbered 10,000.
  
  He estimated that the bees who’d landed on the tree “had stopped to rest” there as they were looking for a new home.
  
  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio