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LETTERMAN GETS RATINGS BOOST WITH RETIREMENT NEAR NEW YORK (AP) -- David Letterman’s imminent retirement is bringing nostalgic viewers back to check out his final shows.

The Nielsen company said Letterman’s CBS “Late Show” had more viewers last week than the “Tonight” show for the first time since Jimmy Fallon took over last year, with the exception of when Fallon’s show was in repeats.

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OBAMA OFFERS GULF NATIONS IRONCLAD” SECURITY COOPERATION

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) -- President Barack Obama pledged America’s “ironclad commitment” to anxious Persian Gulf nations Thursday to help protect their security, pointedly mentioning the potential use of military force and offering strong assurances that an international nuclear agreement with Iran would not leave them more vulnerable.

the security interests of the international community, including our GCC partners.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called Thursday a productive day. He said the Arab leaders were “assured that the objective is to deny Iran the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon” and that all pathways to such a weapon would be cut off.

So far this television season, NBC’s “Tonight” show has averaged 3.96 million viewers, the “Late Show” has 2.83 million and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” has 2.72 million. The season numbers include time-shifted viewership within seven days, while last week’s numbers were for same-day viewership.

He added that it was too earObama promised that the ly to know if a final nuclear U.S. would join with Gulf agreement would be acceptCooperation Council nations “to deter and confront an external able, saying, “We don’t know if the Iranians will accept the terms this May 5, 2015, photo, President Barack Obama speaks during a Cinco de Mayo reception in the East threat to any GCC state’s In Room of the White House in Washington. Americans appear open to a softer immigration policy than Re- they need to accept.” publican presidential candidates preached in the past. According to a new poll, Republicans overwhelmingly territorial integrity.” want a candidate to reverse Obama’s unilateral action to postpone deportations. But most could see themAs the leaders gathered, an selves voting for someone who would keep that policy in place.

Speaking at the close of a Iranian naval patrol boat summit with Gulf leaders at the presidential retreat at Camp Da- fired on a Singapore-flagged commercial ship in the Persian Gulf. vid, he expressed hope that the region would achieve “the kind of A U.S. official said it was an apparent attempt to disable the ship peace and good neighborliness with Iran that I think so many of the over a financial dispute involving damage to an Iranian oil platcountries here seek.” form.

CBS announced Thursday that actor Tom Hanks and musician Eddie Vedder will be on Letterman’s show on May 18. Comic Bill Murray, a frequent Letterman foil, will be on Tuesday’s show.

A written annex accompanying a joint statement from the leaders laid out what Obama meant when he promised “our ironclad commitment to the security of our Gulf partners.”

CBS promised “surprises, memorable highlights and the show’s final Top Ten list” for Letterman’s final show, but announced no guests.

“The United States policy to use all elements of power to secure our core interests in the Gulf region, and to deter and confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War, is unequivocal,” it said.

Letterman averaged 3.82 million viewers each night last week, compared to Fallon’s 3.09 million and 2.23 million for ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, Nielsen said. Kimmel has announced that he wouldn’t air a new show on May 20, the night Letterman makes his final late-night broadcast before retirement.

VATICAN RECOGNIZES S TAT E O F PA L E S T I N E IN N E W T REATY

While the U.S. has long provided military support to partners in the Gulf, the statement pledged new cooperation on counterterrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity and ballistic missile defense, among other things.

Obama’s separate negotiations in recent months to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief have strained relations with many of America’s traditional partners in the region.

Gulf states fear that if Iran gets an influx of money when sanctions are lifted, it will embolden what they see as Tehran’s aggression in the region.

Obama, at his summit-closing news conference, said that while the Gulf leaders hadn’t been asked to “sign on the bottom line” to approve the work-in-progress nuclear deal, they did agree “that a comprehensive, verifiable solution that fully addresses the regional and international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, is in

Pope Francis leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2015.

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty finalized Wednesday, immediately sparking Israeli ire and accusations that the move hurt peace prospects.

“This move does not promote the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct and bilateral negotiations,” the ministry said in a text message.

The United States and Israel oppose recognition, arguing that it undermines U.S.-led efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian deal on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Most countries in Western Europe have held off on recognition, but some have hinted that their position could change if peace efforts remain deadlocked.

The treaty was finalized days before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visits Pope Francis at the Vatican. Abbas is heading to Rome to attend Francis’ canonization Sunday of two new saints from the Holy Land.

“This is a very important recognition as the Vatican has a very

Al-Jubeir, for his part, said, “The Iranians should not be allowed to get away with it. ... For whatever reason they’re doing it, it’s got to stop.”

Obama rarely uses Camp David for personal or official business.

White House aides hoped the more intimate setting would lead to a more candid conversation with the Arab allies.

Just two other heads of state - the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait joined Obama at Camp David. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain all sent lower-level but still influential representatives.

As the leaders gathered around a large table in the Laurel lodge, the most notable absence was Saudi King Salman. On Sunday, Saudi continued on page 2

will evaluate the situation and could issue a notice of violation,” said Jason Kelly, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said in an email Wednesday.

A city planning spokesman says the city could issue a notice of violation to the Port of Seattle and Foss Maritime, whose client is Shell, requiring compliance by a certain timeframe. The city could then fine those entities $150 a day for 10 days and then $500 a day afterward.

The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state and had referred to the Palestine state since. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state, giving the Vatican’s former signs of recognition an unambiguous confirmation in a formal, bilateral treaty.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was “disappointed.”

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said that while the incident did not come up in Thursday’s discussions, it was “exactly the type of challenge” the Gulf nations are focused on.

SHELL: DRILL RIGS COMING TO S E AT T L E D E S P I T E P L E A S F O R D E -

The treaty, which concerns the activities of the Catholic Church in Palestinian territory, is both deeply symbolic and makes explicit that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic recognition from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

The incident took place a bit south of the island of Abu Musa just inside the Gulf, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss details by name. The White House said no Americans were involved in the incident.

Murray last week said the Port of Seattle, a public agency, needs a new permit before it can moor in Seattle. And Port of Seattle commissioners Tuesday night passed a resolution ask Shell’s host, Foss Maritime, to tell Shell to delay coming here. The resolution says they want the delay to allow for further legal review of the city’s interpretation of a new permit.

Protesters hold a sign opposing Shell Oil during a Seattle of the Port of Seattle Commission meeting to address the status of a Port lease with Foss Maritime, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, in Seattle. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has urged the port to reconsider its two-year, $13 million lease with Foss Maritime, a company whose client is Shell.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Royal Dutch Shell is forging ahead with plans to park two Arctic oil drilling rigs in Seattle, despite the city saying it could issue fines in the case and port commissioners asking Shell to wait.

Shell’s plan to move the two rigs to Seattle in coming days sets up a showdown between environmentalists and oil exploration advocates and touches off a wider debate about climate change and whether the nation should tap oil and gas reserves in the icy, remote Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s coast.

A Shell spokesman said Tuesday it has a valid lease to use about 50 acres of terminal space on Seattle’s waterfront and a tight timeline to prepare its fleet for exploratory oil drilling this summer in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska, so it is sticking to plans to park its drilling fleet on Seattle’s waterfront.

“Should Shell bring the rigs to Terminal 5 before the appropriate permits are in place, Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development

At the same time, port commissioners voted unanimously to appeal that city interpretation, which Foss Maritime has already done. The city has said the terminal can’t be used as a base for drill rigs because the port’s land-use permit is for cargo operations.

Shell cleared a major hurdle Monday when the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved its plan, though Shell still must get other permits.

About a dozen protesters in kayaks met one of two drill rigs Shell plans to use, the 514-foot-long Noble Discoverer, as it arrived Tuesday evening in Everett on its way south to Seattle. The second, the 400-footlong Polar Pioneer, has been parked at an Olympic Peninsula port but is expected to arrive in Seattle later this week to larger protests.

“I now hope Shell will respect the wishes of the Port, the city and the community at large, and not bring an offshore drilling rig into Elliott Bay,” Murray said Tuesday in a statement.

A Shell spokesman said the company understands the request for more time but its plans have not changed. continued on page 5

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HOUSE GOP APPROVES CUTS TO AMTRAK BUDGET DESPITE CRASH

The White House and Democrats are pushing to boost domestic programs and insist that they’ll thwart GOP efforts to increase the Pentagon’s budget if domestic agencies aren’t given comparable relief. Republicans have padded war accounts - which are exempt from spending limits - to add to the Pentagon’s budget by $38 billion, a 7 percent increase that matches Obama’s overall request.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Republican-controlled House panel on Wednesday approved deep spending cuts to Amtrak’s budget just hours after a deadly crash in Philadelphia.

The Appropriations Committee backed a $55 billion transportation and housing measure after rejecting Democratic attempts to boost spending on Amtrak by more than $1 billion, including $556 million targeted for the railroad’s Northeast corridor, site of the derailment. The vote was 30-21 along party lines.

The GOP bill would cut Amtrak’s budget by $251 million, to $1.1 billion, for the upcoming fiscal year.

“Every day, tens of thousands of passengers travel our nation’s railways on Amtrak - a majority of those along the Northeast Corridor where yesterday’s tragic accident occurred,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah, who represents Philadelphia. “These riders deserve safe, secure, and modern infrastructure.”

President Barack Obama asked for almost $2.5 billion for Amtrak in his February budget, much more than he’d requested in previous years. Obama’s proposed boost is mostly dedicated to capital investment in track, tunnels and bridges and includes $400 million in grants for capital construction along Amtrak’s Northeast corridor.

There were early indications that Tuesday night’s tragedy may have been due to excessive speed. An Associated Press analysis of a surveillance tape found that the train was going about 107 MPH as it approached a curve where the speed limit less than half that.

“We must pass a multi-year transportation funding bill that increases - not decreases - federal investment in highway, transit and rail programs before other disaster occurs,” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.

In recent years, cuts by House Republicans have been restored in House-Senate negotiations, but the railroad’s budget has remained generally flat.

But Chairman Harold Rogers of Kentucky said majority Republicans are hamstrung by automatic spending cuts known as sequestration that are forcing a freeze in the operating budgets of domestic agencies funded by lawmakers each year. These cuts are the result of a hard-fought 2011 budget deal between Obama and Republicans and are more punishing than originally intended because Congress has yet to find substitute cuts or revenues to replace them.

“We have no choice but to abide by the law,” Rogers said.

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Arabia announced that the king was skipping the summit, two days after the White House said he was coming.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were representing Saudi Arabia instead.

The White House and Saudi officials insisted the king was not snubbing Obama. But there are indisputable signs of strain in the long relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, driven not only by Obama’s Iran overtures but also the rise of Islamic State militants and a lessening U.S. dependency on Saudi oil.

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On Wednesday White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest wasn’t pointing fingers about the accident, though he said more Amtrak funding would “benefit the traveling public and be good for our economy.”

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Amtrak is one of many flash points in the underlying measure, which Democrats say shortchanges important programs for the poor and contains giveaways to the trucking industry.

Top panel Democrat Nita Lowey of New York said the measure undercuts important accounts, including those dedicated to transportation safety and capital construction. Lowey said the bill “drastically short-changes job-creating investments critical to hardworking American families, like roads, bridges, and rail systems and access to safe and affordable housing.”

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But the White House didn’t specifically object to the Amtrak cuts in the letter, sent by Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan.

The vote came as Congress stares down a deadline in 18 days to reauthorize legislation to pay for highways and transit programs.

Fattah’s $1.3 billion amendment to fully fund Obama’s Amtrak request failed along party lines after Republicans pointed out that it would have broken budget limits and left the bill vulnerable to procedural challenges.

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The measure is the largest of 12 spending bills considered so far by the GOP-controlled House and includes cuts to an almost $2 billion account for rehabilitating public housing and grants to states and local governments for housing for the poor. In a letter delivered Monday, the White House reminded lawmakers of recent rioting in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods and said the measure would hurt efforts to end homelessness and hurt families.

The Gulf summit comes as the U.S. and five other nations work to reach an agreement with Iran by the end of June. The White House says a nuclear accord could clear the way for more productive dis-

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Music streaming service Rdio is unveiling a new $4-per-month plan that allows subscribers to save 25 songs to their smartphone for offline listening while getting ad-free Internet radio with unlimited skips.

The plan mimics an offering that rival Rhapsody unveiled with wireless partner T-Mobile last June, except Rdio is offering the price to anyone.

T-Mobile gives away the service to its highest-tier subscribers and reserves the $4 price for its other customers. Otherwise Rhapsody makes the plan available for $5 a month.

It’s the latest salvo in the increasingly competitive streaming music space ahead of Apple’s expected relaunch of Beats Music next month.

The service, called “Rdio Select,” is available in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa with more countries to be added later.

cussions with Iran about its reputed terror links.

The U.S. has criticized Iran’s support for Hezbollah, as well as attacks carried out by Iran’s Quds Force. In 2011, the Obama administration accused Iran of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington.

The Saudis are also particularly concerned about the situation in Yemen, where Houthi rebels with ties with Iran have ousted the U.S.- and Saudi-backed leader.

For more than a month, a Saudi-led coalition has tried to push back the Houthis with a bombing campaign. On Tuesday, a fiveday humanitarian cease-fire went into effect, though the pause in fighting was already at risk. A jet fighter from the Saudi coalition on Wednesday

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S . K O R E A ’ S S P Y A G E N C Y S AY S N. KOREA EXECUTED DEFENSE CHIEF tank in South Korea questioned the authenticity of the report on Hyon’s execution because the minister still frequently appears in state TV footage.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his defense chief executed with an anti-aircraft gun for complaining about the young ruler, talking back to him and sleeping during a meeting presided over by Kim, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Wednesday, citing what it called credible information.

North Korea typically removes executed and purged officials from TV documentaries, but Hyon has appeared multiple times in a TV documentary on live fire drills between April 30 and May 11, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. North Korea’s state media hasn’t mentioned Hyon since an April 29 report of his attendance of a music performance the previous day.

South Korean analysts are split on whether the alleged bloody purge signals strength or weakness from Kim Jong Un, who took power after his father’s 2011 death. Some aren’t even sure if it really happened. One expert described the reported development, part of a series of high profile recent purges and executions by Kim, as an attempt to orchestrate a “reign of terror” that would solidify his leadership.

National Intelligence Service officials told a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting that People’s Armed Forces Minister Hyon Yong Chol was killed in front of hundreds of spectators at a shooting range at Pyongyang’s Kang Kon Military Academy in late April, according to lawmaker Shin Kyoung-min, who attended the briefing.

Kim Gwang-lim, chairman of the parliament’s intelligence committee, quoted the spy service as saying Hyon had failed several times to comply with unspecified instructions by Kim. The office of another lawmaker, Lee Cheol Woo, released similar information about the NIS briefing.

The NIS didn’t tell lawmakers how it got the information, only that it was from a variety of channels and that it believed it to be true, Shin said. The agency refused to confirm the report when contacted

by The Associated Press.

Vice Marshal Hyon Yong Chol applauds during a meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his defense chief Hyon Yong Chol executed with an anti-aircraft gun for complaining about the young ruler, talking back to him and sleeping during a meeting presided over by Kim, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Wednesday, May 13, 2015, citing what it called credible information.

South Korea’s spy agency has a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea. Information about the secretive, authoritarian state is often impossible to confirm.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said the U.S. can’t confirm reporting of the execution of North Korean officials, but added that “these disturbing reports, if they are true, describe another extremely brutal act by the North Korean regime.

These reports are sadly not the first.”

Analyst Cheong Seong-chang at the private Sejong Institute think

DEMONSTRATORS PROTEST POLICE S H O O T I N G I N W I S C O N S I N C A P I TA L district attorney. He pointed to his racial heritage as he announced he wasn’t going to charge Kenny, saying he views Robinson’s death through that lens but based his decision on the facts.

“I am concerned that recent violence around our nation is giving some in our community a justification for fear, hatred and violence,” Ozanne said Tuesday. “I am reminded that true and lasting change does not come from violence but from exercising our voices and our votes.”

According to witnesses, Robinson was high on mushrooms at a friend’s apartment on the night he was killed and got violent. He tried to grab one friend’s crotch and took a swing at another friend. He later went outside and punched a man on the sidewalk, strangled another man at a gas station across the street, ran in and out of traffic and took a swing at a couple

California Gov. Jerry Brown talks with reporters after a meeting about the drought at his Capitol office in Sacramento, Calif. The State Water Resources Control Board is considering sweeping mandatory emergency regulations to protect water supplies as water levels as some of California’s lakes and reservoirs continue to decline. Brown has argued that the voluntary targets in place since early 2014 were insufficient and that Californians needed a jolt to take conservation seriously.

On Tuesday, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said he wasn’t going to charge Kenny because he thought the officer’s actions were justified. Kenny shot and killed Robinson in an apartment house stairwell after Robinson, who was high on hallucinogenic mushrooms and who already had attacked several people that night, struck the officer in the head.

The demonstration Wednesday was organized by the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, a group that has organized a series of protests since the shooting. All of the protests about Robinson’s death have been peaceful, unlike some of the demonstrations that followed the high-profile deaths of young black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore in the past year.

Before the march began, Shabazz implored her fellow protesters not to interact with the police.

“They are not your friend,” Shabazz told them. “There is nothing positive that is going to come from that (interaction).”

Police cordoned off the streets and rerouted traffic to accommodate the march, as volunteers from several community groups, including 100 Black Men and the Urban League, looked on, ready to advise anyone who appeared ready to break the law to think twice.

Ozanne, who is biracial and identifies as black, is Wisconsin’s first minority

before going back inside.

Kenny responded to 911 calls and found the apartment house door open.

He heard what he believed to be a disturbance in the upstairs apartment and thought someone was being attacked, he told investigators.

He drew his firearm and began to climb the stairs. He was near the top when he announced himself as a police officer. Robinson appeared and punched him in the head, he said.

Kenny said he was worried Robinson would knock him down the stairs, take his gun, shoot him and kill whoever was in the apartment so he opened fire, hitting Robinson seven times. Kenny told an investigator he couldn’t use nonlethal force because of “space and time considerations.”

Ozanne said toxicology reports confirmed Robinson had taken mushrooms, smoked marijuana and taken Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

Kenny, who has been on leave since the shooting, per department policy, has not spoken publicly about the shooting.

“She’s absolutely wrong,” Obama said in an interview with Yahoo! that aired over the weekend. “Elizabeth is a politician like everybody else and she has a voice that she wants to get out there.”

That remark prompted Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has been among Warren’s top allies on the trade issue, to rebuke the president for being “disrespectful.”

“I think that the president has made this more personal than he needed to,” Brown said.

“Was Tony Robinson murdered and should Matt Kenny be charged with homicide?” Alix Shabazz, one of the event’s organizers, shouted to her fellow protesters.

At least 25 people were arrested for blocking the street, said Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain. Almost all were released with a $124 misdemeanor fine.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said Kim Jong Un appears to be using purges to keep the military old guard in check because they pose the only plausible threat to his rule. Koh said Kim could be pushing a “reign of terror” to solidify his leadership, but those efforts would fail if he doesn’t improve the country’s shattered economy.

from the public, places U.S. sovereignty at risk and could roll back U.S. financial regulations.

After a peaceful procession from the apartment house where Officer Matt Kenny killed 19-year-old Tony Robinson on March 6 through the streets of the state capital to the Dane County Courthouse, some 150 to 200 protesters looked on as others laid out the case for why Kenny should stand trial.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin had warned that anyone who broke the law would be arrested. At the end of the event, police arrested some two dozen protesters who locked arms and blocked an intersection near the courthouse. As the police were detaining those protesters, onlookers hurled insults at the officers, including racial epithets.

Kim’s purges over recent years are seen as efforts to bolster his grip on power. The most notable was in 2013 when Kim executed his uncle and chief deputy, Jang Song Thaek, for alleged treason. Last month, spy officials told lawmakers that North Korea executed 15 senior officials accused of challenging Kim’s authority.

WA R R E N H A S I R K E D O B A M A B E F O R E , BUT TRADE DEEPENS THEIR RIFT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Protesters angry about a prosecutor’s decision not to charge a white Madison police officer for killing an unarmed biracial man staged a mock hearing outside of a courthouse Wednesday to get the result they had wanted - a trial - even if it was all symbolic.

The crowd gave its rousing approval.

Hyon was named armed forces minister, the equivalent of South Korea’s defense minister, in June of last year. He was made a vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army in July 2012 before being demoted to a four-star general later that year, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry. Kim, the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee chief, said Hyon was the North Korean military’s No.2 man after Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer at the Korean People’s Army.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. applauds as President Barack Obama makes the thumbs up sign as he arrives to speak at AARP in Washington. When Obama huffed that Warren was a “politician like everybody else” he revealed a rift that predates the current hostilities between the two Democrats over trade. Though occasional allies, Warren has been aggravating the Obama administration since her pre-Senate days when she chaired an oversight panel charged with being a watchdog over the massive federal bank bailout.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When President Barack Obama huffed that Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and established liberal star, was a “politician like everybody else” he revealed a rift that predates the current hostilities between the two Democrats over trade.

Though occasional allies, Warren has been aggravating the Obama administration since her pre-Senate days when she chaired an oversight panel charged with being a watchdog over the massive federal bank bailout.

But the dispute over Obama’s efforts to get trade negotiating authority from Congress and complete a 12-nation Pacific rim trade deal goes to the heart of a fundamental divide within the Democratic Party. It also has turned the tables in Congress where Democrats once delighted in watching Republicans struggle with their conservative tea party faction.

Now it’s Republicans who are amused and making the most of a Democratic split.

“You’ve got the energy of the Elizabeth Warren faction kind of driving the agenda” for Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday on CNBC. “The biggest divisions these days are not among Republicans but among Democrats.”

Obama’s request for negotiating authority got back on track Wednesday after an embarrassing procedural loss Tuesday when only one Democrat voted with the president on a motion to begin debate on trade, even though about a dozen support his overall goal.

Democrats have long been suspicious of trade deals, blaming them for job losses and lax enforcement. Warren and her allies have dug further, building on those concerns to make a case that Obama is negotiating an agreement that is secret

While the Obama-Warren spat highlights the deep Democratic split over trade, the party has healed in the past after major trade fights. Mitch Stewart, who was a senior adviser to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns and now is a consultant for a pro-trade advocacy group, downplayed the long-term impact of the Obama-Warren contretemps, predicting that the relationship can survive the disagreement.

This dispute, however, comes at an awkward time for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as Obama’s secretary of State once called the Trans-Pacific negotiations the “gold standard” for fair trade. Now, as a presidential candidate who feels the pressure of Warren’s national prominence, she is sounding more skeptical amid calls for her to take a firmer stance. The lack of her endorsement has been conspicuous.

A former Harvard professor, Warren burst onto the Washington scene after the 2008 financial crisis as a vigorous advocate for consumer financial protections.

She became the chair of a bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel that kept tabs on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the taxpayer-financed fund that helped financial institutions out of the crisis.

Then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner bristled at her critiques, calling them “mostly unjustified.”

“Her TARP oversight hearings often felt more like made-for-YouTube inquisitions than serious inquiries,” Geithner writes in his book “Stress Test.” `’She was worried about the right things, but she was better at impugning our choices - as well as our integrity and our competence - than identifying any feasible alternatives.”

More recently, Warren infuriated the White House by objecting to Obama’s nomination last year of Antonio Weiss, a Lazard investment banker, to be the third-ranking official at Treasury. Warren argued that he was too close to Wall Street to hold a high post at Treasury. Weiss dropped out of contention for the post and Obama appointed him to serve as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.

The arrangement was not unfamiliar to Warren. She herself did not have Senate votes in 2010 to be confirmed as head of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, so Obama appointed her a special presidential adviser to work with Geithner at Treasury on an interim basis.

A year later, with the help of then-Obama senior adviser Pete Rouse, Wa

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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

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

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

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

C r a s h w i t h i n j u r i e s s h u t s d o w n I - 9 5 n o r t h b o u n d l a n e s , t r o o p e r s s a y

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h t t p : / / w w w . s i e r r a c l u b . o r g /

POTECTING SPEICIES Learn more

www.worldwildlife.org

www.redcross.org

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

5

L AW Y E R S G I V E C L O S I N G A R G U M E N T S I N M A R AT H O N B O M B E R ’ S T R I A L BOSTON (AP) -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys on Wednesday made their final appeals to the jury that will decide the fate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as jurors began deliberating whether the Boston Marathon bomber should get life in prison or the death penalty.

Russia, Clarke said. Then he decided to find another way to wage jihad.

“If not for Tamerlan, this wouldn’t have happened. Dzhokhar would never have done this, but for Tamerlan. The tragedy would never have occurred but for Tamerlan - none of it,” Clarke said.

“The choice between these very serious alternatives is yours and yours alone to make,” Judge George O’Toole Jr. told the panel.

Mellin dismissed the contention that the older Tsarnaev somehow led his brother down the path to terrorism. “They were partners in crime and brothers in arms. Each had a role to play and each played it,” he said.

Jurors got the case late in the day and deliberated for about 45 minutes before going home. They will return to the federal courthouse Thursday to resume their work.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured when two bombs exploded near the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013.

The jury must be unanimous in its decision to impose the death penalty.

If even a single member votes against death, Tsarnaev will get life in prison.

Prosecutor Steve Mellin said Tsarnaev wanted to cause his victims as much physical pain as possible to make a political statement.

The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse is seen during the closing statements phase of the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev federal death penalty trial on Wednesday May 13, 2015, in Boston. Tsarnaev is charged with conspiring with his brother to place two bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line that killed three and injured 260 spectators in April 2013.

“The bombs burned their skin, shattered their bones and ripped their flesh,” Mellin said. The blasts “disfigured their bodies, twisted their limbs and punched gaping holes into their legs and torsos.”

morse-free,” Mellin said. “He didn’t care because the death and misery was what he sought that day.”

“Merely killing the person,” he said, “isn’t nearly as terrifying as shredding them apart.”

During the four-month trial, prosecutors portrayed Tsarnaev as a callous, unrepentant terrorist who carried out the deadly attack with his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan.

Defense attorney Judy Clarke asked jurors to spare Tsarnaev’s life, saying her client “is not the worst of the worst, and that’s what the death penalty is reserved for.”

She asked jurors to hold open their minds and try to understand how and why Tsarnaev became involved in the plot.

“We think that we have shown you that it’s not only possible, but probable that Dzhokhar has potential for redemption,” she said, adding that he was “genuinely sorry for what he’s done.”

The prosecutor showed a large photograph of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the attack, and other children standing on a metal barricade near where Tsarnaev placed his bomb. Another photo showed bloodied victims on the sidewalk.

“This is what terrorism looks like,” Mellin said.

Tsarnaev, he said, showed no regret after the bombings, calmly going to buy a half gallon of milk 20 minutes later.

“He acted like it was any other day. He was stress-free and re-

SHELL: DRILL RIGS continued from page 1

“Given the short windows in which we have to work in the Arctic, and our shared view that Shell’s lease and the supporting contract with Foss is valid, we have made the decision to utilize Terminal 5 under the terms originally agreed upon by the parties involved - including the Port of Seattle,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in an email Tuesday. “Rig movement will commence in the days to come.”

Foss also was adamant. Company President Paul Stevens said the port commission knew what activities would be occurring at the terminal when it granted the lease.

“We’re going to proceed,” he said.

Activists who don’t want Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic turned out at the nearly five-hour commission meeting.

“Drilling for oil in the precious Arctic is not on the right side of history,” said Richard Hodgin, a drilling opponent from Seattle.

The meeting drew a range of voices, including several people who traveled from Alaska. Representatives of Alaska Native corporations argued that the environmentalists opposing the drilling don’t understand the economic needs of Alaska’s Natives.

John Hopson, mayor of Wainwright, Alaska, a community of Inupiat whalers, said he traveled two days to speak for his allotted two minutes.

“The Arctic isn’t just a place of polar bears,” he said. “It’s a home, my home.”

Labor groups representing workers at the Port of Seattle noted the 400plus jobs that the Foss lease has already brought to the city, while opponents argued that there are no resources available to respond to a major spill in the Chukchi Sea.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

From the start, Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted he participated in the bombing, but they told the jury he was “a good kid” who was led astray

by Tamerlan, who wanted to punish the U.S. for its actions in Muslim countries.

Clarke said Tsarnaev’s parents favored his older brother and pinned their hopes on him, believing he would become an Olympic boxer. She showed photos of his father at boxing matches with Tamerlan, then asked “Where are the pictures of Dzhokhar? He was the invisible kid.”

She noted the testimony of one witness who said the younger Tsarnaev followed his older sibling around “like a puppy.”

The Tsarnaevs, who are ethnic Chechens, lived in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and the volatile Dagestan region of Russia, near Chechnya, before moving to the U.S. about a decade before the bombings.

Tamerlan was a “jihadi wannabe” who returned to the U.S. angry and frustrated after an unsuccessful attempt to join Islamic extremists in

Tsarnaev, 21, was convicted by a federal jury last month of all 30 counts against him, including use of a weapon of mass destruction. The same jury must now decide his punishment.

Defense lawyers have said a life sentence would also help the families of his victims, who would not be subjected to the years of appeals and public attention that would almost certainly follow a sentence of death.

The defense showed the jury photos of the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where Tsarnaev would probably be sent if he gets life. There, his lawyers said, he would be locked in his cell 23 hours a day - a solitary existence that would deny him the martyrdom he apparently sought.

A sentence of life “reflects justice and mercy,” Clarke said. Mercy “is never earned. It is bestowed, and the law allows you to choose justice and mercy.”

She disputed prosecutors’ characterization of Tsarnaev as unremorseful.

She cited testimony of Sister Helen Prejean, who said Tsarnaev told her he was sorry about the pain and suffering victims endured.

“What unrepentant, unchanged, untouched jihadi is going to meet with a Catholic nun?” she said.

Mellin reminded jurors that some of them - before they were chosen for the jury - expressed a belief that a life sentence may be worse than death.

“This defendant does not want to die. You know that because he had many opportunities to die on the streets of Boston and Watertown. But unlike his brother, he made a different choice,” Mellin said. “A death sentence is not giving him what he wants. It is giving him what he deserves.”

P R O T E C T I N G

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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I N V E S T I G AT O R S : T R A I N I N D E A D LY W R E C K WA S S P E E D I N G 1 0 6 M P H people were killed.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people, was hurtling at 106 mph before it ran off the rails along a sharp curve where the speed limit drops to just 50 mph, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Amtrak inspected the stretch of track on Tuesday, just hours before the accident, and found no defects, the Federal Railroad Administration said. Besides the data recorder, the train had a video camera in its front end that could yield clues to what happened, Sumwalt said.

The engineer applied the emergency brakes moments before the crash but slowed the train to only 102 mph by the time the locomotive’s black box stopped recording data, said Robert Sumwalt, of the National Transportation Safety Board. The speed limit just before the bend is 80 mph, he said.

As for the engineer, Sumwalt said: “This person has gone through a very traumatic event, and we want to give him an opportunity to convalesce for a day or so before we interview him. But that is certainly a high priority for us, to interview the train crew.”

The engineer, whose name was not released, refused to give a statement to law enforcement and left a police precinct with a lawyer, police said. Sumwalt said federal accident investigators want to talk to him but will give him a day or two to recover from the shock of the accident.

Mayor Michael Nutter said there was “no way in the world” the engineer should have been going that fast into the curve.

“Clearly he was reckless and irresponsible in his actions,” Nutter told CNN. “I don’t know what was going on with him, I don’t know what was going on in the cab, but there’s really no excuse that could be offered.”

More than 200 people aboard the Washington-to-New York train were injured in the wreck, which happened in a decayed industrial neighborhood not far from the Delaware River just before 9:30 p.m.

Tuesday. Passengers crawled out the windows of the torn and toppled rail cars in the darkness and emerged dazed and bloody, many of them with broken bones and burns.

It was the nation’s deadliest train accident in nearly seven years.

Amtrak suspended all service until further notice along the Philadelphia-to-New York stretch of the nation’s busiest rail corridor as investigators examined the wreckage and the tracks and gathered evidence.

The shutdown snarled the commute and forced thousands of people to find other ways to reach their destinations.

The dead included an Associated Press employee, a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, a Wells Fargo executive and a CEO of an educational startup. At least 10 people remained hospitalized in critical condition.

Nutter said some people were unaccounted for but cautioned that

The crash took place about 10 minutes after the train pulled out of Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station with 238 passengers and five crew members listed aboard. The locomotive and all seven passenger cars hurtled off the track as the train made a left turn, Sumwalt said.

Emergency personnel walk near the scene of a deadly train wreck, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in Philadelphia. Federal investigators arrived Wednesday to determine why an Amtrak train jumped the tracks in Tuesday night’s fatal accident.

some passengers listed on the Amtrak manifest might not have boarded the train, while others might not have checked in with authorities.

“We will not cease our efforts until we go through every vehicle,” the mayor said.

He said rescuers expanded the search area and were using dogs to look for victims in case someone was thrown from the wreckage.

The NTSB finding about the train’s speed corroborated an AP analysis done earlier in the day of surveillance video from a spot along the tracks. The AP concluded from the footage that the train was speeding at approximately 107 mph moments before it entered the curve.

Despite pressure from Congress and safety regulators, Amtrak had not installed along that section of track Positive Train Control, a technology that uses GPS, wireless radio and computers to prevent trains from going over the speed limit. Most of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is equipped with Positive Train Control.

“Based on what we know right now, we feel that had such a system been installed in this section of track, this accident would not have occurred,” Sumwalt said.

The notoriously tight curve is not far from the site of one of the deadliest train wrecks in U.S. history: the 1943 derailment of the Congressional Limited, bound from Washington to New York. Seventy-nine

YEMEN’S HUMANITARIAN TRUCE B A R E LY H O L D S A S V I O L E N C E R E S U M E S A Saudi Defense Ministry statement also accused the Houthis of violating the cease-fire by firing toward the Saudi border areas of Jizan and Najran. It said the kingdom’s armed forces were exercising restraint as part of their commitment to the cease-fire.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition of Sunni Arab countries began the air campaign on March 26 to try to break the advance of the Houthis and its allies, who overran the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen late last year and have been on the offensive in the south.

The Saudis and their allies are seeking the restoration of the Western-backed Hadi, who fled the country in March in the face of the Houthis’ advance.

Smoke rises after a Saudi-led airstrike hit a site believed to be a munitions storage, in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition kept up their airstrikes targeting the positions of Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies around the capital, Sanaa, hours ahead of a humanitarian cease-fire set to begin on Tuesday evening.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) -- Yemen’s humanitarian cease-fire came under significant strain in its first 24 hours Wednesday, disrupted by a Saudi-led coalition airstrike, fighting between rival sides in a strategic province and shelling by coalition warships west of the port city of Aden.

The airstrike in Abyan province was in response to an attempt by the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, to send a military convoy to reinforce their forces in Aden, according to Yemeni security officials.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the airstrike.

The heaviest violence on the ground was in the southwestern province of Taiz, where the Iranian-backed rebels and their allies forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh - have for weeks been fighting forces loyal to the nation’s internationally recognized president.

Yemeni officials said the Houthis shelled residential areas in Taiz, a claim supported by an Amnesty International report. The London-based rights group said Wednesday that evidence suggested the Houthis have carried out indiscriminate mortar attacks on civilians and repeatedly targeted medical workers and facilities in Aden.

Also in the south, officials and witnesses said coalition warships deployed off Aden shelled rebel forces that attempted to seize an area west of the city that is home to fuel tanks.

Fighting was also reported elsewhere in the south when rebels sought to storm the city of Dhale just north of Aden, firing tank shells, rockets and mortars against positions belonging to forces loyal to exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, according to the officials and witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Adding a new layer to the Yemeni crisis, a senior Iranian military official warned the U.S.-backed coalition against blocking a Yemen-bound Iranian aid ship, saying that such a move would “spark a fire” in the region.

Iranian Gen. Masoud Jazayeri warned that actions against the aid ship would not be tolerated.

“The self-restraint of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not limitless,” Jazayeri, the deputy chief of staff, told Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam state TV. “Both Saudi Arabia and its novice rulers, as well as the Americans and others, should be mindful that if they cause trouble for the Islamic Republic with regard to sending humanitarian aid to regional countries, it will spark a fire, the putting out of which would definitely be out of their hands.”

Iran says the ship, which departed on Monday, is carrying food, medicine, tents and blankets, as well as reporters, rescue workers and peace activists. It is expected to arrive in the rebel-held port of Hodeida next week - likely after the five-day cease-fire expires.

Iran’s navy said Tuesday it will protect the ship, and on Wednesday Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said Iran would not permit any country involved in the Yemen war to inspect its cargo.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said the U.S. opposed the idea of governments delivering their own assistance outside of the coordination of the U.N. “Iran is no exception to this,” he told reporters.

Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, a military spokesman, said Tuesday that no ship would be permitted to reach Yemen unless there was prior coordination with the coalition.

The U.S, which supports the coalition, and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of arming the Houthis. Iran supports the rebels, but both Tehran and the Houthis deny it has provided weapons to them.

The conflict has killed more than 1,400 people - many of them

Jillian Jorgensen was seated in the second passenger car and said the train was going “fast enough for me to be worried” when it began to lurch to the right. Then the lights went out, and Jorgensen was thrown from her seat.

She said she “flew across the train” and landed under some seats that had apparently broken loose from the floor.

Jorgensen, a reporter for The New York Observer who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, said she wriggled free as fellow passengers screamed. She saw one man lying still, his face covered in blood, and a woman with a broken leg.

She climbed out an emergency exit window, and a firefighter helped her down a ladder to safety.

“It was terrifying and awful, and as it was happening it just did not feel like the kind of thing you could walk away from, so I feel very lucky,” Jorgensen said in an email. “The scene in the car I was in was total disarray, and people were clearly in a great deal of pain.”

Among the dead were award-winning AP video software architect Jim Gaines, a father of two; Justin Zemser, a Naval Academy midshipman from New York City; Abid Gilani, a senior vice president in Wells Fargo’s commercial real estate division in New York; and Rachel Jacobs, who was commuting home to New York from her new job as CEO of the Philadelphia educational software startup ApprenNet. Several victims were rolled away on stretchers. Others wobbled as they walked away or were put on buses.

“It’s incredible that so many people walked away from that scene last night,” the mayor said. “I saw people on this street behind us walking off of that train. I don’t know how that happened, but for the grace of God.” The area where the wreck happened is known as Frankford Junction, situated in a neighborhood of warehouses, industrial buildings and homes.

Amtrak carries 11.6 million passengers a year along its busy Northeast Corridor, which runs between Washington and Boston.

civilians - since March 19, according to the U.N. The country of some 25 million people has endured shortages of food, water, medicine and electricity as a result of a Saudi-led naval, air and land blockade.

The cease-fire is meant to help ease the suffering of civilians in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country.

A U.N. Security Council statement late Tuesday called on the secretary-general to convene U.N.-led talks on Yemen, and it urged all stakeholders to take part. Officials have said the U.N. has not yet set a date for such talks.

On Wednesday, new U.N. envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, met with leaders of Saleh’s one-time ruling party, but there was no word on the substance of the talks. Ahmed has said he intends to meet separately with Yemen’s political leaders before a decision is made on the venue and time of talks that bring them together to chart a political blueprint for Yemen.

And in the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the coalition, a senior official said the air campaign has sought to prevent the Houthis from acquiring the influence and power of the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Our goals are clear. The first goal is to prevent ... the growth of a power like Hezbollah,” Anwar Gargash told the Arab Media Forum in Dubai.

He also emphasize

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

7

H O U S E PA S S E S B I L L TO E N D B U L K COLLECTION OF US PHONE RECORDS WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted by a wide margin Wednesday to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and replace it with a system to search the data held by telephone companies on a case-by-case basis.

attack in their own countries make it more important than ever for the NSA and FBI to have such phone records at their disposal to map potential terrorist cells when new information surfaces. And they say there is no evidence the program has ever been misused.

The 338-to-88 vote set the stage for a Senate showdown just weeks before the Patriot Act provisions authorizing the program are due to expire.

Under the House measure, the NSA would no longer collect and store the records, but the government still could obtain a court order to obtain data connected to a specific number from the phone companies, which typically store them for 18 months.

If the House bill becomes law, it will represent one of the most significant changes stemming from the unauthorized disclosures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But many Senate Republicans don’t like the measure, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has introduced a separate version that would keep the program as is. Yet, he also faces opposition from within his party and has said he is open to compromise.

President Barack Obama supports the House legislation, known as the USA Freedom Act, which is in line with a proposal he made last March. The House passed a similar bill last year, but it failed in the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio listens during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 13, 2015. The House debates and votes for final passage on NSA Surveillance legislation, known as the USA Freedom Act. The measure seeks to codify President Barack Obama’s proposal to end the NSA’s collection of domestic calling records. It would allow the agency to request certain records held by the telephone companies under a court order in terrorism investigations.

administrator who in 2013 leaked thousands of secret documents to journalists.

Most House members would rather see the Patriot Act provisions expire altogether than re-authorize NSA bulk collection, said Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee. “I think the Senate is ultimately going to pass something like the USA Freedom Act,” he said.

The program collects the number called, along with the date, time and duration of call, but not the content or people’s names. It stores the information in an NSA database that a small number of analysts query for matches against the phone numbers of known terrorists abroad, hunting for domestic connections to plots.

The issue, which exploded into public view two years ago, has implications for the 2016 presidential contest, with Republican candidates staking out different positions.

Officials acknowledge the program has never foiled a terrorist attack, and some within the NSA had proposed abandoning it even before it leaked - on the grounds that its financial and privacy costs outweighed its counterterrorism benefits.

The revelation that the NSA had for years been secretly collecting all records of U.S. landline phone calls was among the most controversial disclosures by Snowden, a former NSA systems

Proponents of keeping the program the way it is argue that the rise of the Islamic State group and its efforts to inspire Westerners to

M A L AY S I A T U R N S AWAY B O AT WITH MORE THAN 500 MIGRANTS U.N. refugee agency.

But no countries want them, fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants. But governments at the same time respected the wishes of Myanmar at regional gatherings, avoiding discussions of state-sponsored discrimination against the Rohingya.

Denied citizenship by national law, the Muslims are effectively stateless. They have for years faced attacks by the military and extremist Buddhist mobs. They have limited access to education or adequate health care and cannot move around freely.

Bangladeshi migrants have their lunch at a temporary shelter for the migrants whose boats washed ashore on Sumatra island on Sunday, in Lhoksukon, Aceh province, Indonesia, Wednesday, May 13, 2015. More than 1,600 migrants and refugees have landed on the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia in the past week and thousands more are believed to have been abandoned at sea, floating on boats with little or no food after traffickers literally jumped ship fearing a crackdown.

LANGKAWI, Malaysia (AP) -- Malaysia has turned away a boat with more than 500 Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis after providing them with fuel and provisions, a government official said Thursday.

The boat was found Wednesday off the coast of northern Penang state, just three days after more than a thousand refugees landed in nearby Langkawi island.

Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Jaafar said Malaysia cannot afford to have immigrants flooding its shores.

“What do you expect us to do? We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border. We have treated them humanely but they cannot be flooding our shores like this,” he told the Associated Press.

“We have to send the right message that they are not welcome here,” he said.

Thousands of migrants are still believed stranded in the Malacca Strait and surrounding waters, after captains tied to trafficking networks abandoned ships, leaving behind their human cargo.

Indonesia, which has taken 600, also turned a boat away earlier this week. But a foreign ministry spokesman denied Wednesday it had a “push back” policy, saying the Malaysian-bound vessel strayed into its waters by accident.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have worsened the Rohingya crisis “with cold-hearted policies to push back this new wave of boat people that puts thousands of lives at risk.”

“The Thai, Malaysia and Indonesian navies should stop playing a three-way game of human ping pong, and instead should work together to rescue all those on these ill-fated boats,” he said in a statement Thursday.

If the legislation is enacted, “Americans will now rest easy knowing that their calls and other records will not be warehoused by the government, no matter how careful the government is in their procedures to access those files,” said Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat on the intelligence committee.

The House measure also provides for a panel of experts to advocate for privacy and civil liberties before the secret intelligence court that oversees surveillance programs. And it allows the government to continue eavesdropping on foreign terrorists without a warrant for 72 hours after they enter the U.S., giving authorities time to obtain such a warrant.

The Senate will have a short window to act before Patriot Act provisions authorizing the phone records program and other counterterrorism-related measures expire June 1. If McConnell’s bill passes to reauthorize the law with no changes, that would be seen as a crushing defeat for surveillance opponents.

On Tuesday, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers and FBI Director Jim Comey briefed senators on the program. Afterward, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee told reporters the NSA was not collecting all the data it should be. He declined to be specific, saying the briefing was classified, but he appeared to be addressing the fact that the collection does not include most mobile calls in an era when many people have stopped using landlines.

“The way it’s being implemented today, I don’t see how it’s ... useful at all to the American people,” said Corker, who wants to reauthorize the current law. “And I’m shocked, shocked ... by the small amount of data that is even part of the program. It needs to be ramped up.”

U.S. officials have confirmed the mobile records gap, saying it stemmed from technical and policy issues that ultimately would have been addressed absent the Snowden leak. Under the House’s USA Freedom Act, they said, the NSA would expand its queries to include mobile records, creating a potentially more effective program. But they have expressed concerns about working out an arrangement with phone providers to standardize the data so the information can quickly be searched.

Those officials, n

S TAT E O F PA L E S T I N E continued from page 1

important political status that stems from its spiritual status,” said Abbas’ senior aide, Nabil Shaath. “We expect more EU countries to follow.”

The Vatican has been referring unofficially to the state of Palestine since 2012.

Increasingly over the years, Rohingya boarding boats in the Bay of Bengal have been joined by neighboring Bangladeshi, most of them seeking an escape from poverty.

During Pope Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land, the Vatican’s official program referred to Abbas as the president of the “state of Palestine.”

For those fleeing, the first stop, until recently, was Thailand, where migrants were held in jungle camps until their families could raise hefty ransoms so they could continue onward. Recent security crackdowns forced the smugglers to change tactics, instead holding people on large ships parked offshore.

The Vatican’s foreign minister, Monsignor Antoine Camilleri, acknowledged the change in status, but said the shift was simply in line with the Holy See’s position.

Initially they were shuttled to shore in groups on smaller boats after their “ransoms” were paid. But as agents and brokers on land got spooked by arrests - not just of traffickers but also police and politicians - they went into hiding.

That created a bottleneck, with migrants stuck on boats for weeks, even months.

Chris Lewa of the non-profit Arakan Project estimates as many as 6,000 may still be on boats, waiting to find a chance to land or hoping to be rescued. Several international agencies consider her figures to be the most reliable.

The Holy See clearly tried to underplay the development, suggesting that its 2012 press statement welcoming the U.N. vote constituted its first official recognition. Nowhere in that statement does the Vatican say it recognizes the state of Palestine, and the Holy See couldn’t vote for the U.N. resolution because it doesn’t have voting rights at the General Assembly.

The Vatican’s efforts to downplay the move seemed justified given the swift condemnation of the development by Israeli groups: The American Jewish Committee said it was “counterproductive to all who seek true peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” The Anti-Defamation League said it was “premature.”

In recent days, captains have started abandoning their ships, leaving passengers to fend for themselves, survivors say.

“We appreciate that the Vatican’s basic intention is to promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, but believe that this diplomatic recognition will be unhelpful to that end,” the ADL’s Abraham Foxman said.

The United Nations has pleaded for countries in the region to keep their arms open and help rescue those stranded. Several navies said they were scouring the seas.

The 2012 U.N. vote recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state, made up of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Malaysia, which is not a signatory of international conventions on refugees, is host to more than 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers, the majority who are from Myanmar. More than 45,000 of them are Rohingyas, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

Wan Junaidi said the home ministry will soon call for a meeting with diplomats from Bangladesh and Myanmar, as well as from developed countries, including the United States and the European Union to urge them to take in U.N. refugees in Malaysia waiting to resettle to third countries.

The Palestinians celebrated the vote as a milestone in their quest for international recognition. Most countries in Africa, Asia and South America have individually recognized Palestine. In Western Europe, Sweden took the step last year, while several parliaments have approved non-binding motions urging recognition.

Southeast Asia, which for years tried to quietly ignore the plight of Myanmar’s 1.3 million Rohingya, now finds itself caught in a spiraling humanitarian crisis that in many ways it helped create.

“We want to tell the source countries that they must tell their people back home that Malaysia cannot welcome them,” he said.

In the last three years, more than 100,000 members of the Muslim minority have boarded ships, fleeing persecution, according to the

“We also want to tell other countries not to blame Malaysia while they just talk to the gallery. Open your doors and take these refugees in. Don’t be selective,” he said.

This isn’t the first time that the Vatican under Francis has taken diplomatic moves knowing that it would please some quarters and ruffle feathers elsewhere: Just last month, he referred to the slaughter of Armenians by Turkish Ottomans a century ago as a “genocide,” prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador.

Wan Junaidi said Southeast Asian governments must do more to press Myanmar to address the Rohingya crisis.

“You talk about democracy but don’t treat your citizens like trash, like criminals until they need to run away to our country,” he said.

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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R E V I E W : W H A T T O D O I F P H O N E S F I L L U P W I T H P H O T O S APPLE’S ICLOUD PHOTO LIBRARY

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shoot enough photos and videos, and your phone will eventually fill up.

This is Apple’s way of unifying your photo collection online. It works with Apple’s Photos app for organizing and editing those images on Mac and mobile devices.

It isn’t always possible to add storage, and it isn’t easy to move your vast collection elsewhere to free up space. New services from Yahoo and Apple can help by automatically moving your photos and videos online.

Apple keeps a full-resolution version online while downgrading what’s on your device when space is low. You get the original back when you need it. Otherwise, it’s not taking up as much space. All this is automatic, so you don’t need to mess with deleting originals and potentially deleting the wrong ones.

YAHOO’S FLICKR Flickr offers virtually unlimited online storage for free - 1 terabyte, or as Yahoo puts it, about five photos a day for the next 60 years. New tools from Yahoo automate image transfers.

With Flickr’s app for iPhones, iPads and Android devices, old and new images alike are automatically copied to your online account, so you can delete the original files from your phone. You’ll still be able to edit and share images through Flickr’s app, and you can retrieve the originals anytime.

Meanwhile, Flickr’s software for Mac and Windows computers will continually scan and upload images, including ones you add later.

Houston Texans fan Erick Salgado takes a photo with his cell phone of his brother Andres Salgado, left, and his cousin Victor Ticas, right, before the start of an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, in Jacksonville, Fla. Yahoo’s Flickr and Apple’s iCloud Photo Library will automatically transfer photos and videos to your online account, so you get a backup and more space on your device.

on whether they contain kids or groups, it doesn’t do face detection.

You can’t pull up photos of just your mom or your best friend.

Regardless of the source, all photos and videos are viewable in one collection through a Web browser or Flickr’s mobile app. The newest images are on top, but you can use Flickr’s smart sorting tools under its “Magic View.” Software analyzes and categorizes images based on what’s in them, such as food and flowers. A search tool lets you filter by such attributes as colors in the picture and the image’s orientation.

Flickr is still rolling out the features to all of its users. I’ve encountered some hiccups, including videos not uploading consistently.

To free up space, you need to delete files from your phone after getting them to Flickr, which means keeping track of which ones have already been transferred. Also, while Flickr can categorize people shots based

Get Flickr’s app from your phone’s app store. Go to http://flickr.com/ tools/downloadmac for the Mac software and http://flickr.com/tools/ downloadwindows for Windows.

And after a few days, Flickr still hasn’t finished transferring all of my photos. If your collection is sizable like mine, it can take days or weeks.

F I R S T F E W F I S H I N G S L AV E S H O M E I N M YA N M A R ; H U N D R E D S WA I T I N G denied medical care.

The AP linked their catch to the supply chains of some of America’s biggest food sellers, such as Wal-Mart, Sysco and Kroger, and also to popular brands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, Meow Mix and Iams. The companies have all said they strongly condemn labor abuse and are taking steps to prevent it, such as working with human rights groups to hold subcontractors accountable.

You’re limited to transferring images from Apple devices - iPhones, iPads and Macs - though you can view them through a Windows Web browser. You’re charged for storage once you hit 5 gigabytes, or roughly 3,000 photos. It costs 99 cents a month for 20 gigabytes, though you might need more if your phone is already full.

Unlike Flickr, Apple can sort images based on specific individuals in them, though it doesn’t do object recognition, such as automatically identifying a dog in a picture. Unlike Flickr, Apple can handle RAW file formats favored by many professionals with high-end cameras. It’s not an issue, though, if you’re just shooting with the phone (unless you have LG’s upcoming G4 phone, which can shoot in RAW).

The online photo feature is built into the Photos apps that come with Mac and iOS operating systems. There’s no separate download once you have the latest system updates. Just turn the feature on when prompted.

AND THE REST ...

With Google’s Auto Backup and Amazon’s Cloud Drive, automatic transfers are limited to Apple and Android phones - not PCs. Google offers free unlimited storage in a reduced resolution. Otherwise, full-resolution images count toward a free allotment shared with Gmail and other Google services. Amazon’s Cloud Drive with unlimited photo storage is $12 a year - waived for members of its $99-a-year Prime service. It’s $60 a year if you want unlimited videos, too.

With all of these services, images are kept private - for your eyes only - until you specify otherwise.

Flickr is the only one that’s truly free and compatible with multiple systems. But if you have an Apple device and don’t mind paying, iCloud Photo Library is the easier one to use.

On Monday, 59 former slaves from Cambodia became the first to return home there. Sim Chhorn, 69, traveled to the airport from the central part of the county to meet her son.

However, Wiriya Sirichaiekawat, vice chair of the National Fisheries Association of Thailand, said that the problems are not representative of the entire Thai fishing industry. He added that he doesn’t believe many of the men from Benjina were unpaid.

“I thought in this life, I would not see him again,” she said with a quivering voice before their reunion.

“Maybe 1 percent,” he said of the level of labor abuses aboard Thai boats in foreign waters. “Not all of them.”

The first votes arrive at the general election count for the Glasgow constituencies at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland, Thursday May 7, 2015. British voters streamed to schools, churches and pubs Thursday for a say in their country’s future, voting for lawmakers in an election expected to produce no clear victor and lead to days of frantic haggling for power.

The hundreds of men still waiting at the port in Tual are now free to relax and laugh as they kick a rattan ball over a net in the traditional Burmese game of “chinlone.” Some watch the sunset at dusk or lounge in hammocks listening to Burmese music.

Others sit in the cool grass of an open field getting haircuts.

Kyaw Naing insists he is still owned for years of work on his boat. Now that he’s back home in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta, he realizes the chances of ever receiving any wages are slim.

But for now, he has something better than money.

TUAL, Indonesia (AP) -- When Kyaw Naing arrived at the tiny thatch-and-bamboo shack in Myanmar, it was empty and the door stood wide open.

But significant challenges remain, including the cost of feeding them, providing medical care and getting them home.

He was finally home, after five years of being forced to work as a slave on a fishing boat, but there was no one to greet him. His brother - and only living relative - was gone.

Kyaw Naing, 30, who was kept at one point in a cage on the remote Indonesian island village of Benjina, is among eight migrant fishermen rescued for their safety during an Associated Press investigation into slavery in the seafood industry. Those men are now home, and hundreds more are waiting to be repatriated after the Indonesian government evacuated them to another island following the story’s publication.

The number of former slaves found has risen steadily in the past month to nearly 600, reflecting how widespread and deep-rooted the problem of forced labor is on the boats that bring them from Thailand. Before the first men left to go home this week, more than 360 were gathered on the island of Tual, including some who got word of the rescue and traveled hundreds of miles by boat to join the others. Another 230 Burmese and Cambodians have been identified and are waiting to leave Benjina, while hundreds of Thai nationals still have not been processed there.

In addition, the AP recently found more foreign migrants desperate to go home during a visit to the provincial capital of Ambon.

The International Organization for Migration suspects thousands of others are stranded on boats or surrounding islands.

A rescue is what Kyaw Naing hoped for when he agreed to talk on camera through the rusty bars of his cage in November. He said he had been locked up by his Thai captain for asking to go home.

“I was really upset because I didn’t know when I was going to return. When I looked at the sea, all I saw was water - ocean all over. I was hopeless,” he said. “I did the video and volunteered it to let the whole world know.”

Most of the men are from Myanmar, also known as Burma, but some are from Cambodia, Laos and poor parts of Thailand.

They were sold, tricked or even kidnapped in Thailand and brought to work in Indonesian waters for little or no pay. They were forced to work up to 24 hours a day with inadequate food and unclean water, and many reported being beaten and

Repatriation is expensive due to air travel. Australia has already donated more than $1.6 million, while the U.S. paid $35,000 for the Cambodians’ flights and has provided another $225,000 to support case workers, health care, food, water and shelter.

Myanmar is planning chartered flights, the first of which is scheduled for Thursday, and the IOM has been coordinating efforts and providing other necessities.

Much more is needed, especially since many of the fishermen were paid little or nothing and are going home penniless. Some have not been in contact with family for years and aren’t sure if relatives have moved or even if they will find them alive.

“The overall response so far is a good first step in tackling human trafficking in the fishing industry that has been allowed to run rampant for far too long,” said Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the IOM in Indonesia. “But it is only a first step of many that need to follow.”

In the meantime, authorities in Indonesia and Thailand are working to punish those responsible.

On Tuesday, Indonesian police announced the first arrests in the case. Two Indonesian employees of Pusaka Benjina Resources, one of the largest fishing companies in eastern Indonesia, and five Thai captains were taken into custody on charges of human trafficking. Authorities have vowed more arrests will follow, and the country’s Human Rights Commission is investigating.

Meanwhile, Jakarta police said Wednesday that a Fisheries Ministry official from Benjina who was slated to be a key witness had died of a heart attack. The Fisheries minister has launched an internal investigation, and other witnesses have been placed in protection.

Thailand’s prime minister’s office has also said it is probing the Benjina case.

“I am surprised and saddened,” said Myanmar police Lt. Col. Khin Maung Hla, who visited the Indonesian islands last month to investigate the problem. “I think the Thai companies should be held responsible because they are the ones bringing these people overseas.”

After waiting for a while at the little hut, his older brother finally returned. Kyaw Naing immediately approached and knelt before him, offering respect according to the country’s Buddhist tradition.

There were no dramatic hugs or tears. But both men smiled as the younger brother told an edited version of his life on the high seas - minus the slavery and despair - and talked about his dream of opening a barber shop in Myanmar.

“Whether he is rich or poor, I am so happy to see him again,” said Kyaw Oo, who happily opened his family’s 8-foot by 8-foot home to the brother he thought he’d lost. “After all these years, I wondered if he had forgotten me. Or does he still recognize me as a brother? Or is he dead or alive?”

Dont Text and Drive

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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C O N T E S T E D U T A H L AW C O U L D I M PA C T C O N TA C T L E N S I N D U S T RY

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A law banning price-fixing for contact lenses that took effect this week in Utah is a setback for the nation’s largest manufacturers that could have ripple effects across the country amid an increasingly bitter fight with discount retailers.

making lenses more expensive. The discount giant Costco says the manufacturer’s minimum price rules forced them to raise prices by more than 20 percent on some brands. Prices on the popular Acuvue Oasys brand increased from about $52 for a 12-pack to about $68 last year, according to court papers.

The new law appears to clear the way for the largest online discount seller, Utah-based 1-800 Contacts, to disregard minimum prices set by the lens makers and sell at a discount across state lines, said Steve DelBianco, executive director of the Internet sellers trade group NetChoice.

“That’s good for consumers, who pay less for their lenses when they buy from Utah suppliers,” he said in an email message. But contact lens manufacturers Johnson & Johnson, Bausch & Lomb and Alcon Laboratories disagree, and the measure is still in legal limbo. They call the law an unconstitutional overreach written specifically to bolster the Utah-based 1-800 Contacts and are fighting it in court.

Utah officials, meanwhile, have been vague on whether it will allow Utah companies to sell at discounted rates to customers outside the state. 1-800 Contacts said they plan to lower their prices, but did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about whether that would apply to customers outside the state. As of Wednesday afternoon, the price for a 12-pack of the popular Acuvue Oasys brand hadn’t changed.

JU DGE L E T S RUSSIAN MAN CHARGED WITH HACKING FIRE HIS LAW YE RS

On Monday, a federal judge sided with Utah and discount companies when he refused to block the law from going into effect the following day. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said it appears to be a legal antitrust measure designed to keep the manufacturers from squelching competition with the minimum prices.

A contact lens is shown in front of a 1-800-Contacts shipping box Wednesday, May 13, 2015, in Salt Lake City. A law banning price-fixing for contact lenses that took effect this week in Utah is a setback for the nation’s largest manufacturers that could have ripple effects across the country amid an increasingly bitter fight with discount retailers.

At stake is control of a roughly $4 billion market with some 38 million American customers, according to court papers. Many contact lens sales come from eye doctors, who issue prescriptions that are brand and model specific, but discount retailers have been growing in recent years. 1-800 Contacts has captured about 10 percent of the national market, court documents state.

The manufacturers say that the minimum prices protect eye doctors, allowing the professionals to talk to their patients about the right lenses for them without having to worry about prices.

“There is no need to shop around for a better price,” Johnson and Johnson company attorneys wrote. The American Optometric Association said in a statement Wednesday that going to the doctor for lenses also helps keep people’s eyes safe.

But the discounters say that the minimum prices hurt customers by

The minimum price rules have also drawn ire elsewhere, sparking 40 class action lawsuits across the country and scrutiny from Congress since the manufacturers started setting them about two years ago, according to Monday’s ruling. Nine states have considered similar legislation similar to that passed in Utah.

The manufacturers are appealing Benson’s ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

A constitutional law expert said Wednesday that the law doesn’t appear to run afoul of interstate commerce rules because it bolsters competition rather than protects a local company.

“This is just garden variety economic regulation,” said Richard Primus, professor of law at the University of Michigan. The potential penalty in the law appears to be more legally complicated, though. The law allows the state’s attorney general to file a civil action against a contact lens manufacturer if they refuse to sell to a Utah retailer that sells the product too cheaply.

“I don’t see how Utah has the power to do that,” said Primus.

Utah state attorney Parker Douglas said it’s not yet clear how the law will be enforced.

AFTER 2ND QUAKE, MANY IN NEPAL CUT OFF BY BLOCKED ROADS

SEATTLE (AP) -- A Russian man who prosecutors say made millions as a prolific computer hacker and credit card thief was allowed to fire his lawyers on Wednesday, just minutes before the start of a two-day hearing to decide whether his arrest in the Maldives was legal.

Five U.S. agents who were slated to testify about the 2014 arrest waited outside a closed courtroom while Roman Seleznev made his case to U.S. District Judge Richard Jones for dismissing his two federal public defenders, who had been appointed in January after he fired his two private attorneys for unknown reasons.

Jones called everyone back in and announced that new lawyers will be appointed and the arrest hearing canceled. No reason was given for Seleznev’s request, which was filed under seal.

In April, Seleznev’s lawyers had filed a motion to dismiss the 40-count indictment charging him with hacking, identity theft and wire fraud.

They argued that Seleznev, the son of a member of the Russian Parliament, was on vacation with his girlfriend in the Maldives when two U.S. agents stopped them at the airport as they prepared to board a flight to Moscow.

They said the agents took him to a small room, showed him a 2011 federal indictment and put him in handcuffs. They flew him by private jet to Guam where he went before a U.S. federal judge before being flown to Seattle.

Nepalese child Subha Laxini, 3, who was injured in Tuesday’s earthquake is carried by father Lak Bahadur on their way to a camp for the displaced in Chautara, Nepal, Wednesday, May 13, 2015. Nepal, just beginning to rebuild after a devastating April 25 earthquake, was hit by a magnitude-7.3 quake Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter carrying six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers remained missing. It had been delivering disaster aid Tuesday in the country’s northeast, U.S. officials said. There have been no indications the aircraft crashed.

Home ministry official Laxmi Dhakal said Wednesday that army helicopters were scouring the Sunkhani area, nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Kathmandu, for the missing helicopter.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- Many survivors of Nepal’s most recent earthquake remain cut off by blocked roads in isolated villages, a U.N. official said Wednesday, after this Himalayan nation suffered through its second major quake in less than three weeks.

Most of the people confirmed dead in the second quake by Wednesday afternoon were in Dolakha district, northeast of Kathmandu, said the district’s chief administrator, Prem Lal Lamichane.

The magnitude-7.3 earthquake shook the impoverished country Tuesday, killing at least 79 people and injuring more than 2,300, just as it was beginning to rebuild from a devastating April 25 earthquake.

“People are terrorized. Everyone is scared here. They spent the night out in the open,” Lamichane said, adding the administration was running out of relief materials.

The most recent quake hit hardest in deeply rural parts of the Himalayan foothills, hammering many villages reached only by hiking trails and causing road-blocking landslides.

“Damaged houses were further damaged or destroyed. Houses and schools building spared before were affected yesterday, roads were damaged,” said Jamie McGoldrick, a top U.N. official in Nepal.

The agents failed to secure approval for the capture from any Maldivian judicial authority, according to the motion, and instead “simply disregarded the Maldives’ sovereign rights and concocted a scheme to kidnap Mr. Seleznev using means outside the Maldivian legal system.” They said the arrest amounted to an illegal rendition and the charges against him dismissed.

Among 14 quake-hit districts, some are barely accessible, and a large part of the affected population could not be reached easily because of damaged roads.

The U.S. attorney’s office responded by saying the agents acted appropriately and within the law.

“Some are even difficult to reach by helicopter. We are facing monumental challenges here to support the government in these districts to have a credible response,” McGoldrick said.

Two agents from the U.S. State Department and two with the U.S. Secret Service who were involved in Seleznev’s capture had flown from as far away as Sri Lanka to testify about the arrest, but will need to return when a new hearing date is set.

owner.

He asked the government to send more helicopters and supplies and said many injured people were stranded in villages.

Tuesday’s quake killed 16 people in northern India and one person in Tibet.

The magnitude-7.8 earthquake that hit April 25 killed more than 8,150 people and flattened entire villages, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless in the country’s worst quake since 1934.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday’s earthquake was the largest aftershock of the April quake. But it was significantly less powerful and occurred deeper in the Earth. Working from USGS data, calculations done by University of Michigan earthquake geophysicist Eric Hetland indicated that about 65,000 people were exposed to “violent” shaking Tuesday, compared to 1.5 million on April 25.

On Wednesday, officials with bullhorns walked through the worst-damaged streets of Chautara, a small town northeast of Kathmandu, calling for people to leave buildings in danger of collapsing after Tuesday’s quake.

The first quake also drove many people to leave damaged homes, which were empty when the new quake caused more damage and collapses.

“There is danger!” they said over the bullhorns. “Leave the buildings!”

On Wednesday, McGoldrick said the U.N. revised its donor appeal to provide $423 million. The response to the earlier appeal of $415 million has been low, with about 15 percent of the sum received.

Most people, though, had fled into the open the day before and had spent the night in tents or under plastic tarps.

Chautara, a foothills town, became a hub for rescuers and humanitarian aid after the first earthquake. Officials there said at least three people had died and more than 60 were injured in the new quake.

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People salvaged whatever they could from their toppled homes.

Most houses appeared to be damaged; some were leveled. Others tilted and rested on adjacent homes.

“We were in the shop. All of a sudden the building shook. I jumped out of the store and the next second it fell down. It was already tilted by the last month’s earthquake. I watched it just slide and fall on its side,” said Devi Acharya, a convenience store

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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F B I H A I R A N A LY S I S P R O B L E M S REVEAL LIMITS OF FORENSIC SCIENCE individuals who could be a potential source of hair, critics note that there’s no way to conclusively know how common or rare the specimen is because no national database of hair specimens exists. A 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences described as “highly unreliable” testimony purporting to identify a particular defendant through hair analysis.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Kirk Odom was convicted of a 1981 rape and robbery after a woman identified him as her attacker and an FBI specialist testified that hair on her nightgown was similar to hair on Odom’s head.

But DNA testing some 30 years later affirmed what Odom long had maintained: The hair wasn’t his; neither was the semen left on a pillowcase and robe. A felony conviction that imprisoned him for decades was overturned in 2012 by a judge who declared it a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

The FBI still considers microscopic hair analysis valid, but has also acknowledged its scientific limitations and uses it now in conjunction with more scientifically reliable DNA testing.

The Justice Department in 2012 embarked on a review of criminal cases following high-profile exonerations in which microscopic hair analysis was used. The government has identified nearly 3,000 cases in which FBI examiners submitted reports or may have testified in trials involving hair analysis.

“I was hoping that I was going to go home that day,” Odom, recalling his trial in Washington, D.C., said in an interview. Instead, “they sentenced me to 20 to 66 years in prison.”

His experience is but one example of flawed forensic science from the pre-DNA era, a simmering problem that now appears far more widespread than initially thought. The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongly accused, has identified 74 overturned convictions in which faulty hair evidence was a factor. Now, a new disclosure by the FBI that experts gave erroneous testimony on hair analysis in more than 250 trials before 2000 suggests that number could rise dramatically.

Defense lawyers say the latest revelations - on top of established concerns about bite mark identification and arson science - confirm fears about the shortcomings of old-fashioned forensic techniques and could affect thousands of cases. Advancing technologies have put such techniques under more scrutiny, including from judges, and highlighted the limits of once-established practices.

“There are forces converging at the moment that are finally bringing some recognition to the failings of many venerable techniques,” said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project.

A 2013 Associated Press investigation concluded that at least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite-mark evidence the practice of matching teeth to a flesh wound - were exonerated since 2000. Meanwhile, some high-profile criminal cases involving arson science have come under renewed scrutiny amid debunked fire investigations. Last year, a Pennsylvania judge threw out the conviction of a

In this photo taken April 30, 2015, Kirk Odom speaks to The Associated Press at his home in southeast in Washington, Thursday, April 30, 2015. Odom was convicted of a 1981 rape and robbery after a woman identified him as her attacker and an FBI specialist testified that hair on her nightgown was consistent with hair on Odom’s head. But DNA testing some 30 years later affirmed what Odom long had maintained: The hair wasn’t his, nor was the semen left on a pillowcase and robe. A felony conviction that imprisoned him for decades was overturned in 2012 by a judge who declared it a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

Korean immigrant who had spent 24 years in prison for his daughter’s death.

When subjective speculation is injected into a trial under the guise of science, “then a real perversion of justice is what happens,” Fabricant said.

Microscopic hair analysis, which involves comparing hair specimens through a microscope, has for decades been an established FBI practice and passed along at seminars to hundreds of state-level examiners.

But critics say the technique lacks objective standards, with limitations that have led experts to overstate its evidentiary value too often.

Though this kind of evidence may be used to include or exclude

GUNMEN KILL 45 SHIITE MUSLIMS RIDING ON A BUS IN PAKISTAN “Terrorists have chosen a very peaceful and patriotic community to target in order to achieve their nefarious designs,” Sharif said.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the attack, saying Pakistan must “take swift measures aimed at effective protection of religious minorities in the country.”

A Pakistani paramilitary trioop stands guard near a bus targeted by attackers in Karachi, Pakistan, Wednesday, May 13, 2015. Gunmen killed dozens of people on Wednesday aboard a bus in southern Pakistan bound for a Shiite community center, in the latest attack targeting the religious minority, police said.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) -- Gunmen stormed a bus carrying Shiite Muslims in southern Pakistan and ordered them to bow their heads before being shot, killing at least 45 people Wednesday in the latest attack targeting the religious minority.

Who carried out the attack in the port city of Karachi wasn’t immediately clear, as a Pakistani Taliban splinter group and an Islamic State affiliate both claimed it. However, some Taliban fighters have pledged their allegiance in recent months to the extremist group that now holds a third of Iraq and Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

“These are the people who are extremists, who are terrorists,” provincial police chief Ghulam Haider Jamali said of the assailants. “These are the same people who have been doing terrorism before.”

The bus was on the outskirts of the city traveling to an Ismaili Shiite community center when six gunmen boarded it, Jamali said. The attackers ordered the passengers to bow their heads and not look up before opening fire at close range, investigator Khadim Hussain said.

Shell casings at the scene suggested the gunmen used both pistols and machine guns in their attack before fleeing on three motorcycles, police said. Jamali said the attackers killed 45 people, including 16 women, and wounded 13.

Qadir Baluch, a security guard at a nearby building, said he heard the gunshots and saw at least one of the militants wearing a police uniform.

The attack riddled the bus with bullet holes, but its wounded driver still could drive it to a nearby hospital, said Mohammad Imran, a guard there. Imran said when he got on the bus later he saw blood still seeping across its seats and floor. Blood stained Imran’s own hands and uniform.

“I hardly saw any survivor,” he said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who rushed to Karachi, condemned the bus attack, calling it “an attempt to create chaos.”

Pamphlets found nearby the site of the attack claimed an Islamic State affiliate carried it out, calling it revenge for the killing of fellow fighters in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, police officer Najeeb Khan said.

Meanwhile, a man describing himself as a spokesman for a splinter faction of the Pakistani Taliban called Jundullah, or Army of God, claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to The Associated Press. The man, who identifies himself as Ahmad Marwat and has conveyed similar claims in the past, said “infidels were the target.”

The Taliban and other Sunni militant groups long have had a presence in Karachi. Sunni extremists view Pakistan’s minority Shiites as apostates and have targeted them in the past, though attacks on the Ismaili branch have been rare.

Wednesday’s attack was the deadliest in Pakistan since December, when Taliban militants killed 150 people, mostly young students, at an army-run school in Peshawar.

The Pakistani Taliban have been fighting for more than a decade to overthrow the government and impose a harsh version of Islamic law, killing tens of thousands of people.

The Islamic State group, meanwhile, has demanded the allegiance of the world’s Muslims and has drawn radicals for its bloody propaganda videos, featuring mass killings or beheadings. Some in Pakistan have made their own filmed killings.

A Pakistani government letter written in December and later obtained by the AP warned local officials that the Islamic State group claims the support of up to “12,000 followers” in northwest Pakistan.

This is second time pamphlets attributed to Islamic State group have been found at the site of an attack in Karachi, government counter terrorism officer Umar Khitab said. The Islamic State group in the so-called “Khorasan Province,” the affiliate named in the pamphlets, later posted the claim of responsibility on Twitter, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. firm that monitors terror groups.

At the Karachi hospital that took in the wounded, panicked relatives wept and tried to comfort teach other. Soofia Ali, 18, who lost her parents, wailed outside an intensive care unit where her wounded brother clung to life, unable to speak to those around her. A relative consoled her, asking her to pray.

The government provided an astonishing update last month when it revealed that of the 268 trials reviewed as of mid-March, investigators found erroneous statements from FBI experts in nearly all of the cases including in death-penalty prosecutions. The review is limited to cases dating before 2000 in which FBI examiners provided evidence. But the number of affected cases would almost certainly be much higher if the review took into account cases involving state examiners who were trained by the FBI. Still, no one knows how many defendants have been wrongly convicted because the existence of flawed testimony - often just one element of a prosecution - does not establish innocence.

“What it does mean is that those cases need to be looked at very closely to see what role hair played in the case,” said Norman Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Advocates say they are working to ensure that individuals potentially affected have opportunities to challenge their convictions. They’ve also encouraged states to do their own audits because most of the prosecutions were local cases. The Justice Department has said it will waive procedural objections, including statute-of-limitations claims, in federal cases.

Odom, 52, always maintained his innocence, saying he was home asleep at the time the assault occurred. But the hair evidence and eyewitness identification proved persuasive, and Odom spent more than 20 years in prison before being released on parole in 2003.

The big break came when the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, which has focused attention on the flawed science and ultimately established Odom’s innocence, reopened his case following the earlier exoneration of another local man because of faulty hair evidence.

DNA testing on evidence pulled from storage showed that the hair on the woman’s garment could not have come from Odom. The conviction was thrown out - a relief for a man who had been a registered sex offender and whose travel had been hampered.

When the call came that he’d been cleared, Odom was on a nighttime plumbing job, “and I just yelled out in happiness. It was a very joyful moment.”

UNEMPLOYMENT C L A I M S FA L L S TO 1 5 - Y E A R L O W WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits ticked lower last week, pushing down the four-week average of applications to its lowest level since April 2000.

Weekly applications fell 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 264,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That is just above a 15-year low reached three weeks ago. The average, a less volatile figure, dropped 7,750 to 271,750, the lowest in 15 years.

Applications are a proxy for layoffs, so their very low level is evidence that Americans are enjoying solid job security. It is also a sign employers are confident enough in the economy to keep their staffs, despite signs of sluggish growth.

“Claims continue to show no sign of the labor market weakening - if anything, the opposite,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.

The economy likely shrank in the first three months of the year. Economists blame a strong dollar, low oil prices that triggered cutbacks at oil and gas companies, and harsh winter weather that discouraged spending. A stronger dollar makes U.S. exports overseas more expensive, restraining sales.

Most analysts predict the economy is expanding in the April-June quarter, though the bounce-back hasn’t been as strong as many had hoped.

Consumers spent cautiously in April, according to a report on retail and restaurant sales Wednesday. Americans have not ramped up their spending so far this year, as economists had predicted, despite strong job gains and gas prices that are $1 a gallon cheaper than a year ago.

The weak retail sales report led JPMorgan Chase to cut its forecast for second quarter growth to an annual rate of 2 percent, down from 2.5 percent.

Still, employers are hiring at a steady pace, which means more Americans are earning paychecks. That could fuel stronger growth in the second half of this year. Employers added 223,000 jobs in April, the government said last week, and the unemployment rate fell to a seven-year low of 5.4 percent.

The number of people receiving benefits was unchanged at 2.29 million.

That is down 17 percent from a year earlier.

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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A G A I N ? A G E N T S L I K E LY ‘ I M PA I R E D ’ I N W H I T E H O U S E I N C I D E N T In advance of the report’s release late Wednesday, Connolly, the deputy special agent in charge of the Presidential Protection Division, notified the agency that he would retire. Ogilvie has been placed on administrative leave.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- What were they thinking?

For months new Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy had been warning agents and officers that misconduct and drunken shenanigans would not be tolerated in the once-vaunted law enforcement agency. And yet, according to investigators, two senior Secret Service agents spent five hours at a bar, ran up a significant tab, and then drove back to the White House, where they shoved their car into a construction barrier and drove within inches of a suspicious package earlier this year.

The incident once again focused a congressional spotlight on an agency that didn’t need more attention for scandals. The scandal-plagued agency has been in the spotlight since 2012 when more than a dozen agents and officers were caught up in a prostitution scandal in advance of a presidential trip to Colombia. Since then, there have been a handful of other incidents, the most serious being a security breach at the White House in September.

All this just months after Secret Service Julia Pierson director was ousted in the aftermath of a series of embarrassing security breaches involving Secret Service agents and officers.

George Ogilvie and Marc Connolly were “more likely than not” impaired by alcohol when they drove through a secure area at the White House earlier this year, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general said in a new report released late Wednesday.

They were among dozens of agency personnel who went to a retirement party for another agent but when the party wrapped up on March 4, the pair and two other, non-agent Secret Service employees, stuck around the Irish-themed bar for three more hours. Ogilvie, the assistant special agent in charge of the agency’s Washington field office, opened a tab and paid $149.87 for eight Johnny Walker Red scotches, two vodka drinks, three beers and a glass of wine.

The incident became public days later and forced Clancy to follow in the steps of Pierson and head to Capitol Hill to once again explain a Secret Service scandal to lawmakers.

In a statement Wednesday, the agency’s third director in less than three years said he was “disappointed and disturbed at the apparent lack of judgment described in this report. Behavior of the type described in the report is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Inspector General John Roth’s 18-page report on the incident said that Ogilvie, Connolly and their two companions all denied drinking all the drinks Ogilvie paid for before driving his government sport utility vehicle into a secured area at the White House, pushing a large construction barrier with the vehicle’s bumper and passing within inches of a suspicious item that had been left in the area.

In that incident, a Texas man armed with a knife was able to climb over a perimeter fence and run deep into the White House before being apprehended. It was later revealed that a few days before that incident, President Barack Obama rode an elevator in Atlanta with an armed contractor. The Secret Service didn’t know the man was armed until after Obama got off the elevator.

Roth told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday that the agents’ behavior was “troubling.” When asked if the pair should be punished, Roth said while discipline will fall to the Secret Service, he “believes there should be some consequences.”

Roth testified that Ogilvie and Connolly both violated agency policies barring driving a government vehicle after drinking and requirements that they self-report any incident that could gain public attention.

When pressed by lawmakers about what may have led the agents to ignore or violate agency policies, Roth said there is a lack of accountability within the Secret Service.

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and the ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said in a statement that Roth’s report was more evidence that the Secret Service is in need a “major cultural overhaul.”

Secret Service officers on duty and investigating the suspicious item when Ogilvie and Connolly drove through later told investigators they thought something was “not right” and the men were “not making sense” as they spoke to officers on the scene. None of the on-duty officers gave the agents a field sobriety test. Both were instead allowed to leave the White House complex driving government-owned vehicles, despite a watch commander’s concern that Connolly was not fit to drive.

H O U S E PA S S E S B I L L F O R C O N G R E S S TO REVIEW IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL Royce said.

New York Rep. Eliot Engel, ranking Democrat on the panel, urged bipartisan passage, saying, “Let’s get this bill to the president’s desk with a single voice.”

At the same time, he lamented that the nuclear talks were not addressing Iran’s threat to destroy Israel, Americans being held captive in the country, Iran’s backing of militant groups and its involvement in Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Boehner said Thursday that this week’s fatal Amtrak crash wasn’t caused by a lack of federal funds and mocked a reporter for even asking about it. “Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?” he said at a news conference as a reporter started to ask about Democratic complaints that the government shortchanges the railroad.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress on Thursday sent President Barack Obama a bill to give lawmakers the power to review and potentially reject a nuclear deal with Iran.

The House overwhelmingly passed the measure, 400-25, a reflection of lawmakers’ insistence on having a say in what could be a significant international accord to get Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

Getting a deal would enhance Obama’s foreign policy record, and while the GOP-led Congress doesn’t want to see a nuclear-armed Iran, they are skeptical about Iranian compliance and have demanded time to review the fine points of any agreement the White House reaches with Tehran.

Presidential spokesman Josh Earnest said again Thursday that Obama would sign the bill into law.

Pierson’s handling of those incidents ultimately led to her ouster. An independent panel concluded that the agency was “insular” and in need of new leadership. The panel recommended hiring a new director from outside the agency, but Obama instead chose Clancy, a retired agent who once ran the president’s protective detail.

“Regardless of whether we support the NDAA or not, we all support the brave men and women of our military who defend this country,” said Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. “Speaker Boehner is only implying otherwise in order to score cheap partisan points. Shame on him.”

Overall, the House bill authorizes $515 billion in spending for national defense and another $89.2 billion for the emergency war-fighting fund for a total of $604.2 billion. Another $7.7 billion is mandatory defense spending that doesn’t get authorized by Congress. That means the bill would provide the entire $611.9 billion desired by the president, but he still has threatened to veto it.

He and Democratic lawmakers oppose the way the committee skirted automatic spending caps imposed by Congress in 2011 by increasing defense spending by padding the emergency war-fighting fund, which is not affected by the caps. Democrats argue that the GOP wants to ignore those spending caps when it comes to funding the military, but wants to adhere to them when it comes to other domestic spending.

The same approach to authorizing defense spending was taken Thursday on the Senate side, and garnered the same opposition from Democrats.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 22-4 to authorize $523 billion in base funding for the Defense Department and the national security programs of the Energy Department as well as an additional $90.2 billion for the emergency war-fighting fund.

Separately, the House unanimously passed a bill, 423-0, to impose new sanctions on Hezbollah’s fundraising channels and restrict its ability to use its funds to support global terrorist activities. Iran is a strong backer of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. in the mid-1990s.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee chairman, said the measure also included bipartisan language requiring Obama to submit a detailed proposal to Congress on his plan to close the U.S. prison for terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer them to U.S. detention facilities. That plan would only take effect if approved by Congress, he said.

Also Thursday, the House considered a defense policy bill that authorizes U.S. military spending, with a final vote expected Friday.

Obama has threatened to veto the House bill, which historically has garnered overwhelming bipartisan support.

The measure would also authorize $300 million for the Ukraine government to buy weapons and equipment for its war against pro-Russian separatists.

House Speaker John Boehner chided Democrats for pulling their support for the bill.

“I think it’s downright shameful that they are even contemplating turning back on the American troops, especially those (Democrats) on the Armed Services Committee who voted for this bill in committee.”

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office quickly responded, saying Boehner was among 160 Republicans who voted against the defense authorization bill in 2010. That was the year that the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” - the law that barred gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals from openly serving in the military - was added to the bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act.

Negotiators from the U.S. and five other nations are rushing to reach a deal with Tehran by the end of June. As the House voted, Obama met at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland with Arab leaders in hopes of convincing them that U.S. overtures to Iran would not come at the expense of commitments to their security in the region.

The Iran nuclear legislation would bar Obama from waiving congressional sanctions for at least 30 days while lawmakers examine any final deal. The bill would stipulate that if senators disapprove of the deal, Obama would lose his current power to waive certain economic penalties Congress has imposed on Iran.

The bill, which was passed last week by the Senate on a 98-1 vote, would require Congress to pass a resolution of disapproval to reject the deal, an action that Obama almost certainly would veto. Congress then would have to muster votes from two-thirds of each chamber to override the veto.

Even if Congress rejects his final nuclear deal with Tehran, however, Obama could use his executive pen to offer a hefty portion of sanctions relief on his own. He could take unilateral actions that - when coupled with European and U.N. sanctions relief - would allow a deal to be implemented.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, backed the measure, saying it would strengthen the U.S. negotiating position with Tehran.

“Instead of Iranian negotiators knowing that they can wear down the administration, this now injects Congress as an important backstop,”

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The Weekly News Digest, May 18, thru May 24, 2015

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S U R V E Y: M O R E T H A N 4 0 P E R C E N T O F B E E H I V E S D I E D I N PA S T Y E A R WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than two out of five American honeybee colonies died in the past year, and surprisingly the worst die-off was in the summer, according to a federal survey.

hives die since April 2014, according to the survey.

“Most of the major commercial beekeepers get a dark panicked look in their eyes when they discuss these losses and what it means to their businesses,” said Pennsylvania State University entomology professor Diana Cox-Foster. She wasn’t part of the study, but praised it.

Since April 2014, beekeepers lost 42.1 percent of their colonies, the second highest loss rate in nine years, according to an annual survey conducted by a bee partnership that includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Delaplane and vanEngelsdorp said a combination of mites, poor nutrition and pesticides are to blame for the bee deaths. USDA bee scientist Jeff Pettis said last summer’s large die-off included unusual queen loss and seemed worse in colonies that moved more.

“What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems,” said study co-author Keith Delaplane at the University of Georgia. “We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”

But it’s not quite as dire as it sounds. That’s because after a colony dies, beekeepers then split their surviving colonies, start new ones, and the numbers go back up again, said Delaplane and study co-author Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland.

What shocked the entomologists is that is the first time they’ve noticed bees dying more in the summer than the winter, said vanEngelsdorp said. The survey found beekeepers lost 27.4 percent of their colonies this summer. That’s up from 19.8 percent the previous summer.

a hive of honey bees is on display at the Vermont Beekeeping Supply booth at the 82nd annual Vermont Farm Show at the Champlain Valley Expo in Essex Jct., Vt. Since April 2014, beekeepers lost 42.1 percent of their colonies, the second highest loss rate in nine years, and then managed to recover a bit, according to an annual survey conducted by a bee partnership that includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Seeing massive colony losses in summer is like seeing “a higher rate of flu deaths in the summer than winter,” vanEngelsdorp said. “You just don’t expect colonies to die at this rate in the summer.”

Dick Rogers, chief beekeeper for pesticide-maker Bayer, said the loss figure is “not unusual at all” and said the survey shows an end result of more colonies now than before: 2.74 million hives in 2015, up from 2.64 million in 2014.

That doesn’t mean bee health is improving or stable, vanEngelsdorp said. After they lose colonies, beekeepers are splitting their surviving hives to recover their losses, pushing the bees to their limits, Delaplane said.

U S D A C R E AT E S N E W T H E D E B A T E O V E R A R C T I C GOVERNMENT CERTIFID R I L L I N G - W H A T ’ S A T S T A K E CATION FOR GMO-FREE Oklahoma, Illinois, Iowa, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine and Wisconsin all saw more than 60 percent of their

ogy and member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in North Carolina.

It costs $19 to get the list of games to play with your dog at http://www.dognition.com . After you record the results, Duke puts together your pet’s profile. A dog will be dubbed an Ace, Charmer, Socialite, Expert, Renaissance Dog, Protodog, Einstein, Maverick or Stargazer.

For example, “Aces” are problem-solvers, socially elite, bond well and are good at almost everything. They also try to get away with bad behavior and then rely on a sweet face or some nuzzling to get themselves out of a pickle.

Wallis Brozman is aided by her service dog, Caspin, while going through a shopping mall in Santa Rosa, Calif. On the weekend of May 15, 2015, Nat Geo Wild will air a three-part series called “Is Your Dog a Genius?” It will be part of the network’s inaugural “BarkFest” weekend with one show after another dedicated to dogs. Brozman and Caspin will be guests on the show

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When her muscles locked and left her unable to move or speak, Wallis Brozman was glad she had a genius for a service dog.

Brozman, who has a movement disorder called dystonia, had taken her golden-Labrador retriever mix, Caspin, outside for a potty break without attaching the pulling harness he wears to guide her. Suddenly, she couldn’t move.

“I couldn’t talk or yell. I had no phone to text a message. I thought I would be stranded until someone found us,” said Brozman, who lives on her own in Santa Rosa, California, with a wheelchair and Caspin, who understands English and sign language.

Caspin put his neck under her hand until she got a finger looped on his collar.

“Then, very slowly, he started to pull me forward. He pushed the door open. Then he stayed by me until I could function enough to get into bed,” she said.

Caspin ranks as a Protodog, a spontaneous pooch that bonds easily and can solve problems on its own or with people, according to dog intelligence measures created by scientists and trainers. The Dognition Assessment uses 20 games to determine a dog’s level of empathy, communication, cunning, memory and reasoning.

People believing they have a smarty pants for a pet can see if their dog fits the bill on Nat Geo Wild’s three-part series “Is Your Dog a Genius?” airing May 15-17.

“People will learn about and come to a new understanding of their best friends,” said host Brian Hare, who helped develop the assessment as an associate professor of evolutionary anthropol-

“Einsteins” are the brainiacs. They can solve new problems by looking at the facts in front of them, a key attribute of a genius.

However, like brilliant people, Einstein dogs can be socially awkward.

The games show dog brainpower isn’t measured like man’s with an IQ test.

“We don’t deal in numbers,” Hare said. “In the animal world, we recognize there are lots of kinds of intelligence, and they vary widely. You can be a genius in one area but not in another.”

In one of the games, you put down two overturned paper cups, allowing the dog to watch as you put a treat under one.

You point to the empty cup and see where your pet goes. Both show a kind of genius: If Fido goes to the empty cup, he’s good at following orders and bonding. If he goes the other, he’s able to rely on his own devices - and gets the treat.

Brozman and her dog will be guests on the show, and she says there’s no question 8-year-old Caspin is smart in many ways.

His problem-solving skills make him most valuable to Brozman, but she says she doesn’t ask the impossible.

“No matter how many times I ask him to build me a rocket ship, he won’t build me a rocket ship,” she said. “He’ll bring me the parts, but building the rocket ship depends on me. So it’s a collaborative relationship, and you have to be realistic about what your dog is capable of doing.”

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Wallis Brozman is aided by her service dog, Caspin, while going through a shopping mall in Santa Rosa, Calif. On the weekend of May 15, 2015, Nat Geo Wild will air a three-part series called “Is Your Dog a Genius?” It will be part of the network’s inaugural “BarkFest” weekend with one show after another dedicated to dogs. Brozman and Caspin will be guests on the show

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Agriculture Department has developed a new government certification and labeling for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients.

USDA’s move comes as some consumer groups push for mandatory labeling of the genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The certification is the first of its kind and would be voluntary - and companies would have to pay for it. If approved, the foods would be able to carry a “USDA Process Verified” label along with a claim that they are free of GMOs. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack outlined the department’s plan in a May 1 letter to employees, saying the certification was being done at the request of a “leading global company,” which he did not identify. A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

Right now, there are no government labels that only certify a food as GMOfree. Many companies use a private label developed by a nonprofit called the Non-GMO Project. The USDA organic label also certifies that foods are free of genetically modified ingredients, but many non-GMO foods aren’t organic.

Vilsack said the USDA certification is being created through the department’s Agriculture Marketing Service, which works with interested companies to certify the accuracy of the claims they are making on food packages - think “humanely raised” or “no antibiotics ever.” Companies pay the Agricultural Marketing Service to verify a claim, and if approved, they can market the foods with the USDA process verified label.

“Recently, a leading global company asked AMS to help verify that the corn and soybeans it uses in its products are not genetically engineered so that the company could label the products as such,” Vilsack wrote in the letter. “AMS worked with the company to develop testing and verification processes to verify the non-GE claim.”

A USDA spokesman confirmed that Vilsack sent the letter but declined to comment on the certification program. Vilsack said in the letter that the certification “will be announced soon, and other companies are already lining up to take advantage of this service.”

Genetically modified foods come from seeds that are originally engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, like resistance to herbicides. The majority of the country’s corn and soybean crop is now genetically modified, with much of that going to animal feed. GMO corn and soybeans are also made into popular processed food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil.

The government says GMOs on the market now are safe and that mandatory labels aren’t needed. Consumer advocates pushing for mandatory labeling say shoppers still have a right to know what is in their food, arguing that not enough is known about the effects of the technology. They have supported several state efforts to require labeling, with the eventual goal of having a federal standard.

The USDA label is similar to what is proposed in a GOP House bill introduced earlier this year that is designed to block those mandatory GMO labeling efforts around the country. The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., provides for USDA certification but would not make it mandatory. The bill also would override any state laws that require the labeling.

The food industry, which backs Pompeo’s bill, has strongly opposed individual state efforts to require labeling, saying labels would be misleading because GMOs are safe.

Vermont became the first state to require the labeling in 2014, and that law will go into effect next year if it survives a legal challenge from the food industry.

A spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the major food industry trade group that challenged the Vermont law, said, “We are interested in this development and look forward to engaging with the department” on the labels.