After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers were still on the job. In fact, U-S Attorney Carol Lam says as many as a third of the company's 750 workers may have been in the country illegally.

Golden State Fence built millions of dollars' worth of fencing around homes, offices, and military bases. Its president and one of its Southern California managers will pay fines totaling $300,000. The government is also recommending jail time for Melvin Kay and Michael McLaughlin, probably about six months.

It is exceptionally rare for those who employ illegal immigrants to face any kind of criminal prosecution, let alone jail time. Earlier this week, for example, immigration raids on six meat-packing plants netted almost 1,300 suspected illegal workers. But no charges were leveled against the company that runs the plants: Swift.

Golden State Fence's attorney, Richard Hirsch, admits his client broke the law. But he says the case proves that construction companies need a guest-worker program.

At the same time, Police Department spokesman Paul Browne noted that this year's total is only slightly higher than last year's 539 homicides - the city's lowest death toll in more than 40 years.

Browne blamed the rise in part on the availability of guns, particularly weapons from out of state. The city this year sued dozens of out-of-state gun shops that it says are responsible for many of the illegal weapons on the streets of New York.

In Chicago, homicides through the first 11 months of the year were up 3.3 percent compared with the same period in 2005, reversing a four-year decline. A police spokeswoman said gang violence has been a contributing factor.

In New Haven, Conn., there were 23 homicides as of Tuesday, compared with 15 in 2004 and in 2005. Police Chief Francisco Ortiz said that about half of this year's killings involve young people settling disputes with guns instead of fists.

"They're all struggling with this thing about respect and pride," Ortiz said. "It's about respect. It's about revenge. It's about having a reputation. It's about turf and it's about girls."

Houston police attribute the 15 percent increase in the homicide count to the influx of Katrina evacuees from the Gulf Coast.

"So we expect that to settle," Lt. Murray Smith said. "We're hoping it will go down."

New Orleans, with its post-Katrina exodus, is the only major U.S. city that saw a sharp decline in the number of homicides. There were 154 in New Orleans this year as of Monday, said police spokesman Sgt. Jeffrey Johnson, down from 210 in 2005. But the city was largely empty during the fall and winter of 2005-06, and even now has only about half of its pre-Katrina population of 455,000.

Some cities, like Cincinnati - which has had 83 homicides so far, up from 79 in 2005 - posted their highest numbers ever. Others saw their highest death tolls in years.

Oakland, Calif., had 148 homicides as of Wednesday, up 57 percent from last year and the highest in more than a decade. Philadelphia's 2006 homicide total was 403 as of Wednesday, the first time the number has topped 400 in nearly a decade. There were 380 killings in all of 2005.

Philadelphia officials have struggled all year to reduce the violence. In July, Mayor John F. Street gave a televised address in which pleaded with young people: "Lay down your weapons. Do it now. Choose education over violence."

A few cities reported slight decreases in murders. Los Angeles' total was down about 4 percent to 464 homicides through Dec. 23. San Francisco's fell about 15 percent. San Francisco Police Sgt. Steve Mannina said the drop is partly due to increased patrols in violence-prone areas and more overtime approved by the police chief.

The FBI does not release its national crime statistics until several months after the end of the year. The bureau's statistics for the first six months of 2006 showed an increase of 1.4 percent in the number of murders in the first half of 2006 compared with the first six months of 2005.

Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at John Jay College in New York, said that while there are various theories for the drop in murders in New York and other cities in the 1990s, no one knows for sure why it happened. And if they are going up again, no one knows the reason for that, either, he said.

He noted that police departments tend to take credit when the murder rate goes down. "When crime goes up it will be interesting to see whether they will accept responsibility," Karmen said.

"That's an amazing number," an academic who has studied the FBI's record-keeping procedures, Athan Theoharis of Marquette University, said in an interview yesterday. "These are very sensitive investigations. ... They could be called to account for whether they are monitoring reporters. These are records that should be handled very well."

Over the past decade, the FBI has waged an epic struggle to computerize and automate its records systems. The agency abandoned a $170 million "Virtual Case File" project last year after years of Congressional hearings and critical evaluations led to the conclusion that the system would never be implemented successfully.

One frequent critic of government database programs, Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that record makes it understandable that a substantial proportion of the leak files would be mislaid.

Sgt. Dana Wolfe, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office, which first responded to the luggage report, said tags on the bags showed some of the travelers were going to or from London and Dubai.

Continental spokeswoman Mary Clark didn't know if the contents of the bags were stolen. She said the airline would investigate along with law enforcement authorities.

Investigators said some of the luggage had been opened and had valuables removed, according to KPRC.

Authorities said the bags belonged to travelers at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

One of the bags belonged to a woman from Mexico City who said she lost a computer and a camcorder in her luggage. She said she is trying to figure out how her luggage ended up in Houston when she never traveled through the city. She started in Portland and had layovers in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Some travelers were worried about what could happen to their lost luggage.

"I have all my Christmas presents in there," traveler Elaine Mogabgab said.

KPRC reported that officials with Continental Airlines said they have the luggage and are trying to reunite it with their owners.

The owners of a Pet City store found the luggage.