Advocates for wild horses, black bears swarm Nevada capital

It’s been a frenzied week in Nevada’s capital for wildlife advocates, who assailed how the state has handled its wild horse and black bear populations.

First, animal advocates staged a protest on Carson City’s main drag to assail the state’s treatment of stray horses. State officials have proposed rounding up and auctioning off up to 100 of the animals now wandering through the Virginia Range outside Reno, the Associated Press reported.

That's because 35 horses have been struck by cars on the rural area’s highways in recent months.

"We've become a dead horse removal agency," Ed Foster, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, told the AP. No motorists have been injured, but officials fear that’s inevitable if they don't intervene.

The few dozen protesters, who brought along a colt named Mystic Diamond and a mustang named Shadow, weren’t opposed to removing the horses. What riled them was the auction that would follow, which they said might encourage “kill buyers” who would sell the animals for slaughter.

(Nevada is no stranger to wild horse controversy. How to handle mustangs on federal land has been debated for decades. Horses on federal land are mostly left to roam, but on state land they're treated as strays.)

The day after the horse protest, black bear advocates arrived at the Capitol and begged a panel of lawmakers to do away with the state’s new bear hunt, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Activists say that the state’s bear population can’t endure a hunting season and that hunters could endanger residents and tourists in the Lake Tahoe area.

The state Wildlife Commission approved the bear hunt earlier this year, after Tahoe neighborhoods were inundated with bears that rifled through garbage and broke into homes. The hunt began in August and will end Dec. 31, or when 20 bears have been killed. Ten have been killed so far, the paper said.

On Wednesday, bear advocates had as much luck with the legislative panel as they did with wildlife commissioners. Lawmakers voted to keep the bear hunt.

Vanuatu islands: Get happy, get a little wild

Reporting from Yakel Village, Vanuatu ——
My teenage daughter is standing in a lineup of tribesmen and she is angry with me. As I lift my camera, she says, "I look hideous," unaware of the irony of being surrounded by tribesmen wearing next to nothing.

"Yu, pikinini blong Amerika (You, child belonging to America)," the chief says, introducing Indigo to his grandson, who looks to be a much happier teenager. "Yu gat hamas yia? Yu slip wea? (You've got how many years? Where are you staying?)"

We are in the Yakel Village on the South Pacific island chain of Vanuatu. To be specific, we are on the southern island of Tanna, and the Yakel, who live as they have for 4,000 years, have eschewed Western clothing and most white-man trappings. They speak only their tribal language and Bislama, the pidgin English that unifies the Ni-Vanuatu (Vanuatu people).

PHOTOS: Vanuatu islands

I grew up in the South Pacific. Back then, Vanuatu was called the New Hebrides and was one of the poorest nations in the region, with little to recommend it to tourists. Within the last five years, however, it has become a hot spot for adventure travelers and now boasts several swanky resorts. In 2006 it was voted the happiest place on Earth by the think tank Happy Planet Index. (The U.S. ranked 150th.)

The reason they're happy is not that the Ni-Vanuatu have the most stuff; by U.S. standards Vanuatu is poor. (Subsistence agriculture does not count as wealth on the economic index.) But Vanuatu has idyllic white-sand islands, clear waters, waterfalls, great diving, the world's most accessible live volcano and food that grows faster than it can be picked.

The people don't big-foot on their environment, there's no litter, not much waste, little obesity. They share almost everything and, most important, there's no cultural yearning to keep up with the Joneses. I decided this concept would be good for my family, and so my husband, Greg; daughters, Indigo and Sofia; and I spent 10 days here last July.

Vanuatu is a string of 83 Melanesian islands surrounded on three sides by the Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia. The islands have a total population of 240,000. We visited three: Éfaté, home of Port-Vila, the capital; Tanna, home to the volcano and the nearly naked men; and Espiritu Santo, where a billionaire's private island resort recently opened.

After several hours with the Yakel, we said "tata" (goodbye) to the tribesmen, and our driver (driving yourself is not recommended because of bad roads) moved on to Mt. Yasur, one of the most spectacularly active volcanoes in the world. If you've ever fancied getting close to a volcano, here's your chance. The bone-rattling two-hour road trip to get there is less spectacular.

We pulled up before sunset, watching as gray clouds, as tall as multistoried buildings, mushroomed from the crater. We climbed its flank and approached the rim. It struck me as odd that there were no railings, no warning signs, no ropes and no rangers keeping visitors away from the edge. A part of happiness, I figured, must be managing one's own fate.

As darkness fell, we could see the gray, ashy plumes turning brilliant scarlet, red and purple, shooting fireball rocks wildly into the night sky. We were transfixed. We had expected to spend two hours there and we spent five, trying, in vain, to capture the exhilaration on film.

I later learned that in recent years three people were killed by flying lava after climbing too low into the crater. Self-determination can be dangerous.

Accommodations on Tanna were basic. White Grass Ocean Resort is as good as it gets and is pleasant and fun, although the rooms are Spartan and small. You don't go to Tanna for luxe digs; our three days there were sufficiently stimulating.

The words "private island" typically mean "out of my reach," but Ratua, a private island off Espiritu Santo, seemed reasonable to me for all that's included. The $430 per person per night (children are half-price) includes the 45-minute transfer to the island, a private villa, all meals, Internet, horseback riding, windsurfing, mountain bikes, snorkel gear and canoes.

In 2004, a French businessman cashed out, bought a yacht and he, his wife and two small children sailed the world looking for their dream island. They spent more than a year looking, eventually wandering into the friendly waters around the large northern island of Espiritu Santo.

There they discovered Ratua, a 146-acre coconut plantation surrounded by turquoise water, tropical fish, powdery white sand and abundant plant life. The owner, who prefers to remain unidentified but who happened to be here when we were, had found his Nirvana. While we rode horses with our kids, I asked him about choosing such a remote place. "We were seduced by the island, but mainly we loved the people," he replied. What he didn't tell me is that all of the resort's profit is donated to local communities, funding the area's first hospital and supporting educational improvements.

The resort was built to be eco-friendly, which entailed repurposing 200-year-old teak houses from Sumatra and having them reconfigured in Bali and erected as 10 rustic-luxe villas on Ratua. Everything is hand-carved, ancient and sumptuously decorated. There are no hair dryers, phones, TVs or coffee machines in the villas. Instead, you have to wander down to the bar to get your espresso and Internet. The restaurant has a culturally shell-shocked chef from New York who serves the freshest fish and lobster (which teem like pests in the waters off Ratua) I have ever tasted.

A trainer who used to ride with the Lipizzaner was in charge of the 20 horses available for guests, and one day we swam a channel with the horses and headed through verdant jungle on a neighboring island. It was world-class riding.

Indigo and I decided to visit the mainland of Espiritu Santo to explore the Millennium Cave, which, as evidence of Vanuatu's remoteness, was first explored in 2000. We left behind Greg and Sofia because the trip was labeled unsuitable for kids under 10. I rarely pay attention to things labeled "tough" because it's often an overstatement, but "tough" in Vanuatu really means, "Holy smokes, what have I done?" After a jarring one-hour drive, a 45-minute walk through a steamy bamboo forest, a stop at a village long house for a cup of instant coffee and an incomprehensible briefing from our village guide, we were off.

There was a one-hour trek through knotted jungle and several steep descents on ladders fashioned from branches lashed together with palm fronds before we finally descended into the cave, which stretched, pitch-dark, for two miles. For more than 90 minutes we traversed rocky ledges, waded chest-high in the river that rushed through the cave, crawled over slick boulders and squeezed through narrow cracks, all clutching waterproof flashlights. Any pride I had about my fitness was dashed, and I emerged with my legs shaking. Indigo, a sprightly 13, was grinning madly and claiming she wasn't tired at all.

But wait. There was more.

After a sit-down and a sandwich, we were handed a child's blow-up swim ring and told to get in the river. The only way out was to swim down a canyon, get out, portage your body around rocks, swim under waterfalls, get out again, climb a cliff and then traipse back through the jungle. I had never been more exhausted, but it was a true-blue adventure and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

As we made the after-dark return to Ratua, the driver amused us by teaching us Bislama. My favorites: Helicopter: Mixmaster blong Jesus Christ. Sea gull: pigeon blong solwater; a gossip: bigmaot; and bra: basket blong titi.

Back at Ratua, guests were invited to go outside on a deck cantilevered above the lagoon. Below us, a group of women in grass skirts waded into the sea up to their waists. They began to sing and rhythmically beat the ocean with their hands, performing the water music of nearby Banks Island. An ancient ritual performed only by women, this performance seemed to prove that humans will always find a way to make music. Later that night, warriors, also from Banks Island, covered in body paint and wearing coconuts on their heads, rushed into the bar, where they performed athletic and fearsome dances, sending us off with an indelible memory.

Our final night was spent at Eratap, an Australian-owned beach resort 20 minutes from busy and unattractive Port-Vila on the main island of Éfaté. The resort has 12 large seaside villas, a shimmering beach, a huge pool and a relaxed surfer attitude. There are other resorts on Éfaté, but many don't allow children.

Vanuatu had become one of my favorite places. In a world where most places are thoroughly explored and exploited, it felt untouched, blessed with abundant nature and kind people. Every day had brought us a new experience.

Jon Huntsman, the reasonable Republican

As Republican presidential aspirants assembled Tuesday night in Nevada for their umpteenth debate, it was clearer than ever that Republicans have gotten exactly what they had coming.
Their nominating process, controlled by the religious warriors and anti-government agitators who dominate straw polls, has reached its logical conclusion: The hottest candidate in the field is Herman Cain, a fast-food tycoon who never heard of neoconservatism, has never held office, has no foreign policy and a three-digit number for a domestic policy, and likes to joke about electrocuting illegal immigrants. By contrast, Jon Huntsman, governor, ambassador, the man who in a normal political environment would be the most qualified and formidable candidate in the race, wasn’t even on the stage.

A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream.

Facing the humiliation of being topped by the pizza man, Huntsman boycotted the Nevada debate (given his poor standing in the polls, he might not have been invited anyway) and retreated here to New Hampshire to make his last stand.

It says a great deal about the state of the Republican nominating process that Huntsman is floundering while Mr. Pizza soars. “It’s a new world,” Huntsman told me as we spoke Tuesday in the lobby of his Manchester hotel. “You throw out anyone with any connection to real-world experience in government.”

Huntsman will almost certainly fail, but that doesn’t make what he is doing any less important. He’s betting everything — “a Vegas move,” he called it — that there is still some constituency in the Republican Party for reason and moderation. While Mitt Romney has found success by running away from the moderate indiscretions of his past, Huntsman is begging the voters who chose John McCain over George W. Bush in 2000, not to mention Henry Cabot Lodge over Barry Goldwater in 1964, to reestablish the political center.

I detected some bitterness as he spoke of being hobbled by his impressive resume and getting no credit for his solid record of conservatism on guns, abortion and economics. “If you don’t shove people away and stay in your little corner of Republican Party ideology, you’re seen as something other than pure,” he told me. “If you’ve worked on some of the so-called nontraditional issues like the environment, if you’ve crossed party lines to serve your country . . . that can be seen as an easy strike against you — whereas in a perfect world that would be seen as a strength.”

Certainly this is not a perfect world.

As Cain and the others in Las Vegas prepared for a debate that would potentially reach millions, Huntsman was in New Hampshire, reaching dozens. The man introducing Huntsman at a law-firm-hosted forum read the bio haltingly, as if unfamiliar with it.

Huntsman labored to project momentum. “I came in as a margin-of-error candidate,” he said. “We’re now up to the low double-digits.”

(Actually, he’s at 8 percent in a recent WMUR New Hampshire poll, vs. Romney’s 37 percent.)

He spoke for 12 minutes. The lawyers fidgeted. “Questions?” he asked. Silence. “Please,” he said. “Lawyers are never shy.”

It’s probably too late for Huntsman. His campaign is in debt and he’s getting 1 to 2 percent in national polls. But in New Hampshire, Huntsman has finally found a compelling message. He has shifted from his initial dubious theme — the need for civility — to the worthier goal of fighting for the political center. He said he would not join his rivals in going to pander to Donald Trump. He bravely proclaimed: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

In theory, a call to reason could work in New Hampshire, where the far right commands less than a third of the GOP electorate. At least two-thirds of voters here haven’t yet made up their minds, and Huntsman strategist John Weaver thinks they can be persuaded. “It’s a fork in the road between seriousness and circus,” he said. Weaver has some credibility on this point: He was the architect of McCain’s upset here in 2000.

Huntsman, already out of money, is running out of time. But at least he has a message. “The work of the nation isn’t getting done because we’ve got the extreme elements on both sides that are barking at each other, and the entire middle has been hollowed out,” he said. His task: “You put forward a message that addresses that, and you wonder if people are ready for that.”

I suspect he already knows the answer. But it’s still a stand worth taking.

California schools scrambling to add lessons on LGBT Americans

At Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in Laurel Canyon, there are lesson plans on diverse families — including those with two mommies or daddies — books on homosexual authors in the library and a principal who is openly gay.

But even at this school, teachers and administrators are flummoxed about how to carry out a new law requiring California public schools to teach all students — from kindergartners to 12th graders — about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in history classes.

"At this point, I wouldn't even know where to begin," Principal Don Wilson said.

Educators across the state don't have much time to figure it out. In January, they're expected to begin teaching about LGBT Americans under California's landmark law, the first of its kind in the nation.

The law has sparked confusion about what, exactly, is supposed to be taught. Will fourth-graders learn that some of the Gold Rush miners were gay and helped build San Francisco? Will students be taught about the "two-spirited people" tradition among some Native Americans, as one gay historian mused?

"I'm not sure how we plug it into the curriculum at the grade school level, if at all," said Paul Boneberg, executive director at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.

School districts will have little help in navigating this sensitive and controversial change, which has already prompted some parents to pull their children out of public schools.

The Legislature suspended all adoptions of instructional material through eighth grade until 2015 to save money. Any new textbook with LGBT content is not likely to land in schools until at least 2019 because that process usually takes a minimum of four years, according to a state Education Department spokeswoman.

The transition should be easier in L.A. Unified, which has been a pioneer in LGBT education.

The Los Angeles school board passed a resolution directing students and school staff to refrain from slurs about sexual orientation as far back as 1988. Then, in 2003, allegations of adult school staff members bullying LGBT students prompted the district to step up its educational efforts, according to Judy Chiasson, coordinator for human relations, diversity and equity.

In 2005, L.A. Unified debuted the nation's first chapter in a high school health textbook on LGBT issues covering sexual orientation and gender identity, struggles over them and anti-LGBT bias. A section on misconceptions says sexual orientation is not a choice — a statement many religious conservatives disagree with.

Those topics, educators say, are clearly inappropriate at the younger ages, raising tough questions about how to carry out the new law in elementary school.

So sensitive is the subject that a children's picture book about a same-sex penguin pair is one of the most controversial books in America today. "And Tango Makes Three" — based on a true story about two male penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo that bond, hatch a surrogate egg and raise a baby together — has drawn the most complaints and requests for removal from library shelves nearly every year since its 2005 publication, according to the American Library Assn.

Chiasson said LGBT topics are controversial because people conflate them with sex — and, for religious conservatives, sin. "People sexualize homosexuality and romanticize heterosexuality," she said.

The Safe Schools Coalition, an educational support group for LGBT youth, says the only age-appropriate lessons in elementary school involve family diversity, gender stereotypes and anti-bullying.

Which is pretty much what happens at Wonderland.

On a recent morning, teacher Jane Raphael invited her two dozen kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders to sit in a circle and tell a story about their family. The students described a cross section of modern-day America: moms and dads and athletic siblings, crazy dogs, a cat named Lulu, a fish that died, divorced parents, a girl with two mommies.

There was no discussion about sex or gay lifestyles. The exercise simply underscored that families come in all sizes, shapes and configurations.

Wilson, the principal, said such lessons are about as far as the school would take any LGBT instruction.

"The issue is never going to move beyond the diversity of family," he said. "If it were to move beyond that, we would address it as a breach of developmentally appropriate instruction."

Middle and high schools are a different matter. Sex education begins in fifth grade, so more specific LGBT instruction is considered appropriate — and necessary, experts say, as bullying steps up in these years.
That happened at Downtown Magnets High School, where a lesbian student was beaten up on a school bus in 2005. The school responded by launching an anti-bullying poster campaign, a Gay-Straight Alliance club, staff sessions about inclusiveness and a conscious effort by some teachers to integrate LGBT issues into instruction.

An art history teacher includes portraits of same-sex couples in her studies. An English teacher has discussed writer Langston Hughes, who is widely believed to have been gay. And in 11th grade U.S. history, Daniel Jocz covers LGBT issues, especially during the unit on 20th century civil rights movements.

Using video clips of Kanye West, Tyra Banks and other celebrities, Jocz engages his students in lively discussions about language — including the taunt "that's gay." His students study the LGBT resistance to police arrests in the Stonewall riots alongside Rosa Parks' refusal to sit in the back of the bus. And the murder cases of Emmett Till, an African American teenager, and Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, are examined in the class segment on hate crimes.

"I'm a history teacher, and this is history," Jocz said. "It's part of the narrative. You can't remove it."

Students say such efforts have created a safe and nurturing environment.

David Columbus, a senior and president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance club, said he remembers being pushed around and called names since he was 3 because he liked Barbie dolls. When he realized he was gay in eighth grade, he said, he wanted to die and wished he had cancer instead because that was more acceptable.

At school, however, Columbus said he has thrived under the support.

"This law's going to educate kids about LGBT people, and once you get education, you'll respect them, and nobody's going to bully them anymore," said Jennifer Vanegas, a straight member of the club.

But the new law, which added LGBT Americans, European Americans and the disabled to groups whose contributions to California and U.S. history should be studied, has sparked open rebellion from some teachers and families.

Sixty miles east from Wonderland, Calvary Chapel Corona — an evangelical Christian church of 1,200 congregants in western Riverside County — is an active opponent. At least seven families pulled their children from public schools in protest.

"This law teaches children that it's OK to be gay, and that's not my Christian values," said Bryan Breuer, who withdrew his children from public schools. "I don't understand trying to force this on my children."

Grace R. Callaway, a public school teacher near Yuba City, said she will refuse to teach LGBT issues to her fifth- and sixth-graders because she believes homosexuality is a "destructive lifestyle."

She has also taken issue with a short biography recently presented in her daughter's high school history class that described John Berry, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as the "highest-ranking openly gay federal employee in U.S. history." She and some other religious conservatives want to remove their children from such lessons as they can do with sex education.

How administrators plan to handle "conscientious objectors" like Callaway is unclear.

For now, L.A. Unified, along with school districts in south Orange County, Elk Grove and elsewhere, has started meeting with staff members to figure out lesson plans.

"We're looking for places of natural fit," Chiasson said. "We're not going to shoehorn in something gratuitous just to make a point."

South Korea presses Japan at U.N. over 'comfort women'

REPORTING FROM SEOUL -- After decades of frustration, personal protests and government  declarations, South Korea on Wednesday appealed to the United Nations in its demand that Japan take “legal responsibility” for enslaving an estimated 200,000 Korean women as prostitutes during World War II.

 Known euphemistically as “comfort women,” the victims were forced to provide sexual services for Japanese soldiers based on the Korean peninsula. For years, Japan has paid lip service to South Korean demands for monetary payments to surviving victims, leading South Korea to seek support through the court of world opinion.

 “This systematic rape and sexual slavery constitute war crimes, and also, under defined circumstances, crimes against humanity,” Shin Dong-ik, South Korea’s deputy chief envoy to the U.N., told a General Assembly committee.

 The statement is the first time in nearly a generation that a Korean diplomat has raised the issue at the U.N.’s Third Committee. Each year since 1992, South Korea has broached the issue at the less influential U.N. Human Rights Council.

 A Japanese representative at the committee hearing acknowledged the use of Koreans as comfort women during the war, and he  expressed remorse. However, Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, has insisted that the issue was settled by a 1965 compensation package in which South Korea reportedly received $300 million.

 Many surviving comfort women have waged regular protests at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. In December, the women will hold their 1,000th protest.

 The issue will be revisited during an Oct. 19  summit here between South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

Park-&-wreck freeloaders

They are fighting for their rights -- to partay!

The Occupy Wall Street protest has drawn an unwelcome crowd of freeloaders who joined the movement for the sex, drugs and free food -- and they are blending right in.

The opportunists -- ranging from addicts in need of a meal to well-off teens looking to hook up -- have in some cases taken up residence in the demonstrators’ makeshift village in Zuccotti Park, upsetting the movement’s organizers.

“Most of the kids are trust-fund babies. They don’t need to be here,” said Andre, 40, an activist. “I’ve seen some making out, having sex. It doesn’t look good.”
The anything-goes attitude led to a scare early yesterday morning, when a 23-year-old Brooklyn man nearly overdosed after downing a mix of liquor and Robitussin cough syrup.

“He was robo-tripping,” said a woman who knew the man’s first name only, Zachary, and that he had been homeless before camping out in the park starting seven days ago.

None of the protesters sleeping next to Zachary noticed he had stopped breathing or that his lips had turned purple.

An alert passer-by notified cops, and the man was rushed to Downtown Hospital in serious condition.

“If we had not gotten to him when we did, he would have stopped breathing,” a volunteer EMT said.

Many of the newcomers to the tent city are attracted by the donated freebies: pizza, sandwiches, fruit, as well as bins of sweaters, pants, boots, even underwear. There are also handout comforters for anyone who wants 40 winks.

And with complimentary condoms on hand, a 1960s-style free love has begun to blossom. More than 400 participants spent the night Friday huddling and cuddling in Zuccotti Park.

None of which sits well with the movement’s leaders, who set up an internal police group to stop the boozing, pot smoking and hanky-panky.

“We want to make sure everyone is here for the right reason,” said Ricky Torres, 23, who is part of the security unit. “Some are homeless and people who are not really up to any good.”

Torres said leaders are trying to curb the wild side of the movement.

“If we see someone doing something we think the cops are not going to be down with, we take it upon ourselves to stop it.

“We make sure everybody’s doing the right thing -- to be peaceful and not upset the cops because they’re here to protect us.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters are scrambling to find a place to bathe and use the bathroom amid rising concern about sanitation in the overwhelmed park.

Many rely on the kindness of strangers.

“The first five days, I didn’t take a shower. It was rough,” said Patrick Rowe, 48, a carpenter from New Jersey who joined the movement after stumbling across the activists while in the city on a job 11 days ago.

But an actor named Anthony with an apartment on the Upper West Side came to his rescue, allowing him to shower there.

On Friday night, he took up a similar offer from a woman with a place on the Lower East Side.

The movement, Rowe said, “stands for everything I believe in. I’m exhausted. I got rained on. I was cold, but I can’t seem to pull myself away.”

Casey Anthony takes video deposition in civil case

ORLANDO, Florida (AP) – Disguised in sunglasses and a baseball cap, Casey Anthony was deposed Saturday for a civil lawsuit that accuses her of ruining another woman's reputation.
Attorneys for Zenaida Gonzalez used videoconferencing to question Anthony, who was at an undisclosed location in Florida.

John Morgan, who is representing Gonzalez, said he asked Anthony about the disappearance of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony told detectives in 2008 that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny named Zenaida Gonzalez.

Detectives said no such baby sitter existed. Morgan's client, who has the same name as the fictional baby sitter, has sued Anthony, claiming her reputation was ruined.

Anthony answered few questions and her attorney, Charles Greene, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, Morgan said. The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects witnesses from being forced to incriminate themselves.

"I think there were times where some of the questions irritated her," Morgan said, pointing to questions about her mother and father, and her brother's testimony.

Morgan said Anthony tried to disguise herself by wearing a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap and long, thick black hair that appeared to be from a wig. She also wore a large pair of Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses, Morgan said.

He described her as "not happy to be there."

A message left for Greene by The Associated Press on Saturday after the deposition was not immediately returned.

Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee and released from jail in July. She is now serving probation on an unrelated charge at an undisclosed location in Florida.

Foreclosure backlog deepens

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As the foreclosure backlog continues to build up, delinquent borrowers are spending even more time in their homes without making mortgage payments.

Once borrowers start missing payments, they spend an average of a year and nine months, or 611 days, in foreclosure before banks repossess their homes, according to LPS Mortgage Monitor. That's more than twice as long as three years ago, when the average was 251 days. Earlier his year, the average was 523 days.
"The number of defaults in the pipeline has been huge and we had more problem loans than ever before," said Herb Belcher, who supervises analytics for Lender Processing Services (LPS), which provides mortgage industry information and analytics to big banks.

With so many bad loans, servicers have had to prioritize which ones they can deal with and which ones to push aside.
Squatter nation: five years with no mortgage payment

"It's like your boat has all these holes in it and is taking in water. You have to plug up the worst holes first," said Belcher.

The bottlenecks are particularly severe in judicial states where the foreclosures are processed through the courts, he said. In non-judicial states, where trustees handle the cases, the average foreclosure is six months shorter.