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HEROR, Iraq (AP) ? A convoy of gunmen opened fire on a row of liquor stores in eastern Baghdad immediately after sunset on Tuesday, killing 11 people and wounding five others, officials said.
Police said the gunmen were in four cars that had stopped in the area and attacked shortly after sunset. Hospital officials confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to media.
The attack in the Zayouna neighborhood came as the stores were at their peak business time, when commuters buy alcohol on the way home from work. Police say the four liquor stores hit had been rebuilt after bombers destroyed them in a previous attack last year.
Nobody claimed responsibility, although Islamic extremists have frequently targeted liquor stores in Iraq, where alcohol is available in most cities.
Meanwhile in the country's north, the first Kurdish fighters entered Iraq from Turkey as part of a peace deal with Ankara to end a decades-long uprising despite Iraqi objections to the transfer.
The rebels' retreat to bases in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region is a key stage in the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and the Turkish government, aimed at ending one of the world's bloodiest insurgencies.
The PKK declared a cease-fire in March, heeding a call from its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who is engaged in talks with Turkey to end a nearly 30-year battle that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Carrying rifles and hand grenades, the first 13 men and women arrived Tuesday in Heror in the Iraqi Kurdish area and were greeted by comrades serving refreshments of tea and cookies.
"We have been on the road for the past seven days," said Sawashka Kawar, one of the fighters. "But today, we made it and arrived in Iraq despite the difficult journey."
She warned the Turkish government that if PKK fighters were attacked, they "will fight back."
The refuge offer came from Iraq's Kurdish region, which enjoys limited independence from the central government in Baghdad. Iraqi Kurds were involved in the talks with Turkey.
Baghdad has rejected the deal, warning that the entry of more armed Kurdish fighters could harm Iraq's security and add tension to already souring relations between the self-ruled Kurdish region and the central government. The two sides are in conflict over contested areas, including key oil-producing sectors and disputed areas.
During a session Tuesday, the Iraqi Cabinet reiterated its rejection of the deal and of the presence of PKK fighters, saying it "represents a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty and independence."
The government said Iraq will file a complaint to the U.N. Security Council about it. "Iraq stresses its right to defend its sovereignty and independence in ways seen proper and in accordance with international laws and decisions," said the statement.
In Heror, PKK official Furat Jakrkhouni said a larger group is expected to enter Iraq in a week's time.
"More PKK fighters will be arriving if things go smoothly," he said. "The withdrawal process will continue if there is no obstacles put by the Turkish government."
PKK, considered a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies, is believed to have between 1,500 and 2,000 fighters inside Turkey, along with several thousand more based in northern Iraq, which they use as a springboard for attacks on Turkish territory.
Relations between Iraq and Turkey have been strained since December, when Iraq's fugitive Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi took refuge in Turkey following accusations by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad that he was running death squads.
Turkish officials rejected Baghdad's request to hand over al-Hashemi, who was tried and convicted in absentia.
___
Yacoub reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writer Mohammed Jambaz contributed from Heror.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gunmen-open-fire-liquor-stores-iraq-11-dead-181748105.html
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LinkedIn, the social website that caters to professional networking, announced Monday that sex workers will no longer be able to use the online resume service to advertise their own personal brand.
The social network has never allowed ?unlawful? profiles, which it categorizes as those advertising illegal services, but, as prostitution is not forbidden by law everywhere in the world or even everywhere in the United States, escorts have long taken advantage of the opportunity to bring attention to themselves. ?
Under the section titled ?Don?t undertake the following,? LinkedIn's new privacy policy and user agreement stipulates, ?Even if it is legal where you are located," users must not "create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.??
Legal sex workers displaced by the update have criticized LinkedIn for assuming the role of moral arbiter of the Internet.?
?What?s the problem? We have a license to do this stuff,? Dennis Hof, owner of multiple legal brothels including Nevada's Moonlite Bunny Ranch, told NBC on Monday. ?Our business is legal as theirs. We?re the good guys. We have no reason to be knocked off.??
Hof said he hopes LinkedIn doesn?t try to remove his or his employees? profiles as they, like so many other legal businesses in the information age, rely on social media to attract customers.?
?LinkedIn needs to realize they don?t need to filter out legal businesses in America,? he continued. ?These are businesswomen, and some of them are making mid-six-figure incomes. If it?s okay to do that, is it okay to drop Dairy Queen too because it serves too much fat and calories??
A casual inspection of LinkedIn?s listings reveals that many young men and women, while not listing prostitution as one of their career skills, do advertise thinly-veiled massage services, independent escort professionalism, and companionship, among other professions.?
?I?m not saying we?re going to do a purge, though we very well may,? said Hani Durzy, LinkedIn?s director of corporate communications, during an interview with NBC. ?In a nutshell, as we become aware of profiles that violate our policies we will take the appropriate actions. Does that mean shutting them down on day one? Or giving our members the benefit of the doubt, and telling them that?s a violation and you?ve got to change it? There is no hard and fast rule.?
Source: http://rt.com/usa/linkedin-forbids-sex-workers-282/
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Eating out for breakfast, lunch or dinner? Your meal likely contains more than half of your daily recommended calorie intake, according to a new study from Canada.
Researchers from the University of Toronto examined the calorie, sodium, fat and cholesterol levels of 685 meals and 156 desserts from 19 sit-down restaurants around Canada, and found that the average meal has 1,128 calories.
Even though most nutritional facts are based on eating 2,000-calories a day, the number of calories a person should eat each day differs from individual to individual, based on weight, physical activity level, and other factors. The USDA's current daily calorie recommendations are as follows:
Estimates range from 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day for adult women and 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day for adult men, depending on age and physical activity level. Within each age and gender category, the low end of the range is for sedentary individuals; the high end of the range is for active individuals.
The study, published as a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine, also showed that the average sit-down restaurant meal has 151 percent of the daily recommended amount of sodium for adults, 60 percent of the daily recommended amount of cholesterol, and 89 percent of the daily recommended amount of fat. And the average meal contained 83 percent of the daily recommended trans and saturated fats particularly.
"The high level of saturated fat is worrisome because according to the Institute of Medicine, intakes of saturated fat should be kept as low as possible," the researchers wrote in the study. "Furthermore, though recommendations suggest that approximately 20 [percent] to 35 [percent] of energy should come from fat; in this study, 45 [percent] was derived from fat."
They continued on to write: "Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that calorie, fat, saturated fat, and sodium levels are alarmingly high in breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals from multiple chain [sit-down restaurants]. Therefore, addressing the nutritional profile of restaurant meals should be a major public health priority."
In another study, published in the same new issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., found that processed food makers and restaurants are slow to decrease sodium levels in their foods. Jacobson analyzed sodium levels in food between 2005 and 2011, and found that sodium in processed foods went down by 3.5 percent and increased in fast food by 2.6 percent.
"A traditional recommendation among physicians for treating and preventing high blood pressure is to counsel patients on reducing sodium intake," Jacobson wrote in the study. "While in an ideal world that recommendation would be sufficient to lower blood pressure in the patient population, in the real world it places unrealistic demands on both patients and physicians given the high sodium levels present in processed and restaurant foods."
The new studies come on the heels of a report just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, showing that the nutrition quality of fast food has improved just 3 percent over a 14-year period. For more on that research, click here.
For more on what we're really eating, click through this slideshow on gross ingredients in processed foods:
Also on HuffPost:
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(Chicago Tribune) New technology for identifying early stage ovarian cancer in uterine and cervical cells could have the potential to one day stem this often deadly disease, according to a recent study in the International Journal of Cancer.
Using equipment that can carry out nanocytology ? a technique that identifies cells at the nanoscale, or one billionth of a meter, much smaller than typical microscopy can detect ? researchers were able to find ovarian cancerous cells that were invisible using a conventional microscope? If the findings are replicated on a larger scale, doctors could brush the cervix and endometrium for cells during a pap smear and only have to use costlier tests, such as a CT scan, to confirm a diagnosis, [Dr. Vadim] Backman said. Community: This is very good news, since most ovarian cancer isn?t found until it?s at a very late stage and hard to cure.[Click the title, above, to post a comment.]
Source: http://www.manyyearsyoung.com/2013/05/technology-may-find-ovarian-cancer.html
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Ice wave comes ashore: High winds on a Minnesota lake have pushed a wave of ice right into people's front yards.?
By Associated Press / May 13, 2013
Amateur video captures a wave of ice blanketing backyards and threatening houses in the Mille Lacs Lake area of Minnesota. (May 12)?Strong winds have pushed huge?ice?sheets ashore at a northern?Minnesota?lake and right up to people's doorsteps.
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WCCO-TV reports that the?ice?from Lake Mille Lacs reached the doors and windows at the Izatys Resort on Saturday morning.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Shawn Devinny says 30 to 40 mile an hour winds pushed the water into the?ice, driving it ashore. He says the winds were lighter Sunday and the shoreline got a reprieve.
The Department of Natural Resources says about 10 miles of shoreline are covered, with some reaching up to 30 feet high.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/IQ4OImlixmE/Ice-wave-comes-ashore-in-Minnesota
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By Cory Doctorow, The Guardian
Monday, May 13, 2013 8:00 EDT
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A test case between Cody Wilson and the US government could have implications for regulation of the internet
By now, everyone?s heard about the 3D printed gun that Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. The Texas-based group has been steadily working its way up the 3D printed firearms evolutionary ladder, making parts for guns, then guns themselves, then firing a gun, then making the plans for running up your own pistols on a nearby 3D printer. If Defense Distributed had set out to create a moral panic over 3D printing, they could have picked no better project.
The prevailing opinions on 3D printed guns fall into two major categories: the apocalyptic and the nonchalant. The apocalyptics ? including grandstanding politicos like New York State senator Steve Israel, who?s already introduced legislation aimed at banning 3D printed guns ? greet this news with hysterics: the age of the undetectable plastic gun to be upon us, and Something Must Be Done. The nonchalant point out that the 3D printed gun that Defense Distributed fired cost a small fortune and requires a highly specialised and even more expensive 3D printer to produce; is fragile and liable to self-destruction after a few rounds are fired, and remind the apocalyptics that it?s much, much easier to go and buy a traditional gun in the criminal underground than it is to produce a working 3D printed item.
There?s some truth in both points of view, but it?s hard to get at the truth when you?re talking about an issue as polarising as guns. It doesn?t help that Defense Distributed?s founder Cody Wilson describes the project in ideologically loaded terms, calling his first gun ?the Liberator? in homage to the cheap single-shot pistols that the Allies made for distribution in Nazi-occupied France ? Wilson here implying that the ability to print a gun and arm yourself is integral to the defence against tyranny. Wilson?s nomenclature is classic internet rhetoric: by invoking the Nazis with his pistol design, he follows in the tradition of a million internet arguments that prove Godwin?s Law: ?As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.?
For my part, I think that 3D printed guns are both interesting and scary, and certainly important, though not for the reasons most commonly invoked by either camp.
Jumbo problems
The most interesting part of the whole affair is what it says about all forms of technological regulation in the future. All technologies are being subsumed into general-purpose computers connected to the general-purpose internet, from thermostats to hearing aids to pharmaceutical factories to automobiles to radios. Many of these technologies have historically been regulated through rules about how they must be built, used and monitored, and in addition, there?s a kind of de facto regulation that comes from the complexity of building complex devices from readily available parts. Anyone with enough resources can build a jumbo jet, but that?s a pretty specialised use of the word ?anyone? ? if you?re building a jumbo jet, you?re in a relatively small pool of people to begin with, and the act of building a jumbo jet throws off enough detectable signs that it?s hard to keep secret.
Inherent in the notion of regulating a technology is the regulatability of that technology. It?s the idea that you can figure out who?s making or using a technology and dictate terms to them. That?s where computers come in. Computers make it possible for semi-skilled people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled people. A computer program, computer-readable model-file and computer-based 3D printer can (in theory) encapsulate the expertise of a skilled machinist and deploy it on demand wherever a 3D printer is to be found. If that?s hard to grasp, think of recorded music versus live performance: before sound recordings, you needed to find (and possibly pay) a musician every time you wanted to hear music; after recordings, the musician was only needed for the initial performance, which could be captured and reproduced at will.
The existence of a 3D printed gun that can be output on a high-end machine by a skilled user doesn?t do much to change the regulatability of guns. After all, you could already ?print? a much more powerful gun by ordering it, piece by piece, from any of the many overnight-shipping custom metal fabrication companies that will turn a 3D model into a precision-machined piece of metal and FedEx it to your door. Such a gun would keep firing as long as you kept feeding it ammo, too ? unlike a plastic gun, which is likely to experience critical failure after a comparatively small number of rounds fired.
That said, 3D printers keep getting better and cheaper and today?s uncommon professional model is likely to be tomorrow?s ubiquitous home hobbyist machine. If there comes a day when more powerful printers are common, then the regulatability of guns will shelve off dramatically.
Guns and ammo
Of course, there?s no such thing as 3D printed ammunition, and there?s nothing on our immediate horizon that is likely to produce it. However, the current security model for reducing the danger from guns involves a multilayered defence that relies on the regulation of both guns and ammunition. If guns can be readily made at home, then a major piece of the regulatory model is dead. The ability to encapsulate the expertise of a gunsmith in a bit of code becomes more more significant then. But ?then? is not ?now.? Though 3D printers might change the regulatory picture for firearms in years or decades, the regulatability of guns remains intact for now.
More interesting is the destiny of the files describing 3D printed guns. These model-files have been temporarily removed from the internet at the behest of the US State Department, which is investigating the possibility that they violate the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Wilson says that he?s on safe ground here, because the regulations do not cover material in a library, and he says the internet is like a library. As this is taking place in the US, there?s also the First Amendment to be considered, which limits government regulation of speech.
Here?s where things get scary for me. Defense Distributed is headed for some important, possibly precedent-setting legal battles with the US government, and I?m worried that the fact that we?re talking about guns here will cloud judges? minds. Bad cases made bad law, and it?s hard to think of a more emotionally overheated subject area. So while I?d love to see a court evaluate whether the internet should be treated as a library in law, I?m worried that when it comes to guns, the judge may find himself framing the question in terms of whether a gun foundry should be treated as a library.
Hard cases make bad law
Likewise for the question of whether computer code is a form of protected, expressive speech. In 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals legalised the civilian use of strong cryptography, thanks to Bernstein v United States, which asked whether US spy agencies should really be in the business of regulating how academics talked about maths. The court in Bernstein held that code was a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and struck down the US National Security Agency?s ban on publishing code that could be used to make effective cryptographic systems.
However, in 2000?s Universal City Studios Inc v Reimerdes, the court got it wrong when considering the question of whether a magazine should be forbidden from publishing computer code that could be used to decode a DVD. The difference between Reimerdes and Bernstein is that Reimerdes concerned itself with a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and Bernstein was about a nice academic mathematician called Daniel Bernstein. They both turned on the same principle, but the court couldn?t see past the words ?Hacker Quarterly? to see the principle underlying the case.
I agree with Cody Wilson that we?ve entered into a new world of regulation, and it?s one that could go very wrong if things aren?t well handled. I just fear that Wilson?s asking the right questions ? how do we regulate technologies when they can be produced with general purpose computers and networks ? in the wrong way: ?Should everyone be able to print a gun at home??
? Guardian News and Media 2013
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Source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/13/3d-printed-guns-are-going-to-create-big-legal-precedents/
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Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/05/13/kristen-wiig-saturday-night-live-ghost/
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May 12, 2013 ? The gardener's best friend, the earthworm, is great at protecting leaves from being chomped by slugs, suggests research in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology. Although they lurk in the soil, they seem to protect the plants above ground. Increasing plant diversity also decreases the amount of damage slugs do to individual plants.
Spanish slugs (Arion vulgaris) are among the top 100 worst alien species in Europe and are considered a pest almost everywhere. A team of scientists from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna investigated what effect the presence of earthworms and plant diversity would have on the amount of damage these slugs caused.
Using large incubators to simulate grassland environments the researchers could regulate the diversity of plant species and time the introduction of earthworms and slugs. They found that the presence of worms increased nitrogen content of plants and reduced the number of leaves damaged due to slugs by 60%. Yet when they compared leaf area damaged the researchers found slugs also ate 40% less at high plant diversity than at low.
Explaining their results Dr Johann Zaller, who led the study, said, "Our results suggest that two processes might be going on. Firstly, earthworms improved the plant's ability to protect itself against slugs perhaps through the build-up of nitrogen-containing toxic compounds. Secondly, even though these slugs are generalists they prefer widely available food and in high diverse ecosystems slugs eat less in total because they have to switch their diets more often since plants of the same species are less available. Therefore gardeners are to help protect earthworms by increasing plant diversity in the garden in order to keep slug damage low. In order to elucidate the mechanisms behind these complex interactions, all parts of an ecosystem need to be investigated."
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Yx5cH245xwE/130512201613.htm
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Sony's ratcheted up its water-resistant device tech a notch with the launch of the Xperia ZR, a new 4.6-inch, 720p Android smartphone that's waterproof to 1.5 meters (5 feet). Sony boasts that its new device will let you film your snorkeling adventures in full HD quality, with HDR in both video or 13-megapixel stills thanks to the Exmor RS image sensor -- there's also a dedicated camera button like the one on the Xperia ZL. The handset packs a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core 1.5GH CPU, 2GB RAM, LTE, NFC, Sony's Walkman album and movie apps and a notable OptiContrast OLED screen with Bravia tech to reduce glare "even in bright sunlight." There's no word yet on pricing or availability, but as soon as we hear more, we'll try to prep you ahead of that next beach-bound holiday. Meanwhile, you can check the galleries, PR and video after the break for more.
Update: As Xperia Blog found out, the Xperia ZR is actually the international version of Japan's upcoming Xperia A SO-04E -- the one we saw popping up in the FCC database.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony
Source: Sony (Facebook)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/2hm55NySSbc/
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Just like Untappd
The general concept isn't new, sure, but it's never been done in a way quite this fun. You don't just get the typical stats of total monthly intake, most popular types of beer, etc.; you'll also get to see your own personal "beer o'clock," which is the time of you most often take to the bottle. And while most people don't necessarily need a reason to toss back a few cold ones, everyone enjoys a little competition. With a strong group of beer enthusiasts at hand, you can add a little something special to an otherwise uninspired routine.
Beer Hunt, Download this app for: iOS, Free
The Best: Competing to be top drinker
The Worst: So-so UI
Source: http://gizmodo.com/beer-hunt-drinking-with-friends-just-got-even-more-fun-504850080
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Remember when music visualizers were all the rage about fifteen years ago? Or maybe that was just a music visualizer phase I went through alone. Either way, this art installation called "Sonic Water" puts a very literal spin on the concept eschewing any kind of simulation for a real puddle of water.
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By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News
The Powerball lottery jackpot swelled to $350 million after no ticket matched all the winning numbers picked on Saturday night.
That would make it the third-largest Powerball prize ever.
The winning numbers were 6-13-19-23-43 with Powerball 16.
The jackpot had hit $270 million before Saturday night's drawing with a cash value if taken as a lump sum ofs $175.8 million, according to Powerball. Winners also have the option of taking the money as a 29-year annuity.
There?s a one in 175.2 million chance of anyone winning the grand prize, according to Powerball. Tickets cost $2.
The last big winner in the Powerball was on March 30, when a $50 million prize was won. But earlier that month a single ticket produced a $338 million winner, at the time the fourth biggest Powerball prize ever.
The biggest Powerball jackpot ever was won on Nov. 28 -- $587.5 million split by two tickets. But the largest U.S. lottery prize ever won was $656 million in the Mega Millions drawing on March 30, 2012, split among three tickets.
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By David Jones NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - A tense weekend standoff in a South Trenton, New Jersey, neighborhood ended early on Sunday with a hostage taker dead and three children rescued, authorities said. Police shot Gerald Tyrone Murphy, ending the 37-hour standoff and saving the lives of three unidentified children??
Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/weightloss
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We all know that barns are usually red. But why? Well, the answer is a little more complicated than you might think, but basically it's because of nuclear fusion.
Googler Yonatan Zunger took the time to explain the whole thing in great detail on Google+, and the train of thought goes a little something like this:
It's that step where things get a little more complicated. Zunger explains it this way:
[When a star dies, it] starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes.
Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping. This collapse raises the pressure even more, and sets off various nuclear reactions which will produce even heavier elements, but they don?t produce any energy: just stuff.
This stuff-generation just continues for a while, churning out material with an atomic mass of around 56 (iron) until eventually, it meets its final demise and explodes (sometimes), seeding that material through out the cosmos.
It's that rusty startdust that litters the ground of this planet we live on and makes it cheap and easy to get a whole bunch of red paint for our barns. Crazy, right? You can dig waaaaaay deeper into the nitty gritty details by reading Zunger's wildly in-depth post. [Yonatan Zunger via Smithsonian Blog]
Image by MaxyM/Shutterstock
Source: http://gizmodo.com/barns-are-red-because-of-how-stars-explode-501906503
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Beyond the Air Force's embarrassing suspension of 17 nuclear missile launch officers lie two broader questions.
Do those entrusted with the world's most destructive weapons feel stuck in a dead-end career field, given the momentum toward more nuclear arms reductions? And is there a morale crisis among these officers?
This matters because the missiles ? 450 of them standing in below-ground silos, ready for launch at a moment's notice ? form a critical part of America's nuclear defenses. There is little room for error. Although none has ever been fired in anger, the risk of accidental launch or unauthorized intrusion is real.
In a rare look inside the secretive world of nuclear missiles, The Associated Press reported this past week that the deputy commander of operations for the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., complained to his officers about "rot" within their ranks.
In a confidential email obtained by the AP, Lt. Col. Jay Folds wrote of 17 launch officers, 10 percent of his force, being removed from duty for what he likened to incompetence. They are being given remedial training, with the goal of being back on duty within two months.
"If you have this many officers who failed, then how do you explain that and who should be held accountable for their failure?" Robert Gates, a former defense secretary, said Friday. "I think those questions clearly need to be answered."
When faced with similar questions during his Pentagon tenure, Gates fired the top two Air Force leaders in 2008. That followed a series of nuclear embarrassments, including the inadvertent transport of six nuclear-tipped missiles on a B-52 bomber, whose pilot did not know they were aboard when he flew from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.
Gates said in an interview Friday before addressing graduates of the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., that he was disappointed by the latest revelations but confident that Minot's weapons were not in jeopardy.
The Minot missile wing is responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 missiles, one-third of the Air Force's entire ICBM force.
Inside the missile launch capsules, so called because of their pill-like shape, two officers stand watch, authorized to turn the keys enabled by secret launch codes if the presidential order ever comes. They are 60 feet underground, electronically linked to 10 silos, each with one armed Minuteman 3.
That is a lot of responsibility for the young lieutenants and captains that the Air Force puts in these jobs. It's also an enormous challenge for their commanders to keep them on track ? a challenge not always met.
In a March inspection the 91st wing was rated "marginal," the equivalent of a "D'' grade, when tested on launch skills.
Folds described a deeper problem, citing willful rule violations such as leaving open the multi-ton blast door to their launch compartment while one of the two crew members was asleep. Sleep breaks are authorized, but the open door is not, given the risk of losing control of the capsule to an unauthorized intruder.
Publicly, the Air Force insists that its missileers, as they are known within the service, are capable, trustworthy and committed. But Air Force Secretary Michael Donley also acknowledged in congressional testimony that he worries that talk of further shrinking the nation's nuclear force is having a "corrosive effect" on his troops.
Gen. Mark Welsh, the Air Force chief of staff, said at the same congressional hearing that it's understandable that young missile officers may be demoralized by the realization that theirs is a shrinking field.
"You say, 'My goodness, there's only three (missile wings in the entire Air Force). There's no opportunity there,'" Welsh said. "That's actually not the case, but that's the view when you're" in one of those units.
Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer and now a national security scholar at Princeton University, said Friday that morale has dropped in part because the ICBM mission that originated in 1959, deterring the Soviet Union from attacking the U.S. or Europe, is less compelling than it was generations ago.
"This dead-end career is not the result of shrinking nuclear arsenals, but rather because the Cold War ended decades ago and because so few senior commander jobs exist within the missile specialty," Blair said. "Most crews can't wait to transfer out of missiles into faster-track careers such as space operations, but the Air Force doesn't make it easy."
Donley came close to blaming the White House for any malaise. He said that when officers see "the national leadership" contemplating more nuclear reductions "this does have a corrosive effect on our ability to maintain focus on this mission." He also said "critics or others" contribute to this when they suggest getting rid of the ICBM force entirely.
This touches on a sensitive problem for the Air Force, which is inclined to defend its nuclear turf even as President Barack Obama has made clear his view that it is time to end America's heavy reliance on nuclear weapons.
"The massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the Cold War is poorly suited to today's threats, including nuclear terrorism," he said a year ago in Seoul. He noted that in 2011 he ordered his national security team to undertake a comprehensive review of nuclear forces and policies, which was completed last year.
"We can already say with confidence that we have more nuclear weapons than we need," Obama said.
The president is expected to announce this year his intention to make new nuclear reductions, and his defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, has publicly supported the eventual elimination of all of the Air Force's ICBMs. Hagel took that stand before he became Pentagon chief in February; he has not commented on it since then.
Hagel is scheduled to meet with Donley and Welsh on Monday to press for more answers on the lapses at Minot. He received a series of staff briefings on the matter in the days following publication of the AP story, and his press secretary, George Little, said Friday that Hagel "expects not to see this kind of problem again."
Concern over deterioration in the Air Force's nuclear mission is not new.
After Gates cleaned house in 2008, an outside advisory panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger issued a scathing report. It concluded, "There has been an unambiguous, dramatic and unacceptable decline in the Air Force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission." It put the blame mainly on Air Force leaders, not young officers.
"The readiness of forces assigned the nuclear mission has seriously eroded," the report said, adding, "We must restore pride among those who are performing the Air Force nuclear mission."
Gates said Friday the onus is on Air Force leaders to avoid decay in the nuclear force, now and in the future.
"The challenge facing the Air Force leadership, no matter what the size of the nuclear arsenal, is how do you sustain the morale and the intensity of the men and women who manage the nuclear enterprise," Gates said. "That's not an easy thing, especially during terrible budget times that they're encountering right now."
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Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
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Robert Burns can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/morale-crisis-us-nuclear-force-122512238.html
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