World Briefly: 3-10-17

BC-World Briefly/2009

AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST

GOP leaders claim momentum as health bill clears hurdles

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders drove their long-promised legislation to dismantle Barack Obama’s health care law over its first big hurdles in the House on Thursday and claimed fresh momentum despite cries of protest from right, left and center.

After grueling all-night sessions, the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees both approved their portions of the bill along party-line votes. The legislation, strongly supported by President Donald Trump, would replace the tax penalties for the uninsured under Obama’s Affordable Care Act with a conservative blueprint likely to cover far fewer people but, Republicans hope, increase choice.

The vote in Ways and Means came before dawn, while the Energy and Commerce meeting lasted past 27 hours as exhausted lawmakers groped for coffee refills, clean shirts and showers.

Angry Democrats protested that Republicans were acting in the dead of night to rip insurance coverage from poor Americans. But Republican leaders sounded increasingly confident that, after seven years of empty promises about undoing Obama’s law, they might finally be able to overcome their own deep divisions and deliver a bill to Trump to sign.

“This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said at a press briefing where he arrived in shirt-sleeves to deliver a wonky power-point presentation on the GOP bill, part TED talk and part Schoolhouse Rock.

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WikiLeaks aid on CIA software holes could be mixed blessing

NEW YORK (AP) — WikiLeaks has offered to help the likes of Google and Apple identify the software holes used by purported CIA hacking tools — and that puts the tech industry in a bind.

While companies have a responsibility — not to mention financial incentive — to fix problems in their software, accepting help from WikiLeaks raises legal and ethical questions. And it’s not even clear at this point exactly what kind of information WikiLeaks has to offer.

THE PROMISE

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday that the anti-secrecy site will work with technology companies to help defend them against software vulnerabilities in everyday gadgets such as phones and TVs. In an online news conference, Assange said some companies had asked for more details about the purported CIA cyberespionage toolkit that he revealed in a massive disclosure on Tuesday.

“We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to the additional technical details we have, so that fixes can be developed and pushed out,” Assange said. The digital blueprints for what he described as “cyberweapons” would be published to the world “once this material is effectively disarmed by us.”

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White House: Trump unaware of Flynn’s foreign agent work

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was not aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had worked to further the interests of the government of Turkey before appointing him, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday.

Spicer’s comments came two days after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., filed paperwork with the Justice Department formally identifying him as a foreign agent and acknowledging that his work for a company owned by a Turkish businessman could have aided Turkey’s government.

Asked whether Trump knew about Flynn’s work before he appointed him as national security adviser, Spicer said, “I don’t believe that that was known.”

Flynn and his company filed the registration paperwork describing $530,000 worth of lobbying before Election Day on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin. In an interview with The Associated Press, Alptekin said Flynn did so after pressure from Justice Department officials.

The filing this week was the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s first acknowledgement that his consulting business furthered the interests of a foreign government while he was working as a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.

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EPA chief: Carbon dioxide not primary cause of warming

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with mainstream scientific consensus and his own agency.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said measuring the effect of human activity on the climate is “very challenging” and that “there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact” of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“So, no, I would not agree that (carbon dioxide) is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Pruitt’s view is contrary to mainstream climate science, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA itself.

Carbon dioxide is the biggest heat trapping force and is responsible for about 33 times more added warming than natural causes, according to calculations from the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change organized by the United Nations.

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US commander signals larger, longer US presence in Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. commander in the Middle East signaled Thursday that there will be a larger and longer American military presence in Syria to accelerate the fight against the Islamic State group and quell friction within the complicated mix of warring factions there.

Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, told senators Thursday that he will need more conventional U.S. forces to insure stability once the fight to defeat Islamic State militants in their self-declared capital of Raqqa is over. The U.S. military, he said, can’t just leave once the fight is over because the Syrians will need help keeping IS out and ensuring the peaceful transition to local control.

Votel’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee comes as a couple hundred Marines moved into Syria in recent days to bring in large artillery guns for the Raqqa fight, and another couple hundred Army Rangers went into northern Syria to tamp down skirmishes between Turkish and Syrian forces near the border.

“I think as we move towards the latter part of these operations into more of the stability and other aspects of the operations, we will see more conventional forces requirements,” Votel said. Until recently, the U.S. military presence in Syria was made up of special operations forces advising and assisting the U.S.-backed Syrian troops.

It will be critical, Votel said, to get humanitarian aid, basic working services and good local leaders in place in Raqqa so that businesses can return and the city can move on.

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Analysis: US troop increase risks tangling in Syria’s war

BEIRUT (AP) — Rolling around 200 Marines backed with howitzers into northern Syria, the United States is shifting from working quietly behind the scenes in Syria’s conflict, turning instead toward overt displays of U.S. force in an attempt to shape the fight.

The latest deployment widens America’s footprint in a highly toxic battlefield, with U.S. credibility and prestige on the line. It also risks drawing troops into a long and costly war with unpredictable outcomes.

The Marines’ deployment, intended to back local forces in the campaign against the Islamic State group, came just days after another intervention. Dozens of Army troops, riding Stryker armored vehicles waving American flags, drove outside the Syrian town of Manbij in a mission aimed at keeping U.S. allies Turkey and Syrian Kurds from fighting each other and focused instead on the fight against IS.

The latest dispatch brings the number of U.S. boots on the ground in Syria close to more than 700.

The previous troops were quietly sent by the Obama administration to work with local allies against IS; most of them were special forces and advisers, and none brought heavy weapons like artillery with them.

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Media the enemy? Trump is sure an insatiable consumer

NEW YORK (AP) — Before most people are out of bed, Donald Trump is watching cable news.

Indeed, with Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history.

Trump usually rises before 6 a.m. and first watches TV in the residence before later moving to a small dining room in the West Wing. A short time later, he’s given a stack of newspapers — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and, long his favorite, The New York Post — as well as pile of printed articles from other sources including conservative online outlets like Breitbart News.

The TVs stay on all day. The president often checks in at lunch and again in the evening, when he retires to the residence, cellphone in hand.

It is a central paradox of the Trump presidency. Trump is a faithful newspaper reader who enjoys jousting with reporters, an avid cable TV news viewer who frequently live-tweets what he’s watching, and a reader of websites that have been illuminated by his presidential spotlight, showcasing the at-times conspiratorial corners of the internet.

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Death toll rises to 34 in fire at youth shelter in Guatemala

SAN JOSE PINULA, Guatemala (AP) — A blaze that killed at least 34 girls at a shelter for troubled youths erupted when some of them set fire to mattresses to protest rapes and other mistreatment at the badly overcrowded institution, the parent of one victim said Thursday.

Officials said they are still investigating who started the fire Wednesday at the long-criticized shelter on the outskirts of Guatemala’s capital. It houses troubled and abused boys and girls as well as juvenile offenders.

Nineteen victims were found dead at the scene, and 15 more succumbed one by one to their grisly injuries at hospitals in Guatemala City. Several more girls were fighting for their lives, some with severe burns over more than half their bodies.

The fire started when someone ignited mattresses in a dormitory that held girls who had been caught the day before during a mass breakout attempt, authorities said.

On Thursday, distraught parents haunted hospitals and the morgue, passing scraps of paper scrawled with the names of loved ones they hoped to find.

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Legal challenges to Trump’s travel ban mount from US states

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal challenges against President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban mounted Thursday as Washington state said it would renew its request to block the executive order.

It came a day after Hawaii launched its own lawsuit, and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said both Oregon and New York had asked to join his state’s legal action. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said the state is joining fellow states in challenging the revised travel ban.

Washington was the first state to sue over the original ban, which resulted in Judge James Robart in Seattle halting its implementation around the country. Ferguson said the state would ask Robart to rule that his temporary restraining order against the first ban applies to Trump’s revised action.

Trump’s revised ban bars new visas for people from six predominantly Muslim countries: Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. It also temporarily shuts down the U.S. refugee program.

Unlike the initial order, the new one says current visa holders won’t be affected, and removes language that would give priority to religious minorities.

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A look at legal issues with Trump’s revised travel ban

SEATTLE (AP) — Some of the states that helped derail President Trump’s first travel ban are mounting efforts to block his second one, saying that while the new order applies to fewer people, it’s infected with the same legal problems.

Hawaii on Wednesday launched the first lawsuit over the revised order after amending an earlier complaint filed against the old ban. Massachusetts, New York and Oregon say they will join in when Washington and Minnesota do the same on Monday.

In the meantime, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson asked a federal judge Thursday in Seattle to find that the temporary restraining order he issued halting the first travel ban applies to the second one as well. If the judge agrees, the government would not be able to put the new ban into effect Wednesday as scheduled, without further action from the court.

With more legal challenges still to come, here’s a look at the hurdles Trump’s new travel ban faces.

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