A federal prosecutor Monday afternoon portrayed former New Orleans homicide detective Gerard Dugue as an integral cog in a broad conspiracy to hide what happened on the Danziger Bridge in September 2005 as the trial of the last New Orleans police officer accused in the cover-up got under way. For the second time in less than a year, prosecutor Barbara "Bobbi" Bernstein stood before a federal jury and described the shootings by New Orleans police, which left two men dead and four people wounded days after Hurricane Katrina.

She described the gunfire from officers' shotguns and assault rifle, and said no evidence was ever produced to show the civilians were anything but innocent.

"There was no justification for that shooting, but for almost six years the officers got away with it," Bernstein said in her opening statement. "And that's why we are here. Because the officers almost got away with it because of this man, Gerard Dugue."

Bernstein noted that Dugue was an experienced and respected homicide detective who took over the NOPD's internal probe of the case six weeks after the storm. But instead of doing a proper investigation, he purposefully ignored information he knew to be nonsensical, she said.

Not only did he ignore the obvious inconsistencies of the NOPD officers involved in the shootings, but Dugue eventually wrote and submitted an official police report that framed two innocent men who were fired upon that day, Bernstein said.

Bernstein and Dugue's attorney, Claude Kelly, both told jurors, who were selected earlier in the day, that five other officers have already stood trial for the shooting and alleged cover-up.

All five officers were convicted, Kelly noted. Five other officers pleaded guilty and helped prosecutors build their case.

Kelly put the emphasis on those 10 officers, who, he said, began a cover-up of the shooting moments after the firing stopped. They were all members of the NOPD's eastern New Orleans 7th District, which he described as the "7th District clique." They worked together to build the conspiracy, he said.

Dugue, on the other hand, spent the days after Katrina at the Superdome. He didn't take over the case for weeks, after which time the lies of the other officers were already well put together, Kelly said.

While Bernstein lambasted Dugue's efforts as an investigator, Kelly said the work that Dugue did actually helped the federal case. His client was the first NOPD officer to order the collection of the physical evidence left at the bridge, mostly bullet casings that were eventually linked to the NOPD officers' weapons. It was Dugue who ordered that the bullets be tested, Kelly said.


Later, after the NOPD's official report on the case was turned into the Orleans Parish district attorney's office, Dugue continued to interview witnesses, including a State Police trooper who became an important prosecution witness during the first Danziger trial this past summer, Kelly emphasized.

That's "not the kind of action by someone covering it up," Kelly said.

Dugue is charged in six of the counts of the sprawling indictment handed up in 2010 by a federal grand jury. He is accused of conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to violate the civil rights of two men by writing a false police report.

The indictment also accuses Dugue of lying to the FBI in January 2009 about the case when he said he had no reason to be concerned about the shooting. Those statements were later retracted in a meeting nine months later with FBI agents, Bernstein said, during which Dugue said he found many aspects of officers' initial story to be "fishy."

But Kelly said his client never lied to the FBI, emphasizing that he voluntarily submitted to interviews with federal agents while other cops obtained lawyers.

Much of what jurors will hear over the next two weeks will be testimony first revealed during the summer trial. Kelly asked jurors to keep an open mind as they hear admittedly emotional testimony about the shootings.

That point was underscored with the prosecution's first witness. In a replay of the first witness from the first trial, prosecutors called Susan Bartholomew, a mother of three whose arm was blown off by a high-powered rifle during the explosions of gunfire.

Bartholomew, a slight woman who had been walking across the bridge with her teenage children and husband, tearfully recounted the family's terror as they were ambushed by gunfire. At first, they had no idea who was shooting at them. Later, they figured it out it was police, she said.

Eventually, the Bartholomew family was taken to the hospital by ambulances. In the coming days, police investigators showed up at the hospital at least twice, she said. The second time, they took an intimidating posture and Bartholomew said she felt threatened.

On cross-examination, Bartholomew acknowledged that Dugue was not one of the officers who came to see her. After she was released from the hospital, her family moved out of state.

Around 1929, two cemeteries dating to the 1800s that hold the remains of enslaved African-Americans and their close descendants, were plowed over to make way for the Bonnet Carre Spillway flood control structure in St. Charles Parish. Now those sites, which have earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places, will be commemorated with markers and other proper designation as burial sites.

Exactly what shape the memorial and signage will take has yet to be determined, and Army Corps of Engineers officials want to hear ideas from community members and those who may have relatives buried in the Kugler and Kenner cemeteries, said Christopher Brantley, project manager for the Bonnet Carre Spillway.

Plans to manage the cemeteries will be discussed by the corps at a public hearing on Feb. 8 at Destrehan Plantation.

The Kenner and Kugler cemeteries are now grass-covered fields, Brantley said. The road to the Kenner cemetery is unpaved and does not have parking. The Kugler cemetery, located off SC12 or Spillway Road, is paved, but it does not have parking, he said.

Part of the plan includes adding signs near the sites, and adding markers, trees and landscaping. The corps also would pave the roads leading to each cemetery and build a parking lot.

The Kugler and Kenner cemeteries, named for the property owners and located about a mile apart in the Bonnet Carre Spillway on land purchased by the federal government, were rediscovered in 1986.

The Army Corps of Engineers created the spillway after the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which killed hundreds of people in New Orleans and surrounding communities. With two levees, the corps enclosed 7,600 acres and built a control structure to divert high river water away from the city.

Corps officials have estimated that 250 to 300 African-Americans, many of whom were enslaved on nearby plantations, were interred in grassy plots in the spillway from the late 19th century until about 1929.

Margie Richard of Destrehan, who grew up in Norco, said her paternal and maternal grandmothers and great-grandparents were buried in the cemeteries. She said the corps project is “long overdue.”

“I think it’s good,’’ she said. “The corps should do something rather than just let it stay there. We are looking at a part of history that would die. I think it’s been overlooked too long.”

With a consultant’s help, the corps has tracked down 130 known descendants, officials said, who have been sent postcards informing them about the public hearing.

“The corps intends to preserve and interpret these historic properties as well as improve public access to the sites,” Brantley said. “This public meeting will provide a venue for open communication between the corps and key stakeholders, including the descendants of those buried in the cemeteries.”

The corps’ long-term plans call for the reburial of remains that were disinterred from Kenner Cemetery during a spillway opening in 1975, officials said.

Always contentious hearings on whether to close failing Chicago schools have taken a bizarre twist this year with charges that cash-strapped residents were hired as “rent-a-protesters” and given pre-made signs and pre-crafted scripts to support school shakeups.

Two men told the Chicago Sun-Times they showed up to apply for financial help with their energy bills at the Englewood office of the HOPE Organization headed by Rev. Roosevelt Watkins III, only to be offered money to attend school-related “rallies” held Jan. 6. Watkins denies they were paid to protest, saying money paid was for training.

Both protesters said they didn’t realize until the last minute that they were supposed to support school closings. One said he was promised $50 to speak at a rally “for schools,” but was stiffed $25 after Watkins complained he had publicly revealed at the hearing he was “compensated” for speaking.

“I don’t want the $25 he owes me,” Thaddeus Scott, 35, told the Sun-Times. “He can keep his dirty money. You can quote that.

“Why am I speaking out? Because I am in support of Crane [the high school whose closure he says he was supposed to support]. . . .

“They thought for a few dollars they could get us to say whatever they want. . . . We were preyed upon.”

Stipends for ‘training’

Watkins, pastor of Bethlehem Star M.B. Church and founder of Pastors United for Change, acknowledged he organized busloads of people to attend the Jan. 6 school closing hearings.

Yellow buses delivered people from 69th and Halsted, where HOPE’s Englewood office is, to at least three closing hearings on that date. The hearings concerned Crane High, Guggenheim Elementary and Reed Elementary, hearing participants told the Sun-Times.

Scott said he was offered $50 to speak at a hearing from what turned out to be scripted remarks.

But Watkins said protesters were supposed to be paid to attend “training” first on “community organizing” and how “to be aware of what’s taking place in the community.”

“What we do — so you can hear it from the horse’s mouth — we provide training because we engage community activists to participate in things such as health care, affordable housing, education, safety. Those things. So we do training on community organizing,” Watkins said.

A “small stipend” helps “offset their car fare” or “babysitting,” Watkins said.

Of the Jan. 6 protesters, Watkins said, “Those that did not receive the training should not have received a stipend.”

A day after the Sun-Times asked Watkins about the payments, at least one protester said he received a call from organizers asking him to attend a meeting first if he wanted to attend the next rally.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey called the busloads of hearing participants “rent-a-protesters.” He likened them to “paid stooges” who “make a mockery of what public participation is about.”

Said Sharkey: “It’s a new low.”

Cash-filled envelopes

Scott and a second man, a Guggenheim Elementary alum, said they were paid after the Jan. 6 hearings at the HOPE Englewood office by a woman who pulled envelopes holding $25 in cash from a container full of envelopes. Scott said Watkins was in the room when the woman told him he had done them a “disservice” and handed him half the promised amount, but Watkins insisted he was not there. Watkins also denied he ever chided anyone for using the word “compensated” at the hearings.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “There are people saying we pay them. We provide training. We’ve always done this. And they receive a stipend for their time.”

Watkins said he used neither church nor HOPE funds for the stipends. The money came from a “coalition of clergy” who have “money set aside for outreach

A military veteran in need of a kidney transplant had $14.3 million sitting on a table in his house and didn't know it.

Military vet Napolean Elvord, left, poses at the Madison, Wis. Mobil station where he purchased the lottery ticket worth $14.3 million.

For three days after it was announced that the winning Megabucks ticket from the Jan. 14 drawing had been sold at a Wisconsin Mobil station, Napolean Elvord had no idea a life-changing sum of money was right at his fingertips. The clerks at the Madison store that Elvord visits daily asked him if he was the one who bought the winning ticket. But he said it wasn’t him — and as the days passed, no one came forward to claim the prize.

Then the store manager, Corky Wunderlin, asked him again, and it dawned on Elvord: He had mixed up the drawing days that produced the Megabucks winner. Elvord still didn’t believe it when he found the winning $1 ticket sitting on a table at home, so he took it to the Wisconsin Lottery office, which validated that he was about to become a multi-millionaire. He got a lump-sum payment of $10.2 million, which computes to $6.87 million after taxes, overcoming one in seven million odds.

“It’s still going through my head,’’ Elvord told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Elvord, who is in his late 50s, had the state lottery officials scratching their heads when he came forward with his ticket. Most people who come to redeem their prize already know they have the winning ticket, whereas Elvord still wasn’t sure, lottery director Michael Edmonds told the paper.

“The first thing they asked me was, ‘Did you make up the ticket?’’’ Elvord said.

Elvord comes to the Mobil station multiple times per day to buy coffee and lottery tickets, and on the day he won, he let another customer go ahead of him before playing the winning numbers. His picks — 17, 26, 27, 28, 37 and 42 — were computer-generated, and the fact that he bought the ticket at all may have been an accident.

“I think it was a mistake because I was trying to play the Powerball,’’ he told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Elvord’s windfall was also a jackpot for the Mobil station, as the owners earned a $100,000 commission from the lottery for selling the winning ticket.

A semi-retired construction worker, Elvord plans on returning to his native Texas and putting the money toward health insurance. He has received regular kidney dialysis for the last five years.

"I hadn't really made any plans yet, but I do look at the economy and think about the people that have lost homes that had homes and had jobs," he told NBC 15 in Madison. "And I'm into construction. I like remodeling, fixing up things, and I'm looking at possibly doing something in that area to re-sell homes and bring people back into their housing area."

Elvord is the 71st Megabucks winner since the game began in 1992 and the first since a woman won $3.1 million in October 2010. The game is played only in Wisconsin.

The federal government now says a 101-year-old Detroit woman it promised could move back into her foreclosed home four months ago can't return because the building's unsanitary and unsafe.

Texana Hollis was evicted Sept. 12 and her belongings placed outside after her 65-year-old son failed to pay property taxes linked to a reverse mortgage, The Detroit News reported Sunday. Two days later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said she could return.

But now, HUD said it won't let Hollis move back in because of the house's condition. She had lived there about 60 years.

"Here I am, 100 years old, and don't have a home," Hollis said, rounding off her age. "Oh Lord, help me."

Department spokesman Brian Sullivan told The Detroit News that an inspection determined the house "was completely unsuitable for a person to live in."

"We can't allow someone to live in that (atmosphere) now that we are essentially the owners of the property," Sullivan said. "The home isn't safe; it's not sanitary. It's certainly not suitable for anyone to live in, especially not a 101-year-old mother."

HUD doesn't want to pay to fix up the house, but Sullivan said the department's seeking other agencies that might help with the work and get Hollis back into her home.

"We're not giving up," Sullivan said. "We're talking with anybody and everybody about solutions to this situation, but the condition of the property is a challenge."

After hearing about her longtime friend's eviction, Pollian Cheeks, 68, offered Hollis a room at her home within a mile of Hollis' house. Hollis, who once taught Cheeks in Sunday school at St. Philip's Lutheran Church, agreed to the invitation and has been staying at Cheeks' house in the meantime.

"Polly's just as nice to me as anybody could be. She goes out of her way to help me," Hollis said, holding back tears. "It's just like living at home, but it's not my home."

Four members of Florida A&M University's fabled Marching 100 band have been arrested on hazing charges, a spokeswoman for the Tallahassee college said Friday.

The charges are unrelated to the November hazing death of drum major Robert Champion.

FAMU police arrested three of the students Thursday night; the fourth turned himself in Friday morning, said Sharon Saunders, the FAMU spokeswoman.

The students -- Hakeem Birch, Brandon Benson, Anthony Mingo and Denise Bailey -- were charged with hazing five Marching 100 band members who wanted to join a group in the clarinet section known as the "Clones."


The five told police they were made to line up according to height at the start of each meeting. Then they were punched, slapped and paddled, according to the arrest warrant.

One of the students, who quit the pledging process after the first meeting, took a digital photo of the bruising on her body.

The initiation meetings, which began last September, took place at the home of Birch and Benson, the warrant said.

Champion's death prompted FAMU's board of trustees to approve a three-part plan to tackle the issue of hazing on campus. The plan includes an independent blue-ribbon panel of experts to investigate.

Trustee Belinda Reed Shannon told board members the panel would take a "forward-looking" approach at hazing on campus, and would not conflict with any current investigations into the Marching 100 band.

Champion, 26, collapsed in Orlando on a bus carrying members of the band after a November football game that included a halftime performance by the group.

Christopher Chestnut, a lawyer for Champion's family, has charged that Champion died after receiving "some dramatic blows, perhaps (having an) elevated heart rate" tied to "a hazing ritual" that took place on the bus.

Some band members have said Champion died after taking part in a rite of passage called "crossing Bus C." One member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained that students "walk from the front of the bus to the back of the bus backward while the bus is full of other band members, and you get beaten until you get to the back."

No one has been charged in Champion's death; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Orange County Sheriff's Office are investigating the case.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also launched a separate investigation into band employees, who were allegedly engaged in financial fraud.

The medical examiner's office has said Champion "collapsed and died within an hour of a hazing incident during which he suffered multiple blunt trauma blows to his body."

An autopsy conducted after his death found "extensive contusions of his chest, arms, shoulder and back," as well as "evidence of crushing of areas of subcutaneous fat," which is the fatty tissue directly under a person's skin.

An attorney for the band's director, on paid administrative leave since shortly after Champion's death, said his client issued letters of suspension and withheld scholarships "of all students whose names were provided to him once the incident was reported."

Julian White also informed campus police, attorney Chuck Hobbs said in a written statement.

"Dr. White applauds the efforts of law enforcement to arrest individuals that he suspended for hazing and hopes that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," according to the statement. "Dr. White has been the leading anti-hazing advocate on the FAMU campus for years and his legal team continues to call upon President James Ammons to fully reinstate him to his position since the original reason for termination -- failure to report hazing -- is clearly unfounded by the record evidence."

White originally had been suspended with termination scheduled for December 22, but he was subsequently placed on leave until completion of the investigation into Champion's death.

The prosecution's effort to force Dr. Conrad Murray to pay Michael Jackson's family $100 million in restitution for the singer's death has been dropped, a court spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney David Walgren told the court Wednesday that he was ending the restitution request after talking with Jackson's parents and lawyers for his estate.

California law allows for restitution claims by victims' families.

Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter last year for Jackson's death.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor had set a hearing for Thursday to consider the restitution.

When Murray was sentenced to four years in prison in November, Walgren argued the doctor should also pay Jackson's children and parents $100 million, the amount Jackson could have earned if he had survived to complete his planned "This Is It" concerts in London.

Jackson died on June 25, 2009, in his Los Angeles home, two weeks before those shows were to begin.

His death was caused by an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol and sedatives, according to testimony in Murray's trial last year.

Etta James, whose assertive, earthy voice lit up such hits as "The Wallflower," "Something's Got a Hold on Me" and the wedding favorite "At Last," has died, according to her longtime friend and manager, Lupe De Leon. She was 73.

She died from complications from leukemia with her husband, Artis Mills, and her sons by her side, De Leon said.

She was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010, and also suffered from dementia and hepatitis C. James died at a hospital in Riverside, California. She would have turned 74 Wednesday.

" This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world," De Leon said. "She was a true original who could sing it all -- her music defied category.

"I worked with Etta for over 30 years. She was my friend and I will miss her always."

Throughout her career, James overcame a heroin addiction, opened for the Rolling Stones, won six Grammys and was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite her ups and downs -- including a number of health problems -- she maintained an optimistic attitude.

"Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about," she told CNN's Denise Quan in 2002. "I don't!"

Through it all, she was a spitfire beloved by contemporaries and young up-and-comers.

"Etta James is unmanageable, and I'm the closest thing she's ever had to a manager," Lupe DeLeon, her manager of 30-plus years, told CNN in admiration.

British songstress Adele named James as one of her favorite singers, along with Aretha Franklin.

"If you were to look up the word singer in the dictionary, you'd see their names," Adele said in an interview.

Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles to a teen mother and unknown father. (She suspected her father was the pool player Minnesota Fats.)

Her birth mother initially took little responsibility and James was raised by a series of people, notably a pair of boardinghouse owners. But she was recognized from a young age for her booming voice, showcased in a South Central Los Angeles church.

In 1950, her mother took her to San Francisco, where James formed a group called the Peaches. Singer Johnny Otis, best known for "Willie and the Hand Jive," discovered her and had her sing a song he wrote using Ballard's tune as a model. "The Wallflower," with responses from "Louie Louie" songwriter Richard Berry, made James an R&B star.

Her signing to Chess introduced her to a broader audience, as the record label's co-owner, Leonard Chess, believed she should do pop hits. Among her recordings were "Stormy Weather," the Lena Horne classic originally from 1933; "A Sunday Kind of Love," which dates from 1946; and most notably, "At Last," a 1941 number that was originally a hit for Glenn Miller.

James' version of "At Last" starts out with swooning strings and the singer enters with confident gusto, dazzlingly maintaining a mood of joy and romance. Though the song failed to make the Top 40 upon its 1961 release -- though it did hit the R&B Top 10 -- its emotional punch has long made it a favorite at weddings.

James' career suffered in the mid-'60s when the British Invasion took over the pop charts and as she fought some personal demons. But she got a boost when she started recording at Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Her hits included the brassy "Tell Mama" and the raw "I'd Rather Go Blind," the latter later notably covered by Rod Stewart.

She entered rehab in the 1970s for her drug problem but re-established herself with live performances and an album produced by noted R&B mastermind Jerry Wexler. After another stint in rehab -- this time at the Betty Ford Clinic -- she made a comeback album, "Seven Year Itch," in 1988.

James mastered a range of styles -- from R&B and soul to jazz and blues -- but she was always one step behind the popular genre of the day, said Michael Coyle, a Colgate University professor who has written about jazz and R&B and reviews records for Cadence Magazine.

"She never really got her moment in the sun," Coyle said.

But James soldiered on, and by the end of her life she had made so much meaningful music that she was considered a living legend. "By the mid-'90s, she's survived so long that people start to look up to her," Coyle said.

James was portrayed by pop star Beyonce in the 2008 film "Cadillac Records," about Chess. After Beyonce sang "At Last" at one of President Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural balls, James lashed out: "I can't stand Beyonce. She had no business up there singing my song that I've been singing forever." She later told the New York Daily News she was joking.

Earlier this year, news reports revealed that the singer's estate was being contested in a legal struggle between her husband, Artis Mills, and son Donto James. (Donto and her other son, Sametto, both played in her band.)

Over the years, James had her share of health problems. In the late 1990s she reportedly weighed more than 400 pounds and required a scooter to get around. In 2003 she had gastric bypass surgery and dropped more than half the weight, according to People magazine.

However, until her latest issues, James maintained a steady touring schedule and appeared full of energy even when sitting down -- as she sometimes did on stage, due to bad knees and her weight battles.

Even while sitting down, James gave it her all on stage, singing as though possessed, caressing every note like a long-lost love. If that seemed a little much to critics, well, the legendary singer had a show to put on, she told Quan.

"They said that Etta James is still vulgar," she said in the 2002 interview. "I said, 'Oh, how dare 'em say I'm still real vulgar! I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair?' What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that?

"I gotta do something."

Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm.

Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.

Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.

He has never tasted chocolate.

During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands.

It was not supposed to be this way.

After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.

“We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating - candies and all of those wonderful chocolates - is being produced by terrible child labor?”

But after intense lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren’t able to push through a law. What they got was a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor “as a matter of urgency.” One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child-labor free.

“It was meant to achieve the end of child slave labor in cocoa fields,” Engel said.

It didn’t.

UNICEF estimates that nearly a half-million children work on farms across Ivory Coast, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa. The agency says hundreds of thousands of children, many of them trafficked across borders, are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.

A recent study by Tulane University says the industry’s efforts to stop child labor are “uneven” and “incomplete” and that 97% of Ivory Coast’s farmers had not been reached. But the industry’s main representative in the country disagrees with the assessment.

“I think the situation has improved exponentially,” said Rabola Kagohi, country director for the International Cocoa Initiative, the chocolate industry’s answer to fighting child labor and trafficking. “Today, the message is physically getting through.”

Kagohi works out of a basement office with one other permanent employee.

“There are some results,” he said. “I wish that you had spoken to some planters.”

None of the farmers CNN spoke to in the heart of the cocoa production region said they had ever been reached by the International Cocoa Initiative, the government or chocolate companies about child trafficking.

Children such as Abdul don’t know anything about protocols or certification. All they know is work.

When Abdul’s mother died, a stranger brought him across the border to the farm. Abdul says all he’s given is a little food, the torn clothes on his back, and an occasional tip from the farmer. Abdul is a modern child slave.

And he is not the only youngster working in his group.

Yacou insisted he is 16, but his face looks far younger.

“My mother brought me from Burkina Faso when my father died,” he said.

Scars crisscross Yacou’s legs from a machete. He can’t clear grass in the cocoa fields without cutting himself. During harvest season, he works day after day hacking the cocoa pods.

The emotional scars run much deeper.

“I wish I could go to school. I want to read and write,” he said. But Yacou hasn’t spent a single day in school, and he has no idea how to leave the farm.

“It makes me angry,” Engel said. As far as he’s concerned, the chocolate companies haven't done enough.

“They are working with us, and we are glad that they are working with us. But they could do better.”

One of the major players in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade is, not surprisingly, the Ivorian government. Although the country has cornered a vast chunk of a lucrative market, it is considered one of the world’s poorest by any measure.

But the government leadership blames politics and war for the problems in the cocoa industry.

“Thirty years of political instability caused a lot of damage to our economy generally, and to the agricultural sector particularly, and more specifically to the cocoa industry,” said Ivory Coast’s minister of agriculture, Sangafowa Coulibaly. “Unfortunately, these years have been lost.”

After an attempted coup in 2002, the country was split in half and kept from all-out civil war by the United Nations. There was protracted violence after the last disputed presidential elections, when then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede.

With the new government of Alassane Ouattara in charge, the government says it can now put much-needed reforms in place.

“Things can only get better,” Coulibaly said. “The main reason is that today, the political crisis is behind us, the armed conflict is behind us.”

But many observers believe that a new government won’t make it a priority to stop slavery in the cocoa fields.

And with peace, traffickers are free to do their work again. U.N. officials told CNN that the Ivory Coast conflict actually helped slow down trafficking because people were too afraid to move across borders.

Terrell Owens return to the Dallas area won't be as triumphant as he hoped. The former NFL star announced Wednesday that he signed to play for an Indoor Football League team in the Dallas suburb of Allen.

T.O. posted a brief message on Twitter in which he said he'll be a co-owner and player for the Allen Wranglers and -- whoa, hold up. The Wranglers? The Wranglers? If Brett Favre doesn't come back to play quarterback for this team, then all those "this is our country" commercials will have been aired in vain. It's a perfect opportunity. That could be his teammate. That could be his quarterback.

That's not happening, of course, because, uh, how do I put this nicely without insulting the fine folks in Allen, Texas, and at the IFL? Let's just say that playing against teams like the Lehigh Valley Steelhawks and Colorado Ice is a brief step down from where T.O. had hoped to be this season. Following a 72-catch campaign for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2010, Owens suffered an ACL injury in the offseason. He held a workout in October that no NFL team attended.

This caused T.O. to look for work opportunities elsewhere. He found it in Allen. ESPN Dallas reports that Wranglers GM and former Cowboys receiver Drew Pearson helped lure T.O. to the team.

"I want to make the Allen Wranglers the No. 1 attraction in Collin County," owner Jon Frankel said of Owens in one of the most "Texas" statements of all time.

The Wranglers' schedule begins Feb. 25. Calvin Watkins reports that Owens has yet to decide whether he'll play in all games or just ones at home.

Maybe this is another stop in Owens' path to the NFL or maybe it's rock bottom. I'm leaning toward the latter, mainly because of this ominous line from that ESPN Dallas article: "Owens' agent, Drew Rosenhaus, didn't return a call seeking comment."

When Drew Rosenhaus passes up a chance to say something -- anything -- about Terrell Owens, that ain't good.

A jury found former Southern University athletic director Greg LaFleur not guilty on a charge of prostitution.

The jury of six reached its decision Tuesday night, said a spokeswoman for the Harris County District Attorney's office in Houston.

LaFleur was arrested in April 2011. According to the police report, LaFleur, 52, was arrested on Main Street in Houston for alleged solicitation of a prostitute. LaFleur denied the allegation.

LaFleur, who was fired from Southern University after his arrest, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Southern.

"This should have never happened," LaFleur said Wednesday. "The chick solicited me. I have lived with this for a year. I'm more pissed off than happy."

Southern spokesman Ed Pratt said the university had no comment at this time.

At the time of his arrest, the prosecutor's office in Harris County characterized the case as "straight sex for pay." According to the police report, LaFleur was accused of picking up an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute.

The former LSU and NFL football player was booked on a misdemeanor charge by the Houston Police Department.

LaFleur was in Houston for the 2011 Final Four matchup.

He had been athletic director at Southern for almost six years, taking over for Floyd Kerr in 2005.

Juliet Steer was dying of lymphoma when she told her brother Paul she wanted to be buried just like Jesus, following Jewish customs. Even though she’s a black Christian, she chose a plot in the secluded interfaith section of this quiet town's Jewish Ahvath Achim Cemetery.

“She felt like it was a nice and peaceful place,” Paul Steer said. Juliet liked the quiet. When she died, Paul had her buried in the plot, hopeful that she’d finally rest in peace.

But this Jewish cemetery in Colchester, Connecticut, has been anything but peaceful since one of its board members sued Paul Steer. It’s now the center of a legal fight tinged with allegations of racial and religious prejudices.

Maria Balaban, a cemetery board member who has relatives buried there, is demanding Paul remove Juliet’s remains from the cemetery because she is not Jewish and has no ties to anyone in the Jewish section. Paul Steer believes part of the reason Balaban wants his sister's remains removed is because she was African-American.

“Her lawyer said ‘My client don’t believe your sister accepted the faith and she has to be exhumed.' I said, ‘What are you talking about?' 'Your sister don’t (sic) belong there, the cemetery is only for Jews,'” remembers Paul, whose family is of Jamaican descent. “I said, ‘Man, get out of here.’”

Balaban owns empty plots in the cemetery’s Jewish section, near those of her relatives. She is also suing her own congregation because it allowed a non-Jew to be buried on the other side of the property. She says the interfaith section was only supposed to allow non-Jews with ties to Judiasm or members of Congregation Ahvath Achim, a conservative synagogue whose name means "brotherly love."

“She’s not supposed to be there,” Balaban said of Juliet Steer. “She is not Jewish. I had no idea what she was. I didn’t know where she came from, there was never anything said.”

The dispute has upset members of the congregation, whose board - including Balaban - voted in 2009 to allow people of any faith to be buried in the interfaith section.

“That’s the troubling thing about the case for us, we really don’t understand the motivation, we really sure wish it had been raised at the creation of the interfaith section back on November 1 of 2009,” said George Purtil, a lawyer for the congregation. “We wouldn’t be in the pickle that we’re in right now if somebody, if she had just spoken up.”

Her lawyer, Martin Rutchik, said Balaban’s wishes are consistent with the rules governing most Jewish cemeteries. “There has been a violation of the sanctity and the respect of cemetery grounds that were created for Jews, who after centuries of running around went to Colchester and created a home of their own,” he said.

Arthur Liverant, another board member, showed reporters the two sections, divided by a road and some fencing. Juliet, an African-American, is the only person to be buried in the interfaith section so far, he said, although four other plots are reserved and paid for.

The other four plots are for white people and Balaban has not objected to those, which has brought the issue of race into the debate at the synagogue. “They are white, but it makes no different to us,” Arthur said. "Anybody is allowed to be buried there.”

Balaban, who was born in Cuba, says race has nothing to do with her objections to Juliet Steer’s remains. She says the other four plots were bought by people associated to members of the congregation. As a social worker who devoted years of her life to working with black teenagers, she said she's stung by any implication this dispute is about race.

“I do not want to hurt the poor Julia who is buried there that she thought was going to be buried in a peaceful place,” Balaban said. “It’s not my intention. I would not want to hurt anyone. I’m fighting those who approved that. I’m not fighting her. I’m not fighting the family.”

But the family is now fighting, saying they have no intention of moving Juliet’s body. Her brother says he believes Balaban voted to have an interfaith section with no restrictions, but changed her mind when she discovered Juliet is black.

“God knows if she is a racist or not, but I know I think so,” Steer said. “I could be wrong, but from what is going on and from a statement she made … that if she was buried at the back of the cemetery she would accept it more. Only a racist would say something like that.”

Balaban cringes at any suggestions race played a motive in her lawsuit. She says she mentioned moving the body to the back of the cemetery because that space belonged to a congregation that merged with her synagogue. They were more open to allowing people of other faiths. Her comment had nothing to do with wanting a black woman placed in the back of anything, she insisted.

The discussion in the temple to allow non-Jews into the cemetery began a few years ago, because so many Jews had intermarried or had non-Jewish relatives. The final decision was to permit everyone since people had different connections to Judaism, including civil unions and friendships.

The current debate has created bitterness on all sides, prompting Balaban and her lawyer to throw out a potential compromise. “I would suggest that the grave site of Juliet Steer not be disturbed and be surrounded by shrubbery,” says an October letter from Balaban’s lawyer.

George Purtill, the lawyer for the congregation, said that was completely unacceptable to the congregation. “That’s gross,” he said. “My client, the board of directors, was absolutely disgusted by that suggestion.”

A judge will weigh in next month, when a temporary injunction to exhume Steer’s body and move her remains elsewhere is scheduled to be heard. The congregation says it will never allow the body to be taken out. But Maria Balaban will have her day in court, facing her own congregation and Juliet Steer’s family, which also vows to keep her in the resting place she chose.

Attorney General Eric Holder joined NAACP leaders on the steps of the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia on Monday, with the Confederate flag fluttering overhead, to promise he will aggressively protect federal voting rights for minorities.

NAACP National President Ben Jealous said he had chosen to be at the Columbia ceremonies honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., declaring South Carolina is "ground zero" in the battle for African-American voting rights.

As the NAACP speakers denounced the banner of stars and bars that the state continues to display, Holder focused on defending provisions of the Voting Rights Act that he claims are under assault by South Carolina.

The Justice Department has refused to grant the needed approval of a law passed by the legislature requiring most voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls.

"After a thorough and fair review, we concluded that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect," Holder said.

The Justice Department has also sued South Carolina, challenging its law designed to curtail illegal immigration in the state. The government has moved to block laws in six states, including Arizona, which has taken the issue to the Supreme Court. The ruling expected by this summer will likely affect South Carolina.

Holder said the Justice Department is continuing to review proposed redrawing of congressional and legislative districts in South Carolina.

The Columbia rally Monday featuring Democrats was a rare aside from the Republican pre-primary fever gripping South Carolina, which has grabbed virtually all of the media attention as the presidential candidates jockey in advance of Saturday's primary. Five GOP candidates remain in the running, with four of them hoping to catch leading candidate Mitt Romney in the final days of the campaign.

There is no Democratic primary election.

Holder made no mention of the GOP race, but drew applause from the largely African-American crowd when he invoked the name of his boss, President Barack Obama.

28-year-old Fariz Ahmemulic is being arraigned Thursday night in Bronx Criminal Court in connection with a disturbing hate crime discovered in a public building. Police arrested the Parks Department employee Wednesday, and he is now charged with aggravated assault and aggravated assault as a hate crime.

On December 20th, NYPD responded to a call from the Parks Department Facility on Bronx River Parkway. The officers report a supervisor in the Parks Department led them to an area near a garage door where they saw a black doll hanging from a chain around its neck.

It was initially discovered by Parks Department employee Anthony Crum.

"I feel there are good people in the world and bad people," Crum said. "I prefer to be with the good people."

A spokesperson for the NYC Parks Department issued this statement:

"We are gratified that an arrest has been made in this case, but regret that the suspect is a fellow employee. We appreciate the Police Department's swift action in this investigation, which underscores the serious response of the agency and the City to this incident. We will continue to cooperate with the prosecution of this offense as the criminal justice process unfolds as well as conducting our own internal investigation. In the meantime, the arrested employee has been suspended without pay."

Ahmemulic was released on his own recognizance.

One of four convicted murderers whose whereabouts had been unknown since they were controversially pardoned last week by Mississippi's governor insisted Friday that he hasn't been on the run, saying he is a changed man who deserved to be freed.

Anthony McCray, who was convicted in a 2001 murder, said he went straight from prison Sunday to the home of a relative in central Mississippi, where he has been since. He criticized the outrage over outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's decision to grant clemency to him, along with nearly 200 other convicted criminals, in a final act before leaving office.

"I didn't do this. God did this," McCray said from a covered porch. "God touched Haley Barbour's heart."

The office of Mississippi's attorney general said late Friday afternoon that authorities have been in touch with three of the four convicted murderers -- McCray, David Gatlin and Charles Hooker -- who were pardoned and released Sunday. Nathan Kern, an armed robber who is also required to check in with authorities, also has been located.

But authorities are still looking for one convicted murderer, Joseph Ozment, the office said.

McCray said Friday that he did not know the whereabouts of any of the men, whom he described as "nice guys."

He was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to the 2001 murder of his wife, Jennifer McCray. Even with the plea, McCray insisted Friday that her death was an accident and said the shot was fired inadvertently during "tussling" over a gun.

"I didn't know she was shot," he said of his initial reaction. "I said, 'Somebody, call the police.' (Later) I went and turned myself in. ... This is somebody I loved and had children with."

Judge Mike Smith, the former Pike County judge who presided over that case, said Friday that the woman's killing was not accidental. He noted that there were many witnesses, as the woman was shot from behind in a public cafe.

And the victim's younger brother, Ronald Bonds, said Barbour should be "ashamed of himself" for pardoning Anthony McCray.

"He did this for nothing," Bonds said of his former brother-in-law. "He's a coward. He shot her in the back."

All four convicted murderers who were pardoned had been serving life sentences and worked as inmate trusties at the governor's mansion, according to Suzanne Singletary, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Trusties are inmates who can receive additional rights through good behavior.

McCray said he had his own room at the mansion, spending three years there after serving in prison without any disciplinary problems. During his time in Jackson, he said, he did odd jobs like housekeeping, washing cars and cooking, and conversed regularly with Barbour.

He added that it was understood that trusties had a much higher chance of getting pardons than those in the general prison population, though he insisted that the two never talked about clemency.

"He treated us like we were his children," McCray said.

Barbour defended the trusties program Friday, telling Fox News that most inmates who have worked at the mansion committed crimes of passion -- including murder -- and corrections experts say they are least likely to reoffend.

"I have no doubt in my mind that these men have repented, have been redeemed, have come back hardworking to prepare themselves to go out into the world," the former governor said. "I trust them to be around my grandchildren. I think that makes a pretty plain statement."

McCray said authorities contacted him at his relative's house on Thursday night and served him a court order mandating that he appear in court January 23 and contact the attorney general's office daily. He said Friday that he'll comply.

"Everybody deserves a second chance in life," McCray said, expressing thanks for being able to reunite with his son and daughter while acknowledging that there is a "great possibility" he might be ordered to return to prison.

Those orders are the result of a temporary injunction issued Wednesday by Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Tomie Green, which among other measures forbid the release of any more prisoners.

With that ruling, the four convicted murderers and Kern, the armed robber, are required to contact prison officials daily while their fate is adjudicated.

Since Barbour took office in 2004, 222 people have been granted clemency for a wide variety of crimes. The attorney general's office said 203 of those were "full pardons," meaning the convict's record is effectively wiped clean.

State Attorney General Jim Hood said Friday in a statement that "a large number of staff" is examining the pardons.

"Our preliminary investigation indicates that the majority of these purported pardons did not have sufficient publication and therefore we will introduce our evidence (in court on January 23) and ask the court to hold these purported pardons null and void," the attorney general said.

Those who have been granted full pardons include shoplifters, rapists, burglars and embezzlers. There were also a number who were found guilty of either manslaughter or homicide, who were given unconditional pardons.

Barbour, a longtime lobbyist and GOP politician who chaired the Republican National Committee and was in the Reagan administration, said earlier this week that some people misunderstand the clemency process, noting that approximately 90 percent of the convicts on the latest list "were no longer in custody."

And on Friday, Barbour said that efforts to restrict future Mississippi governors' ability to offer pardons was short-sighted. He noted that it is part of the U.S. constitution and many others.

"We believe that people who ask for forgiveness for their sins, redeem themselves should get a second chance," he said. "And 20 years in the penitentiary is time enough to come to grips with getting ... redemption and forgiveness."

In the more than four decades since the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated on the balcony of Memphis' Lorraine Motel, about 900 U.S. cities have named local streets for him. Memphis is not one of them, though there is a stretch of interstate bearing his name.

Now Memphis officials will consider a naming a key downtown street for the civil rights icon after years of inaction that some say reflects a sense of shame and denial in the city where he was cut down.

The proposal to rename nine blocks of Linden Avenue to Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue is expected to pass Thursday when it comes before the Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board. As of Tuesday, the board hadn't received any comments opposing the honor for King, who was killed by assassin James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968.

Berlin Boyd, a former city councilman, came up with the proposal earlier this year while still in office and it easily passed. He predicts it will pass the land use board, with a naming ceremony expected to take place on April 4. The board has final say unless an appeal is filed within 10 days.

The street re-naming is being seen by many Memphians as a symbol that the city is taking steps to heal the wound caused by the assassination.

""It was something that had a place in my heart for some time," Boyd told The Associated Press. "Here is a city where Martin Luther King's blood cries from the streets, and we don't have anything to pay tribute to him."

King came to Memphis to support a sanitation workers strike in 1968 in what became his final act as a civil rights leader. The National Civil Rights Museum is built at the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where King stayed while supporting the sanitation workers. A wreath marks the spot on the balcony where King was shot.

The Rev. James Netters, who marched with King and the sanitation workers as a city councilman, said he proposed naming a street for King in the early 1970s, but the City Council voted to dedicate a stretch of Interstate 240 to him instead.

Supporters say renaming Linden Avenue for King is more significant than the dedication of the interstate because the avenue is in the heart of the city's downtown and residents will have to use the avenue's name to give directions. They also say that new businesses along it — including two hotels set for construction — will use the King address, giving the street more importance and visibility.

Netters, 84, said he does not know why another proposal did not appear before now, a sentiment echoed by many others.

"Memphis can't do enough," Netters said. "Any honor that we dedicate to him is very, very critical."

Kenneth Whalum, a school board member and Memphis native who was 12 years old when King was killed, said no street has been named after King because Memphis has been in a state of denial and depression over the assassination.

"Just as when you lose any loved one, you get depressed," Whalum said. "For the last 43 years we've hoped that the incident didn't happen. We wished it would disappear and go away."

Boyd chose Linden Avenue because he saw a sign with the street's name in a photo taken of a rally led by King. The avenue runs in front of the Clayborn Temple — where King rallied with members of the civil rights movement — and the FedExForum, the arena where the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies play their home games.

It runs parallel to Beale Street, the famous Memphis tourist drag, and is near the offices of the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union that King came to Memphis to defend.

One of the advantages of choosing Linden Avenue is that no businesses will have to change their address with the name change, according to the land use board's report on the street re-naming.

The report, which recommends approval, notes that Linden Avenue is not named after a real person, so no one will be offended that their family name is being stripped from the downtown avenue. The name honors Under the Linden Trees Boulevard, over which the Brandenburg Gate was built in Berlin, Germany.

Should the proposal pass, Memphis would be added to the long list of cities, both big and small, that honor King with a street name. About 75 percent of the roughly 900 cities are found in 10 Southern states, with Georgia leading the way, said Derek Alderman, an East Carolina University geography professor who penned a 2006 study, "Naming Streets for Martin Luther King Jr.: No Easy Road."

Next in line are Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Alabama.

Alderman says cities have endured heated debates over naming streets after King: A common dispute centers on whether to select a street that is in a predominantly black neighborhood, or one that cuts across racial boundaries and "embodies the message that King was preaching when he was alive."

Alderman also notes that naming a street after King is an appropriate way to honor him because African-Americans looked to movement and transportation as ways of challenging and changing the racial status quo and creating racial equality. The Underground Railroad, the Freedom Riders and King's protest marches and leadership of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott are good examples, he said in his study.

"Street naming can be a pretty powerful way of honoring somebody when you consider the way streets connect people," Alderman said. "A significant amount of the actual mechanics of protest and the mechanics of carrying out the civil rights movement was actually carried out in street level protests and marches."

Renaming Linden Avenue for King may change the way residents give directions, but it also may help Memphis live down any shame and embarrassment that comes with being the city where King was assassinated.

Boyd said acknowledging King with his own street may be a symbol that Memphis is making strides in eliminating racial tensions and is finally dealing with King's death.

"We have to start embracing the heritage of our city," Boyd said. "Until we understand who we are as a city, we will always be left behind."

State health officials on Wednesday dismissed complaints that patients in a hospital neonatal unit were mistreated while Beyonce was there giving birth to her and Jay-Z's daughter.

They had received two complaints about Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital, one made anonymously, the other from someone who had learned about the matter through the media, a health department spokesman said. Officials reviewed the complaints and dismissed them Wednesday night, spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said without elaborating.

The hospital, a popular choice for the rich and famous from late philanthropist Brooke Astor to "30 Rock" star Tina Fey, said it was conducting its own probe.

Beyonce gave birth to the couple's baby, Blue Ivy Carter, at the hospital on Saturday.

Media reports said Beyonce and Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, paid $1 million to take over a floor and their security guard blocked parents from the neonatal unit for hours. The hospital denied the reports, saying the couple paid the standard rate for an executive suite without disclosing what that is.

One new mother, Rozz Nash-Coulon, told The Associated Press that her twins, born Dec. 28, were in the neonatal unit and, starting Friday, intense security measures made it a struggle to see them as guards directed hallway traffic.

"Once they checked in there was high security everywhere," she said Monday. "It looked like the president was on our floor. The hospital's security cameras were taped over. Internal windows from the hallways into the ward were blacked out."

The hospital's executive director was heading up its own inquiry into the complaints, hospital spokeswoman Barbara Osborn said. The hospital was interviewing parents who had children in the newborn wing when Jay-Z and Beyonce were there, she said.

"We have spoken to seven out of the 10," she said."None have reported being stopped from seeing their babies."

She confirmed that security cameras were briefly taped over when the Carter family was being moved, "but only when a security guard was present" on the fourth floor, where the neonatal unit is located. She declined to say why they were taped over.

She said that other parents at the unit did notice "enhanced security." But she said none felt restricted from accessing the unit or any other at the hospital.

Jay-Z confirmed the birth of the couple's daughter in a song released on his social website Life and Times on Monday.

















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The hospital's executive director was heading up its own inquiry into the complaints, hospital

The parents of a Catawba County teenager say she was threatened with a noose inside her high school. “She was definitely scared,” Ray Parks, the girl’s father, said.

Parks and his wife said they knew something was wrong when their 14-year-old daughter told them Monday night she no longer wanted to attend Fred T. Foard High School in Catawba County. It was then that they learned some white students had approached her with a noose, telling her it was made for her.

“It was brought into the school and she also told us it could fit around her neck,” Parks said. “So that draws up a lot of concern.”

The superintendent, Glenn Barger, said he didn’t know about the incident until Eyewitness News told him. He immediately called the principal and visited the school Tuesday afternoon.

“They have identified the students who had the hangman's noose and showed it to a female student at the school,” Barger said.

The students involved claimed it was a joke, and the 14-year-old initially told the school she didn’t feel threatened, but an investigation by both the district and the Sheriff's Office is under way.
“It is a very serious accusation that has been made here -- one that will not be taken lightly at all,” Barger said.

The superintendent said the incident could fall under a form of bullying. If the investigations find that is what happened, the district has guidelines that will be followed. The most severe punishment is expulsion.

The district is also looking into why the parents weren't notified after the incident.
Parks said he has already contacted the Sheriff’s Office about possible criminal charges.
“She's scared, and that’s why we are going to stick with what we are going to do, because children should not be afraid to go to school,” he said.

Controversy on the court. Morgan State’s head basketball coach is suspended, accused of hitting a player in the heat of the moment.

Witnesses say coach Todd Bozeman lashed out at No. 1 senior guard Larry Bastfield. It happened at Saturday’s game against South Carolina State, a game the Bears ended up winning.

“Some say he actually struck the student, others say it wasn’t that bad. He kinda gave him a little push,” said Clint Coleman, Morgan State spokesman.

One witness, Christopher Johnson, told reporters he saw the coach punch the player in the face.

“It was pretty dramatic. There were a lot of people there who though the coach was out of line,” Johnson said.