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Volume 004 Issue 01
A LOOK AT $1 MILLION HOMES IN THE US Sales of $1 million homes are booming, even as overall sales have sputtered this year. It’s further evidence of how the nearly six-year economic recovery has favored the wealthy. Those with epic stock portfolios, superb credit and cash to spare are snapping up estates, pied-a-terres and beachside cottages. Some of this shopping spree comes courtesy of the Standard & Poor’s 500 climbing an additional 13 percent this year, while mortgage rates had slid below 4 percent and made it much easier to borrow. The real estate brokerage Redfin recently reported that sales of properties costing more $1 million climbed 9 percent year-overyear, based on data from the July to October quarters. Overall sales slipped 1.2 percent. These luxury homes are ascendant even though they represent less than 3 percent of the market. More than 60 percent of the U.S. homes sold in November cost less than $250,000 - and their sales have tumbled over the past 12 months, the National Association of Realtors said last week. But as this slideshow of homes from Realtor.com reveals, what $1 million gets you can vary drastically across the country. In St. Louis, it can secure a Beaux Arts mansion. In Atlanta, it’s enough for a charming craftsman. In Boston, it covers a two-bedroom condominium.
N. KOREA USES RACIAL SLUR AGAINST OBAMA OVER HACK
Established 2012
US OFF WAR FOOTING AT YEAR’S E N D , B U T WA R S G O O N
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Taking America off a permanent war footing is proving harder than President Barack Obama may have suggested.
U.S. troops are back in Iraq, the endgame in Afghanistan is requiring more troops - and perhaps more risks - than once expected and Obama is saddled with a worsening, high-stakes conflict in Syria. Last spring, Obama described to newly minted Army officers at West Point how “the landscape has changed” after a decade of war. He cited then-dwindling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said Osama bin Laden, whose plotting from an al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan gave rise to what became America’s longest war, “is no more.” “You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Obama declared to a burst of applause. But once again the landscape has changed. Once again the U.S. is engaged in combat in Iraq - not by soldiers on the ground but by pilots in the sky. And the Pentagon is putting “boots on the ground” to retrain and advise Iraqi soldiers how to fight a new menace: the Islamic State militants who emerged from the Iraq insurgency that U.S. troops fought from 2003-2011. Once again there are worsening crises demanding U.S. military intervention, including in Syria. Four months after his speech at the U.S. Military Academy, Obama authorized American pilots, joined by Arab allies, to begin bombing Islamic State targets with the aim of undermining the group’s base and weakening its grip in Iraq. And once again the U.S. is on a path that could expand or prolong its military role in Afghanistan. The U.S. combat role there ends Dec. 31, but Obama has authorized remaining U.S. troops to attack the Taliban if they pose a threat to U.S. military personnel who are training Afghan security forces for at least the next two years. At his final news conference of 2014, Obama spoke just 18 words on Afghanistan, saying, “In less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over.” As of Dec. 16, a total of 2,215 U.S. troops had died in Afghanistan and 19,945 had been wounded. In Iraq, 4,491 died and 32,244 wounded. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama, then an Illinois state senator, called it a “dumb war.” He warned of unforeseen costs and consequences, arguing that President George W. Bush would
This photo combination shows U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has compared Obama to a monkey and blamed the U.S. for shutting down its Internet amid the hacking row over the movie “The Interview.”
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea blamed its recent Internet outage on the United States on Saturday and hurled racially charged insults at President Barack Obama over the hacking row involving the movie “The Interview.”
It wasn’t the first time North Korea has used crude insults against Obama and other top U.S. and South Korean officials. Earlier this year, North Korea called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a wolf with a “hideous” lantern jaw and South Korean President Park Geun-hye a prostitute. In May, the North’s official news agency published a dispatch saying Obama has the “shape of a monkey.” A State Department spokeswoman at the time called the North Korean dispatch “offensive and ridiculous and absurd.” In the latest incident, the North Korean defense commission also blamed Washington for intermittent outages of North Korean websites this past week. The outages happened after Obama blamed continued on page 2 the Sony hack on
Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq was a key to winning the White House in 2008. He delivered on that promise, but the war was not really over. Events conspired to pull Obama back in. In January 2014 the Islamic State group seized the Sunni city of Fallujah, scene of the bloodiest fighting of the U.S. war a decade earlier. In June, the militants expanded their offensive, sweeping across much of northern Iraq and capturing key cities, including Mosul. Whole divisions of the Iraqi army folded, abandoning tanks and other American-supplied war equipment. That was not just a boon to the militants. It was a blow to U.S. prestige. Suddenly, inexplicably, Baghdad seemed within the Islamic State group’s reach. Two months later Obama gave the go-ahead for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. He ruled out sending ground combat forces, but at some point next year may face another tough choice: whether to allow U.S. military advisers to accompany Iraqi ground forces as they launch counteroffensives, including an expected push to retake Mosul. Up to now, U.S. advisers have been coordinating with Iraqi forces from a safer distance. As Obama approaches the end of his sixth year in office, he awaits Congress’ formal endorsement of his new war against Islamic State militants. The administration wants a legal basis for the war, known as an authorization for use of military force, rather than continuing to rely on congressional resolutions granted after 9/11 to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, wage the Iraq war and pursue al-Qaida elsewhere. Obama insists he has kept his word to end America’s big wars, the occupations and nation-building efforts that began with such promise in both Afghanistan and Iraq but ultimately defied U.S. hopes for clear victories. In his speech Dec. 15 at Fort Dix, N.J., Obama said 90 percent of the troops that were deployed to war zones when he took office are now home. “The time of deploying large numbers of ground forces with big military footprints to engage in nation-building overseas - that’s coming to an end,” he said. “Going forward, our military will be leaner” but ready for “a range of missions.” continued on page 5
I’m going to defend gains that we’ve made on environment and clean air and clean water.” Obama’s warning to the GOP that he’ll veto legislation if necessary to protect his agenda and laws like the Affordable Care Act came as he sought to set the tone for a year in which Congress and the president are on a near-certain collision course. Buoyed by decisive gains in last month’s midterm elections, Republicans are itching to use their newfound Senate majority to derail Obama’s plans on immigration, climate change and health care, to name a few.
“Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” an unidentified spokesman at the commission’s Policy Department said in a statement carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea has denied involvement in a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures but has expressed fury over the comedy. Sony Pictures initially called off the release of the film, citing threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theaters. Obama criticized Sony’s decision, and the movie opened this past week.
be smarter to finish what he started in Afghanistan.
OBAMA WARNS GOP HE PLANS TO USE VETO PEN IN 2015
North Korea’s powerful National Defense Commission, which is headed by country leader Kim Jong Un and is the nation’s top governing body, said Obama was behind the release of the comedy that depicts Kim’s assassination. The commission described the movie as illegal, dishonest and reactionary.
The White House’s National Security Council declined to comment Saturday.
Jan 5 thru Jan 11, 2014
To overturn Obama’s veto, Republicans would need the votes of twothirds of the House and Senate. Their majorities in both chambers are not that large, so they would still need to persuade some Democrats to defy the president. President Barack Obama, with first lady Michelle Obama, points toward a child in the audience as he greets troops and their families on Christmas Day, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2014, at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii during the Obama family vacation.
HONOLULU (AP) -- Bracing to do business with a Congress run solely by Republicans, President Barack Obama is serving notice he has no qualms about vetoing legislation he dislikes. This would be a significant change in style for Obama, come January when the new Congress will be seated with the GOP not only in command in the House but also the Senate as well. He’s wielded the veto pen through his first nearly six years very sparingly. Since taking office in 2009, Obama has only vetoed legislation twice, both in fairly minor circumstances. “I haven’t used the veto pen very often since I’ve been in office,” Obama said in an NPR interview airing Monday. “Now, I suspect, there are going to be some times where I’ve got to pull that pen out.” He added: “I’m going to defend gains that we’ve made in health care.
But Obama said he was hopeful that at least on some issues, that won’t be necessary, because there’s overlap between his interests and those of congressional Republicans. On that point, at least, he’s in agreement with incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Bipartisan jobs bills will see the light of day and will make it to the President’s desk, and he’ll have to make decisions about ideology versus creating jobs for the middle class,” McConnell said in response to Obama’s comments. “There’s a lot we can get done together if the president puts his famous pen to use signing bills rather than vetoing legislation his liberal allies don’t like.” Potential areas for cooperation include tax reform and global trade deals - both issues where Obama and Republicans see at least partially eye to eye. Conversely, the likeliest points of friction surround Environmental Protection Agency regulations, the Keystone XL pipeline and Obama’s unilateral steps on immigration, which let millions of people in the U.S. illegally avoid deportation and get work permits. In the interview, recorded before Obama left Washington earlier this continued on page 2
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WHO HACKED SONY BECOMES I N T E R N E T ’ S N E W M Y S T E RY interviewing suspects. In prior closedbook cases, cyber criminals caught bragging online were only charged after evidence was found on their hard drives.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Everyone has a theory about who really hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
Despite President Barack Obama’s conclusion that North Korea was the culprit, the Internet’s newest game of whodunit continues. Top theories include disgruntled Sony insiders, hired hackers, other foreign governments or Internet hooligans. Even some experts are undecided, with questions about why the communist state would steal and leak gigabytes of data, email threats to some Sony employees and their families and then threaten moviegoers who planned to watch “The Interview” on Christmas.
“The NSA (National Security Agency) has penetrated a lot of computers, but until Ed Snowden came around, nobody was certain because the NSA has the world’s best operational security. They know how to cover their tracks and fingerprints very well,” Libicki said. Sony Pictures Studios building in Culver City, Calif. It seems everyone has a theory about who really hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. Despite President Barack Obama’s conclusion that North Korea was the culprit, the Internet’s newest game of whodunit continues. Top theories include disgruntled Sony insiders, hired hackers, other foreign governments or Internet hooligans. Even some experts are undecided, with questions about why the communist state would steal and leak gigabytes of data, email threats to some Sony employees and their families then threaten moviegoers who planned to watch “The Interview” on Christmas.
“Somebody’s done it. And right now this knowledge is known to God and whoever did it,” said Martin Libicki, a cyber security expert at RAND in Arlington, Virginia, who thinks it probably was North Korea. “So we gather up a lot of evidence, and the evidence that the FBI has shown so far doesn’t allow one to distinguish between somebody who is North Korea and somebody who wants to look like North Korea.”
Perhaps the only point of agreement among those guessing is that even the most dramatic cybercrimes can be really, really hard to solve convincingly. When corporations are breached, investigators seldom focus on attributing the crime because their priority is assessing damage and preventing it from happening again. “Attribution is a very hard game to play,” said Mike Fey, president of security company Blue Coat Systems Inc. and former chief technology officer at McAfee Inc. “Like any criminal activity, how they get away with it is a very early step in the planning process, and framing another organization or individual is a great way to get away with something. Fey added: “If they’re smart enough and capable enough to commit a high profile attack, they’re very often smart enough and capable enough to masquerade as someone else. It can be very difficult to find that true smoking gun.” In a report earlier this month, Fey’s company described a malicious software tool called Inception, in which attackers suggested a link to China, used home routers in South Korea, included comments in Hindi, with text in Arabic, the words “God-Save-The-Queen” in another string, and used other techniques to show links to the United States, Ukraine or Russia. Unlike crimes in the physical world, forensic investigators in the cyber world can’t dust for fingerprints or corroborate evidence by
SLUR AGAINST OBAMA Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267
www.childrenincorporated.
continued from page 1
North Korea and promised to respond “in a place and time and manner that we choose.” The U.S. government has declined to say whether it was behind the Internet shutdown in North Korea. According to the North Korean commission’s spokesman, “the U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing tag.” DPRK refers to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The commission said the movie was the result of a hostile U.S. policy toward North Korea, and threatened the U.S. with unspecified consequences.
POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org
North Korea and the U.S. remain technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The rivals also are locked in an international standoff over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and its alleged human rights abuses. A United Nations commission accuses North Korea of a wide array of crimes against humanity, including murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment and rape. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against North Korean aggression.
www.redcross.org
After Sony was hacked, investigators analyzed network logs, the hacking tool and the remains of their crippled network. The investigation began after the attackers announced themselves and wiped the systems by crippling Sony’s hard drives. Security professionals discovered that the hackers had been conducting surveillance on it since the spring. And if not for the theatrics of the Guardians of Peace, as the hackers call themselves, the breach could have easily continued for months without knowledge of the compromise. Because North Korea is so isolated and its Internet infrastructure is not directly connected to the outside world, it’s more difficult to trace attacks originating there. North Korea has vehemently denied that it was responsible for the attack. To complicate matters, roughly 10 percent of home computers are compromised by hackers, allowing their use to conduct attacks on others, said Clifford Neuman, a director of the University of Southern California Center for Computer Systems Security. These compromised machines become networks of computers controlled remotely by hackers and borrowed or rented in an underground economy. Botnets “could be used by cyber terrorists or nation states to steal sensitive data, raise funds, limit attribution of cyber attacks or disrupt access to critical national infrastructure,” Gordon Snow, then-assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, told a Senate panel in 2011. The FBI worked with other U.S. agencies, including the National Security Agency, on the Sony investigation to trace the attacks. The FBI said clues included similarities to other tools developed by North Korea in specific lines of computer code, encryption algorithms and data deletion methods. It also discovered that computer Internet addresses known to be operated by North Korea were communicating directly with other computers used to deploy and control the hacking tools and collect the stolen Sony files. The FBI said some of its evidence against North Korea was so sensitive it couldn’t be revealed. Neuman said that could include reviewing evidence of communications or even recorded conversations between suspected hackers before or during the breach and subsequent leaks of Sony’s confidential business information. “Attribution to any high degree of certainty will always be impossible,” said Chris Finan, a former White House cyber security adviser. “At some point these are always judgment calls. You can do things like corroborate using intelligence sources and methods. But ultimately you’re still looking at a pool of evidence and you’re drawing a conclusion.” Even knowing North Korea was involved doesn’t mean others weren’t, too. “It’s very difficult to understand the chain of command in something like this,” Fey said. “Is this a hacking-for-hire scenario? Is it truly delivered by an organization? Or, is it possible there’s some alternate nefarious plot under way none of us understand yet.” He later added: “One last idea. What if all this is just a movie-goer (who) can’t stand the idea of another Seth Rogen movie?”
USE
VETO
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month for his annual Hawaii vacation, Obama also offered his most specific diagnosis to date of why Democrats fared so poorly in the midterms. He said he was “obviously frustrated” with the results. “I think we had a great record for members of Congress to run on and I don’t think we - myself and the Democratic Party - made as good of a case as we should have,” Obama said. “And you know, as a consequence, we had really low voter turnout, and the results were bad.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Being uninsured in America will cost you more in 2015.
companies say the IRS has told them it’s taking steps to make sure taxpayers’ returns don’t languish in bureaucratic limbo while HHS rules on their waivers.
It’s the first year all taxpayers have to report to the Internal Revenue Service whether they had health insurance for the previous year, as required under President Barack Obama’s law. Those who were uninsured face fines, unless they qualify for one of about 30 exemptions, most of which involve financial hardships.
TurboTax has created a free online tool called “Exemption Check” for people to see if they may qualify for a waiver. Charges apply later if the taxpayer files through TurboTax. Timing will be critical for uninsured people who want to avoid the rising penalties for 2015.
Dayna Dayson of Phoenix estimates that she’ll have to pay the taxman $290 when she files her federal return. Dayson, who’s in her early 30s, works in marketing and doesn’t have a lot left over each month after housing, transportation and other fixed costs. She’d like health insurance but she couldn’t afford it in 2014, as required by the law. “It’s touted as this amazing thing, but right now, for me, it doesn’t fit into my budget,” she said. Ryan Moon of Des Moines, Iowa, graduated from college in 2013 with a bachelor’s in political science, and is still hunting for a permanent job with benefits. He expects to pay a fine of $95. A supporter of the health care law, he feels conflicted about its insurance mandate and fines. “I hate the idea that you have to pay a penalty, but at the same time, it helps other people,” said Moon, who’s in his early 20s. “It really helps society, but society has to be forced to help society.” Going without health insurance has always involved financial risks. You could have an accident and end up with thousands of dollars in medical bills. Now, you may also get fined. In a decision that allowed Obama’s law to advance, the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the coverage requirement and its accompanying fines were a constitutionally valid exercise of Congress’ authority to tax. In 2015, all taxpayers have to report to the IRS on their health insurance status the previous year. Most will check a box. It’s also when the IRS starts collecting fines from some uninsured people, and deciding if others qualify for exemptions. What many people don’t realize is that the penalties go up significantly in 2015. Only 3 percent of uninsured people know what the fine for
Ryan Moon of Des Moines, Iowa, stands outside of his apartment in Des Moines, Iowa. The cost of being uninsured in America is going up significantly next year for millions of people as penalties under President Barack Obama’s health care law will double. Moon, a recent college graduate that has not been able to land a permanent job with good benefits, estimates he will have to pay a penalty of more than $90.
2015 will be, according to a recent poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Figuring out your potential exposure if you’re uninsured isn’t simple. For 2014, the fine is the greater of $95 per person or 1 percent of household income above the threshold for filing taxes. It will jump in 2015 to the greater of 2 percent of income or $325. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures. People can get a sense of the potential hit by going online and using the Tax Policy Center’s Affordable Care Act penalty calculator. Many taxpayers may be able to get a pass. Based on congressional analysis, tax preparation giant H&R Block says roughly 4 million uninsured people will pay penalties and 26 million will qualify for exemptions from the list of more than 30 waivers.
That’s because Feb. 15 is the last day of open enrollment under the health law. After that, only people with special circumstances can sign up. But just 5 percent of uninsured people know the correct deadline, according to the Kaiser poll. “We could be looking at a real train wreck after Feb. 15,” said Stan Dorn, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Urban Institute. “People will file their tax returns and learn they are subject to a much larger penalty for 2015, and they can do absolutely nothing to avoid that.” The insurance requirement and penalties remain the most unpopular part of the health care law. They were intended to serve a broader purpose by nudging healthy people into the insurance pool, helping to keep premiums more affordable. Sensitive to political backlash, supporters of the health care law have played down the penalties in their sign-up campaigns. But stressing the positive - such as the availability of financial help and the fact that insurers can no longer turn away people with health problems - may be contributing to the information gap about the penalties. Dayson, the Phoenix resident, says she’s hoping her employer will offer a health plan she can fit into her budget, allowing her to avoid higher fines for 2015.
But it’s unclear whether taxpayers are aware of the exemptions.
In Des Moines, recent college graduate Moon has held a succession of temporary local and state government jobs that don’t provide affordable coverage. The penalties are on his mind.
Deciding what kind of waiver to seek could be crucial. Some can be claimed directly on a tax return, but others involve mailing paperwork to the Department of Health and Human Services. Tax preparation
“When it gets up to $325, I hope I have a career that actually offers me a good health care plan,” he said.
MALARIA KILLING THOUSANDS MORE T H A N E B O L A I N W E S T A F R I C A cause people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria. “It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic,” he said in a telephone interview. “I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children.”
GUECKEDOU, Guinea (AP) -- West Africa’s fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus. In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea’s tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria. Guinea’s drop in reported malaria cases this year by as much as 40 percent is not good news, said Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. He said the decrease is likely be-
Figures are always estimates in Guinea, where half the 12 million people have no access to health centers and die uncounted. Some 15,000 Guineans died from malaria last year, 14,000 of them children under five, according to Nets for Life Africa, a New York-based charity dedicated to providing insecticide-treated mosquito nets to put over beds. In comparison, about 1,600 people in Guinea have died from Ebola, according to statistics from the World Health Organization. Malaria is the leading cause of death in children under five in Guinea and, after AIDS, the leading cause of adult deaths, according to Nets for Life. Ebola and malaria have many of the same symptoms, including fever, dizziness, head and muscle aches. Malaria is caused by bites from infected mosquitoes while Ebola can be contracted only from the body fluids of an infected victim - hence doctors’ fears of drawing blood to do malaria tests.
SURFER SURVIVES SHARK BITE OFF CENTRAL CALIFORNIA said. “I was a few feet behind him, and we grabbed him and got him ... up on the sand, and very quickly these doctors were there, helping out and calling 911.” The man, who lives in the San Luis Obispo area, sustained cuts to his right hip area and was flown to a local hospital for treatment, Supervising State Park Ranger Robert Colligan said. The 11:30 a.m. attack happened at the Sand Spit Beach in Montana De Oro State Park just west of San Luis Obispo. Walsh said he was surfing about 10 feet from the victim when the attack occurred. “There was no warning at all. It was absolutely quiet. ... (The shark) came straight up out of the depths and got him and took him under the water.”
LOS OSOS, Calif. (AP) -- A man surfing on the Central California coast was dragged under water by a juvenile great white shark and bitten in the hip on Sunday before he could paddle to shore, where he received help from two doctors who happened to be on the beach, a witness said Sunday.
The victim was below the water for several seconds before he surfaced on his damaged board, he said. The beach remained open, but signs will be posted for three days warning the public of the attack, Colligan said. He noted that if there is another shark sighting, the signs will remain up for another three days.
The man in his 50s used the leash cord from his surfboard to make a tourniquet for his leg before he got out of the water, Andrew Walsh told the San Luis Obispo Tribune (http://bit.ly/1JX0gH9 ).
Sharks are native to the area, and Colligan said that they are spotted several times a year. He added that attacks like this are rare.
“We’re really blessed that he was still able to get himself to shore,” Walsh
A woman swimming with seals was killed by a shark in 2003 about 10 miles south of the most recent attack, Colligan said.
People suffering malaria fear being quarantined in Ebola treatment centers and health centers not equipped to treat Ebola are turning away patients with Ebola-like symptoms, doctors said. WHO figures from Gueckedou show that of people coming in with fever in October, 24 percent who tested positive for Ebola also tested positive for malaria, and 33 percent of those who did not have Ebola tested positive for malaria - an indication of the great burden of malaria in Guinea. Malaria killed one of 38 Cuban doctors sent to Guinea to help fight the Ebola outbreak. One private hospital had a kidney dialysis machine that could have saved his failing organ but the clinic was shut after several people died there of Ebola. The U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative ground to a halt in Guinea months ago and the WHO in November advised health workers against testing for malaria unless they have protective gear. The malaria initiative is doing a national survey of health facilities and elsewhere to try to find out “what’s actually happening here ... where people with malaria are going,” said Nahlen, of the U.S. campaign. There was some positive news in Guinea - it had just completed a national mosquito net campaign against malaria when Ebola struck, he said. Neighboring Liberia, on the other hand, suspended the planned distribution of 2 million nets, said Nahlen. In Sierra Leone, the third country hard-hit by Ebola, Doctors Without Borders took unprecedented, pre-emptive action this month, distributing 1.5 million antimalarial drugs that can be used to both prevent and treat, aiming to protect people during the disease’s peak season. “Most people turn up at Ebola treatment centers thinking that they have Ebola, when actually they have malaria,” said Patrick Robataille, Doctors Without Borders field coordinator in Freetown. “It’s a huge load on the system, as well as being a huge stress on patients and their families.” He said a second distribution is planned in Freetown and western areas most affected by Ebola. Robataille said the huge delivery of antimalarial drugs was “in proportion to the scale of the Ebola epidemic - it’s massive.”
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 5 thru Jan 12, 2014
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F L O R I D A C R A S H S TAT I S T I C S A l l I - 9 5
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All lanes are open on Interstate 95 southbound at Palmetto Park Road after an earlier wreck Thursday morning, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. CLEARED: Crash in Palm Beach on I-95 south at Exit 44 Palmetto Park Rd, 2 right lanes blocked.[...]
T r a c t o r - T r a i l e r b y L a k e l a n d M a n o n I - 4
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A Lakeland man driving east on Interstate 4 crashed a tractor-trailer carrying concrete beams at the U.S. 301 exit this morning, the Florida Highway Patrol reported.[...]
Car struck back of cruiser investigating earlier accident A Florida Highway Patrol cruiser was rear-ended on Interstate 95 in St. Johns County on Wednesday morning, one of two state troopers who had stopped to assist with an earlier accident was injured, and a woman suffered life-threatening injuries,
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A 62-year-old Tampa man died Wednesday morning after he had medical condition while driving on Interstate 275 and crashed, the Florida Highway Patrol said.[...]
Pick-up lodged under semi, WB I-4 lanes blocked at Thonotosassa Rd. All westbound lanes of I-4 are blocked after an accident involving a Publix semi-truck and a pick-up truck. The Florida Highway Patrol said it happened shortly before 7 a.m. near Thonotosassa Road.
Northbound I-275 lanes are now open The northbound Interstate 275 lanes are open again after being shut down earlier because of an accident.[...] OCT 23, 2014 07:09AM
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J A I L E D I N I S T S F A T E
E G Y P T , J O U R N A L S T I L L U N C E R T A I N will resolve the case either through the appeal process or through a pardon by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. El-Sissi has in the past said he won’t interfere in the judiciary by pardoning the three. But he also said that if it had been up to him, he would have never sent the case to trial and deported the journalists instead.
CAIRO (AP) -- For a year, three Al-Jazeera English journalists have been locked up in Egypt on terrorism-related charges widely viewed as trumped up for political reasons. Now, a possible thaw in tensions between Egypt, and Qatarwhere Al-Jazeera is based and is funded- has raised a glimmer of hope that the three journalists may be able to resume their lives. A retrial, deportation or a pardon are all possibilities, but the lack of certainty prolongs the torment of the defendants, their families and other journalists.
In one likely sign of the reconciliation, Al-Jazeera shut down its Egypt affiliate, Al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr, which dedicated its coverage to Egypt and in particular to its Islamists, angering the Cairo government. But Egypt could be pushing for more pro-government media, for instance, are demanding Qatar kick out or hand over senior Islamists accused by Cairo of instigating violence.
“It is a very tough experience, not only on him but on his family,” said Marwa Omara, the fiancee of Mohammed Fahmy, the Canadian-Egyptian journalist who was Al-Jazeera English’s acting Cairo bureau chief.
The Cassation court, Egypt’s highest appeal tribunal, will review the lower court’s proceedings, not the substance of the case. It can uphold the previous verdict or order a retrial. If it does order a new trial, it could order them released on bail in the meantime or it could order them held until a new trial date is set.
Fahmy and Australian journalist Peter Greste were sentenced to seven years in prison in a trial that ended in June on charges of assisting the Muslim Brotherhood in a plot to destabilize Egypt. The team’s Egyptian producer, Baher Mohammed, got 10 years seven on the same charges and three more because he was found with a spent bullet casing he picked up as a souvenir, considered possession of ammunition. Egypt’s Court of Cassation begins hearing their appeal on Thursday. It takes place as Egypt and Qatar appear to be moving to resolve their bitter rivalry. The tension followed the military’s ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, and Qatar’s support of the Brotherhood and his Islamist supporters. Omara said the trial really targeted Al-Jazeera and Qatar, not the journalists, and so will be resolved politically. Fahmy “is a pawn in a cold war between Egypt and Qatar,” she told The Associated Press. The families of Fahmy, Greste and Mohammed are accustomed to the risks of their sons’ jobs. But they never expected to be dragged into a bigger political dispute in a region roiled by a turbulent transition. The arrest has thrown their lives into confusion. Omara and Fahmy had to put off their wedding, which had been scheduled four months after his arrest. Mohammed’s wife, Jehane Rashed, delivered their third son while he was in prison. “I know it is a dangerous job...But I never thought I would have to defend my husband against being called a traitor to his country,” Rashed told AP. The unprecedented arrest and prosecution on terrorism charges was part of an escalated crackdown on journalists in Egypt in general following Morsi’s ouster. There are at least 12 other Egyptian journalists arrested since last year who are still behind bars, facing various charges including participating in protests or using violence. The three Al-Jazeera journalists were detained in a Dec. 29, 2013 raid on the Cairo hotel room they were using as an office. The arrest came as the government was cracking down on Islamists following Morsi’s ouster. Authorities accused Al-Jazeera of acting as a mouthpiece for Morsi’s Brotherhood and threatening national security. The station denied the accusations and said the journalists were doing their job, covering protests by Morsi’s
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This era of U.S. wars began in Afghanistan. On Oct. 7, 2001, less than a month after teams of terrorists hijacked U.S. airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, America invaded Afghanistan to root out al-Qaida and topple its host, the Taliban. By the time Obama took office in January 2009 the U.S. had 34,400 troops in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon records. He tripled the total, to 100,000, in 2010 in a bid to turn the tide and defeat the Taliban. That aim was never achieved; the Taliban took a heavy pounding in 2010-2011, but it remains a force to be reckoned with, in part because of sanctuaries it enjoys in neighboring Pakistan. The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has dropped to a bit more than 11,000 from about 38,500 in January. But Obama’s original plan to go down to 9,800 by the end of this year and limit forces to advising the Afghans and only fighting al-Qaida - not the Taliban - has changed. About 1,000 additional U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for a few months to fill in for other coalition forces that Washington hopes will arrive by spring 2015. The U.S. will continue to target Taliban insurgents who threaten either Afghans or Americans.
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supporters. In the subsequent trial, no evidence was put forward backing accusations the three falsified footage to foment unrest. Prosecutors simply presented edited new reports by the journalists, including Islamist protests and interviews with politicians. Other footage submitted as evidence had nothing to do with the case, including a report on a veterinary hospital and Greste’s past reports out of Africa. Rights groups dismissed the trial as a sham. Despite the hopes for a solution now, their families are taking nothing for granted. Nothing is certain - it’s not even sure that Egypt and Qatar have turned a corner. “We are biting our nails. And the next three days are going to be pretty tough,” Greste’s mother, Lois, told AP in Cairo, where she and his father Juris have come to attend the appeal’s opening. “We have spent enough time in Egypt, in Cairo, to have learned not to react to expectations and rumors and talk,” his father, Juris Greste, said. “We will only be certain of anything when we can embrace Peter and, as I have said before, when we are at 30,000 feet in a civilian aircraft in direction to home.” The thaw in Egypt-Qatar ties has raised speculation that Egypt
If a retrial is ruled, authorities could evoke a law passed last month - or the defendants and their families could request it be evoked - that allows for the deportation of foreign nationals who are convicted or are still on trial. That would allow Greste to go home, and would allow Fahmy to go to Canada, if he drops his Egyptian nationality. Omara, his finance, said his family has already asked prosecutors to allow Fahmy to benefit from the law. “If this is the only option that we have than yes, we welcome his deportation,” Omara, who is already applying for a visa to Canada- just in case. They also have tentative plans to hold a small wedding party if Fahmy is released. If not, they have applied to get married in jail. The case of Baher Mohammed is more uncertain. He holds only an Egyptian nationality and so cannot benefit from the deportation law. His family says they have also been denied access to the courtroom, unlike the families of Greste and Fahmy. “Only Egyptians will suffer? They have no value?” said Rashed, Mohammed’s wife. A member of Fahmy’s defense team, Negad Borai, said if the law were applied, the court would surely order a retrial, since there was no case in the first place. He said the prosecution only happened because security agencies were battling the political dispute. “When the security and intelligence are left to create foreign policy of any country, both will fail: the security and the foreign policy.”
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rainy at times. It flew low, at 1,500 feet, easily spotting waves, ships and fishermen, but there was no sign of the plane.
SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) -- The plane sought permission to climb above threatening clouds. Air traffic control couldn’t say yes immediately - there was no room. Six other airliners were crowding the airspace, forcing AirAsia Flight 8501 to remain at a lower altitude.
The suspected crash caps an astonishingly tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular. Malaysia-based AirAsia’s loss comes on top of the still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.
Minutes later, the jet carrying 162 people was gone from the radar without ever issuing a distress signal. The plane is believed to have crashed into Indonesia’s Java Sea, but broad aerial surveys on Monday turned up no firm evidence of the missing Airbus A320-200.
“Until today, we have never lost a life,” AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters. “But I think that any airline CEO who says he can guarantee that his airline is 100 percent safe, is not accurate.”
Searchers spotted two oily patches and floating objects in separate locations, but no one knew whether any of it was related to the plane that vanished Sunday halfway into what should have been a two-hour hop from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. Officials saw little reason to believe the flight met anything but a grim fate. Based on the plane’s last known coordinates, the aircraft probably crashed into the water and “is at the bottom of the sea,” Indonesia search-and-rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said. Still, searchers planned to expand their efforts onto land on Tuesday. The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to climb from 32,000 feet (9,754 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) because of the rough weather. The tower was not able to immediately comply because of the other planes, said Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of air traffic control.
The airline has “carried 220 million people up to this point,” he said. “Of course, there’s going to be some reaction, but we are confident in our ability to fly people.” Relatives and next-of-kin of passengers on the AirAsia flight QZ8501 wait for the latest news on the search of the missing jetliner at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, Monday, Dec. 29, 2014. Search planes and ships from several countries on Monday were scouring Indonesian waters over which the AirAsia jet disappeared, more than a day into the region’s latest aviation mystery. The Flight 8501 vanished Sunday in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
search. Many fishermen from Belitung island also joined in, and all vessels in that area have been alerted to watch for anything that could be linked to the plane.
When planes confront storms, they generally veer left or right, said Sarjono Joni, a former pilot with a state-run Indonesian carrier. A request to climb would most likely come if the plane were experiencing heavy turbulence, he said, and heavy traffic is not unusual for any given airspace.
Jakarta’s air force base commander, Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto, said an Australian Orion aircraft had detected “suspicious” objects near an island about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off central Kalimantan. That’s about 700 miles (1,120 kilometers) from where the plane lost contact, but within Monday’s greatly expanded search area.
The twin-engine, single-aisle plane was last seen on radar four minutes after the final communication from the cockpit.
“However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane,” Putranto said. “We are now moving in that direction.”
At least 15 ships, seven aircraft and four helicopters were looking for the jet, Indonesian search-and-rescue spokesman Jusuf Latif said. Most of the craft were Indonesian but Singapore, Malaysia and Australia contributed to the effort. Aircraft from Thailand were awaiting clearance to join the search.
Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told MetroTV that an Indonesian helicopter spotted two oil patches in the Java Sea east of Belitung island, much closer to where the plane lost contact. He said oil samples would be collected and analyzed.
Those numbers do not include Indonesian warships taking part in the
An Associated Press photographer flew in a C-130 transport carrier with Indonesia’s Air Force for 10 hours Monday over a large section of the search area between Kalimantan and Belitung. The flight was bumpy and
D E A T H T O L L I N T H E G R E E K F E R R Y F I R E R I S E S T O 8 rescue vessels, described the rescue scene as “a chaos, a panic.” He said the fire alarm came after most passengers, alerted by smoke filling their cabins, had gone outside, and that there was no crew in sight to direct passengers. “Our feet were burning and from the feet up we were soaked,” Christos Perlis, 32, told the AP by telephone. When rescue helicopters arrived, Perlis said passengers began to panic. “Everyone there was trampling on each other to get onto the helicopter,” said Perlis, who said he and another man tried to impose order. “First children, then women and then men. But the men, they started hitting us so they could get on first. They didn’t take into consideration the women or the children, nothing,” Perlis said. He said he reached safety after jumping in a helicopter basket carrying a girl. Turkish passenger Saadet Bayhan, speaking to Turkey’s NTV television from a rescue ship, confirmed that there were no fire alarms and that passengers woke each other up. In this image released by the Italian Navy, passengers of the Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic, that caught fire in the Adriatic Sea, are rescued from the Italian Navy ship San Giorgio, Monday, Dec. 29, 2014. A cargo ship with 49 people evacuated from a Greek ferry that caught fire in the Adriatic Sea arrived in the Italian port of Bari on Monday,
BARI, Italy (AP) -- Fighting high winds and stormy seas, helicopter rescue crews on Monday evacuated the last of hundreds of people trapped aboard a Greek ferry that caught fire off Albania. The death toll climbed to eight as survivors told of a frantic rush to escape the flames and pelting rain.
The evacuation of the ferry was completed in the early afternoon with the rescue of 427 people, including 56 crew members, said Italy’s transport minister, Maurizio Lupi. The original ferry manifest listed 422 passengers and 56 crew members, but Lupi said it was premature to speculate on whether people were still missing. He suggested that there might have been some people who reserved a spot on the ferry but did not board. Among the survivors, there were also people not listed on the manifest, indicating the possibility that some on board were traveling illegally. The fire broke out before dawn Sunday on a car deck of the Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic. All day and night, passengers huddled on the vessel’s upper decks, pelted by rain and hail and struggling to breathe through the thick smoke. Four of the dead were found in the water, while the body of a Greek man was recovered Sunday from a lifeboat chute. It wasn’t immediately clear where the others had been found. Exhausted and cold from their ordeal, 49 passengers reached land Monday in the southern Italian port of Bari, more than 24 hours after the fire broke out on a car deck of the ferry making a journey from the Greek port of Patras to Ancona in Italy. The Greek and Italian premiers separately expressed their condolences to the victims and gratitude to the rescue workers. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samras said the `’massive and unprecedented operation saved the lives of hundreds of passengers following the fire on the ship in the Adriatic Sea - under the most difficult circumstances,” while Renzi said the `’impressive” rescue efforts prevented `’a slaughter at sea.” Passenger accounts emerging Monday painted a picture of a panicked reaction as the fire spread, with passengers choking on the smoke and struggling to figure out how to reach safety as they suffered both searing heat from the ship’s floors and driving rain outside. Prosecutors in Bari were opening an investigation into how the fire started. A Greek truck driver, reached by The Associated Press aboard one of the
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo ordered an immediate review of all aviation procedures. Nearly all the passengers and crew are Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays. Ruth Natalia Puspitasari, who would have turned 26 on Monday, was among them. Her father, Suyanto, sat with his wife, who was puffy-eyed and coughing, near the family crisis center at Surabaya’s airport. Suyanto remembers the concern his daughter showed for the families of the MH370 tragedy. Puspitasari once told him how sad it must be for the victims’ relatives who were left waiting for their loved ones with no certainty. “I don’t want to experience the same thing with what was happened with Malaysia Airlines,” he said as his wife wept. “It could be a long suffering.” Few believe this search will be as perplexing as the ongoing one for Flight 370, where what happened onboard remains a total mystery. Authorities suspect the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on board and ultimately lost in a remote area of the Indian Ocean with notoriously deep water. Flight 8501 vanished over a heavily traveled sea that is relatively shallow, with no sign of foul play. The captain, Iryanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, had more than 20,000 flying hours, AirAsia said. “Papa, come home, I still need you,” Angela Anggi Ranastianis, the captain’s 22-year-old daughter, pleaded late Sunday in social-media comments that were widely quoted in the Indonesian press. Many recalled Iryanto as an experienced military pilot who flew F-16 fighters before shifting to commercial aviation. His French co-pilot, Remi Plesel, had been in Indonesia three years and loved to fly, his sister, Renee, told France’s RTL radio. “He told me that things were going well, that he’d had a good Christmas. He was happy. The rains were starting, the weather was bad. It was raining a lot,” she said.
CALIFORNIA COYOTE KILLED AFTER IT BITES MAN, CHILD
“We experienced the Titanic. The only thing missing was that we didn’t sink,” she said. Another rescued Turkish passenger, Aylin Akamac, told the state-run Anadolu Agency from a hospital in Brindisi that the rescue operation was disorganized and that there were only three lifeboats on the ferry. “Those who got out first got on the lifeboats,” she said, while the others were made to wait. “We were soaked from the water they doused to extinguish the fire. Our feet froze. People were forced to move closer to the fire to keep warm. We waited outside for hours.” Most evacuees were to be brought to shore later after the rescue was completed, Greek officials said, but one of the cargo ships, the Spirit of Piraeus, left ahead of the pack, reaching Bari just after 7:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) Monday with 49 survivors aboard. The first to disembark was an injured man wrapped in a yellow striped blanket and wearing bandages around his bare feet, helped down the ship’s ladder by two rescue workers. Other evacuees, many wrapped in blankets, made their way gingerly down the ladder with assistance, some thrusting their hands in a victory sign as they waited their turn. Among them were four children. The evacuees then boarded bright red fire department buses. Officials have said hotels have been booked for them around town. Survivors were also taken to southern Italian hospitals in smaller numbers in the hours immediately after the rescue operation got underway. Several were treated for hypothermia, some for mild carbon monoxide poisoning and one woman suffered a fractured pelvis, officials said. A local convent was housing survivors who were released from the hospital. Helicopters rescued passengers throughout the night, completing 34 sorties by dawn with winds over 40 knots (75 kph; 46 mph). The Greek coast guard said seven people had been airlifted from the ferry to Corfu. “Notwithstanding the weather and the darkness, which is another factor, we persisted throughout the entire night,” Italian coast guard Admiral Giovanni Pettorino told Sky TG24. Italian navy Capt. Riccardo Rizzotto said the ultimate destination of the stricken ferry was unclear. Some Italian officials said it would likely be towed to an Italian port, even though it was currently closer to Albania. Pettorino said two Italian tugs tried to attach themselves to the ferry in the evening, but were frustrated by the thick smoke. Eventually the tugs managed to attach the line to stabilize the ferry, ANSA reported.
FREMONT, Calif. (AP) -- Police in Northern California killed a coyote after it bit a man and a child in separate attacks. A Fremont police spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that a 42-yearold man and 5-year-old boy were bitten on Christmas Day in different neighborhoods. The animal may have been sick. Rabies tests are due back Tuesday. Police say the man was walking with his children about 5:40 p.m. when a coyote bit his leg. No one else was injured. Less than an hour later, a runner nearly a mile away said he was chased by what he described as a wolf. He kicked off the animal and wasn’t hurt. Officers were later notified that a child in the same area was bitten on the leg. All the victims were treated and released from area hospitals.
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A I R A S I A’ S B R A S H C E O I N S P O T L I G H T A F T E R J E T D I S A P P E A R S
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- His airline empire began, Tony Fernandes likes to say, with the purchase of a bankrupt company for less than a dollar. Now, after years of growth that made him the king of Asian budget travel, the flamboyant Malaysian businessman is facing the horror of the disappearance of an AirAsia jet with 162 people on board.
retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Republicans will have their largest U.S. House majority in 83 years when the new Congress convenes next month after a recount in Arizona gave the final outstanding race to the Republican challenger McSally who won a House seat over Democrat Ron Barber by 167 votes out of about 220,000 cast, results released Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014, show.
Fernandes, who built AirAsia’s regional network on cheap fares, a love of the spotlight and occasionally provocative advertising (“There’s a new girl in town. She’s twice the fun and half the price.”), was clearly exhausted by the time he met reporters late Sunday at the airport in Surabaya, Indonesia, where the missing flight had taken off. “We are very devastated by what has happened. It is unbelievable,” he said. In an earlier tweet to his employees, Fernandes said, “This is my worst nightmare.” Fernandes pioneered regional low-cost air travel by launching AirAsia in January 2002, growing it from two planes to more than 180 by breaking the dominance of national airlines and making flying affordable for the millions of Asians entering the middle class. Today, he has an estimated net worth of $650 million. A massive air and sea search has so far turned up no confirmed sign of AirAsia Flight 8501, which vanished from radar Sunday morning about 42 minutes after taking off from Surabaya en route to Singapore. The missing jet was the third major airline incident this year involving Malaysia. First came Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 and has not been found. A few months later, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine. But this marks the first tragedy for Malaysia-based AirAsia, which has a strong safety record. Flight 8501 was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a subsidiary that is 49 percent owned by AirAsia Malaysia.
Earlier this year, AirAsia boasted in its in-flight magazine that its well-trained pilots would never lose a plane. The airline withdrew the magazine and Fernandes apologized for the article, which was written before Flight 370 disappeared. Fernandes also courted controversy on the day that flight lost contact. An active Twitter user with more than a million followers, he tweeted that the plane’s radio had failed and that all on board were safe. He later deleted the tweet. Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Endau Analytics in Malaysia, said Fernandes had reacted well so far to the latest crisis, communicating properly and quickly traveling to Surabaya. “There will be some adverse knee-jerk reaction, but I don’t think it will cripple the airline,” Shukor said. “AirAsia has sound fundamentals in terms of its business model and management, and this crisis should not
S E X T R A F F I C K I N G S H E LT E R F I L L E D W I T H S U RV I VO R TA L E S Local and federal law enforcement agencies are trying to do more to combat sex trafficking. But with an ever-increasing volume of survivors being collected, the patchwork of governmental, nonprofit and faith-based organizations that provide care are scrambling to keep up. The faith-based Samaritan Women relies on grants and donations and does not accept government funding. Its 23 acres includes two restored mansions with the capacity to house, clothe and feed 14 women for up to two years. The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual violence. Instead, the following women are identified by nicknames that were given to them at the house. Samaritan founder and executive director Jeanne Allert confirmed many of the details of the accounts published here. Violesia, a survivor of sex trafficking, sits on a rocking chair at the faith-based Samaritan Women home in Baltimore. Local and federal law enforcement agencies are trying to do more to combat sex trafficking, but with an ever-increasing volume of survivors being collected, the patchwork of governmental, non-profit and faith-based organizations that provide care are scrambling to keep up. Samaritan Women has the capacity to house, clothe and feed 14 women for up to two years, and the mission to help women re-integrate into society.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Squatting in the grass and squinting in the sun, 25-year-old Song takes in the scene: a greenhouse, a farm, rows of heirloom tomatoes, clusters of herbs and flowering zucchini, squash and cucumber plants. A year ago and less than a mile away, she was working the streets of West Baltimore, trading sex for money. That she now tends a vegetable garden is thanks to the Samaritan Women, a residential program that is among the relatively few in the nation dedicated to long-term help for the surging numbers of victims of human trafficking. For most of her adult life, Song was homeless, addicted and caught in a cycle of violence and emotional manipulation that began when she was a child and until just recently, she herself didn’t even recognize. When she was arrested for the last time almost a year ago, she begged the judge to send her to a long-term, residential shelter rather than back onto the streets. As her 30-day stay at a short-term shelter was almost up, she met a man at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting who gave her the number to the Samaritan Women house. A bed was open.
--For seven years, 27-year-old Button had been sold up and down the West Coast by a host of violent pimps, one of whom once drove her into the desert, dragged her out of the car and broke her nose and both of her eye sockets. Button says he bruised her ribs so badly that doctors told her they could identify the type of boot he’d been wearing. The reason: She asked to leave a strip club because she was feeling sick. It wasn’t always that way. Button grew up in a wealthy household on Long Island, with parents she says were always loving and supportive. Still, after dropping out of college and becoming addicted to what she describes as “risky behavior,” Button’s parents sent her to a rehabilitation facility in California, where she met a man who would become her first trafficker. “That opened up a gate to a long, dark life,” Button said. When Button first came to Samaritan Women over a year ago, she said she was afraid of the ghosts she thought might inhabit the mansion hallways, and afraid to leave her parents, with whom Button had reconnected after years of estrangement. Now she spends her time working on legislative issues surrounding human trafficking, and is earning a certification to become a counselor for at-risk youth. “There are still some days that are a struggle,” Button said. “The
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suppress its growth.” Last year, AirAsia flew 42.6 million people across the region. A 50-year-old Malaysian of Indian-Portuguese descent and a serious music buff - he plays keyboards and the drums - Fernandes earned a finance degree in the United Kingdom and rose quickly in the music industry, first at Virgin Group and later at Warner Music International. He was appointed Warner’s chief in Malaysia in 1992 at age 28, the youngest person to hold that post. Warner CD sales jumped during his tenure, but he left after Time-Warner’s merger with AOL to enter the airline business, a longtime dream. Fernandes got together with three other investors, mortgaged his house and withdrew his savings to buy the floundering AirAsia on Sept. 8, 2001, paying a symbolic 1 ringgit, or about 25 U.S. cents. Three days later, New York and Washington were hit by terrorist attacks. But AirAsia coasted through the crisis. With its tagline “Now Everyone Can Fly,” it revolutionized cheap air travel in the region and repaid its 40 million ringgit ($11.4 million) debt in less than two years. Today, it has more than 8,000 employees and flies to 132 destinations in Asia. AirAsia is now a major competitor to full-service carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways, which have since set up budget offshoots to vie for a bigger share of passengers. In many ways, Fernandes’ career echoes the empire Richard Branson created at Virgin Group - both in terms of how the men love attention, and how they have expanded across industries. From short routes of up to four hours, AirAsia has expanded into longhaul flying through its sister airline AirAsia X. Through his Tune Group, which owns AirAsia, Fernandes also started a hotel chain and offers car rental, insurance and credit cards in tie-ups with banks. He was, in many ways, ahead of the industry curve, sensing a need for low-cost flights in what is now the world’s fastest-growing region for airlines. “Air travel is made for Asia,” Fernandes told The Associated Press in 2002. “You can generally drive from one end of Europe to another or take a train, but that’s not the case here. You want to try driving from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok? Good luck, mate!” Fernandes is a vocal leader who enjoys interacting with the public at airports and on social media. AirAsia passengers often tweet him photos of their vacations, images Fernandes then shares with his followers. In 2011, Fernandes stepped into the sports world when he bought a majority stake in the Queens Park Rangers, an English Premier League soccer club. The same year, Britain honored him as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and France made him an Officier de la Legion d’Honneur. He also has funded a Formula One racing team, making lavish bets with owners of competing teams. But he sold his shares in the F1 team this year. Last year, Fernandes further put AirAsia in the spotlight by hosting the Asian version of the reality TV series “The Apprentice.” Filipino Jonathan Yabut won and now works for AirAsia in his country. Since the disappearance of Flight 8501, Fernandes has focused on encouraging his staff not to buckle under the pressure. “Be strong,” he told his staff in another Twitter message. “Continue to be the best. Pray hard.”
process of piecing things together that I don’t want to remember is hard for me. But the longer I’m here, the more my mind is being put back together, the more I’m at peace.” --Now 32, Genesis was offered her first hit of crack cocaine by her mother when she was 13. By 18, she had a criminal record. She spent her teenage years in and out of strip clubs before becoming the property of a violent pimp. By 21, Genesis had lost a baby and become addicted to drugs. For years under a violent trafficker, Genesis said she was never allowed to leave his house. The rooms were bugged, the bathroom had no doors. She said her pimp used to tie her and other women he trafficked to a weight bench, beat them and starve them. The legal system sent Genesis to Samaritan Women, where she’s been living for six months. After three months, Genesis said she had only just begun to remember some of the trauma she suffered. “I didn’t know I was in hell,” she said. “I thought it was just life. Over those years I was held hostage, shot at, beaten with a pistol. And somewhere in my sick mind I thought this is how life is supposed to be.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- If Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the White House again, her message on the economy could be an important barometer as she courts fellow Democrats.
directions for the economy. The disagreement will be how to get there,” said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has backed Clinton.
Members of her party are watching closely how the former secretary of state outlines steps to address income inequality and economic anxieties for middle-class families. Some members of the party’s liberal wing remain wary of Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, six-figure speaking fees and protective bubble.
Clinton could have more opportunities to connect with - or alienate - liberals in 2015.
Clinton is widely expected to announce a presidential campaign next year and remains the prohibitive favorite to succeed President Barack Obama as the party’s nominee in 2016. But how she navigates a party animated by economic populism, an approach personified by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, could represent one of her biggest hurdles. Democrats bruised from GOP gains in the 2014 elections are pushing for big policy changes - raising the minimum wage and pay equity, for example - that favor the declining middle class. “We don’t win when we play small-ball and calibrate. Why not try to be bold?” said Anna Galland of MoveOn.org, which launched a draft campaign to lure Warren into the race. Warren says she’s not running for president, but her confrontational approach on Wall Street and reducing the gap between the rich and poor has generated a loyal following. She showcased this posture during December’s “lame duck” session of Congress, when she led the charge against a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill - ultimately signed by Obama - that repealed part of the DoddFrank financial law and loosened contribution caps for some political donors. Clinton has yet to comment on the spending plan.
One moment could come on the nomination of Lazard investment banker Antonio Weiss to lead a Treasury Department office overseeing domestic finance. Weiss, Warren contends, would represent a long line of Wall Street executives who are part of the revolving door between Washington and the financial markets. Clinton has not yet spoken publicly about Weiss’ nomination.
Hillary Rodham Clinton addressing supporters of Rhode Island Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Raimondo during a Raimondo campaign event at Rhode Island College in Providence, R.I. Rejuvenating the economy figured prominently in the first Clinton presidential campaign and could form the foundation of the next one.
concentration of wealth, pointing to the rise in income and wealth to the top 0.01 percent of the population. “Some are calling it a throwback to the `Gilded Age’ of the robber barons,” Clinton said in May. Clinton also has stumbled on the economy. At a fall event, she drew criticism from Republicans when she said “don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” She quickly cleaned up those comments, arguing that trickle-down economics had failed.
During the fall elections, Clinton often pointed to the broad prosperity during her husband’s administration and advocated for policies to raise the minimum wage, address pay equity for women and provide paid leave for new mothers.
Her supporters point to her 2008 primary campaign, when she scored wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as an indicator of how she could connect with working-class families. They also downplay the differences between her and Warren on the economy.
In a nod to liberals, Clinton has voiced concerns about the
“I think the debate is not going to be about big major fundamental
F U N D I N G S O M E T I M E S L A G S FOR SEX-TRAFFICKING VICTIMS “We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go,” said Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain and co-chair of the Arizona Human Trafficking Council. She pledged to make expansion of victim services a priority. Brian Steele, who oversees programs for trafficking victims as head of the nonprofit Phoenix Dream Center, predicts it will be two or three more years before significant state funding materializes. His organization relies on private donations. North Dakota is another state where sex trafficking is in the spotlight. The U.S. attorney, the state attorney general and advocacy groups have sounded alarms about a surge of trafficking amid the state’s oil boom.
Joy Friedman hugs a woman named Lisa who was working as a prostitute in Minneapolis. Friedman is a women’s programs manager for Breaking Free, a St. Paul based non-profit that helps women who want to leave the sex trade. Minnesota has become a national model for combating sex trafficking, particularly with its investment of state funds to support the victims.
As awareness of America’s sex-trafficking industry increases, state after state has enacted new laws to combat it. But while a few have backed those get-tough laws with significant funding to support trafficking victims, many have not. In Michigan, for example, a cluster of legislators beamed with pride as Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed a package of 21 anti-trafficking bills. For a state ranked by advocacy groups as woefully behind in addressing the problem, the package was touted as a huge step forward, making Michigan, in Snyder’s words, “one of the leading states in fighting this tragic crime.” Yet the bills contained virtually no new funding, even though a high-powered state commission had reported a serious lack of support services and specialized housing for victims.
Christina Sambor, coordinator for an anti-trafficking coalition called FUSE, is unsure whether North Dakota is ready to make major financial commitments for victim services, but she is pleased there’s a bill being drafted to fund some pilot programs. The legislature meets only every other year, so the next chance, after the upcoming session, would be in 2017. Sambor, an attorney, noted that victim services can play a vital role in prosecuting traffickers. “To get victims to testify, you need to support them,” Sambor said. “You can’t prove these cases if you don’t have cooperative witnesses.” In Oklahoma, several experts met with a legislative panel in September to discuss the growth of sex trafficking, including a boom in the child sex trade linked to the convergence of major trucking routes near Oklahoma City. The legislators “were very receptive, and very shocked,” said Kirsten Havig, a professor of social work at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa who was among the speakers.
She remains a favorite of Wall Street from her time representing New York in the Senate. At a recent conference sponsored by the New York Times’ DealBook, Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein said he had “always been a fan of Hillary Clinton” and argued it was important for political leaders to have relationships with key institutions. “I certainly don’t think it’s a virtue to declare a big segment of the economy off limits,” he said. Promoting economic growth and wages will also be on the calendar. The AFL-CIO has invited Warren to deliver the keynote address at its national summit on wages in early January, giving her a plum appearance before labor leaders. About a week later, the Center for American Progress, which was founded by ex-Clinton administration officials, will release a report offering ways to spur middle-class growth, ideas that might guide Clinton’s agenda. The panel is co-chaired by Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Tad Devine, an adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is considering a 2016 presidential campaign, noted that Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 as a different kind of Democrat willing to reform welfare and appeal to centrists. This time, he said, Hillary Clinton will need to make a decision of how she will position herself on the economy. “There is a huge audience right now for people who want to have a completely different economic theory of what’s wrong with the country and how to fix it,” Devine said. sor of the legislation. “We need to find safe housing. We aren’t there yet.” The Michigan commission’s report noted that some states have appropriated significant funds for victim services. It cited a $2.8 million allocation in Minnesota, which is widely considered the national leader in the field. Minnesota got moving earlier than most states, passing a “safe harbor” law in 2011 making clear that sexually exploited youths would no longer be treated as criminals. Key parts of the law did not take effect until last August, providing time to get funding and programs in place to support victims who would no longer go into the juvenile justice system. “We took our plan to the legislature and said, `We’ve thought it out. Now you have to give us money,’ and they did,” said Lauren Ryan, a Health Department official who now oversees the program. “It was amazing that Minnesota took that leap of faith.” The legislature appropriated $2.8 million for the initiative in 2013, and recently boosted the funding to $5 million, covering training for law enforcement as well as shelter and services for victims. At Brittany’s Place, a shelter in St. Paul that has served dozens of trafficking victims since opening Aug. 1, there’s enthusiasm for the initiative even though it’s yet to receive any state funds. “Those young women wouldn’t be coming to our shelter if the law hadn’t changed, and made it necessary to treat them like the victims they are,” said Richard Gardell, president of 180 Degrees, which operates Brittany’s Place. Jeff Bauer of the nonprofit Family Partnership, which serves vulnerable children and families in the Twin Cities, considers Minnesota a model for the rest of the country.
Yet Havig said the legislators, who have voted to punish traffickers more severely, balked at suggestions that the state spend more on victim services.
“In other states, legislators are all for prosecuting,” he said. “But when it comes to paying for the supports these kids need, often that moral outrage has not translated into the investment that’s required.”
“The second I start talking about resource allocation, it’s, `We can’t do that,’” she said.
Florida is another that state that has stepped up with significant funding for victim services - $3 million in the 2014-15 budget.
For a long time, sex trafficking was considered a foreign problem - something relegated to Eastern Europe or Asia. But in recent years, advocacy groups have called attention to people who were similarly victimized in this country, and legislators in every state have embraced the issue, taking the politically easy step of toughening laws.
For now, Havig said, Oklahoma lacks a residential facility suited to care for young sex-trafficking victims and has sent some youths to a facility in Houston. She hopes more state funding might come eventually if advocates can document how many victims need help, “but it’s going to be a long haul.”
Yet Florida and Minnesota, with their seven-figure allocations, are exceptions; many states have invested little or nothing from their general funds for victim services. Several states have created funds to be financed with fines and forfeitures from traffickers, but advocacy groups say this method can be an unreliable.
But national advocacy groups such as the Polaris Project and Shared Hope International say relatively few states - Minnesota and Florida are notable exceptions - have appropriated substantial funding to support victims with shelter, mental-health services and life-skills training.
The package of anti-trafficking measures in Michigan, signed into law in October, was drafted in response to a comprehensive, often hard-hitting 2013 report by the Michigan Commission on Human Trafficking. Among its members were Attorney General Bill Schuette, 10 legislators and several top law enforcement officials.
Kaitlyn Keisel, director of the Polaris Project’s program in New Jersey, said available funds there are often designed for short-term services, not the long-term support needed to help many victims overcome traumatic experiences.
“For all the hoopla, it’s blatantly not true that we’re now at the forefront,” said professor Bridgette Carr, a member of the commission and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. “For many of these victims, there’s often no place to go.”
Without such services, advocates say, many victims are less useful as witnesses against their traffickers and more vulnerable to being forced or lured back to the sordid underworld that exploited them. “We are seeing some states stepping up, but the majority don’t have anything specific in their budgets,” said Britanny Vanderhoof, policy counsel for the Polaris Project. “There’s an idea that once someone is rescued, they’re fine,” Vanderhoof said. “There’s a disconnect with the level of trauma the victims have suffered and the incredible need for services at every level.” Arizona was among the latest states to board the bandwagon, enacting a bill in April that toughens sentences for traffickers of children and stipulates that being a trafficking victim is a defense in prostitution cases. As in Michigan, however, Arizona’s bill did not include funding for victim services.
The bills strengthened penalties for traffickers and established the presumption that minors entangled in sex-trafficking cases should be considered victims, not criminals. However, none of the bills made new state allocations for housing and specialized programming for victims, despite the commission’s conclusion that those were “particularly lacking” in Michigan due to inadequate funding. Schuette, who praised the bills as a shift to a “victim-centered approach,” suggested it might be unrealistic to expect comprehensive state spending for victim support. “It cannot simply be a state government fix,” said Schuette, who hopes some of the need can be met through philanthropic grants and public/private partnerships. “We know we have more to do,” said state Sen. Judy Emmons, a lead spon-
“We often work with individuals for two, three, four years, walking them along that journey of self-determination,” she said. “It’s not a six-month process where you then move on.” Some federal funds are available. However, Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the advocacy group Rights4Girls, said it has sometimes been easier to get federal money to aid foreigners being trafficked in the U.S. than to support American victims. In a recent report, Rights4Girls estimated that nearly 300,000 U.S. children were at risk of commercial sexual exploitation, often being drawn into such activity before turning 15. Girls are routinely raped, beaten and tattooed by their captors, the report said. “You have many judges who recognize that the girls who come before them are in fact victims of child trafficking,” said Saada Saar. “But they will put the girls behind bars because there’s not necessarily another option. You know if you release her, she’s going to return to the trafficker.”
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 5 thru Jan 12, 2014
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Y E S - W E - C A N P R E S I D E N T F A C E S T W I L I G H T O F M A Y B E S
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was supposed to be a joke. “Are you still president?” comedian Stephen Colbert asked Barack Obama earlier this month.
While Obama and his team talk a good game about opportunities ahead, they’ve been here before: Plunging into a new year full of energy and ideas, only to run smack into Washington gridlock.
But the question seemed to speak to growing weariness with the president and skepticism that anything will change in Washington during his final two years in office. Democrats already are checking out Obama’s potential successors. Emboldened Republicans are trying to push aside his agenda in favor of their own.
Signs that Obama’s presidency is closing are all around.
At times this year, Obama seemed ready to move on as well. He rebelled against the White House security “bubble,” telling his Secret Service detail to give him more space. He chafed at being sidelined by his party during midterm elections and having to adjust his agenda to fit the political interests of vulnerable Democrats who lost anyway.
By spring, a committee of Obama friends and advisers will announce which city will host his presidential library. Honolulu, Chicago and New York are in contention.
Yet the election that was a disaster for the president’s party may have had a rejuvenating effect on Obama. The morning after the midterms, Obama told senior aides, “If I see you moping, you will answer to me.” People close to Obama say he is energized at not having to worry about helping - or hurting - Democrats in another congressional election on his watch. He has become more comfortable with his executive powers, moving unilaterally on immigration, Internet neutrality and climate change in the last two months. And he sees legacy-building opportunities on the international stage, from an elusive nuclear deal with Iran to normalizing relations with Cuba after a half-century freeze. “He gained some clarity for the next two years that is liberating,” said Jay Carney, who served as Obama’s press secretary until this spring. “He doesn’t have as much responsibility for others.”
Within weeks, the race to replace him will begin in earnest. Democrats are lining up to endorse Clinton, though she’s yet to declare her candidacy.
President Barack Obama boarding Air Force One at Yangon International Airport, in Yangon, Myanmar. It was supposed to be a joke. “Are you still president?” comedian Stephen Colbert asked Barack Obama earlier this month. But the question seemed to speak to growing weariness with the president and skepticism that anything will change in Washington during his final two years in office. Democrats already are checking out Obama’s potential successors. Emboldened Republicans are trying to push aside his agenda in favor of their own.
fore Christmas, he made an unusual visit to a military base in New Jersey to thank troops and their families - and pledge to preserve hard-fought military gains abroad. Obama is realistically optimistic about what he can get done over the next two years, advisers say. He wants to try tax reform and sees opportunities to accelerate growth and job creation with the economy on firmer footing. Aides have reached out to historians and political scientists to solicit ideas for Obama’s next State of the Union address, including fresh ways to address income inequality.
Still, pillars of Obama’s second-term agenda - gun control, raising the federal minimum wage, universal pre-school- seem destined to stand unfulfilled. Wrapping up the Iraq and Afghanistan wars isn’t turning out to be nearly the tidy success story Obama once envisioned. Even supporters say one of the president’s top remaining priorities may have to be simply preventing Republicans from dismantling his earlier accomplishments, including the health care law.
“They have reasonable expectations,” said Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, who spoke with White House aides about income inequality before the election. “It is the sixth year, after all.”
The Yes-We-Can man is entering a twilight of maybes, his presidency still driven by high ambitions but his power to achieve them running out.
“There’s almost always a point of diminishing returns on a president’s words,” said Jeff Shesol, a former presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton.
--Before the midterm election results arrived, Obama’s advisers say, the president realized he would finish his presidency with Republicans running Capitol Hill. Whatever message the Democrats’ defeat sent about the president’s own standing, Obama concluded the status quo meant more gridlock. Indeed, 2014 had been another year of fits and starts for a White House that has struggled to find its footing in Obama’s second term. The feeble HealthCare.gov website stabilized, but scandal enveloped the Department of Veterans Affairs. Syria got rid of its chemical weapons, but a violent extremist group pulled the U.S. back into military conflict in the Middle East. The unemployment rate fell, but so did Obama’s approval ratings - to the lowest levels of his presidency, worse than the second-term averages for most recent presidents. “I don’t care who you are, after eight years or six years of the presidency, your influence has eroded,” said Robert Dallek, a historian who has met periodically with Obama. “Even someone like Eisenhower or Reagan, you just can’t sustain it.” While White House officials acknowledge the presidency has challenges in its waning years, they say recent economic gains and executive actions on immigration and climate change show Obama still can exert considerable influence. “This year the president’s policy successes vastly outstripped his political successes,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser. Nearly two dozen White House officials, former Obama aides, presidential historians and political analysts discussed Obama’s standing as he closes his sixth year in office, some on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss their conversations with the president or his top advisers. For much of the year, Obama appeared to struggle with the realization that his political standing had slipped. He publicly complained about criticism of his foreign policy by pundits in Washington and New York (his private gripes were more colorful and profane). Despite Democratic pleas to stay out of November’s elections, he said his policies were indeed on the ballot. He desperately sought to break free of the confines of the White House. One afternoon in June, he joined his chief of staff in making an impromptu Starbucks run on foot, leaving aides and reporters sprinting to catch up.
A big question hanging over the White House is how much Obama, whose charisma once charmed the world, can still shape the national debate.
Indeed, the president is forging ahead as something of an isolated figure. December’s debate over keeping money flowing to the government showed Democrats in Congress won’t hesitate to go their own way. In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York has questioned the timing of Obama’s 2010 health care law. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi pronounced herself “enormously disappointed” that Obama embraced a spending bill she saw as a GOP attempt at blackmail. And Sen. Bob Menendez, the outgoing Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, began work with Republicans on new penalties against Iran - against Obama’s wishes.
“He’s going to have a very unique opportunity and ability to reach young people not only here but in other countries,” said Jon Favreau, Obama’s longtime speechwriter who left the White House last year. It is less clear where Obama and his family will go after their time in the White House ends. They own a red-brick, Georgian-style home in Kenwood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Their oldest daughter, Malia, graduates from high school soon and has been looking at colleges in California. The president is said to be drawn to the idea that he could blend in more easily in bustling New York. Obama is already imagining life with fewer restrictions. Asked in a New Yorker interview earlier this year whether he would want to be a judge, Obama said that sounded a bit “too monastic.” “Particularly after having spent six years and what will be eight years in this bubble, I think I need to get outside a little bit more.”
SHOTS FIRED ON LOS ANGELES POLICE CAR; N O O N E H U R T
Inside the White House, Obama’s tight inner circle of loyal advisers keeps shrinking. The trio of political gurus who helped run his presidential campaigns - David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe - have long since moved on. As has onetime chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago. Other longtime aides, including Pfeiffer and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, are said to be eyeing exits. Bringing in fresh talent is becoming a greater challenge. Obama may have to navigate this challenging phase of his presidency without a full stable of trusted advisers with whom he’s comfortable. Many Democratic operatives are also more interested in spots on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential presidential campaign than joining an administration entering its twilight. In some instances, it has been hard for the White House to get prominent Democrats to publicly back Obama’s policy decisions, particularly on foreign affairs, until they know Clinton’s position. Clinton is widely expected to announce a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama is trying to branch out. He started keeping his version of a bucket list: the names of authors, business leaders, innovators and others he wants to bring to the White House for a private lunch or dinner. Some who have visited: inventor and business tycoon Elon Musk, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, a major Republican donor. Obama has opened up his social circle beyond a core group of friends from Chicago and his childhood in Hawaii. He’s become close to former NBA basketball player Alonzo Mourning, who has hosted fundraisers for Obama’s presidential campaign. Former football player Ahmad Rashad, who dated senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett earlier this year, worked his way into the president’s golf outings and joined the first family on vacation in the Florida Keys and Martha’s Vineyard.
“Bear on the loose,” the president’s advisers jokingly said. They said it was good for his mood to break free from the bubble.
ESPN host Michael Wilbon, an occasional golf partner, said Obama displayed an astounding “ability to compartmentalize” amid the past year’s frustrations.
But there were also real concerns in the West Wing about his behavior. Not only was he trying to escape the ever-present press, but Obama was ordering his Secret Service detail to keep its distance.
“A lot of successful people have to have that, but not like the president,” Wilbon said.
In 2014, Obama also went back to war in the Middle East. Less than three years after the last American troops left Iraq, Obama sent U.S. forces back to train and assist the country’s security forces in fighting Islamic State extremists. By fall, the U.S. was launching airstrikes against the militants in Iraq and Syria.
People close to Obama say he is weighing what he will do when he leaves the White House at the relatively young age of 55. He is studying the paths his predecessors have taken and has expressed interest in working on both domestic and international issues. He is considering ways to expand mentoring programs he started for young black men in the U.S. and emerging leaders in Africa and Asia.
Obama admits to being distracted at times. Asked how much sports he watches on TV, the president told ESPN this month, “There are times I will admit at night, when I’ve got a really fat briefing book, where I might have the game on with the sound off.” ---
As he announced the strikes, Obama promised Americans this time would be different from the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No U.S. combat troops would on the ground, he said.
Less than halfway through his presidency, Obama reflected on how being in office had left him “all dinged up.”
But he seemed to be trying to reassure himself as much as anyone else.
The vaunted “hope” posters from his 2008 campaign are “all dog-eared and faded,” he said at a fundraiser three years later.
In public and in private, Obama appears to understand his presidency may end on a war footing. He’s been reading “Redeployment,” a collection of short stories about the Iraq war by former Marine Phil Klay. Shortly be-
He was searching for ways to re-create the energy of 2008. Heading into his final two years in the White House, that challenge is greater.
Los Angeles police officers investigate a shooting in South Central Los Angles on Monday, Dec. 29, 2014. A man fired a rifle at two Los Angeles officers in a patrol car on Sunday night but no one was injured in the attack that comes amid tension nationwide between police and protesters rallying against their tactics. LAPD spokeswoman Officer Nuria Venegas said Monday that one man was under arrest and a second suspect was being sought in the shooting in an area of the city ridden with gangs and crime and heavily patrolled by police.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A man fired a rifle at two Los Angeles officers in a patrol car, but no one was injured in the attack that comes amid tension nationwide between police and protesters rallying against their tactics.
LAPD spokeswoman Officer Nuria Venegas said Monday that one man was under arrest and a second suspect was being sought in the Sunday night shooting in South Los Angeles, an area of the city ridden with gangs and crime and heavily patrolled by police. The two officers were responding to a radio call and driving slowly in the neighborhood around 9:30 p.m. when they saw the muzzle flash of a rifle pointed in their direction, Venegas said. The officers returned fire, but no one was hit. The officers arrested one suspect and recovered a rifle. Police searched the neighborhood throughout the night for the second suspect, warning nearby residents to stay in their homes. The search of the immediate area was called off early Monday morning. Police did not say why the search was called off or whether they had determined a motive for the shooting, which follows weeks of protests in California and across the country against police killings of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York. The subsequent shooting of two New York City officers in their patrol car has departments proceeding with caution, police said. “Obviously, with what happened in New York and what we know is the sentiment right now nationwide, in the mornings or in the evenings when you put on your uniform, you’re very much aware that there are some currents of anger toward police,” Detective Meghan Aguilar told KABCTV. “We’re aware that we could be a target for individuals that are angry at law enforcement right now.” The New York gunman ambushed the officers and then killed himself after shooting and wounding an ex-girlfriend in Baltimore earlier that day and posting threats online, including references to the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City. Both were killed by white officers. Deputy Chief Bob Green told KNBC-TV at the scene of the Los Angeles shooting that “based on what’s going on in the national picture, tensions are very high, that’s not what we need. Whether or not this is related to that - too early to tell.”
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 5 thru Jan 12, 2014
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P U T I N F O E A L E X E I D E T A I N E D B Y
N AV A L N Y P O L I C E
MOSCOW (AP) -- Police have detained President Vladimir Putin’s chief foe, who has broken the terms of house his arrest to attend a protest of several thousand just outside the Kremlin.
months. Independent Moscow-based political analyst Masha Lipman said the verdict is a message to the entire Russian opposition: “All of you guys are at our mercy.”
The unsanctioned demonstration on Tuesday came hours after Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner, was found guilty of fraud and given a suspended sentence of 3.5 years. His brother was sent to prison.
Lipman said it was clear the Kremlin had decided not to make a martyr out of Navalny, with the aim “not to consolidate the opposition, but to demoralize and intimidate it.”
The convictions are widely seen as a political vendetta against any opposition to Putin and his government.
The trial seemed to be full of inconsistencies and loopholes.
Alexei Navalny, who has been under house arrest since February, broke its terms to attend the rally and was rounded up by police as he approached the site of the protest. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is a leading foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found guilty of fraud and given a suspended sentence of three and a half years on Tuesday, while his brother was sent to prison. More than 18,000 people have said on Facebook they will take part in a protest Tuesday evening near the Kremlin, and Alexei Mayorov, a security official in the Moscow mayor’s office, warned that any attempt to hold a rally would be quickly blocked because it has not been officially sanctioned. Police have deployed around a central square just outside the Kremlin wall. The provocateur punk group Pussy Riot released a video supporting Tuesday’s demonstration, featuring four stylishly dressed women sweeping snow from the square, then mounting their brooms and flying off as witches across the Kremlin wall in a performance symbolizing protest. Two of the performers, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, spent nearly two years in prison on charges of hooliganism for mounting an anti-Putin protest in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012, and won global fame. Tuesday’s verdict had been scheduled for next month, but the court session was abruptly moved forward to the day before New Year’s Eve, the main holiday in Russia, in what was widely seen as an attempt to head off protests. Russia’s main nationwide state-controlled television stations refrained from reporting the verdict. Navalny and his younger brother Oleg were convicted of defrauding a French cosmetics company and given the same sentence as each other, but Oleg’s was not suspended. The court also fined
R E P O RT: P O L I C E G U N D E AT H S U P, S T I L L B E L O W AV E R A G E
The company involved, Yves Rocher, wrote a complaint to investigators about the Navalny brothers’ firm, but its representatives have insisted throughout the trial that there never were any damages. The French executive who wrote the complaint also left Russia shortly afterward and never attended the hearings. Russian opposition activist and anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, 38, right, and his brother Oleg Navalny speak to each other at a court in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014. Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is a leading foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been found guilty of fraud and given a suspended sentence of three and a half years.
The prosecutors insisted that the brothers forced the company “into disadvantageous contracts” and defrauded it of 26 million rubles (about $440,000).
each of them 500,000 rubles (about $8,800) and ordered them to pay some 4 million rubles ($77,000) in damages.
The brothers had both arrived at the courtroom with luggage, indicating they expected to be immediately imprisoned.
Oleg Navalny, the father of two small children and a former executive of the state-owned postal service, has never played a role in the Russian opposition movement and his imprisonment could echo the Soviet-era practice of punishing the relatives of inconvenient people.
Navalny, a lawyer and popular blogger, rose to prominence with his investigations of official corruption and played a leading role in organizing massive anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012.
“Aren’t you ashamed of what you’re doing? You want to punish me even harder?” Alexei Navalny shouted out as Judge Yelena Korobchenko handed down the sentence for his brother. Alexei briefly entered the metal cage that his brother was put into after the verdict and appeared to be holding back tears. “This is the most disgusting and vile of all possible verdicts,” Alexei Navalny said outside the court. “The government isn’t just trying to jail its political opponents we’re used to it; we’re aware that they’re doing it - but this time they’re destroying and torturing the families of the people who oppose them,” he said, and called for people to attend the protest on Tuesday evening. The suspended sentence means that it could be converted into a prison term at any time, by court order, in the event that Navalny offends again. He has been under house arrest since February, and his lawyer Vadim Kobzev told The Associated Press that he will remain there until all appeals by either side are exhausted, which could take dramatic dip in 2013, when the figure fell to levels not seen since the 19th century. This year’s uptick comes amid increased tension between police and the public following the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men by white police officers, including that of Eric Garner in New York and Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
In a 2013 trial in a different criminal case, he was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to prison, but he was released the next day after thousands of people protested in the streets of Moscow. He was then handed a suspended sentence and finished a strong second in Moscow’s mayoral election in September 2013. The verdict and sentencing add to anxiety over the Russian economy’s plunge this year. By Tuesday evening, the Russian benchmark index MICEX was down more than 2 percent Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky who spent 10 years in jail before he was pardoned last year dismissed the verdict as Putin’s revenge for Navalny’s activism. Khodorkovsky said in a statement that he is “not even surprised that Putin and his entourage are capable of vile tricks, deception, forgery and manipulation - they are not capable of anything else.” New York-based Human Rights Watch said the verdict sends a message “to independent voices to expect a harsher crackdown in 2015.” Still, some members of the Kremlin-controlled parliament suggested the sentence was too light and should be appealed by prosecutors, which is permitted under Russian law. Mikhail Markelov, a leading lawmakers from the main Kremlin-controlled United Russia party, told the news agency Tass that “everything should be done to achieve reconsideration of this sentence.”
The states that saw the most officer deaths were California, at 14, Texas, at 11, and New York, at nine. Florida followed with six deaths, and Georgia had five, according to the report. The 15 ambush assaults on police officers this year compares to just five in 2013, but matched 2012 for the highest total since 1995, the report said. “With the increasing number of ambush-style attacks against our officers, I am deeply concerned that a growing anti-government sentiment in America is influencing weak-minded individuals to launch violent assaults against the men and women working to enforce our laws,” said Craig Floyd, chairman and CEO of the memorial fund. He added in his statement: “We need to tone down the rhetoric and rally in support of law enforcement and against lawlessness.”
a rose is placed at the wall with the names of fallen police officers at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington during the National Police Week. The number of law enforcement officers killed by firearms in the U.S. jumped by 56 percent this year and included 15 ambush assaults, according to a report released Tuesday. The annual report by the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 50 officers were killed by guns this year, compared to 32 in 2013.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of law enforcement officers killed by firearms jumped by 56 percent this year and included 15 ambush deaths. But gun-related police deaths still remain far below historic highs and lower than the average annual figures in the past decade, according to a report released Tuesday. The annual report by the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 50 officers were killed by guns this year. That’s far higher than the 32 such deaths last year but the same as 2012 figures. In 2011, 73 officers were killed in gunfire, the most in any year in the past decade. The average since 2004 is 55 police deaths annually. In all, the report found that 126 federal, local, tribal and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty in 2014. That’s a 24 percent jump from last year’s 102 on-duty deaths, though below the average annual figures since 2004 and the all-time high of 156 in 1973, said Steve Groeninger, a spokesman for the memorial fund. Of the 126 officer deaths this year, shootings were the leading cause, followed by traffic-related fatalities, at 49. This year’s increase in gun-related deaths among officers followed a
Among the ambush assaults were the fatal attacks on two police officers in New York City on Dec. 20. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were gunned down in their patrol car by Ismaaiyl Brinsley after Brinsley had made threatening posts online and references to the Garner and Brown cases. After shooting the officers, Brinsley ran into a subway station and killed himself. Police said he was troubled and had shot and wounded an ex-girlfriend in Baltimore earlier that day.
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 5 thru Jan 12, 2014
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R A P I D G R O W T H L E AV E S A S I A N AIRLINES SEARCHING FOR PILOTS NEW YORK (AP) -- Every week, a combined total of 28 new planes roll off the assembly lines at Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer factories - the fastest production rate in the history of commercial aviation. Most of those aircraft feed the insatiable demand in Asia.
have a bottomless pit of money.” Money - or lack thereof - is at the heart of much of the region’s staffing shortages, says Lim Chee Meng, CEO of Mil-Com Aerospace Group, a Singapore-based aviation training company that provides training for many of the region’s airlines.
The rapid growth of Asian airlines is helping bolster economies and change lifestyles, but it’s also creating a daunting safety challenge as more passengers head into an increasingly crowded airspace.
Wages for pilots and technicians in Southeast Asia have not risen fast enough to compensate for the cost of training, which discourages people from wanting to pursue an aviation career in the first place, Lim says.
Much of the boom has been driven by the surge in popularity of Southeast Asia’s budget carriers, such as AirAsia, whose Flight 8501 disappeared Sunday morning, 42 minutes after it took off from Surabaya, Indonesia, on its way to Singapore. It is still unclear what happened to the plane, but the aviation disaster has put a new spotlight on the obstacles that lie ahead for the booming region. As Southeast Asia’s economies grow, creating a burgeoning middle class, more people have the appetite to travel and airlines are struggling to ensure that their training and safety standards keep pace with the demand. There are currently 1,600 aircraft operating in Southeast Asia, Brendan Sobie, analyst at the CAPA Centre for Aviation, a consultancy in Sydney, said by email. “It is the only region in the world with as many aircraft on order as in service,” he said. “So the growth seems set to continue.” For each new plane, airlines need to hire and train at least 10 to 12 pilots, sometimes more, according to industry experts. The figure is so high because planes often fly throughout the day and night, seven days a week, while pilots need sleep and days off. Right now, Asia-Pacific accounts for 31 percent of global air passenger traffic, according to the International Air Transport Association. Within two decades, that figure is forecast to jump to 42 percent, as Asia adds an extra 1.8 billion annual passengers for an overall market size of 2.9 billion. Boeing projects that the Asia-Pacific region will need 216,000 new pilots in the next 20 years, the most of any part of the world, accounting for 40 percent of the global demand. To put that in perspective, there are about 104,000 pilots currently working in the United States, flying everything from crop dusters to jumbo jets, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The exponential growth in and the demand for air travel were not anticipated by many of the governments in the region,” says Shukor Yusof, founder of the Malaysia-based aviation research firm Endau Analytics. “And so you’re seeing a lack of infrastructure, airports and pilots because nobody expected low-cost travel would have taken off as quickly, as rapidly, and would be as lucrative as it is now.”
The dearth of trained staff means there are fewer workers to juggle an ever-growing workload - and that comes with risks. “It can lead to cascading effects down the road that can contribute to safety issues,” Lim says. “Which is a big problem.” A crew of an Indonesian Air Force C-130 airplane of the 31st Air Squadron, looks out of the window during a search operation for the missing AirAsia flight 8501 jetliner over the waters of Karimata Strait in Indonesia, Monday, Dec. 29, 2014. Search planes and ships from several countries on Monday were scouring Indonesian waters over which an AirAsia jet disappeared, more than a day into the region’s latest aviation mystery. AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished Sunday in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
Japan’s Peach Aviation, which is partly owned by ANA Holdings, the parent of All Nippon Airways, said this spring it would cut up to 2,100 flights - about one-sixth of its planned schedule - that it expected to operate between April and October due to a pilot shortage. The U.S. has many pilot-training facilities, from universities to specialized flying schools. And it has a farm system of regional carriers that train and churn out experienced pilots for the largest airlines. But Asia, home to fast-growing carriers such as AirAsia, Indonesia’s Lion Air and India’s Jet Airways, doesn’t have enough training programs to produce all the pilots it needs, said David Greenberg, a former Delta Air Lines executive who also oversaw pilot training and safety at Korean Air. “There is a global shortage, and this has brought pilot poaching,” Greenberg said. Carriers in the Middle East and Asia have looked to the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe to fill the gap. Greenberg said that while he was at Korean, 10 percent of the carrier’s captains were foreigners who came from 28 different countries. Meanwhile, many pilots, engineers and technicians in Southeast Asia have been lured to more attractive jobs in the Middle East, which boast higher salaries and the opportunity to fly in sleek new aircraft. “I personally know quite a number of people from Malaysia Airlines who have actually gone to the Middle East and I don’t blame them because the money is very good,” Yusof says. “If you compare Middle Eastern carriers to Southeast Asian carriers, they are more advanced, they are growing far quicker - it’s all about dollars and cents and they
That said, the aviation industry has generally done an amazing job of improving safety while doubling the number of passengers in the past 15 years. Last year, 3.1 billion passengers flew, twice the total in 1999. Yet the chances of dying in a plane crash were much lower. Since 2000, there were less than three fatalities per 10 million passengers, according to an Associated Press analysis of crash data provided by aviation consultancy Ascend. In the 1990s, there were nearly eight; during the 1980s there were 11; and the 1970s had 26 deaths per 10 million passengers. That is not to say some parts of the world aren’t more dangerous than others. The accident rate in Africa, for instance, is nearly five times that of the worldwide average, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, part of the United Nations. Indonesia has a particularly bumpy safety record. In 2007, the safety standards there were so bad that the European Union prohibited all of Indonesia’s airlines from flying into any of its member countries. That ban was lifted Aug. 17, 2009; however, Indonesia’s main airline - quickly growing Lion Air - is still banned by the EU. For many people, flying is the only option. Indonesia is a sprawling archipelago of 250 million people. To get from one island to another, the easiest way is by air. Throughout Asia, adequate highways or railroads don’t always exist. So as the region’s economy has grown, the number of people flying has, too. And that growth is only going to continue. Indonesia’s various airlines have 607 unfilled aircraft orders with Airbus and Boeing. Lion Air has the bulk of those, with 508 aircraft still on order.
SETTLEMENT REACHED IN HORSE D E AT H S C A U S E D B Y TA I N T E D F E E D horses at Masterpiece. Since the first deaths in October, the horses’ owners have tried to keep their animals comfortable, lavishing attention on them with “spa days” in their stables. All riding lessons were suspended, and the parents of the center’s youngest riders struggled to explain how all the horses, not just one or two, were dying and there was nothing anyone could do except give the horses extra treats and grooming.
Ava Exelbirt hugs one of the remaining horses at the Masterpiece Equestrian Center in Davie, Fla., Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. Ava lost the horse she rode to poisoned feed. The Masterpiece Equestrian Center, where 22 horses were poisoned by tainted feed, has reached a settlement with the company that produced and sold the feed. Andy Yaffa, the attorney representing the equestrian center and the owners of 20 of the horses said Monday, Dec. 29, 2014, that the terms of the settlement are confidential, but his clients will be able to care for their ailing horses and purchase new horses.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A Florida equestrian center where 22 horses were poisoned by tainted feed has reached a settlement with the company that produced and sold the feed. Two horses had to be euthanized Friday, bringing the death toll at Masterpiece Equestrian Center in Davie to six since October, said Andy Yaffa, the attorney representing the center and the owners of 20 of the horses. All the horses at the center ate the contaminated feed, and all are expected to eventually die from it. Their owners can do little except keep vigil over the animals as their health fails. The terms of the settlement last week with Lakeland Animal Nutrition are confidential, but Yaffa said Monday that his clients will be able to buy new horses and care for the remaining ailing horses. The afflicted horses range from ponies worth $25,000 to $50,000 to elite competitors worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. “The remaining horses continue to deteriorate - unfortunately,” Yaffa said. “We knew they would but did not want to believe it. We also did not realize it would be so fast.” The feed arrived at the center in September but it was weeks before anyone realized something was wrong with all the
Lakeland Animal Nutrition has said the contamination was limited to the feed at Masterpiece, and no other horses elsewhere were reported sickened because of it. The Lakeland-based company recalled the product, stopped producing equine feeds and acknowledged that feed delivered to Masterpiece contained monensin and lasalocid, anti-bacterial additives safe for livestock such as cattle and some poultry but toxic to horses’ muscles. General manager Jonathan Lang said the 95-year-old company was devastated by the losses at Masterpiece. “Although their beloved animals could never be replaced, it is our hope that this settlement will bring them some peace and allow them to continue pursuing their passion for equestrian care and sport,” Lang said in an email. Necropsies performed on four horses that died at Masterpiece before the settlement last week confirmed monensin poisoning. The remaining horses all showed the same progressive symptoms, including difficulty standing, but no more necropsies will be needed, Yaffa said. “We know what’s causing this,” Yaffa said, adding that Lakeland Animal Nutrition had “acted honorably throughout the restoration process.” Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is investigating.
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The Weekly News Digest, Jan 5 thru Jan 12, 2014
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C O N S E R VAT I O N I S T S , L O G G E R S T E A M U P O N F O R E S T H E A LT H
JOHN DAY, Ore. (AP) -- Logs are piled high in the yard of the Malheur Lumber Co. mill in this small town in northeastern Oregon, ready to be sawed into lumber. Steam pours out of the stacks. Trucks loaded with logs roll in.
things,” Billman said. “As we became better friends, our discussions became about our personal lives, our families and all that.”
They weren’t the only ones. Outside the collaborative, John Shelk, managing partner of Ochoco Lumber Co., which owns Malheur Lumber, decided in 2008 he had to do something and invited Andy Kerr, another founder of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, to his office. By 2009, they were telling others they had a truce.
John Day, a town of 1,700, nearly died two years ago. Its lifeblood, the sawmill, was about to close. So few logs were coming off the nearby Malheur National Forest, the mill’s owners decided it was time to shut down. But the mill and the town’s economy were rescued by a detente between the timber industry and environmentalists - foes since the battles over logging that erupted in the Pacific Northwest three decades ago. The sides uncovered a shared goal: thinning overgrown forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires. Talk to people in town and you’ll still hear grumbling from those who don’t trust environmentalists. But not from Art Andrews, manager of Malheur Lumber. “When I tell people that it’s the environmental community that saved this community, they say, `Oh, baloney!’” Andrews said. “But I lived it. I know it’s true.” Mills in timber country have been steadily closing as fighting continues over how to log national forests without killing protected species like spotted owls and salmon. Across the West, there are efforts to build trust among timber interests, environmentalists and local residents, and the U.S. Forest Service hopes the success of John Day serves as a model. There is little private timber to draw on in such towns, east of the Cascades. One logging project after another in the Malheur National Forest was shot down by lawsuits from environmentalists. Meanwhile, the community was demanding logs. “We were at a stalemate,” recalled Steve Beverlin, supervisor of the Malheur National Forest.
“We agreed that there was a lot of (timber) to be had from ecological forestry,” Kerr recalled. “And he didn’t want the big trees anyway, so why were we fighting?” Malheur Lumber Co. mill in John Day, Ore. The mill was on the verge of closing in 2012, but timber interests and conservation groups overcame decades of fighting to compromise on logging projects that also reduced the danger of wildfire on the Malheur National Forest. The timber produced has allowed the mill to add another shift, and the national forests has hired 40 more people to work on projects.
Then, Blue Mountains Forest Partners formed in 2006, a collaborative group designed to bring together all sides of the community - especially environmentalists and the timber industry - to come up with projects that lawsuits wouldn’t stop. Out of innumerable meetings and forest tours grew a few key friendships among people who became peacemakers in the timber war. Among them were Mike Billman, timber buyer for the Malheur Lumber Co. mill, and conservationist Tim Lillebo. “I had never met him, but I’d heard of him plenty,” Billman said of Lillebo. “He was the devil, I guess.” Lillebo was a founder of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, now Oregon Wild. They first met at a meeting of the collaborative, and they soon found they agreed on most of the issues. Before long, Billman and Lillebo were getting together for camping trips.
Grant County Commissioner Boyd Britton, a welder who lost customers when two other mills shut down, came to trust and respect Susan Jane Brown, a lawyer for the Western Environmental Law Center who shot down so many timber sales. Brown said a key shift came when environmentalists started realizing that wildfires posed as big a threat to the forests as logging. And the way to protect the forests was to work with the collaborative to approve projects that thinned overgrown stands while providing enough logs to keep the local mill running. The atmosphere of trust and respect had reached such a point that when Shelk decided Malheur Lumber had to shut down in 2012, members of the collaborative were able to act. They quickly signed off on delayed forest-thinning projects and developed logging plans that could sustain the mill. Last year, they approved a 10-year “Stewardship Contract” awarded to a local logging company, Iron Triangle. The company took a chance that it could do the thinning and restoration projects in the contract in return for enough logs to make it pay. This year, the mill hired 30 workers. And Malheur National Forest hired 40 people to turn out more restoration projects as it tries to expand the efforts to the other forests in the region. “Why it worked on Malheur Lumber when it did is because we had the right people involved at the right time for the right reason,” Brown said.
J AVA S E A P L A N E SEARCH: MONSOONS, B E A R L O O S E I N S U B U R B A N MURKINESS, TRASH P H O E N I X I S F I N A L LY W R A N G L E D “Early on, we talked about industry, ecological and collaborative
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Arizona wildlife managers say they believe the black bear that was spotted twice this week in a Phoenix suburb but eluded capture finally has been caught. The bear was captured Christmas morning in the backyard of an empty home in eastern Mesa. Authorities spotted the animal around 5 a.m. and followed it to a neighborhood. Mesa police set up a perimeter, and a wildlife officer shot it with a tranquilizer dart. “It climbed a 6-foot block wall fence and then promptly went to sleep, and we were able to capture it safely. It was a great, happy ending to the story,” Arizona Game and Fish Department spokeswoman Amy Burnett told KSAZ-TV ( http://bit.ly/1EjYxuV ).
A member of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) points to a map of a search area during a briefing prior to a search and rescue operation of the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501, at Pangkal Pinang command post in Sumatra Island, Monday, Dec. 29, 2014 in Indonesia. Search planes and ships from several countries on Monday were scouring Indonesian waters over which the AirAsia jet disappeared, more than a day into the region’s latest aviation mystery. Flight 8501 vanished Sunday in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Searchers combing the Java Sea to find and recover debris and bodies from the AirAsia jet that crashed there have the advantage of working in much shallower waters than those found in the open ocean, but also face challenges that include monsoons, murkiness and trash. Flight 8501 crashed Sunday morning with 162 people on board while flying from Indonesia to Singapore. Searchers on Tuesday found bodies and debris floating off Borneo island believed to be from the plane.
Burnett said the bear - a 125-pound male that’s about 2 to 3 years old - likely will be relocated to the Tonto National Forest after it’s evaluated. Officials said the sighting was rare for the Phoenix metro area, where a bear is spotted once every couple of years. The animal was first spotted Monday, when TV news helicopters captured video of the bear bounding across an alfalfa field on the outskirts of Mesa and then standing within feet of a game warden wielding a tranquilizer gun. The bear proved elusive after it entered a former General Motors test site filled with shrubbery and trees. Officials decided the site was too large to search.
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the remote stretch of the Indian Ocean where searchers are still looking for another missing plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, is 100 times deeper than the Java Sea.
He said the currents in shallow seas don’t typically have the same strength as those in the open ocean, meaning debris shouldn’t move as much, although he said winds can quickly create choppy waves which can make the search more difficult.
“It makes the search much simpler,” he said.
David Gallo, the director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, said the challenge of locating the wreckage or black boxes remains huge.
Mostly enclosed by islands from the Indonesia archipelago, the Java Sea has average depths of about 40 to 50 meters (131 to 164 feet). Van Sebille said it’s shallow enough that if conditions were perfect, searchers could probably spot any large pieces of debris on the ocean floor using only their eyesight. “In the last ice age, it was actually land. It was above sea level with forest,” he said. “It’s a much different environment than the open ocean.” But because the monsoon season is underway, he said, there’s likely to be lots of rain that will wash sediment into rivers that feed into the sea and make it murky. And he said the abundance of fishing in the region will make it harder for spotter planes to distinguish trash from any plane debris. “It’s a pretty filthy ocean and there’s a lot of garbage floating out there,” he said. “Everything from small water bottles to big, abandoned fishing nets.”
Gallo said the area where searchers are looking for the AirAsia jet might appear much narrower and more contained than the area for Flight 370, but is still enormous: “bigger than West Virginia and South Carolina combined,” he said. That is about the same size as Indonesia’s Java province. But unlike in the search for Flight 370, he said, ships searching the Java Sea can be smaller and reach the area more quickly because they will be much closer to a port. However, he said, searchers may need to get a better grasp on the last known position of the plane before they are ready to try to detect any underwater locator signals, or pings, which the plane’s black boxes are designed to emit. “There is nothing easy about this,” Gallo said.
A worker walks down stairs next to the nose of a Boeing 737-800 airplane being assembled Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014, at Boeing’s 737 facility in Renton, Wash. Boeing and Puget Sound Energy announced Tuesday that Boeing plans to switch to using all-renewable energy at the factory, by buying more wind power credits and continuing to use hydropower.
Residents spotted the animal again before dawn Tuesday. Authorities searched near the Mesa airport but found nothing. The sightings sparked chatter on social media, including someone setting up a Twitter account for “Mesa Bear.” By Thursday, the account had more than 400 followers. It’s unknown where the bear came from or how long it had been in the area. Black bears are the only species of bears living in Arizona, with an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 of them in the state, wildlife officials say.
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