Wnd oct 20 14

THE

FREE

WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

Ciculated Weekly in Florida

‘ G O N E G I R L’ R E TA I N S N O . 1 S P O T AT B O X O F F I C E “Gone Girl” didn’t disappear from the top spot at the weekend box office.

The Fox thriller starring Ben Affleck as a man whose wife goes missing came in first place in its second weekend with $26.4 million in ticket sales, bringing its domestic total to $77.9 million.

Universal’s vampire tale “Dracula Untold” featuring Luke Evans as the fanged creature debuted in second place with $23.5 million.

Disney’s “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” opened in third place with $18.4 million. The family comedy stars Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner.

FACEBOOK, APPLE PAY FOR EGG FREEZING, S P E R M D O N O R S

Volume 003 Issue 41

Established 2012

OFFICIALS: 2ND PERSON TESTS POSITIVE FOR EBOLA DALLAS (AP) -- A second Dallas hospital worker who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. has tested positive for the disease, pointing to lapses beyond how one individual may have donned and removed personal protective garb.

pose the greatest risk.

It’s not clear how the second worker contracted the virus. Authorities declined to say what position she holds at the hospital or the type of care she provided to Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia. Duncan died Oct. 8.

Emergency responders in hazardous materials suits began work before dawn Wednesday to decontaminate the Dallas apartment of the second hospital worker. Officials said she lives alone with no pets.

The CDC was conducting confirmatory testing of a preliminary Ebola test conducted late Tuesday at a state public health laboratory in Austin, Texas, which came back positive.

Dallas Police and city officials meet in the parking lot of The Village Bend East apartments where a second healthcare worker tested positive for Ebola, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014, in Dallas. The worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was monitoring herself for symptoms, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said. The unidentified woman reported a fever Tuesday. She was in isolation within 90 minutes, Jenkins said.

Officials have said they also don’t know how the first health worker, a nurse, became infected. But the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said “an additional health care worker testing positive for Ebola is a serious concern.”

“What happened there (in Dallas), regardless of the reason, is not acceptable. It shouldn’t have happened,” Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of NIH, said on MSNBC Wednesday.

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have long offered cushy perks to attract top talent and keep workers happy logging scores of hours on the job. But beyond day-to-day luxuries, Facebook and Apple will now give up to $20,000 in benefits to help employees pay for infertility treatments, sperm donors and even to freeze their eggs. The move comes amid stiff competition for skilled engineers, and as many of the biggest firms try to diversify their male-dominated ranks to include and appeal to more women.

Freezing eggs involves removing a woman’s eggs and cooling them to subzero temperatures to preserve them for future use and stop the egg from changing and developing. Generally speaking, the viability of a woman’s eggs can decline a bit at age 27 before taking a steeper drop around age 34 or 35. The rate of women who had their first child between 40 and 44 has more than doubled in the past 20 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As more women wait longer to have their first child, the number of women choosing to freeze their eggs has grown “exponentially,” said Dr. Alan Copperman, a fertility specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital. They are also doing it at a younger age, which means healthier and more viable eggs.

Freezing their eggs gives women an option to focus on their career or education first, the “leaning in” that Facebook Chief continued on page 2

“It’s a little scary. It’s a little shocking that it’s right near me,” he said.

“But I’m not afraid or anything like that. I’m not gonna run away.”

“We are looking at every element of our personal protection equipment and infection control in the hospital,” said Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources, which operates Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

“I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the patient - the first patient - was diagnosed. That might have prevented this infection,” Frieden said.

The second case may help health officials determine where the infection control breach is occurring and make practices safer for health workers everywhere. For example, if both health workers were involved in drawing Duncan’s blood, placing an intravenous line or suctioning mucus when Duncan was on a breathing machine, that would be recognized as a particularly high-risk activity. It also might reveal which body fluids

The stark admission came as the World Health Organization projected the pace of infections accelerating in West Africa to as many as 10,000 new cases a week within two months.

The new case lends support to nurses’ claims this week that they have inadequate training and in some cases, protective gear, to take care of Ebola patients.

“They’re not prepared” for what they are being asked to do, said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, a union with 185,000 members.

Based on statements from nurses it did not identify, the union described continued on page 2

K E R R Y: A D D R E S S C L I M AT E CHANGE BEFORE IT’S TOO LAT between prosperity and the future of our planet.”

The Wind Technology Testing Center, located on Boston’s waterfront, is the first in the country capable of testing large-scale wind turbine blades up to 90 meters in length. The center also acts as an independent certifier of wind blade designs, with the goal of helping reduce the costs of the technology.

“Anything that gives women more control over the timing of fertility is going to be helpful to professional women,” said Shelley Correll, a sociology professor and director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. “It potentially addresses the conflicts between the biological clock and the clockwork of women’s careers: The time that’s most important in work, for getting your career established, often coincides with normal fertility time for women. This can potentially help resolve that by pushing women’s fertility into the future.”

Facebook this year started offering to reimburse workers for up to $20,000 worth of reproductive-related costs, over the course of employment. Apple’s similar perks will start next year. The companies’ egg-freezing benefits were first reported by NBCNews.com on Tuesday.

Ryan Fus, 24, who lives in the same building as the blocked-off apartment, said police knocked on his door before 6 a.m. to notify him and make sure he was doing OK.

Frieden outlined new steps this week designed to stop the spread of the disease, including the creation of an Ebola response team, increased training for health care workers nationwide and changes at the Texas hospital to minimize the risk of more infections.

“We could’ve sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed,” he said Tuesday.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Free lunches, dry cleaning, massages frozen eggs?

Notices handed out to neighbors advise them that “a health care worker who lives in your area has tested positive for Ebola.”

The worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was monitoring herself for symptoms, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said. The unidentified woman reported a fever Tuesday. She was in isolation within 90 minutes, Jenkins said.

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the CDC, has acknowledged that the government wasn’t aggressive enough in managing Ebola and containing the virus as it spread from an infected patient to a nurse at a Dallas hospital.

A Facebook worker waits for friends to arrive outside of Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook and Apple, long known for cushy perks such as free meals, laundry service and massages, are among some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies now eyeing reproductive expenses as the next batch of benefits to offer to their employees.

Oct 13 thru Oct 20, 2014

Massachusetts is home to what could be the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm.

The Cape Wind project is a proposed 130-turbine facility off the coast of Cape Cod. The project, which has been in the planning stages for more than a decade, is slated to begin construction next year.

Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond climb down the steps of a platform after viewing the blade of a wind turbine at the Wind Technology Testing Center, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 in Boston. Hammond walked down the steps backwards.

BOSTON (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that the country and the world need to confront the threat of climate change while there’s still time.

Kerry said climate change is already changing the world in real and significant ways, from serious food shortages to increasing temperatures to the threat of rising sea levels. But those changes also bring the potential of millions of new jobs to develop the renewable energy industry, he said, provided the U.S. and the rest of the world act now.

“We still have in our hands a window of opportunity to make the difference,” he said. “But the window is closing quickly. That is not a threat. That is a fact.”

Kerry made the comments after touring a Boston wind technology testing center with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, who echoed Kerry’s remarks.

“This is a battle that we have to win for the sake of our long-term security,” Hammond said. “We do not accept that we have to choose

A large area off the coast of Massachusetts, south of Martha’s Vineyard, is also being opened up for other commercial wind energy projects.

The proposed area announced this year is more than 1,160 square miles - larger than the land area of Rhode Island - and will nearly double the federal offshore land area available for commercial-scale wind energy projects.

Gov. Deval Patrick said the state is leading the way for the country, noting that Massachusetts has topped other states in energy efficiency over the last three years.

He also said about 100,000 people are working in the state’s clean-energy sector.

“There is no niche center of our economy,” Patrick said. “This is a powerhouse.”

Nationwide, Kerry said, the economic changes are already happening. The U.S. is continuing to increase the amount of power generated by wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy, he said.

“A clean energy future is not a fantasy,” Kerry said. continued on page 4

2

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

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

PUBLISHER INFORMATION Published By

Digital Media Publishing For The Weekly News Digest

Design, Production & Layout Digital Media Pubishing Records Department Administrator

Yrma Perez

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

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

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

DALLAS NURSES CITE SLOPPY CONDITIONS IN EBOLA CARE

DALLAS (AP) -- A Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and nurses treating him worked without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols, according to a statement released by the nation’s largest nurses’ union.

Among those nurses was Nina Pham, 26, who has been hospitalized since Friday after catching Ebola while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with the virus in the U.S. He died last week.

Wendell Watson, a Presbyterian spokesman, did not respond to specific claims by the nurses but said the hospital has not received similar complaints.

A sign points to the entrance to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where U.S. Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan was being treated, in Dallas.

The Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of the Dallas emergency room for hours, and the nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols, according to a statement released late Tuesday Oct. 14, 2014 by the largest U.S. nurses’ union.

Public-health authorities announced Thursday that a second Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital health care worker had tested positive for Ebola, raising more questions about whether American hospitals and their staffs are adequately prepared to contain the virus.

The CDC has said some breach of protocol probably sickened Pham, but National Nurses United contends the protocols were either non-existent or changed constantly after Duncan arrived in the emergency room by ambulance on Sept. 28.

Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Duncan’s family show that Pham helped care for him throughout his hospital stay, including the day he arrived in intensive care with diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and the day before he died.

When Pham’s mother learned she was caring for Duncan, she tried to reassure her that she would be safe.

Pham told her: “Mom, no. Don’t worry about me,” family friend Christina Tran told The Associated Press.

Duncan’s medical records make numerous mentions of protective gear worn by hospital staff, and Pham herself notes wearing the gear in visits to Duncan’s room. But there is no indication in the records of her first encounter with Duncan, on Sept. 29, that Pham donned any protective gear.

Deborah Burger of National Nurses United, who convened a conference call with reporters to relay what she said were concerns of nurses at the hospital, said they were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments and worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for Duncan.

RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of Nurses United, said the statement came from “several” and “a few” nurses, but she refused repeated inquiries to state how many. She said the organization had vetted the claims, and that the nurses cited were in a position to know what had occurred at the hospital. She did not specify whether they were among the nurses caring for Duncan.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

The nurses allege that his lab samples were allowed to travel through the hospital’s pneumatic tubes, possibly risking contaminating of the specimen-delivery system. They also said that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling.

2 N D

P E R S O N

continued from page 1

how Duncan was left in an open area of the emergency room for hours.

It said staff treated Duncan for days without the correct protective gear, that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling and safety protocols constantly changed.

DeMoro refused to say how many nurses made the statement about Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, but insisted they were in a position to know what happened.

POTECTING SPEICIES worldwildlife.org

Officials say at least 76 people at the hospital might have been exposed, and all are being monitored for fever and other symptoms.

Nurse Nina Pham, 26, contracted the virus while caring for Duncan.

Health officials are monitoring 48 others who had some contact with Duncan before he was admitted the hospital where he died.

Pham became the first person to contract the disease on U.S. soil. She released a statement Tuesday through Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital saying she was “doing well,” and the hospital listed her in good condition. She has received a plasma transfusion from a doctor who recovered from the virus.

www.redcross.org

“Patient and employee safety is our greatest priority, and we take compliance very seriously,” he said in a statement. He said the hospital would “review and respond to any concerns raised by our nurses and all employees.”

The nurses’ statement said they had to “interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available,” even as he produced “a lot of contagious fluids.” Duncan’s medical records underscore that concern. They also say nurses treating Duncan were also caring for other patients in the hospital and that, in the face of constantly shifting guidelines, they were allowed to follow whichever ones they chose.

When Ebola was suspected but unconfirmed, a doctor wrote that use of disposable shoe covers should also be considered. At that point, by all protocols, shoe covers should have been mandatory to prevent anyone from tracking contagious body fluids around the hospital.

A few days later, however, entries in the hospital charts suggest that protection was improving.

“RN entered room in Tyvek suits, triple gloves, triple boots, and respirator cap in place,” a nurse wrote.

The Presbyterian nurses are not represented by Nurses United or any other union. DeMoro and Burger said the nurses claimed they had been warned by the hospital not to speak to reporters or they would be fired.

The AP has attempted since last week to contact dozens of individuals involved in Duncan’s care. Those who responded to reporters’ inquiries have so far been unwilling to speak.

David R. Wright, deputy regional administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which monitors patient safety and has the authority to withhold federal funding, said his agency is going to want to get all of the information the nurses provided.

“We can’t talk about whether we’re going to investigate or not, but we’d be interested in hearing that information,” he said.

CDC officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Duncan first sought care at the hospital’s ER late on Sept. 25 and was sent home the next morning. He was rushed by ambulance back to the hospital on Sept. 28. Unlike his first visit, mention of his recent arrival from Liberia immediately roused suspicion of an Ebola risk, records show.

The CDC said 76 staff members at the hospital could have been exposed to Duncan after his second ER visit. Another 48 people who may have had contact with him before he was isolated are being monitored. Pham remained hospitalized Tuesday in good condition and said in a statement that she was doing well.

The Rev. Jim Khoi, pastor at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Fort Worth, which Pham’s family attends, said the 2010 Texas Christian University nursing school graduate appeared to be in good spirits when she spoke to her mother via video chat.

Pham was in Duncan’s room often, from the day he was placed in intensive care until the day before he died.

She and other health care workers wore protective gear, including gowns, gloves, masks and face shields - and sometimes full-body suits - when caring for Duncan. Health officials have said there was a breach in protocol that led to the infections, but they don’t know where the breakdown occurred.

Among the changes Frieden announced was a plan to limit the number of health care workers who care for Ebola patients so they “can become more familiar and more systematic in how they put on and take off protective equipment, and they can become more comfortable in a healthy way with providing care in the isolation unit.”

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

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

Name _____________________________

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

Address ___________________________ City ____________________State____

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

F A L L I N G O I L U P G L O B A L

P R I C E S S H A K E E C O N O M I E S

NEW YORK (AP) -- A sudden plunge in the price of oil is sending economic and political shockwaves around the world. Oil exporting countries are bracing for potentially crippling budget shortfalls and importing nations are benefiting from the lowest prices in four years.

The global price of oil was relatively stable for nearly four years, averaging $110 per barrel. Increased production in the U.S., Canada, Iraq and elsewhere made up for declining supplies in nations such as Iran and Libya and helped meet rising global demand.

That delicate balance has been upended by a weaker global economy.

Demand is slowing while production, particularly in the U.S., continues to surge.

Consumer-driven economies benefit. For example, drivers in the U.S. are paying the lowest gasoline prices since 2011, giving them more money to spend.

In general the plunge in prices is good for those who have to buy fuel, and bad for those who sell it. But it has far wider and more complex effects on economies around the globe that are only starting to be felt.

- MAJOR EXPORTERS OPEC countries and other major exporters will feel the biggest impact.

The cash-strapped governments of Russia, Venezuela and Iraq are among the most vulnerable.

Oil is cheap to produce in these countries, so they still make money at lower prices. But their government budgets are based on expectations of oil prices of $100 or more.

- ASIA The picture is reversed in Asia, where most countries are major importers and some subsidize the price of fuels.

CORRECTS TRILLIONS TO BILLIONS - Gas prices below $3 dollars are displayed at a gas station, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014, in Jersey City, N.J. A sudden plunge in the price of oil is sending economic and political shockwaves around the world as oil exporting countries face the prospect of billions of dollars of lost revenue and importing nations get some relief in a time of slower economic growth.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern that lower oil prices could force the government to cut spending. Researchers at the state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, estimate that the country needs an oil price of over $104 per barrel to balance its budget next year.

In Venezuela, the government leans heavily on oil revenue to fund spending on housing projects, community organizing and other social programs. Now, oil production is falling at a time when the country desperately needs cash. This month, the analysis firm Stratfor Global estimated that Venezuela needs oil at $110 to continue meeting its obligations.

Last week, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez called for an emergency OPEC meeting to allow member countries cut production to keep prices above $100.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter and OPEC’s most influential member, might not rush to cut production, however, even though it would start running a deficit with oil at $85 per barrel, according to Merrill Lynch. With a large reserve fund - estimated to be $700 billion it could withstand a longer period of lower prices.

RECORD NUMBER OF BLACK CANDIDATES SEEKING OFFICE An Obama “coattails effect” is partly responsible for this large candidate pool because it spurred blacks to vote and encouraged them to pursue offices they might not have sought in the past, said political science professor Fredrick C. Harris, director of Columbia University’s Center on African-American Politics and Society.

America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, according to the Census Bureau.

“It may be that this is a reflection of political opportunity,” Harris said.

He noted a similar increase in black candidates in 1988, when Jesse Jackson made a second unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mia Love, the Republican nominee in Utah’s 4th congressional district, smiles after speaking during a rally, in Lehi, Utah. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, hosted the rally and fundraiser for Mia Love. More than 100 black candidates will be on the ballot in statewide and congressional races next month, a post-Reconstruction record that some observers say is a byproduct of President Barack Obama’s historic presidency. Love is trying to become the first black Republican woman to be elected to Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 100 black candidates will be on the ballot in statewide and congressional races next month, a post-Reconstruction record that some observers say is a byproduct of Barack Obama’s historic presidency.

At least 83 black Republicans and Democrats are running for the House, a modern era high, according to political scientist David Bositis, who has tracked black politicians for years. They include Mia Love in Utah, who is trying to become the first black Republican woman elected to Congress.

Four other black women - Democrats Bonnie Watson Coleman in New Jersey, Brenda Lawrence in Michigan, Alma Adams in North Carolina and Stacey Plaskett in the Virgin Islands - are expected to win, Bositis said. If they all win, and no black female incumbents lose, there should be a record 20 black women among House members, Bositis said.

There are at least 25 African-Americans running for statewide offices, including senator, governor or lieutenant governor, also a record.

The previous record for black candidates seeking House seats was 72 in 2012, the year Obama, the nation’s first black president, was re-elected to a second term.

The previous record for statewide contests was 17 in 2002, said Bositis, formerly of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington that focuses primarily on issues affecting African-Americans.

Those statewide numbers include Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only black members.

Booker is seeking a full term next month. He won a special election last year to replace the late Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Scott, appointed last year, is trying to finish out the two years remaining in the term of former GOP Sen. Jim DeMint, who resigned in 2013.

Saudi Arabia may be interested in using lower prices to force Western oil companies to cut back on some less profitable production in an effort to secure market share.

Iraq is counting on rising revenue both from high oil prices and increasing production to help it fight the insurgency gripping the country and recover from war. Revenue may now fall instead.

The global price of oil is near $83 per barrel, down about $32, or 28 percent, from its high point for the year. Oil consumption globally is 91 million barrels per day. That means the world’s oil producing countries and companies are bringing in as much as $2.8 billion less in revenue every day - and consumers, shippers and airlines are saving a comparable amount on gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

“The problem is that countries get accustomed to a certain level of income, and then spend,” says Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It seems like a windfall at first but when it lasts long enough you get used to it.”

3

Bositis said the increase also may result from changing political demographics.

“The fact is that many of the increases are occurring in states (especially in the South) where most whites are withdrawing from Democratic Party politics - leaving black candidates the nominations by default,” Bositis said.

Republicans have heavily courted minorities, spending millions to woo black voters and to recruit women and minorities.

“If elected, these candidates will be great representatives for all their constituents and will continue to play a major role in the party’s efforts to expand the electorate,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Orlando Watson.

While the GOP is building up its numbers, the Democrats have a record number of African-Americans running for statewide and congressional offices, according to Bositis. There are at least 65 Democratic nominees, surpassing the previous high of 59 in 2012.

“The historic number of black Democrats running for office at all levels this year once again confirms that the Democratic Party is a broad coalition of Americans from diverse ethnic and professional backgrounds, focused on expanding opportunity for all and building ladders to the middle class,” said Kiara Pesante, Democratic National Committee spokeswoman.

China is the second-largest oil consumer and on track to become the largest net importer of oil. Falling prices will provide China’s economy some relief, according to Huang Bingjie, professor from the School of Economics and Management at China University of Petroleum. But lower oil prices won’t fully offset the far wider effects of a slowing economy.

India imports three-quarters of its oil and analysts say falling oil prices will ease the country’s chronic current account deficit. Samiran Chakraborty, head of research in India for Standard Chartered Bank, also says the cost of India’s fuel subsidies would fall by $2.5 billion during its current fiscal year if oil prices stay low.

Japan imports nearly all of the oil it uses. Following the accident at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in 2011, Japan has turned more to oil and natural gas, which is priced based on oil, to generate electric power. But the lower prices are a mixed blessing. Rising energy prices have helped to push inflation higher - a key aim of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s deflation-fighting “Abenomics” growth strategy.

- NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA, AND EUROPE Low prices could eventually threaten the boom in oil production in such countries as the U.S., Canada, and Brazil because that oil is expensive to produce. Investors have dumped shares of energy companies in recent weeks, helping to drag global stock markets lower.

For now, lower crude oil and fuel prices are a boon for consumers. In the U.S., still the world’s biggest oil user, consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, and lower energy prices give consumers more money to spend on things other than fuel.

The same is true in Europe. Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank, says that a 10 percent fall in oil prices would lead to a 0.1 percent increase in economic output. That’s meaningful because the 18-country currency union didn’t grow at all in the second quarter.

FA C E B O O K , A P P L E continued from page 1

Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg champions. But the procedure can cost upward of $10,000, plus storage costs of several hundred dollars a year. Later it costs another several thousand to thaw and fertilize the eggs and implant them in the womb.

The number of egg freezing patients at the New York University Fertility Center rose to about 400 this year from just five in 2005, said Dr. Nicole Noyes, a fertility specialist at the center. She said some big banks also are covering the procedure, and expects law firms to do the same if they want to keep good female employees.

Copperman thinks Apple and Facebook are ahead of the game in offering to cover the procedure, both as a recruitment and retention tool and from a public health perspective. He expects other companies to follow suit, “because it’s the right thing to do and it’s going to send a signal that women’s health should be a priority.”

“It’s telling women they have the opportunity to put off child bearing and focus on their careers,” he said. “(And) not make decisions based on certain reproductive limits women have.”

Apple’s and Facebook’s reproductive benefits policies could also appeal to gay and lesbian couples who want to use a surrogate or a sperm donor to have a baby, or heterosexual couples who incur in vitro fertilization costs not covered by insurance. Apple also reimburses adoption costs.

Coverage of infertility treatments is becoming more common among big employers, according to the benefits consultant Mercer. Sixty-five percent of companies with 500 or more workers covered the beginning step of an evaluation by a fertility specialist last year, according to Mercer’s annual benefits survey. That’s up from 54 percent in 2008. IVF coverage rose too. Slightly less than a third of companies offered no infertility treatment benefits, down from 41 percent.

But coverage of egg freezing is rare. Corey Whelan, of the American Fertility Association, said she’s never heard of an insurer or employer covering the procedure for women who want to delay pregnancy for non-medical reasons like school or a career.

“Insurers will sometimes cover egg freezing for cancer patients, but it’s by no means guaranteed,” said Whelan, the nonprofit’s program director.

While the technology is growing more popular, experts stress that egg freezing is not foolproof.

“It’s really, really important for women to know it’s not a guarantee of motherhood,” Whelan said. “Some women consider it an iron-clad insurance policy. It’s not.”

4

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

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

F L O R I D A C R A S H S TAT I S T I C S C r a s h c l o s e s e n t r a n c e r a m p t o I - 9 5 S a t P G A B l v d

2

An early morning crash forced Florida Highway Patrol to shut down the entrance ramp to I-95 South at PGA Boulevard.[...]

OCT 17, 2014 07:26AM

D e p u t i e s : D r u n k e n m a n r a m s c r u i s e r , p u s h e s i t 2 0 0 f e e t The 22-year-old had a blood-alcohol level of 0.288 percent when he hit hit the parked squad car, a report says.[...]

OCT 17, 2014 07:12AM

O n e

p e r s o n i n j u r e d i n c r a s h i n N a p l e s

I - 7 5

The northbound lanes of I-75 have been reopened near mile marker 111 in Naples due to a crash involving injuries, according to Collier County Sheriff’s officials.[...]

OCT 17, 2014 02:15AM

7 0 - y e a r- o l d N e w S m y r n a B e a c h r e s i d e n t k i l l e d i n I - 9 5 m o t o r c y c l e c r a s h A motorcyclist died in a New Smyrna Beach crash Thursday afternoon, according to Florida Highway Patrol troopers. The single-vehicle accident happened on the Interstate 95 southbound ramp to State Road 44.

The 70-year-old victim, whose name hasn’t be[...]

OCT 16, 2014 1:43PM

Road Ranger Hit By Car While Helping Motorists Florida Highway Patrol Troopers said a road ranger helping a motorist on I-95 when a car hit him early Sunday morning.[...]

OCT 14, 2014 02:42AM

Wreck snarls traffic on I-95 near Ormond Beach Cars were backed up Friday morning after a crash on Interstate 95 near Ormond Beach.[...]

OCT 12, 2014 00:06AM

Sierra Sierra Sierra Sierra

“

Club Club Club Club

Sierra Sierra Sierra Sierra

Club Club Club Club

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

Learn more

www.directrelief.org

“

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

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

POTECTING SPEICIES Learn more

www.worldwildlife.org

www.redcross.org

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

5

I N T E X A S , B U S H F A T H E R A N D S O N H I T C A M P A I G N T R I A L ABILENE, Texas (AP) -- He’s a former two-term governor of Florida and possible candidate for president in 2016, but at this moment, Jeb Bush is just a proud dad. And it’s all a bit overwhelming.

Still, George P. Bush sometimes sounds like he’s setting his sights higher.

“I like to think that my race is the most important. It’s not. It’s making sure that we stop the president’s agenda in Washington, D.C., and making sure that we take the U.S. Senate,” he said in Abilene, drawing cries of “Amen!” from the crowd. “I’m doing this to reach out to young people and to Hispanics, which are two groups that as Republicans, candidly, we need to do a better job of.”

“Here I am with this incredible candidate,” Bush says, his voice cracking. He tries to continue, then stops to wipe tears from his eyes and clear his throat. His son, George P. Bush, candidate for Texas Land Commissioner, beams and pats him on the shoulder.

“I don’t know why it is that one generation of Bush after another has to run for office,” Jeb Bush, having recovered a little bit, finally said Tuesday afternoon while back on the campaign stump. “But apparently nothing’s changed.”

George P. Bush is expected to sail to victory next month and take over a little-known but powerful office that’s historically served as a stepping stone to a higher level of Texas politics. The 37-year-old Fort Worth attorney and investment manager didn’t really need to import his famous father for a campaign swing through West Texas.

But Dad was along for the ride all the same.

“He’s worked harder than any candidate probably running for office in Texas, so he could do it on his own, but he was kind enough to let the old guy show up,” Jeb Bush said in an interview with The Associated Press.

EBOLA COMES TO LAST SAFE DISTRICT IN S I E R R A L E O N E

Bed frames are laid out to be used at a newly built MSF, ‘Doctors Without Borders’, Ebola treatment center in the city of Monrovia, Liberia. The Ebola crisis is not prompting as large of a response from donors as other recent disasters. The American Red Cross, for example, received $2.8 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, but only about $100,000 in Ebola-related gifts from other donors. By comparison, the Red Cross received more than $85 million in response to Typhoon Haiyan.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- The deadly Ebola virus has infected two people in what was the last untouched district in Sierra Leone, the government said Thursday, a setback in efforts to turn back the disease in one of the hardest-hit countries.

The Emergency Operations Center in its report covering Wednesday noted two Ebola cases in the Koinadugu district, in Sierra Leone’s far north, which since the outbreak early this year has remained untouched.

Residents of the district had practiced strict safety precautions and limited contact with the rest of the country where the disease is rampant.

According to the World Health Organization, there have been 425 new cases in the whole country just last week.

The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, visited Sierra Leone Wednesday as part of a tour through the three hardest-hit countries where he announced an additional $142 million in projects and grants to battle the outbreak.

International agencies and countries are trying to boost the capacity of the countries to fight the disease where overstretched health care systems and minimal sanitation have allowed transmission to rage almost unchecked.

There has been investment in new treatment centers and equipment for health care workers but so far, the disease continues to spread in Sierra Leone where the WHO has described rate of transmission in the capital Freetown as “intense.” Liberia has also been particularly hard hit.

The organization reported Wednesday that there are 4,249 infections in Sierra Leone with 2,458 fatalities.

Dont Text and Drive

www.redcross.org

Jeb’s wife and George P.’s mother hails from Guanajuato, Mexico, and both men speak fluent Spanish. Texas’ Hispanic population is booming, accounting for around two out of every three of the state’s new residents.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, right, and his son George P. Bush, second from left, visit with supporters at Hardin-Simmons University, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, in Abilene, Texas. Jeb Bush heads into West Texas to campaign for his son who is on the ballot this November as a candidate for state land commissioner.

Should George P. Bush win, as expected, against former El Paso Mayor John Cook, he’d become the first member of the Bush family to prevail in his first election. His grandfather, George H.W. Bush, and his uncle, George W. Bush, both lost early campaigns before winning the White House, and his father won the Florida governorship on his second try. Even his great-grandfather, family patriarch and long-serving Connecticut Sen. Prescott Bush, lost his inaugural race.

Father and son began the day in Fort Worth and stopped in Abilene for an event at Hardin-Simmons University, where Jeb choked up.

Things ended in Midland at a night campaign rally and concert. But the pair also found time to tour the home where Jeb lived until age 6. It was abutted by a park that would flood during infrequent rain storms - forming makeshift lakes where locals would waterski.

“Republicans, if we get the young and the Hispanic vote, we win,” said Tony Cummings, an 83-year-old cattle nutritionist consultant, who handed George P. Bush a campaign flier to autograph during the stop in Fort Worth.

Jeb Bush responded by playfully grabbing his son. “The CrossFit vote. Young people that don’t have any body fat,” he said. Then Jeb pointed back at himself and added, “That’s not me.”

The elder Bush was more serious hours later, telling the Abilene crowd, “This state is a spectacular state but it’s changing a lot, in many ways for the better, but you can’t ignore the changes.”

“You have to realize that there’s a lot of people moving in and a lot of people have different backgrounds than what used to be, and it’s important to constantly reach out,” Jeb Bush said, adding it was time for Washington to “fix our broken immigration system.”

If he decides to run for president in 2016, Bush could one day hope to lead such an overhaul. But the former governor was reluctant to say much about the White House while campaigning with his son.

“I remember bullfrogs that would suddenly appear everywhere,” Jeb recalled. “And everyone out there skiing.”

George P. Bush also wasn’t ready to drop any solid hints, saying only, “I would like to see a conservative leader step forward in our party that can unite our party.”

The younger Bush has for months played down suggestions he aspires to anything more than land commissioner, which oversees the state’s vast public lands. It also administers Texas’ Permanent School Fund, which just overtook the educational endowment at Harvard University to become the country’s largest.

“Somebody who is challenged in the primary by the tea party who can speak from authority that we need to come together,” the younger Bush said. “I think my dad is probably on a short list of potential candidates that can do that.”

6

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

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

U S S T E P S U P R E S P O N S E A S E B O L A W O R R I E S G R O W

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The revelation that a second Dallas nurse who is ill with Ebola was cleared to fly the day before her diagnosis raised new alarms as leaders of the nation’s public health system prepared to defend their efforts to contain the deadly virus before a congressional hearing Thursday.

Still, a CDC official cleared Vinson to board the Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to the Dallas area. Her reported temperature 99.5 degrees - was below the threshold set by the agency and she had no symptoms, according to agency spokesman David Daigle.

Ebola patients are not considered contagious until they have symptoms.

President Barack Obama directed his administration to respond in a “much more aggressive way” to oversee the Dallas cases and ensure the lessons learned there are transmitted to hospitals and clinics across the country. For the second day in a row he canceled out-of-town trips Thursday to stay in Washington and monitor the Ebola response.

Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola a day after the flight, news that sent airline stocks falling amid fears it could dissuade people from flying.

Losses between 5 percent and 8 percent were recorded before shares recovered in afternoon trading.

Federal health officials who say they know how to shut down the disease within the U.S. were being called to testify in what was looming as a combative hearing by a House oversight panel on Capitol Hill.

In prepared testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of NIH, said that Duncan’s death and the infections of the two Dallas nurses and a nurse in Spain “intensify our concerns about this global health threat.” He said two Ebola vaccine candidates were undergoing a first phase of human clinical testing this fall. But he cautioned that scientists were still in the early stages of understanding how Ebola infection can be treated and prevented.

Spain’s government is wrestling with similar questions. The condition of a nursing assistant infected with Ebola at a Madrid hospital appeared to be improving, but a person who came in contact with her before she was hospitalized developed a fever and was being tested for the virus Thursday.

That person is not a health care worker, a Spanish Health Ministry spokesman said.

To this point, only hospital workers - the Madrid nursing assistant and the two nurses in Dallas - are known to have contracted Ebola outside West Africa in this outbreak, which is spreading out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

A nurse at the Dallas hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian, on Thursday described a “chaotic scene” when the hospital faced its first Ebola patient, Liberian traveler Thomas Eric Duncan.

President Barack Obama, right, next to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, speaks to the media about Ebola during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014, with members of his team coordinating the government’s response to the Ebola outbreak.

Briana Aguirre, who has helped treat the first nurse who was infected, told NBC’s “Today” show she felt exposed in the protective gear the hospital provided.

“In the second week of an Ebola crisis at my hospital, the only gear they were offering us at that time, and up until that time, is gear that is allowing our necks to be uncovered?” Aguirre said, adding that she piled on gloves and booties in triplicate and wore a plastic suit up to her neck.

The hospital said it used the protective gear recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and updated the equipment as CDC guidelines changed. Because nurses complained that their necks were exposed, the hospital ordered hoods for them, according to a statement from Texas Health Presbyterian.

CDC Director Tom Frieden said that nurse Amber Joy Vinson never should have been allowed to fly on a commercial jetliner because she had been exposed to the virus while caring for the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia.

Vinson was being monitored more closely since another nurse, Nina Pham, also involved in Duncan’s care was diagnosed with Ebola.

PUTIN TO FOCUS ON UKRAINE D U R I N G T R I P T O M I L A N fighting.

On Friday, Putin will have breakfast with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Ukraine and the European Union that will focus on Ukraine. A separate meeting involving Putin and the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine is also being considered.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he’s pinning big hopes on the meetings in Milan. He spoke with Putin over the phone Tuesday to discuss preparations for the talks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives prior to heading the Human Rights Council in Moscow’s Kremlin, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a series of meetings with Western leaders focusing on Ukraine during his trip to Italy, the Kremlin said Wednesday.

Attending this week’s Europe-Asia summit in Milan offers Putin the first chance to discuss the Ukrainian crisis with Western leaders since his trip to France in June to attend the D-Day anniversary.

The U.S. and the European Union have imposed a series of economic sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and support for a pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine. High-level contacts have been sharply curtailed amid the worst Russia-West crisis since the Cold War, and Putin hasn’t traveled to Europe since a brief visit to Vienna in late June.

The Kremlin said that the two leaders agreed to discuss the gas dispute among other issues. Much of the Russian gas supplied to the EU passes via pipelines crossing Ukraine, and the pricing dispute has raised fears of a supply crisis in Ukraine and the EU. European Union energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger plans to bring together the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers for talks in Berlin next Tuesday aimed at securing a temporary deal to ensure supplies through the winter.

Amid increasing anxiety over Ebola, Customs and health officials at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, the Washington suburbs and Newark, New Jersey, were scheduled Thursday to start taking the temperatures of passengers from the three hardest-hit West African countries Thursday. The screenings, using no-touch thermometers, started Saturday at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.

Even as Obama sought to calm new fears about Ebola in the U.S., he cautioned against letting them overshadow the far more urgent crisis unfolding in West Africa, where Ebola has killed more than 4,000.

Underscoring his emphasis on international action, Obama called European leaders Wednesday to discuss better coordination in the fight against Ebola in the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and to issue a call for more money and personnel to “to bend the curve of the epidemic.” British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said he offered to consult with the Italians to add treatment beds in Sierra Leone.

On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged continued support for the fight against Ebola in West Africa, but made no specific new aid offers. China last month pledged $33 million in assistance and dispatched doctors and medical supplies.

And France said that on Saturday, it will begin screening passengers who arrive at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport on the once-daily flight from Guinea’s capital.

But it was Wednesday’s development in Dallas that captured political and public attention in the United States.

Duncan originally was sent home when he went to the Dallas hospital’s emergency room, only to return much sicker two days later. He died of Ebola on Oct. 8.

Frieden has said breaches of protocols led to the infection of the two nurses. More than 70 other health care workers involved in Duncan’s care were being monitored.

Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Duncan’s family showed Vinson inserted catheters, drew blood and dealt with Duncan’s body fluids. Late Wednesday, she arrived in Atlanta to be treated at Emory University Hospital, which has already treated three Americans diagnosed with the virus.

E U R O P E A N S PA C E AGENCY CONFIRMS COMET LANDING SITE

In an apparent show of goodwill before the trip to Milan, Putin over the weekend ordered 17,600 Russian troops to pull back from areas near the border with Ukraine and return to their home bases.

Ukraine and the West have repeatedly accused Russia of fueling the insurgency with weapons

Presidential foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said that Putin will meet Thursday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and attend a dinner involving other leaders. They last met face-to-face at the World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro in July.

BERLIN (AP) -- The European Space Agency has confirmed the time and place it will attempt to land the first spacecraft on a comet.

Merkel said she expects to discuss the fulfillment of a ceasefire deal signed last month in Minsk, which has helped reduce hostilities but so far has failed to completely halt fighting.

The agency said Wednesday its unmanned probe Rosetta will release the 100-kilogram (220-pound) lander at 0835 GMT (3:35 EST) on Nov. 12.

The aim is to drop its lander Philae at a location dubbed `Site J’ on the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) wide comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

“I expect an open exchange of views and progress in implementing the Minsk agreement ... we will talk about how we can transform the Minsk agreement into reality,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin.

Late last month, Merkel said that the EU still wasn’t considering removing the sanctions because of ongoing

Frontier has taken the aircraft out of service. The plane was flown Wednesday without passengers from Cleveland to Denver, where the airline said it will undergo a fourth cleaning, including replacement of seat covers, carpeting and air filters.

www.additions.generalcontractors1.com

The maneuver will take about seven hours. Because radio signals have to travel more than 400 million kilometers (250 million miles) back to Earth, confirmation of a successful landing won’t arrive until about 1600 GMT (11:00

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

7

W H A T ’ S A T S T A K E I N I R A N N U C L E A R T A L K S ?

VIENNA (AP) -- An Iranian nuclear agreement is the Obama administration’s grandest foreign policy objective, a legacy-defining endeavor that holds the prospect of ending the gravest potential threat to Israel and the Middle East and reintegrating Iran into the world community.

The devil of any deal is in the details. Fearful the Iranians could inch toward weapons production despite the nuclear restrictions, Washington will be looking for as many safeguards as possible.

Iran needs to know what economic measures the U.S. will lift from an overlapping set of sanctions targeting the nuclear program as well as Iran’s human rights record, alleged terror links and development of ballistic missile technology.

But reaching a deal is no easy matter. And as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry plunges back into talks Wednesday with Iran’s foreign minister, many challenges beset the diplomacy.

Iran is maintaining a tough line on much of the nuclear infrastructure that it says is for peaceful energy production, but which world powers worry may be designed to develop atomic weapons. President Barack Obama’s negotiators are offering the Iranians permanent relief from economic sanctions, yet are struggling to convince the U.S. Congress to cooperate.

With impatience rising in both countries, a Nov. 24 deadline for an accord looms. Washington and Tehran each have spoken vaguely about a second extension of the talks in four months.

Neither side wants the alternatives: fast-developing Iranian nuclear advances, more crippling U.S. economic pressure and, with Israel vowing to stop Iran by any means, maybe even a new Mideast war.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? After more than a decade of stop-and-go negotiations, diplomacy with Iran heated up after last year’s election of moderate-leaning President Hassan Rouhani.

Within months of Rouhani taking office, Iran and world powers reached an interim agreement imposing strict limits on Iran’s enrichment of uranium and halting work on a heavy water reactor that would potentially produce plutonium. Both materials can be used in nuclear warheads.

In exchange, the U.S. granted Iran eased trading conditions and access to funds frozen in foreign accounts - some $7 billion in combined relief.

The plan was for a permanent deal by late July. But the U.S., its five negotiating partners - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - and Iran failed to build on the early promise of the talks. The deadline was pushed back a further four months.

Domestic pressures in Tehran and Washington could prove deal-breakers.

From left, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are photographed as they participate in a trilateral meeting in Vienna, Austria, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014. The three will try and advance nuclear talks and meet the target date of Nov. 24. But with less than six weeks left until Nov. 24, there may be no alternative than to prolonging them.

level of about 9,000. Other technical safeguards also are being considered.

The interim deal’s stepped-up monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activity would surely be continued, and likely expanded. Negotiators have spoken of creative options for redesigning Iran’s heavy water reactor project so it cannot produce plutonium.

The United States has promised to scrap its “nuclear-related” sanctions on Iran in the event of a deal. Those could include global restrictions on Iranian oil, banking and manufactured trade.

A final pact would lock in place the conditions for each side for several years, though the Americans and their partners are pushing for a longer duration than the Iranians.

WHAT ARE THE REMAINING CHALLENGES?

Libyan Gen. Khalifa Hifter addresses a press conference in Benghazi, Libya. In eastern Libya, a new round of battles appeared imminent after renegade Gen. Khalifa Hifter announced Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, in a late televised statement, a new offensive to “liberate” Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, “from terrorists.” Benghazi has fallen into hands of Islamist extremist militias in the past few months. The militias overran army barracks and seized large amounts of weapons. Hifter’s forces called for an “armed uprising” on Wednesday in Benghazi, urging youth to carry weapons and fight for their own neighborhoods.

CAIRO (AP) -- Two Egyptian government officials say their country’s warplanes are bombing positions of Islamist militias in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Libyan lawmaker Tareq al-Jorushi confirmed to the AP that Egyptian warplanes were taking part in the ongoing operation in Benghazi, but added that they were being flown by Libyan pilots.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

It says U.S. attack and fighter aircraft also launched five airstrikes in Iraq overnight -- one near Haditha Dam northwest of Baghdad and four near Bayji, north of Baghdad.

One of his key partners, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was more optimistic. “I’m sure a compromise is possible,” he said. Still, he said the deadline was “not sacred.”

Iran’s Rouhani said this week he believed a deal “can be achieved.”

By midday, there were conflicting reports over who controlled several military barracks.

The officials, who have first-hand knowledge of the operation, say the use of the aircraft is part of an Egyptian-led operation against the militiamen that involves Libyan ground troops.

Central Command says the latest airstrikes by Americans bombers and fighter jets destroyed multiple Islamic State fighting positions. It says the strikes also hit 16 buildings occupied by the militants. In line with its usual practice, Central Command provided no estimate of militant casualties.

Asked about the deadline in Paris on Tuesday, Kerry wouldn’t make a prediction. “I don’t believe it’s out of reach but we have some tough issues to resolve,” he said.

Wednesday’s airstrikes preluded what many believe to be a concerted push against the Benghazi militias, and Hifter has described the fighting as a “turning point” in his war against Islamists.

After years of demanding an end to all such activity, the U.S. and its partners now speak only of limiting the amount of centrifuges Iran can have in operation and the amount of material Iran can stockpile for enrichment. A compromise could be to cut the number of centrifuges in half from their current

The 18 strikes announced Wednesday by Central Command headquarters were in addition to 21 launched near Kobani the day before.

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?

militias. Many Libyans as well as some army troops and even parts of the government support him, although his popularity has waned after militias beat back his troops.

Iran has won tacit acceptance of its biggest priority: recognition of its right to enrich uranium.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military says it launched 18 airstrikes overnight near the contested Syrian city of Kobani, intensifying an air campaign against Islamic State militants’ efforts to capture the city near the Turkish border.

Obama, meanwhile, needs Congress to agree to permanently scrap any sanctions. Opposition runs deep among Republican and Democratic hawks. And a potential Republican takeover of the Senate in 2015 could make significant U.S. concessions more difficult.

O F F I C I A L S : E G Y P T WA R P L A N E S B O M B I N G L I B YA N M I L I T I A S

WHAT MIGHT AN AGREEMENT LOOK LIKE?

U S K E E P S U P INTENSIFIED STRIKES NEAR SYRIAN CITY

Any pact needs the blessing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose support has been ambiguous. Other Iranian hardliners have strenuously objected to any concessions.

Islamist militias fought Wednesday with forces loyal to a renegade general who vows to seize the eastern city of Benghazi, as a top militia commander accused Egypt of bombing his positions with warplanes.

The city, the second largest in Libya and the cradle of 2011 uprising that led to the downfall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has been held by Islamist militias since the summer when they defeated forces allied with Gen. Khalifa Hifter.

Hifter, once an army chief under Gadhafi before joining the opposition decades ago, has announced an offensive to drive out the Islamist

Residents contacted by telephone said they saw warplanes striking camps of several Islamist militias fighting under an umbrella group called the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries. Armed residents have set up checkpoints and cordoned off their neighborhoods to prevent militias from using their districts as staging ground for attacks against Hifter’s forces, they added, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

A top Islamist militia commander in Benghazi however said that his group’s forces took over a pro-Hifter barracks housing tanks and a second said that three people have been killed in the fighting so far. He says the takeover of the barracks came after an Islamist suicide bomber blew himself up at the camp gates. They too spoke anonymously for the same reasons.

A security official allied to Hifter denied the claim, saying that the general’s troops “liberated” one of the barracks controlled by “extremists,” killing a leading member of the Ansar al-Shariah militia.

Ansar al-Shariah was implicated in the deadly assault on U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in 2012 which left four Americans dead including the ambassador.

“I am in the street right now, with my colleagues, and Hifter’s forces are deployed to the center and engaged in fierce clashes,” said the official, who is a member of Benghazi’s official security body. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Reinforcing the perception that Libya has also become a proxy battleground for larger regional struggles - with Turkey and Qatar backing the Islamist militias while Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE support their opponents, the commander accused the Egyptian government of sending its warplanes to hit his group’s positions.

“We have photographs of the Egyptian warplanes and Egyptian naval forces stationed in eastern cities,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. He said the planes were taking off from airport in Bayda city in eastern Libya. “The Egyptians are bombing us day and night and only want to seed divisions among us here so people point guns at each other.”

8

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

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

W O U N D E D A P R E P O R T E R V O W S T O R E T U R N T O A F G H A N I S T A N

NEW YORK (AP) -- Over and over, Kathy Gannon has re-lived the decisions that led to her close friend’s death - and almost her own - in Afghanistan.

Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Fufa reconstructed Gannon’s left arm with bone, fat and muscle from her left leg, attaching nerves and arteries where there was once a six-inch (15-centimeter) hole.

Gannon, a veteran Associated Press correspondent, and Anja Niedringhaus, an award-winning AP photographer from Germany, had negotiated through many stories and many dangers together for five years. But on April 4, as they prepared to cover the presidential election in Afghanistan the next day, an Afghan police commander ripped into them with gunfire.

“As horrible as everything was, there were so many times you think, `My God, I’m so fortunate,’” Gannon said. “Every nerve, even the smallest nerve in my left hand, was intact. How is that possible?”

The doctor in turn praised Gannon for her perseverance.

She keeps asking herself if she could have prevented the tragedy. And the answer is always “No.” “We weren’t careless or cavalier about the security arrangements ...,” Gannon said in New York last week, in her first interview since the attack. “We really made sure that we had a safe place to stay, we knew who we were traveling with, we knew the area in which we were going. Honestly, I’ve thought it through so many times - I know neither Anja or I would have done anything differently.”

The two women were accompanying a convoy transporting ballots from the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan to an outlying Taliban stronghold, under the protection of Afghan security forces.

As they sat in their vehicle in a well-guarded compound, one of the men supposedly assuring their safety walked up, yelled “Allahu Akbar,” and fired on them with his AK-47. Then he dropped his emptied weapon and surrendered.

Niedringhaus, 48, died instantly. Gannon, 61, took six bullets through her left arm, left shoulder and right hand.

“I remember saying, `Oh my God, this time we’re finished,’” Gannon said. “One minute we were sitting in the car laughing, and the next, our shoulders were pressed hard against each other as if one was trying to hold the other up. The shooting ended. I looked toward Anja. I didn’t know.”

“She is an incredibly motivated person,” Fufa said. “I could not ask for a more motivated and pleasant patient to work with.”

Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannon answers questions during an interview in New York. This was Gannon’s first interview since she and AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus were attacked on April 4, by a gunman in Khost Province in eastern Afghanistan as they prepared to cover the presidential election the next day. Niedringhaus was killed in the attack and Gannon is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds.

As the driver sped their bullet-riddled car to the nearest hospital, 45 minutes away, the translator told Gannon, “Kathy, don’t leave us.” She was sure she was dying.

“That time was very much about really making peace,” Gannon recalled. “I was so trying to just breathe and just go peacefully.”

At the hospital, Gannon was sedated in the operating room.

When she woke up, she’d been airlifted back to the capital, Kabul.

It was only there, still half-conscious, that she realized her friend was dead.

The months of recovery and therapy since have been grueling.

Gannon raves about the care she has received, in particular from Dr. Duretti Fufa, a hand and reconstructive specialist at the

N E PA L B L I Z Z A R D , AVA L A N C H E D E A T H T O L L R I S E S T O 2 7 deep snow.

“One Nepalese guide who knows the way saw me and asked me to stay with him. And he dragged me, really dragged me to the tea shop. And everybody there was really frightened,” she said.

Another Israeli survivor, Yakov Megreli, said they tried to stay awake in the tea shop to stay warm.

“We tried not to sleep. We tried not to get hypothermia. It was a very frightening and awful situation,” he said.

The blizzard, the tail end of a cyclone that hit the Indian coast a few days earlier, appeared to contribute to an avalanche that killed at least eight people in Phu village in neighboring Manang district. The dead included one Indian and four Canadian trekkers as well as three villagers, said government official Devendra Lamichane.

The foreigners’ bodies were buried in up to 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) of snow and digging them out will take days, he said. Three Canadian trekkers who survived the avalanche were taken by helicopter to a shelter in a nearby village. No information was immediately available on their condition.

Authorities said five climbers were killed in a separate avalanche about 75 kilometers (45 miles) to the west, at the base camp for Mount Dhaulagiri. The climbers, two Slovaks and three Nepali guides, were preparing to scale the 8,167-meter (26,800-foot) peak, the world’s seventh tallest, said Gyanedra Shrestha of Nepal’s mountaineering department.

Their bodies were recovered Thursday.

In this photo provided by the Nepalese Army, rescue team members carry a victim of an avalanche before they airlift the body from Thorong La pass area in Nepal, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. Search teams in army helicopters rescued dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and recovered more bodies of victims of a blizzard and avalanches in the mountains of northern Nepal on Thursday.

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- Search teams in army helicopters rescued dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and recovered more bodies of victims of a blizzard and avalanches in Nepal’s northern mountains Thursday, raising the death toll to 27.

About 70 people were still missing along or near the popular Annapurna trail, said Ganga Sagar Pant of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal, and the death toll there was expected to rise.

The route, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of the capital, Katmandu, was filled with international hikers during the peak October trekking season, when the air is generally clear and cool. There were also many Nepalese on the trails because of local festivals.

Government administrator Yama Bahadur Chokhyal said rescuers recovered 10 more bodies from the Thorong La pass area, where they had been caught in a sudden blizzard Tuesday.

The bodies were not yet identified. The bodies of two Poles, an Israeli and a Nepalese were recovered from the area on Wednesday.

Chokhyal said 64 more foreign trekkers were rescued from the area on Thursday. Two trekkers from Hong Kong and 12 Israelis were airlifted Wednesday to Katmandu, where they were being treated at a hospital.

They said they survived by taking refuge in a small tea shop along the path.

“I was sure I was going to die on the way to the pass because I lost my group, I lost all the people I was with and I could not see anything,” said Linor Kajan, an injured Israeli who said she was stuck in waist-

An avalanche in April just above the base camp on Mount Everest killed 16 Nepalese guides, the deadliest single disaster on the mountain.

Climate experts say rising global temperatures have contributed to avalanches in the Himalayas.

US MONITORS HEALTH CARE WORKER ABOARD CRUISE SHIP WASHINGTON (AP) -- Obama administration officials said a Dallas health care worker who handled a lab specimen from a Liberian man who died from Ebola is self-quarantined on a Caribbean cruise ship and is being monitored for infection.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement Friday that the woman had shown no signs of the disease and has been asymptomatic for 19 days.

The government is working to return the woman and her husband to the U.S. before the ship completes its cruise. The White House said the State Department was working to secure their transportation home.

An administration official who was not authorized to be named and requested anonymity said the cruise ship had stopped in Belize but officials there would not allow the passenger to leave the vessel.

Psaki said that when the woman left the U.S. on the cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, on Oct. 12 health officials were requiring only self-monitoring.

One official said it’s believed the woman poses no risk but health-care authorities want to get her off the cruise ship and back to the United States out of an abundance of caution.

There have been no restrictions placed on other passengers aboard the ship.

Gannon still can’t move the fingers on her left hand. But when she recovers, she is determined to return to Afghanistan. While her relatives in Canada and Pakistan worry, they understand her decision.

“Neither Anja or I would ever accept to be forced out by some crazy gunman,” Gannon said. (He has since been sentenced to death by an Afghan court.)

Gannon has established a strong bond with the people of Afghanistan over three decades of covering one war after another. As she put it, “There’s history still to be told there.”

Moreover, Gannon said, Niedringhaus would want her to go back.

Niedringhaus worked in trouble spots such as the Gaza Strip, Israel and Kuwait, and was one of 11 AP photographers who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for coverage of the Iraq War. She and Gannon started working together in 2009 in Kabul and hit it off, despite an initial disagreement over a military assignment.

“It was as if we had known each other forever,” Gannon recalled.

Both journalists believed in getting away from officialdom and spending time in villages, sleeping on the floors of mud houses and talking closely with people. Now, Gannon insists she will do so again - without Niedringhaus, but in her memory and with her spirit.

“If it was reversed, Anja would be out there telling those stories too - she’d be telling them in the most amazing pictures,” she said. “It might be physically half a team, but emotionally and every other way, when I go back, it’s a two-person team. We’re together on this.”

M A N S TA B B I N G P E O P L E O N B U S F A T A L LY S H O T HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut State Police say they’re dealing with a language barrier as they investigate the stabbing of two people on a tour bus by a man who was fatally shot by a trooper on Interstate 95.

Police say another trooper is interpreting for the many Asian people who were on the Dahlia bus from New York City to Mohegan Sun casino Tuesday night.

Authorities say the unidentified man attacked passengers with a “cutting instrument,” and the driver flagged down a trooper at a highway construction site in Norwalk.

Officials say the trooper and the man got into a fight, and the trooper was forced to shoot the suspect. The trooper wasn’t hurt.

A bullet fired by the trooper ricocheted and injured a third passenger.

The three passengers’ conditions haven’t been released.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

A man who stabbed passengers on a casino-bound tour bus on Interstate 95 in Connecticut was fatally shot by state police, officials said Wednesday.

The unidentified man began attacking passengers around 10 p.m., state police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance said. The bus driver flagged down a trooper at a construction site.

As the trooper approached the bus, the suspect and a passenger “were engaged in physical combat, rolled off the bus and onto the pavement of the highway,” Vance said.

The suspect acted aggressively toward the trooper and was shot when he refused to drop his weapon, described as a “cutting instrument,” Vance said.

The man died at a hospital. Two people were stabbed and another person suffered non-life threatening injuries when a bullet from the officer’s gun ricocheted off the pavement. There was no immediate word on the condition of the two people stabbed.

The trooper wasn’t injured.

The bus, carrying about 24 passengers, was headed from Chinatown in New York City to a Connecticut casino. The name of the tour bus company was not immediately released.

Police will “get all the facts and circumstances” from the passengers as part of the investigation, Vance said.

The northbound lanes of the interstate were closed more than seven hours from late Tuesday night until early Wednesday morning.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

9

W I T H F O X E S S C A R C E , H U N T I N G C L U B S T A R G E T C O Y O T E S BRIDGEWATER, Conn. (AP) -- American fox-hunting is a sport so steeped in tradition that riders still wear ties and blazers and cry out “Tally ho!” at the sight of prey. But it is adapting to one dramatic change: Coyotes have displaced foxes in the wild and become the hunters’ new quarry.

“Once the hounds find a coyote, and they start producing a lot of music, that’s exciting,” Stuart said. “That’s what I’m out there for.”

The sport has come under attack from animal rights activists in the U.S. and Britain, which in 2005 outlawed traditional fox hunting in which dogs kill prey. But Stuart says the club is not out to kill animals and, even if they wanted to, the hunters can’t catch them. Some club members say it has faced less opposition since they began chasing coyotes, which are considered more of a nuisance.

The bigger, stronger animals pose challenges to the existence of some of the clubs carrying on the hunts introduced from England in the 1600s.

The coyotes that have overtaken much of the country in recent decades run so much farther that they enter areas where hounds and riders on horseback cannot follow. It is a strain particularly on the few remaining fox-hunting clubs in the densely populated area surrounding New York City, where encroaching development is leaving hunters with less room to roam.

“Those territories are mapped out or delegated. What the coyote has done is made it more difficult because the fox didn’t run into other areas,” said Dennis Foster, executive director of the Virginia-based Masters of Foxhounds Association, which oversees some 155 clubs in 37 U.S. states and Canada.

It has been three years since the last fox sighting for Fairfield County Hounds, a hunting club in Bridgewater, 75 miles north of New York, that is the last fox-hunting club in Connecticut.

The coyotes receive mixed reviews as substitute targets. Club members say the coyotes have not changed the essence of the experience - the braying of the hounds, the vistas seen from horseback - but they are less sly and playful. The coyotes also run so fast and through such rugged terrain they are effectively impossible to catch.

“When you do find one, the chase is so fast you’ve really got to hang on,” said Mary Huribal, a 51-year-old former show rider and nurse from Easton.

A hunt began with the blast of a horn last week on a Bridgewater field as 18 American foxhounds were released from the back of a truck, fed treats and directed toward the woods. As the hounds followed a scent up and over Wolf Pit Mountain, the riders, who are not armed, gave chase by circling around on a more manageable path for the horses. The hunts are faster with coyotes and within three hours the riders had returned in time for lunch - without catching their prey.

hunt master William T. Stuart, from Fairfield County Hounds, collects the hounds for a hunt, in Bridgewater, Conn. At the last fox-hunting club in the state, it’s been three years since the last fox sighting and coyotes have become the hunters’ new quarry. Coyotes run fast and in rugged terrain they are nearly impossible to catch. None were caught this day

Coyotes moved into Connecticut around the middle of the last century and have outcompeted foxes for territory, according to Paul Rego, a state wildlife biologist. There are still some foxes in the area, he said, but state officials receive a large number of complaints about coyotes attacking pets and livestock.

The hunts require vast expanses of undeveloped land - meaning property owners must give hunters permission to pass through.

The Bridgewater club, which was founded 90 years ago, relocated from nearby Newtown in the 1980s as rural property changed hands and some new owners refused to allow access.

Several other clubs in the Northeast have closed over the last couple decades due to development.

John Lemay, who was the master of foxhounds at Litchfield County Hounds in Bethlehem, said coyotes were plentiful by 2002 when the club had to close as farmland was sold.

The news comes a day after HBO said it plans to offer a streaming-only service next year. Americans are increasingly turning to digital media to watch TV and movies. About 45 percent of Americans stream television shows at least once a month, according to research firm eMarketer. That number is expected to increase to 53 percent or 175 million people by 2018, it says.

“With video consumption habits changing all the time, it is very important that we continue to provide the best local news, entertainment and sports via a service like CBS All Access,” said Peter Dunn, president of CBS Television Stations, in a statement. “Television stations have been the fabric of local broadcasting for 75 years, and today’s announcement is part of paving the way for the next 75.”

But live-streaming of sporting events, including NFL coverage, is not available.

Other monthly streaming services, Hulu and Netflix, currently

“We are very concerned about development,” she said.

U N S AY S E B O L A D E AT H T O L L R I S I N G TO 4,500 THIS WEEK

With territory becoming scarcer, some clubs have embraced drag hunting - in which there is no animal to be chased and a scent is laid down along a particular path, ensuring the hounds will not stray.

To purists like Bill Stuart, the leader of Fairfield County Hounds, that can hardly be considered hunting.

offer some CBS shows for streaming, but the CBS All Access service offers a more complete catalog.

Tallmadge police cordon off a home in Tallmadge, Ohio, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014, where Amber Joy Vinson stayed over the weekend before flying home to Dallas. Vinson, a nurse who helped care for Thomas Eric Duncan, has also been diagnosed with the Ebola virus.

GENEVA (AP) -- The death toll from the Ebola crisis will rise to more than 4,500 lives this week from among 9,000 people infected by the deadly disease, a top official with the U.N. health agency said Thursday.

Dr. Isabelle Nuttall, director of the World Health Organization’s global capacities, alert and response, said new numbers show the outbreak is still hitting health workers hard, with 2,700 infected and 236 dead, mainly because Ebola victims are most contagious around the time they die.

Nuttall said the focus of the world’s efforts should remain on the three West African countries where the outbreak has been spreading out of control: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Children Incorporated 4205 Dover Road Richmond, VA 23221-3267

www.childrenincorporated.

“Our data shows that cases are doubling every four weeks. The disease is still widespread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is persistent transmission of the virus,” she told a news conference in Geneva.

Although the effects of the crisis are increasingly being felt beyond its epicenter in West Africa, until now two nurses in Dallas and a Madrid nursing assistant are the only ones known to have contracted Ebola outside the hot zone.

Nuttall said cases are growing in Guinea’s capital of Conakry, she said, but problems with data-gathering in Liberia, which has a significant under-reporting of Ebola cases in Monrovia, its capital, make it hard to draw any conclusions there.

The broadcast TV network says 15 current prime-time shows such as “The Good Wife” and “Survivor” will be available the day after they air on the service, called CBS All Access.

Subscriptions to the service will include the ability to stream CBS stations live in 14 markets and watch previous seasons of current shows as well as older shows from both CBS and other networks like “Twin Peaks” and “Cheers.”

At Golden’s Bridge Hounds, a hunting club in North Salem, New York, treasurer Elizabeth Almeyda said the arrival of coyotes has added to concerns about the effects of development.

Already, the club deploys assistants with radios in cars to help guide the hounds if they get too close to roads.

“Somebody comes in from Bridgeport or New York and they say, `No, don’t go over it.’ So you have to stop,” he said. “’It’s progress.’ That’s what they say.”

C B S D E B U T S S T A N D - A L O N E S T R E A M I N G S E R V I C E NEW YORK (AP) -- CBS is jumping on the cord-cutting bandwagon, launching a stand-alone digital streaming service for $5.99 a month that will offer subscribers access to its current and older shows.

Stuart, a farmer, said he owns 50 acres and leases another 1,000 and natural barriers including Lake Lillinonah generally keep coyotes from straying from the club’s hunting area. A club member, Paul Brainard of Bloomfield, said that members also have bought adjoining property when it’s come up for sale to keep it from being developed.

POTECTING SPEICIES

www.worldwildlife.org

It will take months before the outbreak is stopped, she said, but WHO has identified 14 African countries where being prepared and containing Ebola is a top priority. Those countries are Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan and Togo.

“They’ve been chosen because either they have land borders with the affected countries ... or they have high travel or trade routes,” Nuttall said.

Dont Text and Drive

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

Yanukovych’s successor, President Petro Poroshenko, was overwhelmingly voted into power in May. He and other new political faces have succeeded in riding out one calamity after another on the back of Ukraine’s post-revolution euphoria.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- In Ukraine, trashing a politician isn’t a metaphor. It’s literal: Find a suspected shady official, grab him and throw him into a dumpster.

Online videos of several public figures receiving the treatment from gangs of rowdy activists have provoked both glee and revulsion.

Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, a development precipitated by Kremlin fears that the new Ukrainian government’s turn toward the West could lead to the loss of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval base, did little to dampen fervor for Ukraine’s incoming order.

The fad is part of a broader coarsening of the political climate in Ukraine as anger simmers over the snail’s pace of reforms and persisting corruption since the overthrow in February of former President Viktor Yanukovych.

“People are seeing no real changes ... people see no fairness,” said Maxim Latsyba, head of the social development program at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research. “You look on social media and you will see all kinds of illustrations, photos and jokes about this. This means that people are supporting the trend.”

With parliamentary elections coming Oct. 26, the mood seems best suited to favor the chances of nationalist rabble-rousers.

The first widely reported victim of the trash can punishment was Oleg Rudenko, a local official in the Black Sea port city of Odessa accused of extorting a $45,000 kickback. After cornering Rudenko, activists from the ferociously nationalist Right Sector movement pounced him and tipped him into a nearby dumpster.

Within days, the video of the incident became a sensation, as did the practice itself. National politicians - all male so far - have been targeted in more than a dozen reported copycat incidents.

Frustration is especially intense at perceived failures to revamp Ukraine’s notoriously graft-ridden court system and police.

“We can find no fairness in the justice system. There are judges left over from Yanukovych’s time. Nobody has fired them,” Latsyba said.

The buzzword of the moment in Ukraine is “lustration” - an arcane term referring to the purging of government officials in former Soviet bloc nations in the 1990s for their previous affiliation with the communist system. Today, self-appointed people’s committees

T U R N S S O U R S

The outbreak of fighting in the mainly Russian-speaking east as armed separatists sought to break away from Kiev’s rule gave the government political cover. Many embrace the government’s belief that the rebels are directly supported by Moscow.

Activists throw water at various lawmakers as they demonstrate to demand sanctions against Russia, during a protest opposite the parliament building in Kiev, Ukraine. In Ukraine, trashing a politician isn’t a metaphor. It’s literal: Find a suspected shady official, grab him and throw him into a dumpster. The fad is part of a broader coarsening of the political climate in Ukraine as anger simmers over the snail’s pace of reforms and persisting corruption since the overthrow in February of former President Viktor Yanukovych

disappointed by government inaction in Ukraine have stepped in to do the job.

Critics of the trend, which has been dubbed “trashcan lustration,” worry that unruly excess could turn even uglier down the line.

They have criticized police for failing to punish its practitioners.

“The mute and inactive position of law enforcement organs is provoking the so-called trash lustrators into further lawlessness,” Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema wrote last week. “The boundary between lynch-mob justice and trashcan lustration is very thin.”

Demonstrators now regularly picket parliament and threaten to pelt deputies with eggs and tomatoes unless they vote the way the protesters want. Initial approval of a raft of hastily hatched anti-corruption laws last week took place under just such conditions.

Some see the unabashedly aggressive actions as the legacy of the four-month street protests that culminated with the toppling of Yanukovych, who now lives in self-imposed exile in Russia.

Those demonstrations ranged from predominantly peaceful rallies in the beginning to violent confrontations with riot police toward the end.

But the declaration of a nominal, if often-violated, truce in the east in early September has now turned attention back upon Ukraine’s stubbornly dismal political progress.

“Consumers are pondering the fate of their national currency and the prospect of galloping inflation, and we all wonder what further deprivations Ukrainians will incur this coming winter,” columnist Yegor Struzhkin wrote in the Kommentarii weekly.

A recent surge in support for the abrasive Oleh Lyashko, whose Radical Party is expected to be one of a handful that will get into parliament in the Oct. 26 election, marks a distinct turn against political order.

Last month, not wanting to be left out of the wave of dumpster lustrations, Lyashko enlisted supporters in the city of Kirovohrad to seize a newly appointed regional governor for allegedly supporting Yanukovych’s previous government. Unable to locate the governor, the mob instead disposed of a lesser regional representative.

Lyashko, a flamboyant populist known for publicity-grabbing stunts, insists he is not whipping up passions but channeling them.

“When you can’t fix things through the courts, or when prosecutors and police are doing nothing, where there is no law, people get radicalized,” he told The Associated Press. “Society is now far more radical than even our Radical Party.”

N Y C P R O S E C U T O R : N I X MAN ACCUSED OF C O N V I C T I O N S I N ‘ 8 5 K I L L I N G KILLING MOM TELLS The New York Police Department had no immediate response J U D G E H E ’ S G U I LT Y to Thompson’s plans. The lead detective in taking the confessions has died.

The news stunned and dismayed Blenner’s relatives.

“We were led to believe, for 29 years, that they’re the killers.

They confessed,” said his sister, Dr. Deborah Blenner, adding that the family found it troubling that a review by DA’s staffers and an advisory panel of outside lawyers could upend a jury verdict that appeals courts upheld.

The ailing Carter worked on McCallum’s bid for exoneration for a decade after getting a letter from him. n this November 2009 photo provided by Marc Lamy, David McCallum sits for a photo while shooting a documentary film, “David & Me”, at Arthur Kill correctional facility in New York. Now, almost 30 years later, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson plans to ask a judge Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014, to throw out the convictions of McCallum and the late Willie Stuckey, saying their convictions hinged on made-up confessions peppered with details seemingly supplied by police

NEW YORK (AP) -- They were 16 when they confessed to kidnapping and killing a stranger and taking a joyride in his car. They quickly recanted but were convicted of murder.

Now, almost 30 years later, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson plans to ask a judge Wednesday to throw out the convictions of David McCallum and the late Willie Stuckey, saying their convictions hinged on made-up confessions peppered with details seemingly supplied by police. Their cause was championed by one of the nation’s most famous exonerees, former prizefighter Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

“We’ve concluded that the confessions were false, and they were false in large part because these 16-year-olds were fed false facts,” Thompson said by phone Tuesday. No other evidence tied the two to the abduction or killing of 20-year-old Nathan Blenner, he said.

If a judge agrees, McCallum, 45, could be released as soon as Wednesday. He greeted the news with “disbelief, combined with just utter joy” when his lawyers phoned him Tuesday in prison, attorney Oscar Michelen said.

Stuckey died in prison in 2001.

Theirs are the ninth and 10th decades-old convictions Thompson has disavowed since taking office this year, but the first in which he’s cited a false confession as the main reason. His predecessor reviewed McCallum’s and Stuckey’s convictions and decided to stand by them last year, and they had lost various appeals.

“My aim in helping this fine man is to pay it forward, to give the help that I received as a wrongly convicted man to another who needs such help now,” Carter wrote in the Daily News in February, two months before he died of prostate cancer. Convicted and then cleared of a triple murder, he had become a symbol of wrongful convictions, his story told in Bob Dylan’s 1975 song “Hurricane” and a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington.

McCallum and Stuckey were arrested after Blenner was found shot dead in a park, his wallet gone, in a rough part of Brooklyn in October 1985. Back in Blenner’s middle-class Queens neighborhood, witnesses told police they had seen two men push Blenner into his Buick Regal and drive away. The car was found, torched, a few days later in Brooklyn.

McCallum and Stuckey gave confessions naming the other as the gunman but soon professed their innocence. The teens were convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after a trial that featured their confessions and a witness’ testimony that Stuckey had sought to get rid of a gun with “a body on it”; Thompson says the witness’ credibility has proven questionable.

Thompson’s office has been examining over 100 mostly homicide cases from the 1980s and 1990s. He said he was struck by inconsistencies and improbabilities in McCallum’s and Stuckey’s videotaped and written statements.

Stuckey describes commenting on a woman’s car in Blenner’s neighborhood shortly before the kidnapping, a remark she reported hearing as two men eyeballed her car. But the woman’s description of the men didn’t match Stuckey and McCallum, and prosecutors at the time took inconsistent positions, Thompson said. Although they embraced Stuckey’s confession, they said the defendants weren’t the men she saw.

MAYS LANDING, N.J. (AP) -- A convicted murderer who police say killed his mother two days after being released from prison told a judge that he’s guilty and doesn’t want a trial.

Steven Pratt, 45, told a judge through tears on Tuesday that he doesn’t have a lawyer, before he was taken back to jail on $1 million bail.

Judge Michael A. Donio told Pratt not to speak without an attorney, but he spoke anyway.

“I don’t want a trial,” he said. “I’m guilty.”

Gwendolyn Pratt was found dead Sunday at a home in Atlantic City. Atlantic County prosecutor Jim McClain says that an autopsy determined that she died from massive blunt injuries to the head.

Pratt was 15 when he shot and killed his next-door neighbor, Michael Anderson, in an Atlantic City apartment building in 1984. He was tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder in 1986. He received a 30-year prison sentence and was freed on Friday.

According to court records, Pratt and Anderson argued after Pratt and some of his friends refused to leave an apartment hallway where they were noisily hanging out. Pratt came back to Anderson’s apartment with a lead pipe, but Anderson took the pipe away from Pratt and bloodied his face, according to the newspaper.

Pratt then returned with a borrowed handgun and shot Anderson in the face and shoulder. Anderson, who Pratt said acted like a father to him, died days after the shooting.

“How can we say that Stuckey’s confession was valid?”

Thompson asked.

Stuckey also described three shots - something a witness had said to police, though authorities ultimately found evidence of only one shot, Thompson said. Police also didn’t find the gun where Stuckey said he’d hidden it, under his mattress, and the statements described an hours-long drive by two teenagers whom no one had ever seen drive at all, the DA noted.

The teens also said the shooting happened as night fell, when medical examiners determined Blenner died around 3:15 p.m.

McCallum, the subject of a recent documentary film, “David & Me,” has said he felt pressed to confess and implicate Stuckey after hearing Stuckey had done the same to him.

Recent DNA tests and fingerprint analyses from the stolen car matched other people, fueling questions about the case, Michelen said. No one else has been charged.

____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________

T H I N N E R I M A C S I N

$499 base model remains at 16 gigabytes.

Addressing competition from Android, Apple is also cutting the price of its 2012 iPad Mini model to $249. It had been selling for $299.

MAC UPDATES

The new iPad Air 2, at a quarter of an inch “thin,” also adds many of the features previously available on iPhones. That includes the ability to take burst shots and slow-motion video, and unlock the device with a fingerprint ID sensor instead of a passcode.

The company unveiled new iMacs with a sharper display, following what Apple has already done on its mobile devices and MacBook laptops. The company says the new iMacs have seven times the pixels found on standard high-definition television sets. The new 27-inch iMacs have a starting price of $2,499. Apple will continue selling standard-screen models starting at $1,799 for 27 inches and $1,099 for 21.5 inches.

Meanwhile, Apple made its new Mac operating system, Yosemite, available as a free download starting Thursday. The new 27-inch iMac which Apple is dubbing the “Retina 5K” model - went on sale Thursday as well.

Apple also released its new Yosemite operating system for Macs as a free download. The Mac update includes aesthetic changes as well as new functionality, such as the ability to make phone calls with an iPhone nearby and a one-stop search tool for both locally stored documents and online resources.

The company also said Apple Pay, its new system for using iPhones to make credit and debit card payments at retail stores, will launch on Monday.

Much of the emphasis at Thursday’s product-launch event centered on how Apple’s devices work well together because the company makes both its hardware and software.

NEW IPADS: It’s been a year since Apple came out with a lighter, thinner full-size model called the iPad Air. Apple refreshed that with a device that is skinnier by 18 percent at 6.1 millimeters. The rear camera is boosted to 8 megapixels, matching what’s found in iPhones. Previous iPads had a 5 megapixel camera.

The iPad Air 2 will start at $499. Apple also updated its iPad Mini device, with a starting price of $399. The new devices will begin shipping next week, with advance orders starting Friday.

Thursday’s event comes as sales of Apple’s iPads have dropped.

Through the first half of this year, Apple had shipped 29.6 million iPads, a 13 percent drop from the same time last year. Apple plans to issue results for the latest quarter on Monday. Apple has been facing

competition from cheaper tablets running Google’s Android operating system. Google announced Wednesday that an 8.9-inch Nexus 9 tablet is coming next month at a starting price of $399, $100 less than the 9.7inch iPad Air. It will run a new version of Android, dubbed Lollipop.

Besides competition, there’s been an overall slowdown in tablet demand. This week, research firm Gartner projected worldwide shipments of 229 million tablets this year. Although that’s up 11 percent compared with 2013, it’s far less than the 55 percent growth seen last year and the more than doubling in sales in 2012.

Cook sought to address those concerns by pointing out that the 225 million iPads sold cumulatively since 2010 is more than any other product Apple has sold in the first four years after launch. He also said Apple sold more iPads in the past year than many manufacturers have for personal computers.

The step-up models of the new iPads will have double the storage of previous models. (Just like Apple’s new iPhones). So the $599 iPad Air 2 will come with 64 gigabytes instead of 32 gigabytes, for instance. The

C O U RT TO H E A R D I S P U T E O V E R P A Y F O R S E C U R I T Y C H E C K S creasingly impatient with the demonstrations, the biggest challenge its authority since China took control of the former British colony in 1997.

A front-page editorial Wednesday in the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece, condemned the protests and said “they are doomed to fail.”

“Facts and history tell us that radical and illegal acts that got their way only result in more severe illegal activities, exacerbating disorder and turmoil,” the commentary said. “Stability is bliss, and turmoil brings havoc.”

A protester leans over barricades after scuffling with police as they were trying to remove barricades that protesters have set up to block off main roads in Central district in Hong Kong Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2014. Hong Kong police removed some barricades on Tuesday from the edge of pro-democracy protest zones that have choked off roads for weeks, the second straight day they have taken such action and signaling their growing impatience with the student-led demonstrators.

HONG KONG (AP) -- Hong Kong’s police force said Wednesday it will investigate after officers were caught on camera kicking a handcuffed protester amid the most violent clashes since street demonstrations for greater democracy began more than two weeks ago.

Hundreds of riot police, some wielding batons, pepper spray and shields, knocked activists to the ground and dragged dozens away as they moved in to clear them from an underpass next to the government’s headquarters early Wednesday.

The clashes sparked public outrage and worsened an already bitter standoff between authorities and activists, who have taken over the city’s key roads and streets to press demands for democratic reforms.

Anger over the aggressive police tactics exploded after local TV showed a group of plainclothes officers taking the protester around a dark corner and kicking him repeatedly on the ground. It was unclear what provoked the attack. Local Now TV showed him splashing water on officers beforehand.

The protester, Ken Tsang, said officers assaulted him while he was “detained and defenseless,” and that he was attacked again in the police station afterward. Tsang, a member of a pro-democracy political party, lifted his shirt to show reporters injuries to his torso and said he is considering legal action against police.

Police spokesman Steve Hui said seven officers who were involved have been temporarily reassigned, and that authorities will carry out an impartial investigation. Police arrested 45 demonstrators during the clashes, and said five officers were injured.

“Hong Kong police have gone insane today, carrying out their own punishment in private,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheukyan. “Hong Kong’s values and its rule of law really have been completely destroyed by police chiefs.”

Beijing, meanwhile, issued its harshest condemnations yet of the protests, calling them illegal, bad for business and against Hong Kong’s best interests. The central government has become in-

11

I P A D S , S H A R P E R A P P L E ’ S L I N E U P

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) -- Apple unveiled a thinner iPad Thursday with a faster processor and a better camera as it tries to drive excitement for tablets amid slowing demand. The company also released an update to its Mac operating system and introduced a high-resolution iMac model that might appeal to heavy watchers of television over the Internet.

“They’re designed to be incredible products individually but they’re also designed to work together seamlessly,” CEO Tim Cook said. “This is our vision of personal technology, and we are just getting started.”

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

However, there were no signs that the central government was planning to become directly involved in suppressing the demonstrations, which have marshalled opposition to plans for a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates in Hong Kong’s first election to choose the city’s chief executive in 2017. The protesters also want the current leader, deeply unpopular Leung Chun-ying, to resign.

The demonstrations have posed an unprecedented challenge to the government, and it is unclear when and how the crisis will be resolved.

Leung, who described the protests as being “out of control,” told reporters that officials are willing to talk to protesters, but reiterated that Beijing will not drop the election restrictions it imposed. He canceled a leader’s questions session at the Legislative Council on Thursday, citing security risks.

The police operation early Wednesday came hours after a large group of protesters blockaded the underpass, expanding their protest zone in apparent retaliation after police closed in on the occupied areas and cleared activists out of a key thoroughfare.

Police said they had to disperse the protesters because they were disrupting public order and gathering illegally. They also said protesters acted aggressively toward officers.

After initial attempts to disperse protesters with tear gas and pepper spray backfired two weeks ago, police have adopted a strategy of gradually chipping away at the three protest zones by removing barricades from the edges of the occupied areas in the early morning, when the crowd numbers are usually lowest.

But Wednesday’s raid was the most violent so far, with police charging the protesters and dragging them away. One officer ripped a facemask off an activist before spraying him with pepper spray, according to a video on the South China Morning Post newspaper’s website.

“Some of us were sleeping in the park when more than a hundred

Apple has been releasing Mac updates more frequently, in part to time them with annual changes to the iOS system for iPhones and iPads.

Many of the new Mac features will complement what’s found in iOS 8, including the ability to start tasks such as email on one device and finish on another.

During a demo, Apple executive Craig Federighi made a phone call to Stephen Colbert from his Mac and connected with the comedian. The call was actually being made through a nearby iPhone. Federighi also used Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch as a remote control to control a Mac presentation being projected onto a big-screen set via Apple TV. APPLE PAY Apple had already announced its new payments system, Apple Pay, but the iPhone feature wasn’t made available right away. In announcing a Monday launch date, Cook said deals have been made with hundreds of additional banks since the service was announced last month. Cook also said additional merchants plan to accept Apple Pay by the end of the year.

With Apple Pay, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners will be able to make payments at brick-and-mortar stores by holding their phone near a card reader. The new iPhones have a wireless chip to transmit the information needed to complete the transaction. Owners of older models won’t be able to use Apple Pay, even with the software update.

Consumers aren’t likely to abandon plastic credit cards until a majority of retailers, especially smaller merchants, accept contactless payments such as Apple Pay. But Apple Pay may spur transactions over mobile Web browsers and apps this holiday season, since it lets consumers avoid typing in credit card information each time.

The new iPad Air 2 will be able to make browser transactions, but not payments at retail stores.

APPLE WATCH Apple says it will release tools next month so that developers can begin making apps for the upcoming Apple Watch wearable device.

Rival smartwatches running Android have suffered from not having many useful apps from the start. Apple is hoping to have a strong app store in place when Apple Watch debuts next year. of them ran toward us with torches as if they’re trying to blind us temporarily. We were not prepared for how aggressive they were,” said protester Simon Lam, 22.

Positions on both sides have been hardening since the government called off negotiations last week, citing the unlikelihood of a constructive outcome given their sharp differences.

Beijing is eager to end the protests to avoid emboldening activists and others on the mainland seen as a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

In language freighted with political symbolism, Zhang Xiaoming, director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, was quoted as telling Hong Kong legislators at a banquet Tuesday that the protest movement “is a serious social and political incident.”

Zhang said the movement challenged Beijing’s authority and had caused the city to suffer huge economic losses. It had “hurt the basis of Hong Kong’s rule of law, democratic development, social harmony, international image and its relations with the mainland,” he said.

Zhang called for an end to the protests as soon as possible to avoid further losses to Hong Kong’s citizenry.

But Lam, the student protester, said he was bracing for more tensions as students’ distrust of police grows.

“Now there is a feeling we are not just here to fool around or just to sit peacefully. We are feeling more prepared. We have become more united in building defenses,” Lam said.

12

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

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3 W I N C H E M I S T R Y N O B E L F O R S U P E R - Z O O M M I C R O S C O P E S STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Three researchers won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for giving microscopes much sharper vision than was thought possible, letting scientists peer into living cells with unprecedented detail to seek the roots of disease.

May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for brain research that could pave the way for a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s.

On Tuesday, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and U.S. scientist Shuji Nakamura won physics award for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes - a breakthrough that spurred the development of LED technology, which can be used to light up homes, offices and the screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs.

The chemistry prize was awarded to U.S. researchers Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scientist Stefan Hell. They found ways to use molecules that glow on demand to overcome what was considered a fundamental limitation for optical microscopes.

The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced Thursday, followed by the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize Monday.

Betzig, 54, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia. Hell, 51, is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, and also works at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Moerner, 61, is a professor at Stanford University in California.

Their work, done independently and extending back to the 1980s, led to two techniques that were first demonstrated in 2000 and 2006.

Previously, a calculation published in 1873 was thought to define the limit of how tiny a detail could be revealed by optical microscopes.

“As recently as 15 years ago, it was believed to be theoretically impossible to break this barrier,” said Nobel committee member Claes Gustafsson. He called the laureates’ work “a revolution.”

The result of their advance is “really a window into the cell which we didn’t have before,” said Catherine Lewis, director of the cell biology and biophysics division of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

“You can observe the behavior of individual molecules in living cells in real time. You can see ... molecules moving around inside the cell. You can see them interacting with each other.”

The research of the three men has let scientists study diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s at a molecular level, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“Due to their achievements, the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld,” the academy said, giving the 8 million-kronor ($1.1

RETIRED SHUTTLE E N D E AV O U R E X H I B I T CLOSER TO LAUNCH

The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the date that prize founder Alfred Nobel died in 1896.

In this undated image provided by Stanford University, William E. Moerner poses in a lab at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. Moerner, fellow American researcher Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell, of Germany, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible, allowing scientists to see how diseases develop inside the tiniest cells.

million) award jointly to the three for “the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

While scientists can get still finer resolution by using an electron microscope, that device can’t be used to examine cells that are alive.

“You really need to be able to look at living cells because life is animate - it’s what defines life,” Betzig said.

Hell said that close look can shed light on disease.

“Any disease, in the end, can be boiled down to a malfunctioning of the cell,” he said. “And in order to understand what a disease actually means, you have to understand the cell and you have to understand the malfunction.”

Hell has used the technology to examine nerve cells, Moerner studied proteins related to Huntington’s disease, and Betzig tracked cell division inside embryos, the academy said.

Betzig said his reaction to hearing about the prize was “kind of like 50 percent happiness and 50 percent fear. Because I don’t want my life to change. I really like my life, and I’m busy enough already.”

Moerner heard the news as he stepped out of a shower in Brazil, where he was attending a conference. The phone call came from his wife, who learned that he’d won from The Associated Press.

“I’m incredibly excited and happy to be included with Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell,” Moerner told the AP.

AMAZON HIRES 80K S E A S O N A L H O L I D AY WORKERS NEW YORK (AP) -- Amazon is hiring 80,000 seasonal workers for its distribution centers as it looks to improve its shipping efficiency during the crucial holiday season.

The figure is a 14 percent increase over last year’s hiring of 70,000 workers, as Amazon has been opening more distribution centers.

It now has more than 50 distribution centers in the U.S., up from 40 last year. And in July it announced it was opening eight smaller sorting centers for a total of 15 by year-end. At the centers packages are sorted

by ZIP code and then transported to U.S. Postal Service offices.

The company says the sorting centers help Amazon offer services such as Sunday delivery, a later cutoff order time and tighter control over shipping logistics.

Thousands of the seasonal jobs are expected to become permanent positions.

The pace of hiring at a retailer can serve as an indicator of expectations for the holiday shopping season, which accounts for 20 percent of the industry’s annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group.

Seattle-based Amazon is hoping to avoid problems that occurred late in the holiday season last year, when shippers such as UPS were caught off guard by spiking online orders, particularly from Amazon.com.

Hell, who was born in Romania, said he was “totally surprised, I couldn’t believe it.”

Overall, the National Retail Federation said it expects sales during the November and December period to increase 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, up a percentage point higher than last year. It marks the highest increase since 2011 when the rise was 4.8 percent.

This year’s Nobel awards began Monday with U.S.-British scientist John O’Keefe splitting the medicine award with Norwegian couple

Amazon employs more than 132,600 full-time and part-time employees globally.

4 N O R T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A FA U LT S P R I M E D F O R B I G Q U A K E S system, the geological dividing line that marks where the western half of California shifts northwest and away from the rest of North America at about 2 inches a year.

The payload bay doors of the space shuttle Endeavour, housed at the California Science Center, stand open after the installation of a space lab and storage pod on Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 in Los Angeles. The equipment being installed was flown on some missions.

A crew on Thursday delicately positioned the 3,000-pound (1,360-kilogram) portable lab and pod inside the orbiter’s huge cargo bay. Workers also installed a replica robotic arm, airlock and docking system.

The other fault sections that have built up enough tension for a temblor with a magnitude of 6.8 or greater are the northern Calaveras and Hayward faults in the east San Francisco Bay Area and the Rodgers Creek fault to the north, scientists concluded in a study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The space shuttle Endeavour on Thursday was paired once again with a space lab and storage pod it used on some missions, as the countdown to its final exhibit continues at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Geologists reached their conclusions partly through regular data readings that geologists and San Francisco State University geology students began in 1979 along fault lines. The tracking now features annual readings at 80 monitoring sites at 29 sections of faults in northern California.

A crew delicately positioned the 3,000-pound portable lab and pod inside the orbiter’s huge cargo bay, the Los Angeles Times reported ( http://lat.ms/1BZn1mL ). Workers also installed a replica robotic arm, airlock and docking system.

The installations move the Endeavour one step closer to becoming the nation’s most complete iteration of a grounded shuttle on display.

The final exhibit is still four years away from being complete. But visitors to the temporary exhibit site will get a rare, brief chance to see Endeavour with both cargo bay doors open before they are closed again for more work after Oct. 21.

None of the other shuttles on display have equipment in the cargo bay, according to the newspaper. Endeavour will also be the only one of the three retired shuttles that orbited the Earth - Endeavour, Atlantis and Discovery - to be posed with its nose pointing up, toward space.

“Just like it’s ready to launch,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the Science Center.

In its final pose, the cargo doors will be open and people will be able to peer inside the craft, which was a workhorse during its two decades in flight.

“That’s what this thing is about - bringing stuff to and from space,” Rudolph said. “So that’s why we really wanted to be able install a payload and put it up, and let people understand the function of the space shuttle a lot better.”

The Times said the next big steps for the Endeavour exhibit will probably happen next year, when construction of the $250 million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center - its eventual home - begins.

The museum has so far raised about $100 million of the $250 million needed to complete it. The center is expected to open in 2018.

Pedestrians examine a crumbling facade following an earthquake at the Vintner’s Collective tasting room in Napa, Calif. Four long fault segments running beneath northern California and its roughly 15 million people all have become locked far underground, and loaded with enough tension to produce earthquakes of magnitude 6.8 or greater, a geological study published Monday, Oct. 13, 2014 says

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Three fault segments running beneath Northern California and its roughly 15 million people are overdue for a major earthquake, including one section that lies near the dams and canals that supply much of the state’s water, according to a geological study published Monday.

The three fault segments and one other in the region are loaded with enough tension to produce quakes of magnitude 6.8 or greater, according to a geological study published Monday.

They include the little-known Green Valley fault, which lies near key dams and aqueducts northeast of San Francisco. Underestimated by geologists until now, the fault running between the cities of Napa and Fairfield is primed for a magnitude-7.1 quake, according to researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and San Francisco State University.

The water supplies of the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and the farm-rich Central Valley depend on the man-made water system that links to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, noted James Lienkaemper, the U.S. Geological Survey geologist who was lead author of the study. The Green Valley fault is last believed to have ruptured sometime in the 1600s.

The study shows the state “needs to consider more seriously” the earthquake risk in that area, Lienkaemper said by phone.

All four vulnerable fault segments belong to the San Andreas fault

The surveys measure fault creep, movements of fractions of inches that slowly release strain on some faults. When no fault creep is recorded, a fault is considered locked, and stress builds until an earthquake unlocks it.

Roughly two-thirds of the 1,250 miles that comprise the five major branches of the San Andreas fault feature fault creep, the study concludes.

Northern California recorded its biggest earthquake of a quarter-century Aug. 24, when a magnitude-6.0 quake hit Napa, north of San Francisco. Seismologists estimate seven quakes of 7.3 magnitude or more have hit California just since the 1800s, most of them when the state’s population was a fraction of what it is now.

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

www.directrelief.org