Category: USA

Officials say the top US diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. More from Nike Ching.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to the state’s drought emergency Friday after powerful storms quenched the state following four extraordinarily dry years that drained reservoirs and wells, devastated forests and farmland and forced millions of people to slash their water use.

The turnaround has been stark. After years of brown fields and cracked earth, monster storms blanketed California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains this winter with deep snow that flows into the network of rivers and streams that supply most of the state’s water.

Front lawns revived to bright green in neighborhoods throughout the state, and rivers that had become dry beds of sand and gravel are now charged with water swelling up in their banks.

Restrictions remain

Still, lifting the order is a largely symbolic measure that doesn’t remove most of the restrictions. Officials insisted they’re holding onto some conservation rules for the 40 million residents of the nation’s most populous state.

California uses more water each year than nature makes available, and one wet winter won’t change the long-term outlook, environmentalists cautioned.

“Water may appear to be in abundance right now,” said Kate Poole, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But even after this unusually wet season, there won’t be enough water to satisfy all the demands of agriculture, business and cities, without draining our rivers and groundwater basins below sustainable levels.”

At the drought’s peak, citizens were urged to cut shower times and outdoor watering. Homeowners let lawns turn brown or ripped them out altogether and replaced them with desert-like landscaping.

The drought strained native fish that migrate up rivers, and forced farmers in the nation’s leading agricultural state to rely heavily on groundwater, causing the ground to sink. Some growers tore out orchards.

Emergency declared in 2014

Brown declared the emergency in 2014, and officials later ordered mandatory conservation for the first time in state history.

Even now, the governor has kept the drought emergency in place for four counties, most of them at the state’s farming heartland, where emergency drinking water projects will continue to help address diminished groundwater supplies.

More than 900 families in Tulare County, a farming powerhouse in the San Joaquin Valley, are struggling even to find drinking water after their wells dried up and have to turn to charities for bottled water or tanks for their yards.

In the inland region of Southern California east of Los Angeles, streams and groundwater basins are still at historically low levels, and rainfall has been below average for nearly two decades. It would take the equivalent of three consecutive years of above-average precipitation to refill the basins.

Conservation will be way of life

The rest of the state shouldn’t forget water-saving strategies either. Cities and water districts throughout the state will be required to continue reporting their water use each month, said the governor’s order, which also bans wasteful practices, such as hosing off sidewalks and running sprinklers when it rains.

Water conservation will become a way of life in the state, said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, who led conservation planning.

“This drought has been one for the record books, but it won’t be our last or longest,” said Marcus. “It’s a wakeup call and we can’t hit the snooze button.”

Even Brown was circumspect in his dramatic announcement: “This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner.”
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The U.S. government on Friday dropped its effort to force Twitter to identify users behind an account critical of President Donald Trump, the social media company said.

In response, Twitter said it was dropping a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government that challenged the request to unmask the users.

Twitter had sued just a day earlier, claiming the government overstepped its authority in issuing a summons to reveal the account owners.

The lawsuit said that the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection had sought the identity of the users of Twitter handle @ALT-USCIS.

‘Alternative’ handles

The account describes itself as “immigration resistance.” Its creators told media outlets the account is run by current and former employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.

It is one of several “alternative” handles purportedly created by current federal employees unhappy with the Trump administration.

It was not immediately clear why the government withdrew its effort to identify the Twitter users. It was also not immediately known whether the government had closed an investigation it said it was conducting into the Twitter account.

The American Civil Liberties Union praised the government’s decision to withdraw its request, saying in a tweet, “Big victory for free speech and the right to dissent.”
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President Donald Trump on Friday chose Kevin Hassett, an economics adviser to past Republican presidential candidates, to be chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Hassett will play a critical role in analyzing the performance of the economy and impact of policy changes.

Hassett is the research director for domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that he joined in 1997. He has provided economic advice to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. With a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Hassett has worked as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve and taught at Columbia University’s business school.

Jason Furman, the CEA chair under former President Barack Obama, hailed Hassett as an “excellent pick” on Twitter.

“He is serious about substance, committed to dialogue, & knows how to navigate DC,” Furman wrote.

An expert on taxes and budget policy, Hassett also co-wrote a paper challenging the National Football League conclusions about the New England Patriots using underinflated footballs to gain an advantage against the Indianapolis Colts in a 2015 playoff game.

Not all of Hassett’s analysis has been prescient. He has faced criticism for co-writing the 1999 book “Dow 36,000,” which predicted a rising stock market shortly before the tech bubble burst and the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled.

The CEA has routinely been filled by leading academic economists and was among the most prominent vacant posts during the early months of the Trump presidency.

Formed in 1946, the CEA is responsible for giving the president economic guidance on domestic and international policy. The post has also been a launching pad for leading monetary policy at the Fed. Previous CEA chairs — Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan — have served as the past three Fed chairs.
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Don’t look to the Kentucky Coal Museum to bring coal back.

The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the city’s largest electric customers. It’s also a symbol of the state’s efforts to move away from coal as its primary energy source as more coal-fired power plants are replaced by natural gas. The state legislature recently lifted its decades-old ban on nuclear power.

“It’s a little ironic or coincidental that you are putting solar green energy on a coal museum,” said Roger Noe, a former state representative who sponsored the legislation that created the coal museum. “Coal comes from nature, the sunrays come from nature, so it all works out to be a positive thing.”

The museum is in Benham, once a coal camp town whose population peaked at about 3,000, according to Mayor Wanda Humphrey, 85.  Today, it has about 500 people.

The town’s second building was a company commissary known as the “big store,” where Humphrey would visit every day after school to order an RC Cola and a bag of peanuts, charged to her father’s account. Today, that building houses the Kentucky Coal Museum, which opened in 1994 with the help of some state funding. The museum houses relics from the state’s coal mining past, including some items from the personal collection of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” country singer Loretta Lynn.

It’s also the best place in town to get the most direct sunlight, which made it an ideal location for solar panels.

“The people here are sort of in awe of this solar thing,” Humphrey said.

The Southeast Community and Technical College, which owns the museum, expects the solar panels to save between $8,000 and $10,000 a year on energy costs, according to spokesman Brandon Robinson.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said to light laughter at a Thursday evening dinner he hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping that after a long discussion, “I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing” from his guest. But Trump added that the two leaders, who chatted earlier at the president’s Florida resort, had quickly “developed a friendship,” and he predicted that “long term we’re going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it.”

Xi did not make remarks while reporters were in the Mar-a-Lago dining room, and Trump did not answer questions about Syria or North Korea directed at him by journalists.

Earlier, Trump and members of his administration made it clear they hope to pressure Beijing into doing more to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.

Trade high on agenda

In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the roughly $310 billion U.S. trade deficit with China is high on the agenda.

“We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. So that’s one of the things we’re gonna be talking about.”

But he also appeared to link that issue with U.S. concerns over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“The other thing, of course, is going to be North Korea, and somehow they will mix. They really do mix. So we’re going to be talking about trade, North Korea, and many other things,” he said, without elaborating.

A working lunch also is on the agenda for the two leaders Friday.

North Korea ‘a big problem’

Earlier this week, Trump warned, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.” His administration is considering sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that give Pyongyang access to international financing.

China supplies North Korea with almost all its fuel oil, imported foods, consumer goods and the raw materials used to construct its weapons program.

But China also has grown weary of the militaristic aspirations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has yet to visit Beijing during his six-year rule. A series of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have not deterred it from a string of missile tests, the latest this week.

Trump and Xi, who oversee the world’s two largest economies, are meeting for the first time.

On Wednesday, Trump said dealing with North Korea’s nuclear development program could have “been made a lot easier if it was handled years ago.” But the U.S. leader, in office less than three months, said he welcomes the challenge.

“We have a big problem; we have somebody that is not doing the right thing, and that’s going to be my responsibility,” Trump said.

Differing views on climate

According to advance thoughts on the summit from Beijing, Xi could offer the United States more Chinese investments, which would create more American jobs, a key Trump campaign pledge.

Under former U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese American relations often were focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the two biggest polluting countries in the world. But Xi and Trump have taken sharply divergent paths on curbing pollution.

The Chinese government recently canceled construction of more than 100 coal-fired power plants and is investing at least $360 billion in green energy projects by 2020.Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to bring back mining jobs that have been lost through automation and closure of U.S. mines, as the country has turned to the use of cheaper natural gas.

Trump in the past has described global warming as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy. Last week, he signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obama-era policies regulating carbon emissions.

Beijing appears to be focused more on atmospherics and slogans at the summit. From what analysts and officials in Beijing say, China will be watching closely for telltale signs that Washington may be adopting its view of relations between the two countries, the so-called “new style of major power relations.”

US China relations defined

China expects Trump to reaffirm a pledge that was made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month, during his visit to Beijing.

“The two presidents are going to define the nature of the relationship between China and the United States as characterized by this phrase: no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” said Wang Dong, a political scientist at Peking University.

Wang said China hopes the informal get-together will inject some stability into the relationship and help reduce the uncertainties that have arisen during the transition to the new administration.
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Jupiter is extra close and extra bright this week, and that means some amazing, new close-ups.

The Hubble Space Telescope zoomed in on the solar system giant Monday, and NASA released the pictures Thursday. Jupiter was a relatively close 415 million miles (668 million kilometers) away.

The planet’s Great Red Spot is especially vivid. It’s a storm big enough to swallow Earth, but is mysteriously shrinking. Hubble’s ongoing observations may help explain why. Also visible in the photos is Red Spot Jr.

On Friday, Jupiter will be in opposition. That’s when Jupiter, Earth and the sun all line up, with Earth in the middle. Jupiter will appear brighter than usual — the brightest all year. Stargazers won’t want to miss it.

Look for one of the brightest objects in the night sky, visible from sundown to sunrise near the moon.
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A former leader of the Beltran Leyva Mexican drug-trafficking cartel that bears his name was sentenced on Wednesday to life in a U.S. prison for participating in an international narcotics trafficking conspiracy, the Justice Department said.

Alfredo Beltran Leyva, 46, also known as Mochomo, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington to forfeit $529 million, the Justice Department said.

Since the 1990s, the Beltran Leyva Organization, together with the Sinaloa Cartel, directed a drug transportation network that shipped tons of cocaine and methamphetamines into the United States, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

At its peak, the Beltran Leyva Organization dominated drug trafficking in western Mexico and was responsible for “countless murders,” they said.

“Alfredo Beltran Leyva is one of the Goliaths of Mexican drug traffickers known for his savage business tactics and responsible for flooding the United States with illegal drugs,” said James Hunt, special agent in charge, of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Beltran Leyva was arrested by Mexican special forces in early 2008 in what his brothers Hector and Arturo reportedly believed to be a sell-out by the rival Sinaloa gang. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Sinaloa gang’s former leader, was extradited to the United States in January and is awaiting trial in a New York jail, after having escaped twice from Mexican custody.

U.S. prosecutors indicted Beltran Leyva in August 2012, while he was still in Mexican custody, on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for importation into the United States. He was extradited from Mexico in November 2014 and pleaded guilty to the charge on Feb. 23, 2016.

Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed in a December 2009 shootout with the Mexican army, while Hector, the cartel’s boss, was captured by Mexican soldiers in October 2014.
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If confirmed as expected this week by the U.S. Senate, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee would join his new fellow justices in time to act on divisive cases concerning religion, guns and big business, underscoring Neil Gorsuch’s importance as the fifth conservative on a nine-justice court.

 The Senate’s Republican leaders have pledged to confirm the Colorado-based appeals court judge on Friday. His first official task after being sworn in would come at an April 13 private meeting among the justices to discuss taking various appeals from lower courts.

There are appeals pending on expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public, state voting restrictions critics say are aimed at reducing minority turnout, and allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to serving gay couples. All three could lead to landmark rulings if taken up.

Oral arguments

On April 17, the justices will begin hearing a new round of oral arguments, including a closely watched case on the separation of church and state focusing on whether a Missouri church was improperly denied state funds. The court is nearing the end of its current term, which runs from October to June.

Gorsuch also would play a key role in important cases the justices already have agreed to hear in their next term, including a bid by employers to prevent workers from bringing class action claims, a goal of big business.

The court has been divided between four conservatives and four liberals since the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

Major issues before the court highlight the significance of Gorsuch filling Scalia’s seat and restoring the court’s 5-4 conservative majority.

Senate Republicans paved the way for Trump to replace Scalia by refusing last year to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy. That would have given the court a liberal majority for the first time in decades.

Legal experts suspect a conservative majority on the court could motivate conservative lawyers to bring cases in a hope that five justices will back abortion restrictions, oppose political spending limits, and favor wider gun and religious rights.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the four liberals, will remain the court’s swing vote. Most experts expect Gorsuch to be more aligned with the court’s two most stalwart conservatives, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

“There’s no reason to think he will be anything other than extremely conservative,” said Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Carolyn Shapiro.

Pending appeals

With four votes needed to take up a case at the private meetings, each justice is important. Among pending appeals the court is likely to act on in the coming weeks is a case in which activists have asked the justices to rule for the first time that the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, extends to carrying firearms outside the home.

In another case, the court could decide whether to revive voter-identification and other restrictions in North Carolina blocked by a lower court. The justices also could hear a Christian baker’s religious claim that he should not be forced to sell a cake to a gay couple.

Conservative justices generally take expansive views of gun and religious rights and may back state laws whose Republican backers say are intended to prevent voter fraud.

On April 19, the court will hear a religious rights case in which a church contends Missouri violated the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom by denying it funds for a playground project due to a state ban on aid to religious organizations.

Gorsuch has ruled several times in favor of expansive religious rights during his decade as a judge.

“Given Gorsuch’s solicitude for religious liberty, his joining the court can only help the church,” said Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the libertarian Cato Institute think tank.

There are several cases the court has already heard but has not yet decided in which Gorsuch could play a role. The court has the option of hearing fresh arguments, with Gorsuch in a position to cast a potential deciding vote.

Predatory lending accusation

One such case is a bid by Miami to revive lawsuits accusing major banks of predatory mortgage lending to black and Hispanic home buyers.

Another concerns whether the family of a Mexican teenager can sue a U.S. Border Patrol agent who fatally shot the 15-year-old from across the border in Texas.

Longer term, an issue likely to return to the court is a conservative-backed challenge that could weaken organized labor.

The court was expected to deny unions a vital source of cash last year. But after Scalia died, it issued a 4-4 ruling leaving in place a lower court’s decision favoring unions.

The court is also likely to weigh in on whether transgender students are protected under a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The court took up that question last fall but in March sent the case back to a lower court without resolving the main legal question.
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In a major embarrassment for Mexican law enforcement, U.S. prosecutors said in documents made public Wednesday that the commander of a Mexican police intelligence-sharing unit was passing information on a DEA investigation to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in exchange for millions of dollars.

Ivan Reyes Arzate was named in a U.S. district court indictment, just hours after Mexico’s federal police revealed an unnamed agent had been charged with obstructing an investigation.

What Mexican police commissioner Manelich Castilla did not reveal was that Ivan Reyes Arzate, the officer charged, was the commander of a federal police sensitive investigative unit. The special units, known as SIUs, were formed starting in the 1990s precisely to create more secure groups that the U.S. could feel more comfortable sharing intelligence with. Castilla said Reyes Arzate had been fired in November.

According to the U.S. indictment, Reyes Arzate was caught on a wiretap in September telling a drug trafficker to get rid of his communications equipment because he was under investigation and his phones were being tapped.

He even sent the trafficker a surveillance photo that the Mexican unit had taken of him.

The U.S. indictment unsealed Wednesday in Chicago says Reyes Arzate was the top commander of an SIU unit whose officers were specially trained and vetted by the United States, including weeklong training at a DEA school in Quantico, Virginia.

A former federal police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is no longer with the agency said Reyes Arzate was probably two or three steps down in the command chain from the federal police commissioner.

“Reyes, in his role as supervisor over the SIU, routinely had contact and worked collaboratively with DEA agents in Mexico City,” according to the indictment.

‘Severe integrity issues’

Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said there had always been a problem with the special units: The top commanders refused to submit to background or polygraph checks, even though low-level agents were vetted.

“The higher echelon, the higher level of the federal police, do not want to be vetted,” Vigil said. “So the information that goes from the vetted units to their commanders can be easily compromised.”

“We have pushed for that … they have never wanted to and I think that a lot of them have severe integrity issues, so they don’t want to go through that vetting because they’re afraid of what we may find out,” Vigil said. “A lot of them are corrupt so they don’t want to be vetted. If we were able to vet them from top to bottom, it would be a great program.”

What is startling is the length and depth of Reyes Arzate’s collusion with the Beltran Leyva gang, which has built a reputation of specializing in corrupting or bribing law enforcement officials.

Beyond giving the drug trafficker detailed advice on how to evade the DEA investigation, the commander passed on to him fresh information given to him by the U.S. agency.

An unidentified confidential source cited in the indictment said Reyes Arzate had directly passed tips to Arturo Beltran Leyva, the cartel boss who was killed in 2009. That meant that Reyes Arzate had been a cartel mole in police agencies for at least seven years.

The cartel even killed a DEA informant based on information supplied by Reyes Arzate. 

‘There seems to be a pattern here’

It raised questions about how Mexican authorities could possibly have missed such longstanding, outrageous corruption.

Still, it’s not the first time Mexico has failed to detect such deep corruption.

The indictment comes about a week after the attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit was arrested at the U.S. border on drug charges.

Edgar Veytia was charged in the United States with conspiracy to smuggle cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to the U.S. from January 2013 to last month, while he was chief law enforcement officer in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.

The revelations about two such-high-ranking officers could fuel continuing tensions between Mexico and the United States.

Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said “there seems to be a pattern here.”

“In both cases, the arrests were made without the participation of Mexican authorities. Confidence is not at its highest level.”

Added Vigil: “It detracts from the working relationship we have worked so hard to build.”
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Activists claiming an imbalance in economic and social equality prayed, rallied and marched in Memphis on Tuesday, the 49th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Hundreds of supporters of the Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 movements demanded higher wages and equal rights as they walked more than 1.6 kilometers (1 mile), from Memphis City Hall to the National Civil Rights Museum.

The museum is at the site of the former Lorraine Motel. King was standing on the motel’s balcony when he was shot down by a sniper’s bullet on April 4, 1968. He was in the midst of his “Poor People’s Campaign” when he came to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers seeking better pay, safer working conditions and union rights.

Marchers

Led by a 220-piece band from Talladega College in Alabama, marchers chanted “This is what democracy looks like” and held signs saying “I Am A Man.” Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Show Me $15. Real Change. No Pennies.”

The Fight for $15 group wants a higher hourly minimum wage for low-pay workers, including fast food employees and home and child care workers. The Black Lives Matter movement developed after the deaths of unarmed black men during confrontations with white police officers and has waged protests throughout the country.

Marchers also came from Arkansas and Missouri to join their Tennessee colleagues. Police did not immediately have an estimate of the number of marchers who participated.

Renita Moore, a 54-year-old nursing assistant from St. Louis, said raising the minimum wage is important because her cost of living keeps going up.

“We’ve all come together as one,” Moore said. “It’s very important that we stick together, stand together and fight together.”

King-related events

The march was one of many King-related events in Memphis.

Earlier Tuesday, more than 200 people gathered at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church to hear the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. William Barber talk about how King’s fight for economic and racial equality and social justice is far from over. A vocalist belted out a religious hymn and another song, “The Impossible Dream,” and attendees held hands in prayer.

Barber, known for his firebrand public speaking style, called for those seeking progress on social and economic issues affecting poor people to help register more blacks voters and engage in “civil disobedience.”

The pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was critical of President Donald Trump, including his effort to suspend new visas for people in six Muslim-majority countries. He called Trump a “narcissistic tweeter.”

“We are not those who believe the terrible lies that the best way to better America is to attack public education and attack Muslims and attack immigrants and attack living wages,” said Barber, progressively raising his voice. “How in the world can America attack refugees when we sing ‘God bless America, shed his grace on us,’ but we don’t have grace for immigrants? That’s contradictory to everything we say we believe.”

Justice, love, mercy

Then, he added: “We are the crowd that believes in justice and love and mercy and goodness and hope, the common good, the general welfare. We believe `liberal’ is a good word, and `conservative’ is a good word.”

Outside the church, Sharon Johnson, 60, said she came to the rally to honor King’s memory.

“He came from the right place in his heart, believing that all people are equal, that everyone should be treated with respect, that people deserve equal pay for their work,” said Johnson, a pharmacy technician. “He sacrificed his life to make that happen.”

Rallies also were scheduled in Florida, California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan. In Boston, dozens of people marched through the Boston Common to call for less racism and a higher minimum wage. Marchers held a moment of silence at 6:01 p.m. Central Time to mark when King was shot.
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For the first time ever, a U.S. appeals court on Tuesday ruled that federal civil rights law protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees from discrimination in the workplace.

The ruling from a divided 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago represents a major legal victory for the gay rights movement.

It also allows a lawsuit to go forward in Indiana, where plaintiff Kimberly Hively said she lost her community college teaching job because she is lesbian.

“I have been saying all this time that what happened to me wasn’t right and was illegal,” Hively said in a statement released by the gay rights legal organization Lambda Legal, which represents her.

Reinstates lawsuit

In its decision to reinstate Hively’s 2014 lawsuit, which was thrown out at the local level in Indiana, the Court of Appeals ruled that protections against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from job discrimination based on their sexual orientation.

In so doing, the full appeals court overruled a decision by a smaller panel of its judges to uphold the district court’s decision in the college’s favor.

In its 8-3 decision, the court bucked decades of rulings that gay people are not protected by the milestone civil rights law, because they are not specifically mentioned in it.

“For many years, the courts of appeals of this country understood the prohibition against sex discrimination to exclude discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation,” Chief Judge Diane Wood wrote for the majority. “We conclude today that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination.”

To reach its conclusion, the court examined 20 years of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court on issues related to gay rights, including the high court’s 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry, Wood wrote.

No high court ruling yet

The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the question of whether the Civil Rights Act protects gays and lesbians, she wrote.

In their dissent, three of the judges said that the majority had inappropriately used its own power to change the civil rights law, which does not explicitly protect people on the basis of sexual orientation, and which for decades has been interpreted as excluding that protection.

“Today the court jettisons the prevailing interpretation and installs the polar opposite,” Judge Diane Sykes wrote in dissent.

In her lawsuit, Hively said that Ivy Tech Community College in South Bend passed her over for a permanent position and refused to renew her contract as an adjunct professor after school administrators learned she is a lesbian.

The school has denied the claims. Spokesman Jeff Fanter said in an email to Reuters that officials were reviewing the ruling and would comment on Wednesday.
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About one in 10 pregnant women with confirmed Zika infections had a fetus or baby with birth defects, offering the clearest picture yet of the risk of Zika infection during pregnancy, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to analyze a group of U.S. women with clear, confirmed test results of Zika infection during pregnancy.

Once considered a mild disease, a large outbreak of the virus that began in Brazil in 2015 and quickly spread through the Americas revealed that the mosquito-borne virus can cause severe brain damage and microcephaly, or small head size, when women are exposed during pregnancy.

‘Continues to be a threat’

“Zika continues to be a threat to pregnant women across the U.S.,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the CDC, said in a statement. “With warm weather and a new mosquito season approaching, prevention is crucial to protect the health of mothers and babies.”

Babies affected by Zika can develop congenital Zika syndrome, which includes brain abnormalities, vision problems, hearing loss, and problems moving limbs.

The study comes from the CDC’s Zika pregnancy registry, which includes data from the continental United States and all U.S. territories except Puerto Rico.

The researchers analyzed data on nearly 1,000 completed pregnancies in 2016 among women who had some evidence of Zika infection. Most were infected through travel to a region where the virus was actively spreading.

Of the 1,000, 51 or about 5 percent had babies or a fetus with one or more Zika-related birth defect. Because of limitations of testing, only tests done within the first few weeks of Zika can test specifically for the Zika virus.

Women analyzed

The team also analyzed 250 women with definitive test results for Zika.

Among these, about one in 10 had a fetus or baby with birth defects. The risk was even higher among women infected in the first trimester of pregnancy, where 15 percent of pregnancies resulted in a fetus or baby with birth defects.

The study also showed that three out of four babies exposed to Zika had not received brain imaging after birth to diagnose birth defects.

“We know that some babies have underlying brain defects that are otherwise not evident at birth. Because we do not have brain imaging reports for most of the infants, our current data might significantly underestimate the impact of Zika,” CDC’s Peggy Honein told a news briefing.
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Some big American coal companies have advised President Donald Trump’s administration to break his promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement — arguing that the accord could provide their best forum for protecting their global interests.

Remaining in the global deal to combat climate change will give U.S. negotiators a chance to advocate for coal in the future of the global energy mix, coal companies like Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy told White House officials over the past few weeks, according to executives and a U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

“The future is foreign markets, so the last thing you want to do if you are a coal company is to give up a U.S. seat in the international climate discussions and let the Europeans control the agenda,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

“They can’t afford for the most powerful advocate for fossil fuels to be away from the table,” the official said.

Cloud Peak and Peabody officials confirmed the discussions.

‘Path forward’

In Cloud Peak’s view, staying in the agreement and trying to encourage “a more balanced, reasonable and appropriate path forward” on fossil fuel technologies among signatories to the accord seems like a reasonable stance, said Richard Reavey, Cloud Peak’s vice president of government affairs.

The coal industry was interested in ensuring that the Paris deal provides a role for low-emission coal-fired power plants and financial support for carbon capture and storage technology, the officials said. They also want the pact to protect multilateral funding for international coal projects through bodies like the World Bank.

The Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, would seek to limit global warming by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to pull the United States out of the pact, tapping into a well of concern among his fellow Republicans that the United States’ energy habits would be policed by the United Nations.

Seeking companies’ advice

But since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue, and administration officials have recently been asking energy companies for advice.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that the administration expected to make a decision on whether to remain a party to the deal by the time leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations meet in late May.

The prospect of the United States remaining in the Paris deal has irritated some smaller miners, including Murray Energy Corp, whose chief executive, Robert Murray helped fund Trump’s presidential bid.

Staying in the Paris accord could also face resistance from within Trump’s party. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has been circulating a letter among Republican lawmakers calling on the president to stay in the deal but has gathered only seven signatures so far.
…

The outgoing head of the United Nations’ World Food Program said Monday she is certain the U.S. Congress will reject the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts for U.N. aid agencies, saying “No one in America believes that ‘America First’ means that other people must die.”

Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, whose friendship with former President Barack Obama predated his presidency, on Tuesday winds up five years of leading the world’s largest anti-hunger humanitarian organization. The Trump administration tapped former South Carolina Gov. David Beasley to replace her, and U.N. officials appointed him last week.

In a blunt interview on the eve of her departure, Cousin joined Congressional Democrats and Republicans in criticizing the administration’s proposal to reduce funding for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development by roughly 31 percent in the next fiscal year. Congress, in negotiation with the administration, has the final say on the budget.

“I sincerely believe that no American wants to see images of starving babies,” Cousin said.

The United States is the largest contributor to the World Food Program, which serves some 80 million needy people with emergency food aid and other food assistance in conflict zones, refugee camps and natural disasters around the world.

The amount of money the administration has proposed for the food program hasn’t been released. The WFP enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, suggesting it won’t be as deeply cut as other U.N. programs.

But Cousin, who was Obama’s ambassador to the U.N.’s three food agencies before she was named to lead WFP, was clear that the White House’s proposal was inadequate and contrary to U.S. interests in her view.

“The budget that has been suggested by the administration does not reflect the generosity of the American people,” she said. “I’m hopeful that the administration will recognize that the security of the United States is directly related” to ensuring food security and development opportunities for poor people around the world.

“The policies of the Obama administration will reflect that they ‘got’ that,” Cousin added. “The policies of the Trump administration would suggest that they don’t believe that that is the case.”

The U.S. has provided the program with $2 billion a year for the past three years, more than Germany, Britain, Canada and Japan combined. The WFP contributions are voluntary, unlike the assessed contributions the U.S. is billed for the U.N.’s general and peacekeeping budgets.

Cousin said Germany and the European Union have already stepped in to increase their voluntary contributions, as has the private sector.

“But that does not fill the gap of a significant reduction in U.S. contributions,” she said. “However, I do not believe at this point that this Congress will pass legislation where babies begin to die. I don’t think the American people will allow it. And that is what will happen.”

The United Nations has warned that the world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the U.N. was founded in 1945, with more than 20 million people in four countries facing possible famine: South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and northeast Nigeria. Already, famine has been declared in parts of South Sudan.

“No one in America believes that ‘America First’ means that other people must die,” she said.

Cousin said she plans to remain engaged in food security, access to clean water and related issues when she takes up a position as lecturer and visiting fellow at Stanford University starting in September.
…

A U.S. appeals court said Monday it would hold a hearing in May over a Hawaii federal judge’s order that blocked President Donald Trump’s revised travel restrictions on citizens from six Muslim-majority countries.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld a Seattle judge’s block of Trump’s first travel order. The appeals court did not say Monday which three judges would preside over the latest appeal.

Trump signed the revised ban last month, in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order that caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before its enforcement was halted in February.

Trump has said the travel ban is needed for national security.

The state of Hawaii challenged the revised travel directive as unconstitutional religious discrimination. Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claim it is based on Trump’s election campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

The Justice Department has also appealed a ruling from a Maryland judge against Trump’s revised executive order. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia scheduled a hearing in that case for May 8.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the North Korea nuclear issue later this month.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told reporters Monday that Tillerson’s briefing to member states will take place April 28 — well after this week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida.

“I think a lot is going to depend on what happens between now and the end of the month,” Haley said at a news conference marking the U.S. assumption of the U.N. Security Council presidency for April. “Because with the conversations we are having and the decisions China makes, that will really spell out where at least the U.S. wants to go.”

Haley said the two leaders’ summit “will be very, very important” on a number of levels, but particularly on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The rogue nation has stepped up its ballistic missile tests and conducted five nuclear tests in the past decade. Experts say a sixth nuclear test could happen soon.

“I think the United States has seen China for 25-plus years say that they are concerned about North Korea, but we haven’t seen them act like they are concerned about North Korea,” Haley said. “I think this administration wants to see them act, and I think they are going to pressure them to do that.”

She said China hopefully will respond favorably. “That’s the goal of this weekend, is to make sure that China shows that they are willing to act on North Korea because we know at the end of the day, the only one that North Korea is really going to respond to is China,” Haley said.

In an interview with London’s Financial Times, Trump said that if China is not going to solve the problem of North Korea, “we will.”

“China has a great influence over North Korea,” he told the newspaper. “And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t … and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”

Haley said the discussions between presidents Trump and Xi also will cover economic issues, but that “the way that the weekend will go will very much depend on how that conversation with North Korea is.”

“The president has made it very clear that he needs to see actions from China,” she said.
…

President Donald Trump doubled down on his tough talk on trade with a pair of executive orders Friday, which he says are designed to level the playing field and reduce the $500 billion U.S. trade deficit, more than half of which is with China. As Mil Arcega reports, the issue of unfair trade is likely to come up when the U.S. president meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next week.
…

Training for the Boston Marathon has left Tommy Race feeling spent. His bank account, too: Race’s Boston adventure will cost about $2,000.

“It’s a lot of money, but it’s also a vacation,” said Race, a high school math teacher from Bellingham, Washington. “For a runner like myself, I’d much rather throw down money to run Boston than go to Cancun or Europe or some other travel destination.”

Race (yes, that’s his real name) has plenty of company. Thirty-thousand athletes from 94 countries will participate in this month’s 121st running of America’s most venerable footrace, and organizers say they’ll pump $192 million into the local economy.

That’s the equivalent of $311 for every man, woman and child living in the city of Boston.

Sports industry experts say Boston’s payout is part of a lucrative global trend that’s been playing out in Chicago, New York, London and other cities that stage major marathons drawing competitors and spectators from around the world.

“People want to be a part of something that Olympians run in,” said Rich Harshbarger, CEO of Running USA, a nonprofit group that promotes the sport.

“You’re not going to be able to run the bases at Fenway. But at a big marathon, you get to line up and have the same experience that the pros do,” he said.

It’s an affluent bunch: Running USA’s latest national survey, done in 2015, found that more than seven in 10 marathon runners earn more than $75,000 a year, and most are college graduates.

Many in the field for the Boston Marathon on April 17 will bring their families along. Another 10,000 runners will descend on Boston for a sister 5K race, swelling not only the size of the crowds but the amount spent on hotels, restaurants, transportation and a weekend running expo hawking expensive gear and swag.

“Nearly everyone involved … will patronize local businesses,” said Tom Grilk, CEO of the Boston Athletic Association, which manages the marathon.

Included in the $192.2 million projection is $30 million that runners will raise to benefit dozens of charities.

And the Boston Marathon’s economic impact is steadily growing. Last year’s race generated $188.8 million, and the 2015 race brought in $182 million, the Association said.

Patrick Moscaritolo, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, calls race weekend “an extraordinary kick start” for the tourist season.

Other races that are part of the World Marathon Majors – a series that includes Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York City and Tokyo – have an even bigger haul.

The TCS New York City Marathon says its economic impact in 2014, the most recent year for which figures were available, was $415 million. The Bank of America Chicago Marathon had an estimated $277 million impact in 2015, organizers say.

Getting to the start line is expensive, “but it’s worth every penny,” said Malinda Ann Hill, bereavement coordinator for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who’s running her first Boston together with her twin sister.

After 12 attempts to qualify, Hill doesn’t care what it costs.

“My twin won’t total it up, though,” she said. “She doesn’t want to know.”
…

To Doris Day’s many admirers, the pert and fresh-faced charmer who starred in “Pillow Talk” and “Move Over Darling” is ageless.

But Day turns 95 on Monday – which is a birthday surprise to even the star herself, who has long pegged her age to a 1924 birthdate that would make her 93. Media outlets have variously reported her as between 93 and 95.

A copy of Day’s birth certificate, obtained by The Associated Press from Ohio’s Office of Vital Statistics, settles the issue: Doris Mary Kappelhoff, her pre-fame name, was born on April 3, 1922, making her 95. Her parents were Alma and William Kappelhoff of Cincinnati.

“I’ve always said that age is just a number and I have never paid much attention to birthdays, but it’s great to finally know how old I really am!” Day said in a statement Sunday.

She’s in excellent company with other vibrant Hollywood standouts lucky enough to reach that milestone year, including Betty White, a close friend, and Carl Reiner.

“There has long been speculation and rumors about Doris’ age and we get this question a lot, looks like we finally have the answer,” said Day’s spokesman, Charley Cullen Walters. “The story I have heard the most is that at one point Doris was up for a role when quite young and her age may have been miswritten on the audition form.  We don’t know if that’s correct, but if so it could’ve simply stuck for all these years.”

He said Day and White had long joked about White being two years older.

“Now we know that they are actually just a couple months apart, and turns out it’s an even bigger exciting landmark than we thought,” Walters said. White was born in January 1922.

On previous birthdays, Day has said she doesn’t care about her age but rather using the occasion to highlight her favorite cause: animals.

A longtime supporter of animal welfare, Day founded the nonprofit Doris Day Animal Foundation in 1978 to provide grants to projects that rescue, care for and protect animals. Among the wide-ranging recipients: a group that helps seniors and others with pet care needs; one that provides trained service dogs for veterans and others; Iowa Parrot Rescue, and Misfit Acres, a Minnesota horse sanctuary.

Day, who lives in Carmel, California, has effectively parlayed her fame for her mission. This year, she’s seeking to bring younger people on board with a social media campaign that asks people to post a photo or video of their pet with the hashtag @DorisBirthdayWish and the tag @ddaf_org for her foundation. The best of the submissions will be combined into a digital birthday card for her.

Famous friends and admirers are among those saluting Day online. Country music star Reba McEntire tweeted that she was donating to the foundation and invited her Twitter followers to do the same.

Day, who started out as a big band singer, made her film debut in 1948 with “Romance On the High Seas” before starring in a string of smash-hit 1950s and `60s rom-coms. She remained a pop star as well, with hits including “Whatever Will Be Will Be (Que Sera)” and “Secret Love.”

“Pillow Talk” earned her an Academy Award nomination, and she won critical acclaim for dramatic turns in “Midnight Lace” and “Love Me or Leave Me.” But Oscar gold, including the lifetime achievement award that her career justifies, hasn’t come to her.

Yet Day, who once dismissed her “goody two shoes” image as “so boring,” isn’t necessarily predictable:  Walters said she has been offered the honorary award several times and politely declined. She always concludes, he said, in a “classic Doris tone – ‘Never say never!’”
…

Week by week, country by country, the Pentagon is quietly seizing more control over battle decisions, sending hundreds more troops to war with little public debate and seeking greater authority to fight extremists across the Middle East and Africa.

This week it was Somalia, where President Donald Trump gave the U.S. military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaida-linked militants. Next week it could be Yemen, where military leaders want to provide more help for the United Arab Emirates’ battle against Iranian-backed rebels. Key decisions on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are looming, from ending troop number limits to loosening rules that guide commanders in the field.

The changes in Trump’s first two months in office underscore his willingness to let the Pentagon manage its own day-to-day combat. Under the Obama administration, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that included commanders needing approval for routine tactical decisions about targets and personnel moves.

Higher risk of fatalities

But delegating more authority to the Pentagon — and combat decisions to lower-level officers — carries its own military and political risks. Casualties, of civilians and American service members, may be the biggest.

The deepening involvement in counterinsurgency battles, from the street-by-street battles now being fought in Iraq to clandestine raids in Yemen and elsewhere, increases the chances of U.S. troops dying. Such tragedies could raise the ire of the American public and create political trouble with Congress at a time when the Trump administration is trying to finish off the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and broaden efforts against similarly inspired groups.

Similarly, allowing lower-level commanders to make more timely airstrike decisions in densely populated areas like the streets of Mosul, Iraq, can result in more civilian deaths. The U.S. military already is investigating several bombings in Mosul in mid-March that witnesses said killed at least 100 people. And it is considering new tactics and precautions amid evidence suggesting extremists are smuggling civilians into buildings and then baiting the U.S.-led coalition into attacking.

Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a public policy research group in Washington, cited yet another concern: military operations becoming “divorced from overall foreign policy” could make both civilian leaders and the military vulnerable to runaway events.

“Political leaders can lose control of military campaigns,” she warned.

But top military leaders say they need to be able to act more quickly against U.S. enemies. And they’ve been staunchly supported by Trump, who has promised to pursue Islamic extremists more aggressively and echoed the view of Pentagon leaders that the Obama administration’s tight control over military operations limited effectiveness.

Desire for flexibility

Explaining his request for more leeway in Somalia against al-Shabab militants, General Thomas Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command, told Congress this month that more flexibility and “timeliness” in decision-making was necessary.

Approved by Trump on Wednesday, it was hardly the first military expansion.

The Defense Department has quietly doubled the number of U.S. forces in Syria. It has moved military advisers closer to front lines in Iraq. It has publicly made the case for more troops in Afghanistan.

The White House is tentatively scheduled in the first week of April to discuss providing intelligence, refueling and other assistance to the United Arab Emirates as it fights Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to officials who weren’t authorized to speak about a confidential meetings and demanded anonymity.

Some changes are happening with little fanfare. While there is limited American appetite for large-scale deployments in Iraq and Syria, additions are coming incrementally, in the hundreds of forces, not the thousands.

The result may be confusing for the public. Trump hasn’t eliminated Obama’s troop number limits. Thus, the caps of 503 for Syria and 5,262 for Iraq are still in effect.

But the military is ignoring them with White House approval and using an existing loophole to categorize deployments as temporary. For example, several hundred Marines and soldiers were recently sent to Syria to assist U.S.-backed Syria forces, including in the fight to retake IS’s self-declared capital of Raqqa. All were deemed temporary, so they didn’t count against the cap.

On Friday, the Pentagon said that officially there were 5,262 U.S. troops in Iraq, even as officials privately acknowledge at least a couple thousand more there.

Other agenda items

It’s still early in the Trump administration. And as the White House juggles complex details of several military campaigns, it is dealing with tax reform, its health care repeal failure, partisan infighting and expanding investigations into possible Russian ties to his presidential campaign. Observers say the expanding military power may reflect the administration’s limited “bandwidth” at the moment.

But the military wants some decisions quickly.

Iraqi forces are trying to complete the recapture of Mosul, IS’s stronghold, and more American advisers closer to the battle can help. U.S.-backed fighters are closing in on Raqqa, and the Pentagon is pushing to accelerate the effort. Conducting both operations at the same time, the Pentagon argues, will put a lot of pressure on IS.
…

Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84.

Ginny Hensley, a spokeswoman for Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, confirmed Yevtushenko’s death. Roger Blais, provost at the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko was a longtime faculty member, said he was told Yevtushenko had died Saturday morning.

“He died a few minutes ago surrounded by relatives and close friends,” his widow, Maria Novikova, was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. She said he’d died peacefully in his sleep of heart failure.

Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with “Babi Yar,” the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union.

Heard by huge crowds

At the height of his fame, Yevtushenko read his works in packed soccer stadiums and arenas, including to a crowd of 200,000 in 1991 that came to listen during a failed coup attempt in Russia. He also attracted large audiences on tours of the West.

With his tall, rangy body, chiseled visage and declaratory style, he was a compelling presence on stages when reading his works.

“He’s more like a rock star than some sort of bespectacled, quiet poet,” said former University of Tulsa President Robert Donaldson, who specialized in Soviet policy during his academic years at Harvard.

Until “Babi Yar” was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War.

“I don’t call it political poetry, I call it human rights poetry, the poetry which defends human conscience as the greatest spiritual value,” Yevtushenko, who had been splitting his time between Oklahoma and Moscow, said during a 2007 interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tulsa.

Yevtushenko said he wrote the poem after visiting the site of the mass killings in Kyiv, Ukraine, and searching for something memorializing what happened there — a sign, a tombstone, some kind of historical marker — but finding nothing.

“I was so shocked. I was absolutely shocked when I saw it, that people didn’t keep a memory about it,” he said.

It took him two hours to write the poem that begins, “No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid.”

Native of Zima

Yevtushenko was born in the Siberian town of Zima, a name that translates to winter. He rose to prominence during Nikita Khrushchev’s rule.

His poetry was outspoken and drew on the passion for poetry that is characteristic of Russia, where poetry is more widely revered than in the West. Some considered it risky, though others said he was only a showpiece dissident whose public views never went beyond the limits of what officials would permit.

Dissident exile poet Joseph Brodsky was especially critical, saying, “He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved.” Brodsky resigned from the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Yevtushenko was made an honorary member.

Donaldson invited Yevtushenko to teach at the university in 1992.

“I like very much the University of Tulsa,” Yevtushenko said in a 1995 interview with the AP. “My students are sons of ranchers, even cowboys, oil engineers. They are different people, but they are very gifted. They are closer to Mother Nature than the big city. They are more sensitive.”

He was also touched after the 1995 bombing of a federal government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. He recalled one woman in his class who lost a relative in the blast, then commented that Russian women must have endured such suffering all their lives.

“This was the greatest compliment for me,” he said.

Blais, the university provost, said Yevtushenko remained an active professor at the time of his death. His poetry classes were perennially popular and featured football players and teenagers from small towns reading from the stage.

“He had a hard time giving bad grades to students because he liked the students so much,” Blais said.

Lauded in Russia

Yevtushenko’s death inspired tributes from his homeland.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on the Russian social media site Vkontakte: “He knew how to find the key to the souls of people, to find surprisingly accurate words that were in harmony with many.”

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the poet’s legacy would remain “part of Russian culture.”

Natalia Solzhenitsyna, widow of the novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said on Russian state television that Yevtushenko “lived by his own formula.”

“A poet in Russia is more than a poet,” she said. “And he really was more than a poet — he was a citizen with a pronounced civic position.”
…

The language at a small graduation ceremony inside a federal office building in Washington Friday morning was militaristic: Fighting. Frontlines. Enemies. War.

For a fifth year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rather quietly has trained a small team of injured, wounded or sick military veterans for a different type of deployment – supporting the agency’s lesser-known investigative arm as analysts on child exploitation cases – the ones who will be able to take photos off a hard drive in a child pornography investigation, then help identify the perpetrator and build the case for an arrest.

“It is a battle. It is a war. And it needs to be,” said Daniel Ragsdale, ICE Deputy Director.

Since 2013, more than 100 veterans have learned computer forensics through the H.E.R.O. Child-Rescue Corps, an 11-week program in the nation’s capital, followed by a nearly year-long internship in ICE field offices around the country.

Chris Wooten, a U.S. Army ranger who was injured in a helicopter crash seven years ago while serving with a special operations regiment in Afghanistan — his fifth tour in Iraq and Afghanistan — felt like the program could return that sense of purpose and pride he felt serving in the military.

“I did have a lot of buddies who weren’t able to make it home, that were killed overseas or even individuals that took their own lives when they made it back just because they didn’t have that sense of purpose anymore,” he explains after the ceremony, before flying home to southwest Florida, where he starts his internship next week.

“I think this opportunity, even though we’re all wounded and can’t do our military job anymore, that this program allows us to serve our country again, and not only that, but help save some kids.”

‘Daunting’ task

It’s unpaid work that first year, working alongside agents to find suspects and build the cases, often looking at graphic, violent content for clues about the perpetrator, the victim, or even the location. But the program regularly leads to job offers from ICE, according to an agency spokesman.

The collaboration between ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office, U.S. Special Operations Command, and the National Association to Protect Children builds the ranks of child sexual abuse investigators, as law enforcement across the United States scrambles to keep up with networks of elusive online suspects — the ones supplying the images and the ones demanding them.

Non-profit organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that also work on these cases report that the trade in child pornography images is growing “exponentially.” They report receiving thousands of requests from law enforcement agencies to analyze millions of images and videos in one year.

Ragsdale, the second in command at ICE, says there aren’t enough analysts to meet the investigative demand. The agency is only one of several federal bureaus trying to dismantle the online exchange of child pornography, and in the week before Friday’s graduation, it posted three updates on three such cases:

“Tucson man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography”
“Idaho man sentenced to 25 years on federal child pornography charges”
“Southwest Texas man sentenced to nearly 16 years in federal prison for distributing child pornography”

“It’s daunting to see case after case after case… when you see 100-year sentences or multiple life sentences,” Ragsdale told the graduates. “Unfortunately, it’s still not enough. It’s certainly not tipping the scale to dissuade people who abuse children.”

“You are joining a fight that law enforcement is having a hard time winning,” he added.

‘Horrible photos’

Chosen to speak for the class at the ceremony, Wooten’s voice faltered at the podium; he spoke about friends who died in combat or after returning home. He mentioned the veteran suicide rate in the U.S. — about 20 a day. He talked of “scars, visible and invisible.”

More than the adrenaline rush of military work under high stress, Wooten says with the investigatory work “you get that sense of pride back.”

“In the military, you’re very proud to serve your country. And this, you almost get a sense of pride that ‘I’m able to handle the images,’” said Wooten, who at 29, is the father of five children. “I knew the struggle was going to be looking at horrible photos and videos that everyday people don’t even know goes on.

“This job, I’m actually going out and saving kids and stopping bad guys, and help putting bad guys behind bars by analyzing evidence and different things that help them get a prison sentence,” said Wooten. “Before, I was just sitting at a desk basically doing paperwork.”
…

U.S. media outlets say terrorist groups have been testing explosive devices that can be hidden in a laptop and that can evade some commonly used airport security screening methods.

CNN and CBS said Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had told them militants with al-Qaida and Islamic State have been developing innovative ways to plant explosives in electronic devices.

The news organizations said the new intelligence suggested that the terror groups have obtained sophisticated airport security equipment to test how to conceal the explosives in order to board a plane.

They said the intelligence played a significant role in the Trump administration’s recent decision to prohibit travelers flying out of 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying laptops and other electronic equipment onboard in the cabin area.

Devices banned on certain flights

Earlier this month, the U.S. government banned laptops and other large electronic devices, including iPads and cameras, from the passenger cabin on flights to the United States from 10 airports in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Britain also took similar measures.

Passengers on those flights must place electronic devices larger than cellphones in their checked luggage.

In a statement to media outlets, the Department of Homeland Security said: “As a matter of policy, we do not publicly discuss specific intelligence information. However, evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation, to include smuggling explosive devices in electronics.”

CNN said the intelligence that contributed to the ban on electronic devices was specific, credible and reliable, according to three officials who used the same words to describe it. One official called the intelligence “hair-raising.”
…

A case unfolding in a lower Manhattan courtroom has caused political tremors in Honduras, seeming to confirm long-held suspicions that corruption at the highest levels of government helped turn the Central American country into a violent epicenter of the drug trade at the start of this decade.

Fabio Porfirio Lobo, the son of the Honduran president in 2010-2013, is preparing to go before a federal judge for sentencing after pleading guilty to his role in a drug-trafficking ring involving members of Honduras’ national police. But it is the details of the conspiracy that emerged in testimony and newly released court documents which have captivated people back home by tying his father and a brother of the current president directly to traffickers.

Political and civil society groups have been demanding investigations into the allegations, especially against former President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, who remains a leader in the ruling National Party and is among the wealthiest people in the country, with extensive agricultural land holdings.

“This is something that everyone suspected,” said Edmundo Orellana, a former attorney general of Honduras. “But what we didn’t know was the extent of the involvement with the politicians. This has been a surprise.”

A surprising source

Most of the new information has come from a surprising source: Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, a once-feared leader of a Honduran trafficking organization known as Los Cachiros. He matter-of-factly admitted taking part in dozens of killings, including the country’s former drug czar, as he testified in a largely empty courtroom against the ex-president’s son over two days in March.

“I caused the death of 78 people,” he said at one point. “Together with politicians and drug traffickers.”

Rivera Maradiaga had a decade-long career as a trafficker based on the Atlantic coast. He described paying at least $500,000 in bribes directly to the elder Lobo, beginning when he was running for the presidency in 2009 following a coup that ousted the former president and threw Honduras into political chaos. Rivera Maradiaga was seeking protection for his business and against extradition to the U.S.

Rivera Maradiaga sketched out what became a close working relationship with the younger Lobo during his father’s term in office. It allowed him to ship huge quantities of cocaine to the U.S. in coordination with the cartel led by Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. As U.S. authorities closed in on him, the leader of Los Cachiros surrendered to the Drug Enforcement Administration with his brother in 2013 and became a cooperating witness.

As part of their relationship, the president’s son connected the head of Los Cachiros to corrupt politicians and police to bring in loads of cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela, according to U.S. prosecutors. They said the son helped the trafficker set up front companies, including a zoo north of the capital, and obtain government contracts that enabled him to launder enormous profits.

Brother of Honduras leader named  

Rivera Maradiaga also testified that Antonio Hernandez, a brother of Honduras’ current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, asked him for a bribe in exchange for government contracts. The brother has denied that allegation.

“Without support from [the president’s son] and Honduran officials, criminality of this magnitude could not have continued, largely unfettered, for as long as it did,” prosecutors wrote in a pre-sentencing brief.

At the time, Honduras had deteriorated into violent upheaval. In 2011, the U.N. ranked it as the country with the world’s highest homicide rate. The U.S. State Department described Honduras as the “primary transshipment point” for U.S.-bound cocaine and lamented that the country received a 2.4 out of 10 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

The situation has improved since Lobo left office. The State Department says in its most recent report that the volume of cocaine that passes through Honduras is down 40 percent since 2014, the homicide rate has dropped a third, and a new national police investigative division “replaced its historically inept and corrupt predecessor.”

In December 2014, with the new president in office, the country extradited the first Honduran citizen to the U.S. on a drug-trafficking charge, Carlos Lobo, who is not related to the former president. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Pence praises government

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met with Honduras’ president on March 23 and praised the country’s progress fighting drugs and corruption.

As a result of the revelations of alleged corruption by Rivera Maradiaga, the Honduran government said it is conducting a wide-ranging investigation that includes at least four anti-corruption prosecution teams to look into allegedly fraudulent government contracts set up to help Los Cachiros launder money.

Manuel Retureta, a lawyer for Lobo, has declined to comment but said in a motion filed with the court late Thursday that Rivera Maradiaga has downplayed his role in killings and drug trafficking and his allegations against the former president are irrelevant and unproven. “Rivera Maradiaga’s word alone is far from sufficient evidence and should be treated with great caution,” he said.

Help for former gang boss

The DEA and federal prosecutors have declined to discuss the case because it is ongoing. Lobo faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

Rivera Maradiaga has pleaded guilty to charges that include drug trafficking and involvement in the slayings of the 78 people, including a woman killed in November 2013 in Quebec after fleeing the gang in her homeland. He also faces up to life in prison at a sentencing scheduled for April.

The former drug gang boss apparently did gain a concession. He said in court that U.S. authorities have allowed his parents and two siblings to come to the United States as he continues to provide assistance.

“I’m in prison,” he said. “And ever since I signed my agreement with the government I have to tell the truth, testify whenever they ask me to, and not commit any more crimes.”
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A lawyer for former national security adviser Michael Flynn says he’s in talks with congressional committees to testify before them in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Those committees are investigating Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election and potential ties between Russia and associates of President Donald Trump.

Trump’s attorney, Robert Kelner, said Thursday night that “no reasonable person” would agree to be questioned “in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.” Trump echoed that sentiment on Twitter Friday, encouraging Flynn to seek immunity from a “witch hunt.”

Here are some questions and answers about the process:

Q: What does it mean to receive immunity, and who can give it?

A: An immunity grant generally shields a witness from prosecution for statements he or she makes to the government.

Congress is empowered to give immunity to witnesses who might otherwise be inclined to avoid a committee hearing, protecting them from having their statements later used against them in a criminal prosecution.

The Justice Department, too, can offer different forms of immunity. One type, for instance, protects a witness from prosecution for any offense related to the testimony, while another, more narrow form simply bars the government from using someone’s testimony against them.

The process of seeking immunity generally involves a person describing to the government what information he or she would be able to provide, a conversation known as a proffer. Investigators may decide immunity is worth it if it’s the only way to secure a witness’s testimony against a higher-value target, or if the testimony is seen as indispensable in resolving unanswered questions.

Plenty of high-profile witnesses have requested immunity for congressional testimony, from high-ranking federal government officials to professional baseball stars, though not everyone has received it.

Q: If a witness seeks immunity, doesn’t that mean he or she is probably guilty of a crime?

A: Not at all.

Since witnesses are under no obligation to speak with the FBI, it’s fairly standard for them — through their lawyers — to demand immunity as an unwavering condition for any kind of conversation they agree to have.

Seasoned lawyers often see no benefit to cooperating with the government without such an agreement, especially since it’s impossible to predict with certainty how the interview will go, what sort of statements or activities investigators will home in on, or whether any vaguely worded questions will trip up their client or prompt an unexpected answer or one unfavorable to their own interests.

“The easiest way to not incriminate yourself is to keep your mouth shut,” said Washington lawyer Steven Ryan, a congressional investigations expert.

Sometimes immunity will be granted if investigators believe a deal is the only, or at least the fastest, way to get the information they need. It can be especially palatable to the Justice Department if the person seeking immunity was never really at risk of prosecution in the first place, or if it represents the best chance to secure the cooperation of an otherwise wary witness whose insight is seen as critical.

The IT expert who set up Hillary Clinton’s email server received limited immunity from the Justice Department last year. Her chief of staff received a limited form of immunity because FBI agents wanted to inspect her computer.

Still, in a nation’s capital consumed by optics, there’s no doubt that an immunity request can make someone appear like he or she has something to hide.

Flynn himself said as much last year about the immunity deals in the Clinton email investigation, saying in a television interview, “When you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime.”

That wasn’t necessarily true then, and it’s not any more true now that Flynn himself is seeking congressional immunity.

Q: Why might Flynn in particular seek immunity?

A: It’s already known that he’s attracted the attention of law enforcement authorities. Flynn was interviewed by the FBI in the early days of the Trump administration about communications he had during the transition period with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.

He and his firm also recently registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents for lobbying work conducted on behalf of a company owned by a Turkish businessman. That businessman, Ekim Alptekin, has told The Associated Press that the registration was made under pressure from the Justice Department.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people acting as agents for a foreign principal to publicly disclose that relationship.

Q: If Congress chooses to grant immunity, what impact might that have on any criminal investigation?

A: It’s not clear, though there are long-established restrictions on the Justice Department’s ability to use any statements given to Congress under immunity in any future criminal prosecution. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his panel was “deeply mindful of the interests of the Department of Justice in the matter.”

Though it’s not an impossible burden to clear, Justice Department prosecutors would inevitably have to prove that any case that they bring did not rely on statements made to Congress.

Ryan said there’s no doubt that a grant of congressional immunity can negatively affect a simultaneous criminal investigation.

A congressional committee, he added, has to balance the need to not interfere with a criminal investigation with its own interest in putting information out to the American public.

That was a stumbling block in the 1980s-era prosecutions of Iran-Contra Affair figures Oliver North and John Poindexter, whose convictions were set aside following concerns from judges that witnesses in their criminal cases had been unduly affected by their congressional testimony.
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