Note to self: Never buy a bridge kit from China.....

Bay Bridge project's rainy-day money is nearly gone

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

The cost of repairs and unfinished work on the $6.4 billion Bay Bridge eastern span is likely to exhaust what is left in the project's contingency fund for overruns, a Caltrans official warned Thursday.

"We're trending in the wrong direction," Rich Foley, risk manager for the Caltrans toll bridge program, told the three-person committee that oversees the bridge project. "We are moving toward a cost overrun."

The bridge contingency fund - money collected from toll payers' wallets - totaled $900 million when it was created in 2005. At the time, bridge officials portrayed it as far more than they were likely to need.

Now, however, the fund is down to $90 million, and "a bunch of" pending payments for finishing work on the new bridge and demolishing the old span will probably "eat up" that money and more, Foley said. He pegged the likelihood of exhausting the fund at 80 percent.

The money could be replenished from reserve funds intended to pay for other Bay Area bridge projects, but only with the approval of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a 21-member panel made up mostly of local elected officials. If that happens, the final cost of the eastern span will top $6.4 billion.

No toll increase

Steve Heminger, executive director of the commission, said there's enough money in the other bridge reserves to ward off the need for a toll increase.

"We have adequate reserves to deal with what we are likely to face, even if there is an overrun on the budget," he said. "Our first line of defense is to avoid one to begin with."

The bridge panel - made up of Heminger and the heads of Caltrans and the state Transportation Commission - got the sobering report at a meeting in Oakland after approving more than $4 million to pay for repainting the bridge, fixing misaligned anchor rods that hold down the cable on the suspension span, and repairing movable maintenance platforms under the road decks.

Steel grit is rusting

Steel grit that embedded in the paint when grinding was being done during construction is rusting, which had already required an extra $2.5 million in work before the committee approved the new money Thursday. The misaligned steel rods have created the risk that steel cable strands will rub against metal on the bridge, potentially weakening the cable.

The maintenance platforms that run on rails beneath the bridge have developed gaps, causing the scaffolds to stall.

Last month, the panel approved $3 million to compensate the bridge's main builder, the joint venture American Bridge/Fluor, to work on the project through the end of the year. The bridge opened last September, but work has continued to prepare the span for being handed over to local authorities.

Costly demolition

Foley told the panel that in the second quarter of this year alone, bridge costs were $20 million over budget. One big issue down the line, he said, is the expense of dismantling the old span - a cost that recently ballooned $17 million, to more than $90 million, because of added environmental protections.

"There's a lot of uncertainty," Foley said. "A lot of people are nervous about it, myself included."

Heminger said one way to save money would be to leave the old span's piers in place rather than demolishing them. "If we can leave some foundations in the bay, we don't have to pay to take them out," he said.

The panel did receive some good news regarding more than 2,000 rods and bolts on the span, whose strength was called into question when 32 galvanized rods used to hold down seismic-stability structures snapped in 2013.

Tests on the remaining fasteners - a $20 million effort that has contributed to the bridge overruns - led engineers to conclude the bolts and rods are tensioned just below the level at which they would be at high risk of failure, said chief bridge engineer Brian Maroney.

If the fasteners had to be replaced, it could cost toll payers tens of millions of dollars.

Heminger said the narrow safety margin "makes me, as a layman, nervous."

Maroney, however, said the tests have given engineers "confidence that we know what the heck is going on."

Some caps are leaking

The rods that failed last year were from a batch that was markedly more vulnerable than the vast majority of the bridge's fasteners, said Marwan Nader, chief design engineer for the project. He also noted that some of the rods and bolts have been covered with grease-filled caps designed to keep out potentially corrosive water.

Heminger, however, said some of the caps "are not working perfectly - they are leaking."

Nader said the caps can be fixed, and that other layers of protection can be added so that "there's a lot of things that can go wrong, and you're still not going to get failure."

Bay Bridge costs

The new eastern span was originally projected in 1998 to cost $1.4 billion. The cost to date has been $6.4 billion, and the final total may be more. Among the recent cost overruns:

-- $185 million to finish deck sections at the eastern end and reward builders for meeting the September 2013 opening date.

-- $26 million to retrofit seismic stabilizers where steel rods broke.

-- $20 million to test additional rods and bolts.

-- $3.8 million to repair the bicycle and pedestrian path.

-- $9.5 million to repaint the suspension span, repair maintenance scaffolds and make other fixes.

Source: Caltrans

The CCC

So what is the CCC? The Courmayeur Champex Chamonix is a mountain trail race through Italy, Switzerland and France. It is under way to day August 29th. Why do I care? My niece is running in it. Here are some charts and info on the race.

Some facts: Around 101km & 6100m of positive altitude change, with a cap of 1900 runners.

CCC® (Courmayeur Champex Chamonix)

A race deep into wilderness using for the most the international path “Grande Randonnée du Tour du Mont-Blanc (GR TMB)”.

Mountain race, with numerous passages in high altitude (>2500m), in difficult weather conditions (night, wind, cold, rain or snow), that needs a very good training, adapted equipment and a real capacity of personal autonomy.

The CCC® has climbed from being the "little sister of the UTMB®" to becoming a unique race that is one of the most prestigious of the world. The start line at the centre of Courmayeur is tinged with an atmosphere that only Italians can provide, a rare emotional moment to the music of Vangelis.

The first kilometres, on an original route, different from the UTMB®, quickly lead to 2500m of altitude to one of the most exceptional panoramas one can imagine, facing the Mont-Blanc and the Grandes Jorasses. The passage of the Grand col Ferret (2537m) marks the entrance of the race in Switzerland, where the competitors will be warmly welcomed by the volunteers of La Fouly, Champex and Trient. Already in France but so close to Switzerland, anyone can enjoy the authenticity of Vallorcine, before discovering after an incredible ascension the Vallons des Chezerys, a true corner of paradise with a magnificent view on the Mont-Blanc chain. It is then time to finally reach the arrival arch in the heart of Chamonix. 

Those crazy bundy's

Cliven Bundy Spawn Boycott School When Told They Can't Bring Knives

ByAhiza Garcia

The son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy pulled his five children out of Clark County, Nev. schools on Thursday after getting into a disagreement with administrators over the ability to carry pocketknives at school.

The five students are the grandchildren of Cliven Bundy, a rancher who has previously engaged in armed clashes with the U.S. government over the use of federal land. The incident that sparked the removal involved Bundy's 15-year-old granddaughter whose school refused to allow her to bring a pocketknife to school, according to television station KSNV.

Her father, Ryan Bundy, disagreed with the school's labeling of the knife as a weapon and, per KSNV, said he has inculcated in his children the need to always carry a knife. His children affirmed his stance, saying that they utilize knives for chores but don't wield them as weapons.

"They're trying to make my child a criminal – and any other child a criminal – for simply having something, and that is not right," Bundy said.

Bundy said he hopes the administration will allow the pocketknives on campus so that the issue can be resolved, a sentiment his daughter echoes.

"I hope that somehow (sic) figures this out because I still would like to go to this school," she said. "I really don't want to be homeschooled."

Strangest

The 6 Strangest Libertarian Ideas
We must challenge libertarians on the extreme nature of their ideology.

By Richard Eskow

Few movements in the United States today harbor stranger political ideas than the self-proclaimed libertarians. The Rand Paul school of libertarianism is at least as far outside the mainstream on the right as, say, a rather doctrinaire old-school form of Marxism/Leninism is on the left. The difference is this: The mainstream media isn’t telling us that we’re in the middle of a “Marxist/Leninist moment.” Leninist politicians aren’t being touted as serious presidential contenders. And all the media chatter we’re hearing about a “Libertarian moment” ignores the very harsh, extreme and sometimes downright ugly ideas that are being disseminated under that banner.

It’s great to have allies like Rand Paul working alongside other Americans to defend our right to privacy, restrain the NSA and reduce the military/industrial complex’s grip on foreign policy. It’s possible to admire their political courage in these areas while at the same time recognize that we may not care for the environment they inhabit.

There’s another reason to challenge libertarians on the extreme nature of their ideology: A number of them seem determined to drive competing ideas out of the free market for ideas—which isn’t very libertarian of them. There has been a concerted effort to marginalize mainstream values and ideas about everything from workers’ rights to the role of government in national life. So by all means, let’s have an open debate. Let’s make sure that all ideas, no matter how unusual they may seem, are welcome for debate and consideration. But let’s not allow any political movement to become a Trojan horse, one which is allowed to have a “moment” without ever telling us what it really represents.

Obviously, not every self-proclaimed libertarian believes these ideas, but libertarianism is a space which nurtures them. Can the Republican Party really succeed by embracing this space? Why does the mainstream media treat libertarian ideas as somehow more legitimate than, say, the social welfare principles which guide Great Britain or Sweden?

Here are seven of modern libertarianism’s strangest and most extreme notions.

1. Parents should be allowed to let their children starve to death. We’re not making this up. From progressive writer Matt Bruenig (via Sean McElwee at Salon) comes this excerpt from libertarian economist Murray Rothbard:

“a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also … should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.”

Note the repetitive use of the word “it” to describe the child. This linguistic dehumanization of helpless individuals is surprisingly common in libertarian literature. (See Ayn Rand and the young Alan Greenspan for further examples.)

Rothbard is a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics, cofounded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and is widely admired among libertarians. He continues:

“The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such “neglect” down to a minimum.)”
In other words, society may have moral values, but it may not impose those values on anyone.

To his credit, Rothbard preaches a form of libertarianism which is internally consistent. That’s a virtue some of his peers in that community lack. But people should understand: this idea isn't an outlier in the libertarian world. It is, in fact, a logical outgrowth of the philosophy.

2. We must deregulate companies like Uber, even when they cheat. So-called ridesharing services like Lyft and Uber are actually taxi services using unlicensed contractors. They’re heavily promoted by libertarians who tout them as ideal examples of the free market as a counter to bureaucratized, more traditional taxicab services.

We now know that Uber is as ruthless in its anticompetitive tactics as it is hypocritical in its public statements. A recent report from the Verge shows that Uber employees frequently hire drivers from competitor Lyft for short, relatively unprofitable rides in an attempt to recruit them. Uber promised to “tone down” these tactics. Instead, in a related move, its employees made and then canceled 5,493 Lyft reservations, reducing the availability of Lyft drivers and hurting its drivers.

Yet here’s what Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had to say about taxis:

“The taxi industry [is] trying to protect a monopoly that has been granted them by local officials, so they're trying to slow down competition."

That sounds a lot like what Uber is doing. In a Twitter exchange this week, Kalanick insisted that Lyft drivers were welcome to sign with Uber while keeping their Lyft affiliation. But Uber lied to its own drivers about that recently in New York, when it sent out a text message falsely claiming that New York regulations barred them from signing with Lyft.

Have libertarians expressed their outrage with Uber for its dirty tricks, or for its assault on the idea of competition? Not at all. In fact, libertarian Nick Gillespie wrote in Time last March that, "Letting markets work to find new ways of delivering goods and services isn’t just better for customers in the short term, it’s the only way to unleash the innovation that ultimately propels long-term economic growth.”

Of course, “letting markets work” is precisely what Uber isn’t doing. Gillespie also expresses outrage that California has imposed regulations that include “mandatory criminal-background checks for drivers, licensing via public-utilities commissions, and driver-training programs.”

Which one of those things don’t you want to have in place when a driver comes to your house at four in the morning for an emergency drive to the hospital? But Gillespie equates regulators to “mobsters.”

(Update: Gillespie has been silent about these recent Uber revelations. For its part, Uber has hired former Obama aide David Plouffe, which means nothing politically but will help them leverage their market dominance and suppress competition even more. Expect further radio silence from the libertarian front.)

3. We should eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Libertarian/Republican icon Rand Paul holds with the libertarian faith in his steadfast opposition to both Medicare and Social Security. “The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed,” says Paul. “Socialism doesn’t work.”

Except that Medicare isn’t failing. It provides healthcare at lower direct cost, lower administrative cost, and with lower cost inflation than equivalent private-sector insurance. Its biggest efficiency problem stems from the runaway profit motive in the delivery of healthcare. Medicare must purchase goods and services from for-profit medical corporations, hospital chains and pharmaceutical companies. (Conservatives have forbidden it from negotiating prices with Big Pharma.)

In other words: It’s the private sector, not government, which is causing our country’s healthcare problems.

Social Security is entirely self-funded through its own contributions. It has far lower costs than any equivalent private program. Medicare and Social Security annoy libertarians, not because they don’t work, but because they do, putting “free enterprise” in the dust.

4. Society doesn’t have the right to enforce basic justice in public places of business. From Rep. Ron Paul, Sen. Paul’s father:

 “… the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

This was Rep. Paul’s reasoning in voting against a resolution which praised the Civil Rights Act. The libertarian position, as articulated by the Paul family, appears to be this: a business owner’s rights, even in a public place of business, extend to the ability to discriminate solely on the basis of skin color.

That is a violation of the United States Constitution, and of federal law. The libertarian position is that some laws cannot be enforced on private property. But which ones? If the government can’t forbid discrimination, can it forbid theft? Assault? Murder?

As with so many libertarian positions, the reasoning seems murky and the differences appear arbitrary. After all, won’t the free market eventually make a murderer’s business unpopular and force a correction to the killer’s behavior?

5. Selflessness is vile. From libertarian avatar and prophet Ayn Rand: “The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.”

Aid workers. Doctors Without Borders. Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr. Mother Teresa. In this libertarian view, all of them are “parasites” who make parasites of those they serve—because, of course, the free market would eventually eliminate poverty. (Never mind the millions who would starve in the meantime.)

Not only are these good people “parasites” in this libertarian view, they are deliberately parasitical (“in motive”). They lack the nobility of character needed to act purely out of self-interest, like the murderer Ayn Rand so admired. As Mark Ames reported in 2012, Rand,

“became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burn... Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation... on him.”

Rand described the child-killer as a “genuinely beautiful soul.” But that aid worker sweating in the Darfur heat, spooning food into a skeletal child’s mouth? Despicable.

This is not fringe libertarianism. Ayn Rand is its heart and soul.

6. Democracy is unacceptable, especially since we began feeding poor people and allowing women to vote. This isn’t a fringe idea, but one that was proclaimed in a prominent libertarian outlet by one of the movement’s leading funders:

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.

 Translation: Things have gone to hell with all those black and brown poor people around, especially with all those weak-willed women feeling sorry for them and voting to feed them. This isn’t your lunatic uncle talking.

These are the words of Peter Thiel, PayPal billionaire and leading libertarian, not spoken in a drunken rage at Thanksgiving dinner, but published in Cato Unbound, perhaps the nation’s leading libertarian outlet.

Thiel clearly felt the heat on this one, since he was forced to append a statement at the end saying, “It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us,” adding: “While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.”

Thiel’s prescription? “Escape” democracy by using technology to create spaces where the democratic process cannot go. His ideas include ocean colonization, or “seasteading"; outer space; and inevitably, “cyberspace.”

Unfortunately for the libertarian ethos, cyberspace is a government creation. The Internet, and the core technology which enables us to access it, were both created at government expense using government resources. But Thiel’s dream, the libertarian dream, is one in which publicly created tools, which should rightly be considered the modern “commons,” are usurped by a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals for their own undemocratic and noncompetitive purposes.

7. We can replace death with libertarianism. If they can’t bend us to their will in this lifetime, they’ll achieve the goal by other means. Thiel begins his Cato essay this way:

“I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.”

That’s right. The new libertarian ideology insists that private entrepreneurs will conquer death. Then they’ll force us to bend to their will in the new dominion of eternal life, whether in biochemically preserved flesh or as uploaded spirits in a digital netherworld. Either way, their freedom won’t be ours. Based on their past behavior, they’ll “monetize” our afterlife with advertising and by manipulating our artificial-life experiences.

Life extension has its merits, if handled humanely and justly. But an eternity of “curated content” governed by Silicon Valley billionaires? I’d rather die, thanks very much. And if the Republican Party accepts the “libertarian moment” as its new ideological covering, it apparently has a death wish too. 

Ukraine War

In Russia, Ukraine War Hits Home With Secret Funerals, Missing Men

By Glenn Kates

In early spring, Vladimir Putin deployed soldiers without insignia into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to ensure a quick annexation of the territory.

After a month of denying their very existence, the Russian president nonchalantly acknowledged that the thousands of well-armed fighters, who had previously been cheekily referred to as "little green men," were in fact Russian troops.

Decried in the West, Russians gave the move near unanimous support. A territory was won through military might -- and an overwhelming referendum vote that has not been recognized in the West -- but without a fight.

But now, as Moscow reinvigorates a flailing pro-Russian separatist insurgency with a barely concealed incursion into southeastern Ukraine, indications are that Russian military men are dying. And as captured Russian paratroopers are paraded on Ukrainian television and servicemen are buried in secrecy, some Russians are asking a seemingly simple question:

"Are we at war?"

The answer to the question, originally posed in an editorial in the "Vedomosti" business daily, is one that is becoming increasingly obvious for military families. It is the details that they say are not forthcoming.

In Kostroma, 1,300 kilometers from Russia's border with eastern Ukraine, family members of a group of 10 Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine say all their information has come from secondhand, online sources.

One mother, Olga Pochtoyeva, says when she originally approached officials with photos on her son's Vkontakte page that appeared to show he had been taken prisoner in Ukraine, her claims were dismissed as "provocations." "We showed them [these pictures] and they didn't believe it," she says. "It's Photoshop, they told us. I'm sorry, I'd never mistake my son's eyebrows for photoshop."

But the paratroopers, who have been paraded in front of cameras by Ukrainian authorities at least three times, are only the most public face of Russian military involvement.

Members of Russia's Presidential Council on Human Rights have asked Russia's Investigative Committee to verify information about the deaths of nine military contractors, while the Stavropol Committee of Soldiers' Mothers has compiled a list of 400 Russian troops who it says have recently been either killed or wounded.

The claims come amid evidence of secret funerals for Russian servicemen, reports of which began with small drips of information from Pskov, a small city in northern Russia.

On August 25 families buried Leonid Kichatkin and Aleksandr Osipov, two Russian paratroopers from a regiment based in the city. Some of the brigade's gear and documents had been spotted by Ukrainian journalists days earlier in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

State media did not provide coverage of the funerals and independent reporters who had come to inspect the paratroopers' gravestones were accosted by unidentified men.

"It was more like a threat than any sort of demand," Ilya Vasyunin, a journalist for the online Russian Planet news site, told RFE/RL's Russian Service. "They wanted to make sure we understood that there was no need to visit the cemetery or dig any deeper into the situation."

The names on the gravestones, which showed the dates of death as August 19 and 20, have since reportedly been removed.

There has been a near complete blackout in coverage of the funerals by Russia's state-controlled media and a message on Kichatkin's VKontakte page, apparently from his wife, which said the serviceman had been killed, has been removed. The families have since been unwilling to speak with media.

Meanwhile, reports of new funerals continue.

On August 25, Anton Korolenko, a commander -- apparently from the same Pskov-based paratrooper division -- was buried in Voronezh. A local journalist told RFE/RL's Russian Service that an unidentified family member had claimed the circumstances behind his death were a "secret," but that "he did not die in vain."

And in Russia's Urals republic of Bashkortostan, the mother of Marsel Arattanov told the independent Dozhd TV station that she had buried her son on August 22 after being ordered by the authorities to claim his body in Rostov, a Russian city near the border with Ukraine. "He was not on our territory when he died," Venera Arattanova said. "We have heard that they went to Ukrainian territory."

Asked about the funerals, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told the ITAR-TASS news agency the information was "being checked by the agencies concerned."

A NATO official said on August 28 that there were more than 1,000 Russian soldiers now serving with separatists in Ukraine. The head of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, Valentina Melnikova, said the number was as high as 15,000. And Aleksandr Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic," admitted that there were members of the Russian military serving with the rebels, though he said they had come during their "vacations."

Although Russians have been largely supportive of pro-Russian separatists, in a survey conducted by the government-backed Public Opinion Foundation, just 5 percent of respondents said they would favor sending troops into Ukraine.

Families of soldiers still unaccounted for fear the worst. "It's absolutely ridiculous," says Ella Polyakova, a member of Putin's advisory council on human rights, who so far has been unsuccessful in using official channels to gather information. "People are demanding answers -- where are their sons?"

Us - Enhanced Interrogation. Them - Torture....

Captives held by Islamic State were waterboarded

By Adam Goldman and Julie Tate

At least four hostages held in Syria by the Islamic State, including an American journalist who was recently executed by the group, were waterboarded in the early part of their captivity, according to people familiar with the treatment of the kidnapped Westerners.

James Foley was among the four who were waterboarded several times by Islamic State militants who appeared to model the technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Waterboarding often involves strapping a person down on a gurney or bench and pouring cold water over a cloth covering the face. It causes the sensation of drowning. “The wet cloth creates a barrier through which it is difficult — or in some cases not possible — to breathe,” according to a Justice Department memo in May 2005 about the CIA’s use of the technique.

President Obama has condemned waterboarding as torture.

“They knew exactly how it was done,” a person with direct knowledge of what happened to the hostages said of the Islamic State militants. The person, who discussed the hostages’ experience on the condition of anonymity, said the captives were held in Raqqah, a city in north-central Syria.

The Islamic State beheaded Foley last week in apparent retaliation for U.S. airstrikes on Iraq, where the militant group has seized large swaths of territory. The group, which also controls parts of Syria, has threatened to kill another American, journalist Steven J. Sotloff. He was seen at the end of a video the Islamic State released that showed Foley’s killing. Two other Americans are being held by the group.

A second person familiar with Foley’s time in captivity confirmed that he was tortured, including by waterboarding.

“Yes, that is part of the information that bubbled up, and Jim was subject to it,” the person said. “I believe he suffered a lot of physical abuse.”


Foley’s mother, Diane, said Thursday that she had not been informed previously that her son had been waterboarded.

The FBI, which is investigating Foley’s death and the abduction of Americans in Syria, declined to comment. The CIA had no official comment.

“ISIL is a group that routinely crucifies and beheads people,” said a U.S. official, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State. “To suggest that there is any correlation between ISIL’s brutality and past U.S. actions is ridiculous and feeds into their twisted propaganda.”


Waterboarding was one of the interrogation techniques adopted by the CIA and sanctioned by the Justice Department when the agency opened a series of secret overseas prisons to question terrorism suspects.

Three CIA detainees — Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — were waterboarded while held in secret CIA prisons. Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded 183 times, according to a memo issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The three men, along with 11 other so-called high-value detainees, were transferred to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006, when President George W. Bush closed the CIA’s overseas prisons.

Upon entering office, Obama outlawed the use of coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.
Critics of waterboarding have said for years that the practice endangered Americans, putting them at risk of being subjected to the same brutal treatment at the hands of the enemy.

“Waterboarding dates to the Spanish Inquisition and has been a favorite of dictators through the ages, including Pol Pot and the regime in Burma,” Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) said in an op-ed in 2008. “Condoning torture opens the door for our enemies to do the same to captured American troops in the future.”


The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a report asserting that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques used by CIA operatives were not effective, said Feinstein, who chairs the panel. Former agency employees dispute that conclusion.

French journalist Didier François, who was imprisoned with Foley, has told reporters that Foley was targeted for extra abuse because his captors found pictures on his computer of his brother, who serves in the U.S. Air Force.

François said Foley was subjected to mock executions — something suspected al-Qaeda operative Nashiri also endured while being held in a secret CIA prison, according to a report by the inspector general of the CIA. The Justice Department did not sanction mock executions.

François was kidnapped by the Islamic State in June 2013 and held for 10 months. He and three other French journalists were released near the Turkish border.

U.S. and British intelligence officials said they’re close to identifying Foley’s killer among a group of British men who traveled to Syria to fight and appear to have held him, François and the others hostage.

On Wednesday, Sotloff’s mother released a video in which she made an emotional plea for the leader of the Islamic State to free her son.

“Please release my child,” Shirley Sotloff said. “And as a mother, I ask your justice to be merciful and not punish my son for matters he has no control over.”


On Thursday, Islamic State militants released another video of the purported beheading of one of their prisoners — this time an Iraqi Kurdish fighter who was killed for his government’s alliance with the United States.

Bomb the shit out of them....

ISIS militants carry out apparent mass execution in Syria

From CBS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed more than 160 troops captured in recent fighting for a string of military bases in northeastern Syria, shooting some and slashing others with knives in the past 24 hours in the latest mass killing attributed to the extremists, activists said Thursday.

In southern Syria meanwhile, gunmen detained 43 U.N. peacekeepers during fighting on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, the United Nations said. It added that another 81 peacekeepers were trapped in the area by the heavy clashes between rebels and Syrian troops.

The killing of government troops, combined with photos of dusty, terrified conscripts under militant guard in the desert, underscored how the extremist group uses violence - and images of violence - to instill fear in its opponents as it seeks to expand the proto-state it has carved out in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that many of the soldiers killed were rounded up Wednesday in the arid countryside near the Tabqa airfield, three days after ISIS fighters seized the base. The government troops were among a large group of soldiers from the base who were stuck behind the front lines after the airfield fell to the jihadi fighters.

The Observatory said around 120 captive government troops from Tabqa were killed near the base. ISIS fighters killed at least another 40 soldiers, most of whom were taken prisoner in recent fighting for other bases in the area, in the Hamrat region near Raqqa city, the group's stronghold.

A statement posted online and circulated on Twitter by supporters of ISIS claimed the extremists killed "about 200" government prisoners captured near Tabqa. It also showed photographs of what it said were the prisoners: young men stripped down to their underwear marching in the desert. The photos could not immediately be verified, but correspond to other AP reporting.

A video that emerged online purportedly showed ISIS fighters escorting nearly 200 men, stripped down to their underwear and barefoot, through the desert. Another video posted online later showed more than 150 men, also in their underwear, lying motionless - apparently dead - in a row in the sand.

While the videos could not be independently confirmed by the AP, they appeared to illustrate the claims made online by ISIS supporters and Syrian activists about the mass killing.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Meanwhile, a second American from the Minneapolis area has been killed while fighting for ISIS, according to family and friends. The death follows that of Douglas McCain, an American who grew up in Minnesota. McCain,33, was killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria over the weekend.

According to jihadist tweets and social media, the second American was not killed in Syria but was killed in Iraq on or around August 17.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that U.S. forces have hit ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria could be next.

Speaking before a meeting with his national security advisors, President Obama said degrading Islamic State militants is going to require a "regional strategy" and assistance from partners in the Middle East.

He said it's time for states in the region to "stop being ambivalent" about the aims of such extremist groups.
Obama played down the prospect of imminent U.S. military action in Syria on Thursday, saying "we don't have a strategy yet" for defeating ISIS.

The Wednesday meeting is to to discuss options for going after the militant group. The U.S. is already going after militant targets inside Iraq and officials say Obama is considering taking similar action in Syria.

The surveillance missions expected to begin flying over Syria are a major step toward launching airstrikes against ISIS bases there. A senior Pentagon official said this week that one of the primary objectives of the missions is to determine how ISIS commands and controls its forces - who are its senior leaders and how do they communicate?

Syria has warned the U.S. not to fly over its territory, but its air defenses are trained on its archenemy, Israel, and are not considered a serious threat in the part of the country where American planes will be flying.

In its rise to prominence over the past year, ISIS has frequently published graphic photos and videos of everything from beheadings to mass killings.

In Iraq, for example, the group killed nearly 200 men - most of them Iraqi soldiers - in late June near the northern city of Tikrit, human rights groups and Iraqi officials say. It published photos online showing dozens of men dressed in civilian clothes lined up or lying face down as militants aimed rifles at their backs. A final set of photos showed their bloodied bodies.

Such killings have not been limited to Iraq. Earlier this month, ISIS fighters shot and beheaded hundreds of tribesmen in eastern Syria who had risen up against the group.

A U.N. commission accused ISIS Wednesday of committing crimes against humanity in Syria - echoing U.N. accusations against the group in Iraq.

ISIS' surge is one aspect of Syria's multi-layered civil war, a bloody conflict that has killed more than 190,000 people and destabilized the region.

The 43 U.N. peacekeepers were detained by an armed group early Thursday in the Golan, where fighting has raged this week between Syrian rebels and government forces.

The office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did not identify the armed group that is holding the peacekeepers. Several rebel groups operate in the Golan, while the Islamic State group has no known presence there.

The U.N. said another 81 peacekeepers are "currently being restricted to their positions" in the vicinity of Ruwaihaniyeh and Burayqa.

The Syrian government denounced the "kidnapping" of the U.N. peacekeepers. In a statement issued by the Syrian Foreign Ministry, the government said it holds "the terrorist groups and those who support them fully responsible for the safety of the U.N. peacekeepers, and calls for their immediate release."

The statement from Ban's office said the U.N. "is making every effort to secure the release of the detained peacekeepers," who are part of UNDOF, the mission that has been monitoring a 1974 disengagement accord between Syria and Israel after their 1973 war.

As of July, UNDOF had 1,223 troops from six countries: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, Netherlands and the Philippines.

Syrian rebels briefly abducted U.N. peacekeepers twice in 2013 before eventually releasing them unharmed.
Heavy fighting has engulfed the Syrian side of the Golan since Wednesday, when rebels captured a crossing on the disputed frontier with Israel. A rebel spokesman said the opposition is focused on fighting President Bashar Assad, and poses no threat to Israel.

On Thursday, government warplanes targeted several rebel positions in the area, including in the village of Jaba, the Observatory said. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, also reported the air raids.

The Observatory said heavy clashes were raging between the rebels and the Syrian military in Jaba and the surrounding countryside.

White plumes of smoke set off by exploding mortar rounds could be seen on Thursday from the Israeli side of the Golan. The sound of small arms fire could be heard echoing in the background.

Quote

'We don't have a strategy yet': What everyone gets wrong about the quote that will haunt Obama

Updated by Zack Beauchamp

When President Obama gave a press conference Thursday afternoon on Iraq and Ukraine, he mostly reiterated things he or his aides had already said. But there was one line that'll be quoted again and again, particularly by critics.

When asked about whether his future plans for combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) required congressional authorization, Obama ducked. "I don't want to put the cart before the horse," he said, before uttering the line that'll likely haunt him for the rest of his presidency.

"We don't have a strategy yet."

On one level, it's an absolutely devastating indictment of the administration's approach to Iraq and Syria. The president took pains to emphasize the fact that his administration had been warning the Iraqi government, for at least a year, about the threat from ISIS. If his administration was so concerned about ISIS, why didn't it have a plan for dealing with its advance in place? Why do they seemingly have no plan for kicking ISIS, perhaps the most dangerous extremist group in the world, out of the Maryland-sized territory it controls?

Hitting Obama for dithering in the face of a crisis is a pretty venerable line of attack, dating back to Obama's lengthy review of Afghanistan policy at the beginning of his first administration. It pairs well with another common criticism: that the president simply has no vision for handling the major challenges in world politics, and simply lurches from crisis to crisis without any vision of how to string them together.

"We don't have a strategy yet" seems to vindicate both at the same time. It sounds like Obama is admitting that he has no idea what he's doing in Iraq.

There's also a more sympathetic interpretation.

Viewed in context with the rest of his remarks, Obama's point might be that there is no good strategy available for fully defeating ISIS in both Iraq and Syria — which is both consistent with his approach the crisis in those countries, in which he has primarily avoided risky escalation, and perhaps true.

Throughout Obama's addresses on ISIS, including this press conference, he's emphasized the need for a political strategy to defeat ISIS, one that focuses not on Washington but on Baghdad and, in an ideal world, Damascus. Barring political reform in the Iraqi government, and the development of some sort of peace in Syria, it'll be really hard to fully defeat ISIS. In a changing, complicated situation, Obama's thinking has long seemed to be, it's better not to prematurely commit to a specific problem that might not fit the changing situation.

You can't have a strategy for what can't be done, in other words.

Whether you're inclined to be charitable to Obama here depends on whether you think Obama's assessment of the ISIS situation is correct. If you agree with him, and think the the US can't plausibly defeat ISIS on its own, then you also probably don't think the US needs a comprehensive strategy for ISIS — the regional actors of the Middle East do.

If, on the other hand, you think the United States could make, or could have made, a real difference on the ground, then "we don't have a strategy" vindicates everything you've ever suspected about the president's foreign policy.

28,000 children

Lives cut short: Bullets killed 28,000 children, teens between 2002 and 2012

On average, that came to seven youths every day

By Kate Murphy and Jordan Rubio

For every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan during 11 years of war, at least 13 children were shot and killed in America.

More than 450 kids didn’t make it to kindergarten. Another 2,700 or more were killed by a firearm before they could sit behind the wheel of a car. Every day, on average, seven children were shot dead.

A News21 investigation of child and youth deaths in America between 2002 and 2012 found that at least 28,000 children and teens 19-years-old and younger were killed with guns. Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in America.

The News21 findings are compiled in the most complete database to date from records obtained from 49 state health departments and FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports.

“It’s an unacceptable number and it should be regardless of where you stand on gun-owning ideology,” said Colette Martin, a member of Parents Against Gun Violence. “The numbers are that high and we are as a country ignoring them.”

Most of those killed by firearms, 62 percent, were murdered and the majority of victims were black children and teens. Suicides resulted in 25 percent of the firearm deaths of young people: The majority of them were white. More than 1,100 children and teens were killed by a gun that accidentally discharged.

Zeke Cohen, executive director of The Intersection, a Baltimore youth advocacy group, said the dialogue on guns only seems to pierce the national consciousness when there’s a mass shooting in an affluent white suburban community, such as the one where he grew up.

The American gun debate, he said, rarely takes into account the number of black youth who are murdered every day. “We as a country tolerate violence when it is in low-income black communities,” Cohen said. “Because we’ve come to accept that the acceptable face of gun deaths is black, we allow it to continue to happen.”

Dawnya Johnson was 11 years old when her already broken life was shattered further. Her mom was addicted to drugs, her dad was in prison, and she was tossed from foster home to foster home. She found solace in her older cousin, but that protection was left on a bloody sidewalk. Johnson’s cousin was shot six times in the back and he bled to death before the ambulance got to the scene. He was 17.

“He had taken on the role of two people who were unable to take care of me at that time,” Johnson said. “This beam of support had been ripped from under me.”

Her cousin had lost his job and started selling drugs to make ends meet. When Johnson’s foster families wouldn’t give her food or buy her clothes, he always found a way to get her what she needed.

“My cousin made sure that I had the basic stuff and that I had Nikes and looked fresh every day,” Johnson said. “No kid would ever know if we were homeless or I was hungry walking in the door.”

A young black girl growing up on her own in inner-city Baltimore, in a state with one of the highest percentage of black youth gun deaths in the nation, she said she doesn’t live in fear. “I’ve become desensitized to fear,” Johnson said. “Once something happens so many times and it repeats itself it becomes something that you don’t fear.”

Jennifer Rauhouse, executive director of Peer Solutions, an Arizona-based organization that looks to prevent violence from occurring, said gun violence was a manifestation of other issues, such as child abuse, sexual abuse and bullying. “If we don’t get to the heart of the question of gun violence, we’re doomed,” said Rauhouse, who founded the organization.

It’s not enough to react after a shooting, she said. Steps have to be taken to prevent that sort of violence from occurring in the first place. Eli Chevalier, a high school senior and member of Peer Solutions, said the group works to prevent violence by teaching middle- and high-school students that respect and equality are the norm, not violence.

“People won’t turn to drugs and violence if they have respect and equality in their lives and in their relationships,” Chevalier said.

Cohen started The Intersection, a Baltimore youth advocacy group, after he was held at gunpoint in his Maryland apartment and realized how many kids live with gun violence in their neighborhoods. Johnson, an active member and student leader of The Intersection, lives with it every day.

“For my students, it’s having hope and feeling like they are playing a constructive role in bettering their communities,” Cohen said. “One of the challenges when you’re dealing with communities is that the victims of the gun violence often have a feeling of disenfranchisement.”

All of the students at The Intersection have been affected by gun violence. They’ve lost family or friends, been shot at or caught in shootouts.

“Our students are attempting to change that narrative and dismantle the amount of violence in our city,” Cohen said. The state of Maryland had one of the highest percentages of black youth gun deaths from 2002 to 2012. In 11 years, more than 600 black kids were shot and killed in their homes or on the street.

“Kids are getting killed, but the reality is America has played such a role in shaping these communities, there is a responsibility that we have to solve this problem,” Cohen said. The conversation can’t be just about guns, it’s more about racism and poverty, he said.

“There is too much access. It’s easier for a child to buy a firearm in Baltimore than it is to buy a pack of cigarettes,” Cohen said. “The less guns that are available, the less gun deaths we are going to have, but that doesn’t solve the problem.”

“This is not a Maryland problem, this is an American problem.” Suicides by gunfire, on the other hand, made up the majority of gun deaths among white youth, accounting for an average of 644 every year.

“A gun doesn’t cause the suicidality, but a suicidal person with access to a gun is far more likely to die from an attempt than someone using another method,” said Elaine Frank, the director of Counseling on Access to Lethal Means. “It’s the combination of accessibility, familiarity, lethality and really short time frame that’s offered by a firearm.”

In New Hampshire, where CALM is based, more than 95 percent of all young people killed by guns were white youths and 70 percent of them committed suicide, News21 found.

As a former program director of the injury prevention center at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth in New Hampshire, Frank helped develop a state plan on suicide prevention, from which the state developed a suicide prevention council. According to Frank it’s not the gun laws that are going to prevent suicide - it has to be more of a family, community and cultural change.

“We are not anti-gun, we aren’t saying that gun use is a problem or gun ownership is a problem,” Frank said. “What we are opposed to is gun misuse and we do consider the ill-attempt by a child misuse.”

With a fairly rural culture, New Hampshire kids grow up with guns and are taught gun safety. They are familiar with firearms and most teenagers know where the guns are kept.

“If someone is suicidal and if they have easy access to highly lethal means, specifically firearms, it greatly increases the risk that if they do make an attempt it will be a lethal attempt,” Frank said. Vermont, another rural New England state, also is facing the problem of youth suicides, with 73 percent of its youth gun deaths being suicides.

“Particularly in young people, the time of risk is often very short,” Frank said. “The time from making the decision to make an attempt, to actually making an attempt can be very, very short. There’s not enough time to say I don’t want to do this.”

Accidents involving guns are the third-largest cause of firearm deaths for youths, after murder and suicide. More than 1,100 kids have been killed by a gun that accidentally discharged, the News21 analysis showed.

James Parker was 12 years old when he was accidentally shot and killed by a family member. He was hunting with his dad, uncle and step brother in Wake Forest, North Carolina, when a shotgun blast took his life.

Sincere Tymere Smith was 2 when he fatally shot himself with his father’s gun on Christmas in Conway, South Carolina. His father, who bought the gun after a previous break-in, was charged with involuntary manslaughter after the toddler grabbed the gun as it was lying on the table and shot himself in the chest.

Ryder Rozier was 3 when he stumbled across a gun in his uncle’s bedroom and shot himself in the head in Guthrie, Oklahoma. The gun belonged to his uncle, a state trooper

Neegnco Xiong was 2 when he was shot by his 4-year-old brother, who found a gun under their father’s pillow in Minneapolis. The gun did not have a safety on it. The father was charged with second-degree manslaughter and endangerment of a child.

William Rees was 14 when he shot himself at his grandparent’s house in Fremont County, Idaho. He was shooting targets when his pistol went off and pierced his abdomen. All were killed in 2012.

“Any gun that ends up in the hands of a child is first passed through the hands of an adult,” said Colette Martin, a member of Parents Against Gun Violence. “We have a lot of responsibility and accountability when it comes to legal gun owners who allow children to access their guns unsupervised.”

Teens between 15 and 19 were the most likely to be killed by the unintentional pull of a trigger, accounting for half of such deaths. “These are the cases that keep me up at night because they are 100 percent preventable,” said Martin, a gun owner and stay-at-home mom, “and I will not be swayed from that belief.”

Whether homicide, suicide or accident, every four hours a child’s life was taken by a bullet during the 11-year period from 2002 to 2012. That’s the equivalent of the Sandy Hook massacre every three days.

More than 19,000 high school-aged students never got to walk across the stage and get a diploma.

“No gun law is going to change anything at this point,” Rauhouse said. “We make it about the guns and we’re not worried about our kids. People should be focusing on why gun violence exists and trying to prevent it from occurring.”

Other gun-control activists argue that gun-storage laws need to be implemented.

“Gun-storage laws with teeth behind them would stop some of the gun deaths that happen in homes,” said Martin, of Parents Against Gun Violence. “It’s a really important piece of federal law that’s missing. Responsible gun owners do it already, it’s not an infringement of a Second Amendment right.”

There are currently 28 states and Washington, D.C., with a child access prevention law, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. These laws impose criminal liability on adults who do not properly store their guns when children are in the house.

“The gun lobby is very powerful. Elected officials are out of step with what the general public wants,” said Gerry Hills, founder of Arizonans for Gun Safety. “Americans are not serious about protecting youths and preventing gun violence.

Surf

Surfing competition in Tahiti is in full gear now.

 How to do it right...

How not to do it...

NGC 7380

Open star cluster NGC 7380 is still embedded inits natal cloud of interstellar gas and dust popularly known as the Wizard Nebula. Seen with foreground and background stars along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy it lies some 8,000 light-years distant, toward the constellation Cepheus. A full moon would easily fit inside this telescopic view of the 4 million year young cluster and associated nebula, normally much too faint to be seen by eye. Made with telescope and camera firmly planted on Earth, the image reveals multi light-year sized shapes and structures within the Wizard in a color palette made popular in Hubble Space Telescope images. Recorded with narrowband filters, the visible wavelength light from the nebula's hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms is transformed into green, blue, and red colors in the final digital composite. But there is still a trick up the Wizard's sleeve. Remove the stars to see the Nebula clearly...

Tropical Storm Marie

When NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an image of what is now Tropical Storm Marie, weakened from hurricane status on August 28, the strongest thunderstorms were located in the southern quadrant of the storm.

NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an image of Marie on August 28 at 11 a.m. EDT. Bands of thunderstorms circled the storm especially to the north. The National Hurricane Center noted that Marie has continued to produce a small area of convection (rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up Marie) south and east of the center during some hours on the morning of August 28. The GOES image was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Infrared data, such as that from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite showed that cloud tops had warmed. Warming cloud tops means that the strength in the uplift of air (that pushes cloud tops higher into the colder levels of the atmosphere) has weakened, and clouds are not getting as high as they did before. The higher the thunderstorms, the stronger they usually are, but Marie's are dropping in height.

Marie is not able to generate strong thunderstorms because it has moved over cooler waters. Sea surface temperatures of at least 80 F (26.6 C) are needed to maintain a hurricane's strength. Marie is in waters as cool as 22C (71.6F).

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) Marie's maximum sustained winds were down to 45 mph (75 kph) and weakening. Marie was centered near latitude 25.4 north and longitude 128.9 west, about 865 miles (1,395 km) west of Punta Eugenia, Mexico. Marie is moving northwest at 15 mph (24 kph).


The NHC expects Marie should become post-tropical by tonight, August 28. Meanwhile Marie continues kicking up rough surf. Large southerly swells affecting much of the west coast of the Baja California peninsula and the coast of southern California will gradually subside through Friday, August 29. These swells could still produce life-threatening surf and rip currents, as well as minor coastal flooding around the time of high tide.

NGC 2547-ID8 Asteroid Smashup

NASA's Spitzer Telescope Witnesses Asteroid Smashup

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted an eruption of dust around a young star, possibly the result of a smashup between large  s. This type of collision can eventually lead to the formation of planets.

Scientists had been regularly tracking the star, called NGC 2547-ID8, when it surged with a huge amount of fresh dust between August 2012 and January 2013.

"We think two big asteroids crashed into each other, creating a huge cloud of grains the size of very fine sand, which are now smashing themselves into smithereens and slowly leaking away from the star," said lead author and graduate student Huan Meng of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

While dusty aftermaths of suspected asteroid collisions have been observed by Spitzer before, this is the first time scientists have collected data before and after a planetary system smashup. The viewing offers a glimpse into the violent process of making rocky planets like ours.

Rocky planets begin life as dusty material circling around young stars. The material clumps together to form asteroids that ram into each other. Although the asteroids often are destroyed, some grow over time and transform into proto-planets. After about 100 million years, the objects mature into full-grown, terrestrial planets. Our moon is thought to have formed from a giant impact between proto-Earth and a Mars-size object.

In the new study, Spitzer set its heat-seeking infrared eyes on the dusty star NGC 2547-ID8, which is about 35 million years old and lies 1,200 light-years away in the Vela constellation. Previous observations had already recorded variations in the amount of dust around the star, hinting at possible ongoing asteroid collisions. In hope of witnessing an even larger impact, which is a key step in the birth of a terrestrial planet, the astronomers turned to Spitzer to observe the star regularly. Beginning in May 2012, the telescope began watching the star, sometimes daily.

A dramatic change in the star came during a time when Spitzer had to point away from NGC 2547-ID8 because our sun was in the way. When Spitzer started observing the star again five months later, the team was shocked by the data they received.

"We not only witnessed what appears to be the wreckage of a huge smashup, but have been able to track how it is changing -- the signal is fading as the cloud destroys itself by grinding its grains down so they escape from the star," said Kate Su of the University of Arizona and co-author on the study. "Spitzer is the best telescope for monitoring stars regularly and precisely for small changes in infrared light over months and even years."

A very thick cloud of dusty debris now orbits the star in the zone where rocky planets form. As the scientists observe the star system, the infrared signal from this cloud varies based on what is visible from Earth. For example, when the elongated cloud is facing us, more of its surface area is exposed and the signal is greater. When the head or the tail of the cloud is in view, less infrared light is observed. By studying the infrared oscillations, the team is gathering first-of-its-kind data on the detailed process and outcome of collisions that create rocky planets like Earth.

"We are watching rocky planet formation happen right in front of us," said George Rieke, a University of Arizona co-author of the new study. "This is a unique chance to study this process in near real-time."

The team is continuing to keep an eye on the star with Spitzer. They will see how long the elevated dust levels persist, which will help them calculate how often such events happen around this and other stars, and they might see another smashup while Spitzer looks on.

The results of this study are posted online Thursday in the journal Science.  

Invading

Let's be clear about this: Russia is invading Ukraine right now

By Max Fisher

There are two things happening between Ukraine and Russia right now. First, Russian and Ukrainian leaders are meeting in Belarus to negotiate a peace deal in the Ukrainian conflict that Russia insists it has nothing to do with. Second, Russian military forces are crossing the border into Ukraine in what is clearly a hostile invasion and act of war. That includes Russian artillery, Russian tanks, Russian-trained irregular forces, and even uniformed Russian soldiers who have admitted on camera that they are Russian military ordered to invade by their commanders.

But the first piece of that is obfuscating the second. Getting Russia to agree to a peace deal on Ukraine requires lots of careful diplomacy, and that means that no one wants to formally acknowledge Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even though Russia is definitely invading Ukraine right now.

When is a Russian invasion of a neighboring country an incursion and an escalation, but not actually an invasion? When acknowledging that is in an invasion would complicate diplomacy to the point that ending the invasion could become much harder.

But there's more behind this confusion than just careful diplomacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin learned a crucial lesson from Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad last year, when the latter got away with using chemical weapons against his own people.

That lesson is this: the Western world can set all the red lines it wants — don't use chemical weapons, don't invade sovereign countries — but if you cross that red line just a little bit at a time, inching across over weeks and months, rather than crossing it all at once, then Western publics and politicians will get red-line fatigue and lose interest by the time you're across.

Had Assad just openly dropped tons of sarin gas on his own people one day, the world probably would have responded much more forcefully than it did. Instead, cynically but smartly, Assad spent months using very small amounts of chemical weapons at a time. He created lots of uncertainty around individual incidents: had the chemical weapons killed anyone? Been used at all? Were they used accidentally, or even by rebels who'd stolen them? He kicked inspectors out, then kept them in; he cooperated, then didn't.

By the time Assad fired sarin-filled rockets at the neighborhood of Ghouta, murdering hundreds of civilians, including a number of children, the world had already acclimated to the idea that Assad was probably using chemical weapons. Western leaders could only muster so much outrage, and Western publics could only be so shocked, because everyone sorta, kinda knew that this was already happening and was going unpunished. There was no clear moment at which Assad had crossed the chemical weapons red line, so one day we woke up and realized he was miles on the wrong side of it, and it was too late to muster enough global outrage to push him back.

That's what Putin did in eastern Ukraine this summer. First he began quietly supporting the separatist rebels there, then arming them. Then an awful lot of military-trained Russian nationals started slipping in, as Moscow had done before when invading and annexing Crimea in March.

In July, in the weeks before boneheaded rebels shot down a civilian airliner and killed 298 people, Russia began shipping them high-grade military technology, including surface-to-air missile systems. Shortly after the airliner shoot-down, Russian artillery in Russia began firing at Ukrainian military forces in Ukraine — an overt act of war. Then NATO said it caught Russia sending an "incursion" force across the border, which Ukraine claimed to destroy. Later, according to the rebel leader in Ukraine, 30 Russian tanks and up to 1,200 Russian-trained troops did manage to cross. By August 22nd, Russian artillery units were reportedly crossing the border into Ukraine, and a few days later, Ukraine captured "rebels" who admitted to being Russian soldiers sent under formal order.

Russia's meddling in eastern Ukraine became a stealth invasion, which has become an overt invasion. But it was all done just gradually enough, and with just enough uncertainty around each incremental escalation, that Russia has managed to invade a sovereign European country, in the year 2014, without sparking any larger war or the credible threat of any substantial response beyond sanctions.

That's not to argue that Western countries should have responded with more sanctions (even that took substantial cajoling from the US), but the point is that Putin shrewdly prevented it from happening by playing on the vulnerabilities of Western democracies: short attention spans, rapid war fatigue, and the often-unwise pull of popular opinion.

GOP and women

Exclusive: GOP poll of women: Party 'stuck in past'

By JAKE SHERMAN and ANNA PALMER 

A detailed report commissioned by two major Republican groups — including one backed by Karl Rove — paints a dismal picture for Republicans, concluding female voters view the party as “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion” and “stuck in the past.”

Women are “barely receptive” to Republicans’ policies, and the party does “especially poorly” with women in the Northeast and Midwest, according to an internal Crossroads GPS and American Action Network report obtained by POLITICO. It was presented to a small number of senior aides this month on Capitol Hill, according to multiple sources involved.

Republicans swore they’d turn around the party’s performance with women after Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012. And while they are in good shape in 2014, poised to pick up seats in the House and possibly take the majority in the Senate, the new report shows that they have not improved their standing with women — which could exacerbate their problems if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee in 2016.

The report — “Republicans and Women Voters: Huge Challenges, Real Opportunities” — was the product of eight focus groups across the country and a poll of 800 registered female voters this summer. The large-scale project was a major undertaking for the GOP groups.

“The gender gap is hardly a new phenomenon, but nevertheless it’s important for conservatives to identify what policies best engage women, and our project found multiple opportunities,” said Dan Conston, a spokesman for the American Action Network. “It’s no surprise that conservatives have more work to do with women.”

Republicans in D.C. say they recognize the problem. Republicans who have seen or been briefed on the polling were not surprised about the outcome. The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Axis Research.

Paul Lindsey, the spokesman for Rove-backed Crossroads GPS, said, “There are a number of House policymakers and staff who have been willing to focus on issues important to women, and we think it’s important that they are aware of the policy solutions that are available to help address these concerns.”

The solutions offered include neutralizing Democratic attacks that the GOP doesn’t support “fairness” for women; “deal honestly with any disagreement on abortion, then move to other issues”; and “pursue policy innovations that inspire women voters to give the GOP a ‘fresh look.’”

The report is blunt about the party’s problems. It says 49 percent of women view Republicans unfavorably, while just 39 percent view Democrats unfavorably.

It also found that Republicans “fail to speak to women in the different circumstances in which they live” — as breadwinners, for example. “This lack of understanding and acknowledgment closes many minds to Republican policy solutions,” the report says. The groups urge Republicans to embrace policies that “are not easily framed as driven by a desire to aid employers or ‘the rich.’”

Two policies former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor promoted as a way to make inroads with middle-class women and families — charter schools and flexible work schedules — were actually the least popular policies among female voters.

Republicans have long had a troubled relationship with female voters, but this report, which comes out just months before Election Day, is the most recent detailed illustration of the problem. Republicans have several initiatives to attract female candidates and voters. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the No. 4 House Republican, for example, is spearheading her chamber’s effort. The Republican National Committee is trying to engage women in 25 “targeted counties for the midterm election,” a spokesman said.

One bright spot is among married women. Married women without a college degree view Republicans favorably, the polling shows. Married women prefer a Republican over a Democrat, 48 percent to 38 percent.

“Just like a gender gap exists, a marriage gap also exists,” Conston said. “While young unmarried women have always skewed liberal, the polling found married women across the country are far more likely to be conservative and are receptive to center-right policies.”

But the GOP appears to have a long way to go when it comes to capturing a significant slice of the female electorate.

Even on fiscal matters — traditionally the party’s strongest issue set — Republicans hold only slight advantages that do not come close to outweighing their negative attributes. The GOP holds a 3 percent advantage over Democrats when female voters are asked who has “good ideas to grow the economy and create jobs,” and the same advantage on who is “fiscally responsible and can be trusted with our tax dollars.”

When female voters are asked who “wants to make health care more affordable,” Democrats have a 39 percent advantage, and a 40 percent advantage on who “looks out for the interests of women.” Democrats have a 39 percent advantage when it comes to who “is tolerant of other people’s lifestyles.”

Female voters who care about the top four issues — the economy, health care, education and jobs — vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Most striking, Democrats hold a 35-point advantage with female voters who care about jobs and a 26 percent advantage when asked which party is willing to compromise. House Republicans say jobs and the economy are their top priorities.

Andrea Bozek, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the party’s candidates “across the country are speaking directly to female voters both on the campaign trail and in their television ads.”

But in Washington, Republican policies have failed to sway women — in fact, they appear to have turned women off. For example, the focus groups and polls found that women “believe that ‘enforcing equal pay for equal work’ is the policy that would ‘help women the most.’”

“Republicans who openly deny the legitimacy of the issue will be seen as out of touch with women’s life experiences,” the report warned, hinting at GOP opposition to pay-equity legislation. It’s the policy item independents and Democrats believe will help women the most.

The groups suggest a three-pronged approach to turning around their relationship with women. First, they suggest the GOP “neutralize the Democrats’” attack that Republicans don’t support fairness for women. They suggest Republican lawmakers criticize Democrats for “growing government programs that encourage dependency rather than opportunities to get ahead.” That message tested better than explaining that the GOP supports a number of policies that could help fairness for women.

Second, the groups suggest Republicans “deal honestly with any disagreement on abortion, then move to other issues.” And third, “pursue policy innovations that inspire women voters to give the GOP a ‘fresh look.’” The report suggests lawmakers and candidates inject “unexpected” GOP policy proposals into the debate as a way to sway female voters. Suggestions include ways to improve job-training programs, “strengthening enforcement against gender bias in the workplace” and “expanding home health care services by allowing more health care professionals to be paid by Medicare for home health services.”

Katie Packer Gage, a political strategist who focuses on improving GOP standing with female voters, said women think of “old, white, right, out of touch” men when they think of the Republican Party.

“I think a lot of folks are whistling past the graveyard on this … Certainly if Hillary is on the top of the ticket for Democrats, it is going to be a significant challenge for us,” she said in an interview. “Maybe we’ll see women on our side that will step up as well. … We have to quit sitting back and taking it on the chin. I think we have to play offense on this.”