Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/364208
ByDavidA.Lieb TheAssociatedPress FERGUSON, MO. The Mis- souri Highway Patrol seized control of this St. Louis sub- urb Thursday, stripping lo- cal police of their law-en- forcement authority after four days of clashes be- tween officers in riot gear and furious crowds pro- testing the death of an un- armed black teen shot by an officer. The intervention, or- dered by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, came as President Barack Obama spoke pub- licly for the first time about Saturday's fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent violence that shocked the nation and threatened to tear apart Ferguson, a town that is nearly 70 percent black pa- trolled by a nearly all-white police force. Obama said there was "no excuse" for violence ei- ther against the police or by officers against peaceful protesters. Nixon's promise to ease the deep racial tensions was swiftly put to the test as demonstrators gathered again Thursday evening in the neighborhood where looters smashed and burned businesses on Sunday and police repeatedly fired tear gas and smoke bombs. But the latest protests were a world apart from the earlier demonstrations, with a light, even festive atmosphere and no hint of violence. The streets were filled with music, free food and even laughter. Protester Cleo WIllis said the change was palpable. "You can feel it. You can see it," he said. "Now it's up to us to ride that feeling." After a particularly vi- olent Wednesday night, Nixon said local po- lice would no longer be in charge of the area, al- though they would still be present. He said Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who is black, would be in command. The change was meant to ensure "that we allow peaceful and appropriate protests, that we use force only when necessary, that we step back a little bit and let some of the energy be felt in this region appropri- ately," Nixon said. "Ferguson will not be de- fined as a community that was torn apart by violence but will be known as a com- munity that pulled together to overcome it," the gover- nor said at a news confer- ence in the nearby commu- nity of Normandy. The governor was joined at a news conference by the white mayor of St. Louis and the region's four state representatives and the county executive, all of whom are black. Johnson said he grew up in the area and "it means a lot to me personally that we break this cycle of vio- lence." He said he planned to keep heavily armored ve- hicles away from the scene and told his officers not to bring their gas masks. By late afternoon, John- son was walking down the street with a large group of protesters as they chanted "Hands up, don't shoot," a reference to witness ac- counts that described Brown as having his hands in the air when the officer kept firing. He planned to talk to the demonstrators throughout the night. "We're going to have some conversations with them and get an understanding of what's going on." At one point, Johnson spoke to several young men wearing red bandanas around their necks and faces. After the discussion, one of the men reached out and embraced him. At the burned-out Quik- Trip near the shooting scene, children drew on the ground with chalk and people left messages about Brown. Earlier Thursday, Obama appealed for "peace and calm" on the streets. "I know emotions are raw right now in Ferguson, and there are certainly passion- ate differences about what has happened," Obama said, speaking from the Massachusetts island where he's on a two-week vacation. "But let's remember that we're all part of one Amer- ican family. We are united in common values, and that includes the belief in equality under the law, re- spect for public order and the right to peaceful public protests." Residents in Ferguson have complained about the police response that began soon after Brown's shoot- ing with the use of dogs for crowd control — a tactic that for some evoked civil- rights protests from a half- century ago. The county po- lice took over, leading both the investigation of Brown's shooting and the subse- quent attempts to keep the peace at the request of the smaller city. SHOOTING DEATH Missouri troopers take control of Ferguson JEFFROBERSON—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A man holds up a piece of police tape during a protest on Monday in Ferguson, Mo. The FBI opened an investigation into the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who police said was shot multiple times Saturday a er being confronted by an officer in Ferguson. By Seth Borenstein The Associated Press WASHINGTON More than two-thirds of the recent rapid melting of the world's glaciers can be blamed on humans, a new study finds. Scientists looking at gla- cier melt since 1851 didn't see a human fingerprint until about the middle of the 20th century. Even then only one-quarter of the warming wasn't from natural causes. But since 1991, about 69 percent of the rapidly in- creasing melt was man- made, said Ben Marzeion, a climate scientist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. "Glaciers are really shrinking rapidly now," he said. "I think it's fair to say most of it is man-made." Scientists fault global warming from the burn- ing of coal, oil and gas as well as changes in land use near glaciers and soot pol- lution. Glaciers in Alaska and the Alps in general have more human-caused melting than the global av- erage, Marzeion said. The study is published Thursday in the journal Science. The research is the first to calculate just how much of the glacial melting can be attributed to people and "the jump from about a quarter to roughly 70 per- cent of total glacier mass loss is significant and con- cerning," said University of Alaska Fairbanks geophys- icist Regine Hock, who wasn't part of the study. Over the last two de- cades,about295billiontons (269 billion metric tons) of ice is melting each year on average due to human causes and about 130 bil- lion tons (121 million met- ric tons) a year are melting because of natural causes, Marzeion calculated. Glaciers alone add to about four-tenths of an inch of sea level rise every decade, along with even bigger increases from melt- ing ice sheets — which are different than glaciers — and the expansion of water with warmer temperatures. Marzeion and col- leagues ran multiple com- puter simulations to see how much melting there would be from all causes and then did it again to see how much melting there would be if only nat- ural causes were included. The difference is what was caused by humans. GLOBAL WARMING BECKY BOHRER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Mendenhall Glaicer spills over the mountains above Mendenhall Lake in Juneau, Alaska in 2013. Study blames humans for most of melting glaciers By Christopher Sherman The Associated Press HIDALGO, TEXAS The first wave of National Guard troops has taken up ob- servation posts along the Texas-Mexico border. Several dozen soldiers deployed in the Rio Grande Valley are part of the up to 1,000 troops called up by Gov. Rick Perry last month, Texas National Guard Mas- ter Sgt. Ken Walker of the Joint Counterdrug Task Force said Thursday. Several guardsmen were seen Thursday afternoon manning an observation tower along the busy road leading to the Hidalgo In- ternational Bridge. This first batch of sol- diers was specifically trained to man such obser- vation towers in the area belonging to local law en- forcement agencies and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Walker said. They will serve as extra eyes on the border and re- port suspicious activity to authorities. State officials have es- timated the deployment, which they've called a "deter and refer" mission will cost $12 million per month. On Wednesday, during a visit to Camp Swift Army National Guard Train- ing Center outside Austin, Perry said the troops were needed to defend the na- tion against "narco-terror- ists." Perry, a Republican possibly mulling a run for the White House, had said the soldiers were neces- sary to help secure the bor- der while the Border Patrol was busy with a surge in il- legal immigration. IMMIGRATION First National Guard troops arrive at border The Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. There may be itsy-bitsy aliens among us. Scientists say seven mi- croscopic particles col- lected by NASA's comet- chasing spacecraft, Star- dust, appear to have originated outside our so- lar system. If confirmed, this would be the world's first sampling of contem- porary interstellar dust. "They are very precious particles," the team leader, physicist Andrew Westphal of the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, said in a statement Thursday. The dust collectors were exposed to what is believed to be the in- terstellar dust stream in the early 2000s and re- turned to Earth in 2006. Since then, dozens of sci- entists worldwide led by Westphal have examined scans of the collection pan- els to zero in on the parti- cles. The team was assisted by 30,000 citizen-scientists, dubbed Dusters, who re- viewed more than 1 million images in search of elusive tracks made by incoming particles. The findings were pub- lished Thursday in the journal Science. Westphal said the sus- pected interstellar parti- cles are surprisingly di- verse. Some are fluffy like snowflakes. A few particles splatted a little when they hit the collection panels because of their speed and the fact that some ended up hit- ting the aluminum foils between the softer aerogel tiles meant to capture the grains. In fact, one parti- cle believed to be follow- ing the flow of interstellar wind was vaporized be- cause it was going so fast — an estimated 10 miles per second. The dust is considered young by cosmic standards: less than 50 million to 100 million years old, the life ex- pectancy of interstellar dust. Westphal said addi- tional testing is needed be- fore concluding these seven specks are truly from out- side our solar system. And there may be more: Roughly half the dust-col- lection panels have yet to be scanned. The physicist expects to find no more than a dozen interstellar dust specks in all, how- ever, a tiny fraction of the amount of comet matter gathered by Stardust. More than 50 grains em- bedded in the Stardust col- lectors were deemed to be debris from the spacecraft itself. SIGNS OF LIFE Specks returned from space may be alien visitors FARMBUILDINGS•ARENAS BULK STORAGE WAREHOUSES • OFFICES SELF STORAGE RV STORAGE AIRCRAFT HANGARS PROCESSING FACILITIES COMPLETE CONCRETE AND BUILDING SERVICE License #812173 #30SevilleCt. Chico, CA 95928 (530) 345-7296 www.northvalleybuilding.com BUILDINGS MongolianBBQ Mongolian BBQ K K ahunas ahunas American Style It's all about the choices! AN ADULT DINNER BUFFET ONLY EXCLUDES SENIOR and CHILDRENS DINNERS and One Per Table $ 2 00 OFF www.kahunasmongolianbbq.com 2151 Market St. Redding, CA 96001 (530) 244-4200 OPEN EVERYDAY 11 AM TO 9 PM STOVEJUNCTION The TheNorthState'spremiersupplierofstoves 22825 Antelope Blvd., Red Bluff 530-528-2221 • Fax 530-528-2229 www.thestovejunction.com Over 25 years of experience Tues-Sat9am-5pm• ClosedSun&Mon Now Carrying! GreenMountainGrills & Accessories Serving Butte, Glenn & Tehama Counties Smog Check (MOST CARS & PICK-UPS) 527-9841 • 195 S. Main St. starting at $ 29 95 + $ 8 25 certificate SERVICESATLOWERPRICES All makes and models. We perform dealer recommened 30K, 60K, 90K Members Welcome Regular Haircut $ 2 00 off KWIK KUTS FamilyHairSalon 1064SouthMainSt.,RedBluff•529-3540 ANY RETAIL PRODUCT 20 % off withanychemicalserviceof $50 or more Notgoodwithotheroffers Expires 8/31/14 With coupon Reg. $13.95 FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014 REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM |NEWS | 5 A