Kansas shooting suspect identifed, believed to be white supremacist

 

The man who allegedly killed three people when he opened fire outside a Jewish community center and nearby retirement community in a Kansas City suburb Sunday is reportedly a 73-year-old Missouri man with a history of racist and anti-Semitic statements.

A Johnson County (Kan.) jail official told the Associated Press that authorities had identified the suspect in the shooting in Overland Park as Frazier Glenn Cross, aka Frazier Glenn Miller. 

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The Kansas City Star reported that Cross was booked into the Johnson County jail on suspicion of premeditated first-degree murder Sunday evening, but had not been formally charged. The paper reported that public records showed that Cross is a resident of Aurora, Mo., a small town southwest of Springfield. 

A dispatcher with the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department told the Star Sunday that local authorities were working with Johnson County authorities and the FBI. A woman who answered the phone at a number listed for Frazier Glenn Miller told the paper she did not know where he was and then started to cry. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center says he has long been an outspoken white supremacist and was once a "grand dragon" of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The group reports on its website that it spoke to Miller's wife, Marge, by phone Sunday and she said police told her that her husband had been arrested in Sunday's attacks.

At a news conference earlier Sunday, Overland Park police chief John Douglass said the suspect was not known to area law enforcement and there was no indication that he knew his victims. 

The family of two of the three people who died in the shooting released a statement Sunday identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood. They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support.

"We take comfort knowing they are together in Heaven," the family said. It asked for privacy to mourn.

Rebecca Sturtevant, a spokeswoman for Overland Park Regional Medical Center, where Reat was taken and where he died, said family members said Corporon and the boy were at the community center so that the high school freshman could try out for KC SuperStar, a singing competition for students.

Douglass said the suspect made several statements to police, "but it's too early to tell you what he may or may not have said." He also said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether there was an anti-Semitic motive for the attacks or if they will be investigated as hate crimes. The Jewish festival of Passover begins Monday.

"We are investigating it as a hate crime. We're investigating it as a criminal act. We haven't ruled out anything. ... Again, we're three hours into it," he said.

Douglass said the suspect first opened fire in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. Corporon died at the scene and his grandson later died at the hospital. The chief said the suspect then drove to the nearby retirement community, Village Shalom, where he shot and killed a woman or girl. The gunman also shot at two other people during the attacks, but missed them, Douglass said.

Douglass said a shotgun was used in the attacks, and that investigators are also trying to determine if a handgun and assault-style rifle may also have been used.

Police officers were also sent to other Jewish facilities in the area immediately after the shootings, the police chief said.

"Immediately when we learned we had an active shooter we dispatched vehicles to secure and surveil all the active Jewish facilities in the city and other religious institutions which are not Jewish," Douglass said.

The suspect was taken to the Johnson County Detention Center. Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe, who attended the news conference along with Barry Grissom, U.S. Attorney for Kansas, said it was too soon to know when the suspect would appear in court.

Corporon, who was a family doctor, leaves behind a wife of 49 years. His grandson, Reat, was an Eagle Scout who loved camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother, the family said.

President Barack Obama released a statement expressing his grief over the attack, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback vowed to bring those responsible to justice.

"My heart and prayers are with all those who were affected by today's events," Brownback said in a statement. "We will pursue justice aggressively for these victims and criminal charges against the perpetrator or perpetrators to the full extent of the law."

Michael Siegal, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, also said in an emailed statement that "no community should have to face a moment such as this one."

"Today, on the eve of Pesach, we are left to contemplate how we must continue our work building a world in which all people are free to live their lives without the threat of terror," he said.

Click for more from The Kansas City Star

Click for more from Fox 4.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Published on: 7:13 PM

War In Black And White: On The Front Lines With Syria's Army

SLONFEH, Syria -- The commander tore off a piece of bread and dipped it into a platter of hummus. Before him sat a spread of simple mountain dishes and grilled meats -- a late lunch after a long day along the northern front of Syria's war.

"I see this war in black and white, angels and devils," said the commander, who, like every military official interviewed in Syria by The Huffington Post during a visit last month, spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I am on the side of white, and they are on the side of black."

The commander, who holds the rank of colonel and has been in the Syrian army for two decades, bore a calm, certain demeanor. He had the jaded aspect of an aging veteran despite only being in his forties, with a young face and soft frame. After service in Lebanon and the Kurdish town of Qamishli, the current three-year-old uprising, he said, has been his toughest fight yet, one that has left him with no doubts about its propriety.

"You can't even imagine the blackness in their minds," he said of the rebels. "That it even still exists in this world, at this time."

The northern front the commander and his troops patrol, in the rugged, craggy hills and valleys of Latakia province, is proving to be one of the war's most stubborn -- and most important.

On the rebel side, the border with Turkey, where opposition fighters draw much of their strength and resources, is often less than a dozen miles away. On the government-controlled side, the province is thick with soldiers and populated by a staunchly pro-government community composed mainly of Alawite farmers -- members of the minority religious sect that includes Syria's president, Bashar Assad. A rebel conquest of the coastal city of Latakia, which houses the country's main port, would be a huge blow to the government.

Up in the mountains, incursions happen with deadly regularity, but have so far proven difficult to sustain. Other than brief assaults, the front line, like the attitudes of combatants on both sides, has hardly budged in years.

In late March, rebels launched an operation that briefly brought them control of a significant coastal town about 25 miles from here, as well as the largely Armenian community of Kesab. The Syrian army has since retaken much of that territory.

The commander came to this area last August after another incursion, in which rebel brigades took control of a dozen frontier communities nearby, leaving a trail of death and destruction. The Syrian army recaptured that ground, too, within a month.

In the periods in between, the forces on the two sides face each other at such close proximity that the Army has grown familiar with the other side's movements and routines. The soldiers say they know the names of the local rebel leaders, and what times of day they like to pray, or eat, or fight. And when they are bored, the fighters on the two sides are close enough to yell obscenities at one another.

"Sometimes the men spend the whole night cursing each other across the valleys," the commander said earlier in the day, over tea at his regional headquarters, after a drive across the front. "'F--- you!' 'No, f--- you!'"

At certain points in the drive at the front, he had pointed to villages or towns, easily visible to the naked eye, that housed rebel fighters, and cautioned his guests to be alert to snipers.

"They shoot at us every day," he said. "And every day they kill someone -- a farmer, a villager, a soldier."

Being so close to the rebels has given the commander a good picture of his enemy, and some begrudging respect for their skill, but it has done nothing to mollify his view of their agenda. He estimates that only about a third of the opposition fighters are Syrian, and the rest, he insists, are foreign militants. (Outside estimates have put the overall proportion of foreign fighters in the opposition closer to 10 percent.)

"They are getting better at fighting," he said. "A local person from here, he doesn't fight well -- he doesn't have the experience. But when someone comes from the outside, he brings in skills from fighting many wars in the past. We're seeing this happen."

He added, "They've come a long way from home into order to kill and be killed here."

Later, at the lunch, the commander was asked whether he thought there might be Syrians among the opposition who didn't support the government, but who also didn't support terrorism -- some gray amid the black and white.

"I do think there were such people in the beginning, but they were very few in number," he said. "But for me, there is no confusion, there is total clarity -- every day I see who the enemy is, and I know what they stand for."

"I always knew the war would end up like this," he went on. "And it will take a lot more time, too. Because they have patience, and so do we."

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Published on: 8:37 PM

White House Makes Clear To Iran: U.N. Ambassador Choice 'Not Viable'

(Adds background on U.S. ability to deny visas to diplomats, Iranian comment, paragraphs 6 and 12)
WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - The White House made clear on Tuesday that it did not welcome Iran's choice of Hamid Abutalebi as its new United Nations ambassador, saying officials had told Tehran that the selection was "not viable."
But White House spokesman Jay Carney stopped short of saying Abutalebi would be barred from entering the United States because of his alleged role in the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, during which radical Iranian students held U.S. Embassy staff for 444 days.
"We've informed the government of Iran that this potential selection is not viable," Carney told reporters.
Asked to explain what "not viable" meant, Carney said: "It's diplomatic jargon to mean what you want it to mean."
He declined to elaborate on whether Abutalebi would be barred from the country, and emphasized that Iran's choice of Abutalebi was a "potential selection" that had "not been formally made."
As the "host" nation for the U.N. headquarters, the United States is generally required to provide access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. However, the State Department last week said U.S. law allows it to deny visas to diplomats for reasons of "security, terrorism, and foreign policy."
Earlier on Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Ministry played down legislation passed by the U.S. Senate on Monday to bar Abutalebi from entering the United States, saying it had contacted the U.S. government about a visa.
Some members of the U.S. Congress have expressed outrage at the choice of the veteran Iranian diplomat. The House of Representatives is expected to soon pass a similar ban.
"We share the Senate's concerns regarding this case and find the potential nomination very troubling," said Carney.
In remarks to Iranian media, Abutalebi has played down his role during the hostage crisis, suggesting he was just a translator.
It was unclear whether the dispute over the ambassador would have an impact on a new round of talks about Iran's nuclear program that began on Tuesday in Vienna between Iran and six major world powers, including the United States.
"It has been a usual practice in the Iranian Foreign Ministry to formally appoint ambassadors for all foreign postings, once all formalities pertaining to this process are completed," a spokesman for Iran's U.N. mission in New York said on Tuesday. (Reporting by Steve Holland and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler, David Storey and Mohammad Zargham)

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Published on: 6:12 PM

Silicon Valley's white men problem

In HBO's new comedy series "Silicon Valley," five young men live inside a tech incubator.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Mitch Kapor and Ben Jealous worry that a lack of diversity in tech firms is stalling innovation
• Startups succeed, they say, when they meet unmet needs
• Innovators from diverse backgrounds can uncover fresh, unsolved problems
• Capitalism, they say, is U.S. operating system but current version needs an upgrade

Editor's note: Tech pioneer Mitchell Kapor is the co-founder of the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Kapor Capital. Benjamin Todd Jealous, the former president and CEO of the NAACP, is a venture partner at Kapor Capital. Both Kapor and Jealous serve on the board of the Level Playing Field Institute. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.

(CNN) -- When Frederick Hutson left prison in 2012 after serving four years on marijuana-related charges, he realized he had gained something more than his freedom: insight into an overlooked consumer market.

Many inmates are stuck in an age before Instagram or Facebook, relying on envelopes and pay phones to connect with family on the outside.

So Hutson founded Pigeonly, a photo-sharing and low-cost phone call service that has already helped 50,000 incarcerated individuals connect with their loved ones, maintain their ties to society, and remain a presence in their children's lives.

The story of Pigeonly is statistically unlikely: a disruptive technology created by a member of a disenfranchised community, in order to solve a problem within that community.

Mitchell Kapor and Benjamin Todd Jealous

It is also a model for the type of entrepreneurship that can revive American capitalism: both inclusive of and responsive to America's changing demographics.

One of the great achievements of the civil rights and women's rights movements was that they unleashed an enormous pool of talent into the economic life of America. Desegregation and the women's movement broke down barriers to education and employment and made our nation stronger by making it more competitive.

Yet 50 years later, a narrow vision of capitalism once again threatens to leave many Americans behind. Our nation's failure to achieve equal educational opportunity has exacerbated race-based economic disparities and produced two starkly different American economies.

And while women have made strong gains in professional life, they remain dramatically underrepresented in many of the most profitable sectors. Silicon Valley is hardly the only place where this is evident, but addressing it here is crucial to turning the tide.

Last year there were eight states where zero Latino students took the Advanced Placement exam in computer science, and 11 states in which no black students took the test. In three states, not a single female student sat for the exam.

It is no surprise, then, that 99% of venture capital-funded startups in 2010 were founded by whites or people of Asian descent, the vast majority of whom were men. The result of this pipeline problem is an enormous amount of untapped talent and a tech sector that fails to reflect the demographics of its users.

To be sure, government can play a crucial role in leveling the playing field. But it can only go so far. The leaders of the innovation economy can and should play their part in reviving capitalism by making it more responsive to a changing country's full range of widespread needs and more inclusive in the process.

This is a practical demand as much as a moral one.

Underrepresented populations are uniquely prepared to do what the tech sector claims to do best: innovate.

Look at the app store on any smartphone. There are thousands of programs to edit a photo or help you check the weather, but far fewer that exist to close the gaps in our society.

In Silicon Valley, we like to say that every problem is a potential opportunity. But it takes a diversity of backgrounds to identify the real-world problems begging for a solution. Simply put, startups like Pigeonly are shattering expectations of what the market demands.

Smart investors are looking at firms like Regalii, which helps immigrants send cash remittances back to their home countries, or Plaza Familia, a Latina-founded multilingual education software platform that helps parents track their children's' school progress in their native language.

Our firm, Kapor Capital, invests in these companies and dozens of others that work to close gaps. We saw that startups like Pigeonly were launched by entrepreneurs who identified an unmet need in the market as a result of their life experiences.

Silicon Valley tells an idealistic story of itself and the revolutionary role of tech leaders in the 21st century economy.

Tech innovation can and should expand wealth, democratize access to opportunity, and build a meritocracy where talent matters most. However, we still have a long way to go.

We will be there when companies like Pigeonly, Regalii, and Plaza Familia and their founders -- African-Americans, Latinos, women of all colors, and others historically excluded -- are no longer the exception to the rule.

Capitalism remains our nation's operating system. The current version needs an upgrade. Investing in the people who are too often locked out, and their ideas, can advance our economy and our country to the next level.

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Published on: 4:03 PM