Author Archives: Pat Turnbaugh

Iraqi Forces Recapture Portions of Ramadi from Islamic State

Multiple reports indicate Iraqi forces have scored a victory in the fight against the Islamic State, taking back important districts in a city that was captured by ISIS militants earlier this year.

Citing Iraqi counterterrorism officials, the BBC reported Tuesday that the Iraqi government has reclaimed parts of the city of Ramadi. The entire city had been taken by the Islamic State in May.

CNN reported the reclaimed territory works out to be about 60 percent of the city.

The move comes after government officials reportedly worked to seal off the city and prevent the Islamic State from bringing in supplies and manpower. Reuters reported ISIS’ final link to the outside was severed last month, and living conditions within Ramadi quickly went downhill.

Reuters quoted one resident as saying the Islamic State was “treating women like animals” and another as saying food rations were so scarce that he’d have to eat his family’s cat if they ran out.

The news agency reported somewhere between 1,200 and 1,700 families were pinned in the city.

CNN reported that Iraqi forces were trying to encourage Ramadi residents to evacuate before the siege, but Islamic State militants were threatening to kill anyone they caught attempting to flee.

It wasn’t immediately clear if any civilians were killed as the Iraqi forces reclaimed the districts.

The BBC reported Iraqi forces would also work to take back the center of Ramadi, though those efforts were complicated by the belief that ISIS likely placed bombs in roads and buildings there.

San Bernardino Suspects Spoke of ‘Jihad and Martyrdom’ Two Years Ago

The husband and wife responsible for last week’s mass shooting in California were discussing ‘jihad and martyrdom’ together as early as 2013, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.

Comey unveiled the information while he was speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Investigators have been working to determine the circumstances that led the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik to open fire during a holiday party for Farook’s coworkers, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others exactly one week ago.

President Barack Obama has called the shooting an act of terrorism, and investigators had said the suspects were radicalized for “quite some time,” though Comey’s revelation to the lawmakers provided the most specific account yet of how and when the suspects became radicalized.

Comey said the FBI’s investigation “indicates that they were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online,” dispelling notions that one suspect radicalized the other. By the end of 2013, Comey said the two “were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom” online before their engagement, marriage and Malik’s move to the United States.

Yet none of these conversations apparently triggered any red flags, as Comey had previously told reporters that neither Farook nor Malik was on the FBI’s radar screen at the time of the attack.

Farook, a United States citizen, was born to Pakistani parents in Illinois. He met Malik, a Pakistan native who was living in Saudi Arabia, on an online dating website. Malik originally came to the United States under a “fiancee visa” waiver program that has been highly scrutinized since the attack, with federal lawmakers and Obama calling for reviews to the program. The fact that Malik was apparently radicalized before she came to America could spur further scrutiny.

While authorities have not linked Farook or Malik to being part of a larger terrorist group, investigators are trying to uncover what initially led the suspects to become radicalized and whether they were inspired by the work any foreign terrorist groups.

Police have said they recovered at least 4,500 rounds of ammunition and 19 pipes that could have been used to produce bombs from the couple’s home in Redlands, California.

Farook and Malik died in a shootout with police, leaving behind a 6-month-old daughter.

Thousands Without Power After Deadly Storm Pummels Oregon, Washington

About 30,000 people near Portland, Oregon, were reportedly without power Wednesday morning a deadly rainstorm caused widespread flooding and toppled some utility lines.

The Oregonian newspaper reported the number of outages as of 5 a.m. local time. That number was down to about 6,000 less than two hours later, according to Portland General Electric data.

The outages came after the latest in a line of rainstorms swept through the Pacific Northwest.

The National Weather Service reported that about 6 inches of rain fell on parts of Oregon between 3 p.m. local time on Monday and 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The agency reported wind gusts of up to 125 mph at Mount Hood and gusts of at least 60 mph in 12 other locations in Oregon, as well as six in Washington. Those winds reportedly contributed to at least one death.

Authorities told The Oregonian the storm sent a 30-inch-diameter tree crashing through a home early Wednesday morning, pinning a 60-year-old woman in her bed. The woman later died.

In Washington, Puget Sound Energy reported about 73,741 customers lacked power Wednesday morning. There were 329 separate outages reported around Seattle, Olympia and Tacoma.

Winds and power outages weren’t the only thing the storm brought.

The National Weather Service reported at least 36 river gauges in Oregon and Washington were at flood stage, and flood warnings remained in effect for northwest Oregon and southwest Washington. There were multiple media reports of flooded roadways, mudslides and sinkholes.

The Oregon Department of Transportation reported a mudslide closed a portion of U.S. Route 30 near a bridge in Portland and a sinkhole closed state Route 22 in Yamhill County, closer to the Pacific Ocean. The police department of Gresham, a Portland suburb, posted multiple photos on social media that showed a gaping sinkhole opened underneath a road there.

Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services said the heavy rainfalls caused sewage systems to overflow into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough on Monday morning. The bureau is continuing to ask the public to avoid the waters there “because of increased bacteria” presence.

The National Weather Service reported the storm also dropped some snow in higher elevations.

The Weather Channel reported that two more storms are expected to hit the Pacific Northwest. One was forecast to hit the region Wednesday night, while the other was expected this weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued storm and gale warnings off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

House Overwhelmingly Votes to Tighten Restrictions on Visa-Free Travel

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to impose new restrictions on travel to the United States, which bill proponents said is designed to prevent terrorists from lawfully entering the country.

The bill, approved by a 407-19 margin, is geared to reform the United States’ Visa Waiver Program, which allows eligible citizens from 38 participating countries to travel to the country for 90 or fewer days without first getting a visa from a United States embassy or consulate.

The list of countries includes Belgium and France, according to the State Department. Those countries were the home of many of the terrorists who executed the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. The legislation is designed to close a loophole that, theoretically, could have allowed any one of those Belgian or French terrorists from entering the United States through the Visa Waiver Program.

The Associated Press reported about 20 million travelers visit America through the program every year. There are some security measures in place, but this bill aims to improve them.

The changes would now require the 38 participating countries to “continually share terrorism and foreign traveler data with the United States,” according to a news release from lawmakers.

“It will also disqualify anyone who has traveled to Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Iran within the past five years from participating in the program,” Rep. Candice Miller (R-Michigan), the lawmaker who introduced the bill, said on the House floor. “In an abundance of caution, we will now require those individuals to apply for a visa and go through the formal visa screening process.”

In the week before the vote, the House’s Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Michael McCaul (R-Texas), said about 5,000 of the 30,000 foreign fighters currently in Iraq and Syria have Western passports that could have been used to exploit the Visa Waiver Program loophole.

Other proposed changes to the program are geared toward reducing passport fraud.

They include requiring the participating countries to report lost or stolen passports within 24 hours, and screen travelers against INTERPOL records. The changes would also require U.S.-bound travelers to hold chip-enabled “e-passports” like those issued by the United States.

The bill would allow Homeland Security officials to suspend a country’s visa waiver privileges if they don’t comply with the proposed rules, like not sharing information about potential threats. They could also block any country from the program if the country is later determined to be a “high-risk” area in security reviews that would be conducted annually.

“We need to be certain that participating countries are giving us all the information we need from either their own terror watch lists or travel manifests and that the information protocols are being shared,” Miller said on the House floor. “As we know, sometimes it’s not until after the fact that some of the participating countries actually provide us names of individuals who they knew were a terror threat. That is unacceptable.”

Though it was approved by the House, the bill still needs Senate approval and must be signed by the president before it becomes a law. Lawmakers have introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

Miller also called for a “complete, comprehensive review of all our visa programs,” including the fiancee-visa that allowed one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, mass shootings to lawfully enter the country. Tashfeen Malik was a Pakistani native living in Saudi Arabia when she met Syed Rizwan Farook, a United States citizen, reportedly on an online dating website.

Last week, the couple killed 14 people and injured 21 more during a party for Farook’s coworkers. The mass shooting has been called an act of terrorism by President Barack Obama, and authorities say they have evidence that the couple had been radicalized for a period of time.

The investigation into the shootings continued on Wednesday.

New Legislation Would Require Tech Companies to Report Terrorist Activity

Two lawmakers have proposed bipartisan legislation that would make it mandatory for tech companies to report any suspected terrorist activities to the appropriate authorities.

The bill was introduced in the Senate by two members of the Intelligence Committee, Vice Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina). They say it’s built on a law that requires companies to report child pornography if it’s found.

In a statement, the senators said the bill wouldn’t require the companies to monitor any of their customers or perform any new investigations to snuff out terrorists. But the senators said if the companies happen to discover any evidence of “terrorist activity” — things like planning attacks, recruiting terrorists or distributing material — they would be required to alert law enforcement.

Both senators said terrorist organizations have used social media to advance their cause.

“We’re in a new age where terrorist groups like (the Islamic State) are using social media to reinvent how they recruit and plot attacks,” Feinstein said. “That information can be the key to identifying and stopping terrorist recruitment or a terrorist attack, but we need help from technology companies.”

The senators said the idea was originally part of the annual intelligence authorization bill the Senate Intelligence Committee approved in June, but the mandatory reporting provision was removed. It’s now being introduced as a standalone bill after the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and injured 21 more in a mass shooting last Wednesday in San Bernardino, California. President Barack Obama has denounced the shooting, which occurred during a holiday party for Farook’s coworkers, as an act of terrorism.

In reintroducing the legislation, the senators pointed to published media reports that said Malik declared allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State on Facebook around the time of the shooting. Authorities have yet to publicly confirm those published reports, though they have said they’ve discovered evidence the shooters were radicalized and had been for a period of time.

The investigation into the shooting continued as the senators urged Congress to pass the bill.

“It’s critical that Congress works together to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence officials have the tools available to keep Americans safe,” Burr said. “The stakes have never been higher and having cooperation with these outlets will help save lives here and abroad.”

Islamic State Militants Reportedly Using U.S. Weapons

Islamic State militants are using some weapons that originally came from the United States, according to a new report from the human rights group Amnesty International.

The report, released Tuesday, provides a glimpse into how the Islamic State has stockpiled the weapons it is using to fight battles in Iraq and Syria and commit deadly terrorist acts worldwide.

Amnesty International found the Islamic State has amassed more than 100 kinds of weapons and ammunition from at least 25 countries, and most of its weapons were stolen from the Iraqi military. Amnesty reported a large number of these arms were obtained when the Islamic State captured Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June 2014 and looted military stockpiles there.

The Mosul haul, which Amnesty described as a “windfall,” included American-made weapons and military vehicles. The organization said both were subsequently used in Islamic State activities elsewhere in the country as the group successfully took control of additional territory.

The report comes days after President Barack Obama gave an address from the Oval Office and said one of America’s strategies to defeat the Islamic State terrorists was to continue providing training and support to local groups who were fighting the insurgents in the Middle East, rather than deploy large numbers of American soldiers there. But Amnesty’s report provides evidence that strategy seems to have, somewhat inadvertently, aided the Islamic State’s terror campaign.

“The vast and varied weaponry being used by the armed group calling itself Islamic State is a textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale,” Patrick Wilcken, a researcher on arms control, security trade and human rights at Amnesty, said in a statement. “Poor regulation and lack of oversight of the immense arms flows into Iraq going back decades have given (ISIS) and other armed groups a bonanza of unprecedented access to firepower.”

Amnesty’s report said “a large proportion” of the Islamic State’s weapons were originally given to the Iraqi military by the United States, Russia and the former Soviet Union. They range from handguns and assault rifles to anti-tank weapons and shoulder-mounted missile launchers, most of which were manufactured between the 1970s and 1990s. But the Islamic State has also been crafting its own weapons, such as hand grenades, car bombs and other explosive devices.

Amnesty said the diverse nature of the Islamic State’s weapons “reflects decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq,” a country that saw its military stockpile swell when at least 34 countries began sending it weapons around the time of the Iran-Iraq war. Amnesty said the country began bringing in fewer weapons after it invaded Kuwait in 1990, largely due to a United Nations embargo, but its weapons imports spiked again after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Amnesty reported that 30 countries have sent weapons to Iraq in the past 12 years, but many were not properly tracked by the Iraqi military or the U.S. military forces occupying the nation.

“Hundreds of thousands of those weapons went missing and are still unaccounted for,” the report states. It goes on to note that “mass desertion” from the Iraqi military during the rise of the Islamic State in 2013-14 “left huge quantities of military equipment exposed to looting.”

While the Amnesty report says the majority of the Islamic State’s weapons were looted from those military stockpiles, the document notes the group also added arms by seizing them from Syrian soldiers on battlefields and from defectors who have brought firepower with them.

Speaking to CNN, a Pentagon spokesman said the United States monitors the technology that it gives to its partners to prevent any American weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, but conceded those monitoring programs don’t include any weapons lost on battlefields.

Amnesty’s report calls for countries to stop providing military equipment and arms to forces in Syria and stronger protocols for sending weapons to Iraqi authorities. It also calls for national laws and procedures to prevent arms from ending up in the hands of groups who will use them nefariously, and for more strict rules regarding stockpile management and record-keeping.

“The legacy of arms proliferation and abuse in Iraq and the surrounding region has already destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of people and poses an ongoing threat,” Wicken said in a statement. “The consequences of reckless arms transfers to Iraq and Syria and their subsequent capture by (ISIS) must be a wake-up call to arms exporters around the world.”

Investigation into California Shootings Continues

The investigation into the mass shooting that left 14 people dead and 21 more injured last week continued on Tuesday, though authorities had yet to hold a news conference on any updates.

Authorities have said the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire in San Bernardino, California, during a holiday party for Farook’s coworkers last Wednesday. President Barack Obama and FBI officials have declared the shooting an act of terrorism and said the suspects were radicalized, but officials have yet to publicly say they’ve found any evidence that the two were part of a foreign terrorist group or a broader conspiracy.

While police continued their investigation, news agencies reported some new information.

Citing unnamed informed sources, Fox News, Reuters and the Los Angeles Times reported that $28,500 was deposited into Farook’s bank account in the weeks before the shooting. Authorities have said they were trying to see if anyone helped the couple plan the attack, but three unnamed sources told Reuters the money trail doesn’t appear to link Farook or Malik to a terrorist group.

Reuters and the Los Angeles Times reported the money was a loan, with the Los Angeles Times reporting that a pair of unnamed federal officials said that could explain how the couple was able to acquire the materials they used in the attack. Authorities have said they recovered at least 4,500 rounds of ammunition at the pair’s home, as well as parts that could make 19 pipe bombs.

Authorities were investigating how the suspects became radicalized and whether they were inspired by the work of other terrorists. The FBI has said Farook and Malik both engaged in target practice ahead of the attacks, in one instance within days of the deadly rampage.

Farook and Malik died in a shootout with police, leaving behind a six-month-old daughter.

Farook was a U.S. citizen who was born to Pakistani parents in Illinois, while Malik was a Pakistan native who was living in Saudi Arabia. It’s been widely reported that the two met on an online dating website. During his speech from the Oval Office on Sunday, Obama called for federal officials to review the “fiancee visa” waiver program that Malik used to enter the country.

Families of Syrian Refugees Settle in Indiana, Texas

A family of Syrian refugees arrived in Indianapolis on Monday night.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said in a statement Tuesday that the family — a father, mother and their two small children — “arrived safely” in the city, where they have some relatives.

The Archdiocese said it has been helping the family resettle through its Refugee and Immigrant Services program. It said the family “fled the violence of terrorists” in war-torn Syria three years ago and underwent “two years of extensive security checks and personal interviews” before the federal government cleared the four of them to enter the United States.

The governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, had asked the Archdiocese to hold off on resettling the family until Congress passed legislation that addressed his concerns about the refugee program. But Archbishop Joseph W. Tobin said the church’s refugee program was “an essential part” of its identity and informed Pence that the Syrian family’s resettlement would go on as planned.

In a statement, a Pence spokesman said the governor “respectfully disagrees” with the church’s decision. One of the governor’s main concerns is that one of the Islamic State-linked terrorists responsible for the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris may have been posing as a Syrian refugee.

“The safety and security of the people of Indiana is Governor Pence’s top priority,” the spokesman, Matt Lloyd, said in the statement. “The State of Indiana will continue to suspend its participation in the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana until the federal government takes action to address the concerns raised about this program.”

Pence is among the many U.S. governors who have attempted to block Syrian refugees from resettling in their states since the Paris attacks, touching off political and moral debates about the legality and ethics of their actions. Texas was another state that vehemently tried to prevent Syrian refugees from resettling within its borders, even taking the battle to the courtroom.

But a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee told the Associated Press a family of Syrian refugees arrived in Texas on Monday and resettled near Dallas, where the six of them have relatives. The AP reported 15 more refugees were expected to arrive in Texas this week.

Study Finds Uranium Seeps into Two Major U.S. Aquifers

Researchers have found that about 2 million Americans in the Great Plains and central California are living close to sites that far exceed federal safety guidelines for uranium levels.

A recent study conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found uranium levels in the High Plains and Central Valley aquifers, two of the country’s most significant sources of drinking water and irrigation, are far above thresholds set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The research showed that water in the High Plains aquifer, the largest in the United States, had uranium levels as high as 89 times the EPA-established standards. The water in California’s Central Valley aquifer, a source of irrigation for one of the country’s most important agricultural hubs, showed some uranium levels that were 180 times the guidelines set forth by the EPA.

Uranium is an element whose isotopes were famously used in the production of atomic bombs. Past studies have shown long-term exposure to water tainted by uranium can lead to high blood pressure and kidney damage, according to a news release accompanying the Nebraska study.

The researchers found the uranium contamination in most of the 275,000 water samples they collected was directly tied to nitrate, a more common water polluter that is found in chemical fertilizers and animal waste. The scientists say that nitrate interacts with the uranium that’s naturally present in the ground in a way that makes the material dissolve in groundwater.

About 78 percent of the contaminated sites had nitrates present, the study indicated. The researchers said the data indicated that the uranium levels weren’t predominantly the result of mining or any kind of nuclear fuel, but rather the reactions between nitrate and the element.

“It needs to be recognized that uranium is a widespread contaminant,” one of the Nebraska study’s researchers, Karrie Weber, said in a statement accompanying the research. “And we are creating this problem by producing a primary contaminant that leads to a secondary one.”

The researchers said that facilities to treat water can cost seven figures, which makes it hard for some smaller municipalities to buy them. And there are some people who receive their water from private wells and don’t tap into any kind of regulated municipal water system.

The Associated Press reported Monday that the uranium contamination has been so widely underreported that some people living in the affected areas didn’t even know it was an issue.

The news agency said it conducted its own tests on the private wells of five homes near Modesto, California, where officials spent $500,000 on upgrades to its water system that were designed to bring down uranium levels. The report indicated none of the homeowners knew uranium even had the potential to be a water pollutant, yet two of the five wells showed dangerous levels of it.

The High Plains aquifer supplies drinking and irrigation water to eight states from South Dakota to Texas, according to the Nebraska study. The Central Valley aquifer is a major water source for California and the state’s vital agriculture industry, which the state Department of Food and Agriculture said produces half of America’s domestically-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. In all, the department said California growers and ranchers got $54 billion for last year’s products.

“When you start thinking about how much water is drawn from these aquifers, it’s substantial relative to anywhere else in the world,” Weber said in a statement. “These two aquifers are economically important — they play a significant role in feeding the nation — but they’re also important for health. What’s the point of having water if you can’t drink it or use it for irrigation?”

Boston College Students Fall Ill, Investigators Probe Link to Chipotle E. Coli Outbreak

Investigators were reportedly trying to determine if the illnesses that several Boston College students reported after eating at a Chipotle were tied to an E. Coli outbreak at the restaurant.

The Boston Herald, quoting a statement from a school spokesman, reported Monday that “several” Boston College students complained of gastrointestinal symptoms after eating at a Chipotle restaurant. The newspaper reported the state’s Department of Public Health was notified and was examining whether the illnesses were linked to Chipotle’s recent E. Coli scare.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 52 people in nine states have come down with one particular type of E. Coli since October. The CDC said that 47 of those people said they ate at a Chipotle restaurant in the week leading up to the onset of their illness.

In a statement to Reuters, a Chipotle spokesman said there wasn’t any evidence that the Boston College illnesses were related to the E. Coli outbreak. The spokesman said in the statement that there have not been any confirmed cases of the illness linked to Chipotle in Massachusetts.

Still, Boston television station WCVB reported that the Chipotle restaurant where the Boston College students ate was closed pending an investigation from Boston Inspectional Services. The television station placed the number of students who fell ill after eating at Chipotle at 30.

According to the CDC, there have been documented cases of the Chipotle-linked E. Coli strain in Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. The CDC said 20 people were hospitalized, but there were no reports of any deaths.

There were 40 cases in Washington (27) and Oregon (13), the CDC reported, and Chipotle voluntarily closed all of its 43 restaurants in the Seattle and Portland, Oregon, markets after the outbreaks were first reported. The company said all of those restaurants have since reopened.

It’s still not known what particular food item is responsible for the outbreak. Chipotle said in a news release on Friday that it has increased food safety practices since the outbreak first began.

The company’s stocks were trading at $750.42 in mid-October, which was near an all-time high. They have fallen more than $200 in the weeks since and were trading at $544.51 early Tuesday.

E. Coli symptoms include diarrhea and abdominal cramps. The disease can sometimes lead to kidney failure, but there haven’t been any reported cases in the outbreak.

The E. Coli outbreak linked to Chipotle restaurants deals with a different type of the bacteria than the one that has been connected to a rotisserie chicken salad sold in Costco stores.