Wnd nov3 14

THE

FREE

WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

Ciculated Weekly in Florida

U S E N V O Y: W O R L D MUST DO MORE TO F I G H T E B O L A

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power speaks during a lecture regarding the Ebola virus at the Residence Palace in Brussels on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. Power, who recently traveled to the Ebola-infected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, is trying to draw support for more international aid in the stricken areas.

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, returning from a visit to West Africa, which has been struggling with the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, says the world must do more to confront “the greatest public health crisis ever.”

Ambassador Samantha Power said Thursday that efforts by the United States and other countries to combat the spread of the deadly virus have begun to bear fruit but that “we each have to dig deeper.”

Without naming them, she said some nations had yet to shoulder their fair burden in the battle against Ebola.

Power spoke to an audience in Brussels after visiting the three countries hardest-hit by Ebola - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -earlier this week.

ISR A EL CLO SES J E R U S A L E M H O LY SITE AFTER SHOOTING

Volume 003 Issue 43

Established 2012

Q U A R A N T I N E S R A R E LY U S E D EFFECTIVENESS QUESTIONED

and local health departments, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The nation’s preparedness effort to fight outbreaks of Ebola and other infectious diseases has been under-funded and lacking in political will and commitment.

“We don’t really have a pharmaceutical response for Ebola,” said retired Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, the former executive director of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction. “But could you imagine if there were 20,000 sick people in 10 cities and we did not have a pharmaceutical response? We would be completely overwhelmed.”

State troopers and a television reporter stand across from the home where Kaci Hickox, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa, is staying, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014, in Fort Kent, Maine. Hickox said Wednesday she plans to stop quarantining herself in rural Maine, signaling a potential showdown with state police monitoring her home and state officials preparing to legally enforce the quarantine. She said she’ll defy the state if the policy isn’t changed by Thursday.

“It was recognized that there would be a dual benefit from research on vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to counter bioterror threats and emerging infectious diseases,” said Parker, now a vice president at Texas A&M Health Science Center.

In an interview Wednesday with the Associated Press, Dr. Nicole Lurie, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, acknowledged that funding limitations had contributed to some of the delay in vaccine development.

But a combination of budgetary constraints and politics has delayed many of those plans.

In the meantime, a flurry of Ebola-related work is further straining resources, even when such efforts turn out to be false alarms - or worse, based on rumor.

Larsen said the setbacks are partly the result of an inefficient, fragmented federal system, which leaves no single agency in charge.

Both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations had a senior position in the White House to lead response efforts to biological attacks and natural pandemics. The Obama administration eliminated the position.

President Barack Obama appointed Democratic operative Ron Klain as Ebola response coordinator on Oct. 17. But there are currently about two dozen presidentially appointed officials who have some emergency response responsibility for infectious disease outbreaks, Larsen said.

East Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians, has experienced unrest since the summer, with Palestinian youths throwing stones and firebombs at motorists and clashing frequently with Israeli police. The violence gained steam last week, when a Palestinian motorist rammed his car into a crowded train station, killing a 3-month-old Israeli-American baby girl.

Much of the unrest has centered on the holy site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The violence reached a new high late Wednesday when a gunman on a motorcycle shot and seriously wounded Yehuda Glick, a U.S.-born activist who often leads groups of Jews on visits to the site.

Glick is a leading voice in efforts to allow Jews to pray on the mosque compound - something that Israeli authorities ban because they fear it would

continued on page 3

The four passengers were isolated, interviewed and subjected to a complete screening evaluation by staff equipped with gloves, respirator and protective gowns. Other staffers collected contact information from all other passengers.

It was determined that none of the four from Texas met any CDC Ebola travel criteria, and were not symptomatic. All passengers and crew were cleared to depart the airport. continued on page 2

West Africa that has come under fire from the White House, medical groups and some quarters of the media, even as the new guidelines were emulated by other states and seemed to influence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tightened its recommendations.

Christie - who famously commanded New Jerseyans to “Get the hell off the beach” as Superstorm Sandy approached - strongly defended the quarantine measures.

The Palestinians accused Israel of a “declaration of war,” deepening a crisis fueled by failed peace efforts, continued Israeli settlement construction and months of simmering violence in the holy city. While Israel said it would reopen the site on Friday, the increasingly religious nature of the unrest risked igniting further violence.

Abbas, meanwhile, said Jerusalem is a “red line that must not be touched.”

The decision to close access to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound was “a declaration of war” that “will lead to further escalation and instability,” his spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said. Abbas made no mention of the attempted killing of the Jewish activist.

Members of West Virginia’s Kanawha-Charleston Health Department were recently called to Yeager Airport to investigate four passengers on a plane from Atlanta - three who started their journey in Dallas, one who started out in Houston. “Someone on the plane overheard a conversation that a passenger or passengers were coming from a Dallas hospital. No one in the meeting had any idea if these people were ill,” according to a summary report.

POLITICS OF EBOLA TRICKY FOR CHRISTIE, CUOMO

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel closed all access to Jerusalem’s most sensitive religious site on Thursday, a rare move that ratcheted up already heightened tensions following the attempted assassination of a prominent Jewish religious activist and the killing of his suspected Palestinian assailant by police.

“The international community must stop its hypocrisy and act against the inciters,” Netanyahu said.

Over that same period, state-level budget cuts and the congressional sequester have forced many states to eliminate emergency preparedness positions.

“I do believe we are lot more prepared than we were a decade ago, but we still have work to do,” Parker said.

Since 2002, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given states and territories more than $10 billion to help public health care systems ramp up when faced with a major disease outbreak. The CDC program has been cut more than 30 percent since reaching $897 million in fiscal year 2007, which led to thousands of layoffs by state

Both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders blamed each other for the tensions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has called for banning Jews from the hilltop holy site, of inciting the violence.

All 50 states and several major cities receive additional annual money through HHS’s Hospital Preparedness Program, which helps private hospitals develop plans to better handle surging emergency room volume. The program has handed out a total of $5 billion since 2002, but annual funding has fallen by about 50 percent since it peaked in 2003 at $515 million as Congress lost enthusiasm for funding biodefense.

Emergency preparedness programs ramped up significantly in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2001 anthrax scare, said Dr. Gerald Parker, a former principal deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Health and Human Services preparedness office. Those efforts included research and development of vaccines and anti-viral drugs.

Budget cuts also have slowed progress at the local level.

Palestinian youths run during clashes with Israeli border police after Moatez Higazi was shot in east Jerusalem Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. Israeli police shot and killed Higazi, who was suspected of trying to kill a hard-line Jewish activist in Jerusalem, an incident that quickly sparked clashes between masked stone throwers and Israeli riot police, threatening to further enflame the already high tensions in the city.

Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

“I’m going to be on the right side of this,” he said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today.” “And I will not submit to any political pressure in doing anything less that I believe is necessary.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, speaks as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens at a news conference, in New York, where the governors announced a mandatory quarantine for people returning to the United States through airports in New York and New Jersey who are deemed “high risk,” for contracting Ebola. Word of the quarantine set off a firestorm, but some other states have followed suit.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two ambitious governors - one Republican, one Democrat - known for their no-nonsense, take-charge style in a calamity have set off a furor with their aggressive handling of the Ebola crisis, and how it plays out could shape their political futures.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie won praise for their decisive response to Superstorm Sandy two years ago, and their reaction to Ebola seemed rooted in the same philosophy: They would take bold steps to reassure a jittery public with a display of bipartisan cooperation.

But their style this time has proved far more divisive.

“This is a big moment, and a lot of people are watching carefully,” said William Eimicke, professor of public affairs at Columbia University. “It’s about balance and judgment, and voters will remember if this was handled well or not.”

The two men hurriedly put together a mandatory, three-week quarantine plan for health care workers returning from Ebola-stricken

Cuomo, the Democrat, faces the voters next week, and Ebola appears to be the last act of a rocky re-election campaign in which he nevertheless holds a commanding lead in the polls.

While Cuomo is widely expected to sit out the 2016 White House race if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs, Christie is a leading contender for the GOP nomination, and the crisis has given him a cudgel to wield against President Barack Obama as he tries to put the George Washington Bridge scandal behind him.

“People are desperate for leadership, and they’re not feeling it from most of their political leaders,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University. He called the Ebola quarantine move “classic Christie,” but suggested that it might not resonate during the 2016 Republican primaries.

“The New Jersey tough guy thing doesn’t play as well in Peoria as it does in New Jersey,” he said.

Cuomo is known for a more deliberative style. He avoids off-thecuff comments to reporters, his public events are carefully scripted, and he takes a cautious approach to divisive issues. On the question of whether to allow fracking for natural gas, for example, Cuomo has said he will wait for a state health study. That is why the sudden quarantine move surprised many and triggered questions about continued on page 4

2

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PUBLISHER INFORMATION Published By

Digital Media Publishing For The Weekly News Digest

Design, Production & Layout Digital Media Pubishing Records Department Administrator

Yrma Perez

Local Sales & Marketing Office The Weeklt News Digest, LLC. 237 S.W. 13st Miami, Florida 33130 twndigest@gmail.com TheWeeklyNewsDigest™ is published

four times a month by “The Weekly News Digest LLC.” All rights are reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited. Editorial inquiries and manuscripts should be directed to the Editor. Manuscripts or other submissions must be accompanied by self addressed, stamped envelopes. “The Weekly News Digest”, assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork. All correspondence regarding business, editorial, production, and address changes should be sent to:

Local Sales & Marketing Office The Weekly News Digest, LLC. 237 S.W. 13st Miami, Florida 33130

NURSE DEFIES EBOLA QUARANTINE IN MAINE

FORT KENT, Maine (AP) -- A nurse who vowed to defy Maine’s voluntary quarantine for health care workers who treated Ebola patients followed through on her promise Thursday, leaving her home for a bike ride.

President Barack Obama warned that overly restrictive measures imposed upon returning health care workers could discourage them from volunteering in Africa.

But Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who canceled campaign events to keep tabs on the situation, maintained that the state must be “vigilant” to protect others.

Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend stepped out of their home Thursday morning and rode away on mountain bikes, followed by state police cruiser.

State law allows a judge to grant temporary custody of someone if health officials demonstrate “a clear and immediate public health threat.”

Police were monitoring her movements and public interactions but couldn’t detain her without a court order signed by a judge.

Hickox contends there’s no need for quarantine because she’s showing no symptoms. She’s also tested negative for the deadly disease.

“I really hope that we can work things out amicably and continue to negotiate,” she said Thursday morning while riding on a dirt trail.

The state’s court filing was expected Thursday, officials said.

This undated image provided by University of Texas at Arlington shows Kaci Hickox. In a Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014 telephone interview with CNN, Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is “inhumane.”

There was no immediate comment from state health officials, who were going to court in an effort to detain Hickox for the remainder of the 21-day incubation period for Ebola that ends on Nov. 10 It was the second time Hickox broke quarantine. She left her home Wednesday evening briefly to speak to reporters, even shaking a hand that was offered to her.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about how Ebola is transmitted, and I can understand why people are frightened. But their fear is not based on medical facts,” Norman Siegel, one of her attorneys, said Wednesday.

Hickox, who volunteered in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders, was the first person forced into New Jersey’s mandatory quarantine for people arriving at the Newark airport from three West African countries. Hickox spent the weekend in a tent in New Jersey before traveling to the home she shares with her boyfriend, a nursing student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

“I’m not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it’s not science-based,” she told reporters Wednesday evening.

Generally, states have broad authority when it comes to such matters. But Maine health officials could have a tough time convincing a judge that Hickox poses a threat, said attorney Jackie L. Caynon III, who specializes in health law in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

“If somebody isn’t showing signs of the infection, then it’s kind of hard to say someone should be under mandatory quarantine,” he said.

Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, has killed thousands of people in Africa, but only four people have been diagnosed with it in the United States.

People can’t be infected just by being near someone who’s sick, and people aren’t contagious unless they’re sick, health officials say.

Guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend daily monitoring for health care workers like Hickox who have come into contact with Ebola patients. But some states like Maine are going above and beyond those guidelines.

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

The defense department is going even further. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered military men and women helping fight Ebola to undergo 21-day quarantines that start upon their return - instead of their last exposure to an Ebola patient.

Q U A R A N T I N E S continued from page 1

The incident cost taxpayers more than $2,350 in staff time - 60 manhours, according to records.

www.redcross.org

“That’s a real drain on the system every time these things happen,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, the health department’s executive director. “If you have to spend that kind of money three or four times a week, it builds up.”

If a judge grants the state request, then Hickox will appeal the decision on constitutional grounds, necessitating a hearing, Siegel said.

Siegel said the nurse hopes her fight against the quarantine will help bring an end to misinformation about how the Ebola virus is transmitted.

“She wants to have her voice in the debate about how America handles the Ebola crisis. She has an important voice and perspective,” he said.

G R A N D J U R Y TWEET IN BROWN C A S E H A C K E D DALLAS (AP) -- More passengers and lower fuel prices are pushing Southwest Airlines to record profits, and the airline expects an even bigger break at the gas pump this winter.

CEO Gary Kelly says the trend toward higher revenue has continued into October, and bookings for November and December look good.

Southwest Airlines Co. said Thursday that net income rose 27 percent to $329 million , or 48 cents per share, in the July-to-September quarter.

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A tweet earlier this month suggesting insider information on the grand jury investigating the Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown was the result of someone hacking a woman’s Twitter account, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said Thursday.

McCulloch released a statement criticizing leaks in the investigation that followed the death of the 18-year-old on Aug. 9 in Ferguson. A grand jury is deciding if Officer Darren Wilson will face charges. A decision is expected by mid-November.

The leak was among several with alleged details of the grand jury investigation, with much of the information suggesting evidence in favor of Wilson. McCulloch said the leaks are “a great disservice to the grand jury process,” but he also questioned their accuracy.

“As exasperating as I and others find the piecemeal release of information and documents, no information or evidence has been released by the grand jury, any individual juror or anyone associated with the grand jury,” McCulloch said in the statement.

He specifically cited the tweet under the name of Susan M. Nichols on Oct. 1. The tweet suggested that an unidentified friend serving on the grand jury said the panel lacked evidence to warrant criminal charges.

Nichols, of Affton, said her Twitter account had been hacked and that she had made no such tweet.

She was telling the truth, McCulloch said - an investigation revealed that Nichols’ account was hacked and the person who actually wrote the tweet was unknown.

Nichols declined comment to The Associated Press when a reporter went to her home the day after the tweet. She does not have a pubcontinued on page 3

SUBSCRIPTION REQUEST FORM The Weekly News Digest is happy to offer subscriptions to individuals and businesses that would like to receive a weekly publication. However, if you would like to have one of the newspapers sent to you on a weekly basis, please fill out the form below and return it with a money order for $24.95 per year to cover postage & handling. Outside Florida $52.95 Tax Incuded MAIL TO :

The Weekly News Digest 237 S.W. 13 St. Miami, Florida 33031

Name _____________________________

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

Address ___________________________ City ____________________State____

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

3

S E N A T E C O N T R O L C O U L D T U R N O N 2 I N D E P E N D E N T S ’ M O V E S WASHINGTON (AP) -- After millions of Americans vote next week, it’s possible that one or two men will decide which party controls the Senate.

He supported President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election, and his voting record leans more Democratic than Republican.

But King has endorsed some Republicans for re-election, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

In Maine, where Republican Gov. Paul LePage seeks re-election, King originally endorsed independent candidate Eliot Cutler but then switched to Democrat Mike Michaud.

One is Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who generally “caucuses” - or cooperates - with Democrats but says he might switch to the Republicans. The other is Greg Orman of Kansas, an independent candidate trying to oust Republican Sen. Pat Roberts.

If he wins, Orman says, he would caucus with whichever party holds the majority when the new Congress convenes in January. He has not said, however, what he would do if he could decide, by himself, which party that will be.

That could happen if Republicans win 50 seats and Democrats control 49 seats (including King’s and that of another independent, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who also caucuses with Democrats). If Orman sided with the Democrats, they would control a 50-50 Senate, thanks to Vice President Joe Biden’s ability to break tie votes.

But if Orman sided with the Republicans, they would hold a 51-49 majority.

King, who’s not up for election this year, could complicate things even further. In the same scenario as above - a 50-49 GOP advantage with Orman undeclared - King could put the Republicans in charge by switching to their caucus. Orman’s decision, either way, would not change that.

In a different scenario - in which Democrats held a 50-49 edge awaiting Orman’s decision - both he and King could choose to caucus with Republicans, giving the GOP a 51-49 majority.

Congressional insiders see that as unlikely. First, Orman would have to win an election that many Republicans believe Roberts will survive. Then, all the other races would have to produce a 50-49 split, awaiting Orman’s declaration. And King would have to switch party leanings and hand minority status to Democrats, with whom he generally seems comfortable.

“Changing who you caucus with is akin to changing parties,” said

Even a remote hint of a caucus switch creates buzz in Senate circles.

“If - and it’s a big if - control of the Senate is determined by two independents, then there well could be some quiet outreach by both sides over which party they should caucus with,” Ferrier said.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine speaks in Portland, Maine. After millions of Americans vote next week, after billions were spent to win those votes, could it be that control of the Senate ultimately comes down to the whims of ... Angus King? Or a Senate rookie named Greg Orman? Both are independents, and if the math falls just right on Election Day, which party they decided to side with in the chamber will decide which party takes control in the next Congress.

Antonia Ferrier, a former GOP House and Senate aide. “It is no small thing, is deeply personal and exceedingly rare.”

Senate leaders have learned not to overdo favors to lawmakers withholding their votes.

King occasionally hints he would consider such a switch. He told reporters in April that he will do what is “best for Maine” in the next Congress. He made similar remarks last week, stirring a Senate campaign pot already about to boil.

In early 2010, then-Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska secured a promise of $100 million in Medicaid funding in return for his crucial vote for Obama’s health care overhaul. Critics denounced the “Cornhusker kickback,” which eventually was dropped.

Currently, Democrats control 55 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 45.

Republicans need to gain six net seats to seize the majority.

In 2001, veteran Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to become an independent who caucused with Democrats, handing them control of the Senate. Jeffords surrendered his chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and accepted the Democrats’ offer to chair the Environment and Public Works Committee.

King repeatedly calls for more bipartisanship and cooperation in government. He has urged Orman and another third-party candidate - former Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota - to refuse to say which party they’d caucus with in Washington. Pressler’s chances seem to be fading, but Orman is giving Roberts a tough fight.

People close to King say they’d be surprised if he joined the Republicans’ caucus, especially if doing so handed the GOP the majority.

WISCONSIN STUDIES MUSIC AND MEMORY PROGRAM Researchers hope to determine whether music improves mood and behavior, which residents might benefit and then tailor activities accordingly. They also want to see if music could someday reduce the need for prescription drugs, Kwak and Cohen said.

Cohen, who founded Music and Memory in New York in 2006, said he hopes the Wisconsin study informs the health care system of the program’s benefits and potential cost savings. He said there’s also fear of visiting dementia patients, so he hopes the program will encourage families and friends to visit more often.

“Then (the patients) will feel more alive and won’t feel as isolated in these facilities,” he said.

Jeffrey Fowle is greeted by family members upon his arrival, early Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Fowle was detained for nearly half a year in North Korea after leaving a Bible at a nightclub. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea.

UNION GROVE, Wis. (AP) -- Mike Knutson taught himself to play the harmonica as a child, and the 96-year-old sang with his family for most of his life. Even now, as he suffers from dementia, music is an important part of his life thanks to a study looking at the impact of a nationwide music program aimed at helping dementia patients.

The study being led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the largest yet on the impact of the Music and Memory program, which is in hundreds of nursing homes across the U.S. and Canada, said program founder Dan Cohen. Similar studies will be conducted in Utah and Ohio.

Researchers are monitoring the responses of 1,500 Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who were given iPods at Wisconsin nursing homes through the program, which was highlighted in a documentary honored at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Their mental state will then be compared to the same number of people in 100 other nursing homes who haven’t received iPods.

C A S E

H A C K E D

continued from page 2

lished telephone listing.

Brown’s killing led to several protests, some of them violent, and a national debate about police use of force and race relations. The officer is white. Brown, who was unarmed, was black.

Excluding one-time items such as the falling value of some fuel-hedging contracts, the profit would have been 55 cents per share. On that basis, analysts expected 53 cents per share, according to FactSet. Revenue rose 5.6 percent to $4.80 billion, a tick better than analysts’ forecast of $4.79 billion.

The average one-way fare inched higher - to $160.74, an increase of $1.35 from last summer. Passengers flew 5.6 percent more miles, and planes carried record loads - the average flight was 84.4 percent full, an increase from 80.8 percent the year before.

Knutson is often sleepy, but he perks up when nurses put headphones on him or when his family sings with him during visits at the Wisconsin Veteran’s Home in Union Grove, south of Milwaukee.

Southwest spent $2.94 per gallon on fuel in the third quarter, down from $3.06 a year earlier. And the discount will grow - the airline predicted that it will pay between $2.70 and $2.75 per gallon in the fourth quarter.

He smiles, taps his feet and gently claps his hands upon hearing big-band music, which is part of his personalized playlist.

Fuel spending dropped 4.4 percent in the third quarter, but labor costs rose 7.2 percent.

“The music really does something to wake him up and help him to be more engaged with what is going on around him,” said his daughter, Barb Knutson, who lives in Madison.

Southwest Airlines shares rose 90 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $35.10 in premarket trading 90 minutes before the market opening.

The state and UW-Milwaukee are investing about $300,000 in the program and study, money received through federal funds acquired from nursing home penalties. The program will be expanded to another 150 Wisconsin nursing homes next year.

For the study, nursing homes put together personalized playlists for residents. Researchers then document residents’ interactions, watch sleep patterns, put on wrist monitors that track movement and collect music data.

The study started this summer, and final data should be available by next summer.

“You may see the immediate effects shown on the residents, but we don’t really know if it actually has longer-term effects,” said Jung Kwak, an associate professor of social work at the university.

Inducements from party leaders might include promises of plum committee assignments. Former Democratic Senate aide Jim Manley said party leaders also might try to address King’s concerns with overtures such as pledging more bipartisanship or a more open process for legislative amendments. Manley said the entire party caucus would weigh in on such matters.

Dont Text and Drive

Senate aides say it would be virtually impossible for either party to offer a committee chairmanship to King, who has been a senator only two years.

AFTER SHOOTING continued from page 1

prompt violence. Muslim worshippers view Jewish prayer there as a provocation, fearing that Jewish extremists are plotting to take over the area.

In an interview this week with The Associated Press, Glick warned of the growing violence in Jerusalem and said Jews were increasingly being attacked by Muslims.

“The more extreme Islamist organizations are taking over and if we don’t stop them early enough, they will take over the entire Jerusalem,” he said.

“We’re calling upon the Israeli government: Stop the violence.”

He remained hospitalized Thursday in serious condition.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemned the shooting and said the U.S. was “extremely concerned by escalating tensions” in Jerusalem. “It is critical that all sides exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve the status quo,” she said, adding the U.S. had been in touch with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian officials to calm the situation. Under a longstanding arrangement, Jordan holds custodial authority over the mosque compound.

Early Thursday, police forces surrounded the suspected gunman at his home in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tor. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the man, identified as Moataz Hijazi, opened fire and was killed by the Israeli forces.

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said Hijazi had served 12 years in Israeli prison for a number of crimes before he was released in 2012. It described him as a sympathizer of the Islamic Jihad militant group, but said he appeared to have acted alone in Wednesday night’s attack.

Shortly after Hijazi was shot dead, clashes broke out in Abu Tor, with Palestinians hurling stones at riot police, who responded with rubber bullets to suppress the demonstration. A funeral was planned late Thursday.

The decision to close access to the holy site for the first time in more than 14 years underscored the incendiary nature of the current tensions.

The Palestinian uprising against Israel began after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Jerusalem site in what many saw as a provocative gesture. That visit - in September 2000 - resulted in a temporary closure of the site.

Late Thursday, police said the site would be reopened on Friday to male Muslim worshippers over the age of 50 and female worshippers of all ages.

Younger men would be barred, they said, because of the risk of renewed violence.

The Jerusalem tensions come at a sensitive time. U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed last April, and Israel battled Hamas militants in Gaza during a 50-day war over the summer.

More recently, Israel has announced plans to press forward with housing construction in east Jerusalem, drawing condemnation from the U.S. and other key allies.

This week, anonymous senior U.S. officials were quoted as criticizing Netanyahu as cowardly and indecisive in an interview with The Atlantic, and on Thursday, Sweden formally recognized a state of Palestine, a symbolic show of displeasure with Israeli policies.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the derisive language used to describe Netanyahu in The Atlantic interview, and said he was still hopeful to forge peace.

“We still believe it is doable, but it takes courage, it takes strength,” he said.

4

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

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

D r u n k

d r i v e r h i t s S o u t h i d a R o a d R a n g e r

F l o r-

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

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

C r a s h w i t h i n j u r i e s s h u t s d o w n I - 9 5 n o r t h b o u n d l a n e s , t r o o p e r s s a y Injuries were reported in a crash that shut down the northbound lanes of Interstate 95 at Broward Boulevard, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Troopers said the crash happened just before 11 p.m. Friday in Broward County. Check: Latest traffic[...]

O n e d e a d a f t e r I - 9 5 c r a s h n e a r H a l l a n d a l e B e a c h

Dont Text and Drive

Sierra Sierra Sierra Sierra

“

Club Club Club Club

Sierra Sierra Sierra Sierra

Club Club Club Club

“

Improves the health and lives of people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest.

Learn more

www.directrelief.org

John Muir (1838-1914) was America’s most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, and founder of the Sierra Club. This website, known as the “John Muir Exhibit” features his life and contributions.

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

POTECTING SPEICIES Learn more

www.worldwildlife.org

www.redcross.org

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

5

F E A R I N G U P R I S I N G , I R A Q M I L I T A N T S H U N T E X - P O L I C E BAGHDAD (AP) -- The Islamic State group wanted to send a warning against anyone who might plot against its rule.

domain the past week. Three days ago, IS fighters shot to death two former army officers and three policemen in a public square in the northern city of Beiji, residents said. They announced to a crowd that the men had carried out mortar attacks on the militants’ positions in the city, according to the residents.

Back when the extremists took over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in June, police Col. Mohammed Hassan was among some Sunnis in the security forces who surrendered, handed over their weapons and pledged to cut ties with the police. In return, the militants gave them “repentance badges” granting them some safety. But now, the Islamic State group suspected Hassan was engaging in activities against it.

So last week, IS fighters stormed Hassan’s house at night. Hassan and his son fought back, killing three attackers before they were gunned down. The militants then hung his mutilated body from a fence for several days near his home as an example, according to two residents who witnessed the battle and were aware of the events leading up to it. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The past few weeks, the Islamic State group has been hunting down former policemen and army officers in areas it controls, apparently fearing they might join a potential internal Sunni uprising against its rule.

While world attention has been focused on the battle to fend off the extremists’ assault on the town of Kobani across the border in Syria, the group has killed dozens of its opponents this month in Iraq. In several instances, Sunnis have been lined up in public squares and gunned down or beheaded as a warning.

The aim is to prevent the Baghdad government and the U.S.-led alliance from finding Sunni allies against it at a time when Kurdish fighters and Shiite militias backed by U.S.-led airstrikes have made some gains, taking back several towns from the militants.

The campaign of killings adds a new bloody chapter in the Islamic State group’s legacy. In its blitz capturing a swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria, it gained a grisly notoriety for butchering its opponents and members of sects it considers heretical.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday said that the extremists carried out a mass killing of around 600 Shiite Muslim inmates being held in Mosul’s main prison when the group captured the city in June. The Shiites were separated from several hundred Sunni and Christian inmates who were set free, then the Shiites - along with a number of Kurds and Yazidis - were forced to kneel on the edge of a nearby ravine and were mowed down with automatic weapons, Human Rights Watch said in a report, based on interviews with survivors.

But killings of former police are of a new, different sort - a campaign to eliminate those who the extremists fear could become the nucleus of a revolt against their control.

In new killings, the militants on Wednesday paraded 30 Sunni tribal fighters through the western city of Hit then shot them all

POLITICS OF EBOLA continued from page 1

national ambitions.

The two men enjoy a sort of bipartisan détente, with Cuomo refusing to criticize Christie over Bridgegate and Christie not helping Cuomo’s GOP challenger.

While reassuring to some jittery residents, the governors’ quarantine plan - unveiled with precious few details of how it would work seemed to many to be at odds with science, since infected people are not contagious until they develop symptoms, and the virus is transmitted only through bodily fluids.

Withering media coverage soon followed, particularly after the first person quarantined under the new policy, a nurse from Doctors Without Borders named Kaci Hickox, complained that her treatment was inhumane. The tabloid headlines screamed (“Bungle Fever” read one, “Ebola Nurse’s Quarantine Hell” read another) while Jon Stewart mocked Christie, and editorial writers accused the governors of grandstanding.

“History isn’t kind to politicians who take short-term advantage out of public health emergencies,” warned Kenneth Sherrill, a retired political science professor at Hunter College. But he added: “There will always be something enticing about trying to appear to be a strong

Dont Text and Drive

www.redcross.org

At the same time, about 20 former policemen and army officers were rounded up by IS fighters in the town of Shurqat and taken to an unknown location, with no word since on their fate, said an official in Salahuddin provincial council.

On Wednesday, IS fighters beheaded policeman Bahjat Salman in a public square in Ana, a town west of Bagdad, proclaiming him a “traitor,” residents said. The residents of Ana and Beiji and the Salahuddin official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for their own safety.

Militants from the Islamic State parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle on a main street in Mosul, Iraq. The Islamic state group has accelerated killings of former policemen and army officers, apparently fearing they might join a potential internal Sunni uprising against its rule. Such killings, including the deadly attack on police Col. Mohammed Hassan and his son in mid October, have accelerated in recent days, as the extremists’ opponents - Kurdish fighters and Shiite militias, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes - have made some gains, taking back several towns that the militants had overrun

to death on a main street, according to a provincial official and other residents. Their bodies were found later that day, followed by another mass grave of 48 tribal fighters discovered on Thursday. The fighters, mostly from the Al Bu Nimr tribe, were captured when the extremists overran Hit earlier in the month.

Mosul, the largest city in the group’s self-styled “caliphate,” has seen increased killings. Last week, Mosul’s governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, who was driven out of the city in the militant takeover, said pro-government Sunni militias were being formed in the city, made up of mainly of former army and police officers.

Soon after, Islamic State group militants rounded up 20 former police officers from villages south of Mosul. Hours later, their bodies - all with gunshots to the head - were handed over to the morgue, according to morgue officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

In a separate incident, the militants shot to death police Col. Issa Osman after parading him through Mosul’s streets. Osman’s battalion was the last unit to give up fighting in Mosul during the June takeover, and afterward he also renounced ties to the security forces, receiving a “repentance badge” from the extremists.

Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim also said anti-IS militant groups have been formed in Mosul. Whether they are part of armed groups or not, former police and army officers are a potential threat to the militants because they “have the expertise on how to plan an armed uprising and they have good knowledge of weapons and military operation,” Maan told AP. There have been similar slayings elsewhere under the extremists’

So far, there has been little sign of an armed revolt in Mosul or other parts of northern and western Iraq under IS control. But the killings could be a sign the extremists’ confidence has been shaken by the air campaign.

The group was able to expand with lightning speed across Sunni-dominated regions of Iraq starting in June, in large part because of the minority community’s deep hatred of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Sunnis have long complained the government discriminates against them and marginalizes them. Government forces collapsed as the extremists swept over Mosul, then south toward the capital, capturing towns and cities along the way.

But there has been resentment among some Mosul residents fueled by the group’s enforcement of its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, a lack of public services and stagnation in business.

“Most Mosul people want to get rid of this savage organization,” said a resident speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “We are waiting for any effort to save us.”

6

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

R U S S I A N D E L I V E R S PA C E S TAT I O N C A R G O A F T E R U S F L O P

ATLANTIC, Va. (AP) -- The company behind the dramatic launch explosion of a space station supply mission promises to find the cause of the failure and is warning residents to avoid any potentially hazardous wreckage.

everyone at the launch site had been accounted for and the damage appeared to be limited to the facilities.

He noted that the cargo module was carrying hazardous materials and warned residents to avoid any contact with debris.

Orbital Sciences Corp.’s unmanned Antares rocket blew up just moments after liftoff Tuesday evening from the Virginia coast.

“Certainly don’t go souvenir hunting along the beach,” he said.

Meanwhile, early Wednesday, the Russian Space Agency launched its own cargo vessel from Kazakhstan and the spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station six hours later with 3 tons of food.

The smooth flight was in stark contrast to the Orbital Sciences’ failed launch, and had been planned well in advance of the accident.

The Orbital Sciences rocket was carrying a Cygnus capsule loaded with 2 1/2 tons of space station experiments and equipment for NASA. No one was injured when the rocket exploded moments after liftoff, shooting flaming debris down onto the launch area and into the ocean.

Ground crews were ready to access the fire-stricken area of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at daybreak Wednesday to search for accident debris.

The company’s Cygnus cargo ship was carrying 5,000 pounds of experiments and equipment for NASA, as well as prepackaged meals and, in a generous touch, freeze-dried Maryland crabcakes for a Baltimore-born astronaut who’s been in orbit for five months.

All of the lost materials will be replaced and flown to the 260-milehigh space station, NASA’s station program manager Mike Suffredini said. The six-person space station crew has enough supplies to last well into spring.

The accident is sure to draw scrutiny to the space agency’s growing reliance on private U.S. companies in the post-shuttle era. NASA is paying billions of dollars to Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and the California-based SpaceX company to make station deliveries, and it’s counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start flying U.S. astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as 2017.

It was the fourth Cygnus bound for the orbiting lab; the first flew just over a year ago. SpaceX is scheduled to launch another Dragon supply

Things began to go wrong 10 to 12 seconds into the flight and it was all over in 20 seconds when what was left of the rocket came crashing down, Culbertson said. He said he believes the range-safety staff sent a destruct signal before it hit the ground, but was not certain.

NASA TV shows Orbital Sciences Corp.’s unmanned rocket blowing up over the launch complex at Wallops Island, Va., just six seconds after liftoff. The company says no one was believed to be hurt and the damage appeared to be limited to the facilities.

ship from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in December.

“Today’s launch attempt will not deter us from our work to expand our already successful capability to launch cargo from American shores to the International Space Station,” NASA’s human exploration chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, said in a statement following the accident.

This was the second launch attempt for the mission. Monday evening’s try was thwarted by a stray sailboat in the rocket’s danger zone.

The restrictions are in case of just such an accident that occurred Tuesday.

Culbertson said the top priority will be repairing the launch pad “as quickly and safely as possible.”

Until Tuesday, all of the supply missions by Orbital Sciences and SpaceX had been near-flawless.

“We will not fly until we understand the root cause,” he said, adding that it was too early to guess how long it might take to make the rocket repairs and fix the launch pad. It will take a few weeks, alone, to assess the damage and extent of potential repairs.

President Barack Obama has long championed this commercial space effort. He was in Wisconsin for a campaign rally and was kept informed.

Culbertson also stressed that it was too soon to know whether the Russian-built engines, modified for the Antares and extensively tested, were to blame.

Orbital Sciences’ executive vice president Frank Culbertson said the company carried insurance on the mission, which he valued at more than $200 million, not counting repair costs. The explosion hit Orbital Science’s stock, which fell more than 15 percent in after-hours trading.

“We will understand what happened - hopefully soon - and we’ll get things back on track,” Culbertson assured his devastated team. “We’ve all seen this happen in our business before, and we’ve all seen the teams recover from this, and we will do the same.”

John Logsdon, former space policy director at George Washington University, said the explosion was unlikely to be a major setback to NASA’s commercial space plans. But he noted it could derail Orbital Sciences for a while given the company has just one launch pad and the accident occurred right above it.

The Wallops facility is small compared to NASA’s major centers like those in Florida, Texas and California, but vaulted into the public spotlight in September 2013 with a NASA moonshot and the first Cygnus launch to the space station.

At a news conference Tuesday night, Culbertson and others said

Michelle Murphy, an innkeeper at the Garden and Sea Inn, New Church, Virginia, where launches are visible across a bay about 16 miles away, saw the explosion.

SWEDEN RECOGNIZES PALESTINIAN STATE; ISRAEL UPSET nizing Palestinian independence, they have become increasingly critical of Israeli settlement construction. The 28-nation European Union has urged that negotiations to achieve a two-state solution resume as soon as possible.

British lawmakers earlier this month voted in favor of recognizing Palestine as a state.

“It was scary. Everything rattled,” she said. “There were two explosions. The first one we were ready for. The second one we weren’t. It shook the inn, like an earthquake. It was extremely intense.”

Among the instruments that were lost from the cargo module: a meteor tracker and 32 mini research satellites, along with numerous experiments compiled by schoolchildren.

The two Americans, three Russians and one German on the orbiting space station were watching a live video feed from Mission Control and saw the whole thing unfold, Suffredini said.

S H R I M P I N W I T H M U R K Y

among food purists because it cheats consumers and puts them at risk of tainted foods, hurts honest vendors and tarnishes an industry’s product. The report said that because of mislabeling, consumers are not guaranteed they are eating shrimp that meets high, chemical-free standards.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom talks during a news conference Thursday Oct. 30, 2014, at the government building Rosenbad, in Stockholm, after Sweden’s new government officially recognized a Palestinian state. Wallstrom said the Scandinavian country had decided on the move because the criteria of international law required for such recognition had been fulfilled, “There is a territory, a people and government,” she told reporters in Stockholm.

Oceana said it found bad labeling on shrimp sold at national and regional supermarkets and smaller grocery stores alike. It also said restaurants of all kinds, from national chains to high-dollar eateries, were selling shrimp with poor labeling.

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Sweden’s new left-leaning government on Thursday recognized a Palestinian state - a move that comes during increased tensions between Arabs and Jews over Israel’s plans to build about 1,000 housing units in east Jerusalem.

The EU member became the third Western European nation, after Malta and Cyprus, to do so, reflecting growing international impatience with Israel’s nearly half-century control of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said Sweden made the move because Palestine had fulfilled the international law criteria required for such recognition.

Oceana declined to provide the names of the vendors it obtained the samples from. Dustin Cranor, an Oceana spokesman, said the company did not want to identify individual vendors because “fraud can happen at any point in the supply chain.” commercial fisherman Ted Petrie picks through a pile of shrimp on his boat in Grand Isle, La. An advocacy group, Oceana, conducted a DNA-based survey of shrimp sold at outlets across the country and around the Gulf of Mexico. Results released Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, show consumers cannot be sure what kind of shrimp they are buying simply by looking at the grocery store label or restaurant menu.

“There is a territory, a people and government,” she told reporters in Stockholm.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Consumers around the nation can’t be sure what kind of shrimp they’re buying if they simply look at the label or menu at supermarkets, grocers and restaurants, an advocacy group says.

Israel was quick to condemn Sweden’s announcement, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman describing it as “a miserable decision that strengthens the extremist elements and Palestinian rejectionism.”

Oceana did a DNA-based survey of shrimp sold at outlets in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and various spots around the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s a shame that the government of Sweden chose to take a declarative step that only causes harm,” he added.

Israel says Palestinians can gain independence only through peace negotiations, and that recognition of Palestine at the U.N. or by individual countries undermines the negotiating process. Palestinians say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t serious about the peace negotiations.

The latest round of U.S.-brokered talks collapsed in April. American officials have hinted that Israel’s tough negotiating stance hurt the talks, and Netanyahu has continued to settle Israelis in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

More than 550,000 Israelis now live in the two areas, greatly complicating hopes of partitioning the area under a future peace deal. The two territories and the Gaza Strip are claimed by Palestinians for a future state.

While the U.S. and European powers have so far refrained from recog-

U S R I F E L A B E L I N G

The group said it found about 30 percent of 143 shrimp products bought from 111 vendors were not what the label said. Cheap imported farm-raised shrimp is being sold as prized wild-caught Gulf shrimp, common shrimp sold as premium shrimp and shrimp of all kinds sold with no indication whatsoever about where they came from, the group said.

Oceana is urging Congress and regulators to enforce proper labeling.

The group acknowledged that the survey was but a small sample, but said the survey using DNA techniques is the first of its kind. The group did a similar survey last year for fish and made similar findings. A laboratory tested each sample to identify what kind of shrimp each was by species.

“It was a first good look at shrimp,” said Kimberly Warner, a marine scientist with Oceana. She went out and obtained many of the samples.

Misleading and illegal labeling of food is considered a major problem

The group’s report came as no surprise to fishermen and others involved in the shrimp industry.

“I’ve been shouting this for ages from the rooftop,” said Kimberly Chauvin, who runs a family shrimp business with fishing boats and docks in Chauvin, Louisiana.

She said shrimp mislabeling has gotten worse in recent decades, and coincided with a growing appetite for shrimp among Americans. For more than a decade, shrimp has become the nation’s most popular seafood, according to federal data. The craving for shrimp has been accompanied by a major uptick in imported farm-raised shrimp, which are considered inferior to shrimp caught in the open ocean.

Chauvin said mislabeling will get worse unless regulators “start handing out big fines” to companies that break the Food and Drug Administration’s labeling laws.

The Oceana survey found the worst labeling of shrimp taking place in New York City. The group found few problems in Portland but more widespread misrepresentation in Washington and the Gulf.

Jerald Horst, a Louisiana seafood writer and former state fisheries specialist, said mislabeling runs rampant in the seafood industry. He said many of the big vendors want to keep the status quo - in other words, lackluster enforcement of labeling.

“There’s a lot of pressure from the major institutions for them not to do it,” Horst said. “They want the freedom to do `creative marketing.’”

Lauren Sucher, an FDA spokeswoman, said mislabeling is illegal and pointed out that the agency inspects and enforces labeling laws.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

7

F U N D I N G T O T A M E A N E B O L A O U T B R E A K H A S FA L L E N S H O R T The nation’s preparedness effort to fight outbreaks of Ebola and other infectious diseases has been under-funded and lacking in political will and commitment.

develop plans to better handle surging emergency room volume. The program has handed out a total of $5 billion since 2002, but annual funding has fallen by about 50 percent since it peaked in 2003 at $515 million as Congress lost enthusiasm for funding biodefense.

“We don’t really have a pharmaceutical response for Ebola,” said retired Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, the former executive director of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

“But could you imagine if there were 20,000 sick people in 10 cities and we did not have a pharmaceutical response? We would be completely overwhelmed.”

Over that same period, state-level budget cuts and the congressional sequester have forced many states to eliminate emergency preparedness positions.

“I do believe we are lot more prepared than we were a decade ago, but we still have work to do,” Parker said.

Emergency preparedness programs ramped up significantly in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2001 anthrax scare, said Dr. Gerald Parker, a former principal deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Health and Human Services preparedness office. Those efforts included research and development of vaccines and anti-viral drugs.

“It was recognized that there would be a dual benefit from research on vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to counter bioterror threats and emerging infectious diseases,” said Parker, now a vice president at Texas A&M Health Science Center.

But a combination of budgetary constraints and politics has delayed many of those plans.

Larsen said the setbacks are partly the result of an inefficient, fragmented federal system, which leaves no single agency in charge.

Both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations had a senior position in the White House to lead response efforts to biological attacks and natural

V I R A L V I D E O DOCUMENTS NEW YORK S T R EET H ARASSM E NT

In an interview Wednesday with the Associated Press, Dr. Nicole Lurie, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, acknowledged that funding limitations had contributed to some of the delay in vaccine development.

Nurse Barbara Smith, left, and Dr. Bryan Christensen demonstrate the proper way for health care workers to use personal protective equipment when dealing with Ebola during an education session in New York. Even small clusters of Ebola cases could overwhelm parts of US medical care system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network.

pandemics. The Obama administration eliminated the position.

President Barack Obama appointed Democratic operative Ron Klain as Ebola response coordinator on Oct. 17. But there are currently about two dozen presidentially appointed officials who have some emergency response responsibility for infectious disease outbreaks, Larsen said.

Budget cuts also have slowed progress at the local level.

Since 2002, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given states and territories more than $10 billion to help public health care systems ramp up when faced with a major disease outbreak. The CDC program has been cut more than 30 percent since reaching $897 million in fiscal year 2007, which led to thousands of layoffs by state and local health departments, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

All 50 states and several major cities receive additional annual money through HHS’s Hospital Preparedness Program, which helps private hospitals

In the meantime, a flurry of Ebola-related work is further straining resources, even when such efforts turn out to be false alarms - or worse, based on rumor.

Members of West Virginia’s Kanawha-Charleston Health Department were recently called to Yeager Airport to investigate four passengers on a plane from Atlanta - three who started their journey in Dallas, one who started out in Houston. “Someone on the plane overheard a conversation that a passenger or passengers were coming from a Dallas hospital. No one in the meeting had any idea if these people were ill,” according to a summary report.

The four passengers were isolated, interviewed and subjected to a complete screening evaluation by staff equipped with gloves, respirator and protective gowns. Other staffers collected contact information from all other passengers.

It was determined that none of the four from Texas met any CDC Ebola travel criteria, and were not symptomatic. All passengers and crew were cleared to depart the airport.

The incident cost taxpayers more than $2,350 in staff time - 60 man-hours, according to records.

“That’s a real drain on the system every time these things happen,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, the health department’s executive director. “If you have to spend that kind of money three or four times a week, it builds up.”

S R I L A N K A S A Y S N O H O P E FINDING MUDSLIDE SURVIVORS Also Thursday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited the disaster site and spoke to residents who are taking shelter in schools and temples.

According to his website, Rajapaksa ordered officials to expedite rescue and relief for the victims.

Heavy monsoon rains caused the mudslide, which wiped out 120 tea workers’ homes in Badulla district, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) east of Colombo, said Lal Sarath Kumara, an official from the Disaster Management Center.

Actress Shoshana Roberts is seen during an interview at Associated Press headquarters in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. Roberts starred in a video discretely made by man walking in front of her as she walked the streets of New York City and endured dozens of unsolicited catcalls during the course of a single day.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A video recording the comments a woman hears as she walks around the nation’s biggest city is a testament to the pervasiveness of street harassment women face, its creators said.

The comments come continuously as the woman walks through the streets of Manhattan - “What’s up, Beautiful?” and “Smile!” - and there’s even a stretch when a man just silently walks right next to her for several minutes.

The video, shot over 10 hours one day in neighborhoods all over the borough and edited down to a 2-minute final product, has set off a storm of outrage on its way to more than 10 million views since it was released online Tuesday.

“This is having a very serious impact on the way we live our lives,” Emily May, executive director of Hollaback!, the anti-street harassment organization that put out the video, said Wednesday.

The footage, which was shot and edited by Rob Bliss, was captured by a camera Bliss had in his backpack as he walked several feet of front of actress Shoshana Roberts, who was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and walked silently along.

At no point did Roberts make eye contact with any of the men she passed or talk to any of them. That didn’t stop the comments from coming. When she didn’t respond, one man told her, “Somebody’s acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more!”

Roberts said the number of comments the day the video was shot was nothing out of the ordinary for her.

“The frequency is something alarming,” she said.

Martha Sauder, walking on a Manhattan street on Wednesday, agreed that street harassment is a problem and said it happens to her frequently.

“It’s inappropriate. It’s like an invasion of your space,” she said. “I’d like it to stop.”

But the video also has faced some online criticisms, among them that the men shown all seem to be minorities. Bliss and Roberts emphasized that the comments came from all racial groups, and Bliss said some interactions that were filmed couldn’t be used for reasons like the audio was disrupted by passing sirens.

“My experience, what we documented, it was from everybody,” Roberts said.

Another criticism was that some men’s comments seemed innocuous: “Good morning,” “Have a nice day.”

Some men could have been “genuinely being nice,” said Gerard Burke, a Brooklyn resident who readily acknowledged street harassment exists and has seen it happen to women in his family. He said he thought the video shed light on a bigger problem, “but some people just genuinely want to say hello.”

That’s the problem with street harassment, May said, because when there’s a fear that a simple good morning could escalate into sexual comments or actions, there’s a reluctance to engage at all.

A Sri Lankan navigates his way though mud and sludge caused by a mudslide at the Koslanda tea plantation in Badulla district, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) east of Colombo, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera estimated the number of dead in Wednesday’s disaster at the plantation would be fewer than 100, although villagers said the figure could easily exceed 200

KOSLANDA, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Hundreds of desperate Sri Lankan villagers clawed through the wreckage of a deadly landslide Thursday, defying police orders after a top disaster official said there was no chance of finding more survivors in the broken red earth of the high-elevation tea plantation.

There were conflicting reports of how many people were missing in the slide, which struck Wednesday morning in the island nation’s central hills.

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said the number of dead at the Koslanda tea plantation would be fewer than 100. But Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Center - which Amaraweera oversees reported 190 people missing.

Villagers, meanwhile, said the death toll could easily exceed 200.

“I have visited the scene and from what I saw I don’t think there will be any survivors,” Amaraweera told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“But that number is less than 100.”

Frustrated relatives who had watched the search from the sidelines tried to follow a politician into the search site but were stopped by police.

However the politician argued with police and took villagers with him who joined hundreds of soldiers who were searching through the mud for survivors.

A 48-year-old truck driver who gave his name only as Raja said he lost all five members of his household - his wife, two sons, daughter-in-law and his 6-month-old grandchild.

“I left for work early morning and got a call asking me to rush back because there was an earth slip near my home,” Raja said, weeping. “I came back and there was no trace of my home, everyone was buried.”

A local government officer familiar with the tea plantation said he believes 200-250 people may have been buried, based on the number of people usually in the area at the time. There were many houses, a big Hindu temple, a playground and two milk collection centers where farmers bring their milk for selling.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because government rules prevent him from speaking to the media.

The tea plantation was one of many in the higher altitudes of Sri Lanka, formerly called Ceylon, one of the world’s leading producers of tea.

Most of Sri Lanka has experienced heavy rain over the past few weeks, and the Disaster Management Center had issued warnings of mudslides and falling rocks. The monsoon season here runs from October through December.

Vettiyan Yogeswaran, who lives on a part of the tea plantation that was not affected by the landslide, said authorities had warned people that the area was vulnerable to mudslides and they should move. But he said no housing alternatives were offered.

“There are 50-70 families living in my neighborhood in the bottom of a mountain. If a mudslide happens we all will be buried,” Yogeswaran said. “We want to leave but we have not been given a proper alternative.”

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

8

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ISRAELI POLICE KILL SUSPECTED P A L E S T I N I A N S H O O T E R

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli police on Thursday shot and killed a Palestinian man suspected of trying to kill a hard-line Jewish activist in Jerusalem, an incident that quickly sparked clashes between masked stone throwers and Israeli riot police and threatened to further enflame the already high tensions in the city.

Israel maintains that it allows free prayer to all, but Palestinians claim it is unilaterally widening access to accommodate larger numbers of Jewish worshippers. The Palestinians see this as Jewish encroachment on the site, the holiest in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, while Jewish activists like Glick say they are being discriminated against by limiting their chances to pray atop the mount.

Jerusalem has seen near-daily clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, particularly around a contested site in the Old City that is holy to both Jews and Muslims. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have traded accusations over alleged changes to testy status quo governing worship at the site.

Violence reached a new high late Wednesday, after a gunman on a motorcycle shot and seriously wounded American-born activist Yehuda Glick outside a conference promoting greater Jewish access to the hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

The gunman approached Glick and spoke to him in “heavy Arabic-accented Hebrew,” according to Moshe Feiglin, a lawmaker with the Likud party. Once he confirmed Glick’s identity, the man opened fire at point-blank range, shooting Glick three times before fleeing the scene.

Glick, and a well-known advocate for greater Jewish access to the site, remained in hospital and in serious condition on Thursday.

In an interview earlier this week with The Associated Press, Glick warned of the growing violence in Jerusalem and said Jews were increasingly being attacked by Muslims.

“The more extreme Islamist organizations are taking over and if we don’t stop them early enough, they will take over the entire Jerusalem,” he said. “We’re calling upon the Israeli government, stop the violence.”

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police forces surrounded the suspect’s home in east Jerusalem early Thursday. The suspect was holed up in a house in the Arab side of Abu Tor, a mixed neigh-

Israel accuses Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of inciting the recent violence. Abbas has recently called for Jews to be banned from the site and urged Palestinians to guard the compound from visiting Jews, who he called a “herd of cattle.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he has yet to hear a word of condemnation from the world against Abbas’ incitement to violence.

Israeli border policemen arrest the brother and father, right, of Palestinian Moatez Higazi after he was shot in east Jerusalem, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. Israeli police shot and killed Higazi suspected of trying to kill a hard-line Jewish activist in Jerusalem, an incident that quickly sparked clashes between masked stone throwers and Israeli riot police, threatening to further enflame the already high tensions in the city.

borhood. He then opened fire and troops responded and killed the man, identified as Moataz Hijazi, an Islamic militant recently released from prison who worked at an adjacent restaurant.

Shortly after Hijazi was shot dead, clashes broke out in Abu Tor, with Palestinians hurling stones at the riot police, who responded with rubber bullets to suppress the demonstration. Residents gathered on rooftops, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans while police set up checkpoints to control access in and out of the neighborhood.

The Temple Mount has been a flashpoint for violence in recent months and has been fraught lately with clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police. On Thursday, police said it had taken the unusual step of temporary closing access to the site to calm tensions.

“Jerusalem and its Muslim and Christian holy sites are a red line that must not be touched,” he said. “This unprecedented decision is dangerous and challenging and will lead to further escalation and instability, and will create a dangerous and negative atmosphere.”

Both states have seen previous initiatives to legalize marijuana fail.

This time around, campaigns have major contributions from outof-state donors who want see the legal pot movement garner more victories.

In Alaska, supporters of Measure 2 have raised more than $890,000, nearly all of it from the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest federal spender on marijuana advocacy. Opponents have raised nearly $150,000.

But backers of the legal-pot ballot measures in both states have a challenge that their predecessors in Colorado and Washington state didn’t face two years ago - increasing turnout of young voters in a midterm election.

Young voters, who as a generation are more likely to support recreational marijuana, usually turn out during presidential years like 2012, but stay home during midterms, when the electorate skews older and more conservative.

If young people 18 to 29 years old vote like they did in 2012, Oregon’s Measure 91, for example, would pass, said Ethan Nadelmann, head of Drug Policy Action, a major contributor in the national campaign to legalize marijuana.

“That’s really what it boils down to,” he said.

Washington, D.C., is voting on whether to make it legal to possess marijuana, but not sell it.

Whatever happens in the states and the nation’s capital, advocates plan to quickly shift their attention to the 2016 presidential elections and the big prize: California, where hopes are high for approval of legal pot despite a 2010 rejection.

“Even if all those things go down to defeat, I still think it’s a clean slate in 2016,” said Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard University and the Cato Institute who follows national drug policy.

Mark Kleiman, a drug policy consultant who helped Washington set up its legal marijuana industry, said the outcomes in Oregon and Alaska “will help determine the enthusiasm of funders financing the legalization campaign in California.”

In the meantime, the focus is on Oregon and Alaska.

Oregon is a blue state that decriminalized marijuana in 1973 and authorized medical marijuana in 1998.

The state’s southwestern corner is renowned for growing some of the nation’s best marijuana, and attracts outlaw growers from the U.S. and Mexico. Medical pot dispensaries were approved last year to sell to nearly 70,000 patients.

“The assassination attempt of Yehuda Glick is another serious step in the Palestinian incitement against Jews and against the state of Israel,” Yaalon said. “When Abu Mazen (Abbas) spreads lies and venom about the rights of Jews to worship in their land the result is terror, as we saw yesterday.”

Some Arab stores in the Old City and elsewhere in east Jerusalem closed shop to protest the closure of the Al Aqsa mosque.

Alaska, by contrast, is more conservative, but there’s a strong libertarian streak, and small amounts of marijuana have been legal for personal use since a 1975 state Supreme Court ruling. Medical pot is legal, but not dispensaries.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -- From slick video ads online to scrawled chalk messages on college campus sidewalks, intense get-out-the-vote drives are mobilizing in Oregon and Alaska to legalize retail sales of marijuana to anyone old enough to drink.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon also reiterated accusations against Abbas Thursday.

In a statement, Abbas did not condemn the shooting of Glick but lashed out at Israel for closing the volatile site, calling it a “declaration of war” against the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim world.

O R E G O N , A L A S K A A R E GROUND ZERO IN POT FIGHT

Anthony Johnson, director of marijuana legalization group New Approach Oregon, and Liz Kaufman, campaign director, speak to reporters in Salem, Ore. Intense get-out-thevote drives are mobilizing in Oregon and Alaska to legalize retail sales of marijuana to anyone old enough to drink.

“The international community must stop its hypocrisy and act against the inciters,” Netanyahu said.

Despite the difference, the no campaign - “Big Marijuana. Big Mistake - is not giving up, relying heavily on volunteers, social media, letters to the editor and word of mouth.

Gaza’s Hamas rulers praised the attack on Glick.

Clashes have also recently taken place elsewhere in east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians as their future capital.

The violence erupted in earnest over the summer after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed by Palestinians in the West Bank. Jewish extremists retaliated by kidnapping and burning to death a Palestinian teenager in east Jerusalem, sparking violent riots. The unrest continued throughout the summer with the 50-day Gaza war that was sparked by heavy Hamas rocket fire toward Israel.

F E W E R G R I Z Z LY BEARS DYING IN YELLOWSTONE AREA

“More and more Alaskans are donating to the no campaign,” said spokeswoman Deborah Williams. “They’re convinced we need to defeat this measure. And we will win this measure.”

In Oregon, two groups backing Measure 91 have raised a total of nearly $4 million, most of it spent on TV ads. Opponents have raised $168,000.

In the state, where elections are settled exclusively by mail ballots, “closing the deal” means a two-step process, said Liz Kaufman, campaign director for Yes on 91. People need to mark their ballots, and then turn them in.

The campaign is reaching out with TV, phone trees, door-to-door canvassing and chalking on college campuses.

“You’d be surprised how many people mark up their ballots and don’t turn them in,” Kaufman said.

In Alaska, a recent poll for initiative proponents shows overwhelming support among voters under 35, with the measure winning by 18 points.

Another for opponents shows it losing by 10 points.

“It’s a very polarized race,” said Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore, who conducted the poll for the initiative sponsor. “Young people like it and old people don’t. And the trouble for the yes side is that old people vote and young people don’t.”

Another key demographic is mothers.

With only $168,000 to spend, the No-on-91 campaign in Oregon used most of it to mail 155,000 postcards to mothers from Portland to Eugene. It focused on fears that marijuana-infused candy and sodas pose a danger to kids.

They have also flown in people from Colorado to speak out, said Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin, a leader of the no campaign. “It’s really difficult,” he said. “We’ve got daytime jobs. The potheads don’t.

This is their job to get this legalized.”

Polls in Oregon have shown support for legalization declining as election day approaches, but still with a fair chance of passing, said Seattle pollster Stuart Elway.

“In Washington’s experience, the measure out-performed the polls,” he said. “What we have in Oregon right now is a statistical dead heat. It’s going to depend in large part on who votes.”

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Fewer threatened grizzly bears are being killed in and around Yellowstone National Park, and scientists said Wednesday their numbers appear to be holding stable as officials consider lifting protections for the animals.

If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eliminates protections, it would open the door to limited hunting in the Yellowstone region of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

At least 757 bears inhabit the region, although researchers say that’s a highly conservative figure.

During a Wednesday meeting of state and federal wildlife agencies in Montana, scientists said a new counting method indicates roughly 1,000 grizzlies in the Yellowstone region, with the population growing zero to 2 percent annually.

Twenty bears have been reported killed or removed from that population so far this year, said Frank van Manen, a grizzly researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.

By comparison, a record 56 grizzlies were reported killed or removed in 2012, and 29 last year.

Most bears die following conflicts with humans. Those range from hunters shooting bears in self-defense to wildlife agents capturing and killing bears that attack livestock or damage property.

In a case earlier this month outside Yellowstone, wildlife officials euthanized a 28-year-old bear that tried to get into a storage building containing horse feed.

This week, two young bears were captured and later released after they raided residents’ apple trees in Gardiner, Montana, just outside the park’s

continued on page 9

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

9

N . K O R E A C R A C K I N G D O W N O N A D I S T A N T T H R E A T : E B O L A

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- North Korea announced Thursday it will quarantine foreigners for 21 days over fears of the spread of the Ebola virus, even though no cases of the disease have been reported in the reclusive country, or anywhere in Asia, and very few foreigners are allowed to enter.

English-language media outlining the tourism ban or other restrictions on travel. There was, and remains, little information about what groups are affected, whether travel out of North Korea will be stopped and under what conditions the restrictions would be lifted.

An announcement distributed to diplomatic missions in Pyongyang said that, regardless of country or region of origin, all foreigners will be quarantined under medical observation for 21 days.

That, of course, has left potential travelers scratching their heads - and businesses bleeding money.

Foreigners from affected areas will be quarantined at one set of locations, while those from unaffected areas will be sent to other locations, including hotels. The staff of diplomatic missions and international organizations will be allowed to stay in their residences.

Tourist visits to North Korea were halted last week, so few were likely to still be in the country.

This Monday, Oct. 27, 2014 photo shows medical personnel in protective suits standing by an ambulance, at the Sunan International Airport, in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea would seem like the last place on Earth that has anything to worry about from Ebola. But it’s virtually gone on DefCon 1 over what it sees as a looming invasion from the outside world that threatens to infiltrate its borders and relentlessly attack its people unless dramatic measures are taken immediately. It has banned tourists, put business groups on hold and is looking even more suspiciously than usual at every foreign face coming across its borders.

Most tourists do not stay for 21 days. It was unclear if they or others already in North Korea on shorter stays, for example on business, would have to remain for the quarantine period.

The strict measures shed some light on how the bureaucracy in North Korea tends to work, and on the isolated country’s often-fearful views of the outside world in general.

North Korea is always on guard against outside influences, but now that it perceives the deadly disease to be a threat, its anxiety has reached a new level. It has put business groups on hold and is looking even more suspiciously than usual at every foreign face coming across its borders.

Last week, after rumors began to circulate among the small foreign community in Pyongyang that draconian measures were in the offing, North Korea’s state media announced that travelers and cargo would be subject to stricter monitoring at airports, seaports and railway border crossings.

Case in point: when a high-level delegation from Japan arrived in Pyongyang this week, two of the first people they met were dressed in full hazmat gear.

Daily reports are being broadcast on television news and during evening programming to increase public awareness of the disease and its symptoms. North Korea’s Korean Central Television aired a news story on Sunday that showed quarantine officials strengthening inspections of people and boats moving in and out of the port city of Nampo.

North Korea’s frantic response to the Ebola outbreak, including the broad but so far poorly defined ban on foreign tourism, is also surprising because it admits so few foreigners at all. Other than diplomatic and government missions, it has virtually no contact with any of the countries that have been most affected in west Africa, though Africa is one of the places it has tried to develop good relations.

Kim Yong Nam, the head of North Korea’s parliament, is now touring the continent, though not Ebola-impacted areas.

“Our army, which protects our borders, has a high responsibility to block the disease,” Han Yong Sik, director of the Nampo inspection center, told the network. “We are strengthening quarantine education and thoroughly inspecting boats and planes to ensure that not even a single person carrying the disease enters our country.”

So far, there has been no official statement in North Korea’s

G U N F I R E , A R R E S T S E R U P T A S G I A N T S F A N S R E V E L I N W I N A man jumps over a burning couch in the Mission district after the San Francisco Giants beat the Kansas City Royals to win the World Series on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014, in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The celebration in San Francisco’s streets over the Giants’ World Series victory turned raucous and violent in some areas with people injured by gunfire, officers hurt by bottles thrown by revelers, and police making arrests.

The partying unfolded peacefully with fans gathering in the streets and uncorking champagne, lighting bonfires, dancing in a mosh pit and hugging strangers Wednesday night as their team scored its third series win in as many championship appearances, a triumph all the more gratifying by its arrival at the end of a seventh, winner-takes-all 3-2 game.

“I knew they were going to win. It’s the Giants. They do this all the time,” San Francisco native Barbra Norris, 54, said of the team’s odds-defying win in an away game played the night after a crushing shutout in Kansas City.

But in some areas, the atmosphere grew rowdier as the night wore on. Television news footage showed fans on the roofs of buses and a police car that had been tagged and its windows smashed.

Violence left three people injured in separate incidents, two by gunshots and one in a stabbing, said Officer Gordon Shyy, a police spokesman. The gunshot victims’ wounds were not life-threatening, and the stabbing victim suffered serious injuries.

Shortly after the celebrating began, Shyy said officers made “a handful of arrests” as fans filled the streets and blocked traffic around the Civic Center, in the Mission District and on Market Street within walking distance of AT&T Park. Updated arrest figures were not expected until later Thursday.

Shyy said bottles struck police in multiple areas.

“These objects were thrown at officers as they attempted to disperse crowds” and help firefighters put out bonfires, he said.

Multiple officers suffered minor injuries, Shyy said, but did not provide an exact number. He also said one was treated at a

hospital for injuries.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the region around Third and King streets was especially raucous with thousands of fans spraying beer, smashing bottles, lighting fires and setting off fireworks. That prompted police in riot gear to move in and set up a perimeter.

At one point, riot police lined up three rows deep, leading people to hurl bottles, some shattering on the street and others hitting cringing officers, the newspaper reported.

The wild street scenes lasted into the early hours Thursday.

Shyy said crowds were still in the streets in some areas and stoking bonfires shortly after midnight, and officers continued to try to clear the areas. But by 1:30 a.m. PDT, he said crowds had dispersed for the most part.

Earlier in the evening, across from San Francisco City Hall, where the exterior lights had been glowing orange all week, more than 9,000 people gathered in an outdoor plaza where the city had set up a Jumbotron and a vendor sold hot dogs but no beer.

“You come out here to feel the pulse of the city. When it’s the seventh game, you want to get the vibe,” said Geoff Goselin, 61.

The diverse crowd sang “Let’s Go, Giants” whenever their counterparts 1,800 miles away rooted for the home team and chanted a prophetic “M-V-P” whenever Giants ace Madison Bumgarner took the mound.

“Bumgarner is the beast, the man,” Aden Bacus, 41, shouted after the exhausted pitcher secured a series of strikes on the heels of giving up a gasp-inducing triple. “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous there at the end.”

Amid the revelry, Mayor Ed Lee said the city would host a parade and celebration for the team Friday.

San Francisco police maintained a heavy presence but kept a cool distance as marijuana smoke wafted over Civic Center Plaza and jubilant fans set off fireworks and popped open cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon someone sold out of a cooler.

One indication of the mood was that several fans said they would have been able to stomach a Royals victory with a shrug, if not a smile.

“It would have been really cool for Kansas City to win the World Series at home,” said David Janmohamed, 23.

“It was poorly communicated,” said a post Monday on the website of the Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based organization that specializes in promoting business and educational exchange with North Korea. “This didn’t allow stakeholders time to prepare for it. For Choson Exchange, we could be seeing potentially tens of thousands of dollars of losses as we delay training programs, and possibly even more as this drags on.

“For businesspeople, a shutdown will likely hurt their investment plans or transactions.”

Uri Tours, a U.S.-based travel agency that specializes in tours to North Korea, already had informed potential customers that tours have been halted, and that anyone coming to North Korea from certain areas may be quarantined.

The new quarantine announcement dated Wednesday and distributed to diplomatic missions on Thursday - though slim on details - suggests a much broader response. A copy of the document, issued by North Korea’s Non-Standing National Emergency Prevention Committee, was obtained by The Associated Press.

More than 13,700 people have been sickened in the Ebola outbreak, and nearly 5,000 of them have died. Nearly all the cases are in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, though there were 20 in Nigeria, four in the U.S. and one each in Mali, Senegal and Spain.

Uri Tours says it believes the ban on tourists is just temporary - and is holding out hope that they may be able to return in December.

North Korea’s reaction isn’t unprecedented. It closed its borders for several months in 2003 during the scare over SARS. But that was a much more obvious threat. SARS affected China, and Beijing is where most flights into Pyongyang originate. In the case of Ebola, North Korea’s efforts to defend itself from what appears to be a tiny risk may end up alienating it from foreigners who have been willing to invest here.

“Overall, this episode seems to reflect two things. First, a callous attitude toward stakeholders in the country’s development stemming from poor communications or the lack of will to communicate,” said the Choson Exchange blog. “Second, that North Korea’s `fear of the foreign’ outweighs their interest in whatever benefits foreign investment brings.”

YELLOWSTONE AREA continued from page 8

north entrance. The bears were relocated in hopes of heading off further problems as food sources dwindle with the approach of winter, Montana officials said Wednesday.

Conflicts had been steadily increasing earlier this decade, including several high-profile instances of bears attacking and killing tourists and hikers. But overall conflicts have been easing since 2012.

“Things are looking really good for the second year in a row,” van Manen said. “This is where we’d rather be, with fewer (bear) mortalities, fewer conflicts with hunters, fewer issues with bears getting into garbage or conflicts with livestock.”

However, van Manen cautioned that human run-ins with bears are still up over the long term.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision is pending on whether the population has recovered enough to revoke the animals’ threatened species status.

Grizzlies received federal protections in 1975 after getting wiped out across much of their historical range.

The Yellowstone population has slowly rebounded and the three-state region now hosts one of the largest concentrations of grizzly bears in the Lower 48 states. Their range covers 19,000 square miles centered on the high country of Yellowstone and surrounding national forests.

The bears temporarily lost protections in 2007 but got them back two years later after environmental groups successfully challenged the decision in federal court.

A judge ruled in part that the Fish and Wildlife Service had not fully considered the potential harm to grizzlies from the loss of a key food source, the nuts of high-elevation white bark pine trees, due to climate change.

Since then, government scientists have issued studies showing the bears have a varied diet and are not dependent on white bark pine. The matter is now in the hands of Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe, said Chris Servheen, the agency’s grizzly recovery coordinator.

10

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A P I M PA C T: I F E B O L A U S , W E A R E N O T

B AT T E R S R E A D Y

The U.S. health care apparatus is so unprepared and short on resources to deal with the deadly Ebola virus that even small clusters of cases could overwhelm parts of the system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network.

Since 2007, Ebola has been identified as a potential threat requiring priority attention under the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, which coordinates the development, stockpiling and dispensing of drugs during a massive disease outbreak or to protect against chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.

Experts broadly agree that a widespread outbreak across the country is extremely unlikely, but they also concur that it is impossible to predict with certainty, since previous Ebola epidemics have been confined to remote areas of Africa. And Ebola is not the only possible danger that causes concern; experts say other deadly infectious diseases - ranging from airborne viruses such as SARS, to an unforeseen new strain of the flu, to more exotic plagues like Lassa fever - could crash the health care system.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has spent nearly $500 million on Ebola research since 2003. At least another $269 million has been spent on Ebola research under a Defense Department chemical and biological defense program. Some of that funding was spent on vaccine research and better diagnostic testing.

To assess America’s ability to deal with a major outbreak, the AP examined multiple indicators of readiness: training, manpower, funding, emergency room shortcomings, supplies, infection control and protection for health care workers. AP reporters also interviewed dozens of top experts in those fields.

The results were worrisome. Supplies, training and funds are all limited.

And there are concerns about whether health care workers would refuse to treat Ebola victims.

Following the death of a patient with Ebola in a Texas hospital and the subsequent infection of two of his nurses, medical officials and politicians are scurrying to fix preparedness shortcomings. But remedies cannot be implemented overnight. And fixes will be very expensive.

Dr. Jeffrey S. Duchin, chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said it will take time to ramp up readiness, including ordering the right protective equipment and training workers to use it. “Not every facility is going to be able to obtain the same level of readiness,” he said.

AP reporters frequently heard assessments that generally, the smaller the facility, the less prepared, less funded, less staffed and less trained it is to fight Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases.

“The place I worry is: Are most small hospitals adequately prepared?” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University specialist in health care quality and safety. “It clearly depends on the hospital.”

He said better staff training is the most important element of preparation for any U.S. Ebola outbreak. He believes a small group of personnel at each hospital needs to know the best procedures, because sick people are likely to appear first at medium-size or small medical centers, which are much more common than big ones.

Jha pointed to stepped-up training in recent weeks but wondered, “Will it be enough? We’ll find out.”

A high ranking official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that the government does not expect every hospital in America to be able to treat an Ebola patient, but “every hospital has to be able to recognize, isolate and use the highest level of personal protective equipment until they can transfer that patient.”

“The moment anyone has an Ebola patient, (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) will have a team on the ground within a matter of hours to help that hospital,” Dr. Nicole Lurie, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said Wednesday. She acknowledged “some spot shortages of personal protective equipment” but said many kinds “`are still pretty widely available” and that manufacturers are ramping up production.

AN OVERTAXED EMERGENCY CARE SYSTEM Without any stress caused by Ebola cases, the emergency care system in the U.S. is already overextended. In its 2014 national report card, the American College of Emergency Physicians gives the country a D-plus grade in emergency care, asserting the system is in “near-crisis,” overwhelmed even by the usual demands of care.

According to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, patients spend an average of 4 1/2 hours in emergency rooms of U.S. hospitals before being admitted. The data also show that 2 percent of patients leave before even being seen.

In a CDC study on hospital preparedness for emergency response in 2008, the latest data available, at least a third of hospitals had to divert ambulances because their emergency rooms were at capacity.

Add an influx of people with Ebola, along with those who fear they might have the disease, and the most vulnerable segments of the health care system could wobble.

“Even though there have been only a couple cases, many health systems are already overwhelmed,” said Dr. Kenrad Nelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and former president of the American Epidemiological Society, referring to new federal procedures for screening, tracking and treating the disease and people who are exposed. He added that if a major flu outbreak also occurred, “it would be really tough.”

“We’re really going to have to step up our game if we are going to deal with hemorrhagic fevers in this country,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert and professor at Georgetown University.

How big of an outbreak would it take to overpower the U.S. health care system?

“It would have to be only a mediocre outbreak,” said Gostin. “The hospitals will be flooded with the `worried-well.’ People with influenza or other infections that are not Ebola could jam up the public health system.”

One federal study on emergency room visits indicated that at least 4 percent of visits involved patients with fever - a common symptom of

Members of the Department of Defense’s Ebola Military Medical Support Team dress with protective gear during training at San Antonio Military Medical Center in San Antonio. Even small clusters of Ebola cases could overwhelm parts of US medical care system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network.

But in October 2011, the Government Accountability Office reported that an anticipated budget for drug acquisitions still had not been produced. Without clear guidance about government funding, pharmaceutical and other medical companies might not want to invest millions of dollars to develop vaccines that are less lucrative than other drugs they could make, the report underscored.

Ebola. Combining fevers with stomach pain, headaches and coughs, about a fifth of emergency visits involve symptoms often seen in Ebola patients.

The GAO issued another critical report in December 2013, faulting the program for its “almost 10-year efforts and the continuing lack of available countermeasures.”

A doctor who had recently treated Ebola patients in West Africa came into Bellevue Hospital in New York City last week with a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. In announcing the man had been placed in isolation, officials pointed out how his symptoms also could be consistent with salmonella, malaria or the stomach flu.

None of that stopped a top federal preparedness official from telling Congress in February that the program is “a model for innovative governance and accountable decision-making.”

Last Thursday, the doctor tested positive for Ebola.

UNEVEN LEVEL OF PREPAREDNESS National surveys have repeatedly found that while most health care providers are willing to care for people with dangerous diseases like Ebola, they generally feel unprepared to do so.

This summer, health care research group Black Book Rankings sought opinions from hospital administrators, doctors and nurses at all U.S. hospitals and health care facilities about infection control, emergency planning and disaster readiness regarding Ebola. Nearly 1,000 personnel at 389 facilities, including 282 hospitals, participated.

Personnel at almost all hospitals in the Black Book survey said their facilities were not capable of quarantining large numbers of people possibly exposed to Ebola.

Nearly three-quarters of emergency doctors and four in five infection specialists at large hospitals felt their facilities were not adequately prepared to deal with Ebola patients.

Hospital administrators and medical staff had widely divergent perspectives on their facilities’ ability to treat the disease. Among medical staff at big hospitals, nearly all who participated in the survey believed their hospitals were not adequately staffed and trained for Ebola patients. About two in three of administrative and financial staff shared that worry.

Among emergency nurses, nearly all worried about the impact of emergency department crowding on the ability to deal with Ebola patients; just more than half of administrative and financial managers felt that way.

Other striking results: Personnel at only 1 percent of surveyed acute care hospitals said they can handle more than 10 Ebola patients at once.

That was true at just about one-quarter of academic medical centers.

A demonstrated weakness of U.S. hospitals in controlling other hospital-acquired infections also suggests a soft spot in Ebola readiness. In 2011, the most recent year of data, about 75,000 hospital patients with health care-associated infections died during their hospitalizations, according to a national CDC survey published this year. Such infections are considered to be a proxy to measure hospitals’ readiness to contain Ebola.

Added Douglas Brown, managing partner at Black Book: “We got a lot of feedback that community hospitals aren’t the place for Ebola patients to come.”

SUPPLY SHORTAGES AND SURGE WORRIES Shortages abound, beginning with the fact there are only four specialized containment care facilities set up to isolate and treat patients with Ebola and other very dangerous diseases. In any sizable outbreak, those dozen or so beds would fill up very quickly.

Appropriate equipment could be in short supply for mid-size and smaller hospitals, and even some larger ones. CDC estimates from 2008, the most recent available national figures, put the average number of protective suits with powered air-purifying respirators per hospital at 10. The average hospital had six mechanical ventilators, which could be needed for Ebola patients with breathing problems.

A recent nationwide survey of state public health departments suggests not all are ready to ramp up quickly. The 2013 National Health Security Preparedness Index, carried out by CDC in partnership with the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, ranks state health departments on a scale of 1 to 10 on numerous emergency measures. In the category of “surge management,” the average score was 5.8.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, says some emergency departments are so consumed by the typical number of patients that a surge of any kind can overwhelm them. With an Ebola outbreak, he said, “they’re not just getting a surge of patients, they’re getting a surge of patients with special needs.”

The AP review found evidence that the federal emergency public health network, which is designed to step in to prevent shortages of medicine and medical supplies while local response capacity ramps up, is failing to perform as planned.

In fact, the feds’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority did not fund its first investment in an experimental Ebola treatment until this year because that program only supports potential treatments in a later phase of development. HHS said a relatively modest $25 million has gone to study ZMapp, an experimental drug in short supply that has been provided to numerous infected Ebola patients.

Lurie acknowledged Wednesday that funding limitations had contributed to some of the delay in vaccine development.

Given that there is no Ebola vaccine, the government does not have a stockpile of disease-specific drugs on hand, as it has had for pandemic flu.

Also, as of last week, there were no national emergency stockpiles of the waterproof gowns, surgical hoods, full face shields, boot covers or other gear that the CDC recommends for treating Ebola patients. CDC’s $6.2 billion Strategic National Stockpile had just a small quantity of older model gowns on hand, since most were sent to the states during the 2009 swine flu pandemic and had not been replenished, said Greg Burel, director of the agency’s stockpile division. Last Thursday, the agency placed an order to purchase a limited amount of Ebola-specific personal protective equipment, but Burel would not say how much was ordered, or when the goods would be available for distribution.

If the U.S. sustains a major Ebola outbreak, the mechanism for confirming individual patient test results also could be quickly overwhelmed, though the testing situation suddenly is improving. For years, spending on diagnostic research has lagged under the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a Defense Department chemical and biological defense program. The CDC noted in August that the agency and the military had “the only U.S. laboratories capable of conducting diagnostic testing to confirm that a patient has Ebola and not some other illness.” As of Friday, though, the CDC said there were 23 additional labs that have the expanded diagnostic technology, primarily local and state health departments.

WORRIES ABOUT TRAINING Shortcomings in training and preparedness for health care workers are pronounced, and chronic.

More than half of working registered nurses reported they neither received nor provided emergency training during the previous year, according to a study HHS published in 2010 using 2008 data. Of those registered nurses who did receive or provide emergency training, 44 percent felt somewhat or not at all prepared.

Regarding epidemic response planning, a third of hospitals had no plans for alternate care areas with beds, staffing and equipment, according to a study published in 2011 by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, again based on 2008 data. Only half had priority-setting plans to get the most use from a limited supply of ventilators. More than a third had no plans for on-site, large-capacity morgues, and a third had no plans for staff absences as a result of the personal or family impact of any epidemic.

A recent survey of 2,500 members of the local health officials’ association found that only one in three local health departments had participated in full-scale emergency preparedness exercises or drills.

Gostin, the global health law expert from Georgetown, thinks the contamination of two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. died, “was not an anomaly.”

He said the U.S. may have the most advanced health care system in the world, but the system is very fragmented because “there’s no uniform national quality control.”

There is great inconsistency in the frequency of emergency drills.

According to the Black Book report, only a quarter of academic medical centers had epidemic or biological warfare drills in the previous year, but just 4 percent of medium-size hospitals ran such exercises, and no small hospitals did.

Kristi L. Koenig, director of the Center for Disaster Medical Sciences at the University of California-Irvine, said every hospital needs to have some basic level of preparation, in order to manage the initial treatment.

But she suggested the best solution is to increase the number of specialized biocontainment centers.

Such centers would help keep workers safe and properly prepared, not just for Ebola but also for other very dangerous diseases like SARS severe acute respiratory syndrome - or influenza.

____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________

The Weekly News Di-

11

B R U T A L W I N T E R S E T T O H I T WA R - T O R N E A S T E R N U K R A I N E

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) -- Dark tunnels in the basement of a bombedout hospital in the eastern city of Donetsk lead to a makeshift shelter.

Opening the door hardly alleviates the gloom, for the only lighting inside is the flicker of handmade oil lamps.

As of Tuesday, nearly 2,000 private houses and several dozens of apartment blocks were without electricity, while 49 villages and 3 towns in the region were partly or fully cut off, according to the local energy company DTEK. The separatists’ self-proclaimed prime minister, Alexander Zakharchenko, said Russia is helping with funds to repair infrastructure but he did not specify how much money was at their disposal.

The inhabitants move around like shadows, eyes dull and faces weary with hardship, dressed in several layers of worn-out sweatshirts, vests and jackets. The tiny rooms are lit with sunflower oil poured into saucers and set aflame.

These people took refuge in the abandoned hospital’s basement after their own homes were destroyed. They are either too poor or old to flee the brutal separatist war that has ravaged Ukraine’s east. Their dire situation is about to become much worse as Donetsk, which has lost nearly half of its 1 million-strong population, braces for winter. In eastern Ukraine, where temperatures typically stay below freezing all winter, damage to critical infrastructure and lack of adequate shelter for the newly homeless could mean death from cold for many.

“We have nowhere to go,” says Vera Dvornikova, a 70-year-old janitor who has been living in the basement of Hospital 18 on the northern outskirts of town since her apartment was obliterated by shelling in late July.

Her murky room is cluttered with shabby relics of the past, battered old chairs and something with a blanket on it, which could be a bed. “We don’t even know who we should ask for help,” she says. “We just sit here like rats.”

The basement that Dvornikova shares with 19 others has no running water or heating, and electricity has been cut off for a month. Asked how she is preparing for winter, Dvornikova mutters vaguely about keeping warm with an oil cloth and two blankets which she took from the hospital upstairs.

The hospital lies in a residential area full of five-story blocks with missing roofs, gaping holes in the walls and gutted windows. The neighborhood is across the bridge from the airport which has been an epicenter of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces for weeks. As the homeless huddle in basements, gangs of purring stray cats roam the streets outside.

A few blocks away, a repair team is fixing a hot water pipe that will soon switch heating on for one of the damaged houses. Alexander

Compounding Ukraine’s energy woes, European Union-brokered talks to guarantee Russian gas imports into Ukraine throughout the winter broke up inconclusively early Thursday, with a draft for a `common understanding’ sent to Moscow and Kiev for consideration, according to an EU official who asked not to be named because an agreement had yet to be reached.

In this photo taken on Monday, Oct. 27, 2014, Vladimir Tumanov, whose home was destroyed in late August, hides from shelling with his dogs in the basement under a hospital not far from Donetsk airport in the town of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Donetsk, which has lost about 400,000 of its 1 million pre-war population, is bracing to a winter ahead. In a climate like eastern Ukraine?s, where temperatures typically stay below zero all winter, the damage to the critical infrastructure and lack of effort to provide adequate shelter to people whose homes were destroyed could literally mean a death from the cold.

Zuyev, the team’s supervisor, says it is not within his power to help Dvornikova and her fellow lodgers because the hospital, like many buildings in the neighborhood, has been too heavily damaged. Without the roof and windows, he said, fixing the heating is pointless.

Some of Donetsk’s boiler stations that provide heat to homes are situated on the front line of fighting. Accessing them to switch on the heating - if the equipment is intact - is simply too dangerous, Zuyev says.

About 1,000 houses and apartment blocks, some 10 percent of the city’s total, have been damaged by shelling, according to Maxim Rovinsky, a former official in the Donetsk City Hall. Many are beyond repair. The rebel government says that over 3,000 homes have been damaged.

Ukraine’s Social Affairs Ministry says the government has compensations measures in place for damaged houses, adding that regional governments are obliged to provide temporary accommodation for people in need. But in reality, residents of destroyed homes find no officials to turn to - forcing them to find their own shelter like the residents of the hospital basement.

U S V O T E R S D E C I D I N G O N B I L L I O N S F O R C O N S E R VAT I O N

Heating woes aside, the rebel stronghold is surprisingly well-stocked considering it is almost entirely surrounded by government troops.

Many grocery stores, pharmacies and open-air markets are open. One upscale restaurant, well-established before the war, is offering its customers oysters this fall.

Food prices have shot up, however. Valentyna Dedyk, director of the wholesale food distributor Sotrudnichestvo, says her suppliers have raised prices by about 25 percent since June. Some foodstuffs are produced in Donetsk, she says, but many are shipped from other Ukrainian regions across the enemy lines - increasing costs. The goods are now shipped with the help of an intermediary who can guarantee the cargo clears checkpoints on both sides.

And the sight of well-stocked markets in Donetsk can be deceiving.

The elderly residents who stayed behind cannot afford to buy from them since most have not received pensions for at least three months.

Coal miners and municipal workers like Zuyev and his team who were repairing pipes have not been paid for months, either.

Even after losing control of the area in spring, the Ukrainian government kept paying pensions and benefits there before they froze them in May. The press office of the Social Affairs Ministry said the government has cut off pensions to about half a million people in the area under rebel control “as the cash could simply be stolen.” But the pension can be withdrawn from “any location under government control.” Rebel leader Zakharchenko said on Wednesday they were going to start paying “part” of the pensions next month.

In the basement of Hospital 18, auto mechanic Vladimir Tumanov, whose home was destroyed in late August, lives in limbo with his 73-year-old mother who is too ill to leave town.

“We will get through this winter somehow as long as mortars ... stop falling on our heads,” Tumanov says. “Everyone here prays every day for the war to end.”

for sportsmen like hunters or environmentalists.”

The dynamic has shown up even in tax-averse Alabama, where 75 percent of voters amended the constitution in 2012 to fund open spaces with oil revenues after a campaign targeting hunters and environmentalists. In Missouri, 71 percent voted in 2006 to renew a sales tax for parks and erosion control that originally passed by just 50.1 percent in 1984.

“It has worked really well. We have over 80 state parks and not only are they nice places but they bring in a lot of tourist revenue,” said William Lowry, a political science professor who focuses on environmental issues at Washington University in St. Louis.

Florida voters are considering a constitutional amendment that would dedicate $18 billion in existing real estate taxes to environmental protection over the next two decades. About half the revenue would go to buy nearly 2 million acres - pockets of wilderness including swamplands, beaches and other places that link key corridors of open space where wildlife can migrate naturally.

New Jersey’s voters could renew and increase a tax on corporations to pay for $2.1 billion for open spaces and farmland.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Voters across the nation are deciding whether to set aside billions of dollars for parks and preservation in what some environmentalists are calling one of the most significant elections for land conservation in American history.

Pollsters say it’s one of the few places on Tuesday’s ballots where voters of all kinds can find common ground.

The most money at stake is in Florida, California and New Jersey.

“These are highly developed and dense states, and they are watching the good natural places disappear,” said Will Rogers, president and CEO of the Trust for Public Land, which tracks and raises money for the ballot measures. “People know if they don’t step up and protect it, it will be gone.”

Nationwide, it adds up to more than $15.7 billion overall in taxes and bonds for land and water conservation, the most in a quarter-century of elections, according to the trust’s data, which was independently verified by The Associated Press.

Other states with significant conservation funding on their ballots include Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oregon. There are local measures, too: voters in Larimer County, Colorado could renew a sales tax to generate $131 million over 25 years for open spaces.

“One of the things we see in this hyper-partisan age is that support for these measures can extend across party lines,” said Lori Weigel, a pollster in Denver, Colorado, who has been tracking voter preferences on this year’s measures. “There’s something appealing about conserving these natural areas, whether that’s

And drought-suffering Californians are being asked to pass Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion voter initiative to fund more dams on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers to improve water supplies in the central part of the state, where most of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown. The same bond measure would set aside much less money - about $1.5 billion - for land and watershed conservation.

That’s hard to swallow for some environmental advocates. The Natural Resources Defense Council is backing Proposition 1, but the Sierra Club decided to not take a public stance, concerned that resource conservation funding could be dwarfed by the billions going to concrete in the form of new dams.

The scope of the initiative is so vast, chances are that environmentalists don’t truly understand its overall effects on land and water resources, said Sejal Choksi, program director of San Francisco Baykeeper. Choksi expressed skepticism about the “vague language and the state’s shabby history of water policy implementation,” and said the proposition’s wording opens too many loopholes for developers.

In Florida and New Jersey, business groups and Gov. Chris Christie are against locking in environmental funding, saying that the Legislature needs power to move money where it’s most needed in tough times.

But the measures’ backers feel good about Tuesday, optimistic that the strengthening economy has made voters willing to pay to preserve natural resources for future generations.

“Wherever you look, in the interior West, in the Rust Belt, the Sun Belt, people care about places, they care about nature and are willing to vote with their wallets to do something about it,” Rogers said.

Dr. Phil Smith, who heads the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center, said that staffers in the typical hospital isolation ward have had little or no practice in putting on and taking off safety gear, or following other procedures for handling Ebola patients. Such practices are second nature at field hospitals and clinics operating in Africa, and are drilled regularly at specialized containment facilities in the U.S. FEARS OF ABANDONMENT Like nuclear radiation, the Ebola virus, which causes massive internal bleeding and organ failure, touches on deep human fears of a fatal invisible menace. Those fears are shared not only by patients, but also by some professionals who treat them.

In the Black Book Ebola readiness survey released in August, some medical staff said they believed they would stay away from work to shun Ebola patients admitted to their hospitals.

Among isolation care doctors and nurses, 14 percent said they’d call in sick, and one in four critical care and emergency staff said the same.

Among the isolation care staff, 17 percent said they wouldn’t work near Ebola patients; half of critical care and emergency staff said the same.

“I think that’s a very valid concern,” said Dr. Melinda Moore, a scientist at Pardee RAND graduate school who has worked as a global health expert for the CDC. “It’s been described in literature and studies.”

She said training on safe Ebola treatment and education for health care workers is the antidote.

Adalja, a member of the Public Health Committee of the Infectious Disease Society of America, called the survey findings troubling and contended they show that many medical staffers “are not confident in the infection control procedures at their hospital.”

Dr. Kenneth Anderson, who leads the research and education affiliate of the American Hospital Association, confidently pointed to the professionalism of most health care workers in the AIDS, H1N1 flu and other past American epidemics as an indication “our staff will step up.”

But Nelson, of Johns Hopkins, pointed to the “huge problem” in Africa, where health care workers have walked off the job. “I think that could be a problem in the United States, because a lot of the population is really terrified,” he said.

12 The Weekly News Digest, Oct 27 thru Nov 3, 2014

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

AFTER FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN GETS G R E E N B O O M A N D G L U T TOKYO (AP) -- Like other Japanese who were banking on this country’s sweeping move toward clean energy, Junichi Oba is angry.

is determined to restart at least some of the reactors, and that plan is beginning with Kyushu Electric’s two Sendai reactors, which the government says have cleared revamped, post-Fukushima safety standards.

Oba, a consultant, had hoped to supplement his future retirement income in a guilt-free way and invested $200,000 in a 50 kilowatt solar-panel facility, set up earlier this year in a former rice paddy near his home in southwestern Japan.

Japan’s energy policy, rewritten after the Fukushima crisis, set a goal for renewable energy including solar, wind, water and geothermal power to provide about 20 percent of energy needs by 2030.

But Kyushu Electric Power Co., the utility to which he must sell his electricity, has recently placed on hold all new applications for getting on its grid. Four other utilities have made the same announcement and two more announced partial restrictions.

Before Fukushima, renewable energy in Japan had been virtually zero.

Abe still professes a commitment to green energy but the recent developments raise doubts that also affect foreign investors and local corporations.

The utilities say they can’t accommodate the flood of newcomers to the green energy business, throwing in doubt the future of Japan’s up-tonow aggressive strategy on renewable energy. Another challenge is that supplies of power from sources such as solar are not reliable enough or easily stored.

“Kyushu electric shock is spreading in a domino effect,” said Oba. “It’s like fraud on the national level, with utility companies and the government in cahoots with each other.”

Traumatized by the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and encouraged by the highest rates for renewable energy in the world, Japan has been undergoing a green boom. It’s now rapidly turning into a fiasco as the cost proves prohibitive and utilities anticipate putting some nuclear reactors, shuttered since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, back online. The unfolding green glut in Japan echoes similar experiences in Germany and Spain.

The number of applications for solar facilities with Kyushu Electric jumped to 72,000 in March, about the same for the entire previous year.

People were trying to beat the April 1 lowering of the government-set tariff that utilities pay renewable energy producers to 32 yen (30 cents) a kilowatt hour from 36 yen (34 cents). The regular cost of electricity in Japan is about 23 yen per kilowatt hour.

If all the planned solar panels in Japan were installed, their capacity would equal 8 percent of overall energy demand. At the 32 yen tariff, a whopping 3 trillion yen ($30 billion) would be added to electricity bills.

U.S. solar companies have aggressively and nimbly set up shop in Japan, including First Solar Inc. and SunPower, in a reversal of the usual history of Japan Inc. being relatively closed to foreign businesses.

This undated aerial photo released by Softbank Corp. shows the Japanese telecommunications and Internet company’s Tottori-Yonago Solar Park which started commercial operation on Feb. 1, 2014 in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, western Japan. Softbank Corp., which has bought Sprint Corp. of the U.S., moved into the solar business after the Fukushima crisis. Softbank’s founder and CEO Masayoshi Son turned against nuclear power and became an advocate of renewables after his mobile networking went dead in the absence of electric power from the nuclear accident in 2011

Experts debating policy at a government committee are pushing for an immediate end to the guaranteed rates for solar power.

Oba is not alone in being worried his green energy income will evaporate. Most Japanese who invested in solar had hoped the higher rates for renewable energy would continue for 10 years or longer. Oba fears some green outfits may go bankrupt. Even individual families that put solar panels on their roofs to provide green electricity for their own homes could see the perks they had counted on disappear.

Before the nuclear disaster set off by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, atomic power had provided about a third of Japan’s energy needs. Resource-poor Japan imports almost all its oil and natural gas.

With all 48 working nuclear reactors now idled, the costs of such imports have weighed heavily on the world’s third largest economy.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative pro-business government

P L A N S F O R A N TA R C T I C M A R I N E R E S E R V E F A L T E R A G A I N create four smaller reserves off the coast of the East Antarctica also appeared headed for failure.

Mark Epstein, the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition environmental advocacy group, said that while geopolitical issues were likely a factor this time, it was too soon to give up on the consensus approach.

“Our profound hope is that all the members will come back to the original reasons and meaning for creating the convention,” he said.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A plan to protect a vast swath of ocean off Antarctica by creating the world’s largest marine reserve appeared headed for failure for the fourth time.

The countries that make decisions about Antarctic fishing finish a 10-day meeting Friday in Hobart, Australia.

In the future, he believes communities will form around decentralized energy sources, instead of going to a giant utility.

He lamented the mishandling by the Japanese government on the initiatives, and demanded a more open debate.

“We did not learn from the mistakes of Germany,” he said.

In Germany, as a result of green policies that began about 2010, and its decision to scale back its dependence on nuclear power after Fukushima in 2011, electricity bills skyrocketed and some people had their power turned off because they couldn’t afford to pay.

Yasuhiro Goto, deputy director at the government’s New and Renewable Energy Division, acknowledged that some serious sorting out was needed on solar applicants and the tariff system, and that would mean some people interested in the solar business would have to be turned away.

A limited approach had been considered from the start, he said, but the government opted for no limits because it wanted to encourage widespread participation in the green initiative.

“Wait and be patient,” he said. “Our plan is going very well. It just went too fast.”

Q U E S T I O N S , A B O U T H A W A I I

A N S W E R S L A V A F L O W

The lava emerged from a vent in June. It started moving through thick vegetation that made it difficult at times to see deviations in topography, he said.

But it’s looking like the lava is headed to Pahoa Village Road, which runs through downtown.

“Laterally it might be a little to the right or left, but it will head to the road” - unless it suddenly stops moving, Vanderkluysen said.

What’s less predictable is where a new branch will sprout from the miles-long flow and spread in other directions.

“It’s very disappointing from the U.S. perspective,” he said.

Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Southern Ocean protection project for The Pew Charitable Trusts, said it might be time to consider new approaches, such as consumers, or nations, refusing to buy fish that has been caught inside the proposed reserve boundaries.

Hiroaki Fujii, who heads Softbank’s renewable business, SB Energy Corp., said Japan needs to define the overall master-plan of what it sees as the “best mix” for energy including wind, solar and others, instead of blindly heading into a renewable push.

The Russian delegation could not be immediately contacted for comment Thursday.

U.S. delegation leader Evan Bloom said Thursday a consensus once again appeared unlikely.

Russia is one of several nations that have fishing interests in Antarctica’s waters. The Ross Sea is home to the Antarctic toothfish, a lucrative species that is often marketed in North America as Chilean sea bass.

The company has built or is planning 20 solar and wind-power facilities in Japan, and is even working on wind generation in the Gobi desert, confident that electricity will become deregulated and decentralized.

Goto urged those who were exasperated, like Oba, to calm down, although he said a solution such as expanding grid access would take time.

But all countries must agree, which they have failed to do at three previous meetings.

Russia was a key holdout in the past among the 24 nations and the European Union that comprise the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. Political tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine have likely only added a further hurdle this time.

Softbank’s founder and CEO Masayoshi Son turned against nuclear power and became an advocate of renewables after his mobile networking went dead in the absence of electric power from the nuclear accident.

The convention was established in 1982 with the express objective of conserving Antarctic marine life.

Most favor a U.S.-New Zealand proposal to ban most fishing in a sanctuary sprawling across 1.34 million square kilometers (517,000 square miles), or twice the size of Texas, in the Ross Sea.

He said a “small number of countries” opposed the proposal, but he declined to name them as the closed-door negotiations were continuing.

Softbank Corp., a Japanese telecommunications and Internet company, which has bought Sprint Corp. of the U.S., also moved into the solar business after Fukushima.

This Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014 photo provided by the U.S. Geological Survey shows lava that has pushed through a fence marking a property boundary above the town of Pahoa on the Big Island of Hawaii.

HONOLULU (AP) -- Lava that has entered a rural Hawaii town has been described as a disaster in slow motion. After months of creeping through uninhabited areas of the Big Island, it reached Pahoa this week, crossing a residential street, burning down a garden shed and inching toward homes and a main road that goes through downtown.

The lava is from Kilauea, one of the most active volcanos in the world.

It has been actively erupting since 1983.

HOW PREDICTABLE IS ITS PATH?

“We don’t have a good grasp of where breakouts are going to happen,” he said.

HOW HOT IS THE LAVA? About 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. “Ten times hotter than boiling water.”

But the temperature starts to drop after the lava is exposed to air.

“The crust cools down, and you can walk on it after a few days,” Vanderkluysen said.

CAN ANYTHING BE DONE TO STOP IT?

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory have the tools to monitor active volcanos to determine if an eruption is imminent and forecast the path of a lava flow.

“Lava diversion is a very complex issue,” Babb said. “It’s a complex legal, political, technical and cultural issue.”

“It’s crushing that for the fourth time in three years this hasn’t gotten through,” she said.

But lava is still a natural phenomenon, and much like a hurricane, some uncertainty remains.

The U.S.-New Zealand proposal had been a decade in the making and has gotten strong support from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The proposal would ban fishing from most of the reserve while allowing for limited scientific catches in some areas.

Residents have expressed anger at suggestions to divert the Kilauea flow, saying it’s culturally insensitive to interfere with the will of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

The Big Island’s topography contributes to deviations in the lava’s route, said volcanologist Loyc Vanderkluysen, as assistant professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia who earned a doctorate degree from the University of Hawaii.

Attempts were made to stop flows from Italy’s Mount Etna by building trenches and concrete walls. But that was only partially successful.

A second proposal by Australia, France and the European Union to

Such efforts also are extremely expensive, noted Vanderkluysen.