US Mom Missing in Turkey Took Side Trips

Sarai Sierra, the New York mother who disappeared in Turkey while on a solo trip, took several side excursions out of the country, but stayed in contact with her family the entire time, a family friend told ABC News.

Turkish media reported today that police were trying to establish why Sierra visited Amsterdam and Munich. Police were also trying to establish the identity of a man Sierra, 33, was chatting with on the Internet, according to local media.

Rachel Norman, a family friend, said the man was a group tour guide from the Netherlands and said Sierra stayed in regular touch with her family in New York.

Steven Sierra, Sarai's husband, and David Jimenez, her brother, arrived in Istanbul today to aid in the search.

The men have been in contact with officials from the U.S. consulate in the country and plan to meet with them as soon as they open on Tuesday, Norman said.

After that, she said Sierra and Jimenez would meet with Turkish officials to discuss plans and search efforts.

Family of Sarai Sierra|AP Photo

NYC Woman Goes Missing While Traveling In Turkey Watch Video

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Giordano Interview Fallout: What Happens Next? Watch Video

Sarai Sierra was supposed to fly back to the United States on Jan. 22, but she never showed up for her flight home.

Her two boys, ages 11 and 9, have not been told their mother is missing.

Sierra, an avid photographer, left New York on Jan. 7. It was her first overseas trip, and she decided to go ahead after a friend had to cancel, her family said.

"It was her first time outside of the United States, and every day while she was there she pretty much kept in contact with us, letting us know what she was up to, where she was going, whether it be through texting or whether it be through video chat, she was touching base with us," Steven Sierra told ABC News before he departed for Istanbul.

But when it came time to pick her up from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Sierra wasn't on board her scheduled flight.

Steven Sierra called United Airlines and was told his wife had never boarded the flight home.

Further investigation revealed she had left her passport, clothes, phone chargers and medical cards in her room at a hostel in Beyoglu, Turkey, he said.

The family is suspicious and said it is completely out of character for the happily married mother, who met her husband in church youth group, to disappear.

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey and the Turkish National Police are involved in the investigation, WABC-TV reported.

"They've been keeping us posted, from my understanding they've been looking into hospitals and sending out word to police stations over there," Steven Sierra said. "Maybe she's, you know, locked up, so they are doing what they can."

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DNA privacy: don't flatter yourself

The secrets contained in our individual genomes are less valuable than we like to believe

IMAGINE donating your DNA to a project aimed at discovering links between genes and diseases. You consent to your genome sequence being released anonymously into the public domain, though you are warned there is a remote possibility that it might one day be possible to link it back to you.

A few years later, that remote possibility comes to pass. How should you feel? This is no longer a hypothetical scenario. About 50 people who participated in a project called 1000 Genomes have been traced (see "Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?").

The researchers' intentions were honourable. They have not revealed these identities, and the original data has been adjusted to make a repeat using the same technique impossible. All they wanted to do was expose privacy issues.

Consider them exposed. It is clear that genomics has entered a new phase, similar to that which social media went through a few years ago, when concerns were raised about people giving away too much personal information.

What happens when the same applies to our DNA? Having your genome open to public scrutiny obviously raises privacy issues. Employers and insurers may be interested. Embarrassing family secrets may be exposed.

But overall, personal genetic information is probably no more revealing than other sorts. In fact there are reasons to believe that it is less so: would an insurance company really go to the trouble of decoding a genome to discover a slightly elevated risk of cancer or Alzheimer's disease?

The available evidence suggests not. In 2006, Harvard University set out to sequence the genomes of 100,000 volunteers and make them publicly available, along with personal information such as names and medical records. One of the goals was to see what happens when such data is open to all. The answer seems to be "not a lot". So far this Personal Genome Project has published 148 people's full genomes. Not one volunteer has reported a privacy issue.

This is not a reason for complacency, but it suggests that our genomic secrets are less interesting to other people than we might like to believe.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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US senators unveil immigration reform deal

WASHINGTON: Eight US lawmakers crossed party lines to unveil a plan Monday that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the shadows in the United States.

"We recognise that our immigration system is broken," the senators said in their bipartisan framework, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

It promises a "tough but fair" path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, reform that would build the US economy, an "effective" employment verification system and an improved process to admit future workers.

The proposed legislation also increases the number of drones and other surveillance equipment, as well as the number of agents at and between ports of entry in a bid to better secure the long borders the United States shares with Canada to the north and especially Mexico to the south.

Although the bill seeks to boost security measures, it also vows to "strengthen prohibitions against racial profiling and inappropriate use of force", as well as improve training for border patrol agents and increase oversight.

In a bid to combat visa overstays, the lawmakers offered a requirement for those in the country illegally to register with the government.

Around 40 percent of the illegal immigrants now in the United States entered the country legally but then let their visa expire, according to official estimates.

But under the plan, they would also be able to earn "probationary" legal status -- to live and work legally in the US -- after passing a background check and paying a fine and back taxes.

Those with a "serious" criminal background or who otherwise threaten US national security would not be eligible for legal status and would face deportation, according to the framework document.

"Individuals with probationary legal status will be required to go to the back of the line of prospective immigrants" and pass an additional background check, among other requirements, the document said.

Under the plan, individuals who fulfil the requirements could eventually obtain a green card for permanent residency.

Senators backing the measure are Republicans John McCain, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, along with Democrats Robert Menendez, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Michael Bennet.

-AFP/fl

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In charred club, cell phones ring with calls for the dead

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

Hundreds dead in Brazil nightclub fire

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Cell phones left in the club ring, go unanswered amid the ruins


• The club's license had expired in August and had not been renewed


• At least 80 of those killed were students at the Federal University of Santa Maria

Are you there? Share your story.

Santa Maria, Brazil (CNN) -- Workers combing through the charred wreckage of Kiss nightclub in southern Brazil on Sunday encountered the eerie sound of ringing cell phones.

Glauber Fernandes, a reporter from CNN affiliate Band News, explains.

"It was a really complicated scene. A lot of smoke, a lot of shoes that was left, cell phones, because everybody tried to get out of there running," he said. "While we were there, we saw the cell phones were ringing. It was parents, friends, trying to know about what was happening and nobody was answering."

A fire swept through the packed, popular nightclub in Santa Maria early Sunday, killing at least 233 people -- enough to fill a large plane -- Brazilian Health Minister Alexandro Padilha told reporters. Of those, 185 have been identified so far.

Many apparently died from smoke inhalation. Others were trampled in the rush for the exits, one security guard told Band News.

More than 90 people were hospitalized, Padilha said, including 14 patients with severe burns.

Deadly blazes: Nightclub tragedies in recent history

About 2,000 people were inside the club when the fire broke out -- double the maximum capacity of 1,000, said Guido de Melo, a state fire official.

Investigators have received preliminary information that security guards stopped people from exiting the club, he told Globo TV.

"People who were inside the facility informed us ... that security guards blocked the exit to prevent people there from leaving, and that's when the crowd starting panicking, and the tragedy grew worse," he said.

The fire started "from out of nowhere" on a stage at the club and quickly spread to the ceiling, witness Jairo Vieira told Band News.

"People started running," survivor Luana Santos Silva told Globo TV. "I fell on the floor."

There was a pyrotechnics show going on inside the club when the fire started. Authorities stopped short of blaming it for the blaze, saying the cause was still under investigation.

The Kiss nightclub is popular with young people in Santa Maria, which is home to a number of universities and colleges, including the Federal University of Santa Maria. At least 80 of those killed Sunday were students at that school, it said.

The blaze broke out during a weekend when students were celebrating the end of summer. Many universities are set to resume classes on Monday.

Video from the scene showed firefighters shooting streams of water at the club and shirtless men trying to break down a wall with axes.

Smoke billowed outside the front of the building as the stench of fire filled the air, said Max Muller, who was riding by on his motorbike when he saw the blaze.

Muller recorded video of a chaotic scene outside the club, which showed emergency crews tending to victims and dazed clubgoers standing in the street. Bodies lay on the ground beside ambulances.

Friends who were inside the club told him that many struggled to find the exits in the dark. Muller, who was not inside the club Sunday morning but has been there twice before, said there were no exit signs over the doors. It is rare to see such signs in Brazilian clubs.

Valderci Oliveira, a state lawmaker, told Band News that he saw piles of bodies in the club's bathroom when he arrived at the scene hours after the blaze. It looked "like a war zone," he said.

Read more: How to protect yourself in a crowd

Police told Band News that 90% of the victims were found in that part of the club.

The roof collapsed in several parts of the building, trapping many inside, said Fernandes, the reporter from Band News.

For others, escaping was complicated by the fact that guards initially stopped people from leaving, he said, echoing comments from the state fire official.

"Some guards thought at first that it was a fight, a huge fight that happened inside the club and closed the doors so that the people could not leave without paying their bills from the club," Fernandes said.

The deadly fire is sure to shine a spotlight on safety in Brazil, which is set to host the World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2016.

Many wept as they searched for information outside a local gymnasium where bodies were taken for identification later Sunday. Inside, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff met with family members and friends as they waited on bleachers for word of their loved ones.

Rousseff became teary-eyed as she spoke of the fire to reporters in Chile earlier Sunday. She had been attending a regional summit there, but cut short the trip and returned to Brazil early to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.

"The Brazilian people are the ones who need me today," she said. "I want to tell the people of Santa Maria in this time of sadness that we are all together."

The fire started around 2 a.m. after the acoustic insulation in the Kiss nightclub caught fire, said Civil Defense Col. Adilomar Silva.

An accordionist who had been performing onstage with a band when the blaze broke out was among the dead, drummer Eliel de Lima told Globo TV.

Police were questioning the club's owner and interviewing witnesses as part of an investigation into what caused the blaze, state-run Agencia Brasil reported.

The club's license had expired in August and had not been renewed, local fire official Moises da Silva Fuchs told Globo TV.

The incident called to mind a 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island where pyrotechnics used by the heavy metal band Great White ignited a blaze that killed 100 people.

Pyrotechnics were also involved in a 2004 nightclub fire in Argentina that killed 194 people and a 2009 explosion at a nightclub in Russia that left more than 100 dead.

Shasta Darlington reported from Santa Maria, Brazil. Marilia Brocchetto and Dana Ford reported from Atlanta. CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet, Helena DeMoura and Samira Jafari contributed to this report.

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Massive loss of life in Brazil nightclub fire

Last Updated 10:16 p.m. ET

BRASILIA, Brazil Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Firefighters responding to the blaze at first had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because bodies partially blocked the club's entryway.

Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people. Officials at a news conference said the cause was still under investigation — though police inspector Sandro Meinerz told the Agencia Estado news agency the band was to blame for a pyrotechnics show and that manslaughter charges could be filed.

17 Photos

More than 200 die in Brazil nightclub fire

Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.

There was only one way out of the nightclub, and no emergency doors, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan. Some panicked patrons mistook the bathrooms for an escape and died there.

The chaos led to confusion -- security guards briefly blocked the exit fearing that customers were fleeing their bar tabs. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours a community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones looked crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."

Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.

"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.

A man carries an injured man, victim of a fire at the Kiss club in Santa Maria, Brazil, early Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013.

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AP Photo/Agencia RBS

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, a major university city with about 250,000 residents at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

An earlier count put the number of dead at 245.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile.

"It is a tragedy for all of us," Roussef said.

Most of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.

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'Barrier of Bodies' Trapped Nightclub Fire Victims

A fast-moving fire roared through a crowded, windowless nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, filling the air in seconds with flames and a thick, toxic smoke that killed more than 230 panicked partygoers, many of whom were caught in a stampede to escape.

Inspectors believe the blaze began when a band's small pyrotechnics show ignited foam sound insulating material on the ceiling, releasing a putrid haze that caused scores of university students to choke to death. Most victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns in what appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Survivors and the police inspector Marcelo Arigony said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

But Arigony said the guards didn't appear to block fleeing patrons for long. "It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died," he told The Associated Press.

Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting inside the Kiss nightclub because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance," Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper.

Germano Roratto/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil Nightclub Fire: Nearly 200 People Killed Watch Video

Authorities said band members who were on the stage when the fire broke out later talked with police and confirmed they used pyrotechnics during their show.

Police inspector Sandro Meinerz, who coordinated the investigation at the nightclub, said one band member died after escaping because he returned inside the burning building to save his accordion. The other band members escaped alive because they were the first to notice the fire.

"It was terrible inside — it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another," said Meinerz. "We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away."

Television images from Santa Maria, a university city of about 260,000 people, showed black smoke billowing out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who attended the university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours a community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.

Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

Teenagers sprinted from the scene after the fire began, desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors. About half of those killed were men, about half women.

The party was organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.

Read More..

Get cirrus in the fight against climate change

FEATHERY cirrus clouds are beautiful, but when it comes to climate change, they are the enemy. Found at high-altitude and made of small ice crystals, they trap heat - so more cirrus means a warmer world. Now it seems that, by destroying cirrus, we could reverse all the warming Earth has experienced so far.

In 2009, David Mitchell of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, proposed a radical way to stop climate change: get rid of some cirrus. Now Trude Storelvmo of Yale University and colleagues have used a climate model to test the idea.

Storelvmo added powdered bismuth triiodide into the model's troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which these clouds form. Ice crystals grew around these particles and expanded, eventually falling out of the sky, reducing cirrus coverage. Without the particles, the ice crystals remained small and stayed up high for longer.

The technique, done on a global scale, created a powerful cooling effect, enough to counteract the 0.8 °C of warming caused by all the greenhouse gases released by humans (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50122).

But too much bismuth triiodide made the ice crystals shrink, so cirrus clouds lasted longer. "If you get the concentrations wrong, you could get the opposite of what you want," says Storelvmo. And, like other schemes for geoengineering, side effects are likely - changes in the jet stream, say.

Different model assumptions give different "safe" amounts of bismuth triiodide, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. "Do we really know the system well enough to be confident of being in the safe zone?" he asks. "You wouldn't want to touch this until you knew."

Mitchell says seeding would take 140 tonnes of bismuth triiodide every year, which by itself would cost $19 million.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

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India sees push for police reform after rape outcry

NEW DELHI: Sixteen-year-old Seenu was walking to her grandmother's house along a quiet street in northern India when a group of men dragged her into a car, took her to a secluded field and raped her in turns.

They filmed the act on their mobile phones and forced a pill into her mouth. She woke up an hour later, naked, bloodied, disoriented. The sun was just beginning to set as she put on her jeans and made her way back home.

When her father -- a gardener belonging to the "untouchable" or Dalit community which lies at the bottom of India's caste system -- found out what had happened to his only daughter, he killed himself.

Over the days that followed, Seenu (not her real name) and her mother made several trips to the nearest police station, defying threats from her upper-caste attackers, some of whom she knew.

Finally, when the Dalit community in her village held public protests and piled pressure on the police, the first arrest was made -- two weeks after the gang-rape. Since then, seven more men have been arrested.

Now living at her grandmother's home with six police officers as protection ahead of a court appearance next month, Seenu told AFP that rape victims like herself have problems reporting the crime "because police don't respect them".

"It makes me so angry. Why don't the police listen? Why don't they do their job? Why do they have to humiliate the girl or treat her like it's her fault she got raped?" she said, speaking softly so the officers did not overhear.

The gruesome gang-rape and murder of a student in New Delhi on December 16 last year prompted nationwide protests and a public outcry over how police handle sexual assault cases.

A beleaguered central government announced several safety measures earlier this month, including more night-time patrols by police in Delhi and the presence of at least a dozen female officers at every police station.

India suffers from a massive shortfall in the number of police on duty, currently employing only 129 officers per 100,000 people, according to data published in 2010 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

This compares to 227 officers per 100,000 people in the United States.

Also, in many cases police have been found displaying the same sexist prejudices prevalent in Indian society, leading them sometimes to encourage rape survivors to marry their attackers.

Last week, a judge at a Delhi court ordered police to pay 25,000 rupees ($470) as compensation to a 13-year-old rape survivor, for refusing to file a complaint and pushing her to settle the case with the alleged rapist.

J.S. Verma, a former chief justice of India heading a government commission looking into sex crime, lambasted the police on Wednesday for their apathy and "low and skewed priority of dealing with complaints of sexual assault".

In his report, Verma also called for an end to the so-called "two finger test", a practice decried as demeaning and flawed in which doctors attempt to determine if a rape victim is sexually active.

Stung by the hail of criticism, police officials in Delhi recently revived a "gender sensitisation" programme that originally ran from 2008-2011, enrolling all personnel on the course in a bid to improve their handling of women.

Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar promised that the force had been "jolted," leading it to "look at offences against women in a totally different way".

The government's plans to improve policing also include measures to recruit more women, who make up just 6.5 percent of the force, according to figures in the National Crime Records Bureau.

Maurice Nagar police station could be a model for the future. Located near a sprawling university campus, the recruitment of women has long been a priority and a female officer is required to be present at all hours.

The khaki-clad guards outside are female, the officer who registers complaints is female and many of the officers on duty, zipping in and out of traffic on motorbikes are female.

But even here an officer, Nazma Khan, dismisses the notion that police reform is a panacea.

"These crimes happen because of people with a messed-up mentality, who are everywhere," she told AFP.

"If we want to change the mentality then it has to change at school level, at homes, in the family, otherwise recruitment (of police) will not make a difference," she added.

To Seenu, the Dalit teenager whose parents cast off centuries of prejudice and oppression to educate their daughter and raise her to dream of someday becoming a doctor, such arguments offer no consolation.

"If the police don't change, girls like me will never get justice and soon enough, people will just stop expecting any justice in India."

- AFP/fa

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Anonymous: U.S. justice system has 'crossed a line'

A screenshot at 3:35 a.m. ET on January 26, 2013, of the homepage of the United States federal sentencing website after it had been hacked by a group that identified itself as "Anonymous."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• U.S. Sentencing Commission website restored


• The FBI is handling the incident as a "criminal investigation"


• Hackers say they have a file of incriminating information ready to launch


• The threat note cited anger over the death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz

(CNN) -- In anger over the recent death of an Internet activist who faced federal charges, hackers claiming to be from the group Anonymous threatened early Saturday to release sensitive information about the U.S. Department of Justice.

They claimed to have one such file on multiple servers ready for immediate release.

The hackers hijacked the website of the U.S. government agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines, where they posted a message demanding the United States reform its justice system or face incriminating leaks to select news outlets.

The lengthy, eloquently written letter was signed "Anonymous."

Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said the bureau was immediately aware of the threat and is "handling it as a criminal investigation."

"We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person('s) or government agency's network," he said.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission said its website was brought down "temporarily" before it was restored later Saturday. "The commission's publications, training materials and federal sentencing statistics are again readily accessible to visitors to the site," it said in a statement.

The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz on January 11 triggered the posting of the hackers' message to the web address of the sentencing commission, they said.

His death, which they blamed on the justice system, "crossed a line," the letter said.

How Aaron Swartz helped build the Internet

A YouTube video accompanied the message, and made use of images from Cold War nuclear scenarios and games of strategy. The letter contained nuclear metaphors to refer to chunks of embarrassing information.

The hackers said they have obtained "enough fissile material for multiple warheads," which it would launch against the Justice Department and "its associated executive branches."

It gave the "warheads" the names of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

'Anonymous' threatens Westboro Baptist

Anonymous accused the FBI of infiltrating its ranks and claimed the federal government is applying "highly disproportionate sentencing" to ruin the lives of some of its members.

Swartz, 26, was facing federal computer fraud charges and could have served 35 years in prison. Anonymous said he "was killed," because he "faced an impossible choice."

His family has issued a statement saying that federal charges filed over allegations that he stole millions of online documents contributed to Swartz's decision to take his own life. The files were mostly scholarly papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Opinion: Why the Net grieves Aaron Swartz

Swartz's suicide has inspired a flurry of online tributes and mobilized Anonymous, the loosely defined collective of so-called "hacktivists" who oppose attempts to limit Internet freedoms. Both Swartz and Anonymous have been stark proponents of open access to information and open-source programming.

A review of a cached version of the USSC.gov website showed the Anonymous message on its homepage early Saturday.

Anonymous also posted an editable version of the website, inviting users to deface it as they pleased. Multiple pages -- not only the home page -- appeared to allow users to alter them.

The "warhead" names appeared as links, most leading to 404 error messages of pages not found, but some leading to pages of raw programming code.

The hackers said they chose the commission's website because of its influence on the doling out of sentences they consider to be unfair.

CNN's Carol Cratty, Jason Moon, AnneClaire Stapleton contributed to this report

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At least 5 die in Chicago shootings

CHICAGO Authorities are investigating the shooting deaths of five people in a single day of bloodshed in Chicago.

Police Officer Daniel O'Brien says Saturday's first killing occurred at around 2:15 a.m. on the city's west side when a gunman opened fire on two men who were sitting in a parked car, killing one and wounding the other.

Investigators say a few hours later, someone opened fire on three men near a South Side eatery, killing two of them and wounding the third.

Detectives were called to the scene of another shooting Saturday afternoon in which a man in his 30s and a teenager were shot to death. There had been no arrests.

Chicago's homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008.

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