Around the World: March 5, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of a private email address and private computer server for official State Department business heightened security risks to her communications, such as the inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information and the danger from hackers, several information security experts said.

 

The revelation that Clinton relied exclusively on a private email account for routine exchanges during her four-year stint as secretary of state also raises questions about whether the agency or anyone else in government examined Clinton's private email server and network before it began operating and continued to regularly review it during her tenure. Federal regulations subject the computer systems of some federal contractors and other organizations to federal oversight when they interact with government systems to ensure they are protected.

 

On Wednesday, a House committee investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, issued subpoenas for emails from Clinton and others related to Libya. The Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi also instructed technology companies it did not identify to preserve any relevant documents in their possession.

 

For a second day, Washington seemed preoccupied with Clinton's email practices, which gave Clinton — who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign — significant control over limiting access to her message archives. But they also complicated the State Department's legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests.

 

Late Wednesday, a message was sent on Clinton's Twitter account that remarked on the growing controversy.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of private email has thrust the Obama administration into the 2016 presidential campaign fray, forcing the White House to defend — or at least explain — the former secretary of state's conduct.

 

Since the revelations surfaced this week, the Obama administration has been pummeled by endless questions about Clinton, who hasn't formally announced a run. In the absence of an official campaign to defend her, the White House press secretary has been put in the awkward position of being a de facto Clinton spokesman and the most public voice speaking on her behalf.

 

Further entangling the Obama administration, Clinton announced in a late-night tweet Wednesday that she wants her emails released. She asked the State Department to vet the 55,000-plus pages she handed over, leaving the diplomatic agency with the intensely politicized task of determining which can be made public.

 

The State Department said it would review the emails as quickly as possible but cautioned it would take some time.

 

The email saga has developed as the first major test for how the White House and President Barack Obama's administration will deal with Clinton's likely campaign — and the inevitable questions that will only get louder as 2016 approaches.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal investigation into the police killing of an unarmed, black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, lays bare what officials contend are racist, profit-driven law enforcement practices in the small St. Louis suburb.

 

While the Department of Justice cleared Officer Darren Wilson of federal civil rights charges in the August death of Michael Brown, it also called for sweeping changes in a city where officers trade racist emails, issue tickets mostly to black drivers that generate millions of dollars in revenue, and routinely use what investigators called excessive force on people stopped for minor or non-existent offenses.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that the department "found a community that was deeply polarized; a community where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents."

 

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III said steps are already being taken to correct problems.

 

"We must do better not only as a city, but as a state and a country," Knowles said.

BOSTON (AP) — It didn't take long for prosecutors in the Boston Marathon bombing trial to convey the sense of fear, pain and grief caused by the 2013 attack. They let victims do it for them.

 

On the first day of testimony Wednesday in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose lawyer admitted he committed the crime, three women who suffered severe injuries described their memories of the blasts, their wounds and the terror they felt.

 

Two of them had to have their left legs amputated and all of them spoke in graphic detail. It gave the jury a glimpse of the kind of agonizing testimony they can expect to hear in the coming months.

 

Sydney Corcoran, 17 at the time of the bombings, told the jury how she and her parents went to the marathon on April 15, 2013, to see her aunt run the race for the first time.

 

She recalled happily waiting to see her aunt cross the finish line one minute, then being immersed in smoke the next. She said she passed out and when she regained consciousness, she was lying on her back and men were tying tourniquets to her thigh.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A knife attack Thursday that injured the U.S. ambassador to South Korea is only the latest act of political violence in a deeply divided country where some protesters portray their causes as matters of life and death.

 

The slashing of Ambassador Mark Lippert's face and arm was an extreme example, but America infuriates some leftist South Koreans because of its role in Korea's turbulent modern history.

 

Washington backed the South during the 1950-53 Korean War against the communist North, still stations nearly 30,000 troops here and holds annual military drills with Seoul. That's something anti-U.S. activists view as a major obstacle to their goal of an eventual reunification of the rival Koreas.

 

Purported U.S. interference in Korean affairs appeared to be the main grievance of the man police named as the assailant, a 55-year-old named Kim Ki-jong who has a long history of anti-U.S. protests.

 

"South and North Korea should be reunified," Kim shouted as he slashed Lippert with a 25-centimeter (10 inch) knife, police and witnesses said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court argument over subsidies that help millions of people afford their health insurance suggests that the Obama administration has two chances to attract one critical vote.

 

The justices will gather in private Friday to cast their votes in the case. The outcome after Wednesday's argument appears to be in the hands of two conservative justices — one who voted with the court's four liberals to uphold the law in 2012 and the other who joins the liberals more often, but who would have killed the whole thing three years ago.

 

If Justice Anthony Kennedy had his way in 2012, there would be no health care case because there would be no Affordable Care Act. Kennedy, whose vote often is decisive in cases that divide the court's liberals and conservatives, was one of four dissenters who would have struck down the entire law.

 

But on Wednesday, Kennedy at least left open the possibility that he would not vote the same way again because of a legal concept known as constitutional avoidance. The idea is that judges should avoid interpreting a law in a way that raises constitutional problems if there's any other reasonable way to view it.

 

The dispute focuses on four words in the massive health law, "established by the state," which the challengers say is clear evidence that Congress intended subsidies to go only to people in states that created their own health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges. The idea was to have a carrot-and-stick approach, the challengers' lawyer, Michael Carvin, said.

 

Congress wanted states to establish their own exchanges and held out generous subsidies to the residents of those that did.

SYDNEY (AP) — She wakes up every morning and reaches for the smartphone on her nightstand, searching for the same jumble of letters and numbers that have consumed her life for a year: MH370. She scrolls through the news results, hoping for something — anything — that could explain what happened to her husband and the other 238 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

 

But every day, there is nothing. And so Danica Weeks puts down her phone and reaches instead for Paul's wedding ring, which she wears on a chain around her neck. He gave it to her the day he said goodbye to her and their two young sons in Perth, Australia — just in case something happened to him on his trip.

 

"People say, 'How are you coping?'" Weeks says. "I'm not coping. I'm existing."

 

Punctuating that existence is a gnawing worry about an unspecified day in May. It's the day crews on board four ships that have been scouring a remote patch of the Indian Ocean for the plane, which vanished on March 8, 2014, are expected to finish their search.

 

What happens if Australian officials overseeing the hunt haven't found the aircraft by then remains unknown. They could search someplace else. They could go back to the drawing board. Or they could simply give up.

Much of the South was forecast to see temperatures drop 30 to 45 degrees in a 24-hour period thanks to yet another arctic cold front, according to the latest forecasts.

 

Some locations may even see their coldest temperatures ever recorded so late in the season, including Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky, where temperatures may drop into the single digits.

 

A wintry mix of precipitation was already falling Wednesday night in Memphis, where a sheet of ice coated the roads, making driving especially hazardous.

 

West Virginia, Kentucky and southeastern Ohio were expected to get hit the hardest overnight into Thursday with 8 to 10 inches of snow, while Baltimore and Washington were looking at 6 to 8 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

 

Mississippi counties were advised to open shelters powered by generators to give residents an option beyond cold, dark homes in the event of power outages.