Even US intel chief in the dark about Trump-Putin talks
ASPEN, Colo. — Even Donald Trump’s intelligence chief doesn’t know what was said in the president’s one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Helsinki.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was also unaware that Putin was being invited to Washington.
Coats made those surprise admissions Thursday in his first public comments since rebutting Trump’s questioning of the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Coats tiptoed around any potential conflict with his boss, but was upfront about some of his misgivings, saying that he wished Trump had made different statements Monday in Helsinki after meeting Putin.
Coats, who is charged with overseeing the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies, also said that if he had been asked, he would have advised Trump against meeting Putin alone, with just interpreters.
Turmoil slows rebuilding of Puerto Rico’s power grid
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Ten months after Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s electric grid, the local agency responsible for rebuilding it is in chaos and more than $1 billion in federal funds meant to strengthen the rickety system has gone unspent, according to contractors and U.S. officials who are anxious to make progress before the next hurricane.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority has seen two CEOs and four board members resign in less than a week in a messy fight over how much the bankrupt agency should pay its CEO. The agency’s fourth CEO since the hurricane lasted less than 24 hours on the job last week before resigning amid public outrage over his $750,000 salary.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello on Wednesday named the former head of Puerto Rico’s water and sewer agency as the fifth head of the electric company since Maria, at a salary of $250,000 a year. Jose Ortiz starts work Monday.
“In spite of missteps in the past, everybody will see that we have the right person at the right time,” Rossello said.
The turmoil has fueled delays in launching $1.4 billion worth of work that includes replacing creaky wooden power poles vulnerable to collapse in the next storm, the chief federal official in charge of rebuilding Puerto Rico told The Associated Press.
Tornadoes sweep through Iowa; major damage and some injuries
DES MOINES, Iowa — A flurry of tornadoes swept through central Iowa Thursday afternoon, flattening buildings and damaging the courthouse in Marshalltown and hitting an agricultural machinery plant in Pella as people were working. Authorities said a hospital was evacuated and there were some injuries from the storms, but no reports of deaths.
Hardest hit appeared to be Marshalltown , a city of 27,000 people about 50 miles northeast of Des Moines, where brick walls collapsed in the streets, roofs were blown off buildings and the cupola of the historic courthouse tumbled 175 feet to the ground.
UnityPoint Health hospital in Marshalltown was damaged, spokeswoman Amy Varcoe said.
Varcoe said all 40 of its patients were being transferred to the health system’s hospitals in Waterloo and Grundy Center.
The Marshalltown hospital’s emergency room remained open to treat patients injured in the storm, Varcoe said. Ten people injured in the storm had been treated by 7 p.m. Thursday, she said. She did not know how serious those patients’ injuries were.
Trump aims to end automatic protections for some species
DENVER — The Trump administration on Thursday proposed ending automatic protections for threatened animals and plants and limiting habitat safeguards meant to shield recovering species from harm.
Administration officials said the new rules would advance conservation by simplifying and improving how the landmark Endangered Species Act is used.
“These rules will be very protective,” said U.S. Interior Department Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, adding that the changes would reduce the “conflict and uncertainty” associated with many protected species.
The proposals drew immediate condemnation from Democrats and some wildlife advocates.
Critics said the moves would speed extinctions in the name of furthering its anti-environment agenda. Species currently under consideration for protections are considered especially at risk, including the North American wolverine and the monarch butterfly, they said.
From wire sources
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Home demolitions may create new problem: lead-tainted dust
DETROIT — The nation’s largest home-demolition program, which has torn down more than 14,000 vacant houses across Detroit, may have inadvertently created a new problem by spreading lead-contaminated dust through some of the city’s many hollowed-out neighborhoods.
Health officials are concerned that crushing walls covered with lead paint generates dust that can settle on nearby homes or drift through open windows, endangering families who have stayed long after their neighbors fled during Detroit’s long decline.
Because the risk of lead exposure is especially worrisome for children, Detroit Health Department teams plan to go door-to-door next week in some neighborhoods to seek out potential hazards and do in-home testing of children.
“We’re kind of throwing the kitchen sink at it a little bit,” said Health Director Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun. Since the problem involves children, “we have to do everything we can” to ensure the demolition program “is as safe as possible.”
Health department data released last year showed elevated blood lead levels among children living in several areas where the dilapidated structures have been knocked down. The city has not determined if the demolitions caused the increase, but officials curtailed some of the work until the onset of colder weather, when windows are more likely to be closed and children less likely to be outdoors.
Gene tests can provide health clues — and needless worry
NEW YORK — Last year, Katie Burns got a phone call that shows what can happen in medicine when information runs ahead of knowledge.
Burns learned that a genetic test of her fetus had turned up an abnormality. It appeared in a gene that, when it fails to work properly, causes heart defects, mental disability and other problems. But nobody knew whether the specific abnormality detected by the test would cause trouble.
“I was pretty distraught,” says Burns, a photographer in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I had a baby who was kicking. I could feel him moving inside of me. But at the same time I had this ache in my chest. What was his life going to be for him?”
It took two months to get more reliable information, and Burns says she wasn’t really sure of the answer until after she gave birth in October to a healthy boy.
Her experience is a glimpse into a surprising paradox of modern-day genetics: Scientists have made huge leaps in rapidly decoding people’s DNA, but they sometimes don’t know what their findings mean. They can even get fooled.