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PRIEST TO PLEAD GUILTY TO TRYING TO HELP CONVICTED MOBSTER Chicago Crime Commission shows reputed mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. A bench trial begins Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015, for prison chaplain Eugene Klein, who is accused of trying to help the imprisoned Calabrese recover a rare, 250-year-old Stradivarius violin hidden in his old Wisconsin home. Prosecutors allege the plot was hatched in 2011 when Klein administered daily communion to Calabrese at the Missouri prison where he was serving a life sentence for 13 murders. Calabrese died in December 2012.

CHICAGO (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest says he’ll plead guilty to trying to help a convicted mobster recover an expensive violin hidden in a Wisconsin home.

Sixty-five-year-old Eugene Klein made the announcement Wednesday just as his federal trial was about to get underway.

Klein appeared in court looking ill at ease, carrying a cane and wearing his clerical collar.

He’s accused of trying to help imprisoned Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. recover what the convict said was a rare, 250-year-old Stradivarius violin hidden in his old Wisconsin home.

Federal prosecutors allege the plot was hatched in 2011 when Klein administered daily communion to Calabrese at the Missouri prison where he was serving a life sentence for 13 murders. Calabrese died in December 2012.

Prosecutors say they believed the instrument was worth millions.

EX-MARINE, INTOXICATED, KILLED ‘AMERICAN SNIPER’ Eddie Ray Routh walks into court for a pretrial proceeding, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015, in Stephenville, Texas. The former Marine is accused of killing Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle and Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield at a gun range on Feb. 2, 2013.

jurors Wednesday.

STEPHENVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A former Marine on trial for capital murder in the death of Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL depicted in the blockbuster “American Sniper,” was numbed by marijuana and whiskey when he fatally shot Kyle and another man, a prosecutor told

Erath County District Attorney Alan Nash said during opening statements at the trial of Eddie Ray Routh that overwhelming evidence points to Routh as the killer of Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield at a shooting range in February 2013.

Nash described the 27-year-old Routh as “a troubled young man” and said a history of mental illness should not absolve him of being accountable for the deaths.

“The evidence will show that mental illnesses, even the ones that this defendant may or may not have, don’t deprive people from being good citizens, to know right from wrong,” Nash said.

The case has drawn intense interest, largely because of Kyle’s memoir about being a sniper who served four tours in Iraq. The Oscar-nominated film based on the book has grossed nearly $300 million.

Defense attorney Tim Moore didn’t dispute that Routh accompanied the men to the shooting range but said he was insane, spiraling out of control from a history of mental illness and thought he needed to kill the two or they would turn on him.

Routh’s psychosis was so transparent that Kyle and Littlefield became alarmed, Moore said. He read to jurors texts that he said the two men exchanged while driving with Routh in Kyle’s pickup to the shooting range.

“This dude is straight up nuts,” Kyle texted to Littlefield.

“He’s (sitting) right behind me, watch my six,” Littlefield texted back, using a military reference for watching one’s back.

Moore told jurors that Routh was suffering from severe mental strain that day. “He thought he had to take their lives or he was in danger,” he said.

Routh faces life in prison without parole if convicted.

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OBAMA ASKS FRESH WAR POWERS, SAYS IS GROUP ‘GOING TO LOSE’ the state. Testing was performed by an expert in DNA barcoding technology, James Schulte II of Clarkson University in Potsdam. The DNA tests were performed on three to four samples of each of the supplements purchased. Each sample was tested five times.

Overall, 390 tests involving 78 samples were performed.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Numerous store brand supplements aren’t what their labels claim to be, an ongoing investigation of popular herbal supplements subjected to DNA testing has found, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday.

GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreen Co. sold supplements that either couldn’t be verified to contain the labeled substance or that contained ingredients not listed on the label, Schneiderman’s office said.

President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, gestures

Steve Mister, president and CEO of the dietary supplement trade group the Council for Responsible Nutrition, on Tuesday criticized the testing procedure and Schneiderman, who he accused of engaging in a “self-serving publicity stunt under the guise of protecting public health.”

he speaks about the Islamic State group, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015, in the Roosevelt Room of the White The supplements, including as House in Washington. Obama asked the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to authorize military force to "degrade echinacea, ginseng, St. John’s and defeat" Islamic State forces in the Middle East without sustained, large-scale U.S. ground combat operwort, garlic, ginkgo biloba ations, setting lawmakers on a path toward their first war powers vote in 13 years. and saw palmetto, were contaminated with substances including rice, beans, pine, citrus, asparagus, primrose, wheat, houseplant and wild He said the companies should have been given a greater opportunity carrot. In many cases, unlisted contaminants were the only plant mate- to respond before Schneiderman went public and “processing during rial found in the product samples. manufacturing of botanical supplements can remove or damage DNA; therefore while a DNA testing method can be useful in some cases, this Overall, 21 percent of the test results from store brand herbal supple- method well may be the wrong test for these kinds of products.” ments contained DNA from the plants listed on the labels. The retailer with the poorest showing was Walmart, where 4 percent of the products Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Assotested showed DNA from the plants listed on the labels. ciation, which represents the herbal industry, called DNA testing “an emerging technology that has the potential to be useful in the future “This investigation makes one thing abundantly clear: The old adage when it has been rigorously tested and validated.” He said identification `buyer beware’ may be especially true for consumers of herbal supple- of an herb through DNA testing must be confirmed with established ments,” Schneiderman said. analytical tools that herbal experts use, such as chromatography or microscopy.

Schneiderman asked the companies to provide detailed information on production, processing, testing and quality control for herbal supple- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires companies to veriments sold at their stores. fy their products are safe and properly labeled. But supplements aren’t subjected to the rigorous evaluation process used for drugs.

Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said the company is immediately reaching out to suppliers and will take appropriate action.

If a manufacturer fails to identify all the ingredients on an herbal product’s label, a consumer with allergies or who is taking medication for an Walgreen and GNC pledged to cooperate with the attorney general. unrelated illness could risk serious health issues every time a contaminated herbal supplement is ingested.

“We take these issues very seriously and as a precautionary measure, we are in the process of removing these products from our shelves as we A DNA study conducted by the University of Guelph in 2013 also found review this matter further,” Walgreen spokesman James Graham said. contamination and substitution in herbal products in most of the products tested. One product labeled as St. John’s wort, often used to treat Target didn’t initially respond to a request for comment. depression, contained Senna alexandrina, a plant with laxative properties. One ginkgo product was contaminated with black walnut, which “We stand by the quality, purity and potency of all ingredients listed could endanger people with nut allergies. on the labels of our private label products,” said GNC spokeswoman Laura Brophy.

A 2013 study from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research estimated there are about 65,000 dietary supplements on the market consumed by The investigation looked at six herbal supplements sold at stores across more than 150 million Americans.

LEONARDO EXPERT DENIES AUTHENTICATING ‘LOST’ LEONARDO This photo provided by the police of Swiss Canton Tessin shows the painting “Ritratto di Isabella d’Este” by Leonardo da Vinci, which was seized by the police of Ticino Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015. Italian authorities have ordered the seizure from a Swiss bank vault of a portrait attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that they said was illegally removed from Italy. Italian financial police said Tuesday that Swiss authorities had seized the portrait of the Renaissance-era noble woman, Isabella D’Este, valued at 95 million euros (US$ 107 million)

MILAN (AP) -- Assertions that an eminent scholar had authenticated a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci tantalized art lovers with the prospect of a new masterpiece and inflated a backroom bidding war worth tens of millions of euros.

Only Carlo Pedretti, long-time director of the Leonardo center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Wednesday that he drew no such conclusion.

“I never attributed this painting to Leonardo,” Pedretti told The Associated Press by telephone from Tuscany. “I only said it merited more study.”

The oil-on-canvas painting of noblewoman Isabella D’Este was seized this week in Switzerland under an Italian probe into whether the painting had been illegally expatriated. Financial police said in a release announcing the seizure on Tuesday that the work had been attributed to Leonardo

by Pedretti - an assertion also made in an Italian magazine cover story in 2013 that tantalized Leonardo admirers with the possibility of a new masterpiece.

Police also noted that the work’s market value had been driven up from a starting price of 95 million euros when they first discovered the painting’s existence in 2013, to 120 million euros when they finally located it in the

vault of a private Swiss bank last summer.

Pedretti said he viewed the painting several years ago in Switzerland after being contacted by a lawyer representing the owners. He wrote a letter expressing promising elements, including the treatment of the noblewoman’s face, but recommending that they pursue further tests without publicizing the find.

“It is mistaken to say I recognized the work. I recognized it as a document important for the study of Leonardo, as a scholar,” Pedretti said.

Pedretti is convinced the painting is old, and quite likely from Leonardo’s lifetime, with some details like a palm frond and wheel clearly added much later, adorning the noblewoman in symbols of St. Catherine. But he said that before making a declaration of authenticity, “I would want to consult with my colleagues in England, France and the United States.

That would be the correct procedure.”

Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in his hometown of Vinci, said Pedretti’s name has been falsely associated with a claim he never made - which has demonstrably driven a bidding war.

“There is a substantial difference between tens of thousands and tens of millions of euros,” he said.

While Vezzosi said he doesn’t see Leonardo’s hand in the work, it is possible “that underneath there are surprises, perhaps a drawing by Leonardo.”

A drawing in the Louvre of Isabella D’Este demonstrates Leonardo’s association with the portrait’s subject. And Pedretti doesn’t rule out that Leonardo may have contributed to the portrait, but said even if Leonardo began the work, it was likely to have been finished by a student.

“Leonardo was very interested in his personal research and studies in mechanics and physics. He didn’t have time to stay and work on a painting,” Pedretti said.

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FRIENDS MOURN AMERICAN AID WORKER HELD BY MILITANTS

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) -- Even while being held hostage by Islamic State extremists, Kayla Mueller tried to find the good in everything, her family and friends say.

A portrait of the 26-year-old humanitarian aid worker from Prescott, Arizona, came as her death was confirmed by the U.S. government. Family members spoke fondly of her free spirit and efforts to ease the suffering of others as a small memorial of flowers and handwritten notes took shape in her hometown near a sign calling on people to “Pray for Kayla.”

nature.

Mueller’s aunt, Lori Lyon, said her niece touched the hearts of people around the world who want to be more like the globe-trotting aid worker.

“And if that is her legacy and the footprint that she leaves on the world,” Lyon added, dissolving into tears, “then that is a wonderful thing.”

A memorial is seen in honor of Kayla Mueller, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015, in Prescott, Ariz. Mueller, a 26-year-old American woman held by Islamic State militants, has been confirmed dead, her parents and the Obama administration said Tuesday.

Mueller was captured in August 2013 in Syria, but her captivity had largely been kept secret in an effort to save her. President Barack Obama said a military operation last summer to recover Mueller and others failed when rescuers arrived only “a day or two” after the group had been moved.

Few details are known about Mueller’s time in captivity and how she died. The Islamic State group claimed Friday that Mueller was killed in a recent Jordanian airstrike targeting the militants. The Pentagon said Tuesday that it doesn’t know how she died but is certain it was not during the airstrike.

Family members released a letter an imprisoned Mueller wrote last year in which said she was staying strong and praying.

“I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it,” a captive Mueller wrote.

During a press conference Tuesday outside Prescott’s historic courthouse, family and friends remembered Mueller and said that even in the worst circumstances, she focused on the positive. They said she taught her guards to do crafts and make peace birds out of paper. And she stood on her head for exercise in her cramped quarters.

Beyond those few details, family members have not said what life was like for Mueller in captivity, including whether she was tortured. Three other Americans - journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid worker Peter Kassig - were beheaded by Islamic State militants last year.

Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican who represents Prescott, were in close contact with Mueller’s family and government officials throughout her captivity.

Gosar told The Arizona Republic that one effort to free Mueller involved a man who traveled to the Syrian prison camp where Mueller was being held. The man told the captors he was Mueller’s husband in a ruse designed to free her, Gosar said, but it didn’t work.

In addition, Gosar’s office said the name of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, came up in discussions with Islamic State militants over Mueller. Siddiqui is an American-educated woman whose release has long been sought by terrorists.

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In Mueller’s hometown, residents began to honor her. Her family has encouraged people to donate to organizations Mueller would have supported, saying big displays of support wouldn’t mesh with her humble

STUDY TIES MORE D E AT H S , T Y P E S O F DISEASE, TO SMOKING Breast cancer, prostate cancer, and even routine infections. A new report ties these and other maladies to smoking and says an additional 60,000 to 120,000 deaths each year in the United States are probably due to tobacco use.

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

The study by the American Cancer Society and several universities, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, looks beyond lung cancer, heart disease and other conditions already tied to smoking, and the 480,000 U.S. deaths attributed to them each year.

“I’m not sure yet how to live in a world without Kayla, but I do know that we’re all living in a better world because of her,” a tearful Eryn Street, a close friend of Mueller’s said from the Prescott courthouse plaza.

In 2010, Mueller spent time with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of foreign activists who come to the West Bank and east Jerusalem to show support for the Palestinians. Activists frequently participate in West Bank protests against Israel’s separation barrier, and organizer Abdullah Abu Rahmeh said a protest Friday would be dedicated to Mueller.

“We were shocked to know that Kayla was taken hostage, and we were shocked more when she was killed because she came here to help people,” Abu Rahmeh said.

Obama pledged to bring Mueller’s captors to justice “no matter how long it takes.” The White House said the president had spoken with Mueller’s parents and offered prayers. From Jordan, government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani offered his country’s condolences.

Mueller wrote passionately about conditions in war-torn Syria, where she had gone to help refugees. In a blog post, she wrote: “Every human should act. They should stop this violence.”

Her family and friends told of simple things Mueller did, such as such as giving people food and water, and searching for clothing and housing.

Street recalled the two of them making the best of their car breaking down about a half-mile from Street’s home. Getting the car towed would be no fun, she said.

“Instead, we turned on Bob Marley on full blast on the radio and, with the car in neutral, we started pushing that golden brown chariot home,” she said.

Prescott, a mountain town that resembles a relic of the Old West in many ways, only recently begun to recover from the deaths of 19 elite firefighters who died in 2013 in a wildfire in the deadliest single day for firefighters since Sept. 11, 2011.

“What a fine, fine woman and a tribute to Prescott,” resident Tina Nemeth said. “It’s just so sad, it really is, and everyone feels exactly the same. It’s a shock it hit Prescott. We’re not that big of a town.”

WHERE DO THE NUMBERS COME FROM? Researchers looked at nearly 1 million Americans 55 and older taking part in five studies, including the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, since 2000. They tracked the participants’ health for about 10 years and compared deaths from various causes among smokers, never smokers and former smokers, taking into account other things that can influence risk such as alcohol use.

THE BIG PICTURE Death rates were two to three times higher among current smokers than among people who never smoked. Most of the excess deaths in smokers were due to 21 diseases already tied to smoking, including 12 types of cancer, heart disease and stroke. But researchers also saw death rates in smokers were twice as high from other conditions such as kidney failure, infections, liver cirrhosis and some respiratory diseases not previously tied to smoking.

WHAT ABOUT BREAST AND PROSTATE CANCER?

“Smokers die, on average, more than a decade before nonsmokers,” and in the U.S., smoking accounts for one of every five deaths, Dr. Graham Colditz, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis wrote in a commentary in the journal.

The report strengthens evidence tying them to smoking. It finds that female smokers’ risk of dying of breast cancer is 30 percent greater than for nonsmokers. Male smokers have a 40 percent greater risk of dying of prostate cancer than nonsmokers do, the researchers found.

The report shows that current estimates “have substantially underestimated the burden of smoking on society,” he wrote.

HOW DO THEY KNOW SMOKING WAS THE CAUSE?

About 18 percent of U.S. adults smoke.

More about the report.

www.redcross.org

Israel, India, France and Syria.

From Prescott, she helped raise awareness of HIV and AIDS and offered comfort at a women’s shelter. In Flagstaff, where she attended college, she protested genocide in Darfur. Her desire to help others stretched beyond Arizona to Palestinian territories,

One strong sign is that the risk of dying of these other conditions declined among people who quit smoking. The longer ago they stopped, the greater the drop in risk as time went on.

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O B A M A S E N D S C O N G R E S S R E Q U E S T F O R M I L I TA R Y F O R C E A G A I N S T I S issued a statement that refrained from endorsing Obama’s proposal. It said Congress should act judiciously and promptly to pass legislation “narrowly tailored” to the fight against IS. She has said previously she opposes deploying U.S. “boots on the ground.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama sent Congress legislation Wednesday to authorize military force against Islamic State fighters, asking lawmakers to “show the world we are united in our resolve” to defeat militants who have overrun parts of the Middle East and threaten attacks on the United States.

Obama arranged to speak publicly about the request later Wednesday.

In urging Congress to back military force, the president ruled out “enduring offensive combat operations,” a deliberately ambiguous phrase designed to satisfy lawmakers with widely different views on any role for U.S. ground troops.

In his letter, he referred to four American hostages who have died in Islamic State custody - at least three of them beheaded. He said the group, if left unchecked, “will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland.”

Majority Republicans in Congress responded warily to the request.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, expressed doubt it would “give our military commanders the flexibility and authorities they need to succeed and protect our people.” He said changes were likely before the measure comes to a vote, although an initial House committee hearing was set for Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., like Boehner, said the proposal would receive serious consideration.

There was no timetable for Congress to act on the president’s request, which triggers the first war powers vote in Congress since President George W. Bush sought and won an authorization in 2002 before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In a letter to lawmakers that accompanied the three-page draft legislation, Obama said the Islamic State “poses a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria and the broader Middle East and to U.S. national security.”

While asking Congress to bar long-term, large scale ground combat

President Barack Obama answers a question during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington.

President Barack Obama asked Congress Wednesday to formally authorize war against the Islamic State group, arguing the militants could pose a threat to the U.S. homeland if their violent power grab goes unchecked and urging lawmakers to “show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat.”

operations like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama said he wants the flexibility for ground combat operations “in other more limited circumstances.” Those include rescue missions, intelligence collection and the use of special operations forces in possible military action against IS leaders.

The issue of ground forces is likely to prove difficult in the administration’s attempt to win passage of legislation.

While some Republicans favor their use, many Democrats oppose it, mindful of the long and deadly war in Iraq.

The House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California,

PA R K I N G D I S P U T E S PA R K S 3 NORTH CAROLINA KILLINGS A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in North Carolina that encompasses Chapel Hill didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment about whether federal prosecutors were involved or looking into a possible hate crime.

Abdullah Antepli, director of Muslim affairs at nearby Duke University, issued a statement calling for people not to jump to conclusions over the motive for the killings.

At UNC, Barakat was a second-year dental student, and Yusor was scheduled to begin dental studies in the fall.

Chapel Hill police officers investigate the scene of three murders near Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, N.C. A man, his wife and her sister, all college students, were shot to death at a quiet condominium complex near the University of North Carolina, but police had not yet given a motive or released details about the suspect. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Tuesday shooting, Chapel Hill police told local news outlets.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) -- A long-running parking dispute between neighbors motivated a man to kill a woman, her newlywed husband and her sister at a quiet condominium complex near the University of North Carolina campus, police said Wednesday.

Beyond the parking arguments, police didn’t comment further on the motivation or details of the crime, but a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization asked authorities to address speculation much of it on social media - about possible religious bias.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in Tuesday’s shooting of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill; Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill; and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh.

Barakat and Mohammad were married, and Abu-Salha was Mohammad’s sister.

Hicks appeared briefly in court Wednesday. He spoke only to answer that he understood the charges and to confirm an indigency affidavit. District Judge Marcia Morey said he would be appointed a public defender and held without bond. She scheduled a March 4 probable cause hearing.

Police said Hicks was cooperating and that their preliminary investigation showed that the parking dispute was the motive.

But outrage spread among American Muslims who viewed the homicides as an outgrowth of anti-Muslim opinions in the U.S. Many posted social media updates with the Twitter hashtags (hash) MuslimLivesMatter and (hash)CallItTerrorism.

“Based on the brutal nature of this crime ... the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” Nihad Awad, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

In an email, Chapel Hill police Chief Chris Blue said, “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”

Durham district attorney Roger Echols said he couldn’t discuss a motive. Asked whether Hicks could be charged with a hate crime, he said the facts of the case were still under investigation.

Both had graduated from North Carolina State University, school spokesman Mick Kulikowski said. Barakat graduated with a business administration degree in the spring of 2013. Mohammad graduated in December with a biological sciences degree.

Abu-Salha was a sophomore design major who had started classes last fall, Kulikowski said.

Muneeb Mustafa, 23, of Cary, attended the same Raleigh mosque as Barakat.

“He was a completely genuine guy. Loving, caring, friendly, smart,” Mustafa said. “He was an ideal human being. He was a role model.”

Mustafa said they last saw each other about a month ago, playing in a basketball tournament staged by the Muslim Student Association at UNC, Mustafa said. Barakat, his wife of less than two months and his sister were all Muslim, Mustafa said.

Barakat’s family was from Syria, and he was raising money to help refugees of the country’s civil war, Mustafa said. Mohammad traveled to Turkey last summer to help treat dental problems in Syrian refugees in that country, Mustafa said.

The neighborhood where the victims were found - about three miles east of campus - consists mostly of apartments and condominiums rented by students. Residents said they’d never before seen police or had crime problems there.

“It’s a very quiet community,” resident Bethany Boring told WRAL-TV. “It’s a lot of graduate and professional students. You know, professional families.”

Police tape hung near the apartment where the victims were found, but otherwise there was no indication of a crime scene. Outside the victims’ apartment, a woman’s bicycle with a helmet was parked by the stairs.

Shadi Wehbe, a UNC graduate who has lived in the complex since 1999, said that two weeks ago, a woman came to his door about 10 p.m. to ask him to move his car. Some of the parking spots are assigned, and others are open. Wehbe said parking had never been a problem and no one had asked him to move his car before, but he realized he was in the wrong spot and moved his car one place over.

Among the four hostages was Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old humanitarian worker whose death under unknown circumstances was confirmed Tuesday. In addition, the group has urged sympathizers to attacks Western targets.

Obama proposed a three-year time limit on the authorization for the use of force, a schedule that would leave the legislation in force through the first year of his successor’s term in office.

He also proposed no geographic limitations where U.S. forces could pursue the militants. The authorization covers the Islamic State and “associated persons or forces,” defined as those fighting on behalf of or alongside IS “or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

Obama’s resolution would repeal a 2002 authorization for force in Iraq but maintain a 2001 authorization against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. He said in his letter to lawmakers his goal is to refine and ultimately repeal that measure as well.

The silence on the 2001 authorization drew criticism from some Democrats. “It makes little sense to place reasonable boundaries on the executive’s war powers against ISIL while leaving them unchecked elsewhere,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in a statement, using an acronym for the terrorist group.

At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said the ground troop limitation would allow special operations missions, such as potential raids targeting Islamic State leaders and the failed attempt last summer to rescue Mueller and other hostages held by the group.

“It’s impossible to envision every scenario where ground combat troops might be necessary,” Earnest said in the White House’s first interview laying out its case for the resolution.

“The president believes this sort of strikes the right balance of enforcing what he has indicated is our policy, while preserving the ability to make some adjustments as necessary,” Earnest told The Associated Press.

In the past, Obama has said the congressional authorizations that President George W. Bush used to justify military action after the Sept. 11 attacks are sufficient for him to deploy more than 2,700 U.S. troops to train and assist Iraqi security forces and conduct airstrikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.

Obama cast the vote as an important message to America’s allies and enemies. “I can think of no better way for the Congress to join me in supporting our nation’s security than by enacting this legislation, which would show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat” from IS, he wrote to lawmakers.

APPLE SETS US RECORD WI T H M A R KE T VA L U E ABOVE $700 BILLION SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Apple has set a record on Wall Street: It’s the first U.S. company to be worth more than $700 billion based on the value of its stock at the close of trading Tuesday.

That’s almost twice the value of the next biggest company, oil giant Exxon Mobil.

Apple shares rose almost 2 percent Tuesday, closing at $122.02, which gave the company a market value of more than $710 billion.

Apple Inc., which has reported record sales and profit in recent quarters, has crossed the $700 billion line before in the course of daily trading. But Tuesday was the first time any U.S. company finished the day above that line.

Exxon Mobil Corp. saw its shares fall by 0.6 percent Tuesday and closed with a value of about $385 billion.

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The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

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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 t u a r t w o m a n s t i l l i n c r i t i c a l condition after multi-car crash on I-95 Palm Beach Post A 26-year-old Stuart woman remained in critical condition Thursday after she was injured in a multi-car crash that shut down a stretch of Interstate 95 in the Jupiter-Hobe Sound area for more than four hours Wednesday night, the Florida Highway Patro[...]

R o a d r a n g e r t r u c k s h i e l d s w o m a n ’s v e h i c l e i n I - 9 5 s h o u l d e r c r a s h 95 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A road ranger’s truck may have very well saved a woman’s life. The ranger had stopped to help her when she had car trouble on Interstate 95, but then someone slammed into the truck, narrowly missing the ranger and the woman.[...]

D r u n k

d r i v e r h i t s S o u t h i d a R o a d R a n g e r

F l o r-

MIAMI (AP) - The Florida Highway Patrol says a Road Ranger is recovering after he was hit by a drunk driver on Interstate 95. The crash happened Sunday in the northbound lanes of I-95 in Miami.

F H P e x p e c t e d t o r e l e a s e m o r e i n f o a b o u t 6 - v e h i c l e I - 9 5 c r a s h Florida Highway Patrol is expected to release more information Thursday about an Interstate 95 crash that sent three people to the hospital and shut down northbound lanes for four and a half hours Wednesday.[...]

C r a s h w i t h i n j u r i e s s h u t s d o w n I - 9 5 n o r t h b o u n d l a n e s , t r o o p e r s s a y Injuries were reported in a crash that shut down the northbound lanes of Interstate 95 at Broward Boulevard, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Troopers said the crash happened just before 11 p.m. Friday in Broward County. Check: Latest traffic[...]

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

FIRES, J E E P

5

D E AT H S C O N T I N U E A F T E R F U E L T A N K R E C A L L after finding 51 fire-related deaths. That number was later raised to 75.

DETROIT (AP) -- As Kayla White slowed her SUV behind two other cars to exit a suburban Detroit freeway on Veterans Day, it was rammed from behind by a Cadillac STS. Her red 2003 Jeep Liberty bounced off a Nissan in front of it, rolled onto its side and exploded in flames.

But Chrysler resisted, and the company sent data to NHTSA showing that 24 comparable SUVs made by other automakers had higher rates of fire deaths in rear-end crashes. Both sides agreed that Chrysler would recall 1.56 million of the Jeeps. The remaining 1.2 million would get inspections and perhaps no repairs at all.

Other drivers ran to help but were forced back by the heat. Firefighters arrived in just three minutes but were too late. White, a 23-year-old restaurant hostess who was eight months pregnant, died of burns and smoke inhalation.

White is one of more than 70 people killed in fires involving older Jeeps with plastic fuel tanks mounted behind the rear axle.

“This is the recall Chrysler never wanted to do,” says Clarence Ditlow, head of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, whose 2009 petition prompted NHTSA to start its investigation. “The minimum amount that we’ve gotten to date has been dragging, kicking and screaming.”

Fiat Chrysler, which makes Jeeps, recalled 1.56 million of them in June 2013 under pressure from U.S. safety regulators. But only 12 percent of the SUVs have been repaired in the 18 months since the recall, a much slower pace than usual. And White’s Jeep was not among those fixed.

According to a document submitted to regulators in 2012, Chrysler has faced more than 40 lawsuits and legal claims over the Jeeps, settling many out of court. A lawyer in one of the cases even warned NHTSA of the Jeep problem in a 2003 letter, after settling with Chrysler.

Last week, prosecutors charged the Cadillac driver with committing a moving violation that caused a death. But safety advocates and the lawyer for White’s family say the blame belongs as much, if not more, on Chrysler and an auto-industry safety system that moves too slowly to prevent tragedy.

The rear-mounted tanks have little structure to protect them if struck from behind, making them susceptible to punctures and fires. Moving the gas tank in front of the axle would be expensive and difficult. So Chrysler’s remedy involved installing trailer hitches on the rear of the Jeeps as an extra layer of protection.

Government testing showed the hitches protected the tanks in crashes up to 40 mph when stationary Jeeps were hit from behind. But at higher speeds, they wouldn’t help.

White tried to get the repair done a few weeks before her death but was told by a Jeep dealer that parts weren’t available, according to Gerald Thurswell, her family’s lawyer. He wouldn’t identify the dealership, and his contention could not be independently verified by The Associated Press.

Thurswell contends the gas tank ruptured, spilling fuel that touched off the fire.

OHIO BABY HAD INJURIES A L L O V E R B O D Y; GIRL CHARGED This undated family photo provided

by Trina Whitehead shows her infant daughter, Zuri Whitehead. An 11-year-old suburban girl has been charged with murder in the beating death of the 2-month-old, who was staying overnight with her and her mother to give the baby’s mom a break.

CLEVELAND (AP) -- An infant who authorities suspect was killed by an 11-year-old girl died of blunt impact injuries all over her body, a medical examiner said Wednesday in ruling the death a homicide.

Two-month-old Zuri Whitehead was staying with a friend of her mother’s and the friend’s daughter in the Cleveland suburb of Wickliffe when the friend called 911 early Friday to report that the child was unconscious. Zuri died in surgery later that morning.

Trina Whitehead, Zuri’s mother, has described the girl’s mother as her best friend and the 11-year-old as a sweet girl. She said the girl and her mother asked to keep the baby overnight to give her a breather. Whitehead has three other children. She also said that if she had not completely trusted the girl, she would never have allowed Zuri to spend the night there.

Reached by phone Wednesday, the 11-year-old’s mother said she was devastated and added: “My heart is broken, and that’s all I can say.”

The Cuyahoga County medical examiner found that Zuri had injuries to her head, neck, body, arms and legs.

The 11-year-old has been charged with murder and is being held in a juvenile detention center where she awaits a competency evaluation.

The girl’s public defender, David Farren, said Wednesday that he asked for the evaluation.

“It’s being done at my request because I don’t think she understands the nature of the proceedings against her and doesn’t have the ability to assist in her defense,” Farren said.

A court psychologist has talked to the girl’s mother and will be gathering records from the girl’s school and any other agencies that might have information about her, Farren said.

An official from the Lake County children and family services agency said Tuesday that his agency has never had a case concerning the girl and her mother.

The Associated Press is not naming the 11-year-old girl or her mother because of the girl’s age. It is rare in the U.S. for children that young to be involved in committing homicides. FBI statistics show that only 20 children 12 and under were accused of commiting homicides in 2012.

This undated photo provided by the estate of Kayla White shows White’s 2003 Jeep Liberty. White was killed in November 2014 after her SUV was hit from behind by a Cadillac STS, bounced of a Nissan in front of it, rolled onto its left side and burst into flames. The vehicle was part of Chrysler’s June 2013 recall of 1.56 million Jeeps at risk of catching fire when struck from behind.

A Chrysler spokesman expressed sympathy to White’s family but said the company had no written proof that she asked a dealer about the recall.

Two crash reconstruction experts interviewed by the AP say gas wouldn’t have spilled from White’s Jeep if the tank had been mounted in front of the rear axle. Both say a hitch might have prevented the tank from being damaged, but because both vehicles were in motion, neither expert could say for sure.

Jessica Cooper, the prosecutor in suburban Oakland County, says the Cadillac driver, Clarence Heath, wasn’t speeding, meaning he was driving 70 mph or less. One of the other drivers involved in the accident told the AP that the vehicles ahead of Heath were going about 50 mph.

Other Jeep owners have reported difficulties in getting repairs done. Since the recall was announced, more than 840 people complained to the government that Chrysler dealers didn’t have hitches available, according to an AP review of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database.

Some complaints came as recently as December and January.

As of Jan. 14, Chrysler had repaired only 12 percent of the Jeeps - despite two letters from NHTSA demanding faster action. That leaves more than 1.3 million Jeeps still on the road with gas tanks in a vulnerable position.

Chrysler acknowledges that it normally completes 78 percent of repairs in 18 months. The company is offering Jeep owners free oil changes and $150 gift cards for parts and accessories as an incentive to get a hitch. But Chrysler cautions that in recalls such as this, owners can be harder to find because the vehicles are up to 22 years old Reports of Jeep fires started in the late 1990s, but NHTSA didn’t start investigating until more than a decade later, in the summer of 2010. Three years later, the agency sought a recall of 2.7 million older-model Jeep Grand Cherokees and Libertys - some dating back to the 1993 model year -

Thurswell, the White family lawyer, says he plans to sue Chrysler. He says the recall notice from Chrysler gives no sense that “your car could explode and you could be burned to death.”

In the recall notice, Chrysler says there is a chance the fuel tank can leak in certain rear-end collisions. Further, it says, “Fuel leakage in the presence of an ignition source can result in a fire.”

Ditlow says six people, including White, have died since the recall was announced.

For its part, NHTSA says it typically watches complaint data and crash reports to make sure a recall is working. In the Jeep case, the agency has no evidence that the trailer hitches aren’t working, a spokesman says. It has no reports of fires or deaths in Jeeps with the hitches.

When White’s crash happened, she was heading to her evening-shift job at an Italian restaurant. Yan Bai was two cars ahead when White’s Jeep pushed the Nissan into the back of Bai’s SUV. Bai got out and saw the Jeep in flames, and knew someone was trapped inside.

“That was something really horrible to watch,” says Bai, who estimates she was traveling 50 mph or a little less before the crash.

No one else was seriously hurt. Police say Heath, 70, told them he wasn’t paying attention.

Heath had no alcohol in his system and wasn’t texting or distracted by his cellphone, says Cooper, the prosecutor. He faces up to a year in jail. Cooper says White’s “horribly tragic” death was the result of Heath’s careless driving.

But Douglas Hampton, Heath’s attorney, isn’t so sure. He has more investigating to do but will probably argue that White’s death was caused by the vulnerable fuel tank and that Heath shouldn’t be charged with causing her death.

“If it wasn’t for the gas tank, that would be an appropriate charge,” Hampton says.

6

The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

P U B L I C I T Y C O M P L I C AT E S J U RY SELECTION FOR 3 MAJOR US TRIALS Kyle’s memoir or seen the movie, served in the military or were familiar with guns.

DENVER (AP) -- Texas lived up to its reputation for swift justice by taking just three days to seat a jury for the trial of the man charged with killing the former Navy SEAL depicted in “American Sniper.” But jury selection in two other major U.S. cases is taking much longer.

Simply reading Kyle’s book or seeing the movie were not grounds for dismissal. Instead, potential jurors were asked if they could set aside what they had heard.

While opening statements are set for Wednesday in Texas in the killing of veteran Chris Kyle, hundreds of prospective jurors in the Colorado theater shooting begin returning to the courthouse for months of questioning about their views on the death penalty and mental illness. And jury selection in the Boston Marathon bombing has dragged on for more than a month, and not just because of interruptions from snowstorms.

All three cases are complicated by heavy publicity. The Boston and Colorado trials are also problematic because of the large number of people affected by the attacks and because the death penalty is on the table. Only jurors willing to sentence someone to death can be selected for such cases.

“The most difficult prospect for jury selection in high-profile cases is to ascertain which of your pool, despite what they have heard, read and seen, can keep an open mind,” said Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, a jury consultant who worked on big cases such as the O.J. Simpson trial.

A look at the three sensational cases unfolding in courtrooms around the U.S.: COLORADO THEATER SHOOTING About 9,000 prospective jurors were summoned starting Jan. 20 for the trial of James Holmes in what experts say was the biggest jury pool in U.S. history.

During the first phase, thousands filled out 75-question surveys. Hundreds will return for the second phase, which could last 16 weeks, as attorneys individually question just six people per day.

The 12 jurors ultimately picked will decide whether Holmes was insane when he killed 12 people and wounded 70 in a 2012 attack on a suburban Denver theater during a screening of the latest Batman movie. If the jury rejects his insanity claim, it will decide whether he should be executed.

The judge has already dismissed more than 1,000 people who cited various reasons for not being able to serve on the trial, which could run through October.

BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING More than 1,350 prospective jurors were called to federal court in early January to complete a detailed, 28-page questionnaire for the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, accused in the 2013 bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 260. The jury will decide whether Tsarnaev is guilty,

OTHER BIG CASES OVER THE YEARS

Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, an Arapahoe County, Colo., Sheriffs Department deputy escorts Josh Nolan, left, who was shot and injured in the shooting spree in an Aurora, Colo., theatre on July 20, 2012, and other attendees out of the courthouse after they looked on during a pre-trial readiness hearing in Centennial, Colo., in the murder trial of James Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 moviegoers and wounding 70 more in the massacre. Finding unbiased jurors can be difficult in any criminal trial, but jury selection in such high-profile cases such as the Holmes case, the Boston Marathon bombing trial and the trial of the man charged with killing the Navy SEAL depicted in the movie “American Sniper” are especially challenging.

and if so, whether he lives or dies.

The judge began individual questioning Jan. 15. The process has been repeatedly interrupted by huge snowstorms that closed the courthouse and by requests from Tsarnaev’s lawyers that the trial be moved from the city that was so traumatized by the bloodshed.

`AMERICAN SNIPER’ KILLING The Oscar-nominated movie was released weeks before the start of jury selection, raising questions about whether it would be harder to find unbiased jurors. But a jury was seated Monday, a day ahead of schedule, and the judge estimated no more than two dozen people were dismissed because of publicity about the case.

Eddie Ray Routh, a troubled former Marine, is charged with murder, accused of fatally shooting Kyle and another man after they took him to a gun range to help him deal with his problems.

Routh’s attorneys plan to pursue an insanity defense. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

About 800 potential jurors were summoned, more than four times the usual number. The pool was narrowed down during a screening process that took two days. Candidates filled out a questionnaire about whether they had read

- Giving the separatists more autonomy: Ukraine says it may offer them broad rights on the basis of the Ukrainian law, but Russia wants guarantees. Russia also wants Ukraine to end its financial blockade of the east.

European leaders have warned there is no guarantee a deal will be reached with Moscow, which the West says is fueling the insurgency with troops and arms. Germany and France have rushed to mediate after a surge in fighting this year.

MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine flew to the Belarusian capital for crucial peace talks Wednesday as fighting still raged in eastern Ukraine.

The talks, brokered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, aim to negotiate a deal to end hostilities between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists. The conflict has claimed more 5,300 lives since April.

Prior to Wednesday’s talks, Merkel and Hollande visited Kiev and Moscow last week to speak to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The entire world is waiting to see whether the situation moves toward de-escalation, weapons pullback, cease-fire, or ... spins out of control,” Poroshenko said upon arriving in Minsk.

Details of a possible peace deal haven’t been released but key sticking points at the talks include: - Drawing a new line of division: Ukraine wants the same one that was agreed upon in September, while Russia wants a new line that reflects rebels’ significant territorial gains since then.

- Withdrawing Russian troops and equipment from eastern Ukraine: Russia says it does not have any troops and military hardware in the east, a stance scoffed at by Ukraine and NATO. - Securing the Ukraine-Russian border: Ukraine wants to get control back over its border with Russia to stem the flow of Russian fighters and weapons, while Russia says that’s up to the rebels.

IRS APOLOGIZES FOR SEIZING BANK A C C O U N T S O F SMALL BUSINESSES

But the judge said last week that locals have shown themselves capable of being impartial and that “substantial progress” has been made. The judge has not set a date for opening statements.

LEADERS IN MINSK FOR CRUCIAL U K R A I N E P E A C E TA L K S

Members of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) investigate the scene after a bus station was hit during a recent shelling between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government forces in Donetsk, Ukraine, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. This is at least the third time a bus has been hit in the rebel stronghold but the first time it happens so close to the center, an area of the city which has so far been mostly spared the destruction.

By comparison, jury selection in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson lasted about two months in 1994. It took three weeks to empanel a jury in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 1997. There were about two weeks of jury selection in the case of Conrad Murray, the former doctor convicted of killing Michael Jackson in 2011. And seating a jury in the court-martial of Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people in a 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, took just a week.

In the rebel-held city of Donetsk, rebel officials said five people were killed and nine wounded in a shelling attack Wednesday on a bus station, where an Associated Press reporter saw one body.

Officials in Kiev said Wednesday that 19 troops had been killed and 78 wounded in a day of fighting in Debaltseve, a hotly contested transport hub in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko posted a statement saying he had made an impromptu visit to eastern Ukraine early Wednesday, stopping in the city of Kramatorsk, where Kiev says 16 people were killed and 48 wounded in a rocket strike Tuesday. The city is 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the nearest front line.

“We demand an unconditional peace,” Poroshenko said. “We demand a cease-fire, a withdrawal of all foreign troops, and closing of the border.... We will find a compromise within the country.”

Later, in comments carried by Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Poroshenko said he was “ready to impose martial law across the country if we are not able to reach an agreement today in Minsk.”

At a news conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there was “notable progress” in the peace process, but gave no details. He acknowledged that the most important goal of the talks would be to implement a cease-fire, but warned that Ukraine only could fully re-establish its control over the border with Russia after it offers a degree of autonomy to the east and lifts the economic blockade.

“To give away the Russian part of the border also would be to cut them (the rebels) off even from humanitarian help and allow them to be surrounded,” Lavrov said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said early Wednesday that “quite a number of problems remain” in negotiations, including the future of eastern Ukraine, guarantees about the Ukraine-Russia border, and the prospects of a possible cease-fire, weapons pullback and prisoner exchange.

Fabius said the aim of the talks is to win an accord that works on the ground, “not just one on paper.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pressured by Congress, the IRS said Wednesday it is changing its policies and apologizing for seizing banks accounts from otherwise law-abiding business owners simply because they structured bank transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements.

Their alleged crime: Routinely making bank deposits of less than $10,000, which allowed the business owners to avoid reporting requirements designed to catch drug dealers and money launderers.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress Wednesday that the IRS is changing policies to prevent the seizures, as long as the money came from legal means.

“To anyone who is not treated fairly under the code, I apologize,” Koskinen told the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. “Taxpayers have to be comfortable that they will be treated fairly.”

By law, bank transactions above $10,000 must be reported to the IRS. It’s a felony, called “structuring,” to manage transactions to avoid the reporting requirement, even if the money is legally earned.

In some cases, the IRS seized and held bank accounts for years without bringing charges.

Koskinen said he didn’t know how many cases the new policy would affect.

He said the IRS seized a total of 147 accounts last year, including those in which the money was illegally obtained.

“On average over the last several years, it’s less than 200 cases,” Koskinen said. “In 60 percent of those cases, the owner of the asset never shows up, which shows that they obviously had a criminal activity going on.”

The Treasury inspector general for tax administration is launching an audit of the IRS’s seizure program, said Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. It is unclear how long the probe will take.

Roskam said the IRS has too much power to seize assets, even if the agency doesn’t have adequate evidence of a crime.

“The IRS doesn’t have to give notice to the account-holder before seizing the assets. And the IRS doesn’t have to prove that the person is actually guilty of anything - just that the account probably is involved in structuring,” Roskam said.

Georgia gun shop owner Andrew Clyde said he didn’t know about the reporting law when he got an insurance policy that only covered losses up to $10,000 if they happened outside his store in Athens.

Clyde and three other business owners appeared before Roskam’s subcommittee Wednesday to recount how the IRS had seized their bank accounts.

Because of his insurance policy, Clyde said, he didn’t like carrying more than $10,000 in cash between his store and the bank.

As a result, Clyde said, he made 109 transactions between May 2012 and March 2013, totaling $940,313. A month later, he said he was visited by two IRS agents who accused him of structuring those deposits to avoid the reporting law. They said the account had been seized.

“I was never so afraid in my life,” said Clyde,” a former Marine who did three tours in Iraq. “I trembled when they left.”

Clyde said he was never accused of evading taxes or of illegally obtaining the money. Yet, he said, the IRS filed a civil complaint against him and made several offers to settle the case by forcing him to forfeit large portions of his money.

In August, three days before the scheduled start of a civil trial initiated by the IRS, Clyde agreed to forfeit $50,000 in order to get the rest of his money back. Clyde said his legal bills totaled almost $150,000.

“This was my tactical retreat, so I could live to fight another day,” Clyde told the subcommittee. “And that day is today.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

7

YEMEN REBELS SEIZE US VEHICLES A S W E S T E R N E M B A S S I E S C L O S E

SANAA, Yemen (AP) -- The United States, Britain and France moved to close their embassies in Yemen on Wednesday, increasing the isolation of Shiite rebels who have seized power. In a show of bravado against the Americans, the rebels seized the cars of U.S. diplomats left at the airport on the way out.

Hadi and opposed the Houthis, have already evacuated their staff.

In Sanaa, the Houthis patrolled the streets armed with Kalashnikov rifles and dressed in a mix of police uniforms and civilian clothes. They sealed off main boulevards and drove around in pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. Shops closed early and people mostly stayed home.

At the same time, the rebels - known as the Houthis - attacked demonstrators holding protests against their power grab in various parts of the capital, Sanaa, witnesses said. The fighters beat protesters and stabbed them with knives, arrested more than a dozen.

The rebels violently dispersed several scattered anti-Houthi protests, beating the demonstrators and stabbing them with knives as they tried to march toward the U.N. offices, according to witnesses. At least 14 were arrested including four top members of the Sunni Islamist party Islah, a rival to Houthis, the party said.

The increasing turmoil comes almost four years to the day since the start of Yemen’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising that ousted the longtime autocratic ruler but then opened a political transition that crumbled between the country’s grinding forces of tribal politics, sectarian divisions, al-Qaida militancy and succession movements.

The crisis reached a new peak when the Houthis - widely believed to have Iranian support - overran the capital Sanaa late last year. They have since taken over larger parts of the country. In January, the rebels put U.S.-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and all his Cabinet ministers under house arrest, leading to their resignations. Subsequently, the Houthis, who are followers of the Shiite Zaydi sect in the Sunni-majority Yemen, dissolved parliament and declared they were taking over the government.

The embassy closures were a signal that world powers see little chance the rebels’ advances will roll back soon.

On Tuesday, the State Department announced it suspended operations at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa and relocated remaining diplomatic personnel “due to the ongoing political instability and the uncertain security situation.” The embassy had been operating with only a skeleton staff for some weeks amid deteriorating conditions.

More than 25 vehicles abandoned by departing American embassy staffers at Sanaa airport were seized by the rebels, according to airport officials. The rebels also took weapons that were left in the vehicles, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The embassy’s Marine detachment, which escorted the cars, left their personal sidearms behind since they would be unable to take them on the commercial flights they were leaving on, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters in Washington. They destroyed their heavier

The Yemeni officials and witnesses spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

Yemeni protesters shout slogans against Houthi Shiites who have seized power in the capital, Sanaa, as they celebrate the fourth anniversary of the uprising in Taiz, Yemen, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. The United States, Britain and France moved to close their embassies in Yemen on Wednesday, increasing the isolation of Shiite rebels who have seized power.

weapons - automatic weapons and machine guns - before leaving the embassy, he said.

Yemeni officials said Wednesday that embassy staffers also destroyed files before leaving and handed over Sanaa’s Sheraton Hotel, where they resided, to the United Nations.

U.S. officials said the embassy’s closure would not affect counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida’s Yemen branch. Yemeni officials, however, say the move was likely to curtail U.S. military operations in the country. Washington has long considered the Yemeni branch to be the world’s most dangerous offshoot of the global terror group, and it claimed to be behind last month’s attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Also Wednesday, Britain’s Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood urged British citizens still in Yemen to “leave immediately” as his country’s embassy evacuated its staff. The French Embassy said it would close on Friday.

Germany urged its citizens to leave Yemen, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said Wednesday.

The diplomatic missions of many Gulf Arab countries, which backed

S U D A N E S E F O R C E S R A P E 2 2 1 W O M E N , G I R L S I N M A S S AT TA C K have been fighting the government since 2003 across the vast region of western Sudan. More than 300,000 have been killed in the conflict, and more than 400,000 fled their homes last year alone.

Witnesses said some of the armed, uniformed soldiers in the mass rape were stationed at the army base on the outskirts of town.

Army defectors said other troops were from bases near the North Darfur capital of El Fasher and Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

“Multiple victims and witnesses reported that government officials threatened to imprison or kill anyone who spoke out about the attacks,” Human Rights Watch said. Among those making such threats was local commissioner Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdallah Abdelrahman.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Sudanese army troops raped at least 221 women and girls in a Darfur village in a series of organized, house-to-house attacks last year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.

The organization’s Africa director, Daniel Bekele, called it “a new low in the catalog of atrocities in Darfur.”

The incident is at the heart of a recent plunge in relations between Sudan and the international community over a region gripped by violent chaos for more than a decade.

Movement in and out of Tabit is now restricted, with new military checkpoints, and some survivors have said they avoided medical treatment after the rapes because they feared more abuse. “They are still completely vulnerable,” Human Rights Watch researcher Jonathan Loeb told reporters.

The report says the military personnel who ordered, aided or participated in the rapes are responsible for war crimes.

Human Rights Watch is demanding that Sudan allow immedi-

Later Wednesday, thousands of Houthi supporters marched in Sanaa, chanting, “Death to America, Death to Israel” - echoing similar slogans from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Houthis, traditionally based in northern Yemen along the border with Saudi Arabia, deny they are backed by the Shiite powerhouse Iran.

On Tuesday, the rebels’ leader, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, warned critics not to stand in the way of his movement and denounced foreign governments for removing their diplomats.

“Whoever harms the interest of this country could see that their interests in this country are also harmed,” al-Houthi said, speaking on the rebels’ Al-Masirah TV network.

Away from Sanaa, the Houthis pressed on with their power grab after taking control the previous day of the central province of Bayda, a gateway to the south. The Houthis now control 10 out of 22 provinces in Yemen.

The Houthis have also been fighting Yemen’s al-Qaida branch and Sunni tribes allied to it. In addition, the Houthis have yet to take the oil-rich eastern Maarib province, where some tribes are fiercely against the rebels.

Thousands flocked to the streets in Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz, to denounce the rebels. The southwestern city remains out of Houthi control.

The rise of the Houthis began last year when they descended from their heartland in northern Saada province, fighting their way toward the capital and defeating tribal and military rivals along the way. In September, they flooded into Sanaa. They won the backing of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh - who is himself a Shiite Zaydi but who as president fought repeated wars against the Houthis. His loyalists in the military are suspected of enabling the Houthis’ advances.

ate access to the village, that the U.N. Security Council and the peacekeeping force take “concrete steps” to protect civilians in Darfur and that the International Criminal Court investigate. The ICC prosecutor, however, told the council in frustration late last year that she was “hibernating” the existing case against Sudan because she was getting little help from the council and the international community.

The nearest U.N. peacekeeping presence to the village is less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) away. “This is exactly the sort of place the mission should be able to reach,” Human Rights Watch’s Jehanne Henry told reporters Wednesday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said the U.N. welcomes the report but needs direct access to the village, which it has requested repeatedly. Ban was meeting the assistant to Sudan’s president later Wednesday, but it wasn’t known if the mass rape would be discussed.

The new report notes the recent U.N. discussions about shrinking the more than 20,000-strong peacekeeping mission and Sudan’s recent insistence on an “exit strategy,” but it warns that “the withdrawal of peacekeepers could undermine what little protection the mission has afforded the people of Darfur.”

Reports of a mass rape in Tabit in late October quickly surfaced via radio broadcasts by Sudanese overseas. A joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission at first said it found no evidence, but the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict said a heavy Sudanese military presence during its visit likely affected its findings.

The Security Council demanded that Sudan allow a full investigation. Instead, President Omar al-Bashir ordered the U.N. mission’s human rights office to close and has refused to allow the peacekeeping mission to visit the village again.

Sudan’s government says its own investigation found “there had not been a single case of rape.” Russia, a Security Council permanent member, endorsed that finding.

But the new report, based on more than 130 telephone interviews with survivors, witnesses and army defectors, says girls as young as 10 were raped by Sudanese forces, and that some women and girls were assaulted multiple times and in front of their families.

The report says Human Rights Watch “documented 27 separate incidents of rape and obtained credible information about an additional 194 cases.”

One question is why it happened. Witnesses and survivors said army forces ordered dozens of men to the outskirts of the village while soldiers entered homes and accused residents of killing a soldier or helping rebel groups, then raped the women and girls.

The report found no evidence in the village of rebel forces, which

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N C S L A Y I N G S S P A R K M U S L I M O U T C RY, R E N E W C L A I M S O F B I A S attacks, often spiking after terror attacks overseas.

The slayings of three young Muslims near the University of North Carolina tapped a deep well of fear and anger over bias toward American Muslims.

Muslim communities in Georgia, Tennessee, Connecticut and other states have faced intense opposition when they’ve tried to build mosques. Several state legislatures have considered or approved laws banning the use of Islamic law in U.S. courts - measures motivated by fear that Muslims seek to take over the U.S. Last month, after a dispute at nearby Duke University over a plan for a Muslim call to prayer from the chapel bell tower, the campus Muslim center started receiving threats. The prayer call was moved.

The hashtag (hash)MuslimLivesMatter spread widely on Twitter.

When Chapel Hill police said a preliminary investigation indicated a parking dispute had triggered the shootings, several U.S. Muslim leaders said the brutal nature of the crime warranted a hate crime investigation from both federal and local law enforcement. The family of the victims joined the call for a hate-crime inquiry.

“How would we be dealing with this issue if the faith and ethnicity of the victims and perpetrator were switched, if a brown-skinned person went into the room of three white people and shot them?” said Dalia Mogahed, director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think-tank that specializes in Muslim issues. “We’re all just floored by the blatant double standard that we’re seeing in both law enforcement and media coverage of the issue.”

Many Muslims voiced outrage that the killings Wednesday had not drawn more media attention.

The victims were a newlywed couple, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Mohammad’s sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the shootings at the Chapel Hill condominium complex.

The father of the women, Mohammad Abu-Salha, told The News & Observer of Raleigh that Hicks had harassed his daughter and husband a couple of times before, and had a gun in his belt when he spoke with them. Abu-Salha said his daughter Yusor, who lived next door to Hicks, wore a Muslim head scarf and told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.”

“Honest to God, she said, `He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he told the newspaper.

Dustin Barto, editor of Muslim American magazine, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the killings could be both a parking dispute and a hate crime, noting the women victims were easy to identify as Muslim from their head coverings.

A woman places flowers at a makeshift memorial next to murder victim Deah Shaddy Barakat’s car at the Finley Forest condominium complex Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015 in Chapel Hill, NC . Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill, is accused of shooting Barakat, 23, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill; and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, the day before. Hicks is being held in the Durham County jail with no bond.

Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organization based in California, urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to open a federal inquiry into the homicides. “We cannot ignore the environment in which this incident took place,” said Madihha Ahussain of Muslim Advocates.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations made a similar plea. Chapel Hill police Chief Chris Blue said, “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”

The reaction reflects the alarm many American Muslims feel in the face of anti-Muslim prejudice which has persisted since the Sept. 11 terror

A spokeswoman for Walker’s governor’s office referred questions about his position on evolution to his political operation, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One Wisconsin Now, a liberal advocacy group that tracks Walker’s statements, said they had no record of him previously addressing his beliefs on evolution.

Walker, who rose to political fame by effectively ending collective bargaining for most public workers in Wisconsin, and then surviving a subsequent recall election, also defended his record at home and questions about his latest proposal to cut funding for the University of Wisconsin by $300 million during his appearance.

MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- Likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott Walker refused to say Wednesday whether he believes in the theory of evolution, dodging that question and several others about foreign policy after delivering a speech about global trade in London.

“I’m going to punt on that one as well,” said Wisconsin’s Republican governor when asked about evolution at the end of an hour-long appearance at the prestigious Chatham House think tank. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”

Walker, an evangelical Christian and the 47-year-old son of a Baptist preacher, also declined to answer a series of questions about foreign policy, including how the West should combat the Islamic State group, whether the U.S. should arm Ukrainian rebels and whether it’s wise for Great Britain to remain in the European Union.

“I don’t think it’s polite to respond on policy in the United States when you’re in a foreign country,” Walker said when asked about Islamic State. “That’s certainly something I’ll answer in the future.”

The speech marked Walker’s only planned public even during a four-day trade mission to the United Kingdom that wraps up Friday. He’s also met privately with British Prime Minister David Cameron and British treasury chief George Osborne, among other officials.

While Walker’s trip to London is an officially trade mission, it was widely viewed as an opportunity for the second-term governor to bolster his foreign policy experience - among the thinnest areas of his resume heading into an expected 2016 presidential run.

But Walker chose not to answer questions from audience members at the speech, including reporters, that strayed from his domestic policies and thoughts on trade. When giving his answer on evolution, he said, “I’m here to talk about trade and not pontificate on other issues.”

“I love the evolution of trade in Wisconsin and I’d like to see an even bigger evolution as well,” he said.

S U N D AY D E A D L I N E DRIVING HEALTH LAW SIGN-UPS FOR 2015

Muslim groups planned vigils for the victims in North Carolina, New York, Virginia and elsewhere, while others organized a worldwide Quran reading as a memorial.

W I S C O N S I N G O V. WA L K E R R E F U S E S TO ANSWER EVOLUTION QUESTION

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leaves after a meeting with Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne at No 11 Downing Street, the Chancellor’s official residence, in London, England, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. Walker is leading a coalition of Wisconsin government and business officials on a trade mission that runs until Friday.

“If the individual had not been a clearly practicing religious person who could be identified by their religion, would it have gone to that level of violence? That has to come out in a trial.” Investigators, he said, should “evaluate all the potential motives.”

Walker is the latest in a steady stream of potential Republican 2016 hopefuls making trips to London. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was there last week and others, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have all traveled to the United Kingdom in recent months.

Walker’s London trade mission comes after he raised attention during an interview on ABC earlier this month saying that the U.S. had to be prepared “to put boots on the ground if that’s what it takes” in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Pressed on whether that meant putting U.S. troops in Syria, Walker said, “No, I don’t think that is an immediate plan.”

Walker’s lack of overseas experience is a vulnerability already being picked at by one other potential 2016 presidential candidates.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio criticized Walker and other governors considering a 2016 campaign when asked at a conservative summit last month in California about their relative lack of foreign policy experience.

“Taking a trip to some foreign city for two days does not make you Henry Kissinger,” Rubio said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ahead of a Sunday deadline, consumers are stepping up to enroll for 2015 coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care law, administration officials said Wednesday.

The number of people signing up jumped last week, the Health and Human Services department reported. Nearly 276,000 signed up in the 37 states served by the federal insurance marketplace, compared with about 180,000 the previous week.

Although enrollment centers haven’t seen the same long lines as last year, volunteers from Austin, Texas, to Columbus, Ohio, report a surge this week, not yet captured in official numbers. And the revamped HealthCare.gov website so far has avoided last year’s technology meltdown.

Not everything was rosy: -Average monthly premiums rose by an average of 8 percent in the federal market states, according to preliminary data the administration released earlier in the week. Obama’s law provides taxpayer-subsidized private insurance for people who don’t have access to coverage on the job.

That 8-percent increase reflects the “list price” before subsidies. After subsidies, the average monthly premium that consumers themselves pay increased $23 over last year.

It’s “the first official indication of how premiums are going up in plans that people are actually enrolled in,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

-About 200,000 people who could not clear up lingering questions about their immigration and citizenship status will soon lose coverage, officials said Wednesday. That’s on top of more than 100,000 who lost coverage last year for similar reasons.

Coverage is only available to citizens and legal residents, but advocates for immigrants say the process for validating legal status has been riddled with errors.

Higher premiums and immigration debates may be the least of the administration’s worries.

Opponents are taking a case to the Supreme Court next month that challenges the validity of the law’s subsidies in states that have not set up their own insurance markets, which is most of them.

REPUBLICANS PRESS TO FIX SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY PROGRAM

If the court agrees with the plaintiffs, at least 6.5 million people will lose subsidies for their premiums and other costs. Most would drop coverage.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans are giving a White House plan to shift money from Social Security’s retirement funds to cover a looming shortfall in its disability account a chilly reception.

All told, the administration seems to be on track to meeting its target of 9.1 million people signed up nationwide by Sunday, the day the open-enrollment period ends.

But acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin defended the proposal on Wednesday at a Senate Budget Committee hearing.

The proposal would shift $330 billion from retirement accounts over the next five years. The shift would stave off an estimated 19 percent cut in benefits should the program become insolvent next year.

That target represents customers who seal the deal by paying their premiums. Last year more than 8 million people initially signed up, but many did not follow through with their payments. By fall, enrollment had dwindled to 6.7 million.

Republicans say the move would shorten the solvency of the retirement program. They’re pressing for a longer-lasting solution, though they hesitated to suggest what benefit cuts or tax increases would be required to stabilize the program.

Wednesday’s enrollment report showed 7.75 million people had signed up in the states served by federal HealthCare.gov as of Feb. 6. That’s not counting states that run their own insurance markets, among them California and New York.

The 2015 sign-up deadline is 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Pacific time, in most states. States running their own markets may have different deadlines.

Federal marketplace consumers who try to sign up, but aren’t able to complete the process before the deadline, will get another chance to do so. That covers anyone in line by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday.

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L E T H A C K E R S I N : E X P E R T S S AY T R A P S M I G H T B E B E T T E R T H A N WA L L S The hackers who targeted Anthem, the second biggest U.S. health insurer, and accessed personal information of 80 million customers, may have been inside its system for more than a month before being detected, according to the company.

In the famous Sony Pictures hack, the attackers who breached the Hollywood studio’s network went unnoticed until computers were paralyzed and a mountain of data was dumped on the Internet.

The amount of data copied and removed from Sony’s systems should have set off internal alarms long before Sony workers found their PCs taken over by malware, said Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope, a network security company based in Alpharetta, Georgia.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Ever since the Internet blossomed in the 1990s, cybersecurity was built on the idea that computers could be protected by a digital quarantine. Now, as hackers routinely overwhelm such defenses, experts say cybersecurity is beyond due an overhaul.

Their message: Neutralize attackers once they’re inside networks rather than fixating on trying to keep them out.

First they need to convince a conservative business world to gamble on a different approach. And having sold generations of defensive systems that consistently lagged the capabilities of the most advanced hackers, the industry itself must overcome skepticism it’s flogging another illusion of security.

The cybersecurity industry characterizes such long-term intrusions as advanced persistent threats or APT. They are often sponsored by states and target valuable commercial and military information.

In South Korea, where government agencies and businesses have come under repeated attacks from hackers traced by Seoul to North Korea, several security firms have jumped on the growing global trend to develop systems that analyze activity to detect potentially suspicious patterns rather than scanning for known threats.

Kwon Seok-chul, CEO at computer security firm Cuvepia Inc., said it has been tough to convince executives that it’s more effective to catch bad guys after they’ve infiltrated a network instead of trying to keep them out, which he believes is impossible anyway.

According to U.S. cybersecurity company FireEye, 229 days is the median length of time attackers lurk inside their victim’s computers before being detected or revealing themselves, underscoring the weakness of conventional tools in identifying sophisticated intruders.

Kwon said his company’s latest monitoring product keeps a log of all activity, dividing it into authorized users and possible attackers.

When certain conditions are met, the program sounds an alarm. A response team, he said, can sit back and watch what hackers copy and respond before damage is done. The security team can cut the hacker’s connection or trick the intruder into stealing empty files.

The traditional defenses must “have a description of the bad guys before they can help you find them,” said Dave Merkel, chief technology officer at FireEye Inc. “That’s just old and outmoded. And just doesn’t work anymore,” he said.

“Because hackers are in your palm, you can enforce any measures that you want,” said Kwon, member of an advisory board for South Korea’s cyberwarfare command.

“There’s no way to guarantee that you never are the victim of cyberattack.”

In one case, the security team at one of Kwon’s clients “enjoyed” watching for about an hour as a hacker scanned its network and installed tools to unlock passwords and counter antivirus programs.

Merkel said in the worst case he knows of, attackers hid themselves for years.

Experts aren’t recommending organizations stop deploying perimeter defenses such as antivirus software or firewalls that weed out vanilla threats. But they say a strategy that could be likened to laying traps is needed to counter the sophisticated hacks that can cause huge losses.

He said that for skilled hackers, it usually takes about 20 minutes to lay out the initial steps of the attack that allow them to stealthily roam a network. Normally the security team would counterattack within a few minutes after gathering intelligence about the hacker’s tools. But in this case, the hacker was not sophisticated and employed well-known programs mostly made in China.

The weakness of relying on a firewall is that it’s like building a fence around a housing complex but not hiring a guard to patrol the interior streets, said Ed Amoroso, chief security officer at AT&T.

Eventually, the security team severed the hacker’s connection to the victim’s computer based on the unique ID of the program that Cuvepia’s software showed the hacker was using.

S T R A U S S - K A H N P I M P I N G T R I A L BEGETS SOME RAUNCHY TESTIMONY

Protecting high value information often comes with a high price tag.

Installing Cuvepia’s cheapest monitoring product on 1,000 computers for a year costs 450 million won ($410,000). That is many times the cost of installing antivirus software though the cost drops significantly after the first year.

The answer for executives, said Kwon, is to see cybersecurity as an investment not a cost.

JUDGE SIDES WITH GOVERNMENT IN L AW S U I T O V E R S U R V E I L L A N C E

telephone records in the hunt for potential terrorists.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday sided with the government in a lawsuit alleging the National Security Agency is illegally engaging in the bulk collection of Internet and

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland said the plaintiffs in the case - AT&T customers - had not shown that all AT&T customers’ Internet communications were currently the subject of a “dragnet seizure and search program, controlled by or at the direction of the Government,” and they therefore did not have standing to file a lawsuit under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against warrantless searches and seizures.

Additionally, even if the plaintiffs had standing, White said a Fourth Amendment claim would have to be dismissed to protect secret information that would damage national security if released. He granted partial summary judgment for the government.

--Strauss-Kahn, in response to questioning about why he didn’t suspect the women he spontaneously had sex with in a restaurant basement were prostitutes.

“I had a very hectic life, with just a few outlets for recreation, and these sessions were part of that.”

--Strauss-Kahn, explaining how the function of IMF chief limited his occasions for sex parties.

“People say that at these soirees, the girls were gifts, but in fact at these parties the gift was Dominique Strauss-Kahn.”

The trial is scheduled to run until Feb. 20. While much of the courtroom testimony is raunchy, here is a toned-down selection of some of the attention-grabbing testimony made so far:

“That’s certainly what some people think, and I believe the IMF saved the world from a crisis that could have been as bad as that of 1929.”

“It was a slaughterhouse. They were lying on the mattress in all directions. It was a rather degrading scene. I didn’t know whether these people had showered. I didn’t want any part of it.”

--Strauss-Kahn, responding to a judge’s description of him as “once one of the world’s most powerful people.”

“That’s him, but with his clothes on.”

When encryption is used, South Korean courts have limited the liability of companies that faced lawsuits from customers over stolen data, said Hwang Weoncheol, a former chief information security officer at a South Korean financial institution. That reinforces the security strategy centered on compliance with regulation, he said.

“We met 12 times in four years. It wasn’t the frenetic, unbridled activity that the investigating magistrates’ report makes out. At the time, I mention without pretension, I had other things to do.”

Strauss-Kahn pleads innocence, saying he had no way of knowing the women who took part in his orgies at luxury hotels in Paris, Brussels and Washington, weren’t freely consenting libertines like himself, but in fact prostitutes paid for by some of his 13 co-defendants in the case.

--Ex-prostitute known as “Jade,” testifying about a 2009 orgy with Strauss-Kahn at a Belgian sex club.

In the financial industry at least, part of the reason is greater concern with meeting regulatory requirements for security than improving security itself.

White said the plaintiffs’ understanding of the key parts of the data collection process was “substantially inaccurate.”

“What can I say? It’s nothing to be proud of, but there have been 10 times that I’ve found myself in a situation where a woman threw herself at me.”

PARIS (AP) -- Half-way through his three-week trial for aggravated pimping, ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been forced under days of judicial questioning to explicitly detail his history of, in his own words, “libertine” sexual practices.

But many companies are in denial about their vulnerability or are reluctant to spend more on cybersecurity, he said.

--Ex-prostitute known as “Jade,” testifying about how she only realized Strauss-Kahn’s identity after she saw him on television sometime after one of his orgies.

--Strauss-Kahn, in response to questioning over the frequency of his orgies during the period in which he is accused of organizing a prostitution ring.

Former International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaves his hotel in Lille, northern France, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015 as he goes on trial for sex charges at a court. Strauss-Kahn sat nonchalantly with folded-arms and stretched legs Tuesday, before telling a French court he was completely unaware that women who participated in orgies at luxury hotels in Paris and Washington were prostitutes.

According to FireEye’s Merkel, there is a rise in awareness in the U.S. and growing interest in Asia in modern approaches to information security that include using automated programs to scan for unusual network activity, encryption and segregating sensitive data in special “domains” that require additional credentials to access.

--Co-defendant Fabrice Paszkowski, testifying about the organization of Strauss-Kahn’s orgies.

“I dare you to distinguish between a prostitute and a naked socialite.”

--Strauss-Kahn lawyer Henri Leclerc, explaining the difficulty Strauss-Kahn had in identifying his sex partners as prostitutes.

“The Court is frustrated by the prospect of deciding the current motions without full public disclosure of the Court’s analysis and reasoning...,” White wrote in his ruling. “The Court is persuaded that its decision is correct both legally and factually and furthermore is required by the interests of national security.”

The judge did not dismiss all of the claims in the suit, said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which brought the suit in 2008.

Still, he said the judge’s ruling was disappointing.

“What we want is a court to rule on the merits of the NSA’s program,” he said. “Is what they are doing legal? Is it constitutional? The court didn’t do that. It didn’t say `yes’ or `no.’”

The foundation plans to continue fighting the case, Cardozo said.

Cardozo said other pending lawsuits are challenging the government’s collection of telephone metadata such as the duration of a call and to whom it was placed.

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

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A S 2 0 1 6 C A M P A I G N B E G I N S , B I D E N I S N ’ T PA R T O F D E M O C R AT I C M I X

On Thursday, Biden will head to Iowa on an official White House trip highlighting Obama’s community college proposal. But while such a visit might normally stir speculation, former Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said the only evidence of Democrats organizing in Iowa has come from former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- By this time eight years ago, Joe Biden had declared his candidacy for president, launched a website, committed and cleaned up after his first campaign gaffe - a set of comments about thenSen. Barack Obama that rubbed some the wrong way.

This time around, even while saying it’s possible he’ll run again, Biden’s name isn’t really in the 2016 mix.

“Not a whisper from Veep,” she said in an email to The Associated Press.

As Hillary Rodham Clinton builds an elaborate campaign-in-waiting, and a few other Democrats nibble around the edges, there are few signs the vice president is taking steps toward mounting a third bid for the top job at the White House.

Biden’s aides and longtime political advisers say he isn’t organizing in early voting states such as New Hampshire and Iowa, although he’ll visit Des Moines on Thursday. He has yet to form an exploratory committee or other apparatus that could rapidly scale up to become a campaign.

Although he stays in close touch with former political aides, no staff has been lined up to take on key roles in a potential bid. Nor are any Democrats in the early voting states organizing a “Draft Joe” movement - the pining of those who aren’t ready for Hillary is reserved for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“There’s a chance, but I haven’t made my mind up about that,” Biden said in a recent appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding that “there’s plenty of time.”

Biden has told associates he feels little pressure or political necessity for a quick decision, according to Biden’s advisers, who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his deliberations publicly. That’s in part because Clinton, who had been expected to announce her candidacy in the spring, is now expected to delay her own launch until the summer. Biden plans to hold off on making a decision for as long as possible, concerned that a campaign launch will undermine the administration’s work by hastening Obama’s lame-duck status.

“He’s hamstrung. He’s limited in what he can do without hurting the president,” said Dick Harpootlian, a Biden supporter and former chair-

If he does run, Biden is likely to turn to the same cadre of advisers who have guided his career for decades, his advisers said, including Larry Rasky, a veteran of both of Biden’s previous presidential campaigns.

Biden’s former personal aide Michael Schrum, who now works in his public engagement office, has been an intermediary in early primary states with supporters and operatives seeking to stay in the loop.

In this image made from video posted by a Libyan blogger, the Cortinthia Hotel is seen under attack in Tripoli, Libya, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. Gunmen stormed the luxury hotel in the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Tuesday, killing several foreigners and guards, officials said. The attack, which included a car bombing, struck the hotel, which sits along the Mediterranean Sea. The blogger, @AliTweel, captured the moments shortly after the blast, when flames rose up from outside the hotel, appearing to be from the aftermath of the car bomb.

man of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “It’s a difficult balancing act.”

Biden isn’t the only Democrat waiting to make a possible White House campaign official. So far, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is the only Democrat to have taken formal steps toward a run.

Yet other likely candidates are quietly moving ahead, putting the sitting vice president at a potentially significant disadvantage if he does run.

Many of the party’s top political minds, as well as major donors, are being snapped up by Clinton’s future campaign, including many Obama loyalists who helped twice elect the Obama-Biden ticket. In recent weeks Obama’s senior counselor John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, pollster Joel Benenson and media strategist Jim Margolis have all indicated they plan to work for Clinton.

C O S TA C O N C O R D I A C A P TA I N G E T S 1 6 Y E A R S I N P R I S O N The reef gashed the hull, seawater rushed in and the Concordia listed badly, finally ending up on its side outside Giglio’s port.

Autopsies determined that victims drowned aboard ship or in the sea after either falling or jumping off the ship during a chaotic, delayed evacuation.

Schettino contended that no one died because of the collision, but because of problems beyond his control. Those factors included a helmsman who botched Schettino’s orders immediately before and after the collision, and crew members who weren’t fluent in English or in Italian, the working language of the ship.

Francesco Schettino arrives to attend his trial at the Grosseto court, Italy, Wednesday, Feb.11, 2015. Whatever verdict is delivered in the trial of the Italian sea captain for the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner and for the deaths of 32 people, survivors and victims’ families already are wondering if justice will be done. The trial, expected to bring a verdict this week, has a sole defendant. Francesco Schettino is accused of causing the shipwreck on the night of Jan. 13, 2012, when he steered too close to a tiny Tuscan island, smashing into a granite reef that sliced open the hull, sending seawater rushing in.

GROSSETO, Italy (AP) -- The captain of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship was convicted and sentenced Wednesday to 16 years and one month in prison for multiple counts of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship in the 2012 disaster that killed 32 people.

The sentence handed Francesco Schettino was significantly less than the 26 years and 3 months requested by prosecutors, who insisted that the Concordia’s captain was a `’reckless idiot.”

The three-judge panel handed down 10 years for multiple counts of manslaughter, five years for causing the Jan. 13, 2012, shipwreck, one year for abandoning the ship while many of the luxury liner’s 4,200 passengers and crew were still onboard. He also was sentenced to one month under arrest for false communications to maritime authorities.

Schettino wasn’t present when Judge Giovanni Puliatti read out the verdict Wednesday night in a Grosseto theater, as is his right under Italian law. The former captain told the court earlier he was being “sacrificed” to safeguard the economic interests of his employer and broke down in sobs immediately before the panel began deliberating.

Schettino said he was “a few hours from a verdict that should have involved an entire organization and instead sees me as the only defendant.”

An emergency generator failed after the crash, and water-tight compartment doors also didn’t work properly. Survivors also said they weren’t given emergency drills after they started what was supposed to be a weeklong Mediterranean cruise.

The three-judge panel took about eight hours to deliberate. Then it took more than a half-hour to read out all the names, one by one, of the survivors and dead, upon whose behalf civil suits were filed for damages from Costa Crociere Spa. The total of all damages and court costs of the lawyers who brought the suits, was not immediate available. But most awards totaled tens of thousands of euros (dollars), far more than the 11,000 euros Costa paid to survivors who declined to press civil suits.

While insisting Schettino deserves conviction and a stiff prison sentence, the plaintiffs’ lawyers had lamented to the court that no one from the cruise company’s upper echelons was put on trial.

Four Concordia crew members and Costa’s land-based crisis coordinator were allowed to plea bargain. None is serving prison time.

Costa Crociere’s lawyer at the trial rejected the assertion that the company bore any blame in the shipwreck.

Cruise travel has been a growing part of tourism, one of Italy’s main industries. Costa Crociere SpA has been a big customer of an Italian state-controlled shipbuilder.

In a last appeal to the court, defense lawyer Domenico Pepe contended the shipwreck was an “accident...and successive events led to the deaths of these poor people.”

He expressed the hope that “this trial will serve for something, at least to save lives” on future cruises because of lessons learned.

`’My head was sacrificed to serve economic interests,” the 54-yearold Neapolitan seaman said, unable to finish his statement to the three-judge panel.

The court rejected prosecutors’ request that Schettino be immediately arrested. In Italy, defendants have two levels of appeals and sentences don’t begin being served until those appeals are exhausted.

Testimony at the trial put the spotlight on errors by other crew and equipment malfunctions after the Concordia smashed into a jagged reef when Schettino steered the ship close to the island of Giglio while passengers were having supper.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

That Biden would start as the underdog, after eight years as vice president, underscores his dilemma deciding whether to take on Clinton.

While polls this early in the race have little value, they still show Clinton with a commanding lead over the rest of the Democratic field.

Although Warren has repeatedly said she’s not running, she’s nevertheless eclipsed Biden as the preferred candidate of the party’s liberal wing. On Sunday, the New York-based Working Families Party became the latest progressive group to try to draft Warren into the race.

As the economy has gained strength, Obama’s popularity has started to rise, potentially giving Biden a powerful economic message on which to run.

BOEHNER CHALLENGES SENATE DEMOCRATS TO ‘GET OFF THEIR ASS’ Francesco Schettino arrives to attend his trial at the Grosseto court, Italy, Wednesday, Feb.11, 2015. Whatever verdict is delivered in the trial of the Italian sea captain for the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner and for the deaths of 32 people, survivors and victims’ families already are wondering if justice will be done. The trial, expected to bring a verdict this week, has a sole defendant. Francesco Schettino is accused of causing the shipwreck on the night of Jan. 13, 2012, when he steered too close to a tiny Tuscan island, smashing into a granite reef that sliced open the hull, sending seawater rushing in.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Speaker John Boehner challenged Senate Democrats Wednesday to “get off their ass” and pass a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department and restrict President Barack Obama’s executive moves on immigration.

His comments seemed unlikely to change Senate Democrats’ behavior. But they underscored a worsening stalemate on Capitol Hill with funding for the Homeland Security Department set to expire Feb. 27. A day earlier, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the Senate “stuck” on the issue and said the next move was in the House’s court.

Boehner rejected that, insisting the House has already done its job. He said Senate Democrats are at fault for blocking a House-passed bill that funds the department through the remainder of the budget year while also overturning Obama’s policies limiting deportations for millions here illegally.

Democrats oppose the immigration language.

“The House has done its job, why don’t you go ask the Senate Democrats when they’re going to get off their ass and do something other than to vote no?” Boehner told reporters after meeting with GOP lawmakers. “The issue here is not Senate Republicans. The issue here is Senate Democrats.”

In response, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid chided Boehner that “cursing is not going to resolve the squabbling among Republicans that led to this impasse.”

“Democrats have been clear from day one about the way out of this mess: take up the clean Homeland Security funding bill which Republicans signed off on in December - and which is ready to come to the Senate floor - pass it, and move on,” said Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson.

It’s not clear how the impasse will be resolved since Republicans in both chambers insist they have no plans for further action. The likeliest outcome may be a short-term extension of current funding levels for the Department of Homeland Security, something agency leaders say would jeopardize their ability to make needed changes at the Secret Service, Border Patrol and other agencies.

The issue has emerged with Republicans in their second month of full congressional control after four years of holding the majority in the House but not the Senate. House Republicans have been frustrated to discover that because of Senate rules giving significant rights to the minority party, not much has changed and they still can’t get their bills through the Senate.

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The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

11

BOKO HARAM KIDNAPS HUNDREDS, TELLS STORIES OF CHIBOK GIRLS

YOLA, Nigeria (AP) -- When Islamic extremists snatched more than 270 girls from the Chibok boarding school in Nigeria in the dead of night, protests broke out worldwide. The U.S. pledged to help find them, and the (hash)BringBackOurGirls hashtag was born.

The fighters said the Chibok girls were all Muslims now, and some were training as fighters to fight women, which Boko Haram men are not supposed to do.

Some 10 months later, most are still missing. The Boko Haram extremist group sees the mass kidnapping as a shining symbol of success, and has abducted hundreds of other girls, boys and women. The militants brag to their new captives about the surrender of the Chibok girls, their conversion to Islam and their marriage to fighters.

Aiden’s captors boasted about how they had married off the Chibok girls, she says. One fighter said he would marry her. She balked.

“They told me the Chibok girls have a new life where they learn to fight,” says Abigail John, 15, who was held by Boko Haram for more than four weeks before escaping. “They said we should be like them and accept Islam.”

Aiden says the insurgents threatened to break the legs of any girl who tried to escape, but she and six others ran anyway. As she made her way through abandoned farm fields, she noticed that Boko Haram had filled about 10 other houses with kidnapped girls and women.

The kidnappings reflect the growing ambition and brazenness of Boko Haram, which seeks to impose an Islamic state across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Some 10,000 people have died in the Islamic uprising over the past year, compared to 2,000 in the previous four years, according to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.

“It’s devastating,” said Bukky Shonibare, an activist in Abuja, of the kidnappings. “It makes you wonder, what is being done?”

John was among three girls interviewed by The Associated Press who recently escaped from Boko Haram. While their stories could not be independently verified, they were strikingly similar, and all spoke of their captors’ obsession with the Chibok girls.

The girls had no idea whether the militants were telling the truth or making up stories to taunt their victims. John says the fighters enjoyed relating how they had whipped and slapped the Chibok girls until they submitted.

When the Nigerian air force dropped a bomb on the house where John was confined, she tried to escape, she says. She wrestled with the fighters, but they broke her am and hauled her off to another house.

At the end of last year, the Nigerian army liberated the town where she was held. She is now in Yola with her father, sister and six brothers, in a house overcrowded with refugees. She finally was able to get medical attention for her fractured right arm, which remains in a cast.

The kidnappings of the Chibok girls in April brought Boko Haram to the world’s attention in a way the group could not have imagined. The hashtag (hash)BringBackOurGirls was tweeted more than 480,000 times globally in early May, and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama held it up in a sign to television cameras. She said at the time, “In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters ...we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now.”

On Wednesday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan again promised the girls will be brought home alive, saying he is “more hopeful” about their

“I said, `No, I will not marry you,’” Aiden recounts. “So he pulled out a gun and beat my hand.”

In this photo taken Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Dorcas Aiden, 20 years old , speaks to a journalist in Yola, Nigeria. Dorcas Aiden was another of the girls caught in Boko Haram’s siege. She had finished high school and was living at home when the war came to her village. Fighters took her to a house in the town of Gulak and held her captive for two weeks last September. The more than 50 teenage girls crammed into the house were beaten if they refused to study Quranic verses or conduct daily Muslim prayers, she says. When the fighters got angry, they shot their guns in the air. Aiden finally gave in and denied her Christian faith to become Muslim, at least in name, she says.

fate now that a multinational force is being formed to fight Boko Haram.

“Give us some time over the Chibok girls. The story will be better in a few weeks,” Jonathan promised, as he has many times in the past, on a nationally televised program.

In the 10 months since the mass kidnapping, Boko Haram has increased the tempo and ferocity of its insurgency. In August, it began seizing and holding towns, and - copying the Islamic State group - declared it would recreate an ancient Islamic caliphate in the region. The fighting has since spilled across Nigeria’s borders, and the African Union this month authorized a multinational force of 8,750 troops to try to stamp it out.

Dorcas Aiden, 20, was another of those caught in Boko Haram’s siege.

She had finished high school and was living at home when the war came to her village. Fighters took her to a house in the town of Gulak and held her captive for two weeks last September.

The more than 50 teenage girls crammed into the house were beaten if they refused to study Quranic verses or conduct daily Muslim prayers, she says. When the fighters got angry, they shot their guns in the air. Aiden finally gave in and denied her Christian faith to become Muslim, at least in name, she says.

One day, the fighters stormed into the room where she was kept locked up with a dozen other girls. They showed a video of the Chibok girls, dressed in hijabs, with only their faces visible through their veils. Aiden says she was so overwhelmed that she cried.

OBAMA TO CREATE NEW AGENCY T O E X A M I N E C Y B E R T H R E A T S U.S. intelligence officials have been warning about the dangers of cyberattacks for years, and the public is starting to pay close attention.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans in a new Associated PressGfK poll conducted Jan. 29-Feb 2 think there is an extremely or somewhat high risk of a foreign country or terrorist group making a major cyberattack on computer systems inside of the United States. That is more than the 50 percent who say the risk of a terrorist attack is somewhat or extremely high.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is setting up a new agency designed to coordinate cyberthreat intelligence that currently is spread across the federal government.

The agency will be modeled after the National Counter Terrorism Center, which was established after 9/11 to coordinate terrorism intelligence. The lack of such an agency before led to missed opportunities to thwart the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, announced the new “Cyber Threats Intelligence Integration Center” in a speech Tuesday at the Wilson Center in Washington.

U.S. companies have been buffeted by a series of damaging cyber incidents in recent years - some from nation states, others from criminal groups. Government expertise in analyzing the various cyberthreats resides in a number of agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel has concluded that cyberintelligence at the moment is bedeviled by the same shortcomings that afflicted terrorism intelligence before 9/11 - bureaucracy, competing interests, and no streamlined way to combine analysis from various agencies, the official said.

The hack on Sony’s movie subsidiary, for example, resulted in a variety of different analytical papers from various agencies.

Each one pointed to North Korea, but with varying degrees of confidence.

Unlike the National Counter Terrorism Center, which gets most of its information from intelligence agencies, the new cyberagency may rely to a much larger extent on private companies, which are regularly seeing and gathering cyberintelligence as they are hit with attempts by hackers to break into their networks.

Gathering threat signatures, and profiling hacker groups, has become a key component of collecting cyberintelligence - a discipline practiced both by government agencies and private firms.

On the other hand, fewer Americans say the risks posed by computer hackers are important to them personally (57 percent) than say the same of terrorism (71 percent).

Just over half of Americans, or 51 percent approve of the way Obama is handling threats posed by computer hackers, the survey found.

Aiden, who is now in Yola with tens of thousands of other refugees, dreams of going to university, in defiance of the extremists’ insistence that girls should be married, not educated. The nickname Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden or sinful.”

Another escapee, a shy 16-year-old captured in September, begs that her name not be published because she escaped only a few weeks ago and believes the fighters are actively searching for her. After the girl’s village was attacked four times, she fled to a great-aunt. Then that village also was targeted, she says.

The fighters held her for four months. When she escaped, she walked through the bush and across the border into Cameroon to avoid areas under Boko Haram’s control. She is now taking refuge in a Catholic church in Yola.

All the girls say they were not raped, despite the fears of some villagers.

Instead, the fighters said they wanted the girls to remain virgins until they were married off.

“They said they are doing the work of God, so they will not touch us,” the 16-year-old recounts.

As she tells her story, she fidgets and looks down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She recounts how one fighter, nicknamed “Tall Arab,” was set on marrying her. She pleaded that she was too young, but was told, “Do you think you are better than those Chibok girls that we kidnapped?”

The man told her the Chibok girls were “enjoying their matrimonial homes,” she remembers. He also said the Chibok girls had turned against their parents, and were “ready to slit their parents’ throats” if they ever saw them again.

Some never will. Even if the girls are released, people in Chibok say at least 13 of their parents have died since they were seized, in Boko Haram violence or possibly stress-related illness.

While dozens of Chibok girls escaped on their own after their kidnapping, 219 are still missing. Nigeria’s military initially feared any action could lead to the girls being killed. But villagers reported last week that air force jets have begun bombing the Sambisa Forest - the area where fighters told Aiden some girls still are held captive.

MILK ALLERGY? WATCH THE DARK CHOCOLATE Japanese plum chocolates made of dark chocolate ganache with plum wine are prepared in New York. Does your sweetheart have a milk allergy? You may want to hold off on a dark chocolate Valentine. Although dark chocolate generally isn’t made with milk, a new Food and Drug Administration study released Wednesday shows that there are traces of milk in some of the candies. The agency found that 55 of 93 bars of dark chocolate “without any clear indication of the presence of milk” on their labels contained some level of milk. The agency also found that two out of 17 dark chocolate bars that were labeled “dairy free or allergen-free” contained milk.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Does your sweetheart have a milk allergy? You may want to hold off on a dark chocolate Valentine.

Although dark chocolate generally isn’t made with milk, a new Food and Drug Administration study released Wednesday shows that there are traces of milk in some of the candies.

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The agency found that 55 of 93 bars of dark chocolate “without any clear indication of the presence of milk” on their labels contained some level of milk. The agency also found that 2 out of 17 dark chocolate bars that were labeled “dairy free or allergen-free” contained milk.

“This can be a problem, since even one small bite of a product containing milk can cause a dangerous reaction in some individuals,” says FDA researcher Binaifer Bedford.

The agency would not say what brands of bars tested positive for milk.

Milk is one of several allergens required to be labeled on food packages.

The agency tested dark chocolate after hearing from consumers who said they had eaten it and experienced harmful reactions.

The FDA said milk can inadvertently end up in dark chocolate if it is manufactured on the same equipment that makes milk chocolate.

The bars tested were purchased from different parts of the country and from several different manufacturers.

When it comes to allergens, labels can be confusing. Some foods are labeled that they “may contain traces of milk,” but a consumer doesn’t know how much milk that is, or whether it’s enough to cause a reaction.

The FDA said the dark chocolate study showed that 6 out of 11 tested products that were labeled as containing traces of milk “contained milk at detectable levels high enough to potentially cause severe reactions in some individuals.”

The FDA says concerned consumers should contact food manufacturers to find out how they control for alle

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The Weekly News Digest, Feb 16 thru Feb 20, 2015

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S U R V I VA L F O R S O M E E N D A N G E R E D SPECIES HINGES ON ‘FROZEN ZOO’

ESCONDIDO, Calif. (AP) -- Whenever an endangered animal dies at the San Diego Zoo, researchers race out, regardless of the hour, to remove its sperm or eggs, maybe a bit of ear or eyeball, and carefully freeze the cells in liquid nitrogen.

endangered species or possibly recently extinct species, said Barbara Durrant, director of reproductive physiology at The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, which houses the Frozen Zoo.

Today, the survival of the northern white rhinoceros and dozens of other species could hinge on the collection amassed over nearly 40 years that has become the largest gene bank of its kind: The Frozen Zoo.

“We’re not so much interested in bringing back dinosaurs or mammoths,” she said. “There’s really no place for them now.”

The Frozen Zoo holds the cell cultures from 12 northern white rhinos - more than the living population: “There have been other species that have come back from numbers that small so we think there is good reason we can do this with the northern white rhino,” she said.

The icy vials may someday even be used in experiments to resurrect recently extinct animals, like the Hawaiian Po’ouli bird. The stainless steel tanks hold the genetic material of more than 10,000 individual animals from more than 1,000 species and subspecies.

The Frozen Zoo’s work has taken on renewed urgency since the San Diego Safari Park lost 42-year-old Angalifu to cancer in December, leaving only five northern white rhinos left in the world - and all unable to reproduce.

Scientists are racing against the clock to find the best way to utilize the bank’s frozen sperm to produce another one before the northern white goes extinct, which could happen within a decade.

Nola, a 40-year-old northern white rhino who is only one of five remaining of the species, wanders around her enclosure at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park on a cold winter day in Escondido, Calf. The survival of the northern white rhinoceros and dozens of other species could hinge on the Frozen Zoo, whose collection amassed over nearly 40 years has become the largest gene bank of its kind

said.

Critics question whether it’s worth speanding millions of dollars on species that are down to so few.

With species going extinct at a faster rate, zoos are taking on greater conservation roles and facing deciding which animals are worth focusing efforts on saving. Some may be extinct by the time another one is reproduced and possibly never live in the wild.

The bank is valued as a genetic archive that has helped advance artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, cloning and stem cell technology. But debate is stirring over how far such research should go.

The northern white’s natural habitat is in war-torn countries like Sudan and Congo, which have been unable to stop poachers. The horn is coveted in Asia as an aphrodisiac, creating a market that threatens all rhino species.

“The frozen zoo is basically re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Paul Ehrlich, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

There’s also the hurdle of producing enough offspring to avoid inbreeding.

He noted the world needs to address the problem’s root causes, such as population growth and climate change.

“Screwing around with science to save a white rhino might be fun and I would like to see it preserved and am all for biodiversity, but it’s so far down the list of things we should be doing first,” he

“We can do all kinds of razzle dazzle things but it’s one thing to make another animal or two or three, but it’s quite another to make a sustainable population from a genetic standpoint,” said George Seidel, a Colorado State University professor who has written about resurrecting the woolly mammoth.

Sperm from the Frozen Zoo has been used in artificial insemination to reproduce endangered animals from the giant panda to the Chinese monal pheasant. Its frozen cells also were used to clone two endangered types of cattle. The gaur lived only a few days while the banteng survived for seven years before being put down after breaking a leg. Both animals, however, had genetic defects.

The northern white rhino and the drill monkey were the first endangered animals to have their cells transformed into stem cells and stored at the Frozen Zoo. Theoretically stem cells can produce any body tissue. That means thawed stem cells from a male rhino could produce both sperm and egg in the lab, but the method has been done only once - in a mouse.

Artificial insemination has seen success in producing other rhino species. Northern white rhino semen could be used to impregnate the closely related southern white to make a hybrid.

Scientists are also looking at in vitro fertilization but that technique has never been done on any rhino species.

On a recent day, the only northern white left in the United States, 40-year-old Nola, munched on apples at the San Diego Safari Park. When she dies, there is talk of placing her in the Smithsonian so future generations can see a northern white rhino.

The challenges, however, are not insurmountable for critically

M I S TA K E N LY K I L L E D OIL DRILLING BANNED IN ARCTIC W O L F WA S A N I M A L A R E A T H AT AT T R A C T S WA L R U S FROM RARE ARIZONA an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil.

SIGHTING The back-to-back announcements hit a familiar nerve for Murkowski and others, who say the federal government frequently makes decisions that are bad for state’s economy. The Obama administration wants to preserve Alaska like a “nice little snow globe,” Murkowski said.

The announcements change very little for current oil exploration. The newly removed section covers about 2,500 square miles. Meanwhile, more than 184,000 square miles of Arctic Ocean territory remain available for future oil leases and exploration.

Also, Alaska officials have failed to get drill rigs onto the ANWR coastal plain for three decades, under presidents from both parties. The president cannot designate wilderness areas in the refuge, and cannot open it to drilling; only Congress has that authority.

U.S. Geological Survey shows adult female walruses on an ice flow with young walruses in the Eastern Chukchi Sea, Alaska. A remote plateau on the Arctic Ocean floor, where thousands of Pacific walrus gather to feed and raise pups, has received new protections from the Obama administration that recognize it as a biological hot spot and mark it off-limits to future oil drilling.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A plateau on the Arctic Ocean floor, where thousands of Pacific walrus gather to feed and raise pups, has received new protections from the Obama administration that recognize it as a biological hot spot and mark it off-limits to future oil drilling.

But the announcement from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell triggered an uproar from Alaska leaders, angry that the federal government was making a decision that they said would harm the state’s economy.

“This administration has effectively declared war on Alaska,” U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

Hanna Shoal rises from the shallow Chukchi Sea and teems with plankton, clams and marine worms that attract walrus and bearded seals. The remote area lies 80 miles off the state’s northwest coast, beyond even sparsely populated subsistence whale hunting towns such as Barrow, the northernmost community in the U.S. Federal estimates, however, show that the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could hold 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and many Alaska leaders are eager to begin drilling in the area to create jobs and fund state government projects and services.

About 90 percent of Alaska state revenue comes from oil taxes or fees, and with the price drop of nearly $60 per barrel since April, the state faces a $3.5 billion budget deficit next year. Leaders in Alaska want to find new drilling opportunities as a way to offset those losses.

Jewell’s move late last month, adding Hanna Shoal to four other Arctic Ocean areas that won’t be offered for future oil lease sales, came just two days after President Barack Obama declared he would seek wilderness protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including its coastal plain, which holds

Environmental groups bitterly oppose Arctic Ocean drilling and contend oil companies cannot clean potential spills. They applauded the removal from future sales of Hanna Shoal, where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has spent about $10 million on studies in the last three years.

Researchers say the shoal, a 30- by 100-mile area, rises from the shallow continental shelf like the top half of a football. Its physical properties interrupt ocean currents to creating eddies where plankton, algae and other organic materials swirl and fall, nourishing bottom feeders that are in turn eaten by walrus and seals.

“The physics are driving the biology,” said Dr. Ken Dunton, chief scientist for the Hanna Shoal Ecosystem Study.

The shoal rises about halfway up the water column, said Thomas Weingartner, professor of physical oceanography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and seawater freezes over the plateau each winter, expelling salt. The salt sinks and mixes with water lower in the column, creating very cold, dense, salty water. Scientists call it “winter water.”

In summer, warmer water flowing north through the Bering Strait hits the dense winter water and swirls around it. The cold, dense, salty water not only creates giant eddies to trap plankton, it can retain ice floes longer than other parts of the Chukchi, giving walrus a platform from which to dive and raise young.

“The winter water stays in that area for a good deal of the year, if not the entire year,” Weingartner said. “It’s only slowly replaced.”

Walrus are drawn to the shoal even when ice melts above it, researcher Chad Jay of the U.S. Geological Survey said. Some make a 300-mile round trip to feed in the area. “They felt that area was important enough to make that trip,” Jay said.

The shoal is incredibly rich biologically and important habitat, Jewell said.

“Like Bristol Bay,” she said, “there are some places too special to drill.”

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A gray wolf that was accidently shot by a hunter in Utah was the same one seen in the Grand Canyon area last year, federal wildlife officials said Wednesday.

DNA tests confirm the 3-year-old female killed in late December was the first wolf seen in northern Arizona in more than 70 years, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a news release.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Steve Segin said geneticists at the University of Idaho compared the DNA from the northern gray wolf killed in southwestern Utah with samples taken from the wolf seen near the Grand Canyon last fall.

Officials have said the Utah hunter mistook the wolf for a coyote. Wolves are protected in Utah under the Endangered Species Act, and officials are investigating the death.

The wolf had worn a radio collar since January 2014.

The investigation into its death is ongoing, Segin said. It’s not clear yet what penalties the hunter could face for killing the animal.

The hunter reached out to Utah state officials after realizing the error, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources spokesman Mark Martinez said in December. The hunter was legally allowed to hunt coyotes, which are not protected in Utah, Martinez said.

Wildlife advocacy groups have called the wolf’s death heartbreaking. They said the animal could have helped wolves naturally recover in remote regions of Utah and neighboring states.

Wolves can travel thousands of miles for food and mates. Gray wolves had been spotted as far south as Colorado until the Arizona wolf was confirmed. Gray wolves were last spotted in the Grand Canyon area in the 1940s.

In recent years, the Fish and Wildlife Service lifted protections for the wolves in the Northern Rockies and western Great Lakes. But a federal judge recently reinstated the protections after wildlife advocates in Wyoming sued.

The Center for Biological Diversity has documented 11 cases since 1981 where hunters told wildlife officials they had shot a wolf thinking it was a coyote.