Russian reporters held in Ukraine 'had missiles': US

12 hours ago

US sends another warship to the Black Sea

12 hours ago

Washington (AFP) - The US Navy is sending a guided missile cruiser to the Black Sea, the Pentagon said Tuesday, the latest bid by Washington to reassure allies worried over Russia's intervention in Ukraine.

"I can confirm the Vella Gulf, a Navy cruiser, will be going in to the Black Sea probably later this week," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters.

The Vella Gulf will arrive in the Black Sea after the recent departure of the frigate USS Taylor, which left the area on May 12.

Since the crisis in Ukraine began in March, the United States has deployed troops to Eastern European countries for joint drills and sent ships to the Black Sea for exercises with NATO states in the area.

But the 1936 Montreux Convention that governs the Black Sea bars outside countries from keeping warships in the strategic waters more than 21 days.

The Pentagon, keen to allay the concerns of allies bordering Russia, has said it would keep up regular deployments of troops to NATO members in Eastern Europe through the end of the year.

The higher US military profile also would "include naval presence in and out of the Black Sea," according to Kirby.

He also said there was no sign of a Russian withdrawal of troops from the Ukrainian border, despite an announcement of a pullout from Moscow.

"They are still in the tens of thousands," Kirby said. "We have not seen any withdrawal activity," he said.

Ukraine said earlier that Russian troops had moved away from the border, but stopped short of confirming a full withdrawal as demanded by the West.

Climate change threatens 30 U.S. landmarks: science advocacy group

By Curtis Skinner11 hours ago

The Statue of Liberty is pictured on Liberty Island in New York, October 13, 2013. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

By Curtis Skinner

(Reuters) - Climate change is threatening U.S. landmarks from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the César Chávez National Monument in Keene, California with floods, rising sea levels and fires, scientists said on Tuesday.

National Landmarks at Risk, a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted more than two dozen sites that potentially face serious natural disasters. They include Boston's historic districts, the Harriet Tubman National Monument in Maryland and an array of NASA sites including the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation's heritage and history," Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at the union, a non-profit organization for science advocacy in Washington D.C. and the study's co-author, said in a statement.

The report is not slated for publication in a scientific journal, said Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist who co-authored the report. It said that reducing carbon emissions could minimize the predicted risks posed by climate change.

The issue of climate change or global warming and its causes are being debated in the United States with splits along party political lines and disagreement about the extent to which human development is to blame.

Jamestown, Virginia - the first permanent English colony - could be completely inundated due to rising sea levels, and the nearby Fort Monroe, "will become an island unto itself within 70 years," Markham said.

In the western United States, rising temperatures have led to an increase in wildfires by melting winter snowpacks earlier, leaving forests drier for longer, the report said.

Among California's 20 largest fires since 1932, a dozen have happened since 2002, the report said.

An unrelated report published on Monday showed that the California drought has cost thousands of jobs and $1.7 billion to farmers in the state's Central Valley [ID:nL1N0O6015]. Governor Jerry Brown has partly blamed climate change for the drought.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in New York; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Grant McCool)

Study: Climate change threatens U.S. landmarks

More than two dozen historic sites across the country face "imminent risks," scientists say.
Floods, rising sea levels, fires

Supreme Court justice suspends Missouri execution

By JIM SALTER and JIM SUHR6 hours ago

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order late Tuesday suspending the planned execution of a Missouri inmate with a little more than an hour to spare before the inmate's scheduled lethal injection.

Alito, who handles emergency matters for Missouri and other states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, didn't explain why he issued the order suspending Russell Bucklew's execution, which had been scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. But Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster issued a statement saying his office understands the full Supreme Court would consider Bucklew's requests on Wednesday.

Under Missouri law, the state has 24 hours to carry out a death warrant, meaning it could still execute Bucklew anytime on Wednesday if the high court rejects his appeals.

Alito's order came shortly after the full 8th Circuit court lifted a stay granted to Bucklew hours earlier by a three-judge panel of that court.

Bucklew, who was sentenced to death for killing a southeast Missouri man in 1996, suffers from a rare medical condition that his attorneys claim could cause him great pain during the execution process.

The 8th Circuit panel's 2-1 ruling read that Bucklew's "unrebutted medical evidence demonstrates the requisite sufficient likelihood of unnecessary pain and suffering beyond the constitutionally permissible amount inherent in all executions."

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A group of death penalty opponents hold a vigil Tuesday, May 20, 2014, outside the prison where Miss …

If the execution happens Wednesday, it would be the first in the nation since a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma last month that left a condemned man writhing on a gurney before he died of a heart attack more than 40 minutes after the procedure began.

Bucklew, 46, has a congenital condition known as cavernous hemangioma that causes weakened and malformed blood vessels, as well as tumors in his nose and throat. His attorneys say he could experience great suffering during the execution process, and Bucklew told The Associated Press by phone last week that he is scared of what might happen.

"The state does not have the right to inflict extreme, torturous pain during an execution," attorney Cheryl Pilate said. "We still hope that Mr. Bucklew's grave medical condition and compromised airway will persuade the governor or a court to step back from this extremely risky execution."

Bucklew's hopes rest with the courts, as Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat and a proponent of the death penalty, rejected Bucklew's clemency request late Tuesday.

"The jury in this case properly found that these heinous crimes warranted the death penalty, and my denial of clemency upholds the jury's decision," he said.

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In this Feb. 9, 2014 file photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections is Russell Buckle …

Missouri switched from a three-drug protocol to the single drug pentobarbital late last year. None of the six inmates executed since Missouri made the change has shown outward signs of pain or suffering. But when Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett's execution went awry April 29, it prompted renewed concern over lethal injection.

Official said Lockett's vein collapsed and he died of an apparent heart attack 43 minutes after the start of the procedure. Oklahoma put on hold a second execution scheduled for the same night as Lockett's death while the state investigates what happened.

European companies cut off supplies of certain execution drugs because of opposition to capital punishment, leading states including Missouri to turn to U.S. sources. The states refuse to identify the sources of their execution drugs, saying secrecy is necessary to protect the sources from possible retaliation by death penalty opponents.

Death penalty opponents say the secrecy makes it impossible to ensure that the drugs couldn't cause an inmate to endure an agonizing death that rises to the level of unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

The AP and four other news organizations filed a lawsuit last week against the Missouri Department of Corrections, claiming the state's refusal to provide information on the execution drug violates the public's constitutional right to have access to information about the punishment.

According to prosecutors, Bucklew was angry at his girlfriend, Stephanie Pruitt, for leaving him. Pruitt moved with her two daughters into the Cape Girardeau home of Michael Sanders, who had two sons. Bucklew tracked Pruitt down at Sanders' home March 21, 1996, and killed Sanders in front of Pruitt and the four children. He handcuffed and beat Pruitt, drove her to a secluded area and raped her.

Later, after a state trooper spotted the car, Bucklew shot at the trooper but missed, authorities say. Bucklew was grazed in the head and hospitalized. He later escaped from jail, hid in the home of Pruitt's mother and beat her with a hammer. She escaped, and Bucklew was arrested a short time later.

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Supreme Court justice stays inmate's execution

Justice Samuel Alito's order comes after an appeals court had lifted the stay of execution for Russell Bucklew.
Medical condition cited

Egyptian court sentences ousted leader Mubarak to three years jail

25 minutes ago

By Maggie Fick

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court on Wednesday sentenced ousted president Hosni Mubarak to three years in prison on charges of stealing public funds.

"He should have treated people close and far from him equally," said Judge Osama Shaheen, as Mubarak looked on from a cage flanked by his sons, who were sentenced to four years in jail on the same charges. "Instead of abiding by the constitution and laws, he gave himself and his sons the freedom to take from public funds whatever they wanted to without oversight and without regard."

Judicial sources told Reuters that the 23 months Mubarak had spent in jail since the 2011 uprising up to August, when he left prison for house arrest, would be applied against the sentence, meaning the former president will probably serve no more than a year as punishment for the corruption charges.

His sons, who have already spent three years in jail, will also have to serve only one more year to complete their sentence, the sources said.

Four other defendants in the case were acquitted.

The embezzled funds had been assigned for the renovation of presidential palaces but instead were spent on sprucing up family properties.

Mubarak's former intelligence chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is poised to be elected president next week in polls that could bolster the legitimacy of a military-backed government.

The verdict may please some Egyptians who lived through three decades of autocracy under Mubarak, but analysts say that business executives still loyal to him remain influential. Rights groups say that abusive practices of the Mubarak regime are alive and well as another former military man prepares to take the reins of power.

TOUGHER SENTENCES

Since former army chief Sisi toppled elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July, courts have handed down tough sentences to members of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood and to secular activists. The judiciary is seen by critics as a key tool in a state crackdown against all dissent to the army-backed government.

Wednesday's ruling was for a financial crime, not a criminal one. However, many prominent activists have recently been given harsher sentences for protesting than Mubarak received for embezzling millions while he served as president. Senior members of the Brotherhood, including the spiritual guide of the Islamist movement, have been sentenced to death.

Some activists, reacting to the verdict on Twitter, compared the sentence for Mubarak and his sons to a Tuesday ruling against Mahienour el-Masri, a young revolutionary activist. Masri was sentenced to two years in jail for protesting without a permit, violating a law passed in November that tightly regulates the right to protest.

Leaders of Mubarak's former ruling party were banned last month from running in any coming elections, but the court order did not list any names, drawing complaints that a lack of clarity could blunt the move's impact.

The court fined Mubarak and his sons 21.197 million Egyptian pounds ($2.98 million) and ordered them to repay about 125 million Egyptian pounds of funds the court said they had stolen. Mubarak, 86, wore a dark suit at the trial, while his sons wore white prison garb.

Alaa and Gamal became very wealthy businessmen during their father's presidency. Gamal, once widely seen as Mubarak's successor, and his brother were part of a strong patronage network that entrenched a system of "crony capitalism" that enriched an elite few while tens of millions of Egyptians lived in poverty.

Mubarak has been under house arrest at a military hospital since August pending retrial in a case of complicity in killing protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his rule.

The website of state newspaper Al-Ahram reported that the court had ordered Mubarak transferred to Tora Prison, where his sons are jailed. His health may mean that he will be held at the prison's hospital.

He is also accused in two other cases of corruption that have yet to come to court.

The former president, who was ousted in 2011, was convicted of stealing millions in public funds.
Sons also sentenced