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Storm Ida dumps heavy rain on Nicaragua-1

Hurricane Ida weakened to a tropical storm as it churned through eastern Nicaragua on Thursday after cutting power and ripping roofs on little-developed Caribbean islands.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from flimsy homes on the Corn Islands, near the port of Bluefields, as Ida drenched the remote Miskito coast with heavy rain. The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned of floods and mudslides.

At 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT) Ida’s maximum winds slowed to near 40 mph and the storm is expected to become a tropical depression Thursday night. “Ida is now barely a tropical storm,” the Miami-based NHC said, though it warned that heavy rainfall was a major concern.

Storm Ida dumps heavy rain on Nicaragua-2

“These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides,” the center said.

The storm was heading north-northwest about 55 miles north of the port of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.

Ida is expected to regain strength after it moves back over the Caribbean sea on Saturday, and could enter the oil and gas-rich Gulf of Mexico next week.

FIERCE WINDS

General Mario Perez-Cassar, Nicaragua’s civil defense chief, said strong winds ripped roofs and knocked out power in Big Corn Island and Little Corn Island, home to shrimp and lobster fishermen.

“They are without power, all the electric lines are down, there are trees on the roads and no running water,” Perez-Cassar told local television.

The NHC said Ida could produce up to 20 inches of rain as it moves over eastern Nicaragua and into Honduras.

Nicaragua and Honduras are important coffee exporters, and harvesting has been under way since October, but farms are mainly in mountainous areas further inland.

Persistent heavy rain could knock ripe cherries off coffee trees if the storm moves inland, however, and mudslides could cut off roads to coffee farms, Luis Osorio, technical director at the national coffee council, said on Wednesday.

Nicaragua is also a key sugar grower, but plantations are nearer the Pacific coast, well away from the storm’s path, and growers did not see a serious impact on production.

At worst the harvest, due to start on November 11, could be delayed a few days by rain, said Mario Amador, head of the national sugar producers’ association. He added that Nicaragua should have no problem filling its sugar export quotas to Mexico, which faces a shortfall this year.

Nearly 2,000 people in the Corn Islands and Sandy Bay were evacuated to shelters before Ida hit. “We are expecting serious impact on infrastructure,” Perez-Cassar said.

Space Elevator Contest Heats Up

Pull me up, Scotty. At least one team has qualified for part of a $2 million prize up for grabs in this year’s Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines that can climb a cable in the sky – precursors for a futuristic transit system to space.

On Wednesday, an entry by the Washington state-based team LaserMotive climbed a 3,000-foot (900-meter) tether suspended by a helicopter at a speed of about 8 mph (13 kph). The feat was the best performance yet of a miniature space elevator prototype, though still a long shot away from what would be needed to carry humans to Earth orbit, as proponents envision.

The competition, called the Power Beaming Challenge, is being held this week at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert. It requires competitors to beam power from a remote source to propell their vehicles upward.

Space elevators were first popularized in the 1970s by the science fiction novels of Arthur C. Clarke, as a means to reach space without using a rocket. Instead, a ship could climb along a fixed structure, like a beam or cable, suspended in space by a permanent geostationary satellite 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above Earth. The sticking points are the need for a super-strong, yet light, material for the tether, and a good way to anchor the other end securely. Not to mention the vehicle to climb it.

That’s where the Space Elevator Games come in. Today offers a second chance for more climbers to compete, and any team that can power their entrant for an average speed of 11 mph (18 kph) will qualify for a portion of the total $2 million prize purse on offer. The competition is sponsored by the Spaceward Foundation and NASA’s Centennial Challenges program aimed to spur development in space exploration.

An attempt by the Kansas City Space Pirates on Wednesday fell short of the speed requirement. The climber from USST (University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team) is slated to compete today.

UN to pull non-essential staff from Afghanistan

The United Nations is to pull its non-essential foreign staff out of Afghanistan temporarily after a deadly Taliban attack on a guesthouse for UN workers, a spokesman said Thursday.

“Around 600 non-Afghan staff will be temporarily relocated,” Dan McNorton told AFP.

“The only people who will remain are regarded as essential staff.”

Nearly all the 600 will leave the country although a small number could be relocated within Afghanistan, he added.

The decision comes eight days after a Taliban attack on a hostel in Kabul in which five UN workers were killed.

Abortion funding opens rift in House health bill-1

Would abortions be easier or harder to obtain under the health care overhaul legislation that the House of Representatives is likely to consider later this week?

It depends on how one interprets the bill.

Abortion foes are upset that the measure would require plans that offer elective abortion services to set aside at least a dollar a month from each of their patient’s private premium dollars in an account strictly apart from any federal funds.

That segregated funding, abortion-rights backers say, would assure that federal money wouldn’t be used.

They point to a different part of the bill to illustrate how they respect the rights of abortion opponents: The bill would require the new health exchanges, or marketplaces generally organized by state or region, to offer at least one insurance plan that doesn’t include abortion services.

Abortion opponents aren’t pleased.

To Rep. Bart Stupak , D- Mich. , such policies would “depart from current laws in important and troubling ways.”

For the past 32 years, federal money can only pay for abortions in the case of rape, incest or to protect a woman’s life.

Abortion funding opens rift in House health bill-2

However, to Rep. Lois Capps , D- Calif. , a leader in the effort to find compromise, the legislation doesn’t expand the government’s role in funding abortion.

“Health insurance reform legislation is not the place to be breaking any new ground on the issue of abortion,” she said.

Anti-abortion lawmakers, thought to include 20 to 40 Democrats and virtually all the 177 Republicans, have expressed serious concerns about abortion language in the health care bill.

Democrats control 256 of the 435 House seats — two are vacant — and 218 are needed for a majority, but party leaders are convinced that a compromise on the abortion language can be reached shortly. The Senate , where Democrats control 60 of the 100 seats, is expected to follow suit.

“I am pretty confident we can get there,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer , D- Md. , said Tuesday, “essentially making very clear that any money spent on the issue of termination of pregnancy will not be spent by the government but by the individuals.”

Many Democrats who described themselves as “pro-life” were confident as well.

“I can’t imagine that this will kill comprehensive health care reform,” said Rep. Mike Doyle , D- Pa.

Abortion funding opens rift in House health bill-3

House leaders are hoping to begin debate Friday, with a final vote possible as soon as Saturday. Senate action is expected later, but perhaps not before the end of this year.

Though Democrats have been adamant that they want a bill on President Barack Obama’s desk by year’s end, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D- Nev. , said Tuesday that, “We’re not going to be bound by any timelines.” Reid has had trouble finding consensus among Democratic moderates to move forward with legislation.

The House is ready to move ahead. Currently, its bill says no federal money would be used for abortion services, unless a pregnancy was the result of a rape, incest or endangered a woman’s life. Only private funds, generated by the patients’ private monthly premium payments, could be used to pay for other abortion services.

Democratic leaders say the compromise that should woo abortion foes will involve making the legislative language regarding such measures more emphatic.

In addition, Capps pointed to the other bill provision that she and other abortion rights backers say assures opponents their views are respected — the one that requires each health premium rating, or coverage, area to include at least one insurance plan that offers abortion services and one that doesn’t.

That has its most dramatic impact on the Medicaid program, the state-federal program that provides medical coverage for lower income people. Many states currently use state money to help pay for abortion services beyond those permitted by the federal government.

Chances are few on the two sides of the issue will be fully satisfied — except Democratic leaders, who’re eager to vote on the bill.

“I am confident of prevailing,” Hoyer said, “and I am confident of prevailing before Veterans Day ,” Nov. 11

Supreme Court declines to hear civil-rights era KKK case-1

The US Supreme Court has declined to decide whether the federal statute of limitations bars the prosecution of a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member accused of kidnapping and murdering two black teens in 1964.

James Ford Seale was tried, convicted, and sentenced to three life prison terms in 2007. His lawyers challenged the prosecution on grounds that a five-year statute of limitations for kidnapping had long since passed.

By declining to take up the case, the high court’s action leaves in place a decision by Mr. Seale’s trial judge allowing his prosecution to go forward and upholding his conviction and life sentences. But the issue remains unresolved in future cases.

The statute of limitations issue is significant because it could undermine efforts by the Justice Department to prosecute suspects in as many as 22 other alleged racially-motivated killings and civil rights crimes dating to the 1950s and 1960s.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia issued a statement saying the high court should have agreed to resolve the issue now. “The question is narrow, debatable, and important,” Justice Stevens wrote. “I see no benefit and significant cost to postponing the question’s resolution. A prompt answer from this court will expedite the termination of this litigation and determine whether other similar cases may be prosecuted,” he wrote.

Supreme Court declines to hear civil-rights era KKK case-2

A 40-year-old case

The statute of limitations issue arose during the federal prosecution of Seale, a former Klan member from Mississippi suspected of kidnap and murder.

Seale was identified by federal agents forty-five years ago as the primary suspect in the teens’ deaths. The agents turned their findings over to local law enforcement officials in Mississippi, but no state charges were ever filed.

In 2007, federal prosecutors resurrected the cold case, indicting Seale on federal kidnapping charges.

The two victims, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, were abducted by members of the KKK on May 2, 1964 while hitchhiking near Meadville, Miss. They were taken to a remote location and beaten.

Then Seale and others allegedly taped their mouths and hands, and tied their bodies to a steel engine block before dumping both teens, still alive, into the Mississippi River.

They were reportedly first targeted for abduction because the KKK suspected Mr. Dees of engaging in civil rights work.

The issue of limitations

Lawyers for Seale challenged his indictment, arguing that a five-year federal statute of limitations on kidnapping had long since run out.

Prosecutors countered that there was no statute of limitation for a kidnapping that resulted in a death.

Supreme Court declines to hear civil-rights era KKK case-3

The trial judge agreed with that view, but a three-judge appeals court panel in New Orleans reversed the conviction. The full Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals then took up the case and split 9-9 on the question.

That action reinstated Seale’s conviction and life sentences. But the appeals court took the somewhat unusual step of asking the US Supreme Court to resolve the underlying question of whether the five-year statute of limitations applied in the Seale case.

The central question in the case was whether a 1972 amendment by Congress designating kidnapping a non-capital offense retroactively reduced the statute of limitations to five years for a crime committed in 1964.

Seale’s lawyers acknowledge that kidnapping was a capital offense in 1964 and thus had no statute of limitations under federal law. But they argue that the law changed in 1968 and 1972 with action by the Supreme Court and Congress.

In a dissent to the decision of the full Fifth Circuit to take up the Seale case, Judge Jerry Smith blamed the Justice Department for delaying more than 40 years in prosecuting Seale for this “despicable crime.”

“The government now asks this court to bail it out by declaring a result that cannot be reached except by a strained explication of the applicable statutes and caselaw,” he wrote. “The result of the government’s inaction under myriad attorneys general is, to say the least, unfortunate. Because, as the [appeals court] panel held, Seale’s conviction is barred by the statute of limitations, Seale must be set free and cannot be successfully prosecuted for this unspeakable crime.”

Judge Smith said: “It is a necessary consequence of having a government of laws that wrongdoers at times must be released without further punishment.”