Baked Alaska: Unusual heat wave hits 49th state

Liz Gobeski soaks up the sun on the beach at Point Woronzof as a Polar Air Cargo jet comes in for a landing at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport as the temperature reached into the 80's in Anchorage, AK on Tuesday, June 18, 2013. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News, Bob Hallinen)

This photo taken Monday, June 17, 2013, shows people sunning at Goose Lake in Anchorage, Alaska. Parts of Alaska are setting high temperature records as a heat wave continues across Alaska. Temperatures are nothing like what Phoenix or Las Vegas gets, but temperatures in the 80s and 90s are hot for Alaska, where few buildings have air conditioning. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A heat wave hitting Alaska may not rival the blazing heat of Phoenix or Las Vegas, but to residents of the 49th state, the days of hot weather feel like a stifling oven — or a tropical paradise.

With temperatures topping 80 degrees in Anchorage, and higher in other parts of the state, people have been sweltering in a place where few homes have air conditioning.

They're sunbathing and swimming at local lakes, hosing down their dogs and cleaning out supplies of fans in at least one local hardware store. Mid-June normally brings high temperatures in the 60s in Anchorage, and just a month ago, it was still snowing.

The weather feels like anywhere but Alaska to 18-year-old Jordan Rollison, who was sunbathing with three friends and several hundred others lolling at the beach of Anchorage's Goose Lake.

"I love it, I love it," Rollison said. "I've never seen a summer like this, ever."

State health officials even took the unusual step of posting a Facebook message reminding people to slather on the sunscreen.

Some people aren't so thrilled, complaining that it's just too hot.

"It's almost unbearable to me," said Lorraine Roehl, who has lived in Anchorage for two years after moving here from the community of Sand Point in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. "I don't like being hot. I'm used to cool ocean breeze."

On Tuesday, the official afternoon high in Anchorage was 81 degrees, breaking the city's record of 80 set in 1926 for that date.

Other smaller communities throughout a wide swath of the state are seeing even higher temperatures.

All-time highs were recorded elsewhere, including 96 degrees on Monday 80 miles to the north in the small community of Talkeetna, purported to be the inspiration for the town in the TV series, "Northern Exposure" and the last stop for climbers heading to Mount McKinley, North America's tallest mountain. One unofficial reading taken at a lodge near Talkeetna even measured 98 degrees, which would tie the highest undisputed temperature recorded in Alaska.

That record was set in 1969, according to Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the online forecasting service Weather Underground.

"This is the hottest heat wave in Alaska since '69," he said. "You're way, way from normal."

It's also been really hot for a while. The city had six days over 70 degrees, then hit a high of 68 last Thursday, followed by five more days of 70-plus.

The city's record of consecutive days with temperatures of 70 or above was 13 days recorded in 1953, said Eddie Zingone, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service who has lived in the Anchorage area for 17 years.

The heat wave also comes after a few cooler summers — the last time it officially hit the 80 mark in Anchorage was 2009. Plus, Tuesday marked exactly one month that the city's last snow of the season fell, said Zingone, who has lived in Anchorage for 18 years.

"Within a month you have that big of a change, it definitely seems very, very hot," he said. "It was a very quick warm-up."

With the heat comes an invasion of mosquitoes many are calling the worst they've ever seen. At the True Value Hardware store, people have grabbed up five times the usual amount of mosquito warfare supplies, said store owner Tim Craig. The store shelves also are bare of fans, which is unusual, he said.

"Those are two hot items, so to speak," he said.

Greg Wilkinson, a spokesman with the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, said it's gotten up to 84 degrees at his home in the Anchorage suburb of Eagle River, where a tall glass front lets the sunlight filter through.

"And that's with all the windows open and a fan going," he said. "We're just not used to it. Our homes aren't built for it."

Love or hate the unusual heat, it'll all be over soon.

Weather forecasters say a high pressure system that has locked the region in clear skies and baking temperatures has shifted and Wednesday should be the start of a cooling trend, although slightly lower temperatures in the 70s are still expected to loiter into the weekend.

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Follow Rachel D'Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro

Obama relying on untested oversight board on NSA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The obscure oversight board that President Barack Obama wants to scrutinize the National Security Agency's secret surveillance system is little known for good reason. The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has operated fitfully during its eight years of low-profile existence, stymied by congressional infighting and, at times, censorship by government lawyers.

The privacy board was to meet Wednesday, its first meeting since revelations that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans. The meeting will be closed to the public.

The board has existed since 2004, first as part of the executive branch, then, after a legislative overhaul that took effect in 2008, as an independent board of presidential appointees reporting toCongress. But hindered by Obama administration delays and then resistance from Republicans in Congress, the new board was not fully functional until May, when its chairman, David Medine, finally was confirmed.

Obama's sudden leaning on the board as a civil libertarian counterweight to the government's elaborate secret surveillance program places trust in an organization that is untested and whose authority at times still defers to Congress and government censors.

"They've been in startup mode a long time," said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a bipartisan civil liberties watchdog group. "With all the concerns about the need for a debate on the issue of surveillance, this is a great opportunity for them to get involved."

It was not clear how much classified information would be discussed at Wednesday's meeting. As late as April 2012, the board's incoming chairman did not have a security clearance and the board did not have the classified, secure meeting area that is necessary to review and discuss classified government material.

The board's five appointees recently got security clearances, said Franklin, who attended the new group's first two meetings in October and March. "The first thing they can do is push for more disclosure and a more well-rounded picture of the surveillance programs," she said.

In an interview with television talk show host Charlie Rose, Obama said he wanted the group to spearhead a national conversation not only on the surveillance programs recently disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but also "about the general problem of these big data sets because this is not going to be restricted to government entities."

The board's mandate includes privacy as well as national security concerns, so, in theory, it could veer into questions about how Internet companies like Google and Facebook as well as hundreds of other data-mining firms deal with privacy and how government might regulate those entities. But as Franklin and other civil liberties experts said, the board's role is largely advisory, setting out problems and suggesting possible options.

"They have statutory authority in two main areas," Franklin said. "One is evaluating whether safeguards on civil liberties are adequate and the other is in transparency — informing the public and ensuring the government is more transparent."

But there are still limits on the group's independence when it comes to the public disclosure of classified material. While the board has leeway in scrutinizing classified material and referencing top secret documents, it can only make those materials public if they are first declassified by the government, said Lanny Davis, who was one of the board's first five members.

"They can say anything they want short of putting out classified information," said Davis, a former senior counselor to President Bill Clinton who has worked as a consultant, commentator and representative for several foreign governments.

Davis ran into that brick wall in 2007 when the board was preparing a draft of its report for Congress on government national security programs. One passage in the draft described anti-terrorism programs that represented "potentially problematic" intrusions on civil liberties, but it was deleted at the direction of the White House. Bush administration lawyers made more than 200 other revisions in the report, and while the board accepted most of the changes, Davis quit. Going public with his decision, Davis said he was not reacting to censorship of any classified material but instead the board's structural ties to the executive branch that allowed White House lawyers to heavily edit the report.

"The law as it was then made the board a functional equivalent of White House staff," Davis said. "Congress corrected that by making the board independent. If they have a problem with classified material, they still can't release it on their own. But they can go out and have a press conference complaining about it. Before, they had to defer to the White House."

Congress' revision of the legal authority that set up the board gave Obama the ability to appoint a new group of appointees when he came into office in January 2009. But Obama did not forward his first nominations until December 2010, and they languished among dozens of other nominations in Congress.

The current board is a mix of civil libertarians and former government lawyers. Medine, the chairman, most recently worked as a Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer. James X. Dempsey is a vice president of public policy with the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet civil liberties group. Elisebeth Collins Cook and Rachel Brand both worked as Justice Department lawyers during the Bush administration and are now in private practice. Patricia M. Wald is a former federal judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

Japan's trade deficit climbs to $10.5B in May

Japan's trade deficit climbs to $10.5B in May as import costs keep pace with rising exports

Associated Press -

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's trade deficit rose nearly 10 percent in May to 993.9 billion yen (nearly $10.5 billion), highlighting the challenge Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces in revitalizing manufacturing as industries increasingly shift production offshore.

Rising costs for imports due to the cheaper yen matched a 10 percent rebound in exports from a year earlier, the Finance Ministry reported Wednesday.

A weakening in the yen's value has pushed up costs for imports of crude oil, natural gas and other commodities for this resource-scarce nation, but the deficit in May was bigger than most economists' estimates.

Strong growth in exports to the U.S., China and the rest of Asia were offset by even stronger imports from the Middle East and China.

While robust imports suggest that demand inside Japan is recovering, growing deficits show that Japan's trade environment has changed for good, said Eiji Ogawa, an economist at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.

"Just a while ago, Japan always enjoyed a surplus," Ogawa said at a conference Wednesday. "It's now clear the deficits are not temporary, but structural."

Japan's economy grew at a 4.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year and is forecast to continue its recovery this year, boosted by government stimulus spending and aggressive monetary easing aimed at ending two decades of stagnation.

But sustained growth will depend on getting Japan's cash-rich corporations to do more hiring and spending at home — a tough sell given the rapid aging and shrinking of the Japanese population.

The May data show Japan's efforts to boost trade with the rest of Asia are yielding results, with exports rising 11 percent to 3.2 trillion yen ($33.7 billion), as imports climbed nearly 10 percent to 2.98 trillion yen ($31.4 billion).

Exports to China rose 8.3 percent in May from a year earlier to 1.05 trillion yen ($11 billion) while imports jumped 15 percent to 1.46 trillion yen ($15.4 billion), leaving a deficit of 410 billion yen ($4.3 billion).

Increasingly, Japanese companies are expanding their manufacturing in Southeast and South Asia, partly to tap new, faster growing markets and partly to hedge risks from their already huge commitments in China, given the threat of anti-Japanese moves due to a festering territorial dispute with Beijing.

Economists say Abe must move ahead with promised tax cuts and deregulation to spur investment and hiring by corporations that complain inflexible labor laws and high taxes and wages are hurting their competitiveness.

"Companies believe it's better to produce overseas and repatriate the profits," Ogawa said, adding that a weakening of the yen helps, but can only provide a temporary respite from what the Japanese call the "hollowing out" of their industrial base.

"Shifts in foreign exchange rates won't bring factories back to Japan," he said.

The yen has slid in value by more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar and euro since late last year, in turn pushing up other currencies in relative value. Its decline is due to expectations among market speculators and also the monetary policies that are injecting huge sums of cash into the economy.

On Wednesday the dollar was trading at a level of about 94.5 yen.

Japan's trade surplus with the United States jumped 26 percent over the year before to 427.1 billion yen ($4.5 billion). Exports surged 16.3 percent year-on-year to 1.04 trillion yen ($10.9 billion) and imports rose 10 percent to 614 billion yen ($6.5 billion). But exports to the EU fell 5 percent, while imports jumped nearly 9 percent, boosting Japan's deficit by nearly 650 percent, to 88.7 billion yen ($933.7 million).

Overall, exports rose 10.1 percent in May over a year earlier to 5.77 trillion yen ($60.7 billion) while imports also surged 10 percent, to 6.76 trillion yen ($71.1 billion), according to the preliminary data from the Finance Ministry.

Japan's trade deficit in May 2012 was 907.93 billion yen, while its deficit in April was 879.9 billion yen.

Much of the deterioration in the trade balance is attributed to a surge in demand for oil and natural gas after most of Japan's nuclear power plants were closed following the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Mounting costs for imported fuel are buttressing the pro-nuclear government's case for restarting more plants.

In May, imports from the Middle East, primarily of crude oil and gas, jumped 11.5 percent from a year earlier to 1.23 trillion yen ($12.9 billion).

While many argue that Japan needs to just shift faster and more aggressively into renewable energy, others say that nuclear energy is essential for Abe's policies to succeed, since companies say high energy costs are a factor driving them offshore.

"Given Japan's limited natural resources ... it will be necessary to rely on nuclear power for at least some years," said Masayuki Kichikawa, an economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in Tokyo.

"That is very important for keeping many companies in Japan," he said. "To ensure a stable source of energy is very important."

Stunning maps show world’s most dangerous weather hot spots

By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – 18 hrs ago

The NSA leaks are exposing our lawmakers' hypocrisy — on both the left and right

Imagine a heaping plate of spaghetti teetering on the edge of a table. A few strands of pasta have already fallen to the floor, and now the whole darn thing seems a breath away from toppling. This is basically the situation faced by the intelligence and political communities in dealing with Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old National Security Agency contractor responsible for what some call one of the biggest intelligence leaks in American history.

Snowden revealed that the NSA collects data from millions of Americans, and has the cooperation of several of the country's largest internet and telecom companies. He also disclosed that during the 2009 G-20 summit, Great Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ monitored delegates' phones and tried to get their passwords.

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And Snowden now, in effect, says you ain't seen nothing yet: "All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped," he said in a Q&A.

But these truths are not exactly unnerving Washington. Indeed, as The Daily Beast's Lloyd Green notes, consensus has at long last come to Congress.

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The center lives. Bipartisanship is not dead, as Democratic and Republican congressional leaders rally around the National Security Agency's big data grab. With the exception of op-ed writers, theAmerican Civil Liberties Union, and the Pauls — Rand and Ron — Washington's establishment is standing together with the administration. In this scrum, party is secondary, at least on Capitol Hill. In a show of unity virtually unseen since 9/11, the congressional leadership has come out unanimously in support of the status quo, while deflecting allegations that The Guardian's news story was actually news. [Daily Beast]

"Campaign contributions aren't necessarily a tattoo of one's political ideology, but they at least raise the possibility that some conservatives have found their answer to Daniel Ellsberg, who 42 years ago leaked a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War to The New York Times," Galloway writes. "Ellsberg, by the way, thinks Snowden's leak is grander, and more important. As do many Democrats. But it is among Republicans that Snowden's self-proclaimed act of civil disobedience has resonated, splitting a party whose two pillars are national security and limited government."

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says Snowden committed an act of "civil disobedience," while former Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker John Boehner call Snowden a "traitor." Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) went on MSNBC and said he sees a strong possibility that Snowden is working with China "because of the fact that he transferred money to China. The fact that he studied Chinese. The fact that his girlfriend had some connections to China. The fact that, of all countries in the world, he went to China..."

And the Democrats? Sen. Dianne Feinstein calls Snowden's behavior an act "of treason," and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wants Snowden prosecuted — as do many Americans. But some liberal bloggers cheer Snowden on.

SEE ALSO: The last word: He said he was leaving. She ignored him.

Meanwhile, partisans in both parties (again) have shown how their positions shift when the other party is in power. Some Republicans now up in arms about the NSA's surveillance didn't seem concerned about it when Republican George W. Bush was president. And Nancy Pelosi sure sounds more tolerant about surveillance with Barack Obama in power.

So much for principles.

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