Third arrest made in St. Maarten killings

The bodies of Michael and Thelma King of South Carolina were discovered at their residence in Cupecoy, St. Maarten. The 20-year-old man was sent to St. Maarten from St. Thomas The suspect is expected to appear before a judge on Monday Michael and Thelma King were found stabbed to death in their home (CNN) -- Police arrested Friday a third suspect in connection with the stabbing deaths of an American couple on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, authorities said. The 20-year-old, identified by his initials J.J.W., was arrested on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he had allegedly fled. The suspect was then extradited to St. Maarten, where he was arrested again upon his arrival, according to a statement from the St. Maarten Public Prosecutor's office. He is expected to appear before a judge Monday. Two other suspects are already in custody in connection with the deaths of Michael and Thelma King. Their bodies were discovered last month at their oceanfront residence in Cupecoy, a beach town on the southwest tip of the Dutch island nation. The first suspect, a 28-year-old Jamaican-born man identified as M.K.J., has confessed to his involvement in the murders, according to the island's solicitor general, Taco Stein. Investigators are now working to confirm the details of the suspect's statements and are gathering additional evidence to present in court, said Stein. A second suspect in custody in the Kings' murders has been identified as a 17-year-old man with the initials of J.C.M. St. Maarten is a self-governing country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, whose economy is based on the tourism industry. More than 1 million tourists visit the island each year. The killings occurred in what is generally considered a safe area that is popular with tourists, according to Stein. Investigators believe the murders took place during a robbery of the Kings, he said. CNN's Gabriel Falcon contributed to this report.

At least 29 hurt in pileup on I-75 in Fla.

As many as 50 vehicles were involved in an accident on southbound I-75, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office said. The accident involves 30 to 50 vehicles, police say It occurred on the Manatee/Sarasota county line There are no immediate reports of fatalities (CNN) -- Twenty-nine people were hurt Friday in a pileup involving dozens of vehicles on an interstate highway on Florida's Gulf Coast, police said. The accident involved 30 to 50 vehicles in the southbound lanes of I-75 on the Manatee/Sarasota county line, said Wendy Rose of the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. There were no immediate reports of fatalities, Rose said. The Sarasota County Fire Department said that 29 people were taken to hospitals.

Fewer vets jobless, but not ex-servicewomen

By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor American businesses are carving out more room for veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan − finally driving the overall unemployment rate for that group into single digits in September. But joblessness for the U.S. women home from war continued to climb, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.  The portion of post-9/11 veterans seeking work fell to 9.7 percent last month, compared to 10.1 percent in August and 11.7 percent in September 2011, according to BLS figures. However, nearly one out of five women who served in the military at home or abroad during the two wars is now without a job, the new BLS statistics show. As the U.S. troop drawdown continues in Afghanistan, the unemployment rate for post-9/11 female vets surged to 19.9 percent in September, compared to 14.7 percent a year earlier and 12.1 percent in August. "More women were deployed than ever before but an awful lot of them are single moms who face the challenge of coming home," said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus, a nonprofit that has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members.  "Someone has been taking care of their kids, and now they want to refocus their lives on being mom. Often, though, the kind of employment that may be available to them is not sufficient to help them meet that dream of both working and being that stable mom," added Pickens, a combat medic with the U.S. Army Special Forces and the 82nd Airborne Division in the early 1970s.  And while many companies trumpet their patriotic side by plucking male combat veterans and plunking them into corporate roles, women who served with some of those same guys often are not viewed by employers with the same level of admiration, Pickens has been told my some of his female clients. In short: Women who logged time in the war zones don't earn the same level of prestige - or employability - are do U.S. males who recently were in the line of fire.  "They are misunderstood and challenged in a number of ways," Pickens said. "Typically, folks look at male veterans returning as warriors who we need to honor, and say we need to do what we can for these warriors. Women, unfortunately, don't carry home that same mantel as a warrior. But they certainly have served beside the men and, in many cases, have done a lot of things that put themselves as risk." Women comprise about 15 percent of the U.S. military, said Genevieve Chase, founder of American Women Veterans, a foundation that works to improve the lives of women veterans and their families. She served in Afghanistan in 2006 and remains in the U.S. Army Reserves. She earned a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in blast in Helmand Province when a car-packed with explosives smashed into the truck in which she was riding. She describes herself as "currently unemployed" - and has been, she said, for almost all of 2012, living off of what's left of her savings.  "A huge part of it is we come home and we don't wear the warrior archetype on our sleeves," Chase said. "We do come home and the American public doesn't understand what we do overseas; they don't quite know how to receive us, don't know how to relate to us. Even some of our brothers, even some of the men who we served with, don't quite know how to relate to us."  Related stories Congress asks VA to explain chronic late payments to student veterans VA weeks, months late paying student veterans Only vets needs apply  Veterans angle for shout out during debate VA struggling to calculate lost wages for wounded vets, GAO report shows Still, some U.S. companies, including Citi and Ryder, have shifted hiring priorities and are hiring more former service members, helping to trim the jobless rate among post-9/11 veterans, Pickens said. Ryder has put ex-military folks into driving and technical positions. Citi is helping move people from the battlefield to Wall Street.  "Certainly, I think some companies, big and small, are realizing these men and women make excellent employees because of their commitment to duty, because of all the traits instilled in them in the military," Pickens said. "And the more that easily recognizable companies like Ryder, like Citi are seen hiring veterans, the more other smaller businesses and organizations will say, 'My goodness. Look at this. Maybe I should I check this out?'" But the mission to re-employ more ex-service members is far from complete, contends a leading veterans group whose chief executive officer said he remains "deeply concerned" about the lack of attention paid to the issue by America's political leaders - particularly its presidential candidates. During Wednesday night's debate, for example, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney both failed to adequately address pressing veterans issues - including the fact that post-9/11 veterans remain strapped with an unemployment rate that's higher than the rest of the U.S. workforce, said Paul Rieckhoff, CEO and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit group with more than 200,000 members.  "Veteran joblessness was not mentioned once," said Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran who called the latest unemployment statistics "appalling," noting that roughly 250,000 post-9/11 veterans are now out of work. "It's something most Americans don't realize until we are reminded. And this (lack of candidate attention) is in such contrast to the last two presidential elections, when Iraq and Afghanistan and the troops were such a centerpiece," he said.  "Because the war (in Iraq) has ended doesn't mean the people who served there have just gone away — I mean 2.4 million of them were in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands are still over there. There are long-term social, financial and human costs to being at war for 10 years. The candidates have a moral obligation to focus on those folks. The war may be over for the civilian population. But for us, in many ways, it's still going on." More content from NBCNews.com: 2,000 gone in Afghanistan: Did you notice the death of Sgt. Riley Stephens? Teen calls 911 to report mother, sister dead: 'I hate the feeling of killing someone' LAPD chief: We'll stop holding some undocumented immigrants for feds Lanai to become eco-lab that runs on solar, billionaire Ellison promises Up for grabs: the $300 million estate of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark Gray wolves probably real target of poisoned meat that killed dog Video: Could Border Patrol agent's death have been friendly fire? Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitterand Facebook

Sources: Friendly fire killed Border Patrol agent

Gary M. Williams / AP Christy Ivie, center, wife of Nicholas Ivie, holds back tears as she is surrounded by her father, Tracy Morris, and mother, DeAnn Morris, left, and her sister, Jan Cloward, and brother, Travis Morris, right, during a news conference on Tuesday. By Pete Williams, NBC News Investigators are preparing to announce that the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie in Arizona earlier this week was the result of friendly fire -- accidental gunfire from another agent who responded to the same scene, state and federal officials told NBC News on Friday. The conclusion is based on an analysis of the ballistics, the lack of evidence of other criminals in the area at the time, and other factors, the sources said. A formal statement about the findings could come later Friday. The incident involving Ivie and two other agents occurred Tuesday in a rugged area about five miles north of the US-Mexico border near Bisbee, Ariz. The agents had responded to an alarm from a sensor that tracks illegal movement along the border. Ivie was killed. A second agent was wounded and was released from the hospital after undergoing surgery. The third agent was unharmed. State and federal officials said immediately after the incident that the shootings were committed by armed criminals.  And since then, Mexican authorities have said they arrested two men in Agua Prieta, northern Sonora state, a few miles from where the shooting occurred. Pete Williams is NBC News' chief justice correspondent. Investigators have told NBC News that they cannot rule out the possibility that border agent Nicolas Ivie, who was shot and killed Tuesday morning, may have been a casualty of "friendly fire." NBC's Mark Potter reports. More content from NBCNews.com: 2,000 gone in Afghanistan: Did you notice the death of Sgt. Riley Stephens? Teen calls 911 to report mother, sister dead: 'I hate the feeling of killing someone' LAPD chief: We'll stop holding some undocumented immigrants for feds Lanai to become eco-lab that runs on solar, billionaire Ellison promises Up for grabs: the $300 million estate of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark Gray wolves probably real target of poisoned meat that killed dog Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

How would you save American Airlines?

American can turn its fortunes around, says a business expert, if officials admit their problems and fix them. American's problems can be fixed if management wants to make changes The airline must convince passengers that its seats are safe and its planes will arrive on time Employees are the likely source of most solutions to the airline's problems (CNN) -- Loose airline seats. Flights that are delayed or canceled. The shifting blame game of who's responsible for American Airlines' ever-growing problems. At the end of the day, travelers want to get from Point A to Point B safely and on time. They don't want to worry that their seats might come loose or that management and labor can't seem to get along. American Airlines and any other company that can't fulfill its core mission on a regular basis, whether it's safe and efficient airline travel or safe peanut butter or cynanide-free Tylenol, may not be long for this world. Clumsy fliers spilling Diet Coke and coffee on plane floors and seats, causing "gunked-up" seat-locking mechanisms, hardly seem to constitute a root cause. American Airlines says spilled soda, coffee helped cause sticky moments "These are solvable problems,"says Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who wrote about the mid-1990s turnaround of Continental Airlines in "Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End." "You have to take the right operational and strategic moves. You have to rebuild confidence. But it's by acting very quickly, not by a nice note to customers." Troubled companies can be turned around, says Kanter, if executives take specific steps to address their problems and move forward. Add your own suggestions for how American Airlines can keep or earn your business in the comments below. Admit what's broken and fix it There's no doubt that American is having problems with its seats. However, Kanter says that's probably just the most obvious problem. "The company needs to admit the facts publicly, put them on the table fully and take responsibility at the very highest levels of the company," she says. And it's probably not just the seats. "This is a quality failure of a massive kind and has to signal other quality problems," she says. "The situation is always worse than you think. There are a lot of other things that have deteriorated that you don't know about. You have to be digging deeper because I bet there have to be other things going on." Who still wants to fly American? Turn to employees for solutions Any solutions must include pilots, flight attendants and mechanics, says Kanter. It's often the front-line employees who really understand what's wrong and can brainstorm the solutions to these problems. It may be too hard to get current management to turn to employees for solutions, when employees are rightly or wrong being blamed for so many of the problems. "These antagonisms have been building for many years," says Kanter. "In a turnaround, it's management that has to change because they'll never regain the trust of employees." Spend money on the core business With limited money to spend, "the airline must shift investment away from things that are not directly related to passenger and (front-line) employee experience," says Kanter. "If that means some corporate staff need to have smaller departments, so be it. They should immediately shift company resources to people delivering the product and those experiencing it." You need happy front line employees to deliver a good product to your customers, she says. And in the case of an airline, that product needs to be safe. "Every day people are deciding whether or not to board that plane and every day they can make different choices. The American board and top management need to take this incredibly seriously." Many of you fly American Airlines frequently. What would you tell American or any airline to do to keep your business? What basic requirements do you have? What extras would you like, and would you pay for them? If you prefer another domestic or foreign airline, please share specific experiences.

Radical Islamist being extradited to U.S.

Lawyers for radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri say his mental health is failing. NEW: The United States is "pleased" by the UK court's extradition ruling The Home Office says it is working to extradite the 5 men "as quickly as possible" Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and 4 others had battled against extradition The father of suspect Babar Ahmad says they will continue fight for justice London (CNN) -- The High Court in London ruled Friday that extremist Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other men will be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges, bringing to an end a years-long legal battle. Judge John Thomas said there could be no appeal of the court's decision. The extradition of al-Masri and the four others -- Khaled al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdul Bary, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan -- to the United States "may proceed immediately," he said. The charges against al-Masri include conspiracy in connection with a 1998 kidnapping of 16 Westerners in Yemen, and conspiring with others to establish an Islamic jihad training camp in rural Oregon in 1999. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted. The UK Home Office welcomed the High Court decision. "We are now working to extradite these men as quickly as possible," it said in a statement. The U.S. Embassy in London said it is "pleased" by the court's ruling. "All of these defendants will be guaranteed the same rights provided to American citizens charged with crimes in the U.S. They will be afforded a full opportunity to challenge the evidence against them in U.S. courts," an embassy statement said. The suspects' lawyers had sought to persuade Thomas and a second senior judge to stay the extradition on medical and human rights grounds. It had already been approved by British courts, the European Court of Human Rights and Britain's home secretary. Thomas said the judges are satisfied that the European court had not fallen into error "and was justified in drawing the conclusion that it did." It was "unacceptable" that extradition proceedings should take so long, he said. They should last "months, not years," he said. The five men had taken every possible effort to prevent their extradition, he added. The legal process in the case of al-Fawwaz and Bary has lasted 14 years. Read more: BBC apologizes to Queen Elizabeth over Abu Hamza revelation In a statement read out on his behalf outside the court, Ahmad -- who has been detained without trial since 2004 -- claimed a moral win. "Today I have lost my eight-year and two-month battle against extradition. I would like to thank all those over the years who supported me and my family: lawyers, politicians, journalists and members of the public from all walks of life," it said. "By exposing the fallacy of the UK's extradition arrangements with the U.S., I leave with my head held high having won the moral victory." His father, Ashfaq Ahmad, said the UK police, prosecutors and judiciary had "colluded to implement a pre-determined decision which was made in Washington." He added: "We will never abandon our struggle for justice and the truth will eventually emerge of what will be forever remembered as a shameful chapter in the history of Britain." Read more: Court clears way for cleric Abu Hamza's extradition The ruling follows a three-day last-ditch hearing this week. Lawyers for al-Masri told the court their client suffers from deteriorating mental health and was unfit to plead. However, the judges' ruling dismissed this argument. "There is nothing to suggest it would be unjust or oppressive to order his extradition," Thomas said. The cases of Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan are both linked to a website called azzam.com, which U.S. prosecutors say was run by the two men to support terrorism around the world. Meanwhile, Al-Fawwaz and Bary are accused of being al Qaeda associates of Osama bin Laden in London during the 1990s. Lawyers for al-Fawwaz presented evidence, including some arising from an interview by British intelligence officers with an al Qaeda informer, which they say discredits the case against him. Read more: Abu Hamza extradition ruling marks end of era for radical cleric Presenting medical reports, lawyers for Bary said he had a deteriorating mental illness, making him unfit for detention in a high-security Supermax prison, where he is expected to be held if sent to the United States. But giving his ruling, Thomas said there was a clear prima facie case against both Bary and al-Fawwaz. He also dismissed the medical argument put forward by Bary's lawyer against extradition, saying: "It is clear to us that there has been no material change in the psychological condition of Abdul Bary." Lawyers for Ahmad and Ahsan presented what they said was fresh evidence to support their calls for the two men to be charged with similar terrorism-supporting offenses in Britain, rather than have them face trial in the United States. The U.S. and British governments strongly contested the five suspects' submissions. Lawyers for the British government described the arguments as an abuse of the legal process. Al-Masri is one of the highest-profile radical Islamic figures in Britain, where he was already sentenced to seven years for inciting racial hatred at his north London mosque and other terrorism-related charges. Born in Egypt in 1958, he traveled to Britain to study before gaining citizenship through marriage in the 1980s. A one-time nightclub bouncer in London's Soho district, al-Masri -- also known as Mustafa Kamal Mustafa -- has said he lost both hands and one eye while fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He often wore a hook in place of one hand. In 1997, al-Masri became the imam of a north London mosque, where his hate-filled speeches attacking the West began to attract national attention and followers, including Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber" who attempted to blow up a Miami-bound passenger airplane three months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Al-Masri has called the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center "a towering day in history" and described bin Laden as "a good guy and a hero." He also described the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003 as "punishment from Allah" because the astronauts were Christian, Hindu and Jewish. Al-Masri faces 11 charges in U.S. courts. "As in the UK, legal counsel will be provided at the expense of the U.S. government if the defendants do not have the resources to pay themselves," a U.S. Embassy briefing note on the extradition said. "The U.S.-UK Extradition Treaty also forbids use of the death penalty for anyone extradited from the UK." CNN's Dan Rivers and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.

Opinion: Romney finally gets specific

William Gale: Mitt Romney's $5 trillion tax cut proposal didn't add up for months He says new idea of a cap on deductions is a first step toward a viable plan Gale says the cap wouldn't be nearly enough to pay for the tax cuts, but it would help He says that it could make taxpayers much less likely to give to charity Editor's note: William Gale is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Washington (CNN) -- For months, voters have been in the dark about key details of Mitt Romney's tax plans. He specified $5 trillion in tax cuts, a 20% cut in income tax rates, a 40% cut in the corporate tax rate, repeal of the estate tax and alternative minimum tax and elimination of taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for households with incomes below $200,000. He did not want his changes to raise the deficit, but he was utterly mum on how to raise $5 trillion to offset the tax cuts. During the summer, two colleagues and I showed that if Romney did not want to add new taxes on savings and investments -- and raising savings and investments is the second of four main planks in Romney's overall economic package -- he could not finance his tax cuts without generating a net tax cut for households with income above $200,000. Politics: 5 things we learned from the presidential debate Even if all the available tax expenditures were closed in the most progressive manner possible, it would not raise enough revenue among high-income households to offset the tax cuts they would receive. This was true even when we adjusted the revenue estimates to allow for the impact of potential economic growth, and even when we gave the campaign a trillion-dollar mulligan by ignoring the cost of the corporate tax cuts. As a result, we concluded that if Romney did not impose new taxes on savings and investments, the only way to finance his tax cut proposals and reach revenue neutrality was to raise taxes on households with income below $200,000. This was not a forecast of what Romney would actually do; it was simply a matter of arithmetic. Romney: I will not raise taxes Obama: 'The real Mitt Romney' The best from the Denver debate But it highlighted the need for specifics; $5 trillion is not a trivial amount, even in Washington, and the prospect of middle-class tax increases sets off alarm bells. Earlier this week, Romney finally started the process of proposing ways to pay for his tax cut proposals. He broached the idea of putting a cap on each taxpayer's total amount of itemized deductions -- including mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions. Although critical design features remain foggy, Romney has said the cap could range from $17,000 to $50,000, and it could vary with income. Several things are already clear. Opinion: Why you should vote for Romney First, capping -- or even eliminating -- itemized deductions will not come close to paying for Romney's tax cuts. It would be a step toward financing, but much more will be needed. Nevertheless, as a piece of the revenue puzzle, a cap is an interesting and important idea and a welcome step forward. Members of Congress are quick to see the political advantages of a cap. Relative to curtailing specific deductions, a cap allows them to leave existing deductions in place but restrict the overall use of such deductions. In that sense, the cap is like the alternative minimum tax was intended to be -- a limit on the overall use of tax shelters, even if political leaders could not shut down each one. A cap on itemized deductions goes after one of the three areas of the income tax where the money is. The other two are the exclusion of health insurance premiums from taxation and saving and investment incentives like 401(k) plans, and the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends and carried interest. A cap on a taxpayer's use of all of these subsidies -- as opposed to just itemized deductions -- could get at all three areas. Martin Feldstein of Harvard University and the Romney campaign and Maya MacGuineas of the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget have proposed a different style of cap that applies to more than just itemized deductions. While Romney's cap appears to apply to all itemized deductions, it may have a disproportionately negative effect on charitable contributions. After all, people have to pay their state and local taxes, and many people are already in the middle of a long-term commitment to pay down their mortgage. Opinion: Romney shakes up the race For those households, there may be little room left under the cap to take deductions for charitable contributions. And, for all households, the cap would eliminate tax deductions for contributions larger than the cap, so large gifts to charities would automatically lose their tax-preferred status. So, a cap is not a panacea, but it could well be one part of a constructive solution. Likewise, his acknowledgment that his earlier, disparaging comments about the 47% of households that do not pay federal income taxes were misguided suggests a reconsideration of the role taxes play in those households. If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, Romney has finally taken the first step. But there is still much more work to be done. Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of William Gale.