Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/73197
2B Daily News – Thursday, July 5, 2012 WORLD BRIEFING Americans have a throwback Fourth: Hot and without power Va. (AP) — George Washington never had air conditioning, but he knew how to keep cool: a man- sion with lots of windows elevated on the banks of a wide, rolling river and lots of ice cream, maybe with a little brandy. It was a little like the old days without electrici- ty Wednesday, as the nation's capital region celebrated Independence Day the better part of a week into a widespread blackout that left millions of residents sweltering in 90-plus degree heat with- out air conditioning. Util- ities have slowly been restoring service knocked out by a freak storm Fri- day from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, and at least 26 people have died in the storm or its after- math. MOUNT VERNON, ton's Mount Vernon estate, one of the most popular Fourth of July attractions was a demon- stration of 18th-century ice cream making, one of Washington's favorite desserts. Historical inter- preters Gail Cassidy and Anette Ahrens showed the crowds how cocoa beans were roasted and ground into a paste for chocolate ice cream, made using ice hauled up in massive blocks from the Potomac River and stored under- ground to last as long into the summer as possible. As for beverages, At George Washing- Washington was no stranger to alcohol, enjoy- ing imported Madeira wine from Spain, distill- ing his own whiskey and enjoying a fruity brandy cocktail called Cherry Bounce. Washington was his own architect at Mount Vernon, ''and he was very good at it,'' said Dennis Pogue, associate director for preservation at Mount Vernon. The piazza, which runs the length of the mansion, is ''kind of California living in the 18th century,'' Pogue said. Perhaps Competition Subaru of Smithtown's flag-themed ''July 4th Blast of Savings SALES EVENT'' is more up your alley this year. Or possi- bly you need some last- minute hot dogs for your Fourth of July cookout? Don't miss the Dietz & Watson ''Grill-a-bration.'' Look around, and one truth seems kind of self- evident. If you arrived in America with entirely fresh eyes, it would be easy to conclude that the summer's day on which we celebrate our hard- won independence from England is merely a pause to blow up some colorful explosives, cook some meat over an open flame and get some good deals on major appliances. And, of course, drink beer. But that can't be all there is. Can it? In an era when every- 236th year SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — In the market for new designer eyewear this Independence Day? Look no further than Wize Eyes on Long Island. ''So Proudly We Hail,'' the chain advertised this week, ''With Fashion Eyewear ... At Half The Price.'' AP Essay: A nation that can't agree on much marks its thing from health care policy to immigration divides us more than it unites us, when the Inter- net allows us to tear apart our fellow Americans' virtual throats from the comfort of our keyboards, what does a holiday like Independence Day mean? Is commercialism the only thing that keeps us together? Does this tribal- feeling nation of niches and special interest groups and online com- munities still have much use for a holiday that, at its most elemental, cele- brates the societal-level version of ''Hey — I'm sick of you, so I'm leav- ing''? term WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of econo- mists in the latest Associ- ated Press Economy Sur- vey expect the national unemployment rate to stay above 6 percent — the upper bounds of what's considered healthy — for at least four more years. AP survey: Jobless rate to persist into next presidential Moderate Muslims along with liberal and women's groups now worry that Mohammed Morsi's presidency will eradicate what is left of Egypt's secular traditions and change the social fab- ric of the mainly Muslim nation of 82 million peo- ple. Some activists say Islamists already are flex- ing their muscles in areas outside Cairo and other main cities, taking advan- tage of the absence of civil society groups and tenuous security in the areas. If the economists are correct, the job market will still be unhealthy seven years after the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. That would be the longest stretch of high unemploy- ment since the end of World War II. market and the economy — President Barack Obama's main political threats — would remain big challenges in either a second Obama term or President Mitt Romney's first term. ''The election isn't going to be a miracle cure for the unemployment rate — that's for sure,'' says Sean Snaith, an eco- nomics professor at the University of Central Florida. He thinks unem- ployment, which is 8.2 percent now, won't drop back to 6 percent until after 2016. And it means the job ''normal'' level to be between 5 percent and 6 percent. 'God particle' GENEVA (AP) — Sci- entists at the world's biggest atom smasher hailed the discovery of ''the missing cornerstone of physics'' Wednesday, cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for a new subatomic parti- cle called the Higgs boson, or ''God particle,'' which could help explain why all matter has mass and crack open a new realm of subatomic sci- ence. Physicists celebrate evidence of subatomic Economists consider a the same qualities as the one predicted by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others and is perhaps the biggest accomplishment at CERN since its found- ing in 1954 outside Gene- va along the Swiss-French border. nities. Acloser look at the Higgs boson Rolf Heuer, director of CERN, said the newly discovered particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself — an extremely fine distinction. With US troops gone, Iraqis see a Whenever he leaves his home, Mohammed Jabar, a Sunni Muslim, carries his cellphone so his fami- ly can find out quickly whether he is safe if a deadly bomb attack hits. Shukria Mahmud, another Sunni, rarely ventures from her house because of the rash of violence that is gripping Iraq. future of fear BAGHDAD (AP) — BERLIN (AP) — Sci- entists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced the dis- covery of a new subatom- ic particle that looks remarkably like the long- sought Higgs boson. Sometimes called the ''God particle'' because its existence is fundamen- tal to the creation of the universe, the hunt for the Higgs involved thousands of scientists from all over the world. First proposed as a the- ory in the 1960s, the mad- deningly elusive Higgs had been hunted by at least two generations of physicists who believed it would help shape our understanding of how the universe began and how its most elemental pieces fit together. findings were announced by two independent teams involving more than 5,000 researchers, the usually sedate corridors of the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, erupted in fre- quent applause and stand- ing ovations. Physicists who spent their careers in pursuit of the particle shed tears. The new particle appears to share many of As the highly technical Laith Hashim, a young Shiite Muslim, is consid- ering moving away from Iraq if security continues to disintegrate. Such a breakdown, he fears, would spark a new round of bitter sectarian fighting of the kind that brought the nation to the brink of civil war just a few years ago. Tensions simmer between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities, yet they share an increasingly widespread despair. Al- Qaida-style attacks are on the rise, faith in the gov- ernment's ability to keep people safe is on the wane and a fatalistic acceptance of a life of fear is perni- ciously settling in. Nine years after the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq that overthrew dicta- tor Saddam Hussein — purging the leadership and military of his sup- porters and leading to a fight against insurgents in a bloody guerrilla war that left more than 100,000 dead — Iraq's outlook is increasingly bleak in summer 2012. that everything is made up of atoms, and inside atoms are electrons, pro- tons and neutrons. They, in turn, are made of quarks and other sub- atomic particles. Scien- tists have long puzzled over how these minute building blocks of the uni- verse acquire mass. With- out mass, particles would- n't hold together and there would be no matter. School physics teaches Islamists CAIRO (AP) — Three bearded men approached a university student and his girlfriend during a romantic rendezvous in a park and ordered them to separate because they weren't married, accord- ing to security officials. An argument broke out, ending with one of the men fatally stabbing the student. Murder of student, musicians stoke fears in Egypt about intentions of Arafat death JERUSALEM (AP) — The discovery of traces of a radioactive agent on clothing reportedly worn by Yasser Arafat in his final days reignited a cauldron of conspiracy theories Wednesday about the mysterious death of the longtime Palestinian leader. Arafat's widow, who ordered the tests by a Swiss lab, called for her husband's body to be exhumed, and Arafat's successor gave tentative approval for an autopsy. But experts warned that even after the detection of polonium-210, getting answers on the cause of death will be tough. Arafat was 75 when he Discovery of deadly agent revives debate of died Nov. 11, 2004, in a French military hospital. He had been airlifted to the facility just weeks ear- lier with a mysterious ill- ness, after being confined by Israel for three years to his West Bank headquar- ters. men and a Greek between 2000 and 2006 and a policewoman in 2007. For years, authorities suspected organized crime rather than racist violence. Only when two suspected founding mem- bers were found dead last November after a botched bank robbery did the so- called National Socialist Underground's activities come to light. Small-town America and the modern world: Andy Griffith to the other Close your eyes and picture it: small-town America. showed one office, of course. A gener- al store, too, and a fishing hole. There's a barber who knows everyone — and knows about every- one. There's a friendly auto mechanic. The pic- ture wouldn't be complete without several women who could be anyone's favorite older sister or aunt. It has a little post At the time, French doctors said Arafat died of a massive brain hemor- rhage. According to French medical records, he had suffered inflamma- tion, jaundice and a blood condition known as dis- seminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC. But the records were inconclusive about what brought about the DIC, which has numerous causes including infec- tions, colitis and liver dis- ease. Outside experts who reviewed the records on behalf of The Associated Press were also unable to pinpoint the underlying cause. German spy agency faces shake-up BERLIN (AP) — The case horrified Germany, a nation where the Hitler era still casts a long shad- ow: a small band of neo- Nazis suspected of killing ethnic Turks and others in a seven-year terror spree, undetected by security forces until a botched bank robbery brought down the group last year. Now, Instead of a Western- style democracy function- ing in peace and coopera- tion, what's been left behind is dysfunctional and increasingly violent. Many of the attacks of the past month have targeted Shiites on annual reli- gious pilgrimages, raising fears of a return to the deadly cycle of destruc- tive violence between Sunni and Shiite commu- The June 25 attack has alarmed Egyptians con- cerned that with an Islamist president in office, vigilante groups are feeling emboldened to enforce strict Islamic mores on the streets. Islamists, including members of one-time vio- lent groups, were empow- ered after last year's ouster of Hosni Mubarak's secular regime by a popular uprising. They formed political parties and won about 70 percent of parliament seats in elections held some six months ago, although a court dissolved the legislature. domestic spy agency faces awkward questions about a possible cover-up after revelations that an official destroyed files related to the investiga- tion of the neo-Nazi group. The case prompted the government to announce this week that the agency's head for the past 12 years will take early retirement. Before he leaves, a par- liamentary committee wants to question Heinz Fromm and the official responsible for the files on Thursday about whether the material was destroyed by mistake or deliberately. Germany's proven deeply embarrass- ing to the agency, the Fed- eral Office for the Protec- tion of the Constitution, because of the failure to solve the killings of eight Turkish small business- The case had already Kids scurry around at reasonable paces, making low-grade mischief while dirtying their short-sleeve plaid shirts or striped T- shirts. Quirky characters wander about in a land- scape of picket fences and healthy storefronts. And the police officer in charge? He's tough but fair, community minded, the Solomon of his entire, geographically limited jurisdiction. He's Atticus Finch without any of the racial tension. This is, today, the com- forting script America often reaches for when it summons the vanished rural nation that so many say they long for. Not coincidentally, it is also the state of mind given to us by Andy Griffith and his long-running TV show. More than anyone except perhaps Walt Dis- ney, entertainment-world emblem of the 20th-cen- tury values Americans often like to say they prize most. He spread the notion, begun by no less a figure than Thomas Jef- ferson, that somehow the very best of us was con- tained in the rural life — in this case, the fictional tales of Mayberry that ''The Andy Griffith Show'' delivered for almost a decade. Griffith was the US sorry, Pakistan opens supply WASHINGTON (AP) — Ending a bitter seven- month standoff, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized to Pak- istan on Tuesday for the killing of 24 Pakistani troops last fall and won in return the reopening of crit- ical NATO supply lines into Afghanistan. The agree- ment could save the U.S. hundreds of millions of dol- lars in war costs. Resolution of the dispute also bandages a relationship with Pakistan that will be crucial in stabilizing the region. The ties have been torn in the past year and a half by everything from a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistanis to the unilat- eral U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistan com- pound. But the accord carries risks for both governments — threatening to make Pak- istan's already fragile civil- ian leadership look weak and subservient to the Unit- ed States while offering fod- der to Republicans, includ- ing presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who contend that President Barack Obama says ''sorry'' too easily.