ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Key ships stationed over BP’s
crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to evacuate Thursday
ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie, and engineers have grown so
confident in the leaky cap fixed to the well head that they will leave
it closed while they are gone.

Tropical Storm Bonnie, which blossomed over the
Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay
by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud
and cement, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and BP officials conceded. Even if it’s
not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the
well by at least a week.

“While this is not a hurricane, it’s a storm that
will have probably some significant impacts, we’re taking appropriate
cautions,” Allen said in Mobile, Ala.

Allen issued the order Thursday night to begin moving
dozens of vessels from the spill site, including the rig that’s
drilling the relief tunnel engineers will use to permanently throttle
the free-flowing crude near the bottom of the well. Some vessels could
stay on site, he said.

“While these actions may delay the effort to kill the
well for several days, the safety of the individuals at the well site
is our highest concern,” he said in a statement.

A week of steady measurements through cameras and
other devices convinced Allen they don’t need to open vents to relieve
pressure on the cap, which engineers had worried might contribute to
leaks underground and an even bigger blowout. The cap was attached a
week ago, and only minor leaks have been detected.

Allen said earlier in the day that evacuating the
vessels could leave the well head unmonitored for up to a few days. He
said he ordered BP to make sure that the ships carrying the robotic
submarines watching the well are the last to leave and the first to
return.

It was unclear Thursday night whether some of the
vessels would go back to port or head further south in the Gulf out of
the path of the storm and await orders once the storm passes. The Coast
Guard cutter Decisive, the hurricane guard for the vessels at the spill
site, was awaiting instructions. In an evacuation, the Decisive is the
last vessel to leave the area.

Bonnie caused flooding in Puerto Rico, the Dominican
Republic and Haiti before reaching tropical storm strength later Thursday, and Allen
said crews expected sustained wind above 39 mph at the spill site by
early Saturday.

Seas already were choppy in the Gulf, with waves up
to five feet rocking boats as crews prepared to leave, and more of the
smaller boats involved in the coastal cleanup were called into port,
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he expects local
leaders in coastal parishes to call for evacuation of low-lying areas as
early as Friday morning.

At the spill site, the water no longer looks thick
with gooey tar. But the oil is still there beneath the surface, staining
the hull of cutters motoring around in it.

One large vessel — the Helix Q4000 — is burning off
oil collected from the water, and bright orange flames flared at the
side of the ship.

Scientists say even a severe storm shouldn’t affect
the well cap, nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface 40 miles from the Louisiana
coast. “Assuming all lines are disconnected from the surface, there
should be no effect on the well head by a passing surface storm,” said
Paul Bommer, professor of petroleum engineering at University of Texas
at Austin.

Charles Harwell, a BP contractor monitoring the cap,
was also confident.

“That cap was specially made, it’s on tight, we’ve
been looking at the progress and it’s all good,” he said after his ship
returned to Port Fourchon, La.

Before the cap was attached and closed a week ago,
the broken well spewed 94 million to 184 million gallons into the Gulf
after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11
workers.

Work on plugging the well came to a standstill
Wednesday, just days before authorities had hoped to complete the relief
shaft. Allen said Thursday he has told BP to go ahead preparing for a
second measure called a static kill that would pump mud and cement into
the well from the top, a move he said would increase the relief well’s
chances for success. BP will have to get final approval from Allen
before starting the procedure.

Vice President Joe Biden visited cleanup workers in southern Alabama, and
said he was cheered the cap could remain on.

“After the storm’s passage we will be right back out there,” Biden said.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

After signing the bill Wednesday in the Ronald Reagan Building, President Obama shared the moment with Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman.

Within minutes of the bill signing, several Wall Street groups were leveling criticism at the new regulations, reflecting Mr. Obama’s increasingly fractious relations with corporate America. The Business Roundtable complained in a statement that the law “takes our country in the wrong direction” and may discourage investment and job growth, echoing concerns made by the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations. In a signal that Wall Street is ready to keep lobbying as regulators work out the details of how to apply the new law, Larry Burton, the roundtable’s executive director, said: “We will work with President Obama and policy makers to ensure this legislation is implemented in a manner that continues to promote sustainable economic growth and job creation.” Still, Democrats and White House officials were euphoric about passage of the legislation, a response to the 2008 financial crisis that tipped the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depression. The law subjects more financial companies to federal oversight and regulates many derivatives contracts while creating a consumer protection regulator and a panel to detect risks to the financial system. A number of the details have been left for regulators to work out, inevitably setting off complicated tangles down the road that could last for years. But “because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Mr. Obama said before signing the legislation. “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.” He was surrounded by a group of mostly Democratic lawmakers and advocates of the overhaul legislation, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, as well as Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairmen of crucial committees involved in developing the legislation. The White House orchestrated a major signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building across from the Commerce Department to trumpet the new law. Mr. Obama took pains to try to show how the complex legislation, with its dense pages on derivatives practices, will protect ordinary Americans. “If you’ve ever applied for a credit card, a student loan or a mortgage, you know the feeling of signing your name to pages of barely understandable fine print,” Mr. Obama said. “But what often happens as a result is that many Americans are caught by hidden fees and penalties, or saddled with loans they can’t afford.” He said the law would crack down on abusive practices in the mortgage industry, simplifying contracts and ending hidden fees and penalties, “so folks know what they’re signing.” The law expands federal banking and securities regulation from its focus on banks and public markets, subjecting a wider range of financial companies to government oversight. It also imposes regulation for the first time on opaque markets like the enormous trade in credit derivatives. It creates a council of federal regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to coordinate the detection of risks to the financial system, and it provides new powers to constrain and even dismantle troubled companies. And it creates a powerful regulator, to be appointed by the president and housed in the Federal Reserve, to protect consumers of financial products. The first visible result may come in about two years, the deadline for the consumer regulator to create a simplified disclosure form for mortgage loans. Mr. Obama acknowledged three Republican senators — Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts — who broke with their party to approve the bill, saying that they “put partisanship aside, judged the bill on the merits and voted for reform.”

– Shirley Miller Sherrod has spent most of her life fighting injustice.

On the Baker County, Georgia, farm where the Miller family grew corn, peanuts, cotton and cucumbers and raised hogs, cows and goats, oldest daughter Shirley despised the work.

“I swore I would never have anything to do with a farm past high school,” she said Wednesday with an easy chuckle. “I would talk to the sun as I picked cotton and picked cucumbers and worked out there in that hot field, and [say], ‘This is not the life for me.’ I didn’t want to have anything to do with agriculture ever again.”

On the night in 1965 when her father, Hosie Miller, a black man and a deacon at Thankful Baptist Church, was shot to death by a white farmer in what ostensibly was a dispute over a few cows, Sherrod — then 17 years old — changed her mind.

“I decided to stay in the South and work for change,” said Sherrod, now 62, who believes her father’s killing was more about a Southern black man speaking up to a white man than about who owned which animals. The all-white grand jury didn’t bring charges against the shooter.

That summer, when she and several other blacks went to the county courthouse to register to vote, the county sheriff blocked the door and even pushed her husband-to-be, Lester Sherrod, down the stairs, she said. Activists used that incident to get a restraining order against the sheriff so blacks could register to vote, she said.

Sherrod worked for civil rights with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while studying sociology at Albany State University in Georgia. She later earned her master’s degree in community development from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Sherrod returned to rural Georgia to help minority farmers keep their land in a place where history is against them. She has often gone toe to toe with the local offices of government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture before she worked there, she said.

Sherrod was forced out of her job with the USDA this week after a video emerged in which she seemingly admitted to failing to try to help a white farmer save his land from foreclosure in 1986. She has since said her words, recorded in March at a Douglas County, Georgia, NAACP meeting, were deliberately taken out of context. The story, she said, was part of a broader message she has given many times about the need to move beyond race.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday afternoon that Sherrod is “owed an apology. I would do that on behalf of this administration.”

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday that he offered his “personal and profound apology for the pain and discomfort” caused to Sherrod and her family.

“It makes me feel better,” she said in response on CNN. “It took too long, but it makes me feel better that the apology’s coming.”

“… Why did they hire me in the first place if they didn’t believe in what I had done up to this point?”

What she had done is work tirelessly for minority farmers for four decades.

Because of discriminatory lending practices, black farmers were losing their farms in the late 1960s and ’70s. After college, Sherrod co-founded New Communities Inc., a black communal farm project in Lee County, Georgia, that was modeled on kibbutzim in Israel. Local white farmers viciously opposed the 6,000-acre operation, accusing participants of being communists and occasionally firing shots at their buildings, Sherrod said.

“They did everything they could to fight us,” she said.

When drought struck the South in the 1970s, the federal government promised to help New Communities through the Office of Economic Opportunity. But the money was routed through the state, led by segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox, and the local office of the Farmers Home Administration, whose white agent was in no hurry to write the checks, she said.

It took three years for New Communities to get an “emergency” loan, she said.

“By the time we got it, it was much too late,” Sherrod said.

The operation hobbled along for a few years with other financing, but creditors ultimately foreclosed on the property in 1985, she said.

Getting money for any minority farmer out of that FmHA office “was always a fight,” Sherrod said. But she made a point of learning the regulations so thoroughly that she understood them better than the bureau agent, she said.

“I was such a thorn in his side,” she said, that the agent eventually left the bureau for good.

Using that experience, Sherrod worked with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to help black farmers keep their land. The group worked with U.S. Rep. Mike Espy, D-Mississippi (who later became agriculture secretary), and Sen. Wyche Fowler, D-Georgia, to pass the Minority Farmers Rights Act in 1990. The measure, known as Section 2501, authorized $10 million a year in technical assistance to black farmers, but only $2 million to $3 million a year has been distributed.

With black-owned farms heading toward extinction, Sherrod and other activists sued the USDA. In a consent decree, the USDA agreed to compensate black farmers who were victims of discrimination between January 1, 1981, and December 31, 1999. It was the largest civil rights settlement in history, with nearly $1 billion being paid to more than 16,000 victims. Legislation passed in 2008 will allow nearly 70,000 more potential claimants to qualify.

“I was deeply involved in all of that work and in the settlement, and in helping farmers to file their claims,” she said. “So I was having to fight USDA just for the services, for the loans for farmers, for some of the programs that should have been automatic, that others were getting.”

USDA hired Sherrod as its Georgia director of rural development in August 2009. She was the first black person in that position; of 129 USDA employees in Georgia, only 20 are black, she said.

Her family still owns the farm in Baker County, plus an additional 30 acres she bought from a cousin. She hasn’t had time to work the land yet.

“I’d like to try some of the things I’ve taught others,” she said, again laughing.

Sherrod emphasizes that the speech that caused all the controversy was about embracing diversity and using the strengths of every culture.

“We’ve got to get beyond this [racial division],” she said. “… My message has been, ‘Let’s work together.’ That’s what my message has always been.”

Despite her father’s killing and the injustices that followed, the racial hatred she has fought all her life, and now her quick exit from the USDA, Sherrod refuses to become bitter.

“I can’t hold a grudge. I can’t even stay mad for long,” she said. “I just try to work to make things different. If I stayed mad, if I tried to hate all the time, I wouldn’t be able to see clearly in order to do some of the things that I’ve been able to do.

“Even with this, I’m not angry. I’m not angry. I’m out of a job today, but I’m not angry. I will survive. I have. I can’t dwell on that. I just feel there’s a need to go forward.”

Several small streams pushed over their banks, and flash floods were threatening homes near Flagstaff, Arizona.

- A 12-year-old girl died Tuesday after falling into floodwaters near Flagstaff, Arizona, authorities said.

Shaelyn Wilson had gone to see runoff from a flash flood around 2 p.m., according to the Coconino Sheriff’s Department. A younger sister ran back to tell the father that Shaelyn had fallen into a wash.

The family searched the area near where the girl fell and several agencies also took part in the search, according to Kelli Most, administrative specialist with the sheriff’s department.

The girl was found about a third of a mile from where she went into the water, and her father performed CPR until paramedics arrived. She was pronounced dead at Flagstaff Medical Center.

A massive wildfire last month made the area susceptible to flooding, said Most. “There’s just no greenery there” to prevent runoff, she said. The blaze charred 15,000 acres.

Several small streams pushed over their banks, and flash floods were threatening homes, according to CNN affiliate KPHO.

U.S. National Guard forces will begin deploying along the U.S. border with Mexico in August and will be fully trained and deployed by the end of the month, government officials announced Monday.

Some 1,200 Army and Air National Guard troops will be in place for a year to assist the border patrol in monitoring and capturing illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States.

They will served as a “gap-filler” while the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency hires additional staff to fill the demand in protection along the almost 2,000-mile-long southern border with Mexico.

The troops, from the four border states, will be fully trained and in place in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas by September 1, according to Gen. Craig McKinley, commander of the National Guard.

The Guard troops will not be involved in law enforcement activities such as arrests of illegal immigrants, but will assist border patrol officers looking for the illegal border crossers and smugglers as well as in intelligence gathering. The airmen and soldiers will be armed, but they will be limited by rules of engagement that allow them to shoot only to defend themselves, McKinley said.

“The rules for the use of force will be well-coordinated, and they’re the same as our counternarcotics teams that are there now — for self-preservation only, self-defense only,” he said.

The point also was emphasized by Alan D. Bersin, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “The National Guard is there to support the efforts of law enforcement, not to have a direct law enforcement role, not to confront, unless confronted, any particular threat,” he said.

The deployment is part of President Barack Obama’s border plan announced in late May, when he also requested $500 million in supplemental funds to try to reduce the number of immigrants and smugglers crossing the border daily.

Guard troops will be doled out along the border where the needs are the greatest, according to federal officials.

“We’re placing a particular emphasis on the Tucson sector in Arizona, an area favored by smugglers and the principal point of illegal entry into the United States along the southwest border,” said John Morton, assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security.

Arizona will receive most of the forces with 524 troops, while Texas will get 250, California 224 and New Mexico just 72, officials said Monday. Additional troops will perform administrative work.

Customs and Border Protection will transfer six more aircraft and 300 border agents to the Tucson sector of the border where an increase in human smuggling and illegal border crossings have been occurring, Federal officials said Monday.

Additionally, Morton said a new investigative office for the border patrol would be opened in the Arizona border town of Ajo as well as the deployment of a border enforcement security task force jump team of specially trained agents in Douglas, Arizona, also along the border.

The supplemental funding asked for by the president will also fund two new unmanned aircraft, known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, to monitor the border around Arizona, according to a homeland security official familiar with the new border plan.

Under President George W. Bush, a border deployment of the National Guard called Operation Jump Start started in 2006 and lasted two years. The operation sent more than 6,000 troops to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to repair secondary border fence, construct nearly 1,000 metal barriers and fly border protection agents by helicopter to intercept illegal immigrants.

McKinley said that while the United States is still fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Guard troop deployment will not affect operations in those areas.

“I cannot see a case where we would be overextending the National Guard in this effort,” he said.

McKinley also said no deployments to the war zones were adjusted to allows these troops to go to the border.

Jose David Figueroa Agosto’s salt-and-pepper hair was covered with a similarly colored long wig. He hadn’t been in the sun much and appeared younger and slimmer than the man in the old mugshots.

Still, the high-living alleged drug kingpin and prison escapee wasn’t coy when he was caught Saturday after a high-speed chase in Santurce, a neighborhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“Everybody knows who I am,” he told federal agents when they asked him his name, according to Antonio Torres of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Better known in the region as Jr. Capsula, Figueroa Agosto, 46, was arrested with two others about noon Saturday after he tried to escape from officers conducting surveillance, DEA special Agent Waldo Santiago told CNN.

“Figueroa was the most-wanted fugitive by Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic authorities,” Santiago said.

“He has been described as the Pablo Escobar of the Caribbean,” he said, referring to the notorious Colombian druglord who was killed by Colombian police in a 1993 gunbattle.

According to federal authorities, Figueroa Agosto has a history of catch-and-escape.

He originally went to prison on murder charges, but escaped a San Juan jail in 1999, according to Harry Rodriguez of the San Juan FBI press office.

Figueroa Agosto fled to the Dominican Republic, where he continued drug trafficking, Rodriguez said. He was arrested “some time ago” but was released for an unknown reason. He was re-arrested in the Dominican Republic and was caught with close to $4 million in cash. He managed to escape and return to Puerto Rico, the FBI said.

Figueroa Agosto has been charged by U.S. authorities with passport fraud and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Dominican authorities have sought Figueroa Agosto for multiple violations including kidnapping, money laundering, drug trafficking and murder. He also has been linked to criminal activity in Colombia and Venezuela, according to federal authorities.

“He appears to have been working out and exercising to lose weight, but (also) to gain muscle mass,” Santiago said. “He appears different from the mug shots. He looks younger and slimmer. He’s been taking care of himself. We have information that he’s been working out and trying to stay in shape, to endure the stress of being on the run.”

Santiago said Figueroa Agosto’s complexion also appeared lighter, possibly from staying out of the sun.

During his time in hiding, Figueroa Agosto had been accompanied by fugitive Sobeida Felix Morel, according to a U.S. Marshals Service poster. “They both love the high life, exclusive dining and living conditions.”

Felix Morel was not with Figueroa Agosto on Saturday. The two arrested with him have not been formally charged, Rodriguez said.

The clean-up could take years

Testing of BP’s newly capped Gulf of Mexico oil well has been extended for a further 24 hours.

The US official in charge of the spill clean-up, Admiral Thad Allen, said the “integrity test” would not stop until Sunday afternoon.

He added that when the test ceased, containment of the spill using surface ships to collect oil would resume.

The new cap has managed to stop the flow of oil for the first time since the well exploded three months ago.

The flow of oil was shut off at 1425 local time (1925 GMT) on Thursday.

In a statement, Adm Allen said: “Based on the data and pressure readings compiled to date, the test has provided us with valuable information which will inform the procedure to kill the well and a better understanding of options for temporary shut-in during a hurricane.

“As we continue to see success in the temporary halt of oil from the leak, the US government and BP have agreed to allow the well integrity test to continue another 24 hours.”

He added that at the end of the test, the surface ships resuming collection of leaking oil would have the capacity to take up to 80,000 barrels per day.

Correspondents say this switch-over will see crude oil flowing into the Gulf once again, on temporary basis, as pressure is relieved.

BP is drilling relief wells which aim to intercept the leaking one at the end of July, enabling it to be sealed by mid-August.

Adm Allen’s statement concluded: “Progress also continues on the two relief wells the federal government has required BP to drill. The relief well remains the ultimate step in stopping the BP oil leak for good.”

The spill has been described as the worst environmental disaster the US has ever seen.

Eleven workers were killed when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on 20 April.

The subsequent spill has affected hundreds of miles of Gulf coastline since April, with serious economic damage to the region as tourists have avoided Gulf Coast beaches and fishing grounds have remained closed.

BP has put the costs of dealing with the disaster at over $3.5bn (£2.3bn).

It has already paid out more than $200m to 32,000 claimants.

The company is evaluating a further 17,000 for payment and is seeking more information on 61,000 other claims.

– In an effort to make children safer while they sleep, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of new proposed mandatory standards for cribs.

The new rules, likely to go into effect next year after a final vote by the federal commission, would render many cribs in the country as not up to code, regardless of whether the crib style and model was ever considered unsafe, and essentially would ban the manufacture and sale of drop-side cribs.

In addition to eliminating drop-side cribs, the new rules will mandate better mattress support, sturdier hardware and better quality wood for crib construction.

Between November 2007 and April of this year, there were 36 deaths associated with crib structural problems, according to Commission Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum.

Hazards in cribs include faulty hardware, dangerous gaps created from mattress support failures, and poor wood quality with crib slats that can be broken easily. The new standards aim to eliminate gaps where babies could become entrapped and suffocate, and to prevent babies from falling out of the crib.

The new rules would impact multiple industries, from manufacturers to retailers who would not be able to sell any cribs already in stock but not meeting the new standards. Many hotels, motels and child-care facilities around the country would likely have to purchase new cribs for their businesses.

The wide-ranging effects could be a strain on some budgets.

“My biggest fear is that day-care centers, in particular, will be stuck with no other option but to place babies in play yards or on floor mats — even temporarily — since the purchase of so many new cribs will be quite expensive,” said Commissioner Anne Northup in a statement.

But crib retailers and crib manufacturers will see a spike in demand for new cribs

“If you are a crib company, at this point you are probably dancing … because of the various effects of this law,” said Northup. “While companies certainly will lose current inventory that does not meet the new standard, they will also reap tremendous financial rewards since every family and day-care center in the near future will be forced to purchase a brand-new crib.”

Families in search of an affordable crib at resellers like thrift stores will also be out of luck for the next few years, as people will no longer be able to donate cribs that do not hold up to the mandatory standards.

A public comment period on the new rules will begin shortly, in which time the agency will assess the comments received and make decisions on whether changes, such as timing, need to be made to the proposed rules. A final vote is expected in December, with the new rules taking effect in the summer of 2011.

The unanimous endorsement of the proposed standards came as the agency announced that Pottery Barn Kids is recalling over 80,000 drop-side cribs due to entrapment, suffocation and fall hazards.

The furniture maker said children have been hurt on seven occasions due to the crib’s faulty drop side, which can detach when hardware breaks or is assembled incorrectly.

All incidents resulted in minor injuries when children fell out of the cribs or got their legs caught. In one instance, where an injury was averted, a child’s head was trapped between the drop side and the crib mattress.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is asking consumers to stop using the recalled cribs, inspect the hardware, and contact Pottery Barn Kids to receive a free kit that will convert the drop side to a fixed gate.

The cribs, ranging in price from $300 to $800, were sold at Pottery Barn Kids retail stores, online, or through the store’s catalog from January 1999 through March 2010.

- Federal officials announced indictments Tuesday against four police officers and two supervisors in the investigation surrounding the post-Katrina deaths of civilians on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge.

At least three New Orleans police officers were in FBI custody Tuesday afternoon, an attorney for one of them confirmed. Kenneth Bowen, Anthony Villavaso and Robert Gisevius surrendered to authorities.

Announcement of the charges stemming from a federal civil rights investigation was made by Attorney General Eric Holder in New Orleans.

“Put simply, we will not tolerate wrongdoing by those who have sworn to protect the public,” Holder told reporters.

Holder promised the Justice Department will help restore the troubled New Orleans police department.

“Today marks an important step forward in administering justice, in healing community wounds, in improving public safety and in restoring public trust in this city’s police department,” Holder said.

He was joined by the Justice Department’s civil rights chief, Thomas E. Perez, and U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, the top federal prosecutor in New Orleans.

The shootings occurred at the bridge on September 4, 2005, six days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

The indictment allegesthat two separate shootings at the bridge resulted in the deaths of a teenager and a 40-year-old disabled man.

The indictment contends four officers — Bowen, Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Villavaso — opened fire, killing 19-year-old James Brissette. Minutes later, Faulcon allegedly shot and killed 40-year-old Ronald Madison. The indictment says the officers violated the victims’ civil rights.

The indictment says police supervisors Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue helped the other officers to obstruct justice during the subsequent investigations.

An earlier investigation launched by the local district attorney resulted in charges but no convictions. Federal prosecutors then moved in and launched a new investigation which led to the newly announced charges.

Letten said the federal case took so long because prosecutors waited for the local investigation to conclude, so as not to interfere or duplicate that probe.

Although the charges announced Tuesday carry a maximum sentence of the death penalty, Letten played down that likelihood, saying an extended process will eventually be followed and any final decision on seeking the death penalty would be made by Holder.

Attorney Frank DeSalvo, who represents Bowen, said of the indictment, “We expected it and are ready to deal with it.”

The two shootings occurred on opposite sides of the bridge.

In the first shooting, on the east side of the bridge, one person — later identified as Brissette — was killed and four people were wounded, prosecutors have said. In the second shooting, on the bridge’s west side, Madison, a severely disabled man, was killed. Madison’s brother was arrested but later released without indictment, authorities said.

A witness to the shooting of Madison told CNN in 2006 that New Orleans police lined up “like at a firing range” and fatally shot the man in the back as he fled from them in the days after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore.

“He just fell like he was collapsing,” Kasimir Gaston told CNN. “Like something just wiped him out.”

Gaston was one of many flood refugees living on the second floor of the Friendly Inn, a low-income motel on the city’s east side. He said on Sunday, September 4, 2005, he woke up and stepped onto the balcony of the motel and saw a man running, hands outstretched and being fired upon.

Initial police accounts said that Madison, 40, reached for his waistband and turned on police, but Gaston said Madison did not appear to have a weapon and that he was running away from police “hands out, full speed” when he was shot.

Police declined CNN’s request for an interview in response to Gaston’s remarks.

After the shooting, police said officers had responded to reported gunshots on the Danziger Bridge and that a running gunbattle ensued with six suspects.

A police department press release from October 4, 2005, said Madison, described as an unidentified gunman, was “confronted by a New Orleans Police officer. The suspect reached into his waist and turned toward the officer who fired one shot, fatally wounding him.”

When asked if Madison had a gun, Gaston said, “I didn’t see any on him.” No gun was found on Madison’s body.

An autopsy report obtained previously by CNN and verified by the Orleans Parish Coroner said Madison suffered five gunshot wounds to his back and two in his shoulder.