Expert testimony on trial in murder case review

Police suspected that William Richards had killed his wife, Pamela, the night her body was found.

There was no sign of an intruder, and police said the crime scene appeared staged. But Richards denied killing Pamela, and authorities had trouble obtaining a conviction.

After two juries hung, a third heard new evidence: A forensic odontologist testified that a "bite mark" on Pamela's hand was consistent with Richards' unusual dentition, a pattern the prosecution expert said was found in only about 2% of the population. That jury convicted, and a judge sentenced Richards to 25 years to life.

Ten years after the conviction, the prosecution odontologist recanted his testimony. Relying on new computer technology that made it possible to view the "bite mark" more clearly, the odontologist ruled out Richards as its source.

The California Supreme Court is now weighing his case, wrangling over what to do when forensic evidence is later discredited. A broad ruling could affect scores of criminal convictions. A narrow one would offer little hope to those convicted at least in part by so-called junk science.

"A lot of forensic science is not well validated to begin with, and that especially includes bite mark evidence," said Hastings Law School professor David L. Faigman, an expert on scientific evidence. He said the court could rule for Richards but limit the kinds of cases that would be affected. If discredited science alone became grounds for a retrial, he said, "then you are potentially opening up the floodgates."

The case against Richards, 63, was largely circumstantial. Richards said he discovered his wife's body after returning home from work shortly before midnight Aug. 10, 1993. But the sandy, sagebrush-pocked land around their remote, high desert home in San Bernardino County contained no unknown tire tracks or footprints. Nothing had been stolen.

Although Pamela was found naked from the waist down, blood splatter on her pants, found nearby, suggested she had been fully dressed when her head was crushed with a cinder block steppingstone. The blow had been so brutal that it left one of her eyes dangling from its socket. An examination failed to detect signs of rape.

Both Pamela, 40, and her husband openly had affairs, and the prosecution contended that Pamela was about to leave her husband for her lover. There were written plans in place for the couple to divide their assets.

Pamela worked as a waitress, and Richards was a mechanical engineer. They had been married for more than 20 years, and their rural home consisted of a trailer, a shack and a shed. A generator provided power.

San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies viewed Richards' behavior that night as suspicious. He told them his wife was "stone cold" dead, though a deputy said the body appeared fresh.

He showed police evidence, including her bloody slacks, across the property and suggested how the crime must have been committed. Police said it was too dark for Richards to have spied the pants and other evidence unless he knew where they had been left.

Richards had clocked out from work that night, and according to the police time line, he had only eight minutes to kill his wife. Investigators said she was strangled and bludgeoned.

Writing from prison, Richards persuaded the California Innocence Project to take his case. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville held a hearing on Richards' case in 2009.

The hearing discredited the old bite mark testimony and unveiled new evidence. DNA from an unknown male was found on the steppingstone used to smash Pamela's head, at spots a law enforcement investigator said the killer would have touched. Another test ruled out Richards as the source of a 2-centimeter hair found under one of Pamela's fingernails.

The defense also demonstrated that a tiny tuft of blue thread that prosecutors said was found under Pamela's fingernail was not visible in early photographs of her hand. Richards had been wearing a blue shirt the night of the murder. Police blamed the poor quality of the photo for the discrepancy.

Prosecutors said the DNA could have come from someone sneezing on the steppingstone, and the hair could have been picked up anywhere. None of the new evidence was enough to overturn the conviction, they argued.

McCarville, however, ruled that the developments undermined the prosecution's case and pointed "unerringly to innocence." He overturned the conviction.

A three-judge appellate panel disagreed and reinstated it. New evidence, they ruled, is not enough to reopen a case unless it clearly points to innocence, and this evidence did not meet that high standard.

Richards' lawyers have asked the California Supreme Court to rule that the dental expert's original testimony amounted to false evidence. A demonstration of false evidence is enough to get a retrial if it significantly affected the verdict.

The California Supreme Court appeared divided during oral argument in September. Justice Carol A. Corrigan suggested that expert testimony is opinion and cannot be considered true or false. Several justices appeared to be siding with her.

Justice Goodwin Liu, however, countered that it was not the opinion that constituted a falsehood but the fact that the expert represented it as being backed by science.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephanie Zeitlin cautioned the jurists about the effect of their decision. If inaccurate expert testimony could reopen criminal convictions, the finality of criminal trials would be "eviscerated," she said.

"The people are entitled to finality; the victims are entitled to finality," Zeitlin argued. "It should not be subject to a mere battle of the experts."

But bad science has been implicated in more than half of all wrongful convictions, according to Jan Stiglitz, co-director of the California Innocence Project. And even if the court favored Richards, he said, it would remain difficult for inmates to win new hearings.

"I don't think we really have to worry about the floodgates," said Stiglitz, a professor at San Diego-based California Western School of Law.

If Richards prevails, San Bernardino County will retry him, said retired Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael W. Risley, who prosecuted Richards. "There is not a doubt in my mind that anybody else other than William Richards murdered Pamela," Risley said.

Asked whether a jury hearing the new evidence would convict, Risley replied: "Good question."

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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White House Presses for Drone Rule Book

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”

The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said.

Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on targeted killings, the government has refused even to acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan.

But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr. Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN interview in September that drones were used to prevent “an operational plot against the United States” and counter “terrorist networks that target the United States.”

But for at least two years in Pakistan, partly because of the C.I.A.’s success in decimating Al Qaeda’s top ranks, most strikes have been directed at militants whose main battle is with the Pakistani authorities or who fight with the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan.

In Yemen, some strikes apparently launched by the United States killed militants who were preparing to attack Yemeni military forces. Some of those killed were wearing suicide vests, according to Yemeni news reports.

“Unless they were about to get on a flight to New York to conduct an attack, they were not an imminent threat to the United States,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is a critic of the strikes. “We don’t say that we’re the counterinsurgency air force of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, but we are.”

Then there is the matter of strikes against people whose identities are unknown. In an online video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of suspected, unknown militants.

Originally that term was used to suggest the specific “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

Many people inside and outside the government have argued for far greater candor about all of the strikes, saying excessive secrecy has prevented public debate in Congress or a full explanation of their rationale. Experts say the strikes are deeply unpopular both in Pakistan and Yemen, in part because of allegations of large numbers of civilian casualties, which American officials say are exaggerated.

Gregory D. Johnsen, author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia,” argues that the strike strategy is backfiring in Yemen. “In Yemen, Al Qaeda is actually expanding,” Mr. Johnsen said in a recent talk at the Brookings Institution, in part because of the backlash against the strikes.

Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistan-born analyst now at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the United States should start making public a detailed account of the results of each strike, including any collateral deaths, in part to counter propaganda from jihadist groups. “This is a grand opportunity for the Obama administration to take the drones out of the shadows and to be open about their objectives,” he said.

But the administration appears to be a long way from embracing such openness. The draft rule book for drone strikes that has been passed among agencies over the last several months is so highly classified, officials said, that it is hand-carried from office to office rather than sent by e-mail.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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L.A.'s revamped teacher evaluation system getting mixed grades

Third-grade teacher Kelly Vallianos wanted to find an engaging way for her students to learn about measuring perimeters. One idea — to have students design a restaurant floor plan — was too difficult, she feared.

But with the help of colleagues, she found a way to tailor that fifth-grade idea to her younger students at Dominguez Elementary School, who excitedly sketched out an imaginary pizzeria.

Vallianos credits the Los Angeles Unified School District's new teacher evaluation system for sparking deeper and more collaborative conversations with administrators, who she said gave her ideas to make the lesson work.

The district's new performance reviews have come under fire by United Teachers Los Angeles, which opposes the controversial element of using student test scores as one factor in measuring teacher effectiveness.

But largely lost in the debate is the fact that the system's centerpiece is a new classroom observation process that, despite some drawbacks, is being praised by many as a better way to help teachers improve.

"It's a more reflective, much more well-rounded process," said Vallianos, who has been teaching for 19 years.

Teachers are ranked on a scale on instruction, lesson plans, classroom environment and dozens of other criteria. A highly effective teacher, for instance, will be able to intellectually engage all students and prompt them to lead their own discussion topics. An ineffective teacher will generate all questions and most answers, involving just a handful of students.

During observations, administrators type notes into their laptops and later rate each of 61 skills. Principals and other administrators conducting the observations must pass a test to ensure they are fairly and accurately scoring instructors. Conferences with teachers before and after the classroom visits are required.

The method is meant to make observations more useful, uniform and objective, using evidence rather than opinions. But it's an elaborate process and has provoked widespread criticism that it takes too long for principals who are already overwhelmed with increasing workloads. And those who can't type well take even longer, administrators say.

"The technology is creating great difficulty and frustration," said Judith Perez, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. "It feels like an immense amount of pressure on people without alleviating their workload."

Teachers union President Warren Fletcher agrees that a better system is needed; UTLA has designed its own. He said "the jury is still out" on the district's observation process but added that it shares some common elements with the union's proposal.

The new system also includes evidence of student achievement — which could be in the form of test scores — feedback from students and parents, and the teacher's contributions to the school community.

The new observations were tested last year on a voluntary basis with about 450 teachers and 320 administrators; this year, every principal and one volunteer teacher at each of the district's 1,200 schools are expected to be trained.

Officials have not yet announced when the system will be used for every teacher — or when the ratings will begin to count for decisions on layoffs, tenure or pay. But in a video shown at the training sessions, L.A. Supt. John Deasy made the stakes clear.

"We have perhaps no greater responsibility than assuring that every student in this district is taught by an effective teacher in a school led by an effective leader," he said.

Many educators agree that the current evaluation system — known as Stull for the state law that created it — doesn't promote that goal of top-notch teachers for every student. Criticized as a perfunctory checklist of expectations that doesn't help teachers improve, the system awarded 99.3% of L.A. Unified teachers the highest rating in 2009-10 — even though only 45% of district students that year performed at grade level for reading and 56% were proficient in math.

The new system has given teachers like Lisa Thorne a boost. Thorne, a math teacher at Hamilton High School, said the new process is "unwieldy" but far more helpful in homing in on her strengths and weaknesses.

After the self-evaluation part of the process, Thorne chose to focus on improving her work with small groups of students, prompting her to try such techniques as using a three-dimensional pegboard to teach geometry. And she started a new computer-based class to help struggling ninth-graders master algebra. Administrators had seen her use the techniques with older students during a class visit and were impressed enough to give her the green light, she said.

"I would definitely say the new system is an improvement, because it's more specific about what they're looking for," Thorne said. "It helps to get the conversation going with administrators."

Eduardo Solorzano, principal of San Fernando Middle School, agrees. In particular, he said, the focus on careful note-taking has given him specific examples to use in helping teachers improve.

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Bomb at Pakistan Shiite Procession Kills 7

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A roadside bomb killed at least seven people and wounded 30 others at a Shiite Muslim procession in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, police said, as minority Shiites prepared to observe the holy day of Ashoura.

Police official Rashid Khan said the bomb struck the procession in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, which is located near the South Waziristan tribal region.

The dead included three children, he said, while some of the injured were in critical condition.

Khan said about 100 Shiites were passing through the city to join a main procession when the bomb went off. No one claimed responsibility, but the suspicion fell on Pakistani Taliban who often carry out such attacks.

On Sunday, Shiites in Pakistan will celebrate Ashoura, which commemorates the seventh century death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. The Sunni-Shiite schism over Muhammad's rightful heir dates back to that time.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the bombing and reiterated his government's resolve to stop militants.

"Such nefarious acts cannot deter the people and the government in their fight against the scourge of militancy," he said in a statement.

Pakistan has deployed thousands of additional police across the country to beef up security, and authorities have suspended mobile phone service in all the major cities for two days to prevent such bombings.

Officials say Taliban frequently use cellular phones as remote detonators for bomb attacks.

Pakistani Taliban and other banned Sunni militant groups often target Shiites during the time around Ashoura.

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Larry Hagman Dies

TV Watch

TV News

By Aaron Parsley

11/24/2012 at 12:00 AM EST

Larry Hagman has died.

The actor, who famously played J.R. Ewing on the hit primetime soap Dallas, was 81.

"When he passed, he was surrounded by loved ones," his family said in a statement released to the Dallas Morning News on Friday. "It was a peaceful passing, just as he had wished for. The family requests privacy at this time."

"This is so sad. Larry was really someone who was loved by everyone," his agent Joel Dean tells PEOPLE. "Me especially. He was the most loving, wonderful, generous man. And he was a true trouper."

In late 2011, Hagman announced that he was battling cancer but he had also signed on to star in the TNT reboot of Dallas, which recently started filming its second season.

"Larry was back in his beloved Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved most," his family said in the statement.

In addition to portraying J.R. – a lovable, scheming, villainous oilman, whose shooting death was a topic of international water-cooler discussion – Hagman starred alongside Barbara Eden as Major Anthony Nelson in the iconic '60s hit sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.

According to the Morning News report, Hagman's Dallas costars Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy were by his side on Friday at Medical City Dallas Hospital when he died.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Program opens door to citizenship for immigrants

Ricardo Sepida gets emotional when he sees his son-in-law in a Navy uniform. Even aircraft carriers make him misty-eyed. There is no better country than the United States, says Sepida, an immigrant from the Philippines.

Yet despite possessing a green card for 40 years, Sepida has never become an American citizen. Life got in the way, as he raised two children, worked a full-time job as a biomedical technician and ran side businesses on the weekends.

"I was so busy at work, I had so many things to do and I'd forget about it," said Sepida, 61, of Sylmar. "I regret it now. I should have done it a long time ago."

Sepida is among the millions of immigrants who are eligible for citizenship but have postponed the milestone, whether because of the $680 fee, a busy schedule or fear of the English and civics exams. In 2011, about 750,000 immigrants applied for naturalization out of the 8.5 million who were eligible.

A $20-million effort is now under way to get more permanent residents to become citizens so they can vote, have access to a wider range of jobs and become fully American. The money for the New Americans Campaign comes from major foundations and is going mainly to nonprofits that have already been doing citizenship work. Two former commissioners of the Immigration and Naturalization Service have signed on as advisors.

"We're going to just grow the number of people who aren't really completely part of the American fabric, who aren't pitching their tent, unless we get them off the sideline and into the game," said Eric Cohen, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which is the campaign's main coordinator.

The campaign is being touted as bipartisan — Doris Meissner and James Ziglar, the two former INS leaders, served under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively. Organizers chose to launch the effort after the November presidential election to avoid any association with partisan voter registration drives, Meissner said.

With the growing clout of Latinos and Asian Americans, who voted for Democrat Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by a ratio of nearly three to one, an increase in naturalization rates could have an effect on local and national politics.

Los Angeles is among eight cities targeted by the New Americans drive, which will last three to five years. The cities, which also include Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Miami, New York and San Jose, are home to about 40% of those who qualify for citizenship.

The money will pay for more workshops to help immigrants fill out the 10-page application and prepare for the exams. The New Americans project will also fund outreach efforts like the CitzenshipWorks website, which provides application guidance in English, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese.

Separately, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes applications and is a successor agency to INS, has worked with Los Angeles officials to install a "citizenship corner" in each of the city's 73 public libraries.

"It's one of those things where you don't know how good it is unless you experience it," said Phyllis Coven, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Los Angeles office. "It's a great gift, an honor and a privilege to hold a U.S. passport and become a full member of this society."

At the Chinatown library, the most pressing issue is English fluency, said Shan Liang, the branch manager. Elderly Chinese immigrants flock to the library's free English and civics classes, but some have a long way to go before they can answer such questions as, "Why did the colonists fight the British?" The cost can also be an issue for retirees living on a fixed income, Liang said.

"It is an intimidating process. It is quite a lot of questions," said Joyce Noche, head of the citizenship and immigration project at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, one of the groups conducting workshops under the program. "Our attorneys can't actually answer all the questions themselves. It is not a walk in the park."

Typically, the naturalization process takes about five months from submitting the initial application to reciting an oath of allegiance at a group swearing-in ceremony.

On a recent Saturday morning, Sepida attended a New Americans workshop in North Hills with his wife, Sally, who has been a citizen for decades. Among a group of procrastinators, Sepida stood out.

Tony Lu, who coordinates the CitizenshipWorks project for the Immigration Advocates Network, examined Sepida's permanent resident card. The pale blue document, dating from 1972, was so old that Lu had never seen that version of it. (Most versions are beige or pink; the agency returned to its original green hue in 2010).

Sepida sat down at a computer to work on his application. Others got one-on-one help with pen and paper, leaving with a completed application and free flashcards to practice English vocabulary and civics.

Elizabeth Lopez Perez, 45, who was brought across the Mexican border when she was 2, got her green card more than 25 years ago. As a single mother raising three children, she hardly had a spare moment.

Now, the impediment is the $680 application fee. The former nursing assistant, who has been unemployed for the last six years, hoped to qualify for a fee waiver for low-income applicants.

"Before, I didn't have the time, and I had the money," said Lopez Perez, of North Hills. "Now I have the time, and I don't have the money."

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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Military Analysis: For Israel, Gaza Conflict Is Test for an Iran Confrontation

Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Israeli missile is launched from a battery. Officials said their antimissile system shot down 88 percent of all assigned targets.

WASHINGTON — The conflict that ended, for now, in a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel seemed like the latest episode in a periodic showdown. But there was a second, strategic agenda unfolding, according to American and Israeli officials: The exchange was something of a practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran, featuring improved rockets that can reach Jerusalem and new antimissile systems to counter them.

It is Iran, of course, that most preoccupies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. While disagreeing on tactics, both have made it clear that time is short, probably measured in months, to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

And one key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran’s ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran’s surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Michael B. Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States and a military historian, likened the insertion of Iranian missiles into Gaza to the Cuban missile crisis.

“In the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. was not confronting Cuba, but rather the Soviet Union,” Mr. Oren said Wednesday, as the cease-fire was declared. “In Operation Pillar of Defense,” the name the Israel Defense Force gave the Gaza operation, “Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran.”

It is an imprecise analogy. What the Soviet Union was slipping into Cuba 50 years ago was a nuclear arsenal. In Gaza, the rockets and parts that came from Iran were conventional, and, as the Israelis learned, still have significant accuracy problems. But from one point of view, Israel was using the Gaza battle to learn the capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — the group that has the closest ties to Iran — as well as to disrupt those links.

Indeed, the first strike in the eight-day conflict between Hamas and Israel arguably took place nearly a month before the fighting began — in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as another mysterious explosion in the shadow war with Iran.

A factory said to be producing light arms blew up in spectacular fashion on Oct. 22, and within two days the Sudanese charged that it had been hit by four Israeli warplanes that easily penetrated the country’s airspace. Israelis will not talk about it. But Israeli and American officials maintain that Sudan has long been a prime transit point for smuggling Iranian Fajr rockets, the kind that Hamas launched against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over recent days.

The missile defense campaign that ensued over Israeli territory is being described as the most intense yet in real combat anywhere — and as having the potential to change warfare in the same way that novel applications of air power in the Spanish Civil War shaped combat in the skies ever since.

Of course, a conflict with Iran, if a last-ditch effort to restart negotiations fails, would look different than what has just occurred. Just weeks before the outbreak in Gaza, the United States and European and Persian Gulf Arab allies were practicing at sea, working on clearing mines that might be dropped in shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.

But in the Israeli and American contingency planning, Israel would face three tiers of threat in a conflict with Iran: the short-range missiles that have been lobbed in this campaign, medium-range rockets fielded by Hezbollah in Lebanon and long-range missiles from Iran.

The last of those three could include the Shahab-3, the missile Israeli and American intelligence believe could someday be fitted with a nuclear weapon if Iran ever succeeded in developing one and — the harder task — shrinking it to fit a warhead.

A United States Army air defense officer said that the American and Israeli militaries were “absolutely learning a lot” from this campaign that may contribute to a more effective “integration of all those tiered systems into a layered approach.”

The goal, and the challenge, is to link short-, medium- and long-range missile defense radar systems and interceptors against the different types of threats that may emerge in the next conflict.

Even so, a historic battle of missile versus missile defense has played out in the skies over Israel, with Israeli officials saying their Iron Dome system shot down 350 incoming rockets — 88 percent of all targets assigned to the missile defense interceptors. Israeli officials declined to specify the number of interceptors on hand to reload their missile-defense batteries.

Before the conflict began, Hamas was estimated to have amassed an arsenal of 10,000 to 12,000 rockets. Israeli officials say their pre-emptive strikes on Hamas rocket depots severely reduced the arsenal of missiles, both those provided by Iran and some built in Gaza on a Syrian design.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Click here to view this gallery.

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Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

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That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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