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CONVENTION 2008
Watchful Eyes
Mark Hosenball 8/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
The man charged last week with sending threatening letters to John McCain campaign offices also mailed a letter to one of Barack Obama's offices, according to a federal official familiar with the investigation, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information. The suspect—a Colorado inmate named Marc Harold Ramsey—told investigators about the missive when questioned last week; it was intercepted at the post office.
JUSTICE
Jailhouse Cop
Dirk Johnson 8/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
Standing 6 feet 5 inches in his jailhouse blues, with a square jaw and grey stubble, Mark Curran is the inmate in cell No. 2. He is also the sheriff.
France
Incarceration Nation
Tracy McNicoll 8/2/2008 12:00:00 AM
Prisons have long been an embarrassment for France, the self-proclaimed "homeland of human rights." Since 1992 the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly rapped Paris for "inhumane and degrading" treatment of prisoners. In 2005, during a 16-day visit to France, then Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles said of a section of Paris's La Santé prison, "In my whole life, apart from perhaps Moldova, I have never seen a center worse than that one." But the overcrowding has worsened since former Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy ascended to the president's office in May 2007, and brought his tough, law-and-order approach with him.
Keep Marion Jones in Prison
Mark Starr 7/24/2008 12:00:00 AM
In August of 1999, I was at the world track and field championships in Seville, Spain to begin my coverage—"gathering string" is what we call it in the business—of Marion Jones, who would be NEWSWEEK's cover gal for the Sydney Olympics a year later.
Mocking Mukasey
Michael Isikoff 7/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
Raising the prospect that Guantánamo Bay inmates might be unleashed onto the streets of American cities, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Wednesday there is an "urgent" need for Congress to enact a new law governing how federal courts handle legal challenges from detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba.
INTERNATIONAL
Why Vietnam Loves McCain
Ron Moreau 7/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
John McCain might not recognize Nguyen van Sy, but they used to be neighbors. Back in the 1960s, Sy was left behind as caretaker at the North Vietnamese Ministry of Culture's Film Institute after its staff was evacuated to the countryside to escape the U.S. bombing. The Hanoi regime converted part of the abandoned facility into a POW camp—"the Plantation," inmates called it—and the 31-year-old Navy pilot was taken there a few weeks after he was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. Sometimes Sy climbed a tree for a peek at the prisoners. At night the caretaker huddled by the camp's wall while the city was being pounded: the Americans would never target their own men, he figured. Four decades later, Sy has a clear favorite in this year's U.S. presidential contest. "We hope McCain wins," says the 62-year-old Vietnamese. "He remembers us and will do good things for Vietnam."