Thursday, October 26, 2017
Monday, November 7, 2016
Janet Reno, First Woman to Serve as U.S. Attorney General, Dies
She died at her home in Miami-Dade County from complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to her sister, Margaret Hurchalla. The disease was diagnosed in November 1995.
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Ms. Reno’s tenure as attorney general was bracketed by two explosive events: a deadly federal raid on the compound of a religious cult in Waco, Tex., in 1993, and the seizing in 2000 by federal agents of Elián González, a young Cuban refugee who was at the center of an international custody battle and a political tug of war.
In those moments, and others in between, Ms. Reno was applauded for a straightforward integrity and a willingness to accept responsibility, but she was also fiercely criticized. Republicans accused her of protecting President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore when, in 1997, she refused to allow an independent counsel to investigate allegations of fund-raising improprieties in the White House.
After leaving office, she mounted a surprise though unsuccessful bid in Florida to unseat Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush, in 2002, amid the resentment of Cuban-Americans in South Florida over her negotiating for the return of Elián to Cuba.
Ms. Reno was never part of the Clinton inner circle, even though she served in the Clinton cabinet for two terms, longer than any attorney general in the previous 150 years. She was a latecomer to the team, and her political and personal style clashed with the president’s, particularly as she sought to maintain some independence from the White House.
Her relations with the president were further strained by her decision to let an independent inquiry into a failed Clinton land deal in Arkansas, the so-called Whitewater investigation, expand to encompass Mr. Clinton’s sexual relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, an episode that led to his impeachment.
Mr. Clinton and his allies thought that Ms. Reno was too quick to refer to special counsels in the Lewinsky matter and other cases of suspect administration behavior. The president let her dangle in the public eye for weeks before announcing in December 1996, after his resounding re-election, that she would remain for his second term.
Ms. Reno was never a natural fit in Washington’s backslapping, highly competitive culture. At weekly news conferences in the barrel-vaulted conference room outside her office in the Justice Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue, she was fond of telling reporters that she would “do the right thing” on legal issues and judge them according to “the law and the facts.”
Imposing at 6-foot-1, awkward in manner and blunt in her probity, she became a regular foil for late-night comics and a running gag on “Saturday Night Live.” But she got the joke, proving it by gamely appearing on the show to lampoon her image.
The comedy could not obscure her law-enforcement accomplishments. Ms. Reno presided over the Justice Department in a time of economic growth, falling crime rates and mounting security threats to the nation by forces both foreign and domestic.
Candidates sprint across US as campaigns react to email case news
“When I’m elected president, we will suspend the Syrian refugee program, and we will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We’ll keep them out,” the Republican nominee told hundreds of people packed into a barn at the Loudoun County fairgrounds, with even more listening from outside.
The stop was Trump’s fifth since Sunday afternoon, several of them in Democratic strongholds he is trying to wrest away from Hillary Clinton in hopes of creating a path to victory on Tuesday.
After starting his day in Iowa, where polls show him ahead, Trump stumped in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states that have gone for Democrats for more than a quarter century. Until recently, polls had showed Clinton with a comfortable lead in Virginia as well.
Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned in Pennsylvania, where she maintains a lead, and in Ohio and New Hampshire, two battleground states that could go either way. Clinton has maintained a narrow lead nationally and has several more plausible scenarios than Trump for winning in the Electoral College.
The candidates’ frenzied pace Sunday came as news broke that, after an expedited review of newly discovered Clinton emails, FBI Director James B. Comey had affirmed his decision that she should not face charges related to her use of a personal server as secretary of state.
During Trump’s Michigan rally — a state a Republican presidential candidate last carried in 1988 — he said Clinton was “being protected by a rigged system, it’s a totally rigged system.”
“Hillary Clinton is guilty,” Trump said. “She’s knows it. The FBI knows it. The people know it. Now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8th.”
Comey’s announcement on Oct. 28 that the FBI was scrutinizing newly discovered email reinvigorated Trump’s campaign in the closing stretch of the race, and polls in multiple battleground states have tightened since then.
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri reacted to the FBI news on the campaign’s flight to a Cleveland rally, telling reporters: “We are glad to see that ... [Comey] has confirmed the conclusions he reached in July, and we are glad that this matter is resolved.”
Clinton is using the closing days of the race to try to both shore up support in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania where she has been leading and to tip the balance in other swing states.
Clinton appeared Sunday night in New Hampshire, where the race has tightened considerably.
“This election is a moment of reckoning,” Clinton told her crowd in Manchester. “It a choice between division and unity. ... What’s really on the ballot is what kind of country we want for our children and grandchildren.”
Clinton was introduced at the rally by Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father of slain U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died while serving in the 2004 Iraq War.
Khan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and was later criticized by Trump, posed a pointed set of questions to Trump about whether his son, a Muslim, and other minorities would have a place in his America.
“Would anyone who isn’t like you have a place in your America, Mr. Trump?” Khan said. “On Tuesday, we’re going to prove America belongs to all of us.”
Clinton said that Khan’s family “exemplify the values that make America great.”
Folk singer James Taylor performed at the rally ahead of Clinton’s appearance.
Clinton appeared earlier Sunday at a rally in Cleveland, where she was introduced by Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star LeBron James, part of an effort to spark enthusiasm in Ohio, a state where polls have showed Trump leading.
“I want an America where everyone has a place, where everyone is included,” Clinton said there. “And I know there is a lot of frustration, even anger, in this election season. I see it, I hear it, you know, I’m a subject of it. I get it. But anger is not a plan. Anger is not going to get us new jobs.”
The more optimistic look toward the future was a script her campaign had hoped to use as a springboard past the exceptional rancor of the last several months of her contest with Trump, but it had been muted somewhat by the uncertainty surrounding the renewed FBI inquiry and the tightening polls.
Sunday’s event was Clinton’s last scheduled visit to Ohio, where she trails despite heavy emphasis on turning out black voters in Cleveland. James was part of that effort, as were husband and wife singers Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who performed a get-out-the-vote concert with Clinton on Friday night.
In attempt to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to win, Trump has new targets in his sights in historically Democratic states including Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Once thought to be safe for Democrats, Michigan has become a last-minute battleground, with Clinton heading to Grand Rapids on Monday, the campaign announced this weekend. President Obama, who won Michigan twice, will campaign in Ann Arbor on Monday. And former president Bill Clinton made a stop in Lansing on Sunday after visiting churches in Flint.
Clinton began her day Sunday by campaigning in Philadelphia after attending a get-out-the-vote concert in the city on Saturday night. And she will return to the state for two rallies on the eve of Election Day, a sign that the Keystone State is among the battlegrounds where her lead over Trump has dwindled in recent days.
Her campaign announced that rock star Bruce Springsteen would join her at a Philadelphia rally that will also include President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
Clinton also deployed a full slate of high-level surrogates around the country on Sunday, including Obama, who appeared in Kissimmee, Fla., and poked fun at Trump.
“Apparently his campaign has taken his Twitter,” Obama told the crowd at Osceola County Stadium. “In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self control, they said we’re just gonna take away your Twitter. Now, if somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes.”
Thursday, November 3, 2016
US election daily dig: Is George W Bush voting for Hillary?
The polls are tightening, the appeals to unenthusiastic voters are becoming more desperate - and speculation is mounting about one previously solid group of Republican voters.
The latest
Just when you thought this election could not get any stranger comes the news that George W Bush could be voting for a Democrat. And not just any Democrat.
The revelation came from Texas land commissioner and Trump supporter George P Bush who suggested at a small Republican gathering that his grandfather George HW and uncle George W could both be casting ballots for Hillary Clinton.
Rumours that Bush Senior was a secret supporter of the wife of the man who beat him in 1992 have been circulating for a few weeks, after he reportedly spilled the beans to a member of the Kennedy clan. The 92-year-old was apparently not impressed by Trump's mockery of his son Jeb in the primaries.
But this is the first time we've heard that George W Bush might back Clinton too - like father, like son, it now appears. When Jeb Bush was asked about his brother's intentions, he simply said: "Secret ballot."
Friday, October 7, 2016
Officials: Death toll soars to 572 in Haiti from Hurricane Matthew
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The number of people killed by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti rose to at least 572 on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, as information trickled in from remote areas that were cut off by the storm, officials said.
With fatalities rising quickly, different government agencies and committees differed on the total death toll. A Reuters count of deaths reported by civil protection and local officials confirmed 572 people had lost their lives.
Haiti's central civil protection agency, which takes longer to collate numbers, said 271 people died as Matthew smashed through the tip of Haiti's western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (233 kph) winds and torrential rain. Some 61,500 people were in shelters, the agency said.
The storm pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which are only now being contacted.
At least three towns reported dozens of fatalities, including the inland community of Chantal, whose deputy mayor said 90 people perished, without giving details. At least 89 more were missing, many of them in the Grand'Anse region area in southern Haiti.
Coastal town Les Anglais lost "several dozen" people, the central government representative in the region, Louis-Paul Raphael told Reuters.
Les Anglais was the first place in Haiti that Matthew reached, as a powerful Category 4 storm before it moved north, lost strength and lashed central Florida on Friday.
Hours before the hurricane landed in Haiti, Les Anglais' mayor told Reuters residents were fleeing for their lives as the ocean rushed into their homes.
With cellphone networks down and roads flooded by sea and river water, aid has been slow to reach towns and villages around the peninsula. Instead, locals have been helping each other.
"My house wasn't destroyed, so I am receiving people, like it's a temporary shelter," said Bellony Amazan in the town of Cavaillon, where around a dozen people died. Amazan said she had no food to give people.
"I have nothing, my hands are empty," said Kimberly Janvier in the town, where dozens of residents staged an angry protest on Thursday demanding more government help.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Islamic State kills dozens of its own in hunt for spies
BAGHDAD (AP) — In March, a senior commander with the Islamic State group was driving through northern Syria on orders to lead militants in the fighting there when a drone blasted his vehicle to oblivion.
The killing of Abu Hayjaa al-Tunsi, a Tunisian jihadi, sparked a panicked hunt within the group's ranks for spies who could have tipped off the U.S-led coalition about his closely guarded movements. By the time it was over, the group would kill 38 of its own members on suspicion of acting as informants.
They were among dozens of IS members killed by their own leadership in recent months in a vicious purge after a string of airstrikes killed prominent figures. Others have disappeared into prisons and still more have fled, fearing they could be next as the jihadi group turns on itself in the hunt for moles, according to Syrian opposition activists, Kurdish militia commanders, several Iraqi intelligence officials and an informant for the Iraqi government who worked within IS ranks.
The fear of informants has fueled paranoia among the militants' ranks. A mobile phone or internet connection can raise suspicions. As a warning to others, IS has displayed the bodies of some suspected spies in public — or used particularly gruesome methods, including reportedly dropping some into a vat of acid.
IS "commanders don't dare come from Iraq to Syria because they are being liquidated" by airstrikes, said Bebars al-Talawy, an opposition activist in Syria who monitors the jihadi group.
Over the past months, American officials have said that the U.S. has killed a string of top commanders from the group, including its "minister of war" Omar al-Shishani, feared Iraqi militant Shaker Wuhayeb, also known as Abu Wahib, as well as a top finance official known by several names, including Haji Iman, Abu Alaa al-Afari or Abu Ali Al-Anbari.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the biggest city held by IS across its "caliphate" stretching across Syria and Iraq, a succession of militants who held the post of "wali," or governor, in the province have died in airstrikes. As a result, those appointed to governor posts have asked not to be identified and they limit their movements, the Iraqi informant told The Associated Press. Iraqi intelligence officials allowed the AP to speak by phone with the informant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his life.
The purge comes at a time when IS has lost ground in both Syria and Iraq. An Iraqi government offensive recaptured the western city of Ramadi from IS earlier this year, and another mission is underway to retake the nearby city of Fallujah.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said some IS fighters began feeding information to the coalition about targets and movements of the group's officials because they needed money after the extremist group sharply reduced salaries in the wake of coalition and Russian airstrikes on IS-held oil facilities earlier this year. The damage and the loss of important IS-held supply routes into Turkey have reportedly hurt the group's financing.
"They have executed dozens of fighters on charges of giving information to the coalition or putting (GPS) chips in order for the aircraft to strike at a specific area," said Abdurrahman, referring to IS in Syria.
The militants have responded with methods of their own for rooting out spies, said the informant. For example, they have fed false information to a suspect member about the movements of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and if an airstrike follows on the alleged location, they know the suspect is a spy, he said. They stop fighters in the street and inspect their mobile phones, sometimes making the fighter call any unusual numbers in front of them to see who they are.
After the killing of al-Anbari, seven or eight IS officials in Mosul were taken into custody and have since disappeared, their fates unknown, said the informant.
"Daesh is now concentrating on how to find informers because they have lost commanders that are hard to replace," said a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Baghdad, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. "Now any IS commander has the right to kill a person whom they suspect is an informer for the coalition."
Another Iraqi intelligence official said at least 10 IS fighters and security officials in Mosul were killed by the group in April on suspicion of giving information to the coalition because of various strikes in the city.
Mosul also saw one of the most brutal killings of suspected informants last month, when about a dozen fighters and civilians were drowned in a vat filled with acid, one senior Iraqi intelligence official said.
In the western province of Anbar, the Iraqi militant Wuhayeb was killed in a May 6 airstrike in the town of Rutba. Wuhayeb was a militant veteran, serving first in al-Qaida in Iraq before it became the Islamic State group. He first came to prominence in 2013, when a video showed him and his fighters stopping a group of Syrian truck drivers crossing Anbar. Wuhayeb asks each if he is Sunni or Shiite, and when they say Sunni, he quizzes them on how many times one bows during prayer. When they get it wrong, three of them admit to being Alawites, a Shiite offshoot sect, and Wuhayeb and his men lay the three drivers in the dirt and shoot them to death.
After Wuhayeb's killing, IS killed several dozen of its own members in Anbar, including some mid-level officials, on suspicion of informing on his location, and other members fled to Turkey, the two intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Some of the suspects were shot dead in front of other IS fighters as a lesson, the Iraqi officials said.
After the Tunisian militant Abu Hayjaa was killed on the road outside Raqqa on March 30, IS leadership in Iraq sent Iraqi and Chechen security officials to investigate, according to Abdurrahman and al-Talawy, the Syria-based activist. Suspects were rounded up, taken to military bases around Raqqa, and the purge ensued. Within days, 21 IS fighters were killed, including a senior commander from North Africa, Abdurrahman said.
Dozens more were taken back to Iraq for further questioning. Of those, 17 were killed and 32 were expelled from the group but allowed to live, Abdurrahman and al-Talawy said, both citing their contacts in the militant group. Among those brought to Iraq was the group's top security official for its Badiya "province," covering a part of central and eastern Syria. His fate remains unknown.
Non-IS members are also often caught up in the hunt for spies. In the Tabqa, near Raqqa, IS fighters brought a civilian, Abdul-Hadi Issa, into the main square before dozens of onlookers and announced he was accused of spying. A masked militant then stabbed him in the heart and, with the knife still stuck in the man's chest, the fighter shot him in the head with a pistol.
Issa's body was hanged in the square with a large piece of paper on his chest proclaiming the crime and the punishment. IS circulated photos of the killing on social media.
According to al-Talawy, several other IS members were killed in the town of Sukhna near the central Syrian city of Palmyra on charges of giving information to the coalition about IS bases in the area as well as trying to locate places where al-Baghdadi might be.
Sherfan Darwish, of the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces, which has been spearheading the fight against IS in Syria, said there is panic in IS-held areas where the extremists have killed people simply for having telecommunications devices in their homes.
"There is chaos. Some members and commanders are trying to flee," Darwish said.
The U.S. -led coalition has sought to use its successes in targeting IS leaders to intimidate others. In late May, warplanes dropped leaflets over IS-held parts of Syria with the pictures of two senior militants killed previously in airstrikes. "What do these Daesh commanders have in common?" the leaflet read. "They were killed at the hands of the coalition."
The jihadis have responded with their own propaganda.
"America, do you think that victory comes by killing a commander or more?" IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in a May 21 audio message. "We will not be deterred by your campaigns and you will not be victorious."
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
University of Miami
Early Years
The University of Miami was chartered in 1925 by a group of citizens who felt an institution of higher learning was needed for the development of their young and growing community. The South Florida land boom was at its peak, resources appeared ample, optimism flowed, and expectations were high. Supporters of the institution believed that the community offered unique opportunities to develop inter-American studies, to further creative work in the arts and letters, and to conduct teaching and research programs in tropical studies.
By the fall of 1926, when the first class of 646 full-time students enrolled at the University of Miami, the land boom had collapsed, and hopes for a speedy recovery were dashed by a major hurricane. In the next 15 years the University barely kept afloat. The collapse in South Florida was a mere prelude to a national economic depression. Such were the beginnings of what has since become one of the nation’s most distinguished private universities.
The University survived primarily due to the vision and persistence of its first president, Dr. Bowman F. Ashe (1926-52). Under his administration, the institution overcame bankruptcy, a reorganization, a world war, and then in the post-war years, experienced tremendous growth and expansion.
When the University opened in 1926, it consisted of the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Music, and the Evening Division. During the Ashe presidency, the University added the School of Law (1928), the School of Business Administration (1929), the School of Education (1929), the Graduate School (1941), the Marine Laboratory (1942; presently the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science), the School of Engineering (1947), and the School of Medicine (1952).
The 1950s-1970s
Dr. Jay F. W. Pearson assumed the presidency in 1953. A marine biologist by training, charter faculty member, and an assistant to President Ashe since 1929, Dr. Pearson presided during a decade of unprecedented growth. Total enrollment stood at over 10,000 in 1953 and increased to nearly 14,000 by the end of the Pearson presidency in 1962. New facilities and resources were added to keep pace with student enrollment as well as to increase the research strength of the institution. The University also added an undergraduate honors program, expanded the graduate programs to the doctoral level in a dozen fields, established a core curriculum for undergraduates, and vastly increased its research activity.
The University entered a new epoch, a time of reexamination and consolidation under its third president, Dr. Henry King Stanford (1962-81). Stanford’s presidency was marked by further emphasis on research activity, additions to physical facilities, and reorganization of the University’s administrative structure. Several research centers and institutes were established, including the Center for Advanced International Studies (1964), the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Evolution (1964), the Center for Theoretical Studies (1965), and the Institute for the Study of Aging (1975).
1980s
In addition, Foote was the catalyst behind the creation of the University’s strategic plan, a blueprint for the acceleration of the University’s excellence. A five-year $400 million Campaign for the University of Miami, launched in 1984, surpassed its goal in April 1988 and ended with a $517.5 million commitment.In 1981, Edward T. Foote II became its fourth president. Under his leadership, the University was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honor society; three new schools were created—Architecture, Communication, and the Graduate School of International Studies along with its research component, the North-South Center; average SAT scores of incoming freshmen increased by nearly 100 points; and the University began and completed a series of renovations that converted standard student dormitories into a system of residential colleges.
The 21st Century and Today
The University entered its present phase in 2001 when Donna E. Shalala became its fifth president. President Shalala was the longest serving Secretary of Health and Human Services in U.S. history. She served in the Clinton Administration from 1993-2000 and oversaw a $600 billion budget. Prior to that, she was Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin – Madison for six years, the first woman ever to head a Big Ten University. President Shalala also served as president of Hunter College, The City University of New York, for seven years. President Shalala, who spearheaded extraordinary progress in all areas, stepped down as president in May 2015.
On October 16, 2003, the University announced Momentum: The Campaign for the University of Miami, the most far-reaching and ambitious comprehensive campaign in its history. The historic fundraising drive surpassed its $1 billion goal in January 2006, a year and a half ahead of schedule, and the University established a new goal to raise an additional $250 million by the end of 2007. The campaign came to end December 31, 2007, having raised $1.4 billion‹making UM the first university in Florida to successfully mount a billion-dollar campaign.
For the sixth year in a row the University of Miami was ranked in the top 50 in U.S. News & World Report’sannual Best Colleges issue. In the 2015 report, UM is ranked No. 48 in the National Universities category. Under President Shalala’s leadership the University experienced an extraordinary rise in these popular rankings, up from No. 67 in 2001. U.S. News also listed several UM graduate programs in its 2014 America’s Best Graduate Schools rankings.
In 2012 the University publicly launched Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami, a $1.6 billion initiative to support academic resources, learning opportunities, and strategic initiatives throughout the University. The campaign goal was reached in May 2015.
In Fall 2014 the University enrolled 16,774 students in 115 bachelor’s, 104 master’s, and 63 doctoral programs. Student selectivity for incoming freshmen continues to be highly competitive, with a mean SAT score of 1320; about half graduated in the top 5 percent of their high school class and 66 percent graduated in the top 10 percent. Enrolled students represent all 50 states and 121 other countries. UM alumni live in all 50 states and 154 countries; more than 49,000 in Miami-Dade County.
In April 2015 Dr. Julio Frenk, dean at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Mexico’s former minister of health, was named the University’s sixth president. A noted leader in global public health and a renowned scholar and academic, President Frenk assumed the presidency on August 16. The University’s first Hispanic president, Frenk views Miami as uniquely positioned as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the University to be a leader in discourse throughout the hemisphere and beyond.
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