Announcement of the Clear Sky multinational exercise comes days after Ukraine said it would establish a new naval base along the Sea of Azov to counter a more assertive Russia.

The U.S. plans to send about 450 personnel from bases in the States and in Europe, a U.S. Air Forces in Europe spokesman said Tuesday. About 250 will participate in the exercise, including pilots and maintainers; the remainder will be in support roles.

Clear Sky is one of several joint and multinational exercises being conducted in Ukraine this year aimed at promoting regional security, defense officials said.

Ukraine is not a NATO member but has declared its interest in joining the alliance. Cooperation between NATO and Kiev has expanded swiftly since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

A total of some 950 personnel are slated to take part in Clear Sky. Besides Ukraine and the United States, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom are participating.

The exercise will take place mainly at Starokostiantyniv Air Base, located about 150 miles southwest of Kiev, and other training areas and ranges in Ukraine.

U.S. participants will include the Air National Guard and other stateside and overseas units, according to USAFE. This year marks the 25th anniversary of collaboration between the California Air National Guard and Ukraine as part of U.S. European Command’s State Partnership Program. California units will be heavily represented, with F-15C Eagles and C-130J Super Hercules, USAFE officials said in a statement.

Other U.S. aircraft participating include an F-15D from the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, England; KC-135s from the Illinois Air National Guard and the 100th Air Refueling Wing; and MQ-9s operating out of Miroslawiec Military Air Base, Poland. The Pennsylvania Air National Guard will provide instructors.

Also scheduled to participate are several additional units from California, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Alaska, Washington and bases in Europe, USAFE said.

Training will focus on air sovereignty, air interdiction, air-to-ground integration, air mobility operations, aeromedical evacuation, cyberdefense and personnel recovery.

svan.jennifer@stripes.com
Twitter: @stripesktown
 

D’Amico, 39, made his comments without elaborating further after a brief appearance in court in Burlington City for traffic offenses that resulted in his license being suspended.

Municipal Court Judge Dennis P. McInerney postponed the hearing until Oct. 9 to give D’Amico time to restore his license and to go to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission to find out whether he is eligible to have his driving privileges reinstated.

“I can’t wait to talk, but I can’t do it right now,” said D’Amico, dressed in a black hoodie and shorts and his baseball cap on backward. Reporters followed him to a dark blue Jeep in the parking lot where he was picked up. “I’m letting the cops do their job right now.”

D’Amico was arrested Sept. 10 on a bench warrant after he twice failed to show up for municipal court hearings related to minor traffic offenses. He was held briefly in the Burlington County Jail a week ago before posting $500 bail. Police arrested him at his home in rural Florence Township.

D’Amico and his girlfriend, Kate McClure, 28, are under a criminal investigation that began after Bobbitt alleged last month that the couple had squandered much of the $400,000 collected through GoFundMe. Bobbitt has since sued the D’Amico and McClure, who were ordered by a judge to turn over what remains of the money.

The couple’s lawyer has said all the GoFundMe donations are gone. Earlier this month, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office, with Florence police, executed a search warrant at the couple’s house and confiscated cash, jewelry, a BMW and financial records.

The couple have denied using the money for their personal use and said they did all they could to help Bobbitt.

Crowded by reporters Tuesday, D’Amico said when he does talk about how the money was used, it will be “crystal clear” what happened to the donations.

As tensions grew between the couple and Bobbitt, D’Amico was arrested earlier this year on the traffic violations.

According to a Florence municipal clerk, D’Amico was arrested in May after he was pulled over for a broken taillight on his vehicle. At that time, he had already been cited by Burlington City police for driving with a suspended license in October 2017. In May, McClure posted $500 bail to free her boyfriend, but D’Amico twice failed to appear in court in June and another arrest warrant was issued. Because he did not show up, the couple had to forfeit the bail money, the clerk said.

It was not immediately clear why D’Amico’s license had been suspended, said Burlington City Police Capt. John J. Fine. When he was pulled over in October, police noted during the traffic stop that he was wanted in Jersey City for driving with a suspended license.

Last fall, McClure and D’Amico created the GoFundMe account to help Bobbitt after he had spent his last $20 to buy McClure gas when she was stranded on an I-95 ramp in Philadelphia. At the time, Bobbitt was homeless and panhandling.

McClure has told reporters that she was on her way to meet friends in Philadelphia when she ran out of gas. More recently, Bobbitt has said McClure was actually on her way to SugerHouse Casino to pick up D’Amico. Bobbitt has said he feared D’Amico gambled with donations. D’Amico has said he used $500 of the donations when he forgot his SugarHouse card, but quickly repaid the money with his winnings.

After the story went viral last year, the couple heard from thousands around the world who wanted to help. McClure and D’Amico promised they would use the donations to buy Bobbitt a house and a truck and to help turn his life around.

This summer, however, Bobbitt, who briefly served in the Marines, told reporters of his suspicions that the couple were using the GoFundMe money to pay for expensive vacations, shopping sprees, and a BMW, adding he saw very little of the money.

Bobbitt also said that he had been kicked out of a drug-treatment program in Camden because D’Amico had been driving him to the outpatient program every day until D’Amico was arrested earlier this year. The SUV the couple bought for Bobbitt was also titled in McClure’s name and Bobbitt said he was not allowed to drive it. Instead, D’Amico used it until it broke down, Bobbitt said.

In an interview with a Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News reporter last month, D’Amico said Bobbitt was using donations to buy drugs, and that’s why he was cut off from the GoFundMe donations. He blamed Bobbitt for getting kicked out of the rehab program. Bobbitt has since started a residential treatment program.

D’Amico said that on the day of his arrest earlier this year, he gave Bobbitt $40 to take the train to Camden.

©2018 The Philadelphia Inquirer
Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Joined by Poland President Andrzej Duda, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Poland was "willing to make a very major contribution to the United States to come in and have a presence in Poland." The U.S. president said it was "something we will discuss."

Facing Russia's increased military activity in the region, Poland has been pressing for the 3,000 U.S. troops now deployed in Poland on a rotating basis to be upgraded to a larger, permanent presence. A decision from the U.S. could come early next year.

Security, trade and energy topped the agenda as Trump welcomed Duda to the White House for the first time. Duda credited Trump for making Warsaw the first stop on the U.S. president's inaugural European trip last year and said Trump's speech was a "very important moment" for the relationship between the two countries.

Trump renewed his criticism of a planned new natural gas pipeline linking Germany with Russia. Trump says it's "ridiculous" and bad for the German people.

Poland wants to increase the volume of liquefied gas contracts with the U.S. as a way to cut its dependence on gas imports from Russia.
 

The story of how that happened began the night before, on Sunday, at 7:02.

All weekend, Lee, 20, had watched the staggering force of Florence rip through the region, killing people and unleashing devastating rains, winds and floods all over North Carolina. But by 7:02, all of that seemed over to her. It was barely even raining in her neighborhood in northeast Charlotte, where she lived with her parents and son. And she was due to visit her grandmother, whom she'd missed seeing over the weekend, at her home in Wadesboro, more than an hour away.

So she brought out her son, and went through the routine she always performed to make sure he was safe and comfortable. She buckled him into a car seat in the back of her 2010 Hyundai Elantra. She placed his bottle nearby. Tugged down his white shirt and blue pants. And, knowing how hot Kaiden can get - "all that testosterone," her sister, Kaila Lee, jokes - she turned on the air conditioning.

She pulled out, heading south. The roads seemed fine, and there were lots of cars on them. Feeling like there couldn't be anything more normal than this, she pulled onto the country roads and into Union County.

Before long, she came upon several orange barrels along Highway 218, near Richardson Creek outside of New Salem. They didn't exactly block the road, she said, but they were on either side of it. She pulled over and thought for a moment. The news had said that some of the roads could be dangerous - "unprecedented," had been how the National Weather Service had described some of the floods - but everything until now had been fine.

Thinking it over, she saw several cars heading in the opposite direction. They drove through the barrels and past her. It must be fine if they'd made it through, she thought. She put the car into drive and checked the time.

7:52 p.m.

She drove between the barrels, down the hill and around the curve. That was when she heard the rush of water.

If there was anything that Lee ever wanted to be, it was a good mom. She had just never expected to be one at such a young age. She was a senior in high school when she found out she was pregnant, and though she knew some people might have counseled either an abortion or adoption, she wanted to have her son.

So she finished high school, got her diploma, and, after carrying him for eight months and six days, gave birth and started working right away. First came a job at a Dunkin' Donuts. Then at a FedEx warehouse. And later at an Amazon.com distribution center, where she did so much lifting that other co-workers commented on how strong she was. Lee would work overtime shifts, feeling good that she was the one providing - buying Kaiden's diapers and bottles - raising him as a single parent.

Every night, she'd come back to Kaiden, taking him on sunset strolls through the neighborhood, impressing her sister with the sort of mother she had become.

"The only thing she ever wanted was to protect him," said Kaila, 18. "As soon as he came out of the womb. . . . Whenever he was crying, she was always the first one to go. My mom or I would go and check on him, but she was always already there, feeding him."

"I protected him from everything and everybody," Lee said.

So on Sunday, when she strapped Kaiden into his car seat and went off into streets that had just been hit with six to eight inches of rain, no one in her family worried. Lee was there. And she would keep Kaiden safe.

It was almost completely dark when the Elantra hit the water and started to hydroplane. The car spun around several times, banked to the left, its tires lifting off the road. For a moment, Lee couldn't think - her only feeling was fear.

They were sinking. Water was beginning to rush into the car. She heard herself begin to scream.

"Oh, God, oh my God, not like this, not like this," she recalled saying over and over.

Without unbuckling herself, she reached back for Kaiden. He didn't look terrified or even worried; his round face showed only confusion. She unstrapped him and began to gather his things, but, realizing there was no time, left the items behind. She got him into her arms and noticed that the windows were already busted. She'd have to climb through.

Then she saw that her seat belt was still on, and suddenly she was struggling with the most basic of tasks. The water continued to rush in. She finally released the belt and started to climb out, carrying Kaiden, knowing how strong she was, and that she'd never let go. Then, just like that, she was free - until her foot got snagged on her seat belt, and she felt herself plunge into the water.

It smelled artificial - almost like pool water - but it was thick with mud and grime and who knew what else. She tried to right herself but couldn't. Brush and tree branches were in her face. Her mouth was filling with water. She couldn't see a thing.

She'd been holding Kaiden to her chest. But now she was only holding onto his forearm. The waters whooshed by with surprising force, pulling him away. She had his wrist. Then his hand. Then his fingers. Then he was gone.

12:23 a.m.

She was being released from the hospital, where she'd been taken for her injuries, which were minimal, after a passerby, whose name she never got, saw the car spin out and helped rescue her. Her parents and sister were now with her, and they were all heading back out to Highway 218.

Kaila still had some hope. Maybe the boy had been pushed to the side of the creek. Maybe he'd been knocked unconscious, and that was why he hadn't screamed or heard others yelling for him. That hope, however minuscule, disappeared when she saw the flooding.

"All you could hear was a waterfall," she said. They called for Kaiden but heard nothing. There was only water and blackness.

A light came up in the distance, and Kaila shouted: "The news is out here!"

"I did everything I could," Lee told the reporter, wiping away tears as the camera operator's light shone on her face. "From the moment I was pregnant until the moment I lost him. I did everything I could to save and protect him."

Now she just wanted to find his body.

They searched until 5 a.m., in the weeds and wetness of what Florence had left behind. Failing to find her baby, and not knowing what else to do, she went to the Union County Sheriff's Office. She and Kaila checked in on the news of the loss of Kaiden, and what commenters were saying, much of it unkind to Lee.

"Mom made a bad decision," one commenter on Facebook said.

"Although I feel for this child, I do not feel for the mother," another said.

"Negligence," added another.

It made everything so much worse. Don't these people know how much she loved that child, and how the roads had seemed safe?

Then she couldn't think anything more, because the phone was ringing, and the voice on the other side was saying, "he's gone," and she was looking at the time.

10:20 a.m., it said.

The measure, which was part of a larger funding package of more than $850 billion, will fund priorities in the recently passed 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which directs policy and spending plans for the Defense Department. It was approved in a vote of 93 to 7.

The legislation, H.R. 6157, now goes to the House for approval. The bill won approval from a congressional conference committee on Thursday. If approved by both chambers, the legislation goes to the president for his signature.

“Critically, after subjecting America’s all-volunteer armed forces to years of belt-tightening, this legislation will build on our recent progress in rebuilding the readiness of our military and investing more in the men and women who wear the uniform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

The defense budget moves on two tracks: the annual NDAA sets policy changes and expenditures for the military and determines how the money will be spent, while the defense appropriations bill is what actually moves money to the Pentagon to support the plan. The defense spending legislation is part of a larger labor, health and human services and education spending bill.

Last month, President Donald Trump signed into law a more than $715 billion NDAA authorizing a 2.6 percent pay raise for servicemembers, as well as new purchases of aircrafts, ships, submarines and weapons.

The legislation also includes funding for three littoral combat ships and an effort to continue payment of death gratuities for fallen servicemembers even in cases of a government shutdown. Those death gratuities, which includes a $100,000 payment to families of the fallen servicemembers, can be halted now when there is a shutdown.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., on Tuesday lauded the bill’s pay raise, boosts to troop levels, funding of 13 new Navy ships, 93 F-35 aircraft, 18 C-130J aircraft, 58 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 13 V-22 aircraft and the upgrade of 135 Abrams tanks.

“It’s good news, then, that Congress is nearing action on a full-year defense funding bill,” Ryan said in a statement ahead of Tuesday’s Senate floor vote. “It provides the resources to continue the rebuilding of our military -- a $17 billion increase that is consistent with the National Defense Authorization Act.”

Ryan also praised the measure’s efforts to fund research and development of new defense systems and technologies, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, nuclear force modernization and the Ohio-class submarine replacement. It also funds above the president’s request for cancer research, traumatic brain injury research and sexual assault prevention, Ryan’s office said.

“If enacted, this would be the first time in 10 years that the Defense Department won’t operate under a continuing resolution,” which is a temporary funding measure, Ryan said.

The 2019 NDAA, H.R. 5515, passed Aug. 13 and ushers through a series of new reforms, such as revamping the military’s “up or out” promotion system and policies to reign in sexual misconduct and domestic abuse among the ranks.

The plan builds on the momentum to increase the size and might of the military in response to China and Russia’s growing capabilities as laid out in Trump’s $686 billion defense budget proposed earlier this year. The Trump request for the fiscal year included an increase of more than 15,000 active-duty troops, which lawmakers matched in the NDAA.

A two-year spending deal that lifted federal budget caps allowed the defense budget to increase to more than $715 billion. Coupled with approaching November midterm elections, lawmakers worked to pass the bills earlier than in past years.

At this pace, it’s possible the defense spending bill could pass by Oct. 1, which is the start of the new fiscal year and would mark the first on-time passage of the NDAA and its funding companion bill in more than 20 years.

However, lawmakers remain on a tight clock. The House is on recess until next week, and Republican senators are racing to confirm Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh ahead of the midterms.

Without a spending measure in place by Oct. 1, lawmakers might need to pass a continuing resolution, to keep the government operating.

grisales.claudia@stripes.com
Twitter: @cgrisales
 

It’s always been a painful moment in American history. The USS Pueblo was a small spy ship— 83 crew members — sailing off the coast of North Korea on a wintry Jan. 23, 1968, eavesdropping on North Korean radio traffic.

That was the day North Korean torpedo boats attacked it, encircling the ship and demanding it halt and be boarded.

For two hours, Cmdr. Lloyd “Pete” Bucher refused to stop the ship while the crew did their best to burn, sledge-hammer and destroy the top-secret code materials and electronics on board.

After being raked by cannon fire, Bucher finally stopped the ship. One crewman, Duane Hodges, already had been killed. Others were wounded.

And so it began, the 11-month ordeal known to Americans as the “Pueblo Incident” in which the crew was beaten, tortured and forced to pose for propaganda photos while the U.S. negotiators tried to get the North Koreans to release them. That finally happened on Dec. 23 that year.

More than 40 surviving crew members and their families are expected here this week — back in the city they enjoy, the city for which their ship was named.

“Pueblo remembers and always treats us well,” said 71-year-old Alvin Plucker, who helped navigate the ship and now lives in La Salle, Colo.

Plucker said this visit will be the sixth time the crew has reunited here.

Don Peppard, 81, worked in the ship’s code office and said it took 18 years for the crew to have its first reunion because there were so many raw, ugly feelings connected to their imprisonment and torture.

“Some of the guys never wanted to look back at what we went through, but I’ve always found that talking about it helps,” said Peppard, who lives in Kerrville, Texas.

“The Navy would have been happier if we’d all gone down with the ship,” is how Plucker puts it.

And that’s a sentiment their commander shared on many occasions. Pete Bucher, who died in 2004, was blunt about it.

During a 1992 reunion here, he was quick to list the many ways the Navy had failed to provide essential equipment, such as an automatic scuttling system to sink the ship quickly. Or an incinerator to destroy manuals and papers.

“We were out there alone,” Bucher said, without Navy escort or help because the ship was working for the National Security Agency. “We weren’t even assigned to a Navy unit.”

Also, the USS Pueblo only had two .50 caliber machine guns to defend it, and they were under ice-covered tarps. During a Navy inquiry after the crew’s release, Bucher said any crew member that had tried to man those guns would have been killed by North Korean gunfire.

When Bucher was radioing for help that day, Air Force fighters were scrambled from Japan but called off.

“Officially, there weren’t any planes available to help us, but that was a bunch of crap,” he said.

“That still sticks in my craw,” Peppard confirmed Monday.

His crew has always been grateful Bucher didn’t force the North Koreans to shoot the ship into pieces.

“He saved our lives,” Plucker said.

There have been books written and movies made about the crew’s long ordeal as prisoners. Fake firing squads and beatings. Especially the code boys. Famously, whenever the crew was photographed for propaganda purposes, they all managed to raise a middle finger at the camera in defiance.

“We told the North Koreans it was a Hawaiian good-luck symbol,” Plucker laughed. “Until they found out the truth and then they really went to work on us. We called that ‘Hell Week’.”

When the crew was finally released, they didn’t come home to a hero’s welcome. The Navy was angry that Bucher had surrendered the ship and its top-secret equipment. A board of inquiry recommended he be court-martialed.

That was too much for Congress and the American public, who believed the crew had endured too much already. Bucher was promoted, not courtmartialed. But it wasn’t until 1995 and an act of Congress that the 82 survivors were awarded Prisoner of War medals.

But 50 years is a long time and Peppard said the national memory concerning the USS Pueblo is fading.

“I wear my hat all the time, just to see how many people recognize what it is and what the USS Pueblo was about,” he said. “Not many do. But sometimes young people come up to me and ask about it, which is always a nice surprise.”

Like other crew members, Peppard doesn’t think much of North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un. He said that regime always protects itself, regardless of what the leader says.

“He’s just like his father and grandfather before him,” Peppard said. “You can’t trust him.”

proper@chieftain.com

©2018 The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo, Colo.)
Visit The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo, Colo.) at www.chieftain.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Pyotr Verzilov has been receiving intensive care since arriving in Berlin from Moscow on Saturday, but his condition isn't life threatening, Dr. Kai-Uwe Eckardt of Berlin's Charite hospital told reporters.

Verzilov's symptoms, together with information received from relatives and the Moscow hospital he was admitted to last week, "make it highly plausible that a poisoning took place," Eckardt said. He said Charite doctors have found "no evidence whatsoever that there would be another explanation for his condition."

Verzilov and other members of the Pussy Riot group served 15-day jail sentences for disrupting the World Cup final in Moscow in July to protest excessive Russian police powers.

Eckardt said Verzilov fell ill on Sept. 11 after attending a friend's court hearing in the Russian capital, and was admitted to a Moscow hospital that evening with symptoms that included disorientation and widened pupils. Russian doctors suspected possible poisoning and treated him accordingly, emptying his stomach and performing a dialysis, Eckardt said.

He said the symptoms indicate Verzilov, who arrived in Germany by private medevac Saturday, is suffering from an anticholinergic syndrome that can result from the disruption of the nervous system that regulates the inner organs.

While doctors in Berlin haven't yet determined what was responsible for the poisoning, they said it could have resulted from various substances including high doses of some pharmaceuticals and plants that contain particular toxins.

Dr. Karl Max Einhaeupl, the Charite hospital's chairman, said doctors wanted to "refrain completely from all speculation about what made these problems happen."

While he wouldn't rule out that recreational drugs were responsible for the poisoning, he said such drug use is very rare.

"We have no evidence that there is a drug problem and it would be very unusual for someone to take a drug in the dose that it was taken," he said. "That would be done with suicidal intent, but we have no indications of this."

Eckardt, who heads the Charite's intensive care department, said he expects Verzilov to make a full recovery and hopefully suffer no permanent damage.

He said Verzilov, who also has Canadian citizenship, is already communicating with doctors but so far they haven't been able to question him in detail about his medical history.

A fellow member of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, told reporters at a separate news conference in Berlin on Tuesday that Verzilov was "one of the most effective activists that Russia has ever seen."

She said Verzilov would likely return to Moscow once he recovers.
 

He had been credited with defeating Islamic State, among other accomplishments, and was expected to easily net a second term in parliamentary elections in May. He had the backing of the U.S. and others in the West. He looked to be Iraq’s first genuinely post-sectarian leader.

Yet today, he stands largely alone. His party has unraveled, his popularity has tanked and his political partners are abandoning him for alliances with groups loyal to Iran. That he is still prime minister is largely a measure of his opponents’ failure so far to agree on a governing coalition.

At his weekly news conference Thursday, he all but acknowledged that his days as prime minister are numbered, saying he “would not cling to power.”

Al-Abadi’s looming downfall speaks to the wrath of a growing force in Iraqi politics: an electorate more concerned with the performance of its leaders than their sectarian or ethnic affiliations.

For weeks, Iraq has been roiled by protests in Basra, a city in the country’s south, which provides most of its oil but whose residents have neither electricity nor clean water to counter summer temperatures reaching 120 degrees.

The demonstrations, sparked after thousands had been hospitalized because of water contamination, turned violent.

Security forces killed at least 12 people, while rioters burned down any governmental, militia and party building they could find. The Iranian Consulate met the same fate. (Protesters gathered around the U.S. Consulate as well before security forces cordoned it off.)

The protests delivered what many believe was the fatal blow to al-Abadi’s bid for the premiership. But his problems had begun earlier.

Little was expected from al-Abadi, a one-time engineer who lived in Britain before returning to Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion, when he was picked from the back ranks of the ruling Dawa Party to dislodge Nouri al-Maliki in 2014.

Arguably, his greatest advantage was that he wasn’t al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim supremacist who had frustrated so many that even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a Shiite cleric who is considered to be Iraq’s highest religious authority, broke his proscription against meddling in political affairs and asked him to step aside.

But al-Abadi, who is also Shiite, performed well: He oversaw a turnaround of the country’s crippled armed forces, keeping a fragile anti-Islamic State coalition of local, regional and international rivals together long enough to beat back and then rout the jihadis who, at their peak, had marauded to within an hour’s drive of Baghdad. Later, he quelled an independence bid by Iraqi Kurds.

As parliamentary elections approached in May, he reached across the sectarian divide to assemble his Victory bloc, made up of elites from all groups in the country.

But some of the goodwill toward him had evaporated. He was a reluctant politician, and claimed to hate the politicking that was an integral part of governing Iraq.

Repeated attempts to fight corruption, jump-start the economy and reduce the public sector failed.

Though he was widely expected to win in May, he came in third, behind a coalition led by Shiite cleric and populist leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah list, a political bloc staffed by leaders of pro-Iranian paramilitary factions.

It was apathy that felled him, many said.

A sobering 56 percent of eligible voters, many of them fed up with almost comical levels of corruption in successive governments and not driven by sectarian loyalties, didn’t bother to go to the polls.

Many of those who did bother had been mobilized by al-Sadr or Hadi Ameri, the fervently anti-U.S. militiaman-turned-politician who led the Fatah bloc.

Al-Abadi tried to recover. He engaged in the customary horse-trading that follows parliamentary elections, with different parties splintering and forming coalitions to achieve a majority in the 329-seat parliament.

By partnering with al-Sadr, al-Abadi could still snatch a second term.

But in the wake of the Basra protests, al-Sadr-affiliated members of parliament called for al-Abadi’s resignation. And just as he had intervened in 2014, Sistani last week issued a statement saying he would not support the incoming prime minister if he was chosen “from politicians who have been in power in the previous years.”

Some observers saw Iran’s hand behind al-Abadi’s sidelining, considering him a pro-U.S. figure, especially after he had agreed to abide by the sanctions Washington imposed last month on Iran.

But Iran had not won either, said Renad Mansour, an Iraq expert at the London-based Chatham House think tank.

“The U.S.’s No. 1 choice was Abadi and that didn’t work out. Iran’s No. 1 choice was a coalition that would include Maliki and (Hadi) Ameri, and that also didn’t work out,” Mansour said.

In a change from the past, the election didn’t turn on identity politics, Mansour added.

In Iraq’s sectarian allocations, the president must be a Kurd, the speaker of parliament a Sunni and the prime minister a Shiite.

“The system reinforces these identities, but for some time people have been saying this doesn’t matter. They’re saying give us water that’s clean, electricity and jobs,” he said.

For Ahmad Basheer, an Iraqi journalist and comedian who hosts the popular “Basheer Show,” the protests in Basra were a wholesale rejection of what he described as Iraq’s “political matrix.”

“The protests were rejecting all politicians,” he said. “It didn’t matter if they were Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, or if they were protected because of their religion or creed.”

There had been protests in Iraq every summer, Basheer pointed out, but he considered the ones in Basra as the “final chance” for politicians to improve.

“People won’t have mercy anymore with politicians,” said Basheer, adding that this year’s protests would be the last to end without wider bloodshed.

“If the politicians don’t improve by next year and truly serve people, it will be a disaster,” he said.

———

©2018 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

In a 432-page report, the members of a fact-finding mission on Myanmar fleshed out preliminary findings and recommendations released in a shorter version three weeks ago.

"With a heavy heart and deep sadness, we have drawn conclusions, on the basis of the facts, that we never expected would be as grave as they are," team chairman Marzuki Darusman said he presented the report to the U.N.-supported Human Rights Council.

"What we have found are not only the most serious human rights violations, but crimes of the highest order under international law," he said.

The team reiterated that some top Myanmar military leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya during a deadly crackdown that erupted in August 2017 following militant attacks on security posts in Rakhine state.

In a rare rebuttal by Myanmar's government, its new ambassador in Geneva lashed out at what he called a "one-sided" report. The team has said Myanmar's government had not responded to its report or honored requests for access to violence-hit regions.

"The way the report portrays ... the national races of Myanmar is misleading," the ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, told the 47-member body. "It also undermines the government's effort to bring peace, national reconciliation and development to the entire nation."

"Regardless of the lack of balance, impartiality and fairness, the government of Myanmar takes the allegations of human rights violations seriously," he said. "The government will not condone human rights violations."

After Marzuki spoke of the rape of women and girls by military forces, the ambassador countered, "We share deep sympathy and concern for all displaced persons, especially women and girls."

The full report also provided new details about the investigators' concerns about how the United Nations reacted during the spasm of violence. It noted that the "only statement" from the U.N. resident coordinator's office "was to condemn the ARSA (militant group) attacks and losses suffered by the Myanmar security forces."

The council created the fact-finding mission 18 months ago, after years of abuses against ethnic minorities in Myanmar, focusing on the time since 2011 when the country began opening up after decades of isolation under a long-ruling military junta.

Though the investigators looked at the treatment of minority groups across the Southeast Asian nation, their mandate came just six months before the crackdown against the Rohingya in Rakhine, injecting the mission with far greater importance to help detail those abuses, crimes and human rights violations.

The report provides details of violence in Kachin, Shan and Rakhine states, much of which has been documented and made public through collection of witness accounts, satellite imagery and other sources. It cited allegations of crimes by the military and other security forces including murder, torture, pillaging, execution without due process, rape, sexual slavery and hostage taking.

It said some acts by ethnic armed groups and the Rohingya militant organization ARSA could also constitute war crimes.

Crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide can be considered by international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court, but Myanmar is not a party to it. The country's government has snubbed a ruling by the court's judges that said the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate alleged crimes against the Rohingya.

The report's critique of the United Nations focused not only on the world body's response to the Rohingya crisis, but its efforts across the country.

For example, the investigators noted that the U.N. had rolled out a "Human Rights Up Front Action Plan" in Myanmar in 2013, but said its "human rights driven" approach was "rarely, if ever, pursued."

"Rather, it was largely 'business as usual,' with development goals and humanitarian access prioritized only," the authors wrote.

They cited allegations that some U.N. personnel who tried to pursue a human rights agenda "were ignored, criticized, sidelined or blocked in these efforts."

They alluded to criticism from Fieldview Solutions, an outside group that works to advance human rights, in July that cited some in U.N. and humanitarian circles for not doing enough to expand their "political space" in Myanmar, adding, "The Myanmar government has learned that it can count on U.N. and humanitarian self-censorship."

The U.N. experts said some U.N. entities and staffers showed "a lack of cooperation" with their work, and "appeared to view it as a threat, rather than a means to address the most deep rooted human rights challenges facing Myanmar."

"This attitude and approach must change," they added.

The investigators did acknowledge that some people in the country had faced "intimidation and reprisals" for their "engagement" with the United Nations.

The team renewed its urgent call for "a comprehensive, independent inquiry into the United Nations' involvement" in hopes of "establishing whether everything possible to prevent or mitigate the unfolding crises was done." It also sought to draw lessons and — "as appropriate" — make recommendations on accountability.

The investigators bemoaned that "there has been no review of what happened, of where the approach taken had some positive effect and where it did not, and of how the U.N.'s approach could be improved in future crises."

Kingsley Abbott, senior legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, said the U.N.'s failure to implement the Human Rights Up Front Action Plan in Myanmar requires a credible and transparent investigation.

"The situation has demonstrated yet again that the U.N. secretary-general and his staff in Myanmar must ensure that the entire U.N. system actually puts human rights up front in its day- to-day work in the country," he added.

The team said a second fact-finding mission should be authorized to examine continued threats to human rights in Myanmar, and urged the creation of a separate team to collect evidence that could be used in possible future prosecutions.
 

If realized, it will be the first case of SDF participation in "internationally coordinated operations for peace and safety," which became possible under the security-related laws that came into force in 2016.

The government will make a final decision after conducting an investigation at the site, hoping to send the personnel early next year or later. The security situation on the peninsula is unstable due to the activities of Islamic militants, and the government has decided not to dispatch troops to the area but instead will send several GSDF personnel to the MFO's headquaters.

The MFO has been deployed to the peninsula since 1982, based on an annex to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty signed in 1979. Its main mission is to monitor military activities of the two countries and ensure their ceasefire. Twelve countries, including the United States and Britain, have dispatched personnel comprising about 2,000 multinational forces members and civilian observers.

Under the revised U.N. Peacekeeping Activities Cooperation Law, which is included in the security-related laws, activities similar to U.N. peacekeeping operations are defined as "internationally coordinated operations for peace and safety." The law enabled the SDF to be dispatched for such operations.

As in peacekeeping operations, the SDF are allowed to protect civilians and come to their rescue when they are attacked by armed groups. To dispatch the SDF members, it is necessary to meet "the five principles on the nation's participation in peacekeeping operations." These principles include such conditions as a ceasefire agreement existing between countries concerned.

In May last year, a GSDF engineering unit withdrew from the U.N. Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), and only personnel working in the UNMISS headquarters are currently stationed there.

But hopefully no coal ash.

Tropical Storm Florence has poured so much rain on the state that the wall of a coal ash landfill near the lake has failed in several places, washing away more than 2,000 cubic yards of toxic waste, enough to fill more than 150 dump trucks.

Duke Energy, which owns the adjacent power plant, said it doesn't believe the landfill poses a risk to public health or the environment, according to spokeswoman Paige Sheehan. But it also dispatched dozens of workers and contractors with heavy equipment to construct an earthen berm that would divert the mix of water and coal ash away from the lake.

Kemp Burdette, an environmental advocate who monitors the health of the Cape Fear River, decided to see for himself. On Sunday, he pushed aside a Duke Energy barricade on a public road to put in his boat. His assessment?

"I see no way that could have been contained without getting into Sutton Lake," he said.

The scrambling at the Sutton power plant is just one of many environmental concerns that are spreading as Florence continued to soak hog and chicken farms, flood coal ash pits, threaten municipal water systems, and idle a nuclear power plant, cutting it off from local roads.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that once conditions allow, the agency plans to deploy "reconnaissance teams" to visually inspect Superfund hazardous-waste sites in the Carolinas and Georgia that might have been affected by the storm. The agency's National Priorities List includes more than 70 toxic sites in North and South Carolina, including former chemical plants, pesticide dumps and at least one former smelting operation near the coast.

The vast hog farms and their waste lagoons - which Burdette called "cesspools the size of football fields" - pose one of the greatest perils. The North Carolina Pork Council says that lagoons holding hog feces and urine are supposed to safely absorb at least 19 inches of rain and that ahead of the storm many were prepared for more than 25 inches. But Florence has dumped that much or close in some areas.

Monday afternoon, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said it had received reports of discharges or overtopping of lagoons at seven locations. Four other lagoons had been inundated by floodwaters.

Fourteen lagoons were at or near their capacity.

"While there are more than 3,000 active lagoons in the state that have been unaffected by the storm, we remain concerned about the potential impact of these record-shattering floods," said Andy Curliss, the North Carolina Pork Council CEO.

When the lagoons are doing their job, the liquid excrement they hold is a deep reddish-pink. Berms and pumps keep the bacteria-laden sludge from spilling out.

But during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, hog lagoons across the eastern part of North Carolina broke open and dumped tons of liquid and solid waste into the storm waters. That material flowed downstream, eventually settling in coastal estuaries. It was blamed for elevated nitrogen and phosphorous levels, algae blooms and fish kills.

State environmental officials insisted they learned lessons from Floyd. They put a moratorium on building new farms with more than 250 hogs. After that hurricane, the state bought out 43 hog operations located in the flood plain, removing 103 waste lagoons. Other lagoons were relocated to higher ground and, in some cases, re-engineered.

But farms still take hog feces and urine from the open-air lagoons and pump the mixture onto crops as a nutrient-rich fertilizer. Many people neighboring the hog operations successfully sued for damages because of the odor and flies that drift over to their properties.

Farmers face lawsuits and at least 25 scheduled trials. Jury verdicts from three trials have resulted in more than a half-billion dollars in judgments against the farmers, according to news reports. In response, Smithfield Foods Inc., which faces nuisance complaints from about 500 North Carolinians, has begun to remove pigs from some farms targeted by lawsuits, erasing, potentially, the livelihoods of farmers.

In May 2017, North Carolina's legislature passed a law limiting the amount of money people can collect in lawsuits against hog farms for odors, headaches, flies and other aggravations. In June 2018, the state Senate approved another bill limiting the ability of landowners to seek damages in court.

North Carolina hog farmers also got a break from the Trump administration, which has moved to relax federal regulations on both coal ash ponds and animal waste lagoons over the past year, arguing that Obama-era standards impose too heavy a burden on industry.

And in July, the Environmental Protection Agency relaxed 2015 standards for handling the toxic waste generated by burning coal, allowing states to suspend groundwater monitoring in certain cases.

Coal ash is what's left over after being burned in a power plant, and it contains a variety of heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium.

The question of how to properly store coal ash - a fine powder that is usually turned into sludge - has bedeviled federal policymakers for years. Those toxins are linked to cancer, heart disease and neurological damage in children.

Obama's EPA reached a compromise with industry that required increased monitoring and compelled companies to line ash pits to prevent leaks into nearby waterways, but it did not classify coal ash as a hazardous waste. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Obama rule was not stringent enough because it did not apply to coal ash ponds at shuttered coal-fired power plants. Environmental groups are also challenging the more recent coal ash rule in federal court.

Duke Energy owns all 31 coal ash disposal basins - pits and ponds - across North Carolina, even though half of the company's 14 coal-fired power plants have been shut down and Sutton has been converted into a natural-gas-fired plant.

The disposal sites had many flaws. Initially, the company dumped coal ash in unlined, open-air pits. Waste water was used in coal ash ponds. "The coal ash basins at the sites were built in accordance with the required standards at the time," Duke spokesman Bill Norton said in an email, adding that they were "highly engineered structures." Yet environmentalists say the four disposal basins at Sutton leached metals into the lake, and from there, some flowed into the Cape Fear River. In one case, Duke paid $2.25 million and built new pipes to bring clean drinking water to a small community.

Environmentalists say the company long fought to fend off state regulation of the coal ash sites, though the company says it worked "constructively" with state regulators. But in February 2014, a Duke Energy coal ash basin flooded when a storm-water pipe cracked open, dumping 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River. The company later pleaded guilty to criminal negligence.

Since then, Duke has been moving coal ash out of ponds and into landfills, but it's been slow going. Two of the coal ash pits are closed, but the rest remain. Duke says it will close all of them.

At the HF Lee power plant in Goldsboro, where more than 20 inches of rain fell, the Neuse River has flooded three coal ash disposal sites, a Duke spokeswoman said. Like many other older coal ash sites, these have been overgrown with trees. Duke plans to excavate the coal ash in the coming years.

Duke said that based on experience, the flooded tree-covered pits would have "no measurable environmental effects," said Sheehan, the spokeswoman.

Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said his group and others remained concerned about flooding at the Lee site, at another near Lumberton, and yet another farther upstream on the Cape Fear River, near Sanford.

"My main immediate concern is that one of Duke Energy's unlined coal ash pits will breach, spilling large quantities of coal ash into one of North Carolina's rivers," Holleman said in an email. "My main concern overall is that we will get through this storm, and Duke Energy and the state of North Carolina will learn nothing from it and go back to business as usual - leaving our rivers and communities at risk when the next flood or hurricane occurs."

The Washington Post's Darryl Fears contributed to this report.

U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy and Rep. Clay Higgins announced their legislation Monday in a news release. They hope to have the Lake Charles Community-Based Outpatient Clinic named after Douglas Fournet.

The Kinder native was a U.S. Army lieutenant. Monday's announcement says he is the only person from Southwest Louisiana to be awarded the Medal of Honor. The legislation would name the Lake Charles facility the "Douglas Fournet Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic."

The release says Fournet joined the army in 1966 and died in Vietnam as he tried unsuccessfully to disarm a mine while his platoon was under sniper fire.

In exchange for his plea, William Canada, 32, received what was essentially a 10-year prison sentence, the St. Charles Parish District Attorney’s Office said.

Judge Timothy Marcel, of 29th Judicial District Court, acknowledged that Canada’s actions were likely driven by emotional and physical injuries suffered during his combat service in Afghanistan, District Attorney Joel Chaisson’s office said. But that only “mitigated” the behavior in question rather than “absolve” Canada of responsibility for it, Marcel said.

The case dates back to Aug. 2, 2016, when Canada showed up at his father-in-law’s home on Lac Verret Drive with a gun, a Molotov cocktail and gas cans. His wife was staying there, and he started shooting through the front door when his father-in-law looked out to investigate noises, authorities said.

Canada’s father-in-law survived being struck once in the chest, with the bullet being slowed down by a wooden door and a sofa, the Sheriff’s Office said. Investigators said Canada had sent his wife a text message reading, “Bye-bye, a**holes,” moments before spraying 40 rounds at the home.

Deputies arrested Canada before he left the subdivision. Prosecutors charged him with attempted murder and attempted aggravated arson. He pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter — a reduced charge — and the arson count.

Marcel gave him a 20-year sentence for the attempted manslaughter, though he suspended half of the punishment, plus a concurrent 10-year stretch for the attempted arson, recommending him for a military veterans program at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel.

He also ordered the defendant to spend the following five years under house arrest and then another five years on probation after that.

Canada is prohibited from contacting the victims or their relatives following his release from prison and ordered him to continue receiving psychiatric treatment, Chaisson’s office said.

The sentence was handed down after the judge heard testimony from the victims, who described how the case had altered their lives.

Marcel said he hoped the plea deal brought all affected “some semblance of closure,” according to Chaisson’s office.

Months before the shooting attack, Canada had sought treatment for his addiction to the painkiller oxycodone, which was prescribed to him after he suffered head injuries from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, officials said.

He later wandered into his neighborhood barefoot and showed up at his old home in Chalmette with daiquiris in hand and making rambling comments, officials said.

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In his opening statement at the International Criminal Court trial of Dominic Ongwen, defense lawyer Krispus Ayena told judges that Ongwen was abducted as a 9-year-old child, plunged into an environment of extreme brutality and effectively stripped of his free will.

Ayena said that Ongwen "did not possess a mind of his own save for the survival instinct" he developed to navigate the harsh conditions in the LRA.

Prosecutors allege that Ongwen is a former child soldier who turned into a murderous commander.

Kony, also indicted by the court in 2005, remains at large despite an intensive man hunt aimed at capturing him.

The case against Ongwen, now aged about 40, poses difficult questions for judges about whether a boy snatched on his way to primary school and raised in a cult-like group renowned for its brutality can also be considered a perpetrator of crimes.

Ongwen's trial started in December 2016 when he pleaded not guilty to charges including murder, rape, sexual enslavement and using child soldiers during the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda.

He is specifically charged with commanding an LRA unit that launched attacks on camps for displaced people in northern Uganda in 2003 and 2004.

At the start of the trial, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told judges that Ongwen rose swiftly through the ranks because of his reputation as a ruthless killer.

She said that while Ongwen's traumatic past could be a mitigating factor for judges considering a sentence if he is convicted, it "cannot begin to amount to a defense or a reason not to hold him to account for the choice that he made: The choice to embrace the murderous violence used by the LRA and make it a hallmark of the attacks carried out by his soldiers."

Ongwen's lawyer disagreed, arguing that his upbringing in the LRA and devotion to its "demiGod" leader, Kony, absolves him of criminal responsibility.

"Once a victim, always a victim," Ayena said. "One cannot be a victim and, still in the grips of the same system that victimized him, become a perpetrator."
 

The Russian military said the Il-20 electronic intelligence plane was hit 22 miles offshore late Monday as it was returning to its home base nearby.

"The Israeli pilots were using the Russian aircraft as a shield and pushed it into the line of fire of the Syrian defense," said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman, later Tuesday to say that Israel is "fully to blame" for the deaths, the ministry said.

The military said Israel did not warn it of its operation over Latakia province until one minute before the strike, which did not give the Russian plane enough time to escape.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, struck a reconciliatory note Tuesday, blaming the shooting down on "a chain of tragic circumstances."

Asked about the Defense Ministry's threat to respond to Israel's actions, Putin said the Russian response will focus on boosting security for its troops in Syria. He did not elaborate but said "these will be the steps that everyone will notice."

The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that its jets were already within Israeli airspace when the downing occurred. Israel offered condolences for the deaths of the Russian troops but said it holds the Syrian government "fully responsible." It also blamed Iran and Hezbollah for what it described as an "unfortunate incident."

The Russian Defense Ministry said a recovery operation located the plane's wreckage at sea and has retrieved some bodies and some fragments from the plane. A specialized ship carrying submersibles was heading to the area to join the operation.

For several years, Israel and Russia have maintained a special hotline to prevent their air forces from clashing in the skies over Syria. Israeli military officials have previously praised its effectiveness.

Russia, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has an air base at Hemeimeem and a naval facility in Tartus. The plane was downed as it was heading to land at Hemeimeem.

Russia has previously lost at least seven warplanes and seven combat helicopters in Syria and also seen dozens of troops killed in ground combat.

In another crash, a passenger airliner carrying members of the Red Army Choir to a New Year's concert at a Russian military base in Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after takeoff from Sochi in southern Russia, killing all 92 people aboard. The investigation into that 2016 crash is still ongoing, but officials have indicated it a pilot error was the likely cause.

Russia's dramatic entry into the Syrian civil war in September 2015 in support of the Syrian government, after a year of airstrikes by the U.S. and its coalition partners against the Islamic State group, increased the possibility of dangerous confrontations in the skies over Syria.

The downing of a Russian warplane by a Turkish jet in November 2015 heightened tensions between Moscow and Ankara, but they later managed to mend the rift and negotiated a series of de-escalation agreements for Syria together with Iran.

Turkish troops are now on the ground in northern Syria and are patrolling the skies over the region as Ankara seeks to ramp up its influence there and curb the expansion of Syrian Kurdish-controlled territory.

Israel has refrained from taking sides in the Syrian civil war. But it has acknowledged carrying out scores of airstrikes against archenemy Iran and its Shiite proxy Hezbollah.

Israel has acknowledged attacking Iranian targets some 200 times. Israel has warned that it will not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence in postwar Syria.

Throughout the fighting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained continuous contact with Russia. Netanyahu frequently travels to Russia for talks with Putin to discuss the war in Syria.

The Israeli military said the Russian plane fell victim to the "extensive and inaccurate" firing of Syrian surface-to-air missile systems and that the Israeli jets — which were carrying out a raid against a Syrian government facility in another place — had already left Syrian airspace by that point.

The Israeli military said that hotline with Russia was in operation and that it would share with Russia all the data at its disposal.

Sima Shine, a former senior Mossad official and ex-deputy director-general at Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry, told Israel's Army Radio station that the downing of the plane is problematic for many reasons.

"I think it will impose very serious restriction on Israel's freedom of activity," she said.

The plane crashed only hours after the leaders of Russia and Turkey reached an agreement to avert an all-out offensive by Syrian government forces to retake Syria's last remaining rebel stronghold in Idlib. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Tuesday called the deal "a landmark and crucial agreement for Syria's future" and said the downing of the Russian plane will have no impact on it.

In Damascus, Syria's foreign ministry welcomed the agreement, while vowing that it will continue the fight against "terrorism until liberating the last inch of the Syrian territory, whether through military operations or through local reconciliations."

Iran also welcomed the agreement, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeting: "Diplomacy works."

___

Josef Federman and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
 

The officials described the death aboard the aircraft carrier as “a mishap” on the ship’s flight deck. The Bush was at sea conducting carrier qualification training after it had departed from Norfolk, Va., last week ahead of Hurricane Florence’s landfall.

No other individuals were injured in the incident, and officials said an investigation has been launched.

They declined to provide additional details Tuesday about the incident.

The name of the dead sailor was withheld Tuesday, per Pentagon policy not to publicly identify fallen servicemembers until 24 hours after family notification.

"We ask for your patience and understanding as the crew grieves the loss of one of their shipmates," the Navy said in a statement.

The Bush is one of 25 Navy ships sent to sea last week ahead of Florence. The Navy has two ships prepared to aid hurricane relief efforts off the coast, but the Bush is not one of them.

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Government spokesman Zakaria Abdourahmane said authorities had not been aware the priest was in the country's southwest near the Burkina Faso border. He said investigations have begun to find the attackers and free the priest. No further details were immediately available.

The Rev. Pierluigi Maccalli is a member of the Society of African Missions religious order. In Niger he had promoted initiatives to encourage an end to the cultural practice of female genital mutilation, which had sparked some local opposition to him, according to the Fides missionary news agency in Rome.

In Rome, the Italian foreign ministry said it had asked local authorities in Niger's capital, Niamey, to give "absolute priority" to resolving the kidnapping but asked that they avoid "any initiative that could put Father Maccalli at risk."

Burkina Faso's border with Niger and Mali is home to extremists who kidnap and kill officials, sometimes in connection with other Islamic extremist groups in West Africa's vast Sahel region. Attacks have risen in the past year as young men frustrated by poverty become radicalized.

Niger for years has fought extremist groups linked to both al-Qaida and the Islamic State organization. Recently it has experienced a rise in kidnappings with ransom demands.

Earlier this month in the Diffa region, a 70-year-old woman who was the mother of a national deputy was abducted by armed men on motorcycles. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of 20 million FCFA ($35,000) but she was eventually released.

"We did not pay ransom, the kidnappers brought her back," said her son, Boulou Boukar.

Other abductions have been reported in the Maradi Region, which neighbors Nigeria's Zamfara state. A mixed patrol of Nigerien and Nigerian military has been set up for weeks along the border, according to Maradi governor Zakari Oumarou.

Nigeria's Defense Minister Mansur Mohammed Dan Ali has been in Niger for two days discussing with President Mahamadou Issoufou the insecurity along Niger's southern border with Nigeria, where Boko Haram is present.

"Our two heads of state have the same vision and we will continue to pool our resources in order to fight the resilience of Boko Haram," Ali said after the meeting.

Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

After building for nearly two years, the jackpot now tops $7 million, and the big prize will be awarded Tuesday. Organizers, a bit overwhelmed by the surge of ticket buyers as the pot ballooned, decided to end the game tonight, meaning they will keep drawing until there’s a winner.

As of Monday, ticket sales had already nearly doubled from the previous week, to 1.9 million, said Dwane Lungren, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4600. The winner will get 60 percent of the pot, or about $4.2 million. The post keeps 20 percent for its own operations and renovations, and the rest rolls over to start the next game, which has been put off until Jan. 8 to give the outfit a breather.

The wait to buy tickets for the raffle grew to about an hour and a half, patrons said, and was expected to grow longer Tuesday.

“I expect it to be a last-minute frenzy,” Lungren said. “Call it a carnival.”

The jackpot and interest in the raffle have grown steadily since the game started in November 2016.

The game consists of a deck of 52 shuffled playing cards plus two jokers, each enclosed in an envelope bearing a random number from one to 52, and displayed in a locked glass board.

Tickets cost $5 for six, and players write on each ticket the number of the envelope they guess holds the queen of hearts. Each week, one raffle ticket is pulled randomly from a bin, and the corresponding envelope is opened to reveal if the ticketholder has won.

Normally, if the queen is not revealed, the game continues another week, and the pot increases. But because of crowd control and security concerns, organizers will continue to pick tickets and open envelopes Tuesday night until there is a winner.

Players get $100 just for having their ticket drawn, even if they don’t find the queen. One other card, the queen of clubs, was worth 5 percent of the pot, or about $278,000, when it was drawn two weeks ago. If there is any dispute over the game, by post rules it must go to arbitration.

The drawing will be streamed live on the McHenry VFW Facebook site. Winners need not be present, but must respond within 24 hours with the matching raffle coupon to claim the prize.

To handle the crowds and the media, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, located at 3002 W. Illinois Route 120, is using four outside parking lots plus its own lot, with about 50 volunteers, 30 staff members, and up to 10 police officers working on site.

The post’s kitchen, which has been doing record business, will close at 4 p.m. Tuesday, and instead four or five food trucks will operate outside, with a beer truck, two tents, 20 picnic tables, and 15 portable toilets, to try to accommodate people outside and not exceed capacity inside the banquet hall.

Even the Batmobile from the nearby Volo Auto Museum will be on the grounds for the crowd’s amusement.

Lungren said he’s been working 10 and 12 hour days to keep up, but hasn’t quite gotten sick of the craziness.

“I’m still positive,” he said. “I have my head up. It’s for a good thing. I’ll just be relieved when it’s over. I’ll sleep in and spend some time with my wife.”

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Officers were called to a medical emergency Monday just after midnight in the 12500 block of Itani Way. Police said they found the woman's body and determined the death was not natural.

Police have not identified the woman or said how she died, but it appears foul play is suspected. The Navy released a statement confirming the death, but Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson said it's against Navy policy to identify a victim until 24 hours have passed.

"A sailor assigned to the guided-missile cruiser USS Hue City was found deceased around midnight Sept. 17," Hillson said. "The death is under investigation by local law enforcement. Our thoughts and condolences are with the family, friends and shipmates of the sailor."

A family member identified her as 37-year-old Andrea L. Washington, according to Times-Union news partner First Coast News. Property records show she owns the home where she was found dead.

Washington filed a petition for injunction for protection against domestic violence this month and was expected in court Monday morning, according to court records.

Court documents show the injunction was filed against a man who was living with Washington, and the two had been in a relationship.

Washington said in the petition that he "pushed me down to the floor, kicked me in my stomach, chased me to the bedroom and pulled a gun on me" after she asked him if he was going to help out with household bills, according to the documents. The petition goes on to say he kicked a hole in a door, destroyed an iPad and took the keys to Washington's vehicles and mailbox.

The temporary injunction for protection was granted Sept. 5, according to court records. The Times-Union is not naming the man because the Sheriff's Office has not said if this could be related to her death.

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Moran — the service’s second-highest ranking officer — visited Navy bases in South Korea and Japan last week on a listening tour that he said brought helpful insight into on-the-ground operations in the Pacific.

“We in Washington have our own views about things and it’s largely programmatic in nature, budgetary in nature and some policy,” he told Stars and Stripes in an interview Thursday. “But to get feedback from sailors, commanding officers, chiefs and master chiefs in the fleet really helps us refine and make sure that we’re supporting from Washington what they need [in the Pacific].”

Readiness challenges

At Yokosuka on Thursday, Moran spent time on the waterfront discussing ship maintenance. The base is home to U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility Japan Regional Maintenance Center, which is working on what Moran called a “not insignificant” backlog. A request for exact numbers on that backlog went unanswered.

The 7th Fleet is operating with fewer ships than it had planned after two of its guided-missile destroyers — the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain — were severely damaged in separate fatal collisions at sea last year.

While Yokosuka added an additional destroyer — the USS Milius — earlier this year, the fleet remains down two operational ships because Milius was originally intended to be an additional ship in support of Indo-Pacific operations, former Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift told Stars and Stripes last year.

Moran said the McCain, which is being repaired in Yokosuka, is expected to get out of drydock this fall and the Navy is aiming to have it underway in the spring. The Fitzgerald is undergoing maintenance in Pascagoula, Miss., and the service has said the goal is to return it to sea by 2020.

Moran said ship maintenance “is a key critical element for overall fleet readiness.”

“Everybody recognizes that we’ve got to do the maintenance that’s built up over time. While that’s important to everybody, no one likes to be in the yards,” Moran said. “There’s a cost of doing that right now and we have to re-baseline the maintenance of our ships across the fleet, particularly [in the Pacific] because it is so active, it has been a very busy place for a long time.”

On Sept. 12, Moran and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith toured Yokosuka’s USS Blue Ridge, which has been undergoing maintenance for about two years. Crews first re-lit the boilers on the Navy’s oldest commissioned operational ship in June, and Moran said the 7th Fleet’s flagship is “about ready to go to sea.”

“She’s outfitted like an old ‘57 Chevy that we’ve took the engine out, took the dashboard out and put all modern capability in, and man, she sounds and she’s going to run kind of nice,” Moran said.

The Blue Ridge’s staff moved back onto the ship this summer.

Capt. Brett Crozier, the Blue Ridge’s commander, said it was an honor to host Moran.

“We’re always proud to show off the ship,” he said in a Navy statement. “We’re glad the VCNO and MCPON are able to see the ship after all the hard work the crew has put in to prepare us for a return to sea.”

After manning shortages and training and certification problems were determined to have contributed to last year’s fatal collisions, the Navy created a new unit — Naval Surface Group Western Pacific — to oversee the maintenance and training that 7th Fleet crews undergo before deployments.

“We are doing our best to find the balance between getting the maintenance done and ensuring that we’re getting out and operational,” Moran said.

While the new setup has received some criticism, Moran said he believes it will be better received over time.

“To some, it may seem like an added layer of bureaucracy; to others it may seem like an added layer of compliance. Actually, it’s designed to do neither,” Moran said. “It’s to cinch up some of the seams between those out here who are scheduling ships for operations and an organization that is designed to make sure that the maintenance is getting done and that the training, manning and equipping is properly provided to the ships at the right time early in their maintenance phase and post-maintenance or basic phase.”

Competitive waters

Moran said he was encouraged by the questions he received from sailors across the Pacific during his visit. He said he believed they were indicative of sailors being “more and more aware of their purpose.”

“They’re asking about readiness to fight; being ready to go to sea to take on adversaries that might emerge in this part of the world; and being ready to answer the nation’s call, whatever that may be,” he said. “I’m getting great questions — questions on a strategic and operational level — not on a low-level tactical [regarding] uniforms and other things that tend to distract us from what’s important.”

That awareness is important as competition in the region grows, Moran said.

“There are plenty of competitors out here … Certainly we know about the Korean Peninsula, we know that China is pushing further and further out and competing for water-space resources,” he said.

The 7th Fleet regularly conducts freedom-of-navigation exercises in the South and East China Seas. China has been militarizing reclaimed land in the area, is involved in territorial disputes with other countries in the region and protests when they sail too close to certain islands.

“There are signs that our competitors around the globe — but particularly out in this area — are trying to change the international rule of order,” Moran said. “… We’ve got a lot of allies out here and a lot of partners out here who are looking at us to enforce what has been a very successful international order for trade, commerce, freedom, freedom of the seas, access to goods and services.

To stay ahead of the competition, Moran said the Navy must focus on its personnel development by “train[ing] better, smarter and frequent enough to build proficiency.”

He also said technology must “not only be defensive so that we can protect our assets, but also demonstrate that we have the punch and the ability to counterpunch somebody who might want to take us on.”

“At the end of the day, competitors are less likely to want to pick a fight with you if they are concerned about your strength, and so we need to continue to demonstrate that by being out here, by operating out here and having the technology to be able to counter anything that they might throw at us,” he said.

Team players

While the Navy continues implementing its new training and maintenance programs to bolster readiness, Moran said a strength the service has now is its “people.”

“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, I thought as soon as the unemployment rate in the United States dropped below 4.1 percent, we would have a heck of a time retaining good sailors in our Navy, and the good news is that retention right now is very good,” he said.

Moran attributes that to programs that have rolled out recently to encourage re-enlistments.

“[We’re] more transparent about what opportunities are out there for them and then giving them every opportunity to stay Navy, especially those who are very talented,” he said.

For example, the Navy in March offered aviators bonuses of up to $90,000, depending on which aircraft they fly. In May, some sailors were offered preferential billet selection and guaranteed shore duty on their next tours if they took a one-year extension on tours in Japan, Guam and Spain. The service has also developed better technology for accessing career goals.

“I think a lot of that has to do with our approach to how we try retaining folks by modernizing the system by which they manage their careers, providing more opportunities for them [and] being more flexible in how they can execute a career,” Moran said.

Moran returned to Washington on Friday, missing planned visits out to the deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan because of typhoons in the region.

He said he would take back to Washington the questions he heard from sailors and lessons he learned during his trip to Korea and Japan.

“It’s really important that … we answer to things that young men and women that serve in any capacity today expect from a high-end profession like the United States Navy,” Moran said.

doornbos.caitlin@stripes.com
Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos