Jackson County deputies need help searching for Destiny McLemore. (Photo Source: Jackson County Sheriff's Department)
Deputies say Destiny McLemore was last seen with Ryan Blake Holmes. (Photo Source: Jackson County Sheriff's Department)
Deputies say Destiny McLemore was last seen with Ryan Blake Holmes. (Photo Source: Jackson County Sheriff's Department)
Walter Howard Zinn, Jr., a Mississippi political operative, will seek the state's vacant 1st Congressional District seat, according to a press release from the Democratic Party.
Zinn is an attorney and lives in Pontotoc, but is well-known in local politics, having served as an aide to former Jackson mayors Harvey Johnson Jr. and Chokwe Lumumba. He describes north Mississippi as a blue-collar region that eschews race and party politics in favor of bread-and-butter economic issues.
“William Faulkner best said, 'To understand the world, you first must understand a place like Mississippi.' I have committed and dedicated myself to doing just that by engaging citizens across Mississippi and the country through my work in helping communities to elect quality leaders and have advocated for the resources and opportunities that Mississippi families deserve,” Zinn said through a press release.
Zinn told the Jackson Free Press that his political career began when now-Sen. Roger Wicker's father, Thomas Wicker, encouraged Zinn to run for Boy's State, a youth leadership program for young men. Zinn says he was on a trajectory to become a Republican until the Sept. 11 attacks. Zinn disagreed with the policies of then-President George W. Bush in response to 9/11.
In Jackson, Zinn directed the legislative agendas for Johnson and Lumumba and helped marshall the passage of the 1-percent sales tax vote in early 2014. Zinn also worked for Sen. Roger Wicker when Wicker served in the United States House of Representatives and worked on a number of local, judge and congressional races.
About 10 Republicans are running to replace late U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee. Among them is former Jackson Ward 1 Quentin Whitwell. Zinn is the only Democrat running.
Photo courtesy Flickr/Austin Hufford
Since winning the presidency in 2008, President Obama hasn't been shy about his feelings on sports. In fact, one of the first things he spoke about as president was the lack of a playoff system in Division I football. Obama felt there was a better way to crown a champion at the highest level of college football.
Obama has spoken about concussions in football, as well. He pressed the powers in charge of both college football and the NFL to make the game safer for the players. In May 2014, the White House even held a concussion summit, where Obama called for more research into youth concussions.
In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Obama once again turned his attention to college sports. He spoke about the need for changes in the NCAA.
Obama said that NCAA member colleges should guarantee athletic scholarships with no strings attached. Some conferences, such as the Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC and SEC, have passed reforms to guarantee athletes' scholarships so long as they remain in good standing, and other individual schools are looking at passing similar reforms. However, many college athletes are still at risk for losing scholarships if they get injured.
The president also attacked the rules of the NCAA that protect so-called amateurism.
"What does frustrate me is where I see coaches getting paid millions of dollars, athletic directors getting paid millions of dollars, the NCAA making huge amounts of money, and then some kid gets a tattoo or gets a free use of a car and suddenly they're banished. That's not fair," Obama told the Huffington Post.
Obama said, at the same time, he doesn't support paying college athletes or allowing them to unionize.
"In terms of compensation, I think the challenge would just then start being, 'Do we really want to just create a situation where there are bidding wars? How much does Anthony Davis get paid as opposed to somebody else?' And that, I do think, would ruin the sense of college sports," Obama said.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled March 26 that football players at Northwestern University could unionize because they are considered employees. A CNN.com article says that players created the petition to get a seat at the bargaining table in college sports, which could change the landscape of the NCAA. Among the athletes' grievances, the players said they wanted guaranteed four-year scholarships and the possibility of getting paid. Northwestern plans to appeal the ruling.
Obama also said that universities could do better at offering college athletes better health-care coverage. He acknowledged that health care for college athletes has gotten better but that colleges and universities can and must do more for athletes in injury situations.
The president also said that college sports don't necessarily lead to a lucrative pro career.
"I do think that recognizing that the majority of these student athletes are not going to end up playing professional ball—this isn't just a farm system for the NBA or the NFL—means that the universities have more responsibilities than right now they're showing," Obama said.
While never having to push for congressional action or personal action from the Oval Office, Obama has been heard when he speaks about sports. He said college football needed a playoff, and this past season ended with the first playoff at the Division I level. All levels of sports have reacted on concussions at Obama's urging. Who knows what else could happen if he keeps speaking out about sports issues?
"I have no permanent friends (or) enemies, but only permanent interests," Stephanie Parker-Weaver told the Jackson Free Press last summer. Or, more to the point, Parker-Weaver seemed to have only permanent passions.
Since 2008, one of Parker-Weaver's main passions has been the nonprofit she founded, called Rebirth Alliance, which aims to educate the public about breast cancer—specifically, a rare and aggressive type of cancer that the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene complicates.
Parker-Weaver, who died last weekend at age 52, shared parts of her story with the Jackson Free Press in 2012. After she began to feel ill in 2007, she went to a doctor, who diagnosed her with cancer. Eventually, Parker-Weaver began chemotherapy and, in February 2008, had a hair-cutting party because she didn't want to go through slowly losing her long, curly locks to the drugs. When her husband, Cordell Weaver, put a lock of her treasured tresses in her hand, the full brunt of what was happening hit her, she said.
Still, she fought with a spirit her late parents—mother Carolyn Parker, a community and labor activist, and father Frank R. Parker, a renowned civil-rights attorney who worked on voting-rights cases across Mississippi—undoubtedly instilled in her.
A Jackson native and one-time executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Parker-Weaver became active in local political organizing in the early 1990s. Later, she assisted the campaign of controversial late Mayor Frank Melton and became a Melton aide at city hall.
Her time with the Melton administration was a perfect example of friends and enemies working together, she later recalled.
Last summer, in an interview with the JFP about the dark side of politicking in Jackson, she noted that Melton's team of supporters consisted of "radical" progressives like herself working alongside conservatives, such as developer Leland R. Speed, whose father served as mayor of Jackson in the 1940s, and Wirt Yerger Jr., the Mississippi Republican Party's founding chairman.
"He had all that money," she said of Yerger, "and we had the Lord, the law and unity on our side."
As she battled illness, Parker-Weaver never wavered in her activism, which included promoting events for Rebirth Alliance and participating in cancer walks.
A memorial for Stephanie Parker-Weaver will take place this Saturday, March 28, at 10 a.m. at Word and Worship Church at 6286 Hanging Moss Road in Jackson.
Walter Howard Zinn, Jr., a Mississippi political operative, will seek the state's vacant 1st Congressional District seat, according to a press release from the Democratic Party.
Zinn is an attorney and lives in Pontotoc, but is well-known in local politics, having served as an aide to former Jackson mayors Harvey Johnson Jr. and Chokwe Lumumba. He describes north Mississippi as a blue-collar region that eschews race and party politics in favor of bread-and-butter economic issues.
“William Faulkner best said, 'To understand the world, you first must understand a place like Mississippi.' I have committed and dedicated myself to doing just that by engaging citizens across Mississippi and the country through my work in helping communities to elect quality leaders and have advocated for the resources and opportunities that Mississippi families deserve,” Zinn said through a press release.
Zinn told the Jackson Free Press that his political career began when now-Sen. Roger Wicker's father, Thomas Wicker, encouraged Zinn to run for Boy's State, a youth leadership program for young men. Zinn says he was on a trajectory to become a Republican until the Sept. 11 attacks. Zinn disagreed with the policies of then-President George W. Bush in response to 9/11.
In Jackson, Zinn directed the legislative agendas for Johnson and Lumumba and helped marshall the passage of the 1-percent sales tax vote in early 2014. Zinn also worked for Sen. Roger Wicker when Wicker served in the United States House of Representatives and worked on a number of local, judge and congressional races.
About 10 Republicans are running to replace late U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee. Among them is former Jackson Ward 1 Quentin Whitwell. Zinn is the only Democrat running.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). A police officer directs a vehicle to turn away at the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. Earlier, a firefight erupted when two men dressed as women tried to ram a car into a gate, killing one...
(AP Photo/WJLA-TV). In this image made from video and released by WJLA-TV, authorities investigate the scene of a accident near a gate to Fort Meade, Md., on Monday, March 30, 2015. A spokesman at Fort Meade says two people are being treated for injuri...
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). ATF agents gather in a parking lot where media have been asked to gather, down the road from the entrance to Ft. Meade after a vehicle rammed a gate to the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015 in Fort Meade, Md. O...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A senior U.S. official says pr...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A spokeswoman at Fort Meade sa...
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up and checked into a motel, police said Tuesday.
The FBI said the driver, Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, died at the scene, and his passenger remained hospitalized Tuesday with unspecified injuries. An NSA police officer was treated for minor injuries and released.
NSA police opened fire on the stolen sports utility vehicle after Hall failed to follow instructions for leaving a restricted area, authorities said.
As it turns out, Hall and his passenger had just driven off in the SUV of a 60-year-old Baltimore man, who told investigators that he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore and brought them to a Howard County motel.
"We can't confirm there was any sexual activity involved," a Howard County Police spokeswoman, Mary Phelan, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Phelan said the car owner told police that they had planned to "party," but she wouldn't say whether drugs or alcohol were part of their plan.
Sherry Llewellyn, director of public affairs for Howard County Police, said that information is not in the police report, and police don't know what happened in the room. Llewellyn said police turned the report over to the FBI and can't release it.
The SUV's owner, who has not been publicly identified, said they checked into a room at the Terrace Motel in Elkridge at about 7:30 a.m. Monday, and that he used the bathroom about an hour later. When he came out, the men were gone, along with his car keys.
He called police to report the stolen car, and only minutes later, just before 9 a.m., the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The two men were dressed as women, but "not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities," FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said.
The FBI has ruled out terrorism, and no one has explained yet why the men ended up in a restricted NSA area.
However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
Once so secretive that it was known as "No Such Agency," the NSA is now in some ways just another part of the suburban sprawl between Baltimore and Washington. Thousands of daily commuters who traverse the Baltimore-Washington Parkway pass its heavily secured campus at Fort Meade each day. About 11,000 military personnel and about 29,000 civilian employees with security clearances work inside the barbed wire.
Similarly, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is less than a mile from the George Washington Parkway, a heavily-traveled link between downtown Washington and the Capital Beltway. The CIA also has a training facility known as "The Farm" at Camp Peary, also conveniently located along Interstate 64 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The NSA is Maryland's largest employer, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA campus, said its convenient location is critical.
He also said the NSA gate is far enough removed from the highway that it's easy to avoid ending up there by mistake.
"I drive by there every day, when I come from Baltimore to go to the Capitol. There's plenty of signage there," he said. "If you follow the signs that say 'prohibited,' you can very easily get off. When you break the law, you break the law everywhere."
But it's not uncommon for drivers to take the wrong exit and end up at the tightly secured gates.
Most drivers then carefully follow the orders of heavily armed federal officers and turn around without getting into more trouble. In this case, authorities say the men ignored instructions on how to leave, and ended up stuck behind barriers. Police ordered them to stop, and then things escalated quickly.
"The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus," Jonathan Freed, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement. The vehicle failed to stop, then "accelerated toward an NSA Police vehicle blocking the road. NSA Police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop. The unauthorized vehicle crashed into the NSA Police vehicle."
The FBI declined to comment on the conditions of the surviving suspect and officer, except to say they were being treated at a local hospital. They also haven't said how the man driving the stolen car died.
It's not the first time someone has disobeyed orders at an NSA gate. In July, a man failed to obey an NSA officer's command to stop as he approached a checkpoint. That man drove away, injuring an NSA officer and nearly striking a barricade. He was later arrested and is awaiting trial on federal charges.
The FBI is investigating and working with the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted.
Associated Press writers Ben Nuckols in Washington and Juliet Linderman in Baltimore contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TUESDAY, March 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are allowed occasional sips of alcohol are more likely to start drinking by the time they're in high school, a new study suggests.
Researchers followed 561 middle school students in Rhode Island for about three years. At the start of sixth grade (about age 11), nearly 30 percent of the students said they'd had at least one sip of alcohol.
In most cases, those sips were provided by parents, often at parties or special occasions.
By ninth grade, 26 percent of those who'd had sips of alcohol at a younger age said they'd had at least one full alcoholic drink, compared with less than 6 percent of those who didn't get sips of alcohol when younger.
The researchers also found that 9 percent of the sippers had gotten drunk or engaged in binge drinking by ninth grade, compared with just under 2 percent of the non-sippers.
The study was published March 31 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The findings don't prove that sips of alcohol at an early age are to blame for teen drinking, said lead researcher Kristina Jackson, of Brown University's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, in Providence, R.I.
"We're not trying to say whether it's 'OK' or 'not OK' for parents to allow this," Jackson said in a journal news release.
She noted that some parents believe that introducing children to alcohol at home teaches them about responsible drinking and reduces the appeal of alcohol.
"Our study provides evidence to the contrary," Jackson said.
Giving sips of alcohol to young children may send them a "mixed message," she suggested.
"At that age, some kids may have difficulty understanding the difference between a sip of wine and having a full beer," Jackson said.
More information
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration discusses how to prevent your child from drinking.
Copyright © 2015 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Photo courtesy Flickr/Austin Hufford
Since winning the presidency in 2008, President Obama hasn't been shy about his feelings on sports. In fact, one of the first things he spoke about as president was the lack of a playoff system in Division I football. Obama felt there was a better way to crown a champion at the highest level of college football.
Obama has spoken about concussions in football, as well. He pressed the powers in charge of both college football and the NFL to make the game safer for the players. In May 2014, the White House even held a concussion summit, where Obama called for more research into youth concussions.
In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Obama once again turned his attention to college sports. He spoke about the need for changes in the NCAA.
Obama said that NCAA member colleges should guarantee athletic scholarships with no strings attached. Some conferences, such as the Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC and SEC, have passed reforms to guarantee athletes' scholarships so long as they remain in good standing, and other individual schools are looking at passing similar reforms. However, many college athletes are still at risk for losing scholarships if they get injured.
The president also attacked the rules of the NCAA that protect so-called amateurism.
"What does frustrate me is where I see coaches getting paid millions of dollars, athletic directors getting paid millions of dollars, the NCAA making huge amounts of money, and then some kid gets a tattoo or gets a free use of a car and suddenly they're banished. That's not fair," Obama told the Huffington Post.
Obama said, at the same time, he doesn't support paying college athletes or allowing them to unionize.
"In terms of compensation, I think the challenge would just then start being, 'Do we really want to just create a situation where there are bidding wars? How much does Anthony Davis get paid as opposed to somebody else?' And that, I do think, would ruin the sense of college sports," Obama said.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled March 26 that football players at Northwestern University could unionize because they are considered employees. A CNN.com article says that players created the petition to get a seat at the bargaining table in college sports, which could change the landscape of the NCAA. Among the athletes' grievances, the players said they wanted guaranteed four-year scholarships and the possibility of getting paid. Northwestern plans to appeal the ruling.
Obama also said that universities could do better at offering college athletes better health-care coverage. He acknowledged that health care for college athletes has gotten better but that colleges and universities can and must do more for athletes in injury situations.
The president also said that college sports don't necessarily lead to a lucrative pro career.
"I do think that recognizing that the majority of these student athletes are not going to end up playing professional ball—this isn't just a farm system for the NBA or the NFL—means that the universities have more responsibilities than right now they're showing," Obama said.
While never having to push for congressional action or personal action from the Oval Office, Obama has been heard when he speaks about sports. He said college football needed a playoff, and this past season ended with the first playoff at the Division I level. All levels of sports have reacted on concussions at Obama's urging. Who knows what else could happen if he keeps speaking out about sports issues?
"I have no permanent friends (or) enemies, but only permanent interests," Stephanie Parker-Weaver told the Jackson Free Press last summer. Or, more to the point, Parker-Weaver seemed to have only permanent passions.
Since 2008, one of Parker-Weaver's main passions has been the nonprofit she founded, called Rebirth Alliance, which aims to educate the public about breast cancer—specifically, a rare and aggressive type of cancer that the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene complicates.
Parker-Weaver, who died last weekend at age 52, shared parts of her story with the Jackson Free Press in 2012. After she began to feel ill in 2007, she went to a doctor, who diagnosed her with cancer. Eventually, Parker-Weaver began chemotherapy and, in February 2008, had a hair-cutting party because she didn't want to go through slowly losing her long, curly locks to the drugs. When her husband, Cordell Weaver, put a lock of her treasured tresses in her hand, the full brunt of what was happening hit her, she said.
Still, she fought with a spirit her late parents—mother Carolyn Parker, a community and labor activist, and father Frank R. Parker, a renowned civil-rights attorney who worked on voting-rights cases across Mississippi—undoubtedly instilled in her.
A Jackson native and one-time executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Parker-Weaver became active in local political organizing in the early 1990s. Later, she assisted the campaign of controversial late Mayor Frank Melton and became a Melton aide at city hall.
Her time with the Melton administration was a perfect example of friends and enemies working together, she later recalled.
Last summer, in an interview with the JFP about the dark side of politicking in Jackson, she noted that Melton's team of supporters consisted of "radical" progressives like herself working alongside conservatives, such as developer Leland R. Speed, whose father served as mayor of Jackson in the 1940s, and Wirt Yerger Jr., the Mississippi Republican Party's founding chairman.
"He had all that money," she said of Yerger, "and we had the Lord, the law and unity on our side."
As she battled illness, Parker-Weaver never wavered in her activism, which included promoting events for Rebirth Alliance and participating in cancer walks.
A memorial for Stephanie Parker-Weaver will take place this Saturday, March 28, at 10 a.m. at Word and Worship Church at 6286 Hanging Moss Road in Jackson.
Walter Howard Zinn, Jr., a Mississippi political operative, will seek the state's vacant 1st Congressional District seat, according to a press release from the Democratic Party.
Zinn is an attorney and lives in Pontotoc, but is well-known in local politics, having served as an aide to former Jackson mayors Harvey Johnson Jr. and Chokwe Lumumba. He describes north Mississippi as a blue-collar region that eschews race and party politics in favor of bread-and-butter economic issues.
“William Faulkner best said, 'To understand the world, you first must understand a place like Mississippi.' I have committed and dedicated myself to doing just that by engaging citizens across Mississippi and the country through my work in helping communities to elect quality leaders and have advocated for the resources and opportunities that Mississippi families deserve,” Zinn said through a press release.
Zinn told the Jackson Free Press that his political career began when now-Sen. Roger Wicker's father, Thomas Wicker, encouraged Zinn to run for Boy's State, a youth leadership program for young men. Zinn says he was on a trajectory to become a Republican until the Sept. 11 attacks. Zinn disagreed with the policies of then-President George W. Bush in response to 9/11.
In Jackson, Zinn directed the legislative agendas for Johnson and Lumumba and helped marshall the passage of the 1-percent sales tax vote in early 2014. Zinn also worked for Sen. Roger Wicker when Wicker served in the United States House of Representatives and worked on a number of local, judge and congressional races.
About 10 Republicans are running to replace late U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee. Among them is former Jackson Ward 1 Quentin Whitwell. Zinn is the only Democrat running.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). A police officer directs a vehicle to turn away at the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. Earlier, a firefight erupted when two men dressed as women tried to ram a car into a gate, killing one...
(AP Photo/WJLA-TV). In this image made from video and released by WJLA-TV, authorities investigate the scene of a accident near a gate to Fort Meade, Md., on Monday, March 30, 2015. A spokesman at Fort Meade says two people are being treated for injuri...
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). ATF agents gather in a parking lot where media have been asked to gather, down the road from the entrance to Ft. Meade after a vehicle rammed a gate to the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015 in Fort Meade, Md. O...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A senior U.S. official says pr...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A spokeswoman at Fort Meade sa...
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up to "party" at a motel, police said Tuesday.
The FBI said the driver, Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, died at the scene, and his passenger remained hospitalized Tuesday with unspecified injuries. An NSA police officer was treated for minor injuries and released.
NSA police opened fire on the stolen sports utility vehicle after Hall failed to follow instructions for leaving a restricted area, authorities said.
As it turns out, Hall and his passenger had just driven off in the SUV of a 60-year-old Baltimore man, who told investigators that he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore and brought them to a Howard County motel to "party."
Howard County Police "can't confirm there was any sexual activity involved," spokeswoman Mary Phelan told The Associated Press on Tuesday. She also declined to elaborate on whether drugs or alcohol were part of their plan.
The SUV's owner, who has not been publicly identified, said they checked into a room at the Terrace Motel in Elkridge at about 7:30 a.m. Monday, and that he used the bathroom about an hour later. When he came out, the men were gone, along with his car keys.
He called police to report the stolen car, and only minutes later, just before 9 a.m., the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The two men were dressed as women, but "not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities," FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said.
The FBI has ruled out terrorism, and no one has explained yet why the men ended up in a restricted NSA area.
However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
Once so secretive that it was known as "No Such Agency," the NSA is now in some ways just another part of the suburban sprawl between Baltimore and Washington. Thousands of daily commuters who traverse the Baltimore-Washington Parkway pass its heavily secured campus at Fort Meade each day. About 11,000 military personnel and about 29,000 civilian employees with security clearances work inside the barbed wire.
Similarly, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is less than a mile from the George Washington Parkway, a heavily-traveled link between downtown Washington and the Capital Beltway. The CIA also has a training facility known as "The Farm" at Camp Peary, also conveniently located along Interstate 64 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The NSA is Maryland's largest employer, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA campus, said its convenient location is critical.
He also said the NSA gate is far enough removed from the highway that it's easy to avoid ending up there by mistake.
"I drive by there every day, when I come from Baltimore to go to the Capitol. There's plenty of signage there," he said. "If you follow the signs that say 'prohibited,' you can very easily get off. When you break the law, you break the law everywhere."
But it's not uncommon for drivers to take the wrong exit and end up at the tightly secured gates.
Most drivers then carefully follow the orders of heavily armed federal officers and turn around without getting into more trouble. In this case, authorities say the men ignored instructions on how to leave, and ended up stuck behind barriers. Police ordered them to stop, and then things escalated quickly.
"The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus," Jonathan Freed, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement. The vehicle failed to stop, then "accelerated toward an NSA Police vehicle blocking the road. NSA Police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop. The unauthorized vehicle crashed into the NSA Police vehicle."
The FBI declined to comment on the conditions of the surviving suspect and officer, except to say they were being treated at a local hospital. They also haven't said how the man driving the stolen car died.
It's not the first time someone has disobeyed orders at an NSA gate. In July, a man failed to obey an NSA officer's command to stop as he approached a checkpoint. That man drove away, injuring an NSA officer and nearly striking a barricade. He was later arrested and is awaiting trial on federal charges.
The FBI is investigating and working with the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted.
Associated Press writers Amanda Lee Myers and Ben Nuckols in Washington, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Maryland and Juliet Linderman in Baltimore contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TUESDAY, March 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are allowed occasional sips of alcohol are more likely to start drinking by the time they're in high school, a new study suggests.
Researchers followed 561 middle school students in Rhode Island for about three years. At the start of sixth grade (about age 11), nearly 30 percent of the students said they'd had at least one sip of alcohol.
In most cases, those sips were provided by parents, often at parties or special occasions.
By ninth grade, 26 percent of those who'd had sips of alcohol at a younger age said they'd had at least one full alcoholic drink, compared with less than 6 percent of those who didn't get sips of alcohol when younger.
The researchers also found that 9 percent of the sippers had gotten drunk or engaged in binge drinking by ninth grade, compared with just under 2 percent of the non-sippers.
The study was published March 31 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The findings don't prove that sips of alcohol at an early age are to blame for teen drinking, said lead researcher Kristina Jackson, of Brown University's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, in Providence, R.I.
"We're not trying to say whether it's 'OK' or 'not OK' for parents to allow this," Jackson said in a journal news release.
She noted that some parents believe that introducing children to alcohol at home teaches them about responsible drinking and reduces the appeal of alcohol.
"Our study provides evidence to the contrary," Jackson said.
Giving sips of alcohol to young children may send them a "mixed message," she suggested.
"At that age, some kids may have difficulty understanding the difference between a sip of wine and having a full beer," Jackson said.
More information
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration discusses how to prevent your child from drinking.
Copyright © 2015 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Photo courtesy Flickr/Austin Hufford
Since winning the presidency in 2008, President Obama hasn't been shy about his feelings on sports. In fact, one of the first things he spoke about as president was the lack of a playoff system in Division I football. Obama felt there was a better way to crown a champion at the highest level of college football.
Obama has spoken about concussions in football, as well. He pressed the powers in charge of both college football and the NFL to make the game safer for the players. In May 2014, the White House even held a concussion summit, where Obama called for more research into youth concussions.
In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Obama once again turned his attention to college sports. He spoke about the need for changes in the NCAA.
Obama said that NCAA member colleges should guarantee athletic scholarships with no strings attached. Some conferences, such as the Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC and SEC, have passed reforms to guarantee athletes' scholarships so long as they remain in good standing, and other individual schools are looking at passing similar reforms. However, many college athletes are still at risk for losing scholarships if they get injured.
The president also attacked the rules of the NCAA that protect so-called amateurism.
"What does frustrate me is where I see coaches getting paid millions of dollars, athletic directors getting paid millions of dollars, the NCAA making huge amounts of money, and then some kid gets a tattoo or gets a free use of a car and suddenly they're banished. That's not fair," Obama told the Huffington Post.
Obama said, at the same time, he doesn't support paying college athletes or allowing them to unionize.
"In terms of compensation, I think the challenge would just then start being, 'Do we really want to just create a situation where there are bidding wars? How much does Anthony Davis get paid as opposed to somebody else?' And that, I do think, would ruin the sense of college sports," Obama said.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled March 26 that football players at Northwestern University could unionize because they are considered employees. A CNN.com article says that players created the petition to get a seat at the bargaining table in college sports, which could change the landscape of the NCAA. Among the athletes' grievances, the players said they wanted guaranteed four-year scholarships and the possibility of getting paid. Northwestern plans to appeal the ruling.
Obama also said that universities could do better at offering college athletes better health-care coverage. He acknowledged that health care for college athletes has gotten better but that colleges and universities can and must do more for athletes in injury situations.
The president also said that college sports don't necessarily lead to a lucrative pro career.
"I do think that recognizing that the majority of these student athletes are not going to end up playing professional ball—this isn't just a farm system for the NBA or the NFL—means that the universities have more responsibilities than right now they're showing," Obama said.
While never having to push for congressional action or personal action from the Oval Office, Obama has been heard when he speaks about sports. He said college football needed a playoff, and this past season ended with the first playoff at the Division I level. All levels of sports have reacted on concussions at Obama's urging. Who knows what else could happen if he keeps speaking out about sports issues?
"I have no permanent friends (or) enemies, but only permanent interests," Stephanie Parker-Weaver told the Jackson Free Press last summer. Or, more to the point, Parker-Weaver seemed to have only permanent passions.
Since 2008, one of Parker-Weaver's main passions has been the nonprofit she founded, called Rebirth Alliance, which aims to educate the public about breast cancer—specifically, a rare and aggressive type of cancer that the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene complicates.
Parker-Weaver, who died last weekend at age 52, shared parts of her story with the Jackson Free Press in 2012. After she began to feel ill in 2007, she went to a doctor, who diagnosed her with cancer. Eventually, Parker-Weaver began chemotherapy and, in February 2008, had a hair-cutting party because she didn't want to go through slowly losing her long, curly locks to the drugs. When her husband, Cordell Weaver, put a lock of her treasured tresses in her hand, the full brunt of what was happening hit her, she said.
Still, she fought with a spirit her late parents—mother Carolyn Parker, a community and labor activist, and father Frank R. Parker, a renowned civil-rights attorney who worked on voting-rights cases across Mississippi—undoubtedly instilled in her.
A Jackson native and one-time executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Parker-Weaver became active in local political organizing in the early 1990s. Later, she assisted the campaign of controversial late Mayor Frank Melton and became a Melton aide at city hall.
Her time with the Melton administration was a perfect example of friends and enemies working together, she later recalled.
Last summer, in an interview with the JFP about the dark side of politicking in Jackson, she noted that Melton's team of supporters consisted of "radical" progressives like herself working alongside conservatives, such as developer Leland R. Speed, whose father served as mayor of Jackson in the 1940s, and Wirt Yerger Jr., the Mississippi Republican Party's founding chairman.
"He had all that money," she said of Yerger, "and we had the Lord, the law and unity on our side."
As she battled illness, Parker-Weaver never wavered in her activism, which included promoting events for Rebirth Alliance and participating in cancer walks.
A memorial for Stephanie Parker-Weaver will take place this Saturday, March 28, at 10 a.m. at Word and Worship Church at 6286 Hanging Moss Road in Jackson.
Walter Howard Zinn, Jr., a Mississippi political operative, will seek the state's vacant 1st Congressional District seat, according to a press release from the Democratic Party.
Zinn is an attorney and lives in Pontotoc, but is well-known in local politics, having served as an aide to former Jackson mayors Harvey Johnson Jr. and Chokwe Lumumba. He describes north Mississippi as a blue-collar region that eschews race and party politics in favor of bread-and-butter economic issues.
“William Faulkner best said, 'To understand the world, you first must understand a place like Mississippi.' I have committed and dedicated myself to doing just that by engaging citizens across Mississippi and the country through my work in helping communities to elect quality leaders and have advocated for the resources and opportunities that Mississippi families deserve,” Zinn said through a press release.
Zinn told the Jackson Free Press that his political career began when now-Sen. Roger Wicker's father, Thomas Wicker, encouraged Zinn to run for Boy's State, a youth leadership program for young men. Zinn says he was on a trajectory to become a Republican until the Sept. 11 attacks. Zinn disagreed with the policies of then-President George W. Bush in response to 9/11.
In Jackson, Zinn directed the legislative agendas for Johnson and Lumumba and helped marshall the passage of the 1-percent sales tax vote in early 2014. Zinn also worked for Sen. Roger Wicker when Wicker served in the United States House of Representatives and worked on a number of local, judge and congressional races.
About 10 Republicans are running to replace late U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee. Among them is former Jackson Ward 1 Quentin Whitwell. Zinn is the only Democrat running.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). A police officer directs a vehicle to turn away at the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. Earlier, a firefight erupted when two men dressed as women tried to ram a car into a gate, killing one...
(AP Photo/WJLA-TV). In this image made from video and released by WJLA-TV, authorities investigate the scene of a accident near a gate to Fort Meade, Md., on Monday, March 30, 2015. A spokesman at Fort Meade says two people are being treated for injuri...
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik). ATF agents gather in a parking lot where media have been asked to gather, down the road from the entrance to Ft. Meade after a vehicle rammed a gate to the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015 in Fort Meade, Md. O...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A senior U.S. official says pr...
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky). A Maryland State Police cruiser sits at a blocked southbound entrance on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that accesses the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015, in Fort Meade, Md. A spokeswoman at Fort Meade sa...
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up to "party" at a motel, police said Tuesday.
The FBI said the driver, Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, died at the scene, and his passenger remained hospitalized Tuesday with unspecified injuries. An NSA police officer was treated for minor injuries and released.
NSA police opened fire on the stolen sports utility vehicle after Hall failed to follow instructions for leaving a restricted area, authorities said.
As it turns out, Hall and his passenger had just driven off in the SUV of a 60-year-old Baltimore man, who told investigators that he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore and brought them to a Howard County motel to "party."
Howard County Police "can't confirm there was any sexual activity involved," spokeswoman Mary Phelan told The Associated Press on Tuesday. She also declined to elaborate on whether drugs or alcohol were part of their plan.
The SUV's owner, who has not been publicly identified, said they checked into a room at the Terrace Motel in Elkridge at about 7:30 a.m. Monday, and that he used the bathroom about an hour later. When he came out, the men were gone, along with his car keys.
He called police to report the stolen car, and only minutes later, just before 9 a.m., the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The two men were dressed as women, but "not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities," FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said.
The FBI has ruled out terrorism, and no one has explained yet why the men ended up in a restricted NSA area.
However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
Once so secretive that it was known as "No Such Agency," the NSA is now in some ways just another part of the suburban sprawl between Baltimore and Washington. Thousands of daily commuters who traverse the Baltimore-Washington Parkway pass its heavily secured campus at Fort Meade each day. About 11,000 military personnel and about 29,000 civilian employees with security clearances work inside the barbed wire.
Similarly, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is less than a mile from the George Washington Parkway, a heavily-traveled link between downtown Washington and the Capital Beltway. The CIA also has a training facility known as "The Farm" at Camp Peary, also conveniently located along Interstate 64 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The NSA is Maryland's largest employer, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA campus, said its convenient location is critical.
He also said the NSA gate is far enough removed from the highway that it's easy to avoid ending up there by mistake.
"I drive by there every day, when I come from Baltimore to go to the Capitol. There's plenty of signage there," he said. "If you follow the signs that say 'prohibited,' you can very easily get off. When you break the law, you break the law everywhere."
But it's not uncommon for drivers to take the wrong exit and end up at the tightly secured gates.
Most drivers then carefully follow the orders of heavily armed federal officers and turn around without getting into more trouble. In this case, authorities say the men ignored instructions on how to leave, and ended up stuck behind barriers. Police ordered them to stop, and then things escalated quickly.
"The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus," Jonathan Freed, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement. The vehicle failed to stop, then "accelerated toward an NSA Police vehicle blocking the road. NSA Police fired at the vehicle when it refused to stop. The unauthorized vehicle crashed into the NSA Police vehicle."
The FBI declined to comment on the conditions of the surviving suspect and officer, except to say they were being treated at a local hospital. They also haven't said how the man driving the stolen car died.
It's not the first time someone has disobeyed orders at an NSA gate. In July, a man failed to obey an NSA officer's command to stop as he approached a checkpoint. That man drove away, injuring an NSA officer and nearly striking a barricade. He was later arrested and is awaiting trial on federal charges.
The FBI is investigating and working with the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted.
Associated Press writers Amanda Lee Myers and Ben Nuckols in Washington, David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Maryland and Juliet Linderman in Baltimore contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TUESDAY, March 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are allowed occasional sips of alcohol are more likely to start drinking by the time they're in high school, a new study suggests.
Researchers followed 561 middle school students in Rhode Island for about three years. At the start of sixth grade (about age 11), nearly 30 percent of the students said they'd had at least one sip of alcohol.
In most cases, those sips were provided by parents, often at parties or special occasions.
By ninth grade, 26 percent of those who'd had sips of alcohol at a younger age said they'd had at least one full alcoholic drink, compared with less than 6 percent of those who didn't get sips of alcohol when younger.
The researchers also found that 9 percent of the sippers had gotten drunk or engaged in binge drinking by ninth grade, compared with just under 2 percent of the non-sippers.
The study was published March 31 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The findings don't prove that sips of alcohol at an early age are to blame for teen drinking, said lead researcher Kristina Jackson, of Brown University's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, in Providence, R.I.
"We're not trying to say whether it's 'OK' or 'not OK' for parents to allow this," Jackson said in a journal news release.
She noted that some parents believe that introducing children to alcohol at home teaches them about responsible drinking and reduces the appeal of alcohol.
"Our study provides evidence to the contrary," Jackson said.
Giving sips of alcohol to young children may send them a "mixed message," she suggested.
"At that age, some kids may have difficulty understanding the difference between a sip of wine and having a full beer," Jackson said.
More information
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration discusses how to prevent your child from drinking.
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