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EGYPT CLERICS WA R N F R E N C H J O U R N A L O V E R PLANNED CARTOON CAIRO (AP) -- One of Egypt’s top Islamic authorities has warned the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo against publishing a new cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover of its first issue since Islamic extremists killed 12 people at its offices. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, which is in charge of issuing religious edicts, on Tuesday called the planned cover an “unjustified provocation” for millions of Muslims who respect and love their prophet. The magazine plans to print 1 million copies of its new issue. The statement said the cartoon is likely to cause a new wave of hatred in French and Western societies and called on the French government and others to reject “the racist act” by Charlie Hebdo. The magazine routinely sparks controversy by publishing gritty cartoons lampooning religious and political figures.
OBAMA PITCHING MORE ACCESS TO FA ST INT E RNE T President Barack Obama speaks at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. Obama renewed his call for Congress to pass cybersecurity legislation, including a proposal that encourages companies to share threat information with the government and protects them from potential lawsuits if they do.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is once again challenging major cable and telephone companies by encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to pre-empt state laws that stifle competition for high-speed Internet service.
Volume 004 Issue 03
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Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
FRANCE ARRESTS 54 FOR D E F E N D I N G T E R R O R ;
PARIS (AP) -- France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism, announcing Wednesday that 54 people had been arrested for those offenses since terror attacks left 20 dead in Paris last week, including three gunmen.
The order came as Charlie Hebdo’s defiant new issue sold out before dawn around Paris, with scuffles at kiosks over dwindling copies of the satirical newspaper that fronted the Prophet Muhammad anew on its cover.
French police say as many as six members of a terrorist cell that carried out the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket may still be at large, including a man seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the now-dead gunmen. The country has deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites, including Jewish schools and synagogues, mosques and travel hubs.
Jean Paul Bierlein reads the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo outside a newsstand in Nice, southeastern France, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. In an emotional act of defiance, Charlie Hebdo resurrected its irreverent and often provocative newspaper, featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover that drew immediate criticism and threats of more violence. The black letters on the front page read: “All is forgiven.”
France has been tightening security and searching for accomplices since the terror attacks began, but none of the 54 people have been linked to the attacks. That’s raising questions about whether President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government is impinging on the very freedom of speech that it so vigorously defends when it comes to Charlie Hebdo. Among those detained was Dieudonne, a controversial, popular comic with repeated convictions for racism and anti-Semitism.
Like many European countries, France has strong laws against hate speech and especially anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust. In a message distributed to all French prosecutors and judges, the Justice Ministry laid out the legal basis for rounding up those who defend the Paris terror attacks as well as those responsible for racist or anti-Semitic words or acts. The order did not mention Islam. A top leader of Yemen’s al-Qaida branch claimed responsibility Wednesday for the Charlie Hebdo attack, saying in a video the massacre came in “vengeance for the prophet.” The newspaper had received repeated threats previously for posting caricatures of Muhammad. The core of the irreverent newspaper’s staff perished a week ago when gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people and igniting three days of bloodshed around Paris. The attacks ended Friday when security forces killed all three gunmen.
inciting terrorism online.
The Justice Ministry said the 54 people included four minors and several had already been convicted under special measures for immediate sentencing. Inciting terrorism can bring a 5-year prison term - or up to 7 years for
In its message to prosecutors and judges, the ministry said it was issuing the order to protect freedom of expression from comments that could incite violence or hatred. It said no one should be allowed to use their religion to justify hate speech. It warned authorities to be particularly attentive to any incidents that could lead to urban unrest or violence against police. That suggested the government fears new riots like the wave that swept through France’s neglected housing projects and immigrant communities a decade ago. The government is also writing broader new laws on phone-tapping and other intelligence designed to fight terrorism, spokesman Stephane Le Foll said Wednesday. In addition, the government is launching a deeper project to rethink France’s education system, urban policies and integration model, in an apparent recognition that last week’s attacks exposed deeper problems of inequality in France, especially at its housing projects. Dieudonne, a comic who popularized an arm gesture that resembles a Nazi salute and who has been convicted repeatedly of racism and anti-Semitism, is no stranger to controversy. His provocative performances were banned last year but he has a core following among France’s disaffected youth.
Obama wants to expand access to broadband communications services, siding with local communities that want either to expand competition or provide municipal services themselves. To promote it, he is announcing that his administration will provide technical and financial assistance to towns and cities that want to improve Internet service for their residents.
Working out of borrowed offices, Charlie Hebdo employees who survived the massacre put out the issue that appeared Wednesday with a print run of 3 million - more than 50 times the paper’s usual circulation. Another run was being planned, one columnist said.
The modest proposals do not require congressional approval and are part of a series of measures Obama is rolling out before his State of the Union address next week.
NYC LIBRARIES PIONEER FREE HOT SPOT LENDING TO 10,000
Obama will detail his broadband plans Wednesday in Cedar Falls, Iowa, a community that has taken steps to provide high-speed Internet to its residents. The administration’s stance would put it at odds with major cable and telephone companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc., that currently provide Internet service, often with little or no competition. Obama has already angered the industry by calling for new FCC rules that treat Internet service providers as public utilities. In a White House video before the announcement, Obama says: “You know what it feels like when you don’t have a good Internet connection. Everything is buffering, you try to download a video and you’ve got that little circle thing that goes round and round, it’s really aggravating.” “There are real world consequences to this and it makes us less economically competitive,” he says. Jeff Zients, director of Obama’s National Economic Council, said Obama wants to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to press the FCC, an independent regulatory agency, to “ensure that all states have a playing field that allows for a vibrant and competitive market for communication services.” Nineteen states place restrictions on municipal broadband networks, many with laws encouraged by cable and telephone companies. Advocates of those laws say they are designed to protect taxpayers from municipal projects that are expensive, can fail or may be unnecessary. The FCC is already considering requests for Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, to prevent state laws from blocking the expansion of their broadband projects. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in June that local communities that want to provide their own broadband service “shouldn’t be stopped by state laws promoted by cable and telephone companies that don’t want that competition.” A new White House report says that while 94 percent of Americans living in urban areas can purchase an Internet connection of 25 megabits per second, only 51 percent of Americans in rural areas have access to such Internet speeds.
In the Facebook post in question, which was swiftly deleted, the comic said he felt like “Charlie Coulibaly” - merging the names of Charlie continued on page 2
President Barack Obama speaks at Ford Michigan Assembly Plant, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, in Wayne, Mich., about the resurgent American automotive and manufacturing sector.
have their own broadband and are registered in library educational programs. Outreach efforts also are aimed at the elderly and disabled seeking health care.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York Public Library is launching the nation’s largest Internet lending program, handing out 10,000 free high-speed hot spots to some of the city’s poorest residents.
“Computers are awesome,” said 10-year-old Carlos Apreza of Staten Island, boasting that his school grades went up by about 30 percent since he got both the hot spot and a computer from the library last year as part of a small test run for the program that was expanded in December.
The program - which offers the devices for up to a year, about a $1,000 value - seeks to bridge a digital divide in the nation’s largest city, where studies have found nearly 3 million of the 8 million people lack broadband access.
“We can buy food and some clothes,” he added, “but we don’t have enough money for technology.”
There’s one challenge: making sure users have laptops or desktops to link in. Google has so far donated 500 laptops - plus half of the $2 million in private grants funding the New York City program - and schools supply them to many children.
Carlos and his brother live on a family income of about $13,000 a year from their father’s paycheck as a restaurant dishwasher.
At the Acosta house in Staten Island, the hot spot they started using last year, also as part of the test, has already reaped benefits.
“It is simply unfathomable that in the digital world in which we live, one-third of New Yorkers do not have access to broadband Internet at home, putting them at a serious disadvantage at school, in applying for jobs, and so much more,” said Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library.
“Our 9-year-old son won first-place at a science fair after learning how to make compost - from the Internet,” said Evelyn Acosta, supervisor of a home for the developmentally disabled who is the family’s sole breadwinner. Her husband is on disability.
Mobile Beacon, a Rhode Island-based, nonprofit national provider of low-cost Internet services, is working with Sprint to distribute the hot spots to library branches across New York City’s five boroughs.
Mobile Beacon pioneered the library Internet-lending model three years ago at the Providence Community Library, which previously had provided Internet access only through on-site library computers.
In addition, Mobile Beacon has similar projects in 74 communities in 20 states, from cities including Chicago and Los Angeles to rural areas of Kansas, Pennsylvania and Texas.
“With shrinking municipal budgets and nonstop technological advancement, public libraries need to be customer-driven and ensure their programs keep pace with patrons’ evolving needs,” says library director Laura Marlane, noting that about 100 million Americans still are without home Internet access.
While requirements differ, borrowers generally are eligible if they don’t
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NYC JAIL GUARDS USE OF FORCE A RECORD IN 2014 Norman Seabrook, who heads the powerful 9,000-member Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said the rise in reported incidents was likely attributable to guards documenting more often than they did previously in an effort to cover themselves from potential lawsuits and discipline, even if they’re legitimately defending themselves from attacks.
NEW YORK (AP) -- New York City jail guards reported more use of force against inmates in 2014 than ever before - an average of 11 incidents a day ranging from pepper sprayings to punches - amid heightened scrutiny from federal prosecutors to clean up what they call a “deep-seated culture of violence.”
Figures obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press via a public “If I physically touch an inmate, records request show correction President Barack Obama walks across the South Lawn of the White House officers reported using force 4,074 in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2015, before boarding Marine One heli- it’s a use of force irrespective of copter for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md.. Obama is traveling to an injury happening,” he said. times last year, including 406 inciDetroit area to speak to workers at Ford automotive plant. “Absolutely we’re saying, `Docdents alone in September, the month ument everything. Don’t physically get into an altercation but after a scathing federal report that said Rikers Island guards too use chemical agents. Spray them. Spray everybody you’ve got often resorted to force against teenage inmates. to spray but don’t punch nobody out. Just spray whoever you’ve got to.’” “There has clearly not been a commitment to date to address officer violence on Rikers Island,” said Dr. Bobby Cohen, a But inmate advocates and others point to the scathing August member of the jail oversight board who alluded to the record review by federal prosecutors that described a “deep-seated rates at a public meeting Tuesday. “Will that change now? I culture of violence” at Rikers, finding that guards regularly used hope so. I’ve certainly not seen that before.” physical force against 16- 17- and 18-year-old inmates often for perceived slights and signs of disrespect. The report said that The figures come the same day federal prosecutors, who have since sued to speed up the pace of reforms at Rikers, begin three behavior likely held true in all of the 10 facilities on Rikers, a massive jail complex in the East River that holds an average of days of negotiations with city lawyers and correction officials over specific language on use-of-force policy, investigations and nearly 11,000 inmates a day on charges ranging from trespassing to murder. other jail problems. Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the data. A jail spokesman said in a statement that city Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte has a zero tolerance for excessive force and is updating the department’s use-of-force policy, improving staff training, expanding the investigation division and installing security cameras. He said those efforts and others likely will result in fewer incidents in the coming months. Officers are required to fill out use-of-force forms every time there’s a confrontation with inmates, including when they are separating two or more inmates fighting each other. The data include the entire range of incidents from minor to serious use of force but don’t describe what happened in each case. Use of force ranges from so-called Class C incidents such as pepper sprayings that result in minor to no injuries, to Class B incidents such as bruises and swelling that can be treated with over-the-counter care, to Class A incidents such as broken bones and deep cuts that require hospitalization.
FRANCE ARRESTS 54 continued from page 1
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Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages at a kosher market Friday, a day after he killed a Paris policewoman. In a separate post, the comic wrote an open letter to France’s interior minister. “Whenever I speak, you do not try to understand what I’m trying to say, you do not want to listen to me. You are looking for a pretext to forbid me. You consider me like Amedy Coulibaly when I am not any different from Charlie,” he wrote. In a posthumous video, Coulibaly had claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group. Said and Cherif Kouachi, the two brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo massacre, had told survivors they were sent by al-Qaida in Yemen.
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In an 11-minute video Wednesday, Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, said Yemen’s al-Qaida branch “chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation.” Solidarity for Charlie Hebdo, although not uniform, was widespread in France and abroad. Defending his caricature of Muhammad on the paper’s latest cover, Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Renald Luzier argued that no exceptions should be made when it comes to the freedom of expression. He said when the weekly was threatened in the past, the reaction was often: “Yes, but you shouldn’t do that (publish cartoons of Muhammad). Yes, but you deserved that.” “There should be no more `Yes, but,” he insisted.
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One such incident occurred last month, the week before a visit from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has vowed to reform the nation’s second-largest jail system, according to an attorney for inmate Ambrorix Celeeomio. Celeeomio, 18, who is being held on a gang assault charge, was pepper sprayed, punched and kicked by guards December 9 in a Rikers cafeteria without cameras after getting into an argument with a jail guard, according lawyer Jenay Nurse, who heads The Bronx Defenders’ Adolescent Defense Project. She said Celeeomio, who has an IQ of 65 and is cognitively delayed, was rushed to a Rikers clinic covered in blood. A city official, who wasn’t authorized to speak about the incident, confirmed that Celeeomio was involved in the use-of-force with at least two correction officers that day. The data also show use-of-force rates have increased steadily in the past eight years even as the overall inmate population has declined. Guards reported 3,285 uses of force in 2013 when the inmate population averaged 11,687. There were 1,299 reports in 2006 when there were nearly 14,000 inmates. Plaintiff’s attorneys and others have long argued the city jails are consumed by violence and the AP reported last year based on a health department study that a third of inmates who said their visible injury resulted from a confrontation with jail guards suffered a blow to the head. Inmate slashings and stabbings have also increased from a low of 19 incidents in 2007 to 93 last year, according to the data. But they’re down from a high of 1,552 incidents in 1990 when the jail population was 20,207 inmates. The new issue vanished from kiosks immediately Wednesday. One newsstand near the Champs Elysees opened at 6 a.m. and was sold out in five minutes. Another, near Saint-Lazare, reported fisticuffs among customers. Some newsstand operators said they expected more copies on Thursday. “Distributing Charlie Hebdo, it warms my heart because we say to ourselves that he is still here, he’s never left,” said Jean-Baptiste Saidi, a van driver delivering copies well before dawn. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was among those getting a copy before they sold out. “I rediscovered their liberty of tone,” he told France-Inter radio, describing the issue as one of “tender impertinence.” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls prominently displayed a copy of the satirical paper as he left a Cabinet meeting Wednesday but his hand carefully covered Muhammad’s face.
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R E P U B L I C A N S P R E S S A T T A C K S O N O B A M A A G E N D A WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defiant congressional Republicans attacked President Barack Obama’s agenda from all sides Tuesday, ignoring veto threats and pushing bills to uproot his policies on immigration and Wall Street, force approval of energy pipeline legislation he opposes and make him justify any new federal rules before he makes them.
president.”
Obama invited his antagonists to the White House for their first faceto-face meeting since the new Republican-controlled Congress convened. But their show of cordiality for the cameras did little to mask the partisan hostilities between Capitol Hill and the White House.
Republicans had no plans to stop there.
“The key now is for us to work as a team,” said Obama, who has issued five veto threats with the new Congress not yet two weeks old. He cited taxes, trade and cybersecurity as areas for potential cooperation, and also told lawmakers he would work with them to come up with a proposal to authorize military force against the Islamic State group. Back at the Capitol, the Senate debated legislation to force the administration to allow construction of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline. And the House passed a regulatory reform bill that the White House says would impose “unprecedented and unnecessary” requirements on agencies trying to write rules. It would require more justifications and notice. That was to be followed by votes Wednesday on two other bills: One would alter a key section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul in a way that would help banks, and the other would block Obama’s executive actions on immigration, including removal of protections for immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children. The Keystone bill passed the House last week and is expected to clear the Senate next week and head to Obama’s desk. Obama has threatened to veto all four pieces of legislation. Far from
“In the first five days that they’ve been in session, they’ve advanced five pieces of legislation all the way to the Rules Committee that they already know this president strongly opposes,” he said.
Citing the terrorist attacks in Paris, Republican senators on Tuesday proposed restrictions on Obama’s ability to transfer terror suspects out of the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the remainder of his term - making it more difficult for Obama to fulfill his goal of closing the facility. “Now is not the time to be emptying Guantanamo,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire told reporters. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio listens at left as President Barack Obama speaks to media during a meeting with bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss a wide range of issues, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington
cowed, with the Senate in GOP hands for the first time in eight years Republican lawmakers are ready to make him do it. “I’m a member of Congress; I’m not a potted plant. I don’t take my orders from the White House,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., after Republicans met behind closed doors to discuss their strategy. “There’s a new sheriff in the Senate, and so he’s not going to have a compliant majority leader in the Senate who’s going to bottle up and bury everything.” In contrast to the president’s tone of cooperation, White House press secretary Josh Earnest chided Republican lawmakers, saying the GOP’s approach to the opening days of the new Congress raises questions “about how serious they are about trying to work with the
COURT RULING MAY FREE EGYPT’S MUBARAK FROM CUSTODY
CAIRO (AP) -- Egyptian authorities have exhausted all legal grounds to keep deposed President Hosni Mubarak in detention after an appeals court on Tuesday ordered his retrial in a corruption case, officials said. The corruption case was the only one still keeping the 86-year-old Mubarak behind bars. The autocratic former president has already been cleared over the killings of protesters during Egypt’s 2011 uprising that toppled him.
An official at the chief prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press that “paperwork was being processed” for Mubarak’s release. The official declined to speculate if and when that could happen. However, an unnamed security official told the state-run MENA news agency that Mubarak will remain in detention since the Appeals Court ruling didn’t include a release order.
“Our response shouldn’t be on the funding bill,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and some House Republicans acknowledged that the Senate was likely to reject their approach, perhaps forcing them in the end to pass a Homeland Security funding bill stripped of controversial language on immigration.
Mubarak and his sons were also fined 21.1 million Egyptian pounds ($2.9 million) and ordered to reimburse 125 million Egyptian pounds ($17.6 million) to the state treasury. The Mubaraks had returned around 120 million pounds to the state in connection with the case in the hope that the charges would be dropped, but the proceedings against them continued anyway.
That ruling was a blow to the pro-democracy and youth groups that spearheaded the uprising against Mubarak.
SMARTEN UP YOUR HOME WITH APPLE HOMEKIT Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi speaks about the Apple HomeKit app at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. HomeKit has the potential to bring home automation to everyday consumers.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Apple didn’t attend last week’s gadget show but its presence was felt. Many companies have designed “smart” home products that integrate with Apple’s HomeKit, an emerging technology for controlling lights and appliances through a mobile app. There are other efforts to unify smart-home devices, but many of them rely on individual partnerships. That approach is slower than simply having everyone use a common set of tools - in this case, HomeKit. SO WHAT IS HOMEKIT?
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Think of HomeKit as a way to unify smart-home products from different manufacturers. Currently, if Acme Co. makes a light switch, you need to download Acme’s app to control it remotely. Buy a garage door opener from Widget Inc., and you need to use Widget’s app. With HomeKit, companies can integrate their apps into a single software platform that you control from your iPhone or iPad. (One note of caution: Companies aren’t required to make rival products work with their apps; although many say they will, it’s best to check before you buy.) WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? HomeKit’s strength is its ability to group products into “rooms,” “zones” and “scenes.” With one tap, you can turn off every HomeKit product in a room, such as lights and stereos. You can also do that with a group of rooms, or zone. You can even use the Siri voice assistant to control your home. Saying “I feel hot” might prompt Siri to turn on the air conditioner and lower the shade for you.
Since his detention in April 2011, Mubarak has spent most of his time in custody in a military hospital in the Cairo suburb of Maadi.
Farid el-Deeb, Mubarak’s chief defense lawyer, told several Egyptian
“One way or another we have to get DHS funding,” said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y. “Hopefully sane minds will prevail, we can make some compromises and get it done.”
In the case of the killing of protesters in 2011, a judge cited a technicality to dismiss the case. However, the same judge also described the 2011 uprising - one of the first to sweep the region in what became known as the Arab Spring - as part of an alleged “American-Hebrew conspiracy” to undermine Arab nations for Israel’s benefit.
The apparent confusion over the release stems from discrepancies in calculating the time Mubarak spent in pre-trial detention and on legal technicalities related to his status - whether he was in detention over corruption charges or not - when he was referred to court.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
And on immigration, even some Republican senators were skeptical of the approach being taken in the House, where Republicans were using a $39.7 billion spending bill, which would keep the Homeland Security Department running past February, as the vehicle to overturn Obama’s executive actions.
The corruption case - dubbed by the Egyptian media as the “presidential palaces” affair - is linked to charges that Mubarak and his two sons embezzled millions of dollars’ worth of state funds over the course of a decade toward the end of Mubarak’s rule. The funds were meant to pay for renovating and maintaining presidential palaces but were instead allegedly spent on upgrading the family’s private residences.
“The ruling of the Appeals Court didn’t include the release and it is in the hands of the general prosecution or the new court handling the case,” MENA quoted the official as saying.
According to two senior security officials, Mubarak, even if released, would remain in the same hospital for security reasons.
The bill on Wall Street reforms - which would give U.S. banks an additional two years to ensure that their holdings of certain risky securities don’t put them afoul of a new banking rule - was no sure bet to pass the Senate.
newspapers that Mubarak would not leave the hospital because he was “sick” and needed medical attention. Efforts by the AP to reach el-Deeb have been unsuccessful.
Tuesday’s ruling by the Appeals Court - a top tribunal based in Cairo - overturned a verdict last May that sentenced Mubarak to three years’ imprisonment and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, to four years in prison each. Four other defendants in the case were acquitted. Mubarak’s lawyers had appealed that verdict. Though the ruling paved the way for Mubarak’s imminent release, there was no explicit statement from the authorities that he would leave as a free man from the Cairo hospital where he has been held. There were also conflicting statements by officials on whether the release would actually take place.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said his bill on regulations would take aim at the “endlessly escalating, excessive federal regulatory costs” under the Obama administration. The White House objected that it would “create needless confusion and delay.” The legislation passed 250 to 175.
One amendment to be voted on Wednesday would undo steps Obama announced in November to allow deportation reprieves and work permits to 4 million immigrants in the country illegally. Another would nullify his 2012 action to allow more than 600,000 immigrants brought illegally to the country as children to stay and work here legally.
In the case’s May verdict, judge Osama Shaheen said Mubarak, “had a duty to restrain himself and his sons from stealing state funds ... but instead, he gave himself and his sons license to embezzle public funds, helping themselves without oversight or consideration. Hence, they deserve to be punished.”
gyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 86, lies on a gurney, next to his son Gamal, second left, in the defendants cage, during a court hearing in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt’s top appeals court has ordered the retrial of the deposed president and his two sons in a corruption case, a move that could pave the way for the former autocrat’s release. The Appeals Court announced its ruling in a brief session Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, carried live on several Egyptian TV networks.
The contentious politics of divided government were on stark display as the House moved forward on a series of bills that face an uncertain future, at best, in the Senate - where the GOP remains six vote shorts of the 60-vote majority needed to advance most issues - and certain rejection by Obama.
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Tap a “party” scene and the stereo and disco lights could turn on while your regular lamps dim. Setting up a “bedtime” scene might involve leaving just the nightlight on, while locking the front door and lowering the heat downstairs. Sure, you can already control a set of lights and appliances by attaching them to a power strip with an on-off switch, but your options are limited to all on or all off. With HomeKit, you have the option of creating multiple combinations to match whatever ambiance you prefer. continued on page 8
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
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F L O R I D A C R A S H S TAT I S T I C S S t u a r t w o m a n s t i l l i n c r i t i c a l condition after multi-car crash on I-95 Palm Beach Post A 26-year-old Stuart woman remained in critical condition Thursday after she was injured in a multi-car crash that shut down a stretch of Interstate 95 in the Jupiter-Hobe Sound area for more than four hours Wednesday night, the Florida Highway Patro[...]
R o a d r a n g e r t r u c k s h i e l d s w o m a n ’s v e h i c l e i n I - 9 5 s h o u l d e r c r a s h 95 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A road ranger’s truck may have very well saved a woman’s life. The ranger had stopped to help her when she had car trouble on Interstate 95, but then someone slammed into the truck, narrowly missing the ranger and the woman.[...]
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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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Y E M E N ’ S A L - Q A I D A C L A I M S R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y F O R PA R I S AT TA C K The Coulibaly video raised questions over possible cooperation between the rival groups, competing for resources, recruits and leadership of Jihad. But al-Ansi called the rival groups’ attacks a “coincidence.”
CAIRO (AP) -- Yemen’s al-Qaida branch on Wednesday claimed responsibility for last week’s massacre at a Paris satirical newspaper, with one of its top commanders saying the assault was in revenge for the weekly’s publications of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, considered an insult in Islam.
In Wednesday’s video, al-Ansi also accused France of belonging to the “party of Satan,” saying the European country “shared all of America’s crimes,” a reference to France’s offensive against militants in the west African nation of Mali.
The claim came in a video posting by Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which appeared on the group’s Twitter account. The video was the group’s official claim of the assault on the Charlie Hebdo offices, although a member of AQAP, as the branch is known, last Friday first confirmed to The Associated Press that the branch had carried out the attack.
Al-Ansi also warned of more “tragedies and terror” in the future. Washington considers AQAP as one of al-Qaida’s most dangerous offshoots. Formed in 2009 as a merger between the terror group’s Yemeni and Saudi branches, AQAP has been blamed for a string of unsuccessful bomb plots against American targets.
In the 11-minute video, al-Ansi says the Charlie Hebdo attack, which killed 12 people - including editors, cartoonists and journalists, as well as two police officers - was in “revenge for the prophet.” He said AQAP, as the branch is known, “chose the target, laid out
AMAZON SIGNS WOODY ALLEN TO CREATE HIS FIRST TV SERIES This image provided by KOMO-TV shows Eclipse, a black Labrador, riding between two other passengers on her way to the dog park. In owner Jeff Young’s words, “She’s a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog.” Young says his dog sometimes gets on the bus without him, and he catches up with her at the dog park three or four stops away. Bus riders report she hops onto seats next to strangers, and watches out the window for her stop. Says commuter Tiona Rainwater, “All the bus drivers know her ... she makes everybody happy.” A Metro Transit
NEW YORK (AP) -- Amazon Studios is delivering Woody Allen as creator of his first-ever TV series. The Oscar-winning filmmaker will write and direct all of the episodes of the half-hour series. A full season has been ordered for Amazon’s Prime Instant Video, the company announced Tuesday. The series is expected to premiere in 2016. No details on casting were disclosed, nor was the series title announced. Amazon Studios vice president Roy Price called Allen “a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all time,” keeping him “at the creative forefront of American cinema” during a career that spans 50 years. “I don’t know how I got into this,” the 79-year-old Allen said in a wryly modest statement. “I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this.” Allen has masterminded and often starred in more than 40 films since his maiden directorial effort, “What’s Up Tiger Lily?” in 1966. His latest movie project is “Magic in the Moonlight,” released last year, with yet another film in the pipeline for this year. The late 1970s saw two of his most celebrated films, “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan.” He has won four Oscars and two Golden Globes. Last year he was presented with the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. But his skills were honed on television, where he first gained widespread notice in the early 1960s as a standup comic, and during the 1950s, when he wrote for Sid Caesar and other TV stars. His prodigious output through the decades has also included magazine essays, books and plays. A musical adaptation of his 1994 film comedy, “Bullets Over Broadway,” ran on Broadway last year. Allen’s signing adds yet more luster to Amazon Studios. Its freshman series, “Transparent,” on Sunday won two Golden Globes, including best comedy series, as it continues to help redefine what “television” means. Amazon started Amazon studios in 2010 to develop full-length films and TV shows. Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy estimates Amazon spent nearly $2 billion on streaming license rights and original content in 2014, of which Amazon Studios would amount to about $400 million. Amazon’s goal is not only to develop successful TV shows but also to grow its $99 annual Prime loyalty program membership by bolstering the Prime Instant Video component of the loyalty program. “I don’t think it moves the needle on Prime membership yet, but I think it has the potential to do so as they build their catalog of original programing,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.
Yemeni al-Qaida militant, center, holds an Islamist banner as he stands behind bars during a court hearing in state security court in Sanaa, Yemen. A top leader of Yemen’s al-Qaida branch has claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on a Paris newspaper when two masked gunmen killed 12 people, including much of the weekly’s editorial staff and two police officers. Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP as the branch is known, appeared in an 11-minute Internet video posted Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015.
These include a foiled plan to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 using a new type of explosive hidden in the bomber’s underwear, and another attempt a year later to send mail bombs hidden in toner cartridges on planes bound to the U.S. from the Gulf.
the plan and financed the operation” against the weekly, though he produced no evidence to support the claim.
The Charlie Hebdo strike is the Yemen-based branch’s first successful strike outside its home territory - and a triumph for its trademark double-strategy of waging jihad in Yemen to build its strength to strike abroad.
Orders he said, came from al-Qaida’s top leader Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s successor. The attack on the weekly was the beginning of three days of terror in France that saw 17 people killed before the three Islamic extremist attackers were gunned down by security forces.
At least one of the two brothers involved in the attack on the Paris weekly traveled to Yemen in 2011 and either received training from or fought alongside the group, authorities say. A U.S. intelligence assessment described to the AP shows that 34-year-old Said Kouachi was trained in preparation to return home and carry out an attack.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi who carried out the attack on the paper were “heroes,” al-Ansi said.
Al-Ansi also referenced AQAP’s radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in September 2011, saying he arranged the Paris attack. The remark appeared to indicate the attack on the weekly was years in the making, and pointed to a possible connection between the Kouachi brothers and al-Awlaki.
“Congratulations to you, the Nation of Islam, for this revenge that has soothed our pain,” said al-Ansi. “Congratulations to you for these brave men have blown off the dust of disgrace and lit the torch of glory in the darkness of defeat and agony.” In the video, al-Ansi made no claim to the subsequent Paris attack on a kosher grocery store, during which a friend of Kouachis, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a French policewoman Thursday and four hostages on Friday. Coulibaly appeared in a video message two days after his death, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, a fierce rival to al-Qaida, saying he had worked in coordination with the Kouachis, the “brothers from our team.”
Al-Qaida has in the past threatened Charlie Hebdo and cartoonists who depicted Islam’s prophet. Editor Stephane Charbonnier, one of those killed last Wednesday, was on a hit list published in a 2013 edition of Inspire, the English-language publication issued by AQAP. Al-Ansi’s video is the first direct claim of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. However, a member of AQAP sent a message to the AP last Friday, saying the group had orchestrated the attack. The member spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized by the group to speak to media.
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
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F R E N C H P R E S I D E N T C O M F O RT S , U N I T E S N A T I O N I N C R I S I S right time” and “use the right words.”
PARIS (AP) -- French President Francois Hollande comforted and united his nation during its worst terrorist attacks in decades, transforming himself from the most unpopular leader of modern France into the “father of the nation” and a statesman who brought world leaders together to link arms and march through Paris to defy extremism.
As soon as he was informed of the attack at Charlie Hebdo, Hollande came to the scene. When the three attackers were killed Friday in two nearly simultaneous clashes with security forces, Hollande was setting the strategy in his office with police chiefs, Valls and the interior minister, according to a top official source.
His prime minister, Manuel Valls, also emerged stronger after the three days of terrorist attacks that left 20 dead, managing the muscular operational reaction including deploying thousands of troops and police.
Later the same day, he urged his nation to remain united and vigilant. His call to French people to mobilize for the march to show values of democracy, freedom and pluralism brought “a positive outlook” on the country, Levy said.
At least for now, the two Socialists’ handling of the crisis could boost their standing, and may play a role in voters’ minds if either or both seek the presidency in 2017. Hollande’s successful management of the crisis was the more surprising. Center-left Le Monde, a frequent critic of Hollande, wrote in a headline Monday that he made “no mistake” during the drama unfolding last week. The French president - once dismissed by a rival as “soft as a strawberry” and lacking leadership mettle - appeared Sunday among more than 40 world leaders, at the forefront of a rally that gathered over a million people. With measured aplomb, he incarnated the traditional figure of the “father of the nation,” said Jerome Fourquet, director of opinion and corporate strategies at the Ifop polling institute. In keeping with his pugnacious style, Valls took a more aggressive stance - notably declaring “war” on radical Islam. A familiar face to the French, his international profile rose thanks to media attention throughout the crisis. Instead of fomenting fear, Hollande gave the image of a comforting figure, for instance when he embraced Patrick Pelloux, an emergency doctor who is also a columnist at Charlie Hebdo. The emotional image of him hugging German Chancellor Angela Merkel, eyes shut, close to his cheek, has been widely published around the world.
French President Francois Hollande holds a medal in front of the coffin of Police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe during a ceremony to pay tribute to the three police officers killed in the attacks, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. Clarissa Jean Philippe was killed by Ahmed Coulibaly last week in Paris.
Hollande sank to record low popularity last year, in a context of lagging economy and unemployment rate over 10 percent. He faced a rebellion in his own Socialist camp about his economic strategy, and was widely criticized for his indecisiveness. Moreover, he was mocked for his tendency to excess weight, and his notoriously complicated private life. Yet Hollande had demonstrated before that he could be decisive on the international scene. He launched a military intervention against Islamist extremists in Mali two years ago and another one to prevent a civil war in Central African Republic. He also involved France in U.S-led coalition fighting against the Islamic state group in Iraq.
Hollande’s main challenge now will be preventing the attacks from fueling anti-Muslim sentiment and handing an even bigger boost to far right leader Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigrant National Front party has long warned about the “Islamization” of France. Frederic Micheau, director of the opinion department at Opinionway, a polling institute that conducted a survey last week partially before and after the attack at Charlie Hebdo, noted a jump of several points in the popularity of Hollande and Valls. “In these moments there is a patriotic reflex of supporting state
D C S U B WAY R E M A I N S HOBBLED AFTER FATA L A C C I D E N T
Last week, “he did not commit any faux pas or mistake in terms of communication, and we can objectively think he came up to the great expectations of the French people,” Fourquet said. Jean-Daniel Levy, director of political opinion department at polling institute Harris Interactive, believed that Hollande has met the nation’s expectations to “provide leadership,” “take decisions at the
JUDGE DECLARES MISTRIAL IN S C P O L I C E S H O O T I N G C A S E “Does he want to go home to his family?” Fayssoux said of Combs. “Or does he hope the truck doesn’t roll over the top of him?” Jurors had the choice between murder and voluntary manslaughter. Murder carries 30 years to life in prison without parole. Voluntary manslaughter carries two to 30 years in prison, and would have meant Bailey’s killing was illegal but happened in the heat of the moment. Judge Dickson authorized the voluntary manslaughter option Monday. The seeds of the fatal confrontation were sown seven weeks earlier when Combs stopped Bailey’s daughter for a broken taillight. The daughter called her father and Bailey came to the side of the road. ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) -- A South Carolina judge declared a mistrial early Tuesday in the case of a white ex-police chief charged with murder in the shooting death an unarmed black man. The jury deliberated for 12 hours before telling Circuit Judge Edgar Dickson early in the morning they were deadlocked. Former Eutawville (yoo-TAH-vill) Police Chief Richard Combs was charged after shooting Bernard Bailey three times in May of 2011. Prosecutor David Pascoe said he will evaluate his case but plans to try Combs again. “I’m going to take a little time, but we’re going forward,” Pascoe said. Pascoe said nine jurors had voted to convict Combs. “We just had three jurors we couldn’t convince,” he said. Defense attorney Wally Fayssoux, who maintains that Combs is innocent, said it had been a long week. “We’re disappointed we didn’t get a result, but I think both sides feel that way,” Fayssoux said. The shooting happened after Combs was trying to arrest Bailey on an obstruction of justice warrant prosecutors contended was trumped up. The defense said the shooting had nothing to do with race and argued Combs fired in self-defense when he was caught in the door of Bailey’s moving truck. During closing arguments, Pascoe said Combs frequently changed his story to match the evidence and was confident he would never be held responsible for killing Bailey because he was a police officer. “He thought he got away with it because he wears a badge. Prove him wrong,” Pascoe said in a passionate, hour-long argument during which he slammed the gun used in the killing on a table and had an assistant sit in the witness chair so he could carefully recreate the shooting. Fayssoux said the case hinges on the three seconds in which Combs was trapped in the door of Bailey’s pickup as it rolled in reverse, not the seven weeks it took Combs to serve a warrant on Bailey.
Sometime later, the chief secured a warrant for obstruction of justice, but waited several weeks to serve it until Bailey came to Town Hall the day before his daughter’s trial. Pascoe asserted that Combs wanted to make a display of arresting Bailey, when he could have instead asked for help from sheriff’s deputies. After Combs told Bailey he was being arrested for obstruction of justice, witnesses said Bailey left Combs’ office and went for his truck. Combs followed. Pascoe said Combs could have stepped away from the truck door, but instead stood there and fired three shots into Bailey. The prosecutor said several things made it clear the truck was stopped and Bailey was trying to give up: The victim’s foot was on the brake, and three shell casings were found close together along with Combs’ dropped handcuffs. But Combs’ lawyer said all that mattered was that the chief feared for his life during the three seconds it took to shoot. He said Combs had no pepper spray or Taser and had no option but his gun. Eutawville suspended Combs after the shooting and dismissed him several months later. The town reached a $400,000 wrongful death settlement with Bailey’s family. Although Combs was white and Bailey was black, race hasn’t been front and center of the case. Pascoe contends Combs was angry at Bailey for just trying to show him up.
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The report also says that because of lack of competition three out of four Americans lack a choice for such Internet service. The White House also announced that the Commerce Department would promote greater broadband access by hosting regional workshops and offering technical assistance to communities. The Department of Agriculture also will provide grants and loans of $40 million to $50 million to assist rural areas. A council comprising more than a dozen government agencies will also seek to remove regulatory and policy barriers that hinder broadband competition, the White House said.
Officers secure the entrance to L’Enfant Plaza Station in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, following an evacuation. Metro officials say one of the busiest stations in downtown Washington has been evacuated because of smoke. Authorities say the source of the smoke is unknown.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The transit network in the nation’s capital remained hobbled Tuesday morning following an electrical malfunction that filled a busy subway station with smoke, killing one woman and sending dozens of people to hospitals. The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the accident, which happened at the beginning of the Monday afternoon rush hour and led to the first fatality on Washington’s Metro system since a 2009 crash that killed eight passengers and a train operator. NTSB investigator Michael Flanigon told reporters late Monday night that an electrical “arcing” involving the high-voltage third rail led a train to stop in a tunnel and quickly filled the tunnel with smoke. An arcing occurs when electricity from the third rail comes into contact with another substance that conducts electricity, such as water. While there was water in the tunnel, Flanigon said the cause of the arcing was not yet known. “The third rail is high-voltage direct current, and if that current starts arcing to another conductor that it is not designed to connect with, you get a flash,” Flanigon said. “In certain cases, that arc can start sort of feeding on itself, and it actually generates gases that are more conductive.” Witnesses described a chaotic scene aboard the train as passengers tried to escape the smoke, and many passengers left the train on their own before emergency responders arrived on the scene, Flanigon said. In addition to the woman who died, whose name had not been released as of Tuesday morning, at least one other passenger was in critical condition at a local hospital. Eighty-four people were taken to hospitals, most with smoke inhalation, authorities said. “It started to get scary pretty quick,” passenger Jonathan Rogers told The Washington Post. “People started praying. Smoke was coming in pretty steadily.” The accident occurred around 3:30 p.m. Monday on a Virginia-bound yellow line train that had just left the L’Enfant Plaza station in downtown Washington, one of the system’s busiest stations. The train stopped about 800 feet beyond the platform, and the arcing occurred roughly 1,000 feet beyond the train, Flanigon said. The train did not derail, and there was no fire, he said. The yellow line remained shut down Tuesday morning, and the system’s orange, blue and silver lines were on a reduced schedule. Service on the green and red lines was normal. The Metrorail system, which connects downtown Washington with the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, carries an average of 721,000 passengers each weekday.
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DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) -- An attack on a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine killed 12 people Tuesday, likely dealing the final blow to hopes that a short-lived and shaky cease-fire could take hold.
Across Donetsk, the city that Russian-backed separatists call their capital, explosions and the sound of shells whistling overhead are again unnerving the local population. The holiday period was spent in relative tranquility after a new truce was called in December between government troops and Russian-backed militia. But by late last week, that uneasy calm was steadily unraveling. In the single largest loss of life so far this year, civilians traveling on a commuter bus from Donetsk were killed Tuesday afternoon by what Ukrainians say were rockets fired from a Grad launcher in rebel territory. Regional authorities loyal to Kiev said the bus was passing a Ukrainian army checkpoint at the time, putting it in the line of fire. Leading rebel representative Denis Pushilin denied responsibility for the attack. The warring sides are now trading accusations over who is responsible for the breakdown in the truce that led to Tuesday’s deaths. Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that separatist attacks in recent days suggest an attempted onslaught to push back the frontline is under way. Separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko said Ukraine’s armed forces unilaterally resumed hostilities and that his fighters would respond in kind. An AP reporter over the weekend saw a convoy of around 30 military-style trucks without license plates heading for Donetsk, suggesting that new supplies were coming in for the rebels. NATO’s top commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, said Tuesday that there has been a continued resupply and training of rebel forces over the holiday period.
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.
“These are separatists that are clearly backed by Russia,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday, adding that Russia must do more to stop the violence and restore Ukrainian sovereignty. In the rebel-held Donetsk suburb of Makiivka, the thrash of outgoing mortars shakes still-inhabited neighborhoods on a daily basis. Separatists have consistently denied using residential areas for cover, but there are ample eyewitness accounts undermining those claims. Ukrainian responses to artillery lobbed out of Donetsk are woefully inaccurate and regularly hit houses and apartment blocks, often killing people inside. The separatist military headquarters in Donetsk said Tuesday that 12 people had been killed and another 30 injured in the preceding three-day period. It did not specify who had been killed. There is little sign of life in Makiivka these days. People rush home from work or aid distribution points and occasionally come out of shelters to exchange information about where shells are landing.
“Those continue to provide a concern and something that we have to be thinking about,” Breedlove said.
Maria Ivanovna, a local retiree, told AP she is inured to the blasts and drew an arc with her arm to show how shells fly over her home toward the government-held airport on the northern edge of the city.
Ukraine and the West have routinely accused Russia of being behind such consignments. Moscow flatly rejects the charges, although rebel forces are so well-equipped with powerful arms that the denials have become increasingly hollow.
“We will survive the same way we did after World War II. Ration cards for bread. 300 grams (11 ounces) for children, 800 grams for factory workers and 1,200 grams for miners,” she said.
look poised to go in one of three directions - a frozen conflict, an escalation in violence or an evolution to sustainable peace. “In case of frozen conflict, we will more or less continue to be seeing (the same) human rights violations that we have facing so far,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “But in case of escalation of hostilities, which is quite possible, we could also be seeing further internationalization of the conflict and far more human rights violations and suffering.” The grimmest of outcomes appears most likely. A hoped-for round of peace negotiations this week between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France has been put on ice - possibly indefinitely. Ukrainian military authorities talk like they are bracing for the long-haul and Tuesday laid out plans for a new round of mobilization. Volodymyr Talalai, deputy head of the army’s mobilization planning, said recruits will be drawn from all regions of the country. He gave no figure for how many people will be mobilized, but said that the primary aim of the upcoming drive is to enable the rotation of forces. Unremitting violence is radicalizing the mood. One resident of Donetsk’s Petrovsky neighborhood - one of the most intensely bombed - said she took up arms and joined the separatist army after a rocket hit a home in her neighborhood. “A Grad landed ... and people were killed and blown to bits,” she said, giving her name only as Vera. “How were we supposed to react? We are out here defending ourselves.” Wearing a balaclava and cradling an automatic rifle, Vera said her 19year old son too wanted to sign up, but that she refused to let him. “I told them I would rather go myself than let my child do it,” she said.
A senior U.N. human rights official said this week that developments
S E N AT E D E M O C R AT S L O O K T O T W E A K BILL ON KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE The measure has sparked intense debate over the Canada-to-Texas pipeline’s potential impact on employment and the environment. While the project was proposed six years ago, the White House opposes the legislation as long as the administration is still conducting its formal review. But with more than enough votes at their command, Republican and Democratic supporters said they hoped the legislation could win final approval and be sent to the White House by the end of next week.
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“President Obama has every reason to sign the jobs and infrastructure bill that we will pass,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. He noted that the Nebraska Supreme Court had recently rejected a legal challenge brought by opponents, an obstacle the White House had cited. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., sponsor of the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline bill, strides to the Senate floor for a roll call vote as the Republican-controlled Senate moves ahead on a bill to construct the Keystone XL pipeline despite President Barack Obama’s veto threat, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015. The measure has sparked intense debate over the Canada-to-Texas pipeline’s potential impact on employment and the environment, yet there was little or no doubt that it would overcome the vote to proceed on the bill Monday night. Republicans said they hoped it could win final approval and be sent to the White House by the end of next week.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats plan to use Senate consideration of the Keystone XL oil pipeline to get Republicans on the record about climate change and to resurrect parts of a bipartisan energy efficiency bill doomed by pipeline politics last year.
But Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said, “I’m going to oppose the Keystone pipeline because tar sands oil is going backwards, not forwards.” If Obama follows through on a veto, it will become the first of what are expected to be numerous clashes with the Republican majorities now in control of both houses of Congress.
But Republicans readied additions of their own, such as lifting a ban on crude oil exports. Other possible tweaks could attempt to ban exports of oil sent through the pipeline or force the pipeline’s builders to use American-made steel. Full-blown debate on the bill was expected to continue Tuesday after the Senate agreed 63-32 Monday to begin deliberating the measure. Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, the lead Republican sponsor of the measure, said before the vote that the additions will “help us build the right kind of energy plan for our country.” “This is an opportunity for all the members of this body to come forward,” he said. The 1,179-mile pipeline would carry an estimated 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines on its way to Gulf Coast refineries. The bipartisan 63-32 vote was 3 more than the 60 required, and well above the level the highly controversial measure ever gained in recent years when Democrats controlled the Senate. But Republicans will need to secure more Democratic support to override a veto, as has been repeatedly threatened by the White House.
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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P R O S E C U T O R AV O I D S G R A N D J U R Y IN ALBUQUERQUE POLICE KILLING Police believe she should be charged with bribery because, they say, she offered to pay a victim not to press charges. The attorney general’s office is handling the matter.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- High-profile police killings in New York and Missouri did not lead to charges against the officers after grand juries met in secret proceedings that infuriated some members of the public. Faced with a similar decision over a police shooting in New Mexico’s most populous city, the top prosecutor took a different approach.
Brandenburg said the charges against police had nothing to do with the agency’s investigation into her and that her office got the case long before the bribery claims came to light.
The Albuquerque district attorney brought murder charges Monday against two officers who shot a mentally ill homeless man during a standoff last year, bypassing a grand jury and taking the case before a judge who will decide at a public hearing whether the case should move forward. “Unlike Ferguson and unlike in New York City, we’re going to know. The public is going to have that information,” District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said. “I think officer-involved shooting cases are important around the country where we want to share all that information with the public.” The March shooting death of James Boyd, 38, led to violent protests and helped drive a major federal-ordered overhaul of the Albuquerque Police Department amid a rash of police shootings over the last five years. It also came during a year when police tactics came under intense scrutiny nationwide, fueled by the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of another unarmed man in New York City. Grand juries declined to charge officers in those cases, leading to large protests. In Albuquerque, police said SWAT team member Dominique Perez and former Detective Keith Sandy fatally shot Boyd, who had frequent violent run-ins with law enforcement. Video from an officer’s helmet camera showed Boyd appearing to surrender when officers opened fire, but a defense lawyer characterized him as an unstable suspect who was “unpredictably and dangerously close to a defenseless officer while he was wielding two knives.” “I’m looking forward ... to the DA’s office presenting one single
Each officer faces a single count in Boyd’s death. The charges allow prosecutors to pursue either first-degree or second-degree murder counts. The FBI is also investigating, but U.S. authorities have not said if the officers will face federal charges. James Boyd, 38, left, is shown during a standoff with officers in the Sandia foothills in Albuquerque, N.M., before police fatally shot him. Lawyers for two Albuquerque police officers say both will face charges in the March killing of Boyd a homeless camper, a shooting that generated sometimes violent protests around the city and sparked a federal investigation.
witness that says this is murder,” said Sam Bregman, a lawyer for Sandy. Brandenburg refused to provide specifics about the reasons for bringing the case but said it was a lengthy and deliberate process. The officers have not been booked or arrested, which would not happen until a judge decides whether the case can advance at a preliminary hearing. A date has not been set. The case suddenly elevates the stature of the district attorney, who has been elected to four consecutive terms and been in office since 2001. The criminal charges were the first Brandenburg has brought against officers in a shooting. She also is waging a fight with the Albuquerque Police Department over allegations she committed bribery while intervening on behalf of her son in a burglary case.
P L O L AW Y E R : B O M B E R S I N I S R A E L ACTED FOR OWN ‘CRAZY REASONS’ Saeb Erekat is the Chief Negotiator of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Previously, he was the Deputy Head of the Palestinian delegation
that the groups are not to blame for terror attacks in Israel.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority told a jury at the start of a civil trial Tuesday
Attorney Mark Rochon said in his opening statement that seven attacks from 2001 to 2004 were carried out by suicide bombers and gunmen “acting on their own angry, crazy reasons.” He said the organizations are victims of guilt by association with terrorists who are not defendants in a lawsuit brought on behalf of victims. The $1 billion lawsuit was filed in 2004 to hold the organizations responsible for seven shooting and bombings in or near Jerusalem that killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more, including scores of U.S. citizens.
If successful, the plaintiffs expect to recover a substantial amount of any award, he said. In court papers, lawyers for the PA and PLO say a U.S. court should not have jurisdiction over the case just because the PLO maintains a 12-person office in the United States. They say the PA and PLO’s home is in the West Bank and that U.S. activities are a tiny portion of their worldwide activities. “Given the high stakes, extraordinary burden, and substantial foreign policy consequences associated with bringing a foreign government to trial for supporting terrorism, the trial ... should not go forward in the absence of general personal jurisdiction over them,” the lawyers wrote in court papers. They also said the publicity of the trial, “some of it inevitable, some of it sought by plaintiffs, will undermine the confidence in the PA’s ability to govern and contribute to a worsening of tensions in the region at a delicate moment.”
BLACK LAB LIKES TO TA K E S O L O B U S R I D E TO HER DOG PARK STOP
Rochon spoke after attorney Kent Yalowitz urged jurors in a packed courtroom to hold the Palestinian organizations liable for the killings. He brought an 11-year-old lawsuit to life with victims of the terror attacks looking on, introducing some of them to jurors and saying they were they were victimized by suicide bombings sanctioned by the PLO. “The evidence will show that killing civilians was standard operating procedure for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority,” he said. Payroll records show that the Palestinian Authority “embraced these crimes” by continuing to pay security officials who organized the attacks, even after they were convicted of murder, he said. The two groups have argued that the case does not belong in U.S. courts. U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels told prospective jurors to put aside politics and emotions and to decide the case objectively. The trial, expected to last up to three months, is occurring despite an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt by the PLO and PA to convince appeals judges that a Manhattan court does not have jurisdiction. The effort was rejected by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit brought under the Antiterrorism Act of 1991 is being heard by an anonymous jury. “The injuries remain very fresh for most of these people,” plaintiffs’ attorney Phil Horton said in an interview. Horton said some victims are seeking a sense of closure and many were interested in accountability. Numerous victims were scheduled to testify. Any damages awarded would be automatically tripled because the claims involved acts of terrorism, he said.
This image provided by KOMO-TV shows Eclipse, a black Labrador, riding between two other passengers on her way to the dog park. In owner Jeff Young’s words, “She’s a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog.” Young says his dog sometimes gets on the bus without him, and he catches up with her at the dog park three or four stops away. Bus riders report she hops onto seats next to strangers, and watches out the window for her stop. Says commuter Tiona Rainwater, “All the bus drivers know her ... she makes everybody happy.” A Metro Transit spokesman says the agency loves that a dog appreciates
SEATTLE (AP) -- A black Labrador named Eclipse just wants to get to the dog park. So if her owner takes too long finishing his cigarette, and their bus arrives, she climbs aboard solo and rides to her stop - to the delight of fellow Seattle bus passengers. KOMO-TV reports (http://is.gd/R9Fa86 ) that local radio host Miles Montgomery was amazed to see the pooch get off the bus, without an owner, at a dog park last week. The dog and her owner, Jeff Young, live right near a bus stop. In Young’s words, “She’s a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog.” Young says his dog sometimes gets on the bus without him, and he catches up with her at the dog park three or four stops away. Bus riders report she hops onto seats next to strangers, and watches out the window for her stop. Says commuter Tiona Rainwater, “All the bus drivers know her ... she makes everybody happy.” A Metro Transit spokesman said the agency loves that a dog appreciates public transit.
Even before Boyd’s death, the U.S. Justice Department was investigating use of force by Albuquerque police. The department recently signed an agreement to make changes after the government issued a harsh report. The agreement requires police to provide better training for officers and dismantle troubled units. Since 2010, Albuquerque police have been involved in more than 40 shootings - 27 of them deadly. After Boyd’s death, outrage over the numbers grew and culminated with protests that included a demonstration where authorities fired tear gas and another that shut down a City Council meeting. Bregman said there is “not one shred” of evidence to support the case and insisted Sandy had no criminal intent when he encountered Boyd. He said the officer followed training procedures outlined by the Police Department. Luis Robles, an attorney for Perez, said he was “confident that the facts will vindicate officer Perez’s actions in this case.” Police are legally empowered to use deadly force when appropriate, and a 1989 Supreme Court decision concluded that an officer’s use of force must be evaluated through the “perspective of a reasonable officer on scene rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Philip Matthew Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who studies police misconduct, found that local officers were charged in 41 cases with murder or manslaughter stemming from on-duty shootings between 2005 and 2011. By comparison, over the same period, police agencies reported to the FBI more than 2,700 cases of justifiable homicide by officers, and that statistic is incomplete. The figures suggest it’s difficult to get a conviction “because juries are so reluctant to second-guess an officer’s split-second decision,” Stinson said.
APPLE HOMEKIT continued from page 3
WHAT DO YOU NEED? The first requirement is an iPhone or an iPad with iOS 8. (Sorry, Android and Windows users, you’ll need a different system. Google is starting to enable similar functionality through its Nest smart thermostat and smoke detector and Microsoft is trying to enable smarthome controls using its Cortana voice assistant. Of course, if makers of smart-home products enable multiple systems - and some of them plan to - consumers won’t have to worry about which device works with what.) OK. Now you’ll need a HomeKit-capable product; those will start coming out in a few months. HomeKit-enabled products certified by Apple will carry a HomeKit logo. The easiest way to start is with a HomeKit power plug, such as ones that iHome, iDevices and Grid Connect soon plan to sell for $40 to $80 each. Your appliance hooks into that plug, which then goes into a regular electric outlet. The HomeKit power plug has a HomeKit-certified chipset with a wireless connection to get instructions from the app. Insteon, a maker of more than 200 automated products including thermostats and light bulbs, also plans to sell a hub to make all of its existing and future products compatible with HomeKit. The HomeKit-compatible hub will sell for $150. By contrast, it sells a $40 hub that lets you control Insteon devices through an app, but it won’t work with HomeKit products from other companies. Meanwhile, a garage-door opener from Chamberlain and door locks from Schlage will be enabled for HomeKit from the start, with no need for an intermediary power plug. Elgato’s Eve home-monitoring system will have sensors to measure air quality, temperature, humidity, air pressure, energy and water consumption. Other products to come will likely include wireless speakers, lamps and security cameras. As you start adding more HomeKit plugs and HomeKit-enabled products, you can define zones and scenes to tap into HomeKit’s power. If you have a third-generation Apple TV streaming device (released in 2012), you can use Siri to control your home from elsewhere. Otherwise, you need to tap on the app and use Siri only when you’re on your home wireless network. THE PROMISE For users of Apple devices, HomeKit will be an easy way to automate your home. Apple says it will review products to ensure they are easy to use and meet its privacy and security guidelines. What will be tougher is outfitting your home with the necessary equipment, especially at $40 or more per plug. But as you replace lights and appliances you can start building a smart home, or just buy HomeKit plugs for the essential things you want automated.
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
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P O P E B A C K S S E A R C H F O R WA RT I M E T R U T H I N S R I L A N K A
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Pope Francis brought calls for reconciliation and justice to Sri Lanka on Tuesday as he began a weeklong Asian tour, saying the island nation can’t fully heal from a quarter-century of brutal civil war without pursuing the truth about abuses that were committed.
“This is a good opportunity to unify the country after a war and bring together a society divided with an election,” said another Francis watcher on the road in from the airport, Saman Priyankara. “It will be a strength to the new government at a time we are free from an autocracy and on a new path.”
The 78-year-old pope arrived in Colombo after an overnight flight from Rome and immediately spent nearly two hours under a scorching sun greeting dignitaries and well-wishers along the 28-kilometer (18-mile) route into town. The effects were immediate: A weary and delayed Francis skipped a lunchtime meeting with Sri Lanka’s bishops to rest before completing the rest of his grueling day. “The health of the pope is good,” the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, assured late Tuesday. “He was a little tired after the 28 kilometers under the sun, but now he has again his strength.” Francis is the first pope to visit Sri Lanka since the government crushed a 25-year civil war by ethnic Tamil rebels demanding an independent Tamil nation because of perceived discrimination by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. U.N. estimates say 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed during the war, which ended in 2009; other reports suggest the toll could be much higher. With 40 costumed elephants lining the airport road behind him and a 21-canon salute booming over the tarmac, Francis said that finding true peace after so much bloodshed “can only be done by overcoming evil with good, and by cultivating those virtues which foster reconciliation, solidarity and peace.” He didn’t specifically mention Sri Lanka’s refusal to cooperate with a U.N. investigation into alleged war crimes committed in the final months of the war. But he said, “The process of healing also needs to include the pursuit of truth, not for the sake of opening old wounds, but rather as a necessary means of promoting justice, healing and unity.” A 2011 U.N. report said up to 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in the last months of the civil war, and accused both sides of serious human rights violations. It said the government was suspected of deliberately shelling civilians and hospitals and preventing food and medicine from getting to civilians trapped in the war zone. The Tamil Tiger rebels were accused of recruiting child soldiers and holding civilians as human shields and firing from among them. A few months after the U.N. report was released, the government of longtime President Mahinda Rajapaksa released its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission findings, which concluded that Sri Lanka’s military didn’t intentionally target civilians at the end of the war and that the rebels routinely violated international humanitarian law.
On Wednesday, Francis will canonize Sri Lanka’s first saint, the Rev. Joseph Vaz, a 17th-century missionary from India who is credited with having revived the Catholic faith among both Sinhalese and Tamils amid persecution by Dutch colonial rulers, who were Calvinists. Colombo’s beachfront Galle Face Green was filling up Tuesday evening with people who planned to camp out overnight to secure a good spot for the Mass. Sri Lankan Hindu priest Kurakkal Somasundaram, right, presents a shawl to Pope Francis during an inter-religious meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. Pope Francis arrived in Sri Lanka Tuesday at the start of a weeklong Asian tour saying the island nation can’t fully heal from a quarter-century of ethnic civil war without pursuing truth for the injustices committed.
order to live in harmony with their brothers and sisters.” Some 70 percent of Sri Lankans are Buddhist - most from the Sinhalese ethnic group. Another 13 percent are Hindu, most of them Tamil, and some 10 percent are Muslim. Catholics make up less than 7 percent of the island nation’s 20 million people, but the church counts both Sinhalese and Tamils as members and sees itself as a strong source of national unity. When John Paul visited in 1995, Buddhist representatives boycotted his interfaith meeting to protest his views on the Buddhist concept of salvation. “It is a blessing and will be helpful for interreligious friendship,” said the Rev. Wimalananda, a young Buddhist monk, who was out on the street to welcome the pope. Francis arrived just days after Rajapaksa was upset in an election he had called. The victor, Sirisena, had defected from the ruling party in November in a surprise move and won the election by capitalizing on Rajapaksa’s unpopularity among ethnic and religious minorities.
EUROPE’S MUSLIMS F E E L H E A T O F BACKLASH AFTER P A R I S T E R R O R
Sri Lanka’s new president, Maithripala Sirisena who unseated Rajapaksa last week, has promised to launch a domestic inquiry into wartime abuses, but has also pledged to protect everyone who contributed to the defeat of the Tamil Tiger separatists from international legal action.
Tamils, however, say they are still discriminated against, and human rights activists said the previous government wasn’t serious about probing rights abuses. The Vatican estimated that some 200,000-300,000 people lined Francis’ route in from the airport, which he traveled entirely in his open-sided popemobile. While some who had staked out positions since dawn were frustrated that he sped past so quickly, Francis took so long greeting well-wishers that he canceled a meeting with Sri Lanka’s bishops in the afternoon after falling more than an hour behind schedule. “This is like Jesus Christ himself coming to Sri Lanka!” marveled Ranjit Solis, 60, a retired engineer. He recalled that Pope Paul VI only spent two hours in Sri Lanka in 1970, while St. John Paul II spent a day in 1995. “The current pope is coming for three days! He serves the poor and is concerned about poor countries. It’s a great thing.” After resting up, Francis met with Sirisena privately at the presidential palace in the late afternoon and then rallied to greet dozens of saffron-robbed Buddhist monks and representatives of Sri Lanka’s other main religions. At one point, he donned a saffron shawl over his shoulders, a traditional Tamil sign of honor. “What is needed now is healing and unity, not further division and conflict,” Francis told the audience. “It is my hope that interreligious and ecumenical cooperation will demonstrate that men and women do not have to forsake their identity, whether ethnic or religious, in
said above all, pretty unanimously, that in France there are 5 or 6 million Muslims. These (terrorist) issues concern 1,000 individuals,” said Socialist lawmaker Patrick Mennucci. “We should be careful not to stigmatize anyone.” Coulibaly’s mother and daughters, presenting condolences to the victims, issued a plea in a statement delivered to the French press “that there will be no amalgam between these odious acts and the Muslim religion.” Yet Muslims and some experts said that it was inevitable that Muslims would fall under suspicion after the attacks, despite a unity march on Sunday - described as the largest in French history - in which throngs of Muslims participated. The rising far-right in France and other European countries has been driven by an anti-immigration, anti-Islam message. National Front leader Marine Le Pen seized upon the Charlie Hebdo attack just hours after it happened, suggesting it was a vindication of her party’s xenophobic stance. Extreme-right groups across Europe have increasingly been striking a chord with ordinary citizens voicing fears their culture is being uprooted by an alien civilization. The fledgling German group that calls itself Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, drew its largest crowd ever Monday night - a reported 40,000 - at its weekly rally in Dresden, after organizers declared it a tribute to the victims of the French attacks. No anti-Islamic acts have been reported in Germany since the terror.
Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish incidents rose throughout 2014 in France, which has Europe’s largest communities of both religions.
Sirisena, who was sworn in Friday, told Francis in the airport welcoming ceremony that his government aims to promote “peace and friendship among our people after overcoming a cruel terrorist conflict.”
In a show of that coexistence, the pope’s welcome ceremony at Colombo’s airport featured traditional dancers and drummers from both ethnic groups and a children’s choir serenading him in both of Sri Lanka’s languages.
On Thursday he heads to the Philippines, the largest Roman Catholic country in Asia and the third-largest in the world, for the second and final leg of the journey.
French Muslims were already facing a backlash triggered by terror acts by French radicals twisting their religion - particularly since the rampage in southern France in 2012 in which Mohamed Merah killed three children at a Jewish school, a rabbi and three paratroopers. Anti-Islam sentiment spread further after the killing of four people by a French Muslim at the Brussels Jewish Museum in May.
Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the responsibility for finding the truth was Sri Lanka’s alone and stressed that Francis had made clear that the goal of determining the truth isn’t to open old wounds.
“We are a people who believe in religious tolerance and coexistence based on our centuries-old heritage,” he said.
Later in the day he flies into Tamil territory to pray at a shrine beloved by both Sinhalese and Tamil faithful.
Muslim residents walk past racial slurs painted on the walls of a mosque in the town of Saint-Etienne, central France. Graffiti reads: “Muslims”. Firebombs and pigs’ heads are being tossed at mosques and women in veils have been insulted in a surge of anti-Muslim acts since last week’s murderous assault on the newsroom of a satirical Paris paper, according to a Muslim who tracks such incidents in France. France’s large Muslim population risks becoming collateral damage in the aftermath of the three attacks by French radical Islamists who killed 17 people. Muslims in other European countries also won’t be spared, some Muslim leaders and experts say. Concern about a backlash against Muslims was discussed Monday Jan. 13, 2015, during a meeting on counter-terrorism measures at the Interior Ministry.
PARIS (AP) -- Firebombs and pig heads thrown into mosques. Veiled women subjected to crude insults in the street. The Internet awash with threats against Muslims. Europe’s Muslims are feeling the heat of a fierce backlash following last week’s terror attack against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
A climate of fear is taking hold in Europe, as ordinary people increasingly heed rightist rhetoric equating the millions of peaceful Muslims with the few plotting murder and mayhem. Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory Against Islamophobia, said that in a 48-hour period after the Wednesday massacre at Charlie Hebdo, 16 places of worship around France were attacked by firebombs, gunshots or pig heads - a major insult to Muslims who don’t eat pork. The three-day terror spree in Paris claimed the lives of 17 victims, and traumatized a continent already brimming with anti-immigrant sentiment. Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi - the al-Qaida-linked suspects in the magazine attack - were killed in a shootout at a printing plant north of Paris; their apparent accomplice Amedy Coulibaly was shot dead in a near-simultaneous raid at a Jewish market, where he had holed himself up with hostages, killing four. French authorities are warning the nation against linking French Muslims with terrorists.
“For Muslims, the shock is grave in this climate of Islamophobia, of aggressions against places of worship,” read a statement by Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council for the Muslim Faith and the most visible Muslim in France. France’s state of high alert after the Charlie Hebdo rampage - with 10,000 soldiers deployed in the streets - may deepen a sense of siege within the Muslim population. French authorities have long warned that France is a preferred target of Islamic extremists. France routed al-Qaida from northern Mali - two years ago to the day before Coulibaly attacked the Jewish market - and is now carrying out airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State group. Both al-Qaida and IS have threatened France. But the attacks have had an effect outside France, too. In the Netherlands, Muslim groups and the government met Friday and said they plan to register anti-Muslim incidents. A burning object was thrown at a mosque in Vlaardingen, on the outskirts of Rotterdam. “Everyone has this uncomfortable feeling, a sense of being threatened - Muslims because they are afraid to be stigmatized and that they will be attacked too,” said Imade Annouri, a Green parliamentarian of Belgium’s regional legislature of Flanders and an expert on integration issues. TellMAMA, a British group that tracks anti-Muslim attacks, reported 50-60 cases of specific online threats to individuals over the weekend. “The sheer volume is unbelievable,” said the organization’s director, Fiyaz Mughal, who fears virtual assaults could spur real ones in the street. Mughal said that after the slaying of British soldier Lee Rigby in London, the group was able to gauge how threats made on Twitter and Facebook translated directly into attacks on individuals or mosques.
“The terrorists’ religion is not Islam, which they are betraying,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said last week. “It’s barbarity.”
Mohamed Ali Adraoui, a fellow at the European University Institute, suggested that hatred of Islam could morph into an assault on a mosque, in France or elsewhere.
Concerns about a backlash against Muslims were discussed Monday during a counter-terrorism meeting at the Interior Ministry. “We
“If you can do that in Charlie Hebdo offices, you can do it in a mosque,” he said.
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
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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
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Financial problems plaguing Caesars Entertainment and its casino empire have the company considering a trip to bankruptcy court, possibly as early as Thursday.
Among its casino peers, Caesars’ empire remains the largest, employing some 68,000 people worldwide at more than 50 casino-hotels, including Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.
It doesn’t necessarily signal the end of this faux Roman Empire, though.
While Caesars Entertainment has seen a steady $8.6 billion or so in revenue since 2009, it’s been outpaced by Las Vegas Sands Corp., which went all-in in Macau, China, and grew every year to post revenue of $14.5 billion in 2013.
If all goes according to the company’s plan, drawn up with its most senior creditors, it should be business as usual for customers - its doors will remain open, the slot machines will still sing, chips will rest atop tables.
Las Vegas Sands made a $2.3 billion profit that year. Caesars lost $2.9 billion. Caesars has lost money each year for the last five years.
“Caesars is, in a certain sense, a Nevada version of `too big to fail,’” said Michael Green, a history professor with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It’s still a gamble. U.S. casino-hotel companies are dependent on extra cash in a person’s pocket, but perhaps none more than Caesars, which waded into the recent economic downturn already burdened by more debt than any of them - a by-product of a buyout in January 2008 that was largely a wager using other people’s money. While competitors found fortune in Asia’s casino growth as stateside gambling in Las Vegas and Atlantic City waned, Caesars missed out. And as other companies built arenas and shopping districts on the Strip or casino-hotels in newer gambling markets across the country, analysts say Caesars was reluctant to spend. It went private, then public again to raise cash and created new related companies, shifting its properties from one to another to free them up from the debt cordoned off in one spot, its Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. That’s the company now headed to bankruptcy court. Regardless of the maneuvers, “the fundamentals were not there to support the amount of debt that they had,” said Keith Foley, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service. WHAT HAPPENED
Caesars Palace hotel and casino, in Las Vegas. The company said Friday, Jan. 9, it has a majority of the holders of its debt on board with a pre-planned bankruptcy agreement that would reorganize Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. into two separate companies, one to own casino-hotels and the other to lease them, and cut its existing debt by about $10 billion.
Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital LP did what a lot of private equity firms were doing at the time when money and loans were easy to come by, buying companies with promise - relying mostly on debt - to add to its portfolio. The gambling industry looked promising. The deal to buy Caesars (then known as Harrah’s) was first announced in 2006 during the heyday of Vegas tourism and development. But the deal didn’t close until January 2008, several months before Lehman Brothers would go bankrupt, shaking the economy to its core. And it was a nearly $30 billion deal with the two firms taking on more than $10 billion of existing debt and relying on several billion more in bonds to pay for the company. In between, the company had cut about 200 people from its corporate staff. Before the year was done, Caesars was cutting more staff and looking for new cash to make its interest payments. WHAT NOW
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 Howard said 95 percent of items sold on Silk Road were illegal drugs, though the site also featured fake passports and tools to hack into computers and email accounts. “This is a case about a dark secret part of the Internet that was home to an enormous marketplace for the sale of illegal drugs,” he said. The prosecutor said Ulbricht operated “like a traditional drug boss,” setting rules for thousands of drug dealers who catered to customers who could “pick their drug of choice and have it delivered right to their doorstep.” Howard said Ulbricht was willing to use threats and violence to protect his turf. He alluded to murders-for-hire that Dratel dismissed as plots in which there was “no evidence the people involved ever existed.” Ulbricht also is charged in Baltimore federal court in an attempted murder scheme. Ulbricht disputes he operated online under the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts,” a reference to a swashbuckling character in “The Princess Bride.” Supporters of Ross William Ulbricht hold signs during the jury selection for his trial outside of federal court in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. Murder-for-hire allegations are central to Ulbrichtt’s trial. He is charged with running an online black market where drugs were sold as easily as books and electronics.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A San Francisco man who launched an underground website as an economic experiment before abandoning it was fooled into taking the fall when investigators concluded it was used almost solely for drug dealing, a defense lawyer told jurors Tuesday after the government portrayed his client as the mastermind of a worldwide digital drug market. Ross William Ulbricht was “left holding the bag” by operators of the Silk Road website after they were alerted that federal investigators were closing in, defense attorney Joshua Dratel said in his opening statement at Ulbricht’s criminal trial. “Ross is not a drug dealer. Ross is not a kingpin. Ross is not involved in a conspiracy,” Dratel said. The 30-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering. Minutes earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Howard described Ulbricht as all of those things and more, calling him a kingpin who created a website where “anybody anywhere in the world could buy and sell dangerous drugs with a click of a mouse.” Howard said it was “as quick and easy as ordinary online shopping.” About a dozen protesters stood in front of the courthouse for part of the day with signs and jury nullification fliers in support of Ulbricht. After the trial finished for the day, Judge Katherine Forrest said she would consider establishing an anonymous jury to protect them if the protests persisted. Dratel said: “People think they’re helping the defense by being out there. They’re not.” In his opening, Howard said Ulbricht made $18 million in bitcoins by enabling drug dealers to earn over $200 million through more than a million drug sales after the website was activated in 2011 until it was shut down by the government in October 2013.
But Howard said Ulbricht was “caught red handed” in a public library in San Francisco on the day he was arrested, talking online as “Dread Pirate Roberts” with an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the website as a trusted member of its support staff. He said trial witnesses would include a computer programmer who provided Ulbricht advice in 2010 and 2011.
Still, the company unveiled its High Roller observation wheel and newly renovated hotels on the Strip: The Linq and The Cromwell. It hired headliners for shows at The Colosseum inside Caesars Palace. All the while, it was shifting and shuttering other assets. Last year, the company closed properties in Atlantic City, London and Mississippi and said it would cut its global workforce by less than 1 percent. “They’re going to have to become a little leaner,” said Chris Jones, an analyst for Union Gaming Group. He added that he doesn’t expect any more properties to shut down and expects the plan will free up Caesars to reinvest where it hasn’t, including the gambling floor. WHAT’S NEXT The company faces irked creditors, a few who have tried to force the casino giant into bankruptcy against its will this week. Others have sued, claiming the company ransacked Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. of most of its valuable assets. Caesars called the claims meritless and alleges some of its holdout creditors are hoping for the company’s demise in order to win wagers predicting as much. Despite the acrimony, the company says that after months of negotiations it has more than 60 percent of the holders of its first-priority debt on board with its plan. The plan would shed $10 billion in debt from its weighed-down operations division, leaving it with $8.6 billion and winnowing its annual $1.7 billion in interest payments to $450 million. Senior creditors who OK’d the plan would get cash and new debt to make them whole.
THOUSANDS PROTEST I N SPA I N FOR B E T T E R HEPATITIS C TREATMENT People supporting those affected by hepatitis C are backlit as they march during a demonstration in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015 . Thousands of people affected by hepatitis C have marched in several Spanish cities to press for easier access to latest-generation medicines for the deadly liver disease. The Platform of People Affected by Hepatitis C who organized the protests says the government is applying a ‘confused and selective’ approach to treatment by not providing expensive drugs to all patients equally. (
MADRID (AP) -- Thousands of people affected by hepatitis C have marched in several Spanish cities to press for easier access to latest-generation medicines for the deadly liver disease. The Platform of People Affected by Hepatitis C, which organized the protests, says the government is applying a “confused and selective” approach to treatment by not providing expensive drugs to all patients equally.
The prosecutor said Ulbricht confessed he was running a website that sold illegal drugs and “bragged that he was the mastermind.”
It claims the latest drugs, that have up to a 95 percent cure rate, are being supplied to patients with the highest survival potential and not to those in the later stages of the illness.
Dratel said Ulbricht created Silk Road as “an economic experiment” but handed it off to others after a few months because it was “too stressful for him.”
One protest started early Saturday at Madrid’s 12 de Octubre hospital and marched 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s office.
He said Ulbricht was lured back to be “in that library that day to take the fall for the people operating the website.”
Rajoy has said anyone with a proven case will receive the appropriate treatment.
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 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
11
P O L I C E O F F I C I A L : A R M S F O R PA R I S AT TA C K S C A M E F R O M A B R O A D PARIS (AP) -- A French police official says the weapons used by a terror cell in attacks in the Paris region that left 17 people dead came from outside the country, and that authorities are urgently tracing the source of the financing.
Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, was arrested Jan. 1 as he tried to cross into Turkey, under two European arrest warrants, one citing his alleged links to a terrorist organization and a second for allegedly kidnapping his 3-year-old son and smuggling him out of the country, said Darina Slavova, the regional prosecutor for Bulgaria’s southern province of Haskovo.
Christophe Crepin, a French police union representative, said several people are being sought in relation to the “substantial” financing of the three gunmen, as well as others in their network.
“He met with Kouachi several times at the end of December,” Slavova said.
He said that the weapons stockpile clearly came from abroad and the amount spent shows an organized network. The news came hours after a Bulgarian prosecutor announced the arrest of a man with ties to one of the brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo newspaper massacre. Crepin said the people in the Islamic extremist cell had mixed allegiances, with little sense of loyalty to individual jihadi groups. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
The Kouachi brothers and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed four hostages in the Paris grocery, died Friday in clashes with French police. All three claimed ties to Islamic extremists in the Middle East - the Kouachis to al-Qaida in Yemen and Coulibaly to the Islamic State group.
A soldier stands guard outside a synagogue in Neuilly sur Seine, outside, Paris, France, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. France on Monday ordered 10,000 troops into the streets to protect sensitive sites after three days of bloodshed and terror, amid the hunt for accomplices to the attacks that left 17 people and the three gunmen dead.
that a new Muhammad cartoon could inflame passions anew.
Two French police officials told The Associated Press that authorities were searching around Paris for the Mini Cooper registered to Hayat Boumeddiene, Coulibaly’s widow, who Turkish officials say is now in Syria. One of the police officials said the Paris terror cell consisted of about 10 members and that “five or six could still be at large,” but he did not provide their names. The other official said the cell was made up of about eight people and included Boumeddiene.
With a printing press, medals of honor and ceremonies thousands of miles apart, France and Israel paid tribute Tuesday to those killed in the Paris terrorist attacks. In Bulgaria, authorities said a Frenchman already under arrest had ties to the Paris gunmen who left 17 victims in their wake.
At police headquarters in Paris, French President Francois Hollande paid separate tribute Tuesday to the three police officers killed in the attacks, placing Legion of Honor medals on their caskets.
Defying the bloodshed and terror of last week, a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad is to appear Wednesday on the cover of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, weeping and holding a placard with the words “I am Charlie.” Above him is emblazoned: “All is forgiven” - a phrase one writer said meant to show that the survivors of the attacks forgave the gunmen.
“They died so that we could live free,” he said, flanked by hundreds of police officers.
One of the police officials also said Coulibaly apparently set off a car bomb Thursday in the town of Villejuif, but no one was injured and it did not receive significant media attention.
Hollande vowed that France will be “merciless in the face of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslims acts, and unrelenting against those who defend and carry out terrorism, notably the jihadists who go to Iraq and Syria.”
Video has emerged of Coulibaly explaining how the attacks in Paris would unfold. French police want to find the person or persons who shot and posted the video, which was edited after Friday’s attacks.
As Chopin’s funeral march played in central Paris and the caskets draped in French flags were led from the building, a procession began in Jerusalem for the four Jewish victims of the attack Friday on a kosher supermarket in Paris.
Ties among the three attackers themselves date back to at least 2005, when Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi were jailed together.
“I think that those who have been killed, if they were here, they would have been able to have a coffee today with the terrorists and just talk to them, ask them why they have done this,” columnist Zineb El Rhazoui told the BBC. “We feel, as Charlie Hebdo’s team, that we need to forgive the two terrorists who have killed our colleagues.” Two masked gunmen opened the onslaught in Paris with a Jan. 7 attack on the paper, singling out its editor and his police bodyguard for the first shots before killing 12 people in all. Ahmed Merabet, a French Muslim policeman, was one of the victims, killed as he lay wounded on the ground as the gunmen - brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi - made their escape. Charlie Hebdo, which lampoons religion indiscriminately, had received threats after depicting Muhammed before, and its offices were firebombed in 2011. Its editor, Stephane Charbonnier, was under constant guard. Its surviving staff say they have been working feverishly since the attacks in loaned office space to put out the latest issue.
“Returning to your ancestral home need not be due to distress, out of desperation, amidst destruction, or in the throes of terror and fear,” said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. “Terror has never kept us down, and we do not want terror to subdue you. The Land of Israel is the land of choice. We want you to choose Israel, because of a love for Israel.” French police say as many as six members of the terrorist cell that carried out the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen. The country has deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites, including Jewish schools and synagogues, mosques and travel hubs. Amid the hunt for accomplices, Bulgarian authorities said Tuesday they have a Frenchman under arrest who is believed to have links to Cherif Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers.
France’s main Muslim organization called Tuesday for calm, fearing
M O T H E R O F T E E N T O I S L A M I C S TAT E : ‘ L E AV E O U R C H I L D R E N A L O N E ! ’
ida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. He also allegedly searched online for information about joining up. “We condemn the brainwashing and recruiting of children through the use of social media and the Internet,” Zarine Khan said Tuesday. Khan’s mother and father, originally from India, are both naturalized U.S. citizens. Khan was born in the Chicago area. His parents did not know of the plans to journey to Syria until their son’s arrest, Durkin has said. Khan’s mother ended her statement Tuesday before a dozen reporters and TV cameras by directly addressing the Islamic State group, which she referred to as ISIS, and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “We have a message for ISIS, Mr. Baghdadi and his fellow social media recruiters,” she said, raising her voice. “Leave our children alone!”
dle-class Bolingbrook neighborhood, was arrested in October as he sought to board an international flight in Chicago on the first leg of a plan to sneak into Syria to join Islamic State militants, court documents allege. Weeks later, prosecutors revealed that Khan’s 17-yearold sister and 16-year-old brother were in on the plot and had been detained at the airport with Khan. According to court documents, the girl once used the Twitter handle (at) DeathIsTheeNear to send a favorable tweet about a video of beheadings - placing a smiley emoticon in the text. The younger siblings haven’t been charged. Zarine Khan, right, and Shafi Khan, parents of Mohammed Hamzah Khan, attend a news conference after a hearing in their son’s federal trial in Chicago. Zarine Khan, mother of the 19-year-old man facing a terrorist charge for trying to join Islamic State militants says the group is “brainwashing” youths via social media. And she declared, “Leave our children alone!” Khan’s mother read her statement in a Chicago federal courthouse lobby Tuesday Jan. 13, 2015, minutes after Khan pleaded not guilty plea to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group at his arraignment.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The suburban Chicago mother of a 19-year-old American facing a terrorist charge for trying to join Islamic State militants accused the group on Tuesday of brainwashing youths into joining their ranks via social media. And she declared, “Leave our children alone!” Mohammed Hamzah Khan’s mother cried softly as she read her statement in a federal courthouse lobby in Chicago. Minutes earlier, her son appeared in orange jail garb in an upstairs courtroom to plead not guilty to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group. Zarine Khan, flanked by her husband, Shafi, said her family felt compelled to speak out in the wake of “unspeakable acts of horror” in Paris last week that killed 17. One gunman reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, while two others cited al-Qaida. “The venom spewed by these groups and the violence committed by them ... are completely at odds with our Islamic faith,” the 41-year-old said. About a dozen Americans were believed to be fighting in Syria, while more than 100 have either been arrested on their way to Syria or went and came back, FBI Director James Comey said last fall. Mohammed Khan, who lived with his parents in a mid-
Investigators later found a three-page letter in Khan’s bedroom in which he apologized to his parents for leaving so abruptly. But Khan, who studied at the Roman Catholic Benedictine University in Illinois for a year, added he felt obliged to go from disgust with Western society and from anger over U.S.-backed bombing of Islamic State fighters, court filings alleged. “This nation is openly against Islam and Muslims,” he wrote. Adept propagandists managed to woo Mohammed Khan into falsely believing they had established a legitimate Islamic government in parts of Syria and Iraq, Khan’s lawyer, Thomas Durkin, told reporters Tuesday. “He’s a very devout, committed, thoughtful kid who bought into some very slick advertising,” Durkin said. He has said there is no evidence Khan aspired to do anything other than live in territory controlled by Islamic State. Another suburban Chicago youth, Abdella Tounisi, then 18, pleaded not guilty in 2013 to a seeking to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group - in his case, al-Qa-
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 19 thru Jan 25, 2015
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FA R M E R S I N D R Y C A L I F O R N I A D E C R Y D E C I S I O N I N V O LV I N G A P P E A L S
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider appeals by Central Valley farmers and California water districts that want to pump more water from a delta that serves as the only home of a tiny, threatened fish.
Supreme Court.” Burling said the smelt ruling resembles a 1978 Supreme Court decision blocking completion of a Tennessee dam that threatened the endangered snail darter fish.
The decision lets stand a 2008 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to safeguard the 3-inch-long Delta smelt, a species listed as threatened in 1993 under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Congress later amended the endangered species law to give federal authorities more flexibility to include economic and technical feasability.
The plan restricts the amount of water that can be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and sent south to Central Valley farmers and water districts.
However, Burling said the law is being used now to favor the smelt, without consideration of the economic hardships.
S PA C E X S U P P LY S H I P A R R I V E S AT S PA C E STATION WITH GROCERIES
The smelt only lives in the delta - the largest estuary on the West Coast that supplies much of California with drinking water and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. Farmers contend that under the smelt regulations, vast amounts of water from the Sierra Nevada snow pack are sent through the delta and into the ocean, exacerbating hardships endured by the growers in the three-year drought. Farmers say their economic interests have been ignored while officials protect the fish. Roadside signs throughout the Central Valley decry the lack of leadership while warning of a second Dust Bowl. “I’d like to see a little more common sense put into it,” said Jim Jasper, an almond farmer who appealed to the high court. “Agriculture has been overlooked.” Because of the drought and restrictions to protect smelt, Jasper said he had to cut down one-fifth of his almond trees last year. The 70-year-old farmer who runs Stewart & Jasper Orchards in Newman anticipates taking out some of his citrus crops if the drought persists.
SELF-TAUGHT COMPUTER PROGRAM FINDS SUPER POKER STRATEGY
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta river are seen through a microscope at a California Department of Fish and Game laboratory in Stockton, Calif. California farmers struggling with drought say a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, that keeps strict water restrictions in place to protect a tiny, threatened fish has forced them to leave thousands of acres unplanted in the nation’s most fertile agricultural region.
Many farmers such as Jasper did not get any irrigation water last year from a federal system of canals and reservoirs, forcing them to rely on diminishing groundwater or rip out trees. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last year largely upheld the previous Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinion that restrictions were needed on the use of massive pumps that move water through the state’s system of canals to deliver it to farms and cities in Central and Southern California. Katherine Poole, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, welcomed the Supreme Court decision on Monday. The smelt’s decline signals the poor health of the massive estuary, she said, adding that a thriving delta benefits farmers and the millions of people who rely on it for drinking water. “We need to keep this estuary healthy and functional for everybody,” Poole said. “The smelt is telling us that we’re not doing a good enough job of that right now.” Earthjustice attorney Trent Orr said the court’s decision is a victory for the Endangered Species Act. “Contrary to their claims, there have been no reductions in water allotment for protection of this species,” Orr said. “The drought is what’s causing a water shortage, not the smelt.” The ruling was no surprise to Marcia Scully, general counsel of the huge Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies 19 million people with drinking water. The district is one of several that joined the appeal. “The water agencies understood the long odds,” she said, noting that the Supreme Court takes up less than 1 percent of appeals. “We will continue to work with the regulatory agencies to improve the underlying science in the delta.”
This undated photo provided by the University of Alberta shows University of Alberta researcher Michael Bowling, left, and team member Michael Johanson, right. A computer program that taught itself to play poker has created nearly the best possible strategy for one version of the game, showing the value of techniques that may prove useful for real-world challenges according to a paper released Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015, by the journal Science.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A computer program that taught itself to play poker has created nearly the best possible strategy for one version of the game, showing the value of techniques that may prove useful to help decision-making in medicine and other areas.
Then Dragon was stalled a month by rocket snags; it should have gotten to the space station well before Christmas.
“We’re excited to have it on board,” said U.S. astronaut Wilmore said. “We’ll be digging in soon.”
The resulting strategy still won’t win every game because of bad luck in the cards. But over the long run - thousands of games - it won’t lose money. “We can go against the best (players) in the world and the humans are going to be the ones that lose money,” said Bowling, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. The strategy applies specifically to a game called heads-up limit Texas Hold `em.
Game theory has also been used to schedule security patrols, and it has implications for other areas like developing strategies for cybersecurity, designing drugs and fighting disease pandemics.
Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who didn’t participate in the new work, called Bowling’s results a land-
The space station’s six astronauts were getting a little low on supplies. That’s because the previous supply ship - owned by another company - was destroyed in an October launch explosion. NASA scrambled to get equipment lost in the blast aboard Dragon, as did school children who rustled up new science projects.
“It may take a while,” he said. “But eventually we’ll have other opportunities to get issues dealing with the Delta smelt back to the
Bowling’s paper, released Thursday by the journal Science, introduces some techniques that could become useful for applying game theory in real-world situations. Bowling is investigating the possibility of helping doctors determine proper insulin doses for diabetic patients, for example.
Many real-world challenges like negotiations and auctions also include imperfect information, which is one reason why poker has long been a proving ground for the mathematical approach to decision-making called game theory.
The SpaceX company’s supply ship, Dragon, pulled up at the orbiting lab two days after its liftoff from Florida. Station commander Butch Wilmore used a robot arm to grab the capsule and its 5,000 pounds of cargo, as the craft soared more than 260 miles above the Mediterranean.
Mission Control joked about missing not only the December shipment date, but Eastern Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7 as well for the three Russian crew member. There are also two Americans and an Italian on board.
mark. He said it’s the first time that an imperfect-information game that is competitively played by people has been essentially solved.
Poker is hard to solve because it involves imperfect information, where a player doesn’t know everything that has happened in the game he is playing - specifically, what cards the opponent has been dealt.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A shipment of much-needed groceries and belated Christmas presents finally arrived Monday morning at the International Space Station.
The Supreme Court’s decision on this aspect of the Delta smelt plan can’t be appealed further, but attorney James Burling, who represents Central Valley farmers at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said he will continue to challenge the unfair application of the federal environmental law at every opportunity.
The program considered 24 trillion simulated poker hands per second for two months, probably playing more poker than all humanity has ever experienced, says Michael Bowling, who led the project.
While scientists have created poker-playing programs for years, Bowling’s result stands out because it comes so close to “solving” its version of the game, which essentially means creating the optimal strategy.
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta river are seen through a microscope at a California Department of Fish and Game laboratory in Stockton, Calif. California farmers struggling with drought say a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, that keeps strict water restrictions in place to protect a tiny, threatened fish has forced them to leave thousands of acres unplanted in the nation’s most fertile agricultural region.
But Bowling doubts the poker strategy will let anybody make a fortune on the game itself. The kind of poker it applies to has waned in popularity over the past seven years or so, he said. Even online, the stakes tend to be small and “you’d be winning a few dollars, not raking in millions.” In the two-player game, each contestant creates a poker hand from two cards he is dealt face-down plus five other cards placed on the table face-up. Players place bets before the face-up cards are laid out, and then again as each card is revealed. The size of the wagers is fixed. Bowling said the computer’s strategy is far too complicated for anybody to memorize, with about 1,000 times the amount of information in the English-language Wikipedia. But his university has created a website where people can ask it for advice and even play against it.
He’s especially eager to get more mustard. The station’s condiment cabinet is empty. NASA is paying SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. for shipments. Orbital’s rockets are grounded until next year, however, because of its launch accident. SpaceX - the only supplier capable of returning items to Earth - is picking up as much slack as it can. Russian and Japan also plan deliveries this year. SpaceX is still poring over data from Saturday’s attempt to land the rocket on a floating barge, the first test of its kind. After the first stage of the Falcon rocket peeled away as planned following liftoff, it flew back to a giant platform floating off the Florida coast. The guidance fins on the booster ran out of hydraulic fluid, however, right before touchdown, and it landed hard and broke into pieces. The California company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, was encouraged nonetheless and plans another rocket-landing test next month.
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