The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Colorado evacuations continue as flood crest moves downstream
- Obama says he wants to test Iran president's interest in dialogue
- U.S. lawmakers question Navy Yard shooting suspect's security clearance
| Colorado evacuations continue as flood crest moves downstream Posted: DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado officials coping with devastation from last week's torrential downpours struggled on Tuesday to reach the last pockets of known survivors left stranded by flash floods that killed least eight people in the foothills of the Rockies. Meanwhile, emergency officials pressed on with evacuations of prairie towns downstream from the initial disaster as the crest of the flood-engorged South Platte River rolled eastward toward Nebraska, inundating farmland along the way. At least 1,700 homes were destroyed - most of those in hard-hit Larimer County - and an estimated 16,300 dwellings were damaged throughout the flood zone, according to preliminary property loss totals on Tuesday. Even as evacuees continued to crowd into emergency shelters, more than 6,400 Colorado flood survivors have already applied for federal disaster assistance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported. In what National Weather Service meteorologists called the most sustained and intense rainstorm to hit the normally semi-arid region in four decades, a tropical-like low-pressure system drenched a 130-mile (210-km) stretch of the eastern slopes of the Colorado Rockies with unrelenting showers for a week, starting last Monday night. Within three days, torrents of runoff were gushing down rain-saturated mountainsides through canyons that funnelled floodwaters straight into populated areas below. Foothill towns clustered at the base of Colorado's so-called Front Range in Larimer and Boulder counties northwest of Denver bore the brunt of the deluge. The overall flood zone has since grown to encompass 17 Colorado counties, including the state's biggest urban centres, across a region about the size of Delaware. Efforts to reach thousands of residents cut off in communities isolated by washed-out roads and bridges were initially hampered as heavy showers persisted with little pause for seven days, grounding rescue aircraft. Except for a brief respite from the rains last Friday, when helicopters were able to fly, most of the early evacuees were ferried to safety by National Guard troops in military vehicles. HUDDLED ON A MOUNTAINSIDE Airborne rescues resumed in earnest again on Monday, and by Tuesday nearly 12,000 flood victims had been evacuated to shelters across the region, said Micki Trost, spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Management. "One family spent two and a half days huddled on a mountainside out of their home and were completely traumatized," said Mark Orphan, pastor of the Timberline Church in Fort Collins, which is serving as an emergency shelter. More than 1,000 evacuees had passed through the church in the week since the floods hit. Many appeared "elated" when they arrived, but others seemed dazed by their ordeals, he said. Nearly 600 more known survivors - some bedridden, elderly or in extremely hard-to-reach locations - were still awaiting rescue on Tuesday in Larimer County alone. County sheriff's spokesman John Schulz said it might be a few days more before all of them were reached. He said some people were refusing to leave their homes. Rescue operations in Boulder County, meanwhile, were winding down, emergency management officials said. However, about 300 residents from the two counties combined were still listed as unaccounted for, meaning friends or loved ones have reported receiving no word from them since the floods struck. That number has declined sharply from a few days earlier, and officials said they hoped most would turn out to be merely cut off in areas without telephone or internet service. As of Tuesday, the death toll stood at eight, including two women reported missing and presumed dead after their homes were swept away in Larimer County. But state officials revised their tally late in the day to remove them from the confirmed count of fatalities because their bodies had not been recovered. The flooding has since progressed downstream and spread out onto the prairie east of the Front Range, swamping farms, ranches and oil and gas well sites as the rain-swollen South Platte River spilled its banks. From an airplane flying over the region, vast swaths of the landscape lay hidden beneath chocolate-brown water. In one area, a small herd of black Angus cattle could be seen milling about a muddy patch of pasture surrounded by floodwaters. Above the water-logged town of Evans, a mobile home park was largely submerged, with trailers strewn about in all directions. Emergency management officials ordered the evacuation early on Tuesday of the tiny riverside town of Crook in northeastern Colorado, where firefighters went door to door asking residents to leave. The flood crest was expected to reach the larger town of Julesburg on the Nebraska border later on Tuesday. Officials there were urging ranchers to move livestock herds to higher ground. In addition to some 1,500 homes destroyed and 4,500 damaged in Larimer County, 200 businesses have been lost and 500 damaged, officials there said. Boulder County officials said rescue teams there had counted 262 homes destroyed and 290 damaged. Last week's downpour dumped up to 21 inches (53 cm) of rain in parts of Boulder city, nearly double the area's average annual rainfall. The last multi-day rainfall to spawn widespread flooding in Colorado's Front Range occurred in 1969. But a single-night deluge from a 1976 thunderstorm triggered a flash flood that killed more than 140 people in Big Thompson Canyon. |
| Obama says he wants to test Iran president's interest in dialogue Posted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani appears to want to open a dialogue with the United States and that he is willing to test whether this is the case. Obama's comment in an interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo was the latest indication the president would like to jump from the crisis over Syria's chemical weapons to a new search for a diplomatic deal to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. Last weekend, Obama revealed he and Rouhani had exchanged letters about the U.S.-Iran standoff. Both leaders will be at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week, although White House officials say they are no current plans for them to meet. "There is an opportunity here for diplomacy," Obama told Telemundo. "And I hope the Iranians take advantage of it." Obama ran for president in 2008 in part by vowing to open a dialogue with Iran. But there has been no breakthrough and sanctions by Washington and the United Nations to weaken Iran's economy have gradually been increased to try to pressure Tehran to give up a nuclear program that it denies is aimed at building a weapon. "There are indication that Rouhani, the new president, is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States, in a way that we haven't seen in the past. And so we should test it," Obama said. Since the surprise election in June of Rouhani, a centrist cleric, officials from both countries have made increasing hints that they are open to direct talks to seek an end to the decade-long nuclear dispute. (The story was corrected to say Telemundo instead of Univision in the 4th para) (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Philip Barbara) |
| U.S. lawmakers question Navy Yard shooting suspect's security clearance Posted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers are calling for a review into how the suspected shooter in Monday's rampage at the Washington Navy Yard received and maintained a security clearance, despite a history of violent episodes. Aaron Alexis, 34, received a security clearance more than five years ago and it helped him obtain his most recent job as a technology contractor at the Navy Yard, where he allegedly killed 12 people before being shot dead by police. Lawmakers say this most recent incident shows serious flaws in the federal government's process for issuing security clearances and vetting contractors - an issue laid bare earlier this year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden who disclosed details about top-secret U.S. spying programs. Democratic Senators Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester plan to send a letter to the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general, demanding answers about how Alexis' background check was conducted for his security clearance. The OPM is the agency primarily responsible for overseeing federal background checks. "I want to know who conducted his (Alexis') background investigation, if that investigation was done by contractors, and if it was subject to the same systemic problems we've seen with other background checks in the recent past," McCaskill said in a statement to Reuters on Tuesday. "While guilt ultimately lies with the perpetrator of this terrible crime, those who lost loved ones and were injured in yesterday's shooting deserve to know the answers to these questions," she said. One of the points they want reviewed, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters, was "how Mr. Alexis' background investigations addressed his pattern of misconduct, including his reported arrests on charges relating to firearms in 2004 and 2010" and a prior disorderly conduct charge. The associate director of federal investigative services at OPM, Mert Miller, said in a statement, "In general, background security clearance investigations include information about an individual's criminal history, including criminal records, and that information would be passed on to the adjudicating agency." Scrutiny of the security clearance process is just one security area that officials are reviewing in the aftermath of Monday's mass shooting. U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel is seeking a review of physical security and access at all Defense Department installations worldwide, and the White House said it will review standards for federal government contractors. MISSING RED FLAGS Alexis' initial background check was conducted as part of his service in the U.S. Navy Reserve from May 2007 to January 2011. The OPM conducted a National Agency Check that was completed in August 2007 on Alexis and he was determined eligible to handle "secret" material in March 2008, a U.S. defense official said. Other officials said that type of check includes a routine review of government databases, an FBI fingerprint check and sometimes checks with local police. The defense official said Alexis' vetting including local police checks and a credit check. Sometimes the person applying for the security clearance is also interviewed by investigators, but the review is far less complex than the type of full-scale background investigation that is conducted on applicants for "top secret" clearance. That check for his security clearance was conducted after Alexis was arrested in Seattle in 2004 for shooting a construction worker's car tires in an anger-fuelled "blackout," according to the Seattle Police Department. The "secret" clearance that he was granted lasts 10 years and was in effect during two other incidents. In 2008, Alexis was cited for disorderly conduct in Georgia when he was kicked out of a club for damaging furnishings and cursing. Alexis was then arrested in 2010 in Texas for discharging a firearm in a case that was dropped after investigators determined his gun accidentally fired while it was being cleaned. In 2011 Alexis received an honourable discharge from the Navy Reserve, even though the Navy had been pursuing a general discharge against him on a series of eight to 10 misconduct charges, ranging from traffic offenses to disorderly conduct, a military official said. Private pre-employment background checks also apparently failed to properly flag Alexis as a security risk. The Experts Inc, an information technology company that hired Alexis to work on a project helping service the Navy Marine Corps intranet, said it had also enlisted a service to perform two background checks on him over the last year. The checks revealed no issues other than one minor traffic violation, the company said. 'A MAJOR PROBLEM' "Somebody didn't do their job, or the system we have is not working," Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Reuters. He expressed concern that an individual like Alexis who had possible anger issues and might have had a criminal record was able to receive a security clearance. "It's a major problem." Tester said Monday's rampage should give momentum to bipartisan legislation he has sponsored that was aimed at improving security clearances after the Snowden incident. The legislation would give the OPM inspector general more flexibility with funding for audits and other oversight activities and require OPM to fire or suspend investigators and contractors who falsify background reports. "This isn't going to stop if we don't start taking some proactive policy measures," Tester told Reuters. "It looks as if the background checks are less thorough; it looks like corners are being cut with Snowden and now Alexis." The legislation was approved by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in July but the timing for full Senate consideration is unclear. Republican sponsors of the legislation, Senators Rob Portman and Ron Johnson, could not be reached for comment. |
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