On Q Professional Investigations

WACO, Texas (AP) — Texas law enforcement officials on Friday launched a criminal investigation into the massive fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people last month.

Investigators have largely treated the West Fertilizer Co. blast that killed 14 people as an industrial accident, but the Texas Department of Public Safety said in statement that the agency has now instructed the Texas Rangers and the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department to conduct a criminal probe.

“This disaster has severely impacted the community of West, and we want to ensure that no stone goes unturned and that all the facts related to this incident are uncovered,” DPS Director Steven McCraw said.

The plant blew up on the night of April 17 after a fire erupted at the facility in the rural town.

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said residents “must have confidence that this incident has been looked at from every angle and professionally handled — they deserve nothing less.”

The statement did not detail any further reasons for the criminal investigation and said no further information would be released at this time.

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It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault.

In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.’s in a matter of hours.

In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million.

The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating financial information with the stroke of a few keys, as well as common street criminals, who used that information to loot the automated teller machines.

The first to be caught was a street crew operating in New York, their pictures captured as, prosecutors said, they traveled the city withdrawing money and stuffing backpacks with cash.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment charging eight men — including their suspected ringleader, who was found dead in the Dominican Republic last month. The indictment and criminal complaints in the case offer a glimpse into what the authorities said was one of the most sophisticated and effective cybercrime attacks ever uncovered.

It was, prosecutors said, one of the largest heists in New York City history, rivaling the 1978 Lufthansa robbery, which inspired a scene in the movie “Goodfellas.”

Beyond the sheer amount of money involved, law enforcement officials said, the thefts underscored the vulnerability of financial institutions around the world to clever criminals working to stay a step ahead of the latest technologies designed to thwart them.

“In the place of guns and masks, this cybercrime organization used laptops and the Internet,” said Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn. “Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City, with the defendants fanning out across Manhattan to steal millions of dollars from hundreds of A.T.M.’s in a matter of hours.”

The indictment outlined how the criminals were able to steal data from banks, relay that information to a far-flung network of so-called cashing crews, and then have the stolen money laundered in purchases of luxury items like Rolex watches and expensive cars.

In the first operation, hackers infiltrated the system of an unnamed Indian credit-card processing company that handles Visa and MasterCard prepaid debit cards. Such companies are attractive to cybercriminals because they are considered less secure than financial institutions, computer security experts say.

The hackers, who are not named in the indictment, then raised the withdrawal limits on prepaid MasterCard debit accounts issued by the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah, also known as RakBank, which is in United Arab Emirates.

Once the withdrawal limits have been eliminated, “even a few compromised bank account numbers can result in tremendous financial loss to the victim financial institution,” the indictment states. And by using prepaid cards, the thieves were able to take money without draining the bank accounts of individuals, which might have set off alarms more quickly.

With five account numbers in hand, the hackers distributed the information to individuals in 20 countries who then encoded the information on magnetic-stripe cards. On Dec. 21, the cashing crews made 4,500 A.T.M. transactions worldwide, stealing $5 million, according to the indictment.

While the street crews were taking money out of bank machines, the computer experts were watching the financial transactions from afar, ensuring that they would not be shortchanged on their cut, according to court documents.

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KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — An 83-year-old nun and two fellow protesters were convicted Wednesday of interfering with national security when they broke into the primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium in the U.S.

It took the jury about 2 ½ hours to find the three protesters guilty of a charge of interfering with national security and a second charge of damaging federal property.

The trio spent two hours inside the complex, which has had a hand in making, maintaining or dismantling parts of every nuclear weapon in the country’s arsenal. They cut through security fences, hung banners, strung crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of the fortress-like Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, or HEUMF, inside the most secure part of complex.

Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, who testified on their own behalf during their federal trial, said they have no remorse for their actions and were pleased to reach one of the most secure parts of the facility.

Defense attorneys said in closing arguments Wednesday that federal prosecutors had overreached in the charges against the trio because of the embarrassment caused by the break-in.

“The shortcomings in security at one of the most dangerous places on the planet have embarrassed a lot of people,” defense lawyer Francis Lloyd said. “You’re looking at three scapegoats behind me.”

Prosecutor Jeff Theodore was dismissive of claims that the protesters’ actions were beneficial to security.

The head of an agency charged with safeguarding the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile said the breach is “completely unacceptable” and an “important wake-up call.” Neile Miller, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday that officials have taken “decisive action” since the incident, including a new management team and a new defense security chief to oversee all NNSA sites.

Rice said during cross examination that she wished she hadn’t waited so long to stage a protest inside the plant.

“My regret was I waited 70 years,” she said. “It is manufacturing that which can only cause death.”

Rice said she didn’t feel obligated to ask the Catholic bishop in the area for permission to act at Y-12. Challenged by a prosecutor about whether it would have been a courtesy to inform superiors of her plans, Rice responded: “I’ve been guilty of many discourtesies in my life.”

Boertje-Obed explained why they sprayed baby bottles full of human blood on the exterior of the facility.

“The reason for the baby bottles was to represent that the blood of children is spilled by these weapons,” he said.

All three defendants said they felt guided by divine forces in finding their way through the darkness from the perimeter of the plant to the enriched uranium plant without being detected.

Prosecutors argue the act was a serious security breach that continues to disrupt operations at the facility. The intrusion caused the plant to shut down for two weeks as security forces were re-trained and contractors were replaced.

Federal officials have said there was never any danger of the protesters reaching materials that could be detonated on site or used to assemble a dirty bomb, a position stressed by defense attorneys.

The protesters’ attorneys noted that once they refused to plead guilty to trespassing, prosecutors substituted that charge with the sabotage count that increased the maximum prison term from one year to 20 years. The other charge of damaging federal property carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The protesters call themselves “Transform Now Plowshares,” a reference to the biblical phrase: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Their actions were lauded by some members of Congress, who said the incursion called attention to flawed security at Y-12, first built as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II that provided enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The plant makes uranium parts for nuclear warheads, dismantles old weapons and is the nation’s primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium. The facility enjoys high levels of support in the region, and Oak Ridge has always taken pride in its role in building the atomic bomb, viewing it as crucial to the end of the war.

A report by the Department of Energy’s inspector general said Y-12 security failures included broken detection equipment, poor response from security guards and insufficient federal oversight of private contractors running the complex.

For decades, protesters have rallied at the gates of Y-12 around the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Some deliberately trespass or block traffic to provoke arrest and call more attention to their cause. Some years, authorities have tried to deprive them of the notoriety by refusing to prosecute. In previous prosecutions, the stiffest sentence ever meted out was less than a year in prison.

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Since 1993, the United States has seen a drop in the rate of homicides and other violence involving guns, according to two new studies released Tuesday. Using government data, analysts saw a steep drop for violence in the 1990s, they saw more modest drops in crime rates since 2000.

“Firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011,” according to a report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, “and nonfatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

There were seven gun homicides per 100,000 people in 1993, the Pew Research Center study says, which dropped to 3.6 gun deaths in 2010. The study relied in part on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew,” according to the Pew study. “The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75 percent lower in 2011 than in 1993.”

All of that is good news — but many Americans don’t seem to be aware of it. In a survey, the Pew Research Center found that only 12 percent of Americans believe the gun crime rate is lower today than it was in 1993; 56 percent believe it’s higher.

In an effort to explain that finding, the Pew researchers noted that while mass shootings are rare, they capture public interest and are often viewed as touchstone events that help define they year in which the crimes occur. As examples, they cite three shootings in the past two years, in Tucson, Ariz.; Aurora, Colo.; and in Newtown, Conn.

The U.S. gun crime rate peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Pew study says, ending years of growth in gun violence that began in the 1960s. But the rate of suicides committed using a firearm hasn’t fallen as fast, they add, noting that 6 out of every 10 gun deaths in America stems from suicide.

“Looking at the larger topic of firearm deaths, there were 31,672 deaths from guns in the U.S. in 2010,” according to the Pew Center study. “Most (19,392) were suicides; the gun suicide rate has been higher than the gun homicide rate since at least 1981, and the gap is wider than it was in 1981.”

The study also analyzed the people who’ve lost their lives to gun violence.

In 2010, 84 percent of those killed were male; 69 percent were between the ages of 18 and 40. And 55 percent of gun homicides that year were black, the researchers found — far higher than their share of the population (13 percent).

The study also notes that while the number of gun homicides has dropped, the number of guns in America hasn’t.

Noting that it isn’t clear how many Americans have guns in their households, the Pew researchers found that the “2009 per capita rate of one person per gun in the U.S. had roughly doubled since 1968.”

The federal report included data about where criminals had acquired their weapons.

“In 2004 (the most recent year of data available), among state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of the offense, fewer than two percent bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show,” according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. “About 10 percent of state prison inmates said they purchased it from a retail store or pawnshop, 37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source.”

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Cleveland (CNN) — The first time most of America heard Amanda Berry’s voice was on a frantic 911 call.

“I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years,” the 27-year-old woman said on the call, which was made on Monday. “And I’m here. I’m free now.”

A day later, Berry could be heard again. This time talking to relatives, she seemed positive, even upbeat — telling her grandmother Fern Gentry that she’s “fine” and that the 6-year-old girl also rescued Monday from a Cleveland home is indeed her own.

“I love you honey, thank God,” her tearful grandmother said, in a call recorded by CNN affiliate WJHL. “… I’ve thought about you all this time. I never forgot about you.”

Back in northern Ohio, balloons dotted the frontyard of the home of 23-year-old Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, who along with Berry and Michelle Knight were allegedly held captive for years in a Cleveland house. There was also a sign strung along a fence, the same one that had been there since Gina was first reported missing nine years ago.

Her 32-year-old sister, Mayra DeJesus, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Tuesday that her sister — for all the hell she’s gone through — is in “good spirits.”

DeJesus spent the day with family, who didn’t focus on what she’d gone through but more on lifting her up, her sister said.

Her brother, Ricardo, earlier described how the whole family was crying and shaking upon hearing Gina was safe and alive.

“I was just glad to be able to see her,” he said. “It’s been nine long years. I was just happy I was able to sit there and hug her and say, ‘Yup, you’re finally home.’”

Berry, DeJesus and the 32-year-old Knight each disappeared from the same Cleveland street — Lorain Avenue — three miles from the home in which they were found Monday evening. They escaped after Berry broke out the bottom of a screen door and called for help Monday evening, startling neighbor Charles Ramsey who came over and helped kick in the door.

Cleveland police and the FBI hailed Berry as a hero for her daring escape.

“We’re following her lead,” Cleveland’s Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said. “Without her, none of us would be here today.”

Three men have been jailed in the women’s disappearance — 54-year-old Pedro Castro, 50-year-old Onil Castro and 52-year-old Ariel Castro, who neighbors said lived at the house. All three are expected to be charged in the coming days.

Some neighbors of Ariel Castro spent Tuesday second-guessing themselves, questioning why they hadn’t noticed signs earlier and if they could have prevented the horrors.

“This is a heartbreaking moment for us, because I’m always out there (and) I’ve heard nothing,” said Daniel Marti, who’s known Ariel Castro since junior high school and lived near him for some 22 years.

“… To us, it was like nothing was happening. But yet it was happening, right in front of our face and we didn’t even know.”

‘He didn’t want nobody back there’

The predominantly Latino neighborhood, made up mostly of two-story frame homes, sits within sight of downtown. The gentrification that has spiffed up districts on either end hasn’t extended to the blocks around Castro’s home, where a number of houses are boarded up. But the churches in the neighborhood still ring the bells in their steeples, and the neighbors say they look out for one another.

Authorities and several neighbors say they had no prior indication anything suspicious was going on at the nondescript home on Seymour Avenue, where a Puerto Rican flag hung from the porch.

But after Monday’s discovery, they reflected back and noticed things that, in retrospect, might have signaled something awry.

Marti, for one, asked himself why he didn’t question why Castro — who, he thought, lived alone — would return each day with bags of McDonald’s food, or who would watch the little girl he occasionally took outside. He also recalled how Castro seemed to steer him away from the house when they talked:

“Now that I think of it, he didn’t want nobody back there.”

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said saw Castro at the park Sunday with a little girl and asked who she was: “He said it was his girlfriend’s daughter.”

Lugo said his sister got a bad vibe from the house and asked him not to let the children play unsupervised nearby. He said he heard yelling in the house in November 2011 and called police to investigate, but they left after no one answered the door.

And Nina Samoylicz, who lives nearby, said she called police about two years ago after spotting a naked woman in the backyard of Castro’s house. Samoylicz said when she called out to the woman, a man told the woman to get in the house, then ran in himself.

“She was just walking around and naked,” Samoylicz said. “We thought that was weird. We thought it was funny at first, and then we thought that was weird, so we called the cops. They thought we was playing, joking, they didn’t believe us.”

She said she had also seen tarps covering the backyard.

But Sgt. Sammy Morris, a Cleveland police spokesman, told CNN that the department had no record of a 911 call reporting a naked woman at Castro’s address.

In fact, authorities never had any indications that the women were being held in the home or that anything suspicious was going on there, Cleveland

Public Safety Director Martin Flask said. Neighbors had not provided any tips, he added.

Police had visited the home twice, authorities said Tuesday, once after Castro called about a fight in the street and another time to investigate Castro on an unrelated incident involving a child who had been left on a school bus.

The 2004 incident was the first of four exhibitions of “bad judgment” that led to Castro’s November firing by Cleveland’s school district, according to records released Tuesday night.

“He previously had been suspended for 60 days for leaving a child on a bus; 60 days for making an illegal U-turn in rush hour traffic with a bus load of students, and last school year for using the bus to do his grocery shopping,” the letter recommending his dismissal states. His firing came after he had left his bus unattended outside a school after his preschool routes had been canceled, without notifying his dispatcher or depot.

Tito DeJesus, a bandmate of Castro’s, said he had been inside the bass player’s home once, about two years ago, to help deliver a washer and dryer he’d sold to the suspect and saw “a normal environment.” DeJesus said he isn’t related to the rescued Gina DeJesus but had known the family for years.

“It didn’t seem to be a place where women were being held against their will,” he said. “Of course, mind you, I didn’t go throughout the entire house. I was just at the beginning of the house, in the living room, but it seemed normal.”

Finally free

Berry was last seen after finishing her shift at a Burger King in Cleveland on April 21, 2003. It was the eve of her 17th birthday. DeJesus disappeared nearly a year later, on April 2, 2004. She was 14.

Michelle Knight vanished on August 22, 2002, and her family reported her missing the next day, Flask said. She was 21.

Little was known about Knight’s case Tuesday. Her mother now lives in Naples, Florida, and was contacted by Cleveland police late Monday, a neighbor, Sheldon Gofberg, told CNN.

The three women and the child were released Tuesday from the hospital where they had been taken for evaluations, a spokeswoman said. Tomba said all four appeared to be in good condition, if in need of a good meal.

While amazing, such discoveries are more common now, said John D. Ryan, CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

“To us at the National Center, this is not something that we find shocking any more,” he said. “The fact is, we have seen more and more long-term missing cases end up in the victim being rescued many years after their original abduction.”

The most widely reported such incident in recent years was that of Jaycee Dugard, who was freed in 2009 after 18 years of captivity behind the home of a California couple.

In another case, Ryan said last year a 43-year-old man was found and reunited with his mother after being abducted at the age of 2.

More than anything, the three victims need privacy and time with family members, said Elizabeth Smart, who was in the headlines in 2002 when she was kidnapped from her Utah home at age 14 and held captive for nine months.

“I want them to know that nothing that has happened to them will ever diminish their value and it should never hold them back from doing what they want to do,” Smart told CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

The women should not feel pressure to speak publicly about their ordeal, Smart said, adding that time will help them heal. “It’s just incredible they are walking away from this horrendous nightmare, alive and safe today,” she said.

‘We’re hoping for a miracle’

Investigators had previously speculated that the disappearances of Berry, DeJesus and another girl, 14-year-old Ashley Summers, may have been connected. Summers’ family last saw her in July 2007, when she was 14.

“We did in fact believe there was an association between the Berry case and the DeJesus case as well as the Summers case,” said former FBI agent Jennifer Eakin. Eakin is now a case manager at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which in 2008 held a comprehensive review of the cases with the FBI and Cleveland police.

Now the Summers family is hoping that the Cleveland investigation will yield information about Ashley, her aunt, Debra Summers, said.

“We’re hoping for a miracle,” she said.

Anderson, the spokeswoman for the Cleveland FBI office, said investigators will question the three women found Monday in the hope that they know something about Summers’ disappearance.

Survival the key difference from ‘House of Horrors’ case

The suspects

Of the three brothers arrested, Ariel Castro was the only one to live at the home where the three women were apparently held, police said. The others lived elsewhere in the city.

Their uncle, Julio Castro, told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″ on Monday that his family had grown up in the same west Cleveland neighborhood and knew the Georgina DeJesus family.

Julio Castro told CNN’s Martin Savidge on Tuesday that family members were “surprised” over the developments.

“Shame on you,” Julio Castro said, when asked what he would say to his nephews.

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Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords received the 2013 Profile in Courage award at the John F. Kennedy Library on Sunday in recognition of the political, personal, and physical courage she has demonstrated in her fearless public advocacy for policy reforms aimed at reducing gun violence.

Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a 2011 shooting when a lone gunman opened fire as she met with constituents in a Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall, and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have been lobbying for more gun control legislation.

This year, on the second anniversary of the January shooting, the couple started Americans for Responsible Gun Ownership, an organization that “supports the right to bear arms and responsible public policy on guns and gun ownership.”

Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, presented the award to Giffords.

Kennedy took a moment to salute the first responders and the citizens of Boston. Referring to the Boston Marathon bombings last month, Kennedy said, “All Americans have been inspired by the countless acts of selfless bravery and compassion we saw during the violence that struck this city on Patriots Day.”

In presenting the award to the former Arizona Congresswoman, Kennedy said, “Gabby Giffords has turned a personal nightmare into a movement for political change.”

Earlier Sunday, Giffords and Kelly spent time visiting victims of the marathon bombings at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston.

“For victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, we extend our deepest sympathies to all of you who have endured violence and loss,” Kelly said.

“Courage means doing everything we can to prevent other parents from having to endure that loss,” he said.

Alluding to her disappointment in Congress’ failure to pass gun control legislation last week, Giffords called for courage from lawmakers.

“I believe we all have courage inside,” she said. “I just wish there was more courage in Congress.”

“It’s been a hard two years for me,” Giffords said, “but I want to make the world a better place more than ever.”

Kelly also praised his wife.

“There are people who make things happen. There are people who watch things happen. And there are people who wonder what just happened,” Kelly said. “Gabby Giffords is a person who makes things happen.”

Kennedy cited Giffords’ strength to carry on a difficult fight.

“Our family is still suffering from the heartbreak caused by gun violence,” Kennedy said. “No one should have to lose a husband, a wife, a father, a child, to senseless murder.

“But as our nominee has shown, out of that pain and tragedy, we must find the strength to carry on, to give meaning to our lives, and to build a more just and peaceful world.”

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National Rifle Association leaders told members Saturday that the fight against gun control legislation is far from over, with battles yet to come in Congress and next year’s midterm elections, but they vowed that none in the organization will ever have to surrender their weapons.

Proponents of gun control also asserted that they are in their fight for the long haul and have not been disheartened by last month’s defeat of a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun sales.

The debate over gun control legislation has reached a fever pitch in the wake of December’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 first-graders and six educators were killed. The expanded background checks bill supported by President Barack Obama and other lawmakers in response to the Connecticut shooting failed to pass in the Senate.

During a fiery and defiant speech Saturday, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, the public face of the NRA, said the “political and media elites” have tried to use Sandy Hook and other recent shootings “to blame us, to shame us, to compromise our freedom for their agenda.” He said the proposed bill “got the defeat that it deserved” and that the measure would do nothing to prevent the next mass shooting.

“We will never surrender our guns, never,” LaPierre told several thousand people during the organization’s annual member meeting, which is part of the yearly NRA convention being held this weekend in Houston. More than 70,000 NRA members are expected to attend the three-day convention, which began Friday. Acres of displays of rifles, pistols, swords and hunting gear could be found inside the convention hall.

James Porter, the incoming NRA president, said Obama’s gun control efforts have created a “political spontaneous combustion” that has prompted millions of Americans to become first-time gun owners and created a national outrage that will manifest itself in next year’s midterm elections.

“The Senate and House are up for grabs,” Porter said during Saturday’s meeting. “We can direct this massive energy of spontaneous combustion to regain the political high ground. We do that and Obama can be stopped.”

LaPierre said the NRA now has a record 5 million members, but he urged for increased membership and added that it “must be 10 million strong” in its battle against gun control.

Meanwhile, across the street from the convention, advocates of expanded background checks and other gun control measures vowed to continue their fight.

Kellye Bowman of the Houston chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a national grassroots effort promoting gun control that was started after the Sandy Hook shooting, said her organization was not discouraged by last month’s failure of the gun control bill. She said its defeat actually increased her group’s membership.

Bowman, who described herself as a fifth generation Texan who grew up shooting guns, said her group’s primary focus now is meeting with legislators and supporting those who agree with their efforts and using the ballot box to remove those that don’t.

“We can turn any mom into an activist. They need to start listening to us,” said Bowman, who was among more than 60 protesters who had gathered Saturday afternoon across the street from the convention.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. —A smash-and-grab at a Northland Best Buy store netted thieves an estimated $30,000 worth of electronics.

The heist happened just after 2 a.m. Kansas City police said the thieves crashed a Jeep into the store near Interstate 29 and Tiffany Springs Parkway and began grabbing computer equipment.

Authorities said the three people were in and out of the store within 3 minutes. They got away by using another vehicle parked in back of the store.

Store officials have turned over surveillance video to police.

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By the middle of the month, iPhones and iPads will likely pass a Pentagon security review that will result in their use, for the first time, on military networks.

As part of the Pentagon’s big push into the mobile-device market, the Defense Department has already issued so-called Security Technical Implementation Guides, or STIGs, for BlackBerry 10 phones and Playbook tablets, and for Samsung’s Android-powered Knox phone. Apple will not be left out.

“We expect to release the iOS STIG sometime in the next two weeks,” says Air Force Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Pentagon still has “a few open questions” about how Apple’s operating system — and the high-end devices it powers — will lock down its sensitive data, Pickart says. But it’s issued an “interim STIG” for the latest version of iOS, iOS 6, indicating that the obstacles are minor. It’s a bureaucratic irony of the mobile age: Apple desktop and laptop computers still aren’t cleared to access military networks, but iPhones and iPads will be.

None of this means the Pentagon is actually buying troops any tablets or smartphones — yet. But military “user groups” interested in accessing Pentagon networks on the move now have approval to use these select devices. For instance: the Army’s Combined Arms Center, which recently developed a book about Afghanistan for the iPad, or whomever will end up using the Pentagon’s experimental biometrics-scanning smartphone.

As might be expected, the military is moving very cautiously into the mobile market. The vast majority of mobile devices already in use in the Department of Defense are BlackBerrys, much like with the rest of the government — some 470,000 of them. The first new devices with security clearances for military networks? Um, BlackBerry phones and tablets.

To think, just months ago, a rumor circulated that the Pentagon was ditching BlackBerry for iPhones and iPads. LOL.

It’s not clear when the Pentagon will use that market power to finally issue orders for specific smartphones and tablets. The Pentagon’s top information-security officials speak about purchasing a “family of devices” for military use, yet it’ll be weeks or months before any of those devices actually make their way to troops’ pockets and backpacks. Most likely, by the time the first military mobile orders get issued, Apple products will be among them.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Tens of thousands of people are expected to rally in dozens of cities from New York to Bozeman, Mont., on Wednesday in what has become an annual cry for easing the nation’s immigration laws.

The rallies carry a special sense of urgency this year, two weeks after a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would bring many of the estimated 11 million living in the U.S. illegally out of the shadows.

“The invisible become visible on May 1,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which is organizing what was expected to be the nation’s largest rally.

The May Day crowds were not expected to approach the massive demonstrations of 2006 and 2007, during the last serious attempt to introduce major changes to the U.S. immigration system. Despite the large turnouts, many advocates of looser immigration laws felt they were outmaneuvered by opponents who flooded congressional offices with phone calls and faxes at the behest of conservative talk-radio hosts.

Now, immigrant advocacy groups are focusing heavily on calling and writing members of Congress, sometimes targeting specific lawmakers at key moments in the debate. Reform Immigration for America, a network of groups, claims more than 1.2 million subscribers, including recipients of text messages and Facebook followers.

Even conservatives are split on the best approach to immigration. Some Republicans shun the idea of a single, encompassing bill, especially one that would contain a path to citizenship, still viewed by some as amnesty. Instead, they prefer to unite around consensus issues like border security, temporary workers and workplace enforcement.

A text-message blast during a key vote in 2010 on legislation to provide legal status to many who came to the country as children resulted in 75,000 phone calls to members of Congress in two days, said Jeff Parcher, communications director for the Center for Community Change, which works on technology-driven advocacy for the network of groups.

A phone blitz targeting Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch produced 100 calls a day to the Utah lawmaker’s office last week, Parcher said. After Hatch was quoted Sunday in The Salt Lake Tribune saying immigration reform couldn’t wait, a message went out to call his office with thanks.

Organizers are also reaching out by email and old-fashioned phone banks.

“The general rule is you keep people on the platform they’re used to,” Parcher said. “If they’re on Facebook, we’ll ask them to post something to Congress members’ pages.”

Gabriel Villalobos, a Spanish-language talk radio host in Phoenix, said many of his callers believe it is the wrong time for marches, fearful that that any unrest could sour public opinion on immigration reform. Those callers advocate instead for a low-key approach of calling members of Congress.

“The mood is much calmer,” said Villalobos, who thinks the marches are still an important show of political force.

Salas, whose group is known as CHIRLA, dates the May Day rallies to a labor dispute with a restaurant in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood that drew several hundred demonstrators in 2000. Crowds grew each year until the House of Representatives passed a tough bill against illegal immigration, sparking a wave of enormous, angry protests from coast to coast in 2006.

The rallies, which coincide with Labor Day in many countries outside the U.S., often have big showings from labor leaders and elected officials.

Aside from Los Angeles, big crowds were expected in New York, Chicago and Milwaukee. At a rally in Salem, Ore., Gov. John Kitzhaber planned to sign legislation to authorize drivers’ licenses to people in the state illegally. With Congress in recess, there were no major demonstrations planned in the nation’s capital.

Organizers were sending text-message blasts on Tuesday to remind subscribers of times and places for the marches.

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