Jimmy Dushku: The 25-year-old who is North Korea’s one true Twitter friend






Mother Jones takes a look at a globetrotting young investor who’s the only American — and the only human being — Pyongyang follows


Google Chairman Eric Schmidt capped a controversial four-day visit to North Korea on Thursday with a call for the country’s censorship-happy communist government to give its people access to the internet, or face further economic decline due to the country’s global isolation. It was a strong message from one of the web’s most powerful figures, although North Korea watchers seem pretty confident the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, will ignore it. There’s one American, however, Pyongyang does appear to listen to. That would be Jimmy Dushku, a young investor who is one of exactly three Twitter users Kim’s government follows on Twitter. What’s the story behind this unlikely online bromance? Here, a guide:






Who is Jimmy Dushku?
He’s a 25-year-old financial whiz kid from Austin, Texas. Dushku, who also goes by the nicknames “Jimmer” and “Jammy,” started a website development business when he was 14, according to Mother Jones, and he parlayed his early earnings into investments that now include everything from construction projects in Europe to real estate in Texas to mines in South America. He’s also a rabid Coldplay fan, and when he isn’t jetting around the world, he says he likes to play Rachmaninoff on his piano and zoom around on his Ducati Monster motorcycle.


SEE MORE: North Korea’s rocket launch: 3 consequences


So how did he become buddies with North Korea?
Dushku tells Asawin Suebsaeng at Mother Jones he’s not really sure. “People always ask me how it happened, and I honestly can’t remember,” he says. “It started sometime back in 2010. I was initially surprised.” North Korea followed him, he followed North Korea “out of courtesy.” He tweeted back, “Hello my friend,” and a relationship was born. Then, the North Korean government, which has piled up some 11,000 followers in two-and-a-half years on Twitter, abruptly whittled down the number of accounts it follows, leaving just three. Dushku made the cut (along with a Vietnam account and another official North Korean handle).


What has Dushku gotten from the relationship?
Death threats, for one thing. Not long after he linked up with North Korea’s account, which goes by @uriminzok (or “our nation”), Dushku says he started getting angry messages from exiles and South Koreans. Since then, he has mostly kept a low profile, just to be safe, although he does occasionally grant interviews to foreign publications. For its part, North Korea gets a rare glimpse at the outside world through Dushku, as his is the only account North Korea follows that is regularly updated — the other two haven’t tweeted in months. He’s also the only human being in the bunch.


Will @JimmyDushku and @uriminzok ever meet in real life?
That’s always the question for acquaintances who meet online, isn’t it? Dushku says his friendly relationship has won him a standing offer to visit North Korea. Casual observers, however, advise him to proceed with caution. “Am I the only one thinking they picked some random guy so they can lure him into North Korea and use him as a political prisoner/bargaining chip?” one commenter at Gizmodo said. Another suggests that Dushku play it cool, without making Pyongyang angry, saying, “Never unfollow anybody with nuclear weapons.”


Sources: Austinist, CNN, Gizmodo, Mother Jones


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Dumb Criminal: Juan Ramirez Tijerina Packed for Jail Break















01/10/2013 at 05:30 PM EST



Give him an "A" for ingenuity.

Four years into a 20-year sentence for illegal weapons possession, Juan Ramirez Tijerina had had enough of life in the pokey. After a conjugal visit in July 2011 with his partner, Maria del Carmen Arjona Rivero, he was packed and ready to go – literally.

Ramirez was apprehended after officers, noticing that Arjona seemed nervous as she headed for the prison exit in Chetumal, Mexico, with a bulging suitcase, unzipped the bag and found the convict inside.

He's back behind bars, and Arjona was detained.

"This is rare," says a prison spokesman. "Most of the inmates here dig tunnels, try to jump fences or take advantage of a riot to escape."

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Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard


NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.


Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.


While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hotspots. On Thursday, health officials blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far.


Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.


"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.


The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low.


David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50-year-old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said.


Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.


"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.


Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.


"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed emergency room saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.


The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations. To deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, hospitals are restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.


One hospital in Allentown, Pa., set up a tent this week for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms. But so far "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.


On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, with the city's hospitals counting about 1,500 emergency room visits since December by people with flu-like symptoms.


All the flu activity has led some to question whether this year's flu shot is working. While health officials are still analyzing the vaccine, early indications are that it's about 60 percent effective, which is in line with what's been seen in other years.


The vaccine is reformulated each year, based on experts' best guess of which strains of the virus will predominate. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.


In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years and was laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.


She decided to skip getting a flu shot last fall. But her daughter got the shot. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.


Europe is also suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. Flu reports are up, too, in China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo. Britain has seen a surge in cases of norovirus.


On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.


Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.


Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.


Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Of the 20 children killed by the flu this season, only two were fully vaccinated.


___


AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.


___


Online:


CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm


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Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park









Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.


A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.


"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.





The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.


The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.


The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.


"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."


The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.


But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.


Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.


"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."


The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.


At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."


During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.


And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.


"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."


mike.anton@latimes.com


rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com





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Venezuelan Court: Chávez Swearing-In Can Be Postponed



CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles is condemning the Supreme Court's endorsement of a delay in President Hugo Chavez's inauguration.


The Supreme Court sided with Venezuela's government and ruling party earlier Wednesday in the heated dispute with the opposition while the ailing leader struggles with complications a month after cancer surgery in Cuba.


Capriles says that "institutions should not respond to the interests of a government."


Supreme Court President Luisa Estella announced that it's legal for lawmakers to delay Chavez's swearing-in for a new term, which had been scheduled for Thursday.


Pro-Chavez lawmakers voted Tuesday to delay the ceremony, allowing Chavez to take the oath of office at a later date before the Supreme Court.


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Men and Women of (Limited) Letters: Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013






Scientific American editors voted in recent weeks on the 20 most informative Twitter accounts to stay abreast of the latest ideas, issues and developments in science and technology. We weeded through hundreds of lists and feeds to select the most brilliant and engaging, as well as the quirkiest of the bunch.Our picks are often witty, sometimes eccentric and occasionally silly, but each brings valuable insights to his or her area of expertise. For the latest, greatest tweets on science, technology, journalism, astronomy, physics, mathematics and more, check out these top 20 Twitter accounts of 2013, listed here in alphabetical order.





 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013Next »
BBC Science
@BBCscience

 Pay attention to BBC Science for breaking science and environmental news from a global perspective. Tweets are most often serious, with the occasional story about whether a toilet seat really is the dirtiest item in the house. The BBC offers variety suitable to both the casual consumer and the diehard nerd.









« Previous
Intro
Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013Next »
Deborah Blum
@DeborahBlum

Deborah Blum’s tweets about poison, murder and other interesting articles and quips aren’t all that make her Twitter feed unique. It also stands out for her insights into science journalism. Blum often posts jobs, tips and tricks of the trade that will motivate any aspiring science blogger to break out the laptop and start posting.
By day, Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist. By night he’s a “truth vigilante.” The Caltech researcher writes lofty pieces about eternity and dark matter, and tweets fascinating facts about his field.


 This NASA Twitter account gained notoriety when the car-size rover Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012. With its witty persona, pop culture references and updates on its forays across the surface of the Red Planet, @MarsCuriosity is a must-follow for 2013—and the rest of its multiyear tour. Also check out the “Curiosity Explorer” badge on Foursquare and watch the rover’s New Year’s Eve message on YouTube
David Dobbs is an accomplished science journalist who is big on audience engagement in the new media milieu. His Twitter feed is punctuated with responses to readers weighing in on a wide variety of topics, especially cognitive science. Dobbs also tweets sporadically about his personal life and his work for Wired. He’s working on his fifth book.
Maryn McKenna, a specialist on food policy, public health and infectious disease, has built and cultivated a dedicated online following. Her tweets and posts are smart, quirky and highly informative. A seasoned science journalist, she uses social media to nerd out on a daily basis, so join in the geeky fun.
Former Scientific American special projects guru Christopher Mims isn’t shy. Opinionated and straightforward, the technology and sustainability journalist, now at QuartzNews, stays ahead of the pack. Mims frequently engages with his audience and uses crowd-sourcing to gather material for many of his stories.
Scientific American editors enjoy checking in on Nature News‘s hard-nosed, clever twitter feed.  One might suspect that our favor for it derives from the fact that Scientific American is also part of Nature Publishing Group, but we actually operate as editorially independent units. Follow Nature News especially for investigative reporting on science scandals and international science policy, as well as the latest important biomedical and physics news.


 Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media Tim O’Reilly reports technology trends and comments on advocacy issues. His Twitter feed is dominated by references to Silicon Valley and e-book deals. Follow his tweets for insightful coverage of the technical world.
John Allen Paulos is a PhD with character. He’s wearing a bow tie in his profile picture, and his favored emoticon is a winking smiley face. Paulos’s tweets can be a tad cryptic for the layperson, but the mathematician has such a great sense of humor that you’re sure to laugh out loud at some point—even if you don’t quite understand the joke.
Accomplished blogger Phil Plait has just migrated his popular “Bad Astronomy” blog to Slate. The author, skeptic, father and punster primarily covers the ins and outs of the solar system. The best part about Plait’s Twitter feed is his daily #BAFact, wherein he throws strange-but-true scraps of science to his curious followers.


 Veteran science journalist Paul Raeburn has turned his eye in recent years to good-natured meta-media, covering science reporting itself for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker while also covering reseach on fatherhood. Raeburn takes reporters to task for sloppy thinking, points out inaccuracies and addresses ethical dilemmas. Follow his account just to read the back-and-forth between him and his targets.
Andy Revkin is a leader in the environmental reporting field, covering everything from fracking to global warming. Check out Revkin’s DotEarth blog in The New York Times too for his breaking news coverage—it’s all the environmental news that’s fit to cover.


 Science Friday, part of National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation radio program, packs its Twitter feed with tantalizing links that just beg to be clicked on. @SciFri looks at daily news through a scientific lens, including live tweets to provide context during the weekly broadcast. The result is an entertaining bundle of scientific discoveries, intrigues and debunkings.
Scientific American‘s contributors are a brilliant group of reporters, bloggers and commentators, if you’ll pardon this moment of pride. Creativity, skepticism and authoritative context are a big part of what makes our coverage so engaging and worthwhile. Check out this Twitter list and follow your favorites.
Nate Silver, the most celebrated political statistician of the 2012 election, started out as a forecaster of baseball player performance. When he turned his attention to U.S. presidential elections, using statistical models to accurately predict what was thought to be unpredictable, he became a sensation. Although this past year’s electoral frenzy is behind us, Silver is still at work making predictions we’d be foolish to ignore.
Steven Strogatz holds the esteem of math wunderkinds as well as those who are iffy on formulas. He’s hardly a typical numbers-cruncher. The Cornell University professor has a knack for taking on complex topics and making them interesting, even to full-on mathphobes. In his recent book, The Joy of X, discussions range from the number of people one should date before settling down to how HBO’s The Sopranos can help us understand calculus. His Twitter account is similarly entertaining.
Not following Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Twitter? Beware: science nerds who don’t wake up each morning to the rational witticisms of NGT in their feed risk losing all geek cred. If you fit this description, please remedy that situation—now.
Blogger Ed Yong diligantly weaves a love of data into his prose, while still managing to craft posts that are accessible to readers with little to no science background. By covering new findings skeptically and tweeting prolifically, he has built a readership that relies on him for science news. Join the club.
A self-described “champion of underappreciated life-forms,” Carl Zimmer tends to tackle stories about parasites, viruses and quantum earthworms. Follow his feed, probably the most followed of any science writer, for solid reporting and captivating writing.





« Previous
Ed Yong
@EdYong209
Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013Restart the list »
Introduction

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs.Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
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David Bowie's New Single Is No Splashy Comeback















01/09/2013 at 05:00 PM EST



"Where Are We Now?" ponders a plaintive David Bowie on his comeback single after seemingly retiring from music. Indeed, this august, atmospheric ballad previews his first album in 10 years, The Next Day, due out March 12.

Out of nowhere the song was dropped in the middle of the night on Jan. 8 – which just happens to be Bowie's birthday (he turned 66). The low-key release certainly suits the understated tone of the tune, which is hardly the splashy comeback one might have expected from the glam god who was once Ziggy Stardust.

Instead, Bowie plays the reflective elder statesman dispensing some existential lyrics: "The moment you know, you know you know."

While the track – produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy from 1977 to 1979 – ultimately doesn't give many answers, it at least tells us where Bowie has been lately. And it's a welcome return from one of our great rock heroes.

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer


WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.


Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.


How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.


In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.


This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.


"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.


But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.


The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.


"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.


"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.


But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.


More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.


Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.


The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.


So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.


The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.


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Judge weeps at "Dating Game" serial killer's 'horrific acts'




Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala appears in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he was sentenced for two murders in the 1970s.


California serial killer Rodney Alcala was sentenced to additional prison time in New York for the murders of two more women, a case that brought a veteran judge to tears during the hearing.


Alcala, who is already on death row in California for the murders of four women and a girl, pleaded guilty in December to the 1971 murder of Cornelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, both in New York. On Monday, New York Supreme Court Judge Bonnie Wittner handed down a sentence of 25 years to life in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported.


"This kind of case is something I've never experienced, hope to never again. I just want to say I hope these families find some peace and solace for these inexplicably brutal and horrific acts," Wittner said, according to the Journal.


PHOTOS: California serial killers


Wittner then dissolved into tears. "As I said, in 30 years I've never had a case like this," she said.


Alcala raped and strangled Crilley, a 23-year-old TWA flight attendant, inside her Upper East Side apartment in 1971. Six years later, he killed Hover, also 23 and living in Manhattan. Her body was found in Westchester County, not far from her family's estate. 


The Journal reported that many in attendance at Monday's sentencing wore stickers bearing the black-and-white photograph that initially appeared in stories about Crilley's death. "Cornelia Always in Our Hearts," the stickers read.


Crilley's sister, Katie Stigell, spoke to the court, using most of her time talking about her sister, who "was in her prime" and "wouldn't hurt anybody." But Stigell also had words for Alcala.


"Mr. Alcala, I want you to know you broke my parents' hearts," Stigell said. "They never really recovered."


Hover's stepsisters declined to appear in court. Instead, prosecutor Alex Spiro read a letter on their behalf, the Journal reported.






"Ellen was a sweet, kind, generous, compassionate, loving and beautiful young woman. She chose to see the good in everyone she met because she had a huge and open heart," the letter read. "Her senseless murder irreparably damaged our family."


Alcala, a self-styled playboy who once appeared on "The Dating Game" TV match-making show, spent much of the 1970s eluding police by changing identities and locales. He has been behind bars since 1979, when he was arrested in the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach.


Twice he was sent to death row for murder, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. In February 2010, he was convicted again for Samsoe's murder and for the murders of four women in Los Angeles County. He is now awaiting execution.


At a news conference after Monday's hearing, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance said Alcala would be returned to California, where he is appealing his death-penalty conviction. Should that conviction be overturned, Vance said, Alcala would return to New York for his sentence.


The extent of Alcala's crimes were revealed as a task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Department and other agencies that was examining cold cases tied him to slayings across Southern California. New York police had long considered Alcala a suspect in the slayings of Crilley and Hover and had taken impressions of his teeth in 2003. Alcala had lived in New York periodically between 1968 and 1977. 


During that period, Crilley was found raped and strangled with her nylon stockings in her Manhattan apartment. Around that time, Alcala was working at a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire, authorities said.


Hover went missing in July 1977 and her body was discovered the following year. Before she disappeared, she had written the name "John Berger" in a planner, a name police believe Alcala used as an alias while in New York.


The Southern California killings began just a few months later.


THE ALCALA CASE: A TIMELINE



Page
1972 
— Alcala is convicted in the 1968 rape and beating of an 8-year-old girl.


Nov. 10, 1977 — The body of 18-year-old Jill Barcomb is found in the Hollywood Hills. She had been sexually assaulted, bludgeoned and strangled with a pair of blue pants.


Dec. 16, 1977 — Georgia Wixted, 27, is found beaten to death at her home in Malibu. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.


1978  Alcala appears in an episode of “The Dating Game” as Bachelor No. 1.


June 24, 1978 — Charlotte Lamb, a 32-year-old legal secretary from Santa Monica, is found in the laundry room of an El Segundo apartment complex. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace. 


June 14, 1979 — Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank is found strangled on the floor of her Burbank apartment.

June 20, 1979 – Robin Samsoe, 12, disappears near the Huntington Beach Pier. Her body is found 12 days later in the Sierra Madre foothills.



AlcalaJuly 24, 1979 —
 Rodney James Alcala, an unemployed photographer, is arrested at his parents’ Monterey Park home.


September 1980 – Alcala is convicted of the 1978 rape of a 15-year-old Riverside girl and sentenced to nine years in state prison.


June 20, 1980 — Orange County Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab sentences Alcala to death after he is convicted of Samsoe's murder.


July 11, 1980 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder, burglary and sexual assault charges against Alcala in the slaying of Parenteau.


April 15, 1981 — The L.A. district attorney’s office tells a judge that prosecution of Alcala in the Parenteau case could not proceed because a key witness admitted that he had committed perjury in another case.


Aug. 23, 1984 — The state Supreme Court reversed Alcala’s murder conviction in connection with Samsoe, ruling that the jury was improperly told about Alcala’s prior sex crimes.


June 20, 1986 — For the second time, Alcala is convicted for Samsoe’s murder and sentenced to death in Orange County Superior Court.



AlcalaDec. 31, 1992 —
 The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Alcala’s death sentence.


April 2, 2001 — A federal appellate court overturns Alcala’s death sentence in the Samsoe case, ruling that the Superior Court judge precluded the defense from presenting evidence “material to significant issues.”


June 5, 2003 — The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office files murder charges against Alcala alleging that he killed Wixted during a burglary and rape.


Sept. 19, 2005 — Additional murder charges are filed against Alcala in connection to the deaths of Barcomb, Wixted and Lamb.


Jan. 11, 2010 — Alcala’s trial for the five murders begins. He represents himself.


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— Kate Mather and Richard Winton


Photo: Convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala appears in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he was sentenced for two murders in the 1970s. Credit: David Handschuh / Associated Press


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British Soldier Killed by Afghan Soldier





KABUL, Afghanistan — A British soldier who was helping to build new quarters for the Afghan National Army at a small base in southern Afghanistan was fatally shot by an Afghan soldier in the first insider attack of 2013, military officials said Tuesday.




The attacker, who struck on Monday evening, also shot and wounded six other British soldiers in the engineering regiment, three of them seriously, before being killed, Afghan and British officials said.


During the attack, which occurred at Camp Hazrat, a joint patrol base in the Nahr-e-Seraj District of Helmand Province, several Afghan soldiers were also shot at but were not wounded, said Maj. Gen. Sayed Maluk, the commanding general of the Afghan Army’s 215 Corps, in a statement to the British Forces Broadcasting Service, an arm of the British Defense Ministry.


“It was the British team that sustained injuries,” General Maluk said. “Unfortunately, they were engineering personnel and they were building billeting for the A.N.A.”


He said the Afghan Army was doing everything it could to prevent such attacks. Until 2011, insider attacks, also known as “green on blue” attacks, were a relatively minor problem for the Western military forces in Afghanistan.


But last year, 62 international troops and civilian contractors died in attacks by Afghan forces. Two additional attacks are still under investigation.


Many in the military see the escalation as a game changer that requires Western troops to stay at arm’s length from the Afghans they are supposed to be training and mentoring.


At one point late last summer, Gen. John R. Allen, the commander for international forces in Afghanistan, temporarily suspended joint patrols unless they were approved at the highest levels because of the risk.


Members of NATO units were required to carry weapons with a loaded magazine, and each unit assigned some troops as “guardian angels” to protect fellow soldiers from insider attacks during meetings with Afghans as well as on patrol.


The Afghan Defense Ministry overhauled its screening process for new recruits and rescreened those already deployed.


“Prior to this incident happening we have done almost everything that we can,” General Maluk said.


He said Afghan soldiers have been told by religious leaders inside the corps that the coalition forces “are not invaders, they are our friendly forces; they are not here to invade, but rather they are here to help us reconstruct this country.”


“But to them, the enemy is the enemy,” he said.


The Taliban claimed responsibility for arranging the infiltration into the Afghan Army of the soldier responsible for Monday’s shooting.


A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusuf, said that the attacker’s name was Mohammed Qasim and that Mr. Qasim had “fulfilled his blessed duty.”


Mr. Qasim, who was between 23 and 25 years old and was known as Sheik Mohammed by his fellow soldiers, was a reticent young man who came from eastern Afghanistan, said Col. Abdul Saboor, an officer with the 215 Corps.


The sequence of events that led to the attack are still unclear, but it seems that the attacker, Mr. Qasim, was on guard duty in a tower as punishment for an infraction and initially began shooting at his Afghan compatriots. It is not clear if Mr. Qasim intended to kill them or whether it was a ploy to draw the British troops closer so that he could target them more easily.


Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.



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