– H&M's fashions are on fire—literally, that is, in Vasteras, Sweden. A heat and power station that powers 150,000 homes there has a mandate to stop burning fossil fuels like coal and oil by 2020. Its path to achieving that involves burning "only renewable and recycled fuels," which in its case, includes recycled wood and "trash" from an H&M warehouse in the neighboring city of Eskilstuna. Bloomberg reports it was only last week that the trash was specified as clothing, and a rep for H&M in Sweden explains the company "does not burn any clothes that are safe to use." What's being torched—year to date, about 30,000 pounds' worth—are ones that may "contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals." The alternative would seemingly be a landfill, which is where a staggering amount of our clothing ends up. The Atlantic in 2014 reported that Americans toss about 10.5 million tons of clothing a year. That's about 85% of what we get rid of, with the other 15% recycled—either ultimately worn by someone else, turned into industrial rags, or "ground down" and repurposed as items ranging from insulation and furniture stuffing to pet bedding, per the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association. The Sourcing Journal cites the Environmental Protection Agency's concern over the situation: The agency recorded a 38% jump in textile waste between 2000 and 2011. Quartz points to a 2016 McKinsey study that found that over that same period, European clothing companies increased their number of annual collections from two to five.

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 Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg

 Burning discarded clothing from retail chain Hennes & Mauritz AB is helping a Swedish power plant replace coal for good.

 The combined heat and power station in Vasteras, northwest of Stockholm, is converting from oil- and coal-fired generation to become a fossil fuel-free facility by 2020. That means burning recycled wood and trash, including clothes H&M can’t sell.

 “For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the 54-year-old plant about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”

 While Sweden prides itself on an almost entirely emission free-power system thanks to its hydro, nuclear and wind plants, some local municipalities still use coal and oil to heat homes and offices during cold winter days. By converting old plants to burn biofuels and garbage, the biggest Nordic economy is hoping to edge out the last of its fossil fuel units by the end of this decade.

 Malarenergi has a deal with the neighboring city of Eskilstuna to burn their trash, some of which comes from H&M’s central warehouse in the same city. The refuse wasn’t specified as clothing until it was highlighted in a Swedish national television program on Tuesday.

 “H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use,” Johanna Dahl, head of communications for H&M in Sweden, said by email. “However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed.”

 The Vasteras plant burned about 15 tons of discarded clothes from H&M so far in 2017, compared with about 400,000 tons of trash, Neren said. Malarenergi has deals with several nearby cities to receive rubbish and even imports waste from Britain to fuel its main boiler.

 The facility, which supplies power to about 150,000 households, burned as much as 650,000 tons of coal at its peak in 1996.

 On Tuesday, the last coal ship docked in Vasteras to supply the plant’s two remaining fossil-fuel generators from the 1960s with enough supplies to last until 2020. That’s when a new wood-fired boiler will be added to supplement the facility’s existing biofuel and trash burning units. ||||| Nearly 100% of all used clothing and household textiles can be re-used or recycled: 45% are re-used as apparel; 30% are converted into industrial polishing/wiping cloths and 20% are processed into fiber to be manufactured into new products. 95% of all used clothing is recyclable, only 5% is unusable due to mildew or other contamination.

 Companies in the textile reuse and recycling industry consist of collectors, processors and distributors of all types of used clothing, textiles and secondary materials.

 Collectors are companies that collect used clothing and other household textiles from the public. In addition, recycled textile collectors gather materials from industrial laundries, healthcare institutions, hotels, and other businesses that utilize large amounts of textile products. Another source of textile products that is directed into the recycling stream by "collector" companies is textile waste from clothing manufacturers.

 Collectors bale and sell these clothing products "as is" to clothing graders or other dealers. Used clothing "graders" sort the items assign a "grade" and re-sell the graded product. The activities of collectors, graders, and used clothing brokers are instrumental in diverting solid waste from landfills.

 Processors sort, grade and reprocess used clothing and household textiles during the recycling process. At the facilities where the collected clothing and textiles are sorted, the items are then made into large bales to be re-sold. The newly created bales of used clothing may be re-sold within the United States, although most often the products are shipped overseas to developing markets in Asia, Africa, Europe, or Central and South America.

 Textile processors also collect items from industrial laundries that are deemed to be unfit to be used by the laundry's clients. These items are sorted and bleached to make them more absorbent before they are cut into wiping cloths.

 Some companies re-process used clothing back into their original fiber. These companies create blends of fiber that are sold in bales to companies that re-manufacture the fiber content into new products. These products include: home insulation (made from the denim of reprocessed blue jeans), stuffing for furniture, athletic equipment, pet bedding, automotive soundproofing, and carpet padding among many other new products.

 Distributors take the used clothing or textiles that are cut or converted into wiping products and then sold to industrial, manufacturing, retail, and other end-use clients. Broker companies fall within the distributor category as well. These businesses facilitate the transactions between collector companies, grader companies and buyers. Materials that are brokered within the used clothing industry include institutional mixed used clothing, clothing gathered by collector companies and materials that have been sorted by grader companies. The clients of brokers are often foreign businesses located in Africa, Asia, Europe, or South America. On occasion, brokers also facilitate transactions among companies within the United States, depending on the needs of their client companies. ||||| A Swedish power plant that aims to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2020 has taken to burning recycled wood and garbage—including clothes from H&M;’s central warehouse, as first reported on Swedish public television.

 “For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, which owns and operates the plant in Vasteras, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”

 According to Bloomberg, the plant has burned about 15 tons of discarded clothing from H&M; so far in 2017, making it a minuscule percentage of the 400,000 tons of trash it has burned to supply power to about 150,000 households. The clothes, according to H&M;’s head of communications, Johanna Dahl, are burned because they’re unsafe for wearing.

 “It is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed,” Dahl told Bloomberg.“H&M; does not burn any clothes that are safe to use.”

 While Sweden is a leader in eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the fast fashion cycle encouraged by brands such as H&M; is far from sustainable, as 15 tons of discarded clothing from a single warehouse would indicate.

 Beyond the staggering resources required to produce H&M;’s hundreds of millions of products globally each year, fast fashion encourages an environmentally catastrophic cycle that sees manufacturers producing ever-increasing quantities to meet rising demands in markets such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. According to a 2016 McKinsey study, clothing production worldwide doubled between 2010 and 2014, and from 2000 to 2011 the average number of annual collections produced by European apparel companies rose from two to five.

 It’s a lot of material for one planet to handle. Plus, when clothes are so cheap, customers value them less, making them even likelier to end up in landfills—if they’re not in an incinerator first.

 🌍 Quartz is running a series called The Race to Zero Emissions that addresses the challenges and opportunities of climate action. Sign up here to be the first to know when stories are published. ||||| What does it mean for textiles to get recycled? While almost half of donated clothing gets worn again, a large portion of it is recycled in the traditional sense—ground down and re-formed into things like insulation and carpet padding—and a slightly smaller portion is turned into industrial rags.

 Figuring out the proper way to dispose of old clothes can be perplexing; if these bins were to be taken off the sidewalks, few people would know where to put their used clothing. On top of that, Americans still think of old clothes as charitable donations, which explains the outrage over news that the Viltex bins actually belong to a for-profit company.

 Those in the textile-recycling industry are now trying to clear up the confusion. "What we need to do is change the dialogue to, 'You're not just donating, you're reusing and recycling,'" says Jackie King, executive director of the Secondhand Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, a trade group. "It's an issue of communicating that and getting people to understand that if they want to use a charitable organization to reuse or recycle clothing, great. If not, let's make it convenient for people to dispose of it elsewhere."

 Most recycling, from bottles to cans to newspapers, is done by for-profit companies. In a nation that churns out an ungodly amount of waste, this amounts to big business. Take plastic: The U.S. exported more than $940 million worth of plastic scrap in 2010. The value of used clothing, moreover, has been in its own inflationary bubble since the recession, as more people are cash-strapped and opting to buy used.

 Of course, castoff clothing differs from a bottle or a newspaper in that almost half of it can be reused as secondhand clothing; it needn't be ground down into a pulp to make a new product, as is the case with plastic or glass. But the other half—the ripped, the torn, the busted—is recyclable.

 Charities have been our de facto national textile recyclers going back to the early 20th century, and Goodwill started providing bins for clothing donations as early as the 1940s. But this system was set up in a pre-consumerist America, when we had neither a landfill crunch nor a waste crisis: Americans now buy five times as much clothing as they did in 1980, according to Mattias Wallander, CEO of USAgain, a textile-recycling company. And between 1999 and 2009, the volume of textile trash rose by 40 percent. Particularly due to the advent of cheap, disposable clothing, charities have seen themselves transformed into dumps that accept clothes of varying condition in ever-increasing volumes.

 King says there is quite a lot of public misinformation about what exactly happens to clothing when it’s donated to charities. "People think when they are giving to, say, a Salvation Army or Goodwill, that all of that is going to be resold in their stores, and it's just not, because they don't have enough room for that," she says. In fact, according to King, there's only a 15 or 20 percent chance that a piece of clothing you've donated is being worn by someone in your community, as charities receive far too many donations to sell them all. |||||


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Something far more concerning than marching bands, balloons, cheerleaders and clowns was at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade . Confidential personal information is what some paradegoers found among confetti tossed during the world's most famous parade. That information included social security numbers and banking information for police employees, some of whom are undercover officers.Ethan Finkelstein, who was home from college on Thanksgiving break, was watching the parade at 65th Street and Central Park West, when he and a friend noticed a strip of confetti stuck onto her coat."It landed on her shoulder," Finkelstein told PIX11 News, "and it says 'SSN' and it's written like a social security number, and we're like, 'That's really bizarre.'It made the Tufts University freshman concerned, so he and his friends picked up more of the confetti that had fallen around them."There are phone numbers, addresses, more social security numbers, license plate numbers and then we find all these incident reports from police."One confetti strip indicates that it's from an arrest record, and other strips offer more detail. "This is really shocking," Finkelstein said. "It says, 'At 4:30 A.M. a pipe bomb was thrown at a house in the Kings Grant' area."A closer look shows that the documents are from the Nassau County Police Department. The papers were shredded, but clearly not well enough.They even contain information about Mitt Romney 's motorcade, apparently from the final presidential debate, which took place at Hofstra University in Nassau County last month.Most significant, the confetti strips identified Nassau County detectives by name. Some of them are apparently undercover. Their social security numbers, dates of birth and other highly sensitive personal information was also printed on the confetti strips."I'm just completely in shock," said Finkelstein, 18. "How could someone have this kind of information, and how could it be distributed at the Thanksgiving Day Parade?"It's a question that PIX11 wanted an answer to as well. The Nassau County Police Department told PIX11, via a written statement from its commanding officer for public information, Inspector Kenneth Lack, "The Nassau County Police Department is very concerned about this situation. We will be conducting an investigation into this matter as well as reviewing our procedures for the disposing of sensitive documents."For its part, the sponsor of the parade, Macy's, told PIX11 News that it uses "commercially manufactured, multicolor confetti, not shredded paper."It appears that the confetti strips are shredded police documents. Where they came from is still a mystery, but the people looking into the issue are trained at solving mysteries , and since they have a personal stake in the investigation, it may be more likely to be conclusive. ||||| Federal prosecutors told a judge last week that they have started reassembling documents shredded by the Stanford Financial Group, whose owner, R. Allen Stanford, is charged with running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. How do you reconstruct documents after they've been passed through a shredder?

 With a computer. In a typical reconstruction process, technicians feed all the available shreds into a scanner. An automated software program then assigns a unique ID to each piece and analyzes a number of characteristics, including size, color, indentation, and font. Using a matching algorithm, the software then identifies potential neighboring shreds, displaying them onscreen for an operator to confirm. (For the home user, an Israeli company sells software that can turn any PC and scanner into an "unshredder.")

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 Not all shredded documents can be put back together. The possibility and ease of reconstruction depends on the size of the shreds—the smaller and more numerous the pieces, the harder it is to reconstruct a document. Strip shredders cut paper into long strips 1/8- to 5/16-inch wide and are the most popular option because of their speed and low cost—but they're also the easiest to reassemble since they produce a relatively small number of large fragments. Cross-cut shredders, which slice paper into many tiny, confettilike pieces, are significantly more secure (and expensive), while shredders that pulverize paper into dust cost thousands of dollars but are essentially reconstruction-proof. (To secure top-secret information, the Department of Defense requires that the majority of shredded particles "not exceed 5 square millimeters.") When using a strip-shredder, the slicing direction also has implications for reconstruction. Horizontal cuts may leave entire lines of text intact. Vertical shredding, which ensures that sentences are broken up, is more secure.

 Before advances in scanning and computer technology, documents had to be reconstructed by hand. Assuming all the pieces are in one place, reassembling a shredded document is a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle; the reconstructionist must painstakingly sift through the shreds, looking for matches. During the 1979 Iranian Revolution, students and militants who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran turned to local carpet weavers to reassemble classified CIA documents they found that had been shredded. These pages were later published in a set of about 60 volumes called Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den. And in 2002, former FBI agent William Daly took about an hour to reassemble a shredded page from the dictionary on Good Morning America.

 Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer. |||||

– Oops: Observers at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade were surprised to discover that the confetti landing on their coats contained confidential information including social security numbers and banking info. One paradegoer tells WPIX his friend first noticed a Social Security number on one piece of confetti, then found more with "phone numbers, addresses, more social security numbers, license plate numbers," and police incident reports including arrest records and information about Mitt Romney's motorcade. Turns out the confetti was made up of Nassau County Police Department documents that "were shredded, but clearly not well enough," WPIX notes. Some of the documents even identify undercover police officers by name, and give out information including dates of birth, social security numbers, and more. The police department says in a statement that it is "very concerned" and will be investigating the matter, and Macy's says it uses "commercially manufactured, multicolor confetti, not shredded paper" in the parade. (Click for more on how shredded documents can be reassembled.)


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It was supposed to be a fun outing to a haunted house with friends until a man, believed to be one of the house's actors — a thin man with a skull face — walked up to them and handed one of them a knife.

 The group of friends at the Nashville haunted house last Friday night decided to play along, so when the thin figure with a straw hat asked one of the women if one of her friends was "fucking around with her," she said yes.

 "Well, here, stab him," he said, handing her a knife, according to the police report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

 The 29-year-old woman took the knife, which she thought was fake, and plunged it into her friend's left arm.

 "As she pulled back she realized that there was blood on the knife," the report states. "There was a hole in the victim's shirt and blood was squirting from the victim's left arm."

 Her friend, 29-year-old James Yochim, was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for his injuries. ||||| NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) - What started out as Halloween fun for a group of friends in Nashville turned into real horror when a woman says she was approached by someone and unknowingly given a real knife which was used to stab her friend.

 Metro Police are investigating the stabbing that happened Friday night at Nashville Nightmare, a popular Halloween attraction in Madison. At this attraction, people dressed up in Halloween costumes roam the grounds, interacting with guests and working carnival-type games.

 According to an incident report from Metro Police, officers were told that a group of four friends had gone to Nashville Nightmare and while inside the venue area, they were approached by someone whom they thought was a character there. Nashville Nightmare says they also believe the person involved was an employee, who has since been placed on leave.

 FOX 17 News spoke with the woman Tawnya Greenfield, who says the group had already gone inside the haunted houses and was playing carnival-type games when it happened inside the roped off area.

 The possible employee, dressed and talking in character, Greenfield if the victim, a friend of Greenfield's, was messing around with her. Playing along with whom she thought to be a character from the attraction she said "yes." The unknown person then handed Greenfield a knife, which she thought was a prop knife. The person, speaking in character according to Greenfield, then said, “well here, stab him.”

 Police said Greenfield, only playing along and believing the knife was a prop, stabbed the victim. Greenfield told us she even joked saying, "ha,ha gotcha!"

 But when Greenfield pulled back, she realized the terrifying truth.

 "His arm was gushing blood like something out of a horror scene," Greenfield said.

 There was blood on the knife, a hole in the victim’s shirt and “blood squirting from the victim’s left arm.” Greenfield told police, and FOX 17 News, she didn’t mean to hurt the victim. Medics responded to the Nashville Nightmare and transported the victim to be treated for his injuries at Skyline Hospital.

 Greenfield says the unknown person, a man, ran away after the incident.

 Two others were in the group with the woman and victim, who corroborate the story about the prop knife.

 The person who walked up to the group is now believed to be an employee, but Nashville Nightmare is investigating and the group involved in the real horror story is seeking legal action.

 Official statement from Nashville Nightmare:

 The safety and security of our patrons is our top priority, and, for the past 8 years, we have hosted Nashville Nightmare without any security incidents or major injuries.

 We are still confirming the facts, but I can tell you that on Friday night, a male patron was injured by a fellow patron outside the Nashville Nightmare house. Our medical staff responded immediately, and the injured party was transported to the hospital where we understand that he was treated and released.

 We have robust safety and security protocols in place, including metal detectors and onsite medical and security staffs. As we have continued to review the information, we believe that an employee was involved in some way, and he has been placed on leave until we can determine his involvement. We are going over all of our safety protocols with all of our staff again, as the safety and security of all of our patrons is always our main concern. We have not been contacted by the police, but we will cooperate fully with any official investigation.

  |||||

– Halloween is James Yochim's favorite time of year: "I get really excited about going to haunted houses." His Friday night at Nashville Nightmare in Madison—a sprawling attraction with four haunted houses, an escape room, and scary cast members running around with fake weapons—might dull the thrill, however. Yochim says a thin man with skull makeup, assumed to be an actor, approached his friend, Tawnya Greenfield, asking if Yochim was "f—ing around with her," per BuzzFeed. When she jokingly said yes, the man handed her a knife and said "stab him," Yochim tells the Nashville Tennessean. "Keep in mind, we'd been chased by chainsaws, holding other weapons, all kinds of stuff all night, and it was all fake," he adds. "So she stabs at me with it, and everything got really black." The blade—very much real—went through the 29-year-old's forearm. Though it didn't hit any major arteries, bones, or tendons, "his arm was gushing blood like something out of a horror scene," Greenfield tells Fox 17. Nine stitches later, Yochim recalls the unknown man apologizing as he lay bleeding, saying, "I didn't know my knife was that sharp." But according to Yochim, there were no weapons allowed inside the attraction and visitors were required to go through "very thorough" metal detectors. In a Tuesday statement, Nashville Nightmare's organizers said an employee believed to be "involved in some way" had been placed on leave "until we can determine his involvement." An initial police report said the suspect had not been identified. No charges have been laid.


Article:
Story highlights Officials will review data to see if satellite information has been "accurately interpreted"

 More high-tech devices will be used over an expanded search area

 The search area will expand to deep water that has "never been mapped"

 Australia estimates the next phase will cost $60 million

 More than 300 flights.

 Over 3,000 hours in the air.

 A staggering 4.6 million square kilometers of ocean.

 The numbers speak to the breadth of the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

 The results speak to the fruitlessness of it.

 JUST WATCHED Skepticism About New MH370 Findings Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Skepticism About New MH370 Findings 04:00

 JUST WATCHED Search for Flight 370 to expand Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Search for Flight 370 to expand 02:38

 JUST WATCHED 2nd search for MH370 in Bay of Bengal Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 2nd search for MH370 in Bay of Bengal 02:03

 The plane, carrying 239 people, disappeared on March 8. And despite an expansive search involving 26 countries, officials have nothing to show for it.

 So authorities are moving on to the next phase of the search -- one that will be even more challenging.

 "We know very clearly the area of the follow-up search will be even broader, with more difficulties and tougher tasks," Chinese Transport Minister Yang Chuantang said Monday.

 What's next

 Australian, Malaysian and Chinese officials will meet in Canberra, Australia, on Wednesday to hash out plans for the next stage of the hunt.

 One group will analyze the data and information collected so far. Another will look at the resources needed.

 The data audit will look at information gathered since the beginning of the search.

 "It will also look again at the satellite information that's been accumulated so that we can make sure that it's been accurately interpreted," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.

 Authorities have relied on satellite information and pings believed to be from the plane's flight data recorders in picking their search area.

 Photos: The search for MH370 Photos: The search for MH370 Two years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, a relative of one of the passengers burns incense in Beijing on March 8, 2016. Flight 370 vanished on March 8, 2014, as it flew from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. There were 239 people on board. Hide Caption 1 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 On July 29, police carry a piece of debris on Reunion Island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. A week later, authorities confirmed that the debris was from the missing flight. Hide Caption 2 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Staff members with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau examine a piece of aircraft debris at their laboratory in Canberra, Australia, on July 20. The flap was found in June by residents on Pemba Island off the coast of Tanzania, and officials had said it was highly likely to have come from Flight 370. Experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane, confirmed that the part was indeed from the missing aircraft. Hide Caption 3 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 In late February, American tourist Blaine Gibson found a piece of plane debris off Mozambique, a discovery that renewed hope of solving the mystery of the missing flight. The piece measured 35 inches by 22 inches. A U.S. official said it was likely the wreckage came from a Boeing 777, which MH370 was. Hide Caption 4 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Relatives of the flight's passengers console each other outside the Malaysia Airlines office in Subang, Malaysia, on February 12, 2015. Protesters had demanded that the airline withdraw the statement that all 239 people aboard the plane were dead. Hide Caption 5 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A police officer watches a couple cry outside the airline's office building in Beijing after officials refused to meet with them on June 11, 2014. The couple's son was on the plane. Hide Caption 6 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of the media scramble to speak with Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department, at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 27, 2014. Data from communications between satellites and the missing flight was released the day before, more than two months after relatives of passengers said they requested it be made public. Hide Caption 7 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Operators aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield move Bluefin-21, the U.S. Navy's autonomous underwater vehicle, into position to search for the jet on April 14, 2014. Hide Caption 8 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks out of a window while searching for debris off the coast of western Australia on April 13, 2014. Hide Caption 9 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 The HMS Echo, a vessel with the British Roya; Navy, moves through the waters of the southern Indian Ocean on April 12, 2014. Hide Caption 10 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion, on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the search, flies past the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 9, 2014. Hide Caption 11 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A relative of a missing passenger cries at a vigil in Beijing on April 8, 2014. Hide Caption 12 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Australian Defense Force divers scan the water for debris in the southern Indian Ocean on April 7, 2014. Hide Caption 13 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A towed pinger locator is readied to be deployed off the deck of the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 7, 2014. Hide Caption 14 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks at a flare in the Indian Ocean during search operations on April 4, 2014. Hide Caption 15 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 On March 30, 2014, a woman in Kuala Lumpur prepares for an event in honor of those aboard Flight 370. Hide Caption 16 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 The sole representative for the families of Flight 370 passengers leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on March 28, 2014, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions. Hide Caption 17 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 18 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 19 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 People in Kuala Lumpur light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27, 2014. Hide Caption 20 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight on March 24, 2014. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." Hide Caption 21 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24, 2014. Hide Caption 22 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 22, 2014. Hide Caption 23 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, 2014, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It was a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes were looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia. Hide Caption 24 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on March 20, 2014, showed debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could have been from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search. Hide Caption 25 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight. Hide Caption 26 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 19, 2014. Hide Caption 27 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 On March 18, 2014, a relative of a missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet. Hide Caption 28 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations in the Indian Ocean on March 16, 2014. Hide Caption 29 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on March 13, 2014. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, search efforts expanded west into the Indian Ocean. Hide Caption 30 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13, 2014. Hide Caption 31 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian air force members look for debris near Kuala Lumpur on March 13, 2014. Hide Caption 32 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12, 2014. Hide Caption 33 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on March 11, 2014. Hide Caption 34 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported on March 8, 2014. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10, 2014. Hide Caption 35 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews on March 9, 2014, before returning to search for the missing plane in the Gulf of Thailand. Hide Caption 36 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 37 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 38 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea on March 9, 2014. Hide Caption 39 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 40 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 41 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8, 2014. Hide Caption 42 of 43 Photos: The search for MH370 Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference at a hotel in Sepang on March 8, 2014. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. Hide Caption 43 of 43

 But with an expanded search area comes the most challenging task ahead: scouring uncharted territory.

 A key element of the new phase will be a detailed mapping of the ocean floor.

 "We know that the water is very deep," Truss said. "And for the next stage involving sonar and other autonomous vehicles, potentially at very great depths, we need to have an understanding of the ocean floor to be able to undertake that kind of search effectively and safely."

 Truss said he's not sure how deep the ocean is in the expanded search area because "it's never been mapped."

 The tools

 The next stage of the hunt will involved highly specialized technology, including towed side-scan sonar and more autonomous underwater vehicles, Truss said.

 "You can count on one hand the number of devices that can do this work, when you talk about towed sonar devices," said Angus Houston, chief coordinator of the joint search effort.

 Truss said he's optimistic that the new devices will be in the water within a month or two. In the meantime, he said, the Bluefin-21 drone will continue underwater missions.

 The Bluefin-21 has already scanned 400 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean floor, but with no luck. The United States has authorized the use of the drone for another month. The cost? About $40,000 a day.

 While the Bluefin-21 provides greater resolution than deep-towed sonar devices, the drone can only go about 4.5 kilometers deep.

 The cost

 Australia estimates the next phase of the search will cost about $60 million, Truss said. He said officials will consult with Malaysia, China and other parties on how that cost would be shared.

 Until now, all countries involved in the search have paid for their own costs.

 "Whenever we've asked, people have come forward," Truss said. But "I think we'll be looking at increasing involvement from the manufacturers and their host countries."

 Letting others in

 The new phase will allow more parties to join the search, acting Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

 "This gives an opportunity to those not involved in the early phase of the search and rescue efforts to come on board," he said.

 Those could involve research institutions and more countries, he said.

 Truss said most of the new equipment will likely have to come from the private sector.

 Lessons learned

 It took two years to find the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean.

 Truss said authorities can learn from that effort.

 "There were some quite long gaps in their search, and we don't want that to happen in this instance," he said. "That's why we're starting work this week on actually putting together the next stages of the search."

 But as officials from this search have already learned, hope can dash as quickly as it arises.

 "We've been confident on the basis of the information provided that the search area was the right one," Truss said. "But in practice, that confidence has not been converted into us discovering any trace of the aircraft." ||||| Chief coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center, retired Chief Air Marshall Angus Houston gestures as he speaks during a press conference in Perth, Australia. (Photo: Rob Griffith, AP)

 BEIJING – After 53 days of fruitless, government-led efforts on sea and by air, the team searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will identify and deploy more sophisticated underwater equipment from private companies, officials from Australia, Malaysia and China agreed Monday.

 Announcing a new phase in the multinational hunt, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the search of the ocean floor will be intensified and expanded over a much larger area than has been covered to date.

 The plane disappeared March 8 with 239 passengers and crew en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The majority of passengers were Chinese citizens. Using satellite data, investigators concluded the plane ended in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles off route, but no wreckage has been found.

 The U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21, an unmanned submarine fitted with sonar, will continue to scan the target area, a thousand miles off Australia's west coast, Truss told a press conference Monday in Canberra. But tenders will soon be put out for specialist vehicles that can dive deeper than Bluefin-21 and recover debris, and also for towed sonar equipment to conduct more detailed underwater mapping of sea floor that "has never been mapped", he said.

 More hardware will be "in the water" in the next two months, said Truss, who promised there would be no long interruptions in the search as occurred during the two-year hunt for the black boxes of the 2009 Air France disaster. At a meeting Wednesday in Canberra, experts from the three countries will discuss what other assets are required for the search's new phase, he said.The extreme depths involved mean there are "only a handful of pieces of relevant machinery in the world," and few oceanographic vessels capable of mapping such depths, said Truss, who expects the private sector to provide most of the required equipment. Towed sonar will permit real-time sharing of information and quicker response times, unlike the Bluefin-21 which must be recovered for data download, he said.

 That meeting will also perform "something of an audit" of all the information gathered to date, including the satellite data, he said. Despite the failure to locate a single piece of MH370, search coordinator Angus Houston said he still believes searchers are correct to place most weight on the satellite analysis that led them to the current search area. But he welcomed the review of all the information that took them there.

 Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield is berthed near Perth on Monday as it replenishes its supplies and conducts maintenance on underwater vehicle Artemis Bluefin-21, which has been searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. (Photo: Greg Wood, AFP/Getty Images)

 "It's very sensible to go back" to ensure "there are no flaws in that, the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right," Houston said in Canberra Monday. Compared to other plane crashes, "we've got very little to work on," admitted Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who still insisted the searchers "are on the right track." All nations involved have borne their own costs to date, said Truss. Hussein doubted that private firms would need the lure of a reward to get involved. "The whole tragedy has caught the imagination of so many," he said Monday. "There's no reward big enough," said Hussein, adding that any company that found the plane would immediately become the most famous in the world. China's Transport Minister Yang Chuantang promised Monday that Beijing will continue uninterrupted and intensified efforts to search for MH370, he said after the trilateral meeting.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1kN5VT7 |||||Summary:

– The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is growing, officials say, as searchers prepare to map a wide swath of the ocean floor in a new phase of the effort. "We know very clearly the area of the follow-up search will be even broader, with more difficulties and tougher tasks," says China's transport minister. "For the next stage involving sonar and other autonomous vehicles, potentially at very great depths, we need to have an understanding of the ocean floor," says Australia's deputy PM, per CNN. The new search area has "never been mapped." Officials will be looking for help from private companies; they doubt firms will need much financial incentive, USA Today reports. "There's no reward big enough," says Malaysia's acting transport minister, but if a company can find the plane, it will win instant worldwide fame, he notes. Search leaders are hoping a single firm will take on the task to avoid continued coordination problems, the Wall Street Journal notes. Officials also plan to go through all existing data once again. "It's very sensible to go back" to be certain "there are no flaws in that—the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right," says search coordinator Angus Houston.


Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share After new DNA evidence cleared him of the crimes and linked them to the notorious "teardrop rapist" Los Angeles judge on Monday overturned the conviction of a man who spent 16 years in prison for sexual assault and other charges. USA TODAY

 Luis Vargas, who has been in prison for 16 years, reacts in court as he is exonerated Monday, Nov. 23, in Los Angeles. A judge exonerated Vargas, convicted of three rapes, after DNA evidence linked the crimes to a serial rapist wanted for assaults dating back two decades. (Photo: AP)

 A California man who spent 16 years behind bars for sexual assault convictions was cleared on Monday after DNA evidence linked the crimes to another man.

 Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan exonerated Luis Vargas after DNA evidence linked the crimes to the so-called “teardrop rapist,” who is suspected of more than 30 rapes in the Los Angeles area since 1996 and has never been identified, AP reported.

 The teardrop rapist gained his nickname for a teardrop tattoo under his eye. The rapist was known for grabbing his victims and threatening them with a weapon before pulling them into a secluded area and raping them, the Los Angeles Times reported.

 Vargas, lived near the area where several assaults took place and was misidentified as the rapist because of a similar teardrop tattoo, according to the Times.

 In 1999, he was sentenced to 55 years in prison for three sexual assaults, but as he sat behind bars the rapes continued, the Times reported.

 Vargas, who has maintained his innocence, reached out to lawyers and students at the California Innocence Project at California Western School of Law. He told them he believed the teardrop rapist committed the assaults of which he was convicted, according to AP. The group took up Vargas’ case in 2012.

 After his name was cleared, Vargas, 46, was taken back into custody because his green card was revoked when he was convicted of the crimes, AP reported.

 His lawyers told his family they believed Vargas will be free to go home soon.

 This December, 2013 photo provided by the California Innocence Project shows Luis Vargas, center, with his daughter Crystal Vargas and son Daniel Vargas at his community college graduation ceremony held within the walls of a California state prison in Blythe, Calif. (Photo: AP)

 His daughter, Cristal Nora Vargas, told KABC-TV, she is ready to help her father take back his life.

 "This is all I've ever wanted, and I thank God for this one because God knows the truth behind all of this," she told KABC. "It's a relief because I believed in my father's innocence the day he told me he was innocent. Growing up, I would cry myself to sleep. My father meant the world to me, and he still does."

 Follow @MaryBowerman on Twitter.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Hk46Mn |||||

 Jurors convicted him, and he was sentenced to 55 years to life in prison.

 As the attacks by the teardrop rapist continued, Vargas fought for his release from behind bars. He filed appeal after appeal and unsuccessfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to look at his case. In December 2012, aided by the California Innocence Project, he filed a request to examine DNA collected from the jean shorts and underwear of one of the victims he was convicted of attacking, according to court documents.

 The tests found genetic material from at least two people, including the victim and the teardrop rapist, Vargas' lawyers said.

 In the recent letter to the court, the district attorney's office said the sophisticated technology used to exclude Vargas' DNA did not exist back in the late-1990s.

 The office said the victims who positively identified him at trial hadn't been as certain of their identifications during earlier lineups. And prosecutors also noted a discrepancy in the victims' descriptions: Two victims said their attacker had two teardrops tattooed near his left eye. Vargas has only one.

 The girl who was raped, now a woman, stood by her identification of Vargas when she was recently interviewed by investigators. Prosecutors said they believe she "honestly but mistakenly identified Vargas at trial as her assailant."

 A D.A. spokeswoman said the office did a "very careful, extensive review, because there was only DNA from one victim," before deciding to approve of Vargas' release.

 At the hearing Monday, Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan ordered Vargas' immediate release but noted that he first would be transferred to federal custody. There is an immigration hold on him, Vargas' attorneys said, because their client, who was born in Mexico, was a legal resident at the time of his arrest. They said they were hopeful he would be released soon.

 Vargas' 26-year-old daughter, Crystal Nuñez-Vargas, said she felt a weight lift from her shoulders inside the courtroom Monday.

 She told reporters after the hearing that her father's imprisonment had wrecked her life. She often cried herself to sleep and felt as if she'd been robbed of the sense of protection and security that might come with a father. She dreaded birthdays and cried before her quinceañera, knowing he wouldn't be there for a father-daughter dance.

 She got married recently, Nuñez-Vargas said, but only on paper. She's holding off on a big church celebration until after her father's release. She wants him to walk her down the aisle.

 "Every little girl's dream," she said, choking up.

 Her dad's wish for after his release, she said, is simple: He wants to read bedtime stories to her 7-year-old daughter.

 Nuñez-Vargas peeked down at her daughter, who was smiling and clinging to her thigh.

 Her little girl, Nuñez-Vargas realized, is about as old as she had been when her father was arrested.

 Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report. ||||| On November 23, 2015, Judge William Ryan of the Los Angeles Superior Court exonerated Luis Vargas after 16 years of wrongful incarceration.

 On December 7, 1999, just before being sentenced for three crimes he did not commit, Luis Vargas addressed the Los Angeles Superior Court.

 Vargas stated, “…I will pray for God’s mercy on all of you…but as far as I’m concerned, as far as I’m concerned [the] individual [who] really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there, might really be killing someone out there.”

 The judge then handed Luis a sentence of fifty-five years to life.

 Unfortunately for Luis and the people of Los Angeles, Luis was right.

 Unbeknownst to the public at the time, a methodical serial rapist known only as the “Tear Drop Rapist” was committing eerily similar crimes. Sadly, it would take almost fifteen years, dozens of sexual assaults, and many advances in DNA science for anyone to see Luis was speaking the truth on December 7, 1999.

 Luis Vargas’s case originally caught the attention of the California Innocence Project (CIP) staff in 2011. His case was riddled with textbook post-conviction red flags. The most prominent red flag of all: eyewitness misidentification. In fact, the prosecution’s entire case relied on the wavering identifications of three traumatized young ladies. Vargas was convicted solely on the victims’ accounts of the savage attacks. Furthermore, the prosecution was beyond adamant the same person committed all three of the assaults. Perhaps one of the most disturbing legal issues in Vargas’s story is that, despite the prosecution’s weak, one dimensional case, the defense chose not to proffer an eyewitness identification expert.

 Vargas wrote a letter to CIP and included an article from the L.A. Times, chronicling the sadistic serial rape spree of the Tear Drop Rapist. The Tear Drop Rapist was described as a middle aged, small build, Hispanic male. The Tear Drop Rapist was given his moniker due to the fact that he was often described by his victims as having one or two teardrop tattoos under his eye. This was eerily the same description given by the three victims in the Vargas case. In contrast, Vargas had one faded, barely visible teardrop tattoo that he received as a homeless thirteen-year-old youth.

 The Tear Drop Rapist committed over 30 attacks in the last decade, all within a 1.6 mile radius of the three attacks in the Vargas case. As if these facts were not enough, CIP noticed that reading the FBI’s published description of the Tear Drop Rapist’s modus operandi (see here) was like reading a carbon copy of the District Attorney’s 1999 closing argument.

 In 2013, CIP decided to test the only remaining physical evidence available in Vargas’s case: the rape kit and clothing from one of the victims. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office agreed to test the requested items. CIP filed a California Penal Code Section 1405 motion for post- conviction DNA testing. The DNA test results revealed Vargas did not commit the rape, but the Tear Drop Rapist did.

 The Tear Drop Rapist is attributed to having committed 35 attacks; not including the three attacks for which Vargas was convicted.

 On November 23, 2015, Luis Vargas was exonerated of all three sexual assaults. Through cooperation with the district attorney’s office, Judge Ryan of the Los Angeles Superior Court threw out the convictions against Vargas. Vargas is the California Innocence Project’s 3rd DNA exoneration and 20th freed client overall. |||||

Write a summary.

– A California man imprisoned for 16 years for sexual assault was exonerated Monday after DNA tests showed another man committed the crimes, USA Today reports. Luis Vargas, 46, broke down when an LA Superior Court judge granted a petition to release him from his sentence of 55 years to life for three sex crimes. The move came after DNA evidence linked those assaults to a serial attacker known as the Teardrop Rapist, so labeled for having a teardrop tattoo under his eye, the AP notes. That man, who was never caught, is suspected of having committed about three dozen crimes in the LA area. Vargas had matched assailant descriptions, and he caught investigators' eye because he had a faded teardrop tattoo under his left eye and a 1992 rape conviction involving his girlfriend at the time, reports the Los Angeles Times. "You can sentence me to all the years you want, but ... that individual that really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there," Vargas warned a judge before he was sentenced in 1999. In 2012, Vargas reached out to the California Innocence Project and asked to use DNA techniques to examine samples on the clothing of one of his alleged victims, per the Times. The DNA matched that of the victim and the Teardrop Rapist. The three victims had positively IDed Vargas as the perpetrator, but an Innocence Project attorney tells the AP it was a "shaky witness" case, an assertion the LA district attorney's office backed up in a recent court letter that said there were discrepancies and uncertainties in their identification of the rapist, the Times notes. Vargas still has to clear up some immigration issues before he's fully released, but he hopes to be home by Christmas.