11-year-old stabs dad to death for beating mom'

CEBU CITY, Philippines–An 11-year-old girl stabbed her father dead Sunday night after she saw him hitting her mother on the head and cutting her leg with a hacksaw inside their house in Argao town, 58 km south of this city, the authorities said.

The 38-year-old father was found dead on a vacant grassy lot a few minutes after he ran away from his daughter who stabbed him in the chest at about 11 p.m. inside their house in Barangay Canbanua, Argao.

The police took custody of the girl who was later turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, said Insp. Alan Batobalunos, Argao police chief.

Batobalunos said the girl didn’t know that she killed her father. “Napatay nako si Papa ma? Mapriso ko (I killed papa, ma? Would I go to jail?” Batobalunos quoted the girl as asking her mother.

But he added the girl didn’t cry but instead told the police that they would not know what would happen to her and her two sisters if their mother was killed.

Their neighbor Miguel Tapales said they heard the couple arguing past 11 p.m. on Sunday. He said he just ignored it because they thought it was just one of the couple’s usual fights.

After several minutes, Tapales said the 11-year–old girl went to their house and asked for help.

“She asked for help because she feared that her father might come back and kill them. She said she stabbed her father after she saw that her father was cutting her mother’s leg with a hacksaw,” said Tapales in Cebuano.

Her mother was later brought to Isidro Kintanar Memorial Hospital in Argao and was released on Monday morning.

Perlita Buenaflor, another neighbor said they would always hear the couple quarreling. On Friday, the husband destroyed the wall of their house in the middle of the fight.

Buenaflor said the arguments were triggered by jealousy because the victim was allegedly a womanizer.

Batobalunos and the couple’s neighbors said the victim was fired from his job as a driver of a Department of Environment and Natural Resources personnel after he had an affair with a married officemate.

He then worked at the Office of the Mayor in Argao but lost his job again when he had a fling with another officemate.

Aside from the 11-year-old girl, the couple has two other daughters–a 13-year-old Grade 6 pupil and a two-month old infant.

Man charged with trying to bomb downtown Chicago bar

(Reuters) - An 18-year-old man who tried to set off what he thought was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar on Friday night has been arrested and charged in a federal undercover sting, authorities said Saturday.

Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen who lives in the Chicago suburb of Hillside, planned for months for the attack and prayed with a man who turned out to be an undercover agent before attempting to set off a bomb in a Jeep outside a bar, authorities said.

Daoud, who considered up to 29 possible targets, was charged with one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of attempt to damage and destroy a building by means of an explosive.

The inert explosives posed no threat to the public and were supplied by undercover law enforcement, acting U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro said in a statement. Daoud was closely monitored and offered several opportunities to change his mind.

According to an FBI affidavit, Daoud used email accounts starting in about October 2011 to gather and send materials "relating to violent jihad and the killing of Americans."

Daoud emailed a lengthy powerpoint presentation to several people defending the tactics of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and emailed himself several articles on Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric who the U.S. said was a leader of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, the affidavit said.

Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011.

Daoud also was registered in an Internet forum where members "discuss violent jihad and distribute jihadist propaganda and related instructional materials," the affidavit said.

Two undercover FBI employees began corresponding with Daoud in May, exchanging several electronic messages with him in which he expressed an interest in "engaging in violent jihad, either in the United States or overseas," the affidavit said.

From late May to mid-June, Daoud sought guidance on whether to carry out an attack in the United States, then sought online resources on how to carry out an attack, the affidavit said.

CONSIDERED ATTACKING TOURIST ATTRACTIONS

An undercover FBI agent then was introduced to Daoud by one of the undercover employees as a cousin and operational terrorist living in New York, the affidavit said.

Daoud listed 29 possible targets on four handwritten pages from a notebook he showed the undercover agent at a meeting on August 6, including military recruiting centers, bars, malls and other Chicago-area tourist attractions, the affidavit said.

"Early in their conversation, Daoud emphasized that any attack they committed needed to be recognized as a 'terrorist attack,'" the affidavit states about the early August meeting.

He told the undercover agent at a meeting on August 23 that he had selected the bar targeted on Friday, the affidavit said. They met again in early September and then on Thursday viewed the green Jeep Cherokee with the inert explosive device at a storage unit in Bellwood, Illinois.

On Friday, Daoud met with the undercover agent in a Chicago suburb, and he led a prayer that the attack would succeed in killing many people as they drove the agent's vehicle to downtown Chicago, the affidavit said.

In downtown Chicago, Daoud picked up the Jeep that contained the purported explosives from a parking lot and drove it to the targeted bar, the affidavit said. They did not identify the bar.

Daoud walked to an alley about a block from the bar and tried to set off the device in the agent's presence before FBI agents arrested him, the affidavit said.

The case is not the first in which undercover agents have been used to gather evidence of suspected plots.

Four self-described anarchists have pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up a four-lane highway bridge near Cleveland in April and a fifth suspect is undergoing competency testing.

An undercover FBI agent sold the men inoperable detonators and plastic explosives, which they placed at the base of the bridge. Authorities said the five men had no ties to foreign militant groups.

A Moroccan man pleaded guilty in June to attempting a suicide bombing of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington in February. An undercover agent drove the suspect on the day of that planned attack.

Authorities also used undercover officers to gather evidence at the Chicago summit of the NATO military alliance in May. Three men described as anarchists were arrested then and accused of attempting to make Molotov cocktails to hurl at police.

Daoud had an initial appearance on Saturday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys in federal court in Chicago. He is being held pending a detention and preliminary hearing that is scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday.

Daoud faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. The second charge calls for a sentence of from five to 20 years.

Drew Peterson fires lawyer who opposed Savio divorce lawyer as witness

Drew Peterson has fired the attorney who loudly warned against calling Kathleen Savio’s divorce lawyer as a defense witness – a move which Peterson’s lead counsel insisted upon and many considered a devastating miscalculation.

Peterson notified attorney Steve Greenberg of his decision Tuesday, just days after jurors said divorce lawyer Harry Smith’s testimony tipped the scales in the prosecution's favor and led to the retired Bolingbrook police sergeant’s conviction.

Smith told jurors that Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, asked him if she could get more money in a divorce if she threatened to tell police about her husband’s role in Savio’s death.

Lead attorney Joel Brodsky decided to call Smith against the advice of the rest of the defense team and after the judge warned him of the possible consequences. Greenberg was overheard pleading with him not to do it in a courthouse hallway.

The debate ended when Peterson sided with Brodsky.

“I think Mr. Peterson was represented by five wonderful lawyers out of six,” Greenberg said Tuesday. “His loyalty to the sixth is disconcerting.”

Greenberg – who had argued several motions during the prosecution’s case to limit what Smith could tell jurors under state questioning – warned Brodsky that he could be opening Pandora’s Box during their hallway shouting match.

“I've filed 74 (expletive) motions to keep him out and now you're going to undo all of it,” Greenberg told Brodsky in a loud, exasperated voice.

Tensions, however, had been building between Brodsky and Greenberg long before Smith's appearance. They clashed earlier this year when Greenberg publicly suggested that Peterson’s and Brodsky’s sophomoric television and radio appearances in the weeks after Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, disappeared were far more damaging to his client’s case than a made-for-TV movie about Peterson.

Though Greenberg had a good rapport with Will County Judge Edward Burmila and had been winning most of the defense team’s successful motions, Brodsky banned him from making objections and often hushed him in court.

Still, Greenberg and Brodsky presented a united front before the TV cameras during their frequent news conferences. Wearing sunglasses and wide grins, they often poked fun at prosecutors and witnesses.

The duo, along with defense attorney Joe Lopez, were sharply criticized for a press conference during jury selection in which they mocked Stacy Peterson’s disappearance. They later apologized.

Brodsky had never tried a homicide case before Peterson hired him in 2007.

Brodsky has repeatedly told the Tribune that Greenberg was not a team player.

“Even though Mr. Greenberg did win many of the motions, these were on small issues,” Brodsky said Tuesday. “Greenberg lost the big ones, such as banning the hearsay previously found to be (inadmissible), and keeping the ‘hit man’ testimony out.”

Alabama School System Teaches Kids to Fight Gunman by Throwing Scissors, Pencils, Pens

By Michael Allen, Mon, September 03, 2012

The Tuscaloosa City School System, in Alabama, is offering some controversial advice to students in case of a school shooting, reports the Daily Mail.

The ALICE [Alert-Lockdown-Inform-Counter-Evacuate] program instructs kids how to gang-tackle a gunman, reports TuscaloosaNews.com.

The four-hour training sessions also advises children to fight an armed gunman with scissors, text books, pencils and pens. 

The courses teach more realistic advice such as instructing kids to look for escape routes or places to hide.

Lt. A.B. Green, school resource officer supervisor for Tuscaloose Police Department, told TuscaloosaNews.com: "What we've been teaching nationwide is everybody stopping, locking the doors and hiding where you are. Those concepts work, but they're not an absolute."

"We can train teachers and students to a certain degree. At a certain level, though, we have to train the students to use their last resource, which is to defend themselves."

'We know that these things can happen anywhere. We always hope that this won't happen in our schools, but that doesn't mean we should fail to prepare for it. If you look at the responses that the individuals had on those cases where there was no response or people decided to stop and hide, the casualties were greater in those cases."

Raquel Payne-Giles, principal at Paul W. Bryant High School, told TuscaloosaNews.com: "They did a skit where a person walked in with a toy gun and what actually happens if everyone throws things at him,. The person began to protect themselves, and it threw him off for a few minutes. That's time to run."

"If they get too close, they teach us how to restrain them. One smaller woman can't restrain a large man, but what about three or four of them? That's why the training is not about doing it by yourself. It's about attacking en masse."