Record number of people deported

Record number of people deported

MIAMI

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Tuesday his agency deported nearly 400,000 individuals during the fiscal year that ended in September, the largest number of removals in the agency’s history.

Morton announced the Fiscal 2011 numbers in Washington, saying about 55 percent of those deported had felony or misdemeanor convictions. Officials said the number of those convicted of crimes was up 89 percent from 2008.

Authorities could not immediately say how many of those crimes related to re-entering the U.S. after being deported. Individuals can be convicted of a felony for returning to the U.S. or being found in the U.S. after they were deported.

Israeli soldier returns home

MITZPE HILA, Israel

Gaunt and pale, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit returned home Tuesday after more than five years in captivity, freed in a lopsided exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners that could greatly complicate Mideast peace prospects and strengthen the Islamic militant Hamas.

The swap set off massive celebrations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, where crowds in Gaza called for more kidnappings of soldiers, chanting: “The people want a new Gilad!”

The 25-year-old Schalit’s poor condition, a jarring appearance by masked Hamas men during his release and the prospects of a strengthened Hamas bode poorly for future relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mistakes made in basement case

PHILADELPHIA

A lack of accountability and follow-through by police and government agencies may have contributed to the plight of four mentally disabled adults authorities say were locked in a basement while a convicted murderer stole their Social Security checks.

Police in Philadelphia and West Palm Beach, Fla., missed opportunities to help one or more of the victims while the woman charged with orchestrating the scheme was legally disqualified from cashing the victims’ government disability checks because of her criminal past.

Linda Ann Weston, 51, was charged Monday with kidnapping, false imprisonment and other offenses after her landlord stumbled on the four adults, all weak and malnourished, in a dank, foul-smelling boiler room Saturday. Her bail was set at $2.5 million.

Forces capture Gadhafi stronghold

BANI WALID, Libya

Revolutionary forces celebrated the capture of one of Moammar Gadhafi’s strongholds and closed in Tuesday on the last holdouts in the fugitive leader’s hometown of Sirte, putting total victory in their eight-month uprising just a few city blocks away.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered millions of dollars in new aid to Libya, encouraging the country’s unsteady new leadership to commit to a democratic future free of retribution.

“I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Libya,” Clinton said on a visit to the capital, Tripoli. “The United States was proud to stand for you in your fight for freedom, and we will continue to stand with you as you continue this journey.”

Although two months have passed since Gadhafi fled the capital, Libya’s new leaders have refrained from declaring national “liberation” until the fall of Sirte, which Gadhafi transformed from a fishing village into a modern city after he seized power in 1969.

Associated Press