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ByKenDilanian The Associated Press WASHINGTON TheObama administration has decided that the National Security Agency will soon stop ex- amining — and will ulti- mately destroy — millions of American calling records it collected under a contro- versial program leaked by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. When Congress passed a law in June ending the NSA's bulk collection of American calling records after a six-month tran- sition, officials said they weren't sure whether they would continue to make use of the records that had al- ready been collected, which generally go back five years. Typically, intelligence agen- cies are extremely reluctant to part with data they con- sider lawfully obtained. The program began shortly af- ter the September 2001 ter- rorist attacks, but most of the records are purged ev- ery five years. The NSA's collection of American phone metadata has been deeply controver- sial ever since Snowden disclosed it to journalists in 2013. President Barack Obama sought, and Con- gress passed, a law end- ing the collection and in- stead allowing the NSA to request the records from phone companies as needed in terrorism investigations. That still left the ques- tion of what to do about the records already in the data- base. On Monday, the Direc- tor of National Intelligence said in a statement those records would no longer be examined in terrorism in- vestigations after Nov. 29, and would be destroyed as soon as possible. The records can't be purged at the moment be- cause the NSA is being sued over them, the state- ment said. The NSA queried the da- tabase around 300 times a year against phone num- bers suspected of being linked to terrorism. But the program was not con- sidered instrumental in de- tecting terror plots. It later emerged that some officials inside the NSA wanted to unilaterally stop collecting the records, both becausetheywereconcerned about the civil liberties in- formation and because they didn't believe the program was effective. Many mobile phone records, for example, were not collected. Still, in the event of an attack, the records cur- rently being stored would allow the NSA and the FBI to quickly map connections going back several years. Without the database, that task will be somewhat harder because the records will have to be obtained. And the top terrorism fear among American officials at the moment is an attack by a disgruntled American who has been radicalized by an Islamic State operative abroad. SURVEILLANCE NSA to stop looking at old phone records SAYYIDAZIM—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS U.S. President Barack Obama, le , and Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn review an honor guard at the National Palace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday. By Julie Pace and Darlene Superville The Associated Press ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA President Barack Obama launched a personal push for peace in South Sudan on Monday, convening African leaders for urgent talks in neighboring Ethiopia aimed at keeping the world's new- est nation from collapsing amid civil war. "The possibilities of re- newed conflict in a region that has been torn by con- flict for so long, and has re- sulted in so many deaths, is something that requires urgent attention from all of us," Obama said. "We don't have a lot of time to wait." The talks on South Su- dan came on the sidelines of Obama's visit to Ethiopia, his second stop on a trip to East Africa. He urged Ethi- opia's leaders to curb crack- downs on press freedoms and political opposition, warning that failure to do so could upend economic progress in a country seek- ing to move past years of poverty and famine. "When all voices are be- ing heard, when people know they are being in- cluded in the political pro- cess, that makes a country more successful," Obama said during a news confer- ence with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam De- salegn. Ethiopia has been among the most active countries in East Africa seeking to end the crisis in South Sudan, a young nation birthed with backing from the U.S. and other nations. South Su- dan's warring factions face an Aug. 17 deadline to ac- cept a regional peace and power-sharing deal. South Sudan was thrown into conflict in December 2013 by a clash between forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, and Pres- ident Salva Kiir, a Dinka. The fighting has spurred a humanitarian crisis that threatens the country's sur- vival just four years after its inception. U.S. officials have ex- pressed pessimism about the prospects for a deal, saying the two sides are indifferent to the plight of the South Sudanese peo- ple. Even as they await the outcome of the peace pro- cess, officials say the U.S. is eying additional economic sanctions and perhaps an arms embargo to ramp up pressure on the warring factions. Obama and Hailemariam were joined in the talks on South Sudan by the presi- dents of Kenya and Uganda, the chair of the African Union and Sudan's foreign minister. Ob am a pu sh es fo r en d to crisis in South Sudan AFRICA TRIP By Seth Borenstein and Frank Bajak The Associated Press WASHINGTON In Califor- nia, they're counting on it to end an historic drought; in Peru, they've already de- clared a pre-emptive emer- gency to prepare for dev- astating flooding. It's both an economic stimulus and a recession-maker. And it's likely to increase the price of coffee, chocolate and sugar. It's El Niño — most likely, the largest in well over a decade, forecasters say. A lot more than mere weather, it affects lives and pocketbooks in different ways in different places. Every few years, the winds shift and the water in the Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual. That water sloshes back and forth around the equa- tor in the Pacific, inter- acts with the winds above and then changes weather worldwide. This is El Nino. Droughts are triggered in places like Australia and India, but elsewhere, droughts are quenched and floods replace them. The Pacific gets more hurricanes; the Atlantic fewer. Winter gets milder and wetter in much of the United States. The world warms, goosing Earth's al- ready rising thermometer from man-made climate change. Peruvian sailors named the formation El Niño — the (Christ) Child — be- cause it was most notice- able around Christmas. An El Niño means the Pa- cific Ocean off Peru's coast is warm, especially a huge patch 330 feet below the surface, and as it gets warmer and close to the surface, the weather "is just going to be a river falling from the sky," said biophys- icist Michael Ferrari, direc- tor of climate services for agriculture at the Colorado firm aWhere Inc. Around the world, crops fail in some places, thrive elsewhere. Commercial fishing shifts. More people die of flooding, fewer from freezing. Americans spend less on winter heating. The global economy shifts. "El Niño is not the end of the world so you don't have to hide under the bed. The reality is that in the U.S. an El Niño can be a good thing," said Mike Halp- ert, deputy director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- tion's Climate Prediction Center. This El Niño officially started in March and keeps getting stronger. If current trends continue, it should officially be termed a strong El Niño early in Au- gust, peak sometime near the end of year and peter out sometime next spring. Meteorologists say it looks like the biggest such event since the fierce El Niño of 1997-1998. California mudslides notwithstanding, the U.S. economy benefited by nearly $22 billion from that El Niño, according to a 1999 study. That study found that 189 people were killed in the U.S, mainly from tornadoes linked to El Niño, but an estimated 850 lives were saved due to a milder winter. A United Nations-backed study said that El Niño cost Bolivia, Colombia, Ecua- dor, Peru and Venezuela nearly $11 billion. Flooding in Peru destroyed bridges, homes, hospitals and crops and left 354 dead and 112 missing, according to the Pan-American Health Or- ganization. The mining in- dustry in Peru and Chile was hammered as flood- ing hindered exports. Though this year's El Niño is likely to be weaker than the 1997-1998 ver- sion, the economic impact may be greater because the world's interconnected economy has changed with more vulnerable supply chains, said risk and cli- mate expert Ferrari. Economic winners in- clude the U.S., China, Mex- ico and Europe while In- dia, Australia and Peru are among El Niño's big- gest losers. On average, a healthy El Niño can boost the U.S. economy by about 0.55 percent of Gross Domes- tic Product, which would translate more than $90 billion this year, an Inter- national Monetary Fund study calculated this spring. But it could also slice an entire percentage point off Indonesia's GDP. SCIENCE AND WEATHER Strengthening El Niño giveth and taketh away REED SAXON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE A Caltrans bulldozer terraces a sliding hillside below the condemned home above Pacific Coast Highway near Las Flores Canyon Road in Malibu. By Ray Henry The Associated Press CARROLLTON,GA. The gun- man responsible for last week's deadly attack in a Louisiana movie theater was delivered by deputies to hospital for a mental evalu- ation in 2008 after his fam- ily said he was a danger to himself and others. But the judge who or- dered him detained said Monday that she did not have him involuntarily committed, which may ex- plain why he was able to le- gally purchase the gun he used to kill two people and wound nine others before killing himself. His case underscores the concerns raised in the after- math of other mass shoot- ings involving suspects with mental health issues — and the gaps in the system meant to "red-flag" people ill-suited to own or carry a firearm. While an Alabama sheriff said that he denied Houser's application for a concealed weapons' permit in 2006, there appears to have been nothing in court filings that would raise concerns in the FBI background check sys- tem. Contrary to legal filings by Houser's family, Carroll County Probate Judge Betty Cason said she did not or- der Houser to be involun- tarily committed for men- tal health treatment at the West Central Regional Hos- pital in Columbus, Geor- gia, which is in Muscogee County, where she lacks ju- risdiction. Doctors at the hospi- tal would have had to pe- tition that county's probate judge for such a commit- ment, so "it wouldn't have come through me," Cason told The Associated Press. This might explain why Houser passed a federal background check in Feb- ruary 2014 allowing him to buy the .40-caliber hand- gun, despite years of erratic and menacing behavior and run-ins with neighbors, lo- cal politicians, and law en- forcement officials. Houser's federal back- ground check came back clean, according to a lawyer for the pawn shop where he bought the weapon, Money Miser Northside Pawn in Phenix City. "We know ATF reviewed our sale and said everything is right on our side," said the store's attor- ney, Eric B. Funderburk. Cason said she did sign an order on April 22, 2008, authorizing deputies to de- tain Houser and take him, against his will if necessary, to a treatment facility for a mental health evaluation. That order would have allowed medical authori- ties to examine Houser for up to five days. LOUISIANA THEATER SHOOTING Ju dg e: G unm an n ot i nv ol un ta ri ly c om mi tt ed Please help sponsor a classroom subscription Call Kathy at (530) 737-5047 to find out how. ThroughtheNewspapersinEducation program, area classrooms receive the Red Bluff Daily News every day thanks to the generosity of these local businesses & individuals. •DR.ASATO&DR.MARTIN • FIDELITY NATIONAL TITLE CO. • DOLLING INSURANCE • GUMM'S OPTICAL SHOPPE • OLIVE CITY QUICK LUBE • QRC • WALMART • TEHAMA CO. DEPT. 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