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BORDER PATROL TO TEST WEARING C A M E R A S U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske poses for photos after ringing the New York Stock Exchange closing bell, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014 file photo. Kerlikowske scheduled a news conference Thursday Sept. 18, 2014 in Washington to discuss what his office said were “developments toward CBP’s commitment to increase transparency and accountability.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Border Patrol will begin testing body-worn cameras on agents next month, the head of its parent agency said Thursday, a step toward seeing if the technology should be used in the field as the government seeks to blunt criticism about agents’ use of force.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, Customs and Border Protection commissioner since March, said a variety of cameras will be tested beginning Oct. 1 at the Border Patrol’s training academy in Artesia, New Mexico.

He didn’t say when or even if cameras will be introduced to the roughly 21,000 agents in the field.

“Putting these into place, as you know, is not only complicated, it’s also expensive,” Kerlikowske said at a news conference. “We want to make sure that we do this right.”

Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief, has moved more aggressively than his predecessors to address complaints that Customs and Border Protection is slow to investigate incidents of deadly force and alleged abuses by agents and inspectors, and that it lacks transparency.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that he gave Customs and Border Protection authority to investigate possible criminal misconduct by its agents and inspectors. Previously, another agency within Homeland Security - Immigration and Customs Enforcement - investigated such complaints before Customs and Border Protection could.

Kerlikowske said the new authority was “a great step forward” and would result in a more timely and transparent process.

The commissioner also announced the creation of the Integrity Advisory Panel headed by Karen Tandy, former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and New York Police Commissioner William Bratton.

The camera test is a first step toward satisfying activists who have long demanded the technology as a way to keep a check on potential abuses. It is likely to meet resistance from the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing more than 17,000 agents, which has said cameras would be expensive and may cause agents to hesitate when their lives are threatened.

Kerlikowske acknowledged Thursday that cameras raise a host of privacy issues about when they should be turned on and off and said their introduction must be negotiated with the agents’ union.

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C D C T E L L S H E A LT H Y ADULTS NOT TO FORGET FLU VACCINE

Volume 003 Issue 37

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Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

S E N AT E R E A D Y T O S U P P O RT OBAMA ON REBEL AID Obama’s general plan is to have U.S. troops train Syrian rebels at camps in Saudi Arabia, a process that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said could take a year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to adjourn for midterm elections, the Senate steamed toward final congressional approval Thursday of President Barack Obama’s request to train Syrian rebels for a war against Islamic state militants in the Middle East.

The legislation also provides funding for the government after the end of the budget year on Sept. 30, eliminating any threat of a shutdown in the run-up to November elections for a new House and control of the Senate. The House approved the bill on Wednesday.

and was reviewing it.

Additionally, the president already has said he will use existing authority to have the Pentagon deploy airstrikes against Islamic fighters in Syria as well as in Iraq. Hagel said the president received a detailed plan for operations in Syria during a visit Wednesday to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida,

Secretary of State John Kerry, right, speaks with House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014, after a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. At the hearing, Kerry sought to push back on an argument by some in Congress that Syria’s rebels lack moderates, or at least any with the capacity to make a difference in the war.

Leaders in both political parties swung behind the legislation in the Senate. But the measure split their rank and file, Republicans and Democrats alike, and likely created new fault lines for this fall’s elections as well as the 2016 race for the White House.

“Intervention that destabilizes the Middle East is a mistake. And yet, here we are again, wading into a civil war,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. laying down a marker for Republican presidential primaries still more than a year distant.

Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat in a difficult re-election campaign, said, “I disagree with my president” on the wisdom of having the U.S. military become more involved. “It is time for the Arab countries to step up get over their regional differences” and be more aggressive in the fight against terrorists,’ he said.

Like Paul, he said the Senate should have cast a stand-alone vote on training Syrian rebels, rather than one on that issue and spending combined.

For a second straight day, the administration dispatched top-ranking officials to reassure lawmakers — and the public — that no U.S. ground combat operation was in the offing.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told one House committee that Obama “is not going to order American combat ground forces into that area.”

Appearing before a different panel, Secretary of State John Kerry said the administration understands the danger of a “slippery slope.” The term was widely used a half-century ago as the United States slid ever deeper into a Vietnam war that eventually left more than 50,000 U.S. troops dead.

From halfway around the world came a chilling reminder from militants who already have overrun parts of Syria and Iraq and beheaded three Westerners.

This time, the Islamic State group released a video showing a British journalist who said he was their prisoner.

Asked about approving Obama’s plan in the wake of the war in Iraq, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “Iraq was a mistake. I was misled and I voted wrong. But this is not Iraq, this is a totally different thing.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell also favored the legislation.

Like some Republicans, Senate liberals split on the measure.

Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent, readily conceded the threat posed by forces seeking creation of an Islamic State. But he said countries in the Middle East most threatened had not yet joined the international coalition that Obama is trying to assemble.

“Not only are countries in the region not stepping up in the fight ... but believe it or not several of these Gulf states are empowering” Islamic State forces as well as al-Qaida allied groups with financial contributions, he said.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Obama’s proposal marked a moderate, middle course between doing nothing in response to a terrorist threat and refighting the Iraq war. “Every civilized person has to stand up against this,” she said.

While Democrats expressed fears that the legislation could lead the nacontinued on page 2

UKRAINE’S PLEAS FOR LETHAL AID FROM US GO UNMET aggression that followed Russia’s annexation of the strategically important Crimean Peninsula.

Ahead of Thursday’s White House meeting, U.S. officials said Obama would announce a security assistance packages that will provide Ukrainian forces with countermortar radar to help detect incoming artillery fire. The U.S. also will provide vehicles and patrol boats, body armor and heavy engineering equipment.

Despite some support for Poroshenko’s request within the Obama administration, officials said the president continues to oppose lethal assistance and does not envision directly arming the Ukrainian military as an effective way to end the conflict.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It’s time for flu vaccine again and while it’s important for the whole family, this year health officials have some different advice for different ages: Certain kids should opt for the ouchless nasal spray. Seniors, expect to get a new kind of pneumonia shot along with that flu jab.

And too many young and middle-age adults are skipping the vaccine altogether, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - even though there are more options than ever.

“The best way to protect yourself against the flu is to get a flu vaccination,” said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden on Thursday, before rolling up his sleeve to get his own flu shot.

Some things to know about flu vaccinations: WHO SHOULD BE VACCINATED The government recommends a yearly flu vaccine for nearly everyone starting at 6 months of age. Yet only about half of Americans get one, a number Frieden called unfortunate. On average, the CDC estimates, flu kills about 24,000 Americans a year.

HOW MANY ARE Vaccination rates last year were highest for children under 5 - 70 percent and for seniors - 65 percent, the CDC said. But just a third of healthy adults ages 18 to 64 got vaccinated and, surprisingly, last year hospitalizations were highest among that age group.

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, escorted by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is welcomed by U.S. lawmakers as he arrives to address a joint session of Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014. Poroshenko is seeking more robust U.S military assistance to help his country in its fight against Russian-backed rebels and will also be meeting with President Barack Obama.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also pressed Obama to increase military aid to Ukraine. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to advance bipartisan legislation that would increase military and nonmilitary assistance, as well as impose broad sanctions on Russia’s defense, energy and financial sectors.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States will provide $46 million in new security assistance to the Ukraine’s military but stop short of fulfilling an urgent request from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for lethal aid to help his country fight Russian-backed separatists.

“We stand as one today in Congress, united in our support for President Poroshenko and the Ukrainian people in their pursuit of peace and democracy in the face of Russian aggression,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

Poroshenko pleaded his case during remarks Thursday to a rare joint meeting of Congress. While he thanked the U.S. for the nonlethal equipment it is providing his country’s beleaguered military, he said more was needed to stop provocations near the Russian border.

The legislation would authorize $350 million in fiscal 2015 for military assistance, including anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, ammunition, counter-artillery radars and surveillance drones.

“Blankets and night vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with a blanket,” he said during a 40-minute address that was repeatedly interrupted by applause from lawmakers.

Hours later, Poroshenko arrived at the White House for discussions with President Barack Obama, a meeting meant to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the West’s support for Ukraine.

“The picture of President Poroshenko sitting in the Oval Office will be worth at least a thousand words - both in English and Russian,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Ukraine and Kremlin-backed separatists have been locked in a monthslong fight for control of eastern Ukrainian cities that sit on Russia’s border,

The U.S. and Western allies have condemned Russia’s provocations in Ukraine, levying a series of economic sanctions and restricting Putin’s involvement in some international organizations. But the penalties have done little to shift Putin’s calculus. In recent weeks, the West has accused Russia of moving troops and equipment across its border with Ukraine, though the Kremlin denies such involvement.

Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists inked a cease-fire agreement Sept. 5, though the deal has been violated repeatedly. On Wednesday, shelling in rebel-held parts of the east killed at least 12 civilians, as a top leader of pro-Russian rebels rejected Ukrainian legislation meant to end the unrest by granting self-rule to large swaths of the east.

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“This red tide ... will likely cause considerable damage to our local fisheries and our tourist economy over the next few months,” said Heyward Mathews, an emeritus professor of oceanography at St. Petersburg College who has studied the issue for decades.

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Despite years of study, there is nothing anyone has been able to do about it. In the 1950s, wildlife officials tried killing the red tide algae by dumping copper sulfate on it, which made the problem worse in some ways. But some researchers are working to change that.

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Predicting when red tides are going to be especially bad can help fishermen and beach businesses prepare.

Right now, much of the information comes from satellite images, which are often obscured by clouds.

In this Sept. 4, 2014 photo, Heyward Mathews, an emeritus professor of oceanography at St. Petersburg College, talks about the toxic “red tide” algae that is threatening the fishing and tourism industries while on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, near Clearwater, Fla.

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) -- It’s like Florida’s version of The Blob. Slow moving glops of toxic algae in the northeast Gulf of Mexico are killing sea turtles, sharks and fish, and threatening the waters and beaches that fuel the region’s economy.

Known as “red tide,” this particular strain called Karenia brevis is present nearly every year off Florida, but large blooms can be particularly devastating. Right now, the algae is collecting in an area about 60 miles wide and 100 miles long, about 5 to 15 miles off St. Petersburg in the south and stretching north to Florida’s Big Bend, where the peninsula ends and the Panhandle begins.

Fishermen who make a living off the state’s northwest coast are reporting fish kills and reddish water.

“It boils up in the propeller wash like boiled red Georgia clay. It’s spooky,” said Clearwater fisherman Brad Gorst as he steered the charter fishing boat Gulfstream 2 in waters near Honeymoon Island, where dead fish recently washed ashore.

Red tide kills fish, manatees and other marine life by releasing a toxin that paralyzes their central nervous system. The algae also foul beaches and can be harmful to people who inhale the algae’s toxins when winds blow onshore or by crashing waves, particularly those with asthma and other respiratory ailments.

In 2005, a strong red tide killed reefs, made beaches stinky and caused millions in economic damage. A weaker red tide in 2013 killed 276 manatees, state records show, after infecting the grasses eaten by the endangered creatures.

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About 55 percent of school-age children were vaccinated. Parents need to realize that flu vaccine is crucial even for otherwise healthy children, said Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. At least 100 U.S. children died of flu last year, only half of whom had lung conditions or other illnesses that put them at high risk and most of whom weren’t vaccinated.

About half of pregnant women get vaccinated. The shot can be given during any trimester, and also protects the baby during the first few months of life, said obstetrician Dr. Laura Riley of Massachusetts General Hospital.

THE VACCINE SUPPLY About 150 million doses are being shipped this year, with no signs of shortages or delays, Frieden said. About half will protect against four strains of influenza instead of the usual three, he said, as U.S. manufacturers move toward vaccines with that extra bit of protection. CDC doesn’t recommend one over the other.

WHICH KIND TO CHOOSE For the first time this year, the CDC says the ouchless FluMist nasal spray version is the preferred vaccine for healthy children ages 2 to 8, after research showed it works a little better for them. But don’t wait if your doctor has only the shot - just get them vaccinated, said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

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FluMist also can be used by healthy people ages 2 through 49 who aren’t pregnant.

If a squirt up the nose isn’t for you, there are lots of other options: the regular shot; an egg-free shot for those allergic to eggs; a high-dose shot just for those 65 and older whose immune systems may need an extra boost; and a tiny-needle shot that just penetrates the skin. The Food and Drug Administration also recently approved a needle-free injector to deliver flu vaccine, although it’s not clear how soon it will be widely available.

“In this particular red tide, we got a good image on July 23 - then we went weeks without another image,” said University of South Florida ocean scientist Robert Weisberg.

Weisberg is one among a team of researchers developing a prediction model based on ocean currents data, rather than satellite images.

The prediction model tracks the currents that bring natural nutrients like phytoplankton the red tide needs to gain a foothold.

Unlike other red tide species, Karenia brevis is not believed to be caused by man-made pollution such as agricultural runoff, and historical accounts of what is believed to be the same red tide date back to the 1700s.

Using his method, Weisberg in March predicted the current late summer bloom that is now causing so much worry. It allowed state officials to issue a warning July 25.

While the project recently received “rapid response” money from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send a data-collecting robotic glider into the bloom, future funding for this work is in doubt.

Weisberg said the team is still trying to develop a model that can look further into the future.

But the tides often start far offshore, where gathering data and images can be a time-consuming, expensive undertaking. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission has tried to stem this data gap by giving fishermen sampling jars to take out to sea with them.

While a good stopgap, Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly, who represents St. Petersburg, has called for more NOAA funding to help prepare for future events.

“Using fishermen to collect samples clearly shows we have a research gap,” Jolly said. “The more we learn about it, the more we can prevent a spread and protect our shoreline.”

NOAA spokesman Ben Sherman said the president’s 2015 budget does ask for a $6 million increase for research related to red tide forecasting, including the Gulf of Mexico, but Congress still has to approve it.

Fishermen say a better warning system could help save time and money.

“If we had more of a head’s up we could plan out where we would go fish,” said Mike Colby, captain of the Double Hook fishing vessel in Clearwater.

Children already receive Pfizer’s Prevnar-13 to prevent a kind of bacteria, called pneumococcus, that can cause pneumonia, meningitis and other infections. Now seniors need a one-time dose, too, Frieden said.

That’s in addition to a one-time dose of another long-used pneumonia vaccine, called a polysaccharide vaccine. The caveat: The two pneumonia shots have to be given at least six months apart. If you’ve had neither so far, get the new kind first - along with this year’s flu shot - and come back later for the second pneumonia vaccine, advised Schaffner. Together, the two pneumonia shots are expected to cut seniors’ risk of pneumococcal infection by 45 percent, and the chance of severe disease by 75 percent, he said.

WHEN TO GET VACCINATED “Now’s the time,” Frieden said. It’s impossible to predict when flu will start spreading and it takes about two weeks for protection to kick in. Flu season typically peaks in January or February.

NEW ADVICE FOR SENIORS

WHAT’S THE COST

This year, the CDC is urging people 65 and older to get a new kind of pneumonia vaccine along with their flu shot.

The vaccine is covered by insurance and Medicare, usually without a copay.

For the uninsured, it can cost about $30, although Schaffner advised checking public health clinics for free or reduced-cost shots.

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G A Z A W I D O W O F F E R S I N S I G H T I N T O W O R L D O F S P I E S GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- The 48-year-old Palestinian woman’s husband was shot to death in 2012 by militants in the Gaza Strip for spying for Israel. A mother of seven, she herself was jailed by Gaza’s Hamas rulers for aiding and abetting a spy - her husband.

In the end, the officer insisted on taking the man’s mobile phone number.

The brother emerged soon after.

Hamas’ Interior Ministry, which is in charge of security, says it has executed 12 collaborators since 2007 after closed-door trials.

The widow’s account to The Associated Press gave a rare look into the secret espionage side of the war between Israel and the Hamas militant group.

Rights groups say another 53 alleged collaborators were gunned down by Hamas militants in that same period. Often, they were dragged out of prisons where they had been detained on suspicion of spying and were shot.

According to her, Israeli security agents took advantage of her late husband’s financial troubles a decade ago, luring him into collaborating by offering him a permit to work in Israel. She was later recruited when she was allowed to take one of their children to Israel for medical treatment.

“Our life was hell. We were scared,” she said of their years feeding Israel information. “I used to look over my shoulder when I am out in the market, get scared when I see a police car.” The woman, who was released in December, spoke on condition of anonymity because Hamas does not allow freed collaborators to talk to the press.

Israel has historically relied on collaborators against Palestinian militants and activists, recruiting them with methods ranging from entrapment and blackmail to cash and perks. Hamas, in turn, has done whatever it can to stop collaborators - particularly by killing them in public as a deterrent to others - since it holds them responsible for helping Israel assassinate dozens of its top figures.

The issue emerged again with the latest round of fighting in Gaza, which ended late last month. During the war, militants gunned down 22 suspected spies, almost all of them on a single day after three senior Hamas military operatives were killed in an Israeli airstrike apparently guided by collaborators.

The husband of the widow who spoke to the AP was recruited around a decade ago, when Israel still directly controlled Gaza before its withdrawal from the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory in 2005.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad masked gunmen hold up their guns as they display one of two men whom they alleged were Palestinian collaborators for Israel in Gaza City. Hamas views collaborators in Gaza as a serious threat, holding them responsible for the assassination by Israel over the years of dozens of its top political leaders and military commanders. Israel, on the other hand, has historically relied on collaborators in its war against Palestinian militants and Palestinian activism in general, using methods that vary from entrapment and blackmail to cash and perks.

part out of revulsion at Hamas’ actions.

But the large majority of collaborators are believed to do so because of blackmail or financial gain.

The man once worked in Israel as a garbage collector, at a time when thousands of Gazans were allowed to enter Israel daily for work. But his permit was revoked because of his involvement in a car theft, his wife said.

His wife began making frequent trips to neighboring Egypt to buy goods to sell in Gaza. When he tried to do the same, Israeli security agents stopped him on the Gaza side of the border. They offered him his Israel work permit back in exchange for collaboration, the wife told the AP. Later, his wife grew suspicious because he was frequently going up on the roof of their house to make phone calls. When she confronted him, he confessed and told her, “I am not hurting anyone. I just give them a phone number, a name or information on a tunnel.”

Palestinians human rights groups sharply criticized Hamas for carrying out extra-judicial killings.

“Everything starts and ends with money,” said an operative from Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, which runs Palestinian informants.

Many are recruited at Erez, Israel’s border crossing with Gaza, when they seek an entry permit, said the operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

She did not join her husband in collaborating until 2008, when she was allowed to accompany one of their children being treated at an Israeli hospital.

She was asked to go to the hospital’s security office, and there an Israeli gave her money to buy presents for herself and her children.

“It was a terrifying message to society and a deterrent to other collaborators,” Salah Abdel-Atti of Gaza’s Independent Commission for Human Rights said.

On the Gaza side of Erez, a large sign put up by Hamas warns travelers against being recruited by Israelis.

A few days later, he gave her $14,000 along with instructions to leave the cash in various drop points around Gaza to pay other informants. “We left money under rocks, in garbage bins and by walls,” she said.

But rights concerns win little sympathy among Palestinians, who widely see informing for Israel as unforgivable treason - even among Gazans opposed to Hamas’ iron fisted control of the territory since 2007.

An AP reporter this week witnessed firsthand how the Israeli military uses access to Israel through Erez to get information from Palestinians.

Ramiz Abu Jazar, a Gazan whose brother was killed by Hamas in intra-Palestinian fighting in 2007, said he’s all for killing collaborators. They are “like cancer in society,” he told the AP. “They sold their souls to the devil.”

There have been instances of Palestinians collaborating out of political conviction. Most embarrassing to Hamas, the son of the group’s co-founder Sheik Hassan Youssef spied for Israel between 1997 and 2007, dubbed “the Green Prince.” Now in the U.S., Mosab Yousef later wrote that he did so in

On the Israel side outside the crossing terminal, a Palestinian businessman who had just entered from Gaza sat waiting for his brother, who was crossing with him but was held up by border officials inside the terminal.

A uniformed army lieutenant speaking Arabic approached the man and promised to help his brother, but first asked him dozens of questions about life in Gaza, from the number of factories damaged in the latest war, to the mood on the streets and power supply. The questioning - casual in tone lasted about 15 minutes, and the man answered with little hesitation.

ALIBABA POST-IPO STRUCTURE GIVES INSIDERS CONTROL “This structure is our solution for preserving the culture shaped by our founders while at the same time accounting for the fact that founders will inevitably retire from the company,” said Alibaba in documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The arrangement allows Ma to retain control even though his and Tsai’s shareholdings are outweighed by the 34.1 percent held by Japan’s SoftBank Corp. and Yahoo Inc.’s 22.4 percent, said Zhang Tianyu, a specialist in corporate governance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ma has 8.8 percent and Tsai 3.6 percent.

“Jack Ma worries about this situation: If the performance of the company gets really bad, can he continue to run it?” said Zhang.

“That is why he set this up.”

BEIJING (AP) -- Control over Alibaba Group will stay in the hands of founder Jack Ma and other company veterans after the Chinese e-commerce giant goes public on the New York Stock Exchange in a record busting share sale.

A group of 27 managers dubbed the “Alibaba Partnership” will have the power to nominate a majority of board members, a structure that was unpalatable to Hong Kong’s stock market and resulted in Alibaba deciding to list in New York.

Alibaba says the arrangement will preserve its innovative culture in a fast-developing industry and reduce distractions from financial market fluctuations. The plan echoes tech founders in China and abroad who say they need to retain control to keep alive the creative energy of their startup days and launch new initiatives, even if that lowers short-term profits.

During the last round of Israel-Hamas fighting in 2012, several senior Hamas figures were killed in an airstrike, and the husband and five other alleged collaborators were pulled from prison by masked men and shot to death at a Gaza intersection. The body of at least one of the six was also dragged in the street by a motorcycle, though it’s not known if it was that of the husband.

The widow was convicted in a Hamas court and sentenced to seven years in prison. She was pardoned in December to look after her children.

Now she struggles to raise her children with little money. She did not speak of being harassed because of her conviction, but said: “the neighbors give me insincere smiles, but I know what they are thinking of us.”

She reflected little about the rights or wrongs of working with Israel - showing a mix of denial, a desire to defend her husband’s reputation and a relief that the fear of those years was over.

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Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman, won Ukraine’s presidential election in May after his country’s Russian-backed leader fled amid popular protests. Western leaders have praised Poroshenko’s commitment to reform, and Obama will press him Thursday for more aggressive political and economic actions that can stabilize the fragile nation.

At the heart of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is the former Soviet republic’s desire to strengthen ties with Europe. Poroshenko has only deepened those efforts, making a high-profile appearance at the NATO summit this month and overseeing the backing of a deal this week to strengthen economic and political ties with Europe.

Alibaba says more goods are sold on its online platforms than by Amazon and eBay combined. The company has spent billions of dollars over the past two years to diversify into mapping, taxi hailing, online finance and other businesses.

The deal lowers trade tariffs between Europe and Ukraine, requires Ukrainian goods to meet European regulatory standards and forces the Kiev government to undertake major political and economic reforms.

Ma, 49, stepped down as chief executive last year, saying it was time for younger leadership, but stayed on as chairman.

Following a vote by Ukrainian lawmakers, Poroshenko called the deal “a first but very decisive step” toward bringing Ukraine fully into the European Union.

In his last major act as CEO, Ma launched an initiative to break up Alibaba’s seven business units into 25 smaller divisions to respond more effectively to changes in the market. He called that the hardest “cultural transformation” in the company’s history.

Analysts say the initial public offering could value Alibaba at $150 billion to $200 billion, making each 1 percent holding worth up to $2 billion.

Alibaba’s insistence on its partnership structure helped to sink plans for a possible stock market listing in Hong Kong last year.

“The Alibaba governance structure is probably inspired by the Chinese political structure,” said David Webb, a former banker who operates the website webb-site.com about government and corporate affairs.

By contrast, American regulators allow multiple share classes and other tactics to give some shareholders more voting power.

Alibaba says its goal isn’t to lock in control for its founders, who will receive the same stock as other shareholders. Instead, the company says it wants to create a collegial leadership group that can make long-term decisions. It says new partners will be picked from time to time by an inner circle of five members, including Ma and vice chairman Joe Tsai.

More than an hour later, she said, the Israelis bombed the car, killing its occupants - apparently militants.

Ma, a former English teacher who founded Alibaba in 1999 in his apartment in Hangzhou, has stressed the importance of keeping the business flexible even as it grew to 22,000 employees.

Other companies including Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. also have tried to preserve control for their founders, often by awarding them a different class of stock with more voting rights. But research suggests such arrangements enrich insiders at the expense of other shareholders and in Alibaba’s setup, some see a reflection of China’s authoritarian politics.

“The `Partnership’ is equivalent to the Politburo of the Communist Party,” said Webb in an email. “The shareholders are equivalent to the People, who have no say in how their country is run.”

Shortly before their arrest in 2011, she said, the husband received a call from the Israelis, who described a car to him and asked him to head immediately to the main road outside his home and wait for it. When he saw the car, he called the Israelis and reported that two people were in it.

The company turned to U.S. markets after Hong Kong regulators insisted all shareholders receive a voice in corporate decisions equal to the number of share they held.

A 2009 study by Ronald W. Masulis of Vanderbilt University, Cong Wang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Fei Xie of George Mason University found dual-class companies tend to pay CEOs and managers more and deliver less value to shareholders.

To address that, Alibaba says partners must own stock to “align the interests of partners with the interests of our shareholders.”

Candidates to become new partners will have to have worked for Alibaba for at least five years. Other requirements include integrity, a “track record of contribution” to Alibaba and being a “culture warrior” committed to company values.

That could bring a windfall to an opaque group of outsiders who were allowed to buy shares in advance that could soar in value after the IPO. Alibaba’s shares are expected to begin trading later this week.

Alibaba has released no details but Hong Kong news reports say the investors include a fund run by Jiang Zhicheng, a Harvard-educated grandson of former President Jiang Zemin, and other princelings, or relatives of Chinese leaders. Other reported pre-IPO investors include China’s sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corp., and state-owned China Development Bank.

They bought a total of 5.6 percent of Alibaba, according to the Hong Kong magazine Asia Weekly.

Those links should help Alibaba obtain licenses required to enter finance and other fields, said Zhang, the governance expert in Hong Kong.

“That’s another potential value for Jack Ma,” said Zhang. “He has good government connections.”

4

The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

U S T O A S S I G N M I L I T A R Y T O

3 , 0 0 0 F R O M U S F I G H T E B O L A The U.S. effort will include medics and corpsmen for treatment and training, engineers to help erect the treatment facilities and specialists in logistics to assist in patient transportation.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is ramping up its response to West Africa’s Ebola crisis, preparing to assign 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the afflicted region to supply medical and logistical support to overwhelmed local health care systems and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and treat victims of the epidemic.

Obama’s trip to the CDC comes a day after the United States also demanded a stepped-up international response to the outbreak. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, called Monday for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, warning that the potential risk of the virus could “set the countries of West Africa back a generation.”

President Barack Obama planned to announce the stepped-up effort Tuesday during a visit to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta amid alarm that the outbreak could spread and that the deadly virus could mutate into a more easily transmitted disease.

The new U.S. muscle comes after appeals from the region and from aid organizations for a heightened U.S. role in combatting the outbreak blamed for more than 2,200 deaths.

Administration officials said Monday that the new initiatives aim to: - Train as many as 500 health care workers a week.

- Erect 17 heath care facilities in the region of 100 beds each.

- Set up a joint command headquartered in Monrovia, Liberia, to coordinate between U.S. and international relief efforts.

- Provide home health care kits to hundreds of thousands of households, including 50,000 that the U.S. Agency for International Development will deliver to Liberia this week.

- Carry out a home- and community-based campaign to train local populations on how to handle exposed patients.

Meanwhile, a Senate panel scheduled a Tuesday afternoon hearing on the Ebola crisis. Expected to testify were Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Kent Brantly, an American physician who

Florida Auto Accident Fatalities Statistics Florida’s crash fatality rate dropped last year to the lowest rate on record. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles provides details on that statistic and much more in its Traffic Crash Statistics Report 2013. The report summarizes data that state and local law endorcement agencies submit to DHSMV. “The report shows that we are moving toward the Department’s vision of a safer Florida,” said DHSMV Executive Director Julie L. Jones. “While multiple factors influence the numbers, the declining trends are a testament to the emphasis that law enforcement agencies, safety advocates and businesses have placed on saving lives on our roadways. DHSMV will continue to work with our safety partners to add to the momentum we have gained in recent years so that we continue to see crashes, deaths and injuries decline in years to come.”

5

Power said the meeting Thursday would mark a rare occasion when the Security Council, which is responsible for threats to international peace and security, addresses a public health crisis.

President Barack Obama speaks at Nordea Concert Hall in Tallinn, Estonia. The Obama administration is ramping up its response to West Africa’s Ebola crisis, preparing to assign 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the afflicted region to supply medical and logistical support to overwhelmed local health care systems and to boost the number of beds needed to isolate and treat victims of the epidemic.

contracted Ebola while working in Liberia but recovered after treatment with an experimental drug.

The Obama administration officials said the cost of the steppedup effort to combat the disease would come from $500 million in overseas contingency operations, such as the war in Afghanistan, that the Pentagon already has asked Congress to redirect to carry out humanitarian efforts in Iraq and in West Africa. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans on the record ahead of Obama’s announcement The officials said it would take about two weeks to get U.S. forces on the ground.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, applauded the new U.S. commitment. Coons earlier had called for the Obama administration to step up its role in West Africa.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to brief the council along with World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan and Dr. David Nabarro, the recently named U.N. coordinator to tackle the disease, as well as representatives from the affected countries.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest, responding to criticism that the U.S. needed a more forceful response to the outbreak, said Monday that Obama has identified the outbreak “as a top national security priority,” worried that it could contribute to political instability in the region and that, left unchecked, the virus could transform and become more contagious.

He said the administration responded “pretty aggressively” when the outbreak was first reported in March.

“Since that time our assistance has steadily been ramping up,” he said.

The U.S. has spent more than $100 million responding to the outbreak and has offered to operate treatment centers for patients.

“This humanitarian intervention should serve as a firewall against a global security crisis that has the potential to reach American soil,” he said.

While at the CDC, Obama also will be briefed about cases of respiratory illness being reported in the Midwest, the White House said. Public health officials are monitoring a high number of reported illnesses associated with human enterovirus 68 in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and elsewhere.

Hardest hit by the outbreak are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus also has reached Nigeria and Senegal. Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, making doctors and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting the virus, which has no vaccine or approved treatment.

After leaving Atlanta, Obama planned to travel to Florida to visit the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa. He will meet Wednesday with military officials about the U.S. counterterrorism campaign against the Islamic State group. Central Command overseas U.S. military efforts in the Middle East.

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

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S E N AT E : C H I N A H A C K E D M I L I TA RY C O N T R A C T O R N E T W O R K S

WASHINGTON (AP) -- China’s military hacked into computer networks of civilian transportation companies hired by the Pentagon at least nine times, breaking into computers aboard a commercial ship, targeting logistics companies and uploading malicious software onto an airline’s computers, Senate investigators said Wednesday.

Some intrusions appeared to come from mundane ruses that targeted employees by email, a practice known as spear-phishing. In 2013, for example, an unnamed CRAF airline was the victim of a phishing attack that investigators suspect led to malicious software being downloaded on the airline’s network.

A yearlong investigation announced by the Senate Armed Services Committee identified at least 20 break-ins or other unspecified cyber events targeting companies, including nine successful break-ins of contractor networks. It blamed China’s government for all the most sophisticated intrusions, although it did not provide any detailed evidence.

Earlier this summer, in an apparently unrelated investigation, the U.S. accused five members of the Chinese military of hacking computers for economic espionage purposes. It said they hacked into five U.S. nuclear and technology companies’ computer systems and a major steel workers union’s system, conducting economic espionage and stealing confidential business information, sensitive trade secrets and internal communications for competitive advantage.

The Senate report did not identify which transportation companies were victimized.

Investigators said China’s military was able to steal emails, documents, user accounts and computer codes. They also said China compromised systems aboard a commercial ship contracted by Transcom for logistics routes, and hacked into an airline the U.S. military used.

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the hacking put at risk the security of U.S. military operations. He called his committee’s findings “very disturbing.”

China’s government did not immediately respond Wednesday to telephone messages and emails from The Associated Press requesting comment in Beijing, its embassy in Washington and offices at the United Nations.

The newly declassified Senate report says defense contractors have generally failed to report to the Pentagon hacker break-ins of their systems as required under their business agreements.

Levin, whose staff investigated the break-ins with the committee’s top Republican, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, said government agencies also failed to share information among themselves about intrusions. He said that hampers the government’s ability to protect national security.

For instance, the committee said some contractors that contacted the FBI about break-ins may have not separately reported the intrusions to Transcom because the firms assumed the bureau already had notified the Pentagon. Levin said he and Inhofe were working on a bill to streamline the reporting process.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., right, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, talk to reporters about cyberattacks from China, Wednesday, Sept.

17, 2014 on Capitol Hill in Washington. China’s military hacked into computer networks of civilian transportation companies hired by the Pentagon at least nine times, breaking into computers aboard a commercial ship, targeting logistics companies and uploading malicious software onto an airline’s computers, Senate investigators said Wednesday.

Federal data show more than $4 billion in contracts went to firms in 2012 and 2013 for the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, a Transcom partnership with private airlines that supplements Pentagon airlifts during wars or natural disasters. Six of 11 companies that investigators contacted about cyber intrusions were CRAF airlines.

The largest recipient of reserve fleet funding during that period, FedEx Corp., did not answer questions from the AP on Wednesday asking whether it was a victim of hacking. In a written statement, it instead said generally it was “confident in the integrity and safety of our systems, including those supportive of our government contracts.”

Other Transcom contractors included firms that have since filed for bankruptcy and ended operations, including Georgia-based World Airways Inc. and Oregon-based Evergreen International Airlines.

The significant intrusions were characterized as “advanced-persistent attacks,” a category of cyber threats so sophisticated they are frequently associated with foreign governments. Of those APT-linked intrusions, Transcom was made aware of only two, which the committee’s report said was troubling.

M O S T A L A S K A N S T O G E T N E A R LY $ 1 , 9 0 0 I N O I L M O N E Y that was clobbered when markets plunged worldwide. The fund has since recovered, according to officials. The fund had a balance of $29.9 billion in 2009, compared to $51.2 billion five years later.

- HOW DO FOLKS SPEND IT? Some dividend payouts go toward fun stuff like vacations and big-screen TVs. But in the remote village of Deering, city administrator Mike Jones says his family’s share, $5,652 for the family of three, will go toward bills and heating fuel, which is $6.50 a gallon and rising. “There was a time when I was younger I would go for snow machines and fun stuff,” Jones said. These days, necessities take precedence for the family in the Inupiat Eskimo community 520 miles northwest of Anchorage.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell tells an audience in Anchorage, Alaska, the amount of this year’s Permanent Fund Dividend that will go to most residents just for living in the state, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014. The $1,884 payout set for Oct. 2 is more than double the amount of last year’s $900 checks.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- It’s a highly anticipated day of the year in Alaska, when residents learn how much money they’ll receive from the state’s oil wealth savings account - a payout people receive just for living in The Last Frontier.

This year’s share of nearly $1,900 is the sweetest since the Great Recession and the third-richest ever.

Gov. Sean Parnell announced the amount of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend with great fanfare Wednesday.

“This is all good news for Alaskans,” he said at an Anchorage press conference.

The payout to be distributed Oct. 2 is more than double the amount of last year’s $900 checks but short of the record payout of $2,069 in 2008.

- WHO QUALIFIES? The dividends are distributed annually to men, women and children who sign up for it after living in the state for at least one calendar year, or were born in Alaska by the Dec. 31 deadline of the previous year.

This year, nearly 599,000 Alaskans will receive checks, either through direct deposit or in the mail. Of those, the oldest recipient is 109 years old and the youngest includes 26 children who were born Dec. 31. Altogether, the checks total $1.1 billion.

- THE PAYOUT FORMULA: The amount of each person’s check is based on a five-year average of the fund’s investment earnings, which have included the recession years.

Alaska wasn’t hit as hard by the recession as the Lower 48, but the Permanent Fund Corp. has a diversified portfolio

- RETAIL SALES: Businesses often rush to take advantage of the cash infusion, offering Private Fund Dividend deals.

For example, the Girl Scouts of Alaska announced a 10 percent discount on all non-uniform apparel in a “PFD Super-Saver” sale being held through Friday at an Anchorage Girl Scouts store. Alaska Airlines announced more than 90 destinations available through a PFD sale running between Sept. 24 and Oct. 29. “How does travel to faraway warm sapphire seas sound? How about exciting cities you’ve always wanted to see?” the airline says on its website. “This is the flight sale that’s made just for Alaskans.”

- GIVING TO CHARITY: Some Alaskans choose to give part of their dividend to charitable causes through the “Pick.

Click. Give.” program. This year, 26,850 recipients pledged $2.8 million to 511 nonprofit organizations.

- HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN? The Permanent Fund was established in 1976 after the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope. The state began distributing fund money to residents in 1982. If an Alaskan has qualified for all of the checks distributed since the beginning, they would have collected $37,027.41. With the upcoming distribution, the state will have distributed more than $21.9 billion over the years.

- DON’T FORGET THE IRS: Alas, it’s not all free money. Alaska has no state income tax, but residents must pay federal taxes on the bounty.

Although Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to bring them to a U.S. courtroom to face the groundbreaking criminal charges, they are believed to be living freely. The Senate committee said Wednesday it hadn’t referred its Transcom probe to the Justice Department.

COUPLE IN CRAIGSLIST S L AY I N G S E N T E N C E D TO LIFE SUNBURY, Pa. (AP) -- A newlywed couple whose Craigslist ad lured a stranger to his death were sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole by a judge who said their “permanent removal” from society is appropriate.

Neither 19-year-old Miranda Barbour nor her 22-year-old husband, Elytte, displayed emotion as they sat with their lawyers in the courtroom while some of the victim’s relatives described the grief and pain they have experience since the Nov. 11 murder.

“Even if they each serve 50 years, they still will not feel any guilt or sympathy,” said Holly LaFerrara, the victim’s sister. “They completely lack empathy. They have no conscience, no remorse and no moral compass.

“They lack the most basic element of humanity,” she said. “These are two fundamentally flawed people who are rotten to the core.”

Elytte Barbour read a written apology in court but said he could not explain his participating in what he acknowledged was “a senseless crime.”

“It is not the person who I am,” he said. “It’s not the person I want to be.”

Miranda Barbour didn’t address the judge.

The couple pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence, in a plea deal that ruled out the death penalty.

They were married in North Carolina and moved to central Pennsylvania about three weeks before they met up with the victim, Troy LaFerrara, 42, of Port Trevorton, when he responded to an ad offering female companionship.

On the day LaFerrara was killed, Miranda Barbour picked him up a mall in Selinsgrove and drove to Sunbury while Elytte hid on the back seat under a blanket. Once they parked, Elytte Barbour emerged from his hiding place and held a cord tight against LaFerrara’s neck while his petite wife stabbed the 6-foot-2, 278-pound man about 20 times. They dumped his body in an alley.

Miranda Barbour initially denied knowing LaFerrara, but changed her story when police obtained records showing that the last call to his cellphone came from hers, authorities said.

Elytte Barbour told police the couple killed LaFerrara because they wanted to kill someone together.

In April, Miranda Barbour gained some notoriety when she claimed in an interview with the Sunbury newspaper, The Daily Item, that she had killed at least 22 other people in Alaska, Texas, North Carolina and California over six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult.

Police said they couldn’t substantiate her claims. But in a Monday telephone interview with The Daily Item from Muncy State Prison, Miranda Barbour stood by them.

The newspaper published a story about the interview Thursday after sentencing. In it, she also asserted that her husband was supposed to have killed LaFerrara by strangulation but “he messed it up.” She said LaFerrara broke free from the cord and was trying to escape from the moving car when she grabbed the knife and began stabbing him.

In separately sentencing the couple, Northumberland County Judge Charles Saylor said he found it difficult to comprehend their indifference to the value of human life.

“Poor Mr. LaFerrara had no idea what was about to happen simply by a Craigslist posting,” the judge said.

“Justice is being served with your permanent removal from our community and society,” Saylor said in sentencing Elytte Barbour.

LaFerrara’s widow, Colleen, tearfully described her life without her husband, an avid outdoorsman who held a degree in civil engineering from Penn State.

“They showed him no mercy. They left him to die in an alley,” she said.

“He was a sweet and gentle man who would never have hurt anyone.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________he Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

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D E M P S E Y: I F C A M PA I G N FA I L S , G R O U N D T R O O P S P O S S I B L E Several lawmakers have their doubts about the United States being pulled into a larger war, with increasing numbers of American troops. The president has already dispatched more than 1,000 Americans three years after combat forces left Iraq.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation’s top military leader told Congress on Tuesday he would recommend that the United States consider deploying ground forces to Iraq if President Barack Obama’s expanded air campaign to destroy Islamic extremists fails.

Many Republicans and Democrats have expressed reservations about the ability to identify moderates in a country awash with rebel formations and shifting alliances. The Islamic State grew out of the al-Qaida movement, but the two are now fighting.

In some instances, the moderate Free Syrian Army has teamed with al-Qaida’s local franchise, the Nusra Front.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel that the goal for American advisers is to help Iraqi forces with planning, logistics and coordinating military efforts by coalition partners to take out members of the Islamic State group.

“To be clear, if we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific ISIL targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committees, using an alternative name for the group.

Pressed during questioning, Dempsey said that under certain circumstances he “would go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of ground forces.”

Obama has maintained that American forces will not have a combat mission in Iraq.

Hagel and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel fielded questions from lawmakers as Obama met at the White House with the general who is coordinating international efforts and House Republicans privately reviewed legislation that would grant the administration’s request to train and equip the forces who will combat the militants.

There was no indication of organized resistance to the administration request. The legislation is likely to come to a vote in the House on Wednesday and the Senate by week’s end.

Still, some lawmakers said they doubted Obama’s current plan was sufficient to achieve his stated goal of degrading and defeating the Islamic state militants.

“I’m still not satisfied that the moderate Free Syrian Army is moderate or an army,” said Rep. Mark Mulvaney of South Carolina, referring to the 5,000 or so individuals the administration hopes to train.

House Speaker John Boehner, told reporters, “I think there’s a

Hagel said the U.S. will monitor them closely to ensure that weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Members of the anti-war activist group CodePink interrupt a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, left, and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Capitol Hill in Washington,

lot more that we need to be doing, but there’s no reason for us not to do what the president asked us to do.”

Dempsey said Americans in Iraq are serving in a combat advisory role but not participating in direct combat. However, if the Iraqi forces took on a complex mission to retake Mosul, the general said he might want U.S. troops to accompany the Iraqi troops or provide close combat advice.

The apparent contradiction of combat-trained forces not participating directly in combat was captured in one exchange between Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Dempsey.

“Are pilots dropping bombs in Iraq a direct combat mission and will U.S. forces be prepared to provide search and rescue mission if pilots get shot down and be prepared to put boots on the ground to make that mission be successful?” Inhofe asked.

“Yes and yes,” Dempsey said.

The U.S. military conducted strikes near Baghdad against the Islamic State group, which has seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria. Dempsey said the United States is prepared to strike Islamic targets in Syria.

“This will not look like `shock and awe’ because that is not how ISIL is organized. But it will be persistent and sustainable,” Dempsey said, referring to the air bombardment at the start of the Iraq war in March 2003.

US EXTREMISM FIGHT COULD TA K E C U E F R O M M I N N E S O TA photo provided by the Hennepin County, Minn. Sheriff’s Office shows Douglas McAuthur McCain. McCain, a U.S. citizen, is believed to have been killed in Syria and was there to fight alongside a terrorist group. When young men from Minneapolis began traveling to Somalia seven years ago to join a terror group in the midst of a civil war, investigators trying to stop the recruiting went straight to the city’s large Somali community to try to build trust and gain understanding. The nationwide effort to stop a new wave of Westerners being recruited, this time for Islamic State militant groups in Syria and Iraq, could take some cues from Minnesota.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- When young men from Minneapolis began traveling to Somalia seven years ago to join a terror group in the midst of a civil war, investigators trying to stop the recruiting went straight to the city’s large Somali community to build trust and gain understanding.

The nationwide effort to stop a new wave of Westerners being recruited, this time for Islamic State militant groups in Syria and Iraq, could take some cues from Minnesota. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday the Justice Department is launching a series of pilot programs to help detect American extremists looking to join terror organizations in countries like Syria and Iraq.

Locations for the programs weren’t announced and few details were released, but Holder said they would bring together religious leaders, prosecutors and community representatives. Such a program would be welcomed in Minnesota - where authorities also are now investigating how a handful of people were recruited to travel to Syria and take up arms with militants. Several Somalis have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury - some back in June and others as recently as last week.

“It looks like the community is under siege and kids are being recruited day and night, and something has to be done immediately to stop this,” said Omar Jamal, director of American Friends of Somalia. “They have to act very quickly ... I’m afraid it’s going to be too little, too late.”

and making sure his office was engaged with groups from elders to youth.

The departures of young men to Somalia seemed to slow, though alShabab’s fading power in Somalia along with several high-profile prosecutions - most on charges of providing material support for terrorism - may have dissuaded some.

But Boelter said he thought the outreach made people more comfortable providing information.

“Things like, people who were going to travel - it certainly increased the opportunity or chance that we would learn about that before it happened,” he said. “It gave us a lot more insight into what was happening, what people were talking about, what people were thinking about.”

Gregory Boosalis, an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis, said that since 2012 the FBI has made about 50 presentations on the dangers of alShabab and terror recruiting. In late 2013, when authorities learned of the possibility that some people were traveling to Syria, the FBI intensified its efforts - educating police, handing out cards for people with anonymous tips, and engaging with mosques.

Boosalis said outreach efforts were reflected in early June, when a suburban Minneapolis mosque called police after a teacher reported that a man had been expressing radical ideas to young people. Leaders of Al Farooq Youth and Family Center in Bloomington barred the man from the premises and police referred the case to the FBI. Efforts to raise awareness about extremism also may be sinking in with average community members.

One Somali woman, Saredo Kulane, told The Associated Press last week she thinks someone brainwashed a neighbor who’s thought to have traveled to Syria. She said she believes there are recruiters targeting youth, and if she sees something, she will speak up.

“I will call the government and tell them,” she said through an

Anti-war protesters filled the front rows at the hearing, chanting “no more war” at the start of the session and repeatedly interrupting the testimony. The protesters were escorted from the room.

Hagel said the involvement will not be “an easy or brief effort.

We are at war with ISIL, as we are with al-Qaida.”

At the White House, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who is coordinating international efforts to combat the Islamic State militants.

The legislation taking shape in Congress includes a provision stating that “nothing in this section shall be construed to constitute a specific statutory authorization for the introduction of U.S. armed forces into hostilities or into situations wherein hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances.”

The provision reflects a congressional divide between hawks seeking tougher action than that proposed by Obama and lawmakers weary from more than a decade of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. plan is to develop moderate Syrian forces at Saudi Arabian training sites before helping t

BORDER PATROL continued from page 1

Shawn Moran, a spokesman for the agents’ union, said the development came as no surprise after the White House said this week that requiring police officers to wear cameras was a potential solution for bridging mistrust between law enforcement and the public.

“We want to make sure these are used to back up agents, not to persecute them,” Moran said Wednesday. “If they’re used correctly by the agency, they will offer an independent account in use-of-force incidents or any type of incident.

We do have concerns management would use them to look for administrative violations.”

The announcements came less than a week after Customs and Border Protections’ new internal affairs head Mark Morgan said an initial review of cases involving use of force and alleged misconduct by agents and inspectors since 2009 found 155 that merit further investigation.

In May, Kerlikowske ordered the release of a highly critical Customs and Bor-

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tion back into a war, some Republicans were skeptical that Obama’s strategy was strong enough to prevail.

As a result, the legislation provided only a narrow grant of authority that will expire on Dec. 11. It specifically stops short of approving the deployment of U.S. forces “into hostilities or into situations where hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances.”

The expiration date means Congress will have to return to the issue in a postelection session scheduled to begin in mid-November.

The overall spending bill will prevent a government shutdown like the one that occurred a year ago, when House Republicans tried to eliminate funding for Obama’s health care program.

It finesses yet another issue that divides the GOP, renewing until next June the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance purchases of U.S. exports. Tea party lawmakers want to abolish the agency, while business-oriented Republicans support it.

The vote in the House on Wednesday giving Obama authority to train rebels was 273-156.

More Democrats, 85, voted to defy the president than Republicans, who cast 71 votes against the policy advanced by a commander in chief they distrust.

Authorities have confirmed that at least one Minnesota man has died while fighting for the Islamic State, and some families fear their daughters have also gone overseas to take up the cause.

Officials in Minneapolis began reaching out to at-risk communities years ago, after some local Somalis began traveling to their homeland to join the terror group al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida. Since 2007, more than 22 young Somalis went from Minnesota to Somalia to fight.

Ralph Boelter, head of the Minneapolis FBI office when the travels to Somalia first came to light, said his efforts included lunches with community members, appearances on Somali television and radio programs,

POTECTING SPEICIES

www.worldwildlife.org

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BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraq’s prime minister strongly rejected the idea of the U.S. or other nations sending ground forces to his country to help fight the Islamic State group, saying Wednesday that foreign troops are “out of the question.”

“The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition is going to help us with is from the sky,” al-Abadi said.

“We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq.”

He said that the Iraqi military will choose and approve targets, and that the U.S. will not take action without consulting with Baghdad first. Failure to do so, he warned, risks causing civilian casualties like in Pakistan and Yemen, where the U.S. has conducted drone strikes for years.

S S

The U.S. has ruled out cooperating with Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Obama administration’s expanded campaign against the Islamic State. The White House has long called Assad’s rule illegitimate and demanded he step aside.

Al-Abadi, however, said that Iraq doesn’t have the luxury of testy relations with Damascus, and instead pushed for some sort of coordination.

“We cannot afford to fight our neighbor, even if we disagree on many things,” al-Abadi said. “This is our neighbor. We don’t want to enter into problems with them. For us sovereignty of Syria is very important.”

But al-Abadi, a Shiite lawmaker who faces the enormous task of trying to hold Iraq together as a vast array of forces threaten to rip it apart, stressed that he sees no need to send foreign troops to help fight the Islamic State group.

Al-Abadi’s comments provided a sharp rebuttal to remarks a day earlier by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that American ground troops may be needed to battle Islamic State forces in the Middle East if President Barack Obama’s current strategy fails.

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tion of Islamic law.

In his first interview with foreign media since taking office on Sept.

8, Haider al-Abadi told The Associated Press that the U.S. aerial campaign currently targeting the militants who have overrun much of northern and western Iraq has helped efforts to roll back the Sunni extremists. He also urged the international community to go after the group in neighboring Syria, saying the battle will prove endless unless the militants are wiped out there as well.

“Not only is it not necessary,” he said, “We don’t want them. We won’t allow them. Full stop.”

S O

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi listens to a question during an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014. Iraq’s new prime minister says foreign ground troops are neither necessary nor wanted in his country’s fight against the Islamic State group

Al-Abadi also urged the international community to expand its campaign against the extremists to neighboring Syria.

“The fight will go on unless ISIL is hit in Syria,” he said, using an acronym for the group. “This is the responsibility of the international community - on top of them the United States government - to do something about ISIL in Syria.”

The Islamic State group was established in Iraq but spread in early 2013 to Syria, where it grew exponentially in the chaos of the country’s civil war. Following its success in Syria, the extremist group’s fighters - including many Iraqi nationals - rampaged across northern and western Iraq in June, seizing control of a huge swath of land and sending tremors across the Middle East.

The group now rules over territory stretching from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad, where it imposes its strict interpreta-

The two countries, both of which are allies of Iran, appear to already be coordinating on some level, and Iraq’s national security adviser met Tuesday with Assad in the Syrian capital, where the two agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting “terrorism,” according to Syria’s state news agency.

The CIA estimates the Islamic State group now has access to somewhere between 20,000 and 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria. A senior Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press that more than 27,600 Islamic State fighters are believed to be operating in Iraq alone, about 2,600 of whom are foreigners. The official spoke anonymously as he is not authorized to brief the media.

Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, backed by U.S. airstrikes, were able to retake the strategic Mosul Dam last month, and several small towns have been retaken since the American aerial campaign began. French reconnaissance planes equipped with cameras able to collect both day and night images from low and high altitude also left from al-Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates on Monday as part of France’s commitment to provide aerial support to the Iraqi government.

N O R T H K O R E A P O W E R F U L T E M P TAT I O N FOR SOME AMERICANS

Iranian-backed militias have provided much of the muscle for Iraq’s government as the national military has struggled. The Shiite militias played a key role recently on the ground in the Iraqi town of Amirli, where they were crucial in ending a siege by Islamic State fighters.

knew little about life in the North, fled across the Demilitarized Zone and later appeared in North Korean propaganda films.

The U.S. hopes to pull together a broad coalition to help defeat the extremist group, but has ruled out cooperating with neighboring Iran or Syria, both of which also view the Islamic State group as a threat. Both countries were excluded from a conference this week in Paris that brought the U.S., France and other allies together to discuss how to address the militant threat.

Charles Robert Jenkins, of North Carolina, deserted his army post in South Korea in 1965. He was allowed to leave North Korea for Japan in 2004.

Other defector soldiers had problems in their military units or issues with family at home. One was reportedly lured north by a female North Korean agent.

In the decades after the war, some Americans harbored “glamorous notions of North Korea as a socialist paradise,” said John Delury, an Asia expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “But that’s just not part of the mix any more. Even in the furthest fringes of American online culture, you don’t find that notion.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., left, shakes hands with Evan C. Hunziker of Tacoma, Washington, upon their arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo. Hunziker, 26, who was jailed for three months in North Korea on spy charges was freed and arrived in Japan with Richardson who negotiated his release. Time and again, Americans over the years have slipped into poor, deeply suspicious, fervently anti-American North Korea, crossing a border that tens of thousands of desperate North Koreans have crossed in the opposite direction, at great risk. Whatever their reasons, Americans detained in North Korea, including the three currently there, are major complications for Washington, which must decide between letting a U.S. citizen languish and providing Pyongyang with a huge propaganda victory by sending a senior U.S. envoy to negotiate a release.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- One shouted about God’s love as he crossed a frozen river, clutching a Bible. Another swam, drunk and naked. Several U.S. soldiers dashed around land mines.

Time and again, Americans over the years have slipped illegally into poor, deeply suspicious, fervently anti-American North Korea, even as it has become increasingly easy to enter legally as a tourist. It’s incomprehensible to many, especially since tens of thousands of desperate North Koreans have crossed in the opposite direction, at great risk.

On Tuesday night, a U.S. citizen apparently tried to swim across a river separating the Koreas, eager to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, local media reported. And on Sunday, a young American who entered as a tourist but then tore up his visa was sentenced to six years of hard labor on charges he illegally entered the country to commit espionage.

Sneaking into autocratic, cloistered North Korea has proven a strange and powerful temptation for some Americans.

Sometimes the spur is deep religious conviction. Sometimes it’s discontent with America and a belief that things will be different in a country that can seem like its polar opposite. Quite often, analysts say, it’s mental or personal problems - or simply a case of a person acting upon a very, very bad idea.

Whatever their reasons, Americans detained in North Korea, including three currently in custody, are major complications for Washington, which must decide whether to let a U.S. citizen languish or to provide Pyongyang with a propaganda victory by sending a senior U.S. envoy to negotiate a release.

In the Cold War, a handful of U.S. soldiers, some of whom

Al-Abadi said that excluding Damascus and Tehran was counterproductive.

“I actually find it puzzling that we hold a conference in Paris to help Iraq and to fight terrorism and here we are, it’s the biggest neighbor of Iraq - Iran - is excluded,” he said. “That puts me as a prime minister in Iraq in a very difficult position.”

Al-Abadi added that Iraq is caught in the middle of “a disagreement between the international allies - or this international coalition - and Iran on the Iraqi land. For me, that is catastrophic.”

Mental health issues have often played a part, Delury said.

“It’s seen as a forbidden country ... a place that’s perceived in the American mind as being locked down,” Delury said. “To cross the border, in some ways, could be alluring” to people looking to break social rules.

Evan C. Hunziker had reportedly been drinking with a friend in 1996 when he decided to swim naked across the Yalu River between China and the North. Hunziker, who was released after about three months, had drug, alcohol and legal problems.

He was later found dead in Washington state in what was ruled a suicide.

Religion has provided a powerful impulse for some to cross.

North Korea officially guarantees freedom of religion, but outside analysts and defectors describe the country as militantly anti-religious. The distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean imprisonment or execution, defectors have said.

Park later said he didn’t want others to repeat his actions.

“I don’t want others to do this. I just hoped that this could galvanize people to action. Because this is a society that needs change now,” he told The Washington Post in February 2011.

For North Korea, getting a senior U.S. official or an ex-president to visit is a huge propaganda coup. It allows Pyongyang to plaster its newspapers and TV screens with scenes meant to show its powerful leaders welcoming humbled American dignitaries, said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in South Korea.

Washington has repeatedly offered to send its envoy for North Korean human rights to discuss the currently detained Americans, but Pyongyang has so far balked.

“The North Koreans are in no hurry,” Lankov said. “It’s a sellers’ market. They say, `This is our price: a senior visit and some concessions. These are our good

“It is one of the last frontiers to spread the Christian faith, so there are people who would take unimaginable risks” to evangelize there, Delury said.

A Bible in his hand, American missionary Robert Park walked into North Korea on Christmas Day 2009 to draw attention to human rights abuses and to call for the resignation of then-leader Kim Jong Il. Park, who was deported from the country in February 2010, has said he was tortured by interrogators.

In 2010, ex-President Jimmy Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

It was unclear what led Gomes, who had been teaching English in South Korea, to cross. But he may have been emulating Park, said Jo Sung-rae, a South Korean human rights advocate who met with Gomes. Gomes attended rallies in Seoul calling for Park’s release before he was arrested.

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_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

9

WITNESS: 21 KILLED BY MEXICO A R M Y H A D S U R R E N D E R E D center in Arcelia. Local journalists say they have been threatened for publishing stories the drug cartel didn’t like.

ARCELIA, Mexico (AP) -- A woman says she saw Mexican soldiers shoot and kill her 15-year-old daughter after a confrontation with a suspected drug gang even though the teenager was lying wounded on the ground. Twenty others also were shot and killed in rural southern Mexico after they surrendered and were disarmed, the mother told The Associated Press.

It was unclear if the AP was allowed to report freely in the area because the story casts the army in a poor light. But the gang appeared to keep close tabs on AP reporters while they were in the region. During an interview with the dead girl’s mother in a parking lot, a young man appeared, arms propped on the back of a pickup truck, staring fixedly and remaining until the end.

The Mexican government has maintained that all died during a fierce shootout when soldiers were fired on in the early morning of June 30.

That version came into question because government troops suffered only one wounded, and physical evidence at the scene pointed toward more selective killings.

The area is patrolled heavily by army and marine units. When reporters were at a local soccer match interviewing a relative of the two dead brothers, a three-man marine detachment stood nearby. The unit’s leader told the journalists, “It’s my turn to interview you,” and asked them what they were doing and where they were staying. Other marines photographed the journalists and their press I.D. cards.

The witness said the army fired first at the armed group holed up at the warehouse. She said one gunman died in the initial shootout, and another gang member and her daughter were wounded. The rest of the gunmen surrendered on the promise they would not be hurt, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

After the gang surrendered, the girl, Erika Gomez Gonzalez, lay face down in the ground, a bullet wound in her leg. Soldiers rolled her over while she was still alive and shot her more than half a dozen times in the chest, her mother said. Another suspected gang member was injured in the initial attack.

“A soldier stood the kid up and killed him,” said the witness, who said she had gone to the warehouse the night before to try to retrieve her daughter from the gang she had apparently joined.

The soldiers interrogated the rest of the gang members in front of the warehouse, and then took them inside one-by-one, she said. From where she stood just outside the warehouse and in army custody, she heard gunshots and moans of the dying.

Several days after the killings, AP reporters visited and took pictures of the warehouse and found little evidence of sustained fighting. There were few stray bullet marks and no shell casings. At least five spots along the warehouse’s inside walls showed the same pattern: One or two closely placed bullet pocks, surrounded by a mass of spattered blood, giving the appearance that some of those killed had been standing against the wall and shot at about chest level.

After the AP report, the state of Mexico prosecutors’ office released a statement saying there was “no evidence at all of possible executions.”

The office said it found ballistic evidence of “crossfire with a proportionate interchange of gunshots.”

The state government refused to release autopsy reports the AP requested under Mexico’s freedom of information law, declaring them state secrets to be guarded for nine years.

Interviewed separately, relatives of three other gang members who were killed and a doctor who saw Erika’s body said the wounds were consistent with the mother’s account of how they were killed - with an incapacitating wound and a burst of gunshots to the chest. The death certificate for Erika, seen by reporters, confirmed that she died on June 30 outside the town of San Pedro Limon, where the killings occurred, and gave bullet wounds as the cause of death. There are no details in the certificate on ballistics or the type of weapon used. The gravestones of two other of those killed, Marcos Salgado Burgos, 20, and his brother, Juan Jose Salgado Burgos, 18, also record their death on June 30.

Separately, a teenager in the nearby town of Ixcapuzalco, said his older brother was among the 22 dead. He said he saw the body and said there

In this Sept. 15, 2014 photo, a woman who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisals, lays out the clothes of her late 15-year-old daughter Erika Gomez Gonzalez, on a bed at her home in Arcelia, Mexico. The woman says she witnessed her child’s death when army soldiers fired first at an armed group at a grain warehouse on June 30 in the town of San Pedro Limon, Mexico. She said one man died in the initial shootout, when the rest of the gunmen surrendered on the promise they would not be hurt. She recalls that her daughter, who was face down in the ground with a bullet in her leg, was rolled over while she was still alive and shot more than half a dozen times in the chest. The mother said she arrived to the warehouse the day before the shooting, in an attempt to take her daughter home, but gang members wouldn’t let her.

was a bullet wound to the left leg - “it destroyed his knee” - and a shot through the back with an exit wound through the chest. His account could not be independently corroborated.

None of the relatives wanted to be identified for fear of reprisals. The army and the state of Mexico so far have not provided a list of those killed. Human Rights Watch has demanded that the case be thoroughly investigated and that the witness be protected.

According to Erika’s mother, the shootout was initiated by the army, a violation of its own rules of engagement, which allow soldiers to fire on armed civilians only if the civilians fire first, and if soldiers’ or civilians’ lives are in danger. The army did not respond to requests for comment.

The federal attorney general’s office said there is an open investigation into the incident but that no evidence has been found so far to corroborate the witness’ account, originally reported by the magazine Esquire Latinoamerica.

The woman spoke angrily last weekend about her daughter’s death. She said she spent a sleepless night sitting on a pile of bricks on June 29, after arriving to retrieve her runaway daughter.

The girl was involved with the wrong crowd, she said. The group had traveled from the town of Arcelia in Guerrero state to nearby San Pedro Limon in three pickups with guns. All were teenagers or in their early 20s.

Little is known about what the gang was up to or had been doing in the days before the shootings.

Local officials said Arcelia is controlled by the La Familia drug gang, which was run out of Michoacan state, where it was founded and now controls parts of the impoverished Tierra Caliente, or hot land, in neighboring Guerrero. Drug trafficking and conflicts with the military have occurred there for decades. Some farmers grow and traffic marijuana and poppies for opium, and violence is common.

Recently, supporters of the gang blocked roads and burned four Coca Cola trucks, leading the soft drink company to shutter its distribution

S E N A T E R E A D Y T O S U P P O R T O B A M A O N R E B E L A I D Chris McAleese holds a Saltire flag as he walks past Bannockburn Polling Station in Scotland, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014. People are voting across Scotland in a referendum that will decide whether the country leaves its 307-year-old union with England and becomes an independent state.

increasingly felt stifling to many Scots.

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Excitement vied with apprehension as Scottish voters went to the polls Thursday in a referendum on independence, deciding whether to dissolve a 307-year union with England that brought prosperity but has

As the polls closed and the vote counting began, there was a quiet thrill of history in the making on the fog-shrouded streets of Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh. Many Scots were staying up all night in homes and bars to watch the results roll in.

Eager voters had lined up outside some polling stations even before they opened at 7 a.m. Many polling stations were busy and turnout was expected to be high. More than 4.2 million people had registered to vote — 97 percent of those eligible — including residents as young as 16.

A Yes vote would trigger 18 months of negotiations between Scottish leaders and London-based politicians on how the two countries would separate their institutions before Scotland’s planned Independence Day on March 24, 2016.

For some, it was a day they had dreamed of for decades. For others, the time had finally come to make up their minds about the future — both for themselves and for the United Kingdom.

“Fifty years I fought for this,” said 83-year-old Isabelle Smith, a Yes

supporter in Edinburgh’s maritime district of Newhaven, a former fishing port. “And we are going to win. I can feel it in my bones.”

For Smith, who went to the polling station decked out in a blue-andwhite pro-independence shirt and rosette, statehood for Scotland was a dream nurtured during three decades living in the U.S. with her late husband.

Recalling the morning of her daughter’s death, the mother said confusion broke out inside the warehouse before dawn when one of the young gunmen appeared, shouting, “They’re on us!”

Troops from the Mexican army’s 22nd military zone were on patrol.

Soldiers trained a spotlight on the warehouse and opened fire on those inside, she said.

After an initial exchange of gunfire, soldiers called out to those inside, saying their lives would be spared if they surrendered. They walked out with their hands on the back of their necks, she said.

The soldiers took her, two other women and two young men who claimed to be kidnap victims to a semi-enclosed room at one side of the entrance to the warehouse.

From there, under soldiers’ custody, the woman could only catch glimpses of what was happening inside “I was afraid to see too much,” she said, noting some of the detainees were shot standing, some were kneeling.

After a couple of hours, the two men who had claimed to be kidnap victim were separated from the three women, taken off by soldiers and shot, apparently because they did not believe their claims, she said.

The army said in its initial press release that soldiers rescued three women who were kidnap victims. The mother says she was one of three women taken by the army to the Mexico state capital, Toluca, and turned over to a state prosecutors’ agent. The other two women were promptly arrested and are still in custody.

The mother said she was photographed next to the guns confiscated from the gang and told she too would be arrested if she didn’t cooperate with authorities and confirm their version of events. She said she did not know the agent’s name, but described her as a tall woman with close-cropped hair who was constantly holding a cigarette. She was later taken to the federal attorney general’s organized crime unit in Mexico City, and finally released with no charges.

Yes because he felt optimistic about Scotland’s future as an independent country.

“Why not roll the dice for once?” he asked.

Once the polls closed, ballot boxes were to be transported to 32 regional centers for counting. The result was expected Friday morning.

Roberts said he was looking forward to learning the outcome in a pub, many of which were staying open overnight.

“I’m going to sit with a beer in my hand watching the results coming in,” Roberts said.

Many who oppose independence agreed that the campaign had reinvigorated Scottish democracy.

“I support the No side, but it’s been a fascinating, worthwhile discussion about Scotland’s future,” said David Clarke, a writing consultant.

“The one thing America has that the Scots don’t have is confidence,” said Smith, who returned to Scotland years ago. “But they’re getting it, they’re walking tall.”

“If it’s a No, it’s a win-win situation. If it’s a Yes, we will have to deal with the fact that it’s a Yes.”

“No matter what, Scotland will never, ever be the same again.”

But other No supporters said the noisy pro-independence campaign had divided the country and fueled bad feeling among neighbors.

The question on the ballot paper could not be simpler: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

Yet it has divided Scots during months of campaigning, generating an unprecedented volume and intensity of public debate and participation. The Yes side, in particular, has energized young people and previously disillusioned working-class voters.

Polls suggest the result was too close to call. A final Ipsos MORI poll released Thursday put support for the No side at 53 percent and Yes at 47 percent. The phone survey of 991 people has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Until recently, polls suggested as many as 1 in 5 voters was undecided, but that number has shrunk dramatically. In the latest poll, only 4 percent remained uncertain how they would vote.

Many questions — the currency independent Scotland would use, its status within the European Union and NATO, the fate of Britain’s nuclear-armed submarines, based at a Scottish port — remain uncertain or disputed after months of campaigning.

After weeks in which British media have talked of little else, the television airwaves were almost a referendum-free zone Thursday.

Electoral rules forbid discussion and analysis of elections on television while the polls are open.

On the streets, it was a different story, with rival Yes and No billboards and campaigners outside many polling places.

At an Edinburgh polling station, Thomas Roberts said he had voted

“The country is divided with a hatchet. It’s so awful — and it was completely unnecessary,” said Fiona Mitchell, distributing No leaflets outside a polling station.

First Minister Alex Salmond, leader of the independence campaign, cast his vote near his home in northeastern Scotland. If the Yes side prevails, he will have realized a long-held dream of leading his country to independence from an alliance with England formed in 1707.

In a final speech on Wednesday night, Salmond told voters: “This is our opportunity of a lifetime and we must seize it with both hands.”

Pro-independence forces got a last-minute boost from tennis star Andy Murray, who signaled his support of the Yes campaign in a tweet to his 2.7 million followers early Thursday.

Anti-independence leaders, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have implored Scots not to break their links with the rest of the United Kingdom, and have stressed the economic uncertainties independence would bring.

Many Yes supporters planned to stay up late in bars, or to gather in symbolic spots like Calton Hill, overlooking Edinburgh — hoping the sun will rise Friday on a new dawn and not a hangover.

But financial consultant Michael MacPhee, a No voter, said he would observe the returns coming in “with anxiety.”

Scottish independence was “the daftest idea I’ve ever heard,” he said.

10 The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

P O L I C E R U N D O W N T I P S A B O U T T R O O P E R A M B U S H S U S P E C T

BLOOMING GROVE, Pa. (AP) -- Authorities hunting for a suspect in last week’s fatal ambush outside a rural state police barracks chased down several mistaken sightings Wednesday as schools closed down and the public remained on edge.

Frein has held anti-law enforcement views for many years and has expressed them both online and to people who knew him, Lt. Col. George Bivens said.

“As we’ve interviewed a number of people, that’s been the common theme: This was not a surprise,” Bivens said.

Law enforcement massed in a forested area to check out one of the latest tips, from workers who said they saw an armed person wearing camouflage, according to Trooper Tom Kelly, a state police spokesman. Police have been “getting sightings all over the place,” but none have panned out so far, he said.

Frein’s father, Michael Frein, who spent 28 years in the Army, told police that two weapons were missing from the home - an AK-47 and a .308 rifle with a scope, according to the police affidavit.

Authorities were looking for 31-year-old Eric Frein, of Canadensis, who is charged with killing one trooper and wounding another outside the Blooming Grove barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania late Friday.

State police have warned the public that Frein is dangerous, calling him an anti-law enforcement survivalist who has talked about committing mass murder. Two school districts closed Wednesday because of safety concerns for students and staff.

After opening fire on troopers at the remote barracks in the Pocono Mountains Friday night, Frein evidently tried to make his escape in a 2001 Jeep Cherokee, authorities said. Instead, he drove into a swamp about 2 miles away, where a man walking his dog stumbled across the partly submerged SUV three days later and called 911.

Inside the abandoned Jeep, investigators found evidence they say ties Frein to the ambush that killed one trooper and critically wounded another: shell casings matching those found at the shooting scene; Frein’s driver’s license, Social Security card and Pennsylvania Game Commission range permit; camouflage face paint; two empty rifle cases and military gear.

It was the big break police were looking for, one that set off a massive manhunt by more than 200 law enforcement officials who fanned out across miles of thick woods, a place where Frein is believed to feel at home.

“We intend to keep him on the run until we catch him,” State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said at a news conference Tuesday in

F E D K E Y

Lars Prillaman, who manages a small farm in West Virginia, said he knew Frein very briefly from their time as military re-enactors. He told The Associated Press he was “saddened by what happened” and said Frein was “a different person eight years ago.”

This undated PennDOT identification photo released Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014, by the Pennsylvania State Police shows Eric Matthew Frein, 31, of Canadensis, Penn., being sought in Friday’s shooting that left one trooper dead and another critically wounded at a state police barracks in Blooming Grove. The gunman killed Cpl. Bryon Dickson, 38, and critically wounded Trooper Alex Douglass outside the barracks during a late-night shift change, then slipped away.

which he revealed the suspect’s name.

Calling him “extremely dangerous,” Noonan said Frein has a long-standing grudge against law enforcement.

“He has made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and also to commit mass acts of murder,” Noonan said.

“What his reasons are, we don’t know. But he has very strong feelings about law enforcement and seems to be very angry with a lot of things that go on in our society.”

Frein was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder, homicide of a law enforcement officer and other offenses.

Police found a U.S. Army manual called “Sniper Training and Employment” in the suspect’s bedroom at his parents’ house, according to a police affidavit released Tuesday. His father, a retired Army major, also told authorities that his son is an excellent marksman who “doesn’t miss,” according to the paperwork.

S I G N A L S P L A N T O K E E P R A T E A T R E C O R D L O W Chair Janet Yellen will be pressed to clarify the Fed’s intentions when she holds a news conference later Wednesday.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen arrives for a dinner during the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park near Jackson, Wyo. Yellen will be pressed to clarify the Fed’s intentions after the Fed issues its policy statement on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it plans to keep a key interest rate at a record low for a considerable period because a broad range of U.S. economic measures remain subpar.

The Fed said it planned to keep its benchmark rate near zero as long as inflation remains under control, until it sees consistent gains in wage growth, long-term unemployment and other gauges of the job market.

The central bank retained language signaling its plans to keep short-term rates low “for a considerable time” after it ends its monthly bond purchases after its next meeting in October.

Court documents filed Tuesday revealed new details about the ambush. According to the documents: Cpl. Bryon Dickson was shot as soon as he walked out the front door of the barracks. A communications officer heard the shot, saw Dickson on the ground and asked him what had happened. Dickson told her he’d been hit and asked her to bring him inside - but the gunman had squeezed off another round, forcing his would-be rescuer inside.

Trooper Alex Douglass, meanwhile, had just arrived at the barracks and was shot in the pelvis as he walked toward Dickson. Douglass managed to crawl into the lobby, where another trooper brought him into a secure area of the barracks. Douglass later underwent surgery at a hospital.

Other troopers drove a patrol SUV into the parking lot and used it as a shield so they could drag Dickson into the barracks and begin attempts to save his life. He died at the scene. A coroner said he had been shot twice.

About 90 seconds elapsed between the first shot and the fourth and final one.

With the gunman still on the loose, residents near Frein’s house were jittery. Rich Turner, 52, who lives around the corner, said school buses avoided the neighborhood Tuesday, with parents directed to take their kids to school and to pick them up. Schools in the Pocono Mountain School District and Wallenpaupack Area School District were closed Wednesday.

“Everybody’s

With job growth solid, manufacturing and construction growing and unemployment at a near-normal 6.1 percent, many analysts had suggested that the Fed was edging closer to a rate increase to prevent a rising economy from igniting inflation.

BIDEN SAYS ‘SHYLOCKS’ WA S P O O R C H O I C E OF WORDS

Other economic gauges have strengthened, too. The number of U.S. job openings is near its highest level in 13 years.

Layoffs have dwindled. And consumer confidence has reached its highest point in nearly seven years.

WA S H I N G T O N ( A P ) - - Vi c e P r e s i d e n t J o e B i d e n s a y s he made a poor choice of words when he referred to unscrupulous moneylenders who took advantage of U.S. troops as “Shylocks.”

Despite the steady decline in unemployment, Yellen has cautioned that it may overstate the job market’s improvement.

She has said the Fed also takes into account the number of people unemployed for more than six months; the number of part-timers who want full-time work; and average wages.

Those measures remain less than healthy.

Over the past several years, the Fed’s ultra-low rates have helped the economy, cheered the stock market and shrunk mortgage rates. A rate increase could threaten to reverse those trends.

In August, U.S. employers added just 142,000 jobs, well below the 212,000 average of the previous 12 months. The slowdown was seen as likely temporary. But some analysts said it underscored that the economic outlook might remain too hazy for the Fed to signal an earlier-than-expected rate hike.

B i d e n w a s s p e a k i n g Tu e s d a y t o a l e g a l a i d g r o u p when he described how some troops serving overseas were facing foreclosures at home. He used the word “Shylocks,” a reference to the villainous Jewish mone y l e n d e r i n S h a k e s p e a r e ’s “ T h e M e r c h a n t o f Ve n i c e . ” The Anti-Defamation League, which works to combat anti-Semitism, chided Biden for using an offensive, s t e r e o t y p i c a l t e r m . T h e g r o u p ’s n a t i o n a l d i r e c t o r , A b e Foxman, said Biden should have been more careful b u t a c k n o w l e d g e d B i d e n ’s s t r o n g t i e s t o t h e J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y.

Biden says in a statement that Foxman is correct and it was a poor choice of words.

The ADL says Biden spoke with Foxman about the i n c i d e n t o n We d n e s d a y.

Stock prices rose after the Fed issued its statement at 2 p.m.

Eastern time. Traders appeared pleased that the Fed seems in no hurry to raise rates.

In a statement ending its latest policy meeting, the Fed says it will make another $10 billion cut in the pace of its purchases, which have been intended to keep long-term borrowing rates low.

On the eve of the Fed’s meeting, the financial world was on high alert for the words “considerable time.” The Fed’s recent statements had said it expected to keep its key shortterm rate near zero for a “considerable time” after it ended its bond buying.

Most economists have said they think the Fed will raise rates starting around mid-2015. But as the U.S. economy has strengthened, speculation has intensified about whether it might do so sooner, perhaps by March.

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____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

11

M U T E D E X P E C T A T I O N S F O R O B A M A , R O U H A N I M E E T I N G WASHINGTON (AP) -- One year ago, President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came close to ending the decades-long freeze on face-to-face meetings between their countries’ leaders.

But the talks have stalled over intense disagreements between Iran and the negotiating coalition of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. At the heart of the dispute are stubborn differences over the size and capacity of nuclear activities Tehran might be able to maintain.

Next week both men are scheduled to again be in New York for United Nations meetings but expectations for even a handshake are more muted than they were last fall. While lower level officials from both countries are now in regular contact, deadlocked nuclear talks - as well as the complexities of the fight against militants in the Middle East - are clouding the prospects for an elusive leaders’ meeting.

“The state of play between the United States and Iran is too fragile to endure what would be the shock of a direct meeting,” said Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

An in-person meeting between the two leaders would mark a substantive shift in the way the U.S. has dealt with Iran for decades and could eventually open the door for talks on matters beyond Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. It would also mark the fulfillment of a pledge Obama made as a presidential candidate when he said he would be willing to talk to America’s adversaries without pre-conditions.

Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said a meeting with Rouhani is not on Obama’s “dance card” next week, though the White House has not ruled out the possibility that the two men could have an encounter on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Obama and Rouhani will both arrive in New York early next week for meetings with world leaders and speeches to the UN. The White House’s public posture is noticeably different than it was heading into last year’s U.N. meetings, which came on the heels of Rouhani’s surprise victory in Iran’s presidential elections. White House officials said repeatedly that Obama was willing to meet with the new, more moderate-sounding Iranian leader. And when plans for the meeting eventually fell apart, U.S. officials made clear that it was the Iranians who balked, not

While the U.S. contends Iran is trying to build a bomb, Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

President Barack Obama speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, after he spoke by telephone earlier in the day with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the first conversation between American and Iranian leaders in more than 30 years. One year ago, Obama and Rouhani came close to ending the decades-long freeze on face-to-face meetings between their countries’ leaders. In late September 2014 both men are scheduled to again be in New York for United Nations meetings but expectations for even a handshake are more muted than they were last fall.

Obama.

Still, Obama and Rouhani did speak by telephone for 15 minutes, the first time the presidents of the United States and Iran had talked directly since the 1979 Iranian revolution and siege of the American embassy. The conversation was hailed as an historic breakthrough, and Obama said it offered the prospect of the two countries moving beyond their difficult history.

Since then, there has been progress in the U.S.-Iranian relationship.

Obama administration officials are in regular touch with their Iranian counterparts, exchanging phone calls and emails. A series of secret talks between officials in both countries also paved the way for nuclear negotiations with the international community. The parties reached an interim agreement late last year, freezing key elements of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the easing of some Western sanctions that have hampered the Islamic republic’s economy.

MARIJUANA INDUSTRY BATTLING STONER STEREOTYPES developing brains.

To get their message across, they are skewering some of the old Drug War-era ads that focused on the fears of marijuana, including the famous “This is your brain on drugs” fried-egg ad from the 1980s.

They are planning posters, brochures, billboards and magazine ads to caution consumers to use the drug responsibly and warn tourists and first-timers about the potential to get sick from accidentally eating too much medical-grade pot.

“So far, every campaign designed to educate the public about marijuana has relied on fear-mongering and insulting marijuana users,” said Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s biggest pot-policy advocacy group.

The MPP plans to unveil a billboard on Wednesday on a west Denver street where many pot shops are located that shows a woman slumped in a hotel room with the tagline: “Don’t let a candy bar ruin your vacation.”

It’s an allusion to Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist who got sick from eating part of a pot-infused candy bar on a visit to write about pot.

The campaign is a direct response to the state’s post-legalization marijuana-education efforts.

One of them is intended to prevent stoned driving and shows men zoning out while trying to play basketball, light a grill or hang a television. Many in the industry said the ads showed stereotypical stoners instead of average adults.

Even more concerning to activists is a youth-education campaign that relies on a human-sized cage and the message, “Don’t Be a Lab Rat,” along with warnings about pot and

Administration officials say the outcome of both negotiating channels will contribute to decisions on whether anything can be gained from a meeting between Obama and Rouhani next week.

Domestic political concerns are also at play for both countries as they weigh potential talks between the leaders. U.S. lawmakers from both parties are skeptical of Iran’s intentions, with some fearing that Tehran is using the talks to stall while continuing to build its nuclear program. Rouhani faces pressure from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and others who don’t want to give away a nuclear program that is a source of pride for the Islamic republic.

“Rouhani is desperately trying to prevent the Supreme Leader from destroying negotiations. He has hardliners who are very critical,” said James Acton, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rouhani would probably loose quite a lot from an Obama meeting.”

Adding a new layer of complications to the prospect of a first-time meeting with Obama and Rouhani: the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq sees Shiite-powerhouse Iran as go-between who could bring its influence to bear in the region against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group. While the U.S. has ruled out cooperating militarily or sharing intelligence with Iran, Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that he was “open to have a conversation at some point in time if there’s a way to find something constructive.”

The cage in Denver has been repeatedly vandalized. At least one school district rejected the traveling exhibit, saying it was well-intentioned but inappropriate.

Kerry’s comments came after Khamenei said the U.S. had requested that Tehran join the fight against the Islamic State group.

The overture was rejected, Khamenei said, because of Washington’s “unclean intentions.”

“To me, that’s not really any different than Nancy Reagan saying `Just Say No,’” said Tim Cullen, co-owner of four marijuana dispensaries and a critic of the “lab rat” campaign, referring to the former first lady’s effort to combat drug use.

of marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient, or half a suggested serving.

A spokesman for the state Health Department welcomed the industry’s ads, and defended the “lab rat” campaign. “It’s been effective in starting a conversation about potential risks to youth from marijuana,” Mark Salley said.

DENVER (AP) -- Tired of Cheech & Chong pot jokes and ominous anti-drug campaigns, the marijuana industry and activists are starting an ad blitz in Colorado aimed at promoting moderation and the safe consumption of pot.

The U.S and its negotiating partners will hold a new round of nuclear talks with their Iranian counterparts in New York in the days before Obama and Rouhani arrive for the U.N. discussions.

There will also be bilateral talks between U.S. and Iranian officials on the sidelines of the meetings.

The dueling campaigns come at a time when the industry is concerned about inexperienced consumers using edible pot.

The popularity of edibles surprised some in the industry when legal-marijuana retail sales began in January.

Edible pot products have been blamed for at least one death, of a college student who jumped to his death in Denver in March after consuming six times the recommended dose of edible marijuana.

The headlines, including Dowd’s experience, have been enough for the industry to promote moderation with edible pot.

“I think the word has gotten out that you need to be careful with edibles,” said Steve Fox, head of the Denver-based Council for Responsible Cannabis Regulation.

The group organized the “First Time 5” campaign, which cautions that new users shouldn’t eat more than 5 milligrams

The campaign warns users that edible pot can be much more potent than the marijuana they’re smoking - and that the pot-infused treats on store shelves are much stronger than homemade brownies they may recall eating.

The advocacy ads tackle anti-drug messaging from year past.

Inside pictures of old TV sets are images from historic ads.

Along with the fried-egg one is an image from one ad of a father finding his son’s drug stash and demanding to know who taught him to use it.

The kid answers: “You, all right! I learned it by watching you!”

The print ad concludes, “Decades of fear-mongering and condescending anti-marijuana ads have not taught us anything about the substance or made anyone safer.”

It then directs viewers to consumeresposibly.org, which is patterned after the alcohol industry’s “Drink Responsibly” campaign.

Marijuana activists plan to spend $75,000 by year’s end and eventually expand it to Washington state, where pot is also legal.

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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 15 thru Sept 22, 2014

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S C I E N T I S T S ’ C O L O S S A L E X A M A K R A K E N G O O D WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- It was a calm morning in Antarctica’s remote Ross Sea, during the season when the sun never sets, when Capt. John Bennett and his crew hauled up a creature with tentacles like fire hoses and eyes like dinner plates from a mile below the surface.

how much genetic variation there is among different squid types, and basic facts about how the colossal squid lives and dies.

She said scientists plan to further assess the condition of the squid before determining whether to preserve it for public display.

A colossal squid: 350 kilograms (770 pounds), as long as a minibus and one of the sea’s most elusive species. It had been frozen for eight months until Tuesday, when scientists in New Zealand got a long-anticipated chance to thaw out the animal and inspect it - once they used a forklift to maneuver it into a tank.

Huge squid sometimes inhabit the world of fiction and imagination, but have rarely been seen in daylight. It’s possible that ancient sightings of the species gave rise to tales of the kraken, or giant sea-monster squid, said Kat Bolstad, a squid scientist from the Auckland University of Technology led the team examining the creature.

She described this rare specimen as “very big, very beautiful.”

Bolstad said sperm whales often eat colossal squid and are known to play with their food, and sailors may have mistaken that for epic battles.

“On the other hand, we don’t really know what the grog rations were like at that time at sea, either,” she said. “So it may be that we’ve got a bit of a fisherman’s story going on there, too.”

photo provided by a crew member of the boat San Aspring of New Zealand fishing company Sanford, Capt. John Bennett shows a colossal squid he and and his crew caught on the boat in Antarctica’s remote Ross Sea. The creature, which has tentacles like fire hoses and eyes like dinner plates, was caught a mile below the surface. (AP Photo/San Aspring crew of Sanford fishing company)

The squid is a female, and its eight arms are each well over a meter (3.3 feet) long. Its two tentacles would have been perhaps double that length if they had not been damaged.

boat have caught two giant squid. Their first, hauled in seven years ago, is on display in New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa.

“This is essentially an intact specimen, which is almost an unparalleled opportunity for us to examine,” Bolstad said. “This is a spectacular opportunity.”

Bennett said there was so much excitement about his previous catch, he thought he had better save the latest one for research.

Many people around the world agreed: About 142,000 people from 180 countries watched streaming footage of the squid examination on the Internet.

Remarkably, Bennett and his crew on the San Aspiring toothfish

“It was partly alive, it was still hanging onto the fish,” Bennett recalls. “Just a big bulk in the water. They’re huge, and the mantle’s all filled with water. It’s quite an awesome sight.”

Susan Waugh, a senior curator at Te Papa, said scientists hope to find out more about where the creature fits in the food chain,

L AVA F L O W S F R O M P H I L I P P I N E V O L C A N O ; T H O U S A N D S F L E E “We are praying that it would not be the worst-case scenario,” Aguas said, adding that nearly 4,000 of the 40,000 residents in his town who live within a government-declared danger zone had started to evacuate to safer areas.

The volcano has erupted 50 times in the last 500 years, sometimes violently, endangering thousands of poor villagers who insist on living or farming in the danger zone.

Villagers living near the volcano have erected huge white crosses at the entrance of their neighborhoods, hoping they will protect them from harm.

smoke billows from the crater of Mayon volcano, one of the country’s most active volcanoes, in Albay province about 550 kilometers southeast of Manila, Philippines. The Philippines’ most active volcano has belched out lava fragments as big as a bus that rolled one kilometer (half a mile) down its slope, prompting authorities to start forcibly evacuating thousands of villagers, officials said Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- The Philippines’ most active volcano has sent more huge lava fragments rolling down its slopes in an ongoing gentle eruption that has prompted authorities to evacuate thousands of villagers, officials said Wednesday.

On May 7, 2013, the volcano suddenly spewed ash, killing five climbers, including three Germans, who had ventured near the summit despite warnings of possible danger.

E X P L O R I N G ‘ GRAVEYARD OF SHIPS’ NEAR SAN FRANCISCO

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology has warned that a “hazardous eruption” of Mount Mayon, located in the eastern Philippines, is possible within weeks.

“It’s already erupting, but not explosive,” said Renato Solidum, who heads the government’s volcano monitoring agency. “Currently, the activity is just lava coming down. If there is an explosion, all sides of the volcano are threatened.”

Volcanologist Ed Laguerta said he saw huge glowing lava fragments and super-hot boulders rolling down from Mayon’s crater late Tuesday from as far as 12 kilometers (7 miles) away.

“They are big because they can be seen from afar, and they splinter, so they could be car-sized,” he added.

Mount Mayon, a popular tourist site known for its near-perfect cone, lies in coconut-producing Albay province, about 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of Manila.

The provincial disaster operations center reported Wednesday that nearly 24,000 people from villages within an 8-kilometer (5-mile) radius from the crater had been evacuated.

Mayor Herbie Aguas said his farming town of Santo Domingo, among the closest to the volcano, has a frightening legacy from Mayon. The volcano nearly wiped out the municipality’s entire population in an 1897 eruption with pyroclastic flows - superheated gas and volcanic debris that race down the slopes at high speeds, vaporizing everything in their path.

WHALING MEETING VOTES AGAINST J A P A N ’ S H U N T PORTOROZ, Slovenia (AP) -- An international whaling conference voted Thursday against Japan’s highly criticized plans to resume whaling in the Antarctic next year, but Japan vowed to go ahead anyway.

A resolution adopted at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia, said Japan should abide by the International Court of Justice’s ruling that its whaling program is illegal because it isn’t for research purposes.

Immediately after the resolution was adopted by a 35-20 vote, Japan announced it will launch a new “research” program that will resume hunting in the Antarctic in 2015. The U.N. court ruling said some “scientific” whaling is allowed under very strict conditions, which Japan said it would meet.

“We will be providing and submitting a new research plan in the Antarctic Ocean so that we implement research activities starting from 2015,” said Joji Morishita, head of Japan’s delegation. “And all these activities are perfectly in accordance with international law, scientific basis as well as the ICJ judgment.”

Approval from the commission’s scientific committee isn’t mandatory, but Japan’s resumption of Antarctic whaling without the body’s specific consent after a one-year pause would likely face intense scrutiny. Japanese boats caught 252 minke whales in the Southern Oceans in 2013, according to the IWC figures.

Australia led the opposition. Many conference member countries believe Japan’s whaling program is not for research, but commercial purposes producing meat and oil.

Animal protection groups welcomed the passage of the resolution, but denounced Japan’s decision to ignore it.

“Additional action is needed to encourage and persuade the government of Japan to reconcile itself to the emerging global consensus for whale conservation, instead of whale killing, in the name of science in the 21st century,” said Patrick Ramage, director of the whales program for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“The Gulf of the Farallones is a graveyard of ships,” said James Delgado, NOAA’s maritime heritage director. “Every one of these accidents, every one of these sinkings, has its own dramatic story to tell.”

The Associated Press accompanied the NOAA team on a research cruise Friday, when they used the underwater vehicle to explore three potential shipwreck sites near the Farallon Islands, a chain of rocky outcroppings about 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Increased restiveness was recorded overnight, including 270 incidents of lava fragments and super-hot boulders rolling down from Mayon’s crater - nearly four times the number recorded the previous day. Some reached the upper portion of a gully on the volcano’s southeastern side, indicating that the lava dome has breached that side of the crater. The number of low-frequency volcanic earthquakes also increased.

Molten lava has accumulated at the top of the 2,460-meter (8,070-foot) volcano’s crater, creating a glow in the night sky that sparked both awe and fear among spectators.

S Q U I D S H O W

At the first target site, Delgado’s team had hoped to see the wreckage of the Noonday, a 19th century clipper ship that was transporting railroad tracks and other cargo from Boston when it hit rocks near the Farallones and sank in 1863.

an octopus swims by a mystery tugboat that was found by the NOAA research vessel Fulmar off the California coast. Federal researchers are exploring more than a dozen underwater sites where they believe ships sank in the treacherous waters outside the Golden Gate in the decades following the Gold Rush. During a five-day expedition, a team from NOAA used sonar and an underwater vehicle to examine and photograph the historic shipwrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary, where more than 300 vessels are believed to have sunk.

GULF OF THE FARALLONES NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY (AP) -- Federal researchers are exploring several underwater sites where ships sank while navigating in the treacherous waters west of San Francisco in the decades following the Gold Rush.

Over the past week, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used a remote-controlled underwater vehicle, equipped with sonar and video cameras, to examine and record the historic shipwrecks.

The five-day expedition was part of a long-term archaeological survey of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, which covers about 1,300 square miles of the Pacific Ocean off the Northern California coast.

NOAA researchers say more than 300 ships have wrecked in the gulf, where heavy fog, strong winds and protruding rocks have bedeviled many vessels heading in and out of the San Francisco Bay - especially before arrival of sonar and other navigational technologies.

After the researchers dropped the remote-controlled vehicle about 300 feet onto the target site, they watched video monitors that showed the underwater video footage in real-time.

The sonar revealed the outlines of what appears to be a clipper ship, but the researchers didn’t see any physical remains of the Noonday, leading them to believe it was buried under the sediment.

“Noonday is there. The sonar is very clear. But there’s just nothing sticking above the seabed,” Delgado said.

When they dropped the underwater vehicle on the third target, they found the wreckage of the SS Selja, a 380-foot cargo steamship that sank west of Point Reyes on Nov. 22, 1910.

Selja was transporting goods from China to San Francisco in heavy fog when it collided with another ship, the SS Beaver. Two Chinese crew members were lost, but the rest of the Selja crew was rescued.

Cameras on the NOAA team’s underwater vehicle revealed the remains of Selja, lying overturned on its starboard side with its hull broken in multiple places. The wreckage had become part of the marine ecosystem, home to numerous fish, sea anemones and other plant life.

“We were actually quite surprised. It was a catastrophic ending for Selja,” said Bob Schwemmer, West Coast coordinator for NOAA’s maritime heritage program.