Pop went the weasel and down went the Large Hadron Collider
GENEVA (AP) — It’s one of the physics world’s most complex machines, and it has been immobilized — temporarily — by a weasel.
Spokesman Arnaud Marsollier says the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside of Geneva, has suspended operations because a weasel invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage on Friday.
Authorities say the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider by a few days.
Marsollier says Friday that the weasel died — and little remains of it.
Officials of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, have been gearing up for new data from the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circuit that runs underground on the Swiss-French border.
16 blamed for mistakes in deadly US attack on Afghan clinic
WASHINGTON (AP) — Human error, violations of combat rules and untimely equipment failures led to the mistaken U.S. aerial attack on a charity-run hospital in Afghanistan last fall that killed 42 people, a senior American general said Friday. Investigators called the attack a “disproportional response to a threat that didn’t exist.”
Sixteen military members were given administrative punishments that could stall or end careers, but no one faces a court martial. A senior defense official said one of the disciplined was a two-star general.
The AC-130 gunship, bristling with side-firing cannons and guns, fired on the hospital in the northern city of Kunduz for 30 minutes before the mistake was realized and the attack was halted, Gen. Joseph Votel told a news conference as he released the Pentagon’s final report on the incident. The intended target was an Afghan intelligence agency building about 450 yards away.
No one involved knew the targeted compound was a hospital, Votel said, but investigators concluded the U.S. ground and air commanders should have known.
Votel expressed “deepest condolences” to those injured and to the families of those killed and said the U.S. government made “gesture of sympathy” payments of $3,000 to each injured person and $6,000 to each family of the killed.
Protesters get rowdy at California hotel before Trump speech
BURLINGAME, Calif. (AP) — Several hundred protesters opposing Donald Trump gathered Friday outside the hotel where he was scheduled to speak to Republicans, and some broke through a steel barricade and approached the venue’s entrance.
Police in riot gear stood shoulder-to-shoulder to keep demonstrators back as they were pelted with eggs. The crowd chanted anti-Trump slogans in a rowdy scene reminiscent of protests that grew out of hand following a Trump rally in Southern California the night before.
On Friday, a man wearing a Trump campaign “Make America Great Again” red hat was struck while being jostled by a group of shouting protesters.
“It went gangbusters. They attacked me,” said Chris Conway, a mortgage broker from San Mateo.
A dozen protesters linked arms to block the road in front of the hotel near San Francisco International Airport, but police had already closed it to traffic. Protesters also draped a large “Stop Hate” banner outside the hotel.
Most states do bare minimum on fire-foam contamination
The military is checking U.S. bases for potential groundwater contamination from a toxic firefighting foam, but most states so far show little inclination to examine civilian sites for the same threat.
The foam was likely used around the country at certain airports, refineries and other sites where catastrophic petroleum fires were a risk, but an Associated Press survey of emergency management, environmental and health agencies in all 50 states showed most haven’t tracked its use and don’t even know whether it was used, where or when.
Only five states — Alaska, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont and Wisconsin — are tracking the chemicals used in the foam and spilled from other sources through ongoing water monitoring or by looking for potentially contaminated sites.
A dozen states are beginning or planning to investigate the chemicals — known as perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs — which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other illnesses. The rest of the states, about two thirds, are waiting for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make a move.
In addition to the Aqueous Film Forming Foam used in disaster preparedness training and in actual fires, PFCs are in many household products and are used to manufacture Teflon.
San Francisco chief releases racist texts, orders training
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s police chief said Friday that he has ordered that all officers finish an anti-harassment class within the next month amid a racist texting scandal that has rocked the department already dogged by fatal shootings of unarmed minority suspects.
Flanked by religious and minority community leaders at a San Francisco press conference, Chief Greg Suhr also released more transcripts of racist and homophobic text messages first made available to The Associated Press along with inflammatory and inappropriate images found on former officers’ cellphones.
It’s the second texting scandal since 2014 in a department that is attempting to diversify its officers to reflect the San Francisco culture and population. The department of 2,100 was led by an Asian-American woman and a black man before Suhr took over five years ago.
About half the officers are white, roughly reflecting the white population in San Francisco. Asians make up a third of the city population, but account for about 16 percent of the officers. Close to 9 percent of its officers are black, exceeding a city population of 6 percent,
Suhr says he has no plans to resign and Mayor Ed Lee says he supports the chief.
