THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

A nearly completed government facility intended to treat the radioactive byproducts of nuclear weapons production is riddled with design flaws that could put the entire operation at risk of failure, according to a leaked internal report.

A technical review of the treatment plant on the grounds of the former Hanford nuclear site identified hundreds of “design vulnerabilities” and other weaknesses, some serious enough to lead to spills of radioactive material.

The draft report is the latest in a series of blows to the clean-up effort at Hanford, the once-secret government reservation in eastern Washington state where much of the nation’s plutonium stockpile originated. Engineers have struggled for years to come up with a safe method for disposing of Hanford’s millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste, much of which is stored in leaky underground tanks.

Energy Department officials have spent tens of millions of dollars to design and construct the site’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, intended to convert some of Hanford’s radioactive waste into a glasslike product that could be stored underground in the future. Although the plant is regarded as one of Hanford’s most successful projects, the internal report identified serious flaws in its design...

The report cites fundamental lapses in multiple areas, ranging from ventilation of waste-
handling areas to the plant’s backup electricity supply. The reviewers found numerous problems with the system that “vitrifies” waste by turning it into glass, noting that the engineers miscalculated how long it would take for the radioactive end-product to cool. “When a container full of molten glass is lifted, there is a chance that the container lifting flange will fail because it has not cooled enough to regain its strength,” the document states.

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An investigation by the Brooklyn DA’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) found that Fowler had inadequate legal defense and that the case relied on unreliable witness testimony, false identification and a false confession by Fowler, who was only 17 years old at the time.

There is a presumption that if “someone confessed, then they were guilty, and what more was there to think about?” said his attorney, Lynn Fahey. But that is not always true, especially in cases involving young or mentally ill defendants or others who might believe that a confession offers the best chance of escaping life in prison, she added.

Fowler’s case illustrates a national concern, since reforms to assist prisoners who claim postconviction innocence are lagging. The CRU under Thompson is dedicating significant resources to look into alleged miscarriages of justice. Many legal advocates believe that others should follow his example, because as a 2014 report by the National Registry of Exoneration points out, there is no reason to believe that the problem of wrongful convictions is limited to Brooklyn.

More than 40 percent of exonerated defendants who were younger than 18 at the time of the alleged crime gave a false confession, according to the report from the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan Law School. The number jumps to 69 percent when the accused is mentally ill or deficient, compared with just 8 percent of adults with no known mental disabilities who confess to a crime they did not commit.

False confessions have been a contributing factor nationwide in about 13 percent of exonerations, according to another report by the project.

// posted by montag @ 1:23 PM 0 Comments

New Jersey’s widely debated $225 million settlement of a pollution lawsuit with Exxon Mobil Corporation was approved on Tuesday by a state judge who called the deal fair, reasonable and in the public interest.

The ruling comes in a longstanding legal battle in which New Jersey demanded $8.9 billion in compensation for natural resource damage to more than 1,500 acres of wetlands, marshes, meadows and waters at refinery sites that Exxon once owned in Bayonne and Linden.

Environmental groups, federal and state politicians and others had sharply criticized the administration of Gov. Chris Christie for accepting just a small fraction of the damages that the state had long sought, and had filed briefs asking the judge to reject the deal.

But in an 81-page opinion, the judge, Michael J. Hogan of Superior Court, found that “although far smaller than the estimated $8.9 billion in damages, Exxon’s payment represents a reasonable compromise given the substantial litigation risks” that the state faced at trial and would face on appeal.

Criticism of the decision was almost immediate. Margaret Brown, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the organizations that fought the deal in court, said, “This is a multi-billion-dollar gift to Exxon Mobil from Gov. Christie and his administration, at the expense of New Jersey residents.”

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Waukesha has run smack into a landmark 2008 compact that prohibits large amounts of water from the five Great Lakes from being pumped, trucked, shipped or otherwise moved beyond the system’s natural basin without approval from the governors of each of the eight states that touch a lake. (Unless it is in a product like beer or soft drinks.) Waukesha, despite being so close to Lake Michigan, is about a mile and a half outside the lake’s natural basin.

In a wetter era, the city’s plan to build a $200 million pipeline to tap into Lake Michigan might have fallen on more sympathetic ears. But it faces a daunting obstacle now: historic drought in the West, which has made officials in the Midwest more protective than ever of their increasingly valuable resource.

“Obviously I have concerns about the usage of the Great Lakes in any capacity,” Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan said in an interview, adding that he was closely watching the Wisconsin city’s request and had yet to decide how he would vote. A single governor can veto a diversion of water.

“To some degree it’s like, where do you draw the line?” Mr. Snyder said. “It shouldn’t be done just as an ad hoc thing or a political thing. It should be based on sound science and good economics and what’s best for the long term. The Great Lakes are one of the world’s most precious assets.”

If national drought conditions and the economic and political pressures that follow worsen over time, some Midwestern water experts fear that the lakes’ existing protections might ultimately weaken. Waukesha’s quest for water — the first proposal for such a diversion outside the Great Lakes basin in years — is seen by some as a first major test of the compact, its strength and its limits.

// posted by montag @ 4:55 PM 0 Comments

In just one week, John Oliver has received thousands of dollars in donations for Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, the ministry the HBO host said he founded to draw attention to the tax-free practices of prosperity gospel churches.

“And we asked you to send us money at this address,” Oliver said, displaying a P.O. box number on the screen during Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”

“To be honest,” he added, “slightly more of you responded than we were expecting.”

Oliver, moving into the pseudo-reverend character he uses to speak about his new ministry, then displayed a large pile of letters (and at least one FedEx package), surrounded by several U.S. Postal Service bins filled with additional donations.

There were thousands of letters in all, he said, equaling thousands of dollars in donations.

// posted by montag @ 2:03 PM 0 Comments

The volunteer program, Tent and Tower, run by the nonprofit organization New Guard, is one of several signs of recovery along the Israeli side of the border. Residents of the farms and villages in the area are reporting a stronger sense of community. Young families are moving in, replacing those that left after the war.

The border communities are still dotted with fortified bomb shelters, and because the war ended inconclusively, many residents say they can never quite escape the thought that the rockets and mortar rounds will start flying out of Gaza again or that Hamas militants will burst out of surreptitious tunnels right into their midst. Still, life is returning, though more quickly in some places than in others.

In Nahal Oz, a kibbutz north of Sufa, 16 families — nearly a fifth of the 380 residents — moved out permanently last year, traumatized by the death of a 4-year-old boy, Daniel Tregerman, who was killed by shrapnel from a mortar shell as he played in his home just days before the war ended. The potato, sunflower, wheat and jojoba fields were churned up by tank tracks.

But the crops grew back, 12 new families have recently arrived, and four more are expected by the end of the summer.

Sharona Poslushni, 41, a kindergarten teacher, moved into one of five newly built houses at Nahal Oz on July 1. She and her husband, who works at the port in Ashdod, came with their three young sons from Yavne, a town about 40 miles north.

“We wanted a place that is more open, more intimate, to be part of a community where the children can run around freely without shoes,” Mrs. Poslushni said, adding that she had also been looking for somewhere “with a good educational level and with good values.”

The Gaza periphery, or envelope, as the area is known in Hebrew, also offers newcomers incentives in the form of tax breaks and lower housing costs.

The Poslushnis had been planning the move for more than a year, but it was delayed by last summer’s war. Despite fears of renewed violence, Mrs. Poslushni said, the values of Zionism and love of the land that attracted them to Nahal Oz in the first place had become “more prominent.”

After the crisis last summer, the government provided financial support for the kibbutz, and the regional council brought in psychologists. Industry consultants and other professionals came to offer help to get them back on their feet, and veteran members of the kibbutz held brainstorming sessions and formed teams to explore development opportunities.

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Sen. Ted Cruz, who has assiduously courted evangelicals throughout his presidential run, will take a lead role in the launch this week of an ambitious 50-state campaign to end taxpayer support for Planned Parenthood — a move that is likely to give the GOP candidate a major primary-season boost in the fierce battle for social-conservative and evangelical voters.

More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday...

The push comes as Cruz seeks to grab a decisive edge in a crowded primary-within-a-primary, with half a dozen GOP contenders battling for what he has referred to as “the evangelical bracket.”

Roughly 1 in 4 voters have identified themselves as evangelical in exit polls from the 2004 campaign on. In key Republican primaries such as Iowa, and in some of the Southern states that Cruz has said are critical to his run, that figure was higher during the last presidential campaign — nearly 50 percent.

Cruz has consistently pointed to his ability to motivate and mobilize those voters as a key element of his 2016 strategy. Earlier this summer, he said repeatedly that his main bases of support were tea party voters — and religious conservatives.

// posted by montag @ 2:12 PM 0 Comments

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Sunday called for using drones to beef up surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border and destroy caves used by those who smuggle people and drugs, but said he did not support strikes aimed at people.

Carson, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," dismissed reports that he had suggested using drone strikes to target people trying to cross into the United States as a "total lie" and blamed media reports as irresponsible.

"Read my lips. I said there are caves that they utilize. Those caves can be eliminated. I'm not talking about killing people," the retired neurosurgeon told CNN. “In no way, did I suggest that drones be used to kill people.”

Carson suggested greater use of drones to patrol border areas after a tour of the region last week. He said local authorities told him they were completely outgunned and receiving little assistance from federal authorities.

Immigration has become a contentious issue for Republicans seeking the presidency in the November 2016 election. Donald Trump, the party's front-runner, and other contenders have called for amending the Constitution to end of the right of automatic citizenship for all people born in the United States.

Carson reiterated his support for deporting families who come to the United States expressly to have children and ensure them U.S. citizenship. Critics call those children "anchor babies," but others view it as offensive.

Carson said he did not view the term as racist and dismissed such objections as "silly political correctness."

// posted by montag @ 1:49 PM 0 Comments

A gunman who attacked passengers on a high-speed train in France two days ago is "dumbfounded" at having been taken for an Islamist militant and says he only intended to rob people on board because he was hungry, his lawyer said on Sunday.

As details emerged of the gunman's early adult life in Spain, lawyer Sophie David said her client -- now in detention near Paris -- also looked ill and malnourished.

French and Spanish sources close to the case have identified him as a 26-year-old Moroccan named Ayoub el Khazzani who was known to European authorities as a suspected Islamist militant.

"(I saw) somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard," David told BFMTV.

"He is dumbfounded by the terrorist motives attributed to his action," she added.

David said the man was barefoot and wore only a hospital shirt and boxer shorts for the police interrogation in Arras, northern France, where the train stopped after the incident.

The Moroccan told David he had found the Kalashnikov he had taken onto the train in a park near the Gare du Midi rail station in Brussels where he was in the habit of sleeping.

"A few days later he decided to get on a train that some other homeless people told him would be full of wealthy people traveling from Amsterdam to Paris and he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery," David said.

The lawyer said the Moroccan had untreated wounds on his face when he spoke to her through an interpreter. He also told David he did not think he had fired any shots before his gun jammed.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 1 Comments

The second-in-command of the Islamic State died in a U.S. airstrike near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this week in what the White House described on Friday as a blow to the group’s operations.

Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, who used the alias Hajji Mutaaz, is the second senior leader of the Islamist extremist group killed by the United States since May. It remains unclear, however, how much damage the losses have done as the Islamic State continues to hold huge swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria more than a year after the U.S. began efforts to crush the group.

“There’s no doubt that ISIL has proven capable of replacing leadership losses,” said a U.S. official, using one of the acronyms by which the group is known. “That said, the death of Mutazz removes a key figure from ISIL and further pierces the group’s veneer of invincibility that it has sought to cast.”

The U.S. official requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the issue publicly.

Hayali died when the vehicle in which he was riding was struck by U.S. aircraft on Tuesday, Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement. Killed along with Hayali was an Islamic State media operative Price identified as Abu Abdallah.

Hayali was a member of the Islamic State’s leadership council and second-in-command to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization’s paramount leader. He was responsible for coordinating the movements of large amounts of ammunition, explosives, vehicles and fighters between Syria and Iraq, Price said.

// posted by montag @ 12:43 PM 0 Comments

General Electric, once one of the biggest employers in Utica, one of New York’s hardest-luck towns, is coming back.

Dolloping out another economic perk to a long-maligned upstate locale, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday that G.E. would return to Utica for a high-tech project in a city where it once made low-tech radios.

The announcement of G.E.’s plans to package silicon carbide power blocks at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute in Utica was just part of what the governor himself packaged as a “transformative moment” for the entire Mohawk Valley, west of the state capital...

The new project will be housed in a 56,000-square-foot “clean room” on the SUNY Poly campus, and could be expected to generate 420 jobs in the next five years, among its company, the university and other partners, according to a G.E. spokesman.

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During the past decade, well-connected Iranian investors amassed undervalued assets in poorly executed and frequently corrupt rounds of privatization, buying insurance companies, hospitals, refineries and public utilities, among other things previously run — usually poorly — by the state.

But with Western sanctions putting an ever-tightening stranglehold on the Iranian economy, finding buyers for the assets became next to impossible, especially in recent years. In the absence of outside investors, and no deep-pocketed private buyers in the country, Iranian investment companies fronting for state pension funds, military cooperatives and religious foundations bounced shares back and forth on the Tehran Stock Exchange just to make small profits.

“They had no one to sell to inside Iran but now, with the nuclear deal done, everything is falling into place,” said one well-established Iranian-American consultant who asked to remain anonymous because his business activities are punishable under United States law as long as sanctions remain in place. “A lot of people here have started pulling out their calculators.”

The potential sell-off began to take shape in July, as the nuclear agreement began to move toward a conclusion, economists say. That was when the Etemad-e-Mobin investment company, part of a cooperative fund belonging to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, put the Telecommunication Company of Iran on the selling block.

The fund’s chief executive officer, Mostafa Seyyed Hashemi, told the Tabnak website that bidding for the company — which Iranian news media reported was acquired after Etemad-e-Mobin’s strongest competitor was barred from the auction — would start at the $7.8 billion it paid in 2009.

That the company could put itself up for sale to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic, might seem impossible in a country founded on an anti-Western revolutionary ideology. However, a law passed with little fanfare in 2002 and mostly forgotten since then as sanctions and anti-Western feelings piled up practically rolls out the red carpet for foreign buyers.

// posted by montag @ 1:22 PM 0 Comments

Former president Jimmy Carter said that the cancer doctors discovered earlier this year on his liver has also been found on his brain. Carter, 90, said he will receive his first radiation treatment for the disease Thursday afternoon.

"I'm perfectly at ease with whatever comes," Carter said at a news conference.

Carter said Thursday that doctors found "four spots of melanoma on my brain -- small spots" after first discovering cancer during an Aug. 3 operation to remove a tumor from his liver...

Carter spoke to a full room of journalists, reflecting on -- and occasionally joking about -- his legacy in the White House and as a global humanitarian.

He called his work with the Carter Center "personally more gratifying" than his presidency, though he joked that he wished he might have been able to serve a second term and then engage in humanitarian work after leaving the White House.

"I think I have been as blessed as any human being in the world," Carter said. "So I'm thankful and hopeful."

// posted by montag @ 1:50 PM 1 Comments

South Korea fired dozens of shells Thursday at North Korea after the North lobbed a single rocket round at a South Korean town near the world's most heavily armed border, the South's Defense Ministry said.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that its artillery shells landed at the place where North Korea had fired its rocket. There were no other immediate details from the military and no reports of injuries.

It appeared that North Korea did not respond to South Korea's returned fire.

North Korea had previously threatened to attack South Korean loudspeakers that have been broadcasting, for the first time in 11 years, anti-Pyongyang propaganda messages across their shared border. Pyongyang also restarted its own loudspeakers aimed at the South.

// posted by montag @ 1:23 PM 0 Comments

Her children, born the Texas side of the border, are U.S. citizens. But when she went to the local vital statistics office earlier this year to get a copy of her youngest daughter’s birth certificate, she was turned away for lack of proper identification. Her child, who was born in November 2013, still does not have a birth certificate.

“What’s going to happen if she’s in an emergency?” she asked. “Will they say they can’t treat her because she doesn’t have a birth certificate?”

Juana is among 28 undocumented immigrants who are suing the Texas Department of State Health Services on behalf of their U.S.-born children for denying them their birth certificates. The suit was filed in May and was amended on Tuesday to include more plaintiffs.

The lawsuit comes as 2016 presidential candidates engaged in bitter debates about the fate of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Some 26 U.S. states filed a lawsuit attempting to block the White House’s plan to protect about 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The 14th Amendment states that all people born in the U.S. are citizens. But in the immigrants’ lawsuit, the two civil rights groups suing the state on the immigrants’ behalf say the department is violating the law by refusing to recognize the matrícula consular — an ID card issued by Mexican consulates — as a valid form of identification.

Parents must present a birth certificate to enroll a child in school or day care, apply for benefits or even to have a child baptized.

Because undocumented immigrants, many of them from Mexico and Central America, do not have a required form of ID like a green card or work authorization papers, they are required to show two secondary forms of identification to get a child’s birth certificate. Often that includes the matrícula consular. But Texas in 2008 announced a new policy of rejecting matrículas, citing security concerns. The measure went largely unenforced until 2013.

Efren Olivares, an attorney for the nonprofit South Texas Civil Rights Project — which, along with Texas-based nonprofit La Union del Pueblo Entero, is representing the immigrants — told Al Jazeera that the timing of the state’s enforcement appears to coincide with a spike in Central Americans arriving in Texas, many of them fleeing violence in their home countries.

The lawsuit accuses Texas of deciding to reject the matrículas knowing that undocumented immigrants are largely unable to present other forms of ID.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments

Mr. Pataki spends a lot of time these days reminding voters that he used to run the State of New York. The former three-term governor faces vast obstacles in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, but none may be more daunting than the electorate’s fleeting memory.

In a political culture that prizes novelty and high drama, Mr. Pataki is a genial, low-key campaigner who left office nearly a decade ago, and sounds like it. Addressing small groups of voters, Mr. Pataki repeatedly invoked his upset 1994 win over Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, “that great liberal icon,” holding up an election more than 20 years old as proof of his political mettle. Advertisements running on television here feature the same victory.

Of all the candidates running this year, Mr. Pataki, 70, may be the most awkward match for the climate of 2016.

Where his party has lurched right, Mr. Pataki has done nearly the opposite: He has criticized Republican rivals for attacking immigration, questioning mandatory vaccination policies and opposing abortion even in cases of rape. He has highlighted his experience cutting deals with Democrats in New York, tackling crime and welfare reform through compromise, and wooing Latino voters in the process.

Mr. Pataki, who has struggled to raise money and gain attention, acknowledged at a lakeside meet-and-greet in Sandown, N.H., that the campaign had not exactly proceeded as anticipated: Donald J. Trump, the billionaire immigration hawk, has led the field of 17 candidates in recent polling, while Mr. Pataki has struggled to register even in the low single digits.

“Things are kind of, ah, different with Trump out there,” Mr. Pataki told voters, adding, “Ultimately, I think people are going to want grown-up government.”

// posted by montag @ 1:36 PM 0 Comments

With 380 cows, the process would take all morning, before it was time to start all over again for the afternoon and night milkings. Hours of gritty, grueling work would ultimately lead to the production of hundreds of pounds of dairy bound for high-end pizza parlors up and down the East Coast via Bruenig’s buyer, a Wisconsin-based cheese manufacturer.

Bruenig said maintaining a reliable workforce — seven out of nine are immigrants from Latin and Central America — is a critical part to keeping his business afloat.

“I couldn’t do all of this and at the same time, run the business,” he said. “The most important thing is, who’s willing to do the job, willing to train and improve every day, and that’s what my staff really wants. We are always working on getting better.”

These days, Bruenig’s employees look much like the rest of the labor force powering Wisconsin’s $43.4 billion dairy industry, more than 40 percent of which is made up of immigrants, according to a conservative estimate from a 2009 University of Wisconsin-Madison study. Many of them — like Sancristobal and Gonzalez — are undocumented.

The importance of immigrant labor to dairy may come as a surprise to some who have followed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s trajectory on the issue as he’s gone from a swing state governor to a 2016 presidential contender. Critics say Walker’s rightward drift reflects a tendency to capitulate to the whims of the Republican party’s base, particularly on social issues, no matter what the realities on the ground may be.

// posted by montag @ 1:14 PM 0 Comments

Regular commercial air travel to Cuba has been heavily restricted since 1963. But last month, the U.S. restored formal diplomatic ties with Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years. And with the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana last week, many expect the travel ban to be lifted soon.

David Bach, a senior lecturer in global business and politics at the Yale School of Management, said that regular commercial air service is essential to the process of renewing ties between the estranged countries.

“Politically, it’s incredibly symbolic,” he said.

Airlines aren’t waiting for Congress to lift the embargo, though. They’ve already expanded charter flights to Cuba or announced plans to do so. Charter flights are not part of an airline’s regular schedule.

American Airlines said Tuesday that it would begin nonstop service later this year between Los Angeles and Havana, Cuba’s first direct connection to the West Coast in many years. The airline has operated charter flights to Cuba since 1991.

The charter flights will operate on Saturdays beginning Dec. 12 with Boeing 737s. American plans to offer another Saturday charter flight from Miami to Havana.

Last month, JetBlue began direct charter service from New York’s JFK International, building on its existing charter flights from Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

United, Delta and Southwest don’t currently operate charter flights to Cuba, but spokespersons for all three airlines indicated Tuesday that they were considering it.

Under current law, U.S. citizens can visit Cuba under a narrow set of categories, such as family visits, official U.S. government business, journalistic activity and athletic competitions.

It would take legislation from Congress to lift those restrictions. Similar bills in the Senate and House of Representatives each has at least 40 bipartisan co-sponsors.

// posted by montag @ 12:35 PM 0 Comments

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

Northwestern Missouri meets the wine world, under a bid to designate one of the nation’s largest grape-growing regions.

At more than 8.2 million acres, the proposed Loess Hills District sprawling across western Iowa and a slice of northwestern Missouri would far surpass any federally recognized winemaking region in California. It could also add some fizz to an area currently home to 13 bonded wineries, vineyards that pay a federal excise tax.

“I think this is going to be great for economic development in both states,” Michelle Wodtke Franks, executive director of the non-profit Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development, Inc., said in an interview Monday.

If approved by the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, following the public comment period that expired Monday, wineries within the Loess Hills District Viticultural Area could use the term on wine made from the region’s grapes.

Sixty-six commercial vineyards, spanning a modest 112 acres, currently operate in the region still dominated by corn and soybean fields.

“The idea is that it would enhance the demand for grapes from the Loess Hills area,” Franks said, adding that viticultural area designation “has a capacity to be used as a marketing tool” for the broader region.

The Golden Hills organization filed the viticultural area application, along with the Western Iowa Grape Growers.

// posted by montag @ 1:07 PM 0 Comments

“The security of Syria as our strategic ally is very important,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahlan, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told McClatchy. “We do not support the establishing a no-fly zone or a protected one in Syria. We believe this will complicate the situation more.”

Although Iran’s influence is on the upswing following the July agreement with six great powers on its nuclear program, there are major questions about the country’s ability to manage crisis, not only in Syria, but also in Iraq, where Iran has been the dominant outside power since U.S. forces departed at the end of 2011.

It was on Iran’s watch and under the leaders it backed, Assad in Syria and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Iraq, that Sunni extremists captured an enormous swath of territory in both countries and set up a self-styled “caliphate.” Yet few in Iran accept any responsibility for the upheaval, and many put the blame exclusively on Arab states, Turkey and the U.S.

Officially, Iran even disputes that the Syrian revolt was home-grown, but blames it on unspecified “foreign intelligence services.”

“It is more than four years that Syria has been fighting terrorism,” Amir-Abdollahlan said.

“Based on our information, the uprising began in the border city of Daraa, and from the early hours of the uprising, foreign forces entered Daraa. . . . Of course the people’s demands turned violent. And the Bashar Assad government took measures to control it.”,,

Across the political spectrum, Iranian foreign affairs experts claim that the Islamic State is sponsored by U.S. allies in the region.

“You see half of Syria has now been captured by Islamic State forces with the support of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and with technical assistance by Erdogan,” said Mohammad-Javad Hag-Shenas, a journalist, academic and former government official, referring to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Bigdeli, the university professor, said the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Qatar “created” the Islamic State in order “to rein in Iran’s power in the region,” and for this same reason, the U.S. decided “not to eradicate the Islamic State group.”

// posted by montag @ 1:16 PM 0 Comments

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The N.S.A.’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

// posted by montag @ 1:34 PM 0 Comments

“It's got a great taste … and it's a natural product that doesn't have chemicals in it,” Ivan Alejandro Camarillo said, explaining pulque's appeal as he sipped it from a brightly colored plastic beaker. “It's also really mellow and doesn't make you crazy” like other drinks, he added.

The 19-year-old restaurant worker is among thousands of young Mexicans rediscovering the so-called “nectar of the gods” first made more than 1,000 years ago by the Aztec civilization of the country’s central highlands and drunk by priests in rituals, including human sacrifice.

Subsequently widely made in haciendas dotted across the central highlands, pulque became the staple tipple of Mexico's working class until, amid false rumors that it was made with excrement, it was gradually eclipsed with the advent of beer. A decade or so ago pulque slipped into what producers and pulquería owners feared could be a terminal decline — until it was rediscovered by a new generation of drinkers.

“Now it's all young people that come in,” said Noe Hernandez, Los Paseos' proprietor for the past 45 years, as he cast his eye over his youthful clientele sipping several varieties of pulque, some “cured” or mixed with fruit including guava and passion fruit that make the pungent drink more palatable. About half of the customers are “new faces,” he added.

The drink's popularity peaked in the late 1800s when there were some 1,100 pulquerías across the capital, according to some estimates, of which perhaps 80 to 100 have survived. Renewed demand in the past five or six years has reinvigorated some of the older bars, and led to a rash of start-ups in Mexico City's trendy Condesa and Roma neighborhoods, where the ancient drink is now served to a dance music beat.

The revival is also giving a boost to rural areas where pulque is produced, like the nearby state of Tlaxcala where emigration to find work is common.

At the historic Hacienda Xochuca, in Tlaxcala, manager Vicente Franquiz takes a growing number of visitors around the fields of hulking magueys, relatives of the blue agaves used to make tequila. Visitors to the estate founded in the 1800s are shown them the traditional techniques to gather the sap known as aguamiel (honey water) that is used to make pulque. He one day hopes to bring output back from the current 130 gallons a day to the 26-32,000 gallons that the estate produced in its heyday, although he finds himself battling a rumor that is endlessly repeated in Mexico that a cloth-wrapped bundle of excrement — dubbed a muneca (doll) — is added to the sap to kickstart fermentation.

“It's a complete lie … pulque has a 100 percent natural fermentation,” said Franquiz, standing beside softly fizzing tanks of fermenting juice in the cool interior of the tinacal, or brew house, at the hacienda. “When people come here, we show them that the myth isn't true. We give them the honey water to take to Mexico City, and then they see that it starts to ferment without adding anything at all.”

// posted by montag @ 1:19 PM 0 Comments

When it comes to blowing up things or threatening other countries with sanctions or invasion, Republicans take nothing "off the table." When it comes to paying bills or leaving their country better than they found it, they take away the table.

// posted by montag @ 5:48 PM 0 Comments

It used to be simpler for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to locate and deport immigrants who had been convicted of crimes. The agency would contact local jails and ask that such inmates be held until an ICE van could pick them up.
But last year a federal judge found that practice illegal, prompting hundreds of counties to stop honoring the detainer requests. As a result, ICE officials say they have to rely on costly and dangerous manhunts like the one conducted Wednesday in Riverside. 

The agency's Fugitive Operation teams carry out raids across the country every morning.

Originally formed to locate immigrants who had failed to comply with a judge's deportation order, the program is increasingly being used to find immigrants with criminal convictions who have recently been let out of jail. Of the more than 27,000 people whom authorities arrested last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, 2014, about 78% had criminal convictions, according to ICE data.

"It would be so much safer for the community if we took custody of this individual in the jail," said David Marin, deputy director of ICE's Los Angeles field office. "It would have taken us two officers to do that, as opposed to the eight or nine that we have out here now."
ICE officials have held up the agency's new Priority Enforcement Program as a cheaper and safer alternative to dramatic neighborhood raids. Under the new program, ICE asks jails to notify the agency when potentially deportable inmates are being released from custody, and occasionally asks jails to hold detainees it considers especially dangerous.
Immigrant advocates don't buy that argument.

Newman and others say the agency's new jail program is simply a rebranding of a controversial earlier initiative, Secure Communities, the post-release detainer program that the federal judge found unconstitutional. Advocates say thousands of U.S. citizens were wrongfully detained and many immigrants with little or no criminal record were deported as a result of the program.

Since counties stopped honoring ICE detainer requests last year, the number of deportations has plummeted, along with the number of people held in immigrant detention, according to ICE data.

// posted by montag @ 1:53 PM 0 Comments

If the diverse group of candidates competing for the Republican presidential nomination agree on one thing when describing how they would engage with the world if they made it to the White House, it is this: If only the United States were stronger, and more feared, the country would not feel threatened by the Islamic State, manipulated by Iran or challenged by a rising China.

But after that, finding any consensus on how they would exercise American power differently from President Obama, or a Democratic opponent in 2016, much less how they would define an alternative Republican foreign policy, gets a bit messy.

In speeches, town-hall-style meetings and interviews, many align themselves with the spirit (but not the arms control agreements) of President Ronald Reagan, knowing it is a sure pathway to applause. Except for his son Jeb, they usually avoid talking about the first President George Bush, now considered, despite his victory in the Persian Gulf war, as far too internationalist for current Republican tastes.

And many struggle with the question of whether to align themselves with the unilateral actions of President George W. Bush’s first term, dominated by the invasion of Iraq, or his second term, when, over the objections of hard-liners, he negotiated with the North Koreans, placed modest sanctions on Iran and set a schedule for America’s withdrawal from Iraq.

“They are all having a hard time threading this needle,” said William J. Burns, George W. Bush’s ambassador to Russia and undersecretary of state for policy, and then Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state. “For a long time after 9/11 we focused on military force with diplomacy as the backup, often to clean up the mess. President Obama has tried to reverse that — with diplomacy backed up by force.”

// posted by montag @ 1:21 PM 0 Comments

When it comes to privacy, Germans can’t take a joke. After it was revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted calls in Germany, sales of old-school typewriters were reported to have skyrocketed, as some Germans assumed that sending letters might make communications surveillance harder for U.S. officials.

It’s not only American surveillance that Germans are concerned about, however. On Tuesday, a 29-year old man was arrested at Frankfurt Airport after authorities noticed that he had microwaved his German identification card, reported German news agency dpa.

According to a police statement, the man was concerned that his privacy might be violated by the microchip that has been embedded in all German IDs since 2010. The man now faces either a fine or time in jail for the offense of illegally modifying official documents. According to German law, identification documents are state property.

Microwaving one’s I.D. is in fact not as uncommon as one would expect. Here's a video of a literally exploding German identification document...

German officials were aware of the strong public backlash against the microchip IDs even before they were first issued. In 2010, a governmental survey came to the conclusion that it would “take ten years for the document to establish itself.” Although several studies have refuted concerns that the microchip could be used to spy on individuals, many Germans remain cautious. Not everyone is willing to use the microchip, which would enable them to fill out online formulas much faster.

Skepticism of state authorities is deeply entrenched in German society: In June, activists inaugurated an Edward Snowden Square in the eastern German city of Dresden. Snowden had for instance revealed that the NSA had spied on German telecommunications data two years ago, and many Germans suspect their own intelligence services to have collaborated with their American counterparts.

"Much of this can be explained historically," Edward Snowden Square creator Markwart Faussner told WorldViews in June. "Germans have experienced observation throughout the 20th century. After the Nazi era, the Stasi intelligence service in the former East Germany monitored most of the country's citizens. When the Berlin Wall fell, East Germans suddenly found out from official government files that their friends or even family members had spied on them for years or decades. Hence, there is still a deeply rooted suspicion of state authorities in Germany,” Faussner explained.

// posted by montag @ 2:13 PM 0 Comments

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.

A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders. To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the ISIS-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.

A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.

“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.

“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.

// posted by montag @ 1:57 PM 0 Comments

As they have captured more in Afghanistan this year, the Taliban have twinned their military offensive with a publicity push. Their pitch goes something like this: We’ve learned the lessons from our time in power, and we’re ready to moderate a bit.

At international conferences, delegates from the Taliban — infamous for outlawing girls’ schools during their rule from 1994 to 2001 — have made a point of being willing to meet and talk with female officials. Old hard-line stances against music and photography have been softening.

But for insight into how the Taliban might rule if they succeed in holding large stretches of Afghanistan, consider Baghran district, in the southern province of Helmand.

There, where the Taliban were scarcely ever out of power, the harsh old policies of the ’90s are still in full swing. Men are hauled into jail if they shave beards, and spot turban checks are still in place to expose any fancy haircuts. And there is still no freedom for women to travel or learn.

// posted by montag @ 1:39 PM 0 Comments

Khalil Abdur-Rashid kept his calm as meeting attendees hollered at him during his speech in a high school auditorium in the tiny northern Texas city of Farmersville. As he tried to explain why his organization, the Islamic Association of Collin County (IACC), wants to develop a 35-acre cemetery in Farmersville one man yelled, “You’re not welcome here!”

Local residents have protested the proposed cemetery since it was approved by the city on May 28 as a concept plan, prompting city officials and the IACC to host a City Council meeting to address locals’ concerns. On Aug. 4 a mostly white, older audience packed into the school auditorium, where a man led a Christian prayer before the meeting started. Farmersville is home to about 3,300 people, more than 80 percent white and nearly entirely Christian, according to city officials.

Abdur-Rashid, a resident scholar at the IACC, said, “Some folks have unfortunately been party to [groups] spreading hate towards Islam and Muslims. It’s based upon ignorance.”

Although the IACC said it doesn’t know of any Muslims living in Farmersville, the group purchased the land because of its scenic location on the shores of Lake Lavon and its affordability compared with real estate in the more densely populated parts of Collin County closer to Dallas. The families who will bury their loved ones there are part of the estimated 22,000-person Muslim community living mostly in the nearby cities of Plano, Richardson and Garland.

At the public meeting, some angry attendees screamed and interrupted Abdur-Rashid as he tried to speak. Near the end, the one who shouted, “You’re not welcome here!” continued. “Every place y’all have been, you’ve caused some kind of controversy in the schools, and the government lets y’all have y’all’s way. Well, it’s not going to happen in Farmersville.”

Much of the opposition is based on incorrect information and rumors. At the meeting and in national media, some residents argued that Islamic burial practices contaminate groundwater because Muslims do not put the dead in coffins — a claim that Abdur-Rashid dismissed as inaccurate, saying that bodies would be buried in caskets or coffins.

One of the most vocal opponents of the cemetery is David Meeks, the 65-year-old pastor of the local Bethlehem Church, which describes itself on its website as “a conservative Southern Baptist Church that believes in the inerrancy of the word of God.” He has told reporters that the plan is an attempt by Muslim groups to build “a mosque or madrassa training center” in the town.

// posted by montag @ 1:31 PM 0 Comments

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop handing out forms to Navajo citizens impacted by the Animas River spill that would effectively waive an individual’s rights to sue the agency for any future damages caused by contaminated water released from an abandoned mine upstream in Colorado last week.

“The people that live up and down the river, the Navajo people, many do not speak English, and those that do may not comprehend legal language,” Begaye said.

Around 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater spilled into the Animas River from an abandoned gold mine in southern Colorado last week after an accident caused by the EPA. The agency says the water contains lead, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals, but has still not disclosed what impact the spill will have on river users downstream, like those in the Navajo Nation. However, Begaye says officials are already trying to preempt future lawsuits by taking advantage of Navajo citizens.

“My interpretation as president of the Navajo Nation is the EPA is trying to minimize the amount of compensation that the people deserve,” said Begaye. “They want to close these cases and they don’t want more compensation to come later.”

The EPA did not return requests for comment.

Claims for damage, death or injury caused by a federal employee’s negligence are covered under Standard Form 95, but the form also states that any payments made are final.

“They’re saying if we pay you $500 for buying hay for your cattle, and you sign your name here, that’s all you’re going to get,” said Begaye. “Next week if you find something else that comes up because of the contamination and maybe your livestock may be injured, then we can’t pay you because you waived your right.”

// posted by montag @ 1:10 PM 0 Comments

Chris Christie Wednesday became the latest Republican to sign a pledge to “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”

Americans for Tax Reform has been urging presidential candidates to sign the pledge. In 2012, all Republicans except one, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, did.

Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is the ninth of the 17 prominent 2016 Republican candidates to agree to no tax increases. Also making the commitment are Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, former business executive Carly Fiorina, former Sen. Rick Santorum, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.

Christie’s fiscal record has also come in for criticism from some conservatives. The Club for Growth Tuesday didn’t list Christie as one of its acceptable 2016 candidates.

“The Club for Growth praised the governor for winning concessions from public employee unions and withdrawing from a multistate compact designed to curb emissions contributing to climate change,” reported NJ.com. But, the group added, “there are enough warning signs in Christie's record to give fiscal conservatives pause," such as his decision to expand Medicaid coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act.

// posted by montag @ 12:59 PM 0 Comments