The great energy hope: better batteries

June 18, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Quitting hydrocarbons isn’t easy.

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Vowing to protect fragile marine life, President Obama acted Tuesday to create the world’s largest ocean preserve by expanding a national monument his predecessor established in waters thousands of miles from the American mainland. The designation for a remote stretch of the Pacific Ocean marks a major symbolic victory for environmentalists, who have urged the president to take action on his own to protect the planet as Congress turns its focus elsewhere.

Signs emerged Tuesday of a reprisal sectarian slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, as police said pro-government Shiite militiamen killed nearly four dozen detainees after insurgents tried to storm a jail northeast of Baghdad. A local morgue official said many of the detainees had bullet wounds to the head and chest, though the Iraqi military insisted the Sunni inmates were killed by mortar shells in the attack on the facility outside the city of Baqouba.

The Internal Revenue Service has lost more e-mails connected to the tea party investigation, congressional investigators said Tuesday. The IRS said last Friday it had lost an untold number of e-mails when Lois Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011. Lerner used to head the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status. On Tuesday, two key lawmakers said the IRS has also lost e-mails from six additional IRS workers whose computers crashed. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller.

A Libyan militant suspected in the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, has been captured and will be tried in the US, the first apprehension of an alleged perpetrator in the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. President Obama said Ahmed Abu Khattala, a senior leader of the Benghazi branch of the terror group Ansar al-Shariah in Libya, will “now face the full weight of the American justice system.” “The fact that he is now in US custody is a testament to the painstaking efforts of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel,” said Obama, whose administration has come under intense criticism from Republicans for being unable to apprehend those responsible for the attack.

Israel’s prime minister on Tuesday urged the international community to demand the Western-backed Palestinian president break off ties with the militant Hamas group over the abduction of three Israeli teens, the latest sign that Israel’s massive five-day-old search in the West Bank has broader objectives than finding the missing. Israel said it also wants to destroy the Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank and apparently hopes to reclaim international support after the latest failure of US-led peace efforts. Israel has launched its most significant military ground operation in more than five years since the three Jewish seminary students went missing last Thursday at a West Bank hitchhiking junction.

A car bomb exploded in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least seven people, including a local rebel commander, opposition activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast struck near the offices of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and another group, Ahrar al-Sham, in the village of Shmeitiyeh in Deir el-Zour Province. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said an Ahrar al-Sham commander in the area and an Islamic judge affiliated with the Nusra Front also were among those killed.

Any thaw in relations between Iran and the United States under the pressure of Iraq’s turmoil is unlikely to hasten progress in difficult negotiations seeking limits on Tehran’s nuclear program. Recent high-level US-Iran talks that were meant to pave the way to a final nuclear deal only highlighted the two nations’ huge differences, say two diplomats, further diminishing expectations that a July 20 target date for agreement will be met. US and Iranian officials are both concerned by the swift advance of radical Islamist forces in Iraq and officials from the two countries met briefly Monday. But the nuclear talks, a senior State Department official said, are “its own process.” The official demanded anonymity in line with State Department rules.

For artist Pablo Picasso, 1901 was a pivotal time to experiment and find his own unique style. At just 19 years old, he was living in Paris, painting furiously and dirt poor, so it wasn’t unusual for him to take one canvas and reuse it to paint a fresh idea. Now scientists and art experts are revealing they’ve found a hidden painting beneath the surface of one of Picasso’s first masterpieces, “The Blue Room.” Using advances in infrared imagery, they have uncovered a hidden portrait of a bow-tied man with his face resting on his hand.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

Compiled from wire service reports

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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