Egyptian army ousts President Mohamed Morsi

CAIRO — The army pushed Egypt's first democratically elected president from power after days of massive street protests, acting swiftly to remove the Islamist leader in favor of a coalition government and calling for new elections to bring stability to this deeply polarized nation.

President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party, in power just a year, remained defiant, insisting that they continued to be Egypt's legitimate authority. Some of Morsi's supporters threatened violent retaliation, but the Islamists appeared to be overwhelmed by tanks in the boulevards and hundreds of thousands of protesters streaming through villages and cities.

Anti-Morsi protesters, honking horns, flying flags and flashing green lasers into the sky over the Nile, crammed Tahrir Square in Cairo during hours of closed-door meetings and amid reports of troop movements. People across the capital silenced one another to listen to televised news bulletins. At the mosque where Islamists camped, men wept.

Fireworks exploded over the city when Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, went on television late Wednesday to declare that Judge Adly Mahmoud Mansour, head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, would replace Morsi. The court was one of Morsi's most potent enemies. The military, acting hours after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline it had given Morsi to restore stability, also scrapped the new Islamist-drafted constitution.

Sisi said Morsi "failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people."

He said religious and civilian leaders "have agreed on a road map for the future that includes initial steps to achieve the building of a strong Egyptian society that is cohesive and does not exclude anyone, and ends the state of tension and division."

In a matter of minutes, Sisi's terse words brought about the demise of the Brotherhood's effort to govern Egypt after decades as a potent but outlawed movement. It was the second time in two years that the army intervened in the country's turbulent politics, highlighting concern that Egypt's success at building a democracy would be determined more by the power of the street than by the ballot box.

"The procedures announced by the general command of the armed forces represent a full coup d'etat that is completely unacceptable," Morsi said on his Facebook page. He urged "all civil and military citizens to abide by the constitution and the law and to not respond to this coup, which drives Egypt backward."

But the military quickly tightened the circle around the deposed president, slapping travel bans on him and prominent Brotherhood members. The Egyptian media reported that Morsi was in "political isolation," perhaps under the jurisdiction of the army. His whereabouts could not be confirmed, and the state newspaper Al Ahram reported that arrest warrants were issued for 300 Brotherhood members.

The opposition greeted the military takeover as a chance to finish the 2011 revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak after three decades in power and briefly turned Egypt into the envy of the Arab world. But Morsi's supporters, including his compatriots in the Brotherhood, saw the army's gambit as something more sinister.

"As I write these lines I am fully aware that these may be the last lines I get to post on this page," Essam Haddad, a senior advisor to Morsi, wrote on Facebook. "For the sake of Egypt and for historical accuracy, let's call what is happening by its real name: military coup."

President Obama said he was concerned about Morsi's ouster, although he avoided describing it as a coup, which would trigger automatic cuts in U.S. aid to a longtime ally. But Obama did not call for Morsi to be returned to power, and he did not openly condemn the Egyptian military.

Some Islamist pro-Morsi demonstrators at a main Cairo mosque were in tears after Morsi's downfall. Others called for "dying in the name of God" while surrounding soldiers and chanting against Sisi. Clashes were reported late Wednesday in the coastal city of Alexandria.

"By what right does [Sisi] have the power to remove a democratically elected president?" said Mahmoud Gameel, standing outside the Rabaa Al Adaweya mosque in Cairo. "We will continue our sit-in ... all over Egypt until [Sisi] and his gang leave power. All they care about is money from the U.S. and Israel that is going into their pockets."

The opposition had accused Morsi and the Brotherhood of one-dimensional vision to create an Islamic state at the expense of fixing the country's many ills, including poverty, power outages, plummeting foreign reserves, rising crime and dwindling tourism. Morsi failed to understand the searing anger of the struggling poor and working classes that grew during his year in office.

"We want a better future, a better economy," said Riham Adel, a 28-year-old secretary protesting in Tahrir Square. "We don't want to be so divided and polarized. This is what the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi did to us."

The military, for decades one of Egypt's most respected institutions, ruled the country from Mubarak's ouster in 2011 until Morsi was inaugurated. But it was accused in that time of mass arrests and civil rights violations. It has said it does not want to return to power. To make its point, and show the face of an inclusive Egypt,

Sisi invited Nobel laureate and opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei and Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to stand beside him during his national address.

ElBaradei's appearance next to Sisi was a stark example of how much the

political atmosphere has changed. ElBaradei, like other activists, was a fierce critic of military rule. But he was selected to represent the opposition in talks with the army and agreed on a coalition government after assurances that the country would be in the hands of civilians.

Before the 2011 revolution toppled Mubarak, ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was often mentioned as an ideal successor. His lack of street presence during that uprising angered many activists, and he was also viewed as someone who had lived abroad too long to govern Egypt. But he has again emerged a possible contender to lead the country.

But Morsi and the Brotherhood, which waited more than 80 years for political power, accused the military of running a legitimately elected president out of office.

In a speech to the nation Tuesday night, Morsi made a rambling, defiant pitch to stay in power. He repeated the word "legitimacy" dozens of times, evoked God and the glory of Egypt. He seemed a man trying to rouse a nation, at least half of which had tired of his rhetoric.

Wednesday afternoon, he offered the compromise of a coalition government but by then the military plan was already in action.

One protester in Tahrir Square was carrying a mock ballot box that told Morsi: "Take your legitimacy box and go."

jeffrey.fleishman @latimes.com

Hassieb is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Manar Mohsen contributed to this report.

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Douglas Engelbart dies at age 88; computer visionary

Douglas Carl Engelbart, who in the 1960s envisioned the power of interconnected computers to accelerate the pursuit of knowledge and solve the world's increasingly complex problems, laying the foundation for the modern computing age and the Internet, died in his sleep at his home in Atherton, Calif., on Tuesday night. He was 88.

Engelbart's health had deteriorated in recent months and took a turn for the worse over the weekend, his daughter Christina Engelbart said in an email.

For years, many in the scientific community dismissed Engelbart's revolutionary vision that would bring computers — then bulky machines operated by engineers and fed data on punch cards — into the digital age and into homes and offices the world over. His team of researchers toiled in relative obscurity until 1968, when Engelbart gave an hourlong presentation to leading technologists in San Francisco that telegraphed the future of computing.

In what technology author Steven Levy dubbed "the mother of all demos," Engelbart demonstrated what could happen when computers talk to one another, showcasing innovations such as word processing, collaborative editing, hypertext links, video conferencing and desktop windows — 13 years before the IBM personal computer and 15 years before the Macintosh.

It was also the world debut of the computer mouse, an idea driven by Engelbart's own desire for a handy device to interact with his computer screen. He and William English, a fellow engineer at the Stanford Research Institute, devised a wooden contraption that rolled on metal wheels and connected to the desktop with a cord that resembled the tail of a mouse. Apple's Steve Jobs would later turn the mouse into a huge commercial success, rolling it out to the masses in 1983 with the Lisa computer.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak credits Engelbart and his landmark 1962 paper, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" — a blueprint for how technology can harness information and help people collaborate with one another — "for everything we have in the way computers work today." The paper earned Engelbart funding from the Defense Department.

"What he did was absolutely brilliant and so far ahead of its time back then," Wozniak said. "He saw where the future was going to go."

Engelbart's work inspired generations of scientists and was deployed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Apple's Jobs to power their companies and fortunes.

Yet Engelbart never shared in those riches, nor did he ever become a household name. He did not receive royalties for the mouse, which the research institute patented and later licensed to Apple, and, in later years, he struggled to get funding for his research, fading into the annals of computing history.

Levy, author of "Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything," remembers visiting Engelbart in small offices half a block from where Apple was developing the Lisa and Macintosh computers.

"He was in the shadow of the people who would get credit for his ideas and make billions of dollars from them," Levy said.

Longtime friend Howard Rheingold said he paid a visit to Engelbart after a contractor had botched the remodel of his home near Stanford University. For years Engelbart, who lived next door to some of Silicon Valley's wealthiest, could not afford to fix the pervasive damage. Thick metal cables bolted to the studs stretched across the living room to hold up the walls, and some parts of the house could not be used.

Yet it was his struggles to get funding for his research that troubled Engelbart.

"He wanted to help people solve problems, and he saw the world as having very significant problems. That is not something you can get a patent on, start a company or make a fortune on," said Rheingold, author of "Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology." "Bill Gates' vision was a computer on every desk running Microsoft software. Doug had a much larger humanitarian vision."

Engelbart was born Jan. 30, 1925, in Portland, Ore. He enrolled at Oregon State University but was drafted into the Navy before he graduated. While stationed as a radar technician in the Philippines in 1945, he read an article in the Atlantic Monthly by presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush that urged scientists to make knowledge more accessible. Inspired, Engelbart resolved to pursue a career in computer science.

After the war, he returned to Oregon State and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1948. In 1955, he got a doctorate in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.

Engelbart joined the Stanford Research Institute in 1957 as a researcher. In the early 1960s, he led a team developing tools for interactive computing. Within SRI, he founded the Augmentation Research Center, which was funded by the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the Defense Department.

In the early 1970s, his laboratory was one of those that hosted the ARPAnet, the forerunner of the Internet. It also hosted the Network Information Center, which would eventually become officially responsible for doling out Internet domain names.

For all of his work to promote collaboration, Engelbart was known in the industry as a control freak, and many of his colleagues eventually moved on to new research centers such as Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center and to companies such as Apple to develop his ideas for the mainstream.

DARPA funding began to dry up, and, in the late 1970s, Engelbart's research group was bought by a company called Tymshare. It was sold again in the early 1980s to defense contractor McDonnell Douglas.

In 1989, Engelbart created the Bootstrap Institute with his daughter Christina. The organization gave management seminars and received DARPA funding to do some work for the military. In 2000, Engelbart received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Engelbart retired in 2008, and the organization is now known as the Doug Engelbart Institute.

Friends say he never lost his playful sense of humor, even after his first wife, Ballard, died in 1997 after 46 years of marriage. It was a long-running family joke that he used to give her science lectures when she had trouble sleeping. He also made up science-fiction stories to entertain his kids.

Though he often had his head nestled deep inside a book, Engelbart enjoyed the outdoors and spent time tending his organic garden, hiking, camping, bike riding and sailing. He also raised ducks, earthworms and bees.

He is survived by his second wife, writer and producer Karen O'Leary Engelbart, whom he married in 2008; daughters Gerda, Diana and Christina; a son, Norman; and nine grandchildren.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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In tiny Cayucos, Fourth of July means one thing: a huge party

CAYUCOS, Calif. — One day each year, this beach town of less than 3,000 residents becomes among the most populous places on the Central Coast.

Some 30,000 people show up for a parade featuring floats that locals have worked on for at least two or three days before the event, children doing cartwheels and — when they aren't otherwise booked — marching bands.

There's a heavy law enforcement presence, partly guaranteed by the barbecue that Bill and Carol's Sea Shanty prepares for officers. There is drinking: At some point each year, Rick Roquet, proprietor of the Seaside Motel with his wife, Rebecca, trades his jaunty straw parade hat for his "drunk hat," a beer-stained relic adorned with a faded red, white and blue pinwheel.

But it is so safe that people set their beach chairs out unattended along the parade route days before the event, and no one touches them.

"The same people have been coming for the past 20 years," said Hani Dagher, who presides over a liquor store on the main street, which is also well-stocked with plastic sand buckets and dog toys. "On Sunday, the hotels will ask the people, 'Do you want to book for next year?' And they'll say yes, because they know if they don't they'll lose their reservations forever."

This year, one of the Shoreline Inn's Fourth of July regulars was ill. She came for many years with her husband and came back with her grandchildren after he died.

"Her family called and said that she was in a hospital bed and she couldn't stop worrying about her reservation," said owner Laila Kollman. "I told them she'd always have her room. I'll rent it out this year. But it's hers when she's better."

No one is sure when Cayucos' love affair with the Fourth started. There's an 1893 photo featured in the 2013 Historic Cayucos Calendar of a parade on Ocean Avenue, back in Cayucos' gunslinger days. According to the community's tourism website, Cayucos "enjoyed a colorful youth with gamblers and rum runners frequenting the Cayucos Tavern — a local favorite to this day."

Cayucos' lawlessness these days tends toward people jumping off the old wooden pier and letting dogs play leash-free.

Families from the Central Valley lease the same summer houses year after year; about 70% of Cayucos' property-rental business comes from Fresno, Bakersfield and Visalia. The community has no room to grow, hemmed in by ocean, the city of Morro Bay and protected land.

The parade has "never, ever, ever been promoted," said Andy Lilley, vice-president of the Cayucos Lions Club. "But we do put up signs at both ends of town." 

Bill Shea and Carol Kramer of the restaurant Sea Shanty are widely acknowledged to come up with the best floats.

"The surfers used to be our major competition," Kramer said. "They had the best float of all time. We had a famous dog in town, a black-and-white dog with a curly tail that hung out with the surfers. The surfers made a float that looked just like that dog, and when it got to the judges it lifted its leg and sprayed water on them."

The surfers' efforts have since ebbed "to a few guys playing guitars in the back of a pickup truck," Shea said.

Behind the restaurant on Tuesday, a float on the framework of what was once Kramer's favorite car was taking on the shape of a duck. Kramer was wearing camouflage shorts and a hat — they were going to spoof the reality show "Duck Dynasty." Shea was handing out plastic duck calls that made resounding quacks.

"There's no way for the driver to see," Carol said, pointing to breast feathers over the window.

"There never is," said artist Tom Reno, who was painting the beak. He said he spent 25 years on the Central Coast developing "the skills of a sign painter and the philosophy of a yogi." Now he lives in Santa Fe, N.M., but returns each year to his role as "Float Guy."

Roquet, the motel owner, showed up to the duck float with two big white buckets. Each year Shea provides the Bloody Mary mix and Roquet adds the vodka, and they take a little cart around delivering drinks to people in the parade.

Roquet said a Cayucos Fourth is "crazy fun — but a good crazy."

"This street will be filled — an ocean of people," he said, throwing his arms wide. "They'll all make their way down the street till they get to the parade and then, well, even my crew will say, 'What? This is just a bunch of old people, kids and dogs.' "

By crew he means the people who have rented the 12 rooms at his Seaside Motel on the Fourth of July for 30 years.

On Tuesday afternoon they were already gathering with hot dogs and chests of beer on the motel's patio.

"When we first started coming here, we weren't friends. We didn't even know each other. But now we're family," said 59-year-old Stacey Clem, in town with her husband and grandchildren.  "We've been through death, marriage, babies, drugs, weddings, all of it together. And we always come back to this patio."

When Rebecca Roquet's mother, Gardyce, died this year, Clem flew out from Missouri for the funeral. When Rachelle Wiseman, 33, of Modesto, married last year, the entire Fourth crowd came to her wedding in Cayucos. She had spent every Fourth at the Seaside Motel since she was a toddler.

This week, the entire town had the air of a reunion. People stopped in the street to hug hello. Perhaps the only people who did not know the Cayucos Fourth of July routine by heart — sandcastle building contest beginning at 5 a.m., parade, barbecue, Bingo, then fireworks over the pier — was the family who had taken to calling themselves the Griswolds, after the disaster-prone family in the series of "National Lampoon" vacation movies.

They had come to the California coast from Colorado in an RV that broke down on the sand dunes near Pismo Beach. There was an emergency room trip after a family member fell — well, it's a long story, said Ed Corridori.

But grandparents, parents, three children and two cousins had ended up here at sunset Tuesday, while golden retrievers frolicked on a beach, a boy cannonballed off the pier and couples paused to watch dolphins.

"It's so pretty. And there were all those chairs on the main street, just sitting there," said Stephanie Corridori. "We didn't know this existed."

diana.marcum@latimes.com

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Coup in Egypt: Judge sworn in as interim leader

toppled the country's first freely elected president, raising fresh uncertainty over the formation of a coalition government to ease deep political divisions and prevent economic collapse.

Judge Adly Mahmoud Mansour, head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, took the oath of the presidency in a court chamber along the Nile. He replaced Mohamed Morsi, the nation's first Islamist president, who was forced from office after refusing a military order to compromise with the opposition to end months of unrest.

The inauguration of a new leader was the latest political maneuver in a tumultuous 24 hours that were also marked by clashes between pro- and anti-Morsi supporters that left 10 dead across the country and the arrest of two prominent members of the deposed president's Muslim Brotherhood party.

After his swearing in, Mansour said the youth-inspired protests that began Sunday and ended with Morsi's overthrow "corrected the path of the glorious revolution that took place on Jan. 25, 2011."

He added the Egyptian people "are the source of all powers" and that the greatest thing that happened on June 30 is that it "united the people without discrimination or differentiation."

Little is known about Mansour, 67, an administrator and judge who is expected to be a transitional figure in the country's tortuous path toward democracy that began with the 2011 uprising that overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Mansour, sworn in in the same chamber where Morsi was inaugurated last year, heads the court that often battled the Brotherhood's attempts to increase its hold on the government.

Morsi was reportedly under house arrest. But he and the Brotherhood remained defiant, insisting they were Egypt's legitimate authority. The coup "drives Egypt backward," Morsi said on his Facebook page.

Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, sought to calm the country Wednesday night, saying religious and civilian leaders "have agreed on a road map for the future that includes initial steps to achieve the building of a strong Egyptian society that is cohesive and does not exclude anyone, and ends the state of tension and division."

But the military has not announced a time frame for holding new elections or rewriting the constitution. Mansour said the nation will move ahead.

"We are looking forward to parliamentary and presidential elections that represent the true will of the people," he said. "This is the only safe way into a brighter tomorrow, more free, more democratic, greater in justice, more conscious, and more elevated in behavior." 

ALSO:

Russian opposition mayor detained in bribe scandal

Coup in Egypt: Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leader ordered

U.N. says it is unable to provide urgently needed aid near Damascus

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Coup in Egypt: Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leader ordered

CAIRO – Egyptian prosecutors have ordered the arrest of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that controlled the government until Wednesday's

.

The state news agency reported that warrants were issued for the Brotherhood's supreme guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat Shater, the organization's chief strategist and financier. Both helped orchestrate the political campaign last year that brought fellow Brotherhood member Morsi to power.

Badie and Shater are accused of inciting violence that led to deadly clashes between anti-government demonstrators and Morsi supporters. Morsi was reported to be in custody, and it appeared authorities were tightening the circle on Brotherhood members.

News of the warrants came shortly after Egypt swore in an interim leader amid fresh uncertainty over the formation of a coalition government to ease deep political divisions and prevent economic collapse.

Judge Adly Mahmoud Mansour, head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, took the oath of the presidency in a court chamber along the Nile. He replaced Mohamed Morsi, the nation's first Islamist president, who was forced from office after refusing a military order to compromise with the opposition to end months of unrest.

The inauguration of a new leader was the latest political maneuver in a tumultuous 24 hours that were also marked by clashes between pro and anti-Morsi supporters that left 10 dead across the country.

After his swearing in, Mansour said the youth-inspired protests that began on Sunday and ended with Morsi's overthrow "corrected the path of the glorious revolution that took place on Jan. 25, 2011."

He added the Egyptian people "are the source of all powers" and that the greatest thing that happened on June 30 is that it "united the people without discrimination or differentiation."

Little is known about Mansour, 67, an administrator and judge who is expected to be a transitional figure in the country's tortuous path toward democracy that began with the 2011 uprising that overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Mansour, sworn in in the same chamber where Morsi was inaugurated in last year, heads the court that often battled the Brotherhood's attempts to increase its hold on the government.

Morsi was reportedly under house arrest. But he and the Brotherhood remained defiant, insisting they were Egypt's legitimate authority. The coup "drives Egypt backward," Morsi said on his Facebook page.

Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, commander of the armed forces, sought to calm the country Wednesday night, saying that religious and civilian leaders "have agreed on a road map for the future that includes initial steps to achieve the building of a strong Egyptian society that is cohesive and does not exclude anyone, and ends the state of tension and division."

But the military has not announced a time frame for holding new elections or rewriting the constitution. Mansour said the nation will move ahead.

"We are looking forward to parliamentary and presidential elections that represent the true will of the people," he said. "This is the only safe way into a brighter tomorrow, more free, more democratic, greater in justice, more conscious, and more elevated in behavior." 

ALSO:

Coup in Egypt: Judge sworn in as interim leader

Russian opposition mayor detained in bribe scandal

U.N. says it is unable to provide urgently needed aid near Damascus

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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U.S. orders $12.5-million payment to victims of racial harassment

U.S. Department of Justice officials have demanded that Los Angeles County, Lancaster and Palmdale pay a total of $12.5 million to residents who the federal government found were victims of harassment and intimidation in the Antelope Valley.

The demand coincides with last week's accusation by the Justice Department that Antelope Valley authorities conducted a systematic effort to discriminate against African Americans who received low-income subsidized housing and that sheriff's deputies engaged in widespread unlawful searches of homes, improper detentions and unreasonable force.

Assistant County Counsel Roger Granbo, describing the Justice Department's position, said the money would go to people whose civil rights were violated when deputies and housing inspectors visited their homes to check on whether they were complying with the Section 8 rental program requirements.

The payments would come from the two cities, the county's Housing Authority and the Sheriff's Department, he said. Granbo said he has already told federal officials that the county has no intention of paying its share of such a large amount of compensation.

If talks over the amount stall, the two sides could end up in court with the county disputing the breadth of the federal government's findings. Granbo said the Justice Department has refused a request to turn over materials from its investigation, including a statistical report that it says shows blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites to be stopped or searched by deputies.

"These negotiations are going to be very critical," Granbo said. "We're willing to sit down with them and work something out, but that could be a very tedious process if we don't know what those findings are based on."

He said the county has yet to agree on who, if anyone, would be compensated.

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said his city would refuse to pay what he said would amount to at least $10,000 and as much as $40,000 for each person with a claim.

"If the county wants to pay millions, let them do it, but Lancaster isn't going to pay 10 cents of it," Parris said.

Palmdale released a statement saying that the proposed settlement was between federal and county officials and that the city "has not been asked nor has it agreed to any participation in this proposed settlement." The statement said city officials were concerned by the federal government's accusations and have scheduled a meeting with Sheriff Lee Baca next week to discuss them.

Baca's spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said the sheriff would not comment on the federal government's accusations, but that the department adamantly disagreed. Department of Justice officials could not be reached for comment.

The nearly two-year federal civil rights investigation found support for allegations by Antelope Valley residents that black residents were targeted for surprise inspections of subsidized, or Section 8, housing. The checks, which were ostensibly to ensure that residents met the terms of their assistance, often involved deputies, some of them in full SWAT armor.

In a letter to Baca, U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Thomas E. Perez wrote that the department's activities in supporting tough compliance measures against those receiving subsidized housing vouchers were based on "an unsubstantiated and racially stereotypical correlation of race and crime."

One sheriff's supervisor, Perez said, told Justice Department officials that he thought all African Americans who recently moved to the Antelope Valley were gang members. Among many problems Perez cited was that deputies accompanied housing inspectors without legal justification and improperly interviewed people and searched homes before individuals understood their rights.

The conduct, he said, had serious consequences for residents, some of whom were forced from their homes and others who were prosecuted for administrative violations of their program contract.

In one case, a deputy sent photographs of luxury vehicles in the garage of one family receiving subsidized housing to an Antelope Valley-based "I Hate Section 8" Facebook page, federal officials found. The family's home was subsequently vandalized, with "I hate Section 8" followed by a profanity and a racial slur. The family's son had urine thrown at him by someone who shouted, "You dirty Section 8" and a racial slur. The family moved back to inner-city Los Angeles for fear of more harassment, Perez wrote.

"They treated people here like they had no civil rights," said attorney Gary Blasi, a UCLA professor of law emeritus who worked on a lawsuit brought by Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm, on behalf of subsidized housing residents who complained about the inspections.

V. Jesse Smith, president of the Antelope Valley Chapter of the NAACP, said the victims of racial discrimination deserve compensation.

"This [money] will better the lives of a lot of people who have been the victims of injustice," he said.

Two studies — one by a sheriff's sergeant and the other by a Lancaster statistician — found no link between crime and Section 8 vouchers, according to Perez's letter. Indeed, the Lancaster analysis asserted that they might keep crime rates lower in some neighborhoods.

Perez credited the Sheriff's Department with making some reforms that stopped the routine practice of deputies accompanying housing inspectors and introducing new rules that ensure that deputies are present at inspections only when necessary and do not actively take part in inspections.

The Justice Department said the civil rights violations occurred amid a climate of hostility toward Section 8 voucher holders expressed by some Palmdale and Lancaster city officials. Perez wrote that one Palmdale councilman said he wanted to make sure that voucher holders did not "swarm the valley." Meanwhile, Lancaster's mayor publicly complained that it was "unfair" that African Americans receive a disproportionately high percentage of vouchers and that his city should be "waging a war" against the program.

Parris, a veteran civil lawyer, said the Justice Department's accusations amount to nothing but hot air. "I have yet to see anything actionable In Lancaster," he said. "I believe the Justice Department is trying to justify its investigation. And, to be frank, it is not there."

Parris said the federal government has done nothing to help reduce gang violence in his city and he credited Lancaster's approach to gangs, subsidized housing and other social issues with helping to reduce crime.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

Times staff writer Frank Shyong contributed to this report.

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Homeland Security watchdog is under investigation by Senate panel

WASHINGTON – The official who investigates potential misdeeds at the Department of Homeland Security is under investigation by a Senate oversight panel for allegations of nepotism, abusing his position and covering up details from the Secret Service prostitution scandal.

Senate investigators are looking into allegations that Deputy Inspector General Charles K. Edwards was "susceptible to political pressure" and that he withheld information about the misconduct of U.S. Secret Service agents who were caught with prostitutes before a White House trip to Colombia in April 2012, according to a letter sent to Edwards by two senators on June 27.

"Numerous" complaints from DHS employees allege that Edwards improperly employed his wife as a government auditor and that he arranged for her to work from India for seven months, according to the letter from Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and the subcommittee's top Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Subordinates also alleged that Edwards gave bonuses to employees who helped him write a dissertation paper for a Ph.D. course at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and complete lesson plans for a course he taught as an adjunct professor at Capitol College in Laurel, Md., the letter states.

The senators requested Edwards provide 2½ years of documents and permission to interview four employees who worked under him.

The White House has not nominated a candidate for inspector general at DHS for more than two years, so Edwards has been the most senior official in the office since February 2011. Some members of Congress believe he has tried to curry favor with the Obama administration by softening his reports in hopes of being nominated as permanent head of the department.

On Tuesday, Edwards took a break from what he described as a "family vacation in India" to issue a bulletin under the Office of Inspector General letterhead. In it, he denied any wrongdoing and said the allegations were "completely without merit."

"I will defend myself against these personal attacks," Edwards wrote during a trip to Chennai, formerly known as Madras, an industrial city on the Bay of Bengal known as the "Detroit of India." Edwards said that similar allegations have been reviewed and dismissed by other oversight bodies.

"I am very disturbed that false allegations have been made against me, but more importantly, I am very concerned that this matter may negatively impact the important oversight work of the Office of Inspector General," Edwards wrote.

Edwards said he is prevented by federal rules from disclosing information in his defense.

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Veterans still struggling to find their bearings

My plan was to check in on Greg Valentini, who fought for the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But I couldn't get into his locked apartment building Monday afternoon in Hollywood. He hadn't answered my phone calls or emails, and it was too hot to wait on the street.

Just as I was about to give up on him, a young man approached on foot, stood under Valentini's window and gave a yell.

"Greg!" called the man, whose name is Jacob Alatriste.

"You think he's in there?" I asked.

"Yes," said Alatriste, who was carrying a baseball jersey he'd picked up from the dry cleaners as a favor for his friend. "I was in there with him earlier. But he's got the air conditioner on, and he probably can't hear anything."

Alatriste knew that I'd written several columns about Valentini, who crashed hard after leaving the military and ended up living in a tent next to Long Beach Airport. When Valentini got caught stealing to feed a drug habit, he landed in a residential recovery program called the Hollywood Center, run by Volunteers of America for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alatriste, himself a veteran of the Iraq war, had gone through the same program. Now, like Valentini, he's still trying to get his bearings.

But it hasn't been easy. Alatriste, 28, told me how he'd just tangled with some tough guys at a nearby sober-living house and gotten himself kicked out.

"So where are you going to live?" I asked.

"I guess I'm going to be homeless for a while," said Alatriste, who told me he has a job but hasn't saved enough to get a place.

As we talked, two more of Valentini's friends approached. Robert Rissman, 24, who fought in Iraq, is currently in the Hollywood Center program. He was with his pregnant fiancee, Marilyn Flores, 19, and I realized that even if Valentini never opened the door, I was still getting a look at the challenges of returning to civilian life after deployment.

Rissman was in a jam, partly of his own making and partly because bureaucracy can easily get in the way of good intentions. He had completed the program and gotten a coveted housing voucher, but it lapsed before he could save up enough money to meet his part of the rent. He went back to the Hollywood Center, but his next application for a voucher was rejected, so now he's contemplating his next move.

"I'm just a veteran's fiancee," Flores said.

I asked where she was living.

"In my car," she said, pointing up the street to a 1999 Isuzu, and explaining how she curls up in the back of the vehicle at night, despite being more than six months pregnant. "Sometimes I couch surf."

Rissman wants to finish school and get a good job, he said, but at the moment all he's got is a 50% disability check for service-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

Flores would like to find a decent studio apartment near MacArthur Park, which she thinks they could get for $700 a month, but Rissman said he doubted that.

"Because you're depressed," she said.

"No, because I've been disappointed many times," he answered.

As we spoke, I noted that the U.S. flag was flying from the porch of a sweet little cottage across the street, perhaps in early celebration of the Fourth of July.

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Snowden still looking for place to go after ruling out Russia

MOSCOW — With his prospects for refuge narrowing, Edward Snowden withdrew an application for asylum in Russia, apparently deciding that he couldn't abide by President Vladimir Putin's insistence that he stop leaking U.S. secrets, a Kremlin spokesman said Tuesday.

"True, Snowden did voice a request to stay in Russia," presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "At the same time, having found out yesterday about Russia's position outlined by President Putin … he rejected his intention and his request to get a chance to stay in Russia."

Putin had said Monday that the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor must stop activities "aimed at damaging our American partners" if he wanted to be granted asylum in Russia.

"As far as we know he is not going to give those up," Peskov said of Snowden.

Putin had also said that, regardless of Snowden's application, Russia would not turn him over to U.S. authorities for prosecution.

The WikiLeaks organization, which is helping Snowden, said Tuesday that the fugitive has applied for asylum in 20 other countries, but many of them appear to be unlikely refuges and several announced that they would not accept him. The countries listed by WikiLeaks were: Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.

Most of those countries have extradition agreements with the United States, which has issued a warrant for Snowden's arrest.

On Tuesday, a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from a summit of major gas exporters at the Kremlin was rerouted to Austria after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicion the Snowden was aboard, Bolivia's foreign minister told the Associated Press.

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca denied that Snowden was on the plane, which landed in Vienna. Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Schallenberg told the AP that Snowden is not with Morales and that the Bolivian president was spending the night at a Vienna hotel.

"We don't know who invented this lie. We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales," Choquehuanca was quoted as saying from Vienna.

Morales had said in an interview with Russia Today television that Bolivia would be willing to consider granting asylum to Snowden.

Among the other remaining possibilities was Venezuela, whose president, Nicolas Maduro, was also at the Moscow summit.

Maduro told reporters that he was unaware of Snowden's asylum application and intended to return home with "numerous agreements related to investments in the oil and gas sphere" — but apparently not with Snowden. Maduro, a persistent critic of the United States who has inherited the mantle of the late President Hugo Chavez, did praise Snowden for telling "the big truth to prevent wars."

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski posted a message on Twitter that he would not grant the request. Brazil, Germany and India were among other countries that said they would not accept Snowden.

Leonid Kalashnikov, deputy head of the foreign relations committee of the lower house of Russia's parliament, said that Putin doesn't want to quarrel with the United States over Snowden.

"The way the Kremlin presents it, Putin wants to save face before the nations by not bowing to the United States. But at the same time, he doesn't want to sacrifice what positive aspects still remain in U.S.-Russian relations over the fugitive," Kalashnikov said. "I am very sorry for Snowden, who keeps being rejected by the countries he was counting on for protection.

"His situation is dire but not hopeless, as the Kremlin will now do its best to find a safe place for him in a third country."

sergei.loiko@latimes.com

The Associated Press was used in compiling this report.

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Candlelight vigil honors fallen Arizona firefighters

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — As darkness fell over the mountains and more than 550 firefighters battled a deadly blaze in nearby Yarnell, about 3,000 people gathered at the high school football field Tuesday evening to honor the 19 firefighters who died on the fire line.

People held handmade signs reading, "We stand united," "We love our 19 heroes," or simply "19." Many wore purple ribbons and clothes in memory of the fallen.

Relatives of the lost firefighters, including widow Juliann Ashcraft, who spoke with The Times earlier in the day, sat near a stage in the center of the field.

As the service began, the Rev. John Dickerson asked the families to stand and face the packed field and bleachers.

"We want you to know we love you and we're here to support you," he said as the crowd applauded.

Many of the firefighters who died Sunday were in their 20s. Some had young families.

"We will tell their children for years to come, 'Your daddy is a hero,'" Dickerson said. "Your loved ones laid down their lives. Tonight you are loved by their community."

The crowd included many firefighters, some of whom wore gear from stations in Arizona, New Mexico and California.

Some wore black T-shirts with the logo of the fallen crew, the Granite Mountain hotshots. One man wearing the T-shirt said he had belonged to the crew, but didn't want to speak. He had tears in his eyes.

Dawn Cooley, 39, an office manager in Prescott, arrived with a shred of yellow tied around her wrist. It was part of a local hotshot uniform that one of the firefighter's wives had given her.

Cooley's ex-husband helped start the Granite Mountain hotshot crew back in 2002. When she saw relatives of the crew at the field, she hugged them.

"I don't know what to do," she said. "After things calm down a bit, I'm sure I can get in there and help."

She came to the vigil "to show respect."

"These boys laid it on the line. They don't know who they're protecting." Thinking of her ex, she said, "I'm glad he wasn't out there, but I'm sad that they were."

Nearby, the Rev. Steve Francis of Mountaintop Christian Fellowship mingled with the crowd, hugging friends. He wore a tag that said, "Prayer." He helped organize the event after spending the past few days meeting with families of the fallen.

Francis serves as fire department chaplain: It fell to him to notify the families.

"They're so young," he said, choking up as he remembered their reactions. "You need to be able to hold someone at that time and let them know it's OK to be angry with God. God doesn't promise the world is a safe place."

The families are grieving at different paces, with some still in shock, he said.

"We want them to know the community supports them, but beyond that, the community is hurting. They're asking, 'God, why would you do this?' So this is as much for them, to heal," he said.

At sunset, organizers gathered a bunch of purple balloons and released them during a moment of silence. As they ascended into the sky, a trumpeter began to play Taps. 

Near the end of the event, organizers acknowledged the surviving hotshot crew member, Brendan McDonough, calling out his name and asking him to stand. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

"I was surprised he came — losing all his buddies, the whole crew," said Debbie Habatone, 46, a student and artist from Prescott. "I was really glad to see him there, to know he came out."

[Updated, 9:47 p.m. July 2: This post has been updated to include the crowd honoring the surviving hotshot.]

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molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

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