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FEDERAL REGULATORS GO AFTER CROWD F U N D I N G S C A M WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators are going after people who raise money online through crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and GoFundMe but don’t follow through on their promises. In its first case involving crowdfunding, the Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that it has settled charges against a man who raised $122,000 through Kickstarter to produce a board game that never materialized. According to the FTC, Erik Chevalier canceled the project and said he would refund the donations, but used the money instead to pay his rent and move. Crowdfunding has become a popular way to donate money directly to someone in need, from independent filmmakers to do-gooders. The donations are often small, ranging from a couple bucks to a couple thousand dollars. In one case in Los Angeles, a man’s crowdfunding campaign received $60,000 in less than a month after posting a YouTube video showing how he built a tiny, $500 wooden house on wheels for a homeless woman in his neighborhood. In another case, a Maine man who wanted to donate his kidney to a stranger after seeing a sign in a car window raised $49,000 to defray medical costs. While this week’s FTC settlement is a warning to online scammers, it also reveals the limits to which the government can protect consumers: Chevalier has been ordered to repay the money, but the judgment is suspended because he doesn’t have any. Otherwise, the settlement prohibits him from lying about future crowdfunding campaigns. “Many consumers enjoy the opportunity to take part in the development of a product or service through crowdfunding, and they generally know there’s some uncertainty involved in helping start something new,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection. “But consumers should able to trust their money will actually be spent on the project they funded.” Chevalier did not respond to requests for comment by telephone or email.

RETIRED CIA OPERATIVE BECOMES BREAKOUT S P Y N O V E L I S T

Volume 004 Issue20

Established 2012

OBAMA MAKES PERSONAL APPEAL ON TRADE VOTE

WASHINGTON (AP) -President Barack Obama made an 11th-hour appeal to dubious Democrats on Friday in a tense run-up to a House showdown on legislation to strengthen his hand in global trade talks. Cheers greeted the president as he strode into a meeting that could make or break a key second-term priority. But it was converts he needed to assure success of a bill to let him complete global trade deals that Congress could approve or reject, but not change. The president’s hastily scheduled trip to the Capitol coincided with the beginning of debate on the House floor.

in the awkward position of allying themselves with Obama, found themselves being asked by their leaders to vote for a worker retraining program that most have long opposed as wasteful. Many were reluctant to do so, leaving the fate of the entire package up in the air, and Obama facing the prospect of a brutal loss - unless he can eke out what all predict would be the narrowest of wins.

President Barack Obama speaks in Washington. A landmark trade bill that tops President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda faces a showdown vote in the House as Democrats mount a last-ditch effort to kill it. The outcome was uncertain and the drama intense heading into Friday’s votes. In frantic 11th-hour maneuvering, liberals in the House defied their own president and turned against a favored program of their own that retrains workers displaced by trade. Killing the program would kill the companion trade bill, and many Democrats and labor leaders advocated just that.

“Is America going to shape the global economy, or is it going to shape us?” said Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is head of the House Ways and Means Committee and a GOP pointman on an issue that scrambled the normal party alignment in divided government. But Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., countered that the legislation heading toward a showdown vote included “no meaningful protections whatever against currency manipulation” by some of America’s trading partners, whose actions he said have “ruined millions of middle class jobs.” The president’s last-minute visit to Capitol Hill marked a bid to stave off a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own party. He met privately first with Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader who remained publicly uncommitted on the measure. Other presidents have had the authority Obama seeks, which is dubbed “fast track.” The White House wants the legislation as it works to wrap up a round of talks with 11 Pacific Area countries. The same measure included a renewal of assistance for workers who lose their jobs as a result of global trade. Normally, that is a Democratic priority, but in this case, Levin and other opponents of the measure mounted an effort to kill the aid package, as a way of toppling the entire bill. The move caught the GOP off-guard. House Republicans, already

CIA operative turned best-selling author, Jason Matthews, a 30-year CIA veteran and author of the new novel, “Palace of Treason,” poses for a portrait in Washington. When Matthews retired after more than three decades as a CIA operative, writing fiction proved a form of therapy.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Jason Matthews retired after more than three decades as a CIA operative, writing fiction proved a form of therapy.

It’s a different discipline than that employed by the many CIA case officers

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Yet in a convoluted series of events Thursday, the fast-track bill, long the main event, seemed to fade in importance even as Republicans began sounding confident it would command enough votes to pass. Instead, Democrats began eyeing the possibility of taking down the related Trade Adjustment Assistance bill - a maneuver that would be made possible only because of rules in place for House debate. Republicans said that the sequencing was determined at Pelosi’s behest. She has worked behind the scenes with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, this week to solve a last-minute hang-up involving Democratic concerns about cutting Medicare funds to pay for worker retraining. The intricate solution to the Medicare issue lay in finding another revenue source -various tax penalties - and also lining up the votes in a certain order that made passage of the fast-track bill contingent continued on page 9

The union believes the hackers stole military records and veterans’ status information, address, birth date, job and pay history, health insurance, life insurance and pension information; and age, gender and race data, he said. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

And the most interesting accolades are coming from CIA insiders, who marvel at how he manages to slip so much past the agency’s censors, portraying the heart-pounding rhythms of on-the-street espionage better that any novelist in recent memory.

He says his books amount to “a love letter” to the Central Intelligence Agency of his memory, one that he fears is slipping away. His specialty was classic espionage - sneaking around foreign capitals persuading sources to betray their country.

Those colliding interests have produced unusual alliances on Capitol Hill, with House Republicans working to help a president they oppose on nearly every other issue, and most Democrats working against him.

The OPM data file contains the records of non-military, non-intelligence executive branch employees, which covers most federal civilian employees but not, for example, members of Congress and their staffs.

Five years on from his retirement, Matthews is back this week with a sequel, “Palace of Treason,” set in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Matthews speaks six languages and helped manage seven CIA stations, sometimes working in tandem with his wife, Suzanne, also a retired CIA officer. They raised two daughters in countries they aren’t allowed to name. At one point he was operations chief in the counter-proliferation division, tasked with slowing Iran’s nuclear program, among other things.

Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce crave the deal; labor unions are ardently opposed, pointing to job and wage losses from earlier trade pacts opponents say never lived up to the hype from previous administrations.

al employee, every federal retiree, and up to one million former federal employees.”

“I started thinking about war stories,” he said in an interview. “Pretty soon I blinked and I had like 300, 400 pages.”

Matthews, 63, spent most of his career overseas specializing in “denied areas,” places where Americans were closely watched and their movements restricted. He is part of a long line of former spies who turned to fiction but the first to have spent a full career at the CIA, rising to management, and then emerge to write with such commercial and critical success.

“If we have to pass something that’s a Democratic ideal with all Republicans to get the whole thing to go,” said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., “we could be in trouble.”

U N I O N : H A C K E R S H AV E P E R S O N N E L DATA ON EVERY FEDERAL EMPLOYEE

Living in Los Angeles, cut off from the agency and its secrets, Matthews channeled his energy into the 2013 novel “Red Sparrow.” It became a best-seller and critical success, resulting in a reported seven-figure movie deal.

They are not alone: The New York Times dubbed Matthews’ new book “enthralling” in a recent review.

June 15 thru June 22, 2015

a gate leading to the Homeland Security Department headquarters in northwest Washington. Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, June 11, 2015, charging that the cyberattack on U.S. employee data is far worse than the Obama administration has acknowledged.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, asserting that the cyber theft of U.S. employee information was more damaging than the Obama administration has acknowledged. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor that the December hack into Office of Personnel Management data was carried out by “the Chinese” without specifying whether he meant the Chinese government or individuals. Reid is one of eight lawmakers briefed on the most secret intelligence information. U.S. officials have declined to publicly blame China, which has denied involvement. J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on the incomplete information the union received from OPM, “We believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every feder-

The union, which does not have direct access to the investigation, said it is basing its assessment on “sketchy” information provided by OPM. The agency has sought to downplay the damage, saying what was taken “could include” personnel file information such as Social Security numbers and birth dates. “We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous,” Cox said in the letter. The union called the breach “an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce.” Samuel Schumach, an OPM spokesman, said that “for security reasons, we will not discuss specifics of the information that might have been compromised.” The central personnel data file contains up to 780 separate pieces of information about an employee. Cox complained in the letter that “very little substantive information has been shared with us, despite the fact that we represent more than 670,000 federal employees in departments and agencies throughout the executive branch.”

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The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

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EX-GITMO INMATE STOPPED FROM FLYING TO CANADA, OVERFLIES US

beyond, but this was the first time he planned a trans-Atlantic flight.

PARIS (AP) -- A former prisoner in Guantanamo said he was prevented from boarding a flight in France on Thursday for conferences in Canada because the aircraft would fly through U.S. airspace.

Benchellali was to attend a conference on peace and another on the phenomenon of radicalization of Western youth who have headed by the thousands to Syria.

Mourad Benchellali, who addresses youth groups in Europe in a bid to dissuade them from jihad, was prevented from boarding the Air Transat flight from Lyon to Montreal. The Canadian airline said because the flight flies through U.S. airspace “our personnel had to, and duly applied the provisions of a U.S. security program known as Secure Flight, as all airlines must.” The Secure Flight program checks passengers against the U.S. No Fly list.

“I wasn’t going on vacation. I was going for prevention,” he said in the interview. At check-in, he said he was informed that “there is a problem because the plane crosses American airspace.” The U.S. Transportation Security Administration receives flight manifests for any commercial flight that will either land in the United States or fly over U.S. airspace as part of the Secure Flight program. Airlines can opt to rebook a passenger to a flight that doesn’t cross U.S. airspace, re-route the flight to make sure it doesn’t come into U.S. airspace or cancel the passenger’s ticket.

former Guantanamo detainee and al-Qaida trainee Mourad Benchellali talks during an interview with the Associated Press in Gennevilliers, suburban Paris, France. With thousands of young Europeans joining the ranks of radical Islamists in Syria, some people have stepped forward to offer to deter them. But most governments and groups trying to prevent the exodus of vulnerable youths are cautious about accepting such services _ since the volunteers were once radicals themselves.

Benchellali, 33, who was released from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in July 2004, said in a telephone interview he was unaware he was on the U.S. list. He has flown to other destinations in Europe and

R I C K P E R RY continued on page 3

who spent the last decade doing tours in Baghdad and Kabul, often conducting source meetings in an armored vehicle with a military escort. Nor does it bear much resemblance to the man-hunting involved in tracking terrorists to target in lethal drone strikes. Human intelligence, or HUMINT, is the “the patrimony of CIA,” Matthews says. “The irony is that the global war on terror has actually taken away resources and institutional focus from classic HUMINT.” Matthews’ novels are a celebration of HUMINT - the art and science of gathering it, the consequences when it goes wrong. He found an amenable setting in modern Russia, which is proving an increasingly nettlesome U.S. adversary. Unlike parts of Syria and Iraq, the CIA can still send Americans to spy in Russia, where the biggest risk to an operative with diplomatic immunity is being sent home. The hero in his new book is clever, competent Nathanial Nash, everything one would want in a CIA case officer except perhaps for the forbidden love affair he carries on with his asset, Dominika Egorova, a former ballerina and trained seductress who dispatches attackers with a lipstick gun and her bare hands. Matthews, who could pass for an insurance salesman but for the thickframed, fashion-forward glasses, spares few details in his steamy sex scenes.

Conference organizers expressed shock that their guest was banned from his flight. Police and university researchers were to take part in a conference organized by the Observatory of Radicalization in addition to a conference entitled “48 Hours for Peace.” Benchellali uses his experience at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan as a lesson for youth tempted by the Islamic State group’s savvy recruiting campaign for jihad.

crawling up their frequency-hopping” posteriors. Matthews depicts plenty of buffoonery by senior CIA officials, too, including a blustering, dangerously unqualified Moscow station chief whose inability to spot surveillance puts operations at risk. At headquarters, the chief of operations is caught in flagrante delicto with his female assistant. Matthews’ institutional criticism doesn’t extend to the agency’s harsh treatment of al-Qaida detainees, excoriated in a recent Senate report. Although he played no role, he defends his friends who did. The sum total of the CIA’s work has been a force for good, he said. “Some of the things that we’ve accomplished are absolutely magnificent, and have kept the bad guys at bay,” he said. “You never actually win 100 percent, but we’ve pushed (weapons) programs back, and we’ve embarrassed bad people and eliminated other people.”

“I’ve read a lot of thrillers, and some of the sex is almost offhand and embarrassingly vague,” he says. “So I wanted to go to the other end of the spectrum and be embarrassingly graphic.”

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The Americans are the good guys in these books, while the Russians are mostly corrupt torturers and thugs. Putin, a central character in “Palace of Treason,” is portrayed as amoral, venal and paranoid. Agency reviewers have focused more on scenes that depicted the main characters using disguises and carefully reading faces during hours-long surveillance detection routes to get “black” before a secret meeting. These “are accurate, richly detailed renderings of anxiety-filled tasks conducted daily by intelligence operatives around the world,” former CIA officer Jim Burridge and an unnamed employee wrote in a review of “Red Sparrow” on the CIA’s Web site.

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That book won Matthews the Edgar Award for best first novel by an American and a reputation among his former colleagues. The agency reviewers marveled at how Matthews got all the tradecraft, as spies call it, past the CIA’s Publications Review Board, which reserves the right to black out secrets in anything written by a former employee. Matthews said he hit a snag, however, with his follow-up novel and was forced to fly to Washington and change part of his ending to get final sign off. Still, the narrative bristles with reality.

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When a Russian military officer wonders why his CIA handler isn’t offering him frequency-hopping mobile phones like the Russians use, the CIA man marvels to himself: “If they (only) knew how the FBI and the NSA were

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

A I R S T R I K E S D E S T R O Y PA RT O F Y E M E N ’ S U N E S C O H E R I TA G E S I T E A police car with a loudspeaker urged residents to stay away from the rubble.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) -- Saudi-led airstrikes targeting Shiite rebels and their allies in Yemen destroyed historic houses on Friday in the center of the capital, Sanaa, a UNESCO world heritage site. Rescue teams digging through the debris pulled the bodies of six civilians from under the rubble.

Online activists posted photographs of the damaged parts of the old city of Sanaa, known as al-Qasimi. The old city dates back 2,500 years and is one of the most popular and historic tourist attractions in the Yemeni capital, famous for its decorated buildings made of packed earth with burnt brick towers.

The bombing drew swift condemnation from the U.N. cultural agency, whose chief expressed sorrow at the loss of human life and the destruction of priceless architectural heritage.

UNESCO’s general director condemned the attack that targeted “the world’s oldest jewels of Islamic urban landscape” and expressing sorrow for the loss of lives.

Initially, local residents believed the warplanes had targeted a house occupied by a senior rebel commander, but officials and witnesses later said there were no Shiite rebels among the victims. The impact of the missiles flattened at least three houses and caused cracks in surrounding buildings, which are cemented to one another, leaving large sections of the old city’s district at the risk of collapse. At a destroyed four-story building, an Associated Press reporter saw a pile of bricks, dust and wood mingled with clothes, kitchenware and water tanks, which are traditionally kept on roofs. An adjacent three-story building was split in half, wooden window frames dangling from the upper floors. Rescue workers were covered with dust as they searched for victims. Most of the old city’s three-to-four-story buildings had been emptied out weeks ago, as their residents left in fear of the airstrikes. The Saudi-led coalition launched the campaign in March, in an effort to halt the power grab by Yemen’s Shiite rebels, known as Houthis. Mohammed al-Raddni, a neighbor whose grandfather lives next door to one of the destroyed buildings, said those killed in Friday’s airstrikes included three women and two men, one of

A man searches for survivors under the rubble of houses destroyed by Saudi airstrikes in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 12, 2015.

whom was a doctor. A 16-year-old teenager remains under the rubble, said al-Raddni. “What do they want from us? This is unfair. Why don’t they go search for Houthis somewhere else,” shouted Zahwa Hammoud, an elderly woman dressed in traditional Yemeni clothing, as she looked at the damage. Hammoud, one of few residents remaining in the neighborhood, said there was a “deafening sound that made me feel my ears exploding” when the missiles struck.

state government.

Crying, Fox apologized to his family, friends and to the state when he addressed the court before the sentencing. “I accept full responsibility for my actions. No excuses, no justifications,” Fox said. “I committed illegal acts and I’m very sorry for it.” He said the only explanation he could offer was greed, keeping up with the joneses and stupidity. He said he got himself in a bad financial situation and didn’t know how to get out of it. Fox pleaded guilty in March to charges of bribery, wire fraud and filing a false tax return. He acknowledged taking more than $50,000 in bribe money from a Providence restaurant when he was a member of the city board of licenses and admitted he took more than $100,000 from his campaign account for his own use. The 53-year-old Democrat became the nation’s first openly gay House speaker in 2010. He represented Providence for 11 terms in the House. He stepped down as speaker the day after a dramatic raid on his Statehouse office in March 2014 but remained in his seat until his term expired in January. Prosecutors and Fox each agreed to request a three-year term as part of a plea deal. U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi on Thursday called it “an appropriate, fair and just sentence.” She said Fox’s actions were crimes of choice. She also ordered him to pay $109,000 in restitution to his campaign account. She noted that Fox waived an indictment, saving the government considerable time and resources, and he waived the statute of limitations on the bribery count. Federal prosecutors painted a picture of a man living far beyond his means and using bribes and campaign cash to finance his lifestyle. They said he made less than $73,000 per year on average from his modest solo law practice but had a mortgage of $3,800 per month. In court filings, they said that soon after he arranged the $52,500 bribe, he bought a $50,000 Audi. Still, he was left with a monthly car payment of more than $800. They also said that from 2011 to 2013, neither Fox nor his husband made a single cash withdrawal from a bank teller or ATM, indicating he had a different source of cash. In a court filing, Fox’s lawyer, William Murphy, said Fox committed financial crimes “because his financial life was not in order.” Fox must surrender by July 7.

UNESCO said that since the beginning of the conflict, several historic monuments across Yemen have suffered damage. It said that on June 9, the Ottoman era al-Owrdhi historical compound, outside the walls of Sanaa’s old city, was severely damaged. The Saudi-led airstrikes, along with ground fighting between different warring parties, have killed 1,037 civilians, including 234 children, between mid-March and May. More than a million people have been displaced by the violence, according to U.N. estimates.

ACCUSED OF PIMPING, STRAUSS-KAHN FA C E S F R E N C H T R I A L V E R D I C T During the three-week trial in February, the man known in France as DSK stuck strictly to his line of defense, saying repeatedly that he did not know that the young women at the parties were prostitutes. He said he thought they were simply “libertine.”

EX-RHODE ISLAND HOUSE SPEAKER GETS 3 YEARS FOR CORRUPTION PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Former Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison for corruption, bringing to a close the federal investigation into a man once considered the most powerful person in

“I am shocked by the images of these magnificent many-storied tower-houses and serene gardens reduced to rubble,” Irina Bokova said in the statement. She urged the warring parties to preserve the heritage of Yemen, which “bears the soul of the Yemeni people” and “belongs to all humankind.”

The sometimes tearful testimony of two prostitutes cast a harsh light on Strauss-Kahn’s sometimes brutal sexual practices. But they testified that they had never told him directly about their professions. Other defendants described how they had voluntarily erected a wall of silence around their powerful friend to protect him from any embarrassing leak.

former Managing Director of International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss Kahn leaving his hotel in Lille, northern France, as he goes on trial for sex charges at a court. Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces a verdict Friday in the last of a string of legal cases that started when a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in 2011. The onetime presidential contender and former International Monetary Fund chief is accused of aggravated pimping in a prostitution trial in the French city of Lille, but he may well be acquitted for lack of evidence of a crime.

Even the prosecutor, unusually, asked for Strauss-Kahn’s acquittal, saying the trial did not back up the charge of aggravated pimping, which requires proof that he promoted or profited from prostitution. However, the prosecutor asked for the co-defendants who admitted having organized these evenings and paid the girls to be convicted and sentenced.

PARIS (AP) -- Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a French court that he participated in sex parties reminiscent of orgies in antiquity because he needed “recreational sessions” while he was busy “saving the world” from one of its worst financial crises. The women at the sex parties, however, were prostitutes - and testified that they weren’t having fun at all during these “beast-like scenes.” The court in Lille decides Friday whether Strauss-Kahn is found guilty of charges of “aggravated pimping.” Despite his sordid testimony, many expect him to be acquitted, citing limited evidence pointing to a punishable crime.

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The verdict is the last step in four years of legal drama for Strauss-Kahn that began when a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in 2011, killing his presidential ambitions. That case was later settled out of court. Strauss-Kahn, 66, is among more than a dozen other defendants, including hotel managers, entrepreneurs, a lawyer and a police chief. They are accused of participating in or organizing collective sexual encounters in Paris, Washington and in the Brussels region in 2008-2011, when Strauss-Kahn was IMF chief - and married. Each faces up to 10 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted.

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COAST GUARD, CUBAN MIGRANTS C O N T I N U E D E A D LY H I D E - A N D - S E E K that have been on board six, seven times, and there’s definitely desperation there,” said Boatswain 2nd Class Matthew Karas, watching over the migrants.

ABOVE THE FLORIDA STRAITS (AP) -- With a shift in the relationship between Havana and Washington, many Cubans are now attempting a risky sea crossing out of fear that the U.S. will change its “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy allowing any Cuban reaching U.S. land to stay and pursue citizenship.

In their wake, the Coast Guard burns or sinks migrants’ rafts. Lately, Beaudoin has noticed many rafts primarily made from construction spray foam, enforced with rebar and wrapped in vinyl tarps. These won’t sink, and the Coast Guard rigs them with transmitters that alert other vessels to the obstacle in the water.

Without it, they’d be treated like other foreigners caught illegally in the country - ineligible for citizenship and subject to deportation. The U.S. Coast Guard returns any Cuban migrants caught at sea to the communist island. Authorities have captured or intercepted more than 2,600 since Oct. 1, and that tally is expected to match or surpass last year’s total of nearly 4,000. “It’s fair to say that this is the `Wild West’ of the Coast Guard,” said Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma, spokesman for the Coast Guard’s Miami-based 7th District, which patrols the Florida Straits. “We’ve got drugs, we’ve got migrants and we’ve got search and rescue, and we’ve got an enormous area, approximately the size of the continental United States.” PILOT’S VIEW The steady hum of a Coast Guard aircraft flying low loops over these swift, dark blue waters broadcasts a distinct message to migrants: Nothing has changed. The Coast Guard planes are equipped with sensors that pick out shapes on the water’s surface miles away. From a patrol altitude of about 1,500 feet,

HOUSE VOTES TO REPEAL C O U N T RY- O F - O R I G I N L A B E L I N G O N M E AT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry. The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month, ruling that the labels that say where animals were born, raised and slaughtered are discriminatory against the two U.S. border countries. Both have said they plan to ask the WTO for permission to impose billions of dollars in tariffs on American goods. The House voted 300-131 late Wednesday to repeal labels that tell consumers what countries the meat is from - for example, “born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States” or “born, raised and slaughtered in the United States.” The Senate has yet to act. The WTO ruled against the labels last year, prompting the appeal that was again rejected in May. The Obama administration has already revised the labels once to try to comply with previous WTO rulings, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said it’s now up to Congress to change the law to avoid retaliation from the two countries. The law was included in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills at the behest of northern U.S. ranchers who compete with the Canadian cattle industry. It also was backed by consumer advocates who say it helps shoppers know where their food comes from. Supporters have called on the U.S. government to negotiate with Canada and Mexico to find labels acceptable to all countries.

“You look at all the risks that they’re taking on those ventures and not being successful, and yet not being thwarted enough to say, `I’m not going to do it a 16th time,’” Beaudoin said, squinting into the sun’s glare off the water. “One can’t underestimate the power of the motivation of the migrant trying to enter the United States.” In this photo taken in the Florida Straits on May 17, 2015, members of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Charles David Jr, foreground, leaving the USCG cutter Mohawk with six Cuban migrants. U.S. authorities have captured or intercepted more than 2,500 Cuban migrants attempting the risky sea crossing from Cuba to the U.S. since Oct. 1, 2014.

cruise ships look like smudges on the horizon and sailboats are white dots with long wakes. A migrant vessel appears the size of a buoy. Pilots look for something suspicious: waves that don’t break quite right, a dark speck in a cloud’s shadow, the glint of something tossed overboard or the ripple of a blue tarp. “I’ve seen two guys on a Styrofoam sheet with two backpacks,” Lt. Luke Zitzman said from the cockpit of a recent patrol. Coast Guard crews will open their cargo doors to toss buckets containing water and food, sometimes their own lunches, down to migrants frantically signaling for help. They’ve also watched migrants push away life jackets and inflatable rafts thrown down to keep them afloat in deep waters before a Coast Guard cutter arrives. If they can see a shoreline, many migrants will try to swim for it. “That must be really frustrating, to see that’s freedom but not realize how far away that it really is,” said Lt. Hans de Groot, the pilot of a recent patrol. FORCED ROOMMATES Once picked up by the Coast Guard, migrants find themselves transferred from cutter to cutter before they return to Cuba. Aboard the cutter Charles David Jr., crew members sometimes recognize faces among the roughly 900 migrants who have crossed the decks since 2013. A family with a 4-year-old girl has shown up twice, and other migrants have confessed to getting caught half a dozen times or more. Although Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Beaudoin calls the migrants his guests, some can’t be pacified. Past guests have lashed out at crew, refused food and water or tried to hurt themselves, hoping to win a transfer to Florida. (That rarely works.) “They’re humans; they’re trying to make a better life for themselves. They’re not just trying to come to the U.S. to freeload. We’ve had some

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In a statement Thursday, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said the Obama administration “has long taken the position that one way to end this dispute is by repeal, but we do not consider that this is the only way Congress could bring the United States into compliance with its obligations.” Canada and Mexico have opposed the labeling because it causes their animals to be segregated from those of U.S. origin - a costly process that has led some U.S. companies to stop buying exports. Meat processors who buy animals from abroad as well as many others in the U.S. meat industry have called for a repeal of the law they have fought for years, including unsuccessfully in federal court. They say it’s burdensome and costly for producers and retailers. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after the vote that the last thing American farmers need “is for Congress to sit idly by as international bureaucrats seek to punish them through retaliatory trade policies that could devastate agriculture as well as other industries.” The bill would go beyond just the muscle cuts of red meat that were covered under the WTO case, repealing country-of-origin labeling for poultry, ground beef and ground pork. The chicken industry has said the labeling doesn’t make much sense for poultry farmers because the majority of chicken consumed in the United States is hatched, raised and processed domestically. The legislation would leave in place country-of-origin labeling requirements for several other commodities, including lamb, venison, seafood, fruits and vegetables and some nuts. Canada and Mexico have said that if they are allowed by the WTO, they may impose retaliatory measures such as tariffs against a variety of U.S. imports. Their list includes food items like beef, pork, cheese, corn, cherries, maple syrup, chocolate and pasta, plus non-agricultural goods such as mattresses, wooden furniture and jewelry. The retaliatory measures could total more than $3 billion, the countries said. According to USTR spokesman Andrew Bates, the WTO is expected to consider Canada and Mexico’s requests later this month. The United States will then object, sending the matter to WTO arbitration. “We will closely consult with Congress and interested stakeholders about possible next steps,” Bates said. The Canadian government said the vote was a positive move. “The only way for the United States to avoid billions in retaliation by late summer is to ensure legislation repealing (country of origin labeling) passes the Senate and is signed by the president,” said Canadian Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Gerry Ritz.

P R O T E C T I N G

S P E I C I E S

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The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

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IN WITH THE OLD: APPLE RESTORES F O R M E R B A N K F O R N E W S T O R E NEW YORK (AP) -- To create the newest Apple store to sell iPhones, smartwatches and other modern gadgetry, Apple took a look back at the 1920s.

The neighborhood has a mix of boutiques, art galleries, museums and residential units. Some residents worry about long lines and traffic, particularly when Apple releases new products. A lawsuit filed in a New York state court last week warns of diminished property values and quality of life.

The new store on New York’s Upper East Side occupies part of a Beaux Arts building that originally housed the U.S. Mortgage & Trust bank. Apple sought to restore some of the building’s old grandeur by reproducing the original chandeliers seen in old photographs, restoring marble floors and pilasters and turning a bank vault into a VIP showroom.

But Apple has cleared the necessary regulatory hurdles. The store is about half the size of most other Apple stores and is designed primarily for local residents and businesses needing a repair or training, Ahrendts said. Many people now buy products online anyway, she noted.

It’s all part of Apple’s effort to keep its stores distinct - not just from other retailers but from each other. And as Apple looks to open new stores or renovate existing ones including the iconic New York Fifth Avenue store, with its distinctive glass-cube entrance - the company will look for additional ways to do that. “It’s no different than every customer downloads different apps and customizes their phones differently,” said Angela Ahrendts, the senior vice president who oversees the company’s retail and online stores. Many retailers keep their stores uniform so you can recognize them when visiting a new city or country. Even if you don’t see its logo, you can often tell a McDonald’s is a McDonald’s from its distinctly sloped roof. Apple has generic stores, too, such as ones in shopping malls. Many of Apple’s larger stores in major cities make heavy use of glass, giving them a modern, open feel. But Apple has its share of stores that try to blend into original, classical architecture, though most are in Europe, where such buildings are more prevalent. The store in New York’s Grand Central train station sits at the top of a marble staircase. The one across the street from Paris’s Opera House greets customers with mosaic floor tiles. The Brisbane, Australia, store is in a building that served as an Allied military headquarters during World War II. Although designing stores individually costs more, there’s payoff in “a level of excitement, engagement and interest from consumers,” said Michael Stephenson, associate strategy director at Fitch, a branding and design consultancy. Apple isn’t saying how much it’s spending. Stephenson said Apple is a pioneer in designing stores, but even chains such as McDonald’s and Starbucks are rethinking how they

“The cube works brilliantly on Fifth Avenue and has been one of the most iconic sites,” she said. “But that works there. That wouldn’t work everywhere.” The accessories room is decorated with reproduction chandeliers at Apple’s new store on New York’s Upper East Side, Thursday, June 11, 2015. The company’s 266th U.S. store - the seventh in New York City - occupies part of a 1920s Beaux Arts building that originally housed the U.S. Mortgage & Trust bank. The store opens to the public Saturday.

make stores fit into their settings. Apple’s new Upper East Side store, which opens Saturday, has a marble entrance and no sign of anything Apple outside, save for a black flag with a white Apple logo hanging from the bank’s original flag pole. While the store itself is small, tall ceilings and the usual open layout make it look spacious. The teller windows might be gone, but Apple went into minute details to restore the building. The entryway, stairs and other parts of the architecture are made of Botticino marble, the same Italian marble used at Grand Central and Penn Station in New York (and what was originally used in the bank). Six metal chandeliers - reproduced to match the originals from old photographs - grace the ceilings. Downstairs, the heavily reinforced vault, complete with a massive steel door behind a set of steel bars, might remind visitors of an old gangster movie. This time, though, the door leads to a room for VIP customers, meetings and other purposes. Upper East Side will be Apple’s 266th store in the U.S. and seventh in New York City, a key market for Apple because it gets twice as much traffic as stores in other U.S. cities.

ONE OF THE ANGOLA THREE RECALLS L I F E I N S O L I TA RY C O N F I N E M E N T said Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office. For now, Woodfox is being held in a jail where he’s awaited his new trial since February. His supporters estimate he’s spent a total of more than four decades in isolation, with some breaks in the 1990s and in 2008. It’s a situation King knows well. He spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from Austin, Texas, where he now lives.

Albert Woodfox walks into a courthouse in Louisiana. A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the release of Woodfox, the last of the “Angola Three” inmates who spent decades in isolation after forming a Black Panther Party to protest prison conditions. Tuesday’s order came a day after a federal judge ruled that the state can’t fairly try Woodfox, now 68, a third time for the death of a prison guard 43 years ago.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Robert King says he watched nearly three decades of his life fade away in solitary confinement inside Louisiana’s Angola prison, sometimes glimpsing the world through a small window and longing for the few hours a week he might feel the sun on his face. “We were caged up,” said King, who was released in 2001 after a court reversed his conviction in the death of a fellow inmate in 1973. “I don’t think a person can go through that and come up unscathed.” King is one of three men known as the “Angola Three,” who supporters say spent decades in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, often referred to simply as Angola, the town in which it’s located. Another man, Herman Wallace, was released in October 2013 when a judge granted him a new trial and died days later. Now, King is closely watching the fate of the last of the three, Albert Woodfox, after a judge this week ordered his immediate release and barred the state from trying him a third time in the killing of a prison guard in 1972. The attorney general is fighting that ruling and won an emergency stay keeping him in jail while the two sides argue the matter before an appeals court.

U N I ON -B A C KE D D E M S continued from page 5

The union’s release and Reid’s comment in the Senate put into sharper focus what is looking like a massive cyber espionage success by China. Sen. Susan Collins, an intelligence committee member, has also said the hack came from China. Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said last week that Chinese intelligence agencies have for some time been seeking to assemble a database of information about Americans. Those personal details can be used for blackmail, or also to shape bogus emails designed to appear legitimate while injecting spyware on the networks of government agencies or businesses Chinese hackers are trying to penetrate. U.S. intelligence officials say China, like the U.S., spies for national security advantage. Unlike the U.S., they say, China also engages in largescale theft of corporate secrets for the benefit of state-sponsored enterprises that compete with Western companies. Nearly every major U.S. company has been hacked from China, they say. The Office of Personnel Management is also a repository for extremely sensitive information assembled through background investigations of employees and contractors who hold security clearances. OPM’s Schumach has said there is “no evidence” that information was taken. But there is growing skepticism among intelligence agency employees and contractors about that claim. In the Senate on Thursday, Democrats blocked a Republican effort to add a cybersecurity bill to a sweeping defense measure. The vote was 56-40, four votes short of the number necessary.

King said he was shackled at the hands and feet anytime he left his cell. He said he could see and converse with a handful of other inmates in the immediate vicinity, but they all had to be careful not to talk too loud, or too much, or they would be written up. The conditions changed over time. At first there was no window or time outside, but eventually he was allowed outside for short periods a few times a week and given a cell with a window.

“The issue of cybersecurity is simply too important to be used as a political chit and tucked away in separate legislation.” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.

“If it was raining, too hot, too cold, they wouldn’t let us go outside, and they wouldn’t give us makeup time,” he said. Many experts say such conditions, whatever the name, can have detrimental effects on inmates. Some have reported anxiety, paranoia, depression and hallucinations, said Dr. Sharon Shalev, a research associate from the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford who runs the website http://www.solitaryconfinement.org . Shalev said she’s had prisoners tell her they harmed themselves just to reaffirm they were still alive. There are no precise figures on the number of inmates held in isolation, the Vera Institute of Justice said in a May report. However, the report said estimates range from 25,000 - which includes only those held in so-called supermax facilities - to 80,000, which includes those held in some type of segregated housing across all state and federal prisons. The report also said inmates in isolation are more likely to kill or hurt themselves than those held in the general population. What has made the case of the Angola Three and Woodfox in particular such a lightning rod for international attention has been the length of time they were in isolation. Tory Pegram of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 said Woodfox was first put in solitary in April 1972, the same day the guard he was eventually accused of killing died. Louisiana corrections officials have said he was in closed cell restriction for many years but declined to elaborate because litigation is pending.

The lawyers also argued that prosecutors’ claims that Woodfox was dangerous were “starkly untrue.”

Meanwhile, King is eagerly awaiting his friend’s release. He started driving from his home in Austin on Tuesday to meet Woodfox when he was released but turned around when that release was delayed. But he plans to be there if and when Woodfox walks out of the jail.

“The perception of `solitary confinement’ is a far cry from the reality,”

The Fifth Avenue store, which draws tourists from around the world, will temporarily move soon to another iconic space, the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store that Tom Hanks made famous in “Big.”

Democrats had warned of the dangers of cyberspying after the theft of government personnel files, but Democrats voted against moving ahead on the legislation, frustrated with the GOP-led effort to tie the two bills together. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the defense legislation over budget changes by the GOP.

In court filings Wednesday, Woodfox’s lawyers argued that he does not pose a flight risk if released, needs medical attention and would submit to electronic surveillance if released.

State officials have said repeatedly that the evidence shows he is a killer. They say Woodfox has been in a form of protective custody called closed cell restriction, but not solitary confinement. They say he’s allowed to watch television through the bars of his cell, talk to other inmates in his tier, read books, talk to visiting chaplains and leave his cell every day for an hour.

As Apple opens new stores, it will also renovate about 20 existing U.S. stores, including the ones on Fifth Avenue and San Francisco’s Union Square. Ahrendts said 60 percent of the U.S. stores predate the iPhone and have outgrown their space. Many stores stated for renovations will also double in size, in some cases moving to a new location nearby. That gives Apple opportunities to rethink designs.

In the years since his release, King has written a book and often gives talks on his experiences. When asked how he didn’t go crazy, he replied, laughing, “I didn’t say I wasn’t crazy.” “It was bitter,” he said. “But there are some things that you can make out of lemons. I just tried every day to make lemonade.”

continued on page 8

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

U N I O N : H A C K E R S H AV E P E R S O N N E L D ATA O N E V E RY F E D E R A L E M P L O Y E E WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, saying that the cyber theft of U.S. employee information was more damaging than the Obama administration has acknowledged.

compromised.”

Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor that the December hack into Office of Personnel Management data was carried out by “the Chinese” without specifying whether he meant the Chinese government or individuals. Reid is one of eight lawmakers briefed on the most secret intelligence information. U.S. officials have declined to publicly blame China, which has denied involvement.

Cox complained in the letter that “very little substantive information has been shared with us, despite the fact that we represent more than 670,000 federal employees in departments and agencies throughout the executive branch.”

J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on the incomplete information the union received from OPM, “We believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree, and up to one million former federal employees.”

The central personnel data file contains up to 780 separate pieces of information about an employee.

Eleyn Ponjuan, who is taking a course in independent journalism led by U.S. professors via video link inside the U.S. Interests Section, works on her laptop at home in Havana, Cuba. “I don’t consider myself counter revolutionary, on the contrary,” she said in her cramped house in a poor section of Havana where she also runs a free community library out of her living room. “I just a want a change for the better for the country,” Ponjuan said.

include” personnel file information such as Social Security numbers and birth dates.

“We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous,” Cox said in the letter. The union called the breach “an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce.”

The union said it is basing its assessment on internal OPM briefings. The agency has sought to downplay the damage, saying what was taken “could

Samuel Schumach, an OPM spokesman, said that “for security reasons, we will not discuss specifics of the information that might have been

F E D S : J A I L G U A R D K I L L E D I N M AT E , CONSPIRED WITH OTHERS TO LIE Byron Taylor, foreground, a guard at the Rikers Island jail, leaves court in New York, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 after his arraignment on conspiracy and obstruction charges for his part in a brutal assault on an inmate in 2012. Behind Taylor is his attorney Samuel Braverman.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Rikers Island jail guard kicked an inmate to death in 2012 and then conspired with two others to lie about what happened, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday in announcing two arrests and a guilty plea and what he called “more sad news” out of the nation’s second-largest jail system.

Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said last week that Chinese intelligence agencies have for some time been seeking to assemble a database of information about Americans. Those personal details can be used for blackmail, or also to shape bogus emails designed to appear legitimate while injecting spyware on the networks of government agencies or businesses Chinese hackers are trying to penetrate. U.S. intelligence officials say China, like the U.S., spies for national security advantage. Unlike the U.S., they say, China also engages in large-scale theft of corporate secrets for the benefit of state-sponsored enterprises that compete with Western companies. Nearly every major U.S. company has been hacked from China, they say. The Office of Personnel Management is also a repository for extremely sensitive information assembled through background investigations of employees and contractors who hold security clearances. OPM’s Schumach has said there is “no evidence” that information was taken. But there is growing skepticism among intelligence agency employees and contractors about that claim. In the Senate on Thursday, Democrats blocked a Republican effort to add a cybersecurity bill to a sweeping defense measure. The vote was 56-40, four votes short of the number necessary.

Zoe Salzman, a Spear family attorney, said the family was grateful for the federal prosecution.

New York’s 11,000 daily inmate jail system fell under increased scrutiny over the past year after two seriously mentally ill inmates at Rikers Island died and other problems.

“The issue of cybersecurity is simply too important to be used as a political chit and tucked away in separate legislation.” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.

Outside court, Schmidt declined comment. A lawyer for Torres declined to comment.

FORMER CHINA SECURITY CHIEF SENTENCED TO LIFE FOR CORRUPTION not antagonize any party members who had been allied with the former security czar. “President Xi does not want to make too many enemies,” Lam said. “Xi has won the battle and he does not want to go too far.”

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced the arrests of former guard Brian Coll and current guard Byron Taylor in Ronald Spear’s death following a federal investigation that began when state authorities decided not to bring charges.

Authorities also did not want to see Zhou put up a feisty fight in an open court, Lam said. His expression of contrition on state TV also helped quell the notion of continued factional fighting at the party’s uppermost echelon.

“Rikers inmates, although walled off from the rest of society, are not walled off from the protections of our Constitution,” Preet said at a news conference.

Zhou was sentenced to life in prison for accepting what the court said were “particularly huge bribes.” He was given lesser terms on the abuse of power and state secrets charges, and was ordered to serve his sentences concurrently. Zhou’s sentence also mandated the seizure of all his personal assets.

The prosecutor described “more sad news out of Rikers Island” six months after suing New York City to address what a Justice Department investigation found was a “deep-seated culture of violence” toward inmates there, particularly the young. The Spear investigation showed that guards worked together to thwart investigators probing how the 52-year-old inmate awaiting trial on a burglary charge was killed Dec. 19, 2012, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court.

In this image taken from video released by China’s CCTV, Zhou Yongkang, formerly the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee member in charge of security, sits in a courtroom at the the First Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin in Tianjin, China, Thursday, June 11, 2015. Zhou was sentenced Thursday to life in prison on corruption charges, in a victory for President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign seen as further cementing his authority by removing a potential challenger.

According to the court, Zhou received, directly and indirectly, a total of 130 million yuan ($21 million) in bribes and used his influence to allow others to realize 2.1 billion ($343 million) in profits on business dealings that caused 1.4 billion ($229 million) in losses for the state treasury - presumably through the sale of government assets at below cost.

Spear was held face-down on the jail floor in view of fellow inmates shouting, “They’re kicking him!” and “They’re killing him!” according to the criminal complaint written by FBI Agent Vanessa M. Tibbits.

BEIJING (AP) -- A court sentenced China’s former security chief to life in prison Thursday after convicting him of corruption in a secretly held trial, underscoring President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign and further cementing Xi’s authority by burying a once-powerful political faction.

Zhou’s actions “inflicted enormous damage to public finances and the interests of the nation and the people,” the court said in an explanation of the verdict on its website.

She said witnesses described Coll repeatedly kicking Spear before kneeling next to him, lifting his head and saying, “Remember that I’m the one who did this to you,” before dropping his head on the hard floor. The FBI agent said a corrections captain told investigators that Coll asked six to eight months after Spear died whether he should get a teardrop tattoo on his eyelid, something street gang members do after they kill someone. She said Coll told the captain “I beat the case” after the state court case ended without charges. The complaint said two guards were cooperating, including former corrections officer Anthony Torres, 49, of New Rochelle, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit obstruction of justice and filing a false report. Coll, 45, of Smithtown, was charged with depriving Spear of his rights, obstruction of justice, filing a false report and conspiracy. Taylor, 31, of Brentwood, faces conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges. Authorities said Taylor helped restrain Spear and then lied about his role. Prosecutor Brooke E. Cucinella said the obstruction charge carries a potential prison term of 20 years. Upon conviction, sentencing guidelines call for more than 10 years to be spent in prison, he said. New York City settled a lawsuit last year for $2.75 million stemming from the death. Lawyers say Spear complained that guards retaliated against him for contacting lawyers about his kidney disease treatment. Attorney Samuel Braverman said lawyers “will defend Mr. Taylor vigorously and cross each bridge as we get to it.” Taylor was released on $200,000 bail. Sam Schmidt, Coll’s attorney, told a magistrate judge before his client’s bail was set at $500,000 that Coll has been undergoing treatment for psychiatric issues since Spear died, is estranged from most of his family, is separated from his wife and children and has depleted his assets. Schmidt confirmed that Coll’s father has an order of protection against him. Coll is expected to make bail and be released from custody Thursday. He was banned from possessing any dangerous weapons, using alcohol excessively and was ordered to stay away from any potential fact witnesses in the case. He also must undergo mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Zhou Yongkang, 72, was spared the death penalty in a decision seen as a show of leniency toward the former Politburo Standing Committee member, the highest-level politician to face court in China in more than three decades. The dour and once-feared Zhou expressed remorse on state television in an appearance in which he looked much older and haggard, with undyed grey hair rather than the dyed-black hair he had when he was last seen publicly in late 2013. “I accept the court verdict, and I will not appeal,” Zhou told the court, with his head lowered and body slightly bowed. The First Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin in northeastern China said it had convicted Zhou of taking massive amounts of bribes, abusing power and leaking state secrets in a trial on May 22. The court cited the latter charge as the reason why the trial was held behind closed doors and not publicly announced at the time. However, observers have said the closed-door trial may have been arranged by the Communist Party leadership to prevent any lurid details of the party’s inner workings from becoming public. Zhou was once seen as not only a potent rival of Xi but as the center of a vast patronage network stemming from his separate stints as an executive in the state-owned oil industry, party boss in the southwestern province of Sichuan and head of state security. “The case involves senior folks from the petroleum industry, the state security apparatus with many corruption scandals,” said Willy Lam, an expert on China’s elite politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The authorities wanted to avoid having them appear in the public.” Lam said Zhou had been expected to receive a suspended death sentence, and that the life sentence indicated that Xi wanted to compromise and

While the charges potentially mandated a death sentence, it said Zhou received leniency after confessing and showing repentance and ordering his relatives to hand over the majority of their ill-gotten gains. Although the charges of abuse of power and leaking state secrets were serious, they had not resulted in any major consequences, the court said. The court said Zhou had passed state secrets to his Qigong master, a kind of spiritual mentor, though it did not detail the secrets or say what the master had done with the information. Zhou is the highest-ranking former politician to face court since the 1981 treason trial of Mao Zedong’s wife and other members of the “Gang of Four” who persecuted political opponents during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Zhou had been under investigation since late 2013, and his former allies in government and the oil industry also were scrutinized. Zhou was once seen as untouchable, and his downfall has been touted as a flagship case for Xi’s anti-corruption drive, which is supposed to target the “tigers” - or top-ranking officials - along with the “flies” - or the low-ranking ones. But Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based independent historian and political commentator, questioned whether Zhou was a true tiger, given that he already was retired and much of his influence had diminished. He was a “clawless tiger,” Zhang said. Zhou spent the early part of his career in the oil industry, rising through the ranks over several decades to become the general manager of China National Petroleum Corp., one of the world’s biggest energy companies, in 1996. He was Sichuan party chief from 1999-2002. Later, he oversaw China’s vast police and security apparatus.

The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

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SUICIDE BOMBER STRIKES NEAR ANCIENT TEMPLE IN LUXOR, EGYPT

LUXOR, Egypt (AP) -- Militants tried to attack the ancient temple of Karnak in southern Egypt on Wednesday, with a suicide bomber blowing himself up and two gunmen battling police. No sightseers were hurt in the thwarted assault, but it suggested that Islamic extremists are shifting targets from security forces to the country’s vital tourism industry.

only on foot.

The violence left the bomber and one gunman dead, the other wounded and arrested, and four other people wounded. The temple was not damaged.

“They looked scary. ... One of them had really bad eyes,” said the waiter, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ikrami, for fear of problems with police for talking to the media.

The waiter who served the men said only one spoke to him and had an accent from northern Egypt, while the others stopped talking when he approached. When they paid their bill, he said he refused to take their tip.

The attackers carried guns in backpacks, and one wore a belt of explosives. They rode in a taxi through a police checkpoint to a parking lot and sat at a cafe and ordered lemonades, witnesses told The Associated Press. The taxi driver, suspicious after they refused his offer to help with the packs, alerted police.

Another cafe employee, Abdel-Nasser Mohammed, said the taxi driver reported his suspicions about the men to police. As the three walked away, a policeman approached them, leading to the tussle between the officer and the bomber, Mohammed said.

When a policeman approached, the bomber tried to hug him, but the policeman wrestled away. Seconds later, he detonated the explosives, and the others pulled automatic weapons from their bags and opened fire wildly, sending a small group of European tourists running for cover, the witnesses said. The attack followed one this month outside the famed Giza Pyramids in which gunmen killed two policemen. The violence points to a change in tactics by Islamic militants against the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. For two years, attacks have been centered in the Sinai Peninsula, mostly by a group that has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group and largely focused on retaliation against police and soldiers. A campaign against tourism, one of the main sources of foreign revenue, could deal a blow to el-Sissi’s promises to repair Egypt’s economy. Tourism has just started to show signs of recovery after plunging in the turmoil since the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The first five months of this year saw tourism revenues up 9 percent from the same period last year, Tourism Minister Khaled Ramy said. Ramy said he expects the slow recovery to continue despite the attack, and he underscored how police had thwarted it. “Security forces were there. It’s a very important message to everyone,” he told

The bomber triggered the blast near a public restroom, and the other two opened fire. One ran toward the visitors’ center, and a policeman shot him in the head, Mohammed said. An Egyptian security official welcomes German tourists at the ruins of the Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt, Wednesday, June 10, 2015. A suicide bomber blew himself up on Wednesday just steps away from the ancient Egyptian temple in Luxor, a southern city visited by millions of tourists every year, security and health officials said. No tourists were killed or hurt in the late morning attack.

the AP on a flight from Cairo to Luxor. Mohammed Sayed Badr, the governor of Luxor province, said the attack was “an attempt to break into the temple of Karnak.” “They didn’t make it in,” he said.

Karnak, one of Egypt’s biggest attractions, is a giant complex of temples, statues, obelisks and columns built by pharaonic dynasties alongside the Nile. The oldest sections date back nearly 4,000 years.

AP video of the scene showed what was believed to be the remains of the bomber covered with a black sheet with pools of blood nearby.

Access to the site is through a gate and a roadblock, leading to a parking lot and visitors’ center hundreds of yards from the ancient structure, which is reachable

The monument “is safe and unaffected and visitors continue to arrive,” temple director Mohammed Abdel-Aziz told the AP. Four groups of foreigners visited after the attack.

As part of the search, state troopers and correction officers in helmets and body armor retraced their steps around the prison, checking garage doors, sheds, windows and other structures for signs of a break-in or other clues. More than 450 federal and state law enforcement officers were taking part in the search, including customs agents, federal marshals and park rangers. But at the late-afternoon news conference, D’Amico confessed: “I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, to be honest with you.”

At a news conference outside the maximum-security prison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said investigators learned that the inmates had talked before last weekend’s breakout about going to neighboring Vermont. “We have information that suggests they thought New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement,” Shumlin said on Day 5 of the search. “And that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be. We do not.” He and other officials would not say how authorities learned that information. New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico also said that a prison employee - identified in news reports as Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison tailor shop - had befriended the killers and “may have had some role in assisting them.” He would not elaborate. Mitchell’s son, Tobey Mitchell, told NBC that she checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn’t have helped the inmates escape. Using power tools, inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole in the street outside the 3,000-inmate Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York, about 20 miles from the Canadian border. The breakout was discovered early Saturday, meaning the inmates may have had a head start of several hours, Cuomo said. Authorities suspect they had help from the inside in obtaining the power tools. Unions representing guards and civilian staff members at the prison said many have been questioned by investigators but no one has been suspended, disciplined or charged. Vermont authorities are patrolling Lake Champlain and areas alongside it, Shumlin said. Cuomo urged the people of Vermont to be on the alert and report anything suspicious, warning:

The exchange of fire with police lasted several minutes, witnesses said, and two policemen were among the wounded. Only a handful of tourists and Egyptians were in the temple at the time, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

“Trust me, these men are nothing to be trifled with.”

“When the explosion happened, I ran for cover and told my friend, a tour guide, to run with the tourists with him. I screamed at him, `Terrorism!’” he told the AP.

But witnesses noted it was civilian bystanders who alerted police to the threat.

H U N T F O R K I L L E R S E X PA N D S TO V E R M O N T; S TA F F E R U N D E R S U S P I C I O N

A prison employee stands guard on a tower at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., Wednesday, June 10, 2015. Police were resuming house-to-house searches near the maximum-security prison in northern New York where two killers escaped using power tools, authorities said Wednesday as they renewed their plea for help from the public.

Tourist shop owner Sheik Ahmed Abdel-Mawgoud said he been standing near the restroom only seconds before the blast.

The killers’ mugshots have been put on more than 50 digital billboards in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, state police said, and a $100,000 reward has been posted.

There was no claim of responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic militants who have operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Last year, the main Sinai-based insurgent group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which has destroyed archaeological landmarks in Syria and Iraq, viewing them as idolatrous. The violence in Sinai accelerated and spread to other parts of Egypt following the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. The militants say the attacks are in retaliation for a massive crackdown on Islamists in Egypt. A senior security official said investigators are looking to see whether the Luxor attackers are Egyptians and whether it marks an expansion of the violence to southern Egypt, which was a breeding ground for the militants of the 1990s and 2000. In the 1990s, Islamic militants targeted tourism to try to undermine the economy. The deadliest attack was in Luxor in November 1997, 58 people were killed at the 3,400-year-old Hatshepsut Temple. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said the new breed of militants were unknown to the authorities. But he said the latest attack was a qualitative shift in the militants’ target. The attack coincided with a major regional economic summit, hosted by el-Sissi at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Law enforcement officials again asked the public to report anything out of the ordinary.

Luxor is home to some of Egypt’s most famous ancient temples and pharaonic tombs, including that of King Tutankhamun. The city has been one the sites hit hardest by the sharp downturn in foreign visitors since the 2011 uprising.

“We don’t want them out searching the woods,” Sheriff David Favro said. “But if you’re sitting on your porch, get your binoculars out and see if you see something unusual.”

Before the turmoil, tourism accounted for as much as 20 percent of Egypt’s foreign currency revenues, with as a high of 14.7 million visitors in 2010.

In Dannemora, Barbara McCasland said officers asked to search her home but she told them no. “I’m pretty battened down here,” she said. “My windows are locked and everything.” As the manhunt dragged on, she said she was getting worried: “I wasn’t in the beginning, but seeing that they’ve been out there so long, I am a little nervous.” Many in the prison town greeted the return of the searchers with a shrug. Many suspect Sweat and Matt are long gone and they are past any danger.

After the uprising, those numbers plunged to 9.6 million, and then fell lower in 2013 after Morsi’s ouster. Tourists have been coming back slowly, with revenues jumping to $4 billion so far this year, compared with $1.9 billion in the same period in 2014. Beach resorts in southern Sinai and along the Red Sea coast have drawn most of the visitors, with cultural sites like Luxor seeing only a trickle. Most tourists in the searing heat of the summer months come to Luxor only for a one-day trip from the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. Wednesday’s attack is likely to result in cancellations in bookings for Luxor, although the blow is cushioned by the fact that it is low season and most tourists stay away until October.

“I’m not worried about it,” Jackie Trombley said.

Three major German operators, TUI Deutschland, the Germany branch of Thomas Cook and L’TUR, said they are temporarily canceling excursions to Luxor, but stressed that most of their customers are at Red Sea resorts or on Nile cruises.

Referring to the searchers swarming the area, she said: “We’ve got these guys down the road. They’re everywhere, so it really doesn’t bother me.”

“We have no reason to advise against traveling to Egypt at the present time, since the German Foreign Ministry hasn’t changed its security guidance,” said L’TUR spokesman Thomas Pluennecke. “But, as a precaution, we have stopped all excursions to Luxor. Of course we take the situation seriously.”

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_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

BEFORE FRANCIS, LONG LINE OF POPES VOICED ENVIRONMENT ALARM VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Anxiety has gripped American conservatives over Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment. So much so that you might think a pope had never before blamed fossil fuels for global warming. Or accused energy companies of hoarding the Earth’s resources at the expense of the poor. Or urged the rich to consume less and share more.

First, no pope has dedicated an entire encyclical to ecological concerns. And no pope has cited the findings of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change in a major document, as Francis is expected to do. Francis, history’s first Latin American pope, will also be bringing the point of view of the “Global South” to a social teaching document of the church, which is in itself new.

But several of Francis’ immediate predecessors have done just that, inspired by the Bible itself - raising the question of what all the fuss is about. Why would U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic who says he loves the pope, urge Francis to “leave science to the scientists” and stop talking about global warming? And why would conservative Catholic commentators attack the Vatican for hosting the U.N. secretary-general at a climate conference? It turns out that environmental issues are particularly vexing for the Catholic Church, especially in the United States. They carry implications for Big Business, often with ties to wealthy Catholics, as well as for the world’s growing population, which brings up questions of birth control. For the religious right, the Vatican’s endorsement of the U.N. alarm about global warming amounts to an endorsement of the U.N. agenda to give women access to contraception and abortion.

But on the whole, the church’s environmental message has been articulated for years, though it has gotten lost in other issues. “To be honest, we have been talking about this but not with enough emphasis,” said the Rev. Agostino Zampini Davies, the Argentine theological adviser to CAFOD, the development agency of the Catholic Church of England and Wales.

Pope Francis, wearing a yellow raincoat, waves to the faithful as he arrives in Tacloban, Philippines. Anxiety has so gripped American conservatives over Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment that you might think a pope had never before blamed fossil fuels for global warming. Or accused energy companies of hoarding the Earth’s resources at the expense of the poor. Or urged the rich to consume less and share more.

How Francis deals with population growth as it affects the environment is one of the key questions that will be answered when the encyclical is released June 18.

Before him there was Pope Paul VI. In his 1967 encyclical, “Popularum Progresso” (Development of Peoples), Paul wrote that while creation is for man to use, the goods of the Earth are meant to be shared by all, not just the rich.

Despite such divisive issues, popes in recent decades have not shied from framing ecological concerns in moral terms, given that in the Bible itself God places mankind in the Garden of Eden with the explicit instructions to not only “till” the ground but to also “keep it.”

“No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life,” Paul wrote nearly a half-century ago.

Recent popes have made clear that human activity is largely to blame for the environmental degradation that is threatening the Earth’s ecosystems. They have demanded urgent action by industrialized nations to change their ways and undergo an “ecological conversion” to prevent the poor from paying for the sins of the rich. Some have even made their points in encyclicals, the most authoritative teaching document a pope can issue. Take one of St. John Paul II’s annual messages for the World Day of Peace: “The gradual depletion of the ozone layer and the related greenhouse effect has now reached crisis proportions as a consequence of industrial growth, massive urban concentrations and vastly increased energy needs,” John Paul wrote. “Industrial waste, the burning of fossil fuels, unrestricted deforestation, the use of certain types of herbicides, coolants and propellant: all of these are known to harm the atmosphere and environment. The resulting meteorological and atmospheric changes range from damage to health to the possible future submersion of low-lying lands.”

And then there was Pope Benedict XVI, dubbed the “green pope” because he took concrete action to back up his strong ecological calls: Under his watch, the Vatican installed photovoltaic cells on the roof of its main auditorium, a solar cooling unit for its main cafeteria and joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions. “The fact that some states, power groups and energy companies hoard non-renewable energy resources represents a grave obstacle to development in poor countries,” Benedict wrote in his 2009 encyclical “Charity in Truth.” “The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process, in order to plan together for the future.” In that encyclical, the German theologian, however, addressed the population issue by denouncing mandatory birth control policies and noting that even populous countries have emerged from poverty thanks to the talents of their people, not their numbers. At the same time, though, he stressed “responsible procreation” - a theme Francis is likely to take up himself given that he has already said Catholics need not reproduce “like rabbits.” So what is so new about Francis’ encyclical?

The year was 1990, a quarter century ago.

2 CHARGED WITH CONSPIRING TO HELP IS GROUP WITH BOSTON MAN This undated self portrait shows Usaama Rahim, who was shot to death by terror investigators in Boston, Tuesday, June 2, 2015. A Rhode Island man was arrested Thursday, June 11, 2015, in connection with the probe into the Massachusetts man who was fatally shot by terrorism investigators as they sought to question him about a possible plot to kill police officers. Nicholas Rovinski is expected to appear in federal court Friday, when the charges against him will be announced, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s spokeswoman Christina DiIorio-Sterling said.

BOSTON (AP) -- A criminal complaint says two men are charged with conspiring to help the Islamic State group by plotting with a Boston terror suspect to kill U.S. citizens to support the group’s objectives.

Nicholas Rovinski, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was arrested Thursday. David Wright, of Everett, Massachusetts, was arrested last week. Both men are charged with conspiring with Usaama Rahim, who was killed last week by terror investigators who had him under surveillance. Authorities say Rahim lunged at police with a military-style knife. Rovinski and Wright were charged Friday with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. The criminal complaint says the men initially planned to behead a political activist whom law enforcement officials have identified as blogger Pamela Geller. But the complaint says Rahim later decided he would attack police.

saying he hadn’t yet been given any information on the charges against Rovinski. Fick is one of the public defenders who represented Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. A docket sheet filed in court lists Rovinski as a defendant but does not list any specific charges against him. It also lists two aliases for him, Nuh Amriki and Nuh Andalusi. Federal officials had searched his house at least two days last week, but they wouldn’t discuss details of the search.

“The teaching of Pope Francis and his efforts to address the environment are in harmony with those of his predecessors,” he insisted.

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on passage of the trade adjustment bill. That created the opening for Democratic fast-track opponents to take aim at the trade adjustment measure. “The TAA is the handmaiden to facilitate the whole deal,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. “We have the potential to stop this whole train.” Friday’s outcome appears to depend on how many Democrats defect on the trade adjustment bill - and whether Republicans can make up their numbers. The biggest questions hanging over the House late Thursday were: How many of the 188 Democrats will vote against TAA because it’s the best way to kill fast track? And how many of the 246 Republicans might hold their noses and vote for the jobs program in a bid to save fast track? The trade issue’s divisiveness was evident when the House voted narrowly, 217-212, on a procedure Thursday to advance the package to Friday’s expected showdown. The White House, recognizing the precarious position the package is in, dispatched top officials to Capitol Hill Thursday to meet with Democrats, and Obama himself made a surprise appearance at Thursday night’s annual congressional baseball game. Arriving as Democratic and Republican lawmakers faced off at Nationals Park, Obama was greeted with chants of “TPA! TPA!” from the GOP side - the acronym for the Trade Promotion Authority fast track bill.

The FBI said Rahim, who had previously discussed beheadings, bought three knives and told Wright he would begin trying to randomly kill police officers. An anti-terror task force of FBI agents and Boston police officers, faced with an imminent threat, confronted Rahim on a sidewalk and fatally shot him when he refused to drop his knife, authorities said. Boston police Commissioner William Evans said officers confronted Rahim because “military and law enforcement lives were at threat.” He said the officers “made the right call,” drawing their guns only after backing away and giving Rahim “multiple chances” to drop the military-style knife he was holding.

Nicholas Rovinski, of Warwick, Rhode Island, was arrested Thursday and is scheduled to appear in federal court at 2 p.m. Friday, when the charges against him will be announced, said Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in Boston.

His mother, Rahimah Rahim, told WCVB-TV that she never saw any signs that her son had become radicalized. She said she talked with her son about Islamic State and people involved in “criminal activities,” and he rejected such activities as “un-Islamic.”

Federal authorities say Boston resident Usaama Rahim plotted for at least a week to attack police. He was shot to death when police and federal agents confronted him last week.

Wright, of Everett, Massachusetts, is in custody pending a June 19 hearing.

Rovinski’s lawyer, William Fick, declined to comment Friday morning,

Amid the alarm that Francis will go far beyond what past popes have said, U.S. Cardinal Donald Wuerl recently addressed a conference of business and church leaders on how sustainable actions can drive the economic growth needed to lift people out of poverty

Rahim, who had been under surveillance, was confronted on June 2 because he had bought knives and talked of an imminent attack on “boys in blue,” the FBI said.

A second man has been arrested in the case connected to the Massachusetts man who was fatally shot by terrorism investigators as they sought to question him about a possible plot to kill police officers.

Rahim’s nephew David Wright was arrested in the case, charged with conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation.

Zampini noted that the 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, a massive undertaking by the Vatican to pull all the church’s social teachings in one book, gave scant attention to the environment - “a missed opportunity” Zampini Davies said that Francis is now correcting with an even more authoritative document.

An FBI affidavit supporting the charge against Wright says Rahim, Wright and another man met on a Rhode Island beach “to discuss their plans.” It doesn’t identify the other man.

Rahim’s relatives have disputed investigators’ version of events, citing surveillance video of the encounter released by police. They said the video doesn’t show him brandishing a weapon or approaching officers aggressively. They said he was not the initial aggressor and did not appear to be breaking any laws as he walked toward a bus stop on his way to work.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Zampini Davies recently made a power-point presentation to the church’s global Caritas aid agencies outlining what each pope and bishops’ conference has said about the environment for the past half-century, a remarkable compilation that could have saved Francis’ ghost-writers time and effort in drafting the encyclical.

A telephone call to Rovinski’s house rang unanswered, and a woman inside yelled through the front door to a reporter outside, “Get out of here.”

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The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

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G E N E R A L : N E W U S I R A Q C O U L D B E

H U B I N M O D E L

NAPLES, Italy (AP) -- The new U.S. military hub setting up in Iraq’s western desert could be a model for more such train-and-advise operations - and with it likely more U.S. troops - designed to help Iraq defeat the Islamic State, the top-ranking American general said Thursday.

“Is this a game changer? ... No. It’s an extension of an existing campaign that makes the campaign more credible. The game changers are going to have to come from the Iraqi government,” Dempsey told reporters traveling with him.

“Sure, we’re looking all the time at whether there might be additional sites necessary,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters traveling with him to Naples, Italy, where he is meeting with U.S. commanders.

The expanded effort also will include expediting the delivery of U.S. equipment and arms to Iraq, including directly to troops at al-Taqaddum, under the authority of the government in Baghdad. Obama this week lamented that the U.S. lacks a “complete strategy” for defeating the Islamic State, and officials pointed to a glaring lack of recruits among Sunnis.

“It’s another one of the options” short of committing U.S. ground combat forces, he said. President Barack Obama has ruled out U.S. ground combat. Dempsey spoke the day after the Obama administration announced that as many as 450 U.S. troops will go over the next two months to al-Taqqadum, situated between the Islamic State-occupied cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in Anbar province, to advise Iraqi forces and help integrate a larger number of Sunni tribal fighters into the Iraqi campaign to retake Ramadi. Dempsey said the mission for U.S. forces there “first and foremost” will be to assist the Iraqi military in organizing and executing its counteroffensive, while encouraging greater Sunni involvement. Integrating into the fight the Sunni tribes - who have either been sidelined by the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad or unwilling to join - is seen as a crucial to driving the Islamic State out of the Sunni-majority areas of western Iraq. As the Iraqi campaign against the Islamic State progresses, Dempsey said, another such U.S. hub could be established along the route between Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, which has been under Islamic State control for a year. Prospects for launching a counteroffensive in Mosul this year, however, seem dim, given the Iraqi army’s recent defeat in Ramadi. Dempsey refused to offer a timeline for Iraq launching a counteroffensive in Ramadi, but his description of the plan for al-Taqqadum indicated the big counter-attack is not imminent.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest answers a question on the battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq, Wednesday, June 10, 2015, during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington

The Sunni-Shiite divide has been at the heart of the Islamic State’s successes in Iraq. Officials blamed the Iraqi government for last year’s collapse of the military in the face of the Islamic State onslaught. Many Sunnis in the armed forces dropped their weapons and fled, unwilling to fight for the Shiite-led government. Some local citizens in Sunni-majority areas still fear an invasion and reprisals from Iran-backed Shiite militia even more than domination by the Islamic State. And Iraqi leaders in the Shiite-led government have been slow to recruit Sunni tribesmen, fearing that the fighters, once armed, could turn against them.

“It will take several weeks” for the U.S. to establish its base at al-Taqqadum, he said. It will include not only U.S. military advisers but also personnel to provide basic supplies and to protect the base. He said almost half of the 450 troops will be devoted to the “force protection” mission. Asked about the reason for putting U.S. advisers closer to the fight for Ramadi, he said, “I think that this will be an enabler to what eventually will become a counterattack to reclaim Ramadi.” Wednesday’s announcement left out any move to send U.S. forces closer to the front lines, either to call in airstrikes or to advise smaller battlefront units, underscoring Obama’s reluctance to plunge the military deeper into war and risk the sight of more body bags coming home from Iraq. The U.S. is insistent that the Americans will not have a combat role but said they may venture out of the base in order to help identify and recruit Sunni tribes.

F B I : B O S TO N M A N TA L K E D O F A BEHEADING, KILLING OFFICERS Vermont authorities are patrolling Lake Champlain and areas alongside it, Shumlin said. Cuomo urged the people of Vermont to be on the alert and report anything suspicious, warning: “Trust me, these men are nothing to be trifled with.” As part of the search, state troopers and correction officers in helmets and body armor retraced their steps around the prison, checking garage doors, sheds, windows and other structures for signs of a break-in or other clues.

New Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has promised to address those concerns. Obama’s new plan, however, doesn’t go far enough for critics who have pressed for military coordinators and advisers closer to the front lines to augment the U.S. airstrike campaign. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday that sending several hundred military advisers to Iraq “is a step in the right direction,” but he criticized Obama for not having “an overarching strategy.” Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was harsher in his assessment: “This is incrementalism at its best or worst, depending on how you describe it.” And some Democrats were also concerned. “Absent significant reform, we can help the Iraqi forces win battles, but they will not stay won,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat. There now are nearly 3,100 U.S. troops in Iraq involved in training, advising, security and other support. In addition to bombing missions, the U.S. is conducting aerial reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering missions against Islamic State forces, while counting on Iraqi troops to do the fighting on the ground. “I’m not worried about it,” Jackie Trombley said. Referring to the searchers swarming the area, she said: “We’ve got these guys down the road. They’re everywhere, so it really doesn’t bother me.”

More than 450 federal and state law enforcement officers were taking part in the search, including customs agents, federal marshals and park rangers.

In this courtroom sketch, David Wright, second from left, is depicted standing with his attorney Jessica Hedges, right, as Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley presides, left, during a hearing Wednesday, June 3, 2015, in federal court in Boston. Wright was ordered held Wednesday on a charge of conspiracy with intent to obstruct a federal investigation in the case of Usaama Rahim, who while under surveillance by terrorism investigators, was killed after he lunged with a knife at a Boston police officer and an FBI agent.

DANNEMORA, N.Y. (AP) -- The manhunt for two escaped killers expanded to campsites and boat slips in Vermont on Wednesday, and State Police said a female prison staff member being questioned may have had a role in helping the men. At a news conference outside the maximum-security prison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said investigators learned that the inmates had talked before last weekend’s breakout about going to neighboring Vermont. “We have information that suggests they thought New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement,” Shumlin said on Day 5 of the search. “And that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be. We do not.” He and other officials would not say how authorities learned that information. New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico also said that a prison employee - identified in news reports as Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison tailor shop - had befriended the killers and “may have had some role in assisting them.”

But at the late-afternoon news conference, D’Amico confessed: “I have no information on where they are or what they’re doing, to be honest with you.” The killers’ mugshots have been put on more than 50 digital billboards in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, state police said, and a $100,000 reward has been posted. Law enforcement officials again asked the public to report anything out of the ordinary. “We don’t want them out searching the woods,” Sheriff David Favro said. “But if you’re sitting on your porch, get your binoculars out and see if you see something unusual.” In Dannemora, Barbara McCasland said officers asked to search her home but she told them no. “I’m pretty battened down here,” she said. “My windows are locked and everything.” As the manhunt dragged on, she said she was getting worried: “I wasn’t in the beginning, but seeing that they’ve been out there so long, I am a little nervous.” Many in the prison town greeted the return of the searchers with a shrug. Many suspect Sweat and Matt are long gone and they are past any danger.

Mitchell’s son, Tobey Mitchell, told NBC that she checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn’t have helped the inmates escape.

The breakout was discovered early Saturday, meaning the inmates may have had a head start of several hours, Cuomo said. Authorities suspect they had help from the inside in obtaining the power tools. Unions representing guards and civilian staff members at the prison said many have been questioned by investigators but no one has been suspended, disciplined or charged.

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He would not elaborate.

Using power tools, inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole in the street outside the 3,000-inmate Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

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The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

EOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Authorities in South Korea temporarily closed two hospitals amid persistent fears over the MERS virus outbreak, which has killed 13 people through Friday, though health officials said they are seeing fewer new infections.

are a large number of infected people who evaded government quarantine measures and spread the virus.

2 S . K O R E A N H O S P I TA L S S H U T O V E R MERS FEARS; 13TH PERSON DIES The Health Ministry reported just four new cases on Friday, after registering 14 Thursday and 13 on Wednesday. About 3,680 people were still isolated on Friday after possible contacts with infected people, a decline from more than 3,800 on Thursday, according to the ministry.

More than 120 people in South Korea have been diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome since the country reported its first case last month. The outbreak, the largest outside Saudi Arabia, has been occurring only in hospitals, among patients, family members who visited them and medical staff treating them. Still, it has caused widespread fears and rumors, and about 2,900 schools and kindergartens remained closed Friday. South Korean officials have hoped the disease would begin to ease since the virus’ maximum two-week incubation period for those infected at a Seoul hospital considered as the main source of the outbreak ended Friday. However, several hospitals have treated MERS patients, and the later incubation periods for them is raising worries of possible new sources of infections. Mediheal Hospital in western Seoul and Changwon SK Hospital in the southern city of Changwon were ordered to temporarily shut down after MERS patients were found to have had contact with hundreds of people there before they were diagnosed, according to officials at Seoul and Changwon. There are currently no MERS patients at the two hospitals, but dozens of medical staff and existing patients are quarantined at the facilities. Mediheal is to reopen on June 23, and Changwon SK on June 24, city officials said.

Senior ministry official Kwon Deok-cheol told the news conference that the public should stop worrying too much about the outbreak as the number of new cases has been falling.

Doctors pray during a special service for patients suffering from MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, at a Sungmo hospital in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, June 12, 2015. The outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome has caused panic in South Korea.

Central government officials say there is little chance of the virus spreading from those hospitals because they are quarantining people who had contacts with infected people and monitoring them. “We see no danger of an additional spread,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, a senior official from the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference. She said only a small number of new infections could still be reported from those hospitals. Some experts have said the outbreak could continue if there

C A L I F O R N I A WAT E R WA S T E R S B E WA R E : #DROUGHTSHAMING ON THE RISE She also emailed it to the local water agency.

Most of the deaths have been of people suffering from pre-existing medical conditions, such as respiratory problems or cancer. Three MERS patients in their 70s died on Friday, raising the country’s number of MERS-related deaths to 13. The three had suffered from conditions such as pneumonia, asthma, lung diseases and high-blood pressure before they were confirmed as having MERS, the Health Ministry said. Experts think MERS can spread in respiratory droplets, such as by coughing. But transmissions have mainly occurred through close contact, such as living with or caring for an infected person. MERS has a death rate of about 40 percent among reported cases. It belongs to the family of coronaviruses that includes the common cold and SARS, and can cause fever, breathing problems, pneumonia and kidney failure.

Dont Text and Drive

“When you’re trying to do your best personally, and you’re trying to conserve water, it’s very irritating,” she said of one of the reasons behind drought shaming. Dan Estes, a Los Angeles real estate broker, has gone so far as to build his own free app, DroughtShame, that records the time and place where people see waste. Unlike some other drought shamers, he doesn’t believe in getting in people’s faces or outing them to the world. Instead, people who use his app send the information and a photograph to him, and he forwards it to the appropriate water agency.

In this Friday, June 5, 2015, photo, Tony Corcoran records sprinklers watering the lawn in front of a house in Beverly Hills, Calif. Corcoran is one of several people who spend their spare time these days canvassing the tony communities of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and elsewhere, looking for people wasting water during the worst California drought in recent memory.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Pssst. Ready to water that beautiful lush lawn of yours? The one that’s the envy of the entire neighborhood.

“I drought shamed the preschool next to my apartment,” Estes said. “Timer was off on their sprinklers. Those things were on for five hours, and the sidewalk was a river. I was non-confrontational, but at the same time, public.”

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

Twenty minutes after he reported it, Estes said, the sprinklers were shut off.

If you live in Southern California, you’d better wait until after midnight. Preferably on a cloudy, new-moon night during a power outage when it’s so dark even night-vision goggles won’t give away your position. Otherwise, you could wind up the star of the latest drought-shaming video posted on YouTube or Twitter. “Yeah, I put your address out there. The world is watching a lot more,” says Tony Corcoran, one of several people who spend their spare time these days canvassing the tony communities of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and elsewhere, looking for people wasting water during the worst California drought in recent memory. Corcoran alone estimates he’s put up on YouTube more than 100 videos of water-wasters, complete with their addresses.

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Others tweet out addresses and photos of water scofflaws, using hashtags such as (hash)DroughtShaming. Still others are snapping smartphone photos of them and sending them directly to authorities. Not everyone is happy about it. One woman, quickly tiring of Corcoran’s lecture on conservation while she watered her plants, turned her hose on him. In Beverly Hills, where he was showing a reporter and photographer water running down the street in front of a mansion, the angry resident called police. Two patrol cars quickly responded, but the officers took no action. In Hollywood, Sam Bakman, who manages a condominium complex, said his building was recently shamed wrongly by somebody on Twitter over a broken sprinkler head that was quickly repaired. He showed a reporter the city-issued restrictions on watering and pointed out his sprinkler timers fall well within the guidelines. “If they thought we were doing something wrong, why not come knock on my door?” he asked. Corcoran, a restaurant group administrator who kept his New York attitude when he came to laid-back Los Angeles awhile ago, is unrepentant. “The whole point is to get people to change, not to shame,” he said. With California in the fourth year of a drought with no end in sight, the governor has ordered everyone to use 25 percent less water, and drought shamers say the easiest way to accomplish that is to quit watering your yard. Or at least be careful about it and not let water spill into the street. “I was a passenger in a car driving by, and first I noticed water down the street. And when we drove up, I saw the broken sprinkler head,” said Patricia Perez of Eagle Rock who quickly tweeted out a picture of the mess.

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

The Weekly News Digest, June 15, thru June 22, 2015

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2 7 O F E I N S T E I N ’ S P E R S O N A L LETTERS GOING ON AUCTION BLOCK LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When he wasn’t busy scribbling out the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein seems to have spent a fair amount of time writing letters involving topics such as God, his son’s geometry studies, even a little toy steam engine an uncle gave him when he was a boy.

On the issue of God, Einstein dismissed the widely held belief that he was an atheist. “I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one,” he wrote to a man who corresponded with him on the subject twice in the 1940s. “You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. ... I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

The Einstein Letters, which include more than two dozen missives, will go up for sale Thursday at the California-based auction house Profiles in History. Some were in English and others in German. Some were done in longhand, others on typewriters. Amassed over decades by a private collector, the letters represent one of the largest caches of Einstein’s personal writings ever offered for sale.

Maddalena expects the 27 letters to fetch anywhere from $5,000 to as much as $40,000, for a total take ranging from $500,000 to $1 million. They are priceless, in his opinion, when it comes to having a greater understanding of the most brilliant physicist of the 20th century, the man whose theories ushered in the atomic age.

But more than that, they give a rare look into Einstein’s thoughts when he wasn’t discussing complicated scientific theories with his peers, said Joseph Maddalena, founder of Profiles in History. “We all know about what he accomplished, how he changed the world with the theory of relativity,” Maddalena said. “But these letters show the other side of the story. How he advised his children, how he believed in God.” In one letter, Einstein urged one of his sons to get more serious about

This June, 1954, file photo shows renowned physicist Albert Einstein in Princeton, N.J. Einstein was a father who worried his son wasn’t taking his geometry studies seriously enough, and that he was indebted to a favorite uncle for giving him a toy steam engine when he was a boy, launching a lifelong interest in science. He also believed the infidelity of a friend’s spouse was no big deal. These and other reflections, including personal opinions on God and politics, are contained in 27 letters being offered by a private collector at auction this week

“These are certainly among the most important things I’ve ever handled,” Maddalena said. “This is not like a Babe Ruth autograph or a signed photo of Marilyn Monroe. These are historically significant.” © 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms

3 S PA C E S TAT I O N SOLAR SYSTEM’S A S T R O N A U T S WEIRDEST DANCE SCENE: THE MOONS C A L I F O R N I A O I L S A F E L Y R E T U R N TO EARTH A R O U N D P L U T O S P I L L C L E A N U P COSTS REACHES $ 6 2 M I L L I O N geometry. In another, he consoled a friend who recently discovered her husband’s infidelity. In still another to an uncle on his 70th birthday, Einstein recalled how the toy steam engine the uncle gave him years ago had prompted a lifelong interest in science.

A Thursday, Nov 14, 2013 photo from files showing cows standing in front of the latest coal-fired power station of German power provider RWE in Hamm, Germany. The global climate agreement that’s set to be adopted six months from now in Paris is supposed to apply to all countries, from large industrialized economies to tiny island nations who fear they will perish amid rising seas. But the major climate polluters of the world are expected to lead the way, and many have, by setting targets for reducing emissions of climate-warming gases including carbon dioxide, well in advance of the Paris summit

BONN, Germany (AP) -- Two weeks of U.N. climate talks ended Thursday with negotiators trimming a draft global climate pact but leaving core sticking points to be untangled later, before a December summit in Paris where the landmark agreement is to be adopted. Frustrated by the slow pace of the climate talks, some negotiators and observers called the Bonn meeting a squandered opportunity to capture the momentum of a declaration this week by seven world leaders including President Barack Obama endorsing a long-term goal of decarbonizing the global economy - moving away from a dependence on fossil fuels. “We must go faster,” said European Union delegate Ilze Pruse. Earlier, officials leading the Bonn talks called for patience, with co-chair Ahmed Djoghlaf telling reporters no one can craft a universal agreement with more than 190 countries overnight. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” he said. He noted that some delegates worked so hard in Bonn they missed Saturday’s Champions League soccer final in Berlin. French climate envoy Laurence Tubiana likened the pain-staking U.N. process to giving birth, saying it’s difficult to judge the outcome until everything is done. “You have to wait until the baby is born to see its face,” she said. The Paris deal, which is supposed to take effect in 2020, would be the first where both rich and poor countries pledge to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases that scientists say are raising global temperatures, resulting in more intense heat waves, rising sea levels and other climate impacts. A previous agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only required rich countries to take action. In Bonn, negotiators reorganized sections as they shortened a 90page text to 85 pages. The co-chairs were asked to streamline the text further by August. The draft still contains multiple options on contentious issues, including how to differentiate between the obligations of rich and poor countries to fight climate change and what commitments of financial support to fight climate change poor nations want from the rich. It remains unclear whether the pact will be legally binding.

Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique team members evaluate oil coverage as workers clean up areas affected by an oil spill at Refugio State Beach, north of Goleta, Calif., Wednesday, June 10, 2015. The cost of cleaning up the oil spill that fouled beaches last month on the California coast has reached $69 million so far, an official of the pipeline company said Wednesday.

In this photo provided by NASA, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti rests in a chair outside the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft just minutes after she and U.S. astronaut Terry Virts and Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov landed in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Thursday, June 11, 2015. Virtz, Shkaplerov, and Cristoforetti are returning after more than six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 42 and 43 crews.

GOLETA, Calif. (AP) -- The cost of cleaning up the oil spill that fouled beaches last month on the California coast has reached $62 million so far, the pipeline company said Wednesday.

DZHEZKAZGAN, Kazakhstan (AP) -- A three-person crew from the International Space Station landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday after a longer-than-expected orbital stint.

Costs are running at $3 million a day, and there is no timetable for when the cleanup will be complete, Plains All American Pipeline’s on-scene coordinator, Patrick Hodgins, told The Associated Press.

NASA astronaut Terry Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency and Russia’s Anton Shkaplerov returned to Earth after 199 days on the station, nearly a month longer than planned.

The company is responsible for footing the bill after a pipeline break near Santa Barbara forced the closure of two state beaches and prompted a fishing ban in the area. Hodgins said the pipeline operator is not focused on the money. “The responsibility here is to get it cleaned up as quickly as possible,” he said. About 76 percent of 97 miles of coastline - mostly sandy beaches - have been cleared of oil. Crews are using putty knives and other tools to scrape oil off rocks and cobble beaches - a labor-intensive process that’s dictated by tidal conditions. “The beaches are fairly clean,” said Coast Guard Capt. Jennifer Williams, one of two federal response coordinators. “We’re making progress on the shoreline cleanup.” The May 19 spill occurred after an onshore pipeline operated by Texas-based Plains All American ruptured, leaking up to 101,000 gallons of crude. About 21,000 gallons entered a storm drain and washed out to the Pacific Ocean off Santa Barbara County. Wildlife experts have recovered 161 dead birds and 87 dead marine mammals, mostly sea lions. Another 106 animals were found coated in oil and are undergoing rehabilitation. The toll of the spill is a sliver of the 1969 oil platform blowout off Santa Barbara County that blackened miles of coastline and killed thousands of shorebirds and other wildlife. At the height of the cleanup, there were almost 1,200 people involved. Eighteen boats skimmed oil from the water while a pair of helicopters and a fixedwing aircraft buzzed overhead. Crews have not used the aircraft for several days and the number of skimmers has been reduced to three. Plains revised the total cleanup cost after initially pegging it at $69 million. Company spokeswoman Meredith Matthews said daily costs are expected to decrease as work progresses. The cause of last month’s break has not been determined, but documents released by federal regulators after the spill said testing conducted in early May found extensive external corrosion along some sections of the pipeline. Hodgins declined to comment on the investigation by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. As cleanup continued, the California Coastal Commission said at its monthly meeting Wednesday that it notified the company that it has opened its own investigation.

Because of the delayed return, Cristoforetti, an Italian, has now spent more continuous time in space than any other woman, surpassing by several days the mark set by a NASA astronaut in 2007. The trio’s Soyuz capsule landed on schedule at 7:44 p.m. local time (1344 GMT; 9:44 a.m. EDT) about 145 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan, in what a NASA commentator described as a textbook homecoming. After descending slowly under a striped red and white parachute, the craft touched down softly on the sun-drenched steppe. Russian helicopters quickly delivered search and rescue crews to help the astronauts get out of the capsule and quickly check their condition. The smiling astronauts sat in reclining chairs, adapting to Earth conditions after months in zero gravity and speaking to doctors and space officials. They were then carried into an inflatable tent for initial medical checks. “I’m doing great. I feel really good,” Virts said. After the check-up, the crew members were to be flown by helicopter to the city of Karaganda, where they were to board planes back home. The mission’s extension was caused by the failed launch of a Russian cargo ship in April. The Soyuz rocket that failed in April is used to launch spacecraft carrying crews, so Russian space officials delayed the crew’s return and further launches pending an investigation. A Soyuz rocket successfully launched a satellite last week. Another Soyuz will launch a Progress cargo ship to the station in early July to be followed by the launch of a new crew later in the month. The new crew will join Russians Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, and NASA’s Scott Kelly, who have remained in orbit. Kelly and Kornienko are in the midst of a yearlong orbital mission.