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JUDGE: BP’S RECKLESS CONDUCT CAUSED GULF OIL SPILL
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- BP acted “recklessly” and bears most of the responsibility for the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, a federal judge concluded Thursday, exposing the energy giant to roughly $18 billion in additional penalties. BP’s market value plummeted by $7 billion after the ruling as its shares suffered their worst percentage decline in almost three years. By Thursday afternoon, company shares had fallen almost 6 percent to $45.05. BP PLC, which vowed to appeal, already agreed to pay billions in criminal fines and compensation to people and businesses affected by the disaster. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier’s ruling that BP acted with “gross negligence” deals instead with civil responsibilities, and could nearly quadruple what the London-based company has to pay in fines for polluting the Gulf of Mexico. The judge held a non-jury trial last year to apportion blame for the Macondo well spill, which killed 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon rig and spewed oil for 87 days in 2010. He ruled that BP bears 67 percent of the blame, Swiss-based drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd. bears 30 percent, and Houston-based cement contractor Halliburton Energy Services is responsible for 3 percent. BP made “profit-driven decisions” during the drilling that led to the deadly blowout, the judge concluded in his 153-page ruling. “These instances of negligence, taken together, evince an extreme deviation from the standard
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BUYER’S REMORSE ON COMMON CORE FOR POLICYMAKERS?
Volume 003 Issue 35
Established 2012
Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
U S , U K W I L L ‘ N O T B E C O W E D ’ B Y M I L I TA N T S NEWPORT, Wales (AP) -- NATO leaders grappled Thursday with whether the alliance has a role in containing a mounting militant threat in the Middle East, as heads of state converged in Wales for a high-stakes summit also focused on the crisis in Ukraine and next steps in Afghanistan.
Obama also planned to meet Thursday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East that’s caught in the crossfire of the region’s instability.
The Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for murdering two American journalists, releasing gruesome videos of their beheadings. Both the U.S. and Britain are deeply concerned about the potential threat to their homelands that could come from the foreign fighters who have joined the violent Islamic State group.
President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that their nations would President Barack Obama meets with British Prime Minister David “not be cowed” by extremists from U.S. Cameron at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales, Thursthe Islamic State group who have day, Sept. 4, 2014. claimed responsibility for killing two American journalists. They also challenged NATO to not Cameron on Monday proposed new laws that would give poturn inward in the face of the threat. lice the power to seize the passports of Britons suspected of “Those who want to adopt an isolationist approach misunder- having traveled abroad to fight with terrorist groups. stand the nature of security in the 21st century,” Obama and Cameron wrote in a joint editorial in the Times of London. The U.S. began launching airstrikes against Islamic State tar“Developments in other parts of the world, particularly in Iraq gets in Iraq last month, and both the U.S. and Britain have been making humanitarian aid drops to besieged minority groups and Syria, threaten our security at home.” there. Cameron said that he hadn’t ruled out joining the U.S. Obama, Cameron and dozens of other NATO leaders met on in airstrikes, but added that the priority was to support those a golf resort in Wales for the two-day summit. Leaders here already fighting the militants on the ground. also planned to commit to a more robust rapid response force on its eastern flank, which would aim to serve as a deterrent to “We need to show real resolve and determination, we need to use every power and everything in our armory with our allies Russian aggression. - with those on the ground - to make sure we do everything Yet much of the action was to take place on the sidelines of the we can to squeeze this dreadful organization out of existence,” summit, where the American and British leaders were expected Cameron told the British network ITV. to drum up support for an international response to confronting Also facing Obama is a decision about whether to expand U.S. the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. military action against the extremists to Syria. While Obama Arriving at the summit site on Thursday, NATO Secretary-Gen- has said he’s considering that step, he has suggested in recent eral Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he believes the broader in- days that it’s not imminent. ternational community “has an obligation to stop the Islamic State from advancing further,” but noted that the alliance U.S. officials say Obama is reluctant to delve into Syria’s quagmire on his own. He’s expected to use some of his discussions hasn’t received any request for help. in Wales to try to build a coalition that could join him in con“I’m sure that if the Iraqi government were to forward a re- fronting the Islamic State through a combination of military quest for NATO assistance, that would be considered seriously might, diplomatic pressure and economic penalties. by NATO allies,” Rasmussen said. continued on page 2
I R A N S AY S I T D I S R U P T S NUCLEAR PLOTS Iran says it and other computer virus attacks are part of a concerted effort by Israel, the U.S. and their allies to undermine its nuclear program through covert operations. Israel has never commented on the allegations but is widely believed to have been involved in the Stuxnet attack.
In the interview Monday, Zarean said foreign intelligence agencies targeted the experts when they traveled abroad and that the experts informed their superiors about the contact when they returned home. He did not elaborate on number of the attempts and destinations where the alleged contact occurred.
This photo taken Monday, Aug. 18, 2014 shows hearings on legislation to repeal Common Core academic standards in the House Finance Hearing Room at Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Millions of students will sit down at computers this year to take new tests rooted in the Common Core standards for math and reading, but policymakers in many states are having buyer’s remorse. The fight to repeal the standards has heated up in Ohio, where Republican legislators such as state Rep. Andy Thompson saying it’s kind of “creepy the way this whole thing landed in Ohio with all the things prepackaged.”
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Millions of students will sit down at computers this year to take new tests rooted in the Common Core standards for math and reading, but policymakers in many states are having buyer’s remorse. The fight to repeal the standards has heated up in Ohio, with state Rep. Andy Thompson, a Republican, saying it’s kind of “creepy the way this whole thing landed in Ohio with all the things prepackaged.” It’s playing out in Louisiana, where GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal is in a nasty feud involving his former ally, Education Superintendent John White. Jindal has sued the Obama administration, accusing Washington of illegally manipulating federal grant money and regulations to force states to adopt the Common Core education standards. The standards were scrapped this year in Indiana and Oklahoma. Governors in North Carolina, South Carolina and Missouri have signed legislation to reconsider the standards, even though they still will be used in those three states this fall. Like many critics, Thompson and Jindal base their opposition on federal support of the standards. But states led the Common Core movement that really took off in 2009 and that effort was voluntary. The administration offered incentives to states to adopt college and career-ready standards, and Common Core fit the bill. The
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Zarean also showed AP journalists parts and equipment, including modems and pumps, which he said had been deliberately tampered with to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. He described the items on display, which he said had been manufactured in Western and Asian countries, as only a small sample of Western sabotage. Photo shows a nuclear research reactor at the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, in Tehran, Iran, which went online with American help in 1967 _ before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution strained ties between the two countries. The deputy head of Iran’s nuclear department has told The Associated Press that the Islamic Republic has disrupted plots by foreign spies to recruit its nuclear experts. Asghar Zarean, who is in charge of security for Iran’s nuclear program, said foreign intelligence agencies targeted the experts when they traveled abroad.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran has disrupted plots by foreign spies to recruit its nuclear experts and stopped sabotage attempts through faulty foreign equipment supplied for its facilities, the deputy head of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear department told The Associated Press.
The comments by Asghar Zarean, who is in charge of security for Iran’s nuclear program, came during a visit by an AP team to Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran organized by state officials. It also comes as Iran continues negotiations with world powers over its contested nuclear program and after authorities said they shot down a purported Israeli drone near one of its atomic facilities. “We aim to raise awareness about the enemy, who is more hostile to us every day,” Zarean said in an interview Monday, without naming the countries that authorities believe are behind the sabotage and the recruitment effort. Iran’s nuclear program has been the target of sabotage in the past. In 2010, the so-called Stuxnet virus temporarily disrupted operation of thousands of centrifuges, key components in nuclear fuel production, at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Experts also demonstrated what they described as a real-time monitoring system that detects malware and cyberattacks on its nuclear program, without elaborating on its abilities. AP journalists weren’t allowed to tour a nearby nuclear research reactor that went online with American help in 1967 - before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution strained ties between the two countries. The U.S. and its allies fear Iran’s nuclear program could allow it to build atomic weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, like generating electricity and medical research. Last November, Iran reached an interim deal with world powers over its nuclear program, agreeing to limit some of its uranium enrichment in exchange for some sanctions to be eased. The Islamic Republic now faces a November deadline to negotiate a final deal with world powers. Despite the negotiations, Zarean said its program remains a target for foreign spies, pointing at Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard shooting down a purported Israeli drone last month near the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Tehran. Israel has not commented on the drone, which Iranian officials said came from a northern country that once was part of the Soviet Union. “With the dominance, resistance and vigilance that our defense system has shown, any flying object aiming to approach our nuclear sites will be targeted,” Zarean said. “We are not joking with anyone. From now on they will see that (our response) to such jokes will be serious.”
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incentives included cash grants and permission to ignore parts of the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law. The standards emphasize critical thinking and spell out what reading and math skills students should grasp at each grade level, while leaving how those skills are mastered up to districts and states. The hope was that higher standards shared across state lines would allow for shared resources, comparable student performance measures and smoother school-to-school transitions for children who move, such as military kids. Nearly every state adopted the standards. --DEBATE SPREADS The debate over Common Core has spilled into the national political realm. Among potential GOP presidential candidates in 2016, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush supports the standards; Jindal, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul do not. Teachers’ unions, historically aligned with the Democrats, endorsed the standards and helped develop them. But they now complain about botched efforts to put them in place and say it’s unfair to use Common Core-based assessments in new teacher evaluation systems rolling out in much of the United States. The issue has gotten pulled into a general anti-testing backlash in parts of the country. To ease the testing concerns, Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently said he would allow states to delay using students’ test scores in teacher evaluation systems.
Thousands of Christians now live in schools and churches in northern Iraq. Yazidis crowd into a displaced persons camp and half-finished buildings. Shiites have mostly drifted to southern Iraq. In this Monday, Sept. 1, 2014 photo, Shiite militiamen hold a flag of the Islamic State group they captured during an operation outside Amirli, some 105 miles (170 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq. Aid began flowing into the small northern Shiite town in Iraq on Monday, a day after security forces backed by Iran-allied Shiite militias and U.S. airstrikes broke a two-month siege by insurgents in a rare victory by government forces.
BAGHDAD (AP) -- An international rights group accused the extremist Islamic State group on Tuesday of systematic “ethnic cleansing” in northern Iraq targeting indigenous religious minorities, as well as conducting mass killings of men and abducting women. In a new report, Amnesty International said militants abducted “hundreds, if not thousands” of women and girls of the Yazidi faith. The extremists also killed “hundreds” of Yazidi men and boys, Amnesty said. In at least one incident, the report said militants rounded up on trucks, took them to the edge of their village and shot them. The 26-page report adds to a growing body of evidence outlining the scope and extent of the Islamic State group’s atrocities since it began its sweep from Syria across neighboring Iraq in June. The militants since have seized much of northern and western Iraq, and have stretched to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. On Monday, the United Nations’ top human rights body approved a request by Iraq to open an investigation into suspected crimes committed by the Islamic State group against civilians. Its aim would be to provide the Human Rights Council with evidence on atrocities committed in Iraq, which could be used as part of any international war crimes prosecution. In its report, Amnesty detailed how the advance of Islamic
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Obama and Cameron visited a local school Thursday morning, where they greeted students learning about NATO before sitting down for a private meeting. Later, the two met with their counterparts from France, Germany and Italy to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. In a show of Western solidarity, new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also joined the discussion. Ukraine and Russia have been locked in a standoff for months, with pro-Moscow forces stirring instability in eastern Ukrainian cities. On the eve of the NATO summit, Russia and Ukraine said they were working on a deal to halt the fighting, but Western leaders expressed skepticism - noting it wasn’t the first attempt to end the deadly conflict. A centerpiece of the NATO summit was to be the announcement of the rapid response force. Officials said the alliance could position at least 4,000 forces and military equipment in the Baltics and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
“What really has happened is that this has become a politicized issue and it’s become an ideological symbol, interestingly, on both sides,” said Patrick McGuinn, a political science professor at Drew University. He said the standards and the assessments designed under them are generally considered acceptable or of high quality.
“We must use our military to ensure a persistent presence in Eastern Europe, making clear to Russia that we will always uphold our Article 5 commitments to collective self-defense,” Obama and Cameron wrote.
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Under Article 5 of the NATO charter, an attack on one member state is viewed on an attack on the whole alliance. Obama reiterated his support for that principle Wednesday during a visit to Estonia, one of the newer NATO members set on edge by Russia’s provocations.
CLASSROOMS PREPARE Far from the political discourse, American classrooms continue to be transformed by the use of the standards, with new curricula developed and teachers trained. Some parents are perplexed by the new ways their children are completing their lessons. Supporters like former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican who helped lead the governors’ group that identified the goals set by Common Core, say politics and mistruths have hijacked a needed and effective education overhaul. The standards were a response from governors in a defensive mode to keep the federal government out of education, Perdue said, and he supported the changes out of concern for U.S. students’ global competitiveness. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is among backers. “It’s just a situation that I don’t think should have become political, which has become politically toxic and I don’t really know how to decontaminate that,” Perdue said. ---
The sudden displacement of the minority groups appears to be the final blow to the continuity of those tiny communities in Iraq. Their numbers had been shrinking since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which triggered extremist violence against them. “Minorities in Iraq have been targeted at different points in the past, but the Islamic State (group) has managed, in the space of a few weeks, to completely wipe off of the map of Iraq, the religious and ethnic minorities from the area under their control,” said Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International. The Yazidis, in particular, were harshly targeted as Islamic State militants overran their ancestral lands in August. In one incident, the report said “possibly hundreds” were killed in the village of Kocho on Aug. 15 after militants told residents to gather in a school. “They separated men and boys from women and younger children. The men were then bundled into pickup vehicles - some 15-20 in each vehicle - and driven away to different nearby locations, where they were shot,” the report said. Islamic State fighters also systematically seized Yazidi women and children, some as they rounded up villagers, others as they tried to flee the militant onslaught, the report said. Their fate is unclear. The report said they had obtained the names of “scores of the women and children” seized by the group. It said “hundreds, possibly thousands,” were likely being held. Some captive women are secretly communicating with their families on cell phones, Amnesty said. They told their families that some girls and young women were separated and taken away, Amnesty said. It appears that some teenage girls were taken in groups to the homes of Islamic State fighters, the report said. The brother of one girl who escaped the militants told The Associated Press that his 17-year-old sister was held with another Yazidi teenage girl in a house in the Iraqi town of Falluja. Khairy Sabri said militants threatened to kill his sister Samira if she did not convert to Islam. Sabri said his sister was seized on August 3 and was moved three times. After fighting intensified between Kurdish forces and the militants, the three Islamic State group fighters guarding the house fled, allowing the women to escape, Sabri said. Sabri said his sister was otherwise unharmed. Amnesty noted allegations that some abducted women were raped or forced to marry fighters. The group said detained women who were in contact with their families had not been harmed, but “they believe that others have, notably those who were moved to undisclosed locations and have not been heard from since.” Yazidi lawmaker, Mahma Khalil, called on the Iraqi government and international community to urgently help the Yazidis who are still facing “continuing atrocities” by the militants. “They have been trying hard to force us to abandon our religion. We reject that
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Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama will make a symbolic show of Western support for the Baltic countries by traveling to Estonia Wednesday before heading to a NATO summit in Wales that is expected to draw out plans to boost the alliance’s military commitments in Central and Eastern Europe. With fighting raging in eastern Ukraine, representatives of Kiev, Moscow, pro-Russia separatists and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met in the Belarusian capital on Monday to begin a new round of talks on settling the crisis. Hinting at a possible compromise, the rebels dropped their previous demand for full independence and expressed readiness to discuss keeping the eastern regions inside Ukraine in exchange for a blanket amnesty and broad autonomy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian natural gas giant Gazprom during the ceremony marking the construction of gas pipeline “Power of Siberia” connecting Russia and China near the village of Us Khatyn in Yakutsk region, Russia, Monday, Sept. 1, 2014.
The talks were quickly adjourned until Friday and it wasn’t clear if the parties could narrow their differences. Moscow wants Kiev to give the rebel regions sweeping powers that would let them keep close ties with Russia and allow the Kremlin to maintain leverage over Ukraine and prevent it from ever joining NATO. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has promised to delegate broad authority to the regions and guarantee citizens’ the right to use the Russian language, but his plan lacked specifics and it has remained unclear whether Moscow would see it as sufficient. Repeated attempts to negotiate a settlement have failed, prompting the West to introduce several rounds of economic sanctions that targeted officials and businessmen close to Putin and, finally, entire sectors of the Russian economy. Russia responded last month by banning most food imports from the West. While most experts agree that the penalties will eventually inflict significant damage on the Russian economy and push it deeper into recession, they will need time to take effect. So far, the sanctions clearly have failed to serve their stated purpose of stopping Putin’s hand. The Russian leader seems ready to face much tougher punishment instead of backing off. If attempts to negotiate a peace deal fail again and more economic sanctions come, Putin’s likely response would be to further raise the ante to push the West into making a deal.
DETROIT’S HISTORIC BANKRUPTCY TRIAL TO BEGIN The strongest opposition to the plan has come from bond insurers like New York-based Syncora Guarantee. Syncora has said its claim is about $400 million and that Detroit has unfairly discriminated against financial creditors. “It has been a very fast-track bankruptcy, which Syncora has no issue with,” company attorney James Sprayregen said. “Syncora’s issue is the lack of transparency of the process and the unfair treatment of its claims.”
The downtown of the city of Detroit is shown. Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr raised more than a few eyebrows a year ago when he took the city into bankruptcy and predicted it would be out by the time his term expired in fall 2014. Because it is by far the largest city to file for municipal bankruptcy and the issues were so complex many experts predicted it would take years to resolve. But the city will take a major step toward that goal with a trial in federal bankruptcy court that starts Tuesday, Sept 2, 2014
DETROIT (AP) -- Opening arguments in Detroit’s historic bankruptcy trial are expected to begin Tuesday afternoon in federal court, where lawyers for the city will attempt to convince a judge that its plans to wipe out billions of dollars in debt should be approved.
General retirees would take a 4.5 percent pension cut and lose annual inflation adjustments. Retired police officers and firefighters would lose only a portion of their annual cost-of-living raise.
The United States and NATO have made it clear that they won’t use military force if Russia invades Ukraine. Even if Washington decides to provide Ukraine with weapons, as some U.S. politicians have urged, such a move will take time and serve little practical purpose. It would take time to train Ukrainian soldiers, accustomed to Soviet-made weapons, how to use Western armaments. And the Ukrainian military’s main problem isn’t the shortage of tanks or missiles, of which it has plenty, but bad training, poor coordination and the low morale of hastily drafted conscripts. The Russian military, in contrast, now appears more combat-ready than ever since the Soviet times. A sweeping modernization program has allowed the army to upgrade its arsenals, and a series of massive drills involving tens of thousands of troops and thousands of tanks have helped polish soldiers’ skills in the past years. Despite the latest escalation, Putin still doesn’t seem to consider a fullfledged invasion as a viable option. For his purposes, tacit support of the rebellion with certain power of deniability is sufficient to keep the conflict burning to press Ukraine and the West into making a deal on his terms. A massive invasion would carry devastating costs for Russia and could quickly erode his power. The Russian president may hope that the continuing fighting in the east, coupled with deepening economic problems will eventually soften Kiev’s reluctance to compromise. Ukraine is teetering on the verge of economic collapse, avoiding bankruptcy only thanks to Western financial aid. Soaring utilities prices and likely fuel shortages in the winter will likely add to the pressure and foment discontent.
A state synonymous with gambling hit the jobs jackpot - Tesla has said the factory will employ about 6,500 people. That’s a welcome jolt for a tourism-based economy particularly hard hit during the Great Recession. Tesla’s choice of Nevada over California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico takes it a big step closer to mass producing an electric car that costs around $35,000 and can go 200 miles on a single charge. That range is critical because it lets people take most daily trips without recharging, a major barrier to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. The “gigafactory,” as Tesla calls the project, would bring the cost of batteries down by producing them on a huge scale. Its approximately 10 million square feet, equivalent to about 174 football fields, would be running by 2017. That is when Tesla hopes to introduce its Model 3, At present, demand for electric vehicles is small. Through August, automakers have sold just over 40,000 fully electric cars this year, up 35 percent from a year ago, according to the auto website Edmunds.com. Factoring in plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles still account for just 3.6 percent of all new car sales, a slight drop from last year. Still, government fuel economy standards that will require new cars and trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon are expected to drive sales.
PLANT GETS TESLA CLOSER TO ELECTRIC CAR FOR MASSES
Gov. Brian Sandoval’s office wouldn’t comment Wednesday on the gigafactory news, saying only that he would make a “major economic development announcement” Thursday. A spokesman for Tesla Motors Inc., based in Palo Alto, California, said company representatives would be at the Capitol in Carson City for the announcement but offered no other details. Sandoval has declined to discuss incentives he has offered Tesla. Based on CEO Elon Musk’s public statements, the incentives likely total at least $500 million. The governor would have to call a special session of the Legislature to approve tax breaks, grants or other incentives of that magnitude. This spring, Musk announced that the company would take the unusual step of spending millions to prepare sites in two states - or perhaps even three - before choosing a winner. The person familiar with Tesla’s plans told The Associated Press a second site still will be prepared, in case Nevada is unable to deliver the incentives it has promised, or possibly to build a second factory. Tesla has done excavation and other site-preparation work at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, where it plans to build the factory, but had not publicly committed to building in Nevada until it tested what economic incentives other states offered. The center is about 15 miles east of Sparks, a Reno suburb founded as a railroad town more than a century ago.
Detroit expects to cut $12 billion in unsecured debt to about $5 billion, which is “more manageable,” according to Bill Nowling, a spokesman for state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr, who has been in charge of Detroit’s finances since March 2013.
The plan includes commitments from the state, major corporations, foundations and others to donate more than $800 million over 20 years to soften cuts to city pensions. In return, pieces in the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts would be placed into a trust to keep them from being sold to satisfy creditors.
The apparent judgment errors by both sides now have pushed the crisis closer to a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.
Rhodes has scheduled additional hearing dates, if needed, into October. But in the end, bankruptcy expert Anthony Sabino expects Rhodes to approve Detroit’s bankruptcy plan - followed by appeals from creditors.
Attorneys for the city and its various creditors debated last-minute legal motions Tuesday morning before Judge Steven Rhodes. The trial in U.S. District Court comes a little more than 13 months after Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.
Most creditors, including more than 30,000 retirees and city employees, have endorsed the plan of adjustment put together by Orr, who guided Chrysler through its bankruptcy, and his restructuring team.
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He has failed in his calculus as the United States and the European Union have ignored his demands and methodically raised the costs for Russia. But the West, in its turn, also has clearly underestimated Putin’s stubborn resolve and his readiness to risk economic damage, falsely hoping that sanctions will force him to back off.
Prospects for a political settlement looked dim just a few weeks ago while the Ukrainian troops were methodically tightening their noose around pro-Russia rebel strongholds in the east, but Kiev’s hopes for a quick victory were short-lived. A rebel counter-offensive has quickly turned the tide against the Kiev government, inflicting huge losses and raising the threat of Ukraine losing access to the energy-rich Sea of Azov.
Putin’s comment last week emphasizing Russia’s nuclear arsenal appeared to send the same tough message to the West: Don’t mess with us.
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Russia could have easily grabbed more land at the start of the crisis, when it annexed Crimea in March, but Putin apparently has seen it as an unnecessary burden, hoping to reach a deal with the West to protect Moscow’s interests in Ukraine without an open invasion.
The four-month conflict has now reached a breaking point, where Russia and Ukraine could either negotiate a political settlement or plunge deeper into hostilities.
Putin’s apparent response is: What you call a Russian invasion is nothing compared to what we could do and all options are on the table. The Kremlin’s halfhearted denial of Putin’s warning that Moscow could seize the Ukrainian capital in two weeks if it wished, which he reportedly made to European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso last week, only reinforced the signal that Russia will not back off.
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Carving a land corridor along the Sea of Azov for supplying Crimea, which has faced power and water shortages since the annexation, is something Russia could threaten to do next.
MOSCOW (AP) -- Riding a wave of military gains by pro-Russia rebels, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it exceedingly clear that he wants a peace deal for Ukraine on his terms and will not be stopped by economic costs.
The West has accused Russia of sharply escalating the conflict by sending regular army units into Ukraine after months of covert assistance to the rebellion and has threatened more sanctions.
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RENO, Nev. (AP) -- To bring electric cars to the masses, Tesla Motors will transform an expanse of desert where pioneers passed on their way to the California Gold Rush and wild mustangs still roam the hillside. This time, the rush will be in Nevada, which Tesla chose over four other states as the site for a $5 billion factory that the carmaker projects will crank out enough high-tech car batteries to power 500,000 vehicles annually by decade’s end. Nevada’s elected leaders still must deliver on the economic incentives they’ve promised, but if they do as expected, Tesla will open its massive factory at an industrial park outside Reno, according to a person familiar with Tesla’s plans. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no official announcement had been made. An announcement was scheduled for Thursday afternoon at Nevada’s Capitol. At least a half-dozen road graders, bulldozers and dump trucks were working at the industrial park behind locked gates Thursday morning. More than a dozen mustangs grazed nearby as sprinkler trucks worked to keep down dust.
Aside from low tax rates and business-friendly workplace laws, Nevada offered plenty of sun and wind to generate “green” power. The industrial park is only about 200 miles along Interstate 80 from Tesla’s lone auto assembly plant in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s also near a deposit of lithium, an essential element to produce the battery cells. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday that this ready supply was an important part of Nevada’s bid. He acknowledged at his Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas that Tesla was coming to Nevada, and said he had spoken with Sandoval about it. Competition for the factory has been intense among the states, which bid up their incentive packages in private negotiations with Tesla. In California, where Tesla has its headquarters and manufacturing plant, the decision to build in the state next door stung. “Tesla was using their business savviness to get states to compete against one another,” said state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, a principal proponent of the project. “It’s just that I felt California had the inside track given our history of working in partnership with Tesla.”
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__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
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D E PA RT M E N T S U S E T E C H N O L O G Y T O I D T R O U B L E D O F F I C E R S LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Police departments across the U.S. are using technology to try to identify problem officers before their misbehavior harms innocent people, embarrasses their employer, or invites a costly lawsuit - from citizens or the federal government.
after emerging from federal oversight. “These are not predictive devices,” he said. “Is the failure in the system itself or is the failure in how the department managed the system. If they did such a small amount of retraining did they ignore lots of training needs and fail to do it?”
While such “early warning systems” are often treated as a cure-all, experts say, little research exists on their effectiveness or - more importantly - if they’re even being properly used. Over the last decade, such systems have become the gold standard in accountability policing with a computerized system used by at least 39 percent of law enforcement agencies, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The issue of police-community relations was thrust into the spotlight after an officer fatally shot Michael Brown in Missouri. Since then, departments have held public forums to build trust with residents. Some are testing cameras mounted to officers to monitor their interactions with the public. Experts say the early warning system can be another powerful tool to help officers do their jobs and improve relations, but it is only as good as the people and departments using it. “It’s not a guarantee that you will catch all of those officers that are struggling,” said Jim Bueermann of the nonprofit Police Foundation, which is dedicated to better policing. “These systems are designed to give you a forewarning of problems and then you have to do something.” The aim is to avoid cases where the first evidence of a troubled officer is a YouTube video showing them excessively beating a suspect. Such incidents stoke public fears about police and can result in huge monetary settlements. The systems track factors such as how often officers are involved in shootings, get complaints, use sick days and get into car accidents. When officers hit a specific threshold, they’re supposed to be flagged and supervisors notified so appropriate training or counseling can be assigned. Some law enforcement agencies adopted the systems under
Maggie Goodrich, chief information officer for the LAPD, defended the technology before the department’s civilian oversight board but also said a deeper analysis of its impacts is necessary. “How do you prove a negative?” she asked. “What we can’t capture with this system is how many times have we stopped somebody from engaging in behavior?” Officers on bicycles keep watch as demonstrators protesting several incidents of alleged Los Angeles Police Department brutality, including the fatal shooting of Manuel Jamines a month ago, stand outside the LAPD’s Rampart Station in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. Police departments across the U.S. are using technology to try to identify problem officers before their misbehavior harms innocent people, embarrasses their employer, or invites a costly lawsuit, from citizens or the federal government. The Los Angeles Police Department agreed to set up their $33 million early warning systems after the so-called Rampart scandal in which an elite anti-gang unit was found to have beaten and framed suspected gang members. The system was then implemented in 2007. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
agreements they entered into with the federal government after officers were accused of abuse, including departments in Seattle, which is currently working to implement such a system, and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department agreed to set up their $33 million early warning systems after the so-called Rampart scandal in which an elite anti-gang unit was found to have beaten and framed suspected gang members. The system was then implemented in 2007. The LAPD’s inspector general found in a recent review that the system was seemingly ineffective in identifying officers who ultimately were fired. The report looked at 748 “alerts” over a four-month period and found the agency took little action in the majority of cases and only required training for 1.3 percent, or 10 alerts, of them. Sam Walker, a University of Nebraska at Omaha professor emeritus and expert on such systems, said he was troubled by the department’s response to the report and concerned their follow-up study would be used to discredit the system a year
U S E AT I N G H A B I T S I M P R O V E A BIT _ EXCEPT AMONG POOR a variety of healthy fruits and vegetables are displayed for sale at a market in Washington. A 12-year study released Monday, Sept. 1, 2014, shows a steady improvement in American’s eating habits, but food choices remain less than ideal
CHICAGO (AP) -- Americans’ eating habits have improved - except among the poor, evidence of a widening wealth gap when it comes to diet. Yet even among wealthier adults, food choices remain far from ideal, a 12-year study found. On an index of healthy eating where a perfect score is 110, U.S. adults averaged just 40 points in 1999-2000, climbing steadily to 47 points in 2009-10, the study found. Scores for low-income adults were lower than the average and barely budged during the years studied. They averaged almost four points lower than those for high-income adults at the beginning; the difference increased to more than six points in 2009-10. Higher scores mean greater intake of heart-healthy foods including vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats, and a high score means a low risk of obesity and chronic illnesses including heart disease, strokes and diabetes. Low scores mean people face greater chances for developing those ailments. The widening rich-poor diet gap is disconcerting and “will have important public health implications,” said study co-author Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health. Diet-linked chronic diseases such as diabetes have become more common in Americans in general, and especially in the poor, he noted. “Declining diet quality over time may actually widen the gap between the poor and the rich,” Hu said. Harvard School of Public Health researchers developed the healthy diet index used for the study. It is similar to federal dietary guidelines but features additional categories including red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages and alcohol.
The study authors used that index along with government estimates on trans fat intake to evaluate information in 19992010 national health surveys that included interviews with people about their eating habits. The results are published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
For rank-and-file officers, there’s concern someone could be flagged merely because, for example, they work in a highcrime area where they are more likely to use their weapon or physical force. Some systems attempt to correct for such factors by comparing officers with their direct peers, and managers are supposed to account for differences in assignments. “Their concern is the concern that the public has about big brother,” said Tyler Izen, president of the union representing LAPD officers. “If you’re watching over me and there’s a setup matrix that is going to tell you that I’m bad, people are always skeptical of things like that.” A 2011 Justice Department report found the New Orleans Police Department’s system, adopted roughly two decades ago, was “outdated and essentially exists in name only.” Investigators said information was included haphazardly and flagged officers were put into essentially “bad boy school,” a one-sizefits-all class seen by some as a badge of honor. The system is being overhauled. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is on the verge of entering into a federal consent decree for its mismanagement of jails. And a Justice Department investigation that concluded last year found deputies discriminated against blacks and Latinos by making unconstitutional stops, searches, seizures and using excessive force. The sheriff’s department has an early warning system. “Our diagnostic systems were fine,” said the department’s Chief of Detectives, Bill McSweeney, who advised his agency on creation of the warning system. “Our managerial and supervision response was not fine. It’s that simple.”
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Hu said the widening diet gap reflects an income gap that deepened during the recent financial crisis, which likely made healthy food less affordable for many people. Hu also noted that inexpensive highly processed foods are often widely available in low-income neighborhoods. The overall diet improvement was largely due to decreased intake of foods containing trans fats but the disappointing results point to a need for policy changes including better nutrition education, Hu said. In recent years the government and manufacturers have moved to phase out use of artificial trans fats in foods including processed cookies, cakes, frozen pizza and margarines. Trans fats contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels and can increase heart disease risks. These fats are made by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil to improve texture and shelf life. The study authors say their results are consistent with an earlier report showing that “nearly the entire U.S. population fell short of meeting federal dietary recommendations.” The federal guidelines are updated every five years and new ones will be issued next year. The current recommendations emphasize limiting intake of trans fats, sodium, processed foods and added sugars. They don’t specify amounts but encourage diets high in whole grains, vegetables and fruits. The Harvard index has a similar emphasis with some specifics; to get a top score would include eating daily more than two cups of vegetables, at least four servings of fruit and at least one ounce of nuts. A JAMA Internal Medicine editorial says the Harvard diet index isn’t perfect because it puts equal emphasis on various foods that may not contribute equally to health. Still, the study highlights a “growing chasm” that is a public health concern, the editorial says. It suggests that government efforts to close the gap with programs including food stamps may be insufficient and that limiting government benefits to cover only healthful foods might be a better strategy.
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, left, is swarmed by the media as he leaves Federal Court for the third day of jury deliberations in his corruption trial in Richmond, Va., Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. McDonnell and his wife Maureen are charged in a 14-count indictment with doing special favors for Jonnie Williams, the CEO of dietary supplements maker Star Scientific Inc., in exchange for $165,000 in gifts and loans
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife were convicted Thursday of using his office to promote a dietary supplement in exchange for gifts in a public corruption case that derailed the career of a onetime rising Republican star. A federal jury in Richmond convicted Bob McDonnell of 11 of the 13 counts he faced; Maureen McDonnell was convicted of nine of the 13 counts she had faced. Sentencing was scheduled for Jan. 6. Both bowed their heads and wept as a chorus of “guilty” kept coming from the court clerk. The couple left the courtroom separately and remained apart. Bob McDonnell left first and walked into a witness waiting room; Maureen McDonnell came out later, hugging one of her daughters while weeping loudly. She went into a separate waiting room. The couple was charged with doing favors for a wealthy vitamin executive in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans. They also were charged with submitting fraudulent bank loan applications, and Maureen McDonnell was charged with one count of obstruction. The former governor testified in his own defense, insisting that he provided nothing more than routine political courtesies to former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams. Maureen McDonnell did not testify. His testimony and that of others exposed embarrassing details about Maureen McDonnell’s erratic behavior and the cou-
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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
E A S T E R N H O P E S F O R N A T O B A S E S S T Y M I E D B Y R U S S I A something for Poland.”
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- On the eve of a NATO summit, President Barack Obama gave the alliance’s eastern European members a soaring assurance of protection from any Russian threat. But Poland and the Baltic states are seeking more than lofty words: They want permanent bases with troops on their land.
Polish leaders have been arguing for months that it makes no sense for NATO to keep significant bases in places like Germany and Italy, far from any apparent threats, while keeping none on NATO’s eastern flank now that Russia is growing more threatening.
And they probably won’t get that.
Sikorski says that Poland only wants what West Germany had during the Cold War, when U.S. troops were stationed there as a deterrent to the sizeable Soviet forces in East Germany.
While the request from Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will be on the agenda at the summit in Wales, European heavyweight Germany and other members strongly oppose it. They argue that it would violate a 1997 agreement with Russia in which NATO pledges not to put “substantial combat forces” in central and eastern Europe.
“I am not saying that this is a new Cold War, or that we are back to this kind of confrontation,” Sikorski said in a recent interview with the website http://www.ozy.com . “But the forces that we are asking for are 1 percent of what (Germany) had in the 1980s.”
The eastern NATO members suspect, however, that the accord with Russia is just a cover for not wanting to further damage economic relations. And Poland argues that the agreement, known as the Founding Act, has already been invalidated by Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Speaking in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, Obama declared on Wednesday: “You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you’ll never lose it again.” While that will be a heartening message for Poland and the Baltic states, there were no details of the kind of action that might back it up. Germany has been specific about what it will not mean. In Latvia last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there will be “no permanent stationing of combat troops” on the alliance’s eastern edge. While saying that she understands the concerns of the eastern members, she stressed that “we have ... a NATO-Russia Act that for the moment I do not want to overstep.” Days later Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, seemed resigned that the Sept. 4-5 summit would agree on lesser measures, such as rotations of NATO troops into the region and the pre-positioning of supplies there so NATO could react more quickly if attacked. “This concept is OK with us. We don’t want to make a fetish of the word `permanent,’” Siemoniak said in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita newspaper. NATO leaders are expected to agree on the creation of a rapid response force, a military unit that would be capable of deploying quickly to
Russian President Vladimir Putin waves after a wreath laying ceremony at the monument to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014. As the Ukraine crisis intensifies, the NATO countries closest to Russia have been pushing the alliance to set up permanent bases with troops on their land _ with historical fears of Moscow heightened by new Russian aggression. But as the alliance holds a summit this week where the Polish and Baltic request will be discussed, it’s looking increasingly unlikely they will get that.
Eastern Europe. The plan includes the pre-positioning of equipment and logistics facilities in the region that would enable NATO to react quickly.
But it is less than the two heavy combat brigades that Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski had called for in the spring - and it is clear that many Eastern Europeans are bitter. Many Poles feel that the West treats it as a second-class NATO member in an attempt to appease Moscow. And they say it is unjust that Poland has helped its allies by sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, but is being denied the security guarantees it now feels it needs. “When a dangerous and unpleasant task has to be performed, like sending thousands of troops across the world, Poland is told by its allies that it is in the West. It is there 100 percent, without a doubt and without baggage from the time of Soviet domination,” commentator Jerzy Haszczynski wrote in Rzeczpospolita. “Everything changes when it’s not Poland that has to do something, but the old West that has to do
S I L I C O N VA L L E Y F I R M S H A LT E D S P R E A D O F G R I S L Y V I D E O in a statement said it has “clear policies prohibiting content intended to incite violence, and we remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users.”
YouTube also terminates accounts registered by members of State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations and used in an official capacity to further their interests. One advocate of free speech on the Internet said she’s troubled by the idea of Internet companies removing content. Jillian York, who directs international freedom of expression initiatives at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said corporations like Twitter and Facebook should never remove content unless required to do so by law. Students and supporters place candles at the edge of a wall surrounding a pond as they take part in a candle light vigil at the University of Central Florida, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014, in Orlando, Fla., to honor Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist to be beheaded by the Islamic State group in two weeks. Sotloff attended University of Central Florida between 2002 and 2004
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Silicon Valley firms were prepared this week to quickly block video of an Islamic State militant beheading an American journalist after a previous video by the same group showing the death of James Foley ricocheted through social networks in what was seen by some as a propaganda coup for the extremists. The video Tuesday showing the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff was first uploaded onto a different website and quickly deleted when copied onto YouTube, slowing the spread of posts linking to it, said a Silicon Valley insider, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others all have policies banning terms of service regarding images of gratuitous violence or that incite hatred. But grisly images, once viral, are hard to restrain. “It’s been very interesting, with this second beheading, how very little of those images have been passed around,” said Family Online Safety Institute CEO Stephen Balkam, who serves on Facebook’s safety advisory board. “It’s very difficult to find them unless you know of some darker places on the web.” When Tuesday’s beheading video of Sotloff was launched so soon after Foley’s death, “platforms were better prepared for it this time around,” the Silicon Valley insider said. Social media firms are trying to force out the Islamic State group “platform by platform,” the tech official said. The major social networks declined to speak with The Associated Press directly about the beheading videos. But YouTube
“The problem is that their rules are applied unevenly,” she said, noting that she has heard from numerous people who had their Twitter accounts banned after they shared the Foley video even though newspapers and the Israeli prime minister did the same without repercussion. Meanwhile, she said, the Islamic State continues to use the platform to recruit. “Ultimately, though, giving corporations the power to censor sets a dangerous precedent,” York said. “And we’ve seen this power abused time and time again.” Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on Internet privacy and freedom of expression, said one strategy that is gaining support “is to remove the underlying video but not to limit the discussion of the topic.” Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer at Tripwire, a Portland, Oregon-based cybersecurity firm, said most of the mainstream sharing sites will cooperate with national agencies to remove content deemed dangerous to national security or endangering an active criminal investigation. “Even in these situations, videos have often already been harvested by users that download them and then repost the material on other sites,” he said. “This is the proverbial `the cat is out of the bag’ problem we see all the time on the Internet. While you may be able to deal with the original sources of content, you’re almost always dealing with multiple sources, many of whom will not listen to any request to `scrub’ the video from their sites.” Social media sites police their content around the clock to take down content that users flag. In the past, this has included images considered online bullying and pages or feeds from people who died or became incapacitated. In recent years, social media sites have
There is no doubt that cash-strapped NATO members are also hesitant to commit to bases that could be there for years or decades. And those that have bases will be hesitant to give up the jobs and other economic advantages they bring. For instance a permanent transfer of airmen from the NATO base in Aviano, Italy, to Eastern Europe would have ramifications in the area as Italy battles recession. Romania, which is also nervous about Russian aggression in the Black Sea region, is also discussing plans for NATO to base fighter planes and personnel there. President Traian Basescu said Wednesday that 200 NATO pilots, mechanics and maintenance personnel will be stationed in Romania. The Founding Act was signed in 1997, after the Soviet Union collapsed and NATO and a democratizing Russia were seeking a partnership. The agreement states that the two sides “do not consider each other as adversaries” and would work for lasting peace. They vow not to use force against each other or to violate the territorial integrity or independence of any other state. And to appease Moscow, which was opposed to the expansion of NATO into parts of the former Soviet bloc, NATO agreed not to put substantial combat forces in the region. “From the outset, countries like Poland were skeptical about an explicit pledge since it would create a kind of two-tiered alliance,” said Jacek Durkalec, a defense analyst with the Polish Institute of International Affairs. Liana Fix, an associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said that Germany’s resistance to breaking with the Founding Act comes from a broader respect for treaties and other international obligations. Not provoking Russia with bases near its borders would also give Moscow room to back down from its confrontational approach, something Merkel’s words in Riga seemed to suggest when she said that she wouldn’t overstep the act “for the moment.” “Germany wants to remain within the framework of international rules. Otherwise Russia can always argue that `it wasn’t us who violated international rules and norms, but it was you who violated this treaty,’” Fix said. “So I think a lot more would have to happen before Germany would actually agree to violate this treaty - even though Russia has already violated it.”
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ple’s marital woes as the defense suggested they could not have conspired because they were barely speaking. Williams testified under immunity that he spent freely on the McDonnells in order to secure their help promoting his supposed cure-all, the tobacco-derived anti-inflammatory Anatabloc. Among the gifts were nearly $20,000 in designer clothing and accessories for Maureen McDonnell, a $6,500 Rolex watch for her husband, $15,000 in catering for one of their daughter’s wedding, free vacations and golf outings. Williams also provided three loans totaling $120,000. As the gifts were being given, the McDonnells attended various Anatabloc promotional events and hosted a luncheon at the governor’s mansion that the company billed as a product launch. Williams also was allowed to invite several of his associates to a reception for Virginia health care leaders at the mansion, and McDonnell arranged meetings for him with two state health officials as he was taking preliminary steps to seek state-backed research on Anatabloc. No applications for research grants were ever submitted. Prosecutors claimed that the McDonnells turned to Williams because they were grappling with credit card debt that once topped $90,000 and annual operating shortfalls of $40,000 to $60,000 on family-owned vacation rental properties. Two of the loans totaling $70,000 were intended for the two Virginia Beach rent houses. Williams said he wrote the first $50,000 check to Maureen McDonnell after she complained about their money troubles and said she could help his company because of her background selling nutritional supplements. A number of witnesses, including the former governor, said Maureen McDonnell despised being first lady and was prone to angry outbursts that prompted mansion staff to threaten a mass resignation. Bob McDonnell said he began working unnecessarily late to avoid Maureen’s wrath and revealed that the two were living apart during the trial. The defense also introduced a September 2011 email from McDonnell to his wife lamenting the deterioration of their marriage, complaining about her “fiery anger” and begging her to work with him to repair the relationship. Defense attorneys said Maureen McDonnell had a “crush” on Williams, who preyed on her vulnerability. Several witnesses described their relationship as inappropriate and flirtatious. None suggested it was physical, and Williams testified that it was not. He said his relationship with both McDonnells was all about boosting his business.
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BEIRUT (AP) -- Islamic State extremists released a video posted Tuesday purportedly showing the beheading of a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff, and warning President Barack Obama that as long as U.S. airstrikes against the militant group continue, “our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
posted it early to another account before it was supposed to be released. A later Twitter message apologized for releasing it early and asked fellow jihadis not to “reproach” them.
The footage - depicting what the U.S. called a sickening act of brutality - was posted two weeks after the release of video showing the killing of James Foley and days after Sotloff’s mother pleaded for his life.
Addressing the leader of the Islamic State group by name, Shirley Sotloff said in a video her son was “an innocent journalist” who shouldn’t pay for U.S. government actions in the Middle East over which he has no control.
Barak Barfi, a spokesman for the Sotloff family, said that the family had seen the video but that authorities have not established its authenticity.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he wasn’t immediately aware of the purported Sotloff video and wasn’t in a position to confirm its authenticity.
“The family knows of this horrific tragedy and is grieving privately. There will be no public comment from the family during this difficult time,” Barfi said. Sotloff, 31, who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines, vanished in Syria in August 2013 and was not seen again until he appeared in a video released online last month that showed Foley’s beheading. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit against the backdrop of an arid Syrian landscape, Sotloff was threatened in that video with death unless the U.S. stopped airstrikes on the group in Iraq. In the video distributed Tuesday and titled “A Second Message to America,” Sotloff appears in a similar jumpsuit before he is apparently beheaded by a fighter with the Islamic State, the extremist group that has claimed wide swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq and declared itself a caliphate. In the video, the organization threatens to kill another hostage, this one they identified as a British citizen. The SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. terrorism watchdog, first reported about the video’s existence. Unlike Foley’s beheading, which was widely shared on Twitter accounts affiliated with the Islamic State group, the video purporting to show Sotloff’s killing was not immediately posted online, though several jihadi websites told users to expect it Tuesday. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said U.S. intelligence analysis will “work as quickly as possible” to determine if the video of the beheading is authentic.
Sotloff’s mother had pleaded for his release last week in a video directed at the Islamic State group.
People stand on the shoreline near a sign reading ‘NO DUMPING’, amongst rubbish at West Point, a area heavily effected by the Ebola virus, with residence not being allowed to leave West Point, as government forces clamp down on movement to prevent the spread of Ebola, in Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2014. Health officials in Liberia said the other two recipients of ZMapp in Liberia — a Congolese doctor and a Liberian physician’s assistant, have recovered. Both are expected to be discharged from an Ebola treatment center on Friday, said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, a Liberian doctor with the treatment team.
“If the video is genuine, we are sickened by this brutal act, taking the life of another innocent American citizen,” Psaki said. “Our hearts go out to the Sotloff family and we will provide more information as it becomes available.” Psaki said it’s believed that “a few” Americans are believed to still be held by the Islamic State but would not give any specifics. The fighter who beheads Sotloff in the video called it retribution for Obama’s continued airstrikes against the group in Iraq. “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State ... despite our serious warnings,” the fighter said. “So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.” At the end of the video, he threatened to kill a third captive, a Briton, David Cawthorne Haines. It was not immediately clear who Haines was. Officials with the British Foreign Office declined to immediately comment. Before the video’s release, messages on websites frequented by jihadis warned of a “second message to America.” However, it appeared that a separate faction of the Islamic State group
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were then taken away from the range, according to the report. The report describes the family as shaken by the accident. Prosecutors are not filing charges in the case. Arizona’s workplace safety agency is investigating the shooting-range death. County prosecutors say the instructor was probably the most criminally negligent person involved in the accident for having allowed the child to hold the gun without enough training. They also said the parents and child weren’t criminally culpable. The girl’s mother had video-recorded the accident on her phone. “All right, go ahead and give me one shot,” Vacca tells the girl in the video. He then cheers when she fires one round at the target. This Aug. 27, 2014 file photo shows painted signs outside of the Last Stop outdoor shooting range, in White Hills, Ariz. Instructor Charles Vacca was accidentally killed Monday, Aug. 25, 2014, at the range by a 9-year-old with an Uzi submachine gun. According to police reports released Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, the girl who accidentally killed the shooting range instructor had said immediately after the shooting that she felt the gun was too much for her and had hurt her shoulder.
PHOENIX (AP) -- A 9-year-old girl who accidentally killed an instructor with an Uzi at an Arizona shooting range said immediately after the shooting that she felt the gun was too much for her and had hurt her shoulder, according to police reports released Tuesday. Her family members were focused on the girl because they thought she was injured by the gun’s recoil and didn’t immediately realize instructor Charles Vacca had been shot until one of his colleagues ran over to him. The family, whose hometown hasn’t been revealed by investigators, had taken a shuttle on Aug. 25 from Las Vegas about 60 miles south to the Last Stop range in White Hills, Arizona. The report did not say why the family had gone to the range or why they let the girl handle the Uzi. After arriving, the girl, her parents, sister and brother took a monster truck ride before heading out to the shooting range. The girl’s father was the first one in the party to handle a weapon. After he fired shots, Vacca instructed the girl on how to shoot the gun, showed her a shooting stance, and helped her fire a few rounds. Then, he stepped back and let her hold the Uzi by herself. She fired the gun, and its recoil wrenched the Uzi upward, killing Vacca with a shot to the head, according to the report. The girl dropped the Uzi, and Vacca fell to the ground. The girl ran toward her family, who huddled around her as she held her shoulder. Another instructor rushed over to help to Vacca. The other children
“All right full auto,” Vacca says. The video, which does not show the actual incident, ends with a series of shots being heard. The shooting set off a powerful debate over youngsters and guns, with many people wondering what sort of parents would let a child handle a submachine gun. Sam Scarmardo, the range’s operator, has said the parents had signed waivers saying they understood the rules and were standing nearby when the accident occurred. He also had said he never had a safety problem before at the range and said his policy of allowing children 8 and older to fire guns under adult supervision and an instructor’s watchful eye is standard industry practice, though he noted his policies are under review. Vacca’s ex-wife and children said last week that they harbored no ill feelings toward the girl or her family. Instead, they feel sorry for the child and want to comfort her.
“This is something that the administration has obviously been watching very carefully,” Earnest said. “Our thoughts and prayers first and foremost are with Mr. Sotloff and Mr. Sotloff’s family and those who worked with him.” A man who answered a phone listed in the name of Sotloff’s sister hung up when called by the AP. The Islamic State group has terrorized rivals and civilians alike with widely publicized brutality as it seeks to expand a proto-state it has carved out on both sides of the border. In its rise to prominence over the past year, the extremist group has frequently published graphic photos and gruesome videos of everything from bombings and beheadings to mass killings.
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of care and a conscious disregard of known risks,” he wrote. BP said it would appeal. “An impartial view of the record does not support the erroneous conclusion reached by the District Court,” its statement said. Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said “we’re pleased with the court’s finding that BP acted with gross negligence and willful misconduct.” The ruling exposes BP to about $18 billion in civil fines under the Clean Water Act. It also “repudiates BP’s claims that it was merely negligent and will further damage BP’s already badly damaged reputation,” said David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section. James Roy and Stephen Herman, who represented oil spill victims in the trial, said “we hope that today’s judgment will bring some measure of closure to the families of the eleven men who tragically lost their lives, and to the thousands of people and businesses still trying to recover from the spill.” Barbier wrote that legal precedents prevent him adding punitive damages that would have been appropriate given the “egregious” conduct of BP’s employees. The judge cited a botched safety test that should have warned the rig’s drilling crew that the well was in danger of blowing out. Barbier said BP ultimately was responsible for misinterpreting the “negative pressure test.” Donald Vidrine, one of BP’s well site leaders on the rig, should have known that the negative test had failed based on abnormal pressure readings before the blowout, Barbier wrote. Vidrine and another BP rig supervisor, Robert Kaluza, await trial on federal manslaughter charges for the workers’ deaths, in the same New Orleans courthouse where Barbier sits. The judge was assigned to oversee most of the federal litigation spawned by BP’s spill. Last year, he presided over two phases of a trial for claims against BP and its contractors brought by the federal government, the five Gulf states and private lawyers representing businesses and residents. Barbier heard eight weeks of testimony before identifying the causes of the blowout of BP’s Macondo well and assigning percentages of fault to the companies involved in the drilling project. The second phase took three weeks, focusing on dueling estimates of how much oil spilled and examining BP’s efforts to seal the well. Government experts estimated that 4.2 million barrels, or 176 million gallons, spilled into the Gulf. BP urged the judge to use an estimate of 2.45 million barrels, or nearly 103 million gallons, in calculating any Clean Water Act penalties. Both sides agreed that 810,000 barrels, or 34 million gallons, was captured before it could cause pollution. Barbier hasn’t ruled yet on the question of how much oil spilled into the Gulf. Millions of gallons of crude gushed from the sea floor after the well blew and triggered a rig explosion, killing wildlife, staining beaches and polluting marshes. BP ultimately sealed the well after several techniques failed to stop the gusher. BP says it has spent more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses to date, including cleanup costs as well as payments to affected businesses and residents. Long before Thursday’s ruling, the company estimated that its total payout to fully resolve its spill-related liability would be $42 billion. BP pleaded guilty in January 2013 to manslaughter in the rig workers’ deaths. BP also agreed to pay a record $4 billion in penalties as part of its deal with the Justice Department, but the plea agreement didn’t resolve the federal government’s civil claims. Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay a maximum of either $1,100 or $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil. The higher limit applies if the company is found grossly negligent - as BP was in Barbier’s ruling. But penalties can be assessed at amounts below these caps.
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The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
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B L A C K WAT E R L E G A C Y: A FA I N T M E M O R Y O F N I S O O R S Q U A R E
NEW YORK (AP) -- Squeezed into tighter and tighter spaces, airline passengers appear to be rebelling, taking their frustrations out on other fliers.
But passengers aren’t just losing legroom; they’re losing elbow room. Airlines sold 84 percent of their seats on domestic flights so far this year, up from 81 percent five years ago and 74 percent a decade ago, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That means there are fewer and fewer empty middle seats on which passengers can spread out.
Three U.S. flights made unscheduled landings in the past eight days after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every inch counts. “Seats are getting closer together,” says Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 60,000 flight attendants at 19 airlines. “We have to de-escalate conflict all the time.” There are fights over overhead bin space, legroom and where to put winter coats.
Blackwater Worldwide guard Nicholas Slatten enters a taxi cab as he leaves federal court in Washington, after the start of his trial. After 10 weeks of argument and testimony, the case goes to the jury on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014.
“We haven’t hit the end of it,” Nelson says. “The conditions continue to march in a direction that will lead to more and more conflict.”
to be first on board, and then fight for the limited overhead bin space. They are already agitated by the time they arrive at their row and see how cramped it is.
Airlines today are juggling terror warnings in Britain, an Ebola outbreak in Africa and an Icelandic volcano erupting and threating to close down European airspace. Yet, the issue of disruptive passengers has captured the world’s attention.
To boost their profits, airlines have been adding more rows of seats to planes in the past few years.
It’s getting to the point where the pre-flight safety videos need an additional warning: Be nice to your neighbor. The International Air Transport Association calls unruly passengers “an escalating problem,” saying there was one incident for every 1,300 flights in the past three years. The trade group would not share detailed historical data to back up the assertion that this is a growing problem. Today’s flying experience is far from glamorous. Passengers wait in long lines for security screening, push and shove at the gate
Southwest and United both took away one inch from each row on certain jets to make room for six more seats. American is increasing the number of seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 150 to 160. Delta installed new, smaller toilets in its 737-900s, enabling it to squeeze in an extra four seats. And to make room for a first-class cabin with lie-flat beds on its transcontinental flights, JetBlue cut one inch of legroom for coach passengers. Airlines say passengers won’t notice because the seats are being redesigned to create a sense of more space. Southwest’s seats have thinner seatback magazine pockets, Alaska Airlines shrank the size of tray tables, and United moved the magazine pocket, getting it away from passengers’ knees.
3 2 T E E N S E S C A P E F R O M NASHVILLE DETENTION CENTER from the inside, officials said. The teens wear blue pants with white or light gray T-shirts. The clothing has no markings. The detention center was calm and back under control Tuesday morning, Johnson said. Police cars were on the scene, but there was little activity at the center or its neighbors - a women’s prison, several offices for trucking companies and other businesses. On the western edge of the facility, the spot where the teens escaped, the closest neighbors are a frozen pizza plant and a liquor distributor. Officials said the fence has been fixed.
Police work in front of the Woodland Hills Youth Development Center Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, in Nashville, Tenn. Thirty-two teens escaped from a Nashville youth detention center by crawling through a weak spot in a fence late Monday, and more than half of them were still on the run Tuesday, a spokesman said
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Thirty-two teens escaped from a Nashville youth detention center by crawling under a weak spot in a fence late Monday, and nine of them were still on the run Tuesday, a spokesman said.
JOLIE, PITT WED P R I VA T E L Y A T C H AT E A U I N F R A N C E
He said the fence is buried 8 inches deep into the ground, but the teens managed to pull up a weak portion and get out underneath. Once staff members saw some of the group escaping, they called the police, Johnson said. Two teens were captured immediately and others were found overnight, Johnson said. Some were found by authorities, others turned themselves in, and others were turned in by their parents, he said. No staff members were hurt in the incident, officials said. On Tuesday morning, local police and the Tennessee Highway Patrol were still searching for nine of the teens. The 23 who were found or turned back in to the center were taken to Metro Nashville Juvenile court and could face escape charges, officials said in a news release. The state-owned center in northwest Nashville held 78 teens at the time of the escape, and most had committed at least three felonies, Johnson said. The center has a school, offers vocational training and career counseling, and works to move teens to less restrictive settings, according to a state website. It holds teens until their 19th birthdays, and all have been charged as juveniles, not adults. Their records are sealed. At the center, the teens stay in single rooms that are not locked
Three days later, on an American flight from Miami to Paris, two passengers got into a fight, again over a reclining seat, and the plane was diverted to Boston. Then on Sunday night, on a Delta flight from New York to West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman resting her head on a tray table got upset when the passenger in front of her reclined his seat, hitting her in the head. That plane was diverted to Jacksonville, Florida. The passengers on both the United and Delta flights were already sitting in premium coach sections that have 4 inches of extra legroom. There were 14,903 flight diversions by U.S. airlines in the 12-month period ending in June, according to an Associated Press analysis of Department of Transportation reports. That means, 41 flights a day, on average, make unscheduled landings at other airports. The government doesn’t break out the reason for diversions, but industry experts say the vast majority occur because of bad weather or mechanical problems. And diversions remain a tiny portion of the 6 million annual flights in the U.S. - less than a quarter of a percentage point. The decision to divert is up to the pilot. Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant says the crew must determine if the person is going to cause harm to others or has terrorist intentions. It can cost an airline $6,000 an hour, plus airport landing fees, to divert the standard domestic jet, according to independent airline analyst Robert Mann. “These costs are among the reasons why airlines ought to be arbitrating these in-flight issues instead of diverting, not to mention the significant inconvenience to all customers and possible disruption of onward connections,” Mann says. Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, says that if airlines install seats that can recline, passengers should have the right to recline. Of course, Spirit and Allegiant Air are the only U.S. airlines to install seats that don’t recline. “People should lose the emotion,” Baldanza says. “We’ve never had to divert because of legroom issues.” publicity stunt. Al-Qaida “is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world,” said Ajai Sahni, a top Indian security analyst with the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.
The teens - ages 14 to 19 - left their rooms at Woodland Hills Youth Development Center and went into a common area, where they overwhelmed 16 to 18 staff members, Tennessee Department of Children’s Services spokesman Rob Johnson said. The group then kicked out a metal panel under a window to get out of the building and into a yard, Johnson said. The teens were running in the yard for a few minutes, and then they realized they could lift part of the chain-link fence and crawl out, Johnson said.
The latest spate of passenger problems started Aug. 24, when a man on a United flight prevented the woman in front of him from reclining thanks to a $21.95 gadget called the Knee Defender. It attaches to a passenger’s tray table and prevents the person in front from reclining. A flight attendant told the man to remove the device. He refused, and the passenger one row forward dumped a cup of water on him.
“Osama bin Laden has been killed and (al-Qaida’s) entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks,” he said. “This statement is meaningless.”
In this image taken from video, Ayman al-Zawahri, head of al-Qaida, delivers a statement in a video which was seen online by the SITE monitoring group, released Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. Al-Qaida has expanded into the Indian subcontinent, the leader of the terror group, said with a united group that will “wage jihad against its enemies.” Al-Zawahri said al-Qaida had been preparing for years to set up in the region.
NEW DELHI (AP) -- Promising to “storm your barricades with cars packed with gunpowder,” al-Qaida announced Thursday it had created an Indian branch that the terror network vowed would bring Islamic rule to the entire subcontinent. The announcement by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri brought few signs of increased security in India even after the government ordered states to be on alert. Instead, al-Zawahri’s announcement by online video appeared directed more at his own rivals in the international jihad movement, analysts said. “This is really very personal,” said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. “You cannot understand this announcement without understanding the fierce rivalry between Islamic State and al-Qaida central.” Al-Qaida has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State group, a renegade al-Qaida offshoot that was expelled amid internal divisions and which has gone on to capture vast territory in Syria and Iraq, including oil wells and other income-generating resources, and has inspired thousands of fighters to join its jihadist mission. Al-Zawahri, in turn, has found his own influence pale beside that of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In India, where terror threats have largely come from Pakistan and Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region where al-Qaida’s influence is thought to be minimal, many derided the creation of the group - Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian Subcontinent - as a
But Gerges noted al-Qaida has long tried to nurture as many cells as possible, using affiliates in places like Yemen and East Africa to take pressure off relentless American attacks on its core operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. India, with its badly underfunded and desperately ill-trained security infrastructure, can also be a tantalizing target for terrorists. In 2008, a small group of Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai, India’s financial hub, effectively shutting down the city for days and killing 166 people. Al-Qaida, meanwhile, which was behind the 9/11 attacks in the United States, has long proven itself to be a formidable enemy. “The problem is not these threats,” said Sahni. “The problem is India’s vulnerability.” Al-Zawahri said the new group “is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian subcontinent into a single entity,” adding it would fight for an Islamic state and laws across the region, “which was part of the Muslims’ territories before it was occupied by the infidel enemy.” While al-Zawahri’s statement referred to the “Indian subcontinent” - a term that most commonly refers to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal - his comments were widely seen as directed at India, a predominantly Hindu nation that still has more than 150 million Muslims. In an audio recording released with the video, the leader of the new group, Essam Omar, said that Jews and Hindus - who he referred to as “apostates of India” - “will watch your destruction by your own eyes.” Fighters will “storm your barricades with cars packed with gunpowder,” Omar said, decrying what he called the region’s “injustice toward Muslims.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
SURROGATE OFFERS CLUES MAN WITH 16 BABIES
BANGKOK (AP) -- When the young Thai woman saw an online ad seeking surrogate mothers, it seemed like a life-altering deal: $10,000 to help a foreign couple that wanted a child but couldn’t conceive.
During the hearing, Shigeta told the judge he owned a finance company in Japan. His story is being intensely followed in Japan despite legal threats against the press. After his case made headlines, a group of prominent lawyers sent letters warning Japan’s mainstream media not to report Shigeta’s name or the names of his family members, according to news organizations that received the letter.
In reality, there was no couple. There was instead a young man from Japan named Mitsutoki Shigeta, whom she met twice but who never spoke a word to her. This same man - reportedly the son of a Japanese billionaire - would go on to make surrogate babies with 10 other women in Thailand, police say, spending more than half a million dollars to father at least 16 children for reasons still unclear.
Wassana’s story, which she shared with The Associated Press on condition that her last name not be used to protect her family and 8-year-old son from embarrassment, offers clues into an extraordinarily complex puzzle that boils down to two questions: Who is Shigeta and why did he want so many babies? Shigeta is being investigated for human trafficking and child exploitation, but Thai police say they haven’t found evidence of either. The 24-year-old, now the focus of an Asia-wide investigation, has said through a lawyer that he simply wanted a big family.
However, several Japanese magazines and online publications have identified him as a son of Japanese tycoon Yasumitsu Shigeta, founder of mobile phone distributor Hikari Tsushin. In this Friday, Aug. 29, 2014 photo, Wassana stands in a rented room in Bangkok,Thailand. When the young Thai woman saw an online ad seeking surrogate mothers, it seemed like a life-altering deal: $10,000 to help a foreign couple who wants a child but can’t conceive. Wassana, a lifetime resident of the slums, viewed it as a nine-month solution to her family’s debt. She didn’t ask many questions.
“I don’t know if the doctor used my eggs or another woman’s,” she says. “Nobody told me.” During the pregnancy, she developed pre-eclampsia, a condition that causes dangerously high blood pressure. She was rushed into the delivery room two months early and on June 20, 2013, she underwent a cesarean section, giving birth to a boy. Wassana’s family came to visit, but, she says, Shigeta did not.
He has not been charged with any crime and is trying to get his children back - 12 are currently in Thailand being cared for by social services. His whereabouts are unknown; he left Bangkok after police raided his condominium Aug. 5 and discovered nine babies living with nine nannies. Police say he sent DNA samples from Japan that prove he is the babies’ father.
The infant was placed in an incubator and after six days, Wassana returned home. She’s not sure when the baby was released from the hospital to Shigeta’s custody.
Key to unraveling all of this are the women Shigeta paid to bear his children. And Wassana, whose account has been corroborated by police, was his first.
He was tall, with shaggy, shoulder-length hair, and was dressed casually in jeans and a wrinkled, button-down shirt he left untucked. His lawyer had accompanied him to the meeting, where he and Wassana signed a document granting him sole custody.
AN ANSWER TO EVICTION Wassana’s Bangkok is not the city of skyscrapers and spas that most visitors see. The petite, soft-spoken 32-year-old with a ninth grade education has spent her life in a trash-strewn slum, scraping by selling traditional Thai sweets from a food cart and sharing a mildew-stained tenement with seven relatives. At $6 a day, it was affordable until her late father’s medical bills drained the family’s savings. They couldn’t pay rent for a year and faced eviction. So when her sister stumbled upon an ad seeking surrogates in 2012, Wassana didn’t hesitate. “I thought that any parents who would spend so much money to get a baby must want him desperately,” she says. “The agent told me it was for a foreign couple.” She assumed it was customary to keep the biological parents’ identities confidential. In a country where deference to authority is expected especially for poor, uneducated women - she didn’t probe. She wondered, though, who the baby’s mother was.
Two months later, she finally met Shigeta for the first time at the New Life fertility clinic, which had posted the Internet ad.
VOTER ID LAW Before the law took effect last year, voters could cast ballots by presenting their county-issued voter registration card or a valid government-issued photo identification card. The law passed in 2011 requires voters to show one of seven kinds of photo ID in order to vote, with or without a voter registration card. The seven forms of identification include a Texas driver’s license, U.S. passport, a state-issued ID card, a state-issued election certificate, a Texas concealed handgun license, a U.S. military ID or a citizenship certificate with a photograph issued by the federal government. With the exception of the citizenship certificate, none of the forms of identification may be expired for more than 60 days. VERIFICATION PROCEDURE The election judge is required to compare the name on the ID card
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Until recently, India had largely seen itself as beyond the recruiting territory of international jihadists like al-Qaida. Over the past few months, however, the Islamic State group has grown in prominence in India, and has gained at least a handful of followers here. Last month, an Indian engineering student who had traveled to Iraq with friends, and who was thought to have joined the Islamic State, was reported killed. A spokesman for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said the statement was “a matter of serious concern. But there is nothing to worry about.”
Yet even his heritage is shrouded in mystery. The company says it can neither confirm nor deny the father-son relationship, calling it “a personal matter,” and Thai police and Interpol say they are investigating his family ties. Multiple stock filings, meanwhile, show the elder Shigeta has a son named Mitsutoki and his company has a shareholder with the same name. The stock papers show that Yasumitsu’s child was born Feb 9, 1990, the same birthdate as the Mitsutoki Shigeta at the center of the surrogacy scandal, according to Thai media that published his passport page. Yasumitsu Shigeta did not respond to a request for an interview and Mitsutoki Shigeta’s current lawyer did not respond to requests for interviews with his client, who has multiple addresses throughout Asia. Phone calls to a Hong Kong mobile number listed for the younger Shigeta went straight to voicemail, and he did not answer text messages. No one answered the bell at his Hong Kong condo, and the doorman said he could not recall ever seeing him there. `10 TO 15 BABIES A YEAR’ In early August, barely a year after Wassana’s court date with Shigeta, she saw his face again - this time, on television. She almost didn’t recognize him; his hair was now neatly trimmed. The Thai media was calling it the “serial surrogacy” case. It had broken just after another scandal involving an Australian couple who paid a Thai surrogate to carry twins, then left behind the one with Down syndrome.
He wasn’t personable. There was no “thank you” for carrying his child, she says. There was, in fact, no communication at all.
Wassana was floored. What was happening?
“He didn’t say anything to me,” she says. “He never introduced himself. He only smiled and nodded. His lawyer did the talking.”
Police wondered the same thing. So intricate was Shigeta’s quest for children that they crafted a flowchart to keep track of how he did it.
PERJURY ALLEGATIONS
The 9-step diagram starts with Shigeta’s picture and traces the steps he took to get his babies, from hiring surrogacy clinics and nannies, to registering apartments in the infants’ names and completing legal paperwork required for birth certificates and passports. The deliveries were spread out at nine Bangkok hospitals.
A month later, the same lawyer, Ratpratan Tulatorn, called and told her to go to the Juvenile and Family Court to finalize the custody transfer. Under Thai law, a woman who gives birth is the legal mother, and, if she is married, her husband is the legal father. A court approval is required to transfer custody, which experts say often involves perjury. Police Col. Decha Promsuwan, who has questioned five of Shigeta’s surrogates, said several of the women told police Ratpratan had instructed them to tell the court they’d had an affair with Shigeta, resulting in a child their husbands did not want. Ratpratan said he is no longer Shigeta’s attorney and declined to com-
A G U I D E T O T H E O V E R T E X A S ’ V O T E R AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A major election year in Texas largely has overshadowed the trial to determine the fate of the state’s tough new voter identification law, but U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi is presiding over a case to determine whether the measure safeguards ballot integrity or discriminates against minorities by imposing a mandate that suppresses turnout.
INTO
ment on the women’s statements, saying, “I don’t want to touch that point because it’s a legal matter.”
Wassana, a lifetime resident of the slums, viewed it as a nine-month solution to her family’s debt. She didn’t ask many questions.
The mystery surrounding Shigeta has riveted Thailand and become the focal point of a growing scandal over commercial surrogacy. The industry that catered to foreigners has thrived on semi-secrecy, deception and legal loopholes, and Thailand’s military government is vowing to shut it down.
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T R I A L I D L A W
to the voter registration card or the computerized voter roll maintained at the precinct. If the names are not a match, the election judge can declare them “substantially similar” if the difference is slight (Wendy Davis vs Wendy Russell Davis), a customary variation (Gregory Abbott vs Greg Abbott) or if the name is the same but filled out in a different order (Mary Jones vs Mary Jones Smith). The election judge also will verify the voter’s address before providing a ballot. PROVISIONAL VOTING Failure to produce a recognized ID card or a rejection of an ID card does not mean an individual may not vote. The voter may still cast a ballot, but it will be considered provisional until the voter can obtain an ID and present it to the county voting office within six days. If the voter doesn’t meet the deadline, the ballot is not counted. CONTROVERSY Supporters of the law say the Voter ID requirement guarantees the integrity of elections by making sure the voter is who they say they are. They point out that people cannot cash a check or rent a DVD without proper identification and voting should be held to the same standard. Opponents point out that voter fraud isn’t a serious problem in Texas and that poor, elderly or minority voters are more likely not to possess an approved form of ID. They accuse the state’s Republican leadership of passing the law to discourage groups who generally vote Democratic from casting ballots. WHAT NEXT? The Justice Department, Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and other voting rights groups joined a federal lawsuit attempting to overturn the law, while Attorney General Greg Abbott, the favorite to win the governor’s race in November, has sought to dismiss the lawsuit - even though his office, not Abbott personally, is arguing the matter. Opening statements from both sides began Tuesday before Gonzales Ramos, and the trial is expected to last two weeks. The judge could issue a ruling from the bench in time to affect the November election, but attorneys say that’s unlikely meaning that 13.6 million registered voters in Texas would still be required to produce a photo ID next Election Day.
Shigeta’s acquaintances offer varying accounts of his motives. The New Life clinic, which is currently closed pending investigation, stopped working with Shigeta after two surrogates got pregnant and he requested more, said founder Mariam Kukunashvili. Shigeta told New Life “he wanted to win elections and could use his big family for voting,” Kukunashvili said. “He said he wanted 10 to 15 babies a year, and that he wanted to continue the baby-making process until he’s dead.” Kukunashvili said she reported his requests to Interpol in an April 8, 2013 fax to its French headquarters, but never heard back. Thailand’s Interpol office said it never saw the warning. She rejected Wassana’s account that the New Life agent had portrayed the parents as a couple and withheld Shigeta’s identity. “At New Life, surrogates are always informed fully and never treated this way,” she said. The Medical Council of Thailand, meanwhile, spoke with Wassana’s doctor, Pisit Tantiwattanakul, before he closed his All IVF fertility clinic and emptied it of all patient files after the scandal broke. His whereabouts are unknown, but he has vowed to present himself for a police interview in early September. Pisit told the council Shigeta said he had businesses overseas and wanted a large family because he only trusted his own children to take care of them. Interpol has asked its regional offices in Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong and India to probe Shigeta’s background. Police say he appears to have businesses or apartments in those countries. Japan has no law banning surrogacy, but the medical industry has issued orders against it that are strictly followed, which could explain why Shigeta flew to one of the few places in Asia where it is openly practiced. Since 2010, he has made 41 trips to Thailand and police say he traveled regularly to Cambodia, where he holds a passport and brought four of the babies. Cambodian police have refused to comment on the case. One of the babies in Cambodia might be Wassana’s - a prospect that leaves her riddled with guilt. “What if they’ve done something bad to the baby?” she says. “Did I deliver him to some terrible fate?” Today, her own fate is uncertain. The money she received for bearing Shigeta’s child cleared the family debt but was not enough to drag them out of the slums. She still lives in the same derelict tenement. She has held the boy just once, when Shigeta handed him to her briefly in court. But she told police that she would be willing to raise him if he is being mistreated. “I thought he would be with a good family that would love him,” she says. “That’s what I thought.”
10 The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
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TA L I B A N H I T A F G H A N G O V E R N M E N T H Q I N E A S T , K I L L 1 2 money and investors put the brakes on new projects as they wait to see how the crisis unfolds.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban struck a government compound in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday in a dawn attack that included two suicide truck bombings and left at least 12 people dead, including 10 policemen asleep in their quarters nearby.
One truck bomb in the Ghazni attack targeted the local office of domestic intelligence, while the other targeted the police force’s sleeping quarters, the Interior Ministry said. Seventeen policemen were wounded. The Interior Ministry said two civilians were also killed.
The assault followed a stark message from the Taliban to world leaders gathered at a NATO summit in Wales, which will also discuss the drawdown of the alliance’s mission in Afghanistan.
The Taliban regularly stage brazen attacks against Afghan forces and government institutions. In July, a suicide bomber blew up a car near a busy mosque and a market in the eastern province of Paktika, killing at least 89 people.
The exit of all foreign combat troops at the end of the year is proof that “no nation is able to subdue a free nation, especially a nation proud and free such as Afghanistan,” the Taliban note said. Thursday’s attack started at sunrise, with the Taliban setting off two massive suicide truck bombs outside the government compound in the provincial capital of Ghazni, followed by an assault by nearly a dozen gunmen. The assault triggered a gunbattle with policemen and security forces at the compound and all 21 assailants were subsequently killed, including the two suicide bombers, the Interior Ministry said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message sent to media. The bombs blew out many windows across the city, and left about 200 people injured, mostly from flying glass, said Ghazni Gov. Musa Khan Akbarzada. He said one truck carved a 10-meter (yard) hole into the ground. The Interior Ministry put the number of wounded at 130. Sadly, the bombings also destroyed Ghazni’s city library and two museums, the governor said. The attack comes as Afghanistan is embroiled in a political crisis with the country’s April presidential election still without a clear winner. Two candidates vying to succeed President Hamid Karzai pulled their observers out of a ballot audit meant to determine the winner of a June runoff. The audit’s final results are expected sometime next week. Even though NATO forces are to leave Afghanistan, a small number of U.S. and international troops may stay on after 2014 to advise
Afghan security forces stand guard near the dead bodies of Taliban fighters in Ghazni, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. The Taliban struck a government compound in eastern Afghanistan early on Thursday in an attack that included two suicide truck bombings and left at least 12 people dead, including several off duty policemen asleep in their quarters nearby, officials said.
and assist the Afghans. But that is likely contingent on Afghanistan signing a security arrangement with the United States, something Karzai has so far refused to do. And despite the exit of most foreign forces, violence between the Taliban and the Afghan government is expected to continue. Both presidential candidates - Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai have pledged to sign the security deal. Had the vote been resolved, it was expected that Karzai’s successor would have attended the summit in Wales.
The election impasse has also hurt Afghanistan’s economy, as customers worrying about the outbreak of civil war hold onto their
But Ameerah Haq, head of U.N. peacekeeping’s Department of Field Support, warned that before bringing in external expertise, guarantees are needed for medical evacuations and treatment for any workers who become infected. Haq said “without one, the other will not happen.” The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Earlier Tuesday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that food in countries hit by Ebola is becoming more expensive and will become scarcer as farmers can’t reach their fields. Authorities have cordoned off entire towns in an effort to halt the virus’ spread. Surrounding countries have closed land borders, airlines have suspended flights to and from the affected countries and seaports are losing traffic, restricting food imports to the hardest-hit countries. Those countries - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - all rely on grain from abroad to feed their people, according to the U.N. FAO.
In Liberia, a missionary organization announced that another American doctor has become infected.
For instance, the price of cassava root, a staple in many West African diets, has gone up 150 percent in one market in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia.
Doctors Without Borders President Joanne Liu said her organization is completely overwhelmed by Ebola outbreak in four West African countries. She said treatment centers can offer little more than palliative care and called on other countries to contribute civilian and military medical personnel familiar with biological disasters.
“Even prior to the Ebola outbreak, households in some of the affected areas were spending up to 80 percent of their incomes on food,” said Vincent Martin, who is coordinating the food agency’s response to the crisis. “Now these latest price spikes are effectively putting food completely out of their reach.”
World Health Organization Director Margaret Chan warned that the outbreak would “get worse before it will get better” and would require a larger global response. She thanked countries that have helped but said: “We need more from you. And we also need those countries that have not come on board.” The latest missionary to come down with the disease, a male obstetrician, was not immediately identified by the group Serving In Mission. He did not work in an Ebola ward. The group did not specify how he contracted Ebola, but it can be spread through vaginal fluids. Bruce Johnson, the group’s president, said the organization was “surrounding our missionary with prayer” and Liberian colleagues who continue fighting the epidemic. Last month, two Americans, including one from SIM, were evacuated to the United States for treatment after contracting Ebola in Liberia. The two received an experimental drug known as ZMapp and recovered. The manufacturer says it has run out of supplies of the drug and it will take months to produce more.
G O O G L E ’ S H E A LT H STARTUP FORGES VENTURE WITH ABBVIE
“Their 13-year-old occupation is now seen as a historical shame,” said their statement, released late Wednesday. “It was planned that Afghanistan’s next leader would participate in the Wales Summit. Now their plans have come to naught.”
David Nabarro, who is coordinating the U.N. response, said the world body is “bringing in outside health workers as much as we can.”
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The international group Doctor Without Borders warned Tuesday that the world is losing the battle against Ebola and lamented that treatment centers in West Africa have been “reduced to places where people go to die alone” as authorities race to contain the disease.
NATO spokesman Maj. Paul Greenberg said he could not specify where the service member died but he said he did not believe there were any coalition troops at the Ghazni government compound during the Taliban assault.
The Taliban needled the alliance ahead of the summit.
G R O U P S AY S W O R L D I S L O S I N G B AT T L E A G A I N S T E B O L A
Health workers spray the body of a amputee suspected of dying from the Ebola virus with disinfectant, in a busy street in Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014. Food in countries hit by Ebola is getting more expensive and will become scarcer because many farmers won’t be able to access fields, a U.N. food agency warned Tuesday. An Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 1,500 people, and authorities have cordoned off entire towns in an effort to halt the virus’ spread.
In other developments, the U.S.-led international military coalition said one of its service members was killed in an attack Thursday in eastern Afghanistan.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Google’s ambitious health startup is teaming up with biotechnology drugmaker AbbVie in a $500 million joint venture that will try to develop new ways to treat cancer and other diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The alliance announced Wednesday calls for Google Inc. and AbbVie Inc. to each invest $250 million in the project. An additional $1 billion may be poured into the project. The two companies will split all expenses and any profits generated by the venture. Calico, a company hatched by Google last year, will manage a team of scientists who will work at a research-and-development lab in the San Francisco Bay Area. The precise location and size of the new lab hasn’t been determined. AbbVie, a spin-off from Abbott Laboratories, will oversee the marketing of the drugs. The North Chicago, Illinois, company already has been working on drugs to fight Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s and other ailments. Google set up Calico as separate business last year to pursue medical breakthroughs that would enable people to live longer. Toward that end, Calico is doing extensive research to get a better understanding about how the human body ages and working on technology that could cure cancer. Calico is run by Arthur Levinson, a former CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech and a former member of Google’s board. He is also chairman of Apple Inc., which is expected to provide further details to help people manage their health next week when the company unveils its latest iPhone. The expansion into health also could include a new Apple device that could be worn on a person’s wrist. AbbVie Inc. shares slipped 8 cents to $54.99 in afternoon trading Wednesday, while Google shares gained 25 cents to $577.58.
An estimated 1.3 million people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will soon need help feeding themselves, said the U.N. Chan and other officials at the U.N. forum criticized the border closures because they are preventing supplies from reaching people in desperate need. “The three worst-hit countries are isolated,” Chan said. “We cannot fly in our experts for help.” The situation will likely worsen because restrictions on movement are preventing laborers from getting to farms and the harvest of rice and corn is set to begin in just a few weeks, the FAO said. Ivory Coast decided Monday night to keep its borders with Guinea and Liberia closed but said it would open a humanitarian corridor to allow supplies in. A separate Ebola outbreak has hit a remote part of Congo, in Central Africa, the traditional home of the disease. So far, 53 cases consistent with Ebola have been identified there, of whom 31 have died, WHO said Tuesday.
Improves the health and lives of people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest.
www.directrelief.org
____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ The Weekly News Digest, Sept 1 thru Sept 8, 2014
11
I T ’ S N O L O N G E R S A F E T O R E C L I N E Y O U R A I R P L A N E S E AT
NEW YORK (AP) -- Squeezed into tighter and tighter spaces, airline passengers appear to be rebelling, taking their frustrations out on other fliers.
this year, up from 81 percent five years ago and 74 percent a decade ago, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That means there are fewer and fewer empty middle seats on which passengers can spread out.
Three U.S. flights made unscheduled landings in the past eight days after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every inch counts.
The latest spate of passenger problems started Aug. 24, when a man on a United flight prevented the woman in front of him from reclining thanks to a $21.95 gadget called the Knee Defender. It attaches to a passenger’s tray table and prevents the person in front from reclining. A flight attendant told the man to remove the device. He refused, and the passenger one row forward dumped a cup of water on him.
“Seats are getting closer together,” says Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 60,000 flight attendants at 19 airlines. “We have to de-escalate conflict all the time.”
Three days later, on an American flight from Miami to Paris, two passengers got into a fight, again over a reclining seat, and the plane was diverted to Boston.
There are fights over overhead bin space, legroom and where to put winter coats. “We haven’t hit the end of it,” Nelson says. “The conditions continue to march in a direction that will lead to more and more conflict.” Airlines today are juggling terror warnings in Britain, an Ebola outbreak in Africa and an Icelandic volcano erupting and threating to close down European airspace. Yet, the issue of disruptive passengers has captured the world’s attention.
their row and see how cramped it is. To boost their profits, airlines have been adding more rows of seats to planes in the past few years.
It’s getting to the point where the pre-flight safety videos need an additional warning: Be nice to your neighbor.
Southwest and United both took away one inch from each row on certain jets to make room for six more seats. American is increasing the number of seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 150 to 160. Delta installed new, smaller toilets in its 737-900s, enabling it to squeeze in an extra four seats. And to make room for a first-class cabin with lie-flat beds on its transcontinental flights, JetBlue cut one inch of legroom for coach passengers.
The International Air Transport Association calls unruly passengers “an escalating problem,” saying there was one incident for every 1,300 flights in the past three years. The trade group would not share detailed historical data to back up the assertion that this is a growing problem.
Airlines say passengers won’t notice because the seats are being redesigned to create a sense of more space. Southwest’s seats have thinner seatback magazine pockets, Alaska Airlines shrank the size of tray tables, and United moved the magazine pocket, getting it away from passengers’ knees.
Today’s flying experience is far from glamorous. Passengers wait in long lines for security screening, push and shove at the gate to be first on board, and then fight for the limited overhead bin space. They are already agitated by the time they arrive at
But passengers aren’t just losing legroom; they’re losing elbow room. Airlines sold 84 percent of their seats on domestic flights so far
C H I C A G O H O S P I T A L N A V Y D O C T O R S F O R
T R A I N S B A T T L E
ed over the July 4 weekend when Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dwight Koontz helped treat a man whose body was riddled with bullet holes. After helping cut the man’s clothes off, Koontz’s chores included putting little EKG discs on all the bullet holes to help doctors quickly understand what they were up against - an exceedingly tough job given how tiny bullet wounds can be and how much blood can pour out of them.
In this Aug. 6, 2014 photo, Dr. Faran Bokhari, head of the trauma department at Cook County’s Stroger Hospital in Chicago, prepares for surgery on a gunshot victim. Bokhari works with medical personnel from the U.S. Navy at the hospital. Launched this past spring, the program sends Navy medical teams on rotations through Stroger’s trauma unit
CHICAGO (AP) -- The patient had been shot on the streets of Chicago, but when Dr. Jared Bernard stood over his open body in the operating room, he could see that the single bullet had unleashed the same kind of massive infection inflicted by roadside bombs in Afghanistan. Although the wounded man lay in a modern American hospital, saving his life would be no different than caring for a soldier wounded by a bomb exploding under a Humvee. That’s why the Navy is sending its doctors, nurses and medics to Stroger Hospital, a Cook County facility that, in its own way, stands in the middle of a war zone. Because the Navy doesn’t have any trauma training facilities in the U.S., military medical teams can’t get experience dealing with penetrating wounds, inserting IVs in emergencies and other techniques common to combat areas, said Bernard, a 37-year-old lieutenant commander who has been deployed to Afghanistan. He’s a trauma surgeon at the Lovell Federal Heath Care Center in North Chicago, where the Navy teams work when they aren’t at Stroger. Launched this past spring, the program is one of two of its kind in the country. The other is at the Los Angeles County-University of South California Medical Center. Navy doctors, nurses and medical corpsmen rotate through Stroger because its trauma unit is one of the busiest in the U.S., a result of the nearly constant gun violence in some troubled neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides. Last year, Stroger treated nearly 600 gunshot victims, more than 260 people with stab wounds and almost 900 people injured in traffic collisions - all categories represent-
“He had 15 holes in him,” Koontz said of the man, one of dozens of gunshot victims rushed to Stroger during a particularly bloody weekend. “It took about two hours for us to get him stable enough to get him to surgery.” The man survived, he said. Working at Stroger gives medics a chance to help treat patients who have been shot in the chest, abdomen and pelvis - wounds that have become rare in combat zones because of body armor. Learning to treat those kinds of injuries is invaluable because bullets and shrapnel do occasionally find gaps in soldiers’ Kevlar vests. At the same time, the hospital staff gets to watch the work of military medics who have performed their jobs under enemy fire, to see the kind of decisiveness required when there is no doctor around and a single corpsman is the difference between life and death for a wounded Marine, soldier or sailor. Stroger’s reputation for treating gunshots is so strong that police officers have been known to insist on being taken there after being wounded. So there may be no better place to learn what happens after a piece of metal pierces a body and tumbles through the tissue, shredding everything in its path. There are no IEDs exploding in Chicago, and Navy medical professionals seldom see wounds from small-caliber handguns. But there can be striking parallels between the two worlds. “Land mines and IEDs ... and high-speed car crashes can cause similar types of injuries,” said Dr. Faran Bokhari, the head of Stroger’s trauma department who helped establish the partnership with the Navy. “So we need to do hemorrhage control here or there.” Back in the operating room, the infection inside the Chicago man rages. His organs are so swollen that it is impossible to close his body each time the doctors go in and cut away more dead tissue. Three weeks have passed since he was shot. In that time, the infection has spread like a slow-motion version of an IED blast that hurls shrapnel, dirt and other nearby
Then on Sunday night, on a Delta flight from New York to West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman resting her head on a tray table got upset when the passenger in front of her reclined his seat, hitting her in the head. That plane was diverted to Jacksonville, Florida. The passengers on both the United and Delta flights were already sitting in premium coach sections that have 4 inches of extra legroom. There were 14,903 flight diversions by U.S. airlines in the 12-month period ending in June, according to an Associated Press analysis of Department of Transportation reports. That means, 41 flights a day, on average, make unscheduled landings at other airports. The government doesn’t break out the reason for diversions, but industry experts say the vast majority occur because of bad weather or mechanical problems. And diversions remain a tiny portion of the 6 million annual flights in the U.S. - less than a quarter of a percentage point. The decision to divert is up to the pilot. Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant says the crew must determine if the person is going to cause harm to others or has terrorist intentions. It can cost an airline $6,000 an hour, plus airport landing fees, to divert the standard domestic jet, according to independent airline analyst Robert Mann. “These costs are among the reasons why airlines ought to be arbitrating these in-flight issues instead of diverting, not to mention the significant inconvenience to all customers and possible disruption of onward connections,” Mann says. Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, says that if airlines install seats that can recline, passengers should have the right to recline. Of course, Spirit and Allegiant Air are the only U.S. airlines to install seats that don’t recline. “People should lose the emotion,” Baldanza says. “We’ve never had to divert because of legroom issues.” material into a soldier. The stool inside the bowels spills throughout the body, triggering a widespread infection and eroding blood vessels. “From that standpoint, this is almost the exact same thing as the IED,” Bernard said. As with the bomb blasts, it is the infection from the gunshot, not the bullet itself, that often forces doctors to amputate limbs or large parts of them as the infection advances. The concern with this man is that he too might lose at least one of his legs. “Because the infection goes down into the pelvis ... the only way to control it is to take his leg and part of his pelvis,” Bernard said. “We need to clear all the dead tissue out.” For Bokhari, the man’s treatment helps explain why he wanted the Navy to come to his hospital. “What we do here with him,” he said, “will be translatable to what they do on the front lines.”
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The Weekly News Digest, Aug 24 thru Sept 4 , 2014 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
S T U D Y L I N K S P O L A R C H I L L S T O M E L T I N G
V O R T E X S E A I C E
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Remember the polar vortex, the huge mass of Arctic air that can plunge much of the U.S. into the deep freeze? You might have to get used to it.
Yoon said that although his study focused on shrinking sea ice, something else was evidently responsible for last year’s chilly visit from the polar vortex.
A new study says that as the world gets warmer, parts of North America, Europe and Asia could see more frequent and stronger visits of that cold air. Researchers say that’s because of shrinking ice in the seas off Russia.
In the past several years, many studies have looked at the accelerated warming in the Arctic and whether it is connected to extreme weather farther south, from heatwaves to Superstorm Sandy. This Arctic-extremes connection is “cutting edge” science that is hotly debated by mainstream climate scientists, Serreze said. Scientists are meeting this week in Seattle to look at the issue even more closely.
Normally, the polar vortex is penned in the Arctic. But at times it escapes and wanders south, bringing with it a bit of Arctic super chill.
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is skeptical about such connections and said he doesn’t agree with Yoon’s study. His research points more to the Pacific than the Arctic for changes in the jet stream and polar vortex behavior, and he said Yoon’s study puts too much stock in an unusual 2012. But the study was praised by several other scientists who said it does more than show that sea ice melt affects worldwide weather, but demonstrates how it happens, with a specific mechanism.
That can happen for several reasons, and the new study suggests that one of them occurs when ice in northern seas shrinks, leaving more water uncovered. Normally, sea ice keeps heat energy from escaping the ocean and entering the atmosphere. When there’s less ice, more energy gets into the atmosphere and weakens the jet stream, the high-altitude river of air that usually keeps Arctic air from wandering south, said study co-author Jin-Ho Yoon of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. So the cold air escapes instead.
Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist in Lubbock, said the study “provides important insight into the cascading nature of the effects human activities are having on the planet.”
That happened relatively infrequently in the 1990s, but since 2000 it has happened nearly every year, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. A team of scientists from South Korea and United States found that many such cold outbreaks happened a few months after unusually low sea ice levels in the Barents and Kara seas, off Russia. The study observed historical data and then conducted computer simulations. Both approaches showed the same strong link between shrinking sea ice and cold outbreaks, according to lead author BaekMin Kim, a research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute. A large portion of sea ice melting is driven by man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels, Kim wrote in an email. Sea ice in the Arctic usually hits its low mark in September and that’s the crucial time point in terms of this study, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Levels
“These changes are very real, and we’re seeing them happen quickly,” said Malin Pinsky, a biology professor at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who studies ocean temperature change and was not involved in the research that resulted in the 99 percent statistic. This Jan. 10, 2014 file photo shows the US side of Niagara Falls in New York beginning to thaw after the recent “polar vortex” that affected millions in the US and Canada. Remember the polar vortex, the huge mass of Arctic air that can plunge much of the U.S. into the deep freeze? You might have to get used to it. we should see more of these in the future because a study partially links these polar vortex related cold outbreaks to loss of sea ice off Russia as the world gets warmer. But we have to note that last year’s polar vortex chill was slightly different and not connected to sea ice loss, researchers say
reached a record low in 2012 and are slightly up this year, but only temporarily, with minimum ice extent still about 40 percent below 1970s levels, he said.
F I S H E R I E S T O C U T C A T C H O F E N D A N G E R E D B L U E F I N T U N A
The commission, a grouping of more than 20 nations that monitors the western two-thirds of the Pacific, also endorsed catch limits for adult bluefin and set a 10-year target of rebuilding the population to 8 percent of its original size. Japanese eat 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna, or “hon maguro,” a sushi mainstay, and demand elsewhere in the world has kept growing. At a ritual new year auction, the top price for the fish jumped to about $7,000 a kilogram in 2013 but was a more reasonable $300 per kilogram this year. The Pew Charitable Trusts, which is trying to save the species, said the plan to cut catches is only a first step toward saving the bluefin tuna, which has been decimated by overfishing. “There must be a strong recovery and rebuilding plan put in place for Pacific bluefin across its full range,” said Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation for Pew. “Countries have the responsibility to agree on a strong recovery plan that does more than simply move the population from severely depleted to slightly less seriously depleted,” she said. The fisheries commission left a decision on longer-term efforts for later. It also approved a recommendation that stocks of albacore tuna do not drop more than 20 percent from their current level. Stocks of swordfish were judged to be healthy, it said. Nations that manage the eastern Pacific bluefin fisheries are due to discuss their management plans for the species next month, and a final decision on the catch limits for the western Pacific is expected in December. A stock assessment by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the Northern Pacific Ocean found the levels
The shore of a cove off Maine’s Friendship Long Island has long been the best site on the East Coast to find baby lobsters, she said. Around 2007, she couldn’t lift a rock without finding one, and usually found several.
Most of the fish caught are juveniles that have not had a chance to reproduce, the scientific body said.
On a recent August morning, she made it to the site and found 19 young lobsters - far down from the huge colonies she found seven years ago, she said.
Fisheries experts in Japan are rushing to devise techniques for commercially viable aquaculture of the deep-sea species.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission announced the decision Thursday after meeting in Fukuoka, a city in western Japan. It said the catch should be cut to half of its average level in 2002-2004.
The rising waters in the Gulf - a big dent in the East Coast stretching from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick - have interfered with the work of Diane Cowan, founder of the Lobster Conservancy, who has conducted lobster censuses in New England for 22 years.
But the rising sea has prevented her from getting there much since 2010, she said, because it’s almost always underwater.
The catch of adult fish weighing over 30 kilograms would be 4,882 tons out of a total regional catch of 6,591 tons, according to an announcement posted on the Japanese fisheries ministry’s website.
TOKYO (AP) -- The multi-nation fisheries body that monitors most of the Pacific Ocean has recommended a substantial cut to the catch of juvenile bluefin tuna, a move conservationists say is only an initial step toward saving the dwindling species.
“The warming is already here,” said Jeff Young, a spokesman for Pew Charitable Trust’s oceans project, which has campaigned in favor of restrictions on fishing for herring, another species leaving for colder water. “And we have to deal with it.”
of bluefin in 2012 at near their lowest ever of just 4 percent of original stocks.
Cutting the catch in half would reduce Japan’s annual catch of juvenile bluefins to about 4,000 tons from next year, out of a fisheries-wide catch of 4,725 tons.
In this Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014 file photo, customers take sushi of a bluefin tuna which was bought by sushi restauranteur Kiyoshi Kimura at the year’s celebratory first auction, at his restaurant near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. The multi-nation fisheries body that monitors most of the Pacific Ocean has agreed to cut the catch of juvenile bluefin tuna to half of its average level in 2002-2004.
It is a rallying point for environmental activists, who see the response to the temperature rise and its impact on fisheries as a touchstone for the global debate about climate change.
“Things have changed dramatically,” she said. The rising sea is connected to the warming waters because higher temperatures make the water less dense, said Bob Steneck, a professor at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences. Until 2004, Gulf temperatures were increasing by about 0.05 degrees per year since 1982, about in line with worldwide trends, said Andy Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the man behind the 99 percent figure. But then the pace accelerated to about a half-degree per year - nearly 10 times faster.
There have been other recent measures to help bluefins, which sometimes grow to the size of small cars.
Scientists are not certain why. The rest of the oceans are also warming, albeit not as fast, as increased carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to rising temperatures, Pershing said.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month issued stricter quotas for bycatches, or unintentional catches, of Atlantic bluefin tunas on surface longlines meant to catch other species.
“Atmospheric events” could be pushing additional heat into the Gulf, causing a “perfect storm” of conditions that combine to dramatically raise temperatures there, said Nick Record, a research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a Maine center for oceanography. Pershing and many peers agree.
Earlier this year, the EU proposed banning all use of driftnets in its waters and on its vessels by the year’s end to better enforce the protection of dolphins, sharks, swordfish and bluefin tuna. Such nets, which stretch for miles close to the surface, tend to have huge bycatches, and often were used illegally to catch bluefin tuna.
J A PA N L A B U N A B L E T O R E P L I C A T E S T E M C E L L R E S U LT S In this Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014 photo, Diane Cowan, executive director and senior scientist of the Lobster Conservancy, reads a caliper while measuring a juvenile lobster on the shore of Friendship Long Island, Maine. The Gulf of Maine, where Cowan has been studying the lobster population for more than two decades, is warming faster than more than 99 percent of the world’s oceans. The temperature rise is prompting fears about the future of one of the Atlantic’s most unusual ecosystems and the industries it supports.
Another possible cause, Pershing said, is that shifts in the Gulf stream, the Atlantic current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and keeps Europe mild, warmed the ocean off the Northeast. The Gulf of Maine’s temperature is expected to rise more than 4 degrees by the end of the century, Pinsky said. The 99 percent statistic isn’t arbitrary. Pershing and others compared ocean trends and presented the figure to NOAA in April. Pershing’s work illustrates that the Gulf is indeed among the fastest-warming bodies of water, said Roger Griffis, climate change coordinator for NOAA Fisheries Service. The Gulf of Maine, he said, is “one of the poster children, unfortunately, for major changes.” Its historical chill and strong tidal currents, which mix the waters and increase nutrients, make it one of the most productive marine ecosystems and a key summer territory for rare whales. But half of 36 fish stocks studied in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, including many commercial species, have been shifting northward over the past 40 years, a 2009 NOAA report said.
FRIENDSHIP, Maine (AP) -- Imagine Cape Cod without cod. Maine without lobster. The region’s famous rocky beaches invisible, obscured by constant high waters.
Ironically, the warmer water has created ideal conditions for lobsters and contributed to an overabundance in recent years, causing prices to tumble to their lowest point in nearly two decades in Maine. But warming is on a path to force them to move north or die off, Steneck said.
It’s already starting to happen. The culprit is the warming seas - and in particular the Gulf of Maine, whose waters are heating up faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, scientists say.
Puffin chicks have starved and died because of a lack of the herring and hake they need to grow and fledge. Seemingly overnight, longfin squid normally found in warmer, more southerly waters - appeared, Record said.
Long-established species of commercial fish, like cod, herring and northern shrimp, are departing for colder waters. Black sea bass, blue crabs and new species of squid - all highly unusual for the Gulf - are turning up in fishermen’s nets.
Scallops, also an important economic element in the Gulf, are vulnerable to ocean acidification, which scientists say is another effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The Gulf of Maine’s warming reflects broader trends around the North Atlantic. But the statistic - accepted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - underscores particular fears about the Gulf’s unique ecosystem and the lucrative fishing industries it supports for three U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.
The changes threaten a three-state industry valued at more than $1 billion in 2012, a year in which fishermen caught more than 550 million pounds, NOAA statistics say. Governments are reacting by creating new commercial fisheries; Maine regulators are in the process of creating a licensing process for black sea bass, a species associated more with the mid-Atlantic.