Author Archives: Pat Turnbaugh

Norovirus Outbreak Sickens 200 in Seattle

About a third of the 600 people who went to a catered event last week in a Seattle office building indicated they came down with norovirus, according to multiple published reports.

The Seattle Times reported that about 200 people who attended the party last Tuesday at Russell Investments Center in the city’s downtown area fell ill. A public health official told the newspaper that eight people were treated in emergency rooms and two were hospitalized.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the highly contagious norovirus is the top cause of foodborne-illness outbreaks in the United States, sickening 19-21 million people, hospitalizing 56,000-71,000 and killing 570-800 annually. The virus, which affects the stomach and intestines, causes stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. It’s acquired by eating tainted food or water, touching contaminated surfaces or interpersonally.

Al Jazeera reported crews worked to decontaminate the building over weekend and that food service remains closed by order of the health department. The news agency reported authorities were still trying to determine what exactly caused the outbreak, as a few cases of the illness had been reported before Tuesday’s party. The CDC said that norovirus can spread rapidly in closed environments, and this time of the year is generally when most United States outbreaks occur.

The CDC recommends washing hands, properly preparing food like fruit, vegetables and seafood and disinfecting any contaminated surfaces as three ways to combat the spread of norovirus.

Obama Vows U.S. ‘Will Destroy’ ISIS, Other Terrorist Groups

The United States “will destroy” the Islamic State “and any other terrorist organization that tries to harm us,” President Barack Obama said in a televised speech to the nation on Sunday night.

Speaking from the Oval Office, the president said the country faces new challenges in its 14-year war on terrorism but remains equipped to overcome the threat the ideology poses to America.

The speech came days after the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and wounded 21 others in a mass shooting at San Bernardino, California. The brazen attack occurred during a holiday party for Farook’s coworkers on Wednesday.

“This was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people,” Obama declared in the speech.

Obama went on to say that other shootings at military installations in Fort Hood, Texas, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, were also acts of terrorism. The president said the nature of these attacks represent a fundamental shift in the face of terrorism, and the challenge it presents.

He said the country has been at war with terrorists since 9/11, when terrorists hijacked four airplanes in an elaborate plot that ultimately killed nearly 3,000 people. America has beefed up its security and intelligence operations and disrupted a host of terrorist plots in the years since.

“Over the last few years, however, the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase,” Obama said. “As we’ve become better at preventing complex, multi-faceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turn to less-complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.”

While noting there was no evidence that Farook and Malik were directed by a terrorist group or that they were part of a broader conspiracy in planning and executing Wednesday’s shootings, Obama said “it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West.”

The FBI echoed that statement on Monday, with an official saying at a news conference that the bureau had evidence that Farook and Malik had been radicalized “for quite some time.” The probe into the shootings and the circumstances around them continued Monday afternoon.

In his Sunday night speech, Obama reaffirmed the country’s commitment to fighting terrorism.

He said “our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary,” and noted that 65 countries have joined an American-led coalition that is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS interests. The United States is also providing training to forces in Iraq and Syria that are fighting ISIS militants on the ground, and deploying special ops in both countries. Coalition forces are working to disrupt ISIS in other ways, like cutting off its money supply (largely obtained through oil smuggling) and preventing it from adding manpower.

Obama noted global efforts to combat ISIS have increased since Nov. 13, when gunmen and suicide bombers linked to the group killed 130 people in multiple terrorist attacks in Paris. In particular, he said the exchange of intelligence between allies has surged since those attacks.

The president said technology has made it easier for groups like the Islamic State to corrupt the minds of people around the world. The terrorists are frequently able to use social media and the Internet to share their radical messages. Obama called for technology companies and law enforcement officials to make it more difficult for terrorists to hide behind computer screens.

He also called for the departments of State and Homeland Security to review the ‘fiancee visa’ waiver program that Malik, a Pakistani native who was living in Saudi Arabia, used to enter the United States. It’s been widely reported that she met Farook, a U.S. citizen, on an online dating site.

Obama also called for stricter gun laws, like making it more difficult to purchase assault weapons like the ones used in San Bernardino. He noted authorities simply can’t identify every potential mass shooter, but “what we can do — and must do — is make it harder for them to kill.”

While Obama outlined the steps America is taking against ISIS and to prevent future terrorist attacks at home, he also laid out a list of things that America should not do. Those included entering a ground war in the Middle East, which could be lengthy and ultimately play into the Islamic State’s hand. He also said the country shouldn’t fear or discriminate against Muslims, noting that the Islamic State “doesn’t speak for Islam” and was “part of a cult of death.”

“The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it,” Obama said in his televised comments. “We will destroy (ISIS) and any other organization that tries to harm us.”

FBI: California Shooting Suspects Were Radicalized ‘For Quite Some Time’

The FBI believes the husband and wife who killed 14 people in a rampage last week in southern California had both been radicalized “for quite some time,” authorities said Monday.

Speaking at a news conference in California, David Bowdich, the assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Los Angeles office, told reporters several new details regarding the San Bernardino mass shooting that the FBI had previously said is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

He said it’s still not clear how the shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, became radicalized, and authorities were continuing to probe the shooting that also wounded 21 people.

Farook worked for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which was hosting a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center at the time of the shooting. Police have said Farook left the party angrily and abruptly, then came back with Malik and the two opened fire.

Authorities have said there wasn’t any evidence Farook or Malik were part of a foreign terrorist organization, but investigators were vetting the possibility the suspects were inspired by one. Bowdich said there’s no currently evidence that the plot was hatched outside the United States.

Authorities had also said there was evidence of extensive planning associated with the attack.

Bowdich said the FBI now has evidence that both Farook and Malik engaged in target practice in metro Los Angeles, in one case within days of the shooting at the Inland Regional Center.

He also said that investigators removed 19 pipes from the couple’s home in Redlands, California. With the right components, Bowdich said those pipes could have been used to make bombs. Earlier, police put the number of “pipe-bomb-type devices” in the couple’s residence at 12.

Police have also said they recovered at least 4,500 rounds of ammunition from the home.

Bowdich said Monday that investigators have conducted more than 400 interviews in the five days since the shooting. They have collected more than 370 pieces of evidence and were using survey tools and technology to recreate the crime scene at the Inland Regional Center.

Bowdich also said authorities still aren’t sure if anyone else helped the couple plan the attack. That’s something investigators were still trying to determine on Monday. The FBI was working with its foreign counterparts to help compile a complete portrait of the shooters, Bowdich said.

“We will leave no stone unturned,” Bowdich told reporters at the news conference.

Germany Migrant Totals Approach 1 Million

Just shy of 1 million people have traveled to Germany in search of asylum so far this year, according to multiple published reports, and the country should top that figure this month.

The BBC reported the number of registered asylum-seekers was at 964,574 at the end of last month, and that number included a record-setting total of 206,101 migrants in November alone.

Germany has been a highly popular destination for migrants, according to a report published this year by an arm of the European Union. The Eurostat report found more than a third of all asylum-seekers during the second quarter applied to settle in Germany, and the BBC reported Monday that Germany still has more migrants than any other member of the European Union.

It’s been widely reported that the country’s policies have been particularly favorable for those fleeing war-torn and impoverished nations, particularly for those migrants coming from Syria. But Germany’s welcoming practices have been controversial and have faced mounting public criticisms as the number of total migrants seeking asylum in Europe has swelled this year.

Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maziere, spoke to the Wall Street Journal and said that the migrant totals had been declining in the past couple of weeks. Pointing to the colder, wintry weather and Turkish officials controlling the number of people illegally leaving the country as the top reasons why, de Maziere told the newspaper Germany is only registering 2,000 to 3,000 new arrivals every day. That’s a fraction of the 8,000 daily arrivals it received earlier this year.

But de Maziere told the Wall Street Journal it wasn’t clear how many of the 964,574 were still living in Germany. It’s possible that some of them have since traveled to another country and were successful in their pursuit of asylum there.

Changes Coming to U.S. Terror Alert System

In the wake of last week’s mass shooting in California that left 14 people dead, U.S. officials said Monday they will unveil a new alert system to warn Americans of potential terrorist attacks.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said during a livestreamed forum with Defense One, a website that covers security issues, that the specific changes to the country’s terror alert system would be announced in the coming days. He did not provide a release date.

America is currently using the National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS), which was adopted in 2011. It replaced the color-coded advisory system implemented following the 9/11 attacks.

During the Defense One event, however, Johnson noted that the NTAS has never been activated “because it depends on a specific, credible threat to the homeland.” He said triggering an NTAS warning required “a pretty high bar” to be met, and that’s why no advisory was ever issued.

He said that in this day and age there needs to be “an intermediate level” in a warning system.

“We need to do a better job of informing the public at large of what we are seeing, removing some of the mystery about the global terrorist threat, and what we are doing about it and what we are asking the public to do,” Johnson said during the Defense One event.

Johnson’s comments come days after the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire during a holiday office party in San Bernadino, California, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others on Wednesday. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism and trying to determine if the couple was inspired by any foreign terrorist groups.

Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake Strikes in Tajikistan, Aftershocks Follow

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake occurred in a remote area of Tajikistan on Monday.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake occurred about 68 miles west of Murghob at about 12:50 p.m. local time. Several aftershocks occurred nearby, USGS data show.

NBC News reported buildings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India shook as a result of the quake.

There were not any immediate reports of deaths, injuries or damage.

The earthquake occurred 18 miles underground near Sarez Lake in the Pamir Mountain range.

According to the USGS, earthquakes in that part of Tajikistan seldom lead to shaking-related deaths because the region is so remote. But they have sometimes triggered fatal mudslides.

The USGS website shows that eight other quakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater occurred in or near Tajikistan on Monday.

There were magnitude 4.8 and 4.6 aftershocks near Sarez Lake within three hours of the initial earthquake, according to USGS data.

There was also a cluster of four earthquakes further northeast closer to the city of Karakul. They ranged in magnitude from 4.8 to 5.4, the data show.

Further northeast, on the other side of Karakul, the data show there were magnitude 4.5 and 4.6 quakes near Tajikistan’s border with China.

Beijing Issues First ‘Red Alert’ for Smog

Officials in Beijing have issued the city’s first red alert for smog.

The Chinese capital city’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau issued the alert on Monday. In a translated posting on its website, the bureau said the warning was issued “to protect public health” and “reduce the degree of air pollution.”

The posting indicates that “heavy air pollution” is expected to continue through Thursday.

The Associated Press reported that the levels of fine particle matter (called PM 2.5) were approaching 300 micrograms per cubic meter on Monday. That’s 12 times the level that the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, lists as a guideline for those particles.

The website posting indicates that schools are encouraged to close and that officials will be strengthening emergency measures. The city is also stepping up its public transportation and instituting alternating driving days for vehicles, among other pollution-curbing techniques.

The Xinhua News Agency reported it’s the only time a red alert was issued in Beijing since 2013, the year in which the city implemented emergency management protocols for air pollution.

The red alert was issued as leaders from China and nearly 200 other countries were entering the second week of a two-week climate changes summit in Paris. Much of the focus at the COP21 conference is how to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and curb rising temperatures.

China emits more greenhouse gasses than any other country in the world.

Hackers Access Data of 650K British Pub Chain Customers

Hackers gained access to a database that contained private information about more than 650,000 customers of a chain of British pubs, according to a posting on its website.

JD Wetherspoon reported that about 100 of its customers had the last four digits of their credit and debit card numbers stolen through a breach of the company’s former website. Because the complete numbers hadn’t been stored, the company said no stolen data could be used for fraud.

The website posting indicated the database contained information like email addresses, names, birthdays and phone numbers of 656,723 people. The pub chain’s CEO, John Hutson, said in the posting that neither its customers nor its cyber security specialists gave any indication that anyone had used that stolen customer information for fraud, “although we cannot be certain.”

Hutson said in the posting there were no passwords stored in the database. He asked customers to watch out for suspicious emails, such as ones that ask recipients to respond with personal or financial information or to click on links. Such emails are commonly seen in phishing schemes.

The breach took place in June, the company said in the website posting. The pub chain only learned of the breach last week, and subsequently began investigating and notifying customers.

Huston said in the website posting that JD Wetherspoon has “taken all necessary measures to secure” its website following the breach (the pub chain has since switched to a new website manager that it says has no ties to the hack) and that a forensic investigation is ongoing. The pub chain has also notified the British authority that regulates data protection of the breach.

As of Monday morning, it’s still not known who was responsible for the hack.

The news comes just days after digital toy manufacturer VTech announced that the personal data of millions of its customers was hacked, including some photographs of children. VTech has said it’s cooperating with law enforcement officials from around the world to investigate.

Scientists Track Fukushima Radiation off Pacific Coast

Scientists who are studying the impacts of a nuclear power plant accident in Japan have discovered radiation is spreading to more sites off the Pacific Coast of the United States.

But the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reported Thursday that even a sample with the highest-documented radiation level to date is still far below a threshold that should cause alarm.

The institute has been tracking the spread of radiation from the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima power plant, in which an earthquake set off a tsunami that struck the plant and caused three meltdowns. That event released some radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean.

Ken Bruessler, the director of the institute’s Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, is part of a research team that’s monitoring the ocean for traces of that radioactive material. Over the past four years, they’ve observed small amounts of material, cesium-134, off the coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California.

The team recently found its most contaminated sample to date — 11 becquerals per cubic meter of ocean water, according to a news release. A becqueral is a unit used to measure radioactivity, and this sample was 50 percent higher than any other that’s ever been found off the West Coast.

Even at its highest figure yet, scientists say the sample is still more than 500 times lower than government standards for safe drinking water. It’s also OK for recreational activities like swimming, and Bruessler said in the news release that it’s also below safety limits for sea life.

Contamination levels are higher near Fukushima.

While Bruessler said in the news release that contamination levels near Japan “are thousands of times lower” than they were following the 2011 accident, recent samples collected there contain 10 to 100 times more radioactive material than those collected off the Pacific Coast. He said that indicates that the plant is still releasing radioactive material, though how much remains unclear.

The scientists also note that virtually any sample of Pacific Ocean water will have some level of radioactive material, as atomic weapons testing was performed there in parts of three decades.

Scientists say they know the contamination they’re measuring is from Fukushima and not left over from atomic bomb detonations because the specific type of radioactive material is different.

FBI Investigating California Mass Shooting as Terrorist Act

The FBI is investigating the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, “as an act of terrorism.”

David Bowdich, the assistant FBI director at the bureau’s Los Angeles office, made the announcement at a news conference on Friday, saying the bureau had taken over the investigation’s lead from local authorities.

The revelation came two days after the husband-and-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and injured 21 others when they opened fire during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center. They were later killed in a shootout with police.

Bowdich told reporters that investigators found evidence that indicated “extensive planning,” as well as mentioning the couple’s extensive stockpile of ammunition and explosive devices.

Speaking at a later news conference in Washington, FBI Director James Comey told reporters there was evidence that suggested the Muslim suspects became radicalized, but no evidence had surfaced that suggested that the shooters were part of a terrorist group. However, Comey did say there were indications that the couple might have been inspired by foreign terrorist organizations.

“There’s a lot of evidence in this case that doesn’t quite make sense,” Comey told reporters, adding that investigators were still wading through a large amount of electronic evidence.

Neither Bowdich nor Comey publicly confirmed multiple published reports that said Malik pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State through a post on social media on the morning of the attack.

CNN, FoxNews, The New York Times and The Washington Post were among the media outlets reporting that sources familiar with the investigation told them about the Facebook post.

Bowdich told reporters at the news conference that Farook and Malik “attempted to destroy their digital fingerprints,” and investigators discovered two “crushed” cell phones in trash cans near the crime scene. He said authorities were working to extract data from those cell phones.

“We do hope that the digital fingerprints that were left by these two individuals will take us towards their motivation,” Bowdich told reporters. “That evidence is incredibly important.”

Comey told reporters neither Farook nor Malik was on the FBI’s radar at the time of the shooting.

It was widely reported that Farook worked at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which was holding a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center at the time of the attack. Police said Farook left the party angrily, then returned with his wife and opened fire.

Farook was born to Pakistani parents in Illinois and met Malik, a Pakistan native who was living in Saudi Arabia, on an online dating site, the New York Times has reported. The couple had a six-month-old daughter who they left with her grandmother on the morning of the attack.

Police have said they found at least 4,500 additional rounds of ammunition and a dozen “pipe-bomb-type devices” at the Redlands, California, residence of the suspects.

The FBI released the crime scene and the couple’s landlord somewhat bizarrely opened it up to the media on Friday morning, leading to several news organizations to take cameras through the residence and broadcast live images of reporters examining the suspects’ personal belongings.