A sunbather applies sunscreen onto another in this file photo. The FDA announced it is delaying the release of new regulations for sunscreen manufacturers until December. (Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images)

Summer heat means more sun protection, but how can you tell if the product you buy actually does the job? New sunscreen standards that were supposed to go into effect next month are being held back until December by federal regulators.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, unprotected sun exposure is the most preventable risk factor for skin cancer. But because regulators have long classified sunscreens as a cosmetic, these products have largely avoided government oversight, making it difficult for consumers to determine which sunscreens work as they claim.

With skin cancer on the rise, the call for better testing and label requirements has grown louder. After years of deliberation, last June the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced new regulations designed to distinguish genuine protection from empty promises.

“We want consumers to understand that not all sunscreens are created equal,” says Lydia Velazquez, of the FDA’s Division of Nonprescription Regulation Development.

In a statement, Velazquez says the new guidelines “will help consumers know which products offer the best protection,” but for now they remain a mystery. On May 11, the FDA announced that they need to wait a little more.

Since 1978, the FDA has been considering regulations targeting inaccurate sun-protection claims, and critics say they can’t afford to stall any longer. Legislators and consumer advocacy groups are trying to convince the agency to stick with the original timeline.

Leading the charge is Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who says the FDA needs “to stop dragging their feet” and give “consumers the protection they deserve.”

Sun protection has been an important issue for Sen. Reed, author of the Sunscreen Labeling Protection Act. In a recent letter, Reed and other Senate Democrats called the decision to delay regulations “a major step backward” and strongly urged the FDA to reverse it.

Lawmakers say regulations that would have gone into effect on June 18 were “a positive signal to Americans that they would not go another summer without critical protection from the sun. Unfortunately, delaying the implementation of these standards by six months (for some manufacturers, and 18 months for others) will allow the deceptive practices of the industry to continue.”

The new guidelines are sure to have an effect on the sunscreen market, and the FDA says they are postponing new rules to “avert a shortage.” But according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), regulators are simply caving to industry pressure. The consumer advocate says the Personal Care Products Council and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association are the real reason behind regulation delay.

Not that the EWG has been all that impressed with the new guidelines. The group previously accused federal regulators of submitting to industry demands when the FDA released their “low-bar” new rules last year.

EWG estimates that 90 percent of sunscreens on the market are already in compliance with what it calls the FDA’s “weak” regulations on efficacy and safety. For example, the groups says new rules will allow most products on the U.S. market to use the label ‘broad spectrum sunscreen,’ even though “some will not offer enough protection to assure Americans they can stay in the sun without suffering skin damage from invisible UVA radiation.”

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Eight additional states have decided to loosen ties with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate on schools, the Department of Education said on Tuesday.

In exchange for other federal mandates, states can opt out of NCLB and still receive federal funds for their schools, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated in a conference call May 29.

The requirements states must meet are to develop plans that will “prepare all students for college and successful careers, focusing aid on the neediest students, and supporting effective teaching and leadership,” Duncan said.

To date, there are 19 states that have chosen not to use NCLB standards, with 18 more under review. The eight new states are Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

Duncan said that relieved of NCLB’s one-size-fits-all mandate, schools will now be able to create “locally catered solutions to meet their unique educational challenges.”

There are three main goals that states have to meet: have college and career ready standards; create a plan to strengthen, bring up, and support teachers and principals; and create an accountability system to find the lowest performing schools, or schools with the highest inequality in student performance, and focus on making them better.

No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2001, is the current reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” initiative. The program aims to ensure all children receive an equal education.

ESEA historically has been reauthorized every five years, but NCLB has been in place for over 10 years, yet to be reauthorized by Congress.

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The pumping of groundwater in arid regions of Texas and California for agricultural purposes may threaten overall U.S. food security, researchers said.

Researchers evaluated groundwater usage in the California’s main agricultural hub, the Central Valley, and the High Plains, according to a release from the University of Texas-Austin on Tuesday.

“We’re already seeing changes in both areas,” said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist the university and lead author of the study. “We’re seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley.”

The High Plains, which stretches from Texas to South Dakota, and the Central Valley are considered the main agricultural areas of the United States, producing a large amount of the country’s fruits and vegetables as well as grains, respectively.

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The head of the National Weather Service retired on Tuesday following an investigation that staff improperly redirected millions of dollars in budget resources to different accounts without congressional approval.

Jack Hayes stepped down on Friday, according to a note he sent out to staff members. He did not mention anything about the controversy, according to the Federal Times.

The investigation found that the money was not used for personal gain or for fraud but it “does not excuse, or reduce the seriousness of the employees’ actions,” Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees the National Weather Service, was quoted as saying.

The Service “operated with an unacceptable lack of transparency,” she added.

After the investigation, the agency asked Congress if it could relocate $36 million in its total spending for 2012 to local forecasting and equipment upgrades, reported Reuters, citing NOAA spokesperson Scott Smullen.

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Dr. Fernanda Mercade conducts a routine checkup on a patient in a community clinic in Miami, Fla., in March. Health professionals advocate more education, more engagement between patient and doctor, and more programs to encourage healthy lifestyles and drive down health care costs. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Chronic disease and costly testing are two big contributors to health care costs in the United States, with many diseases being preventable and many medical tests being unnecessarily performed. Addressing both issues could produce much-needed savings, say health care professionals. These issues were addressed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., at a discussion organized by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Alliance for Health Reform.

Chronically ill patients account for around three-quarters of the spending on health care in the United States, around $1.6 trillion a year, says Dr. Kenneth Thorpe, professor and chair of the department of Health Policy & Management at Emory University. He said that is it not only the biggest source of spending, but it is also the fastest growing. A number of chronic illnesses, like kidney disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, have risen over the last decade, he said.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one of the sponsors of the D.C. forum, health care costs are also expected to grow faster than national income in the future. The foundation also notes that while Medicare covers the elderly and people with disabilities, and Medicaid provides coverage to low-income families, enrollment has grown in both—with aging baby boomers entering Medicare and the recession driving the needy to Medicaid. “In total, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010,” the Kaiser Family Foundation says on its website.

Chronic illnesses are not only a burden to the health care system, they also impact the economy directly through loss of productivity. Dr. Thorpe estimates that for every $1 spent on health care, $4 are lost in productivity as a result of chronic illnesses. He is most concerned about obesity. Directly linked to the rise in diabetes, obesity has doubled in the last decade, now affecting over 30 percent of the population.

In total, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2010.

—Kaiser Family Foundation

When comparing adults who are obese with those of average weight, the obese adults will spend 20 to 40 percent more on health care over the course of a lifetime, he said. Many chronic diseases like obesity are a result of lifestyle choices and are largely preventable under the right interventions, says Dr. Thorpe, but Medicare does not address those initiatives.

“We need to find ways to change the incoming health profile of people coming into the program [Medicare] because the benefits of interventions in a program like Medicare are enormous,” he said. According to Dr. Thorpe, the United States will spend $500 billion to $600 billion over the next decade on “readmission for things that we can potentially prevent.”

Costly Testing

High-tech medical equipment testing is also adding to the cost of health care. While Joseph Antos, health care expert with the American Enterprise Institute, defends those technological advances saying in many ways they have proved effective, he adds that it is in the routine procedures that he sees the waste. Costly and sometimes intrusive testing, like blood tests, X-rays, and scans, are done with constant regularity and with what seems to be disregard as to whether they are necessary.

“That is where the money is for the very sick people and obviously that is where the money is for the not very sick people,” he said at the Alliance for Health Reform discussion. “It is not in the major surgery … it is in the seemingly ordinary interventions that we are used to. That is where all the money is.”

Shannon Brownlee, a health policy specialist at the New America Foundation, says many people, and particularly the elderly, are subject to all sorts of testing without anyone assessing whether it is actually leading to better outcomes.

“Mindless testing that tends to happen without really thinking: What will the clinician do with the information? Will it change the course of treatment? Is it what the patient wants?” she told The Epoch Times.

“What is sometimes missed is the thing that has the greatest influence on us, that has nothing to do with hospitals,” she said, referring to good diets and exercise. “They have everything to do with whether or not we teach kids and adults about what to eat and how to eat, and why they need to get exercise, and how hard it is to get exercise.”

“In so many places, and we have made great strides in smoking, but obesity is going to swamp us,” she said.

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An elderly woman walks in San Jose on May 12. (RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/GettyImages)

Women past menopause should not take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) due to increased risk of disease, says a recent statement by a panel of preventive medicine experts.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released a draft recommendation statement May 29 that found the potential harm of HRT, and its use of estrogen and progestin, greater than the potential benefit. The group suggests that HRT not only fails to protect against heart disease, it actually increases the risk of that and other ills.

The task force “recommends against the use of combined estrogen and progestin for the prevention of chronic conditions in postmenopausal women,” according to the draft statement.

Osteoporosis, a disease that causes loss of bone density and bone tissue, can be a debilitating, painful condition that impacts menopausal women over 50. Hormones were once touted as a fountain of youth, meant to keep bones strong, skin supple, brains smart, and hearts healthy.

Menopausal women over 50 have a lower risk of hip fractures and other fractures if they take hormones. “The USPSTF found convincing evidence that estrogen and progestin therapy is of moderate benefit in reducing the risk for fractures in postmenopausal women,” the USPSTF stated.

But according to the draft recommendation, the group “found adequate evidence that its use is also associated with moderate harms, including an increase in the risk for stroke, dementia, gallbladder disease, and urinary incontinence. There is convincing evidence of a small increase in the incidence of invasive breast cancer, and adequate evidence of a small increase in breast cancer deaths.”

The advice does not apply to women under 50. For them, estrogen alone can reduce the risk of breast cancer, although it is not yet understood why that is the case.

The task force used data from a Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) randomized, controlled trial, involving participants of an average age of 64—well past menopause.

Hormone replacement therapy had already fallen out of favor for post-menopausal women over evidence that it increases the risk of breast cancer.

It is possible that hormones can be safely used to help women make the transition through menopause, which can be associated with hot flashes, insomnia, and other discomforts. The task force recommends a black-box warning, advising doctors to prescribe the lowest possible dose for a limited time, for younger women than those in the trial.

Other credible sources recommend women avoid HRT altogether. “The American Heart Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend against the use of menopausal hormonal therapy for the primary or secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease,” said the USPSTF. “The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and the American Academy of Family Physicians recommend against the use of hormonal therapy in postmenopausal women for the prevention of chronic conditions.”

Controversy

The USPSTF has made controversial recommendations before, including fewer mammograms for women and abandoning the PSA prostate test for men, suggesting the two screenings may lead to false positives and overtreatment. The PSA is suspected of not accurately detecting prostate cancer.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) oversees and assists the work of the USPSTF. The task force, created in 1984, is made up of 16 volunteer members “from the fields of preventive medicine and primary care” charged with “making evidence-based recommendations

Being a draft statement, the findings are “distributed solely for the purpose of pre-release review” and do not “represent and should not be interpreted to represent an AHRQ determination or policy.”

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force invites the public to comment on its advice until June 26.

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Novelist Toni Morrison is presented with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Barack Obama during an East Room event May 29 at the White House in Washington, D.C. The Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, is presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Members of South Korean special warfare command parachute during a rehearsal for the Armed Forces Day south of Seoul, on Sept. 29, 2009. (Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images)

Following a news report claiming that U.S. and South Korean special forces had been parachuting into North Korea on intelligence-gathering missions, the U.S. military on Tuesday denied the report and told AFP that a source had been misquoted.

Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley, commander of special forces in South Korea, was quoted at a conference saying soldiers from the United States and South Korea had been dropped across the border into North Korea for “special reconnaissance” missions in the Tokyo-based current affairs magazine The Diplomat. Col. Jonathan Withington, public affairs officer for U.S. Forces Korea, said the report took Tolley, “completely out of context.”

“Quotes have been made up and attributed to him,” Withington told AFP, also denying that any U.S. or South Korean forces had parachuted into North Korea.

The Diplomat pulled the article offline on Tuesday saying that they are seeking corroboration

“While the author strongly disputes the contention that any quote was fabricated, we acknowledge the possibility that Brig. Gen. Tolley was speaking hypothetically, about future war plans rather than current operations. The author insists he heard no such qualification, but if there has been a misunderstanding then we regret any confusion,” wrote posted the Diplomat in lieu of the article.

The author of the article, South Carolina-based freelance journalist Dave Axe, denied the military’s accusations and tweeted Tuesday afternoon the “military is lying about general’s comments.”

Axe said that Kimberly Dozier, an Associated Press correspondent whom Tolley had spoken to in private after the conference that they attended, has confirmed the parachuting that Tolley spoke about in Axe’s story.

Steve Herman, Seoul bureau chief and correspondent of Voice of America, backed up Axe and tweeted “An experienced military reporter in the room in Tampa May 22 tells me @daxe did NOT misquote BGEN Tolley on SOF into #DPRK.”

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Graduating students celebrate at New York University's commencement ceremony at Yankee Stadium on May 16, 2012 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

This year’s high school and college graduates are expected to get a generous send-off, with the total spending on graduation gifts expected to top $4.7 billion, the National Retail Federation estimated.

From simple greeting cards to gift cards to clothes and electronics, one-third of Americans will buy graduation gifts this year, a decent increase from last year’s 30.7 percent.

Over one third of families and relatives of fresh graduates who participated in the federation’s survey said they plan to give gift cards as their graduation gifts, a 5 percentage point increase from last year.

“The flexibility, convenience, and ease of purchasing gift cards makes this type of gift the ideal way for consumers to show their appreciation while also letting the graduate choose the perfect gift for them,” the federation said in a statement.

The federation also found that consumers’ average spending is continuing to rise, with Americans willing to spend as much as $99.94 on graduation gifts, $9 higher than last year.

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A Chinese worker checks the circuit boards at a factory in Mianyang, southwest China's Sichuan province. A recent study found that a U.S. military chip manufactured in China—widely used in systems for weapons, nuclear power plants, and public transport—contains a built-in backdoor. (STR/AFP/GettyImages)

A recent study found that a U.S. military chip manufactured in China—widely used in systems for weapons, nuclear power plants, and public transport—contains a built-in backdoor that allows the Chinese regime access to critical U.S. systems.

“In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for national security and public infrastructure,” writes security researcher Sergei Skorobogatov on his blog. Skorobogatov is from U.K.-based Hardware Security Group at the University of Cambridge, the group that conducted the study.

The Stuxnet weapon he refers to was a piece of malware that was able to physically destroy nuclear centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear plant.

Going off claims from some of the world’s top intelligence agencies—among them MI5, NSA, and IARPA—that computer chips could be preloaded with potentially devastating malware, Hardware Security Group decided to put this to the test.

“We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China,” Skorobogatov said. They used a new form of chip scanning technology to “see if there were any unexpected features on the chip.”

“U.K. officials are fearful that China has the capability to shut down businesses, military and critical infrastructure through cyber-attacks and spy equipment embedded in computer and telecommunications equipment,” he said, noting, “There have been many cases of computer hardware having backdoors, Trojans, or other programs to allow an attacker to gain access or transmit confidential data to a third party.”

Their complete findings will be published in September, in a paper called “Breakthrough silicon scanning discovers backdoor in military chip,” which Skorobogatov says “will expose some serious security issues in the devices, which are supposed to be unbreakable.”

The chip scanning technology is still relatively new, and thus, studies such as this are few and far between. Skorobogatov notes that 99 percent of chips are manufactured in China, and the prevalence of such malware is something he and his research group would like to investigate further.

Even so, the issue of the Chinese regime planting malware in exported technology is not unknown.

Back in July 2011, Greg Schaffer, acting deputy undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Protection and Programs Directorate, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

After being pressed with questions around this, Schaffer admitted he was “aware of some instances” of foreign-made software and hardware being purposely embedded with malware, The Epoch Times reported.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) continued pressing Schaffer on this, and after trying to avoid the question or give vague responses several times, Schaffer admitted that he was aware of this happening, and said, “We believe there is significant risk in the area of supply chain.”

“This is one of the most complicated and difficult challenges that we have,” Schaffer said. “There are foreign components in many U.S. manufactured devices.”

Few details have been revealed since. Yet, in April 2011, the Commerce Department sent a survey to U.S. telecommunication companies—including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.—demanding “confidential information about their networks in a hunt for Chinese cyberspying,” Bloomberg reported in November 2011.

Built-in Spying

Among the information requested were details on foreign-made hardware and software on company networks, and it asked about any findings of “unauthorized electronic hardware” or anything else suspicious, Bloomberg reported.

There seemed to be a tight lid on this, even then. A senior U.S. official spoke to Bloomberg on anonymity, noting, they report, “The survey represents ‘very high-level’ concern that China and other countries may be using their growing export sectors to develop built-in spying capabilities in U.S. networks…”

This was further exposed a month later by author and freelance writer Robert McGarvey, reporting for Internet Evolution. He was told by Don DeBolt, director of threat research at the New York security-consulting firm Total Defense, that “China has been bugging our computers for a long time,” and “We have seen cases where malware is installed at the BIOS level. Security suites do not detect it.” Computers all have a BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) chip that is sometimes hard-coded, meaning they can only be written once and contain information about the system’s hardware.

And just recently, on April 29, former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who now runs his own cybersecurity firm, told Smithsonian Magazine that such Chinese malware even exists at the consumer level—in shocking prevalence—stating that everything from silicon chips, to routers, to hardware could be loaded with logic bombs, Trojan horses, and other forms of malware.

“Every major company in the United States has already been penetrated by China,” Clarke told Smithsonian Magazine.

“My greatest fear,” he continued, “is that, rather than having a cyber-Pearl Harbor event, we will instead have this death of a thousand cuts. Where we lose our competitiveness by having all of our research and development stolen by the Chinese.

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Richard Baldwin, a retired naval officer, was keen to talk about his father who is veteran of World War II, on Memorial Day. (Shar Adams/Epoch Times Staff)

Washington, D.C.—It’s a pageant, the Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C. The military bands sport plumes, braid and brass sections blasting, and drums rat-a-tat-tatting, challenging all to ignore them. The streets around Constitution Avenue are clogged with military paraphernalia, hummers and jeeps, amphibious vehicles and helicopters, and most of all servicemen from all the forces and all the battles, from the Civil War to the modern military. But they are all there and they line up for something more serious, to pay their respects to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

“It’s all about honoring the memory of the veterans who came before us and fought for our freedom and liberty, keeping the country together as one,” Jeffrey French, a plant program manager on Andrews Air Force Base, said from under his American Civil War regalia.

French said he felt “proud and honored” to be able to march in the parade. Memorial Day was a significant day, he said, providing an opportunity to remind people not only of the sacrifices those early soldiers made during the Civil War, but also of those who continue to lay their lives on the line for the United States.

“A lot of people since the Revolutionary War have sacrificed and shed their blood for us to have freedom and liberty,” French told The Epoch Times, “This is the least we can do to honor them.”

World War II

Richard Baldwin is a retired naval officer, but it was his father whom he was keen to talk about on Memorial Day.

A veteran of World War II, his father had been in a combat force in the Philippines when the Japanese surrendered and was in Tokyo Bay September 1945, when the Japanese signed the ‘Instrument of Surrender’ aboard the USS Missouri.

An American farm boy who, within a couple of months, had gone from working the fields with mules and lighting the nights with kerosene lamps, to becoming part of the U.S. combat force in the Western Pacific, his father had never spoken with Baldwin about his war years, despite their shared military background. That is, until last year.

“He is very relaxed about it—there is no trauma there, but he doesn’t elaborate very far from the question,” Baldwin said, adding that it is only since he has been doing his own research as part of a heritage project that he has found the right questions to ask his father.

Now Baldwin says he has to keep the questions coming, as he realizes the time is precious. His father is 84 years old.

The Korean War

Sitting high on a red-white-and-blue float were distinguished U.S. Air Force pilots from the Korean War. Long known as the “Forgotten War,” Korean War veterans had returned from their war service to a largely disinterested public.

“It means a heck of a lot to us veterans of the Korean War that the Department of Defense and the country have seen fit to continue to recognize what we put forth in that war,” said Lt. Gen. Charles Cleveland.

“Some people call it the ‘Forgotten War’ and I like every effort to make sure that is not true,” he said.

“It was a time after World War II, when the Marshall spirit had kind of gone away, and the armed forces had disbanded to a great degree,” he explained, “A lot of us felt our efforts were not fully appreciated, so it is so nice to know that, 50–60 years after the fact, that we are being appreciated.”

Ironically, the Korean War was particularly significant for the U.S. Air Force, as it was the first war in which the air forces fought as a separate service.

“We didn’t win that war ourselves, the Air Force, but we kept the army and marines from losing it,” he said.

Tuskegee Airmen

There are not many left, but representatives of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American military aviators in the U.S. armed forces, were there. Ninety-three-year-old Cicero Satterfield a groundsman for the Tuskegee Airmen, said he was just happy to be still alive.

“I appreciate being here,” he told The Epoch Times as he sat proudly in his jeep, “Many of us have died. “

Satterfield entertained a continual stream of well-wishers, some of whom just thanked him for his service while others were armed with books about the famous airmen for him to sign.

Gold Star Families

For Gold Star families, Memorial Day does not have the same joy. Seated on a special float among other Gold Star ladies, Leslie Spencer holds up a poster of the son she lost in the Iraq War.

“His last words to me were ‘Mum, I never want to be forgotten,’” she said, adding: “All soldiers should never, ever be forgotten and Memorial Day should be in their memory.”

Spencer said she was displaying the photo of her son so that everyone “could see who Raymond Spencer was, and remember him.”

“You see the numbers come up, you know so-and-so was killed in Iraq, but it is not the same thing,” she said, “So here is a picture of who he really was.”

On the Gold Star float was Vivianne Wersel, president of the Arlington Chapter of Gold Star Wives.

“A day doesn’t day go by that I don’t think about my husband, Rich, so it is a bittersweet day,” she said. “It is great to see the community recognize them, but at the same time, it hurts.”

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U.S. President Barack Obama (C) walks up to lay a commemorative wreath during a ceremony on Memorial Day at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery on May 28, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. For Memorial Day President Obama is paying tribute to military veterans past and present who have served and sacrificed their lives for their country. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama on Monday paid tribute to war veterans at Arlington National Cemetery and reminded Americans that the nation is ending its decade-long war in Afghanistan.

After taking part in the traditional laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the president gave a speech before a large audience, promising war veterans that “we will be there for you.”

“These 600 acres are home to Americans from every part of the country who gave their lives in every part of the globe,” he said.

The president said the war in Iraq has ended after nine years and is “winding down” in Afghanistan. With many troops coming back home from their services, the president said the country needs to return the favor.

“We have to serve them and their families as well as they have served us,” Obama said in his weekly radio and online address. “By making sure that they get the health care and benefits they need; by caring for our wounded warriors and supporting our military families; and by giving veterans the chance to go to college, find a good job and enjoy the freedom that they risked everything to protect.”

Obama is scheduled to visit the Vietnam War Memorial later in the day. The White House said the gathering at the memorial would mark the beginning of a 13-year program to honor those who served during the Vietnam War.

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(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

U.S. military veterans bow their heads during a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of an unknown Union soldier who died during the Civil War, at the Congressional Cemetery May 25 in Washington, D.C.

The ceremony is part of weekend events marking the 25th anniversary of the Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom, a motorcycle rally in the nation’s capital.

Started in 1988 as a protest to bring more awareness to issues about POW/MIAs, Rolling Thunder now has 90 chapters across the United States and expects more than 900,000 veterans and their supporters to participate in the ride.

A re-enactment of the communist regime in China harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners at a public rally in Tokyo on Sept. 13, 2006. (Clearwisdom.net)

The U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Report, published on May 24, 2012, addressed the issue of illicit organ harvesting in China, mentioning Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs. 

The report says: “In response to allegations that the organs of executed prisoners were harvested for transplant purposes, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu in 2009 stated that inmates are not a proper source for human organs and prisoners must give written consent for their organs to be removed. Overseas and domestic media and advocacy groups continued to report instances of organ harvesting, particularly from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs.” 

Another action taken by the U.S. government to prevent people involved in the crime of forced organ harvesting from entering the country is a new question added last June to the USCIS non-immigrant visa application form DS-160. It asks whether the applicant “has participated in forced human organ transplantation.”

According to a State Department spokesperson, this question is based on Section 232 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act published on Sept. 30, 2002 (approved by Congress and signed by then president George W. Bush), denying entry to the United States to Chinese and other nationals engaged in coercive organ or bodily tissue transplantation. The same section is included in United States Code 8 USC1182f. 

The recent report is the first time the U.S. government’s human rights report has mentioned live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs.

Editor’s Note: When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing any longer to participate in the persecution. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes.

Read the original Chinese article.

chinareports@epochtimes.com

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People read the names of the 58,272 servicemen who died as a result of the Vietnam War. (Shar Adams/The Epoch Times)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) in Washington, D.C. is a moving experience at any time—but on Veterans Day and Memorial Day weekends, it is a complexity of emotions. At once heartbreaking and consoling, tragic and yet healing, it is both sacred and profound.

Thousands of Vietnam veterans, mothers and fathers, families and friends, descend upon the memorial on those days. They come to touch the sheer granite wall that is inscribed with the names of every serviceman who died, or was declared missing in action, as a result of the Vietnam War.

They track their loved ones from the four books encased at the entrance, moving down the wall, peering and stopping to gently trace their fingers over an etched name: Many weep; some lay memorabilia that is picked up at the end of the day and archived for eventual display; others go quietly down memory lane, visiting a past that for most has been too painful to revisit.

Vietnam veteran Mark Del Maestro at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Shar Adams/The Epoch Times)

“You can spend some time with the brothers and introduce them to some people,” Vietnam veteran Mark Del Maestro told The Epoch Times at the memorial site. He tells the people, “This is the guy that I lost in Vietnam, I’d like to introduce him, he was 20.”

New Jersey-born Del Maestro served on the riverboats out of Da Nang and lived through the Tet Offensive. He lost five high school friends and three from the riverboats.

“Their names are on the wall. I can go and see their names,” he said, adding that for Vietnam veterans, “We can put a face to a name.”

Vietnam War

Del Maestro spoke openly about the Vietnam War and the memorial, now known simply as “the wall,” but it wasn’t always this way. For years Vietnam veterans were barely able to acknowledge they had fought in the war, let alone speak of their experience. When America’s servicemen returned from their duty in Vietnam, they were not met with the welcome that U.S. servicemen receive now. There were no welcome announcements at U.S. airports, nor any special recognition.

“We were literally and figuratively spat on when we came home,” said Tom Forbes, who was in the 1st Air Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War and who now serves as a docent at the VVM wall.

Returned servicemen paid the price for one of the most controversial wars in U.S. history. Protesters took to the streets and confrontations took place not only with police, but in neighborhoods and families, as well.

“The protesters were taught to spit on a soldier, when it was really Congress that was making the calls. We were just doing our job, and they took it out on a soldier,” said Del Maestro.

A Vietnam veteran takes a photo of the 60-foot pole and American flag, which, along with the sculpture of the “Three Servicemen”, was a compromise for those that did not agree with “the wall” as the official memorial. (Shar Adams/The Epoch Times)

Controversy and The Wall

It was seven years after the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War that the VVM wall was built. Its construction was also surrounded by controversy.

A competition had been set up to choose a design. There were four criteria: To be “reflective and contemplative in character; harmonize with its surroundings; contain the names of those who had died in the conflict or who were still missing; make no political statement about the war.”

The winning design was by 21-year-old Yale University architecture graduate, Chinese-American Maya Ying Lin.

The choice was not unanimous, however. Some wanted a statue, as tradition would have it; others felt a wall was demeaning, because it fell below ground level. Others did not like the black granite—it represented shame, some said. And one vet, who was too emotional to give his name, said it did not appeal because of the country of origin of the designer: “Asian,” he said.

Eventually, under the threat that the memorial would not go ahead, a compromise was reached—the VVM would include a statue and the American flag.

Healing Place

Today, the larger-than-life bronze statue of ‘Three Servicemen’ by Washington sculptor Frederick Hart, and a 12-foot by 18-foot American flag on a 60-foot pole, stand at the Lincoln Memorial entrance to the VVM wall. Young Maya Lin’s dream is also fulfilled.

Her vision was “to create a park within a park—a quiet, protected place unto itself, yet harmonious with the overall plan of Constitution Gardens,” according to the VVM website.

The bronze statue of the “Three Servicemen” (Shar Adams/The Epoch Times)

Amazingly, Ms. Lin received a B grade from Yale for the original design—Charlie, one of the veterans who works as a docent at the memorial, told The Epoch Times.

The black granite wall has a mirror-like surface that not only reflects the surrounding trees and monuments but, more specifically, reflects the viewer as he or she searches for that special name.

“It’s very powerful,” he said.

“The memorial has given dignity back to the families of the fallen because of the way they were treated then,” said Charlie, “And lets them know their loved ones will never be forgotten.”

Charlie did not want to give his last name. “It is not about me,” he said, but confessed that “the wall” had made a huge impact on him. When it was to be dedicated, Charlie had not wanted to go. “I had had enough arguments during the war,” he said. However, with his wife’s encouragement, he came to D.C. for the dedication in November 1982.

There were 250 thousand veterans in D.C. that day. Charlie had never seen so many servicemen together.

“The mantra was ‘welcome home’” he said, recalling the parade down Constitution Avenue that day. “We came around a corner and there was a World War I veteran standing there with his helmet on holding a sign saying ‘Thank You, Vets.’ There wasn’t a dry eye after that. It was just so powerful. You talked to people you didn’t know, told stories, and realized you were not alone.”

Charlie is a regular volunteer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall now and is looking forward to Memorial Day this year, which not only celebrates the 30th anniversary of the wall, but also the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. He is also looking forward to Veterans Day in November when all 58,272 names inscribed on the wall will be read out.

“It is important for veterans to come here,” he said, “They will feel the support and realize they are not alone.”

The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (R) visits with troops March 14 at Forward Operating Base Shukvani, Afghanistan. Panetta said the United States is heading in the right direction by winding down the war in Afghanistan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Responding to criticism to wind down the decade-long war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the United States is heading in the right direction.

“We still have a fight on our hands. The American people need to know that. The world needs to know that we still have a fight on our hands,” Panetta said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We’re still dealing with the

Taliban. Although they’ve been weakened, they are resilient.”

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney recently called President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan timeline problematic, saying the United States should not tell its enemies when they are going to pull out.

Romney’s description of Obama’s plan is merely “campaign rhetoric,” said Panetta, adding that the “50 nations in NATO … agree[d] to a plan in Afghanistan” in Chicago last week to pull out nearly all troops by the end of 2014.

“That is the plan that has been agreed to. And it’s a plan that is working,” he said.

Panetta said the time frame is the best way to draw down the number of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan and transfer power over to the Afghan army.

“The only way to get this accomplished—in terms of the transition that we have to go through—is to be able to set the kind of timelines that have been set here in order to ensure that we fulfill the mission of an Afghanistan that governs and secures itself,” he added.

The defense secretary also addressed Pakistan’s decision to sentence Dr. Shakil Afridi, the man who gave the CIA information about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, leading to the raid last May that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

“It is so difficult to understand and it’s so disturbing that they would sentence this doctor to 33 years for helping in the search for the most notorious terrorist in our times,” Panetta said.

The United States has called on Pakistan to release the doctor, but Islamabad has said any other government would have done the same, because he aided a foreign government’s intelligence agency.

Afridi ran a vaccination program at the behest of the CIA to collect DNA from bin Laden’s family to find his compound in the town of Abbottabad.

Panetta said, “This doctor was not working against Pakistan.”

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(Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest)

Seattle will soon be home to the nation’s largest urban food forest. Planted on a seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, the site will not only provide locally grown food to the area, but is viewed by those involved as a path to increased community cooperation and friendship. 

“There is a goodwill movement to grow organic food in public spaces for the health of the people and other species that are beneficial to our food chain,” said co-founder Glenn Herlihy, in an email statement. “This goodwill builds a stronger more resilient community, regenerates habitat on public lands and elevates many pressures on the environment with locally grown food.”

A food forest, or edible garden, is a manufactured forest that’s designed to mimic a woodland ecosystem, but with different varieties of edible trees, bushes, and flowers substituted.

The Beacon Food Forest will include hundreds of kinds of edible plants including walnut and chestnut trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, apple and pear trees, pineapple, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, a variety of citrus, and various herbs, among others. 

Fruit and nut trees will be grown on the upper level canopy, while below will be berry shrubs, edible perennials, and annuals.

Most of what is to be planted in Seattle’s food forest will grow perennially, meaning that the plants will live for more than two years. Thus, the vegetation will, over time, become a large orchard capable of sustaining itself year after year. 

A handwritten mission statement is displayed at a forest design party in Beacon Hill, Wash., September 2011. (Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest)

The food forest is specifically designed so that the layers of plants and the insects they attract benefit each other, to increase crop production and provide a resilient community.

The organizers see a comparison between the plant diversity and relationships in the forest and human diversity and cooperation in planting and maintaining it.

The modern ecological system known as permaculture, where a designed ecosystem is managed for diversity and sustainability, is based on the ancient concept of food forests. Permaculture promotes the sustainable relationships between plants and animals that are inherently found in natural forests or in other natural ecosystems.

Permaculture expert and a designer of the Beacon Food Forest, Jenny Pell, discussed the idea of food forests in an interview with the independent media program Living on Earth. “Permaculture, it’s an ethical framework with a lot of principles that give us a design methodology, really trying to get to sustainable, resilient human communities,” Pell said.

Creating relationships to form an ecosystem that is able to produce high yields of food with less maintenance requires putting plants together that are mutually beneficial. Many plants are even included only for their ability to attract insects for promoting a system of natural pest management. 

Glenn Herlihy, a co-founder of the Beacon Food Forest project, does the introductions at a forest design party in Beacon Hill, Wash., September 2011. (Courtesy of Friends of the Beacon Food Forest)

“We’re really good at picking things that are going to play well together,” said Pell. “And when we step back, those things are going to grow in their own relationships–nature kind of takes over at that point.”

The Friends of Beacon Food Forest community group received a $20,000 grant from Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods to hire a small design team that included Pell. In December of 2011, the project received $100,000 from the Department of Neighborhoods to begin phase one of the food forest plan. 

Designers hope to finish the first phase–a 1.75-acre test zone to be planted by the end of the year–and in the years to come they hope to convert the remaining acreage to fruit trees, according to Beacon Food Forest project committee member Glenn Herlihy on npr.org’s The Salt. 

Eventually being able to offer small plots for gardeners at around $10 a year is also in the plans, says Herlihy.

Urban Gardens

Seattle is not the first city to grow an edible forest. In Portland, Ore., a 2,600-square foot garden is now in its fifth season. In 2010, Atlanta expanded its botanical garden to include a one-acre edible garden.

Since 2007, Philadelphia has become home to 22 free to low-cost food forests that have sprouted up all over the city. Another Pennsylvania city, Pittsburgh, is preparing to grow its orchards in vacant parking lots. Other efforts to establish edible gardens as part of a free health clinic are nearing completion in Syracuse, N.Y.

In central Portugal, a nearly 20-acre forest garden system has been in cultivation since 2008.

For 28 generations, a single family in Vietnam has maintained a two-acre 300-year-old food forest.

For thousands of years, forest gardens have existed in Central and South America. To this day many food forests can still be found scattered throughout the Maya and Amazon rain forests. 

A 2,000-year-old food forest oasis in southern Morocco is maintained by over 800 people and still growing strong.

“But it’s been continually managed over time for 2,000 years,” says Pell. “So, I think what’s captured people’s imaginations so much about this project worldwide is that it’s so solutions oriented. And it’s so accessible.”

Though Seattle’s food forest is being grown to serve the local community, wherever edible gardens sprout up, the Beacon Hill developers hope that the motivation for growing food forests continues to spread far and wide.

“The reaction from the community, the country and many global regions has been very positive,” Herlihy stated. “We encourage all people to join a local food growing project and empower their community with healthy living.”

The ancient method of forest gardening is still in use today, and the Beacon Food Forest is one of its most modern demonstrations.

For more information, please visit beaconfoodforest.org

A US Border Patrol vehicle drives along the fence separating the US from Mexico, near the town of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, on July 31, 2010. Since the creation of CBP in March 2003, the U.S. Border Patrol more than doubled in size to a force today of 21,370 agents. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON—A House Homeland Security subcommittee heard testimony May 17 on incidents of misconduct and criminal behavior of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees. While no one would disagree that the vast majority of DHS employees are honest and dedicated civil servants, a small and growing number are betraying the public trust by engaging in illegal and unethical behavior.

Even though there are stacks of [federal] government manuals, training materials and yearly briefings about ethics, lapses continue.

—Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Chairman, House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management.

“Since 2004, over 130 agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been arrested, charged, or otherwise prosecuted on corruption charges. Allegations and convictions include alien and drug smuggling, money laundering, and conspiracy,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management, said in his opening statement at the hearing.

Besides Customs and Boarder Protection personnel, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have also abused their positions, McCaul observed.

McCaul said an ICE agent in February pleaded guilty to illegally providing documents to individuals with ties to drug trafficking organizations. ICE agents have been convicted of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes from immigrants seeking U.S. documentation, he said.

ICE personnel have been found guilty of filing fraudulent travel claims.

McCaul pointed to a 22-count indictment that “alleges TSA employees took payments to provide drug couriers unfettered access through Los Angeles International Airport so that drugs could be smuggled into the United States.”

“Even though there are stacks of [federal] government manuals, training materials, and yearly briefings about ethics, lapses continue,” McCaul said.

The drug trafficking organizations have turned to recruiting and corrupting DHS employees.

—Charles Edwards, Acting Inspector General, DHS

McCaul often expressed concern that breaches in security could permit terrorists entry into the United States. He declared that terrorists are seeking to infiltrate law enforcement employment. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee could be bribed to provide the necessary documentation for an alien terrorist to enter, or a TSA employee could allow illegal entry or an explosive device at one of the 450 airports it screens for passengers and baggage, or Customs and Border Protection personnel could do the same at the border.

Mexican Drug Cartels

Department of Homeland Security’s acting Inspector General Charles Edwards offered an explanation for the misconduct and criminal behavior that persists and flourishes, despite the vetting process for new employees and mandatory ethics training.

Edwards said that smuggling of people and goods across our borders has fallen into the hands of organized criminal enterprises. He said that the Mexican drug cartels today are more sophisticated and dangerous than any other organized criminal groups from the past.

“As the United States has enhanced border security with successful technologies and increased staffing to disrupt smuggling routes and networks, drug trafficking organizations have become not only more violent and dangerous, but more clever as well. The drug trafficking organizations have turned to recruiting and corrupting DHS employees.”

Edwards said that Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigations are hampered by the “brutality the cartels use to control their organizations and coerce witnesses,” and the high-tech resources that “unlimited money” can buy.

According to Edwards, border patrol agents and customs and border protection officers whose jobs could facilitate smuggling are prime targets for the crooks; other employees are useful to the cartels for the intelligence they can provide such as ongoing investigative activities and whether their members are in law enforcement databases.

By fiscal year 2011, the number of complaints against customs and border protection employees rose 38 percent at the Office of Investigations from fiscal year 2004, Edwards said.

The urgent need for DHS agencies to hire many new personnel was cited often as another factor for the growth of misconduct and criminal behavior.

According to Thomas Winkowski, acting deputy commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, deploying over 60,000 law enforcement officers and support personnel along the U.S. borders, at ports of entry and overseas.

“After the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol experienced a level of growth in personnel resources unprecedented in the history of U.S. law enforcement. Since the creation of CBP in March 2003, the U.S. Border Patrol more than doubled in size to a force today of 21,370 agents,” Winkowski says in written testimony.

Former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz received the Henry Kissinger Prize at the Foreign Ministry on May 24 in Berlin, Germany. The award is given annually by the American Academy in Berlin in recognition of outstanding contribution to transatlantic political relations. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

Standards that would have closed cybersecurity holes may have never been implemented by the American Gas Association (AGA) due to costs. Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) responded to these allegations with an open letter detailing the threats and requesting a response from AGA president and CEO Dave McCurdy.

American’s network of gas supply and delivery systems is among the “critical infrastructures” often referred to in cybersecurity documents. Critical infrastructures are private industries that are crucial to economy and safety of the United States; industries where a well-placed cyber-attack could have potentially devastating consequences. The financial and energy sectors are other example of critical infrastructures.

In the letter, Rockefeller addressed the AGA and the suppliers it represents. “Many Americans likely take for granted the service your industry provides, given its dependability and ubiquity,” he states. “A prolonged disruption to this energy supply, whether through a cyber-attack or other catastrophe, would be disastrous.”

After the initial review in 2006, the AGA published a report stating, “there are credible [cyber] vulnerabilities that threat agents could exploit.”

The report states that “with little effort,” an attacker could scan AGA communications from different sites—including between control centers. It adds that a hacker could also access its systems and change software used by field device operations.

At the control centers, SCADA systems write data to a master database, which is in turn used by other systems. “This interface also may be compromised, giving the attacker access to either SCADA operations or to sensitive data used by business operations,” the report states.

Now, in English, that means quite a bit. SCADA systems are often used to control industrial systems, such as moving parts, opening and closing valves, and controlling other vital functions. SCADA systems can also be hacked to speed up and physically destroy these systems, or to open a valve and release more of a substance than intended.

The Stuxnet worm, for example, was used to physically destroy nuclear centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear plant. Similarly, in April 2000, a man by the name of Vitek Boden hacked SCADA systems at a sewage treatment plant in Queensland, Australia, and dumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into creeks, parks, and a hotel.

It has been widely known for years that our critical infrastructure is vulnerable and that the threats are real. Yet, while the threats have grown, the vulnerabilities remain.

—Senator John Rockefeller

The AGA formed a working group to close the security holes found in its study, and created a set of standards, dubbed “AGA-12.” These were intended to guard data as it was sent by control systems. The AGA-12 went through testing, and won the support of both government agencies and private organizations, among them the Department of Energy and the Gas Technology Institute.

Yet, Dennis Holstein, an independent researcher who helped develop AGA-12, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that the standards were never used.

“What I think killed AGA-12 more than anything else was the cost of it. It was a success. But nobody was willing to pay $500 for a bump in the wire solution even if it radically improved security. I haven’t seen any deployment of it,” Holstein said.

This is what prompted Rockefeller to confront the AGA president and CEO in his letter.

Phone calls to the AGA were not returned by press deadline.

Sen. Rockefeller is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, but he notes that as the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “I am well aware of both the gravity and likelihood of cyber threats that could do great damage to the United States.”

“It has been widely known for years that our critical infrastructure is vulnerable and that the threats are real. Yet, while the threats have grown, the vulnerabilities remain,” he states.

Rockefeller is currently proposing the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which would create a partnership between the private sector and the federal government, to guard critical infrastructure. He introduced the bill on Feb. 14, alongside Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“I fear that the business justification for securing critical infrastructure will not come until it is too late, after a cyber-attack does great damage to our economy, or worse, cause a mass casualty event. At that point, the private sector will have little choice but to make the necessary investments in cybersecurity,” Rockefeller states.

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Rear Adm. Rick Breckenridge said in a statement that the fire on the U.S.S. Miami was “successfully extinguished.” The vessel was docked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

“I repeat, the fire is out,” reiterated Breckenridge.

The submarine’s nuclear reactor has been shut off for the past two months and remains in safe and stable condition. There were no weapons on board, the statement said.

“The fire and subsequent damage was limited to the forward compartment spaces only, which includes crew living and command and control spaces,” Breckenridge said. “The nuclear propulsion spaces were physically isolated.”

The heat and smoke within the confined area inside the vessel “made it challenging for fire-fighters to combat the blaze,” Breckenridge added. The injuries suffered were minor, he said, emphasizing “the heroic actions” of the local firefighters in battling the blaze.

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Hurricane Wilma, the last major hurricane to hit the East Coast, is shown from space Oct. 23, 2005, just before coming ashore in South Florida. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season produced a record-breaking number of severe hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina. (NOAA via Getty Images)

U.S. weather forecasters said Thursday that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be “near-normal.”

That means the coming season will produce between nine and 15 tropical storms, with four to eight turning into at least Category 1 hurricanes, with wind speeds of at least 74 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA predicted one to three storms will turn into major hurricanes with winds above 110 mph.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially starts June 1 and ends Nov. 30. It encompasses the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. However, major storms can form outside of this time frame, if weather conditions are favorable. Based on data from 1981 to 2010, in a typical season there are an average of six hurricanes.

Tropical Storm Alberto was the first named storm of this season after it formed off the coast of South Carolina on April 19. It was later downgraded and then vanished into the Atlantic. Whenever it appears, the next storm will be named Beryl.

“NOAA’s outlook predicts a less active season compared to recent years,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, in a statement.

One to three storms will turn into major hurricanes with winds above 110 mph.

—NOAA

Last year’s season, including Hurricane Irene—which made its way up the East Coast to New York City and beyond—was considered to have been of above-average activity. There were seven hurricanes and 13 tropical storms in 2011.

However, the agency said it cannot predict how many storms will actually hit land. “Regardless of the outlook, it’s vital for anyone living or vacationing in hurricane-prone locations to be prepared,” Lubchenco added. She recommended forming evacuation plans and stocking up on supplies like food and water.

A major hurricane has not hit the United States since the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season, which produced both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma.

The hurricane season could be affected by two factors, including cooler ocean temperatures in the eastern Atlantic and strong wind shear, NOAA said. It added that the El Nino phenomenon could also affect the formation of hurricanes, if the weather pattern develops in the late summer to early fall.

El Nino is the cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean that has far-reaching effects on the global climate. La Nina, which came to an end recently, is the cooling cycle of Pacific Ocean waters. Both weather cycles can cause extreme weather, including droughts and floods, throughout the world.

“In that case, conditions could be less conducive for hurricane formation and intensification during the peak months (August–October) of the season, possibly shifting the activity toward the lower end of the predicted range,” lead NOAA forecaster Gerry Bell said.

Earlier this month, the AccuWeather website predictions were close to NOAA’s predictions, with 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and two major hurricanes. Similarly, the Weather Channel predicted 11 named storms, six hurricanes, and two major hurricanes.

We may be expecting a run-of-the-mill hurricane season, but it never hurts to be prepared. “Another big storm is possible for the East Coast with heavy, flooding rain,” Paul Pastelok, AccuWeather’s lead long-range forecaster, said in late April after the website released its predictions.

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The BP refinery in Whiting, Ind., in this file photo. BP, under pressure from environmental groups, agreed to spend $400 million in pollution control upgrades to treat future emissions.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

CHICAGO—On the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan is the small town of Whiting, Ind.—home to the largest inland oil refinery in the United States, and the recent conclusion of a big environmental controversy.

BP’s Whiting Refinery has been in operation since 1889, even before the advent of the automobile, and the big oil company has been working to expand the facility for years. The state of Indiana gave the go ahead in 2008, but environmental and community groups have been fighting permits for expansion ever since.

The struggle appears to have reached an end. This week BP North America Inc. agreed to pay an $8 million penalty and invest more than $400 million to install state-of-the-art pollution controls in order to continue the Whiting Refinery’s multibillion-dollar expansion project.

The expansion will allow Whiting to process the thick and heavy crude of what is known as tar sands oil. According to BP, the unconventional and significantly dirtier crude oil source is “critical to America’s future energy security.”

The settlement calls for pollution monitoring equipment to address increased emissions associated with the largely Canadian tar sands. BP will be forced to observe the strongest requirements seen anywhere in the industry, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the controls will eliminate more than 4,000 tons of regulated pollutants annually.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), BP North America had it coming. The big oil company had not lived up to its obligations under an earlier settlement agreement, while the Whiting facility had committed new violations of the Clean Air Act. But the new settlement, which includes another $9.5 million on projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, puts the big oil company in the clear.

A driving force behind complaints that the state permit for the Whiting expansion would significantly harm the environment for neighboring residents was the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

According to NRDC’s Ann Alexander, lead attorney for groups opposing the expansion permit, the settlement will ensure that local communities are protected from plant pollution.

“The permit that BP and the state of Indiana drafted did not reflect reality,” said Alexander in a statement. “And as the country wakes up to the mess being made by tar sands all over the country, it will be harder and harder for them to keep trying to play these games.”

But in order for the state’s largest-ever industrial project to go forward, environmentalists are expected to back down. As part of the agreement, petitioners say they won’t challenge the new permit. The settlement, signed by the state of Indiana, BP, the DOJ, EPA, and environmental groups, will go into effect following a brief public comment period.

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A Sheriff deputy's vehicle is parked in front of Chardon High School where a shooting took place on February 27, 2012 in Chardon, Ohio. T.J. Lane opened fire inside the high school cafeteria. (David Dermer/Getty Images)

The Ohio teenager accused of the shooting deaths of three high school students will be tried as an adult, according to reports.

T.J. Lane, 17, could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty, said Juvenile Court Judge Timothy Grendell, who handed down the decision, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Lane, however, cannot be sentenced to death because it is against the constitution to execute a juvenile.

Deputy Jon Bilicic said that when he arrested Lane, the teenager told him after the shooting took place that he “killed a bunch of people,” according to News Net 5.

When he was asked why, Bilicic recalled Lane saying, “I have no idea. I don’t really understand it myself.”

Furthermore, he said he did not shoot the students out of anger. “I have no problem with people,” he added.

As a result of the Feb. 27 shooting, Lane is charged with three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of felonious assault.

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The wind blows a plastic bag around the beach near the Manhattan Beach Pier August 21, 2008 in Manhattan Beach, Calif., in this file photo. Los Angeles became the largest city in the country to adopt a ban on single-use plastic bags, passing the ordinance May 23.(David McNew/Getty Images)

Los Angeles became the largest city in the country to do away with plastic bags in supermarkets after the city council passed a ban on them May 23. The council passed the restriction by a 13–1 vote.

The ban will be phased in over a 12-month period, and will impact an estimated 7,500 stores, according to the L.A. Times. Council members, as well as supportive environmental groups and advocates, praised the measure.

This is a great day for the city of Los Angeles, - 

Adrian Martinez of the Natural Resources Defense Council

“This is a great day for the city of Los Angeles,” said Adrian Martinez of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in a blog posting. “The environmental and economic problems with these bags far outweigh any limited benefit they may have,” he added.

Martinez expounded on the problems in a May 22 NRDC blog posting, leading up to yesterday’s council vote. “The Los Angeles Department of Public Works reports that only 5 percent of the 2.3 billion plastic bags used each year in the city of Los Angeles are recycled,” he wrote, pointing to additional risks to wildlife, and “the high cost of removing these bags from our land and waterways.”

According to Martinez, 43 municipalities in the state had already adopted ordinances restricting single-use plastic grocery bags.

Some want to see the ban expanded. “Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, according to the L.A. Times report.

A spokesperson representing plastic bag manufacturers decried the city’s ban.

“By voting to ban plastic shopping bags, the city of Los Angeles put in motion a misguided and onerous policy that threatens the jobs of hundreds of Angelenos employed by the industry, and nearly 2,000 statewide, while pushing residents to less environmentally friendly reusable bags, which are produced overseas and cannot be recycled,” said Mark Daniels, chair of the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA), in a press release statement Wednesday.

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The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday released a report saying spending cuts that will take place at the beginning of next year will drain $607 billion from the U.S. economy in the 2013 fiscal year.

The figure amounts to 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and “the resulting weakening of the economy will lower taxable incomes and raise unemployment, generating a reduction in tax revenues and an increase in spending on such items as unemployment insurance,” the nonpartisan CBO said.

The office projects the economy to contract during the first half of 2013 at an annual rate of 1.3 percent and will expand at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the second half.

“Given the pattern of past recessions … such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession,” the CBO said.

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Students celebrate at New York University’s commencement ceremony at Yankee Stadium on May 16 in the Bronx borough of New York City. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimates 1,781,000 students at the bachelor’s-degree level will graduate in 2012. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Graduation is a time of fresh beginnings. Embarking on a path where grown-up choices abound. How to spend one’s time, which career path to travel, whether and when to start a family—the consequence of each deserves careful thought. Then there are the unforeseen hardships and changes that bring yet more choices and challenges.

In the face of so many big questions, recent graduates might turn to an unlikely place for guidance and support: America’s elders.

Having watched a whole lifetime go by—lasting marriages, careers past, empty nests, wars, poverty, painful loss of loved ones, death, and illness—American elders know how to survive and how to thrive.

According to Karl Pillemer, professor of gerontology at Cornell University, they have a lot of wisdom to offer the young.

In 2004, Pillemer was doing research in a nursing home when a nurse introduced him to June, the surname of an elderly lady who was losing her eyesight, and who had only a few weeks left to live. Pillemer sat down with June. As they talked, he found June “an incredibly vibrant, alive, and positive person,” said Pillemer who wondered how she could be so happy. So he asked her.

June told Pillemer that she felt it was her responsibility to be as happy as she could be, no matter what her circumstances were.

“She really had to make a choice to be happy every day. You can’t just wait to be happy because something is going to happen to you, you have to make a conscious choice to be responsible for your own happiness,” Pillemer said, adding that it’s better to learn this in your 20s than when you are in your 60s.

June was an inspiration.

Life, seen from the end, is unbelievably, incredibly short.

—Karl Pillemer, professor of gerontology, Cornell University

Pillemer spent the next six years talking with nearly 1,200 American elders, asking them the most important lessons they had learned over the course of their lives. Pillemer calls his search “The Legacy Project.” What he learned, he put in a book titled, “30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.”

The book offers practical advice drawn from generations past. There’s something in there for anyone at any crossroads, but Pillemer offers some specific lessons to recent high school and college graduates.

Take risks to avoid regrets. Choose excitement over money. Make the most of a bad job. And use those graduation gifts to travel, as the elderly often wish they had traveled more in their youth.

The common thread of hardship ties the span of human lives together, which our treading feet endure. Many of the elders told Pillemer that they had experienced a tragedy that ruined their life for months or years, but that life goes on. “They were able to make that decision to step beyond it and learn how to live their life again,” says Pillemer.

Helga, a lady in her mid-80s, fled Germany as a child when the country was faced with genocide and murderous crimes at the hands of the Nazis. Helga settled in the United States and raised a wonderful family. Then, suddenly, her middle daughter died in a plane crash while she was in college.

“She told me that she basically laid on the couch for three years torturing herself, her husband, and her other children with her depression and guilt,” Pillemer says.

However, Helga changed her life with the difference in one thought. “She basically said to herself ‘I can’t go on like this, I have to look to the living ones,’ and she changed her life around,” says Pillemer.

“Life, seen from the end, is unbelievably, incredibly short,” says Pillemer.

Pillemer encourages the young to really think like you will be 90 years old someday. Don’t live under the illusion that you have forever, and pack as much into life as you can.

When looking back, elders say, “I can’t believe how short my life was,” says Pillemer. “They say that not to depress young people, but to encourage them to really choose experiences that are going to be valuable to them and to not waste time in a bad job,” he added. “You don’t have unlimited time.”

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A map showing waters disputed by China in the South China Sea. (UNCLOS and the CIA)

WASHINGTON—The need for the United States to sign onto a maritime treaty is a matter of “utmost security and economic urgency,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a Senate hearing Wednesday.

The U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) has become the leading accord in dealing with international maritime disputes, offering guidelines on a range of issues—including free passage through world’s seaways, jurisdiction of ocean beds, and passage for underwater telecommunication cables.

Whether to join the international body has been a point of discussion in the U.S. Senate for over 20 years—but to date, the United States remains one of the few major countries that has not signed up. Currently, 160 nations, including Russia and China, are members.

Clinton said, “Twenty years ago, ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, joining the convention was important, but not urgent. That is no longer the case.”

The race for resources is a big contributor to the urgency. The convention allows nations to claim economic sovereignty over their continental shelf to a distance of around 200 nautical miles from shore. That would extend U.S. territory by at least one-and-a-half times the size of Texas, maybe more, Clinton said.

We are strong because we play by the rules, not because we go against those rules.

—Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary

Before, oil and gas companies did not have the technology to drill in such areas. Yet, now that they do, without the treaty they do not have the legal certainty of jurisdiction.

Similarly, mining companies now have the technology to mine deep waters, beyond the continental jurisdiction, but without the mechanism the Treaty provides to ensure secure title, companies are hesitant to make expensive investments.

“As long as the United States is outside the convention, our companies are left with two bad choices: either take their deep-sea mining business to another country or give up on the idea,” Clinton said.

Arctic and Mining Concerns

Warming of the Arctic region has also opened opportunities in fishing, oil, and exploration, as well as shipping and tourism. While Russia and other Arctic nations are using the treaty’s framework to capitalize on those opportunities, the United States is only one of seven Arctic nations not a LOST member, and it remains “on the outside looking in,” Clinton said.

Adding to the urgency is that LOST members are moving forward on a range of issues on which the United States has no input. Notably, a move by 40 countries to draw up rules related to the deep-sea mining of minerals is “of great interest to the United States and American industry,” Clinton said.

As long as the United States is outside the convention, our companies are left with two bad choices: either take their deep-sea mining business to another country or give up on the idea.

—Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State

Clinton was referring to rare earth elements that are essential for the production of not only high-tech products like cellphones, computers, and flat-screen televisions, but also military equipment.

China presently has around 90 percent of available rare earth minerals, the Senate heard, a power it has shown that it will use strategically, like when it blocked supply to Japan in 2010 after a maritime dispute.

“While we are challenging China’s export restrictions on these critical materials, we also need American companies to develop other sources,” Clinton said.

Security

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added weight to Clinton’s testimony.

Dempsey said the treaty made concrete U.S. military rights, spelling out “navigational rights and freedoms,” while ensuring the right of “innocent” passage through foreign territorial seas. It also affirmed “the sovereign immunity of U.S. warships and other public vessels,” he said.

The U.S. Navy is the world’s largest and most capable, Dempsey said, but increasingly other nations are looking to restrict international seaways. “[LOST] gives us the framework to counter excessive claims by states seeking to illegally restrict movement of vessels and aircraft.”

“These are all rights and capabilities that we want and that we need,” he said.

Dempsey was referring to threats by Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz—critical to the distribution of oil to the West—and China’s claims on large swathes of the South China Sea, a territory that penetrates far into the 200-mile continental shelf zone of other Southeast Asian countries.

Responding to criticism that the treaty undermines U.S. military power, Secretary Panetta told the hearing there is, “No question we have the strongest navy, but engaging in gunboat diplomacy will result in conflict and will jeopardize our national security.”

Panetta has consistently noted that global security is complex and challenging, and beyond the domain of any one single nation to resolve. The Obama administration has made clear that its approach to defense strategy is to develop a rules-based international order, building on regional security partnerships.

“We are strong because we play by the rules, not because we go against those rules,” Panetta told the hearing.

The difficulty of being outside LOST is not only that the U.S. is unable to influence rule-making and rule interpretations within the body, but also that America appears hypocritical about rules-based decision-making, Panetta said. They ask, “How can you assert that, when you are not even part of the convention? That is our concern,” he said.

Senate Republicans were not convinced by the administration’s high-level representation.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) raised concerns that the treaty requires the U.S. to pay royalties on mining leases from deep-water mining and that the United States would be unable to control where those funds went.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) believes the treaty would leave U.S. businesses vulnerable to environmental lawsuits, and suggested that the treaty was just another set of laws that rogue countries would ignore.

Sen. Kerry, who has supported signing the treaty, said the Senate would not push for a vote on the treaty before the general election, noting that the hearing was the first of a number to come that would address Senators’ concerns.

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop on May 16 in St. Petersburg, Fla. The economy has been a major focus of the 2012 presidential campaign. (Edward Linsmier/Getty Images)

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are tied on who would be best to run the economy, according to a recent national poll. The positive shift in attitude should boost Obama’s re-election campaign but it remains a tough year ahead for both candidates, and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, appears to be biding his time.

Obama and Romney each gained a 47 percent approval rating on the economy in a Washington Post/ABC poll conducted May 17. The economy far outweighed other issues as the most concerning to voters, the poll noted.

Obama led in the telephone survey of 1,004 voters as the favored candidate should the election be held immediately, gaining 49 percent support to Romney’s 47 percent.

The positive approval rating on the economy contrasts to an earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, taken March this year, which showed a 38 percent approval rating on the economy for Obama, and 59 percent disapproval.

The recent poll comes as the housing sector shows signs of improvement. The National Association of Realtors reported a rise in existing home sales and house prices during April.

According to NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun, the positive results reflect an important shift from a buyer’s market toward a seller’s market.

“It is no longer just the investors who are taking advantage of high affordability conditions. A return of normal home buying for occupancy is helping home sales across all price points, and now the recovery appears to be extending to home prices,” he said in a statement.

While the news will be welcomed by the Obama campaign, the recent polls do not reflect an easy campaign for either candidate.

Asked to compare their current financial situation to their financial status when Obama took office, 30 percent said they were worse off, and only 16 percent said they were better off. Fifty-three percent said their status was about the same.

“On this question, Obama’s numbers continue to resemble those of George H.W. Bush, who lost his bid for re-election in 1992 amid a flagging economy,” Jon Cohen and political analyst Dan Balz noted in the Post’s coverage of the poll.

Romney also has some work to do. The Post/ABC poll found that 91 percent of Obama’s supporters said they were enthusiastic about his candidacy, while around a quarter of Romney supporters said they were not that enthusiastic about their candidate.

Obama’s Campaign on Bain Capital

Obama’s campaign attack on Mitt Romney’s previous role as a Bain Capital executive, was also featured in the poll. Respondents were questioned about “Romney’s work buying and restructuring companies.” Those for and against Romney’s role in Bain registered in equal numbers, while just over half those polled said his role at Bain had no impact on their attitude toward him as a candidate.

Romney’s role at Bain Capital has been a target for the Obama campaign, as it had been during the Republican primaries, but the poll indicates that the recent ad has not had an impact.

The advertisement depicted former workers at a steel factory that Bain Capital, under Romney’s management, had taken over. The steel company, GS Industries, eventually filed for bankruptcy and, although Romney was no longer actively managing the company at the time, the workers describe him as a “vampire” and someone who was out of touch with the American people.

Gov. Rick Perry had also raised Bain’s handling of GS Industries during the GOP primaries, accusing Romney of being a “vulture” capitalist.

Obama’s attack on Romney over his role at Bain has engendered criticism within Democrat ranks, providing fuel for the Romney campaign. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, was quoted defending private equity firms and confessing that negative ads made him “uncomfortable,” after an interview on Meet the Press last weekend. Although he endeavored to clarify his comments later, saying his comments were taken out of context and declaring his total support for Obama, the criticism stuck.

On Monday, Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, weighed in on the issue, telling BuzzFeed the negative ads were “disappointing.”

“I think Bain is fair game because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say is important as well,” he said.

Barack Obama has stuck by the Bain attack ad, telling reporters at a press conference at NATO that “this is what the campaign’s going to be about.”

“[Romney’s] main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience,” Obama said. “And when you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity … firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.”

Romney meanwhile has been lying low, focusing this week on raising funds in Wall Street, AP reported, and perhaps biding his time.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket early on May 22 as it heads for space carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Dragon capsule is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station in a few days. (Bruce Weaver/AFP/GettyImages)

Private space exploration got a major boost when a commercial spacecraft blasted off into space on Tuesday and will be the first to reach the International Space Station (ISS).

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, had twice this month been forced to postpone the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, which carries the Dragon space capsule, but successfully launched the craft at 3:44 a.m. on May 22 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX is the first company to carry out a flight to the ISS, as such missions were commissioned only by the space agencies with the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the European Union, along with only specific contracted aerospace companies.

“We’re now back on the brink of a new future, a future that embraces the innovation the private sector brings to the table,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden, in a statement released by the agency. “The significance of this day cannot be overstated. While there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are off to a good start.”

A short while after the launch, SpaceX confirmed in a statement that the Dragon capsule entered its orbit and will undergo tests to see if it can berth with the station.

SpaceX’s launch is said to be the first test of NASA’s project to commission private companies to launch space missions. Last year, NASA did away with its decades-long space shuttle program.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said that SpaceX is indebted to NASA. “I would like to start off by saying what a tremendous honor it has been to work with NASA. And to acknowledge the fact that we could not have started SpaceX, nor could we have reached this point, without the help of NASA,” he said in a statement.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the mission is getting the Dragon to actually berth with the station, but Musk said that he is optimistic it would. NASA said the test would be performed to see if the capsule can move close enough to the ISS before astronauts grab it with a robotic arm and connect it to one of its ports.

“There’s still a thousand things that have to go right, but we are looking forward to this exciting mission,” stated Alan Lindemoyer, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program.

Ultimately, the company’s objective is delivering cargo to the ISS and during the test run, the Dragon is carrying around 1,200 pounds of supplies for the ISS crew members along with experiments. The capsule can carry a maximum weight of around 7,300 pounds, but the company opted to put less weight on it because it is only a test.

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A Charlotte, N.C.-bound flight was diverted Tuesday because a female passenger claimed she had a surgically implanted explosive device, it was reported.

Officials told The Associated Press that a US Airways flight with 188 people on board from Paris was diverted to Maine in the incident. It was escorted by military aircraft as a precaution.

In a note she passed to a flight attendant, the woman claimed to have a device implanted inside of her, reported CNN. Passengers held her down and two doctors on board the plane examined her for scars, but suspected there were no devices inside of her.

A federal law enforcement official briefed on the subject told the network that the woman was “basically no threat.” She is being questioned and will later receive a psychological evaluation.

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A South Carolina voting booth is shown at the Shandon Fire Station January 21, in Columbia, South Carolina. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Paper-based voter registration is outmoded, expensive, and inaccurate, and should be scrapped, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank. States should offer online registration, allow citizens to correct their own records, make registration portable, and allow same-day registration and voting, it said in a press conference on May 22.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) introduced H.R. 5799, the Voter Empowerment Act of 2012, on May 17. It includes the features that the Brennan Center recommends, and more. Lewis famously served with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The Voter Empowerment Act is one of two momentous events about voting rights,” said Wendy Weiser. She directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

The second event is that the “courts upheld a constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act—momentous,” she said. A number of Southern states are still under federal supervision because of Jim Crow-era practices that disenfranchised African-Americans. Some of the states sued to be released from supervision, but lost in the courts.

The new legislation is a “serious proposal,” which shows that Democratic leaders care about reducing the potential for fraud and making the rolls more accurate, according to Weiser. Computer security has come a long way since the controversies over potentially hackable voting machines, and online registration can be secure.

The Voter Empowerment Act is one of two momentous events about voting rights.

—Wendy Weiser, NYU School of Law

The Florida Department of State found thousands of deceased people registered as active voters, after a new state law allowed it to check voting lists against Social Security lists. According to the Sun-Sentinel, 51,966 deceased people were found listed as active voters. Florida is also checking for and purging non-citizens who were registered to vote. It announced that it found 180,000 possible non-citizens on voter lists.

“You’ve got to protect the integrity of the rolls,” said Richard DeNapoli, chairman of Broward’s Republican Executive Committee, quoted by the Sun-Sentinel.

Some Democratic leaders have downplayed the potential for voting by deceitfully or inaccurately registered people. Weiser said online registration eliminates a host of errors and alleviates concerns about fraud and misconduct. Electronic registration would bypass problems from typos during duplicate data entry to illegible handwriting to backlogs of unprocessed forms before an election day, she said.

The changes would enfranchise more people, according to Myrna Perez, senior counsel, Democracy Program of the Brennan Center. She said the Pew Center released a report in which it said 51 million eligible voters are not registered, and one in eight voter records have inaccuracies.

The states that have already reformed their registration systems report a double to seven-fold increase in registered voters, according to Perez. “It’s a fairly non-controversial proposal,” said Weiser. “When steps have been taken, people have been pleased.”

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U.S. President Barack Obama greets Joplin High School graduates just before Monday night’s commencement ceremony for the Class of 2012 at the Missouri Southern State University Leggett & Platt Athletic Center on May 21 in Joplin, Mo. President Barack Obama spoke at the event in commemoration of the anniversary of the city being struck by an EF-5 tornado. (Rich Sugg-Pool/Getty Images)

For students in the southwest Missouri city of Joplin, the end of the school year rings triumph and a true soldiering spirit. “We made it,” said Dr. C.J. Huff, superintendent of Joplin Schools, in a phone interview hours before President Obama gave a commencement address at Joplin High graduation ceremony.

The people of Joplin made it through one of the greatest disasters to hit the nation in the summer of 2011, on May 22 when an EF-5 tornado destroyed the town. The tornado, as wide as a small lake, turned at over 200 mph for 13 miles. The destruction was unimaginable—161 lives were lost and entire towns were flattened.

“It’s been a challenging year. Our students and our families have just been remarkable this year and our kids have shown so much these last 12 months. I’m just very proud of the work that they’ve done to overcome some very challenging obstacles this school year,” said Huff.

Joplin’s only high school, Joplin High, was completely destroyed. The community spent the summer of 2011 rushing to get temporary school buildings ready by the first day of the new school year. More than 3,200 students now go to school in temporary buildings.

We got through the year and I think we did it in a very classy and very effective way.

—Dr. C.J. Huff, superintendent of Joplin Schools

“As a community, I think we are doing pretty well. We are all tired. We’ve been working for a year to rebuild all that was lost and we still have a long way to go, but very thankful and appreciative of all the support that has come from across the country to help us get to where we are today,” said Huff.

Half of Joplin’s school district buildings were touched by the tornado. More than 3,000 students lived in the path of the storm and more than 4,200 students were without a school to attend. Seven students and one school staff member lost their lives.

High school students spent the 2011–2012 school year in a once empty shopping mall now setup for the 11th- and 12th-grade students and an older district building setup for the 9th- and 10th-graders. Middle school students spent the year learning in an industrial complex.

Joplin school’s major accomplishment is that, despite the devastating storm and after the community’s hard work, the 2011 school year started on time and the class of 2012 was able to graduate according to schedule. Not only were these milestones meet, Huff said the education provided was high quality.

“We got through the year and I think we did it in a very classy and very effective way,’ said Huff.

After the storm, Huff said it has been an ongoing effort to take care of everyone—families, kids, and school staff as everyone was impacted by the storm. “We have to continue to put a lot of effort and time into it to make sure that everybody is okay,” said Huff.

The Joplin tornado anniversary is May 22. There will be a walk and a day of unity with various events during the week that support the rebuilding of Joplin.

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The United States is among the world’s leading producers of computers and electronic goods, but it is one of the few countries among industrial nations that does not have national electronic waste regulations.

“That’s in contrast to the European Union and we need it,” said Allen Hershkowitz told The Epoch Times. Hershkowitz is a senior scientist and specialist on waste management at the National Resource and Defense Council.

Electronic waste includes computers, laptops, printers, televisions, flat screens, and mobile phones. The United States is not only a big producer, but also a big consumer and, accordingly, disposer of electronic goods.

Americans discard around 200,000 computers a day, said Hershkowitz, and it is estimated that the United States produces around 50 million tons of waste a year.

We need to have the infrastructure to collect e-waste effectively.

—Casey Harrell, Greenpeace

While roughly 30 percent is accounted for, Hershkowitz says no one really knows where the rest is going.

One thing they do know is that a lot goes to developing countries, particularly China, India, and more recently Latin America and Western Africa.

“They are put in containers and shipped abroad to these developing countries that are really not technically, or administratively, structured to receive these potentially dangerous materials,” Hershkowitz said.

Electronic waste contains extremely toxic material like lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chlorides. These can produce a range of harmful effects including brain damage (particularly in children), cancer, and kidney disease.

The irony is that electronic goods are almost entirely recyclable and many of the materials can be quite valuable. But while recycling companies are springing up, there is little monitoring of what they are doing with the material once they get it, said Hershkowitz.

According to Hershkowitz, there is already a bill that has bipartisan support in Congress prohibiting the export of e-waste to developing countries—it just needs to be passed to stop the trade.

“We are dealing with 21st-century toxins that are often getting handled in medieval conditions,” he said.

Casey Harrell, international electronics campaigner for Greenpeace, said the export ban is not the only issue that needs to be looked at nationally. The fact that no one really knows where 70 percent of the e-waste is going—it could be in people’s attics, in landfills, or exported—is a concern, he says.

Harrell says the recycling process needs to be made more accessible for the general public.

“We need to have the infrastructure to collect e-waste effectively,” Harrell told The Epoch Times.

Of the people who want to recycle e-waste, they have to presently go out of their way to do so. A number of states have put in place recycling procedures and regulations but they all differ, he says, and are not always easy to follow in terms of what can be recycled and where it is to go.

“What we know is that if we make collection inconvenient, meaning if you have to drive or take your electronic product—which is easy for a cellphone but more difficult with a flat-screen TV—somewhere but not having it picked up, the percentage of products that do get collected are quite small,” Harrell said.

He says for recycling to really work it has to be “free, convenient, and easy”—that is, easy for people to understand what can be recycled and what cannot.

“Right now, most of the time, we don’t have any of these three,” he said.

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More than 2,000 people in the United States have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated of serious crimes since 1989, according to a study on Monday.

The National Registry of Exonerations, created by the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University, commissioned the study.

“There are far more false convictions than exonerations. That should come as no surprise. The essential fact about false convictions is that they are generally invisible: If we could spot them, they’d never happen in the first place,” the study states.

It added that despite “how tragic they are,” the 2,000 exonerations over the past 23 years “is a tiny number in a country with 2.3 million people in prisons.”

Nine out of ten of those exonerated are men, and around half are African-American.

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The US Supreme Court is seen in this March 31, photo on Capitol Hill in Washington. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear an appeal to decide whether rights groups may challenge the government over its foreign surveillance program.

The case, James R. Clapper Jr. v. Amnesty International USA, involves the federal government appealing to the court to establish whether the plaintiffs in the original case (Amnesty v. Clapper) could demonstrate they were harmed; whether they have the right to even bring the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit in 2008 on behalf of journalists, human rights groups, lawyers, and others. Plaintiffs include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, PEN American Center, media organizations, lawyers, and other NGOs. Amnesty and the ACLU want the court to consider if wiretapping powers amended in 2008 are unconstitutional.

The groups charge that warrantless wiretapping of people overseas, authorized to prevent terrorist attacks, may be applied to legitimate communications.

According to the ACLU, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit it filed revealed information the government had found in twice-yearly reviews that the National Security Agency had “‘compliance incidents’—suggesting either an inability or an unwillingness to properly safeguard Americans’ privacy rights,” according to a summary on aclu.org. No details of the compliance incidents were given.

A U.S. appeals court in New York ruled in 2011 that the plaintiffs have the legal right to challenge the 2008 amendment, recognizing that the ACLU’s clients had reason to fear their communications were being monitored—this even though the government was not suspected of any wrongdoing, according to a statement from the ACLU.

It is this ruling that is being challenged in the Supreme Court by the Obama administration.

“The appeals court properly recognized that our clients have a reasonable basis to fear that the government may be monitoring their conversations, even though it has no reason to suspect them of having engaged in any unlawful activities,” Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director, said in a statement. “The constitutionality of the government’s surveillance powers can and should be tested in court.”

The Justice Department previously said the plaintiffs had no standing to sue, because there was no proof they had been hurt. It also said the NSA may keep secret the details of who it is investigating.

The rule that plaintiffs are challenging is called the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. They want the act to be amended to be more transparent, to only focus on criminal suspects or potential terrorists, and to require restrictions on how long information is kept and how it is used.

Some media organizations claim that the new rules forced them to expensively change the way they work with sources, and that they have been harmed by increased operational costs.

It is already illegal to eavesdrop on the kinds of groups included in the original lawsuit. The government has not said if it eavesdropped on any of the plaintiffs.

Supreme Court opening arguments for the case are tentatively scheduled to begin in the fall.

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Activists from Greenpeace hold a banner with the slogan “Microsoft, clean our cloud” during a protest in Tel Aviv during a Microsoft exhibition on April 22.(JACK GUEZ/AFP/GettyImages)

In what it describes as an effort to be more environmentally friendly and set a positive example for other corporations, Microsoft announced earlier this month that it will be completely carbon-neutral as of the new 2013 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2012.

According to a May 8 posting on its official blog, titled “Making Carbon Neutrality Everyone’s Responsibility at Microsoft,” Microsoft hopes its efforts will inspire other companies to follow suit. Microsoft says its commitment to carbon neutrality will extend throughout its facilities and logistics, including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings.

“Discussions have already been initiated across the company to increase our focus on renewable energy and to drive additional efficiencies as a result of the carbon pricing and cascade model,” said Dani Reese, a Microsoft spokesperson for the corporation. “The added price on carbon, as well as efficiency goals, should create an incentive for business groups to pursue energy efficiency and purchase new renewable energy.”

Known as “carbon footprint” or environmental footprint, these terms refer to contributions to carbon emissions by an individual, home, business, or corporation, through the use of resources like electricity, or fuel, such as driving to and from work.

Using electricity that comes from renewable sources (like wind or hydropower) can reduce a corporation’s carbon footprint. Microsoft’s goal is to achieve complete carbon neutrality—to not produce as much carbon—through their environmental efforts.

The efforts Microsoft took in order to achieve the goal of carbon-neutrality included purchasing renewable power. To achieve 2012 goals, Sterling Planet, a company contracted by Microsoft to help supply energy from renewable sources, provided more than 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable power per year. According to Microsoft, the power will provide 46 percent of their electricity demands and is equal to removing 150,000 carbon-producing vehicles from the road.

“These investments in renewable energy and carbon reduction projects have also resulted in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) listing Microsoft third in its Top 50 list of the largest green power purchasers in the U.S.,” continued Reese. “In the future, we plan to purchase high-quality renewable energy certificates from Sterling Planet. Our investments will be Green-e-certified.”

Microsoft hopes to earn a return on their investment into carbon-neutrality. Microsoft’s Redmond campus, for example, uses software solutions to help achieve energy efficiency. At that site alone, an energy savings of approximately $1.5 million dollars is projected for the fiscal year 2013, earning their investment back in 18 months.

According to Reese, Microsoft will have more details about impact and bottom line and cost savings over time.

Microsoft is also working with a company called CarbonSystems on a solution called an Enterprise Sustainability Platform. The platform streamlines the collection of environmental data from multiple sources, which it uses to assess other ways of reducing its carbon footprint.

They will additionally be implementing internal “carbon fees” for their operations in over 100 countries. The company hopes that this fee will ensure that all their business divisions are responsible for their own carbon emissions and efficiency.

“We believe that the carbon fee creates a new opportunity to raise awareness about the carbon emissions associated with use of the company’s data centers, software development labs, and office buildings, as well as business travel,” continued Reese. “In addition, the introduction of an internal carbon price and our commitment to achieve carbon neutrality is part of a long-term commitment at Microsoft to reduce our carbon emissions across our business operations, including cloud computing and data centers.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks while meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama during the NATO Summit, May 20 at McCormick Place in Chicago. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/GettyImages)

President Obama on Sunday said NATO’s defense capabilities and Afghanistan would be the primary focus of meetings among world leaders at the NATO Summit held in Chicago through Monday.

“We anticipate not only ratifying the plan for moving forward in Afghanistan … but we’re also going to be talking about the progress that we’ve made in expanding NATO’s defense capabilities,” President Obama said as he met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Obama commended Rasmussen’s leadership as chief official of the strategic alliance, and said the meetings would ensure “that every NATO member has a stake and is involved and integrated in our mutual defense efforts.”

The president had earlier met with President Karzai of Afghanistan, where he highlighted the centrality of Afghanistan to the Chicago meetings.

“The NATO summit is going to be largely devoted to ratifying and reflecting the broad consensus that so many of our partners and ISAF members have agreed to,” Obama said at a press conference with Karzai, referring to the countries that have deployed troops to the war.

President Obama said NATO nations would be focusing on a vision for Afghanistan “post-2014,” when troops would be withdrawn and the Afghan War would be over.

“The Strategic Partnership Agreement, [and] this NATO Summit, are all part and parcel of a shared vision that we have in which Afghanistan is able to transition from decades of war to a transformational decade of peace and stability and development,” he said.

Karzai thanked American taxpayers for their support and reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to the transition process and to the complete withdrawal of NATO forces by 2014.

The Chicago meeting is the first time a NATO meeting has been held outside the U.S. capital and the first time many world leaders have met since the last NATO meeting in Lisbon in 2010.

Although there are 28 member nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 61 countries are in attendance in Chicago, as well as the EU, the United Nations, and the World Bank.

Apart from Afghanistan—which will be discussed formally Monday morning—the two-day summit will address a range of pressing issues, including the alliance’s potential role in Syria and Iran, the missile defense program, and fiscal issues, the latter particularly pertinent as Europe and the United States endeavor to rein in spending and reducing deficits.

The NATO alliance is considered “cornerstone” to U.S. national interests, and the president’s focus on both the G8 and NATO reflects the increasing value the Obama administration places on U.S. alliances, says National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.

“No other nation in the world has the set of global alliances that the United States does. No other nation in the world … has a series of countries that it can go to around the world and work with these countries,” he told a press briefing ahead of the G8 and NATO summits.

Donilon stressed the strength of alliances over ‘coalitions of the willing,’ saying alliances are more highly valued and have established lines of communication and organizational architecture.

“You have operational capabilities that you practice and work on, and can call on in a moment’s notice,” he said, citing as an example the speed with which NATO responded to Libya.

Plot Foiled

While President Obama was talking about peace and stability in the confines of the summit venue, (the massive McCormick Place convention center), protesters outside were making their voices heard.

Thousands turned up in Grants Park Sunday for a city hall-approved rally and parade to the summit venue; around a thousand anti-war and anti-NATO protesters rallied around the city on Saturday night.

While the protests have been largely peaceful to date, there were reports that one protester was run over by a police vehicle at Jackson Street Bridge Saturday night.

“Chicago Police van number 6751, accelerated as it passed through the crowd, striking several people and seriously injuring one victim, who was later transported to the emergency room” the Boing Boing website reported, with a statement and a video of the hit-and-run.

The Chicago police force also claimed to have foiled a terrorist plot, arresting three men on Wednesday and charging two more Saturday.

The first three were from out-of-state, The Chicago Tribune reported, and were accused of planning to strike President Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house, and police stations, with Molotov cocktails.

Two more men were charged Saturday for similar offenses.

Chicago police also confirmed that the city of Chicago website and the police department site had been hacked. Both were reported inoperable Sunday morning.

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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently announced an ambitious series of national studies aimed at slowing the U.S. Alzheimer's epidemic. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

It starts with confusion and signs of memory loss, but as the disease progresses, a lifetime of language and decision-making skills slowly deteriorate. As symptoms worsen, the Alzheimer’s patient progressively requires more care.

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects over 5 million Americans and is growing fast. Without better treatment, experts say the number of cases in the United States will soon double.

This week the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced details of an aggressive new strategy to address the nation’s Alzheimer’s epidemic. The plan includes two major clinical trials that work toward prevention, and the development of an effective treatment by 2025.

The ambitious goal stems from the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA). The disease-led legislation and funding program is aimed not only at advancing treatment, but also works to provide help for patients and their families adjusting to life with a debilitating illness. Since NAPA passed in January 2011, the Obama administration has since offered additional funding to support Alzheimer’s research and other programs related to the disease.

Efforts to realize NAPA’s big goals came last week at the 2012 Alzheimer’s Research Summit. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced two proposed trials for treatments that may slow progression, delay onset, and even prevent the disease within the next 13 years.

According to the World Health Organization, while Alzheimer’s can occur in people as young as 40 years old, incidents increase exponentially with advancing age. Experts say that as the nation’s senior population is projected to double in the coming decades, policymakers, health service providers, patients, and their family caregivers all stand a lot to gain from NAPA’s success. Recent estimates find that the direct and indirect expenses related to Alzheimer’s and other dementias in the United States run more than $150 billion annually.

But research can be costly too. The HHS says nearly $8 million will go to fund a trial testing an insulin nasal spray as a possibility for treatment. The National Institutes of Health is ponying up another $16 million for another study focusing on Alzheimer’s prevention, which targets people thought to be at the highest risk for the disease.

More research is expected soon, and the HHS says there are plans to test other drugs, as well as non-pharmaceutical treatments. Guided by strict research goals laid out in NAPA, the HHS says upcoming studies will aim to improve outcomes for minority populations, as NAPA’s new partnerships and federal outreach programs promise to make for a more diverse pool of subjects.

Much of the funding for this aggressive research strategy would come from President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget, which provides a $100 million increase for a variety of efforts to tackle Alzheimer’s disease. Public awareness campaigns and caregiver support programs would also receive federal dollars, but the lion’s share ($80 million) is allocated to research.

According to Secretary Sebelius, “These actions are the cornerstones of a historic effort to fight Alzheimer’s disease.”

In addition to federal support, the private sector is also expected to play a significant role. In a statement, Sebelius specified that this was “a national plan,” rather than a federal one, “because reducing the burden of Alzheimer’s will require the active engagement of both the public and private sectors.”

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A privately owned rocket’s launch was delayed on Saturday after a computer detected a problem with one of its engines, it was reported.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is attempting to send the first privately owned rocket to the International Space Station, launching from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Technicians with SpaceX told Florida Today that its rocket came within only seconds of launching before the computer detected an issue.

“If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday,” SpaceX spokesperson Kirstin Grantham was quoted as saying.

SpaceX insisted that it is not a failure. “It would be a failure if were to have lifted off with an engine trending in this direction,” company president Gwynne Shotwell said.

NASA is working with SpaceX as it attempts to make the landmark launch that could deliver cargo to the space station.

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Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, formed off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday but weakened by Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The storm is moving west-southwest and is forecast to stay off the coast of North and South Carolina, and Georgia, according to the agency. Its current maximum sustained winds are around 45 miles per hour, with higher gusts.

“Tropical storm conditions are possible along the coast of South Carolina in the watch area later today or Monday,” the Hurricane Center said. By 5:00 p.m. Sunday, the Center had discontinued its watch for the South Carolina coast.

A U.S. Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft located Alberto on Sunday, and the agency said the storm is “expected to slow down and drift southward tonight,” with “little change in strength … forecast during the next 48 hours.”

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Around 2,360 pounds of diced red onions were recalled by Gills Onions due to a possible listeria contamination, the company said over the weekend.

The Oxnard, Calif.-based company said the recall is voluntary and encompasses products with use-by dates of May 14, 15, and 17. It encouraged customers to get rid of recalled onions.

No illnesses have been reported in connection with the recall and no other products from the company are affected, Gills said.

The red onions were distributed to retailers in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida.

Listeria monocytogenes is the cause of listeriosis, a potentially fatal disease. The disease causes the most problems with the elderly, infants, and people with weakened immune systems.

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(L to R) Greg Thielmann joined Arms Control Association at the Brookings Institution in 2009. David Hoffman, is Contributing Editor, Foreign Policy Magazine, and the author of “The Dead Hand.” Steven Pifer, former ambassador to Ukraine, is director of Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and author of new report, “Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention?” They spoke May 17 at Brookings on U.S.-Russian relations (Gary Feuerberg/ The Epoch Times)

WASHINGTON—The contentious issue of missile defense is reemerging between Washington and Moscow. Russia worries that NATO’s later missile defense plans at the end of the decade will pose a threat to its strategic missile defense. So far, U.S. assurances that the missiles are not aimed at Russia have not been enough to eliminate those fears.

At the end of 2010, Russia agreed to explore a cooperative defense arrangement, seeking a “legal guarantee” that U.S. arms would not be directed against its strategic ballistic missiles. This guarantee would have the U.S. limit the number, velocities, and locations of its missile defense interceptors.

But the two nations have yet to reach an understanding, and a strong Republican opposition in the U.S. Senate stands in the way of Russia getting what it wants. The Obama administration is trying to get the Russians to accept a political assurance in lieu of a legal guarantee to not direct U.S. and NATO missile defenses against Russian strategic deterrent.

On May 17, the Brookings Institution hosted a discussion on the prospects for cooperative resolution of Europe’s missile defense. The new Brookings’ Arms Control series released a 37-page paper, “Missile Defense: Cooperation or Contention,” that makes the case for NATO-Russia agreement on missile defense cooperation.

The paper’s author Steve Pifer argues that Russian participation could ideally provide several benefits for Europe’s missile defense. Missile defense could become an asset rather than a liability on U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia agendas and provide a stronger missile defense of Europe, says Pifer, who is director of the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings and former ambassador to Ukraine.

Some suggest that President Vladimir Putin is simply holding off until after the U.S. presidential election before committing to anything. Pifer acknowledges that a 2012 cooperative defense agreement “appears all but impossible in 2012.”

Limited Missile Defense

The U.S. missile defense strategy has seesawed through the decades, but offense has always developed faster than defense. President Ronald Reagan hoped that his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) would provide the U.S. the ability to defend against a large-scale Soviet ballistic missile attack. But by the end of the 1980s, it was clear that “defensive technologies were far more difficult to develop than anticipated,” and the costs were excessive, writes Pifer.

By the George H.W. Bush administration, the scope of SDI was scaled back to protect against a limited number of offensive weapons, which, according Pifer, remains U.S. policy. Threat focus narrowed in 1998 to rogue nations—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—by a commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld.

Writer Greg Thielmann points out that the Rumsfeld Commission predicted that that each of these nations could have ICBMs by 2003.

Although alarmist, the Rumsfeld Commission report provided an inducement to Congress to pass the National Missile Defense system in March 1999 calling for a homeland defense against “limited missile attack.” At that time, it was understood that U.S. missile defense could not “effectively defend against a deliberate, full-scale Russian or Chinese attack,” said Thielmann, who is currently at the Brookings’ Arms Control Association, and a previous U.S. Foreign Service Officer.

Thielmann observes that in 2012 North Korea and Iran still don’t have long-range, nuclear-tipped missiles the Rumsfeld Commission predicted.

The U.S. Plan

As an alternative to previous administration’s plan, the Obama administration proposed the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to missile defense, which it hoped would be more acceptable to the Russians, because it is tied to actual rather than theoretical ballistic threats, according to Thielmann.

EPAA’s phase 1, which is in place now in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, installed the SM-3 Block 1A missile interceptor with the Aegis SPY-1 radar that is capable of tracking a large number of ballistic missile targets simultaneously. It has the capability of intercepting “existing Iranian short-and medium-range ballistic missile warheads,” writes Pifer.

The Russians voiced concern for phase 4 at the end of the decade. Then EPAA will have the SM-3 Block IIB; its burn-out velocity 5 or more kilometers per second is much greater than the 3 kilometers per second of the Block 1A.

The Russians regard this burn-out velocity as a threat to its strategic deterrent, said David Hoffman, contributing editor at the Washington Post and Foreign Policy Magazine, who has interviewed several retired Russian generals.

According to Pifer, the SM-3 Block IIB will have the capability of intercepting medium and intermediate-range ballistic missile warheads and some capability against ICBM warheads. It would likely be deployed in Poland.

The Russians don’t like the location of sites in the Northern Seas and close to Russian borders in Romania and Poland, Hoffman said.

“We are making the Russians uncomfortable” by bringing missile defense back to discussion, said Hoffman. He emphasized that they are “not prepared technologically to compete on missile defense.”

“It would behoove us to be sensitive to their mindset,” even if they are sometimes a little bit irrational and paranoid, he said.

Cooperation Obstacles

The kind of “legal” agreement Russia seeks is a non-starter in the current political climate, though Putin seems to have backed off a bit. Immediately after taking office on May 7, he changed his words to “firm guarantees.” But a Russian agreement involves setting limits on numbers, velocities, and locations of missile defense interceptors.

Earlier this month in the Wall Street Journal, Republican Senator Jon Kyl wrote that, “President Barack Obama can’t offer any ‘legally binding’ guarantee, because when he sought ratification of the New Start Treaty in 2010 he promised to accept no limits on U.S. missile defenses.”

Kyl, whom Republican senators defer to on defense matters, said he strongly opposes the president offering political assurances of the sort that Obama suggested to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. A hot mic in Seoul on March 26 broadcast President Obama saying he would have “more flexibility” after the election.

But Kyl says that offering political assurances “would be a serious mistake…The right to self-defense is not one for which we must negotiate.”

Both Thielmann and Pifer say the Republican leadership takes support for strategic missile defense as an article of faith. “Every policy shift or defense reduction is judged according to whether it implies a failure of commitment to the cause of strategic missile defense,” writes Thielmann.

All three speakers stressed that Kyl’s position fails to appreciate the advantages of Russian cooperation in Europe’s missile defense.

“The primary Russian contribution to a cooperative missile defense system with NATO would be early warning and tracking data from Russian radar at Armavir and the Russian-operated radar at Gabala,” Pifer writes.

Pifer said these radars would likely provide earlier warning and tracking data of missiles from Iran than the U.S. radar in Turkey.

Pifer also mentioned that U.S. and Russian officials in 2011 agreed on a jointly-manned “data fusion center and a “planning and operations center.” This kind of cooperation would go a long way toward defusing mistrust and misperceptions.

The U.S. could show more flexibility if the U.S. or NATO “choose not to deploy the SM-3 Block IIB interceptor if it were clear that Iran was not making progress toward achieving a longer-range missile capability,” Pifer writes.

The two nations are still talking, but for now things have stalled. President Putin is not expected to come to the NATO summit this week in Chicago, so the matter is not likely to come up any time soon.

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U.S. postal worker Tin Aung moves boxes of letters and cards at the U.S. Post Office sort center in San Francisco, Calif., in 2008. The USPS's most recent consolidation plan begins with closing 48 processing centers this summer. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The U.S. Postal Service announced Thursday that it will consolidate 48 mail processing centers across the country starting in July—the first part of the agency’s cost-saving plan for climbing out of debt.

“As a result, nearly all consolidating activities in 2012 will occur in August and then will resume again the early part of next year,” Megan Brennan, the CEO of the Postal Service, said in a statement.

Postmaster Patrick Donahoe said the agency needs to shrink in size due to the smaller mail volume in recent years that has given way to email and other forms of communication.

In nine months, the move to close down mail centers would save USPS around $1.2 billion, the agency said.

“We simply do not have the mail volumes to justify the size and capacity of our current mail processing network,” Donahoe said, citing projections that the USPS will lose around $14 billion in the 2012 fiscal year. “To return to long-term profitability and financial stability while keeping mail affordable, we must match our network to the anticipated workload.”

The agency hinted that it needs to start consolidating processing facilities because of the deadlock in Congress, which is preventing passage of legislation to aid it.

After the initial 48 are closed this year, another 92 processing centers are scheduled for consolidation in February 2013. The year after that, 89 more would be consolidated.

The move to consolidate will force the USPS to cut around 13,000 jobs, mostly through attrition.

“The Postal Service will be communicating with our customers and employees about these changes in great detail,” Brennan said. “We will work closely with our customers to ensure there are no surprises as we move forward.”

In the next week, around 5,000 USPS employees will receive notifications related to the consolidation efforts and other activities related to the plan.

With the new plan, approximately 80 percent of the United States that gets first-class overnight mail service will continue to receive it until the end of 2013.

“We are essentially preserving overnight delivery for first-class mail through the end of 2013, although we are collapsing the distance that we can provide overnight service to the distribution area served by a particular mail processing facility,” Brennan said.

In the past, the agency has said it wants to reduce its workforce from around 570,000 to around 420,000, reduce the six-day delivery schedule to five days, and shrink employee benefits.

A number of U.S. senators urged the Postal Service to keep rural offices open until further Congressional action.

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A Japanese fishing vessel Ryou-Un Maru smoulders after a gunnery exercise 180 miles west of the Southeast Alaskan coast April 5, 2012. The Coast Guard crew sank the vessel, in 6,000 feet of water, by using explosive ammunition and filling it with water. (AFP/Getty Images)

When the derelict Japanese ghost boat appeared on the U.S. West Coast earlier this year, it was a touching reminder of the tragic loss Japan had endured from the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Now, however, the U.S. coastlines face a grim reality of their own—marine debris from the Japanese tsunami is posing a bigger threat than experts first thought.

“It’s a very large environmental tragedy which is just beginning,” said Merrick Burden of the Juneau-based Marine Conservation Alliance foundation. The problem is large, both in physical area and in its impact on the environment.

The Japanese government estimated that about 5 million tons of debris was washed into the sea following the tsunami. Much of the material sank, but around 1.5 million tons was expected to be buoyant—a great deal of which would end up on U.S. shores, with the help of prevailing winds.

“That’s not surprising when you consider that entire cities with their gas stations, garages, warehouses, stores, and industrial plants all washed into the sea,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Thursday at a congressional hearing on the threat to the U.S. coastline posed by the debris.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates the bulk of the debris will peak around Spring 2013 and continue to wash up throughout the rest of the year. However, wind-driven material has already started to build up in parts of the northwest American coast.

While Canada found a Harley Davidson floating off its shores, the Alaskan coastline is receiving the brunt of the debris, according to Merrick Burden.

There are mounds of plastic, Japanese fishing buoys, kerosene flagons, bottles of rat poison, and drums of kerosene products, all washing up onto the shore.

To document the debris, the Marine Conservation Alliance has mobilized groups of environmentalists up and down the Alaskan coast. Among the masses of material, they are finding thousands of Styrofoam boxes the size of 55 gallon drums and piles of Styrofoam broken up into tiny pieces. They are a real threat to fish, Burden said.

There are also mounds of plastic, Japanese fishing buoys, kerosene flagons, bottles of rat poison, and drums of kerosene products.

The beaches, previous tourist destinations for their pristine beauty, are now “littered with rubble,” Burden said, “Styrofoam everywhere, leaked stuff hardening on the shore.”

The NOAA is alert to the problem and is working with other U.S. coastal regions to the south of Alaska, including Washington state, California, Oregon, and Hawaii.

This combination shows a rescue worker walking through rubble in the tsunami hit area of Minamisanriku, Miyagi prefecture on March 18, 2011 (top) and the same area on Jan. 14, 2012 (bottom). (Mike Clarke/Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images)

Through its 13-man Marine Debris Program, the NOAA is working to understand the scope of the threat and is collecting data on debris quantity, type, movement, and impact, David Kennedy, assistant administrator for the NOAA’s Ocean Services and Coastal Resource Management, told the Senate hearing.

The debris is now in an area three times the size of the contiguous United States, Kennedy said, and varies from buoyant wind-driven debris, to partially submerged or just-below-the-surface debris that is carried by sea currents.

Mindful that large pieces of debris could block shipping lanes, Kennedy said that NOAA has mobilized an array of strategies in an endeavor to pinpoint those pieces and predict where they might come ashore.

“NOAA has coordinated with groups who regularly have ‘eyes on the water’ to report back debris sightings, including shipping fleets, commercial fishing vessels, and scientific fleets such as University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System vessels,” he told the hearing.

National airlines, satellites, and at-sea technologies have also been recruited, Kennedy said, and discussions were planned with communities in California, Oregon, and Hawaii to monitor the coast.

Meetings have already been held in Washington state and Alaska, he said.

Also aware that the ghost ship had drifted right into U.S. territory without being picked up by U.S. surveillance—it was reported to the U.S. by Canadian authorities—Kennedy said they were now working with high-level U.S. security surveillance to better detect larger debris on its way to the U.S. coast.

West Coast communities, however, want to know more. In a prepared statement, Robert Andrew, mayor of Long Beach, Wash., wanted to know what the plans were if hazardous material turned up: who would be responsible, what the lines of communication were, and “the $64,000 question”—who would organize and pay for the cleanup.

The city is reliant on a long-established fishing industry and tourism for its economy, he said.

“If the debris is heavy or dangerous, it could keep the visitors and summer residents we are so dependent on away, and that would be disastrous for our economy and for the 230 small businesses located in Long Beach,” he said.

Andrew noted stories in the Alaskan press showing banners reading: “Shame on us for not being prepared.”

“We have had a year to get prepared and Washington, too, will have few excuses when the day comes,” he stated.

His concerns were passed on to the hearing by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who, along with Sen. Begich and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), grilled Kennedy for answers.

What is the national plan and who is going to pay for it, Sen. Begich asked.

Kennedy responded. “We don’t have the funds to mount a cleanup, especially in areas remote like Alaska and Hawaii.” Nor did Kennedy volunteer a plan.

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GROUP PHOTO: (R to L) Film director Michael Perlman, Jennifer Zeng, Margaret Chew Barringer, Kean Wong, producer; NTD President Zhong Lee, Kean Wong's parents. Left—Charles Lee (Edward Dai/The Epoch Times)

PHILADELPHIA—A documentary portraying how two Falun Gong practitioners stood up against the Chinese regime at great personal cost won yet another top prize at a film festival on Wednesday.

Free China: The Courage to Believe, took away top honors at the inaugural International Free Speech Film Festival in Philadelphia. Earlier it won the top award in its category at the Awareness Film Festival in West Hollywood on May 6 and another top award at the 45th World-Fest Houston Film Festival on April 23.

The practitioners’ personal stories are told against the backdrop of the 13-year-long persecution faced by more than 100 million Chinese people. Audience members at Wednesday’s event said they had heard and read about Falun Gong but had no idea of the magnitude of the persecution and had never been brought so close to it.

At the end of the day, it is not politicians, or governments, but the choices of every single one of us that will shape and create our own future.

—Jennifer Zeng in “Free China”

“I hope this film changes our world,” said Margaret Chew Barringer, a poet and filmmaker. The film festival is the latest initiative from American Insight, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting free speech founded by Barringer. “Free China” was screened to a full house in the Benjamin Franklin Hall.

“I was struck by the human scope of it,” Sharon Eisenhour said of the film. Eisenhour is a professor at Temple University’s School of Communication. “A lot of people in this country have no idea to what extent the persecution is,” she said.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have parks filled throughout this country of people doing Falun Gong, paying tribute to the film, to the story, to those who are being persecuted?

—Jennifer Lynn, American broadcast producer  

The award ceremony was preceded by a panel of high-profile speakers including Karen Curry, former CNN bureau chief and veteran producer of broadcast news and CNN’s New York bureau chief. Also on the panel was Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University who has served as director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, C.K. Williams; Reggie Shuford, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; Vernon Odom, host of the Channel 6 TV station’s weekly public affairs program; and Bob Craig, host of Big Band Jazz with Bob Craig, also spoke.

CELEBRITY PANELISTS: Vernon Odom, C.K. Williams, Karen Curry, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Reggie Shuford, Bob Craig (Edward Dai/The Epoch Times)

Lydia Hunn, professor at Drexel University’s College of Media Arts and Design, said she was moved to tears by the story of Jennifer Zeng, the Chinese woman profiled in the film. “I didn’t know the extent of this. I didn’t know there is so much repression,” she said.

Zeng was a former Chinese Communist Party member who belonged to China’s upper middle class and then became a prisoner of conscience in China and a human rights activist in exile. In telling her story, the film examines the journey to freedom taken by millions of Chinese citizens who have chosen to speak up against injustice in China.

Zeng, who was granted political asylum by Australia and now lives in the United States, is the author of the bestselling book, Witnessing History: One woman’s fight for freedom and Falun Gong.

“It was heart wrenching,” professor Hunn said. “She was so honest in her description of the pains of having to lie about giving up in her belief in order to get out and tell her story—a torture to her.”

RINGING THE LIBERTY BELL: (3rd L)  Kean Wong (producer), Michael Perlman (director), Jennifer Zeng, Charles Lee, Margaret Chew Barringer (Edward Dai/The Epoch Times)

Zeng, who was visibly touched while giving a speech at the award ceremony, said, “For me, free speech means two things: whether one has a kind enough heart to see the truth; and secondly, whether one has the wisdom and courage to search for the truth, or to simply accept it when it is presented.”

Zeng said the 13-yearlong sacrifice and suffering endured by millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China has become the most crucial test for people’s conscience and ability to take a stand between good and evil and right and wrong.

“At the end of the day, it is not politicians, or governments, but the choices of every single one of us that will shape and create our own future,” she said.

Charles Lee with wife and daughter (Edward Dai/The Epoch Times)

Alongside Zeng, U.S. citizen Charles Lee is profiled in the film. Lee is a former Harvard Medical School fellow who was imprisoned in a Chinese labor camp for three years for attempting to publicize the persecution of Falun Gong in China by tapping into the state-controlled television.

Lee suffered the same inhuman treatment as Zeng did: mental and physical torture, brainwashing, forced-feedings, forced labor, and the threat of becoming a victim of forced organ harvesting.

Both Lee and Zeng discussed their Chinese labor camp experiences of making toys and other consumer products sold in the United States by American companies. The film also examined the role of leading Western technology companies in the development of the Chinese regime’s internet censorship to suppress free speech.

Jennifer Lynn, a broadcast producer in Philadelphia, said she was “wowed by the power of the story.” Lynn, the Morning Edition host of NPR affiliate WHYY/91FM in Philadelphia said, “The story is of courage and truth. Really resounding. All I want to do now is to share it with more people.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have parks filled throughout this country of people doing Falun Gong, paying tribute to the film, to the story, to those who are being persecuted?” Lynn said.

In the speech given at the award ceremony, Lee, who was accompanied by his wife and 2-year-old daughter, thanked the American people for their role in trying to end the injustice in China. He said the persecution of Falun Gong has reached far beyond the 100 million Falun Gong practitioners directly affected.

“Internationally, it also affects countries that have trading, diplomatic, political, and cultural relations with China,” he said. “The persecution is also directly against the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. The test is the toughest one for people of conscience, because they know that Falun Gong practitioners are good people and the persecution is unlawful and inhumane. If they want to continue to do business with the communist regime, they think they have to turn a blind eye to the persecution.”

Lee continued, “I believe it is the responsibility of each of us to uphold the moral standards that are the foundations of any society. A China without the Communist Party will be a truly free China and a stable friend to all countries around the world.”

Free China was selected from a group of six finalists that explored topics of censorship, resistance, inequality, courage, change, and hope. A panel of 50 judges from all walks of life chose the winner.

The film will be distributed free of charge to high schools globally.

Free China was directed by Michael Perlman, award-winning director of Tibet-Beyond Fear, and produced by Kean Wong, a Chinese-Australian filmmaker, TV producer, and host for New Tang Dynasty Television.

“With the persecution of truth, compassion, and tolerance you eradicate morality and principles that are the basis of a civil society, a free society, a prosperous society,” Wong said at the awards evening.

Perlman said he directed the film in the hope that it would foster real freedom inside China. “And to let the Chinese government know they have nothing to be afraid of by allowing freedom in China. Because this is the way that China will become even stronger economically and politically.”

“History is on the side of freedom around the world,” he continued. “And it’s something that all of us together, both in the United States, and around the world, individually and collectively, can work and make it happen.”

The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

The census defined a minority as someone “who is not single-race white and not Hispanic.”

In an estimate on Thursday, the agency said that 50.4 percent of children under 1 were minorities, which is up from 49.5 percent from the 2010 census taken in April of that year.

“This is a watershed moment,” Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist with Johns Hopkins University, told the Washington Post. “It shows us how multicultural we’ve become.”

Minorities make up around 36.6 percent of the entire U.S. population in 2011, rising from 36.1 percent in 2010, the census said.

There are four states with a population of greater than 50 percent minority: California, Hawaii, Texas, and New Mexico.

President Barack Obama (R) presents the Medal of Honor to Rose Mary Sabo-Brown (L), widow of Army Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr., during a ceremony May 16 at the White House. Spc. Sabo was presented with the highest military decoration, posthumously, for his heroic actions on May 10, 1970 while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rescued Magellanic penguins from South America swim in the water at the new June Keys Penguin Habitat at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif, on May 16. An exhibit highlighting the environmental threats faced by penguins, such as climate change and over-fishing, opens this week. A live video feed of the penguins is available on the aquariums website, www.aquariumofpacific.org (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/GettyImages)

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee May 16, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The FBI said on Wednesday it is investigating an information leak in the foiled al-Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on a U.S.-bound airplane, according to reports.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said the information that was disclosed to the media last week has risked the lives of intelligence sources and makes it harder to recruit them, according to a live video feed of the hearing.

“Leaks such as this have a huge impact on our ability to do our business, not just on a particular source and the threat to the particular source, but your ability to recruit sources is severely hampered,” Mueller said, adding that the FBI is investigating the incident “thoroughly.”

The foiled plot was traced back to al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and was first revealed by The Associated Press and other media, but it was later revealed that the person in the middle of it was a double agent working with the CIA, U.K. intelligence, and Saudi intelligence officials.

Such leaks, Muller said, strain relationships between countries that cooperate with the United States over intelligence matters, which creates an “inhibition in the willingness of others to share information with us where they don’t think that information will remain secure.”

“So it also has some long-term effects, which is why it is so important to make certain that the persons who are responsible for the leak are brought to justice,” he said. Muller added that the FBI is discussing the leak with partners overseas to make sure the impact is minimized.

The bomb in the plot, according to reports, was an improvement over the underwear bomb that failed to explode over Detroit on Christmas Day of 2009. The new explosive device was also designed to be placed in the bomber’s underwear and had a more sophisticated detonator.

While responding to questions over safety measures implemented by airports to ensure that such explosive devices do not make it onto American airliners, Mueller said information was passed to the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security to possibly beef up security measures.

The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.