Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/245656
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 – Daily News 5A WORLD BRIEFING Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, ''and I think we're going to see pretty quickly the lack of specificity behind some of the president's promises.'' UN chief withdraws last-minute invitation to Iran to attend peace talks GENEVA (AP) — A last-minute U.N. invitation for Iran to join this week's Syria peace talks threw the long-awaited Geneva conference into doubt Monday, forcing U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to rescind his offer under intense U.S. pressure after the opposition threatened to boycott. With the invitation withdrawn, the main Western-backed opposition group said it would attend the talks aimed at ending Syria's ruinous three-year civil war. The opposition said the conference should seek to establish a transitional government with full executive powers ''in which killers and criminals do not participate.'' The surprise invitation, extended Sunday by the U.N. secretarygeneral, set off a flurry of diplomatic activity to salvage the talks. The U.S. said the offer should be rescinded, and the opposition threatened to skip the event entirely. The conference is set to begin Wednesday in the Swiss luxury resort city of Montreux, with high-ranking delegations from the United States, Russia and close to 40 other countries attending. Face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian government and its opponents — the first of the uprising — are to start Friday in Geneva. The uproar over Iran's invitation put the entire event at risk of being scuttled. Christie: Hoboken treated no differently than others AP photo Firefighters stage outside the International Nutrition plant in Omaha, Neb., Monday, where a fire and explosion took place. At least nine people have been hospitalized and others could be trapped at the animal feed processing plant. on Iran's program — though it continues low levels of uranium enrichment. Tehran denies its nuclear program is intended to produce a bomb. The payoff to Iran is an injection of billions of dollars into its crippled economy over the next six months from the suspension of some sanctions — though other sanctions remain in place. In part a reflection of a thaw between Washington and Tehran, the moves coincidentally occurred on the 33rd anniversary of the end of the Iran hostage crisis. The holding of 52 Americans for 444 days by radical Iranian students that ended Jan. 20, 1981 was followed by more than three decades of U.S.-Iranian enmity that only began to ease last year with signs that Iran was ready to meet U.S. demands and scale back its nuclear activities. Iran starts Authorites implementing say 2 people nuclear deal dead in TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran unplugged banks Omaha plant of centrifuges involved in its most sensitive ura- explosion nium enrichment work on Monday, prompting the United States and European Union to partially lift economic sanctions as a landmark deal aimed at easing concerns over Iran's nuclear program went into effect. The mutual actions — curbing atomic work in exchange for some sanctions relief — start a six-month clock for Tehran and the world powers to negotiate a final accord that the Obama administration and its European allies say will be intended to ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon. In the meantime, the interim deal puts limits OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha authorities confirm two people died and 10 others were seriously hurt in an explosion and partial building collapse at an animal feed processing plant Monday morning. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine says he's been notified about two deaths in Monday's explosion. It's unclear if the death toll will rise as crews sift through the rubble of the International Nutrition plant. Interim Omaha Fire Chief Bernie Kanger says the search is progressing slowly because the structure is unsafe. Kanger said he does- n't believe anyone remaining inside is alive. Several of Obama's key Family of surveillance man held in changes are N Korea both hampered by worried and complications WASHINGTON (AP) encouraged — Several of the key sur- SEATTLE (AP) — The family of an American missionary held more than a year in North Korea was heartbroken and encouraged by a brief news conference in which Kenneth Bae, wearing a gray cap and inmate's uniform with the number 103 on his chest, apologized and said he committed anti-government acts. ''Our end goal is to see Kenneth reunited so he can recover emotionally and physically. He has chronic health problems,'' family friend Derek Sciba told The Associated Press. Sciba is a friend of Bae's sister, Terri Chung of Edmonds, and part of a group pushing for Bae's release. ''On the one hand it's heartbreaking to see him in a prison uniform at the mercy of folks in North Korea, but on the other hand it's encouraging to see him and that he's able to speak,'' Sciba said. Bae made the comments at what he called a press conference held at his own request. He was under guard during the appearance. It is not unusual for prisoners in North Korea to say after their release that they spoke in similar situations under duress. Bae spoke in Korean during the brief appearance, which was attended by The Associated Press and several other members of the foreign media in Pyongyang. Abundant Life Fellowship Need a Physician? 21080 Luther Rd. Doctors who listen ... 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Cometchasing spacecraft wakes from hibernation BERLIN (AP) — Waking up after almost three years of hibernation, a comet-chasing spacecraft sent its first signal back to Earth on Monday, prompting cheers from scientists who hope to use it to land the first space lander onto a comet. The European Space Agency received the allclear message from its Rosetta spacecraft at 7:18 p.m. (1818 GMT; 1:18 p.m. EST) — a message that had to travel some 800 million kilometers (500 million miles). In keeping with the agency's effort to turn the tense wait for a signal into a social media event, the probe triggered a series of ''Hello World!'' tweets in different languages. Dormant systems on the unmanned spacecraft were switched back on in preparation for the final stage of its decade-long mission to rendezvous with the comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Systems had been powered down in 2011 to conserve energy, leaving scientists in the dark about the probe's fate until now. Because of the time it took Rosetta to wake up, and the long distance between the spacecraft and Earth, the earliest possible hour for a signal to arrive was 6:30 p.m. 604 Main St. Red Bluff (530) 529-5154 www.redblufflosmariachis.com A Warm Welcome Awaits You SUNDAY SCHOOL.........................9:45AM MORNING WORSHIP..................11:00AM SUNDAY EVENING........................6:00PM TUESDAY: LADY'S PRAYER CIRCLE.....9:30-10:30AM BIBLE STUDY..................................6:00PM SATURDAY: MEN'S PRAYER MEETING...........5:00PM FLYING veillance reforms unveiled by President Barack Obama face complications that could muddy the proposals' lawfulness, slow their momentum in Congress and saddle the government with heavy costs and bureaucracy, legal experts warn. Despite Obama's plans to shift the National Security Agency's mass storage of Americans' bulk phone records elsewhere, telephone companies do not want the responsibility. And the government could face privacy and structural hurdles in relying on any other entity to store the data. Constitutional analysts also question the legal underpinning of Obama's commitment to setting up an advisory panel of privacy experts to intervene in some proceedings of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the NSA's data mining operations. Obama has asked Congress to set up such a panel, but senior federal judges already oppose the move, citing practical and legal drawbacks. The secret courts now operate with only the government making its case to a federal judge for examining someone's phone data. Civil libertarians have called for a voice in the room that might offer the judge an opposing view. ''The devil is in the details of how the government collects and retains phone records,'' said TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Republican Gov. Chris Christie's administration on Monday pushed back against a claim that Superstorm Sandy relief funding was withheld from a severely flooded city because its Democratic mayor wouldn't sign off on a politically connected real estate venture. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno strongly denied Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer's claims as ''false'' and ''illogical'' on Monday, the day before Christie's second-term inauguration. And Marc Ferzan, executive director of the Governor's Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, told reporters in a conference call that Hoboken has been treated no differently than other cities with respect to storm relief funds. Zimmer said on Saturday that Guadagno pulled her aside at a supermarket opening in May and said Hoboken's storm recovery funds hinged on Zimmer's approval of a commercial development whose lawyer and lobbyist are close to the governor. On Sunday, Zimmer told CNN the ultimatum was delivered on behalf of the governor, a possible 2016 presidential candidate. Guadagno said the mayor's description of the conversation ''is not only false but is illogical and does not withstand scrutiny when all of the facts are examined.'' ''Any suggestion that Sandy funds were tied to the approval of any project in New Jersey is completely false,'' she said. Security experts say the Russians are right in taking the threat seriously. The video was posted online Sunday by a militant group in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's volatile North Caucasus. The Olympic host city of Sochi lies only 500 kilometers (300 miles) west of Dagestan. Two Russian-speaking men featured in the video are identified as members of Ansar al-Sunna, the name of a Jihadist group operating in Iraq. It was unclear whether the men in the video had received funding or training from that group or only adopted its name. There was no confirmation the two men were the suicide bombers who struck the southern Russian city of Volgograd last month as the video claims. 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