In Brief | Nation & World | 12-28-15

Relatives of 2 killed by Chicago police question shootings

CHICAGO — Grieving relatives and friends of two people shot and killed by Chicago police said Sunday the slayings raised concerns about why officers “shoot first and ask questions later,” saying the city failed residents even as a federal civil rights investigation has begun scrutinizing police practices.

Quintonio LeGrier, 19, was killed early Saturday by police responding to a domestic disturbance at an apartment on the city’s West Side, along with downstairs neighbor Bettie Jones, 55. Police said Jones was hit accidentally by the gunfire.

Both were black. The shootings came amid scrutiny of police after a series of deaths of African-Americans at the hands of officers across the country gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

LeGrier’s mother, Janet Cooksey, during a vigil Sunday placed candles on the porch of the two-story home, where Jones lived in a ground-floor apartment and LeGrier’s father in an upstairs unit. On either side of the door, Post-It notes indicated where two bullets hit siding on the house.

“I used to watch the news daily and I would grieve for other mothers, other family members, and now today I’m grieving myself,” Cooksey said at a news conference outside the residence earlier Sunday. She wore a black shirt with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s image on it and the phrase “Rahm Failed Us.

IS puts up heavy fight to slow Iraqi troop advance on Ramadi

BAGHDAD — Islamic State fighters are putting up a tough fight in the militant-held city of Ramadi, slowing down the advance of Iraqi forces, a senior Iraqi commander said Sunday.

Iraq launched the long-awaited operation to retake the Anbar provincial capital, which was captured by IS militants in May, but after an initial push across the Euphrates River, their progress stalled.

Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of the Anbar military operations, told The Associated Press that the advance was hampered by suicide bombers, snipers and booby traps.

Iraqi troops will “need days” to get to the city’s central government complex, said al-Mahlawi, adding that the troops were about one kilometer (half mile) from the complex on Sunday.

Al-Mahlawi said he could neither confirm nor deny media reports that IS fighters had pulled out of the government complex by nightfall Sunday. But he cited residents in the area as telling his troops that the IS militants had withdrawn from the neighborhood of Albu Alwan, adjacent to the complex.

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‘Force Awakens’ becomes fastest movie to $1 billion

LOS ANGELES — “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has reached $1 billion at the box office, achieving the milestone with record-setting hyper speed.

The Walt Disney Co. said “The Force Awakens” crossed the billion-dollar mark Sunday, accomplishing the feat in just 12 days. The previous movie to reach $1 billion the fastest was Universal’s “Jurassic World,” which did it in 13 days in June. “Jurassic World” also had the benefit of record grosses in China. “The Force Awakens” doesn’t open in the world’s second-largest movie market until Jan. 9.

J.J. Abrams’ installment of “Star Wars” also posted the biggest Christmas Day box office in history with $49.3 million and the best second-weekend earnings with $153.5 million.

“The Force Awakens” has been setting records since its debut Dec. 17. It brought in a galactic $238 million in North America over its opening weekend, besting previous record-setter “Jurassic World,” and set international opening-weekend records in Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe. It scored the biggest worldwide debut with $529 million. It also topped $100 million in IMAX screenings in 10 days, another global record.

“You almost have to rewrite all the record books for this movie,” box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Rentrak said. “It’s absolutely mind-blowing that ‘Star Wars’ could get to a billion dollars in 12 days and it hasn’t even opened in China, the second biggest movie market in the world.”

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Activists predict abortion will be a hot issue in campaigns

NEW YORK — With a deeper-than-ever split between Republicans and Democrats over abortion, activists on both sides of the debate foresee a 2016 presidential campaign in which the nominees tackle the volatile topic more aggressively than in past elections.

Friction over the issue also is likely to surface in key Senate races. And the opposing camps will be further energized by Republican-led congressional investigations of Planned Parenthood and by Supreme Court consideration of tough anti-abortion laws in Texas.

“It’s an amazing convergence of events,” said Charmaine Yoest, CEO of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life. “We haven’t seen a moment like this for 40 years.”

In the presidential race, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is a longtime defender of abortion rights and has voiced strong support for Planned Parenthood — a major provider of abortions, health screenings and contraceptives — as it is assailed by anti-abortion activists and Republican officeholders.

In contrast, nearly all of the GOP candidates favor overturning the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Some of the top contenders — including Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — disapprove of abortions even in cases of rape and incest.

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Israeli liberals cry foul over funding disclosure bill

JERUSALEM — Israeli Cabinet ministers gave preliminary approval Sunday to a bill that imposes new disclosure requirements on nonprofit groups that receive foreign funding — drawing accusations the government was trying to crack down on government critics, rattling relations with Europe and deepening an increasingly toxic divide between liberal and hawkish Israelis.

Critics said the regulations are meant to stifle dovish organizations critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government policies toward the Palestinians, since such nonprofits tend to rely heavily on donations from European countries.

In contrast, pro-government and nationalistic nonprofit groups tend to rely on wealthy private donors, who are exempt from the measures under the bill. The legislature is expected to approve the bill as early as this week.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog quickly blasted the bill as a “muzzling law” that would bring about “thought police.”

The bill, proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and approved by a committee of ministers, also dealt a new setback to already strained relations with the European Union, which funds a variety of nonprofit groups. Israeli leaders have been outraged over the EU’s recent decision to require labels on imported products made in West Bank settlements.

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Dangerous helicopter-bird strikes increase, few safety specs

WASHINGTON (AP) — The crew of a Dallas police helicopter was searching for a capsized boat last March, when there was a loud explosion and wind rushed through a huge hole in the windshield.

The pilot, Sgt. Todd Limerick, put a hand over one eye, his face covered in blood and Plexiglass shards. He kept his other hand on the controls until the co-pilot, Cpl. Laurent Lespagnol, took over and landed the aircraft.

“My first thought was that we had been shot. My second was the engine blew up,” Lespagnol said in an interview. It wasn’t until they had landed that they found the cause wedged between the cockpit seats — a 3-pound American coot, a duck-like bird.

Reports of helicopter bird strikes are up dramatically in recent years, including incidents, like the one in Dallas, that damage the aircraft and create the potential for crashes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. In 2013, there were 204 reported helicopter bird strikes, a 68 percent increase from 2009 when there were 121 reports and an increase of over 700 percent since the early 2000s, said Gary Roach, an FAA helicopter safety engineer.

The increase is due partly to greater awareness among pilots about the importance of reporting bird strikes since the January 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 was ditched in New York’s Hudson River after the airliner’s two engines sucked in geese.

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Damage from sinking land costing California billions

DOS PALOS, Calif. — A canal that delivers vital water supplies from Northern California to Southern California is sinking in places. So are stretches of a riverbed undergoing historic restoration. On farms, well casings pop up like mushrooms as the ground around them drops.

Four years of drought and heavy reliance on pumping of groundwater have made the land sink faster than ever up and down the Central Valley, requiring repairs to infrastructure that experts say are costing billions of dollars.

This slow-motion land subsidence — more than one foot a year in some places — is not expected to stop anytime soon, experts say, nor will the expensive repairs.

“It’s shocking how a huge area is affected, but how little you can tell with your eye,” said James Borchers, a hydro-geologist, who studies subsidence and says careful monitoring is necessary to detect and address sinking before it can do major damage to costly infrastructure such as bridges and pipelines.

Land subsidence is largely the result of pumping water from the ground. As aquifers are depleted, the ground sags.

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Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ returns to German market in new form

BERLIN — For 70 years since the Nazi defeat in World War II, copyright law has been used in Germany to prohibit the publication of “Mein Kampf” — the notorious anti-Semitic tome in which Adolf Hitler set out his ideology.

That will change next month when a new edition with critical commentary, the product of several years’ work by a publicly funded institute, hits the shelves.

While historians say it could help fill a gap in Germans’ knowledge of the era, Jewish groups are wary and German authorities are making it clear that they still won’t tolerate any new “Mein Kampf” without annotations.

Under German law, a copyright expires at the end of the year 70 years after an author’s death — in this case, Hitler’s April 30, 1945, suicide in a Berlin bunker as the Soviet army closed in. That means Bavaria’s state finance ministry, which holds the copyright, can no longer use it to prevent the work’s publication beyond Dec. 31.

The book has been published in several other countries; in the U.S., for example, Bavaria never controlled the copyright.