Guardian Real Estate Services: Portland Area Communities Raise ...

During our annual Green Awareness Month our Portland-area communities were able to take advantage of an innovative?Portland General Electric program focused on increasing use of renewable power.

The Renewable Power Program gives PGE customers the choice of several different renewable energy options to receive their power from. The program keeps Oregon green by decreasing the use of power sources like fossil fuels that pollute the environment and instead utilizing clean sources like low-impact?hydro, new wind, and biomass (wood waste). Twelve?Guardian?communities that are in PGE territory worked with this program during?Green Awareness?Month to increase participation,?with amazing results!

Total Number of Tenants: 1225
Number Enrolled During?Green Awareness Month: 168
Number Enrolled Prior to Green Awareness Month: 180
Total Enrolled After Green Awareness Month: 348
Percentage of Residents Enrolled Prior: 15%
Percentage of Residents Enrolled After: 28%

Resident participation almost doubled, and we are so proud of our community managers for their hard work in partnering with PGE to promote green living at their community. Special thanks to our fantastic PGE/Green Mountain Energy partner, Aaron Green. Great work!

Source: http://guardianrealestateservices.blogspot.com/2013/06/portland-area-communities-raise-bar-on.html

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A path to lower-risk painkillers: Newly-discovered drug target paves way for alternatives to morphine

June 10, 2013 ? For patients managing cancer and other chronic health issues, painkillers such as morphine and Vicodin are often essential for pain relief. The body's natural tendency to develop tolerance to these medications, however, often requires patients to take higher doses -- increasing risks of harmful side effects and dependency.

Now, new research from the University of Michigan Health System and a major pharmaceutical company has identified a novel approach to moderate and severe pain therapy that paves the way for lower dosage painkillers. The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Drugs such as hydrocodone (the main ingredient of Vicodin) and oxycodone (Oxycontin) are often the best options for the treatment of moderate to severe pain for patients facing medical conditions ranging from a wisdom tooth extraction to cancer. The drugs bind to specific molecules (opioid receptors) on nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to prevent the feeling of pain.

"We have for the first time discovered compounds that bind to an alternative site on the nerve opioid receptors and that have significant potential to enhance the drug's positive impact without increasing negative side effects," says co-author John Traynor, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the U-M Medical School.

"We are still in the very early stages of this research with a long way to go, but we believe identifying these compounds is a key step in revolutionizing the treatment of pain. This opens the door to developing pain relief medications that require lower doses to be effective, helping address the serious issues of tolerance and dependence that we see with conventional pain therapy."

Conventional drug treatments for pain work by targeting the so-called orthosteric site of the opioid receptor that provides pain relief. Targeting this site, however, is a double-edged sword because it is also responsible for all of the drug's unwanted side effects, such as constipation and respiratory depression. Tolerance also limits chronic use of the drugs because higher doses are required to maintain the same effect.

Using cell systems and mouse brain membranes, researchers have identified compounds that bind to a physically distinct and previously unknown "allosteric" site on the opioid receptor- a site that fine-tunes the activity of the receptor. Not only do these compounds act at a location that hasn't been studied as a drug target before but they bind to the receptor in a new way to enhance the actions of morphine -- which means lower doses can have the same impact.

"The newly-discovered compounds bind to the same receptor as morphine but appear to act at a separate novel site on the receptor and therefore can produce different effects. What's particularly exciting is that these compounds could potentially work with the body's own natural painkillers to manage pain," Traynor says.

"We know that conventional strong pain medications ultimately increase the risk of withdrawal symptoms and addiction, which is an especially serious issue with the current prescription drug abuse epidemic in our country. The implications of this work, if it translates to animal studies and then to humans, are highly significant to this area of study."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/S7LBKSEkcBM/130610192553.htm

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Senator says intel chief was not forthcoming

WASHINGTON (AP) ? One of the staunchest critics of government surveillance programs said Tuesday that the national intelligence director did not give him a straight answer last March when he asked whether the National Security Agency collects any data on millions of Americans.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called for hearings to discuss two recently revealed NSA programs that collect billions of telephone numbers and Internet usage daily. He was also among a group of senators who introduced legislation Tuesday to force the government to declassify opinions of a secret court that authorizes the surveillance.

But other key members of Congress, including House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, say the programs were valuable tools in counterterror and that the former NSA contractor who leaked them is a traitor. President Barack Obama has vigorously defended the program, saying Americans must balance privacy and security to protect the country from terrorists.

Wyden, however, complained that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, during a Senate Intelligence hearing in March about threats the U.S. faces from around the world, was less than forthcoming.

"The American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives," Wyden said in a statement.

Wyden said he wanted to know the scope of the top secret surveillance programs, and privately asked NSA Director Keith Alexander for clarity. When he did not get a satisfactory answer, Wyden said he alerted Clapper's office a day early that he would ask the same question at the public hearing.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.

"No, sir," Clapper answered.

"It does not?" Wyden pressed.

Clapper quickly and haltingly softened his answer. "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect ? but not wittingly."

Wyden said he also gave Clapper a chance to amend his answer.

A spokesman for Clapper did not have an immediate response on Tuesday, but the intelligence director told NBC that he believed Wyden's question was "not answerable necessarily, by a simple yes or no." Officials generally do not discuss classified information in public hearings, reserving discussion on top-secret programs for closed sessions where they will not be revealed to adversaries.

"So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least most untruthful manner, by saying, 'No,'" Clapper said.

The programs that do sweep up such information were revealed last week by The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, and Clapper has since taken the unusual step of declassifying some of the previously top-secret details to help the administration mount a public defense of the surveillance as a necessary step to protect Americans.

One of the NSA programs gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records to search for possible links to known terrorist targets abroad. The other allows the government to tap into nine U.S. Internet companies and gather all communications to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

A new poll by the Post and the Pew Research Center found Americans generally prioritize the government's need to investigate terrorist threats over the need to protect personal privacy, and most (56 percent) considered the NSA's collection of Americans' telephone call records an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism. Americans were more closely divided on whether the government should be able to monitor email and other online activities to prevent future terrorist attacks, with 52 percent opposed to that.

The poll was conducted June 6-9, as many details of the NSA's data collection efforts were still being revealed.

A senior U.S. intelligence official on Monday said there were no plans to scrap the programs. Despite backlash from overseas allies and American privacy advocates, the programs continue to receive widespread, if cautious, support within Congress as an indispensable tool for protecting Americans from terrorists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive security issue.

Wyden said lawmakers must have clear and direct answers to questions in order to conduct oversight. "This job cannot be done responsibly if senators aren't getting straight answers to direct questions," he said in the statement.

The Justice Department is weighing whether to charge the American man who claims to have given documents about the classified programs to journalists. The whereabouts of Edward Snowden, 29, were not immediately known. He was last in Hong Kong, where he hopes to avoid being extradited to the United States for prosecution.

The NSA contractor for whom he worked, Booz Allen Hamilton, announced Tuesday that they had fired Snowden after less than three months on the job.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament planned to debate the spy programs Tuesday and whether they have violated local privacy protections. EU officials in Brussels pledged to seek answers from U.S. diplomats at a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin later this week.

The global scrutiny comes as other lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California accuse Snowden of committing an "act of treason" that should be prosecuted.

Officials in Germany and the European Union issued calm but firm complaints Monday over two National Security Agency programs that target suspicious foreign messages ? potentially including phone numbers, email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy laws.

And in Washington, members of Congress said they would take a new look at potential ways to keep the U.S. safe from terror attacks without giving up privacy protections that critics charge are at risk with the government's current authority to broadly sweep up personal communications.

"There's very little trust in the government, and that's for good reason," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. "We're our own worst enemy."

House Speaker John Boehner, however, said he believes President Barack Obama has fully explained why the program is needed. He told ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday that "the disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are and it's a giant violation of the law." He called Snowden a "traitor."

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was considering how Congress could limit the amount of data spy agencies seize from telephone and Internet companies ? including restricting the information to be released only on an as-needed basis.

"It's a little unsettling to have this massive data in the government's possession," King said.

Snowden is a former CIA employee who later joined Booz Allen, where the papers said he gained access to the surveillance. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine said, it was "absolutely shocking" that a 29-year-old with limited experience would have access to this material.

FBI agents on Monday visited the home of Snowden's father, Lonnie Snowden, in Upper Macungie Township, Pa. The FBI in Philadelphia declined to comment.

The first explosive document Snowden revealed was a top secret court order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that granted a three-month renewal for a massive collection of American phone records. That order was signed April 25. The Guardian's first story on the court order was published June 5.

Snowden also gave the Post and the Guardian a PowerPoint presentation on another secret program that collects online usage by the nine Internet providers. The U.S. government says it uses that information only to track foreigners' use overseas.

It was unclear when or if Snowden would be extradited.

"All of the options, as he put it, are bad options," Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported the phone-tracking program and interviewed Snowden extensively, told The Associated Press on Monday. He said Snowden decided to release details of the programs out of shock and anger over the sheer scope of the government's privacy invasions.

"It was his choice to publicly unveil himself," Greenwald told the AP in Hong Kong. "He recognized that even if he hadn't publicly unveiled himself, it was only a matter of time before the U.S. government discovered that it was he who had been responsible for these disclosures, and he made peace with that. ... He's very steadfast and resolute about the fact that he did the right thing."

Greenwald said he had more documents from Snowden and expected "more significant revelations" about NSA.

Although Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., the document has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political. Any negotiations about his possible handover will involve Beijing, but some analysts believe China is unlikely to want to jeopardize its relationship with Washington over someone it would consider of little political interest.

Snowden also told The Guardian that he may seek asylum in Iceland, which has strong free-speech protections and a tradition of providing a haven for the outspoken and the outcast.

The Justice Department is investigating whether his disclosures were a criminal offense ? a matter that's not always clear-cut under U.S. federal law.

A second senior intelligence official said Snowden would have had to have signed a non-disclosure agreement to gain access to the top secret data. That suggests he could be prosecuted for violating that agreement. Penalties could range from a few years to life in prison. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the process of accessing classified materials more frankly.

The leak came to light as Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was being tried in military court under federal espionage and computer fraud laws for releasing classified documents to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other items. The most serious charge against him was aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence. But the military operates under a different legal system.

If Snowden is forced to return to the United States to face charges, whistle-blower advocates said Monday that they would raise money for his legal defense.

Clapper has ordered an internal review to assess how much damage the disclosures created. Intelligence experts say terrorist suspects and others seeking to attack the U.S. all but certainly will find alternate ways to communicate instead of relying on systems that now are widely known to be under surveillance.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was open for a discussion about the spy programs, both with allies and in Congress. His administration has aggressively defended the two programs and credited them with helping stop at least two terrorist attacks, including one in New York City.

Privacy rights advocates say Obama has gone too far. The American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School filed legal action Monday to force a secret U.S. court to make public its opinions justifying the scope of some of the surveillance, calling the programs "shockingly broad." And conservative lawyer Larry Klayman filed a separate lawsuit against the Obama administration, claiming he and others have been harmed by the government's collection of as many as 3 billion phone numbers each day.

Army records indicate Snowden enlisted in the Army around May 2004 and was discharged that September.

"He attempted to qualify to become a Special Forces soldier but did not complete the requisite training and was administratively discharged from the Army," Col. David H. Patterson Jr., an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said in a statement late Monday.

___

Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Frederic Frommer and Matt Apuzzo in Washington, Robert H. Reid in Berlin and Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

___

Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at https://twitter.com/larajakesAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senator-says-intel-chief-not-forthcoming-182533174.html

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Global warming: Not too late to rein in climate change, group says

The International Energy Agency urges governments to take interim steps to reduce emissions even before a hoped-for climate treaty, saying aggressive measures can still limit global warming.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / June 10, 2013

A flock of Geese fly past the smokestacks at the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant as the suns sets near Emmett, Kan., Dec. 2012.

Charlie Riedel/AP/File

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Over the next seven years, aggressive efforts to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, refineries, and pipelines, and especially to boost energy efficiency, could still keep the world on track to meet its goal of holding increases in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

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What?s more, those efforts need not come at the expense of a profitable energy sector, a concern that has fueled opposition to international agreements on curbing emissions and slowing climate change.

That's the conclusion the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has reached after reviewing rising global emissions trends from energy production, rising greenhouse-gas concentrations in general, and the glacial efforts to craft a new global climate treaty by 2015, to take effect in 2020.

Eight years have passed since the first attempt at a global climate treaty ? the 1997 Kyoto Protocol ? took effect. It's first four-year enforcement period ended last year. Throughout the pact's torturous negotiations and implementation, however, emissions have continued to climb.

The pace has even topped some of the highest emissions trajectories climate researchers and economists developed as tools to evaluate the level of effort needed to deal with global warming, as well as the consequences of inaction.

Even with climate policies currently in place globally and nationally, emissions of greenhouse gases in 2020 are projected to be 4 billion tons higher than they should be if nations are intent on giving themselves a 50-50 chance of holding the rise in global average temperatures to 2 degrees C, above pre-industrial levels by 2100, the IEA notes. At global climate talks negotiators have settled on the 2-degree target in order to minimize the harmful effects of global warming.

The agency estimates that the aggressive global approach it recommends could slash that 2020 emissions excess to a far more manageable 900 million tons.

Some 49 percent of that reduction would come from tighter energy-efficiency standards on everything from cars and home appliances to industrial motors and heating and cooling equipment. Another 21 percent could come from reducing reliance on ? or simply not building ? coal-fired power plants that use the least-efficient technology. Some 18 percent of the emissions reductions would come from plugging methane leaks at oil and natural-gas refineries and in pipelines. Finally, 12 percent of the reductions could come from a partial reduction in subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry.

?We identify a set of proven measures that could stop the growth in global energy-related emissions by the end of this decade at no net economic cost,? said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, the report?s lead author, in a statement. ?Rapid and widespread adoption could act as a bridge to further action, buying precious time while international climate negotiations continue.?

In one sense, the report offers proposals that already are widely seen as arrows in the climate-change quiver. But the report also suggests that these are far more affordable than some have suggested, according to World Resources Institute President Andrew Steer.

"The common assumption is that action to reduce emissions is prohibitively expensive," he said in a statement. But, he added, "The IEA's new report offers affordable and common sense measures to rein in energy-related emissions."

Quite apart from its impact on emissions, the IEA's approach also could build support for the heavier lifting that is likely to come in a 2015 agreement.

The IEA is offering a "let's get started" plan, adds Gregory Nemet, a political scientist who focuses on climate, energy, and resource issues at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The plan urges individual governments to adopt affordable, interim policies, such as improved fuel efficiency standards, to make the goals of any future climate treaty more achievable.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/nWuWgGlbIyY/Global-warming-Not-too-late-to-rein-in-climate-change-group-says

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Apple brings file-sharing capabilities to iOS 7 with AirDrop

Amongst the significant changes and feature enhancements we've already seen on iOS 7, it appears that AirDrop will be featured in the new version of Apple's mobile operating system. The file-sharing feature will be available on the iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad mini and 5th-gen iPod touch, but apparently nothing earlier than that. The peer-to-peer feature was briefly shown off at WWDC in the Control Center, and it means there is "no need to wander around the room bumping your phones." We wonder if this means we shouldn't expect any NFC capabilities in the next version of the iPhone or iPad, but it's still a little too early to make that correlation.

Here's Apple's official statement on AirDrop for iOS7:

"AirDrop is an entirely new way to quickly and easily share content with people nearby. When you've got something you want to share, AirDrop shows you your contacts close by. Just select who you want to share with and AirDrop does the rest. AirDrop transfers are peer-to-peer so you can use it anywhere, without any network or set up required, and transfers are fully encrypted so your content is protected and private."

Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Apple

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Ng673eUtXY4/

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Zimmerman's attorney walks tight line in defense

George Zimmerman, accused in the Trayvon Martin shooting, leaves a Seminole County courtroom at the end of a pre-trial hearing, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday, June 8, 2013. Circuit Judge Debra Nelson halted the hearing Saturday after an audio expert was unable to testify because he was stuck at an airport. She will issue a ruling after testimony is concluded. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

George Zimmerman, accused in the Trayvon Martin shooting, leaves a Seminole County courtroom at the end of a pre-trial hearing, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday, June 8, 2013. Circuit Judge Debra Nelson halted the hearing Saturday after an audio expert was unable to testify because he was stuck at an airport. She will issue a ruling after testimony is concluded. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

George Zimmerman, right, and attorney Don West, stand as the judge enters the courtroom in Seminole circuit court for a pretrial hearing, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday, June 8, 2013. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

George Zimmerman, accused in the Trayvon Martin shooting, listens during a pretrial hearing at the Seminole County courthouse, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday morning, June 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

George Zimmerman, left, talks to Seminole County Investigator Robert Hemmert in Seminole circuit court during a pretrial hearing, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday afternoon, June 8, 2013. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

Defense attorney Don West, center, addresses the court as defense attorney Mark O'Mara, left, and defendant George Zimmerman listen, in Seminole circuit court during a pretrial hearing, in Sanford, Fla., Saturday, June 8, 2013. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.(AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank, Pool)

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? George Zimmerman's lead attorney will be walking a fine line as he tries to convince jurors that his client didn't murder Trayvon Martin: He needs to show why Zimmerman felt threatened by the African-American teenager while avoiding the appearance that either he or his client is racist.

Because there is no dispute that Zimmerman shot Martin, 17, during a fight on a rainy night in February 2012, Mark O'Mara must convince the jury that Zimmerman pulled his 9 mm handgun and fired a bullet into the Miami-area high school student's chest because he feared for his life and that the fear was caused by Martin's actions, not his race.

Jury selection begins Monday in the second-degree murder trial, which is expected to last about six weeks. Martin's killing drew worldwide attention as it sparked a national debate about race, equal justice under the law and gun control. If convicted, Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, could get a life sentence.

Under Florida law, Zimmerman, 29, could lawfully shoot Martin in self-defense if it was necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.

O'Mara has to be careful how he characterizes Martin, said Randy McClean, an Orlando-area defense attorney. "Mr. O'Mara's challenge is to show Trayvon wasn't profiled, that Zimmerman either saw something that looked suspicious or something else that caused him to make contact with Trayvon."

The challenge for prosecutors trying to get a second-degree murder conviction, meanwhile, is that they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that while Zimmerman's actions weren't premeditated, they demonstrated a "depraved mind" that didn't consider the threat his actions had toward human life.

McClean and another Orlando defense attorney, David Hill, predicted that prosecutors will attack Zimmerman, who was employed at a mortgage risk management firm, as a frustrated, would-be police officer who had a chip on his shoulder. Zimmerman had studied criminal justice at a community college and had volunteered to run his community's neighborhood watch program.

"The state's narrative is going to be ... Zimmerman was a powerful neighborhood watchman, a wannabe officer who liked to use his authority," McCLean said.

The Feb. 26, 2012, confrontation began when Zimmerman spotted Martin, whom he did not recognize, walking in the Retreat at Twin Lakes, the gated townhome community where Zimmerman lived and the fiancee of Martin's father also resided. There had been a rash of recent break-ins at the Retreat, and Zimmerman was wary of strangers walking through the complex. He was well-known to police dispatchers for his regular calls reporting suspicious people and events.

Martin was walking back from a convenience store after buying ice tea and Skittles. It was raining, and he was wearing a hoodie.

Zimmerman called 911, got out of his vehicle and followed Martin behind the townhomes despite being told not to by a police dispatcher. "These a------s, they always get away," Zimmerman said on the call. Zimmerman, who had a concealed weapons permit, was armed.

The two then got into a struggle. Zimmerman told police he had lost sight of Martin, and that Martin circled back and attacked him as he walked back to his truck. Prosecutors say he tracked down Martin and started the fight.

Zimmerman told police Martin punched him in the nose, knocking him down, and then got on top of him and began banging Zimmerman's head on the sidewalk. Photos taken after the fight show Zimmerman with a broken nose, bruises and bloody cuts on the back of his head. He said that when Martin spotted his gun holstered around his waist under his clothes, he said, "You are going to die tonight." Zimmerman said he grabbed the gun first and fired. Martin died at the scene.

An autopsy showed Martin was shot through the heart at close range. Prosecutors claim Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin, and Martin's divorced parents have said the neighborhood watch captain was the aggressor in the fight.

"Trayvon Martin did not have a gun. Trayvon Martin did not get out of his car to chase anybody," said Benjamin Crump, the parents' attorney. "Trayvon Martin did not shoot and kill anybody."

Given the low visibility on the dark, rainy night of the shooting, few residents of the Retreat at Twin Lakes were able to give investigators a good description of what happened, and several offered conflicting accounts of who was on top of whom during the struggle.

But 911 calls made by neighbors captured cries for help during the fight and then the gunshot. Martin's parents say the cries for help were from their son, while Zimmerman's father has testified they were from his son. Voice-recognition experts could play an important role in helping jurors decide who was screaming, provided they are allowed to testify. O'Mara had raised questions about whether such prosecution experts would mislead jurors and Circuit Judge Debra Nelson has yet to rule on his concerns.

For days, the Trayvon Martin shooting received no attention beyond some small items in the local news media. Sanford police, after questioning Zimmerman, let him go and local prosecutors chose not to press charges right away.

That changed after Martin's parents hired Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney. He began complaining to the news media, accusing the police and prosecutors of letting the murderer of a black child go free, and contacting other civil rights leaders including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to get their support.

Those events sparked protests in Sanford and around the country, with thousands demanding that Zimmerman be prosecuted. Gov. Rick Scott appointed State Attorney Angela B. Corey from the nearby Jacksonville district to re-examine the case.

Forty-four days after Martin's death, Corey charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder and had him arrested. For the past year, Zimmerman has been free on $1 million bond and living in seclusion. His defense is being paid by private contributions through a website O'Mara set up.

Outside attorneys say the challenge for O'Mara and his colleagues will be to divorce the case's facts from the larger context of what the shooting symbolizes to some communities.

"You have to take away the controversial stuff and make it just about what Zimmerman thought, that he was scared and feared for his life," Hill said.

If his pre-trial statements are any indication, that's exactly what O'Mara will do. O'Mara earlier decided not to invoke a "stand your ground" hearing in which a judge alone would decide whether to dismiss the case or allow it to proceed to trial.

"This case, in my opinion and in my view of the facts, is a clear, straightforward self-defense case based upon the forensic evidence," O'Mara said. "With that as a premise, this case has taken on a significance well beyond the facts."

Nelson has already ruled that defense attorneys won't be able to mention Martin's past marijuana use, suspension from school and past fighting during opening statements, although Nelson left open the possibility that the defense could try again later during the trial if it could show relevance. Such a situation could arise if prosecutors attempt to portray Martin as an angelic kid.

"The trial itself is like a symphony," O'Mara said in a recent interview. "You play with those other people around you in the proper way to present the evidence. If they go down a certain path, then we may have to go down a certain path."

Jurors will want to hear from Zimmerman, but his attorneys should wait to see how their case unfolds before putting him on the stand, McClean said. It would be helpful for Zimmerman to get on the witness stand to recount his state of mind, Hill said.

"I can't see how he doesn't," Hill said. "He's the only one who can say 'I was scared for my life and here's what happened.'"

Another crucial witness will be a Miami-area female friend of Martin's who was talking to the teen by cellphone as he was walking through the Retreat at Twin Lakes followed by Zimmerman. She says Martin told her during that conversation that someone was following him and that she also heard a brief exchange between him and someone before the phone was cut off. Martin was shot shortly afterward. But O'Mara already has called into question her credibility, accusing her of lying about missing Martin's funeral because she was in the hospital.

O'Mara said he doubts he will find six jurors and four alternates who haven't heard about the case but his goal is to find jurors who haven't formed opinions. The judge ruled that potential jurors' identities will stay anonymous in an effort to protect them from harassment and public pressure during the trial. She rejected a defense request to sequester the jury candidates during jury selection.

The defense will have a better chance with the jury if its members are older, more conservative citizens who believe in the right to bear arms, said both Hill and McCLean.

"If there are African-Americans on the jury, they are going to sympathize with Trayvon Martin more," McClean said.

Prosecutors have refused to comment about the case outside the courtroom, but lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda indicated at a recent hearing he was well aware of the pressures the case's high profile is putting on all parties involved. Reporters from national media groups are attending the trial, and areas outside the courthouse have been designated for expected protests.

"We want to make sure this trial is tried in a courtroom and not outside a courtroom," de la Rionda said.

___

Follow Mike Schneider at http://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-06-09-Neighborhood%20Watch/id-1961bfd0fcb742a596245952ac582a77

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