PENINSULA DAILY NEWS for Wednesday, December 10, 2014 P A G E
A3 Briefly: Nation No terrorism link seen in stabbing at Jewish center NEW YORK — A man with a history of mental illness slipped into the headquarters of a major Jewish organization in Brooklyn in the middle of the night Tuesday and stabbed an Israeli student in the head as he was studying in the library. Then, as the bloody victim was taken away, the attacker lunged at police and was shot and killed, authorities said. Calvin Peters, 49, could be seen on amateur video waving a knife in the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights at 1:40 a.m. after the attack on Levi Rosenblat. Rosenblat, wounded in the side of the head, was expected to survive. Police said the stabbing was not believed to be connected to terrorism. But it shook the Jewish community, still reeling over an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue by two Palestinian cousins last month that left four worshippers and an officer dead.
GOP a political gift “wrapped in a bow.” Gruber told groups in 2012 and 2013 that voter stupidity and a “lack of transparency” Gruber were important to passing the hard-fought legislation. Appearing before the House Oversight committee Tuesday, Gruber expanded on earlier apologies, repeatedly saying, “I was conjecturing in areas beyond my expertise.”
Military was cheated
PHILADELPHIA — Two foreign companies have pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy for overcharging the U.S. military in connection with a contract to provide food and water to troops in Afghanistan. Court documents said the privately held firms fraudulently inflated the price of fresh fruits and vegetables and bottled water, overcharging the government by $48 million between 2005 and 2009. The companies agreed to pay Adviser apologizes $288 million in fines and restiWASHINGTON — MIT econ- tution, plus $101 million to resolve a whistleblower suit. omist Jonathan Gruber — an The case involves Supreme often-quoted adviser on the Group B.V., a privately held president’s health care law — Dutch corporation, and its subtold Congress on Tuesday he sidiaries, Supreme Foodservice was glib and “inexcusably arroGmbH of Switzerland and gant” when he said it was “the stupidity of the American voter” Supreme Foodservice FZE of United Arab Emirates. that led to the law’s passage. The U.S. attorney’s office in Democrats tried to limit the Philadelphia announced the resdamage as Republicans raked olution of the case Monday. Gruber at a four-hour hearing The Associated Press but acknowledged he gave the
CIA interrogations are attacked in new report Torture probe claims public was misled BY MARK MAZZETTI THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects and that its methods were more brutal than the CIA acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public. The long-delayed report, which took five years to produce and is based on more than 6 million internal agency documents, is a sweeping indictment of the CIA’s operation and oversight of a program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also provides a macabre
accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the CIA used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects. Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the CIA’s medical staff, some CIA prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the CIA’s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” CIA medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.” The report also suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three the CIA has acknowledged in the past. The committee obtained a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water at the prison in Afghanistan commonly known as the Salt Pit — a facility where the CIA had claimed that waterboarding was never used. One clandestine officer described the prison as a “dungeon,” and another said that some prisoners
there “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.” During his administration, President George W. Bush repeatedly said that the detention and interrogation program, which President Barack Obama dismantled when he succeeded him, was humane and legal. The intelligence gleaned during interrogations, he said, was instrumental both in thwarting terrorism plots and in capturing senior figures of al-Qaida.
Helped find bin Laden? Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and a number of former CIA officials have said more recently that the program was essential for ultimately finding Osama bin Laden, who was killed by members of the Navy SEALs in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The Intelligence Committee’s report tries to refute each of these claims, using the CIA’s internal records to present 20 case studies that bolster its conclusion that the most extreme interrogation methods played no role in disrupting terrorism plots, capturing terrorist leaders — even finding bin Laden.
Briefly: World Frenchman held 3 years is freed by his captors PARIS — A Frenchman held for more than three years by al-Qaida’s North African branch was freed Tuesday, days after two of the men implicated in his abduction were reportedly released from a prison in Mali. Negotiations among the governments of Niger, Mali and France led to freedom for Serge Lazarevic, 51, who was Lazarevic described by the French president as in “relatively good health” despite his long captivity. Tuesday’s release, greeted with joy among many in France, stands in contrast to the attempted rescue in Yemen last weekend that ended in the deaths of two hostages —an American and South African — held by al-Qaida.
Hostilities suspended DONETSK, Ukraine — Government troops and Russianbacked separatists largely suspended hostilities in east Ukraine on Tuesday, raising
hopes of a lasting peaceful settlement in a conflict that has raged for seven months and claimed thousands of lives. The lull in fighting followed a proposal by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to hold a “day of silence” as a bid to revive a largely ignored cease-fire deal reached in September. The war has left more than 4,300 people dead, displaced hundreds of thousands and exhausted a nation struggling to stave off economic collapse. Separatist rebel leaders have supported the truce, which appeared to be holding around the main rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Uber exec questioned NEW DELHI — Indian police questioned an Uber executive Tuesday about the company’s claim it conducts comprehensive background checks and a top official called for the taxibooking service to be banned nationwide after one of its New Delhi drivers was accused of rape. New Delhi police official Brijendra Kumar Yadav said there is a possibility of criminal charges against the company if police find evidence the taxihailing app misrepresented the safety of its service. The driver, 32-year-old Shiv Kumar Yadav, is being held by police and will appear again in a New Delhi court Thursday. The Associated Press
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CALIFORNIA
Protesters block an Amtrak train in Berkeley, Calif., on Monday night. Hundreds of people marched through Berkeley for a third night, blocking an interstate highway and stopping the train as activists rallied against grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men.
Congressional spending deal to keep government funded BY ASHLEY PARKER AND JONATHAN WEISMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders reached a deal Tuesday on a more than $1 trillion spending package that would fund most of the federal government through the current fiscal year. But because negotiations on the package dragged over policy details, House lawmakers also prepared to move on a short-term spending measure that would avert a government shutdown if they cannot pass
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the larger bill by Thursday, when current funding expires. Even with nettlesome lastminute issues, leaders in both parties expressed confidence that they would be able to keep the government running. Lawmakers battled behind the scenes over dozens of additional policy provisions ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency’s jurisdiction over some bodies of water to the District of Columbia’s marijuana laws to matters of campaign finance.
The big spending package, which congressional leaders had hoped to have ready Monday, did not come until Tuesday evening. The final legislation would keep domestic funding at current levels, while providing more money to fight various crises abroad. The House is expected to vote on the package Thursday, and the short-term measure would help provide the Senate a margin of error for passing the legislation the House sends over before breaking for the winter recess.
. . . more news to start your day
West: Death penalty sought in California deputy killings
Nation: Documents show Newtown parents plan suit
Nation: Man charged in theft of military information
World: Watson’s Nobel is bought so it can go back
CALIFORNIA PROSECUTORS SAID Tuesday they will seek the death penalty for a Utah man charged with killing two deputies during an hourslong rampage that also left a motorist and another deputy wounded. Prosecutors in Placer and Sacramento counties decided after consulting with the victims’ families that the death penalty is appropriate for defendant Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, Placer County Supervising Deputy District Attorney David Tellman said. No inmates have been executed in California since 2006, and no executions are currently scheduled because of ongoing legal challenges.
THE PARENTS OF another firstgrader killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 have filed court documents that could pave the way for a wrongful death lawsuit. The parents of James Mattioli filed the forms Tuesday in Connecticut probate court, joining parents of 10 other children killed at the Newtown school. The documents seek to establish estates for the children — a move required before lawsuits on behalf of the children could be filed. Sunday is the second anniversary of the school shooting in which 20 children and six adults were killed.
AN ENGINEER WHO worked for defense contractor United Technologies in Connecticut has been charged with attempting to travel to China with stolen documents on the development of advanced titanium for U.S. military aircraft. Federal prosecutors announced charges against 36-year-old Yu Long, a Chinese citizen and a lawful permanent resident of the United States who lived in New Haven, Conn. Authorities said Long was arrested Nov. 7 at an Ithaca, N.Y., home two days after he allegedly attempted to fly to China from Newark, N.J., with sensitive, proprietary material.
RUSSIA’S RICHEST MAN said he has bought James D. Watson’s Nobel Prize medal at Christie’s in order to return it to the scientist. Alisher Usmanov, a metal and telecommunications tycoon worth $15.8 billion according to Forbes magazine, said in remarks carried by Russian television Tuesday that when he learned that Watson was selling the medal for charity, he decided to purchase it and give it back to him. Watson’s 1962 Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA sold at Christie’s in a New York auction for $4.7 million, a world auction record for any Nobel.