Hearing news of freedom

June 20, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Truth doesn't always travel fast, but when it is finally known it changes the world.

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Russia has resumed a military buildup near Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday, calling it "a very regrettable step backward."

"I can confirm that we now see a new Russian military buildup — at least a few thousand more Russian troops deployed to the Ukrainian border — and we see troop maneuvers in the neighborhood of Ukraine," Rasmussen said in London.

"If they're deployed to seal the border and stop the flow of weapons and fighters that would be a positive step. But that's not what we're seeing."

The Russian Defense Ministry refused to comment on Rasmussen's claim.

Their belongings piled high on buses, rickety donkey carts and tractors, thousands of refugees poured out of Pakistan's North Waziristan on Thursday, terrified by both state troops and Taliban insurgents fighting for control of the troubled region.

Pakistan announced the start of a full-on military offensive on Sunday to quash an increasingly assertive Pakistani Taliban insurgency in the ethnic Pashtun region, the base of some of the country's most feared Al Qaeda-linked militants.

Troops have since encircled the mountainous region on the Afghan border and fighter jets have pounded villages and militant hideouts, sending a wave of panicked people spilling into the nearby region of Bannu, as well as Afghanistan.

A timely warning allowed an entire South Dakota city to shelter from a tornado that razed dozens of homes and businesses but injured only one or two people in the area, officials said Thursday.

Dedrich Koch, a Jerauld County prosecutor, said everyone was accounted for after the twister hit Wessington Springs just before 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Tornado alarms sounded several times, prompting residents to head to the city's emergency shelter in the basement of the courthouse, Koch said.

Charles Bergeleen, who has lived in Wessington Springs since 1981, said the twister moved over hills and through the town, missing his house by 50 feet.

"There's debris all over that (south) end of town; there's a lot of insulation, wood, siding," Bergeleen said Thursday. "I found a license plate from Texas in my yard. I guess it's from someone who was visiting the area."

Ten businesses were damaged, five of them extensively, and at least 25 of 43 houses that were damaged are uninhabitable, he said Thursday. The city has a population of about 850 residents.

Top environmental regulators for four Republican presidents told Congress on Wednesday what many Republican lawmakers won't: Action is needed on global warming.

In a congressional hearing organized to undermine Republican opposition to President Barack Obama's environmental proposals, Senate Democrats asked the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency for Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to discuss the risks from climate change and what should be done about it. Some Republicans dispute the science of climate change and have worked to unravel Obama's steps to address it.

Action on Capitol Hill — where even a bland, bipartisan energy efficiency bill couldn't get passed in May — has been in a deep freeze.

"We have a scientific consensus around this issue. We also need a political consensus," said Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey Governor and first EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, who resigned her post after disagreeing with the White House's direction on pollution rules.

Whitman was joined by William Ruckelshaus, the nation's first EPA administrator under President Richard Nixon, William Reilly, who led the EPA under President George H.W. Bush, and Lee Thomas, who was administrator under Reagan.

Children's faces pressed against glass. Hundreds of young boys and girls covered with aluminum foil-like blankets next to chain link fences topped with barbed wire. The pungent odor that comes with keeping people in close quarters.

These were the scenes Wednesday from tours of crowded Border Patrol stations in South Texas and Arizona, where thousands of immigrants are being held before they are transferred to other shelters around the country.

It was the first time the media was given access to the facilities since President Obama called the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally this budget year an "urgent humanitarian situation."

The surge in minors, mostly from Central America, has overwhelmed the US government. It also prompted Texas officials Wednesday night to order a surge in state law enforcement resources to the border in an effort to help stop the influx. Details of that surge are still to come.

The children pose a particular challenge because the law requires that they be transferred from Border Patrol stations like the ones in Texas and Arizona to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.

From there, they are sent to shelters for several weeks as the government tries to reunite them with family in the US. The network of some 100 shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now caring for more than 7,600 children.

Lawmakers expressed disbelief Wednesday at General Motors' explanation for why it took 11 years to recall millions of small cars with defective ignition switches, and also confronted its chief executive with evidence that the company dragged its feet on a similar safety issue in different vehicles.

CEO Mary Barra and attorney Anton Valukas, who recently released a 315-page investigative report into the recall, endured skepticism and some lecturing at a House subcommittee hearing. One member referred to the actions of some employees described in the report as "insane."

The GM recall has triggered a deeper look at ignition switches across the auto industry. On Wednesday, the government opened an investigation into reports of defective switches in 1.2 million Chrysler vehicles.

Barra made her second appearance before the committee since GM recalled 2.6 million small cars in February.