Wnd dec 8

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A M E R I C A N S WA T C H L E S S T V, S T R E A M MORE, REPORT SHOWS Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister in a scene from “Game of Thrones.” Americans are increasingly turning to digital media to watch TV and movies via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services, according to a Nielsen report released Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. CBS and HBO have announced standalone streaming

NEW YORK (AP) -- Americans are turning away from live TV on the tube and tuning in to streaming services, a Nielsen report says.

That’s bad news for cable and satellite TV providers. Americans are increasingly watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services. CBS and HBO have announced standalone streaming services as well.

About 45 percent of Americans stream television shows at least once a month, according to research firm eMarketer. That number is expected to increase to 53 percent or 175 million people by 2018, it says.

According to the Nielsen report, which came out Wednesday, the average daily time spent watching live TV fell 12 minutes in the third quarter to four hours and 32 minutes. That means it dropped nearly 4 percent to 141 hours per month.

Meanwhile, time spent watching streaming services jumped 60 percent to nearly 11 hours each month.

That’s still a small amount compared with live TV, but it is growing continued on page 5

AVERAGE AFFORDABLE CARE PREMIUMS GOING UP IN 2015

Volume 003 Issue 48

Established 2012

PROTESTS ERUPT AFTER DECISION IN CHOKEHOLD

NEW YORK (AP) -- The cellphone video of the last moments of Eric Garner’s life was watched millions of times on the Internet, clearly showing a white police officer holding the unarmed black man in a chokehold, even as he repeatedly gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

But despite that visual evidence, and a medical examiner’s ruling that the chokehold contributed to the death, a Staten Island grand jury decided Wednesday not to bring any charges against the officer involved, prompting protests across the country and sending thousands onto New York’s streets, where they marched, chanted and blocked traffic into the next morning.

heavily secured area around the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting with a combination of professional-looking signs and hand-scrawled placards reading, “Black lives matter” and “Fellow white people, wake up.” And in the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner died, people reacted with angry disbelief and chanted, “I can’t breathe!” and “Hands up - don’t choke!”

People participate in a protest in response to the grand jury’s decision in the Eric Garner case in Times Square in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. The grand jury cleared the white New York City police officer Wednesday in the videotaped chokehold death of Garner, an unarmed black man, who had been stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, a lawyer for the victim’s family said.

While legal experts note it’s impossible to know how the grand jurors reached their conclusion, they say the Garner case, like Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, once again raised concerns about the influence local prosecutors have over the process of charging the police officers they work with on a daily basis.

“The video speaks for itself,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia Law School. “It appears to show negligence. But if we learned anything from the Brown case, it’s the power of prosecutors to construct and manage a narrative in a way that can shape the outcome.”

Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at Cardozo School of Law, agreed that, “It is hard to understand how a jury doesn’t see any probable cause that a crime has been committed or is being committed when looking at that video, especially.”

Another observer, James A. Cohen, who teaches at Fordham University Law School, went further, saying, “Logic doesn’t play a role in this process.”

U.S. Attorney Eric Holder said federal prosecutors would conduct their own investigation of Garner’s July 17 death as officers were attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street. The New York Police Department also is doing an internal probe which could lead to administrative charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who remains on desk duty.

The grand jury’s decision prompted emotional protests around New York and in cities from Atlanta to California.

In Manhattan, demonstrators laid down in Grand Central Terminal, walked through traffic on the West Side Highway and blocked the Brooklyn Bridge. A City Council member cried. Hundreds converged on the

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Obama administration officials are acknowledging that HealthCare.gov premiums, on average, will go up next year.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many people covered under President Barack Obama’s health care law will face higher premiums next year, the administration acknowledged Thursday. While the average increases are modest, it’s more fodder for the nation’s political battles over health care.

Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

Police Commissioner William Bratton, in an interview Thursday on Fox-TV’s “Good Day New York,” said 83 people were arrested. The department said most were for disorderly conduct.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful, in contrast to the widespread arson and looting that accompanied the decision nine days earlier not to indict the officer in Brown’s death.

Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said the grand jury found “no reasonable cause” to bring charges, but unlike the chief prosecutor in the Ferguson case, he gave no details on the grand jury testimony. The district attorney said he will seek to have information on the investigation released.

“Honestly, I think from the beginning I had no faith in Staten Island prosecutors ... I didn’t have any kind of encouragement, I felt no remorse, I felt no compassion, no anything from Staten Island besides the people on Staten Island. But as far as the police and the DA, there was no sincerity from day one,’ Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, said in an interview on the “Today” show.

In order to find Pantaleo criminally negligent, the grand jury would have had to determine he knew there was a “substantial risk” that Garner would have died. Pataleo’s lawyer and union officials argued that the grand jury got it right, saying he used an authorized takedown move - not a banned chokehold - and that Garner’s poor health was the main cause of his death.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has led protests over the custody death of Garner and the police shooting of Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, said the New York decision is yet another reason he has lost confidence in state grand juries and local prosecutors to bring such cases.

“State grand juries tend to be too compromised with local politics because local prosecutors run for office and they have to depend on the police for evidence,” he said. “Don’t we have the right to question grand continued on page 2

IRAN LAUNCHES AIRSTRIKES I N I R A Q A G A I N S T I S that were sold to Iran’s U.S.-backed shah in the 1970s, and were last produced by McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in 1981.

Officials stressed that millions of current HealthCare.gov customers can mitigate the financial hit if they’re willing to shop around for another plan in a more competitive online marketplace. Subsidies will also help cushion the impact.

Qatari-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera filmed a jet flying over Iraq Nov. 30th that was identified by Jane’s Defence Weekly as an Iranian Phantom.

It’s currently taking an average of 30 minutes for returning customers to update their coverage.

In public, U.S. officials have walked a careful line over the strikes.

Premiums for the most popular type of plan are going up an average of 5 percent in 35 states where Washington is running the health insurance exchanges this year and will do so again in 2015, said a report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said Tuesday he had seen “nothing that would dispute” that Iran has carried out airstrikes in eastern Iraq. The U.S. was “not taking a position” on the strikes, he said.

Monthly premiums are one of the most important and politically sensitive yardsticks for Obama’s health care law, which offers subsidized private insurance to people who don’t have access to coverage through their jobs. Sharper premium hikes were common before it passed.

The modest average increases reported for 2015 mask bigger swings from state to state, and even within regions of a state. According to data released by the administration, some communities will still see double-digit hikes while others are seeing decreases. Most are somewhere in the middle.

“Prior to the Affordable Care Act taking place, we saw double-digit increases in health care costs in this country,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “Those were routine.”

Many people who go back to the website “will now find that their costs are limited to only 5 percent on average,” he said, “a much lower cost increase than was in place before the Affordable Care Act.” Even after Thursday’s report, the bottom line remains blurry.

Last year, the administration released its analysis of premiums before the start of open enrollment season. This year’s snapshot came more than two

continued on page 2

Hakim al-Zamili, a parliament member and head of Security and Defense Committee, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. Mixed reactions were voiced in Baghdad on Wednesday to Pentagon reports that Iran launched airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State group.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iranian jets have carried out airstrikes in Iraq against Islamic State militants in recent days, U.S. officials and independent analysts say, underscoring the strange alliances generated by the war against the extremist group that has beheaded Americans and blown up rivals’ holy sites.

Washington and Tehran are locked in tough negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But at the same time, the two adversaries have been fighting parallel campaigns on the same side in Iraq to defend the Shiite-dominated government - and the region’s Kurds - from IS militants who have seized large sections of Iraq and Syria.

It has long been known that Iranian troops and advisers have been fighting alongside Iraqi forces against Islamic State militants, but until this week there had been no confirmation of Iranian air activity. The timing and nature of the strikes are not clear, but U.S. officials say some involved American-made F-4 Phantoms, twin-engine fighter bombers

Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that Iranian attacks on IS militants would represent a positive development.

“I think it’s self-evident that if Iran is taking on ISIL in some particular place, and it’s confined to taking on ISIL, and it has an impact, its net effect is positive,” Kerry told reporters. “But that’s not something we’re coordinating.”

In Iran, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, Marzieh Afkham, also denied that Iran has cooperated with the U.S.-led coalition, but she neither confirmed nor denied the Iranian airstrikes against IS in Iraq.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi told reporters Wednesday, “I’m not aware there were Iranian airstrikes.”

Hakim al-Zamili, a Shiite Iraqi lawmaker who heads the Security and Defense Committee in Parliament, said Iran “is serious in fighting Daesh,” a term for the Islamic State group. “It has advisers in country.

It provides Iraq with weapons and ammunition,” al-Zamili said, adding that he had no knowledge of whether Iranian airstrikes had been carried out. continued on page 3

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The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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H O U S E N E A R S PA S S A G E OF $585B DEFENSE BILL of using a “good soldier defense” to raise doubts that a crime has been committed.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House is moving toward passage of a $585 billion defense policy bill that gives President Barack Obama the authority to expand U.S. military operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria.

The sweeping legislation authorizes spending for the nation’s defense, from construction of ships, planes and war-fighting equipment to a 1 percent pay raise for the troops, while maintaining the prohibition on transferring terror suspects from the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States.

The bill includes a bipartisan plan crafted by three female senators - Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Republicans Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Deb Fischer of Nebraska - that would impose a half-dozen changes to combat the pervasive problem of rape and sexual offenses that Pentagon leaders have likened to a cancer within the ranks.

The U.S. Capitol Christmas tree is seen after being lit by House Speaker John Boehner and Make-A-Wish Foundation recipient Aaron Urban, 10, from Linthicum, Md., on the West Front of the Capitol in Washington Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014. The 2014 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree is an 88-foot white spruce from the Chippewea National Forest in Cass Lake, Minn.

The House is expected to vote Thursday and send the measure to the Senate, where Republicans are divided over the inclusion of unrelated provisions expanding wilderness areas in the West. Proponents of the measure hope to finish the bill next week and send it to Obama for his signature.

In a rare instance of bipartisanship, Congress has passed the defense policy bill for 52 consecutive years. This year, work on the bill has added poignancy as the chairmen of the Armed Services committees in the Senate and House are retiring. Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin is leaving after 36 years; California Republican Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon is stepping down after 22 years.

The overall legislation endorses Obama’s latest request to Congress in the 4-month-old war against Islamic State militants who brutally rule large sections of Iraq and Syria. Obama sought billions for the steppedup operation and the dispatch of up to 1,500 more American troops; the bill provides $5 billion.

The administration also pressed for reauthorization of its plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels battling the forces of President Bashar Assad, with that mandate expiring Dec. 11. The legislation would extend that authority for two years.

Some in Congress have pressed for a new vote for authorizing the use of military force - to no avail.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., warned that the U.S. must “not get dragged into Iraq war 2.0.”

The bill would provide the core funding of $521.3 billion for the military and $63.7 billion for overseas operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where fighting has lasted more than a decade.

The bill would prohibit the retirement of the A-10 Warthog, the closeair support plane often described as ugly but invaluable.

The Pentagon sought cuts in military benefits. Lawmakers compromised by agreeing to make service members pay $3 more for co-pays on prescription drugs and trimming the growth of the off-base housing allowance by 1 percent instead of the Pentagon-preferred 5 percent.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

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The legislation would change the military justice system to deal with sexual assault, including scrapping the nearly century-old practice

GOING UP IN 2015 continued from page 1

weeks after sign-ups had started and covered 13 fewer states. Among the missing states were two of the largest, California and New York.

Last year’s report provided average premiums for three types of plans across 48 states - close to a national number. This year’s report has no comparable statistic.

With both chambers of Congress under Republican control next year, the health care law will face even closer scrutiny from opponents still pursuing its repeal.

Nonetheless, industry experts said the picture appears positive for consumers and the administration.

“Benchmark premiums going into year two of the health law are very stable nationally, driven largely by strong competition among insurers,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “How the law is playing out varies quite a bit across the country, with premiums increasing in some areas but actually going down in other places, which is almost unheard of.”

Administration officials said that on the whole, the market for individual insurance has gotten better for consumers.

“In today’s marketplace, issuers are competing for business,” HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said in a statement. “Returning customers may find an even better deal if they shop and save.”

The administration says about two-thirds of current customers can still find coverage comparable to what they have now for $100 a month or less if they shop. That estimate takes into account the tax credits that most consumers receive, which cover about three-fourths of their premiums on average.

PROTESTS ERUPT juries when we’re looking at a video and seeing things that don’t make sense?”

The most popular coverage, known as the lowest cost silver plan, will go up 5 percent next year across the 35 states included in the administration’s analysis. The second-lowest cost silver plan - the benchmark the government uses to set subsidy levels - will go up an average of 2 percent.

continued from page 1

The heavyset father of six, who had asthma, was heard repeatedly gasping, “I can’t breathe!” He later died at a hospital.

worldwildlife.org

Officials told The Associated Press that the number of sexual assaults reported by military service members increased 8 percent in 2014, suggesting victims are far more willing to come forward and seek help or file complaints than in years past.

Also, 91 percent of customers will have a choice of three or more insurers this year, with each company usually offering a range of plans. That’s a notable improvement from last year, when 74 percent of customers had similar options.

The video shot by an onlooker showed the 43-year-old Garner telling a group of police officers to leave him alone as they tried to arrest him.

Pantaleo responded by wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck in what appeared to be a chokehold.

POTECTING SPEICIES

The measure would give accusers a greater say in whether their cases are litigated in the military system or civilian and would establish a confidential process to allow alleged victims to challenge their separation or discharge from the military. In addition, it would increase the accountability of commanders and extend all changes related to sexual assault cases to the service academies.

The medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide and found that a chokehold contributed to it. A forensic pathologist hired by Garner’s family agreed with those findings, saying there was hemorrhaging on Garner’s neck indicative of neck compressions.

Columbia’s Fagan said another factor was that the Staten Island grand jury came from the most conservative and least racially diverse of the city’s five boroughs, and home to many current and retired police officers and their families.

“Staten Island is a very different borough,” he said. “In fact, it may be closer to suburban St. Louis, and we can’t discount that.”

Tax credits are based on a person’s income and the premium for the second-lowest cost silver plan in their community. The slow premium growth for the second-lowest cost silver plans is also good news for taxpayers who are subsidizing the program.

Open enrollment season for 2015 is now in its third week and runs through Feb. 15. The next big deadline for consumers is Dec. 15, the date by which new customers must sign up if they want their coverage to take effect on Jan. 1. For current customers, it’s the deadline to make changes and updates that would take effect Jan. 1.

Current customers who do nothing will be automatically renewed in the plan they have now on Jan. 1. But with all the changes in premiums for 2015, administration officials and consumer advocates are urging people to come back and shop.

“For the vast majority of people, if they stay in the same plan, I think they’ll see rate increases in the single digits to high single digits,” said Andy Slavitt, a top HHS official overseeing technology and management issues.

The administration has set a goal of 9.1 million people enrolled in 2015,

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N E W M E X I C O S T R U G G L E S D E S P I T E F E D E R A L L A R G E S S

Economists and activists say New Mexico has trouble attracting new industries for two major reasons: widespread poverty and low education levels. While Los Alamos and a few other parts of New Mexico have some of the highest percentages in the nation of doctoral-degree holders in science and engineering, U.S. Census data show the state is below the national average in the percentage of its adult population that holds a bachelor’s degree.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Tucked in the mountains of one of the poorest states is one of the nation’s wealthiest counties: Los Alamos, which, except for its landscapes, looks decidedly unlike the rest of New Mexico.

In Los Alamos, there’s a new county building and a renovated community center. Less than 30 miles south is Rio Arriba County, home to drug- and crime-plagued Espanola, whose main drag is a mix of fastfood restaurants, boarded-up businesses, a casino-hotel and a Wal-Mart.

The private sector did add about 8,000 jobs in the 12-month period that ended in September, according to state labor reports. More than half the jobs were in education or health services. Government jobs declined by 1,800 over the same period, with 300 of those losses in the federal sector.

Average per-capita income in Rio Arriba: $20,000, well below half Los Alamos County’s $50,740.

The contrast highlights an unusual wealth gap in New Mexico: Unlike other states, the richest residents of New Mexico work mainly in the public sector, while almost everyone else is employed in the private sector.

That dynamic is both a blessing and a curse. In all, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Fiscal Federalism Initiative, about 35 percent of New Mexico’s economy comes from the federal government - the highest such figure for any state.

Critics say an inability to diversify the economy has exacerbated income disparities. They say that at a time of tight federal budgets, the state can’t afford to stake its economic future on government spending.

Unless new industries can be attracted, workers will have to settle for whatever lower-paying government jobs are available or for low-wage service industry work, according to political leaders and experts on the state’s economy.

“The rest of the nation is subsidizing New Mexico,” said Jake Arnold, a political consultant.

The issue was a key topic in this fall’s governor’s race, with Republican Gov. Susana Martinez saying she cut business taxes to spark the creation of more private-sector jobs.

But so far, large-scale job-creation efforts have faltered.

Spaceport America in Sierra County, the venture of entrepreneur Richard Branson that was supposed to lure both jobs and tourism dollars.

Residents enjoy the lush landscaping at Ashley Pond Park near a new county building and a renovated community center in Los Alamos, N.M. Tucked in the mountains of one of the poorest states is one of the nation’s wealthiest counties: Los Alamos, which, except for its landscapes, looks decidedly unlike the rest of New Mexico.

Instead, the county is losing private-sector jobs, according to state data.

The building and runway sit nearly empty. The breakup Oct. 31 of its experimental rocket-powered spaceship over the California desert has raised new doubts about whether the space-tourism flights will ever happen. The company says tests flights could resume as early as next summer.

“I think we gave up on all that a long time ago,” said Stephanie Ontiveros, who works at the Butte General Store and Marine in Sierra County, which raised its taxes to help support Spaceport.

Sierra is now among the New Mexico counties with the lowest average wages, and, like Rio Arriba, it is plagued by empty buildings and businesses for sale.

New Mexico ranked last among states for job growth from January 2011 through 2013. It is second, behind Mississippi, in the percentage of its residents living in poverty - a percentage that increased from 20.8 percent in 2012 to 21.9 percent in 2013, Census figures show. It also consistently ranks at or near the bottom of national rankings for education and child welfare.

OBAMA PLAN AIMS TO HELP YOUNG AMERICAN INDIANS Greek officials said Wednesday there were no reports of severe health problems or food and water shortages on board. A pregnant woman was airlifted by helicopter to an island hospital.

Once near the Cretan coast, the vessel was expected to anchor offshore but it was unclear if the migrants would be immediately ferried to land.

Just days before the freighter ran into trouble, 228 Syrian refugees heading for Italy were rescued from a crippled ship off Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean.

EU regulations stipulate that refugees seeking asylum must apply in the first EU country they arrive at.

IRAN AIRSTRIKES In this June 13, 2014 file photo President Barack Obama and Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe David Archambault II, left, watch dancers during a visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Cannon Ball, N.D. Obama on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014 announced an initiative to improve conditions and opportunities for American Indian youth, more than one-third of whom live in poverty.

ERAPETRA, Greece (AP) -- Local authorities and Red Cross volunteers on Crete were racing Wednesday to prepare shelter and food for hundreds of immigrants on a crippled freighter being slowly towed to safety by a Greek navy frigate, a rescue effort hampered by gale-force winds and high waves.

A day after it suffered engine failure in international waters, the 77-meter (250-foot) Baris cargo ship carrying some 700 men, women and children trying to enter Europe clandestinely - one of the largest boatloads of the kind in recent years - was being towed at a speed of about three knots (3.4 miles per hour).

By midday Wednesday it had covered about a third of the way, and was expected to arrive well after nightfall at the port town of Ierapetra in southern Crete.

The coast guard said initial indications suggested passengers included Syrians and Afghans heading for Italy. It was unclear where the Kiribati-flagged ship had set sail from, or when.

About 80 percent of immigrants arriving by sea at Greece’s eastern Aegean Sea islands are Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war, according to the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian organization’s Greek branch.

Tens of thousands of people risk the hazardous journey every year, paying smuggling gangs to carry them over in usually unseaworthy craft ranging from toy dinghies to aging rust-buckets. Most end up in Italy.

According to Amnesty International data, since the start of 2014 more than 2,500 people have drowned or gone missing - about 1.7 percent of the estimated 150,000 who made it across.

Ierapetra local authorities and volunteer groups were preparing an indoor basketball stadium to provide temporary shelter for the migrants, and were collecting food, blankets, mattresses and toiletries.

“Our main concern is to offer them preliminary care, to register them and to find, as soon as possible, somewhere for them to stay under the best conditions possible,” said Red Cross volunteer organizer Nikos Nestorakis.

The Baris lost engine power Tuesday about 30 nautical miles off the southeastern tip of Crete.

continued from page 1

“If Iran has carried out airstrikes against Daesh, in coordination with the Iraqi government, it is a welcomed step,” he said.

It is unlikely to be welcomed, however, by Republicans in Congress who accuse the Obama administration of not being tough enough on Iran, which the U.S. calls a state sponsor of terrorism.

Iran supports the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, which the U.S. wants to remove. American officials have expressed hope that Iran could play a role in negotiating an exit for Assad and help bring an end to a Syrian civil war that fueled the growth of the Islamic State group.

While most of the territory controlled by the Islamic State group in Iraq lies along the western border with Syria, one province along the Iraq-Iran border has been the scene of fierce fighting between security forces and the Islamic State militants. Last month, Iraqi troops backed

by Shiite militiamen and Kurdish security forces recaptured Jalula and Saadiya, seized by the militants in August. Heavy clashes continue in the province with some pockets of resistance outside the two towns.

Iran in the 1980s fought a brutal, ultimately stalemated war with Iraq when that country was led by Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-controlled Baath Party. But the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam left an Iraqi government closely aligned with Iran. A majority of Iraqis are Shiite, as are most Iranians. The Islamic State group is led by Sunni extremists and has attracted many Sunnis who felt disenfranchised by Baghdad.

Even in Los Alamos, the number of lucrative lab jobs is shrinking along with the federal budget. And yet in a sea of struggling New Mexicans, Los Alamos, with nearly 18,000 residents, remains an island of prosperity.

Mike Lippiatt, a Los Alamos native, said that while Los Alamos and places like Rio Arriba County are worlds apart, residents really don’t think much about the disparities.

Lippiatt likened Los Alamos to a “fantasy world” where children still walk to school, crime is kept low by a huge police force and there’s no such thing as real traffic.

While many residents “live very humbly,” he said, “I think the people who have all this money are retired from the lab, they invested well, they did things right. ... They have literally millions of dollars in the bank.”

AUSTRALIA WON’T PAY TO CLIMATE FUND Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop addresses a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Iraq at the United Nations headquarters. Australia will continue to directly pay for climate change adaptation in vulnerable South Pacific island nations through its aid budget rather than donate to a U.N. Green Climate Fund designed for the same purpose, Bishop said Friday, Dec. 5, ahead of climate talks in Peru.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Australia will continue to directly pay for climate change adaptation in vulnerable South Pacific island nations through its aid budget rather than donate to a U.N. Green Climate Fund designed for the same purpose, the foreign minister said Friday ahead of climate talks in Peru.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said governments should judge for themselves whether bilateral action to reduce the impact of climate change on developing countries was a more efficient use of aid money than donating through the U.N. “The Green Climate Fund is about supporting developing countries build resilience to climate change. Australia is already doing that through our aid program,” Bishop told The Associated Press before leading the Australian delegation to Lima for a U.N climate summit.

“From my experience, bilateral work is able to customize responses when we’re working directly with another partner country,” she said.

Rich countries have pledged about $10 billion to the recently launched Green Climate Fund, which is meant to become a key source of finance to help developing countries deal with rising seas, higher temperatures and extreme weather events.

Australia has been accused of setting a poor example for other countries by failing to contribute to the fund. Bishop’s government has also been criticized for abolishing Australia’s carbon tax that was levied on the country’s worst greenhouse gas polluters until July.

It replaced the tax with a 2.55 billion Australian dollars ($2.14 billion) government fund to pay polluters incentives to operate more cleanly.

Bishop said Australia was on track to achieve its target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 12 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

But she said the Australian delegation would not give the Lima meeting any proposed Australian emission-cutting targets beyond 2020.

“The message that I will be presenting on Australia’s behalf is that the new agreement should establish a common playing field for all countries to take climate action from 2020 and seek commitments from all the major economies to reducing emissions,” she said.

Delegates from more than 190 countries will be in Lima trying to lay the groundwork for a global emissions pact they hope will be adopted in Paris next year.

Bishop said that without legally binding commitments in Paris to reduce global emissions beyond 2020, any agreement would amount to nothing more than aspirations.

She said Australia wants to see the details of a U.S.-China emissions deal that was struck last month.

“China has already said that it will continue business as usual until 2030. We want to know whether there’s some sort of binding commitment,” Bishop said.

New targets for fossil fuel use were announced ahead of the climate conference by the European Union, U.S. and China, the first Asian nation to make such a pledge. This has injected optimism into negotiations that are supposed to climax in Paris with the adoption of a long-awaited climate pact.

But Australia, India, Russia and Japan have yet to commit to new limits. Scientists say much sharper emissions cuts are needed in coming decades to keep global warming within 2 degrees C (3.6 F) of pre-industrial times, the overall goal of the U.N. talks.

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The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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F L O R I D A C R A S H S TAT I S T I C S S e p a r a t e c r a s h e s c a u s e m a j o r d e l a y s o n I - 7 5

The Florida Highway Patrol has reopened the left lane after completely shutting down the roadway. A second crash then occurred at I-75 and Moccasin Wallow Road, just north of I-275. The Florida Highway Patrol has since reopen[...]

C r a s h o n I - 7 5 n e a r m i l e m a r k e r 1 1 6 i s c l e a r e d The scene is cleared according to FHP after a crash and debris on I-75 near mile marker 116, southbound slowed traffic this morning.[...]

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Southbound I-75 is completely shut down in Dade City after yet another wrong-way crash.[...]

OCT 10, 2014 06:18AM

Tr a c t o r t r a i l e r, c a r c r a s h o n I - 5 9 5 i n D a v i e ; o n e p e r s o n i n j u r e d One person was taken to a hospital Wednesday afternoon after a tractor trailer and a car crashed on Interstate 595 in Davie, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.[...]

OCT 10, 2014 05:30AM

Truck stopped by Nassau County before school bus crash A truck slammed into the back of a school bus from Starke Elementary School in Bradford County. Shannon Sherrell Ford, 35. Shannon Sherrell Ford, 35.[...]

OCT 10, 2014 07:39AM

Lakeland Man Sentenced to 1 2 Ye a r s I n D U I M a n s l a u g h t e r Case

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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C O P I N V I D E O TA P E D D E AT H NO INTENT TO HARM

NEW YORK (AP) -- A white New York City police officer was cleared Wednesday in the alleged chokehold death of an unarmed black man stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes - a case that sparked outrage and drew comparisons to the deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

sations of racist policing and calls for federal prosecutors to intervene. But unlike the Missouri protests, the demonstrations in New York remained mostly peaceful.

The case also prompted Police Commissioner William Bratton to order officers at the nation’s largest police department to undergo retraining on use of force.

The decision by the Staten Island grand jury not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo threatened to add to the tensions that have simmered in the city since the July 17 death of Eric Garner. It also prompted Pantaleo’s first public comments on the death.

“I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can’t protect themselves,” he said in the written statement. “It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”

Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said the grand jury found “no reasonable cause” to bring charges.

In the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner died, people reacted with shouts, chants of “Eric Garner” and expressions of angry disbelief. Garner’s father, Benjamin Carr, urged calm and said the ruling made no sense.

A P P L E S AY S P L A I N TIFFS’ IPODS NOT COVERED BY SUIT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- For want of an iPod, a billion-dollar lawsuit may be in jeopardy.

Apple attorneys have raised an eleventh-hour challenge that could derail a long-running, class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit is over Apple’s use of restrictive software that kept iPods from playing digital music sold by competitors to its iTunes store.

The case went to trial this week, but Apple said new evidence shows the two women named as plaintiffs may not have purchased iPod models covered by the lawsuit.

Opposing lawyers are not ready to give up the case. But U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told both sides to file written arguments on whether the trial should proceed, because she wants to begin considering the issue.

“I am concerned that I don’t have a plaintiff. That’s a problem,” the judge said in court Thursday afternoon at the end of the trial’s third day of testimony in Oakland, California.

Apple stopped using the software in 2009 and, after a series of pretrial rulings narrowed the case, the lawsuit only covers iPod models purchased between September 2006 and March 2009. Plaintiffs are claiming that Apple’s restrictive software froze out competitors and allowed Apple to sell iPods at inflated prices. They are seeking $350 million damages, which could be tripled if the jury finds Apple violated federal antitrust law.

After plaintiff Marianna Rosen testified on Wednesday, Apple attorneys said they checked the serial number on her iPod Touch and found it was purchased in July 2009. In a letter sent to the court late Wednesday night, Apple lawyer William Isaacson said it appears the other plaintiff, Melanie Wilson, bought iPods outside the relevant time frame or, in one instance, purchased a model that didn’t have the specific version of software at issue in the case.

Isaacson, who suggested the lawsuit can’t proceed without a plaintiff, said he’s asked for proof that either woman had purchased an iPod covered by the case. Plaintiffs’ attorney Bonny Sweeney said her side is checking for other receipts. She conceded that Wilson’s iPods may not be covered, but she also noted that an estimated 8 million consumers are believed to have been purchased the affected iPods.

The judge appeared irked at the last-minute snarl in a case that was originally filed almost 10 years ago. She said she was not ready to decide without further briefing. But she indicated she did not want to leave the issue unresolved indefinitely.

LESS TV MORE S TR EA M continued from page 1

quickly.

“Content is still king, but consumers are shaping their own content-discovery experience, and the evolving media landscape has not lessened consumer demand for quality, professionally produced content,” Dounia Turrill, senior vice president of insights at Nielsen, said in a statement. “What has changed is the number and reliability of new media available to viewers.” (equals)

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The medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide and found that a chokehold contributed to it. A forensic pathologist hired by Garner’s family, Dr. Michael Baden, agreed with those findings, saying there was hemorrhaging on Garner’s neck indicative of neck compressions.

A woman, who did not want to give her name, places flowers at a memorial for Eric Garner near the site of his death in the borough of Staten Island Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014., in New York. A grand jury is deciding whether to indict a New York City police officer in the chokehold death of Garner.

The grand jury could have considered a range of charges, from murder to a lesser offense such as reckless endangerment.

“I am actually astonished based on the evidence of the videotape, and the medical examiner, that this grand jury at this time wouldn’t indict for anything,” said a lawyer for Garner’s family, Jonathan Moore.

Garner’s family planned a news conference later in the day with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

A video shot by an onlooker and widely viewed on the Internet showed the 43-year-old Garner telling a group of police officers to leave him alone as they tried to arrest him.

Pantaleo responded by wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck in what appeared to be a chokehold, which is banned under NYPD policy.

Police union officials and Pantaleo’s lawyer argued that the officer used a takedown move taught by the police department, not a banned chokehold, because Garner was resisting arrest and that his poor health was the main reason he died.

While details on the grand jurors were not disclosed, Staten Island is the most politically conservative of the city’s five boroughs and home to many police and firefighters.

Donovan said the investigation was four months long and included 38 interviews and 22 witness accounts. The panel began hearing evidence in late September, including the video, autopsy results and testimony by Pantaleo.

Pantaleo had been stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty while the case was under investigation. He is likely to remain on modified duty while the NYPD conducts an internal investigation that could result in administrative charges.

The heavyset Garner, who had asthma, was heard repeatedly gasping, “I can’t breathe!”

In anticipation of the announcement on the grand jury decision, police officials met with community leaders on Staten Island to head off a repeat of the response in Ferguson, where a grand jury decided not to indict the white officer who shot the black teen. Demonstrations there resulted in more than 100 arrests and destruction of 12 commercial buildings by fire.

A second video surfaced that showed police and paramedics appearing to make no effort to revive Garner while he lay motionless on the ground. He later died at a hospital.

Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled his planned appearance at the annual Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting to hold a news conference on Staten Island Wednesday afternoon.

As with 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, the Garner case sparked protests, accu-

“Today’s outcome is one that many in our city did not want,” he said in a statement. “Yet New York City owns a proud and powerful tradition of expressing ourselves through nonviolent protest.”

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The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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C A M E R A S W O R N N O P A N A C E A ,

B Y P O L I C E A R E E X P E R T S S A Y

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Police body cameras have become a rallying cry in the wake of racially charged decisions by grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, but experts caution that increased use of the devices may raise more questions than answers.

“At the end of the day, if people don’t like the lack of an indictment, then they have to look at what the legal standard is in these cases.

Sometimes that’s the law,” Bueermann said.

Often what is filmed may appear excessive to a person unfamiliar with police work, even though the conduct may be legal.

U S T R O O P S H AV E IMMUNITY IN IRAQ

“There’s this saying in policing: `It’s lawful, but awful.’ It’s technically legal to do that, but it’s a terrible thing to do ... We have to work on the awful piece, that’s what we need to focus on,” said Jim Bueermann, who heads the nonprofit Police Foundation.

Officers in one of every six departments around the country now patrol with tiny cameras on their chests, lapels or sunglasses. And President Barack Obama wants to spend $74 million to equip another 50,000 with them around the country.

A camera captured a white New York police officer applying a chokehold that led to the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man. In Ferguson, Missouri, there was no camera showing what happened when a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a black man.

In both cases, grand juries declined to indict the officers.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014.

Los Angeles Police officer wears an on-body cameras during a demonstration for media in Los Angeles. Officers in one of every six departments around the country are now patrolling with these tiny cameras on their chests, lapels or sunglasses, and that number is growing. Most civil libertarians support their expansion despite concerns about the development of policies governing their use and their impact on privacy.

Officers, however, generally have the law on their side.

Many law enforcement officials support cameras’ use and say they are effective.

A 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case concluded that claims an officer used excessive force must be judged by whether the officer’s actions were “ `objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them” at the time.

The police department in Rialto, California, found after a yearlong University of Cambridge study last year that the cameras led to an 89 percent drop in complaints against officers, possibly reining in misbehavior on the part of the public and officers as well as ultimately limiting department liability.

With video evidence, “we’re being forced to confront exactly what these legal standards mean,” said Peter Bibring, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California. “It provides the public a much better foundation to draw their own conclusions about what police are actually doing, and whether they believe it’s appropriate.”

“If it were up to me, every officer walking around in a uniform would be wearing a body camera,” said Martin J. Mayer, a California-based attorney who has defended law enforcement agencies for more than 40 years.

Mayer said that in most states the penal code allows officers to use “the amount of force necessary to repel and overcome” force used by an individual. “It’s not just to match. It’s to overcome it,” he said.

Most civil libertarians support their expansion despite concerns about the development of policies governing their use and their impact on privacy. Rank-and-file officers worry about being constantly under watch, or that an errant comment may be used by a supervisor to derail their careers.

Camera footage provides an independent record from the officer’s perspective and tangible evidence that cannot be changed, unlike often malleable and faulty eyewitness accounts, experts say. But video is limited, only showing what’s in front of it after the camera is turned on.

F L U VA C C I N E M A Y E F F E C T I V E T H I S

B E L E S S W I N T E R

He was echoed by Dr. Richard Zimmerman, a University of Pittsburgh flu vaccine researcher. Some doctors may hesitate, reasoning that flu season usually doesn’t hit hard until around February. But it appears to have arrived in many parts of the country already and “it’s time to use them,” Zimmerman said.

Among infectious diseases, flu is considered one of the nation’s leading killers. On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC. Nearly 150 million doses of flu vaccine have been distributed for this winter’s flu season.

Current flu vaccines are built to protect against three or four different kinds of flu virus, depending on the product. The ingredients are selected very early in the year, based on predictions of what strains will circulate the following winter. a sign lets customers know they can get a flu shot in a Walgreen store in Indianapolis.

The flu vaccine may not be very effective this winter, according to U.S. health officials who worry this may lead to more serious illnesses and deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an advisory to doctors about the situation Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The flu vaccine may not be very effective this winter, according to U.S. health officials who worry this may lead to more serious illnesses and deaths.

Flu season has begun to ramp up, and officials say the vaccine does not protect well against the dominant strain seen most commonly so far this year. That strain tends to cause more deaths and hospitalizations, especially in the elderly.

“Though we cannot predict what will happen the rest of this flu season, it’s possible we may have a season that’s more severe than most,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a news conference Thursday.

CDC officials think the vaccine should provide some protection and still are urging people to get vaccinated. But it probably won’t be as good as if the vaccine strain was a match.

Flu vaccine effectiveness tends to vary from year to year. Last winter, flu vaccine was 50 to 55 percent effective overall, which experts consider relatively good.

The CDC issued an advisory to doctors about the situation Wednesday evening.

CDC officials said doctors should be on the look-out for patients who may be at higher risk for flu complications, including children younger than 2, adults 65 and older, and people with asthma, heart disease, weakened immune systems or certain other chronic conditions.

Such patients should be seen promptly, and perhaps treated immediately with antiviral medications, the CDC advised. If a patient is very sick or at high risk, a doctor shouldn’t wait for a positive flu test result to prescribe the drugs - especially this year, CDC officials said.

The medicines are most effective if taken within two days of the onset of symptoms. They won’t immediately cure the illness, but can lessen its severity and shorten suffering by about a day, Frieden said.

That allows for interpretation and ambiguity that can inflame the public, regardless of what the law allows.

The ingredients always include a Type A H3N2 flu virus. The most severe flu seasons tend to be dominated by some version of that kind of flu bug. The three most deadly flu seasons of the last 10 years - in the winters of 2003-2004, 2007-2008, and 2012-2013 - were H3N2 seasons.

In March, after the H3N2 vaccine strain was vaccine production was underway, health officials noted the appearance new and different strain of H3N2. “This is not something that’s been around before,” Frieden said.

But health officials weren’t sure if the new strain would become a significant problem in the United States this winter until recently, they said. Lab specimens from patients have shown that the most commonly seen flu bug so far is the new strain of H3N2. Specifically, about 48 percent of the H3N2 samples seen so far were well matched to what’s in the vaccine, but 52 percent were not, the CDC said.

An official with one vaccine manufacturer - GlaxoSmithKline emphasized that about half the samples do match the strain in the vaccine. He also noted flu seasons can sometimes involve a second wave of illnesses caused by a different strain.

“We’re at the very beginning of flu season, and it’s quite possible different strains will predominate,” said Dr. Leonard Friedland, director of scientific affairs for GSK’s vaccines business.

Thursday’s news follows another problem recently identified by CDC officials, involving the nasal spray version of flu vaccine.

At a scientific meeting at the CDC in October, vaccine experts were told of preliminary results from three studies that found AstraZeneca’s FluMist nasal spray had little or no effect in children against the swine flu strain that was the most common bug making people sick last winter.

Because this year’s version of FluMist is the same formulation, experts said it’s possible the spray vaccine won’t work for swine flu this season, either.

However, CDC officials believe H3N2 will be the most common flu bug this winter.

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Washington has an agreement with Baghdad on privileges and immunities for the growing number of troops based in Iraq who are helping in the fight against the Islamic State group, the new U.S. ambassador said Thursday.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Stuart Jones said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has given assurances that U.S. troops will receive immunity from prosecution. Under Iraq’s former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that issue was a major sticking point, ultimately leading to the decision to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops in late 2011.

“That was a different situation and those troops would have had a different role,” Jones said.

“We have the assurances that we need from the government of Iraq on privileges and immunities,” he said. “It’s in the basis of our formal written communications between our governments and also based on the strategic framework agreement that is the legal basis of our partnership.”

The House was expected to vote Thursday on a proposed $5 billion expansion of U.S. military operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq, part of a broader $585 billion defense policy bill for Iraq and Syria. Last month, Obama authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces, which could more than double the total number of U.S. forces to 3,100. That’s in addition to the 5,000 people working for the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi military has struggled to recover from its collapse in June, when the Islamic State group captured the country’s second largest city, Mosul, and swept over much of northern and western Iraq. Iraqi commanders fled, pleas for more ammunition went unanswered, and in some cases soldiers stripped off their uniforms and ran. The U.S. began launching airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8, and now heads a coalition backing Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces from the air.

U.S. advisory teams, which were previously based in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional capital Irbil, are now fanning out to other locations in the country, including the highly volatile Anbar province in western Iraq, where U.S. troops fought some of the heaviest battles of the eightyear conflict.

This time the troops are operating far from the front lines. “What we’re doing is airstrikes,” Jones said. “What we’re doing is sharing intelligence. We’re doing advise and assist and we’re doing training - and that’s all we’re doing.”

Part of the plan to boost Iraqi forces includes training, equipping and paying Sunni tribesmen to join in the fight against the Islamic State group, reminiscent of the Sunni Sahwa, or Awakening movement, which confronted al-Qaeda in Iraq starting in 2006. The Pentagon plans to buy a range of arms for Iraq’s tribesmen, including 5,000 AK-47s, 50 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 12,000 grenades and 50 82-mm mortars.

The arms supply, described in a document that will be sent to Congress for its approval, said the estimated cost to equip an initial Anbar-based force of tribal fighters is $18.5 million, part of a $1.6 billion request to Congress that includes arming and training Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

However, recruiting the tribes has been a challenging process since many of the Sunni tribes involved in the Sahwa campaign felt a breach of trust after the American and Iraqi governments’ commitment to the program waned.

“What I say to the tribes is you’ve got to be integrated with security forces to get the benefit of the airstrikes,” Jones said. “We can play a facilitating role but it’s only that.”

He declined to address whether U.S. ground troops will be needed to defeat the Islamic State group, instead pointing to recent successes by Iraqi security forces in retaking territory, including the town of Beiji and the country’s largest oil refinery, as well as Jurf al-Sakher, south of Baghdad.

Iraq’s Shiite militias, or Popular Mobilization Forces, played a central role in those victories. They have also been accused by rights groups of abducting, torturing and killing scores of Sunni civilians in reprisal attacks.

“Let’s be frank: they play an important role in the security of Iraq,” Jones said of the Iran-supported militias. “They have been an effective fighting force and they have greatly assisted Iraqi security forces in some of these military victories....Now, they need to really be brought under the supervision and control of the armed forces.”

The ambassador did not address reports by Pentagon officials this week that Iran has launched airstrikes against the Sunni militant group in eastern Iraq, but acknowledged the important role Iran plays independently in the fight against the Islamic State group.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “Iran is an important neighbor to Iraq. There has to be cooperation between Iran and Iraq.

“The Iranians are talking to the Iraqi security forces and we’re talking to Iraqi security forces... we’re relying on them to do the deconfliction.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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V I R G I N I A B R E W E R Y T A P S 3 0 0 - Y E A R - O L D B E E R R E C I P E

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- What do you get when you combine water, American persimmons and hops and ferment it with yeast? A beer based on a 300-year-old recipe scribbled in a cookbook kept by Virginia’s prominent Reynolds family.

engood said the partnership presents an opportunity to discuss alcohol production and consumption throughout history.

Archaeologists recently uncovered the remains of what is likely an 18th century brewery on the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Officials at the nation’s oldest college say the discovery will allow them to tell a broader story about campus life in the Colonial era that involved the interaction of slaves, Native Americans, faculty and students.

And beer caves built in 1866 along the James River in Richmond were listed on the National Register of Historic Places earlier this year. The brick and granite remnants were from the James River Steam Brewery founded by David G. Yuengling Jr., son of the founder of “America’s Oldest Brewery” in Pottsville, Pa., the year after the fall of Richmond to Union troops.

Ardent Craft Ales in Richmond recently brewed “Jane’s Percimon Beer” unearthed from the book in the Virginia Historical Society’s collections from the 1700s that contains food, medicinal remedies and beer recipes.

The formula for the Colonial-era concoction is one of thousands of alcoholic recipes in the society’s collection that provide a glimpse into what Virginians and others were drinking in the 18th century and other points in history.

“You can feel a connection across time when you’re drinking something that maybe hasn’t been drunk for a couple hundred years,” said Paul Levengood, president and CEO of the Virginia Historical Society, a privately funded nonprofit that collects, preserves and interprets the state’s history. “It’s a fun way to bring the past into the present.”

As one would expect, the process of brewing the beer was dramatically different from the techniques and equipment used in modern-day brewing. Where current recipes include very specific instructions on the amount of ingredients and timing, the handwritten formula of just a few short sentences contains no detailed instructions or quantities. The first trial run using about 17 pounds of persimmons yielded only three gallons of beer.

Co-Owner of Ardent Craft Ales, Kevin O’Leary, takes a sample of Persimmon beer at the facility in Richmond, VA., Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014. Ardent Craft Ales is tapping into the Virginia Historical Society’s collections to serve up a 300-year-old beer made with persimmons from a cookbook from the 1700s. The beer recipe is one of several in the society’s collection that provide a glimpse into what Virginians and others were drinking in the 18th century.

The libation is considered a table beer, clocking in at an extremely easy-drinking 3 percent or less of alcohol by volume. That would be pretty typical of alcoholic beverages of the time that were enjoyed with many meals.

“With a lot of these recipes, the real fun of it is trying to figure out where the little pieces of wisdom hid in the recipes,” said Tom Sullivan, who brewed the beer with fellow Ardent Craft Ales co-owner Kevin O’Leary. “If you’re making this stuff for yourself and your family and drinking it all the time, you bet your bottom dollar the end product was good.”

In 1790, annual per-capita alcohol consumption for those over age 15 was 34 gallons of beer and cider, five gallons of distilled spirits and one gallon of wine, according to US government figures cited in an article in the “Colonial Williamsburg” history magazine. Unlike alcohol that was boiled and fermented, water at that time included high levels of bacteria that sickened those who drank it.

And how does it taste? The light peach-colored concoction conjures touches of sweetness and tangerine-like notes from the persimmons and just a whisper of spiciness from the English Golding hops.

Sullivan said the brewery hopes to comb through other recipes in the society’s collection and create other beers from Virginia rich beer history.

And with craft beer gaining consumer interest across the country, Lev-

Y E M E N ’ S A L - Q A I D A T H R E AT E N S U S H O S TA G E I N N E W V I D E O Al-Ansi criticizes US-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group and President Barack Obama for his “latest foolish action,” referring to the “failed operation” in Hadramawt. He says an “elite group of mujahedeen,” or holy warriors, were killed in the U.S. raid.

He also warned the U.S. against more “stupidities,” referring to future attempts to rescue hostages.

Al-Ansi gives the U.S. three days to meet al-Qaida’s demands or “otherwise, the American hostage held by us will meet his inevitable fate,” without elaborating or explicitly saying they would kill their captive. He doesn’t specify the demands but says Washington is “aware” of them.

This image made from video posted online by militants on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Luke Somers, an American photojournalist born in Britain and held hostage by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen.

The group is threatening to kill Somers, who was kidnapped more than a year ago and has given Washington three days to meet several unspecified demands, a U.S. terrorism monitoring group said Thursday.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) -- Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen threatened an American hostage kidnapped over a year ago, giving Washington three days to meet unspecified demands in a new video released Thursday.

The hostage, identified as 33-year-old Luke Somers, an American photojournalist born in Britain, is shown for the first time in the video, which was posted on the al-Qaida offshoot’s Twitter account. The video comes weeks after an apparent unsuccessful attempt by U.S. special forces to rescue Somers in a raid in the remote Yemeni desert.

The footage apparently seeks to mimic hostage videos released by al-Qaida’s rivals from the Islamic State group, which has threatened - and later beheaded - several American and British hostages in the aftermath of a summer blitz that captured much of Iraq and Syria. The IS fighters have at times battled al-Qaida and prompted defections among their rivals.

Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 from a street in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where he had worked as a freelancer for the Yemen Times. Since his capture, Yemeni journalists have been holding sit-ins in Sanaa to press the government to seek his release.

Somers was likely among a group of hostages who were the objective of a joint rescue mission by U.S operation forces and Yemeni troops last month that freed eight captive in a remote area of dunes called Hagr al-Saiaar near the Saudi border in Hadramawt province.

At the time, a Yemeni official said the mission failed to liberate five other hostages. Among them were an American journalist and a Briton who were moved elsewhere by their al-Qaida captors days before the raid.

The American was not identified by name and Yemen did not officially confirm the participation of U.S. commandos in the rescue mission - a rare instance of U.S. forces intervening on the ground in Yemen.

In the 3-minute video, Somers appears somber and gives a brief statement in English, asking for help. The video was first reported by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant sites.

“It’s now been well over a year since I’ve been kidnapped in Sanaa,” Somers said. “Basically, I’m looking for any help that can get me out of this situation. I’m certain that my life is in danger. So as I sit here now, I ask, if anything can be done, please let it be done. Thank you very much.”

Before Somers’ statement, the video shows local al-Qaida commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, reading in Arabic and speaking about alleged American “crimes against” the Muslim world.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemeni group is known, is considered by the U.S. to be the world’s most dangerous branch of the terror network and has been linked to several failed attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Abduction of foreigners has been common in impoverished Yemen, troubled both by al-Qaida and the advance of Shiite rebels, but while kidnapping for ransom was common in the past, threatening a hostage’s life appears to be a shift in the al-Qaida branch’s tactics.

A tribal leader in Hagr al-Saiaar said he has learned from local tribal mediators that U.S. officials have rejected their mediation offers in hostage cases. A second tribal figure, also close to tribal mediators, said outreach efforts to Qatar, a traditional mediator in the region, went nowhere.

In February 2013, Swiss researcher Sylvia Abrahat was released from a year in captivity in the southern Yemeni port city of Houdeida after months-long Qatari mediation.

Also Thursday, Yemeni security officials said the body of a Yemeni hostage who had been held captive together with Somers, was found in the district of al-Qatn in Hadramawt late Wednesday.

The officials identified the man as Rashid al-Habshi and said the al-Qaida Yemeni branch had broadcast his purported “confession of helping” Americans carry out drone strikes against militants. The Yemeni officials and the tribal figures spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The U.S. drone strikes, targeting suspected militant gatherings, have become increasingly unpopular in Yemen due to civilian casualties.

“That’s the great thing about Virginia, right? You’re tripping over (history) every day and you don’t even realize it sometimes,” Sullivan said.

POLICE BREAKING DOWN HUGE CALIFORNIA HOMELESS CAMP

Monday, Dec. 1, 2014, file photo, police officers and city officials hand out warning notices at a Silicon Valley homeless encampment known as The Jungle, in San Jose, Calif. San Jose homelessness response manager Ray Bramson says police and social services in Silicon Valley are starting a massive cleanout of the encampment, Thursday, Dec. 4.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Police and social services in Silicon Valley are starting to clear away what likely had been the nation’s largest homeless encampment.

Animal control and a construction contractor are also helping dismantle the square-mile site that once was home to more than 200 homeless people, San Jose homelessness response manager Ray Bramson said.

People living in the camp, known as The Jungle, were told Monday they must be out by Thursday or face arrest for trespassing. The encampment stands in stark contrast to its surrounding area in the heart of the Silicon Valley, a region leading the country for job growth, income, innovation and venture capital.

In a walkthrough earlier this week, officials found there were 60 people left in the camp. They didn’t know how many remained after Monday.

Officials will try to find people who have been involved in social services some kind of shelter for the night. Bramson says those not involved in social services “are going to have to leave today anyways.”

There have been no reports of violence or people refusing to leave.

The team will first go through the hand-built structures and tents looking for cash, IDs or anything else of value. Those items will be sorted and stored for people to claim later.

In the past year and a half, the city of San Jose has spent more than $4 million on solving the problems at the encampment.

The last time officials cleared out the camp was in May 2012 when about 150 people were moved out of The Jungle.

Bramson said earlier this week that increased violence, wet weather and unsanitary conditions make it imperative the camp is cleared. In the last month, one resident tried to strangle someone with a cord of wire down there, he said. Another was nearly beaten to death with a hammer.

And the State Water Resources Control Board has been demanding that polluted Coyote Creek, which cuts through the middle, get cleaned out.

City officials plan to send in trash trucks and bulldozers to haul out tons of hazardous and human waste. They will use heavy machinery to fill excavated sections where people have been living underground. And they will try to restore the creek beds.

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The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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H O U S E O K S M I L I TA RY C A M PA I G N A G A I N S T E X T R E M I S T S

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican-controlled House approved a $585 billion defense policy bill that grants President Barack Obama the authority to expand the U.S. military campaign against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria despite misgivings about a new American combat role after more than a decade of war.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, reiterated his call for Obama to submit a proposal to Congress for a new authorization.

This year, work on the defense bill has added poignancy as the chairmen of the Armed Services committees in the Senate and House are retiring. Democrat Carl Levin is leaving after representing Michigan for 36 years in the Senate; California Republican Howard “Buck” McKeon is stepping down after a 22-year career in the House.

The vote on Thursday was 300-119, a reflection of the popularity of the sweeping, bipartisan measure that authorizes funds for American troops as well as ships, planes and other war-fighting equipment built in congressional districts nationwide.

The measure heads to the Senate where passage is expected next week, although some GOP senators are angry over the bill’s unrelated provisions to expand wilderness areas.

The legislation endorses Obama’s latest request to Congress in the 4-month-old war against extremists who brutally rule large sections of Iraq and Syria. The bill provides $5 billion for the stepped-up operation of air strikes and the dispatch of up to 1,500 more American troops.

It also reauthorizes the Pentagon plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels battling the forces of President Bashar Assad, with that mandate expiring Dec. 11. The legislation would extend that authority for two years.

Still, war-weary lawmakers expressed considerable unease about a slippery slope for the American military after years of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We’re getting more deeply involved in the war in Iraq and Syria,” complained Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, insisted that U.S. involvement was limited.

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P O P O F

In this photo taken Dec. 3, 2014, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif. listens on Capitol Hill in Washington. The House on Thursday headed toward passage of a $585 billion defense policy bill that gives President Barack Obama the authority to expand U.S. military operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria. The sweeping legislation authorizes spending for the nation’s defense, from construction of ships, planes and war-fighting equipment to a 1 percent pay raise for the troops, while maintaining the prohibition on transferring terror suspects from the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States.

“The train and equip mission is just that,” Smith said. “I don’t want U.S. combat troops fighting this ground war .... By training and equipping the Syrians and Iraqis, we can empower them to fight their own ground war with our support from the air.”

Unity on a new legal justification for U.S. military operations against the extremists remains elusive in Congress, underscored by the divisions displayed across the Capitol.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sought to push through a measure defining how Obama can use military force in Iraq and Syria. But Republicans, who are generally supportive of the war, rebelled. They objected to a lack of debate and legislative maneuvering.

U P I N S T O R E S H O L I D A Y S wanted,” he said. “The experience was great but also a little unnerving in the sense that the store knew who I was and that I was present in their location. It felt a little Big Brother-like.”

And that’s the challenge. Not everyone is thrilled that a beacon app is monitoring them when they walk around with their cellphone. Outdoor advertising firm Titan drew such outcry last month when it installed beacons in phone booths in New York the city had to take them out.

Eamon Bauman, 24, an IT systems administrator in Wisconsin, said he wouldn’t let a store’s app have access to his location even if it meant coupons or deals.

“It’s providing retailers too much information about ourselves,” he said. “If a retailer really wants to draw me into their store, showing me deals before I get to the mall is a better way.”

An undated photo provided by Swirl shows an in-store beacon in a retail store in Boston.

Accessed through apps you download to your smartphone, beacon technology can do everything from guide you to the correct airport terminal to turn on your coffee maker

NEW YORK (AP) -- From American Eagle to Apple Stores, beacons are popping up everywhere. Are they a shopper’s best friend or another pesky Big Brother monitoring our every move?

The square or rectangular devices, smaller than a smartphone, can hang on a wall or be placed on a machine and communicate with your phone via Bluetooth signals. Accessed through apps you download to your smartphone, beacon technology can do everything from guide you to the correct airport terminal to turn on your coffee maker as you sleepily enter the kitchen. In retail, beacons aim to entice you to spend money. As you enter a store, your smartphone might light up with a sale alert. Stand in the dress section for a while and a coupon may pop up for something on a nearby hanger.

Chloe Joslin, 22, a student in Jonesboro, Arkansas, was taken aback when she drove by a Walgreens and a notification on her phone from the Walgreens app popped up.

“The app never asked for permission to use location services and to my knowledge I had disabled them from almost every app to avoid such a situation,” she said.

Because location settings can be different for individual apps, though, it can sometimes be difficult to disable all services. The pop-up likely resulted from the phone’s location setting for nearby store notifications, said Walgreen Co. spokesman Phil Caruso in an email. He said customers can turn off notifications if they prefer not to receive them.

Currently, the drugstore retailer is using beacon technology on a pilot basis in only a very small number of its Duane Reade stores.

“The most important thing a shopper might need to get access to when they go into a store are ratings and reviews, coupons and promotions,” said Erik McMillan, CEO of Shelfbucks, which is working with video game retailer GameStop and others on its beacon marketing. Beacons give customers that research right there in the store - when they have their wallets and are looking to buy.

Transparency is key, says Rob Murphy, Swirl’s vice president of marketing.

Macy’s Inc. has installed beacons in all of its 840 department stores; other chains such as Kohl’s are testing them in some locations. McMillan likens beacons to the early days of retail websites in the 1990s when “all of a sudden it got to the point that `you can’t not have a website’.” He predicts the technology will skyrocket from the 50,000 beacons in use now to between 5 million and 10 million next year.

“You can’t be interruptive or intrusive, you have to be positive and helpful,” said Alexis Rask, chief revenue officer of Shopkick, whose app is also used by teen retailer American Eagle to provide welcome messages, merchandise tips and styling guidance throughout its nearly 1,000 U.S. stores.

The vast majority of shopping is still done in stores. E-commerce is fast-growing but accounts for only about 9 percent of total retail sales, according to Forrester Research. Beacons merge in-store shopping with mobile access to information - and data shows they work.

Between July and September, 30 percent of shoppers who received a “push-ad” from an in-store beacon used that offer to buy something, according to a survey by Swirl, a marketing technology company that has worked with retailers such as Lord & Taylor, Hudson’s Bay, Alex and Ani, Kenneth Cole and Timberland to deploy beacons. Sixty percent of shoppers opened beacon-sent messages, and over half of those surveyed said they would do more holiday shopping at the stores as a result of their beacon experience.

Graham Uffelman, a 45-year-old New Yorker, said he bought Bluetooth headphones at Best Buy because of a deal he got via the Shopkick beacon marketing app.

“The app knew I was in the store and actually suggested a product I

“Now it’s pretty standard if anybody is doing this type of marketing to specifically ask for permission,” he said. “You have to request an optin for location services and in-store push notifications.”

That appeals to Dan Reich, 26, who works in health care in Washington, D.C. “I wouldn’t mind letting a retailer know my location if it meant I’d receive coupons or benefits when I’m in the store,” he said. “This type of data is collected when we sign into Facebook or Twitter or any other social media application. I’m essentially already providing that information, so I might as well get something out of it in the process.”

An emotional, teary-eyed McKeon struggled to deliver his final plea for the bill and request for the next Congress to reverse the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that have hit the Pentagon.

“Please show our troops the respect they deserve,” said McKeon, who received hugs and handshakes from Republican and Democratic aides as well as from Smith.

The bill would provide the core funding of $521.3 billion for the military and $63.7 billion for overseas operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite Obama’s objections, the measure maintains the prohibition on transferring terror suspects from the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States.

The bill would prohibit the retirement of the A-10 Warthog, the close-air support plane often described as ugly but invaluable.

The Pentagon sought cuts in military benefits. Lawmakers compromised by agreeing to make service members pay $3 more for co-pays on prescription drugs and trimming the growth of the off-base housing allowance by 1 percent instead of the Pentagon’s deeper 5 percent recommendation.

The legislation would change the military justice system to deal with sexual assault cases, including scrapping the nearly century-old practice of using a “good soldier defense” to raise doubts that a crime has been committed.

The measure would give accusers a greater say in whether their cases are litigated in the military or civilian system and would establish a confidential process to allow victims to challenge their separation or discharge from the military.

Officials said Thursday that the number of sexual assaults reported by military service members increased 8 percent in 2014, suggesting victims are far more willing to come forward and seek help or file complaints than in years past.

UBER SETS UP MOBILE DEVELOPMENT TEAM I N A M S T E R D A M AMSTERDAM (AP) -- Uber, the San Francisco-based ride sharing company, has set up a mobile phone software development team in Amsterdam, its international headquarters.

In a telephone interview Conrad Whelan - Uber’s second employee and first engineer - said Thursday he has begun working with a team of 10 Dutch mobile software experts immediately and hopes to expand that number to 30 or 40 in the coming year.

Whelan said one of the reasons to choose Amsterdam is that it will allow the company to draw staff from “across Europe.”

“I think the biggest reason is just the combination of design and engineering talent that you have access to here,” he said.

U.S. technology companies frequently complain of how difficult it is to obtain U.S. visas for top foreign engineers, and Uber must compete with Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook when hiring staff.

Still, Uber’s core development will remain in San Francisco, Whelan said.

There are other reasons why Uber chose Amsterdam. Although the arrival of the company - whose service aims to offer a cheaper way of matching drivers and riders than traditional taxi companies - has been met with protests in many European capitals, reaction has been muted in Amsterdam.

That’s in part because the company initially limited drivers to licensed chauffeurs. When Uber opened its service to all drivers in October, the transportation minister intervened to block it - a decision that’s under appeal.

Regardless of the outcome, the Netherlands is already reviewing its relatively liberal taxi laws. Meanwhile, the country in general and Amsterdam in particular are attempting to profile themselves as welcoming to technology startups.

A nationwide law allowing work visas for non-Europeans who found startups is expected to go into effect Jan. 1.

Uber has come under scrutiny in recent weeks after a top executive suggested spending $1 million to dig up dirt on a journalist that has written about the company. Uber has received coverage critical of its corporate culture and the alleged behavior of some of its drivers.

One driver was charged in San Francisco with assaulting a customer in June and the company is investigating one of its New York employees for tracking another journalist while who was using Uber.

Uber on Thursday announced that it raised another $1.2 billion in financing, which will allow it to make “substantial investments,” especially in Asia. In a blog post, CEO Travis Kalanick acknowledged the company’s “significant growing pains.”

“The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change,” he wrote. “Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six countries produce nearly 60 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. China and the United States combine for more than two-fifths. The planet’s future will be shaped by what these top carbon polluters do about the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

How they rank, what they’re doing: CHINA It emits nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the United States, which it surpassed in 2006 as the top emitter of carbon dioxide. China accounts for about 30 percent of global emissions. U.S. government estimates show China doubling its emissions by 2040, barring major changes. Hugely reliant on fossil fuels for electricity and steel production, China until recently was reluctant to set firm targets for emissions, which continue to rise, although at a slower rate. That changed when Beijing announced last month in a deal with Washington that it would stem greenhouse gas emission growth by 2030. About a week later, China’s Cabinet announced a coal consumption cap by 2020 at about 62 percent of the energy mix. While politically significant, the U.S.-China deal alone is expected to have little effect on the global thermostat.

2013 CO2 emissions: 11 billion tons 2013 Population: 1.36 billion UNITED STATES It has never entered into a binding treaty to curb greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, it has cut more carbon pollution than any other nation. It is on pace to meet a 2009 Obama administration pledge to reduce emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Carbon emissions are up, though, as the U.S. rebounds from recession. President Barack Obama has largely leaned on existing laws, not Congress, to make progress - boosting automobile fuel economy and proposing to reduce carbon pollution from new and existing power plants. The White House vowed in the China deal to double the pace of emissions reductions, lowering carbon pollution 26 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Expect resistance when Republicans control Congress in January.

2013 CO2 emissions: 5.8 billion tons 2013 Population: 316 million INDIA The U.S.-China agreement puts pressure on the Indian government, which could announce new targets during a planned Obama visit in January. Meantime, India plans to double coal production to feed a power grid still suffering blackouts. Its challenge: to curb greenhouse gases as its population and economy grow. In 2010, India voluntarily committed to a 20 percent to 25 percent cut in carbon emissions relative to economic output by 2020 against 2005 levels. It has made recent strides installing solar power, which it is expected to increase fivefold to 100 gigawatts by 2030. Under current policies, its carbon dioxide emissions will double by then, according to the International Energy Agency.

2013 CO2 emissions: 2.6 billion tons 2013 population: 1.2 billion RUSSIA It never faced mandatory cuts under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because its emissions fell so much after the Soviet Union collapsed. A major oil

U B E R R A I S E S V A L U E D A T

continue to gain electricity market share. Renewables already account for a quarter of Germany’s electrical production. The country plans to boost that share to 80 percent by 2050 - and put a million electric cars on the road by 2020.

2013 CO2 emissions: 836 million tons 2013 population: 80.6 million

MULTISTATE COALITION SUES OVER IMMIGRATION ORDER and gas producer, Russia in 2013 adopted a domestic greenhouse gas target that would trim emissions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

Russia’s carbon dioxide emissions today average 35 percent lower than 1990 levels. To meet its goal, Russia has set a goal for 2020 of boosting energy efficiency 40 percent and expanding renewable energy 4.5 percent. The state-owned gas company Gazprom has energy conservation plans, as has the federal housing program. But in 2006, Russia announced a move to more coal- and nuclear-fired electricity to export more oil and natural gas.

2013 CO2 emissions: 2 billion tons 2013 population: 143.5 million JAPAN The shuttering of its nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster forced a drastic change in plans to curb carbon pollution. In November, Japanese officials said they would now reduce greenhouse gases 3.8 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. With more fossil fuels in the mix, Japan’s emissions will be up 3 percent from 1990 levels, its benchmark for its pledge at a 2009 United Nations summit in Copenhagen to reduce emissions 25 percent. Beginning in 2012, Japan placed a carbon tax based on emissions of fossil fuels, with the proceeds going to renewable energy and energy-saving projects.

2013 CO2 emissions: 1.4 billion tons 2013 population: 127 million GERMANY It has outperformed the 21 percent reduction in greenhouse gases it agreed to in 1997. Emissions are down 25 percent against 1990 levels.

To comply with 2020 European Union-set goals, Germany must reduce greenhouse gases 40 percent by 2020. On Wednesday, it boosted subsidies for energy efficiency to help it get there. Germany has in recent years seen back-to-back emissions increases due to higher demand for electricity and a switch to coal after Fukushima, which prompted a nuclear power phase-out. Coal use is down this year and renewables

$ 1 . 2 B I L L I O N , $ 4 0 B I L L I O N “The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change,” he wrote. “Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps.”

Uber’s previous funding round also raised $1.2 billion. The company operates in more than 250 cities in 50 countries, although it faces regulatory hurdles and pushback from traditional taxis in many cities.

Also on Thursday, smaller rival Lyft, which has a decidedly more friendly corporate image - complete with pink moustaches on its cars - announced that it has hired a chief financial officer, Brian Roberts, and a chief marketing officer, Kira Wampler. Roberts, who joined the company in October, was previously at Walmart.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Uber raised $1.2 billion in its latest round of funding from venture capitalists, a sign investors were little fazed by the ride-hailing app’s recent spate of bad publicity over privacy violations and its corporate culture.

San Francisco-based Uber triggered a wave of online criticism recently after a top executive suggested spending $1 million to dig up dirt on a journalist critical of the driver-on-demand company.

It was not the first time Uber has been called out for actions by its drivers or its corporate culture. It is investigating one of its employees for tracking another journalist’s ride, which has raised fears that Uber is misusing customers’ private location information.

In a blog post Thursday, CEO Travis Kalanick acknowledged the company’s “significant growing pains.”

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing over President Barack Obama’s recently announced executive actions on immigration, arguing in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the move “tramples” key portions of the U.S. Constitution.

Many top Republicans have denounced Obama’s unilateral move, which was designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation.

But Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott took it a step further, filing a formal legal challenge in federal court in the Southern District of Texas. His state is joined by 16 other mostly conservative states, largely in the south and Midwest, such as Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and the Carolinas.

The states aren’t seeking monetary damages, but instead want the courts to block Obama’s actions.

The lawsuit could make things awkward come Friday, when Abbott travels to Washington to meet with Obama as part of a group of newly elected governors.

Under Obama’s order, announced Nov. 20, protection from deportation and the right to work will be extended to an estimated 4.1 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and to hundreds of thousands more young people.

The lawsuit raises three objections: that Obama violated the “Take Care Clause” of the U.S. Constitution that Abbott said limits the scope of presidential power; that the federal government didn’t follow proper rulemaking procedures; and that the order will “exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.”

Abbott said Obama’s actions “directly violate a fundamental promise to the American people” and that it was up to the president to “execute the law, not de facto make law.”

Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have issued past executive orders pertaining to immigration. Abbott said those were in response to actions by Congress - unlike Obama, who Abbott said acted in lieu of congressional approval.

Overwhelmingly elected governor last month, Abbott has been Texas attorney general since 2002. Wednesday marks the 31st time he has sued the federal government since Obama took office.

Many of those were over environmental regulations or the White House’s signature health care law, however. The only other high-profile lawsuit against Obama’s executive order has come on behalf of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Earlier this week, House Majority Leader John Boehner told lawmakers the GOP-led House may vote to undo Obama’s executive action, but the move would be mostly symbolic, as Obama would certainly veto such legislation and the Democratic-led Senate wouldn’t go for it, either.

Potential 2016 presidential candidate and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who leaves office in January, also spoke out against the executive order earlier Wednesday, saying it could trigger a new flood of people pouring across the Texas-Mexico border and create chaos that could be exploited by drug- and people-smugglers.

Perry said hours before Abbott’s announcement that Obama’s 2012 executive order delaying the deportation of children brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents triggered an unprecedented wave of unaccompanied minors and families, mostly from Central America, crossing into the U.S. this summer.

The latest investment put a value on Uber at $40 billion.

That’s bigger than the stock market values of companies such as American Airlines and Twitter, or the combined value of car-rental veterans Hertz and Avis Budget Group.

At the same time, it is not a guarantee that Uber would receive the same valuation as a publicly traded company that it does as a venture-backed business.

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He said the latest financing round will help the company make “substantial investments,” particularly in Asia.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick arrives at the 2014 TIME 100 Gala in New York. Despite recent bad publicity over privacy violations and other problems, the ride-hailing app Uber has raised $1.2 billion in its latest round of funding from venture capitalists, valuing the company at $40 billion.

The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

“In effect, his action placed a neon sign on our border, assuring people that they could ignore the law of the United States,” said Perry, who has deployed up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the border.

Abbott said his state can already predict the future effects of Obama’s executive action based on the 2012 order.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

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“Texas has been at the epicenter of the results of the president’s executive action,” Abbott said.

The federal lawsuit involves the following states: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

10 The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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P O L I C E C A S E S C O N V E R G E T O S T I R N A T I O N A L D E B A T E NEW YORK (AP) -- From the White House to the streets of some of America’s biggest cities, the New York chokehold case converged with the Ferguson shooting and investigations out of South Carolina and Cleveland to stir a national conversation Thursday about racial justice and police use of force.

“There’s very specific guidelines that are not met in this case,” London said. “This is a regular street encounter. It doesn’t fall into the parameters.”

Acting at the Staten Island district attorney’s request, a judge released a few details Thursday from the grand jury proceedings - among other things, it watched four videos and heard from 50 witnesses, 22 of them civilians. District Attorney Daniel Donovan didn’t ask for testimony, transcripts or exhibits to be made public.

A day after a grand jury cleared a white New York City officer in the death of a black man, civil rights leaders pinned their hopes on a promised federal investigation. Demonstrators protested for a second night in New York and turned out in such cities as Denver, Detroit and Minneapolis. And politicians and others talked about the need for better police training, body cameras and changes in the grand jury process to restore faith in the legal system.

“A whole generation of officers will be trained in a new way,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed he and his police commissioner outlined previously announced plans to teach officers how to communicate better with people on the street.

President Barack Obama weighed in, saying one of the chief issues at stake is “making sure that people have confidence that police and law enforcement and prosecutors are serving everybody equally.”

Even before the decision in the Eric Garner case came down, racial tensions were running high because of last week’s grand jury decision not to charge a white officer in the shooting death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Other cases were added to the mix on Thursday: - In the tiny South Carolina town of Eutawville, a white former police chief was charged with murder in the 2011 shooting of an unarmed black man. Richards Combs’ lawyer accused prosecutors of taking advantage of national outrage toward police to obtain the indictment more than three years after the killing.

- In Cleveland, the U.S. Justice Department and the city reached an agreement to overhaul the police department after federal investigators found that officers use excessive force far too often, causing deep mistrust, especially among blacks. The investigation was prompted chiefly by a 2012 car chase that ended in the deaths of two unarmed people in a hail of 137 bullets.

Just last week, protesters took to the streets of Cleveland after a white police officer shot and killed a black 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be pellet gun.

At a news conference in New York after a night of protests led to 83 arrests, the Rev. Al Sharpton called the state-level grand jury system “broken” when it comes to police brutality cases and urged federal

But London offered some details on Thursday, saying the officer’s testimony focused on “his remorse and the fact that he never meant to harm Mr. Gardner that day.”

authorities to fix it.

Pantaleo admitted he heard Garner say, “I can’t breathe,” but believed that once he got him down on the ground and put him on his side, he would be revived by paramedics, London said. The officer also testified that he “used a takedown move and any contact to the neck was incidental,” the lawyer added.

“The federal government must do in the 21st century what it did in the mid-20th century,” he said. “Federal intervention must come now and protect people from state grand juries.”

London said the grand jury also heard from other officers who described how Pantaleo had tried in vain to talk Garner into complying with them - something not seen on video.

Still, federal civil rights cases against police officers are exceedingly rare.

“Let’s make this easy. You’ve been through this before,” the officer said he told Garner.

In the past two decades, only a few such cases have reached trial in New York - most notably the one involving Abner Louima, who was sodomized with a broom handle in a police station in 1997.

Several other high-profile cases didn’t come together.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state should consider better police training, body cameras and changes to the grand jury process to help restore public trust. Cuomo said the Garner case and others like it around the country have a “corrosive” effect and cause many to lose faith in the criminal justice system.

President Barack Obama speaks about the recent police issues before talking about education at the Summit on College Opportunity, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. On Wednesday, a grand jury decided not to charge a white police officer in the chokehold death of a black man.

That’s largely because federal prosecutors must meet a high standard of proof in showing that police deliberately deprived victims of their civil rights through excessive force, said Alan Vinegrad, who as a federal prosecutor handled the Louima case.

Federal intervention “doesn’t happen often and it shouldn’t happen often,” said James Jacobs, a constitutional law professor at New York University Law School. “They should only step in when the local prosecution was a sham.”

Activists have claimed that the grand jury investigation of Garner’s death was indeed a sham. An amateur video showed Officer Daniel Pantaleo putting Garner in an apparent chokehold, and the medical examiner said the maneuver contributed to the death.

But Pantaleo’s attorney, Stuart London, expressed confidence on Thursday that his client won’t face federal prosecution.

M A R K W A H L B E R G S E E K S P A R D O N F O R 1 9 8 8 A S S A U L T S Mark Wahlberg arrives at the 2014 AFI Fest “The Gambler,” in Los Angeles. Wahlberg is asking Massachusetts for a pardon for assaults he committed in 1988 when he was a troubled teenager in Boston. Wahlberg’s application with the Massachusetts Parole Board says he isn’t the same person he was 26 years ago and his past convictions are still affecting his life

black mark any longer.

BOSTON (AP) -- Marky Mark doesn’t want a

Actor Mark Wahlberg is asking Massachusetts for a pardon for assaults he committed in 1988 when he was a troubled teenager in Boston, saying he has dedicated himself to becoming a better person in his adult years so he can be a role model to his children and others.

The former rapper known as Marky Mark and a star of movies including “The Departed” and “The Gambler,” set to open in theaters Dec. 19, filed a pardon application with state officials Nov. 26. New England Cable News first reported on the application Thursday.

In 1988, when Wahlberg was 16, he hit a man in the head with a wooden stick while trying to steal two cases of alcohol in front of a convenience store near his family’s home in the Dorchester section of Boston, the application says. He punched another man in the face while trying to avoid police, the document says.

Wahlberg says in the application that he was high on marijuana and narcotics at the time, and police caught him with a small amount of pot. He also apologized for his actions.

He ended up being convicted as an adult of assault and other charges, and he was sentenced to three months in jail. He said he was released after serving about 45 days.

Wahlberg, 43, says in the application that he turned his life around and became a successful music artist, actor and film and television producer. He also notes he has raised millions of dollars for charity and donated his time and efforts for philanthropic causes.

“I have not engaged in philanthropic efforts in order to make people forget about my past,” Wahlberg says in the application.

“To the contrary, I want people to remember my past so that I can serve as an example of how lives can be turned around and how people can be redeemed.”

“Rather than ignore or deny my troubled past, I have used the public spotlight to speak openly about the mistakes I made as a teenager so that others do not make those same mistakes,” he says.

To get a pardon, the Massachusetts Parole Board would have to review Wahlberg’s case and make a recommendation to the governor, who has the ultimate authority to grant pardons.

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Calls to the board’s offices went unanswered late Thursday.

Pardons rarely are issued in Massachusetts.

Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, who’s winding up eight years in office, last month recommended four pardons and one commutation - his first since taking office. They must still be approved by the Governor’s Council.

His predecessor, Republican Mitt Romney, recommended none. If Wahlberg is pardoned, it almost certainly would fall to Republican Gov.-elect Charlie Baker to sign off.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- When Kenya sent troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight Islamic extremists, the al-Qaida-linked group al-Shabab threatened to retaliate by bringing down Nairobi’s skyscrapers.

“We went into Somalia without a clear plan. If we had a plan, we would have anticipated the blowback and ensure our borders are secured,” said Abdullahi Boru, an independent East Africa security analyst who formerly worked for the International Crisis Group. “We are terrible at this job (of internal security) ... and al-Shabab knows our weak points.”

Among those weak points, Boru said, is endemic corruption “across all government agencies” in Kenya, a point that security analysts and citizens agree on.

G O P W H I T E C L A S H O N

The political opposition group CORD called Tuesday’s attack “another senseless slaughter.” It blamed “corruption within our security, political, intelligence and military leadership.”

A woman is assisted by Red Cross workers as she is overcome by emotion after seeing the body of a relative who was killed in Tuesday’s attack, at the mortuary in Nairobi, Kenya Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014. The Islamic militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a methodical massacre in northern Kenya early Tuesday that killed 36 non-Muslims - 10 days after a similar attack on a bus that killed 28 - and it prompted President Uhuru Kenyatta to shake up his national security team amid public outrage over the continuing violence.

Allegations that al-Shabab fighters bribed police to let them cross the Somalia-Kenya border are common. But because the border is so long and unguarded, that’s not even necessary.

Al-Shabab once controlled most of Somalia’s capital, but has steadily been losing territory to the African Union forces. That makes the group more likely to hit back elsewhere, and Kenya’s ethnic and political disunity and its ill-equipped security forces make it an easy target, said Sarah Tzinieris, an analyst at Maplecroft, a risk assessment firm.

The border area will remain susceptible to al-Shabab attacks due to its remoteness and inadequate security patrols, Tzinieris said. “Soft targets” like the Westgate Mall also remain vulnerable, she said.

H O U S E P R O S P E C T S F O R E I G N P O L I C Y action only as a last resort.

“If and when we have to, it should be with a clear, stated objective up front,” Cruz said. “We should go in with overwhelming force. And then we should get the heck out.”

Paul on Wednesday formally introduced a “declaration of war” against the Islamic State - a move designed to paint himself as a strict constitutionalist as he explores a White House bid.

The largely symbolic resolution would expire after one year, allowing ground combat forces only to shield Americans from imminent danger and to gather intelligence or pursue high-level targets.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks to the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC’s 11th Annual Luncheon in Coral Gables, Fla., Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014. The presidential contest that’s starting to take shape is exposing divisions among likely Republican candidates on the nation’s role in global affairs. Among those outlining foreign policy this week: Bush, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal, as well as the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As politics turn to the 2016 race for president, the GOP’s most ambitious are clashing over the nation’s role in global affairs.

Several high-profile Republicans offered differing visions this week on foreign policy, pitting the party’s national security hawks against libertarian-minded conservatives whose influence is growing in GOP politics. Largely an afterthought in the last presidential contest, the growing foreign policy debate has emerged as a key issue as Republican contenders jockey for position before officially launching White House bids.

The GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, on Wednesday offered a more positive review of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s foreign policy than that of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a likely Republican presidential contender who favors a smaller American footprint in the world.

“I don’t think he has any credibility,” McCain said of Paul, who the day before charged that McCain favors “15 more wars.”

Asked about the foreign policy of Clinton, the former secretary of state, McCain responded, “I think she’s OK.” McCain was one of the featured speakers at a Wednesday foreign policy forum that was among several events and speeches this week exposing GOP divisions in the early stages of the 2016 presidential primary season.

While no candidates have yet launched bids, the election is expected to feature a new generation of conservative leaders who favor a limited role for America abroad - Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz among them - and establishment-minded Republicans like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose father and brother launched military conflicts in the Middle East.

“It seems the whole world is on fire right now,” Cruz said Wednesday in his second foreign policy address in as many days. In his first, he suggested he would favor U.S. military

SECURITY K E N Y A

Besides creating fear among non-Muslim residents of northern Kenya who are demanding that authorities ensure their safety, the killings have opened up Kenyatta’s government to criticism.

Al-Shabab quickly claimed responsibility for the latest chilling assault: Gunmen invaded a quarry in northern Kenya, lined up 36 non-Muslim laborers, and killed them early Tuesday. That followed a similar massacre on Nov. 22, when al-Shabab killed 28 Kenyans on a bus, again sparing the Muslims among the passengers.

Kenya sent its military forces into Somalia in hopes of creating a secure buffer zone between Somalia’s internal chaos and Kenyan territory. But the series of attacks by al-Shabab has left Kenyans demanding change, and President Uhuru Kenyatta responded Tuesday by shaking up the leadership of his security team.

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Kenya has carried out numerous “counterterrorism” operations in Nairobi and Mombasa, often against Muslim populations or at mosques. Those actions have raised Muslim-Christian tensions - a situation that Tzinieris says increases the likelihood of homegrown attacks from al-Shabab sympathizers.

The buildings still stand, but a series of mass killings in which non-Muslims were singled out for slaughter has increased pressure on Kenya to improve security along a porous border and explain why its army should remain in Somalia.

The group’s most notorious attack was on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last year, when it also targeted non-Muslims, although the four gunmen killed people of all faiths. At least 67 died in that siege in the capital of the East African nation.

The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

Paul, one of the leaders in what critics call the GOP’s “isolationist wing,” on Tuesday lashed out at Republicans who favor a dramatic increase in military spending with little regard for the national deficit.

“There are conservatives who (say), `I’ll spend anything and I don’t care if it bankrupts the world.’ ... That’s wrong,” Paul said.

“I truly believe that the No. 1 threat to our national security is our debt.”

At another event, Bush, whose brother George W. Bush ordered the invasion that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003, cited “a growing awareness that we can’t withdraw from the world.”

“The United States needs to lead. Lead with humility, lead with respect - but lead,” Bush told a group of prominent Cuban-American leaders in Miami on Tuesday. “We are not an equal partner in a so-called community of nations. We are a leader among equals.”

The foreign policy focus comes as violence rages across the Middle East and tensions intensify across Eastern Europe. As would-be presidential candidates seek a leadership role in the debate, others are scrambling to strengthen their international credentials.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is expected to visit Israel for the first time early next year, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie heads to Canada on an official trade mission later in the week his second foreign trip in recent months. In addition to meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other officials, Christie is expected to focus heavily on North American energy production, including the Keystone XL pipeline project, building on a policy platform he began to articulate during his recent trip to Mexico.

For months, CORD has been calling for an overhaul of the country’s security apparatus. Kenyatta on Tuesday finally fired the interior minister, who was ridiculed for a slow response to the Westgate Mall attack, and accepted the resignation of the police chief.

Although some in Kenya advocate withdrawing its troops from Somalia, Kenyatta said that was not his plan.

“We shall continue to inflict painful casualties on these terrorists until we secure our country and region. Our stability and prosperity depends on a secure neighborhood,” he said.

Boru, the security analyst, said the country lacks a long-term strategy in Somalia.

“We need to set out a clear window on when we are leaving,” Boru said.

“The window between when Kenya being considered liberators and that of being regarded as invaders has closed.”

Boniface Mwangi, one of the country’s most vocal activists, criticized Kenyatta for replacing Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku with another man from Kenya’s Maasai community, Joseph Nkaissery, a retired military major general.

Mwangi posted on Twitter the results of a government Truth, Justice and Reconciliation report that recommended Nkaissery be investigated for human rights abuses during his military service.

“The fish rots from the head,” he said. “When the president makes an appointment thinking about his political survival and overlooking merit, then there is the problem.”

He said Kenya’s “ruling elite is out of touch with reality.”

“They have motorcades and bodyguards, and they are telling us that security is our responsibility. That’s telling us that we all should be vigilantes,” Mwangi said.

UN PEACEKEEPER IN LIBERIA TESTS POSITIVE FOR EBOLA MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- The U.N. peacekeeping force in Liberia says one of its members has been infected with Ebola.

This is the mission’s third case linked to the disease. The previous two died.

The country’s top U.N. envoy, Karin Landgren, said in a statement late Thursday that a peacekeeper tested positive the day before. The patient is being treated in Monrovia.

Landgren said 16 people who came into contact with the soldier have been quarantined. Areas the peacekeeper visited while symptomatic have been decontaminated.

The Ebola outbreak has sickened nearly 17,300 people, killing about 6,100. The disease has hit Liberia hardest, in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The U.N. force, with about 7,700 troops and police, has been in Liberia since 2003 to bring stability after civil war.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

Polling suggests that war-weary voters may favor the views of Paul and Cruz.

A CNN/ORC poll in September found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans think the United States should not play

Improves the health and lives of people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest.

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12 The Weekly News Digest, Dec 1 thru Dec 8, 2014

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L A U N C H O F N E W O R I O N S PA C E S H I P H A S N A S A F LY I N G H I G H

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- With the imminent debut of its Orion spacecraft, NASA is on a high not felt since the space shuttle days.

still in development by NASA - SLS, short for Space Launch System. Only after that will humans climb aboard; NASA hopes to send an Orion crew to an asteroid corralled in lunar orbit in the 2020s and to Mars in the 2030s.

Shuttle veterans, in fact, are leading the charge in Thursday morning’s two-orbit, 4 1/2-hour test flight, meant to shake out the capsule before astronauts climb aboard - eventually, perhaps, to visit Mars.

Flying this one without humans on board took some of the edge off NASA’s first-flight jitters.

Still fresh in everyone’s minds is October’s explosion moments after liftoff of a commercial rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station. No one was on board that flight, either, and no one on the ground was hurt.

“We haven’t had this feeling in a while, since the end of the shuttle program,” said Mike Sarafin, the lead flight director stationed at Mission Control in Houston. “Launching an American spacecraft from American soil and beginning something new, in this case exploring deep space.”

Orion is set to fly farther than any human-rated spacecraft since the Apollo moon program, aiming for a distance of 3,600 miles, more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station.

That peak altitude will provide the necessary momentum for a 20,000-mph, 4,000-degree entry over the Pacific. Those 11 short minutes to splashdown is what NASA calls the “trial by fire,” arguably the most critical part of the entire test flight. The heat shield at Orion’s base, at 16.5 feet across, is the largest of its kind ever built.

Navy ships were stationed near the recovery zone off the Mexican Baja coast.

“It’s an exciting time,” Jeff Angermeier, ground support mission manager, said from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. “You can feel the buzz.”

An estimated 26,000 guests were expected to jam Kennedy for the sunrise launch, as well as 650 journalists. (Actually, the unmanned rocket will blast off from the adjoining Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.) The space center press site was packed Wednesday with out-of-town reporters not seen here since the last shuttle flight in 2011.

DEFORESTATION M AY B E AT R O O T O F BRAZIL DROUGHT

The NASA Orion space capsule is seen atop a Delta IV rocket ready for a test launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The test flight scheduled for Thursday morning, will reach an altitude of 3,600 miles before re-entering the atmosphere

NASA’s Orion program manager, Mark Geyer, puts the capsule’s inaugural run on a par with the formative steps of Apollo and the space shuttles.

“It’s important it’s unmanned because we actually structured the test to fly the riskiest pieces of the flight,” Geyer told reporters. “This is the time to do it, when it’s unmanned, and so we intend to stress the systems and make sure they behave as we designed them.”

Lockheed Martin Corp. is handling the test flight for NASA, much the way NASA has contracted out the development of two manned capsules meant for space station ferry trips.

Even so, the shuttle ties run deep.

“In the sense that we are beginning a new mission, it is, I think, consistent with ... the beginning of shuttle, the beginning of Apollo,” Geyer said. “It’s a new mission for us, starting in the region of the moon and then beyond.”

Sarafin’s entire team at Johnson Space Center in Houston is comprised of former shuttle flight controllers. A special VIP, on hand in Mission Control on Thursday, will be Gene Kranz, the legendary flight director of Apollo 11 and 13 fame, and more.

Noted NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr.: “For the first time in more than 40 years, this nation is going to launch a spacecraft intended to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit. That’s a big deal.”

The mission director for Thursday’s flight, based at Kennedy, is Lockheed Martin’s Bryan Austin, a former shuttle flight director like Sarafin.

Unlike the first space shuttle flight in 1981 - helmed by two pilots Orion will not carry astronauts before 2021.

Kennedy’s director, Robert Cabana, is a former shuttle commander.

So is Bolden, NASA’s top guy.

NASA wants to test the most critical parts of the capsule on this $370 million shakedown cruise, including the heat shield, parachutes and all the sections jettisoned during ascent and entry. The capsule also will travel through the high-radiation Van Allen belts surrounding Earth; engineers want to gauge the effects on the onboard computers.

“Getting the band back together,” Sarafin said.

A Delta IV rocket is hoisting Orion this time around. For Orion’s next flight, around 2018, the capsule will fly atop the megarocket

J A PA N E S E S PA C E EXPLORER TO BLOW C R AT E R I N A S T E R O I D TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese space explorer took off Wednesday on a sixyear journey to blow a crater in a remote asteroid and bring back rock samples in hopes of gathering clues to the origin of Earth.

But Nobre and other scientists warn it’s not enough just to slow the pace of destruction - it must be halted.

“With each tree that falls you lose a little bit more of that water that’s being transported to Sao Paulo and the rest of Brazil,” said Philip Fearnside, a professor at the Brazilian government’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon who was not part of Nobre’s study. “If you just let that continue, you’re going to have a major impact on the big population centers in Brazil that are feeling the pinch now.”

The explorer, named Hayabusa2, is expected to reach the asteroid in mid-2018, spend about 18 months studying it and return in late 2020.

U.S. scientists praise the study, with U.S. Geological Survey drought expert James Verdin calling it “compelling and credible.” a deforested area is seen near Novo Progresso, in Brazil’s northern state of Para. The “sky rivers” that flow from Brazil’s immense Amazon jungle have long kept the nation’s southeast a verdant green, a gift of nature that man has used to turn the area’s lush, rolling hills into a breadbasket of farms, coffee plantations and thick pasture for cattle.

While its too soon for scientists to say with certainty, there is a chorus of growing concern that Amazon deforestation has diminished those atmospheric flows, and that the jungle is nearing a permanent tipping point whereby it won’t be able to sustain such rains in the future. Brazil’s southeast is seeing a historic drought that has Sao Paulo, a city of over 20 million, on the brink of running out of water.

SAO PAULO (AP) -- Vera Lucia de Oliveira looks to the sky, hoping for any sign of rain.

For weeks, the taps in her home have run dry as Sao Paulo has suffered its worst drought in eight decades, with rainfall at one-third the normal level. Without heavy and prolonged rain, the megacity of 23 million could soon run out of water, experts warn.

“We are always thinking: The rain is coming, the rain is coming,” said Oliveira.

But it doesn’t, and a growing consensus of scientists believes the answer to what is happening to Oliveria and her neighbors lies not in the sky above their heads but in decades of deforestation of Amazon rainforest hundreds of miles away.

The cutting of trees, scientists say, is hindering the immense jungle’s ability to absorb carbon from the air - and to pull enough water through tree roots to supply gigantic “sky rivers” that move more moisture than the Amazon river itself. More than two-thirds of the rain in southeastern Brazil, home to 40 percent of its population, comes from these sky rivers, studies estimate. When they dry up, drought follows, scientists believe.

It’s not just Brazil but South America as a whole for which these rivers in the sky play a pivotal meteorological role, according to a recent study by a top Brazilian climate scientist, Antonio Nobre of the government’s Center for Earth System Science.

The study draws together data from multiple researchers to show that the Amazon may be closer to a tipping point than the government has acknowledged and that the changes could be a threat to climates around the globe. His work is causing a stir in drought-stricken Brazil as environmental negotiators meet in neighboring Peru at the Dec. 1-12 U.N. climate talks.

Destruction of the Amazon went unchecked until 2008, when the government put teeth in its environmental laws and sent armed agents into the jungle to slow the pace of deforestation by ranchers, soy farmers and timber speculators. The impact was quick: Destruction in 2012 was one-sixth of what was recorded eight years earlier, though it has ticked up in the last two years.

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Minnesota highlighted two “once-in-a-century-level droughts” occurring in 2005 and 2010 in the region, in a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Climate. They used climate simulations to find that deforestation “has the potential to increase the impact of droughts in the Amazon basin.”

The sky rivers are generated by the forest acting as a massive pump, according to research that has shown the jungle’s uniform humidity consistently lowers atmospheric pressure in the Amazon basin. That allows it to draw moist air currents from the Atlantic Ocean much farther inland than areas that don’t have forests.

Those currents travel west across the continent until they hit the Andes mountains, where they pivot and carry rains south to Buenos Aires and east to Sao Paulo.

The trees pump an estimated 20 billion metric tons of water into the atmosphere every day - 3 billion more than what the Amazon river, the world’s largest, discharges into the ocean.

Recent research indicates rainfall has decreased downwind of deforested areas. The fewer the trees, the less humidity there is in the Amazon basin, making its “pump” effect weaker.

Nobre’s October report warned of the crucial need to replant one-fifth of jungle areas that were razed. In addition, 310 million acres, an area twice the size of France, have been degraded by patchwork destruction and need to be restored.

“We’re like the Titanic moving straight toward the iceberg,” Nobre said in a telephone interview.

The government is preparing a study to measure the impact deforestation has had over recent decades, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said in an interview.

The issue is a complex one tied to local problems and the government’s own drive to develop the Amazon region, home to nearly 25 million people. Teixeira said the trick is finding the balance, to be able to use the jungle to benefit the population without destroying it in the process.

A small device will separate from the explorer and shoot a projectile to blast open a crater a few meters (several feet) in diameter. The explorer, which will hide behind the asteroid during the blast, will then try to collect material from inside the crater.

Asteroids can provide evidence not available on Earth about the birth of the solar system and its evolution. JAXA, Japan’s space agency, said the research could help explain the origin of seawater and how the planet earth was formed.

Hayabusa2 will attempt to expand on the work of Hayabusa, a previous explorer that returned in 2010 after collecting material from the surface of another asteroid. By reaching inside an asteroid this time, the new explorer may recover material that is not as weathered by the space environment and heat.

The earlier mission was plagued by mechanical failures and other problems. JAXA hopes improvements since then will make this trip smoother.

“The mission was completed one way or another, but we stumbled along the way,” said Akitaka Kishi of JAXA’s lunar and planetary exploration program. “To travel there and bring back something is extremely difficult.”

Hayabusa2, which was launched from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, is a rectangular unit with two sets of solar panels sticking out from its sides. trucks have been hijacked at gun point.

“We are very scared,” said Ruth Arruda, an elementary school teacher who stopped washing dishes and uses only disposable plates and cups now. “The water simply has nowhere to come from. Nothing is helping concentrate it, and the dams are not storing it well.”

On a recent day, Arruda drove herself and her daughter to a community kiosk to fill empty soda bottles with water from a spigot.

However, Nobre’s report calls on the government to take more urgent action and to aim for zero deforestation. It also calls on Brazilians to influence the government’s approach to the Amazon, noting that “the shock of dry taps here, flooded cities there, and other natural disasters must surely provoke a reaction.”

On the ride there, she passed rows of homes with signs out front depicting the community’s desperation: “Help, Itu Needs Water.”

In the 1980s, she says, the city chopped down dozens of trees to clear land for big homes for white-collar workers who wanted a quiet community away from Sao Paulo.

Taps have been dry for several weeks in Itu, a community 60 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, where residents are feeling the drought more than anywhere else. Water is so scarce that supply

“We have to look inward and pay attention to what we have done wrong to our environment,” she said.