Under Islamic State, Mosul’s people faced darkness, dread
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — She survived the first stone that struck her, then the second.
One of the Islamic State group’s fighters bent down and pressed his fingers to the side of her neck to check her pulse.
As her horrified neighbors watched, extremists threw a third stone at the young woman, who was accused of adultery. That one killed her.
It was, for those who witnessed it, the cruelest moment in Mosul’s two-year descent into fear, hunger and isolation. Before the siege, Iraq’s second-largest city was arguably the most multicultural place in Iraq, with a Sunni Muslim Arab majority but also thriving communities of Kurds, Shiites, Christians and Yazidis. Together, they had created Mosul’s distinct identity, with its own cuisine, intellectual life and economy.
But the Islamic State group turned Mosul into a place of literal and spiritual darkness. It began with promises of order and a religious utopia that appealed to some, but over the course of 2 ½ years, the militants turned crueler, the economy crumbled under the weight of war and shortages set in. Those who resisted watched neighbors who joined IS turn prosperous and vindictive. Parents feared for the brainwashing of their children. By the end, as Iraqi troops besieged Mosul, the militants hanged suspected spies from lampposts, and residents were cut off from the world.
Republican looks to overhaul Social Security
WASHINGTON (AP) — A key Republican lawmaker wants to overhaul Social Security, the decades-old program that provides benefits to some 60 million retirees and disabled, with a plan to gradually increase the retirement age and slow the growth of benefits for higher-income workers.
Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, introduced legislation just before the end of the congressional session last week that he said would “permanently save” the program. He said the bill would increase benefits for lower-income workers.
About 168 million people work and pay taxes toward the inevitable monthly Social Security benefits. About 42 million of the beneficiaries are retirees and their families. The trustees who oversee Social Security say it has enough money to pay full benefits until 2034, and then Social Security will collect only enough taxes to pay 79 percent of benefits.
Unless Congress acts, millions of people on fixed incomes would get an automatic 21 percent cut in benefits.
“Americans want, need, and deserve for us to finally come up with a solution to saving this important program,” Johnson said.
Obama: President without briefings ‘flying blind’
NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama has criticized Donald Trump for saying he plans to shun daily intelligence briefings once inaugurated, saying that would be akin to “flying blind” in managing national security affairs.
Appearing Monday evening on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Obama said fit would be a mistake for a president to pass on regular briefings from the intelligence community.
Trump had said on “Fox News Sunday” he is not interested in getting daily intelligence briefings, a practice that’s been a fixture for chief executives of both parties for several years. Asked whether he’s actually rejecting valuable intelligence, Trump was defiant.
“I get it when I need it,” he said of the top-secret briefings sessions, adding that he’s leaving it up to the briefers to decide when a development represents a “change” big enough to notify him.
“I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” Trump said.
Nearly 7 years after quake, 50,000 in Haiti still in camps
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Nearly seven years ago, Adrienne St. Fume and her family fled their home as the earth shook and their city crumbled around them. They ended up in what was then a vacant lot overlooking a cluster of shops along a busy street in the Haitian capital — and they’ve been there ever since.
The mother of three said she figured their plywood shack would be temporary as they and the rest of Port-au-Prince recovered from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010. But St. Fume has yet to find a way out.
“It’s been hard but we’ve tried our best to make a kind of life here,” she said.
At least 50,000 people like St. Fume remain in 31 settlement camps that emerged in Haiti in the days and weeks after the disaster. The number of people in these makeshift communities has declined 96 percent since the immediate aftermath, but those who remain are a stubborn reminder that this impoverished country has yet to fully recover from one of the worst natural disasters in history.
Authorities estimated 1.5 million people were living in over 1,500 camps in July 2010. The numbers dropped either because people were evicted by private property owners, raised enough money to rebuild homes, or received rental subsidies from the government and aid groups that got them back on their feet.
1st SeaWorld park without orcas opening in Abu Dhabi in 2022
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Months after SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment ended its orca-breeding program amid pressure from animal rights activists, company officials announced Tuesday that they will help develop in Abu Dhabi the first new SeaWorld park without orcas — and the first outside the United States.
SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby told The Associated Press that the Abu Dhabi park is an important step for the theme park company’s move away from orcas, which long were company icons. The captive orcas have been the focus of blistering campaigns against SeaWorld by animal rights activists.
Officials with SeaWorld and Abu Dhabi-government-backed Miral Asset Management said the SeaWorld park will open in 2022 in Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, a man-made island that is fast becoming a tourism and entertainment hub near the southeast tip of the Arabian peninsula.
The Abu Dhabi location will have a research, animal rescue and rehabilitation center, which will open ahead of the park, and the theme park will focus on educating visitors about ocean conservation, officials said. The two companies had been in talks since 2011 about a park in Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates.
SeaWorld ended its innovative orca-breeding program in March after years of declining attendance and pressure from activists following the 2013 release of the critical documentary “Blackfish.” The documentary chronicled the life of Tilikum, an orca that killed a SeaWorld trainer during a performance in Orlando in 2010, and the movie implied that killer whales become more aggressive in captivity.
