Around the World: March 9, 2015

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate report on the CIA's post-Sept. 11 interrogations shows how a rigorous examination of a secret agency can expose misconduct, incompetence and bureaucratic spin, even to those who question the investigation's assertion that torture did not work.

 

The review also highlights how rare such examinations are, and it raises this question: How well run are other CIA programs, such as targeted killing with drones or the secret effort to train and arm Syrian rebels?

 

Congressional intelligence committees have long been accused of being "captured" by the agencies they oversee. When the committees do expose and correct problems, it almost always happens behind closed doors. The Senate report's 518-page summary, made public in December, was a rare instance of an oversight committee trying to hold the CIA accountable in a public way.

 

Particularly unusual was that its findings came from 6 million pages of the sort of internal CIA records that few outsiders, including committee staffers, ever get to see.

 

The report was written by Democrats, and its chief conclusion that brutal interrogations failed to produce unique intelligence is disputed by most Republicans and by the CIA. Since most of the CIA records remain secret, there may always be disagreement about whether detainees, after being tortured, provided information that was important to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, for example, even if it's clear that CIA got much of its intelligence in that case from other sources.

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wondering who's up and who's down in the 2016 presidential race?

Go for a run, tend the garden, clean the closet, remove the lint from the dryer, and then do it all over again because it's going to be a long time before the polls will tell us much about who's likely to be our next president.

 

The fact is, what the polls do show is that most Americans aren't yet paying enough attention to make the horse race results worth much at all.

 

The first votes of the 2016 presidential campaign are roughly a year away, and 21 months before Election Day. Right now, there aren't even any officially declared candidates for president.

 

But there are plenty of polls asking about the few dozen folks who are all but certain to seek the White House, and none of them has the ability to predict who among them might emerge to replace President Barack Obama.

 

 

NEW YORK (AP) — In 2009 the stock market was filled with panic.

 

The housing market had collapsed. Lehman Brothers had gone under and General Motors was on the verge of bankruptcy reorganization. The U.S. was in a deep recession, and stocks had plunged 57 percent from their high in October 2007.

 

Fast forward six years, and investors are enjoying one of the longest bull markets since the 1940s.

 

The Standard & Poor's 500 index has more than tripled since bottoming out at 676.53 on March 9, 2009. The bull has pushed through a U.S. debt crisis, an escalating conflict in the Middle East, renewed tensions with Russia over Ukraine and Europe's stagnating economy.

 

So has this bull run its course? Most market strategists haven't yet seen the signs that typically accompany a market peak. Investors are yet to become rash, or overconfident.

 

 

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Within hours of a white officer shooting an unarmed black man, the police chief of Wisconsin's capital city was praying with the man's grandmother, hoping to strike a conciliatory tone and avoid the riots that last year rocked Ferguson, Missouri.

 

Chief Mike Koval said he knows Madison is being watched across the nation since 19-year-old Tony Robinson's death Friday evening, and he has gone out of his way to avoid what he once called Ferguson's "missteps."

 

"Folks are angry, resentful, mistrustful, disappointed, shocked, chagrined. I get that," Koval said Saturday. "People need to tell me squarely how upset they are with the Madison Police Department."

 

The contrasts with Ferguson are many.

 

While Ferguson police initially gave little information about the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old, unarmed black man, Koval rushed to the home of Robinson's mother. She didn't want to meet with him, he said, but he talked and prayed with Robinson's grandmother in the driveway for 45 minutes.

 

 

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — With its wings stretched wide to catch the sun's energy, a Swiss-made solar-powered aircraft took off from Abu Dhabi just after daybreak Monday in a historic first attempt to fly around the world without a drop of fossil fuel.

 

Solar Impulse founder André Borschberg was at the controls of the single-seat aircraft when it lumbered into the air at the Al Bateen Executive Airport. Borschberg will trade off piloting with Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard during layovers on a 35,000-kilometer (21,700-mile) journey.

 

Some legs of the trip, such as over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, will mean five days and five nights of flying solo. Both pilots have been training hard for this journey, which will span 25 flight days over five months before this Spruce Goose of renewable energy returns to Abu Dhabi in late July or August.

 

"It is also exciting because you know, you simulate, you calculate, you imagine, but there is nothing like testing and doing it in real," Borschberg said just hours before takeoff. "I am sure we are all confident and hopefully we will be able to see each other here in five months."

 

The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, a larger version of a single-seat prototype that first flew five years ago, has a wingspan of 72 meters (236 feet), larger than that of the Boeing 747. Built into the wings are 17,248 ultra-efficient solar cells that transfer solar energy to four electrical motors that power the plane's propellers. The solar cells also recharge four lithium polymer batteries.

 

 

TOKYO (AP) — It was not Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but in many ways, including lives lost, it was just as horrific.

 

On March 10, 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo in the dead of night, dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm. A fifth of Tokyo was left a smoldering expanse of charred bodies and rubble.

 

Today, a modest floral monument in a downtown park honors the spirits of the 105,400 confirmed dead, many interred in common graves.

 

It was the deadliest conventional air raid ever, worse than Nagasaki and on par with Hiroshima. But the attack, and similar ones that followed in more than 60 other Japanese cities, have received little attention, eclipsed by the atomic bombings and Japan's postwar rush to rebuild.

 

Haruyo Nihei, just 8 when the bombs fell, was among many survivors who kept silent. A half-century passed before she even shared her experiences with her own son.

 

 

BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have hit a Syrian oil refinery held by the Islamic State group, activists said Monday.

 

The strikes targeted a refinery near the Turkish-Syrian border outside the town of Tel Abyad. Video from the Turkish Dogan News Agency showed the strikes Sunday night, which saw an enormous fireball engulf the refinery.

 

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated the strikes killed about 30 people, including Islamic State militants and refinery workers. The Syrian activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently also reported the strikes, but offered no casualty figure.

 

The Islamic State group, which controls a self-declared caliphate on captured territory covering about a third of Syria and Iraq, partially funds its conquests through the sale of black market oil.

 

The U.S.-led coalition did not immediately acknowledge launching the strike.

 

 

WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) — When she first arrived in town, Windie Lazenko headed to the neon-lit strip clubs and bars catering to lonely oil field workers with extra cash and time on their hands. She knew these were likely gathering spots for the sex trade — the life she'd given up long ago.

 

For nearly two decades, Lazenko was part of that illicit world, starting as a 13-year-old runaway when, she says, she was bought and sold for sex. Prostitution, pornography and strip clubs followed. Then she walked away from it all. She eventually moved to Montana and a few years ago, while counseling at-risk girls, she began hearing about young women being recruited for prostitution in the Bakken oilfields. She wanted to help.

 

Lazenko is now one of the most prominent activists in the fight against sex trafficking in the oil patch.

 

She's worked with federal prosecutors, the FBI and police, testified before state lawmakers and addressed church and school groups. She also has formed an advocacy-resource group, 4her North Dakota, reaching out to victimized women.

 

"I speak their language from the get-go," she says. "I'm not law enforcement. I'm not out there to bust them. They don't have to play the game with me. They're going to respect me and I'm going to respect them. We're going to have a conversation. I know what it is to be out there."

 

Lazenko's advocacy comes as state lawmakers are considering an array of new measures — including stiffer penalties for pimps and more money to help victims — to combat the growing sex trade in the Bakken. "It's powerful for them to say human trafficking is here in North Dakota," she says. "It's just huge that they've acknowledged it."

 

 

JERUSALEM (AP) — A minor revolution is underway in Israel, with the female candidates catapulting to the top of party lists across the political spectrum ahead of the country's March 17 election, setting them up to claim key positions of power in the next government like never before.

 

While the number of women in Israel's 120-seat Knesset isn't likely to rise dramatically from its current 27, the number of women holding senior positions likely will, breaking new ground for women.

 

Israel is one of the few countries to have elected a female head of government — Golda Meir, four decades ago. But Meir's success turned out to be an exception to the rule, and its politics remain male-dominated. Female representation is low compared to Western democracies, and only 23 women have served as government ministers or deputy ministers since Israel's creation in 1948.

 

Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said the strong showing for women in recent primaries follows a gradual rise in women's participation in the Knesset since the late 1990s.

 

He said that while more established parties such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud have elected only three women into its ranks, with another two appointed, newer parties are bringing in more. The newly formed Kulanu, for instance, is one-third female. Two parties have women at the helm: Tzipi Livni from Hatnuah and Zehava Galon from Meretz.