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RUSSIAN BOMBER PAT R O L S T O R E A C H GULF OF MEXICO MOSCOW (AP) -Russia’s long-range bombers will range from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on regular patrol missions, the military said Wednesday, a show of muscle reflecting tensions with the West over Ukraine. A statement from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu s statement comes as NATO has reported a spike in Russian military flights over the Black, Baltic and North seas as well as the Atlantic Ocean. It reflects Moscow’s increasingly tough posture amid tensions with the West over Ukraine. Shoigu said Russian long-range bombers will conduct flights along Russian borders and over the Arctic Ocean. He added that “in the current situation we have to maintain military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.” He said that the increasing pace and duration of flights would require stronger maintenance efforts. Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers were making regular patrols across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans during the Cold War times, but the post-Soviet money crunch forced the military to cut back. The bomber patrol flights have resumed under Putin’s rule and have become increasingly frequent in recent years.
US LONG-TERM VISAS ISSUED FOR CHINESE T R AV E L E R S U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, looks towards U.S. President Barack Obama, right, during a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014.
BEIJING (AP) -- For his job with IBM, Yang Bo has so far traveled to the United States at least 10 times and is heading to North Carolina soon for more meetings. Li Aiqi is preparing to start her bachelor’s degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology. And Ye Peng, an English teacher in Beijing, wants to take four of her elementary school students to San Jose to take classes with Americans kids. On Wednesday, they were among 11 people given the first-ever U.S. visas to let Chinese citizens travel back and forth to the United States for up to 10 years. In a new agreement, announced this week during the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Beijing will issue similar visas to Americans looking to make repeated trips to China.
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OBAMA, PUTIN CIRCLE EACH O T H E R WA R I L Y I N C H I N A
WASHINGTON (AP) -- One day after sweeping Republican election gains, President Barack Obama and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged to try and turn divided government into a force for good rather than gridlock on Wednesday, yet warned of veto showdowns as well. Trade legislation loomed as one possibility for quick compromise, and immigration as an early irritant.
“I would enjoy having some Kentucky bourbon with Mitch McConnell,” said Obama, who once joked at a black-tie dinner that the Kentucky senator wouldn’t be much of a drinking buddy.
The media-shy Chinese travelers who picked up their visas were not available for interviews, save some gentle queries by Kerry as he handed them their passports. continued on page 2
McConnell also cited trade and taxes among areas ripe for compromise.
Republicans are also expected to mount a major attack on federal deficits. In the second midterm elections of Obama’s presidency, Republicans were assured of a gain of seven Senate seats. They bid for another in Alaska, where challenger Dan Sullivan led Sen. Mark Begich. Also uncalled was a race in Virginia, where Democratic Sen. Mark Warner faced challenger Ed Gillespie.
Obama said that unless Congress takes action by the end of the year, he will order a reduction in deportations of working immigrants living in the country illegally.
In Louisiana, Rep. Bill Cassidy led Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu into a Dec. 6 runoff. continued on page 2
PILOT THROWN FREE AS S PA C E S H I P B R O K E A PA R T Pilot Peter Siebold told investigators Friday that he was pulled from the vehicle when it disintegrated. He said he unbuckled from his seat at some point during his fall and his parachute deployed automatically.
While the full investigation could take up to a year to complete, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher Hart identified the vehicle’s unique “feather” braking system as a possible culprit. The craft is designed to shift its shape as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. The twin tails, or feathers, tilt upright to create drag as the vehicle plummets to Earth.
“We’re going to make history here,” Kerry said. “You are literally helping to write the next great chapter of the history between the United States and China.”
Students, exchange visitors and their immediate families will be able to travel in and out for up to five years - generally, the length of their studies. Chinese citizens make up the largest group of foreign students in the U.S.
“It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull to say if you guys don’t do what I want I’m going to do it on my own,” McConnell said at a news conference in Kentucky.
Said McConnell, “In our system the president is the most important player” who can veto legislation or persuade lawmakers of his own party to back compromise.
“This will pay huge dividends for American and Chinese citizens and it will strengthen both of our economies,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said at a short ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he handed out the visas to the 11 Chinese travelers.
Under the new rules, both the United States and China will allow tourists and business travelers to apply for visas that allow multiple entries to the others’ country for up to 10 years. Ten years is the longest length of time a visa can be issued to a visiting foreigner under U.S. laws.
He made his pledge a short while after McConnell warned him against acting unilaterally.
“There is no doubt that Republicans had U.S. President Barack Obama, left, walks with Chinese President Xi “There will be no government shutcenter, as he gestures towards Russian President Vladimir Pudown or default on the national debt,” a good night,” the president said at the Jinping, tin after taking a group photo for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation White House, referring to big gains that (APEC) summit held at the International Convention Center in Yanqi Lake, he said, making clear he doesn’t agree with some tea party-backed lawmakers left the GOP in control of the Senate, Beijing, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014. who have supported one or the other in with an expanded House majority and in possession of a handful of governorships formerly in Democratic the past - or may want to in the future. hands. McConnell will take office in January as Senate majority leader, and To voters who handed the GOP control of Congress, he said, “I hear he and House Speaker John Boehner will have the authority to set the you. ... It’s time for us to take care of business.” He cited construction congressional agenda. of roads, bridges and other facilities as one area ripe for cooperation, Boehner ceded the Republican limelight to McConnell for the day. The and trade as another. Ohio Republican is in line for a third term as House leader - and his At the same time, he noted, “Congress will pass some bills I cannot first with a Republican majority in the Senate. sign. I’m pretty sure I will take some actions that some in Congress At his news conference, McConnell said, “When America chooses will not like.” divided government, I don’t think it means they don’t want us to do Obama and McConnell presented differing profiles at news confer- anything. It means they want to do things for the country.” ences a little more than an hour apart. Beyond that, he made it clear Congress will vote on legislation to apThe 53-year-old president now faces a Congress under two-house con- prove the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada through the United trol by Republicans for the first time in his tenure - and a lame duck States, and work to repeal portions of the health care law that stands as status that becomes more of a check on his political power with each Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment. He said a tax on medical devices and a mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance passing day. are also Republican targets. McConnell, 72 and famously taciturn, smiled and joked with reporters Obama ruled out ending the requirement for purchasing of health care. on the day after achieving a lifelong ambition. But he pointedly did not reject repeal of the tax, which many DemoStill, the two said they had had a pleasant telephone conversation ear- crats as well as Republicans have already signaled they are ready to jettison. lier in the day.
The rules will cut red tape for frequent travelers at a time when Washington is looking to boost economic ties with Beijing. The Obama administration also is hoping the extended visas will lure even more Chinese - and their wallets - to the United States.
More U.S. visas are issued to Chinese tourists, business people and students than citizens of any other country, including nearly 2 million last year alone, according to the State Department.
Nov 10 thru Nov 17, 2014
wreckage lies near the site where a Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket, SpaceShipTwo, exploded and crashed in Mojave, Calif. The surviving pilot of the Virgin Galactic spaceship that tore apart over the Mojave Desert was thrown clear of the disintegrating craft and did not know his co-pilot had prematurely unlocked the re-entry braking system, federal investigators said Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The surviving pilot of the Virgin Galactic spaceship that tore apart over the Mojave Desert was thrown clear of the disintegrating craft and did not know his co-pilot had prematurely unlocked the re-entry braking system, federal investigators said Wednesday.
Engaging the feathering system is a two-step process. A pilot must first unlock the system and then a lever must be pulled to activate the feathers. The feathers aren’t supposed to be unlocked until the craft reaches Mach 1.4, or more than 1,000 mph. However, co-pilot Mike Alsbury could be seen on inflight video unlocking the system before the vehicle had reached Mach 1.0, Hart has said. The second step to activate the feathers was never taken, but the system engaged anyway. The vehicle broke up two to three seconds later.
In its update on the still-evolving investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board did not provide any details on what caused SpaceShipTwo to crash Oct. 31 in Southern California.
The NTSB has said the feathers could have deployed because of aerodynamic forces on the craft. The agency said Wednesday that it continues to look into the aerodynamic forces and inertial forces on the vehicle.
The NTSB previously said the ship designed to fly tourists to the edge of space broke apart a few seconds after the co-pilot unlocked the braking system.
The NTSB also said Wednesday that it is reviewing safety documentation and the design of the feather system.
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AP EXCLUSIVE: DRONE SIGHTINGS UP DRAMATICALLY -The pilots of a regional airliner flying at about 10,000 feet reported seeing at least one drone pass less than 500 feet above the plane moving slowly to the south toward Allegheny County Airport near Pittsburgh. The drone was described as black and gray with a thin body, about 5 feet to 6 feet long.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is getting near-daily reports - and sometimes two or three a day - of drones flying near airplanes and helicopters or close to airports without permission, federal and industry officials tell The Associated Press. It’s a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual.
-Air traffic controllers in Burbank, California, received a report from Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration a drone flown by Brian Wilson lands after flying over the scene of an explo- a helicopter pilot of a camsion that leveled two apartment buildings in the East Harlem neighborhood era-equipped drone flying near the by airline pilots. But other pilots, of New York. The government is receiving reports nearly every day _ and airport officials and local authorisometimes two or three times a day _ of drones flying near airplanes and heli- giant Hollywood sign. copters or close to airports without permission, a sharp increase from just two ties often file reports as well, said years ago when such reports were still unusual, federal and industry officials -Controllers at central Florida’s the officials, who agreed to discuss familiar with the reports told The Associated Press. ( approach control facility received the matter only on the condition a report from the pilots of an Airbus A319 airliner that they had that they not be named because they weren’t authorized to speak sighted a drone below the plane at about 11,000 feet and 15 miles publicly. Michael Toscano, president of a drone industry trade west of Orlando. The drone was described as having a red vertical group, said FAA officials also have verified the increase to him. stabilizer and blue body. It wasn’t picked up on radar. While many of the reports are unconfirmed, raising the possibil-The pilots of a regional airliner reported spotting a drone 500 ity that pilots may have mistaken a bird or another plane in the feet to 1,000 feet off the plane’s right side during a landing distance for a drone, the officials said other reports appear to be approach to runway 4 of the Greenville-Spartanburg International credible. Airport in South Carolina. The drone was described as the size of a large bird. The FAA tightly restricts the use of drones, which could cause a crash if one collided with a plane or was sucked into an engine. -A 5-foot-long drone with an attached camera crashed near Dallas Small drones usually aren’t visible on radar to air traffic controlLove Field in Texas. The wreckage was discovered by a worker lers, particularly if they’re made of plastic or other composites. at a factory near the airport. Police said they were looking for the operator. “It should not be a matter of luck that keeps an airplane and a drone apart,” said Rory Kay, a training captain at a major airline In some cases the FAA has “identified unsafe and unauthorized and a former Air Line Pilots Association safety committee (drone) operations and contacted the individual operators to educhairman. “So far we’ve been lucky because if these things are cate them about how they can operate safely under current regulaoperating in the sky unregulated, unmonitored and uncontrolled, tions and laws,” the agency said in a statement late Tuesday. The the possibility of a close proximity event or even a collision has FAA also said rogue operators have been threatened with fines. to be of huge concern.” The FAA requires that all drone operators receive permission from the agency, called a certificate of authorization, before they can fly their unmanned aircraft. Most certificates limit drones to 400 feet in altitude and require that they remain within sight of the operator and at least 5 miles away from an airport. Exceptions are made for some government drones. The military flies drones in great swaths of airspace in remote areas designated for military use. Customs and Border Protection flies high-altitude drones along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.
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Jim Williams, who heads the FAA drone office, caused a stir earlier this year when he told a drone industry conference that an airliner nearly collided with a drone over Tallahassee, Florida, in March. The pilot of the 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet reported the camouflage-painted drone was at an altitude of about 2,300 feet, 5 miles northeast of the airport. The FAA hasn’t been able to find the drone or identify its operator. Some other recent incidents:
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Despite the reverses, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada announced he intended to remain as the Democratic leader. There was no sign of opposition. House Republicans were within hailing distance of their largest majority since World War II, 246 seats in 1946, when Harry Truman sat in the White House.
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Even so, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would seek another term as Democratic leader.
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Aviation safety expert John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, said he’s skeptical of some of the reports because most of the small drones currently being sold can’t reach the altitudes cited by pilots. Still, “it needs to be run to ground. That means a real investigation, real work done to determine just what these reports mean,” he said. More than 1 million small drones have been sold worldwide in the past few years, said Toscano, the official with the drone industry group. It is inevitable that some will misuse them because they don’t understand the safety risks or simply don’t care, he said. “This technology has a phenomenal upside that people are still just trying to understand,” he said. “As unfortunate as it would be that we have an incident, it’s not going to shut down the industry.” The FAA is expected to propose regulations before the end of the year that would allow broader commercial use of drones weighing less than 55 pounds. The FAA prohibits nearly all commercial use of drones, although that ban is being challenged. So far, the only commercial permits the agency has granted have been to two oil companies operating in Alaska and seven aerial photography companies associated with movie and television production. But the ban has been ignored by many other drone operators, from real estate agents to urban planners to farmers who use them to monitor crops.
LONG-TERM VISAS continued from page 1
“Congratulations to you. What are you going to do?” Kerry asked Kang Yusi, a graduate of the University of Kansas who wants to return to the U.S. as a tourist. The soft-spoken woman’s reply could not be heard, but Kerry relayed her answer. “She’s going to travel with her parents, and I’m going to get her to promise to spend a lot of money,” he said.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is embracing a radical change in how the government treats Internet service, coming down on the side of consumer activists who fear slower download speeds and higher costs but angering Republicans and the nation’s cable giants who say the plan would kill jobs.
concept of an open Internet, they want flexibility to think up new ways to package and sell Internet services. And, given the billions of dollars spent to improve network infrastructure, some officials say it’s only fair to make data hogs like Netflix bear some of the costs of handling heavy traffic.
Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to more heavily regulate Internet providers and treat broadband much as it would any other public utility. He said the FCC should explicitly prohibit Internet providers like Verizon and AT&T from charging data hogs like Netflix extra to move their content more quickly. The announcement sent cable stocks tumbling.
AT&T on Monday threatened legal action if the FCC adopted Obama’s plan, while Comcast Corp. said reclassifying broadband regulation would be “a radical reversal that would harm investment and innovation, as today’s immediate stock market reaction demonstrates.” Similar statements were released by Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications and several industry groups including CTIA-The Wireless Association, USTelecom, the Telecommunications Industry Association and Broadband for America.
The FCC, an independent regulatory body led by political appointees, is nearing a decision on whether broadband providers should be allowed to cut deals with the content providers but is stumbling over the legal complexities. “We are stunned the president would abandon the longstanding, bipartisan policy of lightly regulating the Internet and calling for extreme” regulation, said Michael Powell, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the primary lobbying arm of the cable industry, which supplies much of the nation’s Internet access. This “tectonic shift in national policy, should it be adopted, would create devastating results,” added Powell, who chaired the FCC during the Bush administration until 2005. Consumer groups and content providers hailed Obama’s move, with Netflix posting to its Facebook page that “consumers should pick winners and losers on the Internet, not broadband gatekeepers.” “Net neutrality” is the idea that Internet service providers shouldn’t block, slow or manipulate data moving across its networks. As long as content isn’t against the law, such as child pornography or pirated music, a file or video posted on one site will load generally at the same speed as a similarly sized file or video on another site. In 2010, the FCC embraced the concept in a rule. But last January, a federal appeals court struck down the regulation because the court
Netflix headquarters is seen in Los Gatos, Calif. Internet providers shouldn’t be allowed cut deals with online services like Netflix or YouTube to move their content faster, and should be regulated more like phone companies, President Barack Obama said Monday in an announcement that was swiftly rejected by industry.
said the FCC didn’t technically have the legal authority to tell broadband providers how to manage their networks. The uncertainty has prompted the public to file some 3.7 million comments with the FCC - more than double the number filed after Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl.
“It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information - whether a phone call, or a packet of data,” Obama said.
The Internet Association, which represents many content providers like Netflix, Twitter, eBay and Google, applauded Obama’s proposal.
This approach is exactly what industry lobbyists have spent months fighting against. While Internet providers say they support the
But doctors and human rights workers have alleged for years that targets exist - which would lead to inevitable coercion in villages where most people have very limited access to both education and health care. “The government of India denies that there are targets but they’re clearly set and when it goes down to the district or village level that’s a real problem. Extreme pressure is the crux of the problem,” says Sona Sharma, joint director for advocacy at the New Delhi-based Population Foundation of India.
The deaths of 12 women after they underwent sterilization procedures this week have raised serious ethical questions about India’s drive to curb a booming population by paying women who get sterilized. The deaths also exposed the dangerous lack of oversight in India’s $74 billion health care industry. “We really are not paying enough attention to the quality of care in the public health system,” said Jay Satia, an adviser to the Public Health Foundation of India. The surgeon who performed the operations at the government-run “health camp” in Chhattisgarh state plowed through more than 80 surgeries in six hours - a clear breach of government protocol, which prohibits surgeons from performing more than 30 sterilizations in a day, a top medical official said Wednesday. The surgeon, Dr. R.K. Gupta, was honored by the state government in January for performing over 50,000 laparoscopic tubectomies, said Dr. S.K. Mandal, the chief medical officer in Chhattisgarh. “He’s a very senior and respected surgeon,” he said. Mandal said he believed Gupta was under pressure to meet government-set targets for sterilizations. “The people from the health department set up some targets and we have to achieve them by 31st March,” Mandal said. A spokeswoman for the federal health ministry said she was not
“There are members of Congress on both sides of this,” he added. Many Republicans including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sided with industry in denouncing the plan as government overreach.
aware of sterilization targets for states. India’s government had said it stopped setting targets for sterilizing women in the 1990s.
NEW DELHI (AP) -- The women were poor, from villages in central India where the promise of a few dollars is all but impossible to resist. Many had babies so young they were still nursing at their mothers’ breasts.
Asked whether Comcast had been consulted on the issue, Earnest said only that the White House had been in touch with the business community on a variety of issues.
On Monday, Obama waded into the fray and gave a major boost to Internet activists by saying the FCC should explicitly ban any “paid prioritization” on the Internet. Obama also suggested that the FCC reclassify consumer broadband as a public utility under the 1934 Communications Act so there’s no legal ambiguity. That would mean the Internet would be regulated more heavily in the way phone service is.
STERILIZATION DEATHS SHOW I N D I A’ S H E A LT H C A R E I L L S
Indian women who underwent sterilization surgeries receive treatment at the District Hospital in Bilaspur, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014, after at least a dozen died and many others fell ill following similar surgery. The surgeon who performed the operations at the government-run “health camp” plowed through more than 80 tubectomies in six hours, a clear breach of government protocol, which prohibits surgeons from performing more than 30 sterilizations in a day, said Dr. S.K. Mandal, the chief medical officer in Chhattisgarh Wednesday. The surgeon, Dr. R.K. Gupta, was honored by the state government in January for performing over 50,000 laproscopic tubectomies, Mandal said, adding he believed Gupta was been under pressure to meet government-set targets for sterilizations. Mandal said that his state had a target of 220,000 sterilizations this year and Bilaspur, the district where the botched surgeries took place, had a target of about 15,000 surgeries.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, traveling with Obama in China, said the president “felt this was an appropriate time” to make his views known because of the FCC’s regulatory timeline, and that the timing wasn’t related to Obama’s trip this week to Asia and Australia.
Mandal said that his state had a target of 220,000 sterilizations this year and Bilaspur, the district where the botched surgeries took place, had a target of about 15,000 surgeries. Sterilization targets have a troubled history in India. In the 1970s, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a policy of forcibly sterilizing men who had already fathered two children. Opponents at the time said the program targeted unmarried and poor men, with doctors given bonuses for operating on low-income patients. Still, many experts caution that the sterilization surgeries can be a lifeline for poor women who are tired of multiple pregnancies or who want to take control of their fertility. “It is convenient for many women. It’s not ideal, but it’s a one-time surgery and then you’re done,” says Sharma. But she said incentive payments and government quotas make doctors pressure patients into surgery rather than advising them on contraception. “Women are not informed about the choices in contraception they have. It’s their right to know that other methods exist,” she added. Women in most Indian states are promised 1,400 rupees ($23) when they chose to have laparoscopic, or “keyhole,” sterilization surgeries like those conducted in Bilaspur. The procedure is one of the most commonly performed minimally invasive surgeries, and is usually done under a local anesthetic. India has one of the world’s highest rates of sterilization among women, with about 37 percent undergoing such operations compared with 29 percent in China, according to 2006 statistics reported by the United Nations. About 4.6 million Indian women were sterilized in 2011 and 2012, according to the government. In comparison, less than 1 percent of men choose to undergo vasectomies even though the cash incentive is higher at about 2,000 rupees ($33), says Sharma. “They’re worried about losing their virility. No amount of compensation will draw them to vasectomies.” A total of 83 women had the operations Saturday as part of the free sterilization campaign and were sent home that evening. But dozens later became ill and were rushed in ambulances to private hospitals
“`Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a tea party favorite, declared on Twitter. “The Internet should not operate at the speed of government.”
On Monday, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up slightly, stock prices fell for big cable companies, including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cablevision and Charter Communications. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former industry lobbyist and venture capitalist, has said he is open to using a “hybrid” approach that would draw from both Title II of the 1934 law and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. On Monday, Wheeler said he welcomed the president’s comments, but suggested that his proposal was easier said than done. “The more deeply we examined the issues around the various legal options, the more it has become plain that there is more work to do,” Wheeler said. “The reclassification and hybrid approaches before us raise substantive legal questions. We found we would need more time to examine these to ensure that whatever approach is taken, it can withstand any legal challenges it may face.” The FCC isn’t under a deadline to make a decision. The president’s statement all but guarantees that the major cable companies will spend the next few months trying to encourage Congress to step in to protect their interests. Still, Internet activists are hoping that Obama’s position will go a long way, even as his popularity among his party has waned. “When the leader of the free world says the Internet should remain free, that’s a game changer,” said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. in Bilaspur city. By Wednesday at least 12 women were dead. Dozens more are hospitalized, and at least 13 are fighting for their lives. Outside the hospital, the relatives and young children of the dead women wailed or looked frozen in shock. “The families of at least 10 women said that they had young babies, most of them under 6 months old, and were still being breastfed. Now the mothers are dead,” said Kamlesh Pandey, a local journalist based in Bilaspur. One man told The Indian Express newspaper that his sister-in-law had just given birth and did not want to sterilization surgery but was bullied into it by local officials. “They said nothing would happen. It was a minor surgery,” Mahesh Suryavanshi said. Yet Gupta, the surgeon, was performing operations in a private clinic that wasn’t even registered with the government and in an operating theater that Mandal says should never have been used. The apparent cause of death was either blood poisoning or hemorrhagic shock, which occurs when a person has lost too much blood, state deputy health director Amar Singh said. The Chhattisgarh state government sent a plane to New Delhi to pick up seven doctors to help treat the patients. “Whatever treatment is being provided to the victims is good,” said Dr. Anjan Trikha of the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Science, speaking with reporters at one of the hospitals in Bilaspur. He declined to say anything more until the results of autopsies are released. The government has also started a criminal investigation into Gupta’s conduct and said that the victims’ families would each receive about $6,600 in compensation. Four government doctors, including Gupta and the district’s chief medical officer, have been suspended.
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All lanes are open on Interstate 95 southbound at Palmetto Park Road after an earlier wreck Thursday morning, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. CLEARED: Crash in Palm Beach on I-95 south at Exit 44 Palmetto Park Rd, 2 right lanes blocked.[...]
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A Lakeland man driving east on Interstate 4 crashed a tractor-trailer carrying concrete beams at the U.S. 301 exit this morning, the Florida Highway Patrol reported.[...]
Car struck back of cruiser investigating earlier accident A Florida Highway Patrol cruiser was rear-ended on Interstate 95 in St. Johns County on Wednesday morning, one of two state troopers who had stopped to assist with an earlier accident was injured, and a woman suffered life-threatening injuries,
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A 62-year-old Tampa man died Wednesday morning after he had medical condition while driving on Interstate 275 and crashed, the Florida Highway Patrol said.[...]
Pick-up lodged under semi, WB I-4 lanes blocked at Thonotosassa Rd. All westbound lanes of I-4 are blocked after an accident involving a Publix semi-truck and a pick-up truck. The Florida Highway Patrol said it happened shortly before 7 a.m. near Thonotosassa Road.
Northbound I-275 lanes are now open The northbound Interstate 275 lanes are open again after being shut down earlier because of an accident.[...] OCT 23, 2014 07:09AM
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U S O F F I C I A L S : M O R E W O R K N E E D E D O N I R A N N U K E D E A L BEIJING (AP) -- Two days of tough talks to limit Iran’s nuclear program failed Monday to make major headway toward a final deal -a foreboding sign for years of negotiations that are set to expire in less than two weeks.
there, in terms of next steps for us,” the second State Department official told reporters traveling with Kerry. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be identified while briefing reporters.
U.S. officials resisted describing how much - or how little - progress was made during the high-level discussions in Oman among U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, European Union policy adviser Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Iranian negotiators remained in Muscat, the Omani capital, where lower-level meetings were expected to continue Tuesday with officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.S and the EU. All teams will meet again Nov. 18 in Vienna for a days-long, last-ditch attempt to clench an agreement.
But they said concerns remain about what Kerry described before the meetings as “real gaps” between world powers and Tehran, despite grueling hours spent trying to clear the path for an agreement. Iran’s official IRNA news agency reports that a senior nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, says “we are not in a position to say that we have made progress.” However, Araghchi added that
MAN ACCUSED OF PUSHING WIFE OFF CLIFF IS IN COURT
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton, center, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meet in Muscat, Oman, Monday, Nov. 10, 2014.
Iran is hopeful to reach an agreement before the dateline, IRNA reported. The Oman talks were widely seen as a sort of predictor for the outcome Nov. 24, when the negotiations expire. Two senior State Department officials traveling with Kerry described the meetings as “tough, direct and serious” but still held out hope that a deal could be secured. If so, it would mark an unprecedented victory after a generation of mutual distrust and between the Islamic Republic and much of the rest of the world. A final agreement could quell Mideast fears about Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb, and revitalize a shaky Iranian economy that has been has wounded by harsh Western sanctions. Asked at a brief photo opportunity Monday afternoon if they were making progress, Zarif responded: “We will eventually.” “We are working hard,” Kerry added. But the two sides are not yet there. One of the State Department officials said it’s “self-evident” there’s still work to be done before a compromise can be reached. The officials noted that Kerry extended his stay in Oman by several hours to continue the discussions. “I’m not indicating that progress was made in any way,” the official said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton, center, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meet in Muscat, Oman, Monday, Nov. 10, 2014.
DENVER (AP) -- Lawyers will argue Wednesday whether a man accused of pushing his wife off a cliff to her death in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park as they celebrated their wedding anniversary should remain in jail. The federal detention hearing comes after Harold Henthorn, 58, was indicted last week on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Toni Henthorn, 50. An autopsy report says she fell or was pushed over the ledge when she paused to take a photo during a hike on Sept. 29, 2012. The couple was visiting the park for their 12th wedding anniversary. Only after her death did Toni Henthorn’s relatives realize she was covered by three life insurance policies totaling $4.5 million. A claim was sent in for one policy days after she died, court records show. Harold Henthorn’s attorney, Craig L. Truman, has said that the case is complicated and that “justice will be done” once the facts come to light. Toni Henthorn was an ophthalmologist with her own practice in Jackson, Mississippi, when she met her husband, who told her he was wealthy and persuaded her to move with him to the Denver suburb of Highland Ranch, her brother, Todd Bertolet told The Associated Press. But once in Colorado, he seemed controlling and obsessed with money, Bertolet said. Toni Henthorn’s relatives were not convinced her husband owned his own business, even though he would take regular work trips without explanation. Bertolet said Harold Henthorn was reluctant to talk about the death of his first wife, Sandra Lynn Henthorn, 30, who was crushed to death in 1995 when a car slipped off a jack while she and Harold were changing a flat tire. Authorities said they are still investigating that case.
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Kerry headed out to Beijing, to join President Barack Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit Tuesday afternoon. The State Department officials said Kerry plans to brief Obama and Rice about the discussions in Oman. “A lot will be determined
A potential agreement would ease Western sanctions against Iran’s economy if Tehran agrees to limit its uranium enrichment to a level that would make it unable to build nuclear weapons. It would also have to provide international inspectors full access - with verifiable assurances that they are seeing the total pictureto its nuclear facilities. Iran wants sanctions lifted immediately after an agreement is struck, which may be impossible since Congress would have to agree to eliminate the U.S. penalties against Tehran’s oil and financial markets. It’s more likely the sanctions would be eased, as Obama has the authority to do. The West also has demanded Iran limit its ability to enrich uranium, which in large amounts is used in nuclear weapons. Iran has maintained that its nuclear activities are purely peaceful, and necessary to fuel medical and energy demands. But for years, Iran hid some of its nuclear facilities and blocked inspector’s access to others, raising widespread alarms about its intentions. The sanctions - imposed by the U.S., EU and the U.N. Security Council - aimed to punish Tehran for its covert nuclear program. Israel remains bitterly skeptical about Iran’s intentions, and the negotiations have strained relations between the Obama administration and Washington’s closest Mideast ally. Citing reports that a deal is close at hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced he would ask the negotiators’ top diplomats to resist any agreement that would allow Iran to become a nuclear power. Kerry spoke early Tuesday with Netanyahu, but the State Department officials refused to discuss why the Israeli prime minister believed a deal was imminent. The officials said Kerry also condemned comments posted this weekend on the managed Twitter account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that called for Israel’s destruction. His feed also tweeted various posts about the negotiations - including one detailing Iran’s “red lines” of things it could not accept - while the Oman talks were ongoing.
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A C T I V I S T S : U S - L E D S Y R I A S T R I K E S K I L L A T L E A S T 8 6 0 five policemen and wounding 10.
BAGHDAD (AP) -- U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State group and other extremists in Syria have killed more than 860 people, including civilians, since they began in mid-September, a monitoring group said Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Iraq, government forces backed by Shiite militiamen are facing tough resistance from Islamic State fighters in the refinery town of Beiji, a day after they pushed militants out of the town center, said a senior military official reached there by telephone.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the vast majority of those killed - 746 people - were Islamic State militants, while another 68 were members of al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate known as the Nusra Front. At least 50 civilians, including eight children and five women, also have been killed in the airstrikes, the group said.
The official said reinforcements have reached Beiji, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, to protect areas of the town now under government control. However, booby-trapped houses and roadside bombs were hindering their advance toward the northern and northwestern parts of the town, where Iraq’s largest refinery is located.
In Baghdad on Wednesday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi shook up the country’s military, relieving 26 army officers from their command, retiring 10 others and appointing 18 new commanders. A statement posted on the official website of the prime minister’s office said the changes were ordered “as part of efforts to reinforce the work of the military on the basis of professionalism and fighting graft in all its forms.” The statement did not elaborate, but a government official said the shake-up followed the findings of a probe carried out by an investigator appointed last month by al-Abadi on corruption in the military. Under Iraq’s constitution, al-Abadi, like Nouri al-Maliki before him, holds the post of General Commander of the Armed Forces. But it was al-Maliki, now a vice president, who had tightly controlled the military during his eight-year rule, with several elite units taking their orders directly from him. Al-Abadi’s move comes as Iraq’s military and security forces, aided by the coalition’s airstrikes, battle militants from the Islamic State group on a multitude of fronts to drive them out of about a third of the country they seized in a summer blitz. The army and security forces had melted away in the face of the onslaught but have since partially regrouped. The U.S.-led coalition’s aerial campaign in Syria began before dawn on Sept. 23 in what President Barack Obama has called an effort to roll back and ultimately destroy the Islamic State group. The militant extremist group has been the primary target of the coalition’s strikes, although on at least two occasions the United States has targeted what it says is a specific cell within the Nusra Front allegedly plotting attacks against American interests.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Smoke rises from an Islamic State position in eastern Kobani, after an airstrike by the US led coalition, seen from a hilltop outside Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014. Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, and its surrounding areas, has been under assault by extremists of the Islamic State group since mid-September and is being defended by Kurdish fighters.
The airstrikes in Syria expanded upon a U.S.-led operation in neighboring Iraq against the Islamic State group, which has seized control of a large chunk of territory spanning the two countries. In Iraq, government security forces and Shiite militias have largely halted the militants’ advance, even rolling them back from some areas with the help of coalition airstrikes. But heavy fighting still rages on multiple fronts, and attacks on government troops and civilians remain common, particularly in Baghdad. On Wednesday, three bombings in and around the Iraqi capital killed at least 17 people and wounded nearly 40, police and hospital officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but they all bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. The deadliest bombing took place in the turbulent Youssifiyah district south of Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber hit an army checkpoint, killing six soldiers and wounding 16 people, including 10 civilians. Earlier in the day, a car bomb near a cluster of shops in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district killed six civilians and wounded 13. Minutes later, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a nearby police station as officers were rushing out to the site of the first attack, killing
PALESTINIAN LEADER ACCUSES I S R A E L O F R E L I G I O U S WA R Jewish and Muslim sides after an Israeli settler gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers there 20 years ago. “Leaders of Israel make a mistake if they think they can divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque as they have done in Ibrahimi Mosque, and they will retreat from this one too,” he said. “By dividing the mosques, they are leading us to a religious war, and no one, Muslim or Christian, will accept that Jerusalem be theirs,” Abbas said. “Jerusalem is our capital, and there will be no concessions.” Following Monday’s deadly attacks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv, Israel said it was stepping up security in an attempt to forestall further incidents.
Israeli soldiers stand guard on the main road near the West bank village of Bet Sahour during the funeral of Dalia Lemkus, at the West Bank Jewish settlement of Tekoa, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014. Palestinian assailants carried out stabbing attacks Monday, Nov. 10 in Tel Aviv and the West Bank, police said, killing an Israeli woman and a soldier as a wave of Arab unrest appeared to be gaining strength.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- The Palestinian president on Tuesday accused Israel of provoking a “religious war” as new violence between the sides broke out in the West Bank, leaving a Palestinian man dead, amid mounting concerns that the long-running conflict is entering a new and dangerous phase. Mahmoud Abbas blamed the latest tensions on a series of visits by Jewish worshippers to Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site. The visits to the contested site have helped fan strife in a region already on edge following last summer’s bloody war in the Gaza Strip and the earlier failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s Mideast peace efforts. Abbas’ remarks - at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat - came as Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian demonstrator in clashes in the West Bank on Tuesday. The shooting happened a day after a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus stabbed and killed a 20-year-old Israeli soldier at a crowded Tel Aviv train station and another Palestinian assailant stabbed three people at a bus stop next to a West Bank settlement, killing a 25-year-old Israeli woman and wounding two others. Much of the recent unrest has stemmed from tensions surrounding the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. It is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is also revered as the location where the ancient Hebrew temples once stood and today is considered the most sacred place in Judaism. Palestinians in east Jerusalem have carried out violent protests, alleging that Jewish zealots are secretly trying to gain control of the site. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. While Jews are permitted to visit the hilltop compound, they are not supposed to pray. Palestinian fears have been heightened by an increased number of visits by Jewish hard-liners and calls by members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition for an expanded Jewish presence there. They also object to Israeli restrictions on Muslims entering the compound. Israel says the restrictions are security measures. In an address to thousands of people at his West Bank headquarters, Abbas accused Israel of trying to divide the mosque compound, comparing it to the experience of a holy site in the West Bank that was split between
Lifting the siege of the refinery, which sits inside a sprawling complex with a capacity of some 320,000 barrels a day - a quarter of Iraq’s refining capacity - was likely the next objective in the campaign to rid Beiji of the militants. When fully retaken, the strategic town will likely be a base for staging a push to take back Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, which was overrun by the extremists last summer.
ISRAEL APPROVES 200 NEW HOMES IN EAST JERUSALEM JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli authorities have given preliminary approval for construction of 300 new homes in east Jerusalem - a move that could ratchet up already-heightened tensions in the holy city. Amnon Arbel, the deputy head of planning in the Jerusalem municipality, said a planning committee approved the project Wednesday in the Ramot area. Arbel said the project needs to clear other hurdles and construction is years away. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their capital, and the international community opposes Israeli construction in the area. An attack against a mosque in a West Bank village earlier Wednesday ignited a fire that destroyed its first floor, an assault the village’s mayor blamed on Jewish settlers. The attack came against the background of competing claims to a holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below. An attack against a mosque in a West Bank village early on Wednesday ignited a fire that destroyed its first floor, the village’s mayor said, blaming Jewish settlers for the attack. The fire broke out before dawn in the village of Mughayer, north of Ramallah, said Mayor Faraj al-Naasan. He said efforts of residents and Palestinian fire services to quell the blaze succeeded only in saving the building’s second floor. The mayor said he had no doubt that Jewish settlers were responsible, citing a previous settler attack against another mosque in the village two years ago and frequent settler attacks against vehicles and olive groves there. “Only Jewish settlers would do this,” al-Naasan said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said several police units had been mobilized in major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and were being deployed “in public places.”
In a related incident, Israeli police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an ancient synagogue in the Israeli-Arab town of Shfaram late on Tuesday night, causing light damage.
The Israeli military said it sent reinforcements to the West Bank, following what it called “new security assessments.”
The attacks came as Israeli-Palestinian tensions are soaring, mostly against the background of competing claims to a holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.
In new fighting, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian demonstrator in clashes in the West Bank on Tuesday.
Visits by Jewish worshippers to the site - known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary - have raised concerns among Muslims that Israel is secretly trying to take over the site. This in turn has fanned strife in a region already on edge following the collapse of U.S.-led peace talks, Israel’s bloody war last summer in the Gaza Strip, and new Israeli settlement construction plans in east Jerusalem.
Tuesday’s clashes erupted near the city of Hebron where about 150 Palestinian demonstrators were throwing rocks and firebombs at Israeli soldiers, the army said.
The tensions at the shrines have frequently boiled over into violent demonstrations, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel has no plans to change the status quo at the Jerusalem holy sites.
The soldiers’ attempts to disperse the crowd using tear gas and rubber bullets failed, prompting the troops to open fire, the military said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu traded accusations on Tuesday over the tensions, with Abbas saying that frequent visits to the site by Jewish worshippers are fueling clashes and accused Israel of leading the region toward a “religious war.” The Israeli leader said Abbas was making matters worse and inflaming tempers.
“I think these reinforcements will calm the situation down,” said Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon.
The Mezan Hospital identified the dead man as a 21-year-old resident of the al-Aroub refugee camp near Hebron. The new spate of violence comes amid rising tensions spawned by conflicting claims to the Jerusalem holy site and the aftermath of this summer’s bloody Gaza war, in which more than 2,100 Palestinians and 72 people on the Israeli side were killed. Complicating the situation, tensions also spiked following the killing of an Israeli Arab by a policeman in the northern Israeli town of Kfar Kana on Saturday. Israeli media debated whether the country was on the verge of a new Palestinian uprising or intifada, similar to those from the late 1980s and the first decade of the 2000s that took hundreds of lives. “This is the same soundtrack that we all remember from the days of the intifadas,” wrote Alex Fishman in Tuesday’s edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
Abbas’ adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh said Abbas was scheduled to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Thursday, and would emphasize his concerns about alleged Israeli attempts to change the status quo at the Jerusalem holy site. On Wednesday, Abbas was to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Jordan, which is the custodian to the Jerusalem holy site, recalled its ambassador in protest after an Israeli police raid last week over a clash at the entrance to the mosque. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police were deployed later Wednesday near the entrance to Mughayer but that “disturbances in the area” were preventing them from opening an investigation. Rosenfeld did not elaborate on the extent of the disturbances but attacks such as the one in Mughayer frequently ignite violent protests. Also Wednesday, the Israeli human right organization Yesh Din published data on what it described as failure by the Israeli police in the West Bank to seriously investigate Palestinian complaints of Israeli attacks against Palestinians and their property. The organization said that of the 1,045 cases opened by the police on such attacks between 2005 and 2014, only 7.4 percent had produced indictments of Israeli civilians. The police were not immediately available to comment on the report. Meanwhile, an Israeli border policeman was arrested in connection with the death of a Palestinian demonstrator near Ramallah in May, Rosenfeld said. Israeli security forces said they used only rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, but Israeli media have reported that the border policeman may have used live fire during the incident.
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BAGHDAD (AP) -- The attack was the most humiliating the Iraqi military had faced since June, when security forces melted away in the face of the Islamic State group’s lightning advance across northern Iraq.
Anbar resonates with many Americans because they recall how costly the fighting was there for U.S. troops. A lasting image of the war was the bodies of U.S. contractors hanging from a Euphrates River bridge in Fallujah in March 2004. And the November 2004 fight to retake Fallujah was an iconic moment for the Marines.
Disguised in Iraqi army uniforms, and bearing heavy arms behind the wheels of stolen Humvees, militants stormed Camp Saqlawiyah in Iraq’s western Anbar province, prompting as many as 700 to flee for their lives. At least 40 soldiers died in the Sept. 21 onslaught. Another 68 were taken prisoner, and later, piled into a military truck and paraded through the streets of Fallujah.
More than 3,500 U.S. soldiers died in combat in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 - and there are concerns that sending Americans back to Anbar in any capacity will inevitably make them a target. The return of U.S. forces in greater numbers also raises the old question of granting American troops immunity from Iraqi law. Under the government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, immunity was a major sticking point between Washington and Baghdad which ultimately led to the decision to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops by Dec. 2011. With American forces now returning, albeit in much smaller numbers, Iraq’s new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will inevitably face these questions.
The military was vulnerable, ill-prepared and poorly equipped to withstand the ambush. Soldiers who fled the front line said that they hadn’t been trained for such heavy fighting, were given no orders, and had been living mainly on a diet of salty water and canned tomatoes. The defeat shows the extent of the task as, for the first time, the Obama administration moves to deploy military advisers directly on the ground in Anbar and other battle zones. It’s part of a planned expansion in training and advising of the Iraqi military - a risky step for the U.S, which until now has been wary about front-line involvement and fearful of history repeating itself. “No mission that we undertake anywhere in the world is risk-free,” Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Friday. “These trainers will be operating at fixed sites that we are surveying right now.” U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $5.6 billion for the expansion. He said Friday he has authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces, which could more than double the total number of U.S. forces to 3,100. He said this represents a new phase in the campaign against IS as the U.S. plays a bigger role in enabling the Iraqis to go on the offensive. In Anbar, territory is increasingly slipping out of the Iraqi government’s hands - most recently large parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, where the militants have gradually chipped away at the military’s resistance. An American advisory mission visited Anbar this week for site surveys
Islamic State group militants wave al-Qaida flags as they patrol in a commandeered Iraqi military vehicle in Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq. U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday, Nov. 7, that he has authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces, which could more than double the total number of U.S. forces to 3,100. For the first time since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011, American military personnel will be on the ground in Iraq’s historically dangerous Anbar province, helping train the Iraqi military for its fight against the Islamic State group.
at al-Asad air base, formerly the largest coalition base in western Iraq, as they search for potential locations for training missions to commence.
The U.S. has already sent assessment teams to an Iraqi military base in Taji, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Baghdad, for discussions with Iraqi colleagues on the best ways to collaborate. The U.S. is looking to train Iraqi security forces on issues ranging from weaponry, synchronization, fire-maneuvering and gunnery, as well as ways to better integrate the efforts of ground forces with coalition airstrikes. Obama has said restoring Iraq’s borders is his first priority, ahead of trying to roll back IS in Syria. But if Iraqi forces are unable to push back IS and recover lost territory, Obama would be faced with a choice of accepting failure in Iraq or committing U.S. combat troops - which would break his pledge not to get involved in fighting another Iraq war.
NEW POT SHOPS ON THE BLOCK N O T A L W A Y S S O P O P U L A R stream business organizations are still demonizing cannabis.”
Warf said he spends much of his time negotiating smell complaints and other gripes between his members and their neighbors. “Until cannabis is accepted nationwide, this is going to keep happening,” said Warf, whose group began in 2009. “We would love to work ourselves out of a job, but I think that’s a long time coming.” Denver officials say marijuana is to blame for J.C. Penney’s decision in 2012 not to reopen a store on a downtown pedestrian mall. The retailer sought assurances it wouldn’t have to share entrance areas with marijuana dispensaries in a mixed-use development, a guarantee the city couldn’t make.
Tim Cullen talks to owners of antique stores along South Broadway in Denver about his proposal to rename the stretch of road “The Green Mile.” Cullen’s proposal has met with resistance from the antique store owners who are frowning on the clientele attracted to the area by the pot shops.
DENVER (AP) -- The booming new marijuana industry has an image problem. Not with government officials and the public - but with other businesses.
From crime fears to smell complaints, new marijuana retailers and growers face suspicion and sometimes open antagonism from their commercial neighbors, especially in Denver, which now has 200 marijuana retailers and dozens of pot growing and manufacturing facilities.
Jeremy Nemeth, chair of the Department of Planning and Design at the University of Colorado Denver, helped craft Colorado land-use regulations for the marijuana industry. He said it’s too soon for reliable data on whether marijuana shops depress property values. But preliminary studies indicate they don’t attract crime. Nemeth said local zoning regulations frequently force pot shops to already-depressed parts of town, where they join the likes of firearms dealers and pornography shops. “Some might talk about these shops as a blight on our neighborhood, and others might say, `Really? They’re worse than the empty doughnut shop and the vacuum repair shop?’” Nemeth said. “Are these new businesses really a bad idea? Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction? It’s too soon to say.”
The militant Islamist group has overrun a large part of Anbar province in its push to expand its territory, which now stands at about a third of both Iraq and Syria. This month, more than 200 men, women and children from the Sunni Al Bu Nimr tribe in Anbar were killed by the militant group, which apparently feared the tribe would challenge its authority in the province. Until now, 12 U.S. advisory teams had been operating in Iraq since August - seven in a joint operations center in Baghdad, and the remainder at a similar facility in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. But advisers alone may not be the answer. The U.S.-trained Iraqi military has been gutted since the crisis began. After months of small-scale attacks around Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, it buckled almost instantly in June when militants advanced on the city. Commanders disappeared. Pleas for more ammunition went unanswered. In some cases, soldiers stripped off their uniforms and ran. Iraqi officials say the country’s total military and police force stands at one million men. However, a senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press that as of June, the Iraqi military strength stood, generously, at 125,000 men, down from 205,000 in Jan. 2014, forcing it to rely heavily on unruly Shiite militias for reinforcement. The official spoke anonymously as he is not authorized to brief the media. Part of the plan to boost Iraqi forces includes training, equipping and paying Sunni tribesmen to join in the fight against the Islamic State group, reminiscent of the Sunni Sahwa, or Awakening movement which confronted al-Qaeda in Iraq starting in 2006. On Tuesday, a low-key ceremony led by Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri was held at al-Asad air base in Anbar to inaugurate the first group of Sunni fighters in what Iraqi and American officials hope is the makings of a full-fledged non-sectarian national guard. However, this has been a challenging process since many of the Sunni tribes involved in the Sahwa campaign felt a breach of trust after the American and Iraqi governments’ commitment to the program waned. Even as an expanding coalition joins the aerial campaign targeting the militant group, Iraqi forces are struggling to maintain a grip on this historically problematic province. This leaves the U.S. and its allies in a difficult position as it increasingly commits to tackling this growing threat. “The issue is whether there is political will in the White House to accept the types of plans that are being recommended,” said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert at RAND Corporation and a former Department of Defense policymaker. There is “pressure to keep numbers small, which is going to undermine recommendations of commanders on the ground.”
NYC ‘CANNIBAL COP’ IS SENTENCED TO T I M E S E R V E D
The strife went public last week along a once-forlorn stretch of highway south of downtown Denver now sprinkled with marijuana shops.
There are some signs of a thaw in the business community. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce now has a handful of cannabis-related members.
About two dozen pot shops along this stretch of Broadway, often dubbed “Broadsterdam,” had a marketing idea for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Why not join forces with neighboring antique shops to market the whole area as “The Green Mile”?
And marijuana’s oldest arch-rival - alcohol - is showing interest. Last summer the Wine & Spirits Daily Summit met in Denver, and the group of several hundred invited an edible pot manufacturer and the leader of the marijuana-legalization campaign to speak.
The pot shops called a meeting, expecting an enthusiastic response from neighboring businesses that have seen boarded-up storefronts replaced with bustling pot shops with lines out the door. Instead, the suggestion unleashed a torrent of anger from the antique shops.
“I never thought I’d be here,” said Mason Tvert, now spokesman for the national Marijuana Policy Project, before his remarks.
Prosecutors are appealing Judge Paul Gardephe’s decision to override a jury verdict and order Valle acquitted of conspiracy.
Back at the “Green Mile” meeting, dispensary owner Tim Cullen told his neighbors that pot isn’t going anywhere.
Valle was dubbed the “cannibal cop” by tabloids after his 2012 arrest.
“We don’t want to work with you,” said James Neisler, owner of Heidelberg Antiques. “Your customers, they’re the long-haired stinky types. They go around touching everything and they don’t buy anything.” The meeting went downhill from there. Despite the support of some neighbors - one quipped that stoned shoppers carrying lots of cash have been great for business - the proposal exposed simmering antagonism. The pot shops feel they’ve revitalized a blighted neighborhood. Some tenants say pot has ruined a neighborhood lined with storefronts that date to the 1940s. It’s a clash that is playing out in other communities in Colorado and Washington that allow marijuana businesses - and could stretch to other states now that Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., have all legalized recreational pot. The central-Colorado city of Manitou Springs voted last week on whether to kick out recreational pot shops. The ballot measure was proposed by other business owners who complained a dispensary was harming the tourist town’s family-friendly reputation. The ballot measure failed. Jason Warf, executive director of the Southern Colorado Cannabis Council, said his 30 or so members frequently clash with other businesses. In fact, his group was formed when existing chambers of commerce rejected cannabis-related members. “They should accept us and embrace us for what we’ve done, the jobs we’ve created and the tourists we bring,” Warf said. “And yet some main-
“We’re all in business on the same street together. Our goals are similar,” Cullen said. The two sides planned to meet again to come up with a plan to live together. “Pot shops are legal. We’re going to have to co-exist,” said Robert Crayne, owner of The Antique Exchange. “Things are changing and we’re trying to change with it. It’s just hard to strike that balance.”
NEW YORK (AP) -- A former New York City police officer acquitted of conspiring to kidnap, kill and eat women was sentenced to time served on Wednesday for unlawfully accessing a federal database. Gilberto Valle also received one year of probation, must continue to get mental health treatment and cannot contact women involved in the case.
Jurors heard evidence that he conversed online with people he had never met about killing and cooking his wife and others. The jury convicted him of conspiracy, but the judge wrote that evidence made it “more likely than not the case that all of Valle’s Internet communications about kidnapping are fantasy role-play.” Defense lawyers said previously that their client had suffered enough. “He has lost nearly everything,” they said. “He lost his job. He lost his liberty for 21 months. He lost his wife and his child. He lost many of his friends. He lost his reputation and anonymity.” The lawyers have said Valle now recognizes that the substance of his Internet chats was “deeply troubling and disturbing” and meets weekly with a counselor to discuss it. “Although having his sexual fantasies revealed in the public forum of this prosecution has been devastatingly embarrassing for Gil, there also is a sense of relief and liberation in being able to confront and overcome them,” the lawyers wrote. They added: “Gil does not want his life’s legacy to be the story of the `Cannibal Cop.’ He is only 30 years old and intends to make something more out of his life. Inspired by the team of people who defended his innocence, Gil wants to go to law school.”
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BEIJING (AP) -- Following an intense two days of talks, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled an array of agreements on climate change, military cooperation and trade as they sought to overcome persistent tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Yet Xi has proved to be less accommodating to the White House than some U.S. officials expected. He has dramatically consolidated power since taking office, deepened China’s provocative maritime disputes with its neighbors and stands accused of continuing cyberattacks against the United States. U.S. officials have new concerns over the potential for a crackdown in Hong Kong and are warily watching Beijing strengthen ties with Moscow as the West distances itself from Russia.
Areas of discord still bubbled to the surface during their rare joint press conference in the heart of the Chinese capital. Obama gently pressed Xi on human rights and rejected rumors that the U.S. is fueling pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, while the Chinese president repeatedly reminded his American guest that his nation wants to be seen as an equal to the United States.
For its part, Beijing remains skeptical of Obama’s intentions in Asia, seeing his efforts to bolster U.S. economic ties in the region as a way of countering China’s rise. Xi made pointed references to Chinese-led regional initiatives, including an Asian infrastructure bank and free trade agreement, while still saying he was open to U.S. participation in such endeavors.
As he closed his first visit to China in six years, Obama said he and Xi have reached a “common understanding on how the relationship between our two countries should move forward.” “Where we have disagreements, we will be candid about our intentions, and we will work to narrow those differences where possible,” Obama said shortly before departing for Myanmar, his second stop on a three-country trip through the Asia-Pacific region. Both Obama and Xi heralded a joint commitment to cut greenhouse gases, an agreement that came about after months of secret talks between officials from both countries. The pact is meant to signal to other heavy-polluting nations that the U.S. and China are in sync on the need to tackle climate change in the lead-up to a highstakes summit in Paris next year. The two leaders also announced an agreement to have their militaries give each other more guidance about their activities in the Pacific, a step deemed necessary after U.S. and Chinese aircraft have come dangerously close in the region. In addition, Obama and Xi touted a breakthrough in trade talks to reduce tariffs on high-tech goods, as well as a deal to extend the lengths of visas granted to U.S. and Chinese citizens. White House officials had pressed their Chinese counterparts for weeks to allow reporters to ask questions of the two leaders after
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping drink a toast at a lunch banquet in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014. Obama is on a state visit after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
they made statements to the press. The Chinese government, which keeps tight control of media in the country, agreed just hours before the event to allow a question from one reporter fro m each country. However, Xi first appeared to ignore a question posed to him from an American journalist who asked about restrictions placed on U.S. news organizations operating in the country. He later suggested it was unfavorable coverage that had led to the crackdowns, saying “the party which started the problem should be the one to resolve it.” Obama has made significant personal investments in his relationship with Xi, including a two-day summit at a California estate last year. U.S. officials saw Xi as a potentially new kind of Chinese leader, with closer ties to the U.S. than other Chinese officials - he spent time in Iowa as an exchange student - and an ease with public appearances that eluded his predecessor, Hu Jintao.
F O R D ’ S A L U M I N U M F - 1 5 0 ALMOST READY FOR PRIME TIME Truck buyers are among the most loyal in the auto market, and Ford can count on many of them. The company says more than 224,600 potential buyers have already asked for more details about the truck.
In this Nov. 6, 2014 photo, Shawn Ebeler works on the door assembly on a new Ford F-150 truck is assembled at the Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Mich. It’s Ford Motor Co.’s biggest bet in decades: an aluminum-sided F-150 that could set a new industry standard _ or cost the company its pickup truck crown.
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) -- It’s Ford Motor Co.’s biggest bet in decades: an aluminum-sided F-150 that could set a new industry standard - or cost the company its pickup truck crown.
Top managers agreed unanimously to switch to aluminum at a meeting in 2012. “Were we recognizing that it was a risk? Sure,” Fields says. “But it was a very calculated and informed risk that gave us the confidence that we were going to get this done.” If Ford’s bet pays off, it could gain an even more commanding lead in the lucrative truck market. More importantly, aluminum “future proofs” the truck - and the company - in an era of rising fuel economy standards, says Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book. “If Ford masters the art of delivering an aluminum vehicle at the level the F-150 sells, they are going to be able to expand that to Mustangs, Edges and Lincolns,” Brauer says.
Chinese officials have suggested the U.S. has played a role in directing pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Obama denied those charges Wednesday, saying he had been “unequivocal” in reassuring Xi that the U.S. “had no involvement in fostering the protests that took place there.” In another nod to China’s sovereignty, Obama reaffirmed his support for a “one China” policy that regards Taiwan as part of China. Xi also waded into the issue of human rights, saying his country has made “enormous progress” on the matter.
U S - C H I N A D E A L COULD END FEES ON $1T IN TECH SALES
Ford’s promise of better fuel economy also failed to sway Pruet, who is paying less than $3 a gallon for gasoline in her area. Fuel economy numbers won’t be released until later this month, but Ford has said the 2015 truck will have up to 20 percent better fuel economy than the outgoing model, which gets up to 23 mpg on the highway. Ford has the disadvantage of introducing the truck as gas prices are hitting a four-year low. But Fields says even when gas prices were $1.25, truck buyers still asked for better fuel economy.
John Krafcik, the president of the car buying site TrueCar.com, says pickup drivers will be drawn by the truck’s capability. The F-150 sits on a high-strength steel frame that’s carrying less weight from the truck, so it can carry more cargo and haul heavier trailers. The new F-150 can tow up to 12,200 pounds compared with 12,000 for the Silverado and 10,500 for the Ram.
CEO Mark Fields told the AP he is confident Ford made the right decision. The new truck has been through 10 million miles of testing, which is more than any other vehicle in Ford’s history, he says.
The U.S. has long faced criticism for engaging with China despite its troubling human rights record. Obama said he broached the topic in his conversations with Xi this week and emphasized that universal freedoms are essential “whether it is in New York or Paris of Hong Kong” - a nod to the protests in the special administrative region of China.
Pruet, 54, has checked out the 2015 version at auto shows. She is impressed by the new truck’s bells and whistles, like the movable LED spotlights on the side mirrors. But she’s concerned that aluminum is untested and not worth the extra cost. Ford has raised the price of the base model by $395 to $26,615, including destination fees. A fancier King Ranch version costs $3,615 more.
Ford thinks a truck that is lighter and more fuel-efficient, but even more capable, will win buyers while competing trucks, still made of steel, struggle to catch up. It hopes those advantages outweigh any customer doubts about the durability of aluminum - which is lighter than steel but just as strong - or potential repair costs for the pricier metal.
Aluminum isn’t new to the auto industry, but this is the first time it will cover the entire body of such a high-volume vehicle. Ford made 647,697 F-150 pickups at its two U.S. plants last year; that’s one every 49 seconds.
The U.S. president dismissed that criticism and other anti-American rhetoric in China. “I am always working on the assumption that the press gives me a hard time wherever I go, whether in the United States or China,” he said.
“That is a fact that is recognized by all people in the world,” he said.
“These vehicles are not just vehicles to our customers. They’re tools to help them do their job,” Fields says. “This thing has to deliver.”
The trucks have been the best-selling vehicles in the U.S. for 37 straight years; last year, Ford sold nearly 100,000 more full-size pickups than General Motors.
Obama’s domestic political weakness, particularly following the Democrats’ defeats in last week’s midterm elections, has also sparked questions in China about whether the U.S. president can deliver on potential international agreements. In the days leading up to Obama’s visit, a newspaper with ties to the Chinese government said the American public had “downgraded” Obama and grown tired of his “banality.”
But even some Ford loyalists have their doubts. Ginny Pruet, who runs a wedding rental business in Rockwall, Texas, recently traded her 2012 F-150 for the 2014 version because she wanted a backup camera.
Ford was scheduled to start production of the 2015 F-150 Tuesday at its Dearborn Truck Plant, four miles from the company’s headquarters. It will arrive at U.S. dealerships next month.
There are big risks. Any quality problems, production hiccups or customer worries could slow sales and hurt Ford’s bottom line. Morgan Stanley estimates F-Series trucks account for 90 percent of Ford’s global automotive profit.
Speaking through a translator, Xi said “the Pacific Ocean is broad enough” to accommodate the prowess of both the U.S. and China.
Ford is spending more than $1 billion to retrofit its plants in Dearborn and Claycomo, Missouri, where the trucks are assembled, as well as the metal stamping plants that make the parts, says Bruce Hettle, Ford’s vice president of manufacturing, who spent three years planning the changeover. Sparks used to fly from the noisy robots welding steel in the Dearborn body shop. Now, 500 new robots quietly rivet aluminum parts together. At Ford’s Dearborn stamping plant, new machines collect and sort aluminum for recycling, which couldn’t be done with steel. Ford also helped dealers with the $30,000 to $50,000 cost to retrofit their repair shops, says spokeswoman Elizabeth Weigandt. Around 700 of the company’s 1,500 dealers who do collision repairs have gone through company training on aluminum, along with 700 independent repair shops. Weigandt says Ford took steps to minimize repair costs. Because of the way the aluminum is sectioned, for example, the roof doesn’t have to be removed to repair to the B-pillar, which sits just behind the front doors. Russell Barnett updated the repair shop at his Ford dealership in Winchester, Tennessee. Barnett figures that in three to four years other brands will be adopting the same technology, so the investment will pay for itself. Jason Cannon doesn’t haul much more than an occasional Christmas tree in his 2006 F-150. But Cannon, 34, a writer who lives in Demopolis, Alabama, says he wouldn’t drive anything else. Cannon’s only wish is that he got better fuel economy than the 15 to 16 mpg he averages around town. That’s why he’s eyeing the 2015 F-150
NEW YORK (AP) -- A trade deal between the U.S. and China could end tariffs on $1 trillion in global sales of semiconductors, MRI machines, GPS devices, printer ink cartridges, video game consoles and other high-tech items. President Barack Obama, in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, said Tuesday that the U.S. and China reached an “understanding” on expanding the Information Technology Agreement of 1996. The ITA bans tariffs - or taxes on imported goods and services - on IT products among countries that are part of the World Trade Organization. Tariffs give domestic goods a price advantage for customers over imported ones. The expanded deal would eliminate those costs for multiple high-tech products such as global positioning systems, medical equipment, software and gadgets - leveling the playing field for those items. Similar talks broke down in 2013 over the scope of the products that could be covered. But if the deal is finalized later this year at World Trade Organization talks in Geneva, it would mark the first major tariff reduction by the WTO in 17 years. The agreement covers more than $100 billion in products sold by the U.S. each year and could support up to 60,000 new U.S. jobs, according to the office of U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. Chip and medical device industries might benefit the most from the new agreement, said Anna Han, director of the Center for Global Law and Policy at Santa Clara University School of Law. She noted that the expanded agreement doesn’t eliminate all barriers on trade: for example, China imposes additional rules on foreign telecommunications companies’ products. Analyst Andrew Bartels of Forrester Research said the effects of the deal will be “relatively minor” because other issues - including government investigations into price-fixing - have a bigger impact on U.S. and European companies in China. However he said the agreement will create hope. “A lot of negotiations over trade have been stalled and stymied,” he said. “Any time they start to make a small step forward ... after a period where there’s been no progress, it creates the perception that this small step could be followed by bigger steps.” with the 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine, a V6 that could give him similar horsepower to his current V8. Cannon says he wouldn’t hesitate to buy aluminum. “This is an F-150. The technology is proven,” he says. “This is the same song, just a different verse.”
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The Weekly News Digest, Nov 10 thru Nov 17, 2014
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O B A M A S T E P S I N T O D I V I S I V E D E B A T E O N N E T N E U T R A L I T Y THE ARGUMENT AGAINST REGULATING INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS AS UTILITIES
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Let’s say President Barack Obama gets his way and high-speed Internet service providers are governed by the same U.S. regulations imposed on telephone companies 80 years ago.
If the U.S. government becomes the Internet’s traffic cop, online service providers will lose their incentive to continue investing in projects that improve their networks and expand into areas that have little or no high-speed access. This would lead to less innovation and threaten millions of jobs, according to cable and telecommunications companies spearheading the argument for little or no regulation.
Depending on whom you listen to, the rules could unleash future innovation and create jobs - or stifle innovation and kill jobs. The divisive and often confusing debate has intensified now that Obama has entered the fray. Obama’s stance is meant to protect “net neutrality,” the concept that everyone with an Internet connection should have equal access to all legal content online. The idea served as one of the Internet’s building blocks, but its fate has been in limbo since January, when a court ruling invalidated Federal Communications Commission guidelines designed to treat all online traffic equally. The FCC has already been working on a new regulatory framework and is under no legal obligation to heed Obama’s call. Nevertheless, Obama’s opinion turns up the political heat on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the four other commissioners who will make the final decision. The FCC isn’t under a deadline to make a decision. THE ARGUMENT FOR REGULATING INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS AS UTILITIES Obama believes the adoption of these Depression-era rules are the best way to preserve a “free and open” Internet that gives everyone in the U.S. the same access to any website hosting legal content, including video, music, photos, social networks, email, and maps. Adopting these rules would empower the U.S. government to prevent powerful online service providers such as Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable from controlling Internet traffic in a way that suits their own financial interests. This premise assumes the service providers, if left unchecked, will create a two-tier system that funnels Internet traffic into fast and slow lanes. Only the richest companies will be able to pay the extra tolls to ensure their online content is accessible through these fast lanes, according to
President Barack Obama shakes hands with then nominee for Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Obama touched off an angry debate Monday, Nov. 10, 2014, over government regulation of Internet service, coming down on the side of consumer activists who fear slower download speeds and higher costs but angering Republicans and the nation’s cable giants who say the plan would kill jobs.
this hypothesis. “It is historically important that the Internet enhances freedom for all rather than profit for a few,” says Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group that represents many technology companies, including Internet search leader Google Inc. and social networking leader Facebook Inc. And major cable-TV providers that also sell high-speed Internet service might be able to diminish the quality of service to Internet-only video services such as Netflix and Hulu that might lure away their customers. Netflix Inc., which boasts 37 million U.S. subscribers, is leading the charge to regulate Internet service providers like utilities.
If net neutrality’s principles hadn’t been in effect for the past 20 years, proponents contend entrepreneurs would have been discouraged from developing a wide range of online services that have created millions of jobs and billions of dollars in wealth. Preserving net neutrality will put more people to work and enrich more investors under this theory.
I R A Q M I L I TA RY: T R O O P S TA K E C E N T E R O F R E F I N E R Y T O W N Ibrahim also told The Associated Press that many militants booby-trapped buildings in Beiji, posing an added threat.
A senior military official earlier told the AP that troops had recaptured of about 75 percent of Beiji. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. Government officials in Baghdad offered no immediate comment on the news. Al-Saadi said Saturday that his forces had recaptured most of the city and that it would soon be entirely rid of Islamic State group fighters.
A column of smoke rises from an oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, after an attack by Islamic militants. Iraqi soldiers battling the Islamic State group recaptured the heart of the town of Beiji, home to the country’s largest oil refinery, state television and a military official said Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014. Retaking Beiji, could allow Iraqi forces a base to attack neighboring Tikrit, taken by the extremists after their lightning advance this summer
There was no word on the fate of the refinery, which lies on the outskirts of the town and has been besieged by Islamic State fighters since June. The small army unit inside the refinery, resupplied and reinforced by air for months, successfully resisted wave after wave of extremist assaults.
BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraqi soldiers battling the Islamic State group recaptured the heart and outlying districts of the town of Beiji, home to the country’s largest oil refinery, state television and a provincial governor said Tuesday.
Iraq’s army and security forces partially have regrouped after melting away in the face of the summer’s Islamic State offensive. In recent weeks, they recaptured a string of small towns and villages, but taking Beiji would be strategically significant in what is shaping up to be a drawn-out campaign against the extremists.
Retaking Beiji, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, could allow Iraqi forces a base to attack neighboring Tikrit, taken by the extremists in their lightning advance this summer. But troops backed by Shiite militias faced pockets of stiff resistance around Beiji, hindering their advance.
Recapturing Beiji also would be a major boost for Iraq’s Shiite-led government and could pave the way for a fresh offensive to drive Islamic State militants from the nearby city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown and the capital of Salahuddin province.
State television quoted the top army commander in Beiji, Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, as saying troops recaptured the city’s local government and police headquarters at the center of the town. It aired what appeared to be archival footage of the town showing Iraqi army troops firing their weapons from behind sand barriers.
The Beiji campaign has been carried out by a contingent of troops and security forces drawn from a nearby military base and airlifted from government-controlled areas elsewhere.
Al-Saadi later spoke to state television by telephone but the line appeared to be cut off after he said his forces were meeting stiff resistance. Raed Ibrahim, the governor of Salahuddin province, where Beiji and Tikrit are located, said the military had secured about 75 percent of the town as of Tuesday, retaking the center of the town and outlying districts. He said government forces continued to meet fierce resistance from the militants, whom he said were using suicide bombers to stall the military’s advance.
Airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition have aided Iraqi forces, militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling Islamic State militants. Hundreds of U.S. advisers and trainers also have been working with the Iraqis.
Adopting Obama’s approach “would threaten millions of jobs and a diverse array of stakeholders,” warned Broadband for America, an industry trade group. Last year, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable invested a combined $46 billion in the U.S. on plants, property and equipment, according to estimates complied in an analysis by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. Internet service providers also argue that it would be unfair to codify regulations that would prevent them from ever recovering some of the costs for connecting to broadband hogs such as Netflix, whose service generates about one-third of U.S. online traffic during the evening hours on weekdays. Netflix already pays Comcast, Verizon and AT&T an undisclosed fee for a more direct connection to their networks, an arrangement that could become unnecessary if Obama’s recommendation is adopted by the FCC. More regulation under rules created in a dramatically different era also threatens to bog down the Internet in more government bureaucracy and meddling. The 1934 Telecommunications Act would be the foundation of net neutrality, as envisioned by Obama, and it’s not clear how much the law would be updated. Broadband for America likened Obama’s proposal to the efforts of governments in China and Russia to gain more control over the Internet. U.S. Central Command said Monday that coalition aircraft conducted seven airstrikes near Beiji since Friday, destroying three small militant units, a sniper position and two militant vehicles, including one used for construction. Meanwhile in Syria, U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura reiterated his call for a truce in the northern city of Aleppo where rebels still hold large areas, although they are under increasing attack from advancing government forces. De Mistura, who met Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday, said an Aleppo truce could be a step toward a wider resolution of the country’s civil war. Assad has said the suggestion was “worth studying.” And in Qatar, ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani warned U.S.-led airstrikes won’t be enough to defeat “terrorism and extremism” in Iraq and Syria. Speaking to the Gulf nation’s legislative advisory council, he said the policies of Assad’s government and “some militias in Iraq” - a reference to Iranian-backed Shiite militias - are the most important factors contributing to extremism in the two countries. Qatar plays a supporting role in the U.S.-led military coalition conducting airstrikes by allowing coalition forces to use its vast al-Udeid air base. The country also has provided substantial arms and other aid to Syrian rebels, but has come under fire from critics for its support of Islamist groups. Qatar denies supporting militants and says it has never provided backing for Islamic State fighters.
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The Weekly News Digest, Nov 10 thru Nov 17, 2014 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
U S F I G H T S C Y B E R C R I M E F R O M S U B U R B A N O F F I C E P A R K S ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) -- Ground zero in the nation’s fight against cybercrime hides in plain sight, in a nondescript suburban office building with no government seals or signs.
“Warning: Contains contraband and potentially disturbing content” reads a sticker on one computer. Tool kits include screwdrivers, pliers, scissors, tweezers and wrenches. The specialists don’t hit an “on” switch until the equipment is placed inside a sealed box, to prevent Wi-Fi signals from reaching or being sent from the devices. A technician with a buzz cut and magnifying glasses leans over a digital tablet’s colorful circuit board, soldering small wires that could eventually allow him to peek into the user’s emails, documents and web-browsing habits.
Only after passing a low-key receptionist stationed on the seventh floor does one see the metal detectors, personal cellphone lockers and a series of heavy doors marked “classified” - all leading to the auditorium-sized National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. Inside, around-the-clock, close to 100 specialists monitor floor-to-ceiling maps of the U.S. and world, along with streams of data and breaking news. States are color-coded from green to red, for a low threat of attack to severe. “This is where we put out the fires,” says Phyllis Schneck, chief cybersecurity official for the Department of Homeland Security, nodding at an image of a rotating globe on a monitor the size of a movie screen. This fall, The Associated Press paid rare visits to two key civilian and military cybersecurity centers, a secret lab and a 24/7 incident-response venue where the government’s computer scientists work to combat an increasing bombardment by thieves, hostile states and hacktivists. Cyberattack now eclipses terrorism as the biggest threat to national security, according to U.S. intelligence chiefs. And an AP report published this week found the $10 billion-a-year federal effort to protect the nation online is failing to keep up with attackers who tap into .gov and .mil networks from coffee shops down the street or military bases on the other side of the world. The hubs for the nation’s online defense are tucked away in office parks mostly in Washington’s sprawling suburbs. There are no external signs these are classified facilities. The AP was granted access only after agreeing to not disclose street addresses, or record equipment serial numbers or employee badges. Some images on desktop monitors were also off-limits. Cellphones were barred, background checks required. Inside the DHS cybersecurity center in Arlington, Virginia, rows of industry, military and intelligence analysts watch three large monitors on each of their desks; they’re detecting, preventing, responding to and mitigating cyberattacks. Some scan through columns of numbers, monitoring live data fed through the federal “Einstein” program, a software system that searches
B U S I N E S S E S W O M E N C H A S E Kelly Brabants, foreground, leads her “Booty by Brabants” class at The Club by George Foreman III gym in Boston. The class, started by Brabants a year ago, fits in 120 squats in 45 minutes.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Gym classes that promise a plump posterior are in high demand. Surgery that pumps fat into the buttocks is gaining popularity. And padded panties that give the appearance of a rounder rump are selling out. The U.S. booty business is getting a big bump. Companies are cashing in on growing demand from women seeking the more curvaceous figures of their favorite stars, who flaunt their fuller rear ends. Nicki Minaj, for instance, raps about her “big fat” butt in “Anaconda.” Reality-star Kim Kardashian posts photos of hers on Instagram. And in the music video for “Booty,” Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea, wearing leotards, spend four minutes rubbing their curvy bottoms together. At one point, they slap each other on the booty. As a result of the pop culture moment the butt is having, sales for Booty Pop, which hawks $22 foam padded panties on its web site, are up 47 percent in the last six months from the same period a year earlier. The company, which declined to give sales, has sold out of certain styles and colors this year, including its Pink Cotton Candy Boy Shorts. Susan Bloomstone, Booty Pop’s co-founder, says customers have asked for larger sizes. So, the Boston-based company plans to begin selling pads that are 25 percent larger this month. “People just want more booty,” she says. Feel Foxy, another maker of padded panties, says 2014 has been its best year since launching nearly a decade ago. Sales are up 40 percent from a year ago, but the company declined to give sales. “The Nicki Minaj song gave women the idea to pay attention to their rear end,” says Jessica Asmar, co-owner of the Houston company. Deborah Santiago squeezed into a $40 Feel Foxy one-piece for her 30th birthday. The shapewear flattened Santiago’s waist and boosted her back side. A flat butt can ruin an outfit, says the New York stay-at-home mother of two. Lopez is her butt idol, but she also covets the bottoms of reality TV stars on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Love & Hip Hop.” “I always wanted a big butt,” Santiago says. “Something you could look twice at.” To be sure, the desire for big butts isn’t new. Large booties long have been preferable in Latino and black communities, says Dr. Dionne Stephens, an associate psychology professor at Florida International University who has researched sexuality in popular culture. And this isn’t the first time big butts have been in songs. (Think: Baby Got Back
A specialist works at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Ground zero in the nation’s fight against cybercrime hides in plain sight, in a nondescript suburban office building with no government seals or signs. Only after passing a low-key receptionist stationed on the seventh floor does one see the metal detectors, personal cellphone lockers and a series of heavy doors marked “classified” _ all leading to the auditorium-sized National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.
government networks for malware, viruses and hacks. Others spot defaced websites and data leaks. Frequently, teams travel directly to infected computers to get them off the network. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Sy Lee declined to comment on whether the center was involved in stopping a recently reported cyberattack on White House networks, but he said DHS generally leads such response efforts.
Specialists like him are in high demand, as private sector cybersecurity jobs can pay double federal salaries, which average around $80,000 a year. The Defense Department this year announced plans to triple its cyberwarrior force to 6,000 by the end of 2016, and the Justice Department is also recruiting hundreds of cyber-savvy contractors and civil servants. In addition to these two centers, the federal government maintains others scattered around the country, including Maryland, Georgia, Texas and Hawaii. Assistant Secretary of Defense Eric Rosenbach, the DOD’S principal cybersecurity adviser, said such centers focus on keeping hackers out, but also on mitigating the damage they can do. “It’s not inconceivable another country would try to take down our network,” he said, “but if they do, we’re resilient and it pops back up.”
Infected military computers are taken to a similarly discreet building in Linthicum, Maryland.
and even bathroom caulk, into their buttocks. Deaths have been reported in Miami, New York, Las Vegas and Jackson, Mississippi.
The Defense Cyber Crime Center has an ordinary entrance where a receptionist checks in visitors before they pass through locked doors. Then there’s a second entrance, a wood-paneled wall with military seals and potted plants. Down a maze of hallways, cybercrime soldiers and defense contractors extract information from devices seized from battlefields, military crime scenes and federal employees whose computers may have been hacked.
Another problem is doctors performing butt-enhancement surgeries that don’t have experience. Schulman says about 20 percent of his patients come so he can fix lumps, bumps and uneven butt cheeks done by unskilled doctors.
They crack encryption on devices, unlock cellphones and disassemble laptops. Tables are stacked with hard drives, including at least one that looks like it has a bullet hole in it. Another was seized during the Gulf War.
C A S H I N A S B I G G E R B U T T S by Sir Mix-A-Lot in the 1990s.) But recently, the desire for a bigger bottom became more mainstream, in large part due to pop culture influences. Mainstream celebrities like Lopez and Minaj accepting their ample assets on camera have given the butt cache. “When people see things repeated on TV more and more, it becomes normalized,” Stephens says. French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann says this is true overseas, too: “In Europe, and in France especially, there’s a trend to show off the buttocks in place of breasts. This has to do with Latin American influences, but also the rise of Beyonce and stars like Rihanna,” says Kaufmann, author of “Women’s Bodies, Men’s Gaze. Sociology of Naked Breasts.” Kauffman also suggests more economic reasons at play: “In uncertain times, people look for security,” he says. “Men are attracted to women’s hips and the buttocks for security and reassurance. Women respond to this. It’s deeply psychological.” Whatever the reason, the widespread interest in larger hind parts seems to have started when Kardashian began appearing in a reality TV show “Keeping up with the Kardashians” seven years ago. In a 2011 episode, she had an X-ray to prove she didn’t have butt implants. Kardashian still frequently posts shots of her backside to her 21 million Instagram followers. But the desire for big buns has intensified. This summer, the music video for “Anaconda” that showed Minaj in a pink thong was viewed 19.6 million times within 24 hours of its release - a record for music video site Vevo. It has racked up nearly 300 million views. The song has been on the top of the Billboard charts, too, right behind another anthem for curvy women, Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.” “I’m bringing booty back,” Trainor sings. Some businesses that specialize in butts say pop culture has had a direct impact on their bottom line. A Brazilian butt lift, in which fat is sucked from a patient’s stomach, love handles or back and put into their buttocks and hips, is increasingly popular in the U.S. This type of surgery, along with buttock implants, was the fastest-growing plastic surgery last year, with more than 11,000 procedures, up 58 percent from 2012, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Dr. Matthew Schulman, who performs the procedure in New York, says this year has been busier than last. Schulman, who charges $10,000 to $13,000 for the three-hour surgery, does six to eight Brazilian butt lifts weekly, up about 25 percent from a year ago. He says when he asks patients which celebrity butt they want, the top names are Kardashian, Minaj and Lopez. Recently, more women have asked for a butt like Kardashian’s sister, Khloe, who also stars in the reality show. The downside of new interest is that women desperate for cheap options have risked their lives, going to phony doctors that inject silicone,
Not everyone is trying surgery, though. Those looking for more natural ways to enhance their derriere have boosted attendance of workout classes and sales of videos. DailyBurn, which streams workout videos, says views for its “Butt, Hips and Thighs” video doubled in January and have remained popular. The video is so popular that DailyBurn is adding another butt workout clip in December. At a gym in Boston, there’s a waitlist for a $30 class that fits in 120 squats in 45 minutes. The class, Booty by Brabants, was started by Kelly Brabants a year ago. Brabants starts most classes, held at The Club by George Foreman III gym, with Lopez’s “Booty” song. By the end of the year, she plans to expand her brand by selling $65 workout leggings that help perk up the butt. “It’s not about being stick-thin anymore,” says Brabants. “Every girl now wants a booty.”
GLOBAL BANKS FINED B I L L I O N S F O R RIGGING MARKET LONDON (AP) -- Traders with nicknames like the “Three Musketeers” and the “A-Team” plotted over Internet chat rooms to manipulate currency markets for years, profiting at the expense of clients - and then congratulating themselves for their brilliance - regulators said Wednesday, as they fined five banks $3.4 billion. Using profanity-laced banter, the traders coordinated their financial positions in the multi-trillion dollar currency market, securing profits for those inside their circles. “YESsssssssssss,” one of them wrote in a chat message. “Yeah baby” and “nice work gents....I don my hat,” wrote others, according to documents of their exchanges. Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC Bank and UBS agreed to settlements totaling almost $3.4 billion with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. The British regulator said Barclays remains under investigation. “Today’s record fines mark the gravity of the failings we found, and firms need to take responsibility for putting it right,” said Martin Wheatley, chief executive of the FCA. “They must make sure their traders do not game the system to boost profits.” Meanwhile, a U.S. Treasury Department agency announced it was fining three of the biggest U.S. banks - JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. - a total $950 million for failing to prevent misconduct in their foreign exchange trading operations. Some $5.3 trillion changes hands every day on the global foreign exchange market, with 40 percent of trades occurring in London. The market is loosely regulated and dominated by a few elite banks. Manipulation of the exchange rates has “a profound effect on the economy,” CFTC Enforcement Director Aitan Goelman said. That’s because a host of financial investments bought and sold by major investors like pension funds are based on benchmark rates for pairs of currencies that are fixed daily by the banks. With so much money flowing through the currency markets, a rigged procedure of fixing exchange rates can ripple through the financial system, the regulators say, and it also shakes people’s confidence in the fairness and integrity of the system. The alleged manipulation occurred around the market fixes, moments during the day when banks set benchmark prices for currency trades around the world.
continued on page 11
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A R C T I C U P P E R
The Weekly News Digest, Nov 10 thru Nov 17, 2014
11
C H I L L S E T T L E S A C R O S S M I D W E S T , R O C K I E S
DETROIT (AP) -- The Arctic chill that has gripped the Upper Midwest and Rockies is spreading.
ed to hit the Appalachians and mid-South by Wednesday morning, and the East Coast by Thursday.
Other parts of the U.S. are expecting sharp drops in temperature in the coming days from a powerful weather system that hit Alaska with hurricane-force winds over the weekend. The system has dumped 3 feet of snow in some places.
In Billings, Montana, where temperatures fell from the high 60s into the single digits on Tuesday, Patsy Kimmel said she was warned about the weather before arriving from Oklahoma to celebrate her 70th birthday with family.
A look at the system and its effects:
“Yesterday I was wearing sandals and a short-sleeve shirt, and today I’m wearing a coat and scarf and turtleneck and sweatshirt and gloves,” she said.
SNOW, SNOW AND MORE SNOW As much as 3 feet of snow blanketed parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s early Wednesday. Up to 18 inches fell in northern Wisconsin and parts of central Minnesota saw more than 16. Many roads were snow-covered and slippery Wednesday morning in the Upper Peninsula, where residents are accustomed to snowy conditions. Of his drive into work, meteorologist Justin Titus said that roads were “just rutted out and kind of felt like you were driving over a washboard.” The National Weather Service said some lake-effect snow, mainly in Michigan, is forecast through the weekend. SNOW DAY DREAMS DASHED The early wintry weather in the Midwest this week gave Principal Lynn Grewing an opportunity to test a virtual classroom: She asked students of St. Cloud Cathedral high school in central Minnesota to work from home using laptops or iPads. Grewing said her students’ cherished snow days are now a thing of the past. “This is what we will be doing every single snow day going forward,” she
In the Texas Panhandle, temperatures plunged from 70 degrees into the teens overnight. Oklahoma City went from a high of 80 degrees Monday to a low of 30 Tuesday morning. Snow melt from a roof forms into icicles in Bozeman, Mont., Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014.
said. “I’ll be honest. There has been some grumbling.” Private schools such as Cathedral, as well as some public school districts nationwide, are starting to use the flexibility that technology provides to meet school mandates without needing makeup days when bad weather keeps students at home.
“Bang! We get this arctic blast, and it just opens the floodgates,” said John Hammond Jr., a department head. “We’re behind right now as we’re sitting here talking.”
Cathedral senior Tommy Auger said doing classwork at home using his school-provided MacBook Air didn’t feel very different to a day in class. Once they got over the initial disappointment of missing a snow day off, Auger said he and his classmates agreed they would rather skip a day of sledding than make up the missed school days in the summer.
DON’T BLAME THE POLAR VORTEX
“It’s hard to think ahead, but it’s definitely better,” he said. THE COLD The unseasonably low temperatures were spreading. The chill was expect-
A R C T I C B L A S T D E S C E N D S O N R O C K I E S , U P P E R M I D W E S T through Thursday. SNOW: NO JOKE FOR FARMERS, BUT RANCHERS CAN BEAR IT The storm stirred anxiety for some farmers in Minnesota and South Dakota whose corn had not yet been harvested. The corn can withstand the cold, but deep snow may delay farmers getting it out of fields. Yet ranchers in the Dakotas were surprisingly upbeat with only a few inches of snow in the forecast, after intense storms in October 2013 killed at least 43,000 cattle that hadn’t yet developed their heavy protective winter coats.
Sue Scheeler walks her dog Brooke at Custer Park in Bismarck, N.D., after the season’s first snowfall on Monday morning, Nov. 10, 2014. Bismarck received just over 3 inches of snow in the aftermath of the season’s first storm.
This year, “we’ve had enough cool weather that they’re haired up like bears,” said South Dakota Stockgrowers Association President Bob Fortune, who ranches near Belvidere, South Dakota. “They can take winter now.”
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- After being buried under more than a foot of snow, parts of the Rockies and Upper Midwest were getting their first icy touch of arctic air on Tuesday. And the rest of the Midwest and the East are expecting a dose later in the week, with temperatures forecast as much as 40 degrees below average.
READY. SET. WAIT. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport saw the brunt of the cancellations and delays Monday, with about 175 cancellations, while about 19 had been cancelled Tuesday out of hundreds of arriving and departing flights, according to the airport.
The frigid air was pushed in by a powerful storm that hit Alaska with hurricane-force winds over the weekend.
There were no delays Tuesday morning at Sawyer International Airport in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
A look at the storm and its effects:
KEEP CALM AND SHOVEL ON The snow got a mixed reception in Minneapolis, where the first inch tripled morning drive times Monday. At one point, the weather turned to sleet, and tiny pellets stung uncovered faces and hands. Crews were plowing, shoveling or brushing off sidewalks, and snowplows did several loops around city streets.
ISN’T IT STILL FALL? Winter is still more than a month away, but it doesn’t feel like it. Residents were digging out from as much as 13 inches of snow Tuesday morning in northern Wisconsin, where several school districts cancelled classes, while some Minnesotans awoke to 15 inches of fresh powder - with more snow expected.
Richard Anderson, who was decorating small trees outside Seven Steakhouse, was downcast.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula also was buried under at least a foot of snow Tuesday - with another foot or two expected - prompting several school closures, including at Northwestern Michigan University. National Weather Service meteorologist Justin Titus said roads are in “very poor condition,” with 2 to 3 inches of snow falling an hour on Tuesday morning.
“As a professional holiday decorator you’d think I’d appreciate it. But I appreciate it when I’m all finished, and I’m finally sitting down and enjoying my own Christmas tree,” Anderson said. “It’s wet, cold, sticks to you. It’s freezing on your jacket as it’s raining. What do you call it? Rain, sleet and snow. And it’s bitter. It’s really bitter. It’s not very nice.”
Terri Sommerfeld, a clerk at Ace Hardware in Webster, Wisconsin, said the store usually sells six or seven snowblowers in a typical winter. That’s how many the store has sold in two days.
Elsewhere, in Minnesota, the State Patrol said at least two people were killed in accidents on icy roads and troopers handled 475 crashes and more than 700 spinouts statewide by Monday evening.
“It hasn’t been overly busy today, but the ones that are coming are buying snowblowers and shovels,” she said. THE COLD AFTER THE SNOW The blast of frigid weather sent temperatures tumbling in the Texas Panhandle, plunging from the 70s into the teens. Similar balmy weather in Missouri was replaced by temperatures in the 20s - dropping some 40 degrees overnight - along with a light dusting of snow. In parts of Colorado, temperatures fell into the teens - about 20 to 30 degrees below normal - and they’re expected to remain
In the Dakotas, wind chills made it feel like 20 below in some places. That was good news for Action Mechanical Inc. of Rapid City, South Dakota, a heating and ventilation business that was doing booming trade.
In eastern Wisconsin, snow-covered roads were blamed for a school bus crash that sent the driver and an aide to a hospital, WBAY-TV reported. In Chicago, some people were savoring breezy but mild weather near 60 before unseasonably cold freezing temperatures arrive Wednesday. “I just wanted to enjoy one of the last nice days,” said 44-year-old Joe Kauda, of the Chicago suburb of Carol Stream.
Meteorologists are adamant the weather isn’t because of the polar vortex, a giant upper air pattern that normally pens in cold air in the Arctic in the winter. Instead, they say it’s pushed in by a different weather phenomenon more related to the remnants of a powerful typhoon. “The polar vortex itself has not moved south. It’s still in the Arctic where it always is,” said National Weather Service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan. Whatever the case, the cold is expected to linger. Some regions will go from record warm to record cold in just two days, with temperatures dropping 15 to 20 degrees below normal on the East Coast Friday and Saturday. Freezing temperatures will likely dip as far south as Atlanta on Friday, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the Weather Underground. Nord reported from Pierre, South Dakota.
RIGGING MARKET continued from page 10
The penalty notices for each bank contain specific examples in which traders manipulated the market to the benefit of their firms. In one example, RBS had net client orders to sell British pounds for dollars. This meant the bank would profit if it were able to push the price of pounds lower. An RBS trader used an online chat room to share information with traders at three other firms, allowing him to increase RBS’s net sell orders to 399 million pounds from 202 million pounds and to push the price on the spot market as low as $1.6213 from $1.6276. The fix was eventually set at $1.6218. As a result, RBS made a profit of $615,000. In the aftermath, the RBS trader used the chat room to thank his compatriots, saying “1.6218 . nice.” One of the other traders replied, “we ... killed it right,” using an obscenity. Louise Cooper, a former Goldman Sachs stock broker who writes the financial blog CooperCity, said that what was extraordinary about the case is that the misconduct occurred when the banks were already under investigation for a similar scandal involving the fixing of the London interbank offered rate, or LIBOR. The industry was well aware that a regulatory backlash was coming. “I thought these were supposed to be the masters of the universe? Brilliantly clever individuals who were worth their multi-million pound bonuses,” Cooper wrote. “And yet they continued their behavior despite the clear signs they were likely to be discovered.” The regulators found that between Jan. 1, 2008 and Oct. 15, 2013, the five banks failed to adequately train and supervise foreign currency traders. As a result, traders were able to form groups that shared information about client activity, using nicknames such as “the players” and “1team, 1 dream.” “The names they called each other are so juvenile,” Cooper wrote. “They sound like kids let lose in a terribly expensive sweetie shop.” RBS Chairman Philip Hampton said the bank accepted the regulators’ criticism and condemned the actions of the employees responsible. “Today is a stark reminder of the importance of culture and integrity in banking and we will rightly be judged on the strength of our response,” Hampton said in a statement. RBS has started disciplinary action against six employees, three of whom have been suspended. The U.S. Justice Department is conducting its own criminal investigation of foreign exchange rate setting. And the Federal Reserve confirmed Wednesday that it has a probe underway in coordination with Justice and other agencies. Additional penalties are possible. The foreign-exchange scandal is the latest black eye for the international banking industry. Five big banks - including Britain’s Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland - have been sanctioned for alleged manipulation of LIBOR, in a continuing investigation. The five banks together have paid nearly $4 billion in settlements, and several individuals have been criminally charged. LIBOR is used by banks to borrow from each other and affects trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages, bonds and consumer loans. Major Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup have each paid billions of dollars in settlements with the Justice Department and other U.S. agencies over their role in selling the toxic mortgage securities that fueled the worst financial crisis since the 1930s and threw millions of homes into foreclosure.
12 The Weekly News Digest, Nov 10 thru Nov 17, 2014
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E U R O P E R E A D Y T O L A N D 1 S T P R O B E O N S T R E A K I N G C O M E T BERLIN (AP) -- How do you land a spacecraft on a comet that is streaking by at 41,000 mph (66,000 kph)?
(3:35 a.m. EST), the lander will separate from the mother ship. If anything goes wrong then, scientists will be powerless to do anything but watch. Since it takes more than 28 minutes for a command to reach Rosetta, the lander has been programmed to perform the touchdown autonomously.
That’s a problem scientists have been grappling with for more than a decade as they prepare for one of the most audacious space adventures ever - the European Space Agency’s attempt to land a scientific probe on the giant ball of ice and dust known as 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The landing site - dubbed Agilkia after an island on the river Nile was chosen because it is fairly free of boulders. But even the smallest error could put Philae hundreds of meters (yards) off course during its seven-hour descent to the comet.
They’ll find out Wednesday whether their plan will work when the agency’s mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, gives its unmanned Rosetta space probe the final go-ahead to drop a lander on the comet. The event marks the climax of Rosetta’s decade-long journey to study the icy celestial bodies that have long fascinated humanity. Scientists hope that the data collected by Rosetta and its sidekick lander, Philae, will provide insights into the origins of comets and other objects in the universe. On Tuesday, the agency announced that systems aboard the Philae lander had failed to switch on properly at first. Fearing a cosmic calamity, scientists tried a reboot. “The lander successfully powered up, and preparations are now continuing as planned,” the agency said on its website. The hitch demonstrates how much can still go wrong with the 1.3 billion euro ($1.62 billion) mission first conceived more than two decades ago. Launched in 2004 after a year’s delay, the Rosetta spacecraft had to swing around Earth three times - and once around Mars - to gain enough speed to chase down the comet. After traveling 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles), it pulled up alongside 67P in August.
Once the 100-kilogram (220-pound) lander touches down, it will fire two harpoons into the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) wide comet’s icy surface to avoid bouncing off due to the low gravity. In this Nov. 1, 2014, photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board, Virgin Galactic pilot Todd Ericson, right, talks with NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart, second from left, at the SpaceShipTwo accident site with investigators in Mojave, Calif. The cause of Friday’s crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo has not been determined, but investigators found the “feathering” system, which rotates the tail to create drag, was activated before the craft reached the appropriate speed, National Transportation Safety Board Acting Chairman Christopher Hart said. The picture taken with the navigation camera on Rosetta and released by the European Space Agency ESA shows the boulder-strewn neck region of Comet 67P/Churyumov– Gerasimenko, with the smaller lobe on the left and the larger lobe on the right. It was captured from a distance of 9.7 km from the center of the comet (about 7.7 km / 4.8 miles) from the surface) on Oct. 28, 2014. On Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014 the Philae lander will be detached from Rosetta to land on the comet.
Now Rosetta and the comet are flying in tandem at 41,000 mph between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, 500 million kilometers (311 million miles) from Earth. The vast distance means the European Space Agency has to rely on NASA’s Deep Space Network of giant radio antennas to communicate with Rosetta. Early Wednesday, Rosetta will execute a series of complicated maneuvers to reach the optimum drop-off point. About 0835 GMT
YA H O O B U Y S D I G I TA L A D S E R V I C E B R I G H T R O L L F O R $ 6 4 0 M Meanwhile, ad revenue at Google and Facebook has been steadily rising by 20 percent or more in most quarters as marketers pour money into digital campaigns to connect with consumers spending more time gazing into screens on PCs and mobile devices. Yahoo’s share of the worldwide ad market now stands at about 2.4 percent, down from 3.9 percent in 2011, according to the research firm eMarketer. Facebook’s share has climbed from 3.6 percent in 2011 to a projected 8 percent this year while Google has held on to a 32 percent share of a much larger market. “This plugs a hole for (Yahoo),” said Outsell analyst Randy Giusto. “They obviously needed to do something.”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Yahoo is buying digital video advertising service BrightRoll for $640 million in the Internet company’s latest attempt to boost its revenue after years filled mostly with financial futility. The acquisition announced Tuesday marks Yahoo’s first major purchase since reaping a $9.4 billion windfall in September by selling part of its stake in a rapidly rising Internet star, Chinese e-commerce service Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Mayer is under more pressure to get Yahoo rolling in the right direction now that the company has brought in more money from its recent sale of Alibaba stock. What’s more, Yahoo still owns 384 million shares of Alibaba stock currently worth $44 billion. The Alibaba holdings are the main reason that Yahoo’s stock has been hovering around its highest levels in more than 14 years.
That makes the BrightRoll deal look quite different from the only larger acquisition that Yahoo has made since hiring Mayer as its CEO in July 2012. Mayer bought online blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion last year, even though that New York company hadn’t yet proven it could make money. In contrast, BrightRoll already is profitable, according to Yahoo. Meanwhile, Tumblr isn’t expected to bring in $100 million in annual revenue until next year, at the earliest. “Acquiring BrightRoll will dramatically strengthen Yahoo’s video advertising platform,” Mayer predicted in a Tuesday blog post. Investors didn’t seem to be as enthusiastic about the deal. Yahoo’s stock dipped 3 cents to $49.02 in extended trading. If Mayer is right, BrightRoll could help Yahoo reverse a long-running decline in display advertising - a category consisting of video pitches and other marketing with a visual element. Through the first nine months of this year, Yahoo’s display advertising revenue had declined 4 percent from last year to $1.2 billion after subtracting commissions.
Even if the landing fails, the European Space Agency says Rosetta alone will be able to complete much of the mission that scientists hope will help them learn more about the origins of comets, stars, planets and even life on Earth.
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Activist shareholder Starboard Value LP issued a challenge to Mayer in September in a letter critical of the more than 30 acquisitions that she had previously made for a total of about $1.6 billion. Those acquisitions seemed to make little financial sense, according to Starboard, which urged Mayer to consider buying rival AOL Inc. as a way to save money and bring in more ad revenue. Yahoo so far hasn’t given any indication that it’s interested in joining forces with AOL, which currently has a market value of about $3.5 billion. Mayer has said that Yahoo is considering ways to minimize taxes on future sales of its Alibaba stock, a step that Starboard had also implored the company to consider. Starboard didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the BrightRoll acquisition.
G L O B A L WA R M I N G W O R S E N I N G WAT E R Y D E A D Z O N E S The researchers looked at 476 dead zones worldwide- 264 in the United States. They found that standard computer climate models predict that, on average, the surface temperature around those dead zones will increase by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit (slightly more than 2 degrees Celsius) from the 1980s and 1990s to the end of this century.
Yahoo Inc. has promised to distribute at least half of the $6.3 billion in after-tax proceeds from the Alibaba stake sale to its shareholders. That gives CEO Marissa Mayer the option of spending the rest on acquisitions that could enable the Sunnyvale, California, company to recover some of the ground that it has lost to rivals Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. in the booming online ad market. BrightRoll, based in San Francisco, helps to automatically place ads in videos displayed on personal computers and mobile devices. Since its founding in 2006, it has built relationships with most of the biggest advertisers in the U.S., helping the service generate more than $100 million in annual revenue, according to Yahoo.
Experts have likened the process to flying over a city and trying to hit a specific spot with a balloon.
The largest predicted warming is nearly 7 degrees (almost 4 degrees Celsius) where the St. Lawrence River dumps into the ocean in Canada. The most prominent U.S. dead zones, the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, are projected to warm 4 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius) and nearly 5 degrees (2.7 degrees Celsius) respectively.
This handout photo provided by the Smithsonian shows dead juvenile menhaden fish floating to the surface during a dead zone event in Narragansett Bay, R.I. Global warming is likely playing a bigger role than previously thought in dead zones in waterways around the world and it’s only going to get worse, according to a new study.Dead zones occur in oceans, lakes and rivers when fertilizer runoff clog waterways with nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, which leads to an explosion of microbes that consumes oxygen and leaves the water starving for oxygen, harming marine life.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming is likely playing a bigger role than previously thought in dead zones in oceans, lakes and rivers around the world and it’s only going to get worse, according to a new study. Dead zones occur when fertilizer runoff clogs waterways with nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous. That leads to an explosion of microbes that consumes oxygen and leaves the water depleted of oxygen, harming marine life. Scientists have long known that warmer water increases this problem, but a new study Monday in the journal Global Change Biology by Smithsonian Institution researchers found about two dozen different ways - biologically, chemically and physically - that climate change worsens the oxygen depletion. “We’ve underestimated the effect of climate change on dead zones,” said study lead author Andrew Altieri, a researcher at the Smithsonian’s tropical center in Panama.
Warmer water holds less oxygen, adding to the problem from runoff, said co-author Keryn Gedan, who is at both the Smithsonian and the University of Maryland. But warmer water also affects dead zones by keeping the water more separate, so that oxygen-poor deep water mixes less. “It’s like Italian dressing that you haven’t shaken, where you have the oil and water separate,” Altieri said. When the water gets warmer, marine life’s metabolism increases, making them require more oxygen just as the oxygen levels are already dropping. Other ways that climate change affects dead zones includes longer summers, ocean acidification and changing wind and current patterns, the study said. Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland ecologist who wasn’t part of the study and works at a different department than Gedan, said there is not enough evidence to say that climate change has already played such a big role in the spread of dead zones. But he said the study is probably right in warning that future warming will make the problem even worse.