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FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — A person believed responsible for shootings along highways over the last two weeks in the Baltimore-Washington area, including shots that damaged a National Security Agency building, is in custody, the FBI said early Wednesday. The FBI believes the person in custody is responsible for shootings along Maryland highways, including one near the Fort Meade Army installation, which is home to the NSA, FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said in a statement. She said no other information was available early Wednesday.

South Korea unveils robotic prison guards, promises futuristic cavity searches To round out their drug-sniffing clone dog army, South Korean authorities are now experimenting with robotic prison guards. Lest you think these cyber-wardens will be equipped with gatling guns in the style of Robocop's ED-209, know that this alarm-equipped bot has more in common with the Death Star's delivery droids. Of course, the robots' responsibilities may expand as the technology improves. Explains Reuters of these security machines' potential uses: The robot has been designed to patrol a prison autonomously, but an IPad will allow manual control as well. The next...

Ten months before Al Qaeda in 2001 struck a deathblow in the heart lower Manhattan, one of the terrorist group's founding members plunged a sharpened comb through Pepe's left eye and into his brain, blinding the 42-year-old prison guard and causing severe brain injuries that plague him to this day. Pepe told FoxNews.com he worries that sending Mohammed and four of his alleged fellow 9/11 conspirators to New York could compromise the safety of the guards at the MCC prison. Keeping the prisoners in one location, he said, was especially dangerous. Teaming up against Pepe, they beat and blinded him,...

Striking French prison warders scuffle with riot police Charles Bremner Riot police scuffled with guards outside two of France's main prisons today as warders stepped up a national "blockade" in protest against over-crowding and a shortage of staff in the nation's prisons. Officers used tear gas and other crowd-control weapons against several dozen guards who used tyres and other obstacles to block the entrance to Fleury Mérongis, Europe's biggest prison, on the south-western edge of Paris. At La Santé, the ancient prison in the heart of the Paris Left Bank, a squadron of CRS riot police shoved aside warders who...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has upheld $600,000 in damages to a state prison guard who said she was fired after complaining that she was being harassed by naked male inmates. The complaints by Deanna Freitag led to an investigation by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's inspector general, who found in 2000 that maximum-security inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison had regularly subjected female guards to "lewd exhibitionism and exhibitionist masturbation" and that the warden and other officials were doing little to stop it.Freitag, who had worked at the prison in Del Norte County since 1996,...

The Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal watchdog says prison guards already earn enough money and don't need a 5 percent pay raise proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill says the state can't afford raises for 30,000 prison guards as it battles a widening budget gap. Veteran guards draw nearly $74,000 in salaries - not counting overtime and annual benefits worth $16,000. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, welcomes the analysis. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent $2 million to defeat Nunez' proposal on Tuesday's ballot for term limit changes that would have let Nunez and Senate leader Don...

SACRAMENTO An arbitrator has ruled that state officials miscalculated wages and benefits for corrections employees, a mistake that will cost California taxpayers an estimated $440 million over two years and force cuts to other state departments. The ruling, made public Friday, means the state will pay $200 million for back pay and health benefits to about 30,000 prison guards, probation officers and other correctional employees, retroactive to July 1, 2005. In addition, the employees are due a 3.1 percent pay increase retroactive to the start of the year under a provision that ties their wages to those of other law...

LOS ANGELES -- A former Chino prison guard shouted insults at a judge and prosecutors Monday after he was sentenced to more than 17 years in state prison for helping a violent prison gang distribute drugs and assault inmates. Shayne Allyn Ziska jumped from his chair and proclaimed his innocence just seconds after Judge Terry Hatter ordered him to federal prison for associating with the white supremacist Nazi Low Riders. ``There was no evidence, judge,'' Ziska angrily told Hatter in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. ``You have a bunch of dope fiends who said I did something so they...

SACRAMENTO – A chronic shortage of guards at the state's 33 prisons is expected to increase after Jan. 1 when an earlier retirement age negotiated in a controversial labor contract four years ago triggers a wave of retirees. The shortage of 2,000 guards is likely to double next fiscal year because of retirements and other factors, the state Department of Finance estimates. The Schwarzenegger administration is scrambling to open a second training facility for correctional officers and is projecting that 2,600 new guards will be trained this fiscal year, an increase from the 1,920 originally planned. The governor is expected...

NASHVILLE -- A Tennessee fugitive was arrested at a Texas motel Friday along with the female guard accused of giving him a uniform and helping him slip away from a prison hospital six days earlier. After a search that had extended as far as Arizona, Edward McDaniel and Vicki Sanford surrendered quietly to federal officers and police before dawn at a Days Inn in El Paso, said Jennifer Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. McDaniel, 37, allegedly escaped Saturday by walking out during a shift change at the maximum-security DeBerry Special Needs facility in Nashville, where he...

SACRAMENTO - As governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly learned to use his office's bully pulpit to get his way. But last month, as he sought $300 million in concessions from the state's prison guards, the governor's megaphone mysteriously went silent. Lawmakers and others who follow corrections issues suggest that Schwarzenegger may have believed he was on the verge of securing an overall budget deal and was focused on quickly putting the prison piece of the puzzle into place. He saw it merely as another budget issue, not in the context of trimming the power of the guards union or reforming prisons....

The best that can be said of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed deal on the prison guard contract is that it's better than having your eye poked out with a stick. This wasn't a true renegotiation, where the two sides exchange views and compromise on provisions of the 300-page contract. Like Schwarzenegger's other "deals" this legislative session, it was merely a deferral of costs to a later date. What a disappointment. A chance for true reform was dashed. Schwarzenegger's deal does nothing to close the gap between what legislators were told the five-year contract would cost ($567 million) and what it...

MEMBERS RESISTING STATE'S CALL FOR BUDGET CONCESSIONS Hefty salary increases that outpaced most state workers have made California's prison guards among the highest-paid prison guards in the country. Now, some of the lawmakers who once gladly accepted donations from the guard union are siding with the governor's call to reject an estimated 11 percent pay raise due July 1.

<p>May 4, 2004 -- OFFICER Louis Pepe is, in many ways, as close to being dead as you can be without lying in a casket. His father, Franklin Pepe, puts it more succinctly: "What they did to him is worse than death."</p>

Alleged bin Laden aide: Stabbing guard was `biggest mistake in my life' Sep 11, 2002-8:46 AM NEW YORK (AP) - A reputed top aide to Osama bin Laden ended four days of testimony by recounting his confession to a clergyman that stabbing a prison guard in the eye was ``the biggest mistake in my life'' and that he wished he could donate his eye to the injured man.