World/Nation Briefs 6.14.2012
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sharpening the choice for the nation, President Barack Obama and Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney are offering dueling visions of how to fix the economy, framing in their most direct terms the fierce debate that will decide the November election. In a flash of campaign drama, the two are giving major speeches at nearly the same time Thursday from the same state, battleground Ohio.
For the president, Thursday’s speech will aim to get above the daily ups and downs — more downs of late — and pull the American people into the discussion Obama wants: a choice between his economic ideas and Romney’s. As he has done before at pivotal moments in his presidency, Obama will use a big speech to try to reframe the debate as he heads into the heart of the campaign calendar.
For Romney, the occasion is about offering definition to a divided public about how he would lead the economy, including the priorities for his first 100 days in office. The former Massachusetts governor who made a fortune in business is sensing momentum on his side, particularly as the weak pace of job growth undermines Obama’s stick-with-me message.
The split-screen economic addresses offer the air of a bigger moment in a general election campaign that has been defined mainly by ads, fundraisers and monthly jobs reports. Yet for all the emerging hype, particularly surrounding the speech of the sitting president, previews from both sides point toward plenty of familiar themes and few, if any, new ideas.
Obama is not expected to announce any major economic policies. His aides say his pending jobs ideas before Congress remain valid and he will keep pushing them.
———
US Anti-Doping Agency charges Armstrong with drug use; former Tour champion denies accusations
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong is facing more doping allegations just a few months after he thought he had finally put them to rest.
Although federal investigators in February closed a two-year investigation without bringing criminal charges, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has filed new doping charges that could strip the seven-time Tour de France winner of his victories in cycling’s premier race.
Armstrong insists he is innocent.
‘‘I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one,’’ Armstrong said in a statement. ‘‘Any fair consideration of these allegations has and will continue to vindicate me.’’
The move by USADA immediately bans him from competing in triathlons, which he turned to after he retired from cycling last year.
———
Syria: Suicide car bomb explodes in Damascus suburb, damaging Shiite shrine and wounding 10
BEIRUT (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated his car packed with explosives in a Damascus suburb on Thursday, wounding 10 people and damaging one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, Syria’s state-run news agency and witnesses on the scene said.
The golden-domed Sayyida Zainab shrine attracts tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims from around the world every year who come to visit the tomb, which is believed to house the remains of the granddaughter of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The site is popular with Iranian and other Shiite pilgrims and tourists.
Witnesses on the scene said the bomber detonated his van in a parking lot about 50 meters (yards) from the shrine. Guards tried to stop him from getting into the area but he pushed through, they said, setting the explosives off inside the lot. The blast shattered the shrine’s windows and knocked down chandeliers and electric ceiling fans and caused cracks in some of its mosaic walls.
Six tourist buses and more than 30 cars and a small police bus also were damaged.
———
After seeing Arab Spring as an opportunity, Iran meets a largely closed door in Egypt
CAIRO (AP) — Iran once saw the Arab Spring uprisings as a prime opportunity, hoping it would open the door for it to spread its influence in countries whose autocratic leaders long shunned Tehran’s ruling clerics. But it is finding the new order no more welcoming. Egypt is a prime example.
Egypt has sporadically looked more friendly toward Iran since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak 16 months ago, and the rise of the Islamists here fueled the expectations of Tehran’s clerical regime that it could make inroads.
Instead, it has been met with the deep mistrust felt by many in mainly Sunni Muslim Egypt toward non-Arab, Shiite-dominated Iran — as well as Cairo’s reluctance to sacrifice good relations with Iran’s rivals, the United States and the oil-rich Arab nations of the Gulf.
In a sign of the mistrust, Egyptian security and religious authorities have raised an alarm in recent weeks that Iran was trying to promote Shiism in the country.
That brought warnings from the Sunni Islamists that Iran had hoped would be friendly to their religious-based leadership.
———
Campaign corruption charges dropped against John Edwards; some say shouldn’t have been brought
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A relieved John Edwards said after his mistrial on campaign corruption charges that he believed good things were still in store for him, though image makers and his friends agree that does not include politics.
The ex-presidential candidate who turned 59 this week will no longer have to face that future with federal charges hanging over his head after prosecutors on Wednesday dropped their campaign fraud case against him. After a six-week trial in North Carolina, jurors acquitted Edwards May 31 on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on five other felony counts. The judge declared a mistrial.
The U.S. Justice Department said in a court order that it will not seek to retry Edwards on the five unresolved counts, leaving some to say the charges shouldn’t have been brought in the first place.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who oversees the agency’s criminal division, said prosecutors knew the case, like all campaign finance cases, would be challenging. But he said it is ‘‘our duty to bring hard cases’’ when warranted.
‘‘Last month, the government put forward its best case against Mr. Edwards, and I am proud of the skilled and professional way in which our prosecutors .... conducted this trial,’’ he said, adding that he respected the jury’s judgment and decided not to seek a retrial ‘‘in the interest of justice.’’
———
From tickets to threat, accusers talk of Sandusky’s sway at ex-PSU coach’s sex abuse trial
BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — One of Jerry Sandusky’s accusers said he stayed quiet to keep going to Penn State football games.
Another man, who was a foster child when he met Sandusky through his Second Mile charity, spoke of a threat — that Sandusky told him he would never see his family again if he told anyone what happened.
Those were among the ways Sandusky held sway following alleged inappropriate encounters, the two men testified Wednesday at the ex-assistant football coach’s child molestation trial.
‘‘He told me that if I ever told anyone that I’d never see my family again,’’ said the man, now 25. He said he was terrified when Sandusky uttered the threat after the coach pinned him while wrestling in the basement of the Sandusky home and performed oral sex on him.
‘‘I freaked out. I got nervous. I got scared,’’ the man said about the encounter. He said he believed that Sandusky’s wife was home at the time, but on a different floor.
———
Your underarm’s the rainforest, your gut the ocean: Body’s bacterial zoos keep people healthy
WASHINGTON (AP) — They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut — enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds.
Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes.
Don’t say ‘‘eeew’’ just yet. Many of these organisms work to keep humans healthy, and results reported Wednesday from the government’s Human Microbiome Project define what’s normal in this mysterious netherworld.
One surprise: It turns out that nearly everybody harbors low levels of some harmful types of bacteria, pathogens that are known for causing specific infections. But when a person is healthy — like the 242 U.S. adults who volunteered to be tested for the project — those bugs simply quietly coexist with benign or helpful microbes, perhaps kept in check by them.
The next step is to explore what doctors really want to know: Why do the bad bugs harm some people and not others? What changes a person’s microbial zoo that puts them at risk for diseases ranging from infections to irritable bowel syndrome to psoriasis?
———
More US homes entered foreclosure process in May, paving way for short sales, repossessions
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lenders initiated foreclosure proceedings against more U.S. homeowners in May, setting the stage for increases in home repossessions and short sales — scenarios that could further weigh down home values in coming months.
Default or scheduled-home-auction notices were filed for the first time against 109,051 homes last month. That’s an increase of 12 percent from April and up 16 percent versus May last year, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
The firm monitors documents filed on properties with mortgages that have gone unpaid. Once that process begins, homes can end up foreclosed-upon, sold at auction or via a short sale. A short sale is when the bank agrees to accept less than what the borrower owes on their mortgage.
May was the first month since January 2010 that the number of homes starting on the foreclosure path rose on an annual basis. But the trend has been visible in the monthly numbers, with four out of the first five months of this year recording increases over the preceding month.
The data reflects how banks and mortgage servicers have been stepping up efforts this year to address unpaid mortgages.
———
APNewsBreak: Study on Yosemite rock hazards identifies most dangerous areas, forces closures
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Falling boulders are the single biggest force shaping Yosemite Valley, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the national park system. Now swaths of some popular haunts are closing for good after geologists confirmed that unsuspecting tourists and employees are being lodged in harm’s way.
On Thursday, the National Park Service will announce that potential danger from the unstable 3,000-foot-tall Glacier Point, a granite promontory that for decades has provided a dramatic backdrop to park events, will leave some of the valley’s most popular lodging areas permanently uninhabitable.
‘‘There are no absolutely safe areas in Yosemite Valley,’’ said Greg Stock, the park’s first staff geologist and the primary author of a new study that assesses the potential risk to people from falling rocks in the steep-sided valley. The highest risk area is family friendly Curry Village, which was hit by a major rock fall several years ago.
A newly delineated ‘‘hazard zone’’ also outlines other areas, including the popular climbing wall El Capitan, where the danger posed by the rock falls is high but risk of injury is low because they aren’t continuously occupied.
‘‘Rock falls are common in Yosemite Valley, California, posing substantial hazard and risk to the approximately four million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park,’’ reads the ominous opening line of the report.
———
Girlfriend says Henry Hill, former mobster, subject of Scorsese ’Goodfellas,’ has died at 69
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Henry Hill spent much of his life as a ‘‘goodfella,’’ believing his last moment would come with a bullet to the back of his head. In the end he died at a hospital after a long illness, going out like all the average nobodies he once pitied.
Hill, who went from small-time gangster to big-time celebrity when his life as a mobster-turned-FBI informant became the basis for the Martin Scorsese film ‘‘Goodfellas,’’ died Tuesday at age 69, longtime girlfriend Lisa Caserta told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Hill had open heart surgery last year and died of complications from longtime heart problems related to smoking, she said.
‘‘He was a good soul towards the end ... he started feeling remorseful,’’ she said.
An associate in New York’s Lucchese crime family, Hill told detailed, disturbing and often hilarious tales of life in the mob that first appeared in the 1986 book ‘‘Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family,’’ by Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist Hill sought out shortly after becoming an informant.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Sharpening the choice for the nation, President Barack Obama and Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney are offering dueling visions of how to fix the economy, framing in their most direct terms the fierce debate that will decide the November election. In a flash of campaign drama, the two are giving major speeches at nearly the same time Thursday from the same state, battleground Ohio.
For the president, Thursday’s speech will aim to get above the daily ups and downs — more downs of late — and pull the American people into the discussion Obama wants: a choice between his economic ideas and Romney’s. As he has done before at pivotal moments in his presidency, Obama will use a big speech to try to reframe the debate as he heads into the heart of the campaign calendar.
For Romney, the occasion is about offering definition to a divided public about how he would lead the economy, including the priorities for his first 100 days in office. The former Massachusetts governor who made a fortune in business is sensing momentum on his side, particularly as the weak pace of job growth undermines Obama’s stick-with-me message.
The split-screen economic addresses offer the air of a bigger moment in a general election campaign that has been defined mainly by ads, fundraisers and monthly jobs reports. Yet for all the emerging hype, particularly surrounding the speech of the sitting president, previews from both sides point toward plenty of familiar themes and few, if any, new ideas.
Obama is not expected to announce any major economic policies. His aides say his pending jobs ideas before Congress remain valid and he will keep pushing them.
———
US Anti-Doping Agency charges Armstrong with drug use; former Tour champion denies accusations
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong is facing more doping allegations just a few months after he thought he had finally put them to rest.
Although federal investigators in February closed a two-year investigation without bringing criminal charges, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has filed new doping charges that could strip the seven-time Tour de France winner of his victories in cycling’s premier race.
Armstrong insists he is innocent.
‘‘I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one,’’ Armstrong said in a statement. ‘‘Any fair consideration of these allegations has and will continue to vindicate me.’’
The move by USADA immediately bans him from competing in triathlons, which he turned to after he retired from cycling last year.
———
Syria: Suicide car bomb explodes in Damascus suburb, damaging Shiite shrine and wounding 10
BEIRUT (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated his car packed with explosives in a Damascus suburb on Thursday, wounding 10 people and damaging one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, Syria’s state-run news agency and witnesses on the scene said.
The golden-domed Sayyida Zainab shrine attracts tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims from around the world every year who come to visit the tomb, which is believed to house the remains of the granddaughter of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The site is popular with Iranian and other Shiite pilgrims and tourists.
Witnesses on the scene said the bomber detonated his van in a parking lot about 50 meters (yards) from the shrine. Guards tried to stop him from getting into the area but he pushed through, they said, setting the explosives off inside the lot. The blast shattered the shrine’s windows and knocked down chandeliers and electric ceiling fans and caused cracks in some of its mosaic walls.
Six tourist buses and more than 30 cars and a small police bus also were damaged.
———
After seeing Arab Spring as an opportunity, Iran meets a largely closed door in Egypt
CAIRO (AP) — Iran once saw the Arab Spring uprisings as a prime opportunity, hoping it would open the door for it to spread its influence in countries whose autocratic leaders long shunned Tehran’s ruling clerics. But it is finding the new order no more welcoming. Egypt is a prime example.
Egypt has sporadically looked more friendly toward Iran since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak 16 months ago, and the rise of the Islamists here fueled the expectations of Tehran’s clerical regime that it could make inroads.
Instead, it has been met with the deep mistrust felt by many in mainly Sunni Muslim Egypt toward non-Arab, Shiite-dominated Iran — as well as Cairo’s reluctance to sacrifice good relations with Iran’s rivals, the United States and the oil-rich Arab nations of the Gulf.
In a sign of the mistrust, Egyptian security and religious authorities have raised an alarm in recent weeks that Iran was trying to promote Shiism in the country.
That brought warnings from the Sunni Islamists that Iran had hoped would be friendly to their religious-based leadership.
———
Campaign corruption charges dropped against John Edwards; some say shouldn’t have been brought
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A relieved John Edwards said after his mistrial on campaign corruption charges that he believed good things were still in store for him, though image makers and his friends agree that does not include politics.
The ex-presidential candidate who turned 59 this week will no longer have to face that future with federal charges hanging over his head after prosecutors on Wednesday dropped their campaign fraud case against him. After a six-week trial in North Carolina, jurors acquitted Edwards May 31 on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on five other felony counts. The judge declared a mistrial.
The U.S. Justice Department said in a court order that it will not seek to retry Edwards on the five unresolved counts, leaving some to say the charges shouldn’t have been brought in the first place.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who oversees the agency’s criminal division, said prosecutors knew the case, like all campaign finance cases, would be challenging. But he said it is ‘‘our duty to bring hard cases’’ when warranted.
‘‘Last month, the government put forward its best case against Mr. Edwards, and I am proud of the skilled and professional way in which our prosecutors .... conducted this trial,’’ he said, adding that he respected the jury’s judgment and decided not to seek a retrial ‘‘in the interest of justice.’’
———
From tickets to threat, accusers talk of Sandusky’s sway at ex-PSU coach’s sex abuse trial
BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) — One of Jerry Sandusky’s accusers said he stayed quiet to keep going to Penn State football games.
Another man, who was a foster child when he met Sandusky through his Second Mile charity, spoke of a threat — that Sandusky told him he would never see his family again if he told anyone what happened.
Those were among the ways Sandusky held sway following alleged inappropriate encounters, the two men testified Wednesday at the ex-assistant football coach’s child molestation trial.
‘‘He told me that if I ever told anyone that I’d never see my family again,’’ said the man, now 25. He said he was terrified when Sandusky uttered the threat after the coach pinned him while wrestling in the basement of the Sandusky home and performed oral sex on him.
‘‘I freaked out. I got nervous. I got scared,’’ the man said about the encounter. He said he believed that Sandusky’s wife was home at the time, but on a different floor.
———
Your underarm’s the rainforest, your gut the ocean: Body’s bacterial zoos keep people healthy
WASHINGTON (AP) — They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut — enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds.
Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes.
Don’t say ‘‘eeew’’ just yet. Many of these organisms work to keep humans healthy, and results reported Wednesday from the government’s Human Microbiome Project define what’s normal in this mysterious netherworld.
One surprise: It turns out that nearly everybody harbors low levels of some harmful types of bacteria, pathogens that are known for causing specific infections. But when a person is healthy — like the 242 U.S. adults who volunteered to be tested for the project — those bugs simply quietly coexist with benign or helpful microbes, perhaps kept in check by them.
The next step is to explore what doctors really want to know: Why do the bad bugs harm some people and not others? What changes a person’s microbial zoo that puts them at risk for diseases ranging from infections to irritable bowel syndrome to psoriasis?
———
More US homes entered foreclosure process in May, paving way for short sales, repossessions
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lenders initiated foreclosure proceedings against more U.S. homeowners in May, setting the stage for increases in home repossessions and short sales — scenarios that could further weigh down home values in coming months.
Default or scheduled-home-auction notices were filed for the first time against 109,051 homes last month. That’s an increase of 12 percent from April and up 16 percent versus May last year, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
The firm monitors documents filed on properties with mortgages that have gone unpaid. Once that process begins, homes can end up foreclosed-upon, sold at auction or via a short sale. A short sale is when the bank agrees to accept less than what the borrower owes on their mortgage.
May was the first month since January 2010 that the number of homes starting on the foreclosure path rose on an annual basis. But the trend has been visible in the monthly numbers, with four out of the first five months of this year recording increases over the preceding month.
The data reflects how banks and mortgage servicers have been stepping up efforts this year to address unpaid mortgages.
———
APNewsBreak: Study on Yosemite rock hazards identifies most dangerous areas, forces closures
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Falling boulders are the single biggest force shaping Yosemite Valley, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the national park system. Now swaths of some popular haunts are closing for good after geologists confirmed that unsuspecting tourists and employees are being lodged in harm’s way.
On Thursday, the National Park Service will announce that potential danger from the unstable 3,000-foot-tall Glacier Point, a granite promontory that for decades has provided a dramatic backdrop to park events, will leave some of the valley’s most popular lodging areas permanently uninhabitable.
‘‘There are no absolutely safe areas in Yosemite Valley,’’ said Greg Stock, the park’s first staff geologist and the primary author of a new study that assesses the potential risk to people from falling rocks in the steep-sided valley. The highest risk area is family friendly Curry Village, which was hit by a major rock fall several years ago.
A newly delineated ‘‘hazard zone’’ also outlines other areas, including the popular climbing wall El Capitan, where the danger posed by the rock falls is high but risk of injury is low because they aren’t continuously occupied.
‘‘Rock falls are common in Yosemite Valley, California, posing substantial hazard and risk to the approximately four million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park,’’ reads the ominous opening line of the report.
———
Girlfriend says Henry Hill, former mobster, subject of Scorsese ’Goodfellas,’ has died at 69
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Henry Hill spent much of his life as a ‘‘goodfella,’’ believing his last moment would come with a bullet to the back of his head. In the end he died at a hospital after a long illness, going out like all the average nobodies he once pitied.
Hill, who went from small-time gangster to big-time celebrity when his life as a mobster-turned-FBI informant became the basis for the Martin Scorsese film ‘‘Goodfellas,’’ died Tuesday at age 69, longtime girlfriend Lisa Caserta told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Hill had open heart surgery last year and died of complications from longtime heart problems related to smoking, she said.
‘‘He was a good soul towards the end ... he started feeling remorseful,’’ she said.
An associate in New York’s Lucchese crime family, Hill told detailed, disturbing and often hilarious tales of life in the mob that first appeared in the 1986 book ‘‘Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family,’’ by Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist Hill sought out shortly after becoming an informant.
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