Syria's warring sides trade wheat for flour

Members of the Free Syrian Army and men from the northern Syrian town of Ras al-Ain load sacks of wheat, as seen from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, Sanliurfa province, November 26, 2012. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah DalshBy Oliver Holmes and Alexander Dziadosz

IDLIB PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - Away from the battlefield, some Syrian rebels are doing business with the same government they are trying to topple.

Both sides want to keep providing basics like bread, fuel and water in the areas they control. When shifting front lines split up supply chains, they started to trade.

In the northwestern Idlib province, rebels control most of the wheat fields but have no way to grind the grain into flour. The government has the flour mill, but can't get enough wheat to supply it.

The two worked out a deal. Every week, the rebels deliver tens of thousands of tons of wheat to the mill in Idlib city. The government grinds it down, takes a cut, and sends it back.

"Wheat is not something to do with the government, it's something to do with the people," said Abu Hassan, an opposition figure who works in a bakery in Salqin, a town in Idlib province.

Syria slid into civil war after a crackdown on peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011. After two years of conflict, both sides have found pragmatic ways of working around the war, even as it has grown more violent and brutal.

In the capital Damascus, businessmen living in rebel-held suburbs still commute to the government-held center, driving at speed through the front lines. Children run through these frontiers to get to school, and civilians cross for shopping trips, even as some are shot dead.

Rebels say that when they entered the northern city of Aleppo, the government cut the main electricity supply. In response, the rebels cut cables running into government areas.

After a few weeks, the government agreed to turn the power back on and the rebels said they would repair the electricity pylons. Now Aleppo has 24-hour power.

Wajdi Zaydu, an opposition activist working with Abu Hassan on an administrative council in Salqin, said the government seemed to be getting more flexible in some respects. A couple of months ago, after appointing several unbending governors, authorities installed one who was more open to communicating with the rebels, allowing them to strike the wheat deal, he said.

For now both sides in the civil war wanted the government apparatus to survive, Zaydu said.

"With this revolution, we're not getting rid of the state institutions. We're getting rid of the regime."

MAKING DO

With a country falling into chaos, Syrians are finding ways to rebuild what they can of their lives. In towns and villages around Aleppo province, large drills clatter in the streets, boring dozens of meters into the ground.

The water supply has stopped working, so people are digging their own wells. They are betting on a long war - drilling can cost more than a year's supply of water, which they have to buy from the owners of industrial-sized wells.

Other businesses are making do. A lack of petrol has forced some farmers to burn rubbish - which is now in abundant supply - to dry out bulgur wheat. Their stinking ovens pump out plumes of grey smoke in the countryside near Aleppo.

On Syria's northern border with Turkey, rebels usher dozens of trucks through a crossing they control, each loaded with sacks of cement mix. People are building even as destruction continues.

And on the edge of Aleppo, black smoke rises and gunfire rattles from a prison where rebels are fighting the army for control. Within sight of the battle, men in dusty jeans and t-shirts are putting up a new house.

(editing by Janet McBride)

IRS draws new criticism over $70M employee bonuses

IRS draws new criticism over $70M in employee bonuses, says it's bound by union contract

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Already reeling from a pair of scandals, the Internal Revenue Service is drawing new criticism over plans to hand out millions of dollars in employee bonuses.

The Obama administration has ordered agencies to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts, but the IRS says it's merely following legal obligations under a union contract.

The agency is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses, said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the IRS.

Grassley says his office has learned that the IRS was to execute an agreement with the employees' union Wednesday to pay the bonuses. Grassley says the bonuses should be canceled under an April directive from the White House budget office.

The directive was written by Danny Werfel, a former budget official who has since been appointed acting IRS commissioner.

"The IRS always claims to be short on resources," Grassley said. "But it appears to have $70 million for union bonuses. And it appears to be making an extra effort to give the bonuses despite opportunities to renegotiate with the union and federal instruction to cease discretionary bonuses during sequestration."

On Wednesday, the IRS said it was still negotiating with the union over the matter. Under the union contract, employees can get individual performance bonuses of up to $3,500 a year.

"Because bargaining has not been completed, there has been no final determination made on the payment of performance awards for the bargaining unit employee population," IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said in a statement.

"IRS is under a legal obligation to comply with its collective bargaining agreement, which specifies the terms by which awards are paid to bargaining-unit employees," Eldridge said. However, she wouldn't say whether the IRS believes it is contractually obligated to pay the bonuses.

The National Treasury Employees Union says the bonuses are legally required as part of the collective bargaining agreement.

"NTEU has had a negotiated performance awards program at the IRS for decades, pursuant to the law and regulations which specifically authorize agencies to implement such merit-based incentive programs," NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said in a statement. "NTEU is currently in discussions with the IRS on this matter and other matters resulting from budget cutbacks."

The IRS has been under fire since last month, when IRS officials acknowledged that agents had improperly targeted conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections. A few weeks later, the agency's inspector general issued a report documenting lavish employee conferences during the same time period.

Three congressional committees and the Justice Department are investigating the targeting of conservative groups. The FBI has about 12 agents in Washington working on the case, as well as others around the country, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Also, key Republicans in Congress are promising more scrutiny of the agency's budget, especially as it ramps up to play a major role in implementing the new health care law.

Much of the agency's top leadership has been replaced since the scandals broke. President Barack Obama forced the acting commissioner to resign and replaced him with Werfel, who used to work in the White House budget office.

In a letter to Werfel on Tuesday, Grassley said the IRS notified the employee union March 25 that it intended to reclaim about $75 million that had been set aside for discretionary employee bonuses. However, Grassley said, his office has learned that the IRS never followed up on the notice. Instead, Grassley said, the IRS negotiated a new agreement with the bargaining unit to pay about $70 million in employee bonuses.

Grassley's office said the information came from a "person with knowledge of IRS budgetary procedures."

"While the IRS may claim that these bonuses are legally required under the original bargaining unit agreement, that claim would allegedly be inaccurate," Grassley wrote. "In fact, the original agreement allows for the re-appropriation of such award funding in the event of budgetary shortfall."

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said paying the bonuses "looks like a payoff to union workers at a time when we're drowning in a sea of red ink. Given the government guidelines on sequestration, this is certainly an issue that demands further scrutiny."

Werfel wrote the directive on discretionary employee bonuses while he was still working in the White House budget office. The directive was part of the Obama administration's efforts to impose across-the-board spending cuts enacted by Congress.

The spending cuts, known as "sequestration," are resulting in at least five unpaid furlough days this year for the IRS' 90,000 employees. On these days, the agency is closed and taxpayers cannot access many of the agency's assistance programs.

Werfel's April 4 memorandum "directs that discretionary monetary awards should not be issued while sequestration is in place, unless issuance of such awards is legally required. Discretionary monetary awards include annual performance awards, group awards, and special act cash awards, which comprise a sizeable majority of awards and incentives provided by the federal government to employees."

"Until further notice, agencies should not issue such monetary awards from sequestered accounts unless agency counsel determines the awards are legally required. Legal requirements include compliance with provisions in collective bargaining agreements governing awards."

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Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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SKorean nuclear operator raided in cable probe

Prosecutors raid South Korea's nuclear operator as probe widens into fabricated test results

Associated Press -

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's sole nuclear power plant operator said Thursday that investigators raided its offices, a sign that a probe into faulty nuclear plant cables is widening.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. spokesman Lee Yoon-doing said prosecutors seized documents and computer hard drives from at least four of the company's offices, including its headquarters in southeastern Gyeongju.

An official at the prosecutor's office in Busan, where the country's largest cluster of nuclear plants is located, said the documents seized were in connection with "wrongdoings in supplying components for nuclear power plants." The official declined to be named, citing the sensitive nature of the probe.

He added that prosecutors are seeking court approval for arrest warrants for two employees at Korea Hydro.

Last month, South Korea shut down two nuclear power plants after discovering that a company contracted to conduct performance tests on control cables had fabricated the results.

The cables failed to meet international standards for capacity to withstand changes in voltage and pressure. Another four nuclear reactors that were either shut down for scheduled maintenance or under construction were also using cables that had failed tests. The resumption of operations in those plants was delayed while the cables were being replaced.

The state-run nuclear safety commission previously filed suit against the private test company and the cable maker, but Thursday's raid shows officials at Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power may eventually be implicated in alleged wrongdoing. The company is 100 percent owned by state-owned Korea Electric Power Corp.

The revelations on the substandard cables deepened public worries about the nuclear industry responsible for a third of South Korea's power supply. The nuclear industry has been mired in corruption and scandals; the substandard cable probe is just the latest.

South Korea is bracing for what its energy minister called "unprecedented power shortages" after it idled nuclear plants. The government is introducing mandatory power cuts for the summer, when demand is at its peak.

Norway opens Arctic border area to oil drilling

Norway opens Barents Sea area to offshore oil drilling in new move into Arctic

Associated Press -

Will Climate Change Destroy New York City?

A striking image of Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn as Hurricane Sandy approaches on Oct. 29, 2012.

This map of New York City shows the areas most impacted by climate change-related flooding.

The city of New York — America's largest metropolis and home to over 8 million people — will be ravaged by the effects of climate change within a few years.

That's the bleak scenario presented by a recent 430-page report developed by a blue-ribbon panel of academics, environmental planners and government officials.

Released this month, the report, nicknamed "SIRR" for Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, presents an ambitious plan for managing the worst effects of global warming, which include flooding, rising temperatures and extreme storms. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

The potential disasters laid out by the plan, however, could easily overwhelm New York City: Searing heat waves, pounding rainstorms and vast acreages flooded by seawater are all expected for the city and the surrounding region.

And as dire as these situations are for New York City as a whole, the implications for the city's most vulnerable populations — the elderly, children, disabled people and those with special needs — are even more ominous.

Sandy: a harbinger of storms to come

On Oct. 29, 2012, New York City and the surrounding area woke up to a reminder of nature's fury when Hurricane Sandy struck the region.

In addition to causing nearly $20 billion in damage, the storm killed 43 people and injured many more. The city's transportation facilities, including airports, commuter trains, subways and highways, were effectively shut down. [On the Ground: Hurricane Sandy in Images]

Other critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and wastewater treatment plants, were incapacitated, and millions of city residents were thrown into darkness by the flooding of electrical facilities. Communication networks were similarly crippled as personal cellphones, computer screens and other devices went dead.

Experts are quick to point out that Hurricane Sandy cannot be directly blamed on climate change, but say that similar storms are more likely in the near future, based on existing trends.

"There has been an increase in the strength of hurricanes, and in the number of intense hurricanes, in the North Atlantic since the early 1980s," Cynthia Rosenzweig, a NASA researcher and co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), said at a recent news briefing.

And Sandy's devastation was made worse by existing climate realities. "Sea level rise already occurring in the New York City area, in part related to climate change, increased the extent and magnitude of coastal flooding during the storm," according to a 2013 NPCC document.

New York's future laid bare

After Sandy exposed New York's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was emboldened to create the plan outlined in the recent SIRR report.

Among the report's many projections, written in a detached academic tone, are a number of genuinely frightening scenarios. A handful stand out as extreme events, said Rosenzweig, who refers to them as "the Big Three":

Heat waves: In decades past, New York experienced an average of 18 days a year with temperatures at or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). But the city could experience 26 to 31 such days by 2020 — just seven years from now.

And by 2050, New Yorkers will swelter under as many as 57 days — almost two full months — of temperatures above 90 degrees F, the report projects. These heat waves "could cause … about 110 to 260 additional heat-related deaths per year on average in New York City," the SIRR report states.

Intense precipitation: Instead of experiencing an average of two days per year with rainfall exceeding 2 inches (5 centimeters), New York City will endure up to five such days by 2020 — almost triple the current number.

Coastal flooding: By 2020, the chances of a 100-year flood (a flood with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year) at the Battery in downtown Manhattan will almost double, according to SIRR projections. By 2050, the chances will increase fivefold.

The heights of 100-year floods are also expected to increase, from 15 feet (4.6 meters) to as high as 17.6 feet (5.4 m) at the Battery. These effects will be experienced dramatically in swamped coastal neighborhoods and at important low-lying facilities such as John F. Kennedy International Airportand LaGuardia Airport.

Populations at greatest risks

During Hurricane Sandy, 26 nursing homes and adult-care facilities had to be closed, forcing the evacuation of about 4,500 people. And six hospitals, including four in Manhattan, were also closed and almost 2,000 patients evacuated.

These evacuees represent just a small fraction of New York City's most vulnerable populations, who are at greatest risk from the projected impacts of climate change-related disasters, said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness in New York City.

"I don't think people realize that vulnerable people — who may be vulnerable for a variety of reasons, whether they're very young or very old or sick or disabled — are roughly 40 to 50 percent of the population," Redlener told LiveScience.

"The success of disaster planning and response could be gauged by how well we handle those vulnerable populations," Redlener said. "This is a big problem, because most of our official planning organizations tend to do very generic planning."

Hurricane Sandy presented a number of case studies in disaster planning successes and failures. After Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn lost power, backup generators supplied electricity until the generator room flooded and all power was lost.

During the height of the storm, "the staff valiantly cared for patients using flashlights and battery-powered medical equipment," the SIRR report states.

By contrast, the nearby Shoreham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing Care was built in 1994 to withstand a 500-year flood (a flood with a 0.2 percent chance of happening in any given year). Its suite of backup generators supplied power for four days during an area-wide blackout, and the facility was able to provide food and shelter to many of Brooklyn's stranded residents.

Unfortunately, the example of Coney Island Hospital — which was forced to send more than 200 patients to other facilities — may be more typical of the way vulnerable populations experience climate change-related disasters.

"I visited shelters for families in the aftermath of Sandy, and they didn't have baby food, they didn’t have diapers and they didn't have cribs," Redlener said. "This is typical of what happens when you do generic planning — you end up leaving lots and lots of people out."

Cities: ground-zero for climate change impacts

New York's SIRR plan calls for about $20 billion in infrastructure improvements, including strengthening utility and transportation networks, renovating buildings and constructing seawalls and shoreline buffers, including a massive residential and commercial development named "Seaport City."

Though it's ambitious, New York's planning isn't atypical for coastal cities, which have assumed a leadership position in addressing climate-change risks since they will likely bear the brunt of its expected impacts.

Through the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), cities are sharing scientific and economic research to support and inform decision makers in those areas, Rosenzweig said.

"We work with cities all over the world. New York is definitely one of — if not the — leader, but there are other U.S. cities that also have a longer-term history of addressing [climate change]," Rosenzweig said.

"Prime examples are Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, of course, because of their risks," Rosenzweig said.

"It's really striking that cities are emerging as the first-responders to climate change," Rosenzweig said. "It's a very exciting and very positive story — the cities are really stepping up."

Follow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.