Feds may set Gulf oil slick ablaze

 A satellite shot, taken Monday, of the oil slick off the coast of Louisiana.

 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Coast Guard officials are considering setting the Gulf of Mexico oil slick on fire as it moved Tuesday to within 20 miles of sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.

 Officials say it could become one of worst spills in U.S. history.

 Oil is still leaking at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day from the well, located some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana beneath a drill rig that exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are still missing following the incident, and are presumed dead.

 BP, the well's owner, is racing to shut off the well using eight remote controlled submarines, but has had no luck as of yet.

 "If we don't secure the well, this could be one of the most serious oil spills in U.S. history," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, head of a joint response task force, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

 Twenty miles is the closest the slick has come to land so far.

 Officials said oil slicks are sometimes set on fire, especially when they are near sensitive marsh areas where heavy equipment used to clean the oil may cause more harm than good.

 If the slick is set on fire, it would be a controlled burn using fire-proof booms, and only done during the day, said Landry. It could begin as early as Wednesday.

 The spill, measured from end to end, stretched as wide as 42 miles by 80 miles, although oil isn't necessarily covering that entire area.

 Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface, ranging in thickness from a couple of molecules to the equivalent of a layer of paint. About 3% of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil.

 At its current flow rate would take over 260 days to rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, which discharged some 11 million gallons into Alaska's Price William Sound. Still, even if it never compares to the Exxon Valdes spill's size, if it makes landfall it'll have serious ecological repercussions.

 The Coast Guard, BP, and the rig's owner Transocean (RIG), have deployed nearly 50 vessels to help contain and clean the slick.

 Marine life has been spotted in the area. Over the weekend a plane from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sighted five small whales nearby. Crews working to contain the spill were alerted to their presence.

 Efforts are also underway near the shoreline to deal with the spill should it reach land, including positioning boom material around sensitive ecological areas.

 Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, La. to Pensacola, Fla.

 Landry said it appears the slick should remain at sea for at least the next three days, although weather reports for the latter part of that period suggest the wind could shift and blow the slick toward land.

 The oil, if it stays at sea, will eventually evaporate, breakdown and sink, or get cleaned up.

 But analysts have said the spill could have political fallout, especially if it reaches shore.

 Several lawmakers and interest groups have led a charge over the last several years to open up more parts of the U.S. coast for oil drilling, efforts that are generally supported by the public.

 That support could erode if crude oil starts washing up on the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts.

 The well is expected to continue leaking until it is sealed. The leak appears to be coming from a pipe that ran from the well head to the drilling rig, which is now laying upside down in 5,000 feet of water not far from the well head.

 It has not been decided if the rig will be salvaged or remain where it is, a Transocean official said Monday.

 To seal the leak, three approaches are being tried.

 BP is now using a set of remote controlled submarines in an attempt to activate the well's "blow out preventer" -- a steel device the size of a small house that sits atop the well and is intended to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a disaster.

 It's not clear why that device didn't not originally act to cap the well, or if it will be of any use going forward.

 BP (BP) is also bringing in another drilling rig which could seal the well, but that effort will take months, according to a BP spokesman.

 In the meantime, the company is also trying a novel approach to capture the oil -- using a dome right above the well head. The dome resembles an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface to capture the oil. That tactic has never been tried in water this deep.

 A BP spokesman said the dome should be ready in two to four weeks.

 The blast last week, which is still under investigation, resulted in 11 workers going missing. The search for them was suspended last Friday.

 115 other people made it off the rig after it exploded, most of them safely. One person remains in the hospital. ||||| With a vast oil slick now within only 20 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline, Coast Guard officials said they were considering a “controlled burn” of the petroleum on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

 Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the federal on-scene coordinator for the spill, said such a burn might be conducted as soon as Wednesday.

 A joint government and industry task force has been unable to stop crude oil from streaming out of a broken pipe attached to a well 5,000 feet below sea level. The leaks were found Saturday, days after an oil rig to which the pipe was attached exploded and sank in the gulf about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. An estimated 42,000 gallons a day are now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

 Officials said Tuesday that wind projections indicated that the oil would not reach land in the next three days, and it was unclear exactly where along the Gulf Coast it might arrive first.

 “If some of the weather conditions continue, the Delta area is at risk,” said Charlie Henry, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 Admiral Landry said a final decision had not been made yet about whether to burn the oil.

 “We fully understand there are benefits and trade-offs,” she said.

 But she also noted that with the spill moving toward land the impact on the shoreline had to be considered. That part of Louisiana contains some 40 percent of the lower 48 states’ wetlands and is spawning grounds for countless fish and birds.

 Controlled burns have been done and tested before, Admiral Landry said, and had been shown to be “effective in burning 50 to 95 percent of oil collected in a fire boom.” The downside, she said, was a “black plume” of smoke that would put soot and other particulates into the air.

 The consideration of burning was raised as the spill seemed to enter a direr phase. Short-term fixes have been unsuccessful, and political reaction has intensified.

 On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said they were expanding the government’s investigation of the explosion that caused the oil rig disaster. The inquiry will have subpoena power and will look into possible criminal or civil violations by the operators of the drilling rig, Transocean, a Swiss company, and related companies.

 Administration officials also met Tuesday with top executives of BP, which was leasing the rig and is required by law to pay for the cleanup. Last fall, as the federal government was weighing tougher safety and environmental rules for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, BP objected, saying its voluntary programs were successful.

 BP engineers have not been able to activate a device known as a blowout preventer, a valve at the wellhead that was supposed to stop oil flow in an emergency and is the only short-term solution for capping the well.

 Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production at BP, defended the company’s efforts, and said the cleanup was costing $6 million a day. He said engineers had not given up on engaging the valve and were exploring other possible fixes.

 Mr. Suttles said that a plan to use a type of tent or dome to collect the oil was progressing and was two to four weeks from being operational. On Tuesday, the company received permits to drill a relief well, which would be started half a mile from the current well site. Crews plan to drill toward the current well and then inject it with heavy fluids and concrete to seal it. That solution is experimental at this depth, however, and is months away.

 Coast Guard officials said they were not expecting landfall for the spill in the next three days. But Doug Helton, the incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s emergency response division, said winds would change Wednesday and start pushing the spill north and west toward the Mississippi Delta. “It is going to land eventually,” Mr. Helton said.

 The prospect alarmed fisherman and ecologists along the Louisiana coast. Gov. Bobby Jindal requested that the Coast Guard set up protective booms around several wildlife refuges in the Delta.

 Those delicate coastal rookeries and estuaries factor into the consideration for the surface burn. Such a burn would most likely ease the impact on wildlife.

 The oceanic agency issued a guide to the burn that advised as follows:

 “Based on our limited experience, birds and mammals are more capable of handling the risk of a local fire and temporary smoke plume than of handling the risk posed by a spreading oil slick. Birds flying in the plume can become disoriented, and could suffer toxic effects. This risk, however, is minimal when compared to oil coating and ingestion.”

 Admiral Landry said that a burn would take place offshore where no one on land could see it.

 A burn does not get rid of the oil entirely. It leaves waxy residue that can either be skimmed from the surface or sink to the bottom of the ocean.

 John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The Coast Guard is considering setting the gigantic oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico ablaze as it approaches land. A controlled burn to burn off the oil could happen as soon as today if winds keep pushing the Rhode Island-sized slick toward ecologically sensitive areas of the Mississippi Delta, CNN reports. "We fully understand that there are benefits and trade-offs" in torching the slick, the admiral co-ordinating federal operations told the New York Times. Birds and mammals will be "more than capable" of handling the effects of a burn, which will remove most of the oil and leave a waxy residue, said a Coast Guard spokesman.


– A woman visiting a nature reserve in Wales over the weekend accidentally took home an estimated 20,000 bees. Carol Howarth, 65, stopped in Haverfordwest to do some shopping on her way home from the reserve when a swarm of bees descended on her car. "I have never seen that many bees in one spot," local park ranger Tom Moses tells the Guardian. "They were packed in quite tight and covered a couple of square feet." Fearing the bees or a person might get hurt, he called the Pembrokeshire Beekeepers' Association and watched for three hours as beekeepers gathered the bees in a cardboard box, reports the Telegraph. "It's safe to say I got stung quite a few times," Moses tells the Milford Mercury. But the bee tale wasn't over. By the time Howarth had finished her shopping, the issue seemed resolved and she drove home. The next day, however, the swarm returned. Howarth called the beekeepers for backup and the bees were cleared away for a second, and, so far, final, time. The leading theory is that the insects were only following their queen, who may have gotten stuck in Howarth's Mitsubishi Outlander at the nature reserve. "We think the queen had been attracted to something in the car, perhaps something sweet, and had got into a gap on the boot’s wiper blade or perhaps the hinge," a beekeeper tells Metro, though a queen bee was never found. "It is natural for them to follow the queen but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days." (A swarm of stinging bees descended on a mosque.)

Expand this summary.

The horror (Picture: Mercury)

 A queen bee got trapped in the back of a 4×4 – so her dedicated hive chased the vehicle for TWO DAYS.

 48 hours of bee-related nightmare.

 The swarm of around 20,000 sparked chaos when their queen got stuck in a car boot.

 EgyptAir Crash: Human remains point to an explosion on flight MS804However it took five different beekeepers, park rangers and passers-by to coax them off into a cardboard box, only for the wind to blow it off the car and the queen go back to the silver Mitsubishi Outlander’s boot.

 Roger Burns of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers then says the car’s owner returned and drove away with the queen unknowingly trapped in the back, resulting in the swarm taking up the chase – even being spotted on the car’s boot the next day.

 MORE: Toddler ‘murdered by his mum’s boyfriend in vicious attack’, court hears

 The swarm was around 20,000 bees (Picture: Mercury)

 Roger, a 65-year-old retired doctor, said: ‘We think the queen had been attracted to something in the car, perhaps something sweet, and had got into a gap on the boot’s wiper blade or perhaps the hinge.

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 ‘The swarm of around 20,000 had followed her and were sat around on the boot of the car. I brought over a cardboard box and carefully brushed them into there as quickly as possible as I was aware it was a big swarm in the middle of the high street.

 Brothers who grew up to be sisters after coming out as trans at the same time’I got about 15 or 20 stings for my trouble. I then left the cardboard box on the roof while we waited for the last few hundred bees to leave the boot but then a gust of wind blew it off and the queen fled back to the boot again.

 ‘Unfortunately I had to go to dinner so another beekeeper took up the watch however eventually the car owner returned and drove off without realising the queen was still hidden in the back.

 ‘I think the owner must have been a bit scared of the swarm that was hanging around and just wanted to get away without realising they were attracted the car because of the queen.

 ‘We were left with a swarm of queen-less bees in the box and then heard that the same car was spotted the very next day with a swarm all over the boot, still chasing it.’

 Roger added: ‘I have been beekeeping for 30 years and I have never seen a swarm do that. It is natural for them to follow the queen but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days. It was quite amusing.’

 MORE: Pregnant women who smoke are more likely to have children with schizophrenia ||||| Park ranger and beekeepers help remove thousands of bees after queen was thought trapped in back of a car in Haverfordwest

 Thousands of bees left a town buzzing after swarming on to the boot of a car.

 The insects are believed to have swarmed on to the back of a silver Mitsubishi Outlander after their queen got stuck in its boot.

 Tom Moses, a ranger at the Pembrokeshire coast national park, noticed a “brown splodge” on the back of the car after the owner parked it in Haverfordwest to do some shopping. When he looked closer, he realised it was a swarm of bees – thought to number more than 10,000.

 Moses, 41, said: “I have never seen that many bees in one spot. It was very unusual and then you go and take a closer look, it is quite spectacular.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A beekeeper waiting for the bees to get in the box. Photograph: Tom Moses/PA

 “They were packed in quite tight and covered a couple of square feet. There was a lot of buzzing and moving.

 “It was interesting to see such a natural phenomenon but there were a lot of people around and I was a bit worried of the bees and the people passing by, their children stopping to look at it. It was the middle of a town and outside a pub. I thought that someone might do something stupid.”

 Moses called the Pembrokeshire Beekeepers’ Association after his discovery on Sunday and two beekeepers helped remove the swarm by luring the bees into a cardboard box.

 Moses, of Haverfordwest, spent about three hours looking after the bees – and was stung five times on the head, neck and behind the ears.

 He said: “My stings are a bit itchy, but they are not too bad now. I am pleased it all worked out and I was able to help. People need to realise that bees are valuable things and they need to be looked after and not hurt.” ||||| "It was spectacular. I was driving through when I spotted the big brown splodge,” he said.

 "A lot of people were really amazed by it, cars were slowing down and people were taking pictures of it.

 "I was a little bit concerned, with it being in the middle of town outside a pub, that someone might do something stupid and get hurt or do something stupid and hurt the bees," he said.

 "As I drove past I noticed this big brown splodge on the back of a car.

 "I had seen swarms before settle on things like this but never one as large as this. It was quite a thing to see - certainly a 'wow' moment.

 "I was really worried that someone could get hurt by them or that someone might damage them in their bid to clear the car so I stopped to help out.

 "It is fair to say I had a sting in the tale - I was stung to my head, neck and the back of my ears. But I took some anti-histamines and they are not too bad now.”

 However, after returning to her car, Mrs Howarth drove home believing the problem had been resolved, only to discover on Monday morning that the swarm had followed her and were again covering the car. |||||


– When first Mississippi responders came upon Jessica Chambers, she had been set on fire and was covered in second- and third-degree burns; she reportedly uttered "Eric did this to me," before dying. Attorneys for Quinton Tellis, the man on trial for her December 2014 death, argued that made for reasonable doubt, reports BuzzFeed. At least some members of the jury apparently had it: A judge on Monday declared a mistrial in the case. Tellis' first trial, in 2017, ended in a mistrial as well. Tellis was arrested in early 2016 after the local DA said a break in the perplexing case came via "technological data" like cellphone records; a DOJ analyst told the court Saturday that Tellis' phone data indicates he was with Chambers the night she died and that he wiped Chambers' texts and info from his phone after her death. BuzzFeed notes that Chambers' father had previously said Tellis' name wasn't known to the family, and the prosecution in this trial described a relationship between Chambers and Tellis that was only a week old. The Clarion Ledger reports the prosecution sought to chip away at the "Eric" detail: The medical director at the Firefighters Burn Center estimated she had been on fire for as long as five minutes, and he and a speech pathologist both testified that they don't believe the 19-year-old was capable of intelligible speech based on the severity of her burns. Tellis' attorney, Alton Peterson, thought doubt remained: "When you have eight trained first responders who were there on the scene ... it's hard to get around her telling them with her dying breaths that someone else did it." FOX13 reports prosecutors plan to "assess things" and then announce if they'll try Tellis a third time.

Expand this summary.

A judge reportedly declared a mistrial in the case of a Mississippi man charged with killing Jessica Chambers, who was burned alive in her car.

 This is the second time a jury failed to reach a verdict on murder charges against Quinton Tellis, 29.

 Tellis had faced a capital murder charge for killing Chambers, then 19, in December 2014. A grand jury first indicted Tellis in 2016, but a trial in 2017 ended with a hung jury. The jury in the second trial began deliberating on Sunday.

 Chambers was discovered burned alive in her car in Courtland, Mississippi, on December 6, 2014. When first responders arrived at the scene, Chambers was still alive but covered in second- and third-degree burns. She later died from her injuries, but not before reportedly telling medical personnel that "Eric did this to me."

 The killing subsequently gripped the nation and ignited a cottage industry of internet sleuths determined to solve the case.

 Months after Chambers' death — and with no suspects arrested — District Attorney John Champion called it "the most baffling case [he'd] ever worked on" in 22 years of employment with Panola County. Eventually, the local investigation expanded to include officials from the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Officials put up billboards in three different states hoping to turn up leads and offered a $54,000 reward.

 The breakthrough came after investigators analyzed "technological data" including cell phone records, Champion told reporters in February 2016, leading to Tellis's arrest and indictment for Chambers' murder.

 "It wasn't until we received information from subpoenas and began analyzing information we obtained that certain things began falling in place," Champion said.

 Chambers' father, Ben Chambers, said at a news conference at the time that his daughter "is at peace now." He also said that Chambers had never mentioned Tellis's name to the family. ||||| 0 After second mistrial in Jessica Chambers murder case, what's next for Quinton Tellis?

 The judge has declared a mistrial in the second trial for Jessica Chambers' murder case, as the jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case.

 RELATED: Mistrial declared in Jessica Chambers murder retrial

 Quinton Tellis was originally charged in Chambers' murder, but the jury did not come to a unanimous verdict for the second time.

 So, what is next for Tellis?

 Download the FOX13 Memphis app to receive alerts from breaking news in your neighborhood.

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 Trending stories:

 POSSIBLE RETRIAL AGAIN IN CHAMBERS CASE

 There is a possibility for prosecutors to retry the case for the third time. However, there is no indication whether or not they will elect to do that.

 "I'm not going to say that here, today," said Batesville District Attorney John Champion. "We've just got to sit down and assess things."

 Champion said Tellis has "some time limits running on some things in Louisiana that we have to get him back down there for."

 As was the case in the first trial, the members of the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict in the case to either convict or acquit Tellis.

 According to Attorney Caren Nichol, a third trial at this point seems "unlikely." In a third trial, the defense would know even more of what the prosecution will do, making a guilty verdict even less likely.

 UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA MONROE STUDENT MURDER CASE

 Tellis will be sent back to Louisiana soon to face charges in another homicide case there.

 There is no timetable for that at this point, but he will face another trial in the murder of a student at the University of Louisiana Monroe in 2016.

 FOX13 confirmed in 2016 that Tellis was the “only suspect” in the brutal stabbing death of an exchange student: Ming-Chen Hsiao.

 RELATED: How Quinton Tellis met suspected Louisiana murder victim 'Mandy" Hsiao

 The 34-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in her apartment this past summer. Tellis was arrested for using her debit card to make cash withdrawals.

 Prosecutors in Louisiana said Tellis was last seen leaving her apartment days prior to the murder and even used her cellphone inside her apartment.

 It is unclear when that case will go to trial.

 This is a developing story. Stay with FOX13 for the latest updates.

 © 2018 Cox Media Group. |||||


Article:
Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Trump's top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process.

 The news of their involvement helps unlock the mystery of whether the White House consulted Capitol Hill about the executive order, one of many questions raised in the days after it was unveiled on Friday. It confirms that the small group of staffers were among the only people on Capitol Hill who knew of the looming controversial policy.

 Story Continued Below

 Kathryn Rexrode, the House Judiciary Committee’s communications director, declined to comment about the aides’ work. A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order."

 "Like other congressional committees, some staff of the House Judiciary Committee were permitted to offer their policy expertise to the Trump transition team about immigration law," a House Judiciary Committee aide said in a statement. "However, the Trump Administration is responsible for the final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation.”

 The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Trump's transition operation forced its staff to sign these agreements, but it would be unusual to extend that requirement to congressional employees. Rexrode declined to comment on the nondisclosure pacts.

 It’s extremely rare for administration officials to circumvent Republican leadership and work directly with congressional committee aides. But the House Judiciary Committee has some of the most experienced staffers when it comes to immigration policy.

 GOP leaders received no advance warning or briefings from the White House or Judiciary staff on what the executive order would do or how it would be implemented — briefings they still had not received as of Sunday night. Leaders including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) only saw the final language when reporters received it Friday night, according to multiple Hill sources.

 Rather, Republicans on the Hill spent the entire weekend scrambling to find out what was going on, who was involved and how it was that they were caught so flat-footed.

 "Their coordination with the Hill was terrible," said one senior GOP source on the Hill, who seemed flabbergasted that congressional Republicans didn’t receive talking points from the White House on the executive order until late Saturday night, about 24 hours after President Donald Trump signed it. “We didn't see the final language until it was actually out.”

 The fumbled roll-out serves as a cautionary tale to Trump officials who decide to go it alone in enacting controversial policies without help from Congress. Indeed, the lack of consultation has set off a wave of resentment on Capitol Hill. GOP insiders believe that the White House and Goodlatte staffers could have avoided the drama that unfolded over the weekend had they looped in relevant lawmakers on the front end.

 The episode also has instilled a wariness among GOP aides about the White House.

 “These executive orders were very rushed and drafted by a very tight-knit group of individuals who did not run it by the people who have to execute the policy. And because that’s the case, they probably didn’t think of or care about how this would be executed in the real world,” said another congressional source familiar with the situation. “No one was given a heads-up and no one had a chance to weigh in on it.”

 Insiders told POLITICO that the botched roll-out of the immigration executive order was coordinated for the most part by White House policy director Stephen Miller, a former Sessions staffer, and Trump senior strategist Stephen Bannon.

 It was intentionally kept quiet. Even key administration officials had not seen it until "just before it was going out," according to one White House source.

 A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order." | AP Photo

 Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the order for potential problems — such as the issue with green card holders that caused authorized U.S. immigrants to be threatened with deportation at airports.

 Even supporters of the administration believe the administration erred in its lack of communication. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, speculated that the administration could have given "people a heads up a week or so out and get them on the same page.” But he cautioned that the administration is “understaffed and Trump is impatient,” and the White House has a natural learning curve.

 “They could have waited a couple days, and they would have done better,” Gingirich said. "I think some of this stuff is they're learning how to roller skate. They can't understand in advance, they have to do it for the first time.”

 When the order first came down Friday, and reports of problems started to surface, lawmakers frantically called leadership offices and committees staff to ask how to respond. That’s when GOP leadership staffers moved to do damage control — even as the administration ignored their requests for briefings and more information. Frustrated by the administration’s lack of communication to reporters on what the executive order did and didn’t do, they tried to pick up the slack by emphasizing that the ban was not a prohibition on Muslims.

 “We were trying to clean up their damage," a senior Republican source said. "The thing was getting totally mischaracterized. The way it was implemented was screwing over a lot of people."

 The White House has now dispatched aides to speak with Capitol Hill staffers before they make policy moves, a person familiar with the matter said. Boris Epshteyn, a senior aide, attended such a meeting Monday.

 Homeland Security Director John Kelly is expected to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday and has told others he was "kept totally out of the loop," one person familiar with his comments said.

 Hill Republicans on Monday were privately simmering that administration officials didn’t seek out their expertise. Most Trump officials lack policy chops and Washington know-how, they argued, and Republicans said they could have been helpful.

 One senior GOP aide said that they generally understood Trump's goals to limit immigration, “but we're getting tired of all the chaos.”

  ||||| White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, left, speaks Saturday with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in the Oval office as President Trump speaks on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 The fallout Monday from President Trump’s sweeping immigration order exposed painful rifts within the Republican Party, alarmed members of his Cabinet and fueled suspicions among his top advisers.

 That left the defiant commander in chief stewing over who was to blame — capped by Trump’s remarkable decision late Monday to fire the acting attorney general because she refused to enforce the order as potentially unlawful.

 For all the promises of Republican bonhomie, Trump and his aides kept GOP congressional leaders almost completely in the dark about the most consequential act of his young presidency: a temporary ban on refugees and on anyone from seven majority-Muslim nations.

 Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly fumed privately to associates over the weekend because they had been caught unaware by a travel ban that was drafted and set into action largely in secret by the White House, according to three people who have spoken with them.

 Inside the West Wing, tensions flared as differences in management style emerged between two factions: one led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who wrote the immigration order, and the other composed of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and his deputies, who are accustomed to operating with a more traditional chain of command.

 (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

 Miller, 31, was the public face of the order and the populist wing of the White House over the weekend, directing department and agency chiefs as well as explaining and defending the move in television interviews.

 As it became evident that the rollout of the executive order bordered between clumsy and dysfunctional, people in Trump’s orbit divided over who was at fault, with some blaming Miller. Others said it was Priebus who should have taken charge of better coordinating with the departments and communicating with lawmakers and the public.

 “The problem they’ve got is this is an off-Broadway performance of a show that is now the number one hit on Broadway,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal adviser to Trump.

 [The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot]

 The infighting spilled into public view Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Host Joe Scarborough, who spent part of Sunday visiting Trump at the White House, looked into the camera and directly challenged Miller.

 “This weekend was a disgrace and it’s all on your shoulders,” Scarborough intoned.

 His commentary was all but certain to be noticed by the president himself; Trump is such an avid watcher of the show that when Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) recently appeared, he received a congratulatory call from Trump just moments later.

 1 of 23 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Protest at New York’s JFK airport against Trump’s order halting refugee admissions View Photos Entry to the United States is being refused to legal residents, including green-card holders, from seven mostly Muslim countries who were abroad when the executive order was signed Friday by the president, and some travelers were detained at U.S. airports. Caption Entry to the United States is being refused to legal residents, including green-card holders, from seven mostly Muslim countries who were abroad when the executive order was signed Friday by the president. Jan. 28, 2017 People protest the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. President Trump signed an executive order that halted refugees and residents from certain predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

 Scarborough’s monologue encapsulated many of the hallmarks of the new White House: It was direct, passionate and provocative, and it played out on live television.

 Scarborough’s analysis aligned with a faction of the West Wing that has grown concerned about the ascent of Miller and Bannon, close partners in driving Trump to make good on his most populist and nationalistic campaign promises, however incendiary.

 One area of heated debate is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants legal protection to undocumented immigrants who are brought to the United States as children — commonly known as “dreamers.” Hard-line conservatives have been urging Trump to rescind DACA, while other advisers, including Gingrich, are counseling him to keep it in place and avoid a politically treacherous confrontation, according to people involved in the deliberations.

 “Why pick a fight over this group of people who have a lot of emotional stories to tell? It’s not realistic. It’s not practical,” Gingrich said. “I strongly agree with the general direction we’re going, but I think this particular fight doesn’t emotionally make any sense.”

 In many ways, Trump’s leading advisers are simply operating within the power parameters the president established. Some officials — Bannon and Miller chief among them — are actively shaping policy and guiding the president’s decisions. Others — such as Priebus, the deputy chiefs of staff and White House press secretary Sean Spicer — function in a more reactive capacity, left trying to find order in chaos and explain away slapdash actions.

 The Priebus-Bannon relationship has had its warm moments. When Priebus’s wife was recently baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, Bannon attended the reception.

 The competing power dynamic appears to have made Priebus, in particular, suspicious of his colleagues’ motives, especially as Bannon asserts his influence, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.

 “A little bit of under-competence and a slight amount of insecurity can breed some paranoia and backstabbing,” one White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said of Priebus. “We have to get Reince to relax into the job and become more competent, because he’s seeing shadows where there are no shadows.”

 During the transition phase, for instance, Priebus maneuvered to sideline perceived threats. He suggested that Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent New York financier who is close to Trump and Bannon, serve outside the administration, as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, according to two people aware of the discussions.

 But Scaramucci demurred, opting for a senior White House job directing the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, a similar role to the one played by Valerie Jarrett in the Obama White House.

 White House officials reject the notion that chaos has overshadowed the early days of Trump’s presidency. They say the media refuse to acknowledge his achievements and intentionally tried to stoke public dissent, even hysteria, with reports about the immigration order.

 “While false narratives circulate, the White House staff is busy working, together, to implement President Trump’s agenda for the betterment of our country,” said a White House spokesman who was not authorized to speak on the record.

 Trump fired off angry tweets attacking the media and lawmakers who criticized his ban, from mocking Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) for his “tears” to labeling Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) “sadly weak.”

 Late Monday evening, Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Yates, who had instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend Trump’s immigration order. The White House said in a statement that Yates had “betrayed” the Justice Department and called her “very weak on illegal immigration.”

 Privately, the president seethed, venting about what he saw as unfair news coverage on a second straight weekend of mass protests, and quizzing confidants about their impressions of how his senior staffers were performing.

 [Donald Trump waits in his tower — accessible, yet isolated]

 As the controversy swirled, Trump, who has taken to giving visitors mini-tours of his new residence, found comfort in a trio of loyalists who share a room just steps from the Oval Office — Hope Hicks, the spokeswoman who has been at Trump’s side since before his campaign launch; Johnny McEntee, a former college football quarterback who is now the president’s personal aide; and Keith Schiller, a retired New York police officer and head of Trump’s personal security detail who now directs Oval Office operations.

 Nonetheless, some of Trump’s friends as well as his critics fear that his agenda may be compromised by mismanagement.

 “Frankly, when I look at this, I think he was ill-served by his staff,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of Trump’s primary rivals. “If I were the president, I’d be very upset with the staff — that they didn’t say, ‘Hey, wait, hold on a second.’ Because that’s what executives do. They have people around them that help them to understand, ‘Hey, your message is fine but here is what’s going to come from it.’ ”

 On Capitol Hill, many Republicans close to leadership were frustrated that they received little to no guidance, or advance notice, about Trump’s immigration and refugee directive. One top House office said it was able to glean the president’s plan only through unofficial back channels to the Department of Homeland Security.

 Asked if he was consulted in drafting the order, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) replied simply, “I wasn’t” — an echo of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who told reporters Monday that the White House had not briefed him before signing the order.

 The first substantive guidance to congressional Republicans came late Saturday — well after protesters had descended on the nation’s airports — in a two-page memo that offered some details on the policy but, to the chagrin of several Capitol Hill aides, very little political guidance. At the end was a pledge for the secretary of state to report regularly on “victims of female genital mutilation or honor killing by foreign-born nationals.”

 It was not only Trump’s immigration order that rankled official Washington. His presidential memorandum that restructured the National Security Council to elevate Bannon to a seat on the Principals Committee, alongside the secretaries of state and defense, worried many in the national security community. Also concerning was language suggesting that the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could only attend certain Principals Committee meetings.

 But Spicer told reporters Monday that Trump was revising the directive to also include the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And he insisted that the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairman would be included in any Principals Committee meeting they wish to attend.

 The confusion out of the White House about the president’s intentions left some of the government’s most decorated officials scrambling to assert their relevance. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs, took the unusual step of issuing a statement to emphasize that he will “fully participate” in giving the president military advice.

 “I remain honored and humbled to represent the extraordinary men and women of the Joint Force in serving the president and our nation,” Dunford wrote.

 Karen DeYoung, Kelsey Snell and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON — Senior Republican lawmakers who work on national security issues, including the entire members of both Homeland Security committees, were not informed of "red flag" changes made to a draft of Donald Trump's recent controversial executive order on immigration until hours after the president signed it, sources says.

 This version of Friday's events appears to contradict, at least partially, what the White House has said about congressional involvement in drafting and reviewing the executive order before it was signed. A senior administration official initially said over the weekend that "top immigration experts on Capitol Hill" drafted the executive action. "Republicans on Capitol Hill wrote it," the official told pool reporters on Sunday.

 White House spokesperson Sean Spicer doubled down on congressional involvement during a press briefing on Monday. Asked about Capitol Hill staff who say they weren't briefed on the executive order, Spicer turned the question back on reporters: "535 offices, plus territories, you talked to them all?"

 "As was told to you last night, there were staff from appropriate committees and leadership offices that were involved," Spicer said.

 However, many Republican and Democratic members were not briefed on the final version of the executive order before Trump signed it on Friday, including the entire House Homeland Security committee and at least some members of the Senate Homeland Security committee.

 "The House Homeland Security committee was not consulted on the final draft of the executive order," said a GOP aide.

 And while some Republican members have said that the order is similar to legislation passed by the House last year after the Paris attacks, it includes new language on current US green card and visa holders that shocked many members of Congress.

 "Total BS," a senior Republican aide familiar with the matter said in response to Spicer's assertion Monday that the "appropriate committees" were briefed on the order. "We got an eleventh-hour phone call the day of to let us know it was about to happen. Precisely zero formal consultation before that, just like [the Department of Homeland Security] itself."

 Sen. Rob Portman, a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, criticized the lack of scrutiny given to the order before it was signed, saying on CNN this weekend that "an extreme vetting program that wasn't properly vetted." His spokesman Kevin Smith told BuzzFeed News in an email Monday that "Senator Portman and his staff were not consulted about the EO in advance of its rollout."

 Similarly, Sen. Bob Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was not consulted or briefed on the order, an aide confirmed on Monday. "I think they understand that this was not handled in the most productive manner," Corker told Bloomberg.

 The senior Republican aide familiar with the matter said that while some lawmakers had seen an early draft of the order, they were blindsided by the contents of the final version and did not see it until it was made public Friday night.

 "Friday we were operating under the assumption that the draft executive order that had circulated earlier in the week was going to reflect the final version," the source said. "There didn't appear to be too many issues."

 But "it was hours" before members and staff saw the final version of the executive action signed Friday by Trump "because coordination was so poor," the aide added.

 "By the time we digested the changes and reviewed the final order, it was clear there were serious shortcomings and problems," the source said.

 One of the problems for some Republican members is the fact that the ban was being used to halt people with valid US visas and green cards at US airports over the weekend, instead of just temporarily stopping the issuance of new visas, which the source called a "major red flag."

 "It was chaotic and very uncoordinated and it caused not only a lot of concern and problems on Capitol Hill, it caused obviously a big PR backlash for the administration," the first Republican aide said. "They seemed to sit and watch for about 48 hours before they decided to come out" and clarify that green card holders and permanent residents weren't included in the ban.

 "It was a total cluster [...] It was a complete cluster and the organization and the coordination really needs to improve dramatically and quickly," the aide added.

 Democrats on the two Homeland Security committees were apparently not briefed on the executive order either, two Democratic sources said. One Senate Democratic office said they were given a draft of the order early on by an "advocacy group," which the aide declined to identify, but noted, as Republicans did, that the draft they saw was significantly different from what Trump signed. It's unclear if the draft viewed by Democrats was the same one that Republicans viewed.

 “We got no notice. We got no briefing, we got nothing from the administration," the Democratic aide said.

 The executive order that Trump signed Friday halted travel to the US for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Yemen. It also suspended the US refugee program for four months and indefinitely halted the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the US.

 After the executive order was signed, border agents detained more than 100 people — including US green card holders and small children — at airports across the US, prompting protests in more than a dozen major cities.

 Republicans on Capitol Hill began publicly criticizing Trump's executive order as public outcry amplified throughout the weekend. On Sunday evening, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul issued a statement saying "it is clear adjustments are needed" after telling cable news channels on Friday that Trump's executive orders made it "a safer day for America."

 "In the future, such policy changes should be better coordinated with the agencies implementing them and with Congress to ensure we get it right—and don’t undermine our nation’s credibility while trying to restore it,” McCaul said in the Sunday statement.

 The New York Times reported that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was only briefed on the executive order as Trump signed it.

 The White House has continued to defend the ban, claiming it will protect the country against terrorists, despite global confusion about how it should be interpreted and court orders seeking to overturn it. Trump tweeted on Saturday that the US "needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW."

 Countries whose dual citizens would be affected were left scrambling over the weekend as well. In Canada, for instance — where at least 35,000 people share nationality with one of the seven banned countries — the prime minister's national security advisor said first learned of Trump's executive order in the media.

 Sarah Mimms contributed to this report. |||||Summary:

– President Trump has been accused of signing off on a legally flawed immigration order crafted without congressional input, but according to Politico's sources, his team did have some help on Capitol Hill—they just couldn't tell their bosses about the order. The sources say aides on the House Judicial Committee helped the Trump team draft the executive order between the election and his swearing-in, but they were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and Republican leaders were not informed. In a statement, a committee aide said they had been permitted "to offer their policy expertise," but Trump was responsible for the "final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation." Some senior Republican lawmakers saw a draft version of the order early last week, insiders tell BuzzFeed, but they were left in the dark about major changes, which meant even legal US residents were blocked from entering the country, until after the order was signed. "It was chaotic and very uncoordinated and it caused not only a lot of concern and problems on Capitol Hill, it caused obviously a big PR backlash for the administration," one GOP aide says. According to the Washington Post's sources, the bungled rollout has exposed not just a rift between the White House and congressional Republicans, but between different factions in the White House itself, with many unhappy with Steve Bannon's disregard for tradition. "The problem they’ve got is this is an off-Broadway performance of a show that is now the number one hit on Broadway," says Newt Gingrich.


A comprehensive analysis of more than 400 men over a 20-year period casts new doubt on the idea of marijuana use, even when long-term, being associated with physical and mental health problems later on in life.

 The authors of the study, published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, looked at data taken from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS), a longitudinal study that attempted to track the development of antisocial and delinquent behavior among a selected group of first, third, and seventh grade boys attending public school in Pittsburgh from 1987 to 1988 (For the purposes of this current study, only data on the seventh grade boys, totaling 506 kids, was used).

 Half of the original group was selected because they represented the top 30 percent of those with reported conduct issues, while the other half was randomly picked from the class roster. Slightly more than half of the group was identified as black and the other half as white.

 For 10 years, PYS researchers conducted regular follow-up interviews with these boys, first semiannually in their teens, and then annually until they turned 25. When they became 35 in 2010, the researchers subjected them to one last interview, with about 82 percent of those still living showing up for the occasion.

 Because of the meticulous record-keeping by the PYS, the current authors were able to reliably track not only how healthy these boys were as they matured, but also their frequency of marijuana use over time. They ultimately divided the subjects into one of four groups: Those who rarely or never used marijuana (46 percent); those who mostly used it in their teens (11 percent); those who took up the habit in adulthood (21 percent); and those who started early and become chronic — pun intended — pot users as they grew up (22 percent). They then compared the health status of these groups to one another, controlling for factors like tobacco use and socioeconomic status.

 “[F]indings from this sample indicated that chronic marijuana users were not more likely than late increasing users, adolescence-limited users, or low/nonusers to experience several physical or mental health problems in their mid-30s,” they wrote. “In fact, there were no significant differences between marijuana trajectory groups in terms of adult health outcomes, even when models were run without controlling for potential confounds.”

 As the researchers note, their results are somewhat surprising, flying in the face of previous studies that have found a small but real link between chronic marijuana use to the development of psychological issues like depression or schizophrenia, while reaffirming several other studies that found the opposite. In many ways, though, this study stands unique by being able to measure the health of its subjects as they grew up, rather than by looking back and asking people to remember when they first became sick or how much marijuana they once used when they were younger.

 Research attempting to study the links between long-term marijuana use and actual health problems have largely been inconsistent, even if the reasoning behind a connection makes sense, such as with marijuana smoke being carcinogenic.

 And even this latest study doesn’t come without its flaws. For one, only men were studied; only for 20 years, before the onset of conditions like cardiovascular disease; and only for certain diagnosable and self-reported health conditions. Maybe there isn’t a real association between depression and long-term marijuana use, but there could be one for less rigid symptoms like an increased sense of paranoia.

 And the researchers theorize that maybe it’s a subset of people who are susceptible to the negative effects of long-term pot. “[I]t is increasingly being recognized that individual differences likely moderate the association between marijuana use and psychotic disorders,” they wrote. “For example, some studies have found that genetic liability affects whether, for whom, and the extent to which, marijuana has a negative influence on mental health.”

 Similarly, other research suggests that marijuana doesn’t actually cause but rather accelerates the development of disorders like schizophrenia.

 All of which is to say that this study, as the researchers themselves admit, isn’t the definitive answer to whether marijuana should become fully legalized, though it certainly is important.

 “Indeed, marijuana policymakers and stakeholders need to consider the results of any single study in the context of the larger body of work on the potential adverse consequences of early onset chronic marijuana use,” they concluded.

 Source: Bechtold J, Simpson T, White H, et al. Chronic Adolescent Marijuana Use as a Risk Factor for Physical and Mental Health Problems in Young Adult Men. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. 2015. ||||| WASHINGTON -- Chronic marijuana use by teenage boys does not appear to be linked to later physical or mental health issues such as depression, psychotic symptoms or asthma, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

 Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Rutgers University tracked 408 males from adolescence into their mid-30s for the study, which was published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

 "What we found was a little surprising," said lead researcher Jordan Bechtold, PhD, a psychology research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence."

 Marijuana use has undergone intense scrutiny as several states and the District of Columbia have legalized the drug, prompting the researchers to examine whether teen marijuana use has long-term health consequences. Based on some prior studies, they expected to find a link between teen marijuana use and the later development of psychotic symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, etc.), cancer, asthma or respiratory problems, but they found none. The study also found no link between teen marijuana use and lifetime depression, anxiety, allergies, headaches or high blood pressure. This study is one of just a few studies on the long-term health effects of teen marijuana use that have tracked hundreds of participants for more than two decades of their lives, Bechtold said.

 The research was an offshoot of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, which began tracking 14-year-old male Pittsburgh public school students in the late 1980s to analyze various health and social issues. For 12 years, participants were surveyed annually or semiannually, and a follow-up survey was conducted with 408 participants in 2009-10 when they were 36 years old. The study sample was 54 percent black, 42 percent white and 4 percent other races or ethnicities. There were no differences in the findings based on race or ethnicity.

 Participants were divided into four groups based on their reported marijuana use: low or non-users (46 percent); early chronic users (22 percent); participants who only smoked marijuana during adolescence (11 percent); and those who began using marijuana later in their teen years and continued using the drug (21 percent). Early chronic users reported much higher marijuana use, which rapidly increased during their teens to a peak of more than 200 days per year on average when they were 22 years old. Their marijuana use then declined somewhat as they got older.

 The researchers controlled for other factors that could have influenced the findings, including cigarette smoking, other illicit drug use, and participants' access to health insurance. Since the study included only males, there were no findings or conclusions about women. Relatively few participants had psychotic symptoms, according to the study.

 "We wanted to help inform the debate about legalization of marijuana, but it's a very complicated issue and one study should not be taken in isolation," Bechtold said.

 ###

 Article: "Chronic Adolescent Marijuana Use as a Risk Factor for Physical and Mental Health Problems in Young Adult Men;" Jordan Bechtold, PhD, and Dustin Pardini, PhD University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Theresa Simpson, MA, and Helene R. White, PhD; Rutgers University; Psychology of Addictive Behaviors; published online Aug. 3, 2015.

 Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at

 http://www. apa. org/ pubs/ journals/ releases/ adb-adb0000103. pdf .

 Contact: Jordan Bechtold at beardsleejb@upmc.edu or (949) 291-7520.

 The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes more than 122,500 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.

 http://www. apa. org

 If you do not want to receive APA news releases, please let us know at public.affairs@apa.org or 202-336-5700. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Previous studies have found teen marijuana use could result in cancer, asthma, respiratory problems, and psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations over time. That's why researchers say the results of a new long-term study following teen pot smokers into their 30s are "a little surprising." Researchers who analyzed 408 males for health and social issues from age 14 to 26, then checked back in with the participants at age 36, found no connection between pot use and any of the aforementioned conditions. Not only that, the study in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors—an extension of the Pittsburgh Youth Study of the 1980s—also found no apparent link between smoking marijuana as a teen and later depression, anxiety, allergies, headaches, or high blood pressure, according to a press release. The participants—54% black, 42% white—were classed into four groups: those who rarely or never used marijuana (46%); chronic users who started using the drug early (22%); those who picked up the habit as an adult (21%); and those who smoked marijuana only in their youth (11%). "There were no differences in any of the mental or physical health outcomes that we measured regardless of the amount or frequency of marijuana used during adolescence," a researcher explains. That means chronic users who smoked the drug 200 days a year on average at age 22 were no more likely to have health problems than those who rarely or never picked up a joint. Researchers say the study should "help inform the debate about legalization of marijuana," but "should not be taken in isolation" as negative health effects may appear in those with a genetic liability, per Medical Daily. (Marijuana apparently heals broken bones.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– Two different views today on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels as a potential presidential candidate: Dana Milbank, Washington Post: He praises Daniels as a "shrewd tactician" who is wisely "portraying himself to moderates as a non-threatening choice" and as the "grown-up in the room" who avoids fringe issues. He's got aw-shucks charm to him and even dares to praise the Obama administration when he sees fit. "So funny, so folksy, and so friendly to the disadvantaged: It is eerily similar to how another Republican governor presented himself to America a dozen springs ago." Gail Collins, New York Times: Forgive her for falling out of her chair. Sure, Daniels famously called for a "truce" on social issues, but he's about to sign into law a bill that "is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits." Among other things, it strips Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds and requires doctors to give women information that is "questionable, theological or totally wrong." Daniels "is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face."

Mitch Daniels, the conservative intelligentsia’s choice for president in 2012, came to Washington on Wednesday to give a speech on education policy to a conservative think tank. But not 10 minutes into his address, he took an unexpected turn.

 “Most of what I’ve talked about so far, and much of what I will, is strongly supported by the Obama administration,” the Republican governor of Indiana told the standing-room-only crowd at the American Enterprise Institute. “I salute the president, Secretary [Arne] Duncan. They are right about these things.”

 Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. View Archive

 Off-message alert! One of the right-minded thinkers in the room rose to give Daniels a second chance to criticize Obama. The governor declined. “I really do want to salute and commend — and I’ve done it over and over — the president, Secretary Duncan, for a lot of leadership in this area,” he affirmed. “There is a federal role” in education, he argued. “I believe in national standards.”

 It may sound jarring these days to hear any conservative say anything nice about the Obama administration; Daniels also cheered the president’s “well-done, well-handled” dispatching of Osama bin Laden.

 But the Indiana governor is following a well-written playbook. A dozen years ago, George W. Bush (for whom Daniels later worked as White House budget director) campaigned for the GOP presidential nomination as a different kind of Republican, a “compassionate conservative” motivated principally by concern for poor black kids and public schools.

 In the end, most of that turned out to be hooey; Bush was very much a conventional conservative. Daniels, likewise, is no bleeding heart — but he is demonstrating himself to be a shrewd tactician. At a time when Republican voters are disenchanted with their presidential choices, and the existing candidates are marginalizing themselves by campaigning on abortion, homosexuality and birth certificates, not-yet-candidate Daniels looks like a grown-up.

 Daniels isn’t nearly as natural a politician as Bush (he’s about 5-foot-4, with a comb-over), and he’s much more of an intellectual (his yawn-inducing talk explored “administrative flexibility” and “state assessment tests”). Surely, some of his wonkish appeal would wear off once opponents began to portray him as the old drug-industry executive he is.

 But so far, the governor is doing well differentiating himself from the Republican field — and in the process portraying himself to moderates as a non-threatening choice.

 Daniels, in the AEI speech, said teacher ratings would be based on the question “Did the children grow?” — an echo of Bush’s famous question “Is our children learning?” Like Bush, Daniels spoke of the need to help “the kids from the most vulnerable homes.”

 In a rebuke of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), Daniels told the audience that “collective bargaining has its place, always will.” He spoke of “social justice” — a verboten phrase among some conservatives — and he softened his support for private-school vouchers by arguing that children must have two semesters in public school to be eligible.

 Daniels boasted that he increased education spending in Indiana as part of his plan for extending full-day kindergarten to all 5-year-olds. “Indiana is number one in America in share of the state budget committed to education,” he claimed.

 Democrats and teacher unions, of course, would beg to differ with Daniels’s characterization of his policies. But the presentation to the conservative elite was more about packaging: He is the disarming alternative to the GOP’s frightful field.

 He began with corny humor (“first thing y’all need to know is you are here under false pretenses: I just came for a meal”) and segued into self-deprecation (“I do what lazy men do and show you a slide show”). He baffled the crowd with a one-liner about the recently deceased inventor of the teleprompter. He told a borscht-belt joke about “Billy,” who wouldn’t get up for school until his mother reminded him, “You’re the principal.” He employed folksy phrases such as “the bee that got in my bonnet,” and he attempted an education metaphor using a high-jump style known as the “Fosbury Flop.”

 The aw-shucks routine also helped Daniels deflect a question from NPR’s Mara Liasson about whether he could still enter the presidential race at this late stage. “The man said, ‘When I considers my opportunities I marvels at my self-restraint,’ ” he quipped, before calling it a “happy surprise” that the race has yet to take shape. “Unless you’re a political professional or running a bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire, it’s a darn good thing,” Daniels said.

 So funny, so folksy, and so friendly to the disadvantaged: It is eerily similar to how another Republican governor presented himself to America a dozen springs ago. ||||| Let us stop for a minute to consider Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana.

 Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

 Many of you may be unacquainted with Daniels. After all, a lot of Americans go for years on end without ever setting foot in Indiana even though it is a fine state, full of lovely people and some first-class universities, not to mention the RV Hall of Fame, the world’s largest ball of paint and the Dan Quayle museum.

 But about Mitch Daniels. The political world has been abuzz with speculation that he will run for president. Centrist Republicans loved it when he began urging the party to keep its eye on the deficit-reduction prize and stop obsessing about social issues. “Try to concentrate on making ends meet, which Washington obviously has failed to do for a long time, and have other policy debates in other places if you can,” he advised.

 He then went home and announced that he would sign a bill to strip Planned Parenthood of Medicaid financing.

 “He called a truce on social issues, and he was the first to fold,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

 “The suggestion I made about trying to set aside other issues was made in the national context,” Daniels said over a lunch with journalists this week in New York. “I was thinking more broadly than some people heard it.”

 Actually, Daniels’s moderate fans thought abortion was precisely the issue he was calling on Republicans to set aside. Right now, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives can barely talk about anything else. State legislatures are flooded with bills to create “Choose Life” license plates, require women seeking abortions to look at sonograms of the fetus or make it harder for insurance companies to offer policies that cover abortions.

 At one point during an interminable debate on an anti-abortion bill in Florida, the Democrats had an embarrassing squabble between two members that ended when Representative Scott Randolph of Orlando threw his opponent’s commemorative House pen in the trash. He is the same legislator who was privately admonished by the Republican House leadership for saying the word “uterus.”

 Florida is a wreck. This is not something I would normally recommend, but maybe they should all get together and work on naming an official state gun.

 The bill Daniels says he is going to sign in Indiana is a compilation of the anti-abortion movement’s greatest hits. It will make it impossible for Medicaid recipients to make use of the 28 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state and bans abortions for pregnancies that have reached 20 weeks.

 Also, doctors would be required to tell women seeking abortions that “medical evidence shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks,” that human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that having an abortion could cause infertility.

 “Pregnant women in the past might not have been provided with all the information,” Daniels said.

 Possibly because all that information is questionable, theological or totally wrong.

 While Daniels is not a good example of a fiscal conservative who wants to move beyond the social wars, he is a real prototype of the peculiar strain in the political right that trusts people to make their own informed decisions without government intervention except when it comes to the most exquisitely personal choice a woman could ever face.

 In Washington, the new Republican majority’s very first bill of the year, H.R. 1, eliminated both financing for Planned Parenthood and financing for the groundbreaking database of public safety complaints that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was about to put online. The database, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas warned, “will drive jobs overseas.”

 Legislatures in states that tend to be less than obsessive about consumers’ right to know are competing to find more things to require that doctors tell or show their patients before they can get abortions. In South Dakota, women have to be told that abortion ends “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” A court tossed out another section that required doctors to say that the procedure leads to an increased risk of suicide.

 In his capacity as deficit hawk, Daniels waxes eloquent on his conviction that if Americans have to pay more of their medical bills, they’ll make smart choices about whether that nagging headache really requires the expense of a CAT scan. Doubting that the individual patient can judge whether more tests or medical procedures are required, Daniels said, “demeans the dignity of people.”

 However, women who are seeking an abortion have to be given not only the information they ask for, or the information the doctor thinks they need, but also faux facts that their local lawmakers want to force on them. And dignity be damned. |||||


Article:
Image caption The earthquake devastated the city of L'Aquila and many surrounding villages

 The trial of six Italian scientists and a former government official for manslaughter over the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila has opened in the city.

 The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people.

 Prosecutors allege the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake after studying hundreds of tremors that had shaken the city.

 The defence argues that there is no way to predict major earthquakes even in a seismically active area.

 The prosecutors accuse the seven of "negligence and imprudence... of having provided an approximate, generic and ineffective assessment of seismic activity risks as well as incomplete, imprecise and contradictory information".

 As the trial opened, L'Aquila prosecutor Alfredo Rossini told reporters: "We simply want justice."

 The defendants face up to 15 years in jail. Lawyers for civil plaintiffs - who include the local council - are seeking damages of 50m euros (£45m). The civil portion of the case will be heard alongside the criminal case.

 Only one of the seven defendants - who include some of Italy's most distinguished geophysicists and members of the country's civil protection agency - was present on the opening day of the trial, which has now been adjourned until 1 October.

 "I thought it was important to be here because this is my land, and I also wanted to underline the professionalism and the quality of the other public officials," said Bernardo De Bernardinis, former vice-president of the Civil Protection Agency's technical department.

 "I am from Abruzzo and I owe it to the people of this area."

 Killed in homes

 The seven defendants were members of a government panel, the Serious Risks Commission, tasked with assessing the risks after hundreds of low-level tremors had rattled the medieval city in the months before the earthquake struck.

 DEFENDANTS Franco Barberi , head of Serious Risks Commission

 , head of Serious Risks Commission Enzo Boschi , former president of the National Institute of Geophysics

 , former president of the National Institute of Geophysics Giulio Selvaggi , director of the National Earthquake Centre

 , director of the National Earthquake Centre Gian Michele Calvi , director of European Centre for Earthquake Engineering

 , director of European Centre for Earthquake Engineering Claudio Eva , physicist

 , physicist Mauro Dolce , director of the the Civil Protection Agency's earthquake risk office

 , director of the the Civil Protection Agency's earthquake risk office Bernardo De Bernardinis, former vice-president of the Civil Protection Agency's technical department

 A week before the quake, they issued a reassuring statement, while also saying that it was not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur. They also recommended stricter enforcement of anti-seismic measures, particularly in building construction.

 In the minutes of their meeting, held on 31 March 2009, Mr Bosci, the former president of the National Institute of Geophysics, is reported to have told the group that just because a number of small tremors had been observed, it did not mean that a major earthquake was on its way.

 Mr Barberi, who headed the Serious Risks Commission, was also reported as concluding that there was "no reason to believe that a series of low-level tremors was a precursor to a larger event".

 On the night of the quake, many people remained in their homes and died because of this advice, while others who had decided to remain outside in the street survived, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

 Vincenzo Vittorini, a doctor who founded the 309 Martyrs association after losing his wife and daughter in the disaster, said: "No-one expected to be told the exact time of the quake. We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb."

 The case has attracted the attention of the scientific community. Last year, more than 5,000 scientists signed an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in support of the defendants.

 A lawyer for Mr Eva, Alfredo Biondi, said the trial was not credible.

 "This is a trial which opens on very shaky foundations. You cannot put science on trial," he said. ||||| Italian scientists face jail over 2009 quake

 Top Italian scientists are set to go on trial today, accused of manslaughter by playing down the risks of the devastating 2009 earthquake in the central city of L'Aquila in a case that some see as an unfair indictment of science.

 Prosecutors allege that the seven defendants — six leading scientists and a government official — should have warned residents to flee their homes ahead of the April 6, 2009 quake that killed more than 300 people in the capital of Italy's Abruzzo region.

 The experts were members of a panel that had met six days before the quake to assess risks after hundreds of tremors had shaken the medieval walled city.

 At that meeting, the committee headed by Franco Barberi of the Civil Protection Agency analysed data on more than 400 low-magnitude tremors that shook the region during the previous four months and determined that the activity was not a prelude to a major quake.

 The experts are accused of giving overly reassuring information to the local residents who could have taken adequate protective measures if they had been properly informed.

 According to the indictment issued last May, the seven are suspected of "negligence and imprudence... of having provided an approximative, generic and ineffective assessment of seismic activity risks as well as incomplete, imprecise and contradictory information."

 The seven include such prominent scientists as Enzo Boschi, until recently the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), or Claudio Eva, a physics professor at the University of Genoa.

 The experts had made it clear that it was not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur but had recommended stricter enforcement of anti-seismic measures, particularly regarding building construction.

 Many in the scientific community however argue that the case effectively amounts to putting science on trial.

 In an open letter sent to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, more than 5,000 scientists said the seven defendants essentially face criminal charges for failing to predict quakes, even though it remains technically impossible to pinpoint the time, location and strength of a future earthquake in the short term.

 "This is a trial which opens on very shaky foundations. You cannot put science on trial," said Alfredo Biondi, Eva's lawyer, who recalled that his client had during the meeting of the expert panel stated that "one cannot rule out a major quake".

 The lawyer also slammed the "absolute inconsistency of the prosecution" which first blamed the experts for "predicting the risk" and then for "failing to assess it".

 But Vincenzo Vittorini, a doctor who founded the association "309 martyrs" and lost his wife and daughter in the disaster, said, "I hope that this trial will change mindsets and will lead to greater attention given to communication on risks."

 "No one expected to be told the exact time of the quake. We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb," he added

 Some 120,000 people were affected by the L'Aquila quake, which also destroyed the city's historic centers and medieval churches.

 In the September 14 issue of the science weekly Nature focused on the L'Aquila trial, Thomas Jordan, head of the International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting (ICEF), said the case raises a fundamentally important issue about risk assessment.

 Italy's INGV has for several years drawn up a map of seismic risks in Italy and L'Aquila has since 2006 been within the highest-risk zone. |||||Summary:

– Predicting earthquakes is shaky business at best, but that detail isn't stopping Italian officials from prosecuting a group of prominent scientists over their failure to do exactly that. Six scientists and one government official face charges of manslaughter for allegedly failing to provide adequate warning of imminent disaster to locals after the region was struck by more than 400 low-magnitude tremors in the months preceding a major quake. The group of experts met in 2009 to analyze the risk posed by the seismic activity, but didn't find cause to raise alarm. Six days later, a major quake devastated the central Italian city of L'Aquila and killed 309 people, reports the AFP. Among the defendants are some of Italy's top scientists in the field. "You cannot put science on trial," says a defense lawyer, citing his client's statement during the expert panel meeting that "one cannot rule out a major quake." The group has gained the wide support of the scientific community. But "no one expected to be told the exact time of the quake," says a doctor who lost his wife and daughter in the quake. "We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb." The trial opened today, and the BBC notes that seven defendants face up to 15 years in jail.


News article:

ELK RIVER, Minn. — The verdict from Washington last week was swift and bipartisan: Michele Bachmann was out of line.

 Accusing two prominent Muslims — State Department aide Huma Abedin and Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota — of being tied to the Muslim Brotherhood was a step too far, even for the conservative firebrand.

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 But the Northeast corridor’s stunned disbelief at what it saw as a loony conspiracy theory is replaced with hollers of support among Bachmann’s many devoted fans here in the exurbs north of the Twin Cities that she represents.

 (Also on POLITICO: Republicans line up to rip Michele Bachmann)

 If anything, the uproar seems to have galvanized her base. And the contrasting reaction demonstrates why Democrats will have a hard time in their latest effort to unseat the GOP lightning rod.

 Supporters like Duane Halstad, a 69-year-old who was sitting on a porch watching a parade here, said Bachmann is the “only one telling the truth about this thing.” He also said he believes President Barack Obama vacations on Martha’s Vineyard to observe the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. Obama is a Christian.

 Rachel Olson, a 41-year-old from Isanti said flatly that she doesn’t “think [Bachmann] would make something up.”

 The theme that emerged in roughly two dozen interviews over the weekend — at parades and a county fair — is echoed within Bachmann’s inner circle.

 (PHOTOS: Moments from Bachmann's political career)

 Bachmann has long been drawn to the idea that Muslim Brotherhood agents are infiltrating the government — even before she landed a seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Ron Carey, former chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party and Bachmann’s chief of staff in 2010, said he was present during a private briefing in her office about the group. Bachmann is simply “privy to information that you and I don’t have.”

 “It was very sobering, some of the information this individual was sharing in this private meeting about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Carey said. “I think she’s been exposed to a lot of discussion on the Hill, and it’s been an area of tremendous interest with her.”

 And just like that, the outlines of the post-presidential profile of Bachmann became abundantly clear. A year ago, the 56-year-old tea party favorite was flying high. Campaigning last year in Iowa, she was, for a time, the front-runner for the presidential nomination.

 Her campaign came apart at the seams, and she faded into the background of Republican politics. Many wondered if she’d run for office again.

 But now, her political star has risen once again on the far right. She’s become an annoyance for House Republican leaders, who say her conspiracy theories tarnish the party’s brand and run afoul of their economy-focused message.

 Meanwhile, the left is again targeting her for defeat.

 Democrats spent millions in an unsuccessful bid to beat Bachmann in 2010. They had largely written her off this cycle, thinking a stronger Republican district would make her invincible. But the party seems to be focusing on Democrat Jim Graves, a wealthy Minneapolis businessman who is looking to cast himself as the moderate alternative to the unpredictable Bachmann. The slogan of his campaign is “Getting back to business.” ||||| Police and federal officials have placed security around ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, after a New Jersey man threatened her, law-enforcement sources said.

 An individual, described as a Muslim man, made the unspecified threat after Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) last week claimed Abedin’s family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and asked for a probe to see if she is helping the Islamist organization.

 The man was questioned by the NYPD and the State Department and has not been charged, sources said. ||||| Report cited by Bachmann claims Norquist linked to Muslim Brotherhood

 By Eric W. Dolan

 Sunday, July 22, 2012 11:11 EDT

 Like Raw Story on Facebook

 Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist helped the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrate the U.S. government, according to the report that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) cited in an attack on top State Department aide Huma Abedin.

 Earlier this month, Bachmann and four other Republicans sent a letter to inspectors general in the State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice departments calling on them to investigate “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the Obama administration by Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton and wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

 As evidence of their claims, the five Republicans cited “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within,” a ten-part video course produced by the Center for Security Policy.

 The movies claim that the “Muslim Brotherhood was helped in its efforts to achieve information dominance over the George W. Bush administration” by Norquist, a Christian. The influential anti-tax activist is also accused of using “various organizations to promote Islamist agendas.”

 Nearly every Republican in Congress has signed Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, vowing to oppose any and all tax increases. Only 14 Republican members of 112th Congress have refused to sign the pledge.

 Bachmann has been widely criticized for her attack on Abedin. Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner, Arizona Sen. John McCain, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Bachmann campaign manager Ed Rollins have all condemned the Minnesota congresswoman. But she has insisted the matter needs to be investigated.

 “The letters my colleagues and I sent on June 13 to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State – and the follow up letter I wrote to Rep. Ellison on July 13 – are unfortunately being distorted,” Bachmann said last week.

 “I encourage everyone, including media outlets, to read them in their entirety. The intention of the letters was to outline the serious national security concerns I had and ask for answers to questions regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical group’s access to top Obama administration officials.” |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– The latest fallout from Michele Bachmann's Muslim infiltration conspiracy theory: Now Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin—whose family, Bachmann claims, is vaguely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood—has been threatened by a New Jersey man. Abedin is under police protection following the threat, and the man—a Muslim—has been questioned, the New York Post reports. Also tangled up in Bachmann's theory: Grover Norquist. The Raw Story reports that a 10-part video cited by Bachmann and her cohorts in their report claims the conservative anti-tax crusader helped the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Bachmann may not have found much support in DC—John Boehner, John McCain, and others roundly condemned her call for a probe into Abedin and others in government—but she has quite a bit of backing in her home state of Minnesota, Politico reports. In fact, her supporters seem even more energized now, which is why this incident almost certainly will not be Bachmann's undoing. Politico has quotes like these from about two dozen interviews with Bachmann supporters: Bachmann is the "only one telling the truth about this thing," or Bachmann wouldn't "make something up."


Article:

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the kingdom’s top international businessmen, was released from detention on Saturday, more than two months after he was taken into custody in a sweeping crackdown on corruption.

 His release came hours after he told Reuters in an interview at Riyadh’s opulent Ritz-Carlton hotel that he expected to be cleared of any wrongdoing and be freed within days.

 A senior Saudi official said Prince Alwaleed was freed after he reached a financial settlement with the attorney general.

 “The attorney general has approved this morning the settlement that was reached with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and the prince returned home at 1100 a.m. (0800 GMT),” the official told Reuters, without giving details of the terms.

 The decision to free him, and the release of several other well-known tycoons on Friday, suggested the main part of the corruption probe was winding down after it sent shockwaves through Saudi Arabia’s business and political establishment.

 In his first interview since being detained, conducted hours before his release, Prince Alwaleed told Reuters he maintained his innocence of any corruption in talks with the authorities.

 He said he expected to keep full control of his global investment firm Kingdom Holding Co 4280.SE without being required to hand assets to the state. He said he had been able to communicate with executives at his business while detained.

 Prince Alwaleed, who is in his early 60s, described his confinement as a “misunderstanding” and said he supported reform efforts by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

 “There are no charges. There are just some discussions between me and the government,” he said.

 Prince Alwaleed had been confined at the Ritz-Carlton since early November, along with dozens of other senior officials and businessmen, part of the crown prince’s plan to reform oil superpower Saudi Arabia and consolidate his position.

 FOREIGN INVESTOR CONCERNS

 When asked if the attorney general was convinced of Prince Alwaleed’s innocence, the senior Saudi official said:

 “I will not negate or confirm what he says. Generally this falls back to those who concluded the settlement, and for sure there is no settlement unless there are violations, and they are not concluded without the accused admitting it in writing and promising not to repeat it.”

 The source declined to give further details, but confirmed that Prince Alwaleed would remain head of Kingdom Holding.

 A Gulf banker who deals with Saudi Arabia said the authorities appeared keen to conclude the probe partly because foreign investors were concerned their assets or local business partners could be targeted in the wide-ranging crackdown.

 Prince Alwaleed’s detention was particularly worrying for foreigners because of his international prominence as an investor in top Western companies such as Twitter (TWTR.N) and Citigroup (C.N), and in top hotels including the George V in Paris and the Plaza in New York, the banker said.

 “The government is signaling that it wants to move to a new phase now, away from the crackdown and into other economic reforms,” the banker said.

 Outside Prince Alwaleed’s Riyadh palace, dozens of cars lined the entrances as a huge Saudi flag flapped above. Guards cracked jokes and drank coffee. His office said the prince was out visiting family, but declined to give any details.

 Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal sits for an interview with Reuters in the office of the suite where he has been detained at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia January 27, 2018, REUTERS/Katie Paul

 The attorney general said earlier this week that 90 detainees had been released after their were charges dropped, while others traded cash, real estate and other assets for their freedom. The authorities were still holding 95 people, he said. Some are expected to be put on trial.

 “NOTHING TO HIDE”

 An official Saudi source said on Friday that several prominent businessmen had reached financial settlements with the authorities, including Waleed al-Ibrahim, owner of regional television network MBC, who was released. Terms of his settlement were not revealed.

 Saudi authorities have said they expect to raise some $100 billion for the government through such settlements - a huge windfall for the state, which has seen its finances squeezed by low oil prices. Some private analysts think that target will be hard to hit, given how many suspects have seen charges dropped.

 Allegations against Prince Alwaleed included money laundering, bribery and extorting officials, a Saudi official told Reuters in November. The prince’s net worth has been estimated by Forbes magazine at $17 billion.

 While declaring his innocence in the Reuters interview, the prince appeared greyer and thinner than in his last public appearance, a television interview in October, and had grown a beard while in detention.

 “I have nothing to hide at all. I’m so comfortable, I’m so relaxed. I shave here, like at home. My barber comes here. I’m like at home, frankly speaking,” he said, adding he had been able to communicate with family members while in detention.

 He granted the 30-minute interview to Reuters, including a tour of his suite, partly to disprove rumors about mistreatment and that he had been moved from the hotel to a prison.

 Prince Alwaleed showed off the comforts of his gold-accented private office, dining room and kitchen, which was fully stocked with his preferred vegetarian meals.

 In the corner of his office sat tennis shoes, which he said he used regularly for exercise. A television played business news programs, and a mug with an image of his own face on it was perched on the desk.

 Slideshow (5 Images)

 After being released, Prince Alwaleed said, he would stay in Saudi Arabia and would return to the challenge of juggling his global business interests.

 “I will not leave Saudi Arabia, for sure. This is my country.” ||||| DUBAI—Saudi authorities on Saturday released billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, more than two months after he was detained in a widespread purge of the kingdom’s elite.

 Saudi officials said Saturday that Prince al-Waleed came to an undisclosed settlement with the government that allows him to remain chairman of his company, Kingdom Holding Co., one of the country’s biggest conglomerates. He is also a major investor around the world, including large stakes in Twitter Inc. and the Four Seasons hotel chain. The status of... |||||
What is a summary?

– One of the richest men in the world is once again a free man, but it may have cost him a fortune. Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal walked out of prison Saturday after being arrested on corruption charges as part of a sweeping roundup in November, reports Reuters. More precisely, he walked out of the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, which has been turned into a prison of sorts for Saudi elite accused of wrongdoing. Prior to his release, Saudi authorities were reportedly seeking a financial settlement of $6 billion—yes, billion—from al-Waleed, though it is unclear what, if any, amount he paid, reports the Wall Street Journal. Neither the prince nor Saudi authorities have provided details about his release, including whether he has been cleared of wrongdoing. The corruption crackdown set in place by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is widely regarded as more of a bid on his part to consolidate power as he institutes wide-ranging reform throughout the country. So far, the government has secured about $100 billion in settlements from those rounded up, though nearly 100 have not paid and face prosecution.