Wnd oct 14

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N E T F L I X S I G N S ADAM SANDLER TO FOUR-FILM DEAL

Adam Sander smiles during a press conference for “Men, Women, and Children” at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. Sandler has signed a deal with Netflix to star in and produce four films for the streaming service.

produce four films for the streaming service.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Adam Sandler has signed a deal with Netflix to star in and

Netflix announced early Thursday that it has landed one of Hollywood’s biggest comedic stars in its growing push into original movies.

The films will premiere exclusively on Netflix.

In a statement, Sandler joked that he agreed to the deal for one reason: Because “Netflix rhymes with wet chicks.”

With films that have collectively grossed more than $2.4 billion domestically, Sandler has long been a major box office draw. His last film, though, the romantic comedy “Blended,” sputtered with a total of just $46.3 million.

The deal follow’s Netflix’s announcement that it will stream a sequel to 2000’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in August when the film simultaneously opens on Imax screens.

US EMPLOYERS LIKELY STEPPED UP HIRING IN SEPTEMBER

Volume 003 Issue 39

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JPMORGAN BREACH HEIGHTENS D ATA S E C U R I T Y D O U B T S

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- New details on a cyberattack against JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s computer servers this summer add to increasing doubts over the security of consumer data kept by lenders, retailers and others.

The New York-based bank disclosed Thursday that the breach compromised customer information pertaining to roughly 76 million households and 7 million small businesses.

JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank by assets, has been working with law enforcement officials to investigate the cyberattack.

Jamie Dimon, the bank’s CEO, said in this year’s annual report that despite spending millions on cybersecurity, JPMorgan remained worried about the threat of attacks. By the end of this year, the bank estimates that it will be spending about $250 million annually on cybersecurity and employing 1,000 people in the area.

The bank discovered the intrusion on its servers in mid-August and has since determined that the breach began as early as June, spokeswoman Patricia Wexler said.

city spokeswoman Sana Syed said.

The ambulance crew is among 12 to 18 people being monitored after exposure to the man. Some are members of his family, but not all, Syed said.

Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus. The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

Officials said there are no other suspected cases in Texas, but the diagnosis sent chills through the area’s West African community, whose leaders urged caution to prevent spreading the virus.

The figures will be studied by Federal Reserve policymakers, who are tracking the job market’s various gauges to determine whether the economy is returning to full health. Strong hiring could raise pressure on the Fed to increase its benchmark short-term interest rate, which it’s kept near zero for nearly six years to support the economy.

A police car drives past the entrance to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. A patient in the hospital is showing signs of the Ebola virus and is being kept in strict isolation with test results pending, hospital officials said Monday.

DALLAS (AP) -- A nine-member team of federal health officials is tracking anyone who had close contact with a man being treated for Ebola in a Dallas hospital, the director of the nation’s top disease-fighting agency said Wednesday.

The growth of the economy has been healthy enough that most analysts predict that hiring will remain solid even if one or two months occasionally produce disappointments.

The team from the Centers for Disease Control is in Dallas to work with local and state health agencies to ensure that those people are watched every day for 21 days.

The annual pace of economic growth is expected to remain above 3 percent for the rest of the year. Business investment is picking up, and consumer spending is growing at a steady if modest pace.

“If anyone develops fever, we’ll immediately isolate them to stop the chain of transmission,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Joseph LaVorgna, an economist at Deutsche Bank, notes that productivity - the amount of output per hour of work - is rising 1 percent annually. LaVorgna thinks the economy is expanding at a 3 percent annual pace and that hiring should grow roughly 2 percent a year. That would translate into 230,000 jobs each month, he calculates.

The Dallas patient on Tuesday became the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. The unidentified man has been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday. Health authorities have not revealed his nationality or age. He was listed in serious condition Wednesday.

LaVorgna also notes that employee tax withholding receipts are growing at a brisk pace, suggesting that companies are stepping up hiring.

Three members of the ambulance crew that transported the man to the hospital have tested negative for the virus and are restricted to their homes while their conditions are observed.

And just 287,000 people sought unemployment benefits last week, not

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Last month, JPMorgan began notifying customers that it would reissue credit or debit cards in the wake of the data breach at Home Depot. Wexler said the bank doesn’t plan to reissue cards as a result of the breach of its servers, noting that customer account information was not stolen.

TEAM SEEKS ANYONE WHO ENCOUNTERED EBOLA PATIENT

And September job figures have often been skewed by seasonal quirks, such as many students giving up summer jobs and teachers returning to work.

Auto manufacturing jobs had also fallen in August, even though car sales have been strong this year. That has led many economists to forecast a rebound in auto manufacturing jobs in September.

In August, the FBI said that it was working with the Secret Service to determine the scope of recent cyber attacks against several American financial institutions.

In a post on its Chase.com website, the bank told customers that it doesn’t

In August, employers added just 142,000 jobs after topping 200,000 for six straight months, the longest such stretch since 1997. Even if the government reports that hiring was subpar for a second straight month, some economists say it wouldn’t be cause for alarm. Most other recent data indicate that the economy is expanding at a healthy pace.

August’s slowdown was attributed in part to temporary factors, such as a walkout by 25,000 workers at Market Basket, a Northeastern grocery store chain. That dispute has since been resolved, and the return of those workers could boost September’s job total.

Last month, Home Depot said that malicious software lurking in its check-out terminals between April and September affected 56 million debit and credit cards.

Michaels and Neiman Marcus also have been attacked by hackers in the past year.

“You have to be paranoid now. You can’t slack off,” Litan said. “There is no such thing as data confidentiality anymore. Everything is out there.”

In response to the data breach, the company has disabled compromised accounts and reset passwords of all its technology employees, Wexler said.

The Labor Department will issue the September jobs report at 8:30 a.m.

Eastern time Friday.

The breach is yet another in a series of data thefts that have hit financial firms and major retailers.

“This is really a slap in the face of the American financial services system,” Litan said. “Honestly, this is a crisis point.”

She also declined to comment on whether JPMorgan has been able to determine who was behind the cyberattack on its servers.

Economists have forecast that employers added 215,000 jobs last month, according to a survey by FactSet. That would match the average monthly gain this year, up from last year’s average of 194,000. The unemployment rate is expected to remain 6.1 percent.

believe they need to change their password or account information. It also noted that customers are not liable for unauthorized transactions when they promptly alert the bank.

Among the customer data stolen were names, addresses, phone numbers and A JP Morgan Chase building in New York. JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Oct. 2, 2014, that a data breach affected 76 million households email addresses, though only customers Thursday, and 7 million small businesses. who use the websites Chase.com and JPA data breach at Target in December compromised 40 million credit and MorganOnline and the apps ChaseMobile and JPMorgan Mobile were debit cards. TJX Cos.’s theft of 90 million records, disclosed in 2007, reaffected, the bank said. mains the largest data breach at a retailer.

JPMorgan stressed that there’s no evidence that the data breach included Chase’s assurances that it hasn’t found any evidence of the personal data account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. It being misused shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a reason to rest easy. The also noted that it has not seen any unusual customer fraud stemming from information still could be used in a variety of ways to rip off people in the the data breach. months and years ahead.

The server breach follows data thefts that have hit financial firms and maThat means consumers and business owners need to be more vigilant than jor retailers this year, adding to consumer concerns over the risk of identity ever, making sure to pore over their financial statements each month for theft and fraud. any sign of suspicious activity. People also should be more leery than ever of unsolicited phone calls from purported bank representatives, emails The Chase heist is even more disturbing than the recent retail breaches fishing for their financial information and even uninvited guests knocking because banks are supposed to have fortress-like protection against intrudat their doors. ers, said Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan.

“We have identified and closed the known access paths,” she said, declining to elaborate.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. employers may have produced 200,000plus job growth in September, a potentially reassuring sign after a hiring slowdown in August.

Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

The man was vomiting when the ambulance got to the hospital, Dallas

The man left Liberia on Sept. 19, arrived the next day to visit relatives and started feeling ill four or five days later, Frieden said.

Stanley Gaye, president of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth, said the 10,000-strong Liberian population in North Texas is skeptical of the CDC’s assurances because Ebola has ravaged their country.

“We’ve been telling people to try to stay away from social gatherings,” Gaye said Tuesday at a community meeting.

The CDC has not advised that people avoid large gatherings in this country.

The association’s vice president warned against alarm in the community.

“We don’t want to get a panic going,” said vice president Roseline Sayon. “We embrace those people who are coming forward. Don’t let the stigma keep you from getting tested.”

Frieden said he didn’t believe anyone on the same flights as the patient was at risk.

“Ebola doesn’t spread before someone gets sick, and he didn’t get sick until four days after he got off the airplane,” Frieden said.

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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FAMILY THAT HOSTED EBOLA PATIENT CONFINED TO HOME Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson and Christopher Perkins, D.O., M.P.H. Medical Director, Health Authority with DCHHS walk out of an apartment unit at The Ivy Apartment Complex, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, in Dallas. Dallas County officials have ordered family members who had contact with the patient diagnosed with the Ebola virus to stay inside their home.

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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.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

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

STEPPED UP HIRING continued from page 1

far from a seven-year low reached in July. The number of people receiving benefits has reached an eight-year low, a sign that companies are confident enough in their customer demand to retain their staff levels.

Business investment in equipment and buildings rose 9.7 percent in the second quarter, the second-highest figure in the past three years.

And orders for capital goods, a sign of future business spending, rose in August.

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

Americans have generally spent cautiously this year, held back by sluggish wage growth. Average hourly pay has barely kept up with inflation in the past three years.

But Americans spent more in August. When adjusted for inflation, spending that month rose at the fastest pace in six months.

Still, there are weak spots. Home sales slipped in August as investors cut back on their purchases, and higher prices have made homes less affordable, particularly for first-time buyers who face tighter credit standards.

Fewer Americans signed contracts to buy homes in August, the National Association of Realtors said this week. That suggests that home sales could slip again in coming months.

www.redcross.org

during the three weeks immediately following the time of contact, Neroes said.

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 took Duncan to the hospital, plus a handful of schoolchildren.

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.

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.

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

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.

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

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M A N Y S I C K I N U S E B O L A P A T I E N T ’ S L I B E R I A H O M E T O W N before she, too, shows signs of the virus, and they want to know which other children may have come into contact with her while she was fetching water.

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- Thomas Eric Duncan rushed to help his 19-year-old neighbor when she began convulsing days after complaining of stomach pain. Everyone assumed her illness was related to her being seven months pregnant.

Pewu Wolobah, a member of the neighborhood anti-Ebola task force, lamented that even as Americans try to trace all of Duncan’s contacts there, the virus is spreading through Duncan’s old neighborhood faster than anyone can keep track.

When no ambulance came, Duncan, Marthalene Williams’ parents and several others lifted her into a taxi, and Duncan rode in the front seat as the cab took Williams to the hospital. She later died.

The aunt of the pregnant victim died on Wednesday after collapsing in her house next door to the Williams home. Her 15-year-old daughter Angela is left behind, along with the pregnant woman’s three younger siblings - Ezo Williams, 16, Tete Williams, 12, and Stanley Williams, 3 - and the family dog.

Within weeks, everyone who helped Williams that day was either sick or dead, too - victims of Ebola, the virus that is ravaging Liberia’s capital and other parts of West Africa, with more than 3,300 deaths reported.

The disease is spread through direct contact with saliva, sweat, blood and other bodily fluids, and all those who fell ill after helping Williams had touched her. She turned out to have Ebola.

Duncan is now hospitalized in an isolation ward in Texas after falling sick with Ebola following his arrival last month on a family visit. He has become a symbol of how the lethal disease could spread within the U.S. Here in Liberia, however, he is just another neighbor infected by a virus that is devastating the cluster of tin-roof homes along 72nd SKD Boulevard where Williams lived.

“My pa and four other people took her to the car. Duncan was in the front seat with the driver, and the others were in the back seat with her,” recounted her 15-year-old cousin Angela Garway, standing in the courtyard between the homes where they all lived. “He was a good person.”

Meanwhile, Liberian authorities Thursday announced plans to prosecute Duncan, saying the delivery driver lied about his Ebola status upon leaving the country.

On an airport screening questionnaire obtained by The Associated Press, Duncan said that he hadn’t come into contact with an Ebola patient.

However, it is not clear whether he had learned of Williams’ diagnosis before traveling.

In an interview with Canada’s CBC News, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she was “very saddened” and “very angry” with Duncan for putting Americans at risk, adding: “I just hope that nobody

Mercy Kennedy, 9, cries as she learned her mother has died, outside her home in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday Oct. 2, 2014. Kennedy’s mother was taken away by an ambulance to an Ebola ward the day before.

else gets infected.”

In the neighborhood where Williams lived, some people were no longer willing to take any risks Thursday, not after seeing what happened to those who showed compassion for the pregnant woman.

As 9-year-old Mercy Kennedy sobbed along with neighbors mourning news of her mother’s death, not a person would touch the little girl to comfort her.

Mercy’s mother had helped to wash the pregnant woman’s clothes, and had touched her body after she died at home when no hospital could find space for her, neighbors said.

On Thursday, little Mercy walked around in a daze in a torn nightgown and flip-flops, pulling up the fabric to wipe her tears as a group of workers from the neighborhood task force followed the sound of wailing through the thick grove of banana trees and corn plants.

“We love you so dearly, yeah,” one man wearing rubber gloves told her from a safe distance. “We want to take care of you. Have you been playing with your friends here?”

With Mercy’s mother dead, neighbors fear it is only a matter of time

PLOT TO BOMB HOLIDAY EVENT LEADS TO 30-YEAR TERM

Mohamud was 19 then, a fact a federal judge in Portland took into account when sentencing him Wednesday to three decades in prison. His attorneys asked for a prison on the West Coast, and pledged to appeal his sentence.

In their telling, Mohamud was a vulnerable, confused teenager, a prime target for the FBI sting. By playing on his Muslim faith, the undercover agents posing as jihadis lured him into a six-month plot that effectively brainwashed him: The Oregon State University freshman who entered the plot left it fully radicalized.

But U.S. District Court Judge Garr King rejected that analysis. While Mohamud was indeed young and lacked the means to carry out a terrorist plot, he had the will and ambition, King said Wednesday.

When given the choice to participate in an internal, peaceful struggle, Mohamud instead declared he wanted to “become operational.” He maintained that course even after being told he would see corpses and body parts.

Prosecutors had sought a 40-year term for Mohamud, now 23. But King said the defendant’s youth and remorse for his actions helped lower his sentence.

King said he believes the actions of undercover FBI agents edged into “imperfect entrapment,” the idea that while they didn’t fully entrap Mohamud in a legal sense, they encouraged him to commit wrongdoing.

“This is a sad case,” King said.

The tragedy of Williams’ death could grow larger still: Neighbors and relatives said more than 100 people came to a wake for her. No one could say for sure how many people may have touched the body.

“We had a lot of people come from a great distance to sympathize with her family,” said Joseph Dolo from the anti-Ebola task force. “She had a lot of friends.”

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

Four American aid workers who became infected in West Africa have been flown back to the U.S. for treatment after they became sick. They were treated in special isolation facilities at hospitals in Atlanta and Nebraska. Three have recovered.

A U.S. doctor exposed to the virus in Sierra Leone is under observation in a similar facility at the National Institutes of Health.

The U.S. has only four such isolation units, but Frieden said there was no need to move the latest patient because virtually any hospital can provide the proper care and infection control.

His mother, Mariam Barre, begged the judge for leniency.

At the time, hospital officials didn’t know he had been in West Africa.

He returned later as his condition worsened.

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that King’s remarks about “imperfect entrapment” will have no effect on the agency’s sting operations.

His intended target was a downtown Portland square one night after Thanksgiving 2010, where thousands of revelers watched the mayor light a towering Christmas tree. The bomb was a fake, part of an elaborate FBI sting with Mohamed Mohamud as its target.

All the cases, including Duncan’s, appear to have started with Williams, though some wondered how a pregnant woman who stayed at home could have contracted Ebola. Maybe it was her boyfriend, who hasn’t been seen in weeks, they said. Or could it have been her close friend known as Baby D, who has since died herself?

The man, who arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20, began to develop symptoms last Wednesday and sought care two days later. But he was released.

His father, Osman Barre, said he has watched his teenage son become an adult in prison and mature in the process. But King said Mohamud’s youth aside, the sentence had to both punish him for his actions and serve as a warning for anyone planning similar acts.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- One thousand, four hundred and six days after he screamed “God is great” while police officers dragged him into a waiting van, a young Somali American was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to detonate a bomb.

“Does anybody know the taxi number or the license plate?” one man called into the crowd. “We need to find this vehicle!”

Mohamud and his parents spoke before he was sentenced.

“The things I said and did were terrible,” Mohamud said. “The hardest thing is to go over the (undercover agents’) tapes, to see myself, to hear what I was saying.”

“Give him another chance,” she said through tears on the witness stand.

Multnomah County, Ore., Sheriff’s Office, shows Mohamed Mohamud. Nearly four years after 19-year-old Mohamud showed up at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore., and triggered what turned out to be a fake bomb provided by the FBI, he is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014.

Their parents left Thursday morning for an Ebola treatment center. As word spread that they, too, took a taxi, the health workers expressed alarm.

Osman Barre was the first person to alert the FBI of his son’s early leanings toward violent jihad, something he later said he regretted. The alert led the FBI to launch its sting operation.

Comey said Wednesday that parents in a similar situation ultimately have no other recourse, and he’s unsure whether Mohamud’s case would discourage them from coming forward.

“I just don’t know what the alternative is,” Comey said.

Jurors rejected Mohamud’s entrapment defense at his January 2013 trial. The sentencing was pushed back a year after the government disclosed that warrantless overseas wiretaps helped make its case. The defense unsuccessfully sought a new trial.

NBC CAMERAMAN TESTS POSITIVE FOR EBOLA IN LIBERIA NEW YORK (AP) -- An American cameraman helping to cover the Ebola outbreak in Liberia for NBC News has tested positive for the virus and will be flown back to the United States for treatment.

NBC News President Deborah Turness said Thursday the rest of the NBC News crew including medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman will be flown back to the U.S. and placed in quarantine for 21 days “in an abundance of caution.”

NBC identified the freelance cameraman on its website as 33-year-old Ashoka Mukpo. He has been working in Liberia for three years for Vice News and other media outlets, and has been covering the Ebola epidemic, according to the network. He began shooting for NBC on Tuesday.

He began feeling tired and achy Wednesday and discovered he had a slight fever. He went to a treatment center Thursday to be tested, and is being kept there, said Snyderman, who was interviewed Thursday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.

Blood tests by Texas health officials and the CDC separately confirmed his Ebola diagnosis Tuesday. State health officials described the patient as seriously ill.

Dr. Edward Goodman, an epidemiologist at the hospital, said the patient was able to communicate and was hungry.

The hospital is discussing if experimental treatments would be appropriate, Frieden said.

Passengers leaving Liberia pass through rigorous screening, the country’s airport authority said Wednesday. But those checks are no guarantee that an infected person won’t get through and airport officials would be unlikely to stop someone not showing symptoms, according to Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the Liberia Airport Authority’s board of directors.

CDC officials are helping staff at Monrovia’s airport, where passengers are screened for signs of infection, including fever, and asked about their travel history. Plastic buckets filled with chlorinated water for hand-washing are present throughout the airport.

Liberia is one of the three hardest-hit countries in the epidemic, along with Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 6,500 people in West Africa, and more than 3,000 deaths have been linked to the disease, according to the World Health Organization. But even those tolls are probably unde

Snyderman said she believes Mukpo’s exposure to the virus happened sometime before he started working with the NBC crew, since it is usually eight to 10 days before the first symptoms are seen.

“The good news is this young man, our colleague, was admitted to the clinic very, very early,” she said. “I spoke with him today. He’s in good spirits. He’s ready to get home - of course, appropriately concerned. But he will be airlifted out soon.”

She said that neither she nor the other three NBC employees has shown any symptoms or warning signs of Ebola infection.

“We observe the custom now, which is to not shake hands, to not embrace people, to wash our hands with diluted bleach water before we enter the hotel,” she said. “We dip our feet in bleach solution.”

She said she and the rest of her crew present little chance of giving it to anyone, unless they get sick.

“We will be taking our temperatures twice a day, checking in with each other, and if any one of us suddenly spikes a fever or gets symptoms, we will report ourselves to the authorities,” she said. “We are taking it seriously.”

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

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B u s H i t s D u f f R o a d

The crash occurred about 8:20 a.m. in the Kathleen area of Lakeland near Duff Road and Summit Avenue, sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Horstman said. The bus was carrying students, but none was injured, Horstman said. Deputies said the driver of the SUV [...]

OCT 03, 2014 12:59PM

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TAMPA - Two sisters and a male passenger died Sunday morning in the fourth wrong-way crash along the same stretch of Interstate 275 this year, the Florida Highway Patrol said.[...]

OCT 03, 2014 09:25AM

9 11 C a l l s R e l e a s e d O f D r i v e r W h o H i t F i r e f i g h t e r O n I - 9 5 Moments after a deadly accident on I-95 on Tuesday, a frantic 911 call came in from the driver of the car involved in the crash. The victim was Fort Lauderdale firefighter Lt. Kevin Johns who was struck while changing[...]

OCT 03, 2014 04:13AM

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The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating a fatal, single-vehicle crash on northbound I-75 at mile marker 134. Troopers say the vehicle struck a concrete footer for an overhead message sign.[...]

OCT 03, 2014 03:35AM

Infant ejected from SUV in crash on I-4 in Lake Mary An infant was seriously injured after being ejected from an SUV that overturned on Interstate 4 Friday evening.Troopers with the Florida.[...]

OCT 03, 2014 07:30AM

Crash reported on Normandy Blvd. at McClelland Rd. All lanes of Normandy Blvd. were closed at McClelland Rd. due to a deadly crash Wednesday morning.[...]

OCT 03, 2014 08:10AM

Wrong-way crash on I-275 kills 3 people Three people were killed this morning after a wrong-way crash on I-275 near Bearss Avenue, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.[...]

OCT 03, 2014 05:50AM

Sierra Sierra Sierra Sierra

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

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O F F I C I A L S A S K A B O U T 8 0 T O WA T C H F O R E B O L A S Y M P T O M S BEIRUT (AP) -- U.S. fighter jets and bombers expanded their aerial campaign against Islamic State targets Wednesday, striking the militants in both Syria and Iraq even as the extremists pressed their offensive in Kurdish areas within sight of the Turkish border, where fleeing refugees told of civilians beheaded and towns torched.

his three-day walk from a village on the outskirts of Kobani.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the United Nations, vowed an extended assault and called on the world to join in.

Halil Aslan, a 48 year-old local villager in Turkey, recounted seeing Islamic State tanks roll into a village on the Syrian side.

“The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force, so the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death,” he told the U.N. General Assembly in a 38-minute speech. “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort.”

“They shelled the place with tanks and mortars,” he said. “We could hear them falling on those hills.”

The fighting near Kobani could be seen from hilltops in Turkey. Kurds from Turkey and Syria cheered on the Kurdish fighters from one hilltop, while the fighters signaled back with mortar fire.

A video posted online showed what appeared to be Islamic State fighters toting assault rifles and fanning out across a dusty field in the Kobani area. A later clip showed a field cannon firing a shell toward a town located across a rolling expanse of brown fields, followed by a puff of smoke in the distance. The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events.

In Syria, hard-line rebels aligned with a faction fighting to oust President Bashar Assad, but considered too radical by the U.S., packed up their heavy weapons and evacuated their bases over fears the Obama administration would target all fighters deemed a potential threat to the United States.

Wednesday’s strikes marked the second day of a broadened U.S. military operation against the Islamic State group, after a barrage of more than 200 strikes on some two dozen targets in Syria a day earlier. That campaign, which the White House has warned could last years, builds upon the air raids the U.S. has already been conducting for more than a month against the extremists in Iraq.

The ultimate aim of the Obama administration and its Arab partners is to destroy the Islamic State group, which through brute force has carved out a proto-state in the heart of the Middle East, effectively erasing the border between Iraq and Syria. Along the way, the extremist faction has massacred captured soldiers, terrorized religious minorities and beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.

On Wednesday, Algerian extremists aligned with the Islamic State group declared in a video that they had beheaded a fourth hostage - a Frenchman seized in Algeria on Sunday - in retaliation for France joining the aerial assault against the militants in Iraq. French President Francois Hollande said France would not be deterred by the act of “barbarity.”

“This particular group ... they don’t strike only those who don’t think like they do. They also strike Muslims. ... They rape, they kill,” a visibly upset Hollande told the U.N. General Assembly. “It is for this reason that the fight the international community needs to wage versus terrorism knows no borders.”

Meanwhile, U.S. allies lined up in support of the aerial campaign.

The Dutch government announced it would send six F-16 fighter jets along with 250 pilots and support staff to strike at Islamic State targets in Iraq, while British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said Parliament had been recalled to debate Britain’s response to a request to support the airstrikes.

SURGE IN SIERRA BEARS REPORTED; 9 CAUGHT IN 2 DAYS a black bear captured in Carson City earlier in the day sits in a trap outside the Nevada Department of Wildlife headquarters in Reno, Nev., on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, awaiting its release back to the wild. An already busy bear season has exploded in the Sierra Nevada with nine hungry bruins captured since Wednesday morning near Reno and Lake Tahoe as an ongoing drought continues to make food scarce in the mountains.

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- You’d be hungry too if you couldn’t find any food and were used to eating the equivalent of more than 80 cheeseburgers a day.

An already busy bear season has exploded in the Sierra Nevada with nine hungry bruins captured since Wednesday morning near Reno and Lake Tahoe as an ongoing drought continues to make food scarce in the mountains. A 10th was hit and killed by a car Thursday in south Reno.

Since July 1, Nevada Department of Wildlife officials have caught 42 black bears and released all but two back into the wild. They said two repeat offenders had to be killed - one so bold it was rummaging through picnic baskets in July on a busy Tahoe beach.

Cars have killed an additional 10 bears as the animals move into more populated areas from the parched foothills on the Sierra’s eastern front, where streams are down to a trickle and the usual supply of berries and insects is lacking.

A surge in activity is expected with cooler temperatures this time of year, when a typical bear’s food intake jumps from 3,000 to 25,000 calories a day, said Chris Healy, Department of Wildlife spokesman. That’s the human equivalent of 83 McDonald’s cheeseburgers.

The animals are going through hyperphagia, a physiological change in which they eat as much as they can to store fat for winter hibernation.

“Nothing much gets in the bear’s way when they are this hungry,” said Carl Lackey, the agency’s chief wildlife biologist. “Nature’s dinner bell is ringing.”

He noted a third consecutive year of drought has exacerbated bear encounters with humans.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife captured 97 bears last year and 83 in 2012, mostly between July 1 and Dec. 1. The 10-year highs and lows were 159 in 2007 and 40 in 2009.

On Thursday, game wardens and wildlife biologists were back on the trail of nuisance bears raiding garbage cans and climbing trees near residential areas in search of fruit. Over the past two days, they’ve trapped two mother bears and three cubs in the same part of west Reno, a sow and two cubs at south Tahoe near Stateline, and a 2-year-old near Carson City.

“It’s pretty wild,” Healy said Thursday after they captured the latest one near Carson City. He said the separate bear families caught in Reno on consecutive days were “literally at the exact same spot.”

U.S. and coalition forces hit a dozen targets in Syria that included small-scale oil refineries that have been providing millions of dollars a day in income to the Islamic State, the U.S. Central Command said.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part, along with U.S. aircraft.

Earlier, U.S. strikes damaged Islamic State vehicles in Syria near the Iraqi border town of Qaim, the U.S. Central Command said. It also reported hitting two Islamic State armed vehicles west of Baghdad, as well as two militant fighting positions in northern Iraq.

In a separate statement, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said the strikes in eastern Syria hit a staging area used by the militants to move equipment across the border into Iraq.

Despite the start of the coalition campaign, Islamic State fighters continued their advance against Syrian Kurdish militiamen around the town of Ayn Arab, known to Kurds as Kobani, near the Turkish border, where refugees fleeing into Turkey reported the beheading of captives and the torching of homes.

A Kurdish militiaman fighting to protect the city said Islamic State militants were less than half a mile (one kilometer) from the outskirts Wednesday.

Weary refugees arriving in Turkey described atrocities at the hands of the Islamic State militants. Osman Nawaf, 59, said he saw about 50 bodies hanging headless in the village of Boras when he passed it on

In the opening salvo of the air campaign inside Syria on Tuesday, the U.S. also hit al-Qaida’s Syria branch, known as the Nusra Front. American officials said the strikes targeted the so-called Khorasan Group, a cell within the Nusra Front made up of hardened jihadis they said pose a direct and imminent threat to the United States.

On Wednesday, the Nusra Front said it was evacuating its compounds near civilian areas in Idlib and Aleppo provinces in northern Syria, according to the Aleppo Media Center activist group. The decision followed a U.S. airstrike on a Nusra Front base in the village of Kfar Derian that killed around a dozen fighters and 10 civilians, activists said.

Another Syrian rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, was also clearing out of its bases, according to the Observatory. It said the group issued a statement calling for fighters to limit the use of wireless communication devices to emergencies, to move heavy weapons and conceal them, and to warn civilians to stay away from the group’s camps.

Ahrar al-Sham has been among the most effective forces fighting to oust Assad in Syria’s civil war, and has also been on the front lines of a 9-month battle against the Islamic State group. But the U.S. has long looked askance at Ahrar al-Sham, considering it too radical and too cozy with the Nusra Front.

An activist in Idlib who goes by the name of Mohammed confirmed the Ahrar al-Sham evacuations. He did not know of any strikes against the group, but said the fighters thought they would be targeted by the U.S.led coalition because of their ultraconservative Islamic beliefs.

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

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T U R K E Y P O N D E R S N E W P O W E R S T O F I G H T I S M I L I T A N T S ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey’s parliament was debating a motion Thursday to give the government new powers to launch military incursions into Syria and Iraq and to allow foreign forces to use its territory for possible operations against the Islamic State group.

Last week, a U.S.-led coalition seeking to destroy the extremist Islamic State group began bombing the militants’ locations around Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab in Arabic. But the airstrikes haven’t halted the militants’ advance, said Hasan.

As lawmakers debate in Ankara, the militants pressed their offensive against a beleaguered Kurdish town along the Syria-Turkey border.

The assault, which has forced about 160,000 people to flee across the frontier in recent days, left Kurdish militiamen scrambling Thursday to repel Islamic State extremists pushing into the outskirts of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab.

That included explosions heard overnight around the Kobani area, believed to be caused by U.S. strikes, said Hasan. There was no immediate confirmation from Washington on the latest airstrikes. The strikes were also reported the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group tracking the Syrian conflict.

Turkey, a NATO member with a large and modern military, has yet to define what role it intends to play in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group. The motion before lawmakers sets the legal groundwork for any Turkish military involvement or the use of Turkish bases by foreign troops.

Parliament had previously approved operations into Iraq and Syria to attack Kurdish separatists or to thwart threats from the Syrian regime.

Thursday’s motion would expand those powers to address threats from the Islamic State militants who control a large cross-border swath of Iraq and Syria, in some parts right up to the Turkish border.

Turkish soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint as Syrian refugees from Kobani arrive at the Turkey-Syria border crossing of Mursitpinar near Suruc, Turkey, late Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeted Islamic State fighters pressing their offensive against a Kurdish town near the Syrian-Turkish border on Tuesday in an attempt to halt the militants’ advance, activists said. The south part of Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani is seen in the background.

to senior fighter and activist. The United States has been bombing the Islamic State group across Syria since last week and in neighboring Iraq since early August.

Asked what measures Turkey would take after the motion is approved, Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said: “don’t expect any immediate steps.”

Ismet Sheikh Hasan, a senior fighter, said the Kurdish forces were preparing for urban clashes in Kobani in a desperate attempt to repel the militants.

“The motion prepares the legal ground for possible interventions, but it is too early to say what those interventions will be,” said Dogu Ergil, a professor of political science and columnist for Today’s Zaman newspaper.

The fight for Kobani has raged since mid-September, sending over 160,000 Syrian Kurds streaming across the Turkish border in one of the worst refugee crisis since the war began over three and a half years ago.

Ergil said the motion could allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters, for example to use Turkey’s territory to safely cross into Syria, to help Syrian Kurdish forces there, or the deployment of coalition forces’ drones.

The government enjoys a majority in parliament and the bill was expected to pass despite opposition from two parties.

The motion comes as the Islamic State group moved closer into the northern Syrian town of Kobani, right across the border from Turkey, despite renewed U.S.-led airstrikes in the area overnight, according

“We are preparing outsides for street battles,” Hasan said. “They still haven’t entered Kobani, but we are preparing ourselves.”

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group tracking the Syrian conflict, reported that the Islamic State group fighters were, in some cases, just “hundreds of meters (yards)” from Kobani on its eastern and southeast side. The militants were about a mile away on the southern side of town.

In a statement, the Observatory said it had “real fears” that the militants would storm Kobani and “butcher civilians remaining in the city.”

T R I P L E - D I G I T FA L L T E M P E R AT U R E S ROASTING CALIFORNIA

Turkey had been reluctant to join its NATO allies in a coalition against the Islamic State militants, citing worries about the safety of Turkish hostages held by the group. It reversed its decision after the hostages’ release earlier this month.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for the creation of a buffer zone inside Syria as well as a no-fly zone to secure Turkey’s borders and stem the flow of refugees. He has also called for military training and equipment for the Syrian opposition fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“In the struggle against terrorism, we are open and ready for every kind of cooperation. However, Turkey is not a country that will allow itself to be used for temporary solutions,” Erdogan said Wednesday.

“An effective struggle against ISIL or other terror organizations will be our priority,” Erdogan said. “The immediate removal of the administration in Damascus, Syria’s territorial unity and the installation of an administration which embraces all will continue to be our priority. “ The motion cites also cites a potential threat to a revered mausoleum inside Syria that is considered Turkish territory. The tiny plot of land that is a memorial to Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, is guarded by Turkish troops.

F I R M S AY S P H O N E APPS SPY ON HONG KONG PROTESTERS

Unusual but not unprecedented. Although temperatures for this time of year are normally in the high 70s, the record high temperature in Los Angeles on Oct 3 is 108, set in 1987. “It’s hot but not record-breaking hot,” says Seto.

WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING ABOUT IT?

Women shade themselves from the sun in the Chinatown section of downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, Oct 2, 2014. Rising temperatures, falling humidity levels and Santa Ana winds increased fire danger in drought-stricken Southern California on Thursday, and forecasters said the fall heat wave would push temperatures well above normal from San Diego to San Francisco

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- While people in some other parts of the country are watching the leaves turn a kaleidoscope of fall colors as they contemplate unpacking winter clothes, California is roasting under an autumn heat wave.

As high temperatures were ranging from the low 100s in Southern California to the 90s in the normally more temperate San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday, National Weather Service forecasters warned that was just a warm-up for what was coming Friday and Saturday.

“We’re looking at temperatures in the mountains and the valleys between 100 to 106,” said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service.

SO WHY IS IT SO HOT, ANYWAY? Blame the Santa Ana Winds, those chameleon-like gusts that start out icy cold in the Great Basin region of Utah and Nevada, but by the time they race across deserts and down mountain canyons and arrive in Southern California they are hot as ... well, you know.

HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO OTHER AREAS?

Los Angeles County is opening dozens of cooling centers at places like libraries and community centers. The Long Beach Unified School District is sending its 76,000 students home an hour early to get them out of class before the hottest part of the day. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is urging people to set thermostats at 78 degrees.

With wildfire danger high across much of the state, the Los Angeles County Fire Department has beefed up many of its firefighting crews from three to four people and stationed extra equipment in strategic locations. “We talk about staying hydrated starting early in the day and staying ready to go,” says Inspector Rick Flores.

HOW ARE SOME PEOPLE HANDLING THE HEAT? Perry Mann, who dresses as a pirate and poses for pictures with tourists on Hollywood Boulevard may have come up with the most innovative solution. On Thursday he packed his body with frozen water bottles and greeted people by telling them, “I’m frozen in ice from the Antarctic.” When the ice melted, he drank it. When it ran out, he went home.

WHILE CALIFORNIA BAKES, WHAT IS GOING ON ELSEWHERE? As Los Angeles County lifeguards prepared for hundreds of thousands of people to storm the beaches - “It should be like a summer weekend,” said Chief Lifeguard Steve Moseley - New York’s Fall Foliage report predicted that autumn leaves in the Adirondack and Catskill mountains could be at their most spectacular this weekend. Meanwhile, parts of the Rockies and sections of Utah and Northern Nevada are under frost warnings.

HONG KONG (AP) -- The Chinese government might be using smartphone apps to spy on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, a U.S. security firm said.

The applications are disguised as tools created by activists, said the firm, Lacoon Mobile Security. It said that once downloaded, they give an outsider access to the phone’s address book, call logs and other information.

The identities of victims and details of the servers used “lead us to believe that the Chinese government are behind the attack,” said a Lacoon statement.

China is, along with the United States and Russia, regarded as a leader in cyber warfare research. Security experts say China is a leading source of hacking attacks aimed at foreign governments and companies to computers in China.

The Chinese government has denied engaging in cyberspying and says China is among the biggest victims of hacking attacks.

Lacoon said it found two similar “malicious, fake” apps that appeared to be related. One targets phones that run Apple Inc.’s iOS operating system; the other is meant for phones using Google Inc.’s Android system.

The “very advanced software,” known as an mRAT, or multidimensional requirements analysis tool, “is undoubtedly being backed by a nation state,” the company said. Lacoon said it was calling the software Xsser.

“The Xsser mRAT represents a fundamental shift by nation-state cybercriminals from compromising traditional PC systems to targeting mobile devices,” the company said.

Usually during a heat wave Southern Californians can tell themselves, “Well, it’s hotter in Arizona and Death Valley.”

Not this time. Friday’s forecast for Phoenix is 97, 3 degrees cooler than that for downtown Los Angeles. The forecast for Death Valley, California, which promotes itself as the hottest place on the planet, is 102. The forecast for the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles is 106.

SO JUST HOW UNUSUAL IS THIS?

Student pro-democracy activists use their smartphones while sitting on the streets near the government headquarters, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014 in Hong Kong. The Chinese government might be using smartphone apps to spy on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, a U.S. security firm says. The applications are disguised as tools created by activists to protests, said the firm, Lacoon Mobile Security. The firm said that once downloaded, they give an outsider access to the phone’s address book, call logs and other information.

Such “cross-platform attacks” that target both Apple and Android phones are rare, which adds to signs a government is involved, Lacoon said. It said the app might be the first spyware for iOS created by a Chinese government entity.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

In May, U.S. prosecutors charged five Chinese military officers with cyberspying and stealing trade secrets from major American companies. A security firm, Mandiant, said last year it traced attacks on American and other companies to a military unit in Shanghai.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

H O N G K O N G P R O T E S T S C I T Y ’ S R O L E A S F I N A N C E

HONG KONG (AP) -- Shops in Hong Kong have closed and the local stock market has plunged but protesters are gambling their agitation for greater democracy will pay off by preserving institutions that made this former British colony a profitable asset to China.

Protests erupted after the communist Beijing government announced candidates in the first direct election of the territory’s chief executive in 2017 would have to be approved by a panel dominated by business leaders allied with the mainland.

That fueled unease Hong Kong is losing its special status despite a promise of a “high degree of autonomy” when the colony returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Protesters also are frustrated at the growing income gap between ordinary people and a wealthy elite.

“I hope that the Hong Kong people could understand that sometimes we need short-term disturbances to draw attention from the government to solve some very serious, deep-seated problems with society,” said Chan Kin-man, an organizer of the pro-democracy movement Occupy Central with Love and Peace, in an interview.

“Business and investors are increasingly building in higher operational risks, fearing that future protests could escalate and turn more frequent,” said Citigroup economist Adrienne Lui in a report.

A question for investors is whether the territory “can resolve its political issues so that we have a government that commands basic popular consent to implement economic and structural policies,” said Andrew Colquhoun, head of Asia-Pacific ratings for the Fitch ratings agency, in a report.

Protesters rest outside a shopping mall during a rally in Hong Kong, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. Shops in Hong Kong have closed and the local stock market has plunged but protesters are gambling their agitation for greater democracy will pay off by preserving institutions that made this former British colony a profitable asset to China.

and legal systems have helped them raise billions of dollars through its stock market from foreign investors.

Business also might be hurt if Beijing’s response to the protest erodes rule of law, transparency and the freedoms that make Hong Kong a global center, said Tony Nash, a vice president at Delta Economics.

“It is that infrastructure that makes Hong Kong exceptional,” he said.

Tens of thousands of protesters have camped out in shopping and business districts for nearly a week. A two-day holiday on Wednesday and Thursday brought more residents into the streets to show solidarity with younger protesters.

“Without a fair system, the election system, I don’t think we can have long-term harmony,” he said.

“I don’t worry about the economy,” said Goria Ho, a 39-yearold administrator. “I think democratic reform is more important than the economy now.”

Packed with skyscrapers and shopping malls, Hong Kong has thrived as a trading port and service provider as China grew to become the world’s No. 2 economy. But that prosperity depends on an independent, Western-style legal system and civil liberties Beijing promised to preserve through 2047.

Some schools and businesses have closed. But demonstrators cleared lanes for emergency vehicles to get through, cleaned up and sorted rubbish for recycling and avoided rowdy behavior.

This territory of 7 million serves as a jumping-off point for mainland companies, many of them state-owned, to do business in global markets. The strong reputation of its regulatory

The local stock market benchmark, the Hang Seng index, has tumbled more than 9 percent since hitting a six-month peak in September. Banks closed 44 branches due to the protests, ac-

WHITE OHIO WOMAN SUES OVER SPERM FROM BLACK DONOR In this image provided by Fox, Stewie Griffin, left, learns to skateboard from his new friend, Bart Simpson in a scene from “The Simpsons Guy,” the one-hour season premiere episode of “Family Guy,” airing Sunday, Sept.

28, 2014. The Fox network isn’t responding to suggestions that it edit the upcoming crossover episode of “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” to remove a joke where the punch line is “your sister’s being raped.”

CLEVELAND (AP) -- An Ohio woman has sued a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white man as she and her partner had intended.

The woman is seeking damages and wants to ensure the sperm bank doesn’t make a similar mistake again.

Within days of their wedding in New York, Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon had become pregnant with the donor sperm. In April 2012, five months into her pregnancy, Cramblett, 36, called Midwest Sperm Bank LLC outside Chicago to reserve sperm from the same donor in the hope that Zinkon, 29, would someday also have a child.

That’s when Cramblett received some disturbing news, says a lawsuit filed Monday against Midwest Sperm Bank in Cook County, Illinois: She learned from a sperm bank employee that she had been inseminated with sperm from the wrong donor.

Cramblett said they had chosen sperm from a man known as No. 380, a white donor. The sperm used for insemination came from No. 330, a black donor, she said.

“How could they make a mistake that was so personal?” Cramblett said during a telephone interview on Wednesday.

According to the lawsuit, her excitement about the pending birth was replaced with “anger, disappointment and fear.”

“They took a personal choice, a personal decision and took it on themselves to make that choice for us out of pure negligence,” Cramblett said.

H I T H U B

cording to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the territory’s central bank. It issued a statement assuring investors financial markets were operating normally.

The impact on Hong Kong’s key industries of finance and trade is limited so far. But economists warn Hong Kong’s appeal to global companies might erode if they start to think protests will become more frequent - or if they end in a violent crackdown.

In the latest blow, mainland authorities on Wednesday suspended group tours to Hong Kong, cutting a critical source of revenue to its growing travel industry.

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Telephone messages left Wednesday at Midwest Sperm Bank were not returned. It’s unclear who its attorney is.

Cramblett said she and Zinkon love their 2-year-old daughter, Payton, very much and wouldn’t change anything about her. But they are concerned about raising her in the predominantly white community where they live.

“Those questions will likely be answered over months or years rather than days,” wrote Colquhoun.

Hong Kong’s growing tourist trade relies on mainland visitors, and this week’s National Day holiday is one of the biggest shopping periods of the year.

“Last year, Hong Kong saw 41 million visitors from China.

That’s a very big part of the economy so it will have an impact, even if it’s just for several weeks,” said Rajiv Biswas, an economist for IHS in Singapore.

“What would be of concern is if it would lead to a protracted downturn.”

A statement read on the mainland’s state TV on Wednesday called on Hong Kong residents to support efforts to “restore social order.” The main Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily warned of “unimaginable consequences” if protests persist.

An intervention by China’s military or security forces is one of several “worst case” but unlikely scenarios, said Steve Vickers, of risk consultancy Steve Vickers & Associates.

“If it actually came to pass, this would present a major threat to business and to Hong Kong’s autonomy and reputation,” he said.

Some local residents expressed consternation over protesters’ rejection of calls by Leung and other officials to quiet down and go home. But many were sympathetic, judging from the piles of donated water, umbrellas and other provisions in protest areas.

“The movement may affect the economy a bit, but not too much,” said Pierre Wong, 36, who works in information technology.

The lawsuit said they had moved from Akron to Uniontown for better schools and to be closer to Cramblett’s family. She said that as a lesbian she has felt the sting of prejudice but doesn’t know what it’s like to be mistreated because of skin color.

The lawsuit says Cramblett also is worried about how Payton will be treated in her “all-white, and often unconsciously insensitive family.”

Therapists have recommended that Cramblett, Zinkon and Payton move to a more racially diverse community with good schools, the lawsuit said.

Cramblett said she decided to sue to prevent the sperm bank from making the same mistake again. The lawsuit says the sperm bank has no electronic record-keeping and no quality controls that would have prevented it from sending the wrong sperm to fertility clinics.

The lawsuit seeks a minimum of $50,000 in damages. Cramblett’s attorney, Tim Misny, said some of the compensation would pay for ongoing counseling.

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

U K R A I N E P E A C E A S

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W A R Y O F F R A G I L E PAT R I O T I S M S U R G E S Ukraine that sees itself as under constant threat.

Federenko may come across as an unlikely fighter, but he and his friends are part of what Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says is a 13.7 percent increase in applications to military-run high schools this year alone. The military will receive an extra $3 billion, or 50 percent of previous budget targets, by 2017.

BOYARKA, Ukraine (AP) -- Since Ukraine’s conflict with Russia erupted, Oleksandr Federenko has gone from village kid to army cadet, trading computer games for knife-throwing classes and morning marches. He is only 13.

Federenko’s shy laugh and wisp of upper lip hair seem at odds with his bulky camouflage uniform as he explains his decision to sign up for the military academy. “This year I had this feeling of patriotism,” he says, “and I wanted to defend my country.”

In Ukraine, the government’s campaign against pro-Russian rebellion in the east has united people of all ages in a newfound patriotic fervor. Army ads dominate TV stations, war heroes are at the top of every party’s list for this month’s parliamentary election and defense issues - once an afterthought in Ukraine - now lead the agenda.

Although many Ukrainians are ready to give a cease-fire called last month a chance, they see it only as a temporary fix and are digging in for years of confrontation, if not outright war, with Russia. President Petro Poroshenko has struggled to sell his deal with Russia and the separatists to a skeptical home audience.

The young cadet says he has struggled to adapt to the daily routine, and doesn’t love the 6:30 wake-up time, the morning drills and the stingy one hour of free time a day.

But here, he says, “you start to grow up quicker.”

a student trains with gun during military training exercises in a military school in Boyarka close to Kiev, Ukraine. In the half-year since Ukraine has lost huge swaths of its territory to Russian annexation and civil war, many young Ukrainians have become army cadets, trading computer games for knife-throwing classes and morning marches. The government’s campaign against the rebels in the east has stoked a sharp rise in militarized patriotism in the rest of the country. Army ads dominate many TV stations, war heroes are at the top of every party’s candidate lists for this month’s parliamentary election and defense issues - once a second-echelon issue topic in Ukraine - are now at the top of the agenda.

stronghold of Donetsk, where more than 20 people have been killed this week.

“Solving the war in (the eastern cities of) Luhansk and Donetsk with the military alone is impossible,” he said in a recent interview with Ukrainian television channels. “The more military groups we have there, the more the Russian army will send.”

“Ukrainians are in theory in favor of restoring peace,” said Andriy Bychenko, the director of sociological services at Kiev’s Razumkov Center. “But the majority is not sure that this peace will be stable and dependable. They lack confidence in Russia.”

Although Poroshenko says the “most dangerous part of the war” in the east has passed, fatal clashes continue, particularly at the government-held airport near the rebel

For Federenko and the other young cadets at the Boyarka military academy about 20 kilometers (12 miles) outside Kiev, that lack of confidence means adjusting to life in a

N O B E L P E A C E PA N E L I N F O C U S A S 2 0 1 4 A W A R D S B E G I N Earlier this year, Norwegian lawmakers touted former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as possible future Nobel judges.

“It should be a Norwegian committee but with one or two from other nations,” said Sverre Myrli a lawmaker for Norway’s Labor Party.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, a prominent Nobel-watcher and head of the PRIO peace institute in Oslo, was skeptical of that idea, saying appointing foreign members would inevitably open a new discussion about which countries and continents are represented.

Still, he suggested the committee should expand its pool of candidates in Norway to include academics and members of civil society.

Thorbjoern Jagland, head of the Council of Europe and Norwegian chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize award committee, speaks to The Associated Press in an interview in Athens.

With the 2014 Nobel Prize announcements around the corner, Norway is considering shaking up the five-member committee that selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Critics say the prestigious panel should no longer be limited to retired Norwegian politicians and have suggested broadening the pool of potential judges to people from other walks of life and even non-Norwegians. Any future changes wouldn’t affect this year’s winner, to be announced Oct. 10, 2014 by chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, but could influence next year’s award as Jagland and two other members are up for re-election.

STAVANGER, Norway (AP) -- With the 2014 Nobel Prize announcements around the corner, Norway is considering shaking up the five-member committee that selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Critics say the prestigious panel should no longer be limited to retired Norwegian politicians and have suggested broadening the pool of potential judges to people from other walks of life and even non-Norwegians.

Any future changes wouldn’t affect this year’s winner, to be announced Oct. 10 by chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, but could influence next year’s award as Jagland and two other members are up for re-election.

“Right now we are all former politicians, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a Nobel judge from the rightwing Progress Party.

Questions surrounding the committee’s makeup have gained prominence amid stinging criticism of some of its recent choices.

While Nobel Peace Prizes are almost always controversial, under Jagland’s leadership the committee has been accused of poor timing.

The 2012 award to the European Union cited the bloc’s historical role in keeping the peace in postwar Europe but didn’t come at its finest hour as the bloc was in the midst of a crippling debt crisis.

By contrast, the 2009 award to Barack Obama honored a president who had not been in office long enough to make an impact.

“He is the first peace prize winner who celebrated by starting a drone war,” said Sverre Valen, a Norwegian lawmaker who also suggested that some of the Nobel judges should be drawn from overseas “to help the credibility of the prize.”

Valen nominated former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for this year’s peace prize for his disclosures of secret surveillance programs.

“We are unfortunately in a situation now where the committee is closely tied to party politics,” Harpviken said.

Harpviken tries to predict the winner every year in a list of potential candidates, though his guesses are rarely correct. His favorites for this year’s award include Snowden, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai and Pope Francis.

Prize founder Alfred Nobel established in his 1895 will that unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, the peace prize should be given by a five-member committee selected by the Norwegian Parliament. He gave no further instructions.

By tradition the Nobel appointments reflect the political balance in Parliament, with major parties typically tapping a member of their own party to the committee.

Because the majority in Parliament shifted from left to right last year, so will the Nobel committee, with three members elected by center-right parties instead of the current two.

Jagland, a former prime minister and foreign minister, is likely to be re-elected by his Labor Party, but some center-right lawmakers say someone else should be the chairman now that the balance of power is shifting.

Ukraine, too, has had to come to terms with some tough realities this year, and its deepening resentment of Russia is on full display in downtown Kiev. Stands selling smartphone cases decorated with Ukrainian embroidery patterns are also stocked with another top-selling item: toilet paper rolls showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and the inscription “PTN PNKh,” an abbreviation for an obscene message to the Russian leader.

As Ukraine rolls into election season, candidates have struggled to outdo each other with promises to continue the campaign against the rebels or bring Ukraine into NATO. Political parties have rushed to snap up war heroes.

Nadiya Savchenko, a female pilot who was captured by Russian forces, tops the list of candidates for Fatherland, the party of gold-braided former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Savchenko has been charged with the deaths of two Russian journalists and remains behind bars in Russia, so it’s hard to see how she would be able join parliament. But her role as a figurehead says much about just how seriously Ukraine’s politicians are taking public opinion about the conflict in the east.

In a poll conducted the week after the cease-fire by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, more than 50 percent of those polled in western and northern regions of Ukraine said that they supported ongoing military activities against the rebels. A total of 63 percent of respondents in the west and 54 percent in the north said they believed that Kiev had used “not enough force” against the separatists.

The poll was conducted by questionnaire and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.

Political parties have also added to their rosters leaders of volunteer militia groups, many of whom have been openly critical of the government for not taking a harder line against the rebels and for sending Ukrainian soldiers or volunteers into battle unprepared and ill-equipped.

One political party that owes much of its success to rise of armed Ukrainian patriotism is the Radical Party, a previously marginal group with only one member of parliament that is now slated to garner at least 10 percent of the vote in the upcoming elections. Sergei Melnichuk, the leader of a pro-Ukraine militia that operates near Luhansk, is number three on the party list.

The cease-fire “is a chance to re-arm so that later we can really hit them in the teeth and recapture our territory,” he said by phone from the Luhansk region. “I am for peace, but I am prepared to fight.” it’s time to end the tradition of “recycling old politicians” for the Nobel committee.

At the time the Norwegian government tried in vain to explain to China that it could not influence the decisions of the independent Nobel committee.

“When we gave the prize to Liu Xiaobo there was a Labor government. And a former Labor foreign minister and prime minister as the committee chairman,” Norheim said. “I think it is naive to think that this couldn’t be misunderstood.”

“I think it is time to change him out as the leader of the committee,” said Kristian Norheim, foreign affairs spokesman for the Progress Party.

He and other critics say the fact that Jagland is also head of the Council of Europe, an international human rights group, could present a conflict of interest, making it difficult for Jagland to endorse a Nobel winner that could upset a member country, such as Russia. Jagland has rejected that notion, fiercely defending his independence.

He declined to comment for this article through his spokeswoman, but told Norwegian media the criticism against him in Norway was linked to the 2010 award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

The prize so enraged China that it froze diplomatic and trade ties with Norway. Many Norwegian export businesses are still feeling the effects.

Norheim said that China’s fury over the Liu award underscores why

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

9

B R I TA I N ’ S C A M E R O N O N S U R P R I S E V I S I T T O A F G H A N I S T A N KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday pledged support for Afghanistan’s newly sworn-in president and the country’s new unity government, saying during a surprise visit to Kabul that Britain is committed to helping Afghans build a more secure and prosperous future.

are to leave by the end of the year that Britain was “incredibly proud of you, incredibly grateful for everything you’ve done.”

At the peak of the 13-year deployment there were almost 10,000 British troops in Afghanistan. About 3,000 remain, and all British combat forces are due to withdraw within weeks.

Cameron was the first of world leaders to meet Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai since his inauguration on Monday. The two had a meeting in Kabul on Friday morning and later held a joint press conference.

Cameron linked the battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida to the fight to stop militants such as the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“Britain has paid a heavy price for helping to bring stability to this country,” Cameron said, paying tribute to the 453 British servicemen and women who died while serving in Afghanistan.

“An Afghanistan free from al-Qaida is in our national interest - as well as Afghanistan’s,” he said. “And now, 13 long years later, Afghanistan can - and must - deliver its own security.”

“This struggle against Islamist extremist terrorism, this is the struggle of our generation,” he said.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron left and Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, hold a press conference, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014. Cameron on Friday pledged support for Afghanistan’s newly sworn-in president and the country’s new unity government, saying during a surprise visit to Kabul that Britain is committed to helping Afghans build a more secure and prosperous future.

But, “we are not leaving this country alone,” he added. “In Britain you will always have a strong partner and a friend.”

mostly from Britain, Germany, Italy and Turkey - to stay in a noncombat role after NATO’s combat mission ends on Dec. 31.

Cameron arrived a day after visiting British pilots in Cyprus who are taking part in airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Iraq. British warplanes have been conducting combat missions over Iraq since Saturday, after Britain joined the U.S.-led coalition of nations that are launching airstrikes against the militants.

Former President Hamid Karzai had refused to approve the deal, and the results of a June presidential runoff to replace Karzai took months to resolve, finally coming to a conclusion with Ghani Ahmadzai’s swearing-in and the establishment of a national unity government.

“The work of defeating Islamist extremist terror goes on elsewhere in the world,” Cameron said in Kabul. “And because this threatens us at home, we must continue to play our part.”

Ghani Ahmadzai thanked the British for their sacrifices in Afghanistan, especially the families who lost loved ones in the war. “They stood shoulder to shoulder with us and we will remember,” he said.

Ghani Ahmadzai’s inauguration this week marked the start of a new era for his country, with a national unity government poised to confront a resilient Taliban insurgency.

A day after he was sworn in, his administration signed a security agreement allowing the United States to keep about 9,800 troops in the country to train and assist Afghan national security forces. A separate agreement was signed with NATO, outlining parameters for 4,000 to 5,000 additional international troops -

With a month more to go in bitterly contested congressional election campaigns, Democratic and Republican lawmakers who usually are at odds have been surprised to find themselves largely agreeing on a response to the agency’s recent extraordinary security breaches, including a knife-carrying intruder who made it all the way into the White House East Room.

There were bipartisan calls for Secret Service Director Julia Pierson’s resignation this week, and once it was announced Wednesday, bipartisan agreement on the need for a wide-ranging independent investigation. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., both joined in that call.

But more than a decade after U.S. forces helped topple the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Afghanistan is still at war with the Islamic militant group, which regularly carries out attacks, mainly targeting security forces.

Ghani Ahmadzai’s former rival for the presidency, Abdullah Abdullah, was appointed the country’s new chief executive, a post akin to prime minister.

Cameron lauded both Afghan men, saying they put national interests ahead of “personal power” when they struck a power-sharing deal. “I look forward to working with both of you in the years ahead,” he said.

Britain is one of the largest financial donors to the Afghan government and Cameron said he and Ghani Ahmadzai would jointly host a conference on future aid to Afghanistan in November in London.

Ghani Ahmadzai also praised his former rival, saying the two of them “have managed a first, which is really rare in the Muslim world - a democratic transfer of authority, not power.”

In addition, Cameron pledged 178 million pounds ($287 million) a year until 2017 to support education, health and other public services in Afghanistan.

Cameron also added a warning to the insurgents. “If the Taliban want to secure a role in the future of Afghanistan, then they must accept that they have to give up violence and engage in the political process,” he said.

Later Friday, Cameron met with British troops at Camp Bastion in southern Helmand province, where he told soldiers who

Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which hosted Pierson at a hearing where her tepid and inconsistent responses infuriated all sides, are drafting a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson outlining their recommendations for the investigation - an unusual moment of agreement on a panel notorious for its partisan sparring.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The scandal that’s rocked the once-proud Secret Service and raised questions about the president’s safety has also produced rare bipartisan unity on Capitol Hill.

“We are not going to send combat troops back to Afghanistan, because we have trained up an effective Afghan army and Afghan police force. It has been hard, patient work,” he said.

Only this week, Taliban suicide bombers staged attacks on Afghan forces in Kabul, killing at least 10 soldiers. Even with residual foreign forces in the country, there remain serious questions about the ability of the Afghan troops to take on the militants on their own.

S E C R E T S E R V I C E S C A N D A L S PA R K S R A R E B I PA RT I S A N S H I P

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.

Earlier in Kabul, he insisted there was no prospect of Britain going back to fight in Afghanistan.

Republicans typically critical of President Barack Obama have been just as full-throated as Democrats in voicing concerns about his safety. And members of both parties are pledging vigorous efforts to ensure that Pierson’s resignation ushers in wholesale culture changes at the Secret Service, where morale has been battered. There are complaints of personnel shortages and the steady drip of embarrassing revelations has tarnished the agency’s once-sterling reputation.

“Whether it’s in public or privately, I can tell you that the bipartisan effort, and the importance of making sure that our president is protected, is truly refreshing,” said North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican on the oversight panel. “We will continue to hold hearings, continue to work together.”

Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, an oversight committee Democrat, said: “If you closed your eyes you would not know any difference between the Democratic concern and the Republican concern. They are one and the same.”

leaving Congress as the key overseer.

That responsibility, along with the shock value of some of the revelations and Pierson’s clearly bungled response, appears to have produced something of a bipartisan truce against scoring political points over the issue.

At the same time, Pierson’s short tenure leading the agency - she took over 18 months ago when the previous director, Mark Sullivan, retired after a scandal involving Secret Service agents hiring prostitutes while on detail in Colombia - left her without deep relationships on Capitol Hill to fall back on when the going got tough, aides of both parties said. She had no protector, and lawmakers of both parties felt free to attack.

Now the agency must rebuild. The Obama administration has called for an independent panel to scrutinize the Sept.

19 incident in which the man with a knife jumped 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.

In the meantime, the deputy director of the Secret Service, A.T. Smith, will be in charge until Monday, when Joseph Clancy, a former head of the service’s presidential protective division, takes the helm on an interim basis.

But presidential security must continue. Thursday the president was in Illinois for a speech on the economy, and uniformed officers patrolled the grounds of the White House - including the new, second layer of temporary fencing put up the day after the fence-jumper made it inside the building.

Dont Text and Drive

Unlike with other scandals that have divided Washington of late, from the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, to IRS targeting of conservative political groups, Republicans aren’t trying to pin this one on Obama. Indeed, the most high-profile mission of the Secret Service - to protect the president - puts Obama in a delicate position when it comes to criticizing the agency or calling for reforms,

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10 The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

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P R O B L E M S AT T R O U B L E D W O M E N ’ S P R I S O N O F T E N I G N O R E D of the ones deemed substantiated involved inmate-on-inmate allegations.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When inmates at a notorious Alabama women’s prison came forward to complain of sexual abuse and harassment, state investigators time and again classified the complaints as unfounded or unsubstantiated and often recommended that the matters be closed without further action, according to investigative reports obtained by The Associated Press.

The reports, many of them multiple pages, offer varied reasons for cases being closed. Sometimes inmates who reported abuse later recanted allegations, scored erratically on lie detector tests or were described as mentally unstable. Other cases lacked corroborating witnesses. In some instances when someone anonymously would accuse a guard of having sex with a prisoner, both would deny it and the allegation was dismissed.

In only a small fraction of cases in the past three years did corrections officials consider the allegations fully credible, according to roughly four dozen reports released to the AP under the state’s open records law.

Corrections officials investigated a complaint from an inmate who said a guard made crude sexual comments. But the officer denied it and the matter was closed. In another case, an inmate said an officer stared at her in the shower as she dried off, and at others in the bathroom. The case was closed after the officer denied wrongdoing and other witnesses didn’t corroborate it.

In a scathing report this year, the Justice Department chronicled an “unabated” culture of sexual abuse and harassment at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, where inmates “universally fear for their safety” and guards aren’t properly disciplined for bad behavior.

Yet state investigators who looked into the allegations of misconduct, usually involving corrections officers, repeatedly categorized the complaints as unfounded or said there was insufficient evidence to move forward.

Their conclusions are difficult to square with a federal inquiry that painted the prison as a cauldron of sexual violence, and they raise questions about whether more should have been done in at least some of the cases to get to the bottom of inmate allegations. The thoroughness of the state’s investigations is among the concerns addressed in the Justice Department report, which said investigators “often fail to use basic investigative tools and techniques” and close cases prematurely with limited evidence.

Alabama corrections commissioner Kim Thomas said his department thoroughly investigates abuse allegations, noting investigators work for the state rather than the prison and are therefore independent. He said the state strongly encourages inmates to report abuse and that allegations, even if unsubstantiated, are forwarded as a matter of routine to the local district attorney for review and potential prosecution.

The state investigative reports represent only a “snapshot in time” of the records the Justice Department had access to in making its findings, he said, calling the prison much improved since then.

“Nothing like that is ever perfect. It’s never going to be perfect, but it’s not going to be because we have our heads in the sand,” Thomas said.

Problems at the prison in Wetumpka, Alabama, a maximum-security facility that houses death-row inmates, are well documented. The Justice Department in 1995 warned of unconstitutional medical and mental health conditions and in 2007 ranked Tutwiler as the women’s prison

O B A M A G L O B A L

inmates sit in their bunks in Dorm B at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala. When inmates at a notorious Alabama women’s prison came forward to complain of sexual abuse and harassment, state investigators time and again classified the complaints as unfounded or unsubstantiated and often recommended that the matters be closed, according to investigative reports obtained by The Associated Press.

with the highest rate of sexual assaults in the nation. Even before this year’s report, Thomas issued 58 directives for improvement.

Justice Department investigators visited in April 2013, interviewing dozens of prisoners and staff and reviewing disciplinary reports, logs and other documents. Their January report was unsparing.

It said staff raped, fondled and harassed inmates with impunity over the previous two decades, invaded their privacy in showers and bathrooms, made sexual advances and created a “toxic, sexualized environment.”

The report said multiple women, with no opportunity to collaborate, told a “markedly similar story.”

“They don’t come into states and go this wide and this deep unless there is pretty convincing evidence of a pattern and practice of abuse,” American University law professor and prison violence expert Brenda Smith said of the federal scrutiny.

The AP reviewed 49 investigative reports between 2011 and July 2014 regarding a broad variety of misconduct, including graphic sexual comments and inappropriate touching. Most of the allegations concerned corrections officers or other prison staff, though a few were made against other inmates. One woman alleged she was abused at a hospital where she’d been taken but later retracted the allegation.

Of the complaints, at least 42 are categorized as either “unfounded” or “unsubstantiated” or investigators made clear in summarizing the complaint that they did not consider the allegations fully credible. Most

S T E P S A W A Y F R O M C R I S E S T O TA L K J O B S that time on pocketbook concerns, including a jobs speech Friday in Indiana.

WILL HE SAY ANYTHING NEW? Obama’s challenge is to walk a delicate line between taking credit for an economic recovery without seeming to disregard continuing hard times. His aides say this speech isn’t designed to lay out new policy ideas, but to explain what he’s done to help the nation recover from the Great Recession. He also plans to acknowledge the reality that many Americans aren’t feeling the recovery and argue that more needs to be done. His aides say he intends to be more presidential than partisan.

“When you start talking about an inmate, it becomes increasingly difficult. I’m not saying every single case, but in most cases, the inmate is either hesitant to cooperate, or they ask for something in exchange for telling the investigator what happened,” he said.

Thomas said the department has made multiple improvements in the investigative process, including training sessions, streamlining investigations so the accuser does not have to tell her story repeatedly and encouraging unannounced visits from professional coordinators.

D O G O W N E R FA C E S 15 TO LIFE IN PIT BULL MAULING LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A pit bull owner whose dogs fatally mauled a woman walking near his house faces the unusual prospect of spending up to life behind bars.

Alex Donald Jackson, 31, faces a sentence of 15 years to life Friday after he was convicted of second-degree murder last month in the death of Pamela Devitt.

The 63-year-old retiree was taking a morning stroll in the high desert town of Littlerock when four of Jackson’s dogs leaped over a fence and attacked her in the street.

She was alone, didn’t have a phone and no one was nearby. By the time help arrived, she had been bitten 150 to 200 times from head to toe and an arm was severed. She died from blood loss.

Jackson was initially arrested when deputies searching for the dogs discovered a marijuana-growing operation in his house. He was later charged with murder when Devitt’s DNA was found on his dogs’ bloody fur.

A murder conviction for a killing by dogs is rare.

Home court advantage. The former Illinois senator can’t go just anywhere these days, with Democratic candidates avoiding the spotlight with the divisive president. Obama aides also thought a scholarly business school audience would be the ideal setting for an address scheduled to last about 45 minutes and dive deeper into the economic issues than a typical campaign speech. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama will be speaking to the “students who will have a hand in shaping America’s economic future and leadership both at home and abroad.”

The mauling of Diane Whipple in the hallway outside her San Francisco apartment in 2001 led to her neighbor’s second-degree murder conviction.

HOW IS THE ECONOMY DOING?

CHICAGO (AP) -- While Washington’s attention was focused on a Secret Service scandal, President Barack Obama slipped away for an overnight trip to his family home in Chicago and a speech Thursday to assure voters he is still focused on the economy.

Many important indicators are good - unemployment has been going down, consumer spending is up and housing prices are rising. The stock market hit records in the past month, then softened in recent days. A big sign will be the jobs report coming out Friday. But although some of the figures look good, they aren’t helping family budgets. “They don’t feel it because incomes and wages are not going up,” Obama said on “60 Minutes.” He argued that Democratic priorities like raising the minimum wage, job training and road building will help. It’s yet to be seen if voters agree.

A Michigan couple is facing trial on second-degree murder charges for the mauling death of a jogger in July by two cane corsos, an Italian mastiff-type breed, near their home about 45 miles outside Detroit.

The theory behind such cases is that the accused did something so reckless they had to know it was dangerous enough to kill someone - even without intending harm.

“His actions in this case show that he has a nearly psychopathic disregard for the lives and well-being of others,” Deputy District Attorney Ryan Williams said of Jackson in his sentencing memo.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles County Superior Court are seeking a term of 24 years to life in prison for the murder and convictions on weapon and drug charges. The dogs guarded Jackson’s pot-growing operation and he knew the animals were dangerous, Williams said.

In Jackson’s case and others like it, prosecutors have said neighbors and others complained that the owners’ dogs were vicious or dangerous and that the owners didn’t do enough to control the animals.

The Devitts, who passed through the area during their walking routine, had never had a problem with the dog, Williams said.

WHY ANOTHER ECONOMIC SPEECH? The president has spent weeks consumed with international crises and wants to let voters know he hasn’t forgotten about their money struggles. “I can put my record against any leader around the world in terms of digging ourselves out of a terrible, almost unprecedented financial crisis,” Obama said in an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes.” An Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday found that the economy is the top issue for the Americans most likely to cast ballots in the midterm elections. Nine out of 10 consider it extremely or very important in deciding their votes for Congress. They have just one month to make up their minds, and Obama plans to speak out more during

The state says it regularly refers cases for prosecution, though juror doubts about inmate credibility can make convictions difficult. C.J. Robinson, an Elmore County prosecutor, recalled one case this year that ended with a guard’s acquittal after jurors apparently didn’t believe the prisoner.

WHY NORTHWESTERN?

President Barack Obama walks off Air Force One after arriving at the Gary/Chicago International Airport in Gary, Ind., Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014.

Obama is delivering his afternoon economic address at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, just a short hop from Chicago by helicopter. The White House has long planned the speech as a way to frame the closing arguments of a midterm campaign with control of the U.S. Senate hanging in the balance.

It’s impossible to say whether more allegations should have been deemed credible. But the Justice Department report strongly criticized the state’s investigative process, saying officials were quick to close out inquiries because of uncooperative accusers, too often failed to seek out witnesses or check verifiable facts and relied too heavily on prisoner polygraphs.

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But nine other witnesses, including several horse riders and a postal worker, testified about seven frightening encounters. One equestrian had offered to provide free fencing and help Jackson put it up to keep the dogs on his property, but Jackson did not accept the help.

Defense lawyer Al Kim said Thursday that the “nail in the coffin” for Jackson was that the number of other incidents made it hard to argue that he wasn’t aware of the danger the dogs posed.

At trial, Kim conceded Jackson was a drug dealer, but also said he was a dog lover who took in strays that reproduced. While he should have kept closer watch of them, he never intended to hurt someone.

“He’s not the evil dude he’s being made out to be,” Kim said. “He feels horrible about this. He’s contrite.”

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A F G H A N S P I K E

A R M Y S 3 0

D E A T H R A T E P E R C E N T

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan army desperate for more advanced military equipment is suffering death rates 30 percent higher in the 2014 fighting season, the army’s first against the Taliban without large-scale assistance from the U.S.-led international military force, officials said.

Abdullah - the leader of the country’s Tajiks - could lead to fissures in the country’s “already fragile” security forces, he said.

“There are already indications that segments of the Afghan National Army, such as the 205th Corps headquartered in Kandahar, could face significant divisions if intra-government fissures widened,” said Jones, the author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan.”

A bigger worry than the increased deaths, though, is the havoc the military could unleash on the country if the army rips at its ethnic seams, an increased possibility as U.S. and other NATO forces continue to draw down their forces, Afghan and American military experts say.

When the U.S. and other NATO-led forces withdraw all combat troops by Dec. 31, the Afghan army will truly be on its own on the battlefield for the first time since the 2001 U.S. invasion. America has spent $62 billion since then to train and equip the country’s security forces, but Afghan military experts remain concerned that the army doesn’t have enough men or materiel.

“They’re fighting, but they are suffering,” said Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan’s former minister of defense and a current adviser to the president’s office.

Some of those worries were mitigated on Sept. 30, when the United States and Afghanistan signed a bilateral security agreement allowing about 10,000 American troops to remain in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist Afghan forces past the end of the year.

America’s NATO allies are expected to contribute a further 5,000 or so troops. A smaller U.S. Special Operations forces will also remain and actively go after extremists such as al-Qaida.

More importantly, signing the deal assured the Afghan government of about $4.1 billion in U.S. and foreign funding that pays for everything from soldiers salaries, to their bullets and the fuel they use in their vehicles. Without the money, the Afghan security forces would have fallen apart in months.

The need for foreign support was evident this summer, the first where the Afghan army couldn’t rely on U.S. bombers when it needed them most. The army’s death rate spiked 30 percent, Wardak said, because of an increased number of battles and the army’s

“This division would almost certainly facilitate Taliban advances,” Jones said.

Afghanistan National Army soldiers march during their graduation ceremony at the Kabul Military Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. An Afghan army desperate for more advanced military equipment is suffering death rates 30 percent higher in the 2014 fighting season, the army’s first against the Taliban without large-scale assistance from the U.S.led international military force, officials said.

vulnerability to roadside bombs. That spike translates to about 450 additional deaths per year - about 1,800 deaths.

Despite the billions in aid, the army is hampered by a lack of large-scale fire power - including offensive air capabilities - little or no medical evacuation ability and not enough transport aircraft, Wardak said. Keeping the Taliban at bay, he said, will be a “difficult task” unless the U.S. continues to provide more fire power, he said.

The Taliban staged attacks on Afghan army troops in Kabul on Wednesday and Thursday, killing 10 soldiers. Large-scale fighting is taking place in several remote provinces.

But it is not the Taliban’s military pressure that poses the most serious potential problem, said Seth Jones, a former special adviser to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Afghanistan and an analyst at the Rand Corporation.

A collapse of the political compromise between newly inaugurated President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai - who represents the country’s ethnic Pashtuns - and newly installed Chief Executive Abdullah

C L A S H E S B R E A K O U T B E T W E E N H K P R O T E S T E R S , R E S I D E N T S legalize recreational pot. The measure, just like the medical marijuana law the state approved in 1996, was the first of its kind. But along with opposition from law enforcement and elected officials, Proposition 19 faced unexpected resistance from medical marijuana users and outlaw growers in the state’s so-called Emerald Triangle who worried legalization would lead to plummeting marijuana prices.

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.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A national marijuana advocacy group took steps Wednesday to begin raising money for a campaign to legalize recreational pot use in California in 2016, a move with potential to add a dose of extra excitement to the presidential election year.

The Marijuana Policy Project filed paperwork with the California secretary of state’s office registering a campaign committee to start accepting and spending contributions for a pot legalization initiative on the November 2016 state ballot, the group said.

The measure would be similar to those passed in 2012 by voters in Colorado and Washington, the first U.S. states to legalize commercial sales of marijuana to all adults over 21.

California, long the national leader in illegal marijuana production and home to a thriving, largely unregulated medical marijuana industry, is one of the 21 other states that currently allow marijuana use only for medical reasons. The drug remains illegal under federal law.

“Marijuana prohibition has had an enormously detrimental impact on California communities. It’s been ineffective, wasteful and counterproductive. It’s time for a more responsible approach,” Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia said. “Regulating and taxing marijuana similarly to alcohol just makes sense.”

In 2010, California voters rejected a ballot initiative seeking to

Wardak says the Afghan army “is still a child. It is not even a teenager,” and because of that is vulnerable to the outside political environment. But he believes that with proper leadership the army will hold.

Maj. Gen. Ben Bathurst - the international coalition’s deputy adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the commander of British forces in Afghanistan - said in an interview that Western forces track the army closely for ethnic tensions, and that the ministry works to prevent fissures.

“Look at how they have behaved through this very uncertain (election) period and they’ve held firm,” Bathurst said. “Yes it’s a worry in the back of our minds, but when you look for the evidence you haven’t seen any. And I think there’s a sort of pride in the Afghan Army that they are the guardians of the nation and that they aren’t behaving in a political way.”

The Afghan army has about 195,000 troops mostly financed by the U.S. But Wardak has long argued that Afghanistan doesn’t have enough forces to satisfy the U.S. military’s own counterinsurgency manual. That formula would see between 600,000 and 700,000 troops.

Including police and other security units, Afghanistan has about 350,000 Western-funded security forces.

The U.S. and Europe have tried to balance that number with its cost. A U.S. Inspector General report says funding the Afghan Army costs $4.1 billion a year, with only $500 million coming from the Afghan government. Bathurst said the international community has committed to funding the Afghan security forces through 2024. Eventually, he said, Afghanistan must do it.

All that Western money has led to a clearly improved military, said a former army general, Jawed Kohistani. But Kohistani also pointed out why the West might be hesitant: Taliban fighters join the army as new recruits, undergo training, get issued new weapons and then defect back to their insurgent force.

Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Mason Tvert predicted no such divisions would surface this time around.

As the Afghan army fought Taliban militants this summer, soldiers saw enemy formations the U.S. and NATO did not in recent years: forces of dozens or hundreds of fighters. Without NATO aircraft in the skies, the Taliban felt they could again mass in large groups, Wardak said. He predicted tough fighting ahead.

Citing his group’s experience in Colorado and the advantage of aiming for a presidential election year when voter turnout is higher, Tvert said legalization supporters would use the next two years to build a broad-based coalition and craft ballot language that addresses concerns of particular constituencies.

“The Afghan Army will fight. I mean that’s in their blood to fight.

But they don’t have any air support of the ground forces,” Wardak said. “If the level of the threat increases the way it’s increasing right now ... it will be a difficult task unless the U.S. continues to provide additional firepower.”

“Obviously, it’s a whole different landscape in California, where it will cost probably as much or more to just get on the ballot as it did to run a winning campaign after getting on the ballot in Colorado,” he said.

League of California Cities lobbyist Tim Cromartie, whose group opposed the state’s 2010 pot legalization initiative and until this year fought legislative efforts to give the state greater oversight of medical marijuana, said Wednesday that it was too soon to say what kind of opposition, if any, would greet a 2016 campaign.

Lynne Lyman, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said her group expects to play a major role in the legalization effort and already has started raising money. Lyman said the goal is to have an initiative written by next summer. She estimated that a pro-legalization campaign would cost $8 million to $12 million.

Even though California would be following in the steps of other states if a 2016 initiative passes, legalizing recreational marijuana use there would have far-reaching implications, Lyman said.

“When an issue is taken up in California, it becomes a national issue,” she said. “What we really hope is that with a state this large taking that step, the federal government will be forced to address the ongoing issue of marijuana prohibition.”

FA C E B OOK T I GHT E N S RESEARCH GUIDELINES

NEW YORK (AP) -Facebook has tightened its research guidelines following uproar over its disclosure this summer that it allowed researchers to manipulate users’ feeds to see if their moods could be changed.

At issue was study in which Facebook allowed researchers to manipulate the content that appeared in the main section, or “news feed,” of small fraction of the social network’s users. During the weeklong study in January 2012, data-scientists were trying to collect evidence to prove their thesis that people’s moods could spread like an “emotional contagion” depending on what they were reading.

“Although this subject matter was important to research, we were unprepared for the reaction the paper received when it was published and have taken to heart the comments and criticism,” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, wrote in a blog post Thursday. “It is clear now that there are things we should have done differently.”

In the past three months, Schroepfer said, Facebook has given researchers clearer guidelines on research procedures and has created an internal panel that will review projects. But there will not be an external review process and Facebook will continue to encourage researchers to study how people use its site.

The Washington, D.C.-based group also has established campaign committees to back legalization measures in Arizona, Massachusetts and Nevada in 2016.

Voters in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia will weigh in on marijuana legalization in November.

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“We believe in research, because it helps us build a better Facebook,” Schroepfer wrote. “Like most companies today, our products are built based on extensive research, experimentation and testing.”

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 29 thru Oct 6, 2014

F A M E D S L O W LY

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B E A C H I N J A M A I C A VA N I S H I N G T O E R O S I O N

NEGRIL, Jamaica (AP) -- Tourists from around the world are drawn to a stretch of palm-fringed shoreline known as “Seven Mile Beach,” a crescent of white sand along the turquoise waters of Jamaica’s western coast. But the sands are slipping away and Jamaicans fear the beach, someday, will need a new nickname.

Building seawalls to protect from an encroaching sea, an approach that has seen limited success in places like California, has been one response on the island of Barbados. But in many cases, scientists say allowing shores to retreat or bolstering beaches with vegetation and restoring wetlands could be smarter. Last year, Cuba razed seaside buildings to restore shorelines to something approaching its natural state.

Each morning, groundskeepers with metal rakes carefully tend Negril’s resort-lined shore. Some sections, however, are barely wide enough for a decent-sized beach towel and the Jamaican National Environment and Planning Agency says sand is receding at a rate of more than a meter (yard) a year.

“For many beaches, adaptation measures such as bringing in sand and creating seawalls will only slow the inevitable, and at a significant and continual financial cost,” said Jason Spensley of the U.N. Climate Technology Center and Network.

“The beach could be totally lost within 30 years,” said Anthony McKenzie, a senior director at the agency.

Shrinking coastline long has raised worry for the area’s environmental and economic future. Now, the erosion is expected to worsen as a result of climate change, and a hint of panic is creeping through this laid back village, one of the top destinations in a country where a quarter of all jobs depend on tourism.

“If the water takes over this beach, well, that’s the end of the tourists,” Lyn Dennison said as she tended to her beachside stand selling jewelry and wooden statues of roosters, horses and other animals.

For much of its history, Negril was an isolated fishing outpost. In the late 1960s, it began to draw American hippies lured by the scenery and cheap marijuana. As its fame grew, its charms were discovered by hard-partying spring breakers and more sober-minded visitors. Resorts such as Sandals and the Grand Lido went up and the number of annual visitors grew from about 40,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 in 2012.

Fearful of losing their main draw, some alarmed hoteliers are pressing the government to refill the beach with dredged sand, a pricey step many experts say is a temporary fix at best.

Jamaica is readying plans to build submerged breakwaters it hopes will absorb wave energy and slow loss of shoreline, using an initial $5.4 million in grants from a U.N. climate change convention.

The breakwater project in Negril, which one study says could cost as much as $77 million over the course of 80 years, offers a glimpse of what may lie ahead for other coastal towns. Caribbean islands, many already heavily in debt, will be faced with the choice of trying to armor shores with seawalls and breakwaters, or conducting a costly retreat from seas that the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

In this Sept. 14, 2014 photo, the tide gnaws away at a badly eroding patch of resort-lined beach in Negril in western Jamaica. The shrinking coastline long has raised worry for the region’s environmental and economic future. Now, the erosion is expected to worsen as a result of climate change, and a hint of panic is creeping through this laid back village, one of the top destinations in a country where a quarter of all jobs depend on tourism.

Change says could rise by nearly a meter (yard) by the end of the century.

Beaches across the region are being transformed by a variety of factors: shoreline development; surges from increasingly intense storms; coastal pollution that affects marine life; coral reefs crumbling in warmer waters. The changes are particularly worrisome for the Caribbean because of its dependence on sea-and-sand tourism. In addition, roughly 70 percent of the Caribbean’s people and much of its essential infrastructure are situated along coasts.

The region is facing an existential threat, said Ulrich Trotz, science adviser for the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, which provides policy advice and guidelines to more than a dozen member nations and territories.

“We don’t have much time. Action now is imperative if the Caribbean is to survive as we know it,” Trotz said in a phone interview from Antigua.

According to the World Bank, some areas of the island of St. Vincent have lost up to 30 meters (yards) of beach over the last nine years. A recent study by the bank forecasts that the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo, where many residents live along the Ozama River and in its flood plain, will be one of five global cities most affected by climate change over the next 35 years.

3 5 , 0 0 0 WA L R U S C O M E A S H O R E I N N O R T H W E S T A L A S K A and walrus cannot dive to the bottom.

Walrus in large numbers were first spotted on the U.S. side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007. They returned in 2009, and in 2011, scientists estimated 30,000 walruses along 1 kilometer of beach near Point Lay. Young animals are vulnerable to stampedes when a group gathers nearly shoulder-to-shoulder on a beach. Stampedes can be triggered by a polar bear, human hunter or low-flying airplane. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Alaska’s Icy Cape.

The World Wildlife Fund said walrus have also been gathering in large groups on the Russian side of the Chukchi Sea. In this aerial photo taken on Sept. 23, 2014 and released by NOAA, some 1500 walrus are gather on the northwest coast of Alaska. Pacific walrus looking for places to rest in the absence of sea ice are coming to shore in record numbers, according to NOAA.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Pacific walrus that can’t find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska.

An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed Saturday about 5 miles north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Point Lay is an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.

The enormous gathering was spotted during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, spokeswoman Julie Speegle said by email.

The survey is conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that oversees offshore lease sales.

“It’s another remarkable sign of the dramatic environmental conditions changing as the result of sea ice loss,” said Margaret Williams, managing director of the group’s Arctic program, by phone from Washington, D.C. “The walruses are telling us what the polar bears have told us and what many indigenous people have told us in the high Arctic, and that is that the Arctic environment is changing extremely rapidly and it is time for the rest of the world to take notice and also to take action to address the root causes of climate change.”

This summer, the sea ice’s annual low point was the sixth smallest since satellite monitoring began in 1979.

J A PA N P O L I C E : VOLCANIC ROCKS KILLED MOST VICTIMS

Environmental experts and civil planners say leaders across the region need to adapt for the long term. City developers could adjust how they zone, improve enforcement of marine regulations and better plan water systems, for example. Beachfront developers could be encouraged to protect dunes and anchoring vegetation such as seagrasses, better manage coastal runoff pollution and push construction farther back from the sea.

“We just don’t seem to be prepared to do any of it. It’s as if we do not see what Negril has become, what the dangers to its future are,” said Diana McCaulay, CEO of the nonprofit Jamaica Environment Trust.

But Shelia McDonald-Miller, program manager for the government’s breakwater project, said she is confident the offshore structures of boulders will slow Negril’s erosion. She expects construction to start next year.

Simon Mitchell, a geologist at the island’s University of the West Indies, says governments need to think further ahead. In low-lying Negril, for example, there is “no doubt” that hotels perched along the beach will be deluged in coming decades, he said.

“We need to be looking 50 years into the future,” he said. “We can’t keep going into places with pristine beaches, immediately put in hotels and then end up with the same problem in 10 years’ time because those beaches are eroding away.” area of Mount Ontake since Saturday’s eruption.

Doctors concluded that all but one of the bodies showed signs of having been hit by volcanic boulders and rocks, Nagano prefectural police said. The other victim died of burns from inhaling hot air.

Those hit by the rocks and debris had multiple cuts and fractures, particularly in the head and the back, as well as the legs, a prefectural police official said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. Nagano police had earlier said the victims died of “disaster,” without specifying the cause.

Most of the bodies were found near Mount Ontake’s summit, where many climbers were resting or having lunch. Some bodies were retrieved from a trail at a slightly lower elevation.

Experts say hikers near the summit might have been hit by rocks flying as fast as 300 kilometers (190 miles) per hour. Most of the ash fell in the first hour of the explosion, according to the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

Survivors said they fled for their lives as rocks and debris rained down on them while they struggled with hot air and ash hitting their face.

Medical experts who have examined some of the nearly 70 injured have said most had bruises, cuts and bone fractures on their back, an apparent sign they were hit by rocks flying out of the volcano.

Some of the injured reportedly had damage to their lungs and other organs due to the impact of rocks hitting them.

The eruption at Mount Ontake, located in central Japan, caught hikers by surprise. Seismologists have said that increased seismic activity had been detected at Ontake, one of 47 active volcanoes in Japan that are under 24-hour monitoring, but that nothing signaled such a big eruption.

The search for more bodies continued Thursday, but ended early due to bad weather and concerns about toxic gases. Authorities are looking into the possibility that about 20 people caught in the eruption are still missing.

The death toll is the highest from a volcanic eruption in Japan’s postwar history, exceeding the 43 people killed in the 1991 eruption of Mount Unzen in southern Japan.

Andrea Medeiros, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said walrus were first spotted Sept. 13 and have been moving on and off shore. Observers last week saw about 50 carcasses on the beach from animals that may have been killed in a stampede, and the agency was assembly a necropsy team to determine their cause of death.

“They’re going to get them out there next week,” she said.

The gathering of walrus on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed.

Pacific walrus spend winters in the Bering Sea. Females give birth on sea ice and use ice as a diving platform to reach snails, clams and worms on the shallow continental shelf.

Unlike seals, walrus cannot swim indefinitely and must rest. They use their tusks to “haul out,” or pull themselves onto ice or rocks.

As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north.

Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea, the body of water north of the Bering Strait.

In recent years, sea ice has receded north beyond shallow continental shelf waters and into Arctic Ocean water, where depths exceed 2 miles

Rescuers conduct a search operation near the peak of ash-covered Mount Ontake in central Japan, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014. Saturday’s eruption on Mount Ontake was the worst fatal eruption in postwar history in Japan.

TOKYO (AP) -- Doctors have determined that almost all of the dozens of people killed on a Japanese volcano died of injuries from being hit by rocks that flew out during its eruption, police said Thursday.

Rescuers have retrieved 47 bodies from the ash-covered summit

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