CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
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News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
Saturday, February 22, 2014
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PEACE: A HARD SELL IN TENSE AND VIOLENT UKRAINE
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine pulled back from the brink of chaos Friday when President Viktor Yanukovych signed a deal with opposition leaders to dilute his powers, form a caretaker government and hold early elections. But the accord appeared likely to be a hard sell among the thousands of demonstrators who vowed that nothing short of his ouster would get them off the streets.
The agreement represents a remarkable, humiliating fall for Yanukovych, whose decision to turn away from closer ties with the European Union and toward Russia sparked protests that began here peacefully in November but turned increasingly violent.
The atmosphere remained tense late Friday in Independence Square, the epicenter of the protests. When one of the opposition leaders, former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, told the crowds this was the best deal they could get, one of the protesters grabbed the microphone and demanded that Yanukovych resign Saturday morning or face the wrath of the people. “We will go with weapons,” said the protester, who leads one of the more militant groups in the square. “I swear it.”
The pact, reached after Ukraine’s bloodiest week of street fighting and following all-night negotiations sponsored by European and Russian officials, calls for an immediate return to the 2004 constitution, which gives parliament, not the president, the right to choose a prime minister and most of the cabinet.
The accord also called for authorities and the opposition to refrain from violence and withdraw from public spaces, and to return the country to normal life. Protesters were to turn illegal weapons over to police.
In a move that sparked a roar of approval from protesters barricaded in Independence Square, the Ukrainian parliament approved, by a veto-proof margin, a change in law that could lead to the quick release of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko, a former two-term prime minister and a founder of the largest opposition party here, was sentenced to seven years in prison in August 2011 for embezzlement and abuse of power over a deal to purchase natural gas from Russia. Her supporters have called her trial and conviction politically motivated.
In a rush to stem the violence, the Ukrainian parliament also sacked the interior minister, citing his “systemic and gross violation” of Ukraine’s constitution for his orders to allow police to fire live rounds at protesters.
The ousted minister, Vitaliy Zakharchenko, who controls the nation’s riot police, said security forces who shot and killed protesters were acting within the law and protecting retreating, unarmed police. “When an outrage is committed in the state and when attacks on the people and looting are spreading, when people don’t know what to expect further, it is the people in uniform’s duty to protect their citizens,” Zakharchenko said before his removal.
Several Ukrainian outlets reported late Friday that Yanukovych had fled Kiev, the capital. In Washington, a senior State Department official said the president is believed to have traveled to Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, for meetings. The official said that after major announcements or developments, “it’s not unusual for him to go to the east, where his base is.”
The deal between the opposition and Yanukovych calls for a presidential election no later than December, instead of March 2015 as scheduled. Many protesters say December is too late — they want Yanukovych to resign immediately and then face charges.
“I think people are preparing for the worst, for more to come,” said Sergiy, a geography teacher from Lviv who is volunteering as a medic in a makeshift triage unit at the October Palace cultural center and who, like others interviewed Friday, declined to give his last name.
Sergiy said that Yanukovych cannot be trusted to hold elections in 10 months and would use the time to fortify his position and surround himself with cronies. The teacher said he also feared that opposition leaders were too ready to make a deal. “We’re afraid the politicians — from both sides, yes, from the opposition, too — will cheat us again,” Sergiy said.
Protesters and mourners swelled into Independence Square on Friday to pray, sing hymns and the national anthem, and pass from hand to hand the coffins of some of the protesters killed Thursday.
The total death toll from clashes reached 77, the Health Ministry said Friday, with 379 others hospitalized. The violence and bloodshed clearly weighed on protesters’ minds.
“After the first shots were fired at us, that was it. Yanukovych is no longer our legitimate president. We’re here until he is gone,” said a mechanic who gave his name only as Vladimir. His head was tightly bandaged from a bullet he said was fired at him by government snipers on Thursday. A friend, Dmitriy, said that “Yanukovych belongs in court, not in the president’s office.”
OUR PRESIDENT AND PUTIN
President Obama spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine for more than an hour, their first extensive conversation in months. The White House said the two leaders “exchanged views on the need to implement quickly the political agreement reached today” but stopped short of saying they had agreed on all the elements of the deal. Obama and Putin also discussed the importance of stabilizing Ukraine’s precarious economy “and the need for all sides to refrain from further violence,” the White House said in a statement.
Also Friday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry spoke with three of the main Ukrainian opposition leaders to congratulate them for what the official called “courage and leadership” in helping reach agreement with the Yanukovych government. Klitschko was invited to join the telephone call with Kerry, the official said, but remained among opposition supporters on Independence Square instead.
“This is a very, very fragile agreement,” despite the progress, and emotion remains high among opposition supporters, the U.S. official said.
One of the lead European negotiators, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, said, “This is the best agreement we could have and it gives Ukraine a chance to return to peace, to reform, and hopefully to resume its way towards Europe.”
In less diplomatic language, in remarks captured by ITV News, Sikorski was caught telling an opposition leader to take the deal, warning that “if you don’t support this, you’ll have martial law, the army. You will all be dead.”
SATURDAY NOON UPDATE
The Ukrainian parliament voted to set early elections for May 25 after declaring President Viktor Yanukovych unable to carry out constitutional duties. The decision came just hours after embattled Yanukovych said he wouldn’t respect any decisions made by parliament. Yanukovych stated Saturday that he has no intention to resign, and called the political crisis a coup while saying it resembles the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s.
“They are trying to scare me. I have no intention to leave the country. I am not going to resign, I’m the legitimately elected president,” Yanukovych said in a televised statement. “Everything that is happening today is, to a greater degree, vandalism and banditry and a coup d’etat,” he said. “I will do everything to protect my country from breakup, to stop bloodshed.”
Parliament also arranged the release of Yanukovych’s arch-rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, by voting to decriminalize the count under which she was imprisoned. Tymoshenko was convicted of abuse of office, charges that domestic and Western critics have denounced as a political vendetta. A party spokeswoman said Tymoshenko was released after 2 1/2 years in prison, and was headed to Kharkiv to join protesters.
RIOTS IN FRANCE TOO
PARIS Riot police have moved into the western French city of Nantes, clashing with hundreds of anarchists who broke shop windows, destroyed bus stops and pillaged the city center. The regional prefecture says that six police officers were injured in confrontations on Saturday with up to 1,000 “radicals” who joined an estimated 20,000 people protesting plans to build an airport in the Loire-Atlantique region. Four people were detained, the prefecture said.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls said the delinquents were from the “radicalized ultra-left” and were waging an “urban guerrilla” campaign. Valls said on iTele TV station that “these are individuals who are very violent.”
There have been numerous, sometimes violent, demonstrations against building an airport in Notre Dame des Landes, a pet project of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, a Nantes native.
BULLETIN: NOTORIOUS HEAD OF MEXICO CARTEL CAPTURED
The head of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a hotel in Mazatlan, Mexico. A senior U.S. law enforcement official confirmed to Fox News that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is in the custody of Mexican law enforcement.
Guzman, 56, was found with an unidentified woman. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Marshals Service were “heavily involved” in the capture, the official said. No shots were fired.
Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is on the DEA’s most wanted list. His drug empire stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia thanks to a sophisticated, international distribution system for cocaine and methamphetamines. His cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last several years.
Known as a legendary outlaw and the world’s most powerful and elusive drug lord, Guzman had been pursued for several weeks. His arrest comes on the heels of the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the last few months and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the last week.
The son of Sinaloa’s co-leader and Guzman’s partner, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, was arrested in November after entering Arizona, where he had an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities to arrange legal status for his wife.
The following month, Zambada’s main lieutenant was killed as Mexican helicopter gunships sprayed bullets at his mansion in the Gulf of California resort of Puerto Penasco in a four-hour gunbattle. Days later, police in the Netherlands arrested Zambada’s flamboyant top enforcer as he arrived in Amsterdam.
Guzman’s was rumored to live everywhere from Argentina to Guatemala since he slipped out in 2001 from prison in a laundry truck — a storied feat that fed his larger-than-life persona. Because insiders aided his escape, rumors circulated for years that he was helped and protected by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s government, which vanquished some of his top rivals.
In more than a decade on the run, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune has grown to more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the “World’s Most Powerful People” and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.
His Sinaloa Cartel grew bloodier and more powerful, taking over much of the lucrative trafficking routes along the U.S. border, including such prized cities as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Guzman’s play for power against local cartels caused a bloodbath in Tijuana and made Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. In little more than a year, Mexico’s biggest marijuana bust, 134 tons, and its biggest cultivation were tied to Sinaloa, as were a giant underground methamphetamine lab in western Mexico and hundreds of tons of precursor chemicals seized in Mexico and Guatemala.
Guzman did all that with a $7 million bounty on his head and while evading thousands of law enforcement agents from the U.S. and other countries devoted to his capture. A U.S. federal indictment unsealed in San Diego in 1995 charges Guzman and 22 members of his organization with conspiracy to import over eight tons of cocaine and money laundering. A provisional arrest warrant was issued as a result of the indictment, according to the state department.
Guzman is still celebrated in folk songs and is said to have enjoyed deep protection from humble villagers in the rugged hills of Sinaloa and Durango where he has hidden from authorities. He is also thought to have contacts inside law enforcement that helped him evade capture, including a near-miss in February 2012 in the southern Baja California resort of Cabo San Lucas just after an international meeting of foreign ministers. He was vacationing in Cabo during a visit by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“There’s no drug-trafficking organization in Mexico with the scope, the savvy, the operational ability, expertise and knowledge as the Sinaloa cartel,” said one former U.S. law enforcement official, who couldn’t be quoted by name for security reasons. “You’ve kind of lined yourself up the New York Yankees of the drug trafficking world.”
More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug violence since former President Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers to drug hotspots upon taking office on December 1, 2006. Many say his government’s assault on drug cartels and arrest of kingpins actually fueled the growth of Sinaloa and its major rival, the Zetas, which are now going head-to-head for lucrative territory. The two are battling for Nuevo Laredo, a play Guzman lost to the Zetas in 2005, and hitting each other deep inside their respective territories. Sinaloa took over a key Zeta port in Veracruz, while bands of Zetas have attacked their rival deep inside the cartel’s home, western Sinaloa and Jalisco states. The conflict has led to the gruesome dumping of dozens of bodies by both organizations in their battlegrounds.
Authorities said the battle also weakened the Sinaloa cartel and that key hits on the top leadership in Guzman’s organization had shaken up his inner circle. In the first months of 2012, the Mexican army and federal police arrested a half dozen key Sinaloa people, including two major cocaine suppliers and a man described as the head of Guzman’s security detail.
In April last year, a video made the rounds on the Internet of a man whom U.S. authorities believed was Guzman, possibly indicating a security breach in his inner circle. In 2012, Colombian police seized 116 properties worth $15 million that they say were bought for Guzman, while the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was placing financial sanctions on his wife and several of his sons.
While his capture may have symbolic importance, many, including Guzman’s cartel partner, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, say it won’t stop the violence or flow of drugs through Mexico to the United States. “When it comes to the capos, jailed, dead or extradited — their replacements are ready,” Zambada said in an exclusive interview published in Proceso magazine in April 2010.
Guzman’s success and infamy surpassed Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, who was gunned down by police in 1993 after waging a decade-long reign of terror in the South American country, killing hundreds of police, judges, journalists and politicians.
Growing up poor, Guzman was drawn to the money being made by the flow of illegal drugs through his home state of Sinaloa. He joined the Guadalajara cartel, run by Mexican Godfather Miguel Angel Gallardo, and rose quickly through the ranks as a ruthless businessman and skilled networker, making key contacts with politicians and police to ensure his loads made it through without problems.
After Gallardo was arrested in 1989, the gang split, and Guzman took control of Sinaloa’s operations. The Sinaloa cartel violently seized lucrative drug routes from rivals and built sophisticated tunnels under the U.S. border to move its loads.
In 1993, gunmen linked to the Tijuana-based Arrellano Felix cartel attempted to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport but instead killed Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, outraging Mexicans.
Police arrested Guzman weeks later before his escape from El Puente Grande prison in 2001. At the time of his escape, Guzman had been serving a 20-year sentence for bribery and criminal association in a maximum-security prison in Mexico.
He was rumored to have once entered a restaurant in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, where his henchmen confiscated every patron’s cellphone so their boss could eat without fear of an ambush. He was also rumored to have staged an elaborate public wedding in 2007 to an 18-year-old bride that was attended by officials and local police. Federal police say they raided the town that day, but got there just a few hours too late.
Guzman had long been reported to move around frequently, using private aircraft, bulletproof SUVs and even all-terrain vehicles. His location was part of Mexican folklore, with rumors circulating of him being everywhere from Guatemala to almost every corner of Mexico, especially its “Golden Triangle,” a mountainous, marijuana-growing region straddling the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
An archbishop in northern Durango state said in April 2009 that Guzman lived in a town nearby. Days later, investigators found the bodies of two slain army lieutenants with a note: “Neither the government nor priests can handle El Chapo.” Now they can.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
IS IRAN INVOLVED IN REAL PEACE TALKS OR JUST STALLING FOR TIME?
VIENNA – Iran and six world powers ended the opening round of nuclear talks on an upbeat note Thursday, with both sides saying they had agreed on a plan for further negotiations meant to produce a comprehensive deal to set limits on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
In a joint statement, they said the next round of negotiations would begin in Vienna on March 17, continuing a process likely to take at least six months and probably longer.
Iran opposes cuts, saying its program is not aimed at building weapons. The U.S. and its partners say that Iran must come to an agreement if it wants a full end to sanctions crippling its economy. “We have … identified all of the issues we need to address for a comprehensive and final agreement,” said Catherine Ashton, the EU’s top diplomat who convened the talks between Iran and the six powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. “It won’t be easy, but we’ve gotten off to a good start,” she said in a statement read later in Farsi by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The six countries want to leave Iran with little capacity to quickly ramp up its nuclear program into weapons-making mode with enriched uranium or plutonium, which can be used for the fissile core of a missile warhead. They say Iran should dismantle or store most of its 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges, including some not yet working. They also want a reactor now being built to either be scrapped or converted from a heavy-water setup to a light-water facility that makes less plutonium.
Zarif, who came to the talks vowing Iran would never strip down its nuclear facilities, was smiling and relaxed as he read out the joint statement. But in a message intended for skeptics at home who fear Iran will give up too much at the talks, he told state TV afterward that the nation would “not close down any site.”
PUBLIC HANGINGS A DAILY OCCURRENCE IN IRAN
Iran is a world leader in executions, killing 529 citizens last year mostly by hanging. Another 40 people were hanged over two weeks in January, and about two Iranians are being executed a day under President Hassan Rouhani.
The name Atlas – a company in Germany who denies shipping any cranes to Iran – can be seen on the cranes in several photographs of Iran’s public hanging ceremonies, in which a masked executioner strings up a man as locals gather to watch, often with their children.
DEFENSE SECRETARY HAGEL MISSPEAKS AGAIN ABOUT IRAN
Defense Department officials acknowledged to Fox News that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, while speaking to a Jewish congregation at a Maryland synagogue on Tuesday, misstated the administration’s policy on Iran by saying the country should not be allowed the “capacity” to develop a nuclear weapon. So that’s the position of this administration; it was the position of the Bush administration — that’s unequivocal. That’s stated — it’s clear,” Hagel said at the Beth El synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland.
But Hagel was mistaken, and it’s not the first time he has misspoken about the United States’ nuclear policy on Iran. What he described on Tuesday would be a much firmer stance than either administration has taken. The current policy is that Iran should be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon, rather than preventing its capacity to make a weapon.
Just last month the Director of National Intelligence released “The Worldwide Threat Assessment” to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Page five states clearly that Iran already has the capacity to build and deliver a nuclear weapon should it decide to do so. “Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas — including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles — from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” DNI James Clapper wrote. “These technical advancements strengthen our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons. This makes the central issue its political will to do so.”
Curious is that the Department of Defense produced a transcript of Hagel’s remarks that incorrectly quotes this portion of his remarks. Instead of using the word “capacity,” the transcript reads “passively.” But Fox News’ own audio recording of the event (cameras were not allowed) demonstrates clearly he used the word “capacity.” The DoD says it relied on Congressional Quarterly to produce the transcript.
Fox News asked National Security Agency spokesman Caitlin Hayden to clarify the Iran nuclear policy for the record. In an email she wrote: “feel free to consult any one of dozens of transcripts where we (including the President) talk about our Iran policy. As the President said when he announced the JPOA [Joint Plan of Action], ‘Since I took office, I’ve made clear my determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.’”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said Hagel’s remarks, though technically inaccurate, are unlikely to have any negative national security consequence or effect on the ongoing nuclear talks. “The real danger here would be if he was somehow softening the U.S. position … that would be a bigger policy problem,” O’Hanlon said.
Anthony Cordesman, a military and foreign policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said “in fairness to Hagel, trying to find a consistent semantic structure in the United States government over any issue is pretty difficult, and in this case arms controllers don’t have a common definition. You’re raising an issue that goes way beyond Hagel.”
It’s not the first time Hagel has misstated the president’s policy on Iran and nuclear weapons. Asked during his confirmation hearing one year ago about the strategy to prevent Iran from building a nuke, Hagel said: “I support the president’s strong position on containment, as I have said.” But moments later he had to correct himself after an aide passed him a note. “I misspoke and said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say we don’t have a position on containment,” he said.
It was then that Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., interrupted, correcting Hagel once again. “Just to make sure your correction is clear, we do have a position on containment, which is that we do not favor containment,” Levin said. “I just wanted to clarify the clarify.” Later in the hearing, Hagel promised to get all the issues straight. “There are a lot of things I don’t know about. If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do. I will have to,” Hagel said.
CNN EVICTED FROM VENEZUELA
CARACAS, VENEZUELA – Venezuela’s government has revoked the press credentials of journalists from CNN after President Nicolas Maduro blasted the television network’s coverage of political protests. CNN says Friday that four of its journalists were notified by the Information Ministry that they are no longer allowed to report in the country. They include CNN en Espanol anchor Patricia Janiot
Maduro on Thursday threatened to expel CNN from Venezuela if it doesn’t “rectify” its coverage of unrest that he says is part of a campaign to topple his socialist government. Colombian news channel NTN24 was suspended from Venezuelan cable TV packages a week ago.
The government’s near-complete control of domestic broadcasters has made CNN en Espanol a source of information for many Venezuelans trying to follow the unrest.
TEARS AND DEEP GRIEF AS FAMILIES PART IN NORTH KOREA
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – As his North Korean daughter wept Saturday, 93-year-old South Korean Park Un-hyeong tried to console her before boarding a bus to take him south across the world’s most heavily armed border after spending three days with her in the North. For Park and dozens of other Koreans at these rare reunions of families divided by the Korean War, it was likely the last time they’d see each other.
“You shouldn’t cry on this good day,” he told his daughter, Pak Myung Ok, 68, as he prepared to leave the North Korean resort that hosted the first reunions of North and South Koreans in more than three years, according to South Korean media pool reports. “We’ll be able to meet again soon. Trust your father, stay healthy and live well.”
In another emotional scene, an 84-year-old South Korean woman, Lee Oh-hwan, became short of breath from crying too hard and was immediately treated by a medical team. Her North Korean sister, 72-year-old Ri Ok Bin, tried to calm her down, telling her in an aching voice not to get sick.
Again and again, similar scenes played out as 80 elderly South Koreans said their goodbyes to North Korean relatives. They wept, held hands, caressed faces, took pictures and tried to convince themselves that they’d meet again.
Both democratic South Korea and authoritarian North Korea share the same type of rhetoric about eventual reunification, and many average Koreans say they long for that day. But after near continual animosity and occasional bloodshed since the three-year war ended in an unsteady armistice in 1953, many analysts see that as only a distant possibility.
The reunions will continue when a group of about 360 South Koreans arrives Sunday to meet with North Korean relatives whom most haven’t seen in six decades. The second and final round of reunions is set to end Tuesday.
It’s an unusual moment of detente between the rivals. Millions of Koreans were separated from loved ones by the tumult and bloodshed of the war, and few have been reunited. Both governments ban their citizens from visiting each other or even exchanging letters, phone calls and emails. During a previous period of inter-Korean rapprochement, about 22,000 Koreans had brief reunions — 18,000 in person and the others by video. None got a second chance to reunite, Seoul says.
The current reunions were arranged after impoverished North Korea began calling recently for better ties with South Korea, in what outside analysts say is an attempt to win badly needed foreign investment and aid.
In South Korea, there are still worries that the current reunions might be disrupted because of the impending military drills. Despite Pyongyang’s recent charm offensive, many in Seoul remember that a year ago North Korea threatened repeatedly to launch nuclear strikes against Seoul and Washington.
The reality of the Korean division wasn’t lost on those lucky few who said their goodbyes Saturday. When it was time to part, many began to wail. North Korean personnel tried to calm down weeping North Korean families.
South Korean TV showed elderly North Koreans straightening their stooped backs to get a final look at loved ones who had boarded the buses. As their breaths steamed in the cold air, men wearing suits and women wearing thin traditional Korean dresses waved without gloves. Some stood on tiptoes so they could put both of their hands on the bus windows, their loved ones doing the same on the inside of the glass. South Koreans on the bus shouted out goodbyes, wiping their faces with one hand and waving with the other. Some held up paper with names or thank you messages.
“Let’s meet again later,” South Korean Woo Young-shi wrote in part to his aunt. Then, flipping the paper over, he wrote a second message: “Stay healthy until the day we reunite.”
VOTER ID’S REQUIRED IN IRAQ
BAGHDAD – A spokesman for Iraq’s election commission says authorities have begun to distribute voter ID cards in all but one of the country’s 18 provinces, preparing for an April election that will be the first since the 2011 withdrawal of the U.S. Forces. Aziz al-Kheikani said Saturday that distribution began in four new provinces including the capital Baghdad. Voters in 13 provinces began to receive cards, which contain a computer chip, three weeks ago. He said authorities will decide soon on how to distribute cards in the western province of Anbar.
Iraq’s Sunni insurgency is at its strongest in Anbar. Militants have taken control of the city of Fallujah and parts of the provincial capital Ramadi. The parliamentary election is scheduled for April 30.
POPE AND EX–POPE TOGETHER AT INSTALLATION OF 19 NEW CARDINALS
VATICAN CITY – Retired Pope Benedict XVI joined Pope Francis at a ceremony Saturday creating the cardinals who will elect their successor in an unprecedented blending of papacies past, present and future. Benedict discreetly entered St. Peter’s Basilica surrounded by a small entourage and was greeted with applause and tears from the stunned people in the pews. He smiled, waved and seemed genuinely happy to be there, taking his seat in the front row, off to the side, alongside the red-draped cardinals.
It was the first time Benedict and Francis have appeared together at a public liturgical ceremony since Benedict retired a year ago and became the first pope to step down in more than 600 years.
The significance of his presence was multifold, signaling both continuity and even a sign of Benedict’s approval of the 19 men Francis had chosen to join the College of Cardinals, the elite group of churchmen whose primary job is to elect a pope.
Francis’ choices largely reflected his view that the church must minister to the peripheries and not be a self-reverential institution but rather a place of welcome and mercy. He named cardinals from some of the world’s poorest countries, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast among them, tapping many pastors like himself.
Saturday’s event marked one of the most important liturgical ceremonies a pope can preside over: the formal installation of new cardinals. Benedict’s presence marked a first step in reintegrating him into the public life of the church after a period of being hidden away that began almost exactly a year ago with his February 28, 2013 resignation.
After processing down the central aisle at the start of the service, Francis went directly to Benedict, clasped him by his shoulders and they embraced. The crowd erupted in polite applause again when one of the new cardinals, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, greeted Benedict in his introductory remarks, saying “We are grateful for your presence here among us.” Benedict, dressed in his white cassock with a long double-breasted overcoat, again smiled and waved.
The occasion for this historic first was Francis’ first cardinal-making ceremony to formally welcome 19 new “princes of the church” into the College of Cardinals.
One cardinal sat out the ceremony even as he made a record by living to see it: Cardinal Loris Francesco Capovilla, aged 98, became the oldest member of the College of Cardinals, but due to his age couldn’t make the trip from northern Italy. His was a sentimental choice for Francis: For over a decade, Capovilla was the private secretary to Pope John XXIII, whom Francis will make a saint alongside Pope John Paul II in April in a sign of his admiration for the pope who convened the Second Vatican Council. Three of the cardinals present are over 80 and thus ineligible to vote in a contemplative to elect Francis’ successor.
“I’M ONLY 90. WHY SHOULD I RETIRE?”
HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Marking his 90th birthday, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said he isn’t ready to consider retirement. “Why should it (retirement) be discussed when it is not due?” he said in an interview broadcast on state television. “The leadership still exists that runs the country. In other words I am still there … When the day comes and I retire … I do not want to leave my party in tatters. I want to leave it intact.”
Mugabe claimed he is “fit as a fiddle,” but appeared frail in the prerecorded televised interview, at times stumbling over his words and slumping in his chair.
Mugabe’s actual birthday was Friday when he was in Singapore for a cataract operation on his left eye, according to the president’s office. Mugabe returned from Singapore Saturday and will celebrate his birthday at a sports stadium tomorrow.
Sunday’s birthday celebrations, estimated to cost $1 million, will be held in a 50,000-seat stadium in Marondera, 74 kilometers (45 miles) east of Harare, where organizers said potholed streets have been repaired for the event. Critics say Mugabe won’t discuss his retirement because he wants to die in office.
Mugabe’s 90th birthday comes amid intense speculation on Zimbabwe’s future when his grip on power loosens. In July, Mugabe who has ruled the nation for 33 years since 1980, won disputed elections for another five-year term that will take him to age 94.
In his early years in power, Mugabe expanded public education and health services that were the envy of the continent. But Zimbabwe’s economy went into meltdown in 2000 after Mugabe ordered seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms, leading to the collapse of the agriculturally based economy, once the region’s breadbasket.
Unemployment has soared to an estimated 80 percent. Hundreds of long established industries have closed, often blaming Mugabe’s new black empowerment laws that compel companies to give black Zimbabweans 51 percent control.
Mugabe has blamed the economic slump on Western economic sanctions, mostly travel and banking bans imposed on him personally and his closest associates to protest human and democratic rights violations.
In recent weeks the country has been seen allegations of massive corruption in state enterprises at a time when many Zimbabweans are surviving on less than $2 a day.
PRESIDENT OBAMA IS GOING TO RIGHT A LONG AGO WRONG
WASHINGTON – Seeking to correct potential acts of bias spanning three wars, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor to 24 Army veterans following a congressionally mandated review to ensure that eligible recipients were not bypassed due to prejudice.
The unusual mass ceremony, scheduled for March 18, will honor veterans, most of Hispanic or Jewish heritage, who had already been recognized with the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest military award. Only three of the recipients are living.
“I never really did worry about decorations,” said one of those being honored, Melvin Morris of Cocoa, Fla., who was commended for courageous actions while a staff sergeant during combat operations on Sept. 17, 1969, in the vicinity of Chi Lang, South Vietnam. Morris, who is black, said in an interview that it never occurred to him that his race might have prevented him from receiving the Medal of Honor. He said it was a huge surprise when the Army contacted him last May about the review and then arranged for a call from Obama.
“I fell to my knees. I was shocked,” Morris said. “President Obama said he was sorry this didn’t happen before. He said this should have been done 44 years ago.”
FCC CANCELS PLANS TO INVADE NEWSROOMS
The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that it was putting on hold a controversial study of American newsrooms, after complaints from Republican lawmakers and media groups that the project was too intrusive. FCC spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said Chairman Tom Wheeler agreed with critics that some of the study’s proposed questions for reporters and news directors “overstepped the bounds of what is required.”
The agency announced that a proposed pilot study in South Carolina will now be shelved, at least until a “new study design” is finalized. But the agency made clear that this and any future studies will not involve interviews with “media owners, news directors or reporters.” Commissioner Ajit Pai, who was one of the staunchest critics of the proposal, heralded the decision Friday as an acknowledgement that government-backed researchers would not be dispatched into newsrooms, as feared.
“This study would have thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country, somewhere it just doesn’t belong,” he said in a statement. “The Commission has now recognized that no study by the federal government, now or in the future, should involve asking questions to media owners, news directors, or reporters about their practices. This is an important victory for the First Amendment.” He added: “And it would not have been possible without the American people making their voices heard. I will remain vigilant that any future initiatives not infringe on our constitutional freedoms.”
Amid the controversy, Wheeler had already told lawmakers the commission had “no intention” of regulating reporters’ speech. He also directed that the controversial questions be removed from the survey entirely.
OBAMA LAMA DRAMA BARRED FROM REPORTERS
WASHINGTON – The White House is defending its decision to bar reporters and photojournalists from a meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama. White House spokesman Jay Carney says he acknowledges the news media’s legitimate interest in covering the encounter. But he says the decision was consistent with past meetings Obama has held with the Buddhist monk.
Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama drew harsh criticism from China even before it took place. The White House appeared to be trying to keep it low-key to avoid further aggravating Beijing. At the same time, after declining media requests to photograph the meeting, the White House released its own photo produced by an official government photographer. The president’s decision comes amid growing media protests about limited access to Obama’s events.
HOUSE REPUBLICAN’S WILL TRY TO STOP “OUR IMPERIAL PRESIDENT”
House Republicans are plotting a broad effort to push the Obama administration to rein in federal regulations and reform a key part of the health care law in a bid to curb what lawmakers see as abuse of executive power by an “imperial presidency.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., on Friday sent a memo to GOP lawmakers accusing President Obama of “effectively rewriting the laws” and called for a fight to “restore the balance of power created by our Founders,” The Hill reported.
“President Obama has provided new clarity as to what constitutes an imperial presidency,” Cantor wrote Friday in the memo. “Declaring that he has a ‘pen and a phone,’ he has acted to effectively rewrite the laws of the United States.”
The Hill wrote that Cantor said several bills will be taken up next week in the House to push back against the administration’s “excessive and burdensome” regulations, including a proposal that reforms the way federal agencies create new regulations.
The Regulatory Accountability Act, introduced last year by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., reforms the current federal rule-making process to require that agencies write regulations that impose the lowest possible cost on businesses.
Cantor’s memo also mentioned Rep. George Holding’s, R-N.C., All Economic Regulations are Transparent (ALERT) Act, which would require federal agencies to provide timely information about the status and cost of new regulations under consideration.
The Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act, by Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., would curb the government’s practice of settling lawsuits with liberal organizations by agreeing to impose regulations on businesses, the report said.
Cantor told House Republicans that the chamber could take up “in the near future” legislation that would target ObamaCare’s individual mandate and cuts to the Medicare Advantage program. He said House will consider a proposal that repeals the 30-hour threshold for full-time work as outlined in the health law’s requirement for employers to provide health care coverage, raising the threshold to 40 hours, the report said.
The House will also consider legislation with the goal of blocking “excessive and unnecessary” Environmental Protection Agency regulations on electric utility plants and coal-fired power plants, Cantor said. “This will prevent, for example, EPA from downplaying the loss of mining and manufacturing jobs as a result of their regulations by arguing that new jobs will be created in regulatory compliance,” Cantor was quoted as saying.
The Obama administration, facing GOP resistance in both chambers of Congress, is reportedly mapping out plans for executive actions that will be unveiled well into the fall and winter for what the president has called a “year of action.”
More than 100 Republican House members have signed on to the Stop This Overreaching President (STOP) Resolution, which accuses the president of violating his Article 2, Section 3 constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Peter Wehner, who served in three Republican administrations, said that while Obama’s executive orders are hardly reshaping the political landscape in Washington, they may be helping the White House internally generate a “sense of momentum and action. Sometimes you wake up and you’re happy there’s just not a series of bad stories or bad news,” said Wehner, who last worked in the White House under George W. Bush. “If you can take the initiative even a little bit, it’s better than being back on your heels.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NEW JERSEY JUDGE DISMISSES MUSLIM LAWSUIT
The first legal challenge to the New York police department’s blanket surveillance of Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been dismissed by a federal judge in New Jersey in a ruling that lawyers acting for the plaintiffs have described as preposterous and dangerous.
Judge William Martini, sitting in the US district court for the district of New Jersey, threw out a lawsuit brought by eight Muslim individuals and local businesses who alleged their constitutional rights were violated when the NYPD’s mass surveillance was based on religious affiliation alone.
In his judgment which was released on Thursday, Martini dismissed the complaint made by the plaintiffs that they had been targeted for police monitoring solely because of their religion. He writes: “The more likely explanation for the surveillance was a desire to locate budding terrorist conspiracies. The most obvious reason for so concluding is that surveillance of the Muslim community began just after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself.”
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the plaintiffs along with attorneys from the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, said that the ruling was dangerous. He equated it with the now widely discredited US supreme court ruling in 1944, Korematsu v United States, that declared constitutional the blanket internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war.
“The dangerous part is that Martini’s ruling sets no limits on racial profiling of Muslims. You don’t have to deeply unpack this to see that it is wrong,” Azmy said.
Legal documents lodged as part of the dismissed Hassan v City of New York lawsuit recounted that as as part of its massive surveillance programme, the NYPD homed in on Newark and Muslim communities in New Brunswick and other parts of central New Jersey. The mission attempted to secure informants within every mosque within a 250-mile radius of New York city with “mosque crawlers” deployed to monitor conversations and sermons.
Undercover officers, known as “rakers”, were sent into cafes, bars and bookstores in neighborhoods with a large Muslim population. The NYPD closely monitored the activities of the Muslim Student Association at Rutgers University and other New Jersey colleges, as well as a predominantly black Newark school for Muslim girls, Al Muslimaat academy. The owners of the school, as well as the Muslim student association, were among the plaintiffs in the Hassan case.
The Martini decision absolves the NYPD of having caused distress or damage to Muslims caught by its mass surveillance on the unusual grounds that were it not for the Associated Press disclosure of the secret programme, those targeted by the monitoring would have been unaware that it was happening. “The Associated Press covertly obtained the materials and published them without authorization. Thus the injury, if any existed, is not fairly traceable to New York City,” Martini writes.
Later in the judgment, he adds: “Nowhere in the complaint do plaintiffs allege that they suffered harm prior to the unauthorized release of the documents by the Associated Press. This confirms that plaintiffs’ alleged injuries flow from the Associated Press’s unauthorized disclosure of the documents.”
Azmy called this argument “preposterous”. “It’s like arguing that you suffer no harm if your spouse is cheating on you as long as you know nothing about it, and that the blame lies with the messenger for telling you about it.”
The plaintiffs in Hassan v US will now appeal the dismissal of the lawsuit. A similar case relating to the NYPD’s mass surveillance of Muslims in New York is ongoing in the Brooklyn courts.
CALIFORNIA SENATOR MAY BE FACING 400 YEAR PRISON SENTENCE
LOS ANGELES – A California state senator was charged Friday with accepting $100,000 in bribes, lavish trips and no-show jobs for his children in exchange for pushing legislation to benefit a hospital engaged in billing fraud and participating in a film industry tax scheme that actually was an FBI sting.
The 24-count federal indictment against Sen. Ron Calderon, a Democrat from a politically prominent family in Los Angeles’ blue-collar suburbs, depicts a rogue legislator eager to trade his clout at the state Capitol to enrich himself and his family. His brother Tom, a former state lawmaker-turned-lobbyist, was charged with money-laundering for funneling bribes through a tax-exempt group he controlled, prosecutors said.
“When public officials choose to callously betray the trust of the people they serve and selfishly abuse the privileges of public office, then we will take all necessary steps to hold those persons fully accountable for their behavior,” U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte said.
The charges come after a long-running corruption investigation that has tarnished the state’s majority party — Democrats hold every statewide office and control both chambers in the Legislature. The charges also threaten the patriarchs of a family that rose to political prominence from the heavily Hispanic, working-class communities southeast of Los Angeles.
“Because they knew how to run elections and they knew how to speak to a newly incorporating group, Latinos, they knew how to get people elected,” said political scientist Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. For any would-be candidate around their home base “you needed their support.” Ron Calderon has denied wrongdoing.
Tom Calderon appeared in court in handcuffs on Friday and pleaded not guilty to seven counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to launder money. His bail was set at $25,000 and he was ordered to surrender his passport, stay in the continental U.S. and appear for a jury trial starting April 15.
Another Democrat, Senator Roderick Wright, was convicted last month of voter fraud and perjury for lying about the location of his Los Angeles County residence. He has been allowed to remain in office while awaiting sentencing in May.
If convicted on all counts, Ron Calderon could face nearly 400 years in federal prison. His brother, if convicted, could face a maximum penalty of 160 years in confinement, prosecutors said.
GAYS CAN NOW MARRY IN CHICAGO
A federal judge says gay couples in Chicago don’t have to wait until June to marry. Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman’s Friday order says there is no reason to delay same-sex marriages in Illinois, when the state’s law is set to take effect. Her finding applies only to Cook County. She says no opposition has been presented to the court, and gay and lesbian couples “have already suffered from the denial of their fundamental right to marry.”
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed against the Cook County clerk, who supports gay marriage. Chicago is in Cook County. Coleman already ruled in December that same-sex couples did not have to wait until June to marry if one or both partners had a life-threatening illness. Now that applies to all couples.
RELIGIOUS RIGHTS BILL IS ON ARIZONA GOVERNOR’S DESK
The Arizona legislature has approved a measure that protects business owners who refuse to serve gays based on their religious beliefs. The bill, which passed the state House Thursday in 33-27 vote, allows individuals, churches, and businesses accused of discrimination to claim religious freedom as a defense.
Supporters said the legislation is needed to protect against increasingly activist federal courts. “Please, I will accept you because you are a child of God, I love you because you are a child of God,” State Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-District 12, said. “But please don’t ask me to go against my religious beliefs.”
“The Arizona Senate bill is blatantly unconstitutional,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
“It violates the requirement of equal protection of the laws by openly singling out a particular group of people and saying it’s okay to discriminate against them.”
The bill has now gone to office of Governor Jan Brewer for her signature.
NOW DEMOCRATS ARE CHALLENGING THE PRESIDENT OVER KEYSTONE
Former Obama administration officials are lining up in support of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline as a Nebraska court ruling threatens to delay a final decision on the controversial pipeline.
The latest to back the Canada-to-Texas project is Marcia McNutt, who led the U.S. Geological Survey from 2009 until 2013. Currently the editor-in-chief of the journal Science, she wrote in an editorial that, “I believe it is time to move forward on the Keystone XL pipeline,” so long as Canada commits to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
McNutt is the latest in a list of former Obama administration officials who have said they would approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Those officials include former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and a pair of former national security advisers, Tom Donilon and James L. Jones.
The administration, however, hasn’t indicated a decision is coming any time soon. The State Department just initiated a 90-day interagency review process that will be used to determine whether building Keystone XL is in the national interest. But even then, there’s no time frame for a final call from the White House.
GAS BOOM IN NORTH DAKOTA EXPLODING IN OTHER PLACES TOO
The energy boom that has North Dakota boasting the country’s lowest unemployment rate — and skyrocketing real estate prices — could soon do the same for the Gulf Coast. Dozens of facilities are set to sprout up along the Louisiana and Texas coasts to liquefy natural gas from shale formations as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio for export around the world. The energy boom, which is turning the U.S. into a net exporter, could drive liquefaction capacity to an eight-fold increase in the next five years alone, experts say. That could mean hundreds of thousands of new jobs along the Gulf Coast, by some estimates.
“From an economic development standpoint, it is going to be huge,” said Ragan Dickens, spokesman for the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. “It is incredibly exciting to know the region will see this influx of new jobs.”
More than 110 liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities now operate in the U.S., some exporting the super-cooled liquid, while others turn natural gas into an energy form that occupies up to 600 times less space than natural gas for vehicle fuel or industrial use. Worldwide, LNG trade is expected to more than double by 2040, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Up to a dozen long-term deals, each worth billions of dollars, have been signed by American natural gas producers with companies in China, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, France and Chile, according to Reuters. The federal Energy Department has authorized companies to export up to 8.5 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas, about 13 percent of current daily production. Given the entrenched oil and gas industry, access to shipping and regional resources, the Gulf Coast is set to become the epicenter of the coming liquefaction boom.
One market research firm, Industrial Info Resources, predicts $64 billion will be spent to build at least seven LNG facilities on the Gulf Coast in coming years. The massive-scale construction could even strain the skilled labor force, according to IIR Executive Vice President Michael Bergen. But other experts said demand for skilled workers to fill high-paying jobs is a problem the region can handle — happily.
“A lot can (and will) happen in five years,” Michael Quinn, managing principal at the Analysis Group, told FoxNews.com in an email. “That’s plenty of time both for workers with various skillsets to be trained or to relocate to where the jobs are. I
Another estimate predicts that the region between Brownsville, Texas, and Pascagoula, Mississippi, could see labor demand surge from 86.1 million required man-hours in 2013 to 134.3 million in 2015, or an increase of more than 55 percent.
In just two years, the number of pipe fitters, welders, electricians and other skilled workers in the Gulf Coast will grow from roughly 62,000 to more than 103,000, driven in part by receipt and export terminals now under development by companies like Sempra Energy in Louisiana and Freeport LNG in Texas.
Labor leaders say the region could face a “dramatic shortage” of skilled hands, especially in the Gulf Coast. To combat that, Eric Dean, general secretary of Iron Workers International, said the 120,000-member union is ramping up its training regimen.
“We have 150 training facilities with a maximum capacity to train over 50,000 highly skilled ironworkers,” Dean told FoxNews.com in an email. “Our training consists of 3-4 year apprenticeship programs which lead to a safe, highly skilled, trades person. We have increased staffing of these facilities as well as recruitment efforts targeting skilled and semiskilled workers that we can train and, where necessary, upgrade their skills.”
But the prospect of a jobs bonanza is not enough to quell the misgivings of some environmental groups and advocates who believe the region could be rushing too fast into the LNG boom. Tim Riley, an attorney who produced and directed “The Risks and Danger of LNG,” told FoxNews.com that LNG facilities will ultimately lead to increased risk of danger to nearby communities, send domestic gas prices surging nationwide, and vastly increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere.
“The main gripe is that proponents of LNG boast that it is clean natural gas,” Riley told FoxNews.com. “However, it’s processed natural gas that by the time it goes through its complete cycle of extraction to liquefaction to transport to gasification to piping … that whole industrial process uses more energy than it would to just burn natural gas.”
As North Dakota has learned, a dizzying economic boom like the Gulf Coast faces with liquefaction can bring headaches. Real estate in the Peace Garden State, which now produces more oil than any state other than Texas, has exploded. A 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Williston, N.D., can easily cost more than $2,000 per month, while a three-bedroom place could fetch as much as $4,500, according to ApartmentGuide.com.
“You’ve got places up there with the most expensive rates in the country and people are flocking there,” Knappenberger said. “Job seekers are coming, it’s just stressing the infrastructure. That might happen down in the Gulf Coast, maybe it won’t. But I think you’ll have droves of people looking for jobs if they’re available. Where did all the people in the Bakken region come from? They weren’t local folks.”
OBAMA LEAVES SOCIAL SECURITY ALONE IN AN ELECTION YEAR
President Obama is under fire from Republicans for backtracking on proposed Social Security and other benefit cuts in his upcoming budget proposal. The White House confirmed Thursday that the president’s forthcoming budget blueprint would no longer contain what had been a central component of his long-term debt-reduction strategy. In years past, Obama had offered to trim cost-of-living increases in Social Security and other benefit programs – known as chained CPI. Not anymore.
“This reaffirms what has become all too apparent: the president has no interest in doing anything, even modest, to address our looming debt crisis,” House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement.
White House officials said Friday that the only reason they put these Social Security trims in last year’s budget was as a carrot to Republicans to try and jump-start talks on a “grand bargain” budget deal. But they argue that Republicans never came to the table with a plan of their own and so Obama was not going to make that Social Security offer this time.
Liberal groups and lawmakers had been mobilizing against the proposed cuts, which reflect a different way for the government to calculate inflation. It’s an election year and on February 14, 16 senators, eight Republicans and eight Democrats including Chuck Schumer of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado, chair of the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee, plus four other Democratic senators in contested races, wrote a letter to President Obama asking that he not go forward with the cuts.
“These are tough times for our country. With the middle class struggling and more people living in poverty than ever before, we urge you not to propose cuts in your budget to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits – cuts which would make life even more difficult for some of the most vulnerable people in America,” they wrote. The letter also states “Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit.”
Asked about the forthcoming budget plan, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday, “The president was willing to step forward and put on the table a concrete proposal. Unfortunately Republicans refused to even consider the possibility of raising some revenue by closing some loopholes that benefit only the wealthy and well connected.”
One official said the offer would remain on the table in the event of new budget talks but that it would not be part of the president’s formal spending blueprint for fiscal 2015.
The new Obama proposal would also eliminate congressionally mandated automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to continue kicking in through 2015 by adding $56 billion to the budget, evenly divided between military and domestic spending. That increase would include money for what the White House calls an “Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative.”
Officials said the White House will retain other spending reductions in benefit programs that it has proposed in the past, including a requirement that wealthier Medicare recipients pay more.
Fox News’ Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ON THE OTHER HAND………
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration announced Friday cuts were on the table next year for Medicare Advantage, giving new ammunition to critics of the president’s health care law and disappointing some Democrats. The politically dicey move affecting a private insurance alternative highly popular with seniors immediately touched off an election-year fight.
Senator John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said, “Every senator who voted for this train wreck owes America’s seniors an explanation for these Medicare cuts, which are already resulting in higher costs and reduced access to the doctors they had and liked.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also attacked the proposed cuts, saying, “the best solution would be to recognize ObamaCare for the historic mistake that it is, repeal it, and replace it with commonsense reforms that will protect America’s seniors and families from the seemingly never-ending consequences of this terrible law.”
Late Friday after financial markets closed, Medicare issued a 148-page assessment of cost factors for the private plans next year. It included multiple variables, some moving in different directions, but analyst Matthew Eyles of Avalere Health estimated it would translate to a cut of 1.9 percent for 2015, a figure also cited by congressional staffers briefed on the proposal. “There’s nothing to like here if you’re one of the plans,” said Eyles.
Administration officials say the plans don’t need to be paid as much to turn a profit, because the growth of health care spending has slowed dramatically. They see the cuts as a dividend for taxpayers. But the political clout of the plans is growing as seniors flock to them seeking better health care value. Medicare Advantage plans now serve nearly 16 million people, or about 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries. They can offer lower out-of-pocket costs and broader benefits than traditional Medicare, but often restrict choice.
Insurers say they will be forced to pass on higher costs to seniors or cut benefits if their rates are reduced, and some plans may drop out altogether. The impact could vary significantly around the country.
The industry says the cuts come as Medicare Advantage reductions programmed under the health care law are ramping up. The law sought to compensate for prior years in which the plans were overpaid. But it also includes a new tax on insurers, so industry officials fear the combined impact will be much higher.
The largest insurer trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is sparing no effort to head off cuts, with an extensive advertising and lobbying campaign. Final rates won’t be released until April 7, so the lobbying will get even more intense. In prior years, Medicare has sometimes pulled back from proposed cuts.
United Health Group Inc. and Humana Inc. are the two largest Medicare Advantage providers. Health insurance stocks that soared in 2013 slipped at the start of this year after Humana Inc., the second-largest in the market, said rate cuts could be deeper than expected.
Fox News’ Jim Angle and The Associated Press contributed to this report
HIGH-RANKING IRS BOSSES AREN’T PAYING THEIR OWN TAXES!
The latest trouble for the Internal Revenue Service has emerged from a Treasury Inspector General report, which reveals some senior IRS executives should have paid taxes on expenses they ran up for out-of- town travel.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is furious.
“Here were the top people doing what no other citizen can do,” Jordan told Fox. “You underreport income, you don’t pay your taxes, you can’t get away with it. And yet the very people who run the IRS were doing just that.”
The IRS issued a statement saying, “Cutting costs is a top priority, and the IRS has put in place a number of steps to reduce expenses involving executive travel. The IRS agreed with (the Inspector General report’s) recommendations and has put in place new steps to prevent future issues in this area.” Meanwhile, the IRS has been complaining about a lack of resources.
The Obama administration sought $13 billion for the 2014 IRS budget, but Congress slashed it to $11.3 billion. The number of audits, which generate revenue, has dropped, with less than 1% now facing extra scrutiny, and it’s questionable how many of these can actually be followed up.
New IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told lawmakers earlier this month the lack of funding is having an impact on service to the taxpayers. Yet the higher-ups can afford highly expensive travel and vacations. This is the same agency that is working on implementing ObamaCare.
Mike Emanuel currently serves as chief congressional correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined FNC in 1997 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent.
IS IT DANGEROUS TO GO TO SCHOOL ANYMORE BECAUSE OF GUNS?
Are schools and colleges dangerous places, with lots of gun violence? Some groups paint a picture of these places being particularly unsafe. Supposedly both murders and firearm suicides are very common at educational institutions. Last Wednesday, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s two groups, Moms Demand Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, jointlythat received massive unchallenged reports from the news media.
They claimed that 44 shootings occurred in schools and colleges nationwide between the Newtown, Connecticut massacre on December 14, 2012 and February 10 of this year. Out of the 44 shootings, a total of 28 died. To dramatize their numbers, Bloomberg’s groups emphasized that one of these attacks occurred every 10 days.
But their statistics are not what they seem. Included in the numbers are suicides. Also included are late night shootings taking place in school parking lots, on their grounds or even off school property, often involving gangs. As “shootings,” they also include any incident where shots were fired, even when nobody was injured.
About 40% of the deaths (11 out of 28) were suicides.
Out of the 28 K–12 school shootings, at least four, possibly eight, where gang shootings. Several of the college cases most likely also involved gangs.
Indeed, gangs are a major problem. But they aren’t just a threat off school campuses. And some schools just happen to be located near dangerous areas, so the gang activity spills over to school grounds. Linking such violence to the Newtown tragedy is highly misleading.
Also, some perspective is needed. Contrary to what many people believe, high school shootings have actually been falling over the last two decades. To illustrate this let’s compare the five school years 1992-93 to 1996-97 with the five school years from 2008-09 to 2012-13. During the first period, the number of non-gang, non-suicide shooting deaths averaged 25 a year. During the recent five-year period, it averaged less than half that, 10 per year – and that figure does include the horrific Newtown massacre.
To put these numbers in perspective, there are about 50 million young people between the ages of 6 and 17. Another 21 million people are enrolled in colleges.
A gun at a school (or even near a school) is considered newsworthy by the media and they often hype the story and milk it as long as possible. When USA Today or major city newspapers do this and get the idea to the vast majority of people that school shootings happen almost every day. They don’t. They are rare. Most young people and college students are totally safe from being shot.
John R. Lott s a columnist for FOXNews.com. He is an economist and was formerly chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with the Crime Prevention Research Center
WELL-KNOWN NEWSCASTER DEAD AT 74
NBC News veteran reporter Garrick Utley has died of cancer. He was 74.
Utley began at NBC News in 1963, where for three decades he handled a wide variety of assignments. Early on, he reported from Vietnam on the escalating conflict. In later years, he moderatedMeet the Press.
He once speculated that he may have been the only person at NBC News who handled every type of programming as host or anchor.
In 1993, he left NBC to be a foreign correspondent for ABC News. He reported for CNN from 1997 to 2002. Standing a lanky 6-foot-6, Utley was known for his courtly and knowledgeable on the-air manner.
An opera buff, he was also a host of PBS’ Live From the Met.
WOOPS!
A Los Angeles waiter says he accidently threw out a receipt with a several thousand dollar tip left to him by the mystery mega-tipper known as “Tips for Jesus.”
Ron Kinney, a 67-year-old waiter at French Quarter Restaurant in West Hollywood, claims he lost the tip over the holidays last year and it was for either $4,000 or $7,000 on a bill that was no more than $50. He doesn’t remember the exact amount because he assumed the large tip was a mistake and immediately tossed out the receipt.
“I was pretty naive, I guess,” Kinney told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I thought it was someone who had a drink too many and didn’t realize what they were doing…We see this all the time. People make mistakes.”
Touting himself as “doing the Lord’s work, one tip at a time,” the mystery diner, who is rumored to be former PayPal Vice-President Jack Selby, uses a Twitter and Instagram account to document generous tips left to everyday wait staff and bartenders.
In an attempt to encourage others to tip big,”Tips for Jesus” ran a Project Christmas Eve campaign during the holidays – the same time Kinney claims to have tossed his tip.
“The money would sure have come in handy for me to help for retirement. We have no such plan at work,” Kinney said.
The Chronicle does note that no receipt from the French Quarter Restaurant has been posted in the past 17 weeks to the “Tips for Jesus” Instagram account.
“OBAMACARE IS CHEAPER THAN GYM SHOES”
On the “Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon, First Lady Michelle Obama explained that it was more important than ever for young people older than 26 to sign up for health insurance. “A lot of young people think they’re invincible, but the truth is young people are knuckleheads,” she laughed, pointing out that they often cut themselves while cooking or injure themselves by dancing on bar stools.
Obama added that thanks to Obamacare, coverage for young people was much cheaper. “Now young people can get insurance for as little as $50 a month, less than the cost of gym shoes,” she explained.
A BOY AND HIS DOG
When 7-year-old Owen Howkins met his new dog, Haatchi, he was a shy boy suffering from a rare syndrome that left his muscles permanently flexed and his mobility limited. He remains in constant pain. When Haatchi met Owen, he was recovering from losing his left rear leg after being hit by a train in north London.
For the boy in the wheelchair and the three-legged Anatolian Shepherd, it was an instant, soul-binding friendship, one that Owen says “changed my life.”
In the video “A Boy and his Dog,” Owen’s stepmother Colleen Drummond explains, “The day that Haatchi met Owen was utterly incredible. It was electric. It was spiritual…they immediately understood they were going to work together as a team.”
Owen has a condition called Schwartz-Jampel syndrome, which his father, Will, explains leaves his muscles in a permanently flexed state. Because they never relax, it affects his balance and Owen uses a walker or wheelchair to get around.
Now, Owen says, he and Hattachi “like going for walks in my electric wheelchair.”
“His confidence has grown and grown this past year,” his father reports. Owen agrees. “Everything changed in my life with him,” he says, referring to Haatchi, who was rescued by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Among the many things Owen says Haatchi taught him is not to be afraid of strangers. Says Drummond, “Owen and Haatchi simplify everything by pure love.”
Adds Owen, “Haatchi is my best friend.”
(Editors Note: To see Owen and Haatchi and watch this beautiful story, go to reachmorenow.com I posted it there last night. Don’t miss it. – Ray)
A LITTLE GIRL’S DREAM CAME TRUE
A 5-year-old girl with terminal cancer lived out her dream of becoming a princess when family and friends organized a ‘princess parade’ in her home town of Dickinson, Texas on Wednesday, KHSB Kansas City reported. Claire Lankford has been battling a rare, incurable cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma since she was 3 years old.
“She went through 42 weeks of chemotherapy and four weeks of radiation on her chest and six weeks of radiation on her spine,” Claire’s mother, Patricia Lankford, the principal at Hughes Road Elementary School in Dickinson, Texas, told KHSB. “Throughout her treatments she did not have her hair, her eyebrows or eyelashes but she was a source of joy for the doctors and nurses. She would walk around the hospital saying, ‘Good evening, good afternoon.’ She walked the hallways receiving chemo and at the same time spreading joy.”
On Wednesday, Claire’s parents planned a surprise for their daughter: A horse-drawn carriage ride around her neighborhood. Both Claire and her mother dressed up as Belle from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – Claire’s favorite princess.
Hundreds of people lined the streets of the family’s neighborhood, carrying signs and tossing flowers to cheer on Claire. “I envisioned a carriage, maybe a few people from the community and the school district to come out and support us,” Patricia said. “This was incredible – incredible to think that people would want to come out and support my child. It’s beautiful.”
Claire’s cancer took a turn for the worst last month, after doctors found five tumors on her lungs and lymph nodes.
“We just want her to know she is loved. I think that’s what anyone would want to know in their lifetime,” Kevin Lankford, Claire’s father, told KSHB. “No matter how long or how short it may be and that they were here and they had friends and family and people that care about them.”
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Don’t let the future scare you because it sure doesn’t scare the Lord
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ALL DAY FRIDAY THROUGH SATURDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 21 AND 22, 2014 CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY