The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, September 30, 2013 - 3A
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom MondaySeptember 30, 2013 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
MARQUETTE, Mich.
Hunters snap up
licenses for Mich.
wolf hunt
Hunters are snapping up
licenses for Michigan's first wolf
hunt in November.
More than 1,000 licenses -
the bulk of the 1,200-license
limit - were sold by Saturday
evening. Hunters will have a
chance to kill 43 wolves in seven
Upper Peninsula counties during
a six-week season that ends at
the end of the year.
"I expected them to be flying
off the shelves pretty fast. So
I got in line with a few other
folks here and was lucky to get
one," said state Rep. John Kivela,
D-Marquette, who dropped
by the Department of Natural
Resources office in Marquette
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
New commercial
supply ship reaches
space station
NASA's newest delivery ser-
vice made its first-ever shipment
to the International Space Station
on Sunday, another triumph for
the booming commercial space
arena that has its sights set on
launching astronauts.
Orbital Sciences Corp.'s
unmanned cargo ship, the Cyg-
nus, pulled up at the orbiting
lab with a half-ton of meals and
special treats for the station
astronauts who assisted in the
high-flying feat.
With the smooth linkup,
Orbital Sciences of Virginia
became only the second company
to accomplish such a far-flung
shipment. The California-based
SpaceX company took the lead
last year.
LOS ANGELES
USC fires Lane
* Kiffin, Orgeron is
interim coach
Southern California fired Lane
Riffin early Sunday morning,
ending the coach's tumultuous
tenure a few hours after the Tro-
jans lost 62-41 at Arizona State.
Ed Orgeron was picked as
USC's interim head coach by
athletic director Pat Haden, who
dismissed Kiffin at the airport
following the Trojans' flight
home. USC (3-2, 0-2 Pac-12) has
eight games left under Orgeron,
Kiffin's assistant head coach
and the former Mississippi head
coach.
"It's never the perfect time to
do these things, but I thought it
was the right time," Haden said.
Haden fired Kiffin in a 3 a.m.
meeting at the Trojans' private
airport terminal, but not before
a 45-minute chat in which Kiffin
tried to change Haden's mind.
POTISKUM, Nigeria
Militants kill
students in
college attack
Suspected Islamic extremists
attacked an agricultural college in
the dead of night, gunning down
dozens of students as they slept
in dormitories and torching class-
rooms, the school's provost said -
the latest violence in northeastern
Nigeria's ongoing Islamic upris-
ing.
The attack, blamed on the Boko
Haram extremist group, came
despite a 4 '/2-month-old state of
emergency covering three states
and one-sixth of the country. It
and other recent violence have led
many to doubt assurances from
the government and the military
that they are winning Nigeria's
war on the extremists.
Provost Molima Idi Mato of
Yobe State College of Agriculture
told The Associated Press that
there were no security forces pro-
tecting the college. Two weeks
ago, the state commissioner for
education had begged schools and
colleges to reopen and promised
they would be guarded by soldiers
and police.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
States resist the launch
of health care exchanges
AP PHOTO
U.N. experts arrive to the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday. A team of U.N. chemical weapons
inspectors returned to Damascus on Wednesday to complete their investigation into what the UN calls "pending
credible allegations" of chemical weapons use in Syria's civil war
Weapons inspectors outline
Syria plan for Nov. 1 deadline
Build nascent
insurance markets
withinjurisdiction
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - With
new online health insurance
exchanges set to launch Tuesday,
consumers in many Southern and
Plains states will have to look
harder for information on how
the marketplaces work than their
counterparts elsewhere.
In Republican-led states
that oppose the federal Afford-
able Care Act, the strategy has
ranged from largely ignoring the
health overhaul to encouraging
residents not to sign up and even
making it harder for nonprofit
organizations to provide infor-
mation about the exchanges.
Health care experts worry that
ultimately consumers in these
states could end up confused
about the exchanges, and the
overall rollout of the law could be
hindered.
"Without the shared planning
and the cooperation of the state
government, it's much harder
for them to be ready to imple-
ment this complicated law," said
Rachel Grob of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, who has
studied differences in how states
are implementing segments of
the law.
Several of the 14 Northeast,
Midwest and Western states
running their own insurance
exchanges have spent weeks on
marketing and advertising cam-
paigns to help residents get ready
to buy health insurance. At least
$684 million will be spent on
publicity explaining what people
need to do next and persuading
the doubtful to sign up for cover-
age, according to data compiled
The Associated Press.
By contrast, most states across
the South have declined federal
grants to advertise the exchanges
and ceded the right to run the
marketplaces themselves. And
early Sunday, the Republican-led
U.S. House added to legislation
that would avert a partial govern-
ment shutdown a one-year delay
of the creation of the marketplac-
es. Democrats have said delaying
the health care law would sink
the bill, and the White House
promised aveto.
Governors from the Caroli-
nas to Kansas have decried the
exchanges and the rest of the law,
which was passed by Congress in
2010 and many argue reaffirmed
when voters re-elected President
Obama in 2012. The Supreme
Court in 2012 upheld the consti-
tutionality of most of the law; a
piece of the Medicaid expansion
was an exception.
"When it came to Obamacare,
we didn't just say 'no,' we said
'never,"' South Carolina Gov.
Nikki Haley said. last month
alongside U.S. Sen. Tim Scott,
whom she appointed last Decem-
ber when Jim DeMint resigned.
"And we're going to keep on fight-
ing until we get people like Sen.
Scott and everybody else in Con-
gress to defund Obamacare."
Priority to
prevent ability
to manufacture
chemical arms
THE HAGUE, Netherlands
(AP) - Inspectors who will
oversee Syria's destruction of its
chemical weapons said Sunday
their first priority is to help the
country scrap its ability to man-
ufacture such arms by a Nov. 1
deadline - using every means
possible.
The chemical weapons
inspectors said that may
include smashing mixing
equipment with sledgeham-
mers, blowing up delivery
missiles, driving tanks over
empty shells or filling them
with concrete, and running
machines without lubricant
so they seize up and become
inoperable.
On Friday, the U.N. Security
Council ordered the Organi-
zation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons to help Syria
destroyits chemical weapons by
mid-2014.
On Sunday, inspectors met
with media in The Hague to
explain their current plan of
action, which is to include an
initial group of 20 leaving for
Syria on Monday.
The organization allowed
two inspectors to speak on
condition of anonymity out
of concern for their safety
amid Syria's civil war; both
are veteran members of the
OPCW. Spokesman Michael
Luhan said the men "are
going to be deeply involved
in Syria."
"This isn't just extraordi-
nary for the OPCW. This hasn't
been done before: an inter-
national mission to go into a
country which is involved in a
state of conflict and amid that
conflict oversee the destruc-
tion of an entire category of
weapons of mass destruction
which it possesses," Luhan
said. "This is definitely a his-
torical first."
Syria acknowledged for the
first time ithas chemical weap-
ons after an Aug. 21 poison gas
attack killed hundreds of civil-
ians in a Damascus suburb
and President Barack Obama
threatened a military strike in
retaliation. A U.N. investiga-
tion found that nerve gas was
used in the attack but stopped
short of blaming it on Syr-
ian President Bashar Assad's
regime.
After a flurry of diplomatic
negotiations involving the U.S.,
Syria, and Syrian ally Russia,
Syria made an initial volun-
tary disclosure of its program
to the Hague-based OPCW.
Under organization's rules, the
amounts and types of weap-
ons in Syria's stockpiles, and
the number and location of the
sites, will not be publicly dis-
closed.
The U.S. and Russia agree
that Syria has roughly 1,000
metric tons of chemical
weapons agents and precur-
sors, including blister agents
such as sulfur and mustard
gas, and nerve agents like
sarin. External experts say
they are distributed over 50
to70 sites.
One of the OPCW experts
with a military background said
the "open source" information
about the Syrian program is
"reasonable."
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Radio failures cited in the
deaths of 19 Ariz. firemen
Experts seek policy
changes, more
investigation in
response to attack
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) -
Shortly before 19 elite firefight-
ers perished in a ragingArizona
wildfire, commanders thought
the crew was ina safe place. No
one had heard from the Granite
Mountain Hotshots for 33 min-
utes. The crew didn't contact
commanders, and commanders
didn't radio them.
Then it was too late.
A three-month investiga-
tion into the June 30 deaths
released Saturday did not
determine if the tragedy was
avoidable, while outlining a
series of missteps by the crew
and commanders and reveal-
ing the more than half-hour
of radio silence that occurred
justbefore the firefighters were
overwhelmed by flames.
It's not certain why the crew
left what was believed to be
a safe spot on a ridge that the
fire had previously burned and,
apparently seeking another safe
location, unknowingly walked
to their deaths in a basin thick
with dry brush. At the time
they died, an airtanker was cir-
cling overhead, confused about
their location.
"There is much that can-
not be known about the crew's
decisions and actions" because
of the gap in communications,
the report concluded.
The 120-page report by a
team of local, state and federal
fire experts pointed to repeat-
ed problems with radios and
contact with the crew. At one
point, a pilot wanted to check
on the firefighters after hearing
radio traffic that they might be
on the move, but commanders
believed at that time the crew
was positioned safely.
Ted Putnam, a former inves-
tigator for the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice, said the report didn't go
far enough to dissect the deci-
sions made by the firefighters.
When the crew members went
silent and did not notify anyone
they were changing locations
"there's an active failure there,"
he said.
At a news conference in
Prescott, where the fallen fire-
fighters lived, Shari Turby-
fill implored officials to draw
stronger conclusions about why
her stepson and his fellow fire-
fighters died, and recommend
immediate changes.
"I don't want another family
to deal with this," she said.
Her husband, David, said the
emergency fire shelter in which
his 27-year-old son Travis died
had not been improved in 13
years.
"Policies, as they may be,
need to change," he said.
Despite identifying numer-
ous problems, the report found
that proper procedure was fol-
lowed in the worst firefighting
tragedy since Sept. 11, 2001.
Investigators suggested that
the state of Arizona should pos-
sibly update its guidelines and
look into better tracking tech-
nology.
All but one member of the
Granite Mountain Hotshots
crew died while protecting
the small former gold rush
town of Yarnell, about 80 miles
northwest of Phoenix, from an
erratic, lightning-sparked fire.
Hotshots are elite backcountry
firefighters who hike deep into
the brush to fight blazes.
Investigators described what
became a chaotic day in which a
fire that two days earlier caused
little concern bloomed into an
inferno that incinerated pine,
juniper and scrub oak in an
area that hadn't experienced a
significant wildfire in nearly a
half century.
The day went according to
routine in the boulder-strewn
mountains until the wind shift-
ed around 4 p.m., pushing a
wall of fire that had been reced-
ing from the firefighters all day
back toward them. The report
suggested the crew was blind-
sided when the fire changed
direction and surged in inten-
sity and speed.
Commanders did not find
out the men were surrounded
by flames and fighting for their
lives until five minutes before
they deployed their emergen-
cy shelters, which was more
than a half hour after a stormy
weather warning was issued.
Without guidance from the
command center or their look-
out, who had escaped after
warning the crew, the men
bushwhacked into a canyon
that soon turned into a bowl of
fire. The topography whipped
up 70-foot flames that bent
parallel and licked the ground,
producing 2,000 degree heat.
Fire shelters, always a dreaded
last resort, start to melt at 1,200
degrees.
The report confirms the
crew knew about the changing
weather, and just before 4 p.m.
a commander warns the crew
superintendent to "hunker and
be safe."
There was no word from
the crew from just after 4 p.m.
until just minutes before the fire
overwhelms them - a gap of 33
minutes.
Shortly before they deploy
their shelters, a static-filled
transmission comes over an
air-to-ground frequency from a
crew member at 4:39 p.m.: "We
are in front of the flaming front."
Other firefighters working
on the blaze who pick up the
transmission are confused,
hearing the urgency in the
Hotshot's voice and chain saws
roaring in the background.
They believed the crew was in
a safe spot.
In final snippets of conversa-
tion, the crew superintendent
says urgently "our escape route
has been cut off. We are prepar-
ing a deployment site" for the
shelters.
He's assured an airtanker is
coming.
But a smaller plane makes
seven passes over four minutes
trying to locate the crew to
guide the bigtanker, but cannot
find or contact them.
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