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FORMER CIA CHIEF CA LLS PA RIS AT TACK ‘ H I G H E N D ’ O F TERRORISM WASHINGTON (AP) -Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says the deadly attack on a French satirical newspaper demonstrates “the increased sophistication” of groups bent on terrorism.

Hayden says the armed gunmen seemed “very comfortable in their own skin.”

On NBC’s “Today” show, he calls the assault “the high end of the new genre of attacks.”

Hayden adds that terrorist elements apparently are scaling back their plots, aiming more toward smaller targets and quick hits. Because of this, he says, “now what we have are drive-by shootings” and incidents like the SUV bombing plot against New York’s Times Square. He says larger-scale attacks aimed at causing mass casualties take longer to evolve and are more easily thwarted by law enforcement.

The Obama administration has said that it stands by the French in this crisis.

OBAMA OFFERS US HELP TO PURSUE TERRORISTS I N F R E N C H AT TA C K

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Established 2012

FRENCH HUNT FOR 2 IN ATTACK ON PAPER; PARIS MOURNS VICTIMS WASHINGTON (AP) -Taking America off a permanent war footing is proving harder than President Barack Obama may have suggested.

U.S. troops are back in Iraq, the endgame in Afghanistan is requiring more troops and perhaps more risks - than once expected and Obama is saddled with a worsening, high-stakes conflict in Syria.

“You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Obama declared to a burst of applause.

But once again the landscape has changed.

Once again the U.S. is engaged in combat in Iraq - not by soldiers on the ground but by pilots in the sky. And the Pentagon is putting “boots on the ground” to retrain and advise Iraqi soldiers how to fight a new menace: the Islamic State militants who emerged from the Iraq insurgency that U.S. troops fought from 2003-2011.

And once again the U.S. is on a path that could expand or prolong its military role in Afghanistan. The U.S. combat role there ends Dec. 31, but Obama has authorized remaining U.S. troops to attack the Taliban if they pose a threat to U.S. military personnel who are training Afghan security forces for at least the next two years.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday offered U.S. assistance to pursue the terrorists responsible for a “horrific shooting” at a satirical weekly newspaper that left 12 people dead.

In a statement, Obama condemned the shooting and offered thoughts and prayers for the people of France, which he called “America’s oldest ally.”

At his final news conference of 2014, Obama spoke just 18 words on Afghanistan, saying, “In less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over.”

As of Dec. 16, a total of 2,215 U.S. troops had died in Afghan-

“We’re at the very early stages of what happened and who was responsible,” Earnest said. He said it is known that there are “strong ties” between the al Qaida terrorist network and the Islamic State extremists.

“We obviously are trying to monitor what we consider to be a very important threat,” he said.

“This is an attack on the basic freedoms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Earnest said. He appeared in interviews on CNN and MSNBC.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Baghdad seemed within the Islamic State group’s reach.

Two months later Obama gave the go-ahead for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. He ruled out sending ground combat forces, but at some point next year may face another tough choice: whether to allow U.S. military advisers to accompany Iraqi ground forces as they launch counteroffensives, including an expected push to retake Mosul. Up to now, U.S. advisers have been coordinating with Iraqi forces from a safer distance.

As Obama approaches the end of his sixth year in office, he awaits Congress’ formal endorsement of his new war against Islamic State militants. The administration wants a legal basis for the war, known as an authorization for use of military force, rather than continuing to rely on congressional resolutions granted after 9/11 to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, wage the Iraq war and pursue al-Qaida elsewhere.

Obama insists he has kept his word to end America’s big wars, the occupations and nation-building efforts that began with such promise in both Afghanistan and Iraq but ultimately defied U.S. hopes for continued on page 5

The president has also talked optimistically about opportunities to cooperate with congressional Republicans on issues like trade and tax reform.

But big clashes between the White House and the new Republican leadership will come first.

Masked gunmen stormed the office of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday and then escaped. It is France’s deadliest terror attack in at least two decades. Charlie Hebdo has been repeatedly threatened for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other controversial sketches.

In earlier television interviews, Obama press secretary Josh Earnest cautioned that the attack was still in the initial stages of investigation.

In June, the militants expanded their offensive, sweeping across much of northern Iraq and capturing key cities, including Mosul.

Whole divisions of the Iraqi army folded, abandoning tanks and other American-supplied war equipment. That was not just a boon to the militants. It was a blow to U.S. prestige.

White House following Democrats’ disastrous showing in the midterm elections. Alongside signs of economic progress, the president has also unveiled a series of aggressive executive actions and seen his low approval ratings start to creep up.

Obama planned to speak later to reporters from the Oval Office during a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry.

“I would like to say directly to the people of Paris and of all of France that each and every American stands with you today - not just in horror or in anger or in outrage at this vicious act of violence - but we stand with you in solidarity and in commitment both to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause which the extremists fear so much,” he said.

Shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama, then an Illinois state senator, called it a “dumb war.” He warned of unforeseen costs and consequences, arguing that President George W. Bush would be smarter to finish what he started in Afghanistan.

O B A M A : ‘ A M E R I C A’ S R E S U R G E N C E I S R E A L’

“France, and the great city of Paris where this outrageous attack took place, offer the world a timeless example that will endure well beyond the hateful vision of these killers,” Obama said.

Shortly after Obama’s statement was released, Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in both English and French, said every American stands with France today.

istan and 19,945 had been wounded. In Iraq, 4,491 died and 32,244 wounded.

Last spring, Obama deObama’s promise to end scribed to newly minted light candles to commemorate the victims killed in an attack at the Paris offices of the the war in Iraq was a key to Army officers at West Point Women weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in front of the French Embassy in Berlin, Thursday, Jan. 8, how “the landscape has 2015. Masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of the weekly newspaper that caricatured the winning the White House in Muhammad, methodically killing 12 people Wednesday, including the editor, before es2008. He delivered on that changed” after a decade of Prophet caping in a car. It was France’s deadliest postwar terrorist attack. promise, but the war was war. He cited then-dwindling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said Osama bin Laden, not really over. Events conspired to pull Obama back in. In January whose plotting from an al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan gave rise 2014 the Islamic State group seized the Sunni city of Fallujah, scene of the bloodiest fighting of the U.S. war a decade earlier. to what became America’s longest war, “is no more.”

Once again there are worsening crises demanding U.S. military intervention, including in Syria. Four months after his speech at the U.S. Military Academy, Obama authorized American pilots, joined

by Arab allies, to begin bombing Islamic State targets with the aim of undermining the group’s base and weakening its grip in Iraq.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest speaks during a television interview with Fox News in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015. President Barack Obama has condemned the shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that has reportedly killed 12 people.

Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

The White House has threatened to veto two priority pieces of legislation for the GOP: a bill approving construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and another measure that could increase the health care law’s definition of a full-time worker from 30 to 40 hours per week.

President Barack Obama speaks at Ford Michigan Assembly Plant, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, in Wayne, Mich., about the resurgent American automotive and manufacturing sector.

WAYNE, Mich. (AP) -- Declaring an American economic resurgence, President Barack Obama opened a three-state swing Wednesday aimed at claiming credit for recent growth and blunting the momentum of the new Republican congressional leadership.

“We are entering into the new year with new confidence that America is coming back,” Obama declared at a Ford plant in Michigan, a state at the center of both the downturn and rejuvenation of the U.S. automobile industry.

From Michigan, Obama was headed to Phoenix, where he was to announce lower insurance premiums for government-backed mortgages.

The White House said the reduction by the Federal Housing Administration means new home buyers and those who refinance with FHA would pay $900 less a year than they would otherwise, in a bid to help more Americans own their own homes.

Obama’s road trip comes amid a surprising burst of momentum for the

“It seems with every new day we have a new veto threat from the president,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday.

Obama and congressional leaders scheduled their first meeting of the new year for Tuesday.

In an effort to counteract the veto threats with new ideas, the White House plans to use the coming weeks to outline proposals the president will discuss in his Jan. 20 State of the Union address. The approach marks a shift from the White House’s usual strategy of staying mum about new proposals until the annual address to a joint session of Congress.

“I thought I’d get started this week,” Obama said. “I figured, why wait?”

The president said his State of the Union address would focus on what steps the country needs to take over his final years in office to capitalize on recent economic gains. While the economic recovery has been uneven throughout much of Obama’s presidency, there have been recent surges in growth fueled by hiring gains, falling gas prices and rising consumer confidence.

The president cast his 2009 federal bailout of the auto industry as a key continued on page 2

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OBAMA ISSUES 3 VETO T H R E A T S I N 2 D A Y S A similar bill cleared the House last year with the support of 18 Democrats but died in the Senate, which was then under Democratic control.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House threatened more vetoes Wednesday against top-priority legislation of the two-day-old Republican-controlled Congress, and GOP leaders said they intend to keep challenging President Barack Obama to sign early measures that demonstrate bipartisan support.

Republicans argue the health law’s 30-hour requirement is encouraging companies to cut workers’ hours. They cited a study by the conservative Hoover “We’re calling on the president to Institution that says 2.6 million ignore the voices of reaction and Americans making less than join us,” Senate Majority Leader $30,000 a year are most at risk of Mitch McConnell said as he and having their work time and wages Speaker John Boehner lined up Barack Obama walks across the South Lawn of the White House cut as a result of the 30-hour rule. legislation to approve the Keystone President in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, before boarding Marine One heliXL oil pipeline, make changes to copter for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md.. Obama is traveling to Of that group, it said 63 percent Detroit area to speak to workers at Ford automotive plant. are women and over half have a the health care law they also have high school diploma or less education. vowed to repeal, and delay a key provision of a 2010 financial regulation law.

But the White House said in a statement there is no evidence the law has caused a broad shift to part-time work, and said the The conflict comes at a time when the president and the two new measure would create incentives for companies to shift Republican congressional leaders have all stressed the opporemployees to part-time work. It pointed to an estimate from the tunity for bipartisanship in the two years ahead, and polls gennonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that the bill would erally indicate the public wants divided government to produce boost federal deficits by $53.2 billion over a decade. compromise instead of gridlock. By approving measures with bipartisan support - the pipeline legislation has well over 60 “It seems with every new day we have a new veto threat from supporters from both parties in the Senate - it appears Repubthe president,” McConnell said a short while after the White licans are trying to make the president pay at least a short-term House issued its announcement. political price if he makes good on his veto threats.

Far larger and more partisan fights likely lie ahead, particularly if, as expected, Republicans attempt to seek large savings in government benefit programs as part of an attempt to balance the budget.

One day after saying Obama would reject the pipeline bill, the White House said he would veto legislation to make a change in the health care law he signed into law four years ago.

In a written veto threat, the administration said the measure “would significantly increase the deficit, reduce the number of Americans with employer-based health insurance coverage, and create incentives for employers to shift their employees to parttime work - causing the problem it intends to solve.”

The measure would increase the definition of a full-time worker who must be offered health coverage at work to 40 hours from the current 30.

OBAMA: ‘AMERICA’S continued from page 1

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decision that helped set the recovery in motion. After spending $80 billion to bail out Chrysler and General Motors, the government reported last month that it had recouped nearly $71 billion of that investment.

Ford was not part of the federal bailout. Ahead of his remarks, Obama got a look at the company’s new Mustang and slipped into a shiny red model on the plant floor. He later said that while he likes his current ride - a black armored limousine - “the Mustangs had a little more style.”

The Michigan Assembly Plant where Obama spoke is temporarily closed this week because of lack of demand for the small cars and hybrids it makes. Falling gas prices have hurt sales of the Ford Focus, which saw sales drop 6 percent in 2014, and the C-Max hybrid, which was down 22 percent.

Automakers often close plants temporarily to make sure their inventories match demand. Ford said the plant will reopen Monday.

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From frigid Michigan, where the temperatures barely got above zero degrees, Obama was headed to Phoenix, a city that has served as a symbol of both of the housing market’s crash and its slow recovery.

The premium rate reduction was to be the centerpiece of Obama’s speech there Thursday. Even with the reduction, the new 0.85 percent premium is higher than historic norms. The rate was initially increased to raise FHA capital reserves, which took a hit during the housing crisis.

Obama returns to Washington Thursday night, then will hit the road again Friday. He’ll travel to Tennessee, where he is expected to tout the state’s new policy to pay for community college tuition.

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The House is expected to vote on the legislation in the next several days, and the Senate not long afterward.

The White House on Wednesday also said Obama would veto legislation that would give U.S. banks until 2019, a delay of two years, to get rid of some high-risk investments. The measure won a 276-146 majority, with 35 Democrats in favor, but failed under House rules requiring a two-thirds vote. It’s likely to pass soon under rules that require a simple majority.

The White House did not mention the veto threat publicly until after the bill failed.

“We are opposed to this legislation and pleased that it did not pass,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said.

“Had the bill been presented to the president for his signature, he would have vetoed it. The president has been clear about his opposition to legislation that would weaken key consumer protections and provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.” Not all the bills in the Congress’ opening days have sparked conflict.

The House approved legislation by a large bipartisan margin Wednesday to re-establish a program that requires the government to cover some insurance losses in the event of a terrorist attack.

The House voted unanimously Tuesday to permit companies to hire veterans without triggering a requirement to provide health coverage for all of their employees.

But the Keystone pipeline, proposed to transport oil from Canada to the United States, has been an early flashpoint, and one on which Republicans have allies within the Democratic ranks.

“It’s just wrong. It’s just not the way you do business,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said after the White House announced it would veto the measure. “If this is the start of things, it is a sad beginning.”

The proposed project is fiercely opposed by environmentalists, but it has the support of more than enough energy-state and other Democrats to overcome any filibuster in the Senate. An identical bill passed the House last year with support from 31 Democrats.

The 1,179-mile project is proposed to go from Canada through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

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D O C U M E N T S : G I R L , 1 5 , W H O S H O T B R O T H E R , 1 6 , S U F F E R E D A B U S E maintain eye contact and appeared emotionless,” officers wrote in a police report.

WHITE SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) -- After suffering years of abuse at home, a 15-year-old girl broke into her parents’ locked room through a window, took their gun while they were away and shot her 16-year-old brother to death, authorities said.

She soon started crying and told the officers that her brother had beaten her and that she had shot him.

On Wednesday, authorities released police documents and interviews describing the abuse, including that the girl was locked in a room for weeks at a time with only a blanket and a bucket to use the bathroom.

When officers arrived at the home, the 3-year-old said: “he’s dead.”

The brother’s body was lying near the fireplace, under a blanket with his head on a pillow.

The shooting at a small white house off a dirt road in rural north Florida happened Monday while the children’s parents were away for work.

The father, a truck driver, and his wife, who often went with him, left the 16-year-old boy to watch over the 15-year-old, her 11-year-old sister and their 3-year-old sister, police said. The parents left Sunday and were due back Tuesday.

Sometime Monday, the 15-year-old girl was locked in her room by her brother, police said. After the boy fell asleep, she talked her 11-yearold sister into unlocking her door.

The girls’ mother told police they often locked the 15-year-old girl up when she misbehaved. The longest they kept her locked in her room was 20 consecutive days, the father told police.

In the girl’s room, police found only a blanket and a bucket filled with urine in the closet.

Columbia County Sheriff Mark Hunter speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015 in Lake City, Fla. about two Columbia County girls accused of killing their brother. Columbia County State Attorney Jeff Seigmeister, right, also spoke.

The older girl knew her parents kept a pistol in their room, but they had locked their door. So the girl went outside and used a knife to remove an air conditioner from her parents’ bedroom window. She climbed in while her 11-year-old sister kept watch and grabbed the gun out of a pink bag and loaded it, police said.

She fled with her 11-year-old sister, leaving the 3-year-old behind, police said.

The girl went back inside the house, telling her young sisters to get in the closet, she told police. She turned her head and fired at her sleeping brother in the living room, and he screamed “Help! Help!”

Police caught up with the girls after a friend of theirs received a “weird phone call” from the 11-year-old girl, saying she had run away and needed someone to pick her up from a Dollar General, according to a police report. When the woman arrived, she found the older sister there, too.

She buried her head in a pillow for a while and upon returning to the living room, the girl found her 3-year-old sister trying to wake her dead brother, according to the police report.

“It’s hard for us to get our arms around this act,” Columbia County Sheriff Mark Hunter said. “This is the stuff nightmares are made of.”

The older girl said something might have been wrong with another sibling at home. As she spoke, she applied makeup and “would not

“It was learned that (the 15-year-old girl) has made past attempts at ending her life but neither law enforcement nor (emergency management services) was notified,” police wrote in their report.

The girls were being held in juvenile detention on suspicion of murder and a prosecutor is trying to decide whether they will be charged as adults. Their parents face charges of child neglect and failing to supervise.

The 3-year-old is in the custody of child welfare officials.

Police documents released Wednesday said the girl’s uncle was convicted of molesting her in 2010. They also say the children’s mother discovered the siblings having sex in 2011. Authorities and child welfare officials investigated, but no one was charged.

Because of the girls’ ages and abuse allegations, The Associated Press is not naming the girls, their brother or the parents.

T I M E C A P S U L E D AT I N G T O 1 7 9 5 I N C L U D E D C O I N S , N E W S PA P E R S newspapers, a medal depicting George Washington, a silver plaque, two dozen coins, including one dating to 1655, and the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

While some of the coins appeared corroded, other items were in good condition and fingerprints could be seen on the silver plaque.

The capsule was embedded in a cornerstone of the Massachusetts Statehouse when construction began in 1795. It was placed there

by Revolutionary era luminaries including Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, governor of Massachusetts at the time.

BOSTON (AP) -- Early residents of Boston valued a robust press as much as their history and currency if the contents of a time capsule dating back to the years just after the Revolutionary War are any guide.

When conservators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston gingerly removed items from the box Tuesday, they found five tightly folded

The contents were shifted to what was believed to be a copper box in 1855 and placed back into the foundation of Statehouse. The box remained there until it was rediscovered last year during an ongoing water filtration project at the building. The box was actually brass, according to conservators.

The oldest coin in the box was a 1652 “Pine Tree Schilling,” made at a time when the colony didn’t have royal authority to create its own currency. Pine trees were a valuable commodity at the time. The trees were used as ship masts.

SAUDI BLOGGER TO BE PUBLICLY FLOGGED FOR INSULTING ISLAM He called from prison and informed his family of the flogging, due Friday, said a person close to the case. The person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal, said Badawi was “being used as an example for others to see.”

Michael Comeau, executive director of the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum, said he has seen the coins offered for as much at $75,000, although given the context of this particular coin and the association with Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, the value would likely be much higher.

The newspapers were folded in such a way that the names of the publications weren’t always visible, but one might have been a copy of the Boston Evening Traveller - a newspaper operation that was eventually absorbed into the current Boston Herald.

A portion of one of the papers that was visible showed a listing of the arrivals of whalers from various ports to Boston. Conservators didn’t try to unfold the papers.

Pam Hatchfield, the head of objects conservation for the museum, removed each item using a slew of tools including her grandfather’s dental tool. Hatchfield said the paper in the box was in “amazingly good condition.”

Massachusetts state Secretary William Galvin said he expects the items will be on display at the museum for a period of time, but that eventually they will again be returned to the foundation to be discovered by a future generation of Bay State residents.

Galvin said he didn’t know if modern items might be added to the foundation.

Comeau said the objects in the box are a bridge back in time.

“This is the stuff of history,” he said.

Badawi’s lawyer Waleed Abul-Khair was sentenced in July to 15 years imprisonment and barred from traveling for another 15 years after being found guilty by an anti-terrorism court of “undermining the regime and officials,” `’inciting public opinion” and “insulting the judiciary.”

London-based rights group Amnesty International has said that Badawi is to receive 50 lashes once a week for 20 weeks.

“It is horrifying to think that such a vicious and cruel punishment should be imposed on someone who is guilty of nothing more than daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director.

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Badawi was originally sentenced in 2013 to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in relation to the charges, but after an appeal, the judge stiffened the punishment. Following his arrest, his wife and children left the kingdom for Canada.

UBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A Saudi blogger who was sentenced last May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes will be publicly flogged for the first time after Friday prayers outside a mosque in the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, a person close to his case said Thursday.

Raif Baddawi was sentenced on charges related to accusations that he insulted Islam on a liberal online forum he had created. He was also ordered by the Jiddah Criminal Court to pay a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals, or about $266,000.

Rights groups and activists say his case is part of a wider clampdown on dissent throughout the kingdom. Officials have increasingly blunted calls for reforms since the region’s 2011 Arab Spring upheaval.

Badawi has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website is now closed. The case has drawn condemnation from rights groups.

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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.[...]

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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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A I R A S I A P L A N E ’ S T A I L M A Y B E L I F T E D T O R E T R I E V E age homebuyer $900 a year, help 800,000 who refinance their mortgages save money, and draw 250,000 new homeowners into the market over the next three years - a modest increase in sales.

PHOENIX (AP) -- Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, Arizona has served as a symbol of the nation’s real estate crisis and recovery.

When Obama visited Arizona within weeks of taking office in 2009, the state was among the hardest hit by the housing collapse and the White House was pushing multibillion-dollar programs to save homeowners from foreclosure.

The rate cut will go into effect by the end of the month.

Arizona-based economist Elliott Pollack said the move would “help on the margins, but it really isn’t a game-changer.”

Six years later, Arizona’s foreclosure crisis has evaporated. Home prices have soared and are nearing pre-crisis levels.

Still, the savings would be meaningful for individual homeowners. The National Association of Realtors estimates that a homebuyer with 5 percent down and a $175,000 mortgage would save $818 per year, or $14,079 over the life of a 30-year mortgage.

On Thursday, Obama returns to Arizona seeking to tackle lingering issues and unintended consequences of the recovery. He’ll announce a cut in mortgage insurance premiums on Federal Housing Administration loans, a move aimed at attracting new homebuyers.

“We’re taking this measure to make homeownership more affordable for responsible families,” Housing Secretary Julian Castro said ahead of the president’s remarks at a Phoenix high school.

President Barack Obama greets supporters after arriving at Sky Harbor International Airport, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, in Phoenix. The President will overnight in Arizona before speaking at Central High School in Phoenix on Thursday.

The housing announcement is the first marker for Obama as he unveils new tenets of his economic agenda in the lead-up to the

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clear victories.

In his speech Dec. 15 at Fort Dix, N.J., Obama said 90 percent of the troops that were deployed to war zones when he took office are now home.

“The time of deploying large numbers of ground forces with big military footprints to engage in nation-building overseas - that’s coming to an end,” he said. “Going forward, our military will be leaner” but ready for “a range of missions.”

This era of U.S. wars began in Afghanistan. On Oct. 7, 2001, less than a month after teams of terrorists hijacked U.S. airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, America invaded Afghanistan to root out al-Qaida and topple its host, the Taliban.

By the time Obama took office in January 2009 the U.S. had 34,400 troops in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon records. He tripled the total, to 100,000, in 2010 in a bid to turn the tide and defeat the Taliban. That aim was never achieved; the Taliban took a heavy pounding in 2010-2011, but it remains a force to be reckoned with, in part because of sanctuaries it enjoys in neighboring Pakistan.

The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has dropped to a bit more than 11,000 from about 38,500 in January. But Obama’s original plan to go down to 9,800 by the end of this year and limit forces to advising the Afghans and only fighting al-Qaida - not the Taliban has changed.

About 1,000 additional U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for a few months to fill in for other coalition forces that Washington hopes will arrive by spring 2015. The U.S. will continue to target Taliban insurgents who threaten either Afghans or Americans.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

State of the Union address on Jan. 20. The economic recovery has been uneven through much of Obama’s presidency, but officials say they feel more confident that recent signs of progress can be sustained given the stronger level of growth and increases in consumer confidence.

Like other areas of the economy, the housing market has rebounded from the depths of the recession. Yet home sales nationwide slowed in 2014, as rising home values pushed many would-be buyers to the sidelines. Wage growth has failed to match the sharp increase in home prices since the market bottomed out in 2012, leaving many Americans without the income level or down payment to buy a home.

In Arizona, homeownership rates have dropped by more than 6 percent from their 2006 peak. New home construction in the state also remains well below what economists believe is a healthy level, with many buyers shut out of the market because of tougher loan standards, higher prices and the lingering fears from the foreclosure crisis.

The rate cut Obama will announce Thursday drops the FHA mortgage insurance premium from 1.35 percent to 0.85 percent.

Administration officials said the move would save the aver-

Even with the reduction, the new 0.85 percent premium is higher than historic norms. The rate was initially increased to raise FHA capital reserves, which took a hit during the housing crisis and are still not back to their required minimums.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said the decision was “bad news for taxpayers and is yet another irresponsible, head-scratching decision from the administration in regards to our nation’s housing finance system.”

Administration officials said that even with the rate cut, FHA will be able to replenish its reserves. Officials also said the rate cut would do nothing to change the eligibility requirements for FHA loans.

“Our action is not a return to the past,” Castro said.

Obama is expected to tout Thursday’s housing announcement in his State of the Union address. In a strategy shift for the White House, the president is unveiling some of the proposals from the address ahead of the Jan. 20 speech rather than follow the usual protocol of keeping policy announcements secret until Obama speaks to Congress.

The president is making his pre-State of the Union pronouncements during a series of stops around the country. He visited Michigan on Wednesday and closes out the week in Tennessee, with additional travel expected next week.

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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

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C O L O R A D O N A A C P O F F I C E VO W S V I G I L A N C E A F T E R B L A S T Southerland said the FBI had given him no information on its early findings. But he said he didn’t believe the barbershop or its predominantly black clientele was targeted.

DENVER (AP) -- Staff members at a Colorado NAACP office say they are waiting for more information before drawing any conclusions about an explosion near their chapter, even as the FBI said it was investigating whether it was a case of domestic terrorism.

Leroy said he believed there were surveillance cameras behind the building, but he did not know whether they captured anything of value.

“We’re standing vigilant and are trying not to let this disrupt anything,” Colorado Springs NAACP volunteer Harry Leroy said Wednesday, a day after someone set off a homemade explosive device outside the group’s building, about an hour south of Denver.

Gregory Alan Johnson, who lives nearby, said he was unaware of any prior problems near the NAACP offices. Colorado Springs police wouldn’t comment about the case, but Lt. Catherine Buckley said the department found nothing concerning in any previous calls for service.

The FBI said it is investigating the possibility that the act was a case of domestic terrorism, but it had not determined whether the nation’s oldest civil rights organization was targeted.

“We’re exploring any potential motive, and domestic terrorism is certainly one among many possibilities,” Denver FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders said.

The blast happened about 11 a.m. Tuesday outside a barbershop that shares a building with the NAACP chapter. There were no injuries and only minor damage.

While local chapter members said they were not making any conclusions, speculation washed across social media about whether the explosion was a hate crime. Investigators have not ruled out any possibilities, Sanders said.

An improvised explosive device was detonated against the lowslung building, which sits in a mostly residential neighborhood, but a gasoline canister placed next to the device failed to ignite.

Members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating because of the explosion’s proximity to the NAACP office, Sanders said.

Investigators were still looking for a balding white man in his 40s who might be driving a dirty pickup truck. His identity was still under investigation.

“This is someone we’d like to speak to,” Sanders said.

This Jan. 6, 2015 photo shows at the bottom right the char marks from a device detonated Tuesday along the northeast corner of a building occupied by a barber shop near the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP in Colorado Springs, Colo. Chapter President Henry Allen Jr. told The Colorado Springs Gazette the blast was strong enough to knock items off the walls.

office, said such violence will not be tolerated.

“We will track you down, prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and put you in prison,” he said. “We will not tolerate that kind of violence in our society.”

Both the chapter office and the barbershop reopened Wednesday with little police presence.

Those who heard the blast, including Southerland, said it sounded like a single, loud “boom.”

Investigators Tuesday were examining a red gasoline canister with a yellow nozzle. They also checked pieces of duct tape and metal lying 40 to 50 feet from the explosion site.

F R E N C H W E E K LY H A S HISTORY OF ANGERING M USLIMS WITH CARTOONS

Investigators were briefing the chapter’s president, Henry Allen Jr., and he did not return calls seeking for comment.

“We’ll move on,” Allen wrote on the chapter’s Facebook page.

“This won’t deter us from doing the job we want to do in the community.”

Gene Southerland owns Mr. G’s Hair Design Studios next door and was cutting a client’s hair there when the explosion occurred. The blast was strong enough to knock items off the walls, but the quick police response was comforting, he said.

Republican Sen. Kent Lambert, whose district includes the NAACP

12 DEAD IN TERROR ATTACK ON PA R I S PA P E R ; M A N H U N T F O R G U N M E N The gunmen abandoned their car at the northern Porte de Patin and escaped, Paris police said.

Corinne Rey, the cartoonist who said she was forced to let the gunmen in, said the men spoke fluent French and claimed to be from al-Qaida. In an interview with the newspaper l’Humanite, she said the entire shooting lasted perhaps five minutes.

France raised its security alert to the highest level and reinforced protective measures at houses of worship, stores, media offices and transportation. Top government officials held an emergency meeting and Hollande planned a nationally televised address in the evening.

Schools across the French capital closed their doors.

An injured person is evacuated outside the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s office, in Paris, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015. Police official says 11 dead in shooting at the French satirical newspaper.

PARIS (AP) -- Masked gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar!” stormed the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper Wednesday, killing 12 people, including the paper’s editor, before escaping in a getaway car. It was France’s deadliest terror attack in living memory.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces were hunting for three gunmen after the noon-time attack on the weekly, whose caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed have frequently drawn condemnation from Muslims. Twelve people died and eight were wounded, including four critically, officials said.

French President Francois Hollande called the slayings “a terrorist attack without a doubt” and said several other attacks have been thwarted in France “in recent weeks.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Clad all in black with hoods and machine guns and speaking flawless French, the attackers forced one of the cartoonists at the weekly Charlie Hebdo - at the office with her young daughter - to open the door.

The staff was in an editorial meeting and the gunmen headed straight for the paper’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier - widely known by his pen name Charb - killing him and his police bodyguard, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman on the scene. Minutes later, two men strolled out to a black car waiting below, calmly firing on a police officer, with one gunman shooting him in the head as he writhed on the ground.

Ten journalists were killed and two police, Crepin said, one of them assigned as Charb’s bodyguard and another who had arrived on the scene on a mountain bike.

“Hey! We avenged the Prophet Muhammed! We killed Charlie Hebdo,” one of the men shouted, according to a video filmed from a nearby building and broadcast on French television. Other video images showed two gunmen in black at a crossroads who appeared to fire down one of the streets. A cry of “Allahu akbar!” - Arabic for “God is great”- could be heard among the gunshots.

World leaders - including President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister David Cameron - condemned the attack, but supporters of the militant Islamic State group celebrated the slayings as well-deserved revenge against France.

Both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have repeatedly threatened to attack France. Just minutes before the attack, Charlie Hebdo had tweeted a satirical cartoon of the Islamic State’s leader giving New Year’s wishes. Another cartoon, released in this week’s issue and entitled “Still No Attacks in France,” had a caricature of a jihadi fighter saying “Just wait - we have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”

“This is the darkest day of the history of the French press,” said Christophe DeLoire of Reporters Without Borders.

Luc Poignant of the SBP police union said the attackers left in a waiting car and later switched to another vehicle that had been stolen.

Obama’s top spokesman said U.S. officials have been in close contact with the French since the attack. “We know they are not going to be cowed by this terrible act,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.

On social media, supporters of militant Islamic groups praised the move. One Twitter user who identified themselves as a Tunisian loyalist of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group called the attack well-deserved revenge against France.

Elsewhere on the Internet, the hashtag (hash)JeSuisCharlie was trending as people expressed support for weekly and for journalistic freedom.

Charlie Hebdo has been repeatedly threatened for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and other controversial sketches. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after a spoof issue featuring a caricature of the prophet on its cover. Nearly a year later, the publication again published crude Muhammad caricatures, drawing denunciations from around the Muslim world, since Islam prohibits the publication of drawings of its founder.

Wednesday’s attack comes the same day of the release of a book by a celebrated French novelist depicting France’s election of its first Muslim president. Hollande had been due to meet with the country’s top religious officials later in the day.

Stephane Charbonnier also known as Charb , the publishing director of the satyric weekly Charlie Hebdo, displays the front page of the newspaper as he poses for photographers in Paris. Masked gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar!” stormed the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper Wednesday Jan.7, 2015, killing 12 people including Charb, before escaping. It was France’s deadliest terror attack in at least two decades.

PARIS (AP) -- The French newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s staple is to be provocative - poking fun at popes, presidents as well as the Prophet Muhammad.

The satirical weekly has a history of drawing outrage across the Muslim world with crude cartoons of Islam’s holiest figure.

The magazine’s offices, where 12 people were killed by gunmen Wednesday, were firebombed in November 2011 after it published a spoof issue that “invited” Muhammad to be its guest editor and put his caricature on the cover.

A year later, the magazine published more Muhammad drawings amid an uproar over an anti-Muslim film. The cartoons depicted Muhammad naked and in demeaning or pornographic poses. As passions raged, the French government defended free speech even as it rebuked Charlie Hebdo for fanning tensions.

The small-circulation weekly leans toward the left and takes pride in making acerbic commentary on world affairs through cartoons and spoof reports.

“We treat the news like journalists. Some use cameras, some use computers. For us, it’s a paper and pencil,” the Muhammad cartoonist, who goes by the name Luz, told The Associated Press in 2012. “A pencil is not a weapon. It’s just a means of expression.”

Editor Stephane Charbonnier, among the 10 journalists killed Wednesday, also defended the Muhammad cartoons speaking to The AP in 2012.

“Muhammad isn’t sacred to me,” said Charbonnier, who used the pen name Charb. “I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Quranic law.”

Islam is not alone in being singled out by Charlie Hebdo’s satire.

Past covers include retired Pope Benedict XVI in amorous embrace with a Vatican guard; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy looking like a sick vampire; and an Orthodox Jew kissing a Nazi soldier.

The magazine occasionally publishes investigative journalism, taking aim at France’s high and mighty.

Charlie Hebdo has come under pressure ever since its 2011 Muhammad issue. Its website has been hacked. It faced a lawsuit over the prophet cartoons. Riot police once guarded its offices.

Charb lived under police protection - and his body guard was killed Wednesday along with another officer.

Charb told Le Monde newspaper two years ago: “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”

One of his last cartoons, published in this week’s issue, seemed an eerie premonition.

“Still no attacks in France,” an extremist fighter says. “Wait - we have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

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W I N T R Y W E AT H E R A R O U N D U S B R I N G S FATA L I T I E S , S C H O O L C L O S I N G S

Dangerously cold air has sent temperatures plummeting into the single digits around the U.S., with wind chills driving them even lower. Throw in the snow some areas are getting and you’ve got a bone chilling mix that may also be super messy.

GETTING WORSE BEFORE BETTER

The result?

The National Weather Service has posted a variety of blizzard and winter weather advisories, watches and warnings for the Dakotas through Thursday. Not a lot of snow is expected, but winds gusting to 50 mph will blow around the snow that’s on the ground.

Another Alberta clipper barreling down from Canada is bringing more bad winter weather to the Dakotas.

School delays and cancellations, a fatal car pileup and worries about the homeless.

Here’s a look at what’s happening: A PILEUP IN WHITEOUT CONDITIONS An 18-vehicle pileup that happened in whiteout conditions on a western Pennsylvania interstate has left two people dead and nearly two dozen injured.

The Lighthouse is mired in the depth of winter’s chill along Lake Michigan as seen Wednesday Jan. 7, 2015 in Sheboygan, Wisc. Cold weather is expected to stay around for a few days.

Nine trucks, several of them tractor-trailers, and nine cars were involved in the crash Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 80 in Clarion Township, state police said. At least one of the trucks was carrying hazardous material, but no leaks were found.

In northwest Georgia, schools in Catoosa County will have a two-hour delayed start on Thursday because of temperatures expected to top out at 27 degrees and dip as low as minus 2 degrees with wind chills.

School officials have urged students to wait for buses inside or in warm cars with parents, and have said bus drivers would make individual stops at students’ homes and blow their horns if necessary.

None of the injuries was thought to be life-threatening, but three of the approximately 20 people taken to the hospital, appeared to have serious injuries. The others were treated for everything from bumps to broken bones.

Among the many cities modifying school schedules is Detroit, where it was 3 degrees early Thursday. Students got the day off Thursday at Detroit Public Schools, the state’s largest district, and at many other districts around Michigan.

DELAYING AND CANCELING SCHOOL

In New York, most of the school delays Thursday morning are in the state’s eastern half, from the Syracuse area to the Adirondacks, Albany area and Hudson Valley. Pre-dawn low temperatures ranged from minus-23 in Saranac Lake to 6 below in Albany. Forecasters say winds gusting to as high as 35 mph Thursday afternoon will make it feel like 45 below in parts of northern New York. The bone-chilling cold is being accompanied by lake-effect snow in parts of western and northern New York.

School districts from the South to the Northeast and Midwest are delaying the start of classes or canceling school altogether.

Wind-chill readings below zero were forecast in such places as Alabama and Asheville, North Carolina, along with a chunk of the Midwest and the Plains. Some areas also are seeing anywhere from a few inches to a foot of snow.

N E W G O P L E A D E R , O B A M A L I N I N G U P F I G H T S “we’ll decide in February how to handle it.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Not wasting any time, new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Barack Obama are setting course for showdowns over health care, a big oil pipeline, immigration policy and financing of the agency that tries to protect the U.S. from terrorists.

At the same time, both insist they are eager for compromise - if only the other side would give in.

“It seems with every new day, we have a new veto threat from the president,” McConnell, R-Ky., complained Wednesday, his second day as Senate leader. Republicans won control of the chamber in the November elections, and strengthened their hold on the House.

With the 114th Congress just getting underway, the White House already has announced that Obama stands ready to veto three bills that Republicans hope to rush through. One would allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada. Another weakens Obama’s signature health care law, by increasing the definition of a full-time employee who must be offered health coverage at work to 40 hours from the current 30.

The third would alter a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial services regulations.

“The president is not going to set the agenda for us here in the Senate,” McConnell told reporters.

Lamenting the deadly attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris, McConnell said the attack underscores that the war on terrorism is not over. He declined to say whether the attack would affect Republican plans to use the Homeland Security Department’s budget as leverage against Obama’s immigration policy.

“But at the end of the day, we’re going to fund the department, obviously,” McConnell said.

The anti-terrorism agency’s budget expires in late February, and Republicans have been working on a plan to tie new funding to a measure overturning Obama’s action that eased immigration rules last year and decreased deportations. McConnell said

STAYING WARM, REACHING OUT TO THE HOMELESS Many cities experiencing cold weather have opened warming stations for residents lacking heat. But extra care is being taken to protect the homeless.

In New Jersey, some officials have empowered law enforcement to move homeless people off the streets and into shelters.

Blankets were being given out at some of the 15 small tent cities around Huntsville, Alabama. Workers from a nonprofit organization there encouraged residents of the encampments to come inside. Some people planned to stay at a church that was opening as a shelter.

“We’ve got snow flurries as the temperatures continue to drop so they’re coming in,” said Clete Wetli, executive director of First Stop Inc., which provides transportation, mental health counseling and other services to the homeless. “The last thing we want is for someone to get hypothermia or die of frostbite.”

Officials in Ohio and Georgia warned residents never to use their kitchen ovens or stoves to heat their homes. It could prove deadly.

THERE IS A BRIGHT SIDE Temperatures were expected to drop to zero or below in southern New England and to 7 above in New York City, with wind chills getting into the minus-20s in some places. But little or no snow is forecast for most of the Northeast.

Tea party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz, one of the loudest voices against Obama’s immigration policy, said there was no reason to pull back from stopping the president’s “abuse of power and his unconstitutional actions.”

Around this time last year, parts of the region were digging out from 2 feet of snow accompanied by brutal polar air.

It’s Obama who should worry about the security risks if he considers a veto that would shut down the Homeland Security Department, said Cruz, R-Texas.

Last year, Philadelphia, New York and Boston all got around 5 feet of snow from December through February, or about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 feet more than normal. This year, they’ve seen only a few inches of snow since Dec. 1.

Even as McConnell and Obama skirmished from afar, both maintained there is hope for bipartisan cooperation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., with Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, right, and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, following their first GOP policy meeting since Congress reconvened yesterday. With Congress under full GOP control for the first time in eight years, Republicans are pursuing an ambitious agenda including early votes on bills to advance the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline and change the definition of fulltime work under Obama’s health law from 30 hours a week to 40 hours a week. President Obama has threatened to veto both measures.

In Minnesota, forecasters expect blizzard conditions to develop in a portion of the River Valley. Weather officials say wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph combined with fresh snow will significantly reduce visibility, especially in open, rural areas. A blizzard warning was posted in an area from Granite Falls southeast to Mankato and Albert Lea.

Obama, who meets with Republican congressional leaders next week, said he expects “some pitched political battles” but is hopeful for a “productive 2015.”

In his first big speech as majority leader, McConnell talked of working with Obama on trade agreements, infrastructure improvements and rewriting tax laws.

He even raised the prospect of tackling some big issues that have bedeviled Congress for years, such as shoring up Medicare and Social Security, balancing the budget and whittling away the national debt.

“But bipartisan reform can only be achieved if President Obama is interested in it,” McConnell said. “The president is the only one who can bring his party on board.”

In fact, this season’s snowfall totals are way down from last year, one of the snowiest seasons on record.

But then there’s western New York. The Buffalo area got slammed with more than 7 feet of snow in November and saw another foot on Tuesday. Thursday night and Friday could bring another 5 inches to 10 inches, weather forecasters say.

MEANWHILE IN ARIZONA...

Phoenix posted a record high temperature of 80 degrees on Wednesday.

That broke the old record of 79 set in 1948.

Over in Tempe, 74-year-old Bill Justice was wearing shorts while hanging out in his yard, just days after the National Weather Service announced that 2014 was the warmest year ever recorded in Arizona.

“We can enjoy all kinds of things in the winter and the same thing in the summer,” Justice said, adding that if he lived in Colorado or another cold climate, his swimming pool would be frozen by now.

Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski and Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis; Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles; and Mike Hill in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

h t t p : / / w w w . l i p t o n t o y o t a . c o m /

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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

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S O N Y C A S E S TAT E M E N T S C O U L D C A U S E B I N D , D E P E N D I N G O N E V I D E N C E

Either way, the public finger-pointing was exceptional considering that federal law enforcement is ordinarily loath to discuss an ongoing investigation, particularly in cybersecurity cases where it’s notoriously difficult to assign blame. It’s even more unusual for a president to make public accusations ahead of an arrest.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration’s extraordinary decision to point fingers at North Korea over the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. could lead to a courtroom spectacle in the event charges are ultimately filed against someone without ties to the isolated country, such as a disgruntled employee or an unrelated hacker.

In a conversation with reporters just one week before the Obama administration’s statements, the FBI director said investigators had not finished sorting through the evidence to arrive at a point of certainty about who was responsible.

Legal experts say potential complications illustrate why federal authorities rarely announce they’ve solved a case before an arrest.

“Once the government says it has good reason to believe North Korea did it, then that is good reason to believe that the defendant did not do it unless the defendant was an agent of North Korea,” said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

U.S. officials for weeks have been emphatic in blaming North Korea for the hack attack, citing similarities to other tools developed by the country in specific lines of computer code, encryption algorithms and data deletion methods. The Obama administration - reeling over persistent public skepticism whether North Korea was to blame - asserted its certainty again last week, announcing a new round of sanctions against North Korea that officials said will be just the first step of retaliation.

FBI Director James Comey told a cybersecurity conference in New York on Wednesday that the hackers “got sloppy” and mistakenly sent messages directly that could be traced to Internet addresses used exclusively by the North Korea. Comey said the hackers had sought to use proxy computer servers, a common ploy to disguise hackers’ identities and throw investigators off their trail by hiding their true locations.

“It was a mistake by them,” Comey said. “It made it very clear who was doing this.”

Though the FBI has repeatedly maintained that there’s no credible evidence suggesting anyone other than North Korea was

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James B. Comey listens to a question from a reporter during a media conference in San Francisco. The FBI director revealed new details Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, about the stunning cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., part of the Obama administration’s effort to challenge persistent skepticism about whether North Korea’s government was responsible for the brazen hacking. Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, FBI Director Comey revealed that the hackers “got sloppy” and mistakenly sent messages directly that could be traced to IP addresses used exclusively by North Korea.

responsible, that hasn’t stopped skeptics from challenging the government’s conclusion and raising questions about whether hackers or Sony insiders could be the culprits instead of - or maybe along with - North Korea. At least one firm claims to have identified a group of individuals it says may have attacked the company’s networks.

Comey said only the FBI has the whole picture, but the U.S. government has been hamstrung over its reluctance to disclose sensitive information that could be persuasive yet might reveal intelligence secrets about how the U.S. secretly watches North Korea.

“They don’t have the facts that I have, don’t see what I see,” he said.

DISSIDENTS FREE BUT QUESTIONS H A N G O V E R U S - C U B A D E A L released without any of the judicial procedures that normally precede the end of political cases. A few hours later, he said a third dissident, Enrique Figuerola Miranda, was let go under similar circumstances.

Sanchez said he believed the three releases were the start of a wider liberation of political prisoners. If he is right, the criticism of the prisoner deal could quickly lose momentum.

But clarity about the fate of the prisoners would answer only one of the questions still hanging over the U.S.-Cuba deal worked out by small teams of negotiators behind closed doors over the 18 months leading up to the announcement.

military guards stand in a room decorated with an image of revolutionary hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara outside prison cells at the Combinado del Este prison during a media tour in Havana, Cuba. Three Cuban political prisoners were freed Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015 and a leading human rights advocate said he believed their liberation was part of a U.S.-Cuban deal to release 53 dissidents. The three freed prisoners are Enrique Figuerola Miranda, Diango Vargas Martin and his twin brother Bianko Vargas Martin, according to Cuba’s Human Rights and Reconciliation Commission.

HAVANA (AP) -- Three dissidents were free Thursday after being abruptly released in what a leading human rights advocate said was part of Cuba’s deal with Washington to release 53 members of the island’s political opposition.

Neither the Obama administration nor the Cuban government spoke publicly about the releases, adding to the unanswered questions swirling around the deal and the broader detente that the two countries announced Dec. 17.

President Barack Obama ended five decades of official U.S. hostility toward communist-governed Cuba by announcing that, along with an exchange of men held on espionage charges, he would move toward full diplomatic ties, drop regime change as a U.S. goal and use his executive authority to punch holes in the longstanding trade embargo.

His Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, welcomed the announcement but said detente would not lead Cuba to change its single-party political system or centrally planned economy.

Relatives of Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a U.S. spy released under last month’s deal, say they are puzzled about why they have yet to hear from him. And Cubans are wondering why former President Fidel Castro has said nothing in public more than three weeks after the announcement.

The freed twin brothers were members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, a small dissident group considered to be the country’s most vehemently anti-government.

According to Amnesty International, they were arrested in December 2012 as they tried to return to their home in Santiago, where they lived with their mother, a member of the dissident group Ladies in White.

They had been held on charges of using violence or intimidation against a state official.

“They’re prisoners of conscience and they’ve been freed immediately and with no conditions,” Sanchez said.

The twins’ mother, Miraida Martin, said her sons had been told they were being transferred to another facility but once outside the prison in far eastern Cuba they were suddenly set free without explanation.

In this case, if anyone outside the North Korean government were to wind up accused, lawyers representing a defendant would almost certainly demand access to all nonpublic evidence pointing to North Korea as potentially exculpatory material.

The government would risk revealing sensitive sources and methods about the North Koreans if it shared such evidence during the discovery process. If it refused to turn over the material, the government would face demands from the defense that it dismiss the prosecution, Granick said.

If the government were ultimately to blame someone other than North Korea, a defense lawyer would easily “stand up and say, `But that’s not what they said before. They said it was North Korea,’” Lessig said.

“If you’re imagining the jury kind of sifting through those two accounts, it certainly benefits the defense that they’ve got this alternative plausible theory that creates in their minds reasonable doubt,” Lessig said.

Given the risks in revealing evidence, the public statements were a “bold move” that could suggest the government acted in haste - or that it has a much stronger case than what’s been made public, said Tor Ekeland, a New York lawyer whose clients include hackers.

Speaking before Comey had made his presentation, he added, “That’s what makes me think they’ve got some smoking gun piece of information that they haven’t revealed.”

HOUSE REJECTS BID TO EASE BANK REGULATIONS WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Tuesday rejected legislation altering a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial services regulations that would give U.S. banks another two years - to 2019 - to ensure that their holdings of certain complex and risky securities don’t put them afoul of a new banking regulation.

The measure won a 276-146 majority but failed under fast-track House rules that required a two-thirds vote. It’s likely to pass soon under rules that require a simple majority.

At issue is the so-called Volcker rule, part of the financial overhaul law, which would limit banks’ riskiest trading bets that could implode at taxpayers’ expense. That kind of risk-taking on Wall Street helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis.

“We think they’re on the list, but nothing’s been said about it,” she said.

Hernandez, of the Cuban American National Foundation, said he had been informed by the White House that Lady in White member Sonia Garro, her husband and a neighbor had been let go as part of the deal prior to both governments’ announcement of warming relations.

“We are opposed to this legislation and pleased that it did not pass,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said. “Had the bill been presented to the president for his signature, he would have vetoed it. The president has been clear about his opposition to legislation that would weaken key consumer protections and provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.” The Federal Reserve in April gave banks until July 2017 to sell off their holdings of so-called collateralized loan obligations, which are mainly backed by commercial loans to higher-risk companies. That came atop a previous oneyear extension by the Federal Reserve, to July 2015.

The rule is named for Paul Volcker, a former Fed chairman who was an adviser to President Barack Obama during the financial crisis. Volcker urged a ban on high-risk trading by big banks to diminish the likelihood that taxpayers might have to rescue them, as they did after the crisis, with hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid.

Facing criticism at home, U.S. officials said they never expected Cuba to move immediately to release the prisoners. They said the U.S. was avoiding public complaints that could provoke a backlash from Cuban officials.

Wall Street banks had pressed for an outright exemption for the securities from the Volcker Rule’s ban on high-risk investments; the Fed didn’t go that far. The banks had contended that without an exemption, they would be forced under the Volcker Rule to shed their CLO securities at a disadvantage.

For many Cuban-Americans and U.S. conservatives, the apparent lack of movement supported complaints that Obama’s secretly negotiated deal was too opaque and had failed to win sufficient concessions from Cuba.

On Wednesday, the head of Cuba’s Human Rights and Reconciliation Commission, Elizardo Sanchez, told The Associated Press that 19-yearold twins Diango Vargas Martin and Bianko Vargas Martin had been

It’s not clear whether any individuals, in North Korea or elsewhere, will ultimately be implicated in the break-in at Sony.

Prosecutions of cybercrime are challenging, especially when they reach overseas. Five Chinese military officers were indicted months ago on charges of vast corporate cyberespionage, but none has appeared in an American courtroom.

The Obama administration on Wednesday threatened to veto the bill if it reached President Barack Obama’s desk. The White House said Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew called House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi early Wednesday afternoon before the vote to express opposition to the legislation and to notify her of the veto threat.

U.S. officials told reporters on Dec. 17 that Cuba had agreed to free the 53 detainees, considered by Washington to be high-priority political prisoners. Castro said they would be released in “a unilateral way.” But since then, neither Cuba nor the United States has publicly identified anyone on the list or announced they have gone free.

“It’s unfair for us Cubans and Cuban-Americans not to be able to influence this situation that has such a tremendous relevance for the future of Cuba,” said Francisco “Pepe” Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation.

“The temptation to engage in the kind of global politics surrounding this rogue nation is probably just too great to resist,” Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig said in explaining why the administration might have felt compelled to speak publicly about the investigation. He added, “Finding a way to continue to reinforce the world’s commitment to bringing North Korea around to sanity seems a pretty compelling objective - which might lead them to deviate from standard practice.”

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The move comes on the heels of a GOP maneuver last month to insert into a must-pass spending bill a provision to relax the regulation of investments known as derivatives.

Under the Dodd-Frank law, banks were required to spin off - or “push out” their derivatives business into a subsidiary separate from the federally insured bank. The idea was to prevent banks from borrowing against depositors’ money to make outsize bets that carry huge risks. But last month’s Republican provision repealed that requirement.

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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

9

D R O N E R E V O L U T I O N D R AW S N E A R , B U T B I G O B S T A C L E S R E M A I N BOULEVARD, Calif. (AP) -- The drones are coming.

a lonely runway near the Gulf of Mexico. The nearest highway is 30 miles away. The surrounding county has 38 residents per square mile.

And even there, if the drone loses contact with controllers for too long, it is programed to crash into the ground. Now, imagine drones flying around New York City, where almost 70,000 people live in each square mile of Manhattan.

Not as flying deliverymen that bring diapers, books or soup cans to your home, a vision put forth by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to much fanfare a little more than a year ago.

Instead, drones will help spray crops, inspect high-voltage power lines and hover over movie sets to provide directors with new vantage points.

They will also work for insurance companies, real estate agencies, ski resorts and dozens of other businesses.

--THE INVESTORS

Eventually.

For now, this all remains theoretical. Except for a few locations, U.S. airspace is closed to commercial drones. Regulators say the danger is too great, and they want to go slow easing unmanned aircraft into the already crowded skies.

Advocates of the young drone industry complain that the long wait is keeping them grounded. Big-money investors are generally staying away, waiting for clear government guidelines. And the blanket flight prohibition has prevented companies from experimenting and advancing the technology. That includes developing sophisticated collision-avoidance systems or finding ways for the aircraft to navigate without human help.

“Most of these drones have very limited safety features,” says Maryanna Saenko, an analyst with science and technology consultancy Lux Research. If one crashes, “it’s a four- or five-pound brick coming out of the sky.”

Most Americans associate drones with the military, which uses unmanned aircraft to survey battlefields and hunt terrorists. In a similar manner, businesses of all kinds envision using them to perform jobs that are too difficult or dangerous for humans, as well as tasks that can be done more cheaply and accurately by machines.

If safety and regulatory obstacles can be overcome, within the next three years, drones and the companies that support them could generate $13.7 billion worth of economic activity in the U.S. and create 70,000 new jobs, according to the industry’s trade group, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

That’s just domestically. In less than a decade, as many as 32,000 commercial drones could be flying worldwide, according to aerospace consultancy Teal Group. Only a third will be in the U.S. Canada and a dozen European nations including Germany, Ireland, Sweden and the United Kingdom have already set rules allowing some drones but under strict conditions. Canada, for instance, allows flights only during daylight and good weather and requires the controller to keep the drone in sight.

The Federal Aviation Administration plans to release guidelines soon about who can fly drones weighing less than 55 pounds and under what conditions. There might also be the extremely stringent - and costly requirement that operators have a pilot’s license.

That means some of the most ambitious drone ideas, like Amazon’s package-delivery system, will probably have to wait. First, drones will tackle the hard-to-do jobs, the dangerous industrial tasks, often in remote places.

--THE FIRST ADOPTERS To see the potential of drones, go to a plateau in the Southern California desert covered with cacti and brush. There Teena Deering, a former Navy helicopter pilot who later taught drone warfare, is testing the idea of using unmanned aircraft to inspect power lines.

A generation ago, military pilots would retire and fly for airlines. Today, they are working on drones.

“It’s just the way of the future,” Deering says.

With a few quick movements of a wireless controller - the type used for model airplanes - Deering sends a 1-pound drone racing into the sky around a 165-foot tower. Live video streams back from the drone’s camera, showing her the condition of the lines. The 500,000 volts passing through them create a constant buzzing that can be heard from the ground.

Normally, the remote lines are inspected by helicopter, a difficult job that costs $1,200 an hour. But San Diego Gas and Electric thinks that drones might be a cheaper, faster way.

The utility maintains more than 25,000 miles of power lines and 185,000 utility towers and poles. In a region where winds surpass 100 mph, lines are often de-energized to prevent brush fires. Before power can be restored, the company needs to ensure there are no downed lines. That means sending out the helicopters or requiring crews to hike through rocky, uneven terrain filled with rattlesnakes and coyotes.

Drones are already being used in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to monitor remote oil pipelines. One drone could replace teams of inspectors.

--FARMER DRONE Perhaps the biggest industry ripe for drone use is farming. With the help of GPS mapping, drones can survey an entire farm, find bugs or soil that is too dry or too low in nutrients and then send the exact coordinates back to a tractor that will apply pesticide, water or fertilizer only to areas in need.

Taking it a step further, there are 2,500 unmanned miniature helicopters currently used by farmers in Japan to spray pesticides in hilly areas where tractors might roll over. Similar drones are operating in South Korean and Australia. In the U.S., the $150,000 helicopters are being

While a handful of big-name investors have poured money into drones, most of the money fueling the industry is coming from entrepreneurs’ own bank accounts.

In this Oct. 16, 2014 picture, former Navy helicopter pilot and San Diego Gas & Electric unmanned aircraft operator Teena Deering holds a drone as it is prepared for takeoff near Boulevard, Calif. San Diego Gas and Electric thinks that drones might be a cheaper, faster way to inspect its power lines in remote areas.

considered for the steep slopes of California vineyards.

Farmers aren’t expected to buy the costly drones themselves or learn how to fly them. Instead, imagine a modern-day door-to-door salesman who would offer drone services from farm to farm.

Drones can also be used to improve crop yields and fight off disease.

Some California wineries want to use unmanned aircraft to see which rows of grapes ripen first. In Florida, researchers are using infrared cameras to monitor orange trees for the deadly citrus greening disease.

Drones could also be used to monitor the air for microbes that spread disease from one farm to other.

Generally, venture capital firms prefer investing in industries with low infrastructure costs, such as developing smartphone apps or security software. They want a quick return on their money, and that’s not something the drone industry can offer, at least not yet.

Since the start of 2013, venture capital firms have invested more than $95 million in drones and related industries, according to data from PwC and the National Venture Capital Association. That might sound like a lot, but consider this: venture capital firms poured $63 billion into various projects across all industries during that time.

For every dollar invested in drones, venture capital firms invested another $91 in biotechnology and another $263 in software. And those are just two sectors.

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DELIVERY BY DRONE

RISKY SITUATIONS

Amazon says its drone delivery service could someday get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less. The company has assembled a team of aviation and robotics experts. They even have a former astronaut.

Part of the initial appeal of drones is that they can go places that aren’t easily accessible or safe for humans - collapsed buildings after an earthquake, nuclear power plants following an accident and neighborhoods damaged by wildfires, hurricanes or flooding.

Through its Prime Air service, Amazon aims to have drones flying 50 mph and capable of carrying up to 5 pounds, which covers 86 percent of products sold on Amazon.

Oil refineries could use drones to inspect and troubleshoot their flare stacks, tall towers used to burn off gas. The flares give off so much heat that people often can’t stand on the ground below, let alone climb the tower, unless there is a lengthy and costly shutdown of the refinery.

“They will become as normal as seeing delivery trucks driving down the street,” says Paul Misner, Amazon’s global vice president of public policy.

For wildlife biologists who track migrating herds, the biggest job risk isn’t snakebites or bear attacks. Two thirds of wildlife biologists killed on the job from 1937 to 2000 died in aviation accidents, according to a study by the Wildlife Society conservation group.

Not everybody is so optimistic - including other shippers. Drones, they say, aren’t a cost-effective replacement for existing systems and would struggle to navigate in crowded cities or around suburban trees and power lines.

---

German delivery company Deutsche Post DHL is already testing a drone, but only to a remote tourist island in the North Sea and just for urgent deliveries of medicine. The only other option is a once-daily ferry that needs to wait for high tide.

INDUSTRY VS. REGULATORS The FAA estimates that 7,500 drones will be flying in the U.S. within five years. The industry puts the number in the hundreds of thousands.

Compare that to the four largest U.S. airlines, with their combined fleet of 4,728 planes.

“The FAA is just scared to death,” says David Bridges, a mechanical engineering professor testing drones at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. “U.S. airspace is one of the safest in the world. It’s their job to keep it that way.”

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta says drone technology is promising but needs to be phased in responsibly.

“We have a duty to protect people in the air and on the ground,” Huerta says.

Some of the greatest danger is close to airports, where hundreds of airline passengers could be at risk from errant drones. The FAA has reports of nearly 200 cases in the past 10 months where drones got too close for comfort to manned airplanes.

Even the military, with its expert pilots, crashes drones. The Air Force has lost 116 unmanned aircraft in the last decade and now has a rate of about five destroyed for every 100,000 hours of flying time.

Others say if the FAA would just get out of the way and provide some basic rules, they could develop solutions to these problems.

“We have very limited availability to test things,” says Nicholas R. Alley, CEO of Georgia drone company AREA-I. “And that’s the FAA’s fault.”

--HOBBYISTS While companies wait, more and more hobbyists are putting drones in the skies. Many of the devices are able to stabilize themselves and can be operated with an iPhone or Android smartphone. Some cost just $300. French company Parrot has sold 670,000 drones worldwide in just the past four years.

The problem is that today’s aircraft lack brains. They must either be controlled remotely by a pilot or fly a predetermined route from one coordinate to another.

A wedding videographer in Wyoming lost control of his drone in 2013, hitting the groom in the face. More than 2.1 million people have viewed the video on YouTube.

Technology that senses obstacles - buildings, power lines, trees or other planes - and avoids them isn’t proven. Battery life is limited. And questions remain about hackers or terrorists intercepting and controlling drones.

That’s why Bridges and his Texas A&M colleagues fly drones from

Drones aren’t intended to supersede planes and trucks, says spokeswoman Anita Gupta.

“It doesn’t replace the solid network we have developed for our ground transportation,” Gupta says. “This is not like some sci-fi movie.”

I N FA C E O F V E TO THREAT, SENATE PA N E L C O N S I D E R S P I P E L I N E B I L L WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite a veto threat from the White House, a key Senate committee is expected to advance a bill approving the Keystone XL pipeline closer to a Senate vote.

The initial meeting on the legislation, also the first in the Republican-controlled Senate, was scheduled for Wednesday, but it was canceled after Democrats objected.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will take up the bill at a meeting Thursday. It is widely expected to clear the committee. The bill has 60 sponsors - 54 Republicans and six Democrats. While that is enough votes to pass the Senate, supporters said Monday they did not have enough votes to overturn a veto.

The House is expected to easily pass a bill on Friday approving the $5.4 billion construction project.

The bid to build the pipeline, which began in 2008, has become a political flashpoint. Conservatives see it as a way to create jobs and wean America off of foreign oil while environmental groups have made it a symbol of President Barack Obama’s commitment to global warming.

The project will likely satisfy neither side. The pipeline’s construction is not expected to produce many direct jobs. The State Department’s own analysis concluded that it wouldn’t worsen climate change because the oil would be harvested and then transported by other means, including rail, even if the pipeline were not built.

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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

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AT L E A S T 2 5 W R O N G A R R E S T S M A R PHILIPPINES ANTI-TERROR WORK

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- More than a decade ago, the military declared they had killed an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping suspect named Abdulmukim Idris. Yet a man authorities accuse of being Idris continues to languish in a maximum-security jail where the Philippines holds some of its most notorious terror suspects.

But mistakes are a concern in the Philippines’ slow and overburdened law enforcement and criminal justice system, which has a backlog of thousands of cases and is tainted by corruption allegations.

In far-flung Muslim regions in the south, those frailties are compounded by backward conditions like a lack of birth certificates and other identification papers of poor villagers, hampering the accurate identification of suspects. With spotty intelligence, government forces have often relied on civilian informants, some with questionable backgrounds, who have at times pointed to wrong suspects, Commission on Human Rights chief Loretta Ann Rosales said.

In the country’s dogged pursuit of terror suspects, it also has nabbed two “Black Tungkangs,” two “Abdasil Dimas,” two “Hussien Kasims.” Those are just a few of the signs that Philippine law enforcers have made a slew of mistaken arrests in going after Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic militant groups long active in this Southeast Asian nation’s south.

Complaints of false arrests prompted low-key but unprecedented reinvestigations of some of the country’s high-profile terrorism cases by state prosecutors. They have led to the release of more than two dozen people who were either mistaken for Abu Sayyaf fighters or brought to trial without evidence, according to official findings.

In their latest review, issued in August, state prosecutors said such faulty arrests of villagers, some of whom could not be identified even by a single witness, are “abhorred in civilized societies like ours.”

An Associated Press investigation that included interviews with prosecutors, key witnesses and a freed detainee shows that dozens more people remain behind bars despite a lack of evidence against them.

For instance, of the two detainees accused of being the Abu Sayyaf militant who used the nom de guerre Black Tungkang, one remains in custody, even though a former hostage has sworn that neither was the right man.

“I really wanted to retaliate if I have the chance - against the right people,” the former hostage, Amily Mantec, told The AP in an interview.

She was among six Jehovah’s Witnesses abducted by Abu Sayyaf gunmen in 2002. Two of the captives, including her husband, were beheaded.

The real culprits “committed horrible crimes, but they’re free because other people are suffering under their names,” said Mantec, who now lives under a government witness-protection program.

The case involving Mantec had the most releases of mistakenly arrested detainees among the three high-profile kidnappings involving the Abu Sayyaf that prosecutors have re-examined in the last two years.

Twenty-two suspects, arrested between 2004 to 2012, were freed in 2013 after Mantec and another former hostage failed to identify them and for lack of evidence. Just three others were returned to trial.

Two detainees were released after prosecutors re-examined the 2000 kidnappings of 52 students, teachers and a Roman Catholic priest on the southern island province of Basilan, an attack that left three abductees dead. Prosecutors discovered that not a single witness stood against the two suspects as they sat in jail for more than a decade.

In a third case - 21 Western tourists and Asian workers kidnapped from a Malaysian diving resort and released in the Philippines’ Sulu province - the review lead to the release of one suspect.

Two men were collared for being a militant named Abdasil Dima two years ago. Another pair were arrested under the militant name Hussien Kasim 13 years ago, according to prosecutors.

Filipino Muslims display placards as they join a rally by activists in front of the Justice Department in Manila, Philippines, to protest the continuing detention of their relatives whom they claimed were wrongfully arrested. In the country’s dogged pursuit of terror suspects, Philippine law enforcers have made a slew of mistaken arrests in going after Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic militant groups long active in this Southeast Asian nation’s south.

Across the three cases, 120 indictments were sustained.

Senior state prosecutor Peter Ong said he and other prosecutors also want the remaining “Black Tungkang” detainee released, but the court has refused because the arresting officer insists he’s the right suspect.

Ong said the suspect says he was coerced into giving a false confession. The arresting officer could not be reached for comment.

Ong said he suspects some law enforcers may have forced civilian informants to point to the wrong people to pocket anti-terror bounties. He said he has asked government officials to introduce more safeguards to prevent government anti-terror bounties from being corrupted.

Mantec told the AP that an arresting officer once pressured her to falsely identify a man as an Abu Sayyaf militant who had a bounty on his head, but she resisted.

More than 140 million pesos ($3.2 million) in rewards have been handed to informants for the “neutralization” of 115 Abu Sayyaf militants from 2001 to 2013, according to the military.

As recently as 2012, the government was offering a bounty for the capture of Abu Sayyaf militant Pedong Palam, even though a man said to be that suspect had been in jail since the early 2000s. Ong said that detainee was finally released last year after prosecutors found no evidence against him during a review of his kidnapping case.

Hundreds of Abu Sayyaf militants have been killed or captured since the country’s south became a battleground in the U.S.-led war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Manila’s constitution restricts America’s involvement to noncombat support, the countries’ cooperation in the decline of the Abu Sayyaf, dreaded for its bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings, has been regarded as a counterterrorism success story.

A I R A S I A P L A N E ’ S TA I L M AY B E LIFTED TO RETRIEVE BLACK BOXES locators, which are dragged by ships.

Three ships equipped with six ping locators were in the search area in the Java Sea, said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator of the National Commission for Transportation Safety.

Based on pictures taken by divers, he believed that the black boxes were still in their original location in the plane’s tail.

“Once detected, we will try to find and lift up the black boxes as soon as possible,” he said.

Officials are hopeful many of the bodies not yet recovered are inside the fuselage, which is thought to be lying near the plane’s tail. Divers reaching the tail Thursday said they did not see bodies trapped in the broken-off tail section.

Indonesian navy divers arrive on boats after conducting operations to lift the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501 on the Java Sea, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015. Divers were hoping to zero in on the flight’s black boxes Thursday, after search and recovery operations got a much-needed boost with the discovery of a chunk of the plane’s tail - nearly two weeks after it plummeted into the sea, killing everyone onboard.

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AP) -- Strong currents and blinding silt thwarted an attempt by divers on Thursday to find AirAsia Flight 8501’s black boxes, which are believed to still be in the recently discovered tail of the crashed plane.

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders are crucial for determining what caused the jet carrying 162 passengers and crew to vanish on Dec. 28, halfway into a two-hour flight between Surabaya, Indonesia, and Singapore.

Four bodies recovered Thursday raised the total to 44, Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said.

Days after sonar detected apparent wreckage, an unmanned underwater vehicle showed the plane’s tail, lying upside down and partially buried in the ocean floor.

Divers looking for the black boxes on Thursday were unable to make it past currents and 1-meter (3-foot) visibility, Soelistyo said.

He said efforts will be intensified Friday to raise the tail - either with a lifting balloon or crane.

Ping-emitting beacons in the black boxes still have about 20 days of battery life, but high waves had prevented the deployment of ping

It’s not clear what caused the crash, but bad weather is believed to have been a factor. The pilot told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but he was denied permission to change altitude because other planes were nearby. The plane soon lost contact.

The four are currently detained in a heavily secured jail in metropolitan Manila with Idris Ukani. He was arrested 13 years ago after being tagged as the kidnapping suspect Abdulmukim Idris, even though the military has publicly declared that troops shot dead Abdulmukim Idris in 2003 after he escaped from the main police camp.

Idris, the two Abdasil Dimas and two Hussien Kasims are suspects in the Basilan kidnappings.

Human rights lawyer Pura Ferrer-Calleja, who represents Ukani, said she has pointed out the anomalous arrest and sought the release of her client years ago, but the court rejected her petition. She said some witnesses previously pointed to her client as among the kidnappers, but said that testimony should be scrutinized at the trial.

A former Abu Sayyaf commander who has turned state witness, Abu Gandhie, has testified that most of the 94 detainees accused of kidnapping the students, teachers and priest on Basilan island are innocent.

Ong said Gandhie, who has acknowledged involvement in the Basilan kidnappings, has identified only 12 of the 94 detainees as participants.

Gandhie has also said far more were arrested than had even taken part in the kidnappings, a number he said was no higher than 60.

Ong said he initially thought as many as 80 Basilan detainees could be freed, but he added that he was unable to petition the court in nearly all cases because the court had rejected earlier petitions to free them. At this point, he said, those defendants must go through the trial process.

Under a 2007 anti-terror law, law-enforcement officials can be fined 500,000 pesos ($11,200) for each day they wrongfully detain a terror suspect. The law has been used at least twice, but Rosales, the Commission on Human Rights official, said officers can avoid it by charging terrorism suspects with common crimes.

Ong said no law-enforcement official has been convicted of falsely arresting an Abu Sayyaf suspect. But the Philippine military and police say personnel who carry out illegal arrests will be punished appropriately.

“If there is some evidence, we’ll look into it. We really correct our mistakes,” national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor said.

Still, Manila’s review of major terrorism cases drew praise from a U.N. counterterrorism official, Jean-Paul Laborde, during a recent visit.

“If you arrest innocent people,” Laborde warned at a news conference, “you will catalyze more and more people into going in the wrong direction.”

Manny Ismael, a 38-year-old laborer, was among those freed in 2013 after prosecutors declared there was no proof he was involved in the kidnappings of Mantec and the other Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A father of nine, Ismael wept when he stepped out of jail after 10 years. He said he had been falsely accused by a feuding relative who died while Ismael was in custody.

Ismael remains poor, but can now bask in the sun, sea and his newfound freedom in his coastal Sulu hometown. His thoughts often turn to the dozens of suspects still locked up on terrorism charges - men he believes are innocent.

“There’s food there, but when you wake up in the morning and sleep at night, the first and last thing you will see are the iron bars,” he said.

“The constant problem is how to keep your sanity.”

h t t p : / / w w w . l i p t o n t o y o t a . c o m /

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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

11

FRANCE HUNTS FOR 2 SUSPECTS; NATION MOURNS THEIR VICTIMS

PARIS (AP) -- Scattered gunfire and explosions shook France on Thursday as its frightened yet defiant citizens held a day of mourning for 12 people slain at a Paris newspaper. French police hunted two heavily armed brothers suspected in the massacre, fearing they might strike again.

raising fears the deadly attack at Charlie Hebdo was igniting a backlash against France’s large and diverse Muslim community.

No one was injured in the attacks, one in Le Mans southwest of Paris and another in Villefranche-sur-Saone, near Lyon, southeast of the capital.

The two suspects - one a former pizza deliveryman who had a prior terror conviction and a fondness for rap -should be considered “armed and dangerous,” French police said in a bulletin.

France’s top security official, meanwhile, abandoned a top-level meeting to rush to a shooting on the city’s southern edge that killed a policewoman. The shooter remained at large and it was not immediately clear if her death was linked to Wednesday’s deadly attack.

French President Francois Hollande - joined by residents, tourists and Muslim leaders - called for tolerance after the country’s worst terrorist attack in decades. At noon, the Paris metro came to a standstill and a crowd fell silent near Notre Dame cathedral to honor Wednesday’s victims.

“France has been struck directly in the heart of its capital, in a place where the spirit of liberty - and thus of resistance - breathed freely,” Hollande said.

France’s prime minister said the possibility of a new attack “is our main concern” and announced several overnight arrests. Tensions ran high in Paris, where 800 extra police patrolled schools, places of worship and transit hubs. Britain increased its security checks at ports and borders.

The satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and witnesses said the attackers claimed allegiance to al-Qaida in Yemen. Around the world, from Berlin to Bangkok, thousands filled squares and streets for a second day, holding up pens to protect the right to freedom of speech.

“The only thing we can do is to live fearlessly,” wrote Kai Diekmann, editor in chief of Bild, Germany’s biggest-selling daily.

“Our colleagues in Paris have paid the ultimate price for freedom.

We bow before them.”

Eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor were killed in Wednesday’s newspaper attack and 11 people were wounded, four of them critically. The publication had long drawn threats for its depictions of Islam, although it also satirized other religions and political figures.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the two suspects still at large in the slayings - Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34 - were known to France’s intelligence services. Cherif Kouachi was convicted of terrorism in 2008 for ties to network that sends radical fighters to Iraq. His lawyer confirmed Thursday that police tracked down the identities of the brothers because one left his ID behind in a getaway car.

French riot officers patrol in Longpont, north of Paris, France, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015.

Scattered gunfire and explosions shook France on Thursday as its frightened yet defiant citizens held a day of mourning for 12 people slain at a Paris newspaper. French police hunted down the two heavily armed brothers suspected in the massacre to make sure they don’t strike again.

By Thursday afternoon, authorities focused their search around the towns Villers-Cotterets and Crepy-en-Valois northeast of Paris, according to an official with the national gendarme service.

Two men resembling the suspects robbed a gas station in Villers-Cotterets early Thursday, and police swarmed the site while helicopters hovered above. Later large numbers of special police units arrived in Crepy-en-Valois amid reports the suspects had holed up there. However, the gendarme official later said the men had not yet been located.

A third suspect, Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station after hearing his name linked to the attacks, a Paris prosecutor’s spokeswoman said. His relationship to the Kouachi brothers was unclear.

One French police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, said the suspects were linked to a Yemeni terrorist network. And a witness, Cedric Le Bechec, wrote on Facebook that the attackers said as they were fleeing “Tell the media that it’s al-Qaida in Yemen.”

The governor of a southern province in Yemen told The Associated Press on Thursday that four French citizens had been deported from Yemen in the last four months. Gov. Ahmed Abdullah al-Majidi said he didn’t have their names and there was no confirmed link between those deportations and the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Two explosions hit near mosques in France early Thursday,

A French security official said seven people had been arrested overnight in the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Fears have run high in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home. The French suspect in a deadly 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium had returned from fighting with extremists in Syria; and the man who rampaged in southern France in 2012, killing three soldiers and four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

Both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have repeatedly threatened to attack France, which is conducting airstrikes against extremists in Iraq and fighting Islamic militants in Africa.

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of those slain, was specifically threatened in a 2013 edition of the al-Qaida magazine Inspire. A caricature of Islamic State’s leader was the last tweet sent out by the satirical newspaper, minutes before the attack. Its feed has since gone silent.

One witness to Wednesday’s attack said the gunmen were so methodical he at first mistook them for an elite anti-terrorism squad.

Then they fired on a police officer. Once inside the building, the gunmen headed straight for Charbonnier, killing him and his police bodyguard first. Shouting “Allahu akbar!” as they fired, the killers then called out the names of other employees.

In Tunisia, the birthplace of one of the slain cartoonists, Georges Wolinski, dozens paid homage in a candlelight vigil outside the French ambassador’s residence.

“These people were executed at point-blank range just because of drawings - drawings that didn’t please everyone and provoked anger and controversy but still were just drawings,” said journalist Marouen Achouri.

DAD ACCUSED OF THROWING 5-YEAR-OLD OFF BRIDGE IN FLORIDA This booking photo provided by the Pinellas County Jail shows John Jonchuck. The 25-yearold faces a first-degree murder charge after throwing his 5-year-old daughter off a bridge on the approach to the Sunshine Skyway, early Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida man driving toward a bridge over Tampa Bay pulled his car over early Thursday, took his 5-year-old daughter from the back seat, pressed her head to his chest, and tossed her over the rail, according to police in St. Petersburg.

John Nicholas Jonchuck, 25, faces first-degree murder charges. His daughter, Phoebe, fell about 60 feet over the Sunshine Skyway bridge into the bay just after midnight, St. Petersburg police Chief Anthony Holloway said at a news conference.

An officer heading home after his shift saw Jonchuck’s vehicle speed past at nearly 100 mph, Holloway said. The officer prepared to pull the PT Cruiser over, but by the time he caught up with it, Jonchuck had pulled over on the side of the road.

Holloway said Jonchuck got out and started toward the officer, who pulled his weapon. But Jonchuck went around to the passenger side of the car and got the child out.

The officer “thought he heard the child scream, but he wasn’t sure,” Holloway said. The officer then saw the man throw the child over, into the strong bay current.

Her body was recovered about a mile from the bridge and hour and a half later. Rescue crews tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead at 2:44 a.m.

Back on the road, officers said Jonchuck got back in the car

and headed south, crossing the bridge on Interstate 275.

“The suspect drove off,” Holloway said. “He just drove off.”

Two other officers who were near the bridge started following Jonchuck into neighboring Manatee County.

Holloway said Jonchuck turned his blinker on and stopped before starting again and driving toward deputies. He then headed the wrong way on the interstate, going back toward the bridge. Deputies put out traffic spikes to stop the vehicle.

Jonchuck was arrested and brought back to St. Petersburg for questioning. He’s being held without bond on the murder charge.

“He lawyered up,” Holloway said. “He really didn’t want to talk.”

He is scheduled for an initial court appearance Thursday afternoon.

Jail records didn’t list the name of Jonchuck’s attorney.

In addition to the murder charge, Jonchuck also faces charges of aggravated assault with a motor vehicle on a law enforcement officer and aggravated fleeing and eluding police.

Authorities said Jonchuck filed a domestic violence report against the child’s mother last month, but it wasn’t granted.

He had custody of the child, and they lived with his father in Tampa. Authorities didn’t release information about the girl’s mother.

An autopsy is pending.

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D o n t Te x t a n d D r i v e

12

The Weekly News Digest, Jan 12 thru Jan 18, 2014

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A S T R O N O M E R S TO E A RT H : Y O U ’ V E G O T S O M E N E W LY F O U N D N E A R - T W I N S WASHINGTON (AP) -- Earth has a few more near-twin planets outside our solar system, tantalizing possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.

size and in the habitable temperature zone to eight or nine. But that’s only from a short search of a small part of our galaxy, so Torres believes that Earth-like planets are common throughout the cosmos, though he cannot prove it yet.

Astronomers announced Tuesday that depending on definitions, they have confirmed three or four more planets that are about the same size as Earth and are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold “Goldilocks Zone” for liquid water to form.

Torres likes to include one planet that would bump the new findings from three to four, but Caldwell said that planet may or may not be habitable.

It doesn’t matter much. “We do not need to talk about the one or two exoplanets that could be like Earth, we are finding so many,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, director of Cornell University’s Pale Blue Dot Institute. She wasn’t part of the study.

These planets are likely to be rocky like Earth, and not gas giants or ice worlds. They get about the same heat from their star as we get from the sun, according to the latest results from NASA’s planet hunting Kepler telescope.

Torres and Caldwell highlighted the two new planets that are closest in size to Earth. The closest, called Kepler 438-b, is only 12 percent larger than Earth and gets about 40 percent more energy from its star than we do from the sun, so it would probably be warmer, Torres said. It tightly circles a small cooler red star with its year lasting only 35 Earth days and the sun in its sky would be red, not yellow.

But don’t book your flights yet.

They may be close to Earth in size and likely temperature in the gargantuan scale of the universe, but they aren’t quite close enough for comfort.

Consider two of the new planets, the nearest to Earth discovered to date.

If they have atmospheres similar to Earth’s - a big if - one would be a toasty 140 some degrees and the other would hover around zero, said study lead author Guillermo Torres, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Life conceivably could evolve and adapt to those temperatures, he said.

Oh, and they aren’t actually within commuting distance of Earth. Those two are 500 and 1,100 light years away; a light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

What’s important, said SETI Institute astronomer Douglas Caldwell, a study co-author who presented the findings at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, is that astronomers are a bit closer to finding twins of Earth and answering the age-old question: Are we alone?

“These planets do exist; we didn’t know that before,” Torres said in a phone interview from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “What we’re really

This artist’s conception provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics depicts an Earth-like planet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a stunning “planetary nebula.” Earlier in its life, this planet may have been like one of the eight newly discovered worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.

looking for is signs of life eventually. We’re not there yet. It will take many years but this is the first step.”

Torres’ team confirmed earlier discoveries and added new ones, bringing the total known number of planets that are no bigger than twice Earth’s

Andy Stahl, director of the watchdog group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, said he thought the agency’s leaders “finally listened to Forest Service employees, and no one thought this was a good idea.”

Without giving a reason, the Forest Service issued a statement Tuesday saying that it had not accepted any contract bids and would look for other ways to enhance the public’s access to national forests and understanding about what the agency does.

Spokesman Larry Chambers would not answer questions.

The agency has been facing an intense public backlash in the West over plans to close trails and roads to motorized vehicles due to a lack of money for maintenance, as well as to prevent erosion and protect fish and wildlife.

The countdown was halted just over a minute before launch when a steering mechanism in the rocket malfunctioned - “behaving strangely,” as SpaceX chief Elon Musk noted via Twitter.

steering of the second stage was moving when it should have been still.

If controllers had not aborted the launch, computers likely would have done so closer to flight time, officials said.

The soonest SpaceX can try again to launch the unmanned Falcon rocket is Friday morning, provided it can quickly fix the problem.

Once the Dragon is on its way, the California-based company will try to fly the first-stage booster rocket to a platform in the Atlantic. No one has ever pulled off such a touchdown. Normally, the boosters are discarded at sea.

NASA took the latest shipment delay in stride, while the company faced three more days of anxious waiting for its unprecedented rocket-landing test - attempting to fly back the main booster to a platform in the ocean.

The Dragon capsule is loaded with more than 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment for an upcoming series of spacewalks, as well as belated holiday surprises for the six station astronauts.

The station pantry took a hit when another company’s supply ship was destroyed in a launch explosion a few months ago.

SpaceX’s founder, Musk, said recovering and reusing rockets could speed up launches and drive down costs.

The delivery was supposed to occur before Christmas, but was delayed twice in mid-December, once because of a flawed test firing of the rocket engines. The test was repeated successfully, paving the way for Tuesday’s try - the sixth supply run by SpaceX since 2012.

Space station commander Butch Wilmore said the six crew members ran out of condiments a month ago, and he’s yearning for some yellow mustard to spice up the food. He and his crewmates were watching the launch countdown just before sunrise live via a video feed from Mission Control in Houston.

NASA is using SpaceX and another private company - Orbital Sciences Corp. - to help keep the space station stocked. The last shipment attempt - by Orbital - ended in an explosion seconds after the October liftoff from Virginia. Orbital has grounded its rocket fleet until next year.

“Certainly, there’s a little bit of disappointment because it had fresh fruit and those types of things that we’re all interested in getting,” Wilmore said in an interview with The Associated Press after the postponement. “But they’ll get off the ground here in a couple of days and it will all be great.”

Researchers, some of them school children, scrambled to get replacement experiments and equipment on this Dragon flight.

SpaceX officials said one of two motors needed for rocket thrust

NASA also announced that its planet-hunter telescope confirmed its 1,000th planet outside the solar system, most quite unlike Earth and not in the habitable zone. Added to those discovered by other telescopes, astronome

But a watchdog group and current and retired Forest Service employees had raised concerns that money would be better spent on the ground, instead of trying to enhance the agency’s image, while it struggles to pay to fight wildfires, maintain roads and trails, and offer timber sales.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -- Faced with a backlash from current and retired employees, the U.S. Forest Service has abruptly dropped plans to spend up to $10 million on a five-year nationwide public relations campaign to brand itself as a public agency that cares about people and nature.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- SpaceX called off a supply flight to the International Space Station on Tuesday because of rocket trouble, another delay in the delivery of groceries and overdue Christmas presents.

The other, Kepler 442-b, is about 34 percent bigger than Earth but gets only two-thirds of the energy from its sun as we do, Torres said.

FOREST SERVICE PULLS PROTESTED PLAN TO SPEND $10M ON IMAGE

ROCKET PROBLEM P O S T P O N E S S PA C E X LAUNCH TO SPACE STATION

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is seen at launch complex 40 after an attempted early morning launch was scrubbed due to technical issues at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015. The countdown was halted with just over a minute remaining until launch.

It may hot, but “there are bacteria on Earth that live very comfortably in those temperatures, no problem,” Torres said.

Space station program manager Mike Suffredini said the outpost is nowhere near being short on food or other critical supplies. Russia and Japan also have supply shipments planned this year.

Stahl said that after he learned of the contract, he sent an email to 25,000 Forest Service employees, and about half of them opened it. He got about 50 replies, all critical, suggesting the money could be put to better use on recreation programs, revising forest management plans, restoring ecosystems, hiring employees and lifting a three-year wage freeze.

Jim Golden, a retired deputy regional forester for the Northwest and board chairman for the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, said he warned Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell in an email Saturday of the “growing firestorm” among retirees unless the agency released information explaining the campaign. But Tidwell never did, Golden said.

“Our primary reaction was one of suspicion,” he said. “Not many retirees believe the Forest Service needs a new brand. Most of us believe the simple (motto), `Caring for the land and serving the people,’ is pretty effective.”

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said he was happy the Forest Service changed its mind so the money could be put to more “pressing needs.”

Al Matecko, retired chief of public and legislative affairs for the Northwest region and head of the Old Smokeys group, which represents about 950 retirees, said he received 50 emails from members who were strongly opposed. He passed on those objections to Forest Service leaders.

“Retirees were just amazed that at this time of shrinking budgets, the Forest Service could find $10 million,” he said.

Last fall, the agency awarded a $526,799 no-bid contract to Metropolitan Group of Portland, Oregon, for a branding campaign titled “Valuing People and Place” in Forest Service regions covering Oregon, Washington, southern Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, according to the federal website FedBizOpps.gov.

It was the only no-bid contract issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of more than 3,000.

Another federal website, USAspending.gov, shows the Forest Service has paid Metropolitan Group $3.6 million since 2011, much of it for the Valuing People and Place campaign.

The campaign focused on areas where the Forest Service has faced public backlash to plans to close roads and trails to motorized traffic.

Metropolitan Group’s Portland office did not return a phone message seeking comment. Its website describes the company’s work for the Forest Service as helping it reflect on its roots and discover its future.

The Forest Service filed notice Nov. 28 that it was soliciting bids to expand the campaign nationwide at a cost of up to $10 million over five years. Bids closed Dec. 29. A week later, it announced it was not accepting any bids.

“It’s called the `Take out the trash season,’” said Stahl, the watchdog group leader. “It’s when government does things it doesn’t want people to know about.”