Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Article Response #15

       The West Coast braces itself for a pacific storm that pour needed rain on the California drought, but the storm promises to carry a high price as schools in San Francisco and Oakland are bracing themselves to be closed Thursday. The rainfall is expected to be so significant that meteorologist is calling it an atmospheric river.
        Atmospheric rivers are 250 to 400 miles wide and split off like a tributary from larger band of moisture from the tropics. 30%-50% of annual precipitation on the west coast occurs in atmospheric events. They cause major flooding when they make landfall and stall over a particular that the bay area is bracing itself for. The highest elevations of northern California are expected to get 10 inches of rain. SF is believed to possibly see 4 inches in city and 8 inches in the hills. 
      The SFUSD superintendent said,  "I did not arrive at this lightly. First and foremost, we don't want to risk having our students injured or seriously delayed transporting to and from school. In addition to student absences, the storm could result in large numbers of staff absences, which could then lead to inadequate supervision of our students. Furthermore, power outages could affect the district's ability to feed students' school meals, among many other operational challenges."
     Oakland school officials cited “ an extreme and potentially dangerous weather system” as a reason for closing.” Rain is much more common if along the gulf or Atlantic coasts, but for parched California, which researchers at the university of Nebraska say is most drought stricken state in the country. Bay area on Tuesday, public works crews got ready for downpour. “This is not the most glamorous work here is, even with equipment like this. This is still really hard work. Hard and dirty work but something that has to be done to make sure the system functions properly when we do have a big storm," Caltrans spokesman Bob Haus.

Bay Area power crews cut pine tree limbs hanging over power lines ahead of winds of 30-40 mph with gusts up to 70 mph. howling winders will drive up and down the west coast.

Article Response #14

          The CIA’s interrogations of terrorists detainees during the Bush era were considered brutal and didn’t reveal any information that prevented an attack, according to the Senate report that was released Tuesday.  The report issued by the senate intelligence committee is condemnation of tactics considered by many as torture. 
         The techniques were flawed and poorly managed often-contained false information. CIA misled the Bush White House about the harsh methods it used to contain results from interrogating al Qaeda suspects. The report is highlighting the divide over combating terrorism that dominated Washington a decade ago. Democrats argue the tactics conflicted with American values while leading members of the Bush administration insist they were key to stopping another homeland attack. 
         The report contains details of secret facilities that the detainees where subjected to near drowning, or waterboarding, days of sleep deprivation, threatened with mock executions and threats that relatives would be sexually abused. The claim of the report is primarily that CIA methods did not produce information necessary to save lives that was not already available from other means. 
       Supporters of the program believe that it was pivotal in obtaining intelligence from detainees that couldn’t be obtained through conversational interrogations. It was reported tat a detainee was said to have died of hypothermia after being held nude chained to the concrete while other times other prisoners were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while bring beat up. It was believed that 26 detainees were held there wrongfully as partly because there was no information to justify detention. 
       Dianne Feinstein said that CIA’s actions in aftermath of 9/11 were a “stain on our values and on our history. A 500 page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say that our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it’s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes.”

        President Barack Obama said in a statement about the report “were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not server our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.” Obama outlawed these interrogation techniques soon after become president in 2009.