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US ORDERS AGENTS TO MONITOR T RAVE L E R S FOR EBOLA

U.S. official said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Homeland Security agents at airports and other ports of entry have begun observing travelers coming into the United States for potential signs of Ebola infection and handing out fact sheets about the disease, a

The official did not provide details as to what specific additional new measures are being taken. Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Customs and Border Protection agents are handing out information sheets to travelers with details of what symptoms to look for and directions to call a doctor if they become sick within 21 days - the incubation period for Ebola. The fact sheet appears to specifically address those travelers arriving from countries affected by the disease. continued on page 2

COST OF EBOLA COULD TOP $32 BILLION

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EBOLA TRAINING FOCUSES O N A S T R O N A U T- L I K E G E A R

you get pretty nervous with a patient that you know has a high viral load,” he said. “Then you get fogged up and you get anxious and you could start pulling at your” equipment, which could be contaminated with virus. “So you have to mentally go through this a number of times and become well-versed. So it becomes a routine.”

CHICAGO (AP) -- The serious-faced physicians practice pulling on bulky white suits and helmets that make them look more like astronauts than doctors preparing to fight a deadly enemy. These training sessions at U.S. hospitals on Ebola alert and for health workers heading to Africa can make the reality sink in: Learning how to safely put on and take off the medical armor is crucial.

For U.S. hospitals, the CDC has issued guidance on how to spot suspicious cases and isolate them if necessary, with an emphasis on the importance of asking patients about recent travel to the outbreak region, where more than 3,400 people have died from the disease.

“When you’re in the real deal, remember to take your time,” biosafety expert John Bivona told doctors during a course this week at the University of Chicago’s medical center. Suits splashed with patients’ vomit or blood must be removed carefully, he explained. “As much as possible, grab from the inside” to avoid touching contaminated parts of the suits, he said. “Be liberal with disinfectant.”

Oct. 6, 2014, photo Dr. Michael O’Connor , left, and Dr. Mark Nunnally, learn how to use personal protective gear during Ebola preparedness training at the University of Chicago. U.S. hospitals are preparing for possible Ebola patients; the only one diagnosed so far in this country is being treated in Texas, while the outbreak in Africa has killed more than 3,400 people.

Looking stoic after this week’s training, Dr. Mark Nunnally said he’s “not overly worried, but I think there’s a legitimate concern” that someone with Ebola may arrive at the hospital’s door. An anesthesiologist, he’s among about 35 doctors and nurses who’ve volunteered to treat any Ebola patients who may show up at the Chicago hospital. Nunnally said he volunteered because “somebody has to do it, and I think it’s important to give care where there’s a need.” The University of Chicago medical staffers get several hours of Ebola training, plus refresher courses and videos in donning and doffing protective gear. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week started training volunteer health workers heading to Africa to help fight the epidemic. Dr. David Sugerman, an Emory University emergency room doctor heading soon to Sierra Leone, was among students in a CDC training session Monday in Anniston, Alabama.

Sugerman, who also works for the CDC, said breaches in health workers’ protective gear in West Africa have contributed to Ebola’s spread. “You realize going through these exercises how easy that is,” he said. “In Sierra Leone or Liberia or Guinea it’s going to be quite hot and humid. And you start sweating. And some of the procedures, like placing an IV, A member of the U.S army walks past a newly constructed Ebola treatment centre in Bongcounty, on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday Oct. 7, 2014. Liberia has been among the hardest hit nations at the center of the long outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people. As of Friday, there had been 3,834 confirmed Ebola cases and 2,069 deaths in Liberia, according to the World Health Organization. Forty-four percent of those cases were reported in the past three weeks, a signal that the infectious disease is spreading.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economic impact of the Ebola epidemic could reach $32.6 billion by the end of next year if the disease ravaging Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone spreads to neighboring countries in West Africa, the World Bank Group said Wednesday.

The economic impact could be limited if immediate national and international action stops the epidemic and alleviates the fear factor, the report said. Fear about the disease is causing neighboring countries to close their borders and airlines and businesses to suspend their commercial activities in the three worst-affected countries. The World Health Organization estimates that Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa and infected at least twice that many.

“It’s so easy to forget to ask about travel,” said Dr. Emily Landon, director of a University of Chicago infection control program. “That’s our one vulnerability.” Emergency room staffers are trained to focus on the most critical problem, like providing fast treatment for a heart attack or broken leg, she explained. If the same patient also has a fever and headache - common problems but also Ebola symptoms - “it’s hard to break that autopilot and say, `Oh, by the way, did you travel’” recently, Landon said. “We have to get them to break that autopilot every time.” Across town, at Rush University Medical Center, doctors got a frightening test run this past weekend when a man coughing up blood said he had been in contact with someone from Nigeria, one of the countries in West Africa where Ebola spread. ER staffers donned protective gear and immediately escorted him to a nearby isolation room, but tests showed he had bronchitis, not Ebola, said Dr. Dino Rumoro, Rush’s emergency medicine chief. Rumoro said he’s worked through similar scary disease threats - AIDS, SARS, swine flu and smallpox after 9/11 - that were in some ways more worrisome because many of them can spread invisibly through the air. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with blood, vomit and other body fluids, or contact with needles, syringes or other objects contaminated by the virus.

shareholders.

That statement was in line with testimony Monday by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who said the AIG bailout was specifically designed by the government to punish the company. Paulson, who headed the Treasury Department at the time of the rescue, said AIG shareholders should have faced punishment for the company’s troubled balance sheet. Geithner is expected to return Wednesday for a second day of testimony in the trial at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is also scheduled to testify later in the week.

“With Ebola’s potential to inflict massive economic costs on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and the rest of their neighbors in West Africa, the international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank.

It is far from certain that the epidemic will be contained by the end of the year, so the report estimated the economic costs of two scenarios as the battle against the disease continues. The report estimated that the economic impact could top $9 billion if the disease is rapidly contained in the three most severely affected countries, but could reach $32.6 billion if it takes a long time to contain Ebola in the three countries and it spreads to neighboring nations.

staff caring for him.

The lone Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States had traveled from Liberia but was treated and released the first time he sought care. At first, the Dallas hospital he went to said it didn’t know about his travel; it later said that information was provided and available to the medical

GEITHNER GRILLED IN C O U RT O V E R A I G B A I L O U T

The World Bank’s assessment said the economic impact of Ebola is already serious in the three countries and could be catastrophic if it becomes a more regional health crisis.

He added that the enormous economic cost of the current outbreak to the affected countries and the world “could have been avoided by prudent ongoing investment in strengthening health care systems.”

Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, in this July 25, 2012 file photo. Geithner, a key player in the U.S. government’s 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., is due back in court Wednesday Oct. 8, 2014 in a trial of a lawsuit filed by the insurance giant’s former CEO over the handling of the rescue.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Timothy Geithner, a key player in the U.S. government’s 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., is due back in court Wednesday in a trial of a lawsuit filed by the insurance giant’s former CEO over the handling of the rescue. On Tuesday, Geithner affirmed his belief that the bailout was needed to avert disaster for the financial system. Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve at the time of the rescue and later Treasury secretary.

A lawyer grilled Geithner at the trial of the lawsuit brought by former AIG Chairman and CEO Maurice Greenberg. He is suing the federal government for about $40 billion in damages, asserting that it violated the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by taking control of the insurance giant without “just compensation” for the shares it received. The $85 billion loan package for AIG, which was teetering toward bankruptcy in September 2008, gave the government control of 80 percent of the New York-based company’s stock. While upholding the necessity of the AIG bailout, Geithner in his testimony Tuesday also acknowledged that he had said the bailout “wiped out” AIG

Geithner was questioned for a full day by Greenberg’s attorney, David Boies. Geithner reconstructed in detail the New York Fed’s deliberations over and decision to extend the aid to AIG, and its discussions with AIG executives on terms for the loan. He frequently said he couldn’t recall specific facts or details. He said he was “deeply involved” in discussions to determine an interest rate for the loan to AIG, which was set at about 12 percent annually. Boies read from a Sept. 17, 2008 document written by a New York Fed official saying “AIG was told this was `take it or leave it.’ Nothing could be negotiated.” With Geithner giving AIG’s then-CEO Robert Willumstad an hour or two to get the company’s board to approve the terms, Boies asked Geithner, “You gave them a deadline, correct?” Answered Geithner: “I don’t know ... how I framed the deadline, but I made clear that we had very little time.” Geithner also acknowledged concern among New York Fed officials that AIG shareholders could vote to reject the government’s terms for the loan. continued on page 4

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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OBAMA: US WILL KEEP MAKING PROGRESS IN IRAQ, SYRIA took Duncan to the hospital, plus a handful of schoolchildren.

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The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through close contact with someone who has symptoms. People have to come into direct contact with the patient’s bodily fluids - blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen - and those fluids must have an entry point.

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For example, people might get infected by handling soiled clothing or bed sheets and then touching their nose, mouth or eyes, or if they are not wearing gloves while doing those tasks and have a cut on their hand.

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“If you sit next to someone on the bus, you’re not exposed,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said.

President Barack Obama, flanked by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, left, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaks to the media at the conclusion of a meeting with senior military leadership, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014, at the Pentagon.

DALLAS (AP) -- Four members of a family the U.S. Ebola patient was staying with were confined to their Texas home under armed guard Thursday as the circle of people possibly exposed to the virus widened and Liberian authorities said they would prosecute the man for allegedly lying on an airport questionnaire. The unusual confinement order was made after the family was “noncompliant” with a request not to leave their apartment, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said the confinement would help ensure the relatives can be closely watched, including checking them for fevers over the next three weeks. “We didn’t have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to,” he said. Several days of food have been delivered to the apartment. The family will not be allowed to receive visitors, officials said. Officials were concerned about the cleanliness of the home and hired a cleaning service to come, Lakey said. “The house conditions need to be improved,” he said. The infected man’s belongings, including clothes and possibly bed sheets, are bagged inside the home so the family cannot come into contact with them until they are removed, Jenkins said. Elsewhere, Texas health officials expanded their efforts to contain the virus, reaching out to about 80 people who may have had direct contact with Thomas Eric Duncan or someone close to him. None of the people is showing symptoms, but public-health officials have educated them about Ebola and told them to notify medical workers if they begin to feel ill, Erikka Neroes, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County Health and Human Services agency, said Thursday. The group will be monitored to see if anyone seeks medical care during the three weeks immediately following the time of contact, Neroes said.

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The 80 people include 12 to 18 who came in direct contact with the infected man, as well as others known to have had contact with them, she said. “This is a big spider web” of people involved, Neroes said. The initial group includes three members of the ambulance crew that

MON I TOR T R AV E LE R S continued from page 1 “You were given this card because you arrived to the United States from a country with Ebola,” the fact sheet says. It tells passengers to “please watch your health for the next 21 days” and to “take your temperature every morning and evening, and watch for symptoms of Ebola,” listed on the information sheet.

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Mayorkas said agents would observe all travelers for “general signs of illness” at the points of entry. He spoke at an airport security conference. The White House, in a fact sheet this week, generally described Customs and Border Protection practices of being alert to passengers with obvious illnesses, but did not specify exactly what would be done to find potentially infected passengers. The Obama administration has wrestled in recent weeks with what it can do, since arriving passengers may not be symptomatic when they arrive. Mayorkas said the department was aware of those issues and is “taking

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In Liberia, authorities announced plans to prosecute Duncan, alleging that he lied on a form about not having any contact with an infected person. Duncan filled out a series of questions about his health and activities before leaving on his journey to Dallas. On a Sept. 19 form obtained by The Associated Press, he answered no to all of them. Among other questions, the form asked whether Duncan had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of anyone who had died in an area affected by Ebola. “We expect people to do the honorable thing,” said Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority in Monrovia. The agency took the case to the Ministry of Justice, which will formally prosecute it. Neighbors in the Liberian capital believe Duncan become infected when he helped bundle a sick pregnant neighbor into a taxi a few weeks ago and set off with her to find treatment. The case has raised questions about whether a disease that has killed 3,300 people in West Africa could spread in the United States. U.S. health officials say they remain confident they can keep it in check. Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 to visit the family and fell ill a few days later. His sister, Mai Wureh, identified him as the infected man in an interview with The Associated Press. A Dallas emergency room sent Duncan home last week, even though he told a nurse that he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa. The decision by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to release him could have put others at risk of exposure to Ebola before he went back to the ER a couple of days later when his condition worsened. The man has been kept in isolation at the hospital since Sunday. He was listed Thursday in serious but stable condition. Liberia is one of the three countries hit hardest in the epidemic, along with Sierra Leone and Guinea. In Duncan’s Liberian neighborhood, a collection of tin-roofed homes, has been ravaged by Ebola. So many people have fallen ill that neighbors are too frightened to comfort a 9-year-old girl who lost her mother to the disease. The 19-year-old pregnant woman was convulsing and complaining of stomach pain, and everyone thought her problems were related to her pregnancy, in its seventh month. No ambulance would come for her, and the group that put her in a taxi never did find a hospital. She eventually died. In the following weeks, all the neighbors who helped have gotten sick or died, neighbors said. Paye-Layleh reported from Monrovia, Liberia. Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant and Paul J. Weber in Dallas, Emily Schmall in Fort Worth and Krista Larson in Monrovia also contributed to this report.

a layered approach.” A Liberian man with Ebola died Wednesday. He had come to Dallas in late September but did not display obvious signs of having the disease when he entered the U.S. Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa and infected at least twice that many, according to the World Health Organization. The virus has taken an especially devastating toll on health care workers, sickening or killing more than 370 of them in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - places that already were short on doctors and nurses before Ebola. President Barack Obama has said the U.S. will be “working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.” Extra screening measures are in effect at airports in the outbreak zones. Departing passengers are screened for fever and asked if they have had contact with anyone infected with the disease. Dr. Tom Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this week that officials are looking at all options “to see what we can do to increase safety of all Americans.”

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

C O M P A N Y W I N S N E W C O N T R A C T S D E S P I T E F E D E R A L P R O B E but their warnings were ignored.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army has awarded $80 million in helicopter contracts to Wall Street executive Lynn Tilton even as the Justice Department is investigating whether she played by the rules to win earlier military work.

In their lawsuit, Marsteller and Swisher said they grew increasingly concerned over the “level of Col. Vergez’ subservience to Tilton and his continuing involvement in MD’s Army contracts” while he awaited a high-paying job with the company that Tilton promised him once he retired from the Army.

Tilton is the founder of the private equity firm Patriarch Partners, which owns MD Helicopters of Mesa, Arizona, and dozens of other companies. The Justice Department inquiry is focused on Tilton’s hiring of a former Army officer who allegedly steered millions of dollars in contracts to MD Helicopters while the pair negotiated his future employment. The Associated Press reported in March that Tilton and Bert Vergez, a retired colonel who ran an Army acquisition office in Huntsville, Alabama, were in unusually close contact for more than a year before Vergez retired from military service in late 2012. Three months later, he was working for Tilton. Under the terms of the two new deals, MD Helicopters will provide Afghanistan’s air force with armed helicopters. The contracts are underwritten by the Army and buttress President Barack Obama’s plan to shift the security mission to the Afghans from the U.S.-led coalition, which is scheduled to leave at the end of 2014. The Justice Department is looking into allegations that Vergez provided Tilton with details about upcoming contracts to give her company an advantage over the competition, according to internal company documents obtained by the AP and interviews with people knowledgeable of the investigation but not authorized to discuss the matter. Vergez’s hiring by Tilton so quickly after hanging up his uniform may have violated rules requiring that federal officials wait a year or more before receiving compensation from a company they dealt with while working for the government. Investigators are also examining whether the government paid inflated prices for rotorcraft it purchased from MD Helicopters. Vergez, who is no longer employed by MD Helicopters or Patriarch Partners, did not return emails and telephone calls seeking comment. Amy Romano, a spokeswoman for MD Helicopters, said in an email that it “is MDHI’s clear understanding that neither MDHI nor Patriarch

Romano described Marsteller and Fisher as “disgruntled former employees” and said their allegations are “wholly without merit.” Defense Department spokeswoman Maureen Schumann said it is department policy to not comment on any ongoing litigation or ongoing investigation. The Justice Department declined to comment.

Lynn Tilton speaks in Gorham, N.H. The Army has awarded $80 million in helicopter contracts to Wall Street executive Lynn Tilton even as the Justice Department is investigating whether she played by the rules to win earlier military work. The Associated Press reported in March that Tilton and Bert Vergez, a retired colonel who ran an Army acquisition office in Huntsville, Alabama, were in unusually close contact for more than a year before Vergez retired from military service in late 2012. Three months later, he was working for Tilton.

Partners is the target of any criminal investigation.” Romano, however, declined to say who provided that understanding. Emails to Tilton were not returned.

The potential scope of the Justice Department’s probe is detailed in a series of documents distributed to a small group of personnel at MD Helicopters earlier this year by Mike Killham, the company’s general counsel. The documents detail a wide range of records U.S. government attorneys were seeking and the company’s obligation to provide the information. The requested records include material related to Vergez’s hiring, the relationship between Tilton’s companies and the acquisition office in Huntsville, and the Army’s prior purchases of rotorcraft from MD Helicopters for foreign customers. Government attorneys also wanted Tilton’s phone message logs, day planners and expense records. Separately, two former employees of MD Helicopters have filed a civil suit against Vergez, Tilton and her companies under the Federal False Claims Act. Philip Marsteller and Robert Swisher said they told their superiors that hiring Vergez would be illegal, according to the lawsuit,

MOM, BEAU PLEAD NOT GUILTY I N A L C O H O L - I N - I V D E AT H Robitille told police that she had drunk three or four beers the same night and initially said she gave Isaac about 3 teaspoons of vodka. She later changed her story to agree with Richters’ version of events, police said. She plugged in a baby monitor because she was worried about the vodka, court records show. When police asked what she would say if Isaac were there, she said: “I’m sorry baby,” according to court records. If convicted, the couple could face a sentence of 20 years to life. In the town of Hardwick in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom, the three-story clapboard home where Isaac died was quiet Wednesday.

CORRECTS SPELLING OF NAME TO RICHTERS NOT RICHTER This photo provided by Vermont State Police shows Melissa Robitille. Vermont State Police say Robitille and her boyfriend, Walter Richters III put alcohol in her disabled son’s IV tube, killing the 13-year-old boy. They were charged Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014 with murder.

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) -- A man told police he poured vodka into the IV feeding tube of his girlfriend’s disabled 13-year-old son to settle him down, a dose of alcohol that contributed to his death, according to court documents released Wednesday. Walter Richters and Melissa Robitille, both 38, were charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 22 death of Isaac Robitille. They entered not-guilty pleas at their arraignment Wednesday afternoon in Caledonia County and were ordered held without bail. Neither spoke. “There is great evidence of guilt,” said Maria Byford, deputy state’s attorney. Isaac was born with significant medical conditions and disabilities that required the assistance of caretakers for up to 80 hours a week. Feeding tubes supplied him with a strict diet of a pediatric nutritional drink, baby formula, water and vitamins. Court records show that Robitille told police that an insurance foul-up meant she was paying $800 a month for the formulas. Isaac’s health conditions included a brain abnormality listed as the cause of death with alcohol listed as a contributing factor. An autopsy showed his blood alcohol content was .146 percent, about twice the legal limit for adult drivers. “I feel for her, whatever it was that happened,” said Aisha Cameron, who befriended Robitille in a writer’s group and described seeing nothing but love for Isaac whenever she visited. “They had a profound connection.” Richters told police in an interview Tuesday that he drank a fifth of vodka and played video games. He said he had asked Robitille if he could give Isaac a little vodka “as he was acting fussy” and she answered that it wouldn’t hurt. He said he poured into the IV bag for about two seconds. Richters said he then passed out in a chair, and when he woke up the next morning, Robitille had already found Isaac dead. Richters said he and the boy bonded when Isaac hugged him during a nap.

Barbara Larabee, who has lived next door for eight months, said she rarely spotted the family outside but saw school buses pick up and drop off Isaac. “Knowing that he lived there and that he has all those handicaps, you assume the people there want to take care of him to the best of their ability and you hope that’s going to happen,” Larabee said. “I just don’t understand it.” On her website, Robitille describes herself as a clothing and jewelry designer, interior decorator, dog breeder and writer who has self-published two paranormal romance novels. Her husband, Dana Robitille, died in January. In December 2005, Melissa Robitille and Isaac, who had just turned 5, appeared on WCAX-TV to talk about the gift he was receiving from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a puppy named Tickle, who has since died.

E B O L A PAT I E N T continued from page 1

In a moment of levity during the tedious back-and-forth, Boies - a famed litigator known for his fight for gay marriage and advocacy of Al Gore before the Supreme Court in the 2000 election - asked Geithner whether he had a “high regard” for Greenberg. “I had ... I would say a complicated regard for him, just to be honest about it,” he replied. AIG nearly collapsed after making huge bets on mortgage investments that later soured. Federal regulators were concerned that if it were allowed to fail it would send shock waves through the financial system, which was already reeling after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September of 2008. AIG became a symbol for excessive risk on Wall Street and a touchstone of public anger. It was criticized, among other things, for paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives after it was bailed out. The $85 billion loan package eventually grew to $182 billion in government aid, which AIG has since repaid. The company has returned to profitability, and its stock has risen more than 45 percent over the past two years.

The contracts were awarded to MD Helicopters between Sept. 19 and Oct. 1. The first, worth $35.6 million, is for 12 of the company’s 530F helicopters. The second could be worth as much as $44.2 million and covers the installation of weapons on these helicopters as w

LAWMAKERS CONSIDER CHANGES TO SECRET SERVICE WASHINGTON (AP) -- Key members of Congress are weighing dramatic changes to the embattled Secret Service, including moving it out of the Homeland Security Department and breaking up its mission. The proposals come as lawmakers assess how to improve the agency after a series of scandals, including a White House break-in by a man with a knife last month. The agency’s director, Julia Pierson, resigned amid the controversy, but lawmakers are promising they’ll continue their focus once Congress reconvenes after the Nov. 4 midterm elections. In the latest development, The Washington Post reported Thursday on evidence implicating a White House advance team member in a prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents in Colombia in 2012. White House officials have denied involvement by anyone on their team, but the Post story said White House officials were informed at the time. One suggestion for improving operations at the Secret Service involves moving it back into the Treasury Department, where it resided for decades until the creation of the Homeland Security Department following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “Looking at the positioning of the agency, whether it should be in Treasury or be in Homeland Security, is one issue that must be taken up” as part of an independent review, said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which hosted Pierson at a hearing last week prior to her resignation. A top committee Republican, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, said, “I haven’t heard anyone make a strong case that it really is working the right way” within Homeland Security. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson defended the current arrangement, telling Fox News Channel the Secret Service belongs in Homeland Security because the service includes a law enforcement and financial crimes component, as well as presidential protections. “I think that it makes a tremendous amount of sense,” he said. But some current and former Secret Service agents trace the decline of morale and performance at the agency to its move into DHS, which they say shoehorned the trim and well-functioning Secret Service into a snarled bureaucracy where it became management-heavy and had to compete for its budget with other law enforcement entities. “The Secret Service was essentially allowed to run its business unencumbered, with lack of interference,” said Dan Emmett, a former agent at the Secret Service and author of a new book on the subject. “Then this monstrosity of a department called DHS was created, and the Secret Service was unceremoniously ripped from Treasury where it had operated so efficiently.” Congressional aides note that the Secret Service director no longer testifies in support of the agency budget at open Appropriations Committee hearings, as happened in earlier years. Lawmakers including Chaffetz and Cummings also question the dual mission of the Secret Service, which was created in 1865 to investigate counterfeit currency, and expanded to a presidential protection mission following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The agency, with a staff of about 6,500 and an annual budget hovering around $1.5 billion - making it a fraction of the size of some other Homeland Security entities - now also investigates credit card fraud and certain other financial crimes. “It’s a small agency, and to have two broad missions poses a challenge, so that has to be reviewed,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said. The Secret Service is now run by an acting director, Joseph Clancy. The Obama administration is preparing to announce the membership of an independent panel to scrutinize the Sept. 19 incident in which a man with a knife climbed over a White House fence and eluded security agents until he was deep inside the executive mansion, as well as related issues, and make recommendations for a new director. Those conclusions are due Dec. 15. Chaffetz is among lawmakers calling for the agency’s new director to come from outside the Secret Service. He also said he’s working to convene a task force of former Secret Service directors and top protective division agents to meet in December. Meanwhile, lawmakers say they’re still hearing from whistleblowers like those who disclosed details of some of the security breaches, including alarming facts about the prostitution scandal, the White House intrusion and an incident in which an armed security contractor rode in an elevator with the president, contrary to agency protocols. “The morale seems to be a bigger problem than I first anticipated,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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The Florida Highway Patrol has reopened the left lane after completely shutting down the roadway. A second crash then occurred at I-75 and Moccasin Wallow Road, just north of I-275. The Florida Highway Patrol has since reopen[...]

C r a s h o n I - 7 5 n e a r m i l e m a r k e r 1 1 6 i s c l e a r e d The scene is cleared according to FHP after a crash and debris on I-75 near mile marker 116, southbound slowed traffic this morning.[...]

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Southbound I-75 is completely shut down in Dade City after yet another wrong-way crash.[...] OCT 10, 2014 06:18AM

Tr a c t o r t r a i l e r, c a r c r a s h o n I - 5 9 5 i n D a v i e ; o n e p e r s o n i n j u r e d One person was taken to a hospital Wednesday afternoon after a tractor trailer and a car crashed on Interstate 595 in Davie, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.[...] OCT 10, 2014 05:30AM

Truck stopped by Nassau County before school bus crash A truck slammed into the back of a school bus from Starke Elementary School in Bradford County. Shannon Sherrell Ford, 35. Shannon Sherrell Ford, 35.[...] OCT 10, 2014 07:39AM

Lakeland Man Sentenced to 1 2 Ye a r s I n D U I M a n s l a u g h t e r Case The woman who caused a car crash on Interstate 4 that killed a 30-yearold Lakeland father of two in 2012 has been sen A 31-year-old Lakeland man was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison for DUI manslaughter in a crash that killed a teenage boy who[...]

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

R E V I E W: S T I R D E S K M A K E S

K I N E T I C S M A R T Y O U S T A N D U P

NEW YORK (AP) -- You may want to sit down for this. Then get up. Then sit down again.

that’s not particularly helpful, because muscles fatigue very quickly and the circulatory system is not being helped,” Hedge says. “When you’re moving around ... it activates what’s called the muscle pump that helps to return blood back to the heart.”

That’s because there’s a desk out there that tells you to do exactly that.

So the $2,000 question here is whether you have the willpower and presence of mind to do that without a smart desk reminding you and helping you track your behavior.

The Stir Kinetic is probably the world’s first “smart” desk. It has a built-in touch screen, so you can see this either as a desk with a smartphone in it or a smartphone with a desk attached.

I used the Stir for a week, and the benefits of the sit-stand regime were pretty obvious. I felt more alert at work and less tired at the end of each day. I’m less sure about the benefit of the reminders. They tended to come at the wrong times. Bloated with lunch, I didn’t want to stand up. When on a roll, I didn’t want to sit down.

Why does a desk need to be smart? One answer is that it has motors and needs smarts to control them. The motors raise and lower the desk surface. You program it with the height you need for sitting and the height you need for standing. It moves, quietly, between them. The other reason the desk needs smarts is that you don’t have them. Well, not you, in particular, but people like you. Apparently we know that sitting all day is not good for us, but when we get motorized desks, we don’t use them very much. “Users were, in general, positive to the worktables, but showed poor compliance in using them,” as some Swedish researchers put it in 2005. Stir was founded by a former Apple engineer, making it sort of like the Nest thermostat of desks. Both are everyday objects imbued

O F F - D U T Y S T. L O U I S COP KILLS MAN, S PA R K I N G P R O T E S T

This undated product image provided by Stir shows the Stir Kinetic desk. The Stir Kinetic is probably the world’s first “smart” desk. It has a built-in touch screen, so you can see this either as a desk with a smartphone in it or a smartphone with a desk attached.

with top-notch software. The Nest figures out when you’re home and varies the temperature accordingly; the Stir desk knows if you’re in front of it. The Stir knows if it’s at the standing or sitting level and keeps track of how long you’ve been in that position. After 20 minutes or whatever interval you select, it will tell you to switch positions. It does so by “breathing” - it gently moves up an inch, then settles down. Nothing further happens unless you tap the touch screen twice to confirm you want to change positions. You can buy a “dumb” motorized standing desk for $1,500. There are also some nifty designs with mechanical counterbalances for the same price. There was even a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign offering a bare-bones motorized table for $369. The Stir Kinetic costs $3,890, plus tax and $299 for shipping. So if you disregard the other qualities of the desk (and the white-glove delivery service), you’re paying more than $2,000 for its smarts, which do the same thing as any number of free timer apps. A standing desk isn’t going to do you any good on its own, says Alan Hedge, a professor of ergonomics at Cornell University. What helps is moving around a lot and switching positions. “If you’re sitting in a static posture or standing in a static posture,

Crowds confront police near the scene in in south St. Louis where a man was fatally shot by an off-duty St. Louis police officer on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. St. Louis Police Lt. Col. Alfred Adkins said the 32-year-old officer was working a secondary security job late Wednesday when the shooting happened.

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- An off-duty St. Louis police officer shot and killed a black 18-year-old who had fired at him, authorities said Thursday. The killing led to an angry demonstration, with some protesters likening it to the August killing of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white officer in nearby Ferguson. St. Louis Police Chief Col. Sam Dotson said the 32-year-old officer, whom he didn’t identify, was patrolling the historic Shaw neighborhood in his police uniform for a private security company at around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday when he saw three males, and one of them ran off before stopping. When the officer did a U-turn, all three ran, so the officer gave chase, first in his car and then by foot. During the chase, he got into a physical altercation with the one he eventually killed, Dotson said at an early-morning news conference. Dotson said that at one point, the suspect’s shirt raised and the officer saw what he thought was a gun. “The officer said he wanted to be certain it was a gun and did not fire at that point,” he said. The chief said the suspect, whom he didn’t identify, ran up a hill, turned and opened fired on the officer, who returned fire and killed the man. Ballistic evidence shows that the teen fired three shots and tried to fire again but his gun jammed, he said, noting that the 9mm gun was recovered. The officer, a six-year veteran of the St. Louis police force whose race wasn’t immediately disclosed, fired off 17 rounds. Dotson said he didn’t know how many of those bullets struck the suspect, or why the officer, who wasn’t hurt, fired that many shots. “An investigation will decide if the officer’s behavior was appropriate,” he said. People who described themselves as relatives of the man who was killed told The St. Louis Post Dispatch that he was not armed. Hours after the shooting, a crowd gathered at the scene near the Missouri Botanical Garden. Some shouted “Hands up, don’t shoot” in reference to the fatal shooting in August of an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson. That shooting led to weeks of sometimes violent unrest in the St. Louis suburb. A state grand jury is deciding if the officer, Darren Wilson, will face charges. He has not been seen in public since the Aug. 9 shooting. Dotson said some in the crowd Wednesday night shouted obscenities at officers and damaged police cars, but that the officers “showed great restraint.” He added: “Any police officer use of force certainly will draw attention.” No demonstrators were arrested and by 1 a.m. Thursday the crowd had largely dispersed. Dotson said he wasn’t aware of any video of the shooting. “We want to be open and transparent and as thorough as we possibly can,” Dotson said. It was the third fatal police-involved shooting in the St. Louis area since Brown’s death. On Aug. 19, Kajieme Powell, 25, was shot by St. Louis city officers after moving toward them with a knife while telling them, “Shoot me now. Kill me now.” Both officers fired six shots each. Powell died at the scene. On Sept. 17, officers shot and killed a 42-year-old man in the St. Louis County town of Jennings after the suspect allegedly slammed his vehicle into two police vehicles before pointing a rifle at officers.

The Stir is supposed to learn your habits, much like the Nest. But it takes four weeks for it to get your measure and start to use that knowledge to time its prompts. As I had it for only a week, I couldn’t test this feature. I was, of course, popular in the office that week. Everyone came by to look at the fancy new desk with its shiny, Apple-like white acrylic top. I was happy to demonstrate its features, which include USB and traditional AC power outlets hidden under lids. There’s plenty of space to hide your laptop power brick under these lids, too. Through the touch screen, you can connect the desk to Wi-Fi so it can download software updates. If you use a Fitbit exercise band, you can also have it send your standing times to Fitbit.com, which computes how many calories you’ve used that way. All in all, it was a very pleasant experience. The worst I can say is that the touch screen is fairly sensitive and reacts not just to finger touches, but also to random objects landing on it. If a book, phone or pen edges on to the screen, it can start the desk surface moving. The remedy for this is to lock the screen by swiping down. This adds the extra step of unlocking it when you want to change positions. But the question remains in my mind: Would I feel just as good with a $1,500 sit-stand desk that doesn’t remind me to move? If money is no object, by all means get the Stir. But there’s quite a bit happening in the world of sit-stand desks, as evidenced by the recent Kickstarter campaign. It wouldn’t surprise me if desks that are cheaper, but just as capable, are just around the corner.

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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A I R S T R I K E S P U S H J I H A D I S T S B A C K I N S Y R I A N T O W N MURSITPINAR, Turkey (AP) -- New U.S.-led airstrikes near the Syrian border town of Kobani have helped Kurdish fighters push back the Islamic State group a day after it appeared on the verge of seizing the town, the fate of which has emerged as a key test of whether coalition air power can roll back the extremist group.

immediate word on casualties.

The new wave of airstrikes came as several Syrian human rights groups called on the world to save the embattled town from falling into the hands of the Islamic State group, whose fighters have broken through Kurdish defenders’ front lines and entered parts of the town over the last two days.

Heavy gunfire was heard from inside the town in a sign of fresh clashes Wednesday.

Meanwhile, an attack apparently carried out by Kurdish fighters inside the town destroyed a mosque minaret, which the Islamic State group had used as an outlook, activists said.

The advances by the Kurdish fighters came a day after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the town was about to fall and that the aerial campaign alone would not be able to save it.

The U.S.-led coalition has launched a series of strikes aimed at preventing the extremist group from seizing Kobani. An activist group said the strikes killed at least 45 Islamic State militants since late Monday, forcing the group to withdraw from parts of the town. “The airstrikes have helped. They were good strikes but not as effective as we want them to be,” said Idriss Nassan, deputy head of Kobani’s foreign relations committee. “Kobani is still in danger and the airstrikes should intensify in order to remove the danger.” “They (militants) have retreated inside the city because of the airstrikes and because of the ambushes that members of the People’s Protection Units carried out, killing many of Daesh’s fighters,” he said, referring to the main Syrian Kurdish militia and using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

A Turkish Kurd uses binoculars in Mursitpinar, on the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, as he watches the intensified fighting between militants of the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces in Kobani, Syria, background, Wednesday, Oct. 8 Oct. 7, 2014. Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab and its surrounding areas have been under attack since mid-September, with militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages.

coalition bombed Islamic State positions near Kobani. One airstrike, visible from the border, struck a hill and an open space near the town. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday’s strikes targeted Islamic State fighters east of Kobani.

Over the past few days thousands of Islamic State fighters armed with heavy weapons looted from captured army bases in Iraq and Syria managed to push into parts of the town, which is located on the Syria-Turkish border and is also known by the Arabic name of Ayn Arab.

The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that several airstrikes were launched near Kobani since Tuesday. It said four airstrikes south of Kobani destroyed an Islamic State group armored personnel carrier, an artillery piece and three armed vehicles, damaging a fourth. It said a fifth airstrike destroyed an armed vehicle and a sixth destroyed an artillery piece.

The Islamic State group has tightened the noose around Kobani since mid-September, when it launched a blitz in which it captured several nearby Kurdish villages and brought Syria’s civil war yet again to Turkey’s doorstep.

Since Monday night, the strikes have killed 45 Islamic State fighters in and around Kobani, targeting 20 separate locations and destroying at least five of their vehicles, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria.

The fighting has forced at least 200,000 town residents and villagers from the area to flee across the nearby frontier into Turkey. Activists say more than 400 people have been killed in the fighting.

The airstrikes also forced Islamic State fighters to withdraw from several streets they had controlled earlier, the Observatory added.

Around noon Wednesday, warplanes believed to be from the U.S.-led

The group said that an Islamic State suicide attacker set off a truck bomb in the town’s industrial neighborhood Wednesday. It had no

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON D O G S A N D E B O L A R I S K S helped care for a missionary priest who died of Ebola. The Madrid regional government got a court order to euthanize their dog, saying “available scientific information” can’t rule out “a risk of contagion.” Q: Does everyone agree that’s best? A: No. The dog’s owners don’t want it killed, and an animal rights group wants it quarantined instead, although it’s not clear how effective that would be since infected dogs don’t show symptoms, and it’s not known how long the virus can last in them. People walk by an advertising calling for financial help to fight Ebola in Africa in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014. Three more people were placed under quarantine for Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nurse became infected, authorities said Thursday. More than 50 other possible contacts were being monitored. The nurse, who had cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola, was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and infected at least twice as many.

Monkeys, bats and a menagerie of animals can spread Ebola. Now there’s worry that dogs - or one dog in particular - might spread it, too. Officials in Madrid got a court order to euthanize the pet of a Spanish nursing assistant who has the deadly virus. No case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs has ever been documented, but “clearly we want to look at all possibilities,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Questions and answers about the situation:

Dr. Peter Cowen, a veterinarian at North Carolina State University who has advised global health experts on animal infection disease risks, thinks officials are overreacting. “I think it’s very unfortunate they are thinking of euthanizing that dog. They should really study it instead,” he said.

Turkey has said it does not want the town to fall. It has encouraged the U.S. to set up a no-fly zone and a humanitarian corridor, as well as ramp up assistance to Syrian rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar Assad. The rebels also distrust the YPG, which they allege has conspired with Assad, allegations the Kurdish fighters deny. Several Syrian human rights groups meanwhile called on the world to save Kobani. In their appeal, the seven rights groups - including the Kurdish Organization for Human Rights and the Human Rights Organization in Syria said the Islamic State assault on Kobani and its “inhuman practices and measures have taken a clear form of persecution and ethnic cleansing.” The statement said that the fighting has displaced nearly 280,000 people who fled fearing “killings, executions, throat slitting, beheadings, mayhem and kidnapping of women and children.” The Islamic State group has conquered vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, declaring a self-styled caliphate governed by its strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah. The militants have massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorized minorities and beheaded two American journalists and two British aid workers. Last week, Islamic State fighters also beheaded nine Kurdish fighters, including three women, captured in clashes around Kobani. On Wednesday, a Kurdish activist said he was detained by Turkish authorities along with 157 residents from Kobani and other activists shortly after they crossed into Turkey three days ago. Mustafa Bali said the detainees include 33 women and nine children. Bali said the activists were to escort Kurdish civilians to safety in Turkey and then cross back. “They allowed us to cross and once we were in Turkey they detained us,” Bali said, speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from a school in the Turkish border village of Ali Kor.

ISLAMIC STATE GROUP DOWNS ANOTHER IRAQI HELICOPTER

Q: What about other dogs? A: The risk that dogs might spread Ebola is very small in the U.S. or other places where dogs aren’t near corpses or eating infected animals, said Sharon Curtis Granskog, a spokeswoman for the American Veterinary Medical Association. In Dallas, health officials are monitoring 48 people who may have had contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, but “we are not monitoring any animals at this time,” said Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey.

Q: Can dogs get Ebola? A: At least one major study suggests they can, without showing symptoms. Researchers tested dogs during the 2001-02 Ebola outbreak in Gabon after seeing some of them eating infected dead animals. Of the 337 dogs from various towns and villages, 9 to 25 percent showed antibodies to Ebola, a sign they were infected or exposed to the virus. Q: What’s the risk to people? A: No one really knows. Lab experiments on other animals suggest their urine, saliva or stool might contain the virus. That means that in theory, people might catch it through an infected dog licking or biting them, or from grooming. Q: Why is this dog suspect? A: The nursing assistant and her husband have been in isolation since she tested positive for Ebola this week. She

Turkish ground forces and tanks have been stationed along the border since the fighting began but have not intervened. Turkey has long distrusted the People’s Protection Units, known as the YPG, viewing them as an extension of the Kurdish PKK, which waged a long and bloody insurgency against Ankara.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

In this Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014 photo, released by the U.S. Air Force, A U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowler supporting operations against the militant Islamic State group, receives fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker over Iraq. After two months, the U.S.-led aerial campaign in Iraq has so far hardly dented the core of the Islamic State group’s territory. The extremists’ grip on major cities across Iraq and neighboring Syria remains unquestioned. The campaign has brought some gains, with Kurdish fighters taking back towns on the fringes of the Islamic State group’s territory. But those successes only underline a major weakness: Besides the Iraqi Kurds, there are no forces on the ground ready to capitalize on the airstrikes. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, Shawn Nickel)

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) -- A Philippines city devastated by the typhoon has begun burying its dead in a mass grave. The ceremony took place Thursday in graveyard just outside the city of Tacloban, where workers buried 30 bodies in black bags. No prayers were said. Mayor Alfred S. Romualdez says he hopes it is “the last time I see something like this.” Bodies have littered the streets of Tacloban since the typhoon hit on Friday, reducing most of the city of 220,000 to rubble. Authorities say 2,357 have been confirmed dead, but that figure is expected to rise, perhaps significantly, when information is collected from other areas of the disaster zone. Most damage appears to be concentrated on coastal regions of two main islands - Leyte and Samar

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

A C L O S E R L O O K : A P P S C A N D O

CHICAGO (AP) -- Many people use smartphone apps to map their drive to dinner or find a less-congested route to work. But did you know that you can use them for public transit, too? You can even access some maps offline, when you have a spotty connection or are in the subway.

W H A T M A P F O R Y O U You’re comparing restaurants on your laptop at home, and you don’t want to duplicate efforts when you leave the house. If you use Apple Maps, you can research places and directions on the Mac’s Maps app and hit a share button to send the destination to your iPhone or iPad. From the mobile device, you simply tap on that location to get voice-guided directions.

Here’s a look at what leading free map apps can do for you, whatever mode of transportation you choose: --BUMPER TO BUMPER Most major map apps show you current traffic conditions. The best guide you toward a little-known shortcut or less-obvious route to avoid congestion. If you’re in a traffic mecca such as Los Angeles, Waze is the app for you. Users update the map with the latest conditions, even reporting cars parked on the shoulder. Over the summer, several relatives and I left at the same time in three different cars for a theater in Hollywood. Only the driver using Waze got there in time. Google bought Waze last year, so Google Maps now factors in Waze’s user contributions, too.

This combination of screen shots shows mapping apps, from left, Apple Maps for iPhones, Microsoft Here for Lumia-branded Windows phones, and Google Maps for Android. Mapping apps have grown more sophisticated in the last five years.

“walk” if you’re hoofing it to your destination. Otherwise you might end up on a six-lane highway, miss shortcuts such as recreational paths and go out of your way taking one-way streets. I eliminated a one-block detour using Google Maps’ walk-specific directions to visit a friend in Chicago, for instance.

The Here app for Windows also will help you find the speediest route. But it doesn’t want you to get a ticket. The app knows speed limits for various roads and will beep when you go over, even by a small amount. (My travel companion turned that feature off by the first rest stop on a weekend trip to New Hampshire.)

Apple Maps is very user-friendly for walkers. As you walk, the distance displayed decreases, but the map itself doesn’t change. That confused me at first, but I came to appreciate it. Other apps tend to constantly refresh depending on where you are and how you’re holding the phone, which can be headache-inducing as you move your hand or arms. With Apple Maps, the direction you should be heading toward is on top, and the streets are fixed on right angles.

---

TAKING A STROLL?

PUBLIC TRANSIT

Map apps give you the choice to input what mode of transportation you plan to take on your route. It’s worth clicking

If you choose transit on Google Maps, it will include the walk to and from the bus or subway stop in its directions. Apple Maps doesn’t offer transit directions, but it will suggest transit apps you can install. I’ve been a fan of HopStop, one of the first transit apps, though I typically gravitate back to Google because it offers driving and walking directions in the same app.

R E P O RT: F E D E R A L BUDGET DEFICIT FALLS TO $486B WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government’s budget deficit has fallen to $486 billion, the smallest pool of red ink of President Barack Obama’s six-year span in office, a new report said Wednesday. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate shows better results than earlier projections by both CBO and the White House budget office.

--SYNCING WITH PERSONAL COMPUTERS

Google offers something similar, though it’s not as precise in practice. If I look up a destination on Google Maps on a Mac or Windows computer, the place is usually already there when I check my phone, as long as I’ve signed in to my Google account. It’s more automated than Apple’s approach, but sometimes the destination I need isn’t there. Other times, the app is cluttered with places I’ve searched for before but wasn’t necessarily intending to go to. Either way, it beats retyping everything on a phone’s small keyboard. --NO DATA CONNECTION? Here for Windows allows you to download maps for an entire state or country ahead of time so you can get directions when you don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to pay for data roaming abroad. The app is inconsistent in finding the right destination, but once it’s found, you can get voice navigation as long as your phone can locate a GPS signal. Unfortunately, it’s not available on Apple or Android devices. You need a Windows phone. Google has an offline option, too. You need to look up the location ahead of time and save that portion of the map by pulling up the info box at the bottom of the screen. (Though you don’t get directions - just the map.) Several third-party apps promise offline mapping, but you should expect to spend up to $10 on a premium version for anything useful. CoPilot’s free version is the most functional of the three I tried. You need to pay for voice guidance, but a passenger can follow upcoming turns on the screen for free. With Maps.me, you need to pay just to enter a destination. And even if you pay for Galileo, you still don’t get turn-by-turn directions from that app.

T E S L A A N N O U N C E M E N T S P A R K S S P E C U L A T I O N

It comes as Congress has mostly paused in its wrangling over the deficit in the run-up to the midterm elections next month.

in the snowy Northeast and Midwest as well as in Europe. Indeed, Tesla sales could use a boost - the company sold 13,850 cars in the U.S. through September, down 3 percent from a year ago.

Obama inherited a trillion-dollar-plus deficit after the 2008 financial crisis but that red-ink figure has improved in recent years as the economy has recovered. Last year’s deficit registered at $680 billion.

“If Tesla wants to be seen a true competitor to brands like Audi, BMW, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz, it needs to offer all-wheel drive,” said Karl Brauer, a senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

The government registered deficits exceeding $1 trillion during Obama’s first term, but the recovering economy has boosted revenues while Republican-imposed curbs on agency operating budgets have combined to shrink the deficit. The Treasury Department and the White House budget office will issue an official report on the budget in the next week or so, but their findings are likely to mirror CBO’s data, which is based on the daily cash flow that Treasury reports. The good news may be temporary. CBO and budget hawks warn that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation will balloon deficits in coming years unless Washington can bridge its divides and curb the growth of expensive programs like Medicare. The deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion in 2009 but fell to $680 billion last year. The government’s budget year ended Sept. 30. While the numbers are large, economists agree that the truest measure of the deficit is to compare it to the size of the economy. By that measure, the 2014 deficit was less than 3 percent of gross domestic product, which economists say is sustainable. But CBO and other budget officials warn that long-term projections are unsustainable as more and more people claim Social Security and Medicare benefits. The growth in health care spending, however, is down and long-term estimates have proven unreliable. Obama and his GOP rivals combined to curb agency budgets in 2011 and the president won a tax increase on upper-rate taxpayers last year, but any future action on the government’s budget woes will likely have to wait until after this year’s mid-term elections or beyond.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Electric carmaker Tesla Motors was expected to unveil an all-wheel-drive system - and perhaps more - at a much-hyped mystery event Thursday night near Los Angeles. Tesla didn’t confirm what it would show ahead of the event. The only hint came last week, when CEO Elon Musk tweeted, “About time to unveil the D and something else,” with a photo showing what looked like Tesla’s Model S sedan mostly hidden by a garage. The tweet prompted a swirl of speculation reminiscent of the launch of a high-demand, mass-market gadget - not something from a car company that sells just 35,000 luxury cars per year. Tesla’s shares jumped 4 percent the day after the tweet. Initially, the share price was up ahead of Thursday’s announcement, then in the afternoon it fell 1 percent to $257.01. Musk planned to deliver the answer at the municipal airport in Hawthorne where another of his companies - the commercial rocket firm SpaceX - is headquartered. Tesla also has a design studio at the facility. Analysts who track the company say the “D” is likely a reference to a “dual motor,” all-wheel-drive system. Tesla’s only current vehicle, the Model S sedan, is rear-wheel drive, with one motor controlling the wheels. That has hurt sales

Tesla has promised that its new Model X crossover, which is expected to go on sale next year, will have an all-wheeldrive system. The company recently upgraded its factory in the San Francisco Bay Area to produce the Model X, so it makes sense that the system could go onto the Model S, which is produced at the same facility. As for the “something else,” speculation swirls. “I’m reading the tea leaves like anybody else,” said Andrea James, an applied technologies analyst with Minneapolis-based Dougherty & Co. She has heard all sorts of theories, including that the “D” could stand for “drop top.” She doubts that a convertible is in the offing. After all, winter is approaching. Instead, James suspects the “something else” relates to “driver assist.” Tesla has updated its software in a way that foreshadowed features such as hands-free highway merging, James noted. And its competitors have been rapidly adding features to allow for semi-autonomous driving. Cadillac said last month that it will sell a car that can drive semi-autonomously on freeways by 2016. Thursday’s event was similar to the 2012 introduction of the Model X in Hawthorne, before a crowd of enthusiastic devotees. Gov. Jerry Brown attended that event, but he isn’t likely to show up Thursday. Tesla recently selected Nevada over California for its new $5 billion battery factory despite Brown’s lobbying.

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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U S , A L L I E S C H A F I N G A T T U R K I S H I N A C T I O N O N S Y R I A

ISTANBUL (AP) -- As U.S. generals and Secretary of State John Kerry warn that a strategic Syrian border town could fall to Islamic State militants, the Turkish military has deployed its tanks on its side of the frontier but only watched the slaughter.

ble vacuum, they say, will lead to further chaos that will only strengthen Assad. They want the U.S. to set up a no-fly zone and a humanitarian corridor, as well as ramp up assistance to Syrian rebels battling to overthrow Assad.

Turkey’s inaction despite its supposed participation in a coalition forged to crush the extremist group is frustrating Washington and its NATO allies, and reviving a rebellion by Turkish Kurds. Amid fears the Kurdish town of Kobani could fall any day, U.S. and NATO officials are traveling to Turkey on Thursday to press negotiations for more robust Turkish involvement in the coalition.

With its ambitious demands, Turkey may be betting that its geography makes it an indispensable partner and that it can leverage that position to force the U.S. and its allies to expand the coalition mission - an assumption that is causing frustration in Washington and strains within NATO, a senior U.S. administration official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

But Turkey is taking a hard line, insisting that it will only consider involvement in military action as part of a broader strategy for ending the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S. and its allies want to keep the focus on the Islamic State group, which they say poses a more global threat.

On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as President Barack Obama’s two envoys to the anti-Islamic State coalition, retired Gen. John Allen and Ambassador Brett McGurk, arrive for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to push for greater Turkish action.

Emphasizing the U.S. position, Kerry said Wednesday that although the Obama administration is “deeply concerned about the people of Kobani,” preventing the town’s fall to Islamic State militants was not a strategic objective for the U.S.

“As horrific as it is to watch in real time what’s happening in Kobani, it’s also important to remember, you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” Kerry told a news conference in Washington.

Turkey is ambivalent about the fight across its border, because of its distrust of the Kurdish fighters protecting Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab. It views them as an extension of the Kurdish PKK, the rebel group that has waged a long and bloody insurgency against Ankara. In recent days, Turkish officials have emphasized that they view both the Islamic State group and the PKK as terrorist groups.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, also conceded Kobani could fall because “air power alone is not going to be enough to save that city.”

Left unsaid is which group they view as the greater threat. But, Turkey’s strict neutrality as the lightly-armed Kurds face annihilation speaks volumes.

“We all need to prepare ourselves for the reality that other towns and villages - and perhaps Kobani - will be taken by ISIL,” Kirby said, adding that the key to eventually defeating the militants is to train and enable indigenous ground forces.

While Turkey maintains it does not want Kobani to fall, Turkish officials say they will not enter combat until they are assured that the U.S.-led coalition has a long-term strategy in Syria. They see Assad as a greater nemesis on their border than even the Islamic State. Taking out the militants without a plan to fill the inevita-

N E W AT T H E P O T S H O P : M I L D E R M A R I J U A N A F O R N O V I C E S won’t get them so inebriated they’re not functional,” said Holden Sproul of the Growing Kitchen, which makes the “Rookie Cookie” and is phasing out some of its stronger offerings. There’s no publicly available data on which products are selling. But interviews with dispensary owners and marijuana producers suggest the lighter products are booming. “We still get people walking in here saying, `What’s the strongest thing?’ But more and more they’re asking about flavor, the experience, the whole nine yards,” Cullen said. In Washington state, where sales of edibles are just beginning in recreational pot shops, some of the first licensed edible-makers are taking a similar approach. smaller-dose pot-infused brownies are divided and packaged at The Growing Kitchen, in Boulder. Recreational marijuana sellers are reaching out to novice cannabis users with edible products that impart a milder buzz and make it easy for inexperienced customers to find a dose they are less likely to regret taking. The marketing shift is the pot-industry equivalent of selling beer and wine alongside higher-alcohol options such as whiskey and vodka.

DENVER (AP) -- Recreational marijuana sellers are reaching out to novice cannabis users with a raft of edible products that impart a milder buzz and make it easy for inexperienced customers to find a dose they won’t regret taking. In many ways, the marketing shift is the pot-industry equivalent of selling beer and wine alongside higher-alcohol options such as whiskey and vodka. “No one buys a handle of Jim Beam and thinks they should drink all of that in one sitting,” said Tim Cullen, owner of two Denver-area marijuana dispensaries. “But people do want to eat an entire cookie, an entire piece of chocolate. So these products allow you to do that and not have a miserable experience.”

Nine months into Colorado’s recreational pot experiment, retailers have good reason to court new users. A market study released in July suggested 40 percent of customers in Denver-area recreational marijuana shops are tourists. That figure spikes to 90 percent in ski towns such as Aspen or Breckenridge. Tourists cannot shop in medical-marijuana dispensaries, so many of those customers may be buying legal weed for the first time. New on the shelves in Colorado’s recreational pot shops is the “Rookie Cookie,” a marijuana-infused confection that contains 10 milligrams of marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient. That’s a low enough dose that most adults wouldn’t be too impaired to drive a car. Then there’s a new marijuana-infused soda that’s 15 times weaker than the company’s best-known soda. The Dixie One watermelon cream soda contains 5 milligrams of THC - half of what the state considers a serving size - and is billed as “great for those who are new to THC or don’t like to share.” The wave of lighter choices comes as the new industry tries to pivot away from products aimed at frequent, heavy pot users to newer customers who weren’t interested in the drug when it was illegal. “For a long time, the medical market was a race to the strongest edibles. Now it’s a new market, and people want something that

The entire product line at Db3 Inc. in Seattle is based around the idea that consumers can control the effect they want - an idea based in part on market research that suggested people often had bad experiences because they over-consumed marijuana edibles. Among the products Db3 hopes to get on retail shelves in the coming weeks are liquid drops that can be added to beverages in precise amounts. “We recognize there are going to be a lot of nontraditional users coming into the market, or people who have used in the past a long time ago and who are just getting back into it,” said Patrick Devlin, one of the company’s founders. There’s more than market share at stake. Marijuana-legalization activists want to tamp down stories about pot users who got sick after eating potent medical-grade cannabis, an experience so common it seems everyone in Denver knows someone who endured it. Most serious was the March death of a college student who had never tried pot before visiting Denver for spring break. The man ate a single cookie that contained 65 milligrams of THC, then jumped to his death from a hotel balcony after his friends said he started acting erratically. And New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd famously wrote in June of trying a marijuana-infused candy bar, after which she “lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.” Colorado dispensaries have launched a “First Time 5” campaign of posters to encourage new users to take a 5 milligram half-dose of marijuana to make sure they don’t overdo it. A marijuana advocacy group has taken out billboards and magazine ads with the tagline “Start Low, Go Slow.” At least one marketing expert warned that pot producers need to be careful not to claim their products won’t cause intoxication. “Is it too early in the industry to go claiming what’s a low dose and what’s a medium dose?” asked Claire Kaufmann of Portland, Oregon, who consults for manufacturers and runs a “Rebranding Cannabis” blog. “We want to create a place for new consumers in our industry. We just need to be aware that we don’t get ahead of the science.”

Adding to the pressure on Ankara, Kurds in Kobani and in Turkey accuse the Turkish government of standing idly by while their people are being slaughtered and even impeding their own efforts to save Kobani. The anger boiled into violence Tuesday, amid widespread protests that threatened to derail promising talks to end three decades of insurgency by the PKK militant group. Nineteen people were killed as Kurdish activists clashed with police and members of an Islamist group in Kurdish areas across the country. The jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has warned that the peace process will end if Kobani falls. While two days of U.S.-led airstrikes seem to be slowing the advance of thousands of Islamic State fighters armed with heavy weapons, Kurdish officials warn they have failed to turn the tide. “The airstrikes have helped. They were good strikes, but not as effective as we want them to be,” said Idriss Nassan, deputy head of Kobani’s foreign relations committee. “Kobani is still in danger and the airstrikes should intensify in order to remove the danger.” Around noon Wednesday, warplanes believed to be from the U.S.-led coalition bombed Islamic State positions near Kobani. One airstrike, visible from the border, struck a hill and an open space near the town. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday’s strikes targeted Islamic State fighters east of Kobani. The U.S. Central Command said in a statement that coalition forces had launched airstrikes on six locations around Kobani since Tuesday. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said there were mixed reports about how many Islamic State militants pulled back from the town under pressure from the air. “We don’t have a force inside Syria that we can cooperate with and work with,” Kirby said, adding that the U.S. administration is planning to train and arm 5,000 moderate opposition Syrian fighters at sites elsewhere in the Middle East and then insert them back into Syria to take on Islamic State forces. Since Monday night, the strikes have killed 45 Islamic State fighters in and around Kobani, targeting 20 separate locations and destroying at least five of their vehicles, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria.

HEALTHCARE.GOV FIXES ERROR ON WEBSITE FOR LATINOS WASHINGTON (AP) -- HealthCare.gov has fixed a conspicuous translation error on its Spanish-language website that had puzzled native speakers. The site suffered from clunky translations last year, and the latest mix-up involved an attempt to let consumers know they can start to “get ready” now for 2015. The correct Spanish term for “get ready” was quietly spliced in Thursday. The original, incorrect, translation stood out because it was the first word on the home page, in large type. After The Associated Press reported the error, an administration spokesman at first said it was not a mistake but instead - quote - “an intentional tonal choice.” Latinos are more likely to be uninsured than other ethnic groups, but the administration has struggled to sign them up under the president’s health care law.

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The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

S I E R R A L E O N E : E B O L A B U R I A L T E A M S G O B A C K T O W O R K

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- Sierra Leone burial teams have gone back to work one day after organizing a strike over pay and abandoning the dead bodies of Ebola victims in the capital.

In Spain, the case of nursing assistant Teresa Romero has highlighted the dangers that Ebola poses for health workers and the fact they can contract it even in sophisticated medical centers in Europe.

In neighboring Liberia, however, health workers said Wednesday they planned to strike if their demands for more money and safety equipment were not met by the end of the week.

Dr. German Ramirez of the Carlos III hospital in Madrid said Romero remembers she once touched her face with protection gloves after leaving an Ebola victim’s quarantine room.

The expressions of frustration by beleaguered West African health workers came as Spanish officials investigated whether a nursing assistant infected with Ebola got the deadly disease by touching her face with tainted protective gloves. The case of Teresa Romero is the first known incident of someone contracting the disease outside the West African outbreak zone. The Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation reported this week that bodies of Ebola victims were being left in homes and on the streets of Freetown because of the strike by burial teams. The dead bodies of Ebola victims are highly contagious. But in a radio interview Wednesday morning, Sierra Leone’s deputy health minister Madina Rahman said the strike had been “resolved.” Later in the day, a team could be seen loading bodies outside a government hospital for burial in the west of Freetown. The team’s leader declined to be interviewed but said members had been promised hazard pay by the end of the day. Rahman said the dispute centered on a one-week backlog for hazard pay that had been deposited in the bank but was not given to burial teams on time. “The health ministry is going to investigate the delay in the health workers not receiving their money,” Rahman said. The burial teams make up a total of 600 workers organized in groups of 12, health ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis said. Tunis described the situation as “very embarrassing.” The government was already facing criticism this week over a shipping container filled with medical gear and mattresses that has been held up at the port for more than a month. In Liberia, health workers are demanding monthly salaries of $700 as well as personal protective equipment, said George

Health officials say Romero twice entered the room of Spanish missionary Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died of Ebola on Sept. 25 - once to change his diaper and again after he died to retrieve unspecified items. Ramirez said Romero believes she touched her face with the glove after her first entry. Heath workers collect samples from the body of a person suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, as it lies on the street covered in leaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Burial teams in Sierra Leone abandoned the bodies of Ebola victims in the capital after going on strike this week, though an official claimed Wednesday the situation had been resolved.

Williams, secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association. “We give the government up to the weekend to address all these or else we will stop work,” Williams said. The average health worker salary is currently below $500 even for the most highly trained staff. Finance Minister Amara Konneh has defended the compensation for health workers, saying last week that it was more than Sierra Leone and Guinea were offering. Health workers are especially vulnerable to Ebola, which is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of infected people. Liberia’s United Nations peacekeeping mission said Wednesday that an international member of its medical team had contracted Ebola, the second member of the mission to come down with the disease. The first died on Sept. 25. The mission is identifying and isolating others who may have been exposed and reviewing procedures to mitigate risk, Karin Landgren, special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said in a statement. More than 3,400 people have been killed this year by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has hit hardest in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

OBAMA TO TARGET MILLENNIALS WITH ECONOMIC PITCH Millennials, young people born roughly between 1980 and the mid-2000s, total a third of the U.S. population and many came of age during the Great Recession. They are also represent one of the most challenging voting blocs. Many millennials supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 but sat out the midterm election in 2010 that shifted control of the House of Representative to Republicans. White House officials say Democrats in close Senate contests must mobilize these voters to win and retain control of the Senate.

Secret Service agents surround President Barack Obama as he greets guests after speaking about the economy, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Obama is looking to frame the closing economic arguments of the midterm campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is targeting his midterm election economic message to young people born after 1980, a cohort that has shown itself to be reluctant to vote in nonpresidential contests. Obama will promote his economic policies Thursday at Cross Campus, a Santa Monica, California, hub for startup companies and entrepreneurs. Obama is highlighting policies such as college aid and health care that officials say have especially benefited members of the millennial generation. Thursday’s speech is one of several White House efforts to draw the attention of demographic groups that are crucial components of the Democratic voting coalition. Officials said Wednesday that in the coming weeks before the election Obama will highlight policies aimed at women, African Americans and Latinos.

“It appears we have found the origin” of Romero’s infection, Ramirez said, but he cautioned the investigation was not complete. Romero was said to be in stable condition Wednesday. Health authorities in Madrid have faced accusations of not following protocol and poorly preparing health care workers for dealing with Ebola. In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, Romero said she thought “the mistake was on taking off the suit. I see it as the most critical moment in which it could have happened, but I don’t know for sure.” “I haven’t got a fever today, I feel somewhat better,” she told the newspaper. In an earlier interview published by Spain’s El Mundo newspaper, she said she had followed safety protocols as part of the team treating two priests infected with Ebola. Her husband Javier Limon told the same newspaper that his wife went on vacation after Garcia Viejo died. She started feeling sick with a low fever Sept. 30 but still took a career advancement exam with other candidates. Health authorities say she did not leave the Madrid area during her vacation. In another interview Wednesday with Spain’s Cuatro television channel, Romero said when she started feeling sick and went to her local health center in Madrid’s suburbs she didn’t tell doctors she had helped treat an Ebola patient. She did not say why. She said she had received training about how to put on and remove her hazmat suit. She declined to give an opinion about whether the training was adequate. Yolanda Fuentes, assistant director of the Carlos III hospital, said Limon is in quarantine but has shown no symptoms of having contracted the disease. She said of the four others taken in for observation, three - a nurse, an assistant nurse and a man who had traveled to Nigeria - had all tested negative. If they test negative again they will be released. Another nurse admitted Wednesday is under observation but has not been tested so far for the virus.

The White House on Wednesday released a 49-page report by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers detailing the millennials’ role in the current economy and the policies that have affected them. The report says the rate of uninsured among millennials has fallen 13.2 percent since the new health care law took effect in 2010, largely due to a provision that allows young people to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. According to the report, millennials are the most diverse and the most educated generation to date. About 61 percent of adult millennials have attended college, compared to only 46 percent of Baby Boomers. Because many entered the job market during the Great Recession, the report states, “their early adult lives have been shaped by the experience of establishing their careers at a time when economic opportunities are relatively scarce.”

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10 The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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N E X T E D I T I H E A LT H C A R E . G O V I S

matically provided by HealthCare.gov - but that wasn’t possible.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration unveiled a new version of HealthCare.gov on Wednesday, with some improvements as well as at least one early mistake and a new challenge.

Administration spokesman Aaron Albright says there’s also a simpler way to do it. Consumers can select their plan from a list of all the plans they are eligible for on the website.

Officials also said that HealthCare.gov won’t display premiums for 2015 until the second week of November. Open enrollment season runs Nov. 15 through Feb. 15. Coverage can start as early as Jan. 1.

Existing customers who do nothing will be automatically re-enrolled in their current plan as of Jan. 1. But they will receive this year’s subsidy amount, which could be lower than what they’d be entitled to for 2015.

On the plus side, the health insurance website will feature a streamlined application for most of those signing up for the first time. Seventy-six screens in the online application have been reduced to 16, officials said. The site has been also optimized for mobile devices. The goof is a mistranslation in large type on the home page of the Spanish-language version of the site. It’s the very first word on the page. Trying to translate “get ready,” someone came up with the wrong word in Spanish. The Spanish-language site had lots of problems last year, ranging from technology issues to clunky translations that left some native speakers puzzled. The administration struggled to sign up Hispanics, the nation’s largest minority and more likely to be uninsured than other ethnic groups. This time, the website designers translated “get ready” as preparase. It should have been preparese - with an “e” instead of an “a.” The same mistake appears three times on the Spanish home page, which is supposed to be a mirror-image of HealthCare.gov. Such a prominent error can unintentionally send a message that the site was not designed to professional standards. HealthCare.gov is the online portal to subsidized private health insurance for consumers who don’t have access to a job-based plan. It served 36 states last open enrollment season, while the remaining states ran their own insurance exchanges. The feds as well as some states experienced crippling technical problems, and officials are vowing things will be different this time. “Where we are focusing in on is a successful consumer experience,” said Andy Slavitt, a tech industry executive brought in by the Health and Human Services department to oversee the relaunch.

And that could mean sticker shock over their new monthly premiums. Officials downplayed those industry concerns on Wednesday, saying many returning customers will want to shop around to make sure their current plan is still the best deal for them. This image shows the website for updated HealthCare,gov, a federal government website managed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service. The Obama administration has unveiled an updated version of HealthCare.gov. It’s got some improvements and some challenges. There’s also at least one early mistake.

Insurers say one big challenge for next year will involve millions of returning customers. It’s not really a technology issue, but a time crunch that also coincides with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Those returning customers will have just one month - until Dec. 15- to go back into their existing accounts and update their financial information. Acting by that date will ensure that they are getting the right amount of financial assistance with their premiums at the very start of the new plan year.

The industry says insurers had hoped that number would be auto-

Federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam has declined to speculate on any link between the speech and the violence.

The yearly report looked at deaths in 2012. It found:

The whereabouts of the mayor’s wife are unknown. In a Sept. 29 interview with Milenio Television, Abarca said he received reports from police that the students had been attacking and robbing people who had come to the speech and dance.

Investigators still had no word on whether the 28 bodies found in a mass grave over the weekend included any of the missing students, who disappeared after two attacks allegedly involving Iguala police in which six people were killed and at least 25 wounded.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Americans are living longer than ever before, according to a new government report filled mostly with good news. U.S. life expectancy inched up again and death rates fell. Rates also dropped or held steady for nearly all the leading causes of death. The one exception: The suicide rate reached its highest point in 25 years. That figure has been increasing since 2000 and “it’s really hard to say why,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention branch that issued the report Wednesday.

Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca is a fugitive, and state officials have arrested 22 city police officers, who have been replaced temporarily by a special federal police unit.

“Whose hands are we in?” said Rosa Ruth Rodriguez Mendiola, a housewife from the city of Atoyac who joined in the march in Chilpancingo.

mourners hold candles as they stand on a pedestrian bridge during a vigil for a junior high school student who died in an apparent suicide on a pedestrian bridge near Bennion Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah. A report released by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014 says although Americans are living longer than ever before - rates in 2012 are falling for most of the leading causes of death, with one exception of the still-climbing suicide rate which reached its highest point in 25 years.

Javier Monroy, an activist in Chilpancingo for the families of the disappeared, suggested the attack could have been caused by the local gang, Guerreros Unidos, which thought the students were going to disrupt the speech by Pineda, whose relatives have drug gang ties, according to prosecutors.

“I am not going to single out any hypothesis until I have confirmed which is the correct one,” he said late Tuesday.

The protesters shut down the highway that links Mexico City with Acapulco, marching behind a banner asking “Who governs Guerrero?” - a reference to the fact that local police working with organized crime have been implicated in the disappearances in the city of Iguala.

AMERICANS LIVING LONGER AS MOST D E AT H R AT E S FA L L

After those returning customers update their financial information, insurers say they’ll have to enter a 14-character plan identifier number on the website if they want to keep their current insurance policy.

The students from the radical rural teachers college had gone to Iguala to solicit donations from passers-by. They were meeting up to return home about the same time the mayor’s wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, was finishing a speech to local dignitaries downtown.

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico (AP) -- Tens of thousands of teachers, activists and residents marched and blocked a major highway in the Guerrero state capital Wednesday to protest the disappearance of 43 teachers college students and demand that authorities find them.

And those returning customers who miss the Dec. 15 date will still have until the end of open enrollment on Feb. 15 to update their financial information. The change would take effect March 1, and in the meantime they might have to pay more.

It’s estimated that more than 6 million of the 7.3 million people who signed up under President Barack Obama’s health law are receiving subsidies, which greatly reduce their premiums.

PROTESTERS JAM ROAD DEMANDING M E X I C O F I N D S T U D E N T S

People protest the disappearance of 43 students from the Isidro Burgos rural teachers college and demand authorities find them in Chilpancingo, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Federal officials say they still have no explanation for violence Sept. 26 that killed six, wounded at least 25 and left so many missing. Also, investigators still had no word on whether the 28 bodies found in a mass grave last weekend included some of the missing students

O N O F U N V E I L E D

“Don’t be provoked,” Abarca said he told them. “I don’t want any kind of violence ... Leave them alone, they’re just passing through.” He said he later received reports of confrontations in different parts of the city throughout the night. Prosecutors had identified Pineda’s late brother, Alberto Pineda, as a main lieutenant in the Beltran Leyva cartel. He and another brother, Marco Pineda, both were on former President Felipe Calderon’s most-wanted list and were killed by rivals in 2009. Another brother, Salomon Pineda, was released from prison last year and is believed to be the Iguala chief for Guerreros Unidos, an offshoot of the Beltran Leyva group, according to local media.

- U.S. life expectancy for a child born in 2012 was 78 years and 9 1/2 months, up about six weeks from life expectancy in 2010 and 2011. That’s a record. - For someone 65, the CDC estimates that men have about 18 years of life left and women about 20 1/2 years. The gaps between men and women grew slightly, compared to 2011. - There were 2.5 million deaths in 2012, or about 28,000 more than the year before. The increase was expected, reflecting the nation’s growing and aging population, Anderson said. - The infant mortality rate dropped again slightly, to a new low of 5.98 per 1,000 births. That’s a historic low, but the U.S. infant mortality rate continues to be higher than in most European countries. - Death rates for blacks and whites dropped but held steady for Hispanics. However, Hispanic death rates remain lower than the black and white numbers. - The 10 leading causes of death remained the same, with heart disease and cancer topping the list. Suicide is the 10th. The suicide rate rose more than 2 percent, to 12.6 per suicide deaths per 100,000 American. That’s the highest it’s been since 1987, when the rate was 12.8. Some research suggests suicides increase during hard economic times, but this trend has persisted before, during, and after the recession of 2007-2009. Some experts have said the sale and abuse of prescription painkillers in the last decade have been a contributing factor.

Murillo Karam said there was no hard evidence until now of the couple’s involvement in criminal activity.

Whatever the reason, “it’s kind of surprising,” said Solveig Cunningham, an Emory University researcher who has studied death rates during eras of financial hardship.

“We don’t investigate on the basis of kinship but rather facts,” he said.

The overall statistics suggest our society is getting better at medically managing conditions like diabetes and heart disease, she said. But maybe “we’re not able to manage mental health as well, resulting in devastating results” - the increasing suicide rate, she said.

The chief prosecutor for Guerrero state, Inaky Blanco, said suspects have testified that as many as 30 members of the Iguala police force were members of the Guerreros Unidos gang.

The CDC report compiles information from all U.S. death certificates from 2012. Researchers use the death rates to project how long people will live.

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The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

M I L I T A R Y P L A N E S E P I C E N T E R O F

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa’s leaders pleaded for the world’s help in dealing with a crisis that one called “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times.”

Mali has not had any cases of Ebola, but it borders the outbreak zone. Researchers say early safety tests should be done in Ebola-free countries to avoid complicating factors. If the vaccine appears to be safe, larger trials could be done in the outbreak zone early next year. The U.S. military is working to build medical centers in Liberia and may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis. Medical workers and beds for Ebola patients are sorely lacking.

Alpha Conde of Guinea said the region’s countries are in “a very fragile situation.”

Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he was reminded of the start of the AIDS epidemic. “We have to work now so this is not the next AIDS,” Frieden said. The fleet of planes that landed outside the Liberian capital of Monrovia consisted of four MV-22 Ospreys and two KC-130s. The 100 additional Marines bring to just over 300 the total number of American troops in the country, said Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the commander leading the U.S. response. Williams joined the American ambassador to Liberia, Deborah Malac, at the airport to greet the aircraft. As vehicles unloaded boxes of equipment wrapped in green-andblack cloth, the Marines formed a line on the tarmac and had their temperatures checked by Liberian health workers. Meanwhile, British authorities said they would introduce “enhanced” screening of travelers for Ebola at Heathrow and Gatwick airports and Eurostar rail terminals.

U.S marines disembark upon their arrival at the Roberts International airport in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014. Six U.S. military planes arrived Thursday at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis, carrying more aid and American Marines into Liberia, the country hardest hit by the deadly disease that has devastated West Africa and stirred anxiety across a fearful world. At a World Bank meeting in Washington, the presidents of several West African countries struggling with Ebola pleaded for help, with one calling the epidemic “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times.”

Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said passengers arriving from West Africa would be questioned about their travels and contacts. Some people could be given a medical assessment and advice on what to do if they develop symptoms. Also Thursday, Liberian police used batons and rattan whips to disperse 100 protesters outside the National Assembly, where lawmakers were debating granting President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf more powers beyond those contained in a state of emergency declared in August. Her handling of the crisis has been criticized as heavy handed and ineffective. Liberian state radio announced that Senate elections scheduled for next week would be postponed. No new date was given. The outbreak has killed more than 3,800 people, according to the latest World Health Organization figures. The vast majority of those deaths have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Elsewhere, University of Maryland researchers announced that the first study of a possible Ebola vaccine in Africa was underway.

C O U RT TO H E A R D I S P U T E O V E R P A Y F O R S E C U R I T Y C H E C K S screening “is no more integral or indispensable to warehouse work than time spent commuting, walking from the parking lot to the work place, waiting to pick up protective gear, or waiting in line to punch the clock.” The 9th Circuit ruling last year has spawned at least four class-action lawsuits against Amazon.com seeking compensation for time spent in post-shift security screenings. Similar suits are pending against CVS Pharmacy and Apple Inc., seeking to represent tens of thousands of workers.

A pro-democracy student protester, left, is pressed by angry locals trying to remove the barricades blocking streets in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014. Hong Kong protest leaders on Friday welcomed an offer by the territory’s leader of talks to defuse the crisis over demonstrations seeking democratic reforms, though they continued to demand he resign and maintained barricades around government headquarters, frustrating staff going to work.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some warehouse workers who fill orders for Amazon.com customers say they spend up to 25 minutes after every shift waiting to pass through security checks to make sure they aren’t stealing from the online retailer. But they don’t get paid for the extra time. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by two former staffers at a Nevada warehouse who claim they should be compensated for time spent in security screenings under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could subject employers to billions of dollars in retroactive pay and increase costs for companies that have expanded security measures to curb employee theft. But it could also mean a slight boost in wages for millions of employees forced to spend extra time going through security.

The Obama administration has sided with the company, saying in a brief that security screenings are not “integral and indispensable” to the work performed by the warehouse employees. It says the screenings at the end of employee shifts “were not closely intertwined with their principal activity of filling orders in the warehouse.” The administration also cites a Labor Department opinion letter that makes no distinction between searches for general security and those to prevent theft, finding neither requires pay. Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say in court filings that security screenings are essential to prevent employee theft, which costs the retail industry an estimated $16 billion a year. Requiring companies to pay workers for going through security, they argue, “would force employers to choose between incurring greater costs to retain security screenings” and “forgoing or reducing security measures so as not to incur additional labor costs.”

Integrity Staffing Solutions Inc., the independent contractor that provides staff for Amazon.com warehouses, claims no extra pay is required because the security clearances are unrelated to the workers’ core job duties. The company requires departing workers to walk through a metal detector and remove wallets, keys and belts to make sure no merchandise has been stolen. The process takes time because hundreds of employees line up to leave at once, causing long lines. A federal judge sided with the company, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling. The appeals court said the security clearance was necessary to the primary work performed by warehouse workers and it was done for the employer’s benefit. Integrity Staffing argued in a brief to the court that a security

A R R I V E E B O L A

Scientists say three health care workers in Mali received the experimental shots developed by the U.S. government.

“Our people are dying,” Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma lamented by videoconference at a World Bank meeting in Washington. He said other countries are not responding fast enough while children are orphaned and infected doctors and nurses are lost to the disease.

Ebola is “an international threat and deserves an international response,” he said, speaking through a translator as he sought money, medicine, equipment and training for health care workers.

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British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said his country would provide more than 750 troops to help build treatment centers and an Ebola “training academy” in Sierra Leone. Army medics and helicopters will provide direct support. Britain will also contribute an aviation support ship. British troops are expected to arrive next week in Sierra Leone, where they will join military engineers and planners who have been there for nearly a month helping to construct medical centers. The German military, which has already been flying material such as protective clothing from Senegal to the worst-hit countries, planned to start a wider deployment of aid in mid-November. The military is expected to set up a clinic for 50 patients. Sierra Leone officials finally released a shipping container filled with medical gear and mattresses that had been held up at the port for more than a month. Ibrahim Bangura, an official who handles medical supplies, said the container’s contents were finally in his possession on Thursday. Bureaucracy and political infighting were blamed for delay in distributing the aid. In Guinea, where the first Ebola cases were confirmed back in March, Doctors Without Borders warned on Thursday of a “massive” influx of cases in the capital. The aid group’s center in Conakry received 22 patients on Monday alone, including 18 from the same region 50 kilometers east of the city, the group said, adding that its facilities were reaching their limits. There was continued concern about Ebola in Spain, where the first person known to have caught the disease outside the outbreak zone in West Africa became sick. The condition of Spanish nursing assistant Teresa Romero deteriorated on Thursday, said Yolanda Fuentes, deputy director of Madrid’s Carlos III hospital. Four doctors, four nurses, a hospital orderly and two beauty salon workers who came into contact with Romero have been admitted to the hospital, bringing to 14 the number of people being monitored at the center, health officials said late Thursday. In Germany, a man infected in Liberia arrived Thursday at a hospital for treatment - the third Ebola patient to be flown to the country. The St. Georg Hospital in Leipzig said the patient works for the United Nations in Liberia.

The Weekly News Digest, Oct 6 thru Oct 13, 2014

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L E D T H E R E B E N O B E L F O R

L I G H T: B L U E

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- An invention that promises to revolutionize the way the world lights its homes and offices - and already helps create the glowing screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs- earned a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for two Japanese scientists and a Japanese-born American.

bring light to every corner of the home, the street and the workplace,” H. Frederick Dylla, the executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics, said in a statement. For illuminating schools, homes and offices, “it’s quite possible this will change everything. All the light sources could easily become blue-LEDbased light sources,” said Mark Rea, director of the Lighting Research Center at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

By inventing a new kind of light-emitting diode, or LED, they overcame a crucial roadblock for creating white light far more efficiently than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Now LEDs are pervasive and experts say their use will only grow. “Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps,” the Nobel committee said in announcing its award to Japanese researchers Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and naturalized U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura.

3 S H A R E D I O D E

In this combination of photos shows three winners of Nobel Prize in physics, from left, Meijo University Prof. Isamu Akasaki, 85, Nagoya University Prof. Hiroshi Amano, 54, and Shuji Nakamura, 60, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, U.S.A. The three Japanese scientists won Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014 for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes — a new energy efficient and environment-friendly light source.

Nadarajah Narendran, director of research at the center, estimated the share of illumination by LED lights in homes, offices, streets and industries is approaching 10 percent in the United States. Within five years, he said, that fraction will probably exceed 30 percent as prices come down.

Their work, done in the early 1990s, led to a fundamental transformation of technology for illumination, the committee said. And when the three arrive in Stockholm to collect their awards in early December, “they will hardly fail to notice the light from their invention glowing in virtually all the windows of the city.”

told reporters, “Nobody can make a cellphone without ... my invention.”

People can already buy LED lights for their homes at a fairly affordable price, he said.

Akasaki told a nationally-televised news conference in Japan that he had faced skepticism about his research bearing fruit. “But I never felt that way,” he said. “I was just doing what I wanted to do.”

In poor countries, such lights are replacing alternatives like kerosene lanterns, he said.

Nakamura, 60, is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Akasaki, 85, is a professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University in Japan, while Amano, 54, is also at Nagoya. Akasaki and Amano made their inventions while working at Nagoya, while Nakamura was working separately at the Japanese company Nichia Chemicals.

Amano said in an interview on NTV aired from Lyon, France on Wednesday that he credits Japan’s high school and university systems for his win. “To know that the ultimate purpose of education, or anything, is to do something to help people. That says it all,” he said.

At a press conference, Nakamura said he is “happy to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality. Nowadays we can buy energy-efficient light bulbs in the supermarket and help reduce energy use. I hope this helps to reduce global warming too,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.

Before their work, scientists had long been able to produce red and green light with LEDs. But they needed a blue LED as well to make white light, a goal sought for about 30 years. The three new Nobel laureates created blue LEDs.

Asked earlier if he realized the importance of his research early on, he

It’s “a fundamental invention that is rapidly changing the way we

M O R E T H A N 5 0 S P E R M W H A L E S S P O T T E D O F F C A L I F O R N I A Humboldt squid, which can weigh 60 pounds or more, have been turning up in the area for a decade. “Could be they’re catching on,” Barlow said. The whales also could simply have gotten confused by the complicated ocean terrain and “wandered in not intending to be here,” he said.

Capt. Dave Anderson/DolphinSafari.com, shows sperm whales swimming in the waters off the the coast of Dana Point, Calif. Several pods of sperm whales emerged off the Southern California coast in an extremely rare, hours-long sighting that had whale watchers and scientists giddy with excitement. More than 50 mothers and juveniles were rolling and playing with dolphins.

ASIAN CAVE DRAWINGS A S O L D A S EUROPEAN ONES

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- More than 50 sperm whales emerged off the Southern California coast in an extremely rare, hours-long sighting that had whale watchers and scientists giddy with excitement.

“I’ve been counting whales and been on the water for 35 years. We’ve never had a large group like this ever,” said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, director of the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project. The massive mammals were spread out over an area of up to 3 square miles and came within inches of boats as they poked their heads out of the waves, said David Anderson, who operates Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Safari sightseeing tours. Sperm whales are the huge, toothed creatures mentioned in the novel “Moby Dick.” They were hunted nearly to extinction for their oil in the 1800s. The whales weigh up to 45 tons and eat about a ton of squid a day. They prefer to hunt in deep waters and can dive to 3,000 feet. Why the sperm whales showed up remains a mystery. Unlike toothless gray whales, which migrate down the California coast each year, sperm whales aren’t frequent visitors. Usually, only one or two adult males show up each summer or fall while large groups of females normally are found in warmer waters, Barlow said. However, this year has seen a lot of warmer water close to shore, he said. “The climate patterns have definitely been weird,” Barlow said. Other species that prefer warmer waters also have shown up this year, including pilot whales, false killer whales, and various species of tropical birds. The sperm whales also might have been chasing food, Barlow said. “That’s mostly what they think about.”

The committee also said the efficiency of LEDs helps save the Earth’s resources because about one-fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting. Not all reactions to the prize were laudatory. Many colleagues of Nick Holonyak Jr., a retired professor from the University of Illinois who invented the red LED in 1962, have long said his work was unjustly overlooked by the Nobel committee. In the past, Holonyak, now 85, has said the award was far less important to him than the work. But on Tuesday, Holonyak said the work done by the new winners was built on achievements by himself and dozens of others who worked with him. “I find this one insulting,” he said in an interview in Urbana, Illinois. Last year’s physics award went to British scientist Peter Higgs and Belgian colleague Francois Englert for helping to explain how matter formed after the Big Bang. On Monday, U.S.-British scientist John O’Keefe split the Nobel Prize in medicine with Norwegian couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for breakthroughs in brain research that could pave the way for a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s. The Nobel award in chemistry will be announced Wednesday, followed by the literature award on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on Monday. Worth 8 million kronor ($1.1 million) each, the Nobel Prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Besides the prize money, each laureate receives a diploma and a gold medal.

This year’s physics prize, the Nobel committee said, was given with that idea in mind.

They later were spotted off San Diego and were heading south, said Jay Barlow, a sperm whale expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Others agreed.

The Nobel committee noted that for people not supplied by power grids, LED lamps may be feasible to use with cheap solar power because they consume so little energy.

Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, provided few directions for how to select winners, except that the prize committees should reward those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”

Pods of mothers and juveniles rolled and played with dolphins Monday a few miles off Laguna Beach, the Orange County Register reported ( http://bit.ly/1s6vG5P ).

It’s by far the largest group ever spotted so near to shore in Southern California, Barlow said Tuesday.

“It’s touched (people) from the poor to the rich in a very short time frame,” he said.

This undated handout photo provided by Nature Magazine shows stencils of hands in a cave in Indonesia. Ancient cave drawings in Indonesia are as old as famous prehistoric art in Europe, according to a new study that shows our ancestors were drawing all over the world 40,000 years ago. And it hints at an even earlier dawn of creativity in modern humans, going back to Africa, than scientists had thought.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ancient cave drawings in Indonesia are as old as famous prehistoric art in Europe, according to a new study that shows our ancestors were drawing all over the world 40,000 years ago. And it hints at an even earlier dawn of creativity in modern humans, going back to Africa, than scientists had thought. Archaeologists calculated that a dozen stencils of hands in mulberry red and two detailed drawings of an animal described as a “pigdeer” are between 35,000 to 40,000 years old, based on levels of decay of the element uranium. That puts the art found in Sulawesi, southeast of Borneo, in the same rough time period as drawings found in Spain and a famous cave in France. And one of the Indonesian handprints, pegged as at least 39,900 years old, is now the oldest hand stencil known to science, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. These are more than 100 Indonesian cave drawings that have been known since 1950. In 2011, scientists noticed some strange outcroppings - called “cave popcorn” - on the drawings. Those mineral deposits would make it possible to use the new technology of uranium decay dating to figure out how old the art is. So they tested the cave popcorn that had grown over the stencils that would give a minimum age. It was near 40,000 years. “Whoa, it was not expected,” recalled study lead author Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Australia. Looking at the paintings, the details on the animal drawings are “really, really well-made,” Aubert said in a phone interview from Jakarta, Indonesia. “Then when you look at it in context that it’s really 40,000 years old, it’s amazing.”

Paleoanthropologist John Shea of Stony Brook University in New York, who wasn’t part of the study, called this an important discovery that changes what science thought about early humans and art. Before this discovery, experts had a Europe-centric view of how, when and where humans started art, Aubert said. Knowing when art started is important because “it kind of defines us as a species,” he said. Because the European and Asian art are essentially the same age, it either means art developed separately and simultaneously in different parts of the world or “more likely that when humans left Africa 65,000 years ago they were already evolved with the capacity to make paintings,” Aubert said. Ancient art hasn’t been found much in Africa because the geology doesn’t preserve it. Shea and others lean toward the earlier art theory. “What this tells us is that when humans began moving out of Africa they were not all that different from us in terms of their abilities to use art and symbol,” Shea said in an email. “Inasmuch as many of us would have difficulty replicating such paintings, they may even have been our superiors in this respect.”

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