Nation roundup for Nov. 24

Marion Barry, former DC mayor, dies at 78

WASHINGTON (AP) — A controversial and tireless advocate for the nation’s capital who created jobs for generations of black families, Marion Barry was the ultimate District of Columbia politician, though his arrest for drug use in the midst of a crack cocaine epidemic often overshadows his accomplishments.

The former four-term mayor will long be remembered for one night in 1990 when he was caught on video lighting a crack pipe in an FBI sting operation. In an instant, the then-mayor of the capital city was exposed as a drug user himself.

Barry, 78, died Sunday at the United Medical Center, after having been released from a hospital a day earlier. His spokeswoman, LaToya Foster, said he collapsed outside his home.

Barry died naturally of heart problems caused by high blood pressure, and his kidney disease was a contributing factor, the D.C. medical examiner said. Barry had a kidney transplant several years ago.

Barry first made a name for himself in the South as a leader in the civil rights movement and brought his fierce advocacy to D.C. to support the fight to free the city to manage its own city affairs, not Congress. That legacy was remembered Sunday at the White House upon news of Barry’s death.

“Marion was born a sharecropper’s son, came of age during the Civil Rights movement, and became a fixture in D.C. politics for decades,” President Barack Obama said. “During his decades in elected office in D.C., he put in place historic programs to lift working people out of poverty, expand opportunity and begin to make real the promise of home rule.”

Flooding threat looms after Buffalo’s big snow

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — First came the big storm, then the big dig. Now comes the big melt.

Residents of flood-prone areas around Buffalo should move valuables up from the basement, pack a bag and prepare for the possibility of evacuation as up to 7 feet of melting snow posed the threat of flooding, Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Sunday.

“Err on the side of caution,” Cuomo said at a news conference in Cheektowaga. “You prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Across the Buffalo region — where rising temperatures were expected to approach 60 degrees today — people took that advice to heart.

In Hamburg, Pete Yeskoot bought a portable generator to make sure his sump pump will keep working once the roughly 80 inches of snow that fell on his property melts. Possessions are up on blocks in the basement and he has food for several days.

“Behind us is an 18-mile creek so everything in the village will come through us at some point, so we have to get ready for the possibility of flooding,” he said. “And given all this snow, we have to expect that this is real.”

Rain fell Sunday, with temperatures rising to 50. It was expected to be even warmer today, accompanied by more rain and rising winds, leading to the threat of toppled trees and power outages.

Anxieties mount as Ferguson waits on jury

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Despite preparations for a weekend decision in the Ferguson shooting case, the grand jurors apparently need more time to deliberate, and the uncertainty just seemed to feed the anxiety and speculation Sunday in a city already on edge.

More than 3½ months have passed since police Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, killed unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown after a confrontation in the middle of a street in the St. Louis suburb.

The shooting triggered riots and looting, and police responded with armored vehicles and tear gas.

Many in the area thought a grand jury decision on whether to charge Wilson with a crime would be announced Sunday, based partly on a stepped-up police presence in the preceding days, including the setting up of barricades around the building where the panel was meeting.

The grand jurors met Friday but apparently didn’t reach a decision, and they were widely expected to reconvene today.

Admiral denies role in counterfeit casino chips

WASHINGTON (AP) — An admiral linked by Navy investigators to counterfeit casino chips denied Sunday that he played any role in making them.

Investigation records say his DNA was found on the underside of an adhesive sticker used to alter one of the phony chips, but previously undisclosed emails indicate that the presence of his DNA is not conclusive evidence that he was involved in the fakery.

Rear Adm. Timothy M. Giardina, who was fired last year as No. 2 commander of U.S. nuclear forces at an early stage of a Navy criminal investigation into the counterfeit chips, acknowledged to The Associated Press that he played the fake chips at a poker table in the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in June 2013.

But he denied any involvement in the counterfeiting or even knowing the chips were fakes at the time he used them.

The three chips in question were altered with paint and stickers to make genuine $1 casino chips look like $500 chips.

Giardina declined to discuss details.

He said he stands behind a detailed written statement he submitted in April 2014 to Adm. Bill Gortney, who at the time was determining disciplinary action against Giardina in light of the months-long probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The AP on Sunday obtained a copy of that statement, which has not been publicly released and was not included in NCIS records of the Giardina case that the AP obtained last week under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the statement, Giardina said he deeply regretted having not immediately surrendered to security officers the four chips which he said he found in a toilet stall at the Horseshoe. He said it was an “error of judgment” that he put three of the chips in play at a poker table, and said he was sorry that he subsequently lied in saying he had purchased them from a man in the bathroom.

“I should have either told the truth or remained silent instead of lying about the events when questioned” by an Iowa state investigator on June 18, 2013, he wrote. That was two days after he played the fake chips and casino officials determined they were counterfeits.

He added, “This lapse in judgment does not make me a thief and a criminal.”

Giardina also wrote that he does not have a gambling problem. At the time of the casino incident, Giardina was deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command, which has responsibility for the nation’s entire nuclear weapons force and is based near Omaha, Nebraska.

Giardina wrote that in discussing his case with the commander of Strategic Command at the time, Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, as well as Navy officers and law enforcement officials in Iowa, “the common opinion is that I have a ‘gambling problem’ and that this gambling problem was my motive” in the counterfeiting. He added that Kehler, who has since retired from the military, felt Giardina had an “obvious gambling problem.”

Giardina wrote that he does not have a gambling problem and does not consider poker a form of gambling.

“Regardless of anyone’s opinion on the matter, disapproval of the legal manner in which I spent portions of my off-duty time is not adequate grounds to allege criminal misconduct,” Giardina wrote.

Giardina had been at risk of being prosecuted by the Navy for counterfeiting the chips, but Gortney chose instead to give him what the military calls non-judicial punishment — in this case a letter of reprimand and the loss of $4,000 in salary. Navy officials have said no court martial was sought because the available DNA evidence against Giardina might not hold up in court.

Doubts about the DNA evidence are summarized in an email exchange between a Giardina lawyer and an examiner at the Army laboratory that tested the DNA. In the emails obtained Sunday by the AP, the examiner affirmed to the lawyer that while the “major contributor” of the DNA found on the underside of the adhesive sticker that had been affixed by the counterfeiter was Giardina’s, this did not necessarily mean he had touched the adhesive.

The examiner indicated it was possible that the Giardina DNA had migrated onto the adhesive when an Iowa state investigator removed the sticker to confirm that the chip was phony. Giardina had handled the chip during the poker game, so his DNA would have been on the outside of the chip and possibly along the edges of the sticker.

The examiner said either explanation — that Giardina had, indeed, touched the underside of the sticker, or that his DNA had migrated to the sticker while others were handling the chip — was equally possible.

In his April 2014 statement to Gortney, Giardina wrote that he suspects the chip counterfeiter left them in the bathroom stall “for a reason,” possibly to observe casino security’s reaction when the finder either turned them in or put them in play.

“I do not believe I was singled out to find them, but believe that I was a patsy for someone who wanted the chips to be found,” he wrote.

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