Feds: 2nd inmate who escaped Chicago jail captured

This undated photo provided by the FBI shows , Kenneth Conley one of two inmates who escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012.

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AP Photo/FBI,HONS

(AP) CHICAGO -- The second of two bank robbers who escaped last month from a high-rise federal jail in downtown Chicago was captured Friday at an apartment complex across the street from a suburban police department, authorities said.

Kenneth Conley was arrested in Palos Hills, according to U.S. Marshals Service spokeswoman Belkis Cantor. She said someone called local police Friday morning thinking they recognized Conley. FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said the Palos Hills Police Department took him into custody.

Conley fled the Metropolitan Correctional Center last month with Joseph "Jose" Banks, apparently by smashing a hole in a wall at the bottom of a narrow cell window and squeezing through before scaling down about 20 stories using a knotted rope made out of bed sheets. Banks was arrested without incident two days later at a home on the city's North Side.

A man who answered the phone at a number listed for Conley's brother, Nicholas Conley, in Orland Hills refused to answer questions and asked that the family be left alone. A message left for Conley's mother was not immediately returned.

This undated photo provided by the FBI shows Jose Banks, one of two inmates who escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Lazarro says their disappearance was discovered at about 8:45 Tuesday morning. Lazarro says the pair used a rope or bed sheets to climb from the building. (AP Photo/FBI,HONS

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Uncredited

Jail officials did not notice for hours on the morning of the escape that Banks and Conley were gone. Surveillance video from a nearby street showed the two hopping into a cab shortly before 3 a.m. on Dec. 18. They had changed out of their orange jail-issued jumpsuits.

When the facility did discover the two men were gone around 7 a.m., what was found revealed a meticulously planned escape, including clothing and sheets shaped to resemble a body under blankets on beds, bars inside a mattress and even fake bars in the cells.

A massive manhunt involving state, federal and local law enforcement agencies was launched, as SWAT teams stormed into the home of a relative of Conley only to learn the two escapees had been there and left. The authorities searched other area homes and businesses -- even a strip club where Conley once worked.

Law enforcement officials left a host of questions unanswered, including how the men could collect about 200 feet of bed sheets and what they might have used to break through the wall of the federal facility.

Conley, 38, pleaded guilty last October to robbing a Homewood Bank last year of nearly $4,000. He wore a coat and tie during the robbery and had a gun stuffed in his waistband.

Banks, 37, known as the Second-Hand Bandit because he wore used clothes during his heists, had been convicted of robbing two banks and attempting to rob two others. Authorities say he stole almost $600,000, and most of that still is missing.

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Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life

It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.

Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.

Then she lost her hands and feet.

Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC

When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.

"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.

The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.

"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.

After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.

"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."

PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands

Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.

"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."

Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.

"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"

Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.

"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."

For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.

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Chavez swearing-in can be delayed: Venezuelan VP

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez's formal swearing-in for a new six-year term scheduled for January 10 can be postponed if he is unable to attend due to his battle to recover from cancer surgery, Venezuela's vice president said on Friday.

Nicolas Maduro's comments were the clearest indication yet that the Venezuelan government is preparing to delay the swearing-in while avoiding naming a replacement for Chavez or calling a new election in the South American OPEC nation.

In power since 1999, the 58-year-old socialist leader has not been seen in public for more than three weeks. Allies say he is in delicate condition after a fourth operation in two years for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area.

The political opposition argues that Chavez's presence on January 10 in Cuba - where there are rumors he may be dying - is tantamount to the president's stepping down.

But Maduro, waving a copy of the constitution during an interview with state TV, said there was no problem if Chavez was sworn in at a later date by the nation's top court.

"The interpretation being given is that the 2013-2019 constitutional period starts on January 10. In the case of President Chavez, he is a re-elected president and continues in his functions," he said.

"The formality of his swearing-in can be resolved in the Supreme Court at the time the court deems appropriate in coordination with the head of state."

In the increasing "Kremlinology"-style analysis of Venezuela's extraordinary political situation, that could be interpreted in different ways: that Maduro and other allies trust Chavez will recover eventually, or that they are buying time to cement succession plans before going into an election.

Despite his serious medical condition, there was no reason to declare Chavez's "complete absence" from office, Maduro said. Such a declaration would trigger a new vote within 30 days, according to Venezuela's charter.

RECOVERY POSSIBLE?

Chavez was conscious and fighting to recover, said Maduro, who traveled to Havana to see his boss this week.

"We will have the Commander well again," he said.

Maduro, 50, whom Chavez named as his preferred successor should he be forced to leave office, said Venezuela's opposition had no right to go against the will of the people as expressed in the October 7 vote to re-elect the president.

"The president right now is president ... Don't mess with the people. Respect democracy."

Despite insisting Chavez remains president and there is hope for recovery, the government has acknowledged the gravity of his condition, saying he is having trouble breathing due to a "severe" respiratory infection.

Social networks are abuzz with rumors he is on life support or facing uncontrollable metastasis of his cancer.

Chavez's abrupt exit from the political scene would be a huge shock for Venezuela. His oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor, while critics call him a dictator seeking to impose Cuban-style communism on Venezuelans.

Should Chavez leave office, a new election is likely to pitch former bus driver and union activist Maduro against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in the October presidential election, but won an impressive 44 percent of the vote. Though past polls have shown him to be more popular than all of Chavez's allies, the equation is now different given Maduro has received the president's personal blessing - a factor likely to fire up Chavez's fanatical supporters.

His condition is being watched closely by Latin American allies that have benefited from his help, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

"The odds are growing that the country will soon undergo a possibly tumultuous transition," the U.S.-based think tank Stratfor said this week.

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Man held as Philippines probes deadly gun rampage

MANILA: A man accused of helping a Philippine gunman kill seven people and wound 12 others has been detained as police investigate the motive for the drug-fuelled rampage, officials said Saturday.

Witnesses told police the arrested suspect helped reload a semi-automatic pistol as the gunman, later shot dead by police, went house to house in search of people to attack at a slum neighbourhood in Kawit town outside Manila.

Police arrested John Paul Lopez in Imus town near Kawit late Friday, hours after gunman Rolando Bae was killed in a firefight with police, national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Generoso Cerbo said.

"We are investigating the level of his involvement, but definitely he faces criminal charges," Cerbo said of the alleged accomplice.

Lopez said Bae forced him at gunpoint to load the clip of the .45-calibre pistol between the shootings, Cerbo told AFP.

"If that is proven false, he would be charged with many murders," Cerbo added.

Juanito Victor Remulla, the governor of Cavite province where Kawit is situated, said relatives led police to Lopez.

Remulla also said in an interview on local radio that the authorities doubted the suspect's version of events.

"He changed the clip three or four times as Bae broke into houses. He (Lopez) could have easily escaped," Remulla told DZMM radio.

Calls to the governor's office and mobile phone by AFP were not returned.

Cerbo said 12 people were being treated for gunshot wounds in hospitals in Manila and Cavite following the rampage.

Police said a pregnant woman and four children were among those shot, and that two of the children had died.

Police said Saturday they still had not established the motive for the attack.

They said Bae had been an elected member of the village council but left the community after being defeated in a 2010 ballot for the post of village chief.

Bae and Lopez, described by police as the gunman's employee, began drinking and taking the banned stimulant methamphetamine on New Year's Eve, according to Remulla.

Frequent methamphetamine use can lead to anti-social or even psychotic behaviour, said Derrick Carreon, spokesman for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

"They may start seeing demons during withdrawal. You take it from there," he told AFP Saturday.

Methamphetamine is the most commonly used narcotic by the nearly two million illegal drug users in the country, Carreon added.

Friday's shooting rampage followed the New Year's Eve deaths of two children by celebratory gunfire in Manila, which has triggered outrage and condemnation of the Philippines' poorly enforced gun laws.

There were 1.2 million registered firearms in the Philippines last year, with another 600,000 unlicensed weapons in circulation, according to police.

- AFP/fa

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Library of Congress digs in to full archive of 170 billion tweets

The U.S. Library of Congress said today that it has completed a process of collecting a full, ongoing stream of tweets, and that it has begun work to archive and organize more than 170 billion tweets.

Under an agreement struck between the government institution and Twitter in 2010, the microblogging company is providing the Library of Congress with a full stream of all public tweets, starting with 21 billion generated from between 2006 and April 2010, and now supplemented with about 150 billion more posted since then.

In an announcement about the status of the project today, the library wrote that:

Twitter is a new kind of collection for the Library of Congress but an important one to its mission. As society turns to social media as a primary method of communication and creative expression, social media is supplementing, and in some cases supplanting, letters, journals, serial publications, and other sources routinely collected by research libraries.

Though the Library has been building and stabilizing the archive and has not yet offered researchers access, we have nevertheless received approximately 400 inquiries from researchers all over the world. Some broad topics of interest expressed by researchers run from patterns in the rise of citizen journalism and elected officials' communications to tracking vaccination rates and predicting stock market activity.

The Library of Congress isn't entirely clear how the ongoing archive will be utilized, but it has issued a white paper (PDF) outlining the project.

This project, of course, is different than Twitter's recently announced initiative to make every user's full tweet history available to them. That effort is under way, though only some users have been given access to date.

Interestingly, the Library of Congress reported in the white paper that its two full copies of the entire archive of 170 billion tweets comprise about 133 Terabytes of data. Each tweet, the library wrote, contains about 50 accompanying metadata fields.

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Venezuela's Chavez fighting severe lung infection

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaks during Brazilian Foreign Minister's official visit at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, on Nov.1, 2012. / LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/Getty Images

Updated 10:35 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela Venezuela's government says President Hugo Chavez is being treated for "respiratory deficiency" after complications from a severe lung infection.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas provided the update on Chavez's condition Thursday night. He read from a statement saying that Chavez's lung infection had led to "respiratory deficiency" and required strict compliance with his medical treatment.

The government expressed confidence in Chavez's medical team and condemned what it called a "psychological war" in international media surrounding the president's condition.

Chavez hasn't been seen or heard from since his Dec. 11 operation in Cuba. Venezuela's opposition has demanded more specific information from the government about his health.

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Ex-USC Player: Painkiller Injections Caused Heart Attack

Despite stated label risks of possible fatal heart attack, stroke or organ failure, college football players across the country are still being given injections of a powerful painkiller on game days so they can play while injured, an ABC News investigation has found.

The drug, a generic version of Toradol, is recommended for the short-term treatment of post-operative pain in hospitals but has increasingly been used in college and professional sports, and its use is not monitored by the NCAA, the governing body of college sports.

Only two of the country's top football programs, Oklahoma and the University of Nebraska, reported to ABC News that they have limited or stopped the use of the drug in the wake of growing concern about its risks.

Which Top-Ranked College Football Teams Use Toradol?

Oklahoma said it stopped using the painkillers in 2012 after using them repeatedly in 2010 and 2011.

Nebraska said its doctors now restrict its use.

SEND TIPS About Painkiller Use in College Sports to Our Tipline

"While team physicians reserve the option to use injectable Toradol, it is rarely prescribed, and its use has been avoided this season following reports of heightened concern of potential adverse effects," Nebraska said in a statement to ABC News.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Despite Risks, College Football Still Uses Powerful Painkiller Watch Video

The top two college football programs, Notre Dame and Alabama, refused to answer questions from ABC News about the painkiller. They play for the national college championship on Jan. 7.

Controversy surrounding the drug has grown this year following claims by former USC lineman Armond Armstead that he suffered a heart attack after the 2010 season, at age 20, following shots of generic Toradol administered over the course of the season by the team doctor and USC personnel.

"I thought, you know, can't be me, you know? This doesn't happen to kids like me," Armstead told ABC News.

The manufacturers' warning label for generic Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) says the drug is not intended for prolonged periods or for chronic pain and cites gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure as possible side effects of the drug.

In addition, like other drugs in its class, the generic Toradol label warns "may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke, which can be fatal."

"This risk may increase with duration of use," the so-called black box warning reads.

In a lawsuit against the school and the doctor, Dr. James Tibone, Armstead claims the school ignored the stated risks of the drug and never told him about them.

"He was a race horse, a prize race horse that needed to be on that field no matter what," said Armstead's mother Christa. "Whether that was a risk to him or not."

Armstead says he and many other USC players would receive injections of what was known only as "the shot" in a specific training room before big games and again at half-time.

"No discussion, just go in. He would give the shot and I would be on my way," Armstead told ABC News.

Armstead said the shot made him feel "super human" despite severe ankle, and later shoulder pain, and that without it, he never could have played in big USC games against Notre Dame and UCLA.

"You can't feel any pain, you just feel amazing," the former star player said.

USC declined to comment on Armstead's claims, or the use of Toradol to treat Trojan players.

An ABC News crew and reporter were ordered off the practice field when they tried to question USC coach Lane Kiffin about the use of the painkiller. USC says the ABC News crew was told to leave because they had not submitted the appropriate paperwork in advance to attend the practice session.

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Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

The semi-official al-Ikhbariya television station showed footage of 10 burnt bodies and Red Crescent workers searching for victims at the site.

The opposition Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus said the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car.

There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the bombing in the Barzeh al-Balad district, whose residents include members of the Sunni Muslim majority and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The station is usually packed even when it has no fuel," said an opposition activist who did not want to be named. "There are lots of people who sleep there overnight, waiting for early morning fuel consignments."

It was the second time that a petrol station has been hit in Damascus this week. Dozens of people were incinerated in an air strike as they waited for fuel on Wednesday, according to opposition sources.

In northern Syria, rebels were battling to seize an air base in their campaign against the air power that Assad has used to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, a much higher death toll than previously thought.

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of rebel fighters were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said much of the base was still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions cut off by the rebels, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" on rebel-controlled areas.

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by shelling and bombing nearby towns.

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble. The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people died in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to step down. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Giles Elgood)

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Inter-agency group to look into family justice reforms

SINGAPORE: An inter-agency group is being set up to consider reforms when it come to dealing with family justice.

The group will made up of Supreme Court judges and representatives from the Law Ministry and Social and Family Development Ministry.

Singapore Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said the reforms should be aimed at reducing acrimony which is inherent in family disputes.

He was speaking at the opening of the 2013 legal year.

CJ Menon said family justice is just one of the areas that the Subordinate Courts will look into this year.

Another is opportunities for the legal profession outside of Singapore. This includes international arbitration

CJ Menon said, Judge of Appeal Justice VK Rajah, together with Senior Minister of State for Law Indranee Rajah, will study the viability of setting up the Singapore International Commercial Court.

Also speaking at the ceremony was the new President of the Law Society, Mr Lok Vi Ming. He said the number of local lawyers holding practising certificates for the first time exceeded 4,000 in 2012. However, between 2007 and 2012, the growth of foreign lawyer numbers have been faster.

Mr Lok said this suggests that the profession is growing steadily in terms of numbers and that the number of foreign lawyers is expanding faster than that of locals. He said these trends are not likely to be reversed in the short term.

Two Senior Counsel were also appointed at this year's ceremony. They are Mr Lionel Yee, the second Solicitor General, and Mr N Sreenivasan, a lawyer in private practice. This brings the number of senior counsel in Singapore to 40.

-CNA/ac

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Illegal file-sharer gets hit with 5-year prison sentence

Convicted file-sharer Jeramiah Perkins has been handed the longest prison sentence even given in a U.S. file-sharing lawsuit: five years.

The 40-year-old man from Portsmouth, Va., was given the sentence today by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen, according to Wired. During his lawsuit, Perkins pled guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement by file-sharing movies, music, games, and more on the Internet.

Perkins -- a.k.a. Butch Perkins, Stash, and theestas -- is said to have been the head of a group that went to theaters, camcorded the movies, recorded the audio, synched the files, and then distributed the product on the Internet. The group, known as IMAGiNE, became one of the most prolific piracy release groups in the world between 2009 and 2011, according to Wired.

"The conspirators informally identified themselves as the IMAGiNE Group and sought, among other things, to be the premier group to first release to the Internet copies of new motion pictures only showing in movie theaters," IMAGiNE's indictment (pdf) reads. "It was further a part of the conspiracy to use computer software to digitally refine and to edit the video and audio portions of a motion picture and to combine or synchronize the two components into audiovisual movie files."

One of the goals of the group was to make movies available before the public release of DVDs, according to the indictment. IMAGiNE rented servers in France, Canada, and the U.S. and hosted several Web sites, such as "unleashthe.net." The Web sites included member profiles, a torrent tracker, discussion forums, a message board, news, and rules. The group got money through donations and payments from people downloading the copyrighted works. Among the movies known to have been pirated by IMAGiNE were, "Friends With Benefits," "Captain America: The First Avenger," and "Avatar."

U.S. courts have become considerably more strict in recent file-sharing cases. In November, illegal file-sharer Kywan Fisher was handed a whopping $1.5 million fine -- the largest BitTorrent damages award ever -- for sharing 10 movies on a file-sharing site. And the well-known case of Jammie Thomas, who was found liable for sharing 24 copyrighted songs on the Web, recently announced that she is taking her case to the Supreme Court because of the "crippling statutory damages" awarded by an appeals court.

Five members of Perkins cohort also pled guilty and have been handed prison sentences for being involved in IMAGiNE. According to Wired, co-defendant Gregory Cherwonik received 40 months, Sean Lovelady was given 23 months, Willie Lambert got 30 months, and the fifth defendant is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

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