Tag Archives: U.S. Government

Trump signs measure keeping U.S. government open until Dec. 21

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump signed a budget extension on Friday that will keep the U.S. government open for two more weeks, according to the White House.

Congress on Thursday approved the two-week stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, setting up a potential standoff over Trump’s proposed border wall later this month.

Before the extension expires on Dec. 21, the Republican-led Congress is expected to consider a $450 billion bill to fund government agencies through the fiscal year that ends next Sept. 30.

Trump has demanded $5 billion this year as part of his plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico and has threatened to force a partial government shutdown if Congress does not provide the money. Democrats, who will take control of the House of Representatives in January and have greater say over federal spending, argue the wall would be ineffective at keeping out illegal immigrants and illicit drugs.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Pentagon creating software ‘do not buy’ list to keep out Russia, China

FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Pentagon building in Washington, June 15, 2005. REUTERS/Jason Reed

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon is working on a software “do not buy” list to block vendors who use software code originating from Russia and China, a top Defense Department acquisitions official said on Friday.

Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters the Pentagon had been working for six months on a “do not buy” list of software vendors. The list is meant to help the Department of Defense’s acquisitions staff and industry partners avoid buying problematic code for the Pentagon and suppliers.

“What we are doing is making sure that we do not buy software that has Russian or Chinese provenance, for instance, and quite often that’s difficult to tell at first glance because of holding companies,” she told reporters gathered in a conference room near her Pentagon office.

The Pentagon has worked closely with the intelligence community, she said, adding “we have identified certain companies that do not operate in a way consistent with what we have for defense standards.”

Lord did not provide any further details on the list.

Lord’s comments were made ahead of the likely passage of the Pentagon’s spending bill by Congress as early as next week. The bill contains provisions that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.

The legislation was drafted after a Reuters investigation found that software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to look into the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help adversaries like Moscow or Beijing to discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.

Lord added an upcoming report on the U.S. military supply chain will show that the Pentagon depends on foreign suppliers, including Chinese firms, for components in some military equipment.

She said the Pentagon also wants to strengthen its suppliers’ ability to withstand cyber attacks and will test their cybersecurity defenses by attempting to hack them.

The Pentagon disclosed the measures as the federal government looks to bolster cyber defenses following attacks on the United States that the government has blamed on Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China.

The Department of Homeland Security this week disclosed details about a string of cyber attacks that officials said put hackers working on behalf of the Russian government in a position where they could manipulate some industrial systems used to control infrastructure, including at least one power generator.

(Reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by Chris Sanders, Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis)

Most children, parents separated at U.S.-Mexican border reunited: court filing

After being reunited with her daughter, Sandra Elizabeth Sanchez, of Honduras, speaks with media at Catholic Charities in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – About 1,400 children of some 2,500 separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border have been reunited with their families, the U.S. government said in a court filing on Thursday.

Government lawyers said 711 other children were not eligible for reunification with their parents by Thursday’s deadline, which was set by a federal judge in San Diego. In 431 of these cases, the families could not be reunited because the parents were no longer in the United States.

The parents and children were separated as part of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigration. Many of them had crossed the border illegally, while others had sought asylum at a border crossing.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case against the government, said in Thursday’s court filing that data showed “dozens of separated children still have not been matched to a parent.”

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt accused the government in a statement of “picking and choosing who is eligible for reunification” and said it would “hold the government accountable and get these families back together.”

In a call with journalists after the court filing, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Chris Meekins said it was awaiting guidance from the court about how to proceed with the children of 431 parents no longer in the United States. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is an agency of department.

The government did not say in the call or in its court filing how many of those parents were deported.

One immigrant, Douglas Almendarez, told Reuters he believed that returning to Honduras was the only way to be reunited with his 11-year-old son.

“They told me: ‘He’s ahead of you’,” said Almendarez, 37, in the overgrown backyard of his modest soda shop several hours drive from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. “It was a lie.”

The ACLU said the government has not yet provided it with information about the reunifications of children aged 5-17 with their parents, including the location and timing of them.

“This information is critical both to ensure that these reunifications have in fact taken place, and to enable class counsel to arrange for legal and other services for the reunited families,’ it said.

LOST IN ‘BLACK HOLE’

Immigration advocates said the government’s push to meet the court’s deadline to reunite families was marred by confusion, and one said children had disappeared into a “black hole.”

Maria Odom, vice president of legal services for Kids in Need of Defense, said two children the group represented were sent from New York to Texas to be reunited with their mother. When they arrived, they learned their mother had already been deported, Odom told reporters during a conference call.

Odom said her group does not know where the children, aged 9 and 14, have been taken.

It was an example, she said, “of how impossible it is to track these children once they are placed in the black hole of reunification.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An outcry at home and abroad forced U.S. President Donald Trump to order a halt to the separations in June. U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and set Thursday as the deadline.

Sabraw has criticized some aspects of the process, but in recent days, he has praised government efforts.

The ACLU and government lawyers will return to court on Friday to discuss how to proceed.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del.; additional reporting by Loren Elliott in McAllen, Texas, Nate Raymond in Boston and Callaghan O’Hare in San Antonio; writing by Bill Tarrant; editing by Grant McCool)

Government workers begin shutdown as Senate vote looms

The U.S. Capitol is lit during the second day of a shutdown of the federal government in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2018.

By Amanda Becker and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of federal workers began shutting down operations on Monday with the U.S. government closed and the Senate prepared to try again to restore funding, if only temporarily, and resolve a dispute over immigration.

As government employees prepared for the first weekday since the shutdown began at midnight Friday, U.S. senators were to vote at midday on a funding bill to get the lights back on in Washington and across the government until early February.

Support for the bill was uncertain, after Republicans and Democrats spent all day on Sunday trying to strike a deal, only to go home for the night short of an agreement.

Federal employees received notices on Saturday about whether they were exempt from the shutdown, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said. Depending on their schedules, some were told to stay home or to go to work for up to four hours on Monday to shut their operation, then go home. None will get paid.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said late Sunday that an overnight vote on a measure to fund government operations through Feb. 8 was canceled and would be held at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT) on Monday.

Up until Monday, most federal workers were not directly affected by the shutdown that began at midnight on Friday.

The federal Office of Personnel Management said on its website on Sunday night that “federal government operations vary by agency.”

The Department of Defense published a memo on its website detailing who does and does not get paid in a shutdown and saying that civilian employees were on temporary leave, except for those needed to support active-duty troops.

The Department of Interior led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, offered no guidance on its website, which still had a “Happy Holidays from the Zinke Family” video near the top of the site. The department oversees national parks and federal lands.

The State Department website said: “At this time, scheduled passport and visa services in the United States and at our posts overseas will continue during the lapse in appropriations as the situation permits.”

Markets have absorbed the shutdown drama over the last week, and on Monday morning world stocks and U.S. bond markets largely shrugged off Washington’s standoff even as the dollar continued its pullback. U.S. stock futures edged lower.

‘DREAMERS’ DRAMA

The U.S. government has not been shut down since 2013, when about 800,000 federal workers were put on furlough. That impasse prevented passage of a needed funding bill centered on former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

The problem this time focused on immigration policy, principally President Donald Trump’s order last year ending an Obama program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gave legal protections to “Dreamer” immigrants.

The “Dreamers” are young people who were brought to the United States illegally as children by their parents or other adults, mainly from Mexico and Central America, and who mostly grew up in the United States.

Trump said last year he would end DACA on March 5 and asked Congress to come up with a legislative fix before then to prevent Dreamers from being deported.

Democrats have withheld support for a temporary funding bill to keep the government open over the DACA issue. McConnell extended an olive branch on Sunday, pledging to bring immigration legislation up for debate after Feb. 8 so long as the government remained open.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer objected to the plan and it was unclear whether McConnell’s pledge would be enough for Democrats to support a stopgap funding bill.

Congress failed last year to pass a complete budget by Oct. 1, the beginning of the federal fiscal year, and the government has been operating on a series of three stopgap spending bills.

Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where they have a slim 51-49 majority. But most legislation requires 60 Senate votes to pass, giving Democrats leverage.

Trump told a bipartisan Senate working group earlier this month that he would sign whatever DACA legislation was brought to him. The Republican president then rejected a bipartisan measure and negotiations stalled.

McConnell had insisted that the Senate would not move to immigration legislation until it was clear what could earn Trump’s support.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who is involved in bipartisan immigration negotiations, said McConnell’s statements on Sunday indicated there was progress in negotiations and he urged his Democratic colleagues to approve another stopgap bill.

(Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson and Damon Darlin; Editing by Peter Cooney and Jeffrey Benkoe)

SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off on Sunday from a Florida launch pad

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on a supply mission to the International Space Station from historic launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Cente

y Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – A SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off on Sunday from a Florida launch pad once used to send NASA astronauts to the moon, a step forward for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and his company’s goal of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

The 229-foot tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 soared off a seaside launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:39 a.m. EST (1439 GMT) carrying a Dragon cargo ship that holds supplies and science experiments for the station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket disappears into clouds after it lifted off on a supply mission to the International Space Station from historic launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida,

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket disappears into clouds after it lifted off on a supply mission to the International Space Station from historic launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., February 19, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Nine minutes after blastoff, the main section of the rocket flew back to a landing pad at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the eighth successful touchdown for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

“Baby came back,” Musk wrote on Twitter, celebrating the landing. SpaceX had decided to delay the mission on Saturday, 13 seconds before launch due to concerns about the steering system in the rocket’s upper stage.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration closely monitored Sunday’s launch to learn more about the company’s operations before it clears SpaceX to fly U.S. astronauts.

The liftoff marked a successful debut for SpaceX at Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, originally built for the 1960s-era Apollo moon program and later repurposed for the space shuttles. SpaceX plans to use the pad for commercial missions, as well as future manned flights.

The pad was last used for the final space shuttle launch in 2011. In 2014, SpaceX signed a 20-year lease and has spent millions on remodeling.

“It was really awesome to see 39A roar back to life,” SpaceX Dragon program manager Jessica Jensen told reporters after the launch. “This is a huge deal for us.”

It was also SpaceX’s first launch from Florida since an accident in September caused heavy damage to what had been the company’s prime site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the NASA spaceport.

NASA hired SpaceX to fly cargo to the station after the shuttle program ended. SpaceX and Boeing Co are scheduled to begin flying crews to the station by the end of 2018, but a U.S. government report last week said technical hurdles likely will delay both companies.

Last month, SpaceX resumed flying its Falcon 9 rockets using a second launch pad in California, where the first stage of the rocket also succeeded in relanding.

The company plans to reuse the rockets to slash costs and reduce pricing.

SpaceX aims to have the Florida launch pad damaged in last year’s explosion up and running by this summer.

(Editing by Letitia Stein, Jeffrey Benkoe and Alan Crosby)

Police begin removing protesters from Dakota pipeline encampment

Protesters demonstrate against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, in Los Angeles, California

(Reuters) – Police in North Dakota began clearing a group of Native American and environmental protesters from an encampment near an oil pipeline construction site on Thursday in a move that could escalate tensions in a standoff that has lasted several months.

The police moved in on the protesters camped on private property near the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, near the town of Cannon Ball, at around 11:15 a.m. (1715 GMT), according to a statement from the Morton County Sheriff Department.

Police also were removing roadblocks set up by the demonstrators.

“Protesters’ escalated unlawful behavior this weekend by setting up illegal roadblocks, trespassing onto private property and establishing an encampment has forced law enforcement to respond at this time,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, said in the statement.

The 1,172-mile (1,886-km) pipeline, which is being built by a group of companies led by Energy Transfer Partners LP, would offer the fastest and most direct route to bring Bakken shale oil from North Dakota to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

Supporters say it would also be safer and more cost-effective than transporting the oil by road or rail.

But the pipeline has drawn the ire of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and environmental activists who say it threatens the water supply and historical tribal sacred sites. They have been protesting for several months, and dozens have been arrested.

On Monday, Native American protesters occupied privately owned land in the path of the proposed pipeline, claiming they were the land’s rightful owners under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also temporarily banned aircraft from flying over the area affected by the protests. The restriction, issued on Wednesday, bars any aircraft other than those belonging to law enforcement from flying within a radius of four nautical miles of Cannon Ball.

The town, located about 50 miles (80 km) south of the state capital Bismarck, is near a site where a section of the Dakota Access pipeline would be buried underneath the Missouri River.

The FAA restriction is effective until Nov. 5 because of unspecified “hazards.”

A spokesman for the FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson and actor Mark Ruffalo this week joined the demonstrations, which have already drawn considerable celebrity support.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Tom Brown and Paul Simao)

Tribal service deals dould help Dakota pipeline impasse

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, waits to give his speech against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access oil pipeline during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland

By Ernest Scheyder

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The chief executive of North Dakota’s largest oil producer, Whiting Petroleum Corp, says the standoff over the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline could be solved by giving economic opportunities, including supply and delivery contracts, to the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native Americans.

Thousands of protesters from all over the world have joined with the Sioux to oppose the pipeline, which would transport oil within half a mile of tribal land in North Dakota. Federal regulators temporarily blocked construction of the pipeline earlier this month under the Missouri River, mollifying opponents but irking the fossil fuel industry.

The Standing Rock Sioux say the pipeline’s construction would destroy tribal burial sites. They also worry that any future leaks would pollute their water supply.

Jim Volker, Whiting’s CEO, said those concerns would be best addressed through economic opportunities, including contracting with American Indian-owned firms for water hauling and other oilfield service needs across oil-producing regions.

“We as an industry like to see them provide those services,” Volker said in an interview on the sidelines of the Independent Petroleum Association of America’s OGIS conference in San Francisco.

“It does provide a better standard of living for them. It does provide a direct tie to the energy business and makes them and their tribal leaders more inclined to want to have more energy development.”

When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to the U.S. Gulf. The project is being built by the Dakota Access subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP.

Contracts between Native American-owned firms and oil and natural gas producers are not uncommon on reservations. Indeed, the MHA Nation, whose members live on a reservation in western North Dakota where about a third of the state’s crude is pumped, requires oil producers operating on their land to contract with American Indian-owned businesses.

But the requirement cannot apply outside the reservation’s borders and many oil companies, Whiting included, do not have oilfield service and supply contracts with a large number of Indian-owned firms.

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, said he appreciated the suggestion from Volker, but that his opposition to the pipeline has little to do with economics.

“It’s going to be very difficult for us to allow this line to come through just because some indigenous-owned company may benefit,”  Archambault said in an interview. “If this pipeline goes through, we will be the first to pay the cost.”

Dakota Access first contacted the Sioux about the pipeline in October 2014 and continued reaching out to the tribe through March 2016, according to a report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Volker, who has worked at Whiting for more than 30 years, said he was sensitive to the tribe’s concerns that construction of the Dakota Access pipeline would disturb ancestral burial sites and other historical areas.

“I wouldn’t want necessarily a pipeline to go through the cemetery where all my relatives are buried,” he said.

But he added that he expects the situation to be resolved by November. “I’m pretty sure there will be a pretty good resolution to this.”

Volker called a move last week by the owners of the Dakota Access pipeline to buy more than 6,000 acres of land adjacent to the line’s route a “pretty good move.” Federal oil pipeline regulators do not have authority over private land and cannot block construction on it.

“It just increases the odds that things get done,” he said.

The Dakota Access pipeline would, if finished, help North Dakota oil producers transport their product to refiners and other customers cheaper and faster.

Volker said he estimates the pipeline would cut the differential for North Dakota oil – that is, the extra cost needed to get the oil to market due to its distance – from about $8.50 per barrel to around $5.50.

Federal regulators are expected to rule soon on whether the pipeline’s construction can proceed, though the Standing Rock Sioux and environmental groups have vowed to oppose it.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

U.S. says free expression was restricted in Russian election

People walk past a sign reading "United Russia" on a building in central Stavropol, Russia,

WARSAW, Sept 19 (Reuters) – Opposition politicians were at a sharp disadvantage in Russia’s parliamentary election because of limits on freedom of expression and barriers that made it hard for them to register, a U.S. human rights envoy said on Monday.

“The elections were well administered, but there were also significant restrictions to the rights of free expression and assembly,” Tom Malinowski, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, told reporters.

The ruling United Russia party took three-quarters of the seats, providing a likely springboard for President Vladimir Putin to seek re-election to another term in the Kremlin in 2018. Liberal opposition parties failed to win a single seat in the weekend election.

“There were obstacles to the registration of political parties and candidates,” Malinowski said in Warsaw, where he was attending a conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on human rights and democracy.

“For all these reasons, it remains very, very hard for non-systemic political parties and candidates in Russia to
compete with the ruling party.”

Earlier on Monday, the OSCE criticized the elections, saying they had been marred by curbs on basic rights and a lack of distinct political alternatives.

(Reporting by Wojciech Strupczewski and Maria Wejcman; Writing
by Marcin Goettig; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Florida declares neighborhood Zika free; CDC remains cautious

Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a press conference about the Zika virus in Doral, Florida,

By Julie Steenhuysen and Ransdell Pierson

(Reuters) – U.S. health officials on Monday continued to advise pregnant women and their partners to consider postponing non-essential travel to Miami to avoid the risk of exposure to Zika, even as Florida Governor Rick Scott declared the city’s Wynwood neighborhood Zika-free and invited visitors to return.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami had been considered an area of active Zika virus transmission from June 15 to Sept. 18, 2016. It urged pregnant women who lived in or traveled to the neighborhood to consider getting tested for Zika.

“We want to continue to emphasize to pregnant women that they still should consider postponing non-essential travel for all of Miami-Dade (County). That is still in effect,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

Wynwood is the first neighborhood in the continental United States to have a local outbreak of Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that has been shown to cause birth defects.

Florida’s governor, at a news conference earlier on Monday, said there have not been any cases of Zika in the Wynwood neighborhood in the past 45 days, and declared that “everybody should be coming back here and enjoying themselves.”

“We had an issue, everybody took it seriously and we solved it,” he said.

Scott’s pronouncement followed news on Friday that the state had expanded the zone with active Zika transmission to nearby Miami Beach after five new cases of the virus were detected.

The Zika zone in Miami Beach, a popular tourist destination, tripled in size, growing from 1.5 square miles to 4.5 square miles. As of Friday, Florida has a total of 93 cases of Zika caused by local mosquitoes.

Zika is a particular threat to pregnant women because the virus can cause serious birth defects in babies whose mothers were infected during pregnancy, including microcephaly, a condition in which the brain is undersized, reflecting arrested development.

Scott also called on the U.S. government to approve spending to arrest any future spread of the virus in Florida and elsewhere, including funds for mosquito abatement, education and testing for Zika. A spending bill has been delayed in Congress.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Julie Steenhuysen and Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Dan Grebler)

U.S., Israel sign $38 billion military aid package

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval office of the White House in Washington

y Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will give Israel $38 billion in military aid over a decade, the largest such aid package in U.S. history, under an agreement disclosed this week and signed on Wednesday.

The deal, whose details were reported by Reuters earlier, will allow Israel to upgrade most of its fighter aircraft, improve its ground forces’ mobility and strengthen its missile defense systems, a top U.S. official said.

While the package constitutes the most U.S. military aid ever given to any country, it entails concessions by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to officials on both sides.

Those include Israel’s promise not to seek additional funds from Congress beyond what will be guaranteed annually in the new package, and to phase out a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend part of its U.S. aid on its own defense industry instead of on American-made weapons, the officials said.

The $38 billion memorandum of understanding covers U.S. fiscal years 2019-2028 and succeeds the current $30 billion MOU signed in 2007, which expires at the end of fiscal 2018.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighborhood,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a written statement.

The agreement was signed at the State Department by U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon and by Jacob Nagel, acting head of Netanyahu’s national security council.

According to a White House “factsheet,” the deal includes:

-annual payments of $3.3 billion in so-called foreign military financing, typically used to purchase U.S. equipment.

-$500 million a year for Israeli missile defense funding, the first time this has been formally built into the aid pact.

-A phasing-out of a special arrangement that for decades has allowed Israel to use 26.3 percent of the U.S. aid on its own defense industry instead of on American-made weapons.

-Elimination of a longstanding provision that has allowed Israel to use a portion of the U.S. aid to buy military fuel.

-The funding will allow Israel to update “the lion’s share” of its fighter aircraft, including purchasing additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Israel is scheduled to receive 33 F-35 aircraft, the first two of which will be delivered in December.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Susan Heavey)