Britain Reopens Embassy In Tehran

By Arthur Macmillan, AFP

An Iranian protester breaks a security camera inside the British embassy after storming into the compound in Tehran on November 29, 2011

Britain's foreign secretary reopened his country's embassy in Tehran on Sunday in a long-awaited step signalling better relations four years after a mob stormed the compound, forcing its closure.

Philip Hammond's trip comes five weeks after Britain and five other world powers struck a deal with Iran to end a 13-year dispute over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear programme.

He entered the embassy at noon (0730 GMT) and held a ceremony shortly afterwards in its garden with Ajay Sharma, the new charge d'affaires who will be Britain's top diplomat in Tehran.

Iran's embassy in London will also reopen on Sunday. The two countries are expected to appoint ambassadors in the coming months.

Hammond was to later hold a press conference with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister and lead negotiator in the nearly two years of talks that have ended Tehran's isolation from the West.

"Arrived in #Tehran. First British Ministerial visit since 2003. Historic moment in UK-Iran relations," Hammond tweeted.

European officials have been quick to visit Tehran since July 14, when the nuclear agreement with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States was announced in Vienna.

The deal will see the lifting of economic sanctions imposed on Iran, in exchange for curbs on its atomic activities.

The deal has sparked a flurry of interest from countries seeking to re-connect with the oil-rich Islamic republic, whose 78 million population is also seen as a largely untapped market for other industries.

The thaw between Britain and Iran began with the June 2013 presidential election victory of Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who reached out to the West.

"President Rouhani's election and last month's nuclear agreement were important milestones. I believe that we have the potential to go much further," Hammond said before his arrival.

Following the 2011 embassy attack, Britain said it could not have happened without the tacit consent of the Iranian regime at the time.

It erupted after Iran's parliament voted to expel the British ambassador and reduce trade relations in retaliation for sanctions against Iran's banking sector.

Students rampaged for hours through the diplomatic compound in downtown Tehran, tearing down the British flag, ripping up pictures of Queen Elizabeth II and trashing offices. Staff were seized by protesters.

Diplomatic relations were reduced to their lowest possible level, with Britain expelling Iran's officials.

- UK trade delegation in Tehran -

"Reopening our embassies is a key step to improved bilateral relations," Hammond said.

"In the first instance, we will want to ensure that the nuclear agreement is a success, including by encouraging trade and investment once sanctions are lifted."

He said London and Tehran should also be ready to discuss challenges including extremism, regional stability, and the spread of the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq.

"This move does not mean that we agree on everything. But it is right that Britain and Iran should have a presence in each other's countries," Hammond added.

Plans to reopen the embassy were announced in June last year.

Sharma was appointed in a non-resident position in November 2013 and has since visited Iran 12 times.

Hammond and treasury minister Damian Hinds are visiting Tehran with a small trade delegation for the two-day visit.

It includes the Institute of Directors, the British Bankers' Association, Shell Upstream International and the Confederation of British Industry, to discuss future trade opportunities.

Hammond follows his Italian, French and German counterparts who travelled to Iran with business delegations after the nuclear deal.

Europe is keen on renewing trade ties with Iran and most countries have diplomatic representation in Tehran.

But the United States, which led the nuclear talks, has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979 following the 444-day hostage crisis that followed the storming of its Tehran embassy.

Britain's foreign secretary reopened his country's embassy in Tehran on Sunday in a long-awaited step signalling better relations four years after a mob stormed the compound, forcing its closure.

Philip Hammond's trip comes five weeks after Britain and five other world powers struck a deal with Iran to end a 13-year dispute over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear programme.

He entered the embassy at noon (0730 GMT) and held a ceremony shortly afterwards in its garden with Ajay Sharma, the new charge d'affaires who will be Britain's top diplomat in Tehran.

Iran's embassy in London will also reopen on Sunday. The two countries are expected to appoint ambassadors in the coming months.

Hammond was to later hold a press conference with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister and lead negotiator in the nearly two years of talks that have ended Tehran's isolation from the West.

"Arrived in #Tehran. First British Ministerial visit since 2003. Historic moment in UK-Iran relations," Hammond tweeted.

European officials have been quick to visit Tehran since July 14, when the nuclear agreement with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States was announced in Vienna.

The deal will see the lifting of economic sanctions imposed on Iran, in exchange for curbs on its atomic activities.

The deal has sparked a flurry of interest from countries seeking to re-connect with the oil-rich Islamic republic, whose 78 million population is also seen as a largely untapped market for other industries.

The thaw between Britain and Iran began with the June 2013 presidential election victory of Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who reached out to the West.

"President Rouhani's election and last month's nuclear agreement were important milestones. I believe that we have the potential to go much further," Hammond said before his arrival.

Following the 2011 embassy attack, Britain said it could not have happened without the tacit consent of the Iranian regime at the time.

It erupted after Iran's parliament voted to expel the British ambassador and reduce trade relations in retaliation for sanctions against Iran's banking sector.

Students rampaged for hours through the diplomatic compound in downtown Tehran, tearing down the British flag, ripping up pictures of Queen Elizabeth II and trashing offices. Staff were seized by protesters.

Diplomatic relations were reduced to their lowest possible level, with Britain expelling Iran's officials.

- UK trade delegation in Tehran -

"Reopening our embassies is a key step to improved bilateral relations," Hammond said.

"In the first instance, we will want to ensure that the nuclear agreement is a success, including by encouraging trade and investment once sanctions are lifted."

He said London and Tehran should also be ready to discuss challenges including extremism, regional stability, and the spread of the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq.

"This move does not mean that we agree on everything. But it is right that Britain and Iran should have a presence in each other's countries," Hammond added.

Plans to reopen the embassy were announced in June last year.

Sharma was appointed in a non-resident position in November 2013 and has since visited Iran 12 times.

Hammond and treasury minister Damian Hinds are visiting Tehran with a small trade delegation for the two-day visit.

It includes the Institute of Directors, the British Bankers' Association, Shell Upstream International and the Confederation of British Industry, to discuss future trade opportunities.

Hammond follows his Italian, French and German counterparts who travelled to Iran with business delegations after the nuclear deal.

Europe is keen on renewing trade ties with Iran and most countries have diplomatic representation in Tehran.

But the United States, which led the nuclear talks, has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979 following the 444-day hostage crisis that followed the storming of its Tehran embassy.

Man Tackled On Train On Authorities' Radar In 3 Countries

By Elaine Danley And Nadine Achouilesage, Associated Press

 in Arras, northern France. The gunman opened fire on the train wounding several people before American passengers subdued him, according to officials and one of the Americans involved. (Christina Cathleen Coon via AP)

PARIS (AP)— The man who boarded a high-speed Amsterdam-to-Paris train with a Kalashnikov rifle before being tackled by passengers was on the radar of authorities in three countries, had ties to radical Islam and may have traveled to Syria, authorities said.

The attacker was identified by a French official close to the investigation as Ayoub El-Khazzani, 26, who was known to authorities in France, Belgium and Spain. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Officials did not disclose a possible motive for the Friday attack, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Spanish authorities had advised French intelligence about the suspect because he belongs to the "radical Islamist movement." Three people were injured but no one died, and authorities credited brave American, French and British passengers with stopping El-Khazzani, who they said was armed with the assault rifle, nine magazines, a pistol and a box cutter.

El-Khazzani was being questioned Saturday by French counter-terrorism police who confirmed through fingerprints their suspicions that he was the same man who had been brought to their attention in February 2014, according to the French official. French authorities said he had lived in the southern Spanish city of Algeciras, frequenting a mosque which is under surveillance there. He was transferred Saturday morning to anti-terror police headquarters outside Paris and can be held for up to 96 hours.

There were discrepancies between French and Spanish accounts of the gunman's travels.

An official linked to Spain's anti-terrorism unit said the suspect lived in Spain until 2014, then moved to France, traveled to Syria, and returned to France. That official spoke on condition anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified by name.

The French official close to the investigation said the French signal "sounded" on May 10 in Berlin, where El-Khazzani was flying to Turkey. The French transmitted this information to Spain, which advised on May 21 that he no longer lived there but in Belgium. The French then advised Belgium, according to the official close to the investigation, but it wasn't clear what, if any, action was taken after that.

El-Khazzani had the Kalashnikov strapped across his shoulder when a French citizen trying to use the toilet encountered him and tried to subdue him, Cazeneuve said. Bullets started flying and two American servicemen, with help from a friend and a Briton, tackled and disarmed him.

The Briton, businessman Chris Norman, said he was working on his computer when he heard a shot and glass breaking and saw a train worker running. Three Americans— U.S. Airman Spencer Stone and National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos from Roseburg, Oregon, and their friend, Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University in California — heard glass breaking at the same time.

"I knew we had to do something or he was just going to kill people," Skarlatos told Oregon television station KEZI. "I mean he wasn't shooting at the time so I figured it was a good time to do it."

Sadler told The Associated Press that they saw a train employee sprint down the aisle followed by a man with an automatic rifle.

"As he was cocking it to shoot it, Alek just yells, 'Spencer, go!' And Spencer runs down the aisle," Sadler said. "Spencer makes first contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and the gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times. And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious."

Norman said he was the fourth to jump into the fray, grabbing the gunman's right arm and tying it with his tie.

Video showed a blood-spattered scene on the train, with the gunman prostrate and shirtless, his hands tied behind his back. Authorities said that in addition to the guns, he had nine loaded magazines for the Kalashnikov. Skarlatos, who served in Afghanistan, said that when he examined the assault rifle, he found that the gunman had tried to fire it but that it didn't go off because it had a bad primer.

Sadler said the gunman remained silent throughout the brief incident. But with the weapons he carried, "he was there to do business," Skarlatos said in an interview shown on French television.

French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who cut his finger it to the bone while activating the train's emergency alarm, heaped praise on the Americans, recounting the high emotion of the episode to Paris Match.

"I thought it was the end, that we would die," he said. "Yes, we saw ourselves dying because we were prisoners in this train and it was impossible to escape the nightmare."

The train, in Belgium, was rerouted to Arras in northern France, the nearest station, where El-Khazzani was arrested.

Stone was taken to a hospital in nearby Lille with a hand injury and an unidentified dual French-American citizen with a bullet wound who was helicoptered to another hospital in Lille.

That victim, wounded in the chest, remained hospitalized in intensive care Sunday in "serious but stable" condition, and his life is not danger, according to Patrick Goldstein, head of the emergency service at CHRU Lille hospital.

"There is strictly no change from yesterday. His condition is perfectly stable and there's no surgical procedure planned," Goldstein said on French television BFM, adding that the victim "is an exceptional person with great calm."

Stone, of Carmichael, California, was released from the hospital later Saturday. A heavily guarded caravan was seen arriving Saturday night at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris, apparently escorting Stone and Sadler, both 23, and Skarlatos, 22. The three friends had been traveling together in Europe. President Barack Obama telephoned them Saturday to commend and congratulate them, the White House said. They and the Frenchman who first confronted the gunman are to meet Monday with French President Francois Hollande.

French authorities are on heightened alert after Islamic extremist attacks in January left 20 people dead, including the three gunmen. In June, a lone attacker claiming allegiance to Islamic radicals beheaded his employer and set off an explosion at an American-owned factory in France, raising concerns about other scattered, hard-to-predict attacks.

Achoui-Lesage reported from Lille. Associated Press Writer Maggy Donaldson in Lille and Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report.

Cheating Site Logged Federal Subscribers With Sensitive Jobs

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. government employees with sensitive jobs in national security or law enforcement were among hundreds of federal workers found to be using government networks to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.

Ing Ashley Madison's Korean web site on a computer screen in Seoul, South Korea. Hackers claim to have leaked a massive database of users from Ashley Madison, a matchmaking website for cheating spouses. In a statement released Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, a group calling itself Impact Team said the site's owners had not bowed to their demands. "Now everyone gets to see their data," the statement said.


The list includes at least two assistant U.S. attorneys, an information technology administrator in the White House's support staff, a Justice Department investigator, a division chief, and a government hacker and counterterrorism employee at the Homeland Security Department. Others visited from networks operated by the Pentagon.

Federal policies vary by agency as to whether employees could visit websites during work hours like Ashley Madison, which could be considered akin to a dating website. But such use raises questions about what personal business is acceptable — and what websites are OK to visit — for U.S. workers on taxpayer time, especially those with sensitive jobs who could face blackmail.

Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison's parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website — whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair" — is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.

Few connecting from federal networks had listed government email accounts when subscribing. But the AP was able to trace their government Internet connections, logged by the website over five years and as recently as June. They encompass more than two dozen agencies, such as the departments of State, Justice, Energy, Treasury and Transportation. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.

Records also reveal subscribers signed up using state and municipal government networks nationwide, including those run by the New York Police Department, the nation's largest. "If anything comes to our attention indicating improper use of an NYPD computer, we will look into it and take appropriate action," said the NYPD's top spokesman, Stephen Davis.

The AP is not naming the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime. Many federal customers appeared to use nongovernment email addresses with handles such as "sexlessmarriage," ''soontobesingle" or "latinlovers." Some Justice Department employees also appeared to use prepaid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but nonetheless connected to the service from their office computers.

"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed Thursday the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"I'm aware it," Carter said. "Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. ... The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely."

The AP's review was the first to reveal that federal workers used their office systems to access the site, based on their Internet Protocol addresses associated with credit card transactions. It focused on searching for government employees in especially sensitive positions who could perhaps become blackmail targets.

The government hacker at the Homeland Security Department, who did not respond to phone or email messages, included photographs of his wife and infant son on his Facebook page. One assistant U.S. attorney declined through a spokesman to speak to the AP, and another did not return phone or email messages.

A White House spokesman said Thursday he could not immediately comment on the matter. The IT administrator in the White House did not return email messages. While rules can vary by agency, Homeland Security rules, for instance, say devices should be used for only for official purposes. It also prescribes "limited personal use is authorized as long as this use does not interfere with official duties or cause degradation of network services." Employees are barred from using government computers to access "inappropriate sites" including those that are "obscene, hateful, harmful, malicious, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, profane, or racially, sexually, or ethnically objectionable."

The hackers who took credit for the break-in had accused the website's owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals. It added that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Canada is investigating and declined comment beyond its statement Tuesday that it was investigating the hackers' claims.

Associated Press writers Alicia Caldwell and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Jake Pearson in New York and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jackgillum and Ted Bridis at https://twitter.com/tbridis

First Female Graduates Of Ranger School Earn Elite Tab

WASHINGTON (AP) — Capping their history-making week, the first female soldiers to complete the Army's rigorous Ranger School are graduating Friday, putting a spotlight on the debate over opening all combat roles to women.

U.S. Army Army 1st Lt. Shaye Haver speaks with reporters, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, at Fort Benning, Ga., where she is scheduled to graduate Friday from the Army’s elite Ranger School. Haver and Army Capt. Kristen Griest are the first two women to complete the notoriously grueling Ranger course, which the Army opened to women this spring as it studies whether to open more combat jobs to female soldiers. (Mike Haskey /Ledger-Enquirer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT


First Lt. Shaye Haver of Copperas Cove, Texas, and Capt. Kristen Griest of Orange, Connecticut, are pinning on the black-and-gold Ranger tab at a graduation ceremony, along with 94 male soldiers, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Defense Secretary Ash Carter called the women Thursday to congratulate them for finishing the nine-week training program.

Their success casts new attention on the obstacles that remain to women who aspire to join all-male combat units, including the 75th Ranger Regiment. Although Haver and Griest are now Ranger-qualified, no women are eligible for the elite regiment, although officials say it is among special operations units likely to eventually be opened to women.

Griest, 26, is a military police officer and has served one tour in Afghanistan. Haver, 25, is a pilot of Apache helicopters. Both are graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Of 19 women who began the Ranger course, Haver and Griest are the only two to finish so far; one is repeating a prior phase of training in hopes of graduating soon.

The Army opened Ranger School to female soldiers for the first time this year as service leaders weighed opening more combat jobs to women. How far the military is willing to go toward ending gender restrictions will be evident soon.

Carter said Thursday he will decide by December whether to accept any recommended exceptions to an order, signed by one of his predecessors, Leon Panetta, nearly three years ago that said all positions must be open to qualified women unless service leaders can justify keeping any closed. Any recommended exceptions are due to Carter in October.

Griest told reporters Thursday she hopes her success shows that women "can deal with the same stresses and training that men can." Some current and former military members feel strongly that the Pentagon is going too far to accommodate women.

James Lechner, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Ranger, said he questions whether the Ranger course adequately tested the female candidates under combat-simulated conditions and whether it makes sense to open all combat units to women.

"American women certainly serve with honor and distinction, provide some capabilities that males may not be able to provide," Lechner said in a telephone interview. "But when you talk about your fighting units, your combat arms units, especially the infantry, ... you don't need to just have the minimum standards. You need to have as good as you possibly can get."

Janine Davidson, a defense policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Air Force cargo plane pilot, said the success of Griest and Haver and the prospect of the Army fully integrating women into its ground combat force is "policy catching up with reality," given the extensive combat experience women had in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also reflects generational change, she said, which she has heard in conversations with high school students.

"They actually are shocked when they learn that women aren't already doing this kind of stuff - the idea that they themselves would not be allowed to do it," Davidson told reporters Tuesday. Rangers call themselves "masters of special light infantry operations" such as seizing key terrain and infiltrating hostile territory by land, sea or air. They are an arm of Army Special Operations Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.

The Ranger School, which began during the Korean War as the "Ranger Training Command," fails most who enter. For the period between 2010 and 2014, 58 percent of candidates washed out - most of those within the first four days, a phase that includes tests of physical stamina, a land navigation course, and a 12-mile foot march, according to the Ranger training website.

Ranger history pre-dates to the Revolutionary War and includes prominent roles in the War of 1812 and the Civil War. In the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, Rangers famously scaled the sheer cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc overlooking Omaha Beach.

Associated Press broadcast correspondent Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

California Says Uber's Background Checks Missed Convicted Murderer

REUTERS

Wide range of criminals driving for Uber only came to light after they got cited for offering illegal rides.

California prosecutors have broadened their civil lawsuit against popular online ride-sharing service Uber, alleging that its background checks missed people previously convicted of murder and sex crimes, court records show.

The district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles filed an amended complaint against Uber Technologies Inc on Tuesday, which said “systemic failures in Uber’s background check process” came to light after their initial December filing.

The new complaint said registered sex offenders, identity thieves, burglars, a kidnapper and a convicted murderer had passed the firm’s screening process and were driving for the company until they were cited for providing illegal rides.

“I support technological innovation. Innovation, however, does not give companies a license to mislead consumers about issues affecting their safety,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement on Wednesday.

San Francisco-based Uber said in a statement its screening system has been as effective, and at times more effective, than a different system used by taxi companies.

“We continue to work on improving safety for riders and drivers before, during and after the trip,” it said.

The company added that last year it had rejected more than 600 people who had applied to become taxi and livery drivers in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco because they had been convicted of violent and drunken driving crimes.

In the complaint filed in December, prosecutors contended that Uber drivers work at airports without obtaining authorization and have charged an extra $4 fee to passengers traveling there without paying anything to the airport.

One of the fastest-growing sharing-economy companies, Uber operates its ride-share program in 57 countries and has an estimated value of more than $40 billion.

The firm has been fighting in courts elsewhere in the United States. Earlier this month Uber won the dismissal of a racketeering lawsuit brought by 15 Connecticut taxi and limousine companies seeking to stop Uber from doing business in the state.

IRS: Computer Breach Bigger Than First Thought; 334K Victims

WASHINGTON (AP) — A computer breach at the IRS in which thieves stole tax information from thousands of taxpayers is much bigger than the agency originally disclosed.

The Internal Revenue Service Headquarters (IRS) building is seen in Washington. The IRS says thieves used an agency website to steal tax information from as many as 220,000 additional taxpayers. The agency first disclosed the breach in May. Monday’s revelation more than doubles the total number of potential victims, to 334,000.


An additional 220,000 potential victims had information stolen from an IRS website as part of a sophisticated scheme to use stolen identities to claim fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said Monday. The revelation more than doubles the total number of potential victims, to 334,000.

The breach also started earlier than investigators initially thought. The tax agency first disclosed the breach in May. The thieves accessed a system called "Get Transcript," where taxpayers can get tax returns and other filings from previous years. In order to access the information, the thieves cleared a security screen that required knowledge about the taxpayer, including Social Security number, date of birth, tax filing status and street address, the IRS said.

The personal information was presumably stolen from other sources. The IRS believes the thieves were accessing the IRS website to get even more information about the taxpayers, which could help them claim fraudulent tax refunds in the future.

"As it did in May, the IRS is moving aggressively to protect taxpayers whose account information may have been accessed," the IRS said in a statement. "The IRS will begin mailing letters in the next few days to about 220,000 taxpayers where there were instances of possible or potential access to 'Get Transcript' taxpayer account information."

In all, the thieves used personal information from about 610,000 taxpayers in an effort to access old tax returns. They were successful in getting information from about 334,000 taxpayers. "The IRS's failure to protect private and confidential information from cyber-attacks risks further fraud for hardworking taxpayers," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate panel that oversees the IRS. "The agency should act swiftly to alleviate the damage for all those affected."

The IRS isn't the first agency — public or private — to initially underestimate the magnitude of a data breach. The Office of Personnel Management announced earlier this year that hackers had stolen sensitive information on 4.2 million people. The number of affected people has since grown to more than 21 million.

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., said, "Today's revelation that the IRS didn't fully understand this security breach for months is not confidence-inspiring." Roskam chairs a House subcommittee that oversees the IRS.

The IRS said it is notifying all potential victims and offering free credit monitoring services. The IRS is also offering to enroll potential victims in a program that assigns them special ID numbers that they must use to file their tax returns.

The IRS said Monday that thieves started targeting the website in November. Originally, investigators thought it started in February. The website was shut down in May. On Monday, the IRS did not identify a potential source of the crime. But in May, officials said IRS investigators believe the identity thieves are part of a sophisticated criminal operation based in Russia.

It wouldn't be the first time the IRS has been targeted by identity thieves based overseas. In 2012, the IRS sent a total of 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds went to a lone address in Shanghai, according to a report by the agency's inspector general. The IRS has since added safeguards to prevent similar schemes, but the criminals are innovating as well.

The IRS estimates it paid out $5.8 billion in fraudulent refunds to identity thieves in 2013.

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

Allies Of Pivotal Civil Rights Victim Reflect 50 Years Later

KEENE, N.H. (AP) — Fifty years after Jonathan Daniels was shot dead by an ardent segregationist in Alabama, the people who stood with him then lament today's killings of blacks by police and the racially motivated slaying of nine black worshippers as stark reminders of the country's persistent racial divide.

 Court clerk Charles Higgins leaves court carrying a shotgun admitted as evidence in the trial of Thomas L. Coleman in Hayneville, Ala., for the slaying of civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels, a New Hampshire Episcopal seminary student. Fifty years after Daniels’ death, the people who stood with him that day in Alabama look at deaths in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and Charleston, S.C., and lament the country’s persistent racial divide.


Daniels, a 26-year-old white seminary student from Keene, New Hampshire, had traveled to Lowndes County, Alabama, to register blacks to vote, a vital component of the civil rights movement. Tom Coleman, a white 54-year-old highway engineer infuriated by what he saw as liberal meddlers out to upset the racial order in his hometown, shot him in the chest.

Ruby Sales was a black 17-year-old secretary with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who met Daniels when she went to Lowndes County. Sales, who founded and directs The SpiritHouse Project, an Atlanta-based nonprofit dealing with discrimination, wonders just how far the country has come since Daniels died, seeing stories of blacks killed by police in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York and Cincinnati, along with the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

"Race relations today in the United States are an extension of that time period," she said. "Tom Coleman was able to kill Jonathan Daniels under the cover of the law. Despite the fact that it has been 50 years, we are still operating in a culture where police and vigilantes can murder African-Americans."

In 1991, the Episcopal Church added Daniels to its roster of martyrs and celebrates his life on Aug. 14, the day of his arrest in Alabama. The Rt. Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, bishop of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, said Daniels' work must be carried on today to combat the "unholy trinity" of racism, poverty and gun violence.

"Racial hatred is still very much alive, and the violence that results in it," he said last month as he prepared to take a group of young people on a pilgrimage to historical civil rights locations in Alabama, including Hayneville, where Daniels was killed. Sales will join Hirschfield Aug. 23 at a worship service in Keene to commemorate Daniels' life.

Robert Harris was born three months after Daniels died. Now the elected chairman of the Lowndes County Commission, Harris said there is still work to be done on race relations in a county that is three-quarters black.

"Based on what I've seen in my years, there's definitely some change for the better that has transpired," said Harris, who is black. "We still have a way to go because we still have one private school in the county and we're still separate on Sundays. There's no place on Sundays where we fellowship together. There's still some sort of separation, or what I would call segregation."

On Aug. 20, 1965, Daniels, Sales, the Rev. Richard Morrisroe and Joyce Bailey left the Lowndes County jail after spending six days locked up with 16 others following a protest. The four headed for Varner's Cash Store a few blocks away for soft drinks while they waited for a ride.

"Bloody Lowndes," a nickname earned because of the county's often-violent suppression of blacks, was an especially dangerous place for activists. Following the Selma-to-Montgomery march in March 1965, Viola Liuzzo, a white mother of five from Detroit, was murdered on a stretch of highway there as she ferried marchers back and forth. Three Ku Klux Klan members were ultimately convicted of federal civil rights charges.

When Daniels' group got to the store, they were met at the door by Coleman, a 12-gauge shotgun in his hands. Coleman told them the store was closed. When Daniels asked whether he was threatening the group, Coleman fired.

Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and was hit in the chest, dying instantly. Coleman pulled the trigger again, hitting Morrisroe in the back and side as the priest tried to escape with Bailey. After a three-day trial, a jury of 12 white men took one hour and 31 minutes to acquit Coleman. Reaction was blistering. Elected officials, including Alabama's attorney general, decried the trial as a sham, the verdict a travesty. Editorial pages in newspapers northern and southern excoriated Lowndes County as a bastion of entrenched racism.

Coleman, who had said that the churchmen had weapons and that he had killed them in self-defense, told CBS News a year later he had no regrets. The civil rights workers denied that the men were armed, no weapons were found, and at trial, defense witnesses gave changing accounts.

"They were down here promoting, antagonizing things, promoting trouble," Coleman said. "I wouldn't change a bit. If the same thing happens in the morning that happened that day, I would shoot them both tomorrow."

Coleman died in 1997. His son, Tom L. Coleman Jr. of Montgomery, declined to comment for this article. Morrisroe was severely wounded; the pain in his back is still a daily reminder of Daniels and Coleman. He was honorably discharged as a Roman Catholic priest in 1973, got a law degree and now works part time as a city planner in East Chicago, Indiana.

Morrisroe, who named a son Jonathan, said it's crucial for people to interact with people from different backgrounds, just as Daniels did by immersing himself in black Alabama. "People have to break out of their ethnic shells," Morrisroe said. "I think too much activity is across picket lines where there is no communication, but rather an attitude of fear and shouting, attitudes that often generate hate rather than any sort of breakthrough."

The killing of Daniels and Liuzzo helped galvanize blacks in the county. More blacks registered to vote and within five years, the county elected its first black sheriff. By the end of the 1970s, county government was effectively controlled by blacks.

For Sales' part, she believes Daniels' actions that day have had a half-century long impact on black lives in rural Alabama. "To maintain freedom is a constant struggle," Sales said. "You can kill the person, but a people's impulse for freedom never dies."

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New Recording Of MLK 'Dream Speech' Found

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington in 1963, he fine-tuned his civil rights message before a much smaller audience in North Carolina.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, gestures during his "I Have a Dream" speech as he addresses thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. Months before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington in 1963, he fine-tuned his civil rights message before a much smaller audience in North Carolina. Reporters had covered King’s 55-minute speech at a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount on Nov. 27, 1962, but a recording wasn’t known to exist until English professor Jason Miller found an aging reel-to-reel tape in the town’s public library. (AP)


Reporters had covered King's 55-minute speech at a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount on Nov. 27, 1962, but a recording wasn't known to exist until English professor Jason Miller found an aging reel-to-reel tape in a town library. Miller played it in public for the first time Tuesday at North Carolina State University.

"It is part civil rights address. It is part mass meeting. And it has the spirit of a sermon," Miller said. "And I never before heard Dr. King combine all those genres into one particular moment." King used the phrase "I have a dream" eight times in his address to about 2,000 people at Booker T. Washington High School in Rocky Mount, eight months before electrifying the nation with the same words at the March on Washington.

He also referred to "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners," saying he dreamed they would "meet at the table of brotherhood." On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King changed that to "sit down together at the table of brotherhood." In both speeches, "Let Freedom Ring" served as his rallying cry.

"It's not so much the message of a man," the Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, said Tuesday. "It's the message of a movement, which is why he kept delivering it. It proves once again that the 'I have a dream' portion was not a good climax to a speech for mere applause, but an enduring call to hopeful resistance and a nonviolent challenge to injustice."

Miller discovered the recording while researching "Origins of the Dream," his book exploring similarities between King's speeches and the poetry of Langston Hughes. His ah-ha moment came when he learned through a newspaper story about a transcript of the speech in state archives. If there's a transcript, then there must be a recording, he thought.

He sent emails and made calls until he eventually heard back in the fall of 2013 from the Braswell Public Library in Rocky Mount, where staff said a box with the recording had mysteriously appeared on a desk one day. Handwriting on the box described it as a recording of King's speech, and said "please do not erase."

Before listening to the recording, Miller confirmed that the 1.5-millimeter acetate reel-to-reel tape could be played safely. He brought it to an audio expert in Philadelphia, George Blood, who set it as close to its original levels as he could. Then Blood, whose clients include the Library of Congress, digitized the tape.

It proved fortunate for King that he had practiced the dream part of his speech in Rocky Mount and later in Detroit, because it wasn't part of his typewritten speech in Washington. Historians say the singer Mahalia Jackson shouted "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" as he reached a slow point in his prepared text. King then improvised, and lit up the audience with phrases very similar to those he had delivered in that gymnasium.

Three people who were in the audience that day in 1962 listened again Tuesday as the recording was played at the university's James B. Hunt Library. Herbert Tillman, who was about 17 years old at the time, recalled how happy they were to see and hear such an inspiring leader.

"Everybody was attentive to what he had to say," Tillman said. "And the words that he brought to Rocky Mount were words of encouragement that we really needed in Rocky Mount at that time." Barber said this newly available recording of King's earlier speech — urging blacks to focus on voting rights and peacefully but forcefully push for change — is just as inspiring today.

"Make no mistake. This kind of oratory is dangerous," Barber said, "especially for those who want to go back, especially for those who want the status quo because this kind of oratory can loose the captive and set people free to stand up and fight for their own freedom."

Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc

Meningitis Epidemic Threat In West Africa, But Few Vaccines

Felix Nwabueze, who was a quality control officer In the late 1970s at a laboratory in Nigeria where millions of smallpox vaccines were made, walk past the abandoned building in Lagos, Nigeria. International health officials are scrambling, without much success, to find meningitis C vaccines as an outbreak of the child-killing disease threatens to balloon into an epidemic. (AP)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — International health officials are scrambling, without much success, to find meningitis C vaccines as an outbreak of the child-killing disease threatens to balloon into an epidemic.

The first large-scale outbreak of the C strain in decades has this year killed 800 of 12,000 infected people in Nigeria and in neighboring Niger, according to the World Health Organization. In 2013 and 2014, deaths numbered 128 out of 2,046 people who fell ill, WHO said, indicating the infection rate has soared and could grow much higher in 2016.

"We've never seen this before with meningitis C," William A. Perea, coordinator of WHO's Control of Epidemic Diseases Unit, said of the resurgence of the strain. The bacterial infection mostly targets children, inflames the brain and spinal cord and kills half those infected if left untreated. Survivors can suffer brain damage, deafness, constant fatigue and neurological and emotional difficulties.

West Africa's biggest epidemic, in 1996, hit four countries, infected a quarter million people and killed 25,000. It was caused predominantly by meningitis A. Since 2010, the meningitis A conjugate vaccine — used across 15 sub-Saharan countries in the "meningitis belt" stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east — has reduced infection rates. But it does not protect against the equally deadly C strain.

WHO, and partners including Doctors Without Borders, say they want to build a 5 million-dose stockpile before next year's meningitis season, which runs from January to June during the dry hot months that force people indoors and enable transmission.

While the Indian-manufactured meningitis A vaccine costs around 60 cents, the conjugate vaccine for meningitis C used in the United States costs $30 to $100 a dose. Two doses for babies provide 10 years' protection.

A much cheaper polysaccharide vaccine, produced for travelers, likely will be used as a stop-gap in West Africa. But that vaccine doesn't work for children under 2 and lasts only around two years. At the start of the last meningitis season in January, only 200,000 meningitis C doses were available for the region, according to Myriam Henkens, international medical coordinator of Doctors Without Borders. By end of the season, in June, international agencies had sourced 1.6 million.

This month, WHO urged manufacturers to increase production. "The first round of discussions, (manufacturers) said no, we just can't produce any more," said Perea. Major manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur has halted production to upgrade facilities and cannot restart until year's end, according to one of the French-based company's vice presidents, Michael Watson. He said they are one of only four global vaccine producers.

"You can't just turn on the tap," said Watson. Nigerian health leaders have repeatedly asked the government to reopen a vaccine lab which once produced millions of vaccines for yellow fever, rabies and smallpox.

With a domestic market of 170 million people, "in Nigeria it makes a lot of sense," Watson said. "They have a population that justifies it." In the late 1970s, Nigeria's laboratory made millions of smallpox vaccines that helped eradicate the disease regionally, according to Felix Nwabueze, who was a quality control officer. The lab fell into disrepair under the neglect of corrupt government officials.

"It would be more cost-effective if vaccines were produced in country, and would create employment," said Godswill Okara, former head of the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists. Abdulsalami Nasidi, who headed the lab in the 1980s and now is director of Nigeria's Center for Disease Control, fears the potential fatalities if a vaccine shortage and meningitis epidemic collide.

"But we are worried about the paucity not just of the meningitis C vaccine but other vaccines," he added. "Maybe this will teach us a lesson, to really address the local manufacturing issue."

Calls To Abolish Nukes On Nagasaki Bombing 70th Anniversary

Catholics offer prayers at an early morning mass to pay respect to the victims of the Nagasaki atomic bombing at the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, southern Japan Sunday, Aug. 9, 2015. Ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing will start late this morning. The atomic bomb attack on this city that left more than 70,000 dead and hastened the end of World War II exactly 70 years ago. (AP)

NAGASAKI, Japan (AP) — The city of Nagasaki marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing Sunday with calls to abolish nuclear weapons and halt the Japanese government's push to loosen restrictions on what its military can do.

With Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the audience, a representative of Nagasaki bomb survivors told an annual ceremony that security legislation introduced by Abe's government goes against the wishes of the survivors and "will lead to war."

"We cannot accept this," 86-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi said, after describing in graphic detail his traumatic injuries and how others died in the Aug. 9, 1945, attack on Nagasaki. Representatives from 75 countries, including U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, were among those gathered under a tall white canopy to shade them from the sun on a 31-degree-Celsius (88-degree Fahrenheit) morning at Nagasaki Peace Park.

As a bell tolled, they observed a minute of silence at 11:02 a.m., the time when the a U.S. B-29 plane dropped the atomic bomb, killing more than 70,000 people and helping to prompt Japan's World War II surrender. The first atomic bomb in Hiroshima three days earlier killed an estimated 140,000.

Abe's security bills, which he says are needed to increase Japan's deterrence capabilities in the face of growing threats in the region, have run into stiff public opposition. The legislation would ease constitutional limits that restrict the military to self-defense, allowing Japanese forces to defend allies in limited circumstances.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, addressing the same ceremony, noted the "widespread unease" about the legislation, which has passed the lower house of parliament and is now before the upper house. "I urge the government of Japan to listen to these voices of unease and concern," Taue said.

A message from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon echoed calls by Taue and others to abolish nuclear weapons. "I wholeheartedly join you in sounding a global rallying cry: No more Nagasakis. No more Hiroshimas," Ban said in a message read by Kim Won-soo, the acting U.N. high representative for disarmament affairs.

Abe, in brief remarks, said that Japan, as the only country to experience nuclear attacks, would seek to play a leading role in realizing a world without such weapons.

Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Tokyo contributed to this story.

4th Blogger Killed In Bangladesh By Suspected Militants

A Bangladeshi police officer, center, and other people carry the body of blogger Niloy Chowdhury, 40, who was hacked to death at his house in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Aug. 7, 2015. Assailants believed to be Islamist militants entered an apartment building posing as potential tenants and killed the secular blogger in Bangladesh's capital on Friday, in the fourth such deadly attack this year, police said. (AP)

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Suspected militants posing as tenants entered an apartment building and hacked to death a secular blogger in Bangladesh's capital in the fourth such deadly attack this year, police said.

Friends of Niloy Chottopadhay, 40, who also used an online name of Niloy Chowdhury, said he had received several threats recently, prompting him to remove all his photos from his blog. They said he was a secular blogger and had a Facebook account with the name "Niloy Neel" in which he criticized radical Islamists at home and abroad.

Asha Moni, the victim's wife, said at least four young people attacked her husband Friday. She filed a murder case against four unnamed persons, police official Zahidur Rahman said Saturday, but no arrests have been made so far.

Hours after the assault, Ansar-al-Islam, which intelligence officials believe is affiliated with al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, sent an email to media organizations claiming responsibility for the killing and calling the blogger an enemy of Allah. The authenticity of the email could not be independently confirmed.

The U.S. State Department condemned it as a "cowardly murder." "This heinous act once again underscores the need to work together to counter violent extremism. We stand with Bangladeshis who reject this vicious act and who work to protect space for freedom of expression," spokesman Mark Toner said

United Nations human rights officials called for Bangladeshi authorities to ensure accountability and prevent such violence. "The organized targeting of critical voices aims at promoting a culture of silence and fear," special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, and extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, said in a statement in Geneva.

The killing is the fourth of a secular blogger since February, when a Bangladeshi-American man who was also critical of Islam, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus while walking with his wife.

Two others were attacked and killed in March and May, one in Dhaka and another in the northeastern city of Sylhet. Detectives say radical groups were behind the previous attacks and have made some arrests, but have failed to make any major headway into the killings.

The family and friends said Chowdhury had sought police protection after he was threatened but police asked him to leave the country for his safety. Moni said her husband went to at least two police stations for recording a complaint in May after he was followed by two men on streets, but his complaint was not registered.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal denied the claim that Chowdhury went to police to seek security for him. Islam is Bangladesh's state religion, but the country is governed by secular laws based on British common law. Over the last decade or so, extreme interpretations of Islam have steadily gained ground.

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.