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The war against Islamic extremists in Mali is won, says French President Francois Hollande
French President François Hollande declared Thursday the war against Islamic extremists had been won in Mali, though he vowed to keep French forces in the West African country as long as the threat exists.
Mr. Hollande spoke before more than a dozen heads of state at inauguration festivities for Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who overwhelmingly won the election that France urged Mali to hold only months after the radical jihadists had been largely ousted from power in northern Mali.
"We have won this war; we have chased out the terrorists; we have secured the north and finally ... we have, you have organized an uncontested election and the winner is now the president of Mali," Hollande told the crowd gathered at a sports stadium in the Malian capital.
"If there had not been an intervention, today the terrorists would be here in Bamako," he said.
Later at a news conference held in Mali's capital, Hollande pledged that French forces would continue to aid the Malian military "so long as the threat exists." He also vowed to continue pursuing the six French hostages who are being held by Al Qaeda's North Africa branch.
"We should seek to do all that we can to liberate them," he said.
Several Islamic militant groups were able to seize control of northern Mali in the aftermath of a March 2012 coup in the distant capital of Bamako. Once in power, they instituted their harsh interpretation of Islamic sharia (Islamic law), meting out amputations and whippings as punishments and forcing women to wear veils in public.
As they threatened to push farther south, France launched a military operation in January that was joined by soldiers from a number of neighboring countries. The jihadists retreated from major centers in the north including Timbuktu and Gao.
However, some analysts cast doubt on Hollande's claim of victory.
There are "persistent reports that jihadists have either started filtering back into Mali or never left," said Andrew Lebovich, an analyst who focuses on political and security issues in the Sahel and North Africa.
"While the French intervention reversed the jihadist push south, significantly degraded the capacity of regional terrorist groups to operate in Mali, and killed or scattered a large number of fighters and commanders, it is a stretch to say that the war is won," he said.
Hollande also addressed questions Thursday about why France had intervened militarily in Mali but not in Syria. Mali's president had asked for French help, Hollande said, adding: "Each situation is different."
Mr. Keita formally took the oath of office two weeks ago as was required by the country's Constitution. On Thursday, Malians in their finest suits and traditional gowns poured into a sports stadium for the festivities, fanning themselves with programs in the heat and shading themselves with umbrellas.
The new president entered the stadium standing in the back of a military jeep draped in Malian flags, wearing a yellow sash accented in the other colors of the national flag — red and green. Throngs of soldiers ran alongside his vehicle, holding hands to form a barricade against well-wishers approaching him.
Keita spent much of his speech thanking regional leaders for their help in dislodging the extremists, and pledged to restore Mali's democratic institutions that were battered by the coup and the months of chaos that followed.
"The path will be long, but we will get there with the participation of all Malians," he said.
Keita emerged from a field of 28 candidates to an overwhelming win in the August presidential runoff election, taking nearly 78 percent of the vote in the second round.
Among his greatest challenges will be resolving the simmering secular separatist rebellion in the northern region of Kidal. Ethnic Tuaregs there have sought sovereignty ever since Mali's independence from France in 1960 and their latest rebellion last year gained momentum in the power vacuum after the coup. While they were temporarily sidelined during the rule of the radical jihadists, the Tuareg separatists are now largely back in control of Kidal and the return of the Malian military remains deeply unpopular.
Talks are set to begin within two months' time between Keita's new government and the group known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, the name rebels use to describe their homeland.


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Briefing on Release of the First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR)
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs
MR. CROWLEY: Good afternoon and welcome to the Department of State. As you all saw a little bit ago with the Secretary unveiling the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review at a town hall here at the State Department, it kicks off a lengthy process where we will be introducing this very important document that will guide reform here at the State Department and reform of our operations around the world.
Two of the, shall I use the term shepherds of – I mean, this is a document and a process, and the document is released today. The process is going to be ongoing and will be incorporated into the day-to-day work here at the State Department. But this represents two years of effort to both do the working groups and the analysis and the difficult thinking and tradeoffs to get to concepts that will be very important to the conduct of diplomacy and development for years to come.
But two of the primary shepherds throughout this process here at the State Department, Anne-Marie Slaughter, our Director of Policy Planning, and at USAID, the Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg. And they'll give you some kind of additional detail extending beyond what the Secretary said this morning. Just to – by the time we finish here in the briefing, the executive summary will be up online. Later in the day, the full document will be available, so you'll have a chance to digest all 200 pages of it. But we'll start with Anne-Marie.
DR. SLAUGHTER: Thank you. Thank you. No one is happier than I am that this day is here. (Laughter.) I should say it has been a very long process, not quite two years. We actually – she launched it in the summer of 2009, so it's really been a year and a half from the moment she launched until today. But it has been a report that brought together an enormous number of people on an enormous number of issues. We actually have copies of the executive summary for you to pick up right here, and it will be online.
I don't think I could possibly do better than the Secretary this morning in terms of explaining why we're doing this and what we're really doing in overview. What I thought I could do is fill in a couple of places where – to make clear what some of the more specific reforms. And then as she said, it's 150 pages, and there's plenty of other material. She starts from the proposition and the report starts from the proposition that we are really adopting a new way of doing business to respond to a very different world, a world of rising powers, of changing global architecture, of evolving threats and of new opportunities.
To do that, we're responding in two big ways, focusing on civilian power so that the civilian power is the first face of American power, supported by the world's finest military. When we talk about civilian power we're talking about the power of civilians across the federal agency, across the federal government. So it is not just State and USAID. State and USAID play an indispensible role in terms of coordinating what other agencies do within an overall strategic and development framework. But this report signals a fundamental shift in how we do business with the rest of the interagency. It's about rewarding people for working together rather than defending turf.
Second, as the Secretary said, we really have focused on streamlining, on focusing, on setting priorities, and on developing procedures to make sure that those priorities translate into resources and then into results. That is necessary given the environment we're in. It's essential, just more broadly, to be more effective across all agencies. In the diplomacy arena, we are reorganizing ourselves to meet the challenges we face, and the Secretary talked about an Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. Within that bureau, we are creating – within that under secretary, we are creating a new Bureau for Energy Resources, which will focus on energy security, energy access, and energy regulation and will bring together all the different places in the Department that we currently focus on energy.
Also, we – as the Secretary talked about, the other Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. We're not creating new under secretaries. We're reconfiguring the current under secretaries for Democracy and Global Affairs and for Economic Affairs. Under the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, we're creating a new Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations. We are also proposing to Congress a new bureau for counterterrorism. There we obviously have the coordinator for counterterrorism. We'll have to work with Congress. But there are a hundred people working for the coordinator now, and as we look at how we need to partner across the government, we want to propose that bureau in addition to the two that we're creating.
Finally, we're also creating a chief economist who will support the Secretary in really looking at the intersection of economic and political issues so that we are able to integrate economic issues into everything we do, and again, to be a better party with the interagency.
And finally on the diplomatic side, we are integrating women and girls into everything we do. Don Steinberg will talk to you about that on the development side, but in all of our diplomacy, in our diplomacy with other governments, in our work with regional and multilateral organizations, in our work on conflict and crisis, and of course, engaging women and girls directly.
Let me just say a few more things on conflict and responding to conflict and crisis and on working smarter, and I'll then turn to Don Steinberg to talk about development. As the Secretary said, we start with the proposition that preventing and responding to conflict and crisis within fragile states is a core part of the State Department's mission going forward, so that we need to build the expertise that is developing, not on conflict around the world but on the specific nexus of weak governance and violence, and how above all, you start by trying to prevent conflict from breaking out. Only then do you move to conflict management or reconstruction and stabilization. But we'd like to start before the troops actually have to be in the field.
And finally on working smarter, there are a set of recommendations about how we build the technical expertise we need. Obviously, there's tremendous technical expertise across the interagency. That's one of the big changes in how we conduct international relations. The Department of Energy, Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, they have that expertise. They ultimately have to be a core part of how we work in those areas. But we need enough expertise to be able to work effectively with them. So we are also increasing our technical expertise and becoming more operational in terms of training people better to operate on the ground, better balancing our workforce between insourcing and outsourcing, and finally, planning and budgeting, which in many ways sounds boring. You know, administrative.
But the whole QDDR is really about the proposition that if you really want to be effective, if you want to spend your resources in accordance with your priorities, you have to have the processes that the QDDR represents. You have to have a long-term planning process. And then every year, you have to look at your priorities from the top down. You have to go to the missions, you have to build those priorities into specific plans, and then those plans are connected to how we spend our resources. Pretty elemental, but we have a new deputy secretary for management and resources. It's really about connecting those processes. What we want to do, how we're going to do it, and how we spend the money, and finally, how we evaluate for results. So with that, let me turn to Don Steinberg, and we're happy to take your questions.
MR. STEINBERG: Thank you. I've only been a part of this process for the past couple months, and so to begin with, I wanted to pay tribute to Anne-Marie for the remarkable effort that she has done. This has been a completely collaborative approach. As we've all sat around a room, at some point you start losing a sense as to what agency you're representing and start to think about how to draw it all together. And Anne-Marie has fostered that attitude, and so thank you for that.
At USAID, we really do view the QDDR as a vote of confidence from the President and Secretary Clinton in AID's capacity to help lead the development effort and to run the U.S. Government's most important development initiatives. It's important to remember the QDDR in the context of President Obama's Presidential Policy Directive on Development that he announced at the United Nations in October. And in that document, as well as the QDDR, there are three important points.
The first is that development matters. It is a key part of our national security policy, recognizing that poor states are unstable and represent threats to our national security interests, that development is in our economic interest – it creates exports, it creates jobs, jobs, jobs. It also reflects our values and our moral considerations around the world.
The second key point is that, indeed, USAID has to be revitalized, re-empowered to be at the center of these efforts, and given the resources needed to make this happen.
And then finally, the notion that we need to be doing things in a different way. We need to be focusing our scarce resources selectively on areas where we have a comparative advantage in order to make sure that the development that we're encouraging is sustainable, that it's transparent, that we are accountable for what we're doing, and that we are indeed drawing on all the contributions from elsewhere within the United States Government, but also from the private sector, from nongovernmental organizations, as well as governments and foreign donors who we cooperate with. In terms of the focus and selectivity, the document identifies six areas that we're going to be focusing on.
The first three are presidential initiatives, one in food security, one in global health, and one in climate change. In addition, it highlights our need to encourage economic growth, to promote democracy and governance, and to prepare for humanitarian response around the world when disaster strikes. And as Anne-Marie said, a further – maybe six plus one is the role of women and girls in all of these efforts, recognizing that unless we mainstream women, unless we empower them, ensure their participation, and, in periods of conflict, protect them, we're not going to be able to achieve our results.
The QDDR represents the whole process we've been going on, not just the single document that you have. And given that we've been identifying over the past 14, 16 months key steps that AID needs to take, we haven't waited till today to launch them. And so a variety of the provisions that you'll see in the documentation are reflections of what we are already doing under Administrator Rajiv Shah's USAID Forward Initiative. And in particular, we have already reestablished a Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning, giving us back policy capability.
We have rebuilt our own budget capacity through the creation of an Office of Budget and Resource Management. We now have a center for innovation, trying to draw in generation-skipping innovations. We've brought in fellows from the AAAS to improve what we do in cooperation of science and technology. We've launched a program on procurement reform to ensure that we are reaching out to governments around the world to encourage them to develop their own capability to use our resources as well as reaching out to nongovernmental organizations in the countries we operate in, and we've expanded our capacity to partner not only with U.S. Government agencies, but with development institutions, with multi-lateral bodies, with civil society, as well as the private sector.
Perhaps most significantly, the QDDR states the USAID will immediately assume responsibility for leadership and accountability of the President's interagency Feed the Future Initiative with a coordinator based at USAID and reporting to the Administrator and the Secretary of State, and it says that USAID will assume leadership and accountability for the President's interagency Global Health Initiative with a transition target at the end of FY12 when certain agreed benchmarks have been met. This is particularly important, given that USAID is the development agency for the U.S. Government, and it simply makes sense that the key development initiatives of the President and the Secretary of State are based at that agency.
Nonetheless, this hasn't always been true in the past, and we do recognize this as a vote of confidence. But with that vote of confidence comes responsibility. And it is a responsibility to act in what we're calling a situation of inclusive leadership where we have to reach beyond an AID-centric approach to involve our colleagues from the rest of the U.S. Government, some 30 organizations that are involved in these development efforts in a spirit of cooperation and mutual accountability.
As Anne-Marie said, the QDDR is only as powerful as we make it, and we at AID intend to do all that we can to make it powerful indeed. So thanks.
QUESTION: Thank you. First of all, congratulations on reaching this milestone and thank you for taking the time to explain it to us. I'd like for you to please talk more about the implementation. Over what time period do you expect the majority of these changes to take place? Will you need authorizations and billets from Congress, and does that mean we can't see a lot of these changes until FY2012, which means next October? And also dealing with Congress, could you please explain what's your message to Democrats on the Hill who might have different ideas about foreign aid reform and Republicans on the Hill who have made a clear statement that they intend to seek the cutting of foreign aid budgets and State Department budgets as their key deficit priority next year?
DR. SLAUGHTER: So on implementation, implementation starts January 1. We will begin developing plans and doing everything we can do on our own immediately. I think some of the reorganizations you can – we don't need authorization from Congress to do any of the reorganizations with the two under secretaries, the Energy Bureau, the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations, all of those we have those positions authorized. Counterterrorism is the one exception.
How long it takes to actually work through all the bureaucratics, I can say Secretary Clinton is going to start right away and she wants to get it done as fast as she can. Well over 50 percent of what is in this report can be done without further authorization. A lot of it is doing what we do a lot better, and we can start doing that. At the same time, there are a number of places where we obviously not only want to inform Congress – we do have to request things from Congress – and more importantly, we want to work with Congress in implementing things that we think on both sides of the aisle are very welcome.
Many of the things the new members are calling for, we've been focusing on. How can we work better? How can we streamline? How can we measure our – what we do? How can we deliver results? This is really the agenda that Secretary Clinton launched a year and a half ago. So we're ready to work with Congress. I think there are specific areas around earmarks where it would certainly make it a lot easier to implement what we're doing if we could work with Congress on that kind of legislation. I think we'll want to talk across Congress, Democrats and Republicans, on how you could put some of these changes together in more – in broader legislation rather than just doing it piecemeal.
MR. STEINBERG: On the USAID side, one of the points that I was trying to make is that we've already begun the implementation process, and so you've already seen a wide variety of changes. But there are others that are going to be implemented as we move along. For example, our Office of Budget and Resource Management will prepare a comprehensive budget proposal for FY13 for foreign assistance that will be sent to the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary for their review and approval, and then incorporate it into the broader assistance budget.
So that you will only see occur as we move ahead. But most of the other provisions that we're talking about do indeed already have credence at the USAID or are being implemented even as we speak. In terms of Congress, we have two immediate needs within the QDDR. One is for a 1 percent capital fund to fund the operating expenditures for much of what we're trying to do right now. And then we have a request for special hires, called Schedule B hires, because we have a situation at AID which is very worrisome. We have a third of our people who have less than three years on the job, and yet we have 95 percent of our senior officers who could retire at full pensions tomorrow. So we've got this middle gap. And there are a variety of things within the QDDR that help us meet that in a way that will solve the problem, while at the same time not completely undermining our commitment to our Foreign Service officers who are coming into the system now. So minimum mid-level hires, Schedule B authorities, the ability to hire very talented Foreign Service nationals on the ground, all of these things will be moving ahead.
And on the second part of your question regarding Congress, Anne-Marie nailed it right on the head. What we're trying to do to say – is to say to Congress we get it. We've got to do things in new ways. We've got to adapt to a restrained budget environment. We've got to prove to you and to the American people that we are good stewards of your money, that we're streamlining, that we're eliminating duplicative systems, and that we're fully engaging other communities.
One of the things that I think is very important is that even as we look at the amount of money that the United States spends as a government, that is dwarfed by remittances that people send to their relatives, it is supplemented by private contributions, it's supplemented by business investments not just in corporate responsibility, but in their own interest in these countries. And we have to be developing models that adapt not just to getting assistance out the door, but producing accountable development.
And one last point, we are, as of January, putting in place at USAID what we consider to be a gold standard monitoring and evaluation system for all of our provisions. And this has been developed by one of the true masters in these areas and we're very proud of it.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.) So if I can – so could you say again on this budgeting question that overall this is a revenue neutral proposal or is that too far?
DR. SLAUGHTER: Thanks. First, the last thing I'll just say to you, Josh, is the first thing we need from Congress is to legislate that this happens every four years. That is something – and that Don Steinberg and I are not part of that team. (Laughter.) But the Secretary is determined to make this quadrennial, and the only way to do that is to do what you have at DOD and the Department of Homeland Security, which is Congress asks us to review ourselves every four years.
On the budget, it's not – there's a great deal of it that we can do that is revenue neutral. There are specific places in building AID's resources after 40 percent cuts over the last decade, in building up our response to conflict and crisis to really be able to deploy people quickly. There are some areas there where we do need additional funding, and we'll be making that case to Congress in very targeted areas.
But the question is always – well, wait a minute, what aren't you going to do? Where are the tradeoffs? I mean, this is lots of nice recommendations, but what aren't you going to do? And the answer is I can't tell you specifically, but I can tell you that this is budget guidance for the next four years, just the way the QDR is for the Defense Department. So what that means is that gets translated into specific budget guidance that goes out to the missions and to the bureaus, and what comes back from them is a list of budget requests. And we're saying the things that fit these priorities will be funded within the constraints we have, and the things that don't will be on the bottom of that list. And those are the tradeoffs. So we're totally prepared to make them, we just can't tell you – we're not lopping off some part of State or AID; we're saying we need to build and we need to build across the agency. But we have thought a great deal about what this means in practice, and that's really the job of Deputy Secretary Nides when he's confirmed – if he's confirmed.
QUESTION: Just a couple of quick ones. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the new bureau of counterterrorism, why we need this now, what role it will fill that isn't being filled by other existing organizations, and how it will fit into the overall sort of security apparatus.
And also for Mr. Steinberg, I was wondering – the Secretary talked a little bit about it, but it'd be interesting to hear your views on these questions that have been raised by some of the development groups saying that this, in effect, sort of sublimates development to politics and that this means that USAID, in particular has even become a political tool in the hands of the government and maybe that will somehow pervert its mission.
DR. SLAUGHTER: Right. So the shift from the coordinator for counterterrorism to a bureau when we have to work with Congress is not a shift in terms of resources. We have, as I said, over a hundred people already working for the coordinator. It is now at a point in terms of its growth and what it does to become a bureau. Equally important, our whole focus is how we're going to engage with the rest of the interagency. And it was very much coordinator Benjamin's view – Ambassador Benjamin's view, and the Secretary's view that we would be more effective in working with the White House, in working with the Justice Department, with Department of Homeland Security if we actually had a defined structure as we always do with parallel positions across the government. So this is one that makes sense.
It also makes sense to do it now. If you're going to have a reorganization, they are hard. Anybody who's ever been through one knows that. It doesn't make sense to be changing a number of different bureaus, and if this makes sense to do, not do it now.
Your final question's a good one: Where will it actually report? That is a question we've explicitly left open. We don't have permission to create it, so it would be a little in advance. But also there really are some important questions between the Bureau of International – Arms Control and International Security and the new Under Secretary for Civilian Security and Democracy and Human Rights – where exactly that should fit. And there we didn't want to prejudge. The folks who are going to actually be implementing need to answer that question.
MR. CROWLEY: Goyal. No, hold on, one second. I'm sorry.
MR. STEINBERG: First of all, as you would expect, I endorse everything that the Secretary said in response to that question. The purpose of the QDDR, in part, and the purpose of the PPD was indeed to recognize that development per se is in our national interest, as I've said. It's in our security interest. It's in our economic interest. It's in our value-based interest. And the QDDR, in fact, does indeed elevate development. When you speak of whether AID's mission or the development mission is sublimated to foreign policy, first of all, foreign policy is part and parcel of everything that we're doing overseas, and development ties into that. But more importantly, think about where we were before this process began. AID did not have a policy-planning section. We did not do policy planning at AID prior to the QDDR. We did not have a budget office. Everyone has always said an agency that doesn't in some way have input into its own budget isn't really capable of performing. And indeed, we now have a budget office, and as of 2013, we will be preparing that guidance that I mentioned about before.
We had suffered from 1990 to 2007 a 38 percent drop in our personnel, our direct hires, forcing us into business models that stressed getting assistance out the door as opposed to focusing on development. That's being reversed, both within the context of the QDDR and within the context of new budget proposals that are being put out. We are enhancing our capacity to do humanitarian relief through an expansion of our OFDA office, same thing regarding the mission of the Office of Transition Initiatives. And so what I would – again, I would challenge the basic assumption that there is some dichotomy between development and our overall foreign policy. But I would also say this is all about elevating development, elevating USAID to play the role in that, but doing it in a smart way.
MR. CROWLEY: All right. I'm sorry, Goyal then --
QUESTION: Thank you. Thank you, sir, madam. AID is playing a great development role around the globe. My question is now that as far as Pakistan, if you can update, what – because people are still asking the basics. What can you report now? And also overall if you can say about the image, U.S. image around the globe, especially in Pakistan, if it has improved? Or what is the role of Ms. Pandith as far as this report is concerned?
DR. SLAUGHTER: What is the role of?
MR. CROWLEY: Farah Pandith.
DR. SLAUGHTER: Farah Pandith, oh.
QUESTION: Special envoy.
DR. SLAUGHTER: Well, I can answer the last one. So I want to frame this in terms of the QDDR rather than our relations with Pakistan as a whole. The work that Farah Pandith does is extremely important. There's an entire section which we haven't had a chance to talk about in the diplomacy chapter on engaging beyond the state. And the Secretary's starting point is that we cannot partner with a nation if that nation's people are opposed to us. So it is essential that we engage directly with those people, and that doesn't just – that doesn't mean traditional public diplomacy of giving a message out. It means developing relationships. It means projects and programs on the ground, engaging with women is a great example, engaging with civil society.
What Farah is doing in terms of making clear the diversity of Muslim communities in the United States, and linking those communities, and making clear that the diversity of our views in terms of how we see Muslims around the world is an essential part of engaging beyond the state. And there's – as I said, it's an entire basket of recommendations in the diplomacy chapter really trying to elevate that. The last thing I'll say is making it very clear that's also part of what we expect every diplomat to do. It's not a specialized public diplomacy over here and economic and political counselor here. It's that's what we have to do in the 21st century.
QUESTION: But how is the USAID reaching out to Pakistan for the basics? Thank you.
MR. STEINBERG: In terms of the QDDR, what I'll say is that there is an emphasis throughout the QDDR on sustainability of our development efforts. It highlights the need wherever possible to work with host governments to develop their capacity to do all the things that we're looking for. And indeed, the procurement reform that I was referring to before highlights that need.
We believe that the job of USAID is essentially to put itself out of business, and unless you can develop the capacity of governments and government institutions, both at the federal level but also to the extent that there are state and local levels, and in addition, as Anne-Marie was saying, civil society organizations within the country itself, we're going to be continually operating in these countries.
And so in the case of Pakistan, we have identified a wide variety of government agencies and institutions that we will be increasingly working with. We demand accountability for those procedures. We demand a transparency, and we're going to be looking very specifically at monitoring and evaluation measures to ensure that the American taxpayer know that their dollars are well spent. But wherever possible we want to empower our partners and to learn from their experiences as well and to support their efforts.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Two quick questions if I may. First of one is regarding the issue of coordination and cooperation with other governmental agencies. The Secretary said that audience stressed the role of ambassadors overseas as the – to play the role of CEOs, to coordinate the U.S. efforts in that country. How do you perceive or what is the way that you see you can implement that in practical way, if in fact that this review is not mandated by Congress? I understand Secretary think regarding the role of ambassadors is there to coordinate all efforts, but there is a lack of that to a certain extent. How do you see you can really implement that in a practical way?
And second, second question is regarding the issue of recruiting and staffing for State and for USAID. Many issues are – how can I say – related to the lengthy clearance process, security clearance process, and issues of salaries and the competition with the private sector. How do – I didn't see anything, at least in the executive summary, about that. You talked about the need to recruit and train and what have you, but how are you going to go forward –
DR. SLAUGHTER: (Inaudible) take a second. Yes, that one. Well, on the second one, I can say there – we covered many things. We did not tackle the security clearance process. That may be for the next QDDR, but that is one thing that is not in the report.
On the first question, it's a very good question. And there's an answer now and there's an answer going forward. The answer now has been that this report has gone through an extensive interagency process, where every other agency has looked at exactly what we've been saying. Many of them welcome the idea that we're going to actually be coordinating and pulling together. They know that we're often working at cross-purposes, and somebody needs to actually exercise that authority. And that is what the letter that the President gives to the chief of mission says. He is the – he or she is the representative of the whole government.
So we've been working with other agencies. We've been working very effectively with the National Security staff. Obviously, they run the interagency process in terms of setting priorities and policy objectives in many areas. In crisis areas, they directly run the operations with lead agencies on the ground. But they understand that we will work better as a government if State and AID perform the overall coordinating function where we provide a strategic framework, a development strategy on AID's side and an integrated country strategy on our side, and then the chief of mission representing the entire government is empowered to enforce that, but all – that's not the right word. It's not to enforce it, but it's to lead within it, and then also that we hold them accountable, and that's our part, because it won't work unless our chiefs of mission are actually working with everybody in the interagency and recognizing what they bring to the table.
So it really is a win-win. It is going to take a while to work out, but it's been fully endorsed. And actually, I have to say the National Security Council, the National Security staff, has been extremely helpful in shepherding us through the interagency process.
MR. CROWLEY: Why don't we do about two more –
MR. STEINBERG: I've got just a quick – on that question, I've had the honor of being a chief of mission and representing the president. And all of our chief of missions get this. They understand that being the head of an embassy doesn't mean that you represent the State Department. It means you represent the broader interests of the United States. And any ambassador worth his or her salt is going to be providing this inclusive leadership. You keep your agricultural attaché, and your intelligence people, and all – do we say we have intelligence people? (Laughter.) And intelligence people.
QUESTION: You do now.
MR. STEINBERG: Well, we do now. And the Defense Department and every aspect very, very close, and you involve them in their exercise, you get their full advice and wisdom, you involve their – you want to draw on their resources very frequently, and you better make sure that they understand the common mission. But what the Secretary was focusing on, which is 100 percent correct, is there can be no distance between any of those agencies regarding basic policy of the United States towards that country, and that's one of the things that this is designed to do.
On the second part, I'm not going to address the security clearances aspect, but I will say a lot of what we're talking about is designed to get people into USAID more quickly through innovative efforts -- whether it's drawing on fellowships that we have, AAAS, the Franklin Fellowship, whether it's Schedule B authority that I was referring to later, a variety of other things -- we do recognize that in a lot of these situations we've got to move very, very quickly, and we've got to speed up that incorporation process.
QUESTION: Thank you. Can you talk about the role of this coordinator for cyber issues? Did you decide to establish this position because of the WikiLeaks incident?
DR. SLAUGHTER: No. No, that decision was actually taken nearly a year ago, and it has taken a while to find the right person and to create the structures to work with the government. But that was the result of an overall review on how the government as a whole needs to be organized for cyber-security. It was way, way before WikiLeaks. We certainly hope that once that person is working, as the Secretary said, we will be able to do much more to protect the confidentiality of our communications.
QUESTION: A number of studies, for example by William Easterly of NYU, have concluded that corruption, endemic corruption, in countries has the effect of undermining many development assistance programs, and in fact, development assistance can even empower corrupt regimes. And that was the thinking behind the establishment of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, making corruption a hard hurdle. And yet, I see very little reference in the executive summary to the MCC or the subject of corruption. Could you comment?
MR. STEINBERG: That may be in the executive summary. It is much more covered in the document itself. It does present the MCC as, in many ways, a model for what we're trying to do throughout the development community. And it also does refer quite frequently to the need for working with transparent and accountable partners overseas. It does highlight, in the area on procurement reform, measures to ensure that we're working through accountable governments. It also highlights, in the democracy and governance sector, exactly the issues of transparency that you're referring to. So yes, it is covered much more substantially.
MR. CROWLEY: All right. Last one.
QUESTION: Good afternoon. In a situation where an entity is almost completely dependent on aid, especially from the United States, like the Palestinian Authority, how do you make sure that the corruption issue is addressed? Do you share with them expenditures and so on? Do you go through what they need to spend money on and so on?
MR. STEINBERG: Absolutely. And it's all about establishing, in effect, contracts with these entities. It is all about bringing in outside observers to ensure that the funds are well spent. In our own agency, we have an inspector general who contributes to this process, not just to investigate problems, but to train people to address issues of accountability within their own systems. And we also do studies of entities within countries to determine whether we can, in fact, work with them. And unless they have minimum standards of bookkeeping, accountability, transparency, we simply do not work with them.
DR. SLAUGHTER: Let me say one thing on that and a final note. We're also making it possible for all of you to hold us and those governments accountable. That's the point of the dashboard, which starts with State and AID foreign assistance, and we intend to make it cover all foreign assistance across the government, precisely so you can see what we're spending and you can see whether or not there are results, because in the end, nothing we do from the point of view of contracts is nearly as powerful as empowering the people who have a stake in getting that assistance to find out what happened to it.
Last thing I just want to say is I've been in Washington for two years. Many of you have been here far longer than that. You've seen lots of reports come and go. You've seen lots of talk about how we're going to collaborate with other agencies and we're not going to fight our turf. And I'm pretty sure a lot of you are thinking we've heard this before. This is different. Secretary Clinton is not naïve. She's been in Washington a long time. She knows what needs to be done, and she also fundamentally understands what kinds of changes at the level of actual incentives, management incentives, who gets promoted, who gets rewarded, what are we valuing in how we do business. And that's the level at which this report, in all its detail, operates.
Last thing I'll say is she was right. We can't afford to keep doing business the way we've been doing business. This has changed in the private sector. All well-run companies are now working in teams, in flexible, collaborative teams. It's not like they didn't defend turf for many, many decades, but they can't get the job done in the world we're in working that way. And neither can we. It's not going to change overnight. But this is not a report with promises and recommendations that will not be fulfilled. This is a report that will be implemented. And in four years, you can hold us to account. We'll hold ourselves to account. How did we do? How do we have to work going forward?
Thank you.


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Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe's winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period.
The cores provide insights into how the region's climate has changed over time. The researchers' results, published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, could help reveal how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales.
The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Romanian Ministry of Education, involved scientists from the University of South Florida (USF), University of Belfast, University of Bremen and Stockholm University, among other institutions.
Researchers from the Emil Racoviță Institute of Speleology in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and USF's School of Geosciences gathered their evidence in the world's most-explored ice cave and oldest cave glacier, hidden deep in the heart of Transylvania in central Romania.
With its towering ice formations and large underground ice deposit, Scărișoara Ice Cave is among the most important scientific sites in Europe.
Scientist Bogdan Onac of USF and his colleague Aurel Perșoiu, working with a team of researchers in Scărișoara Ice Cave, sampled the ancient ice there to reconstruct winter climate conditions during the Holocene period.
Over the last 10,000 years, snow and rain dripped into the depths of Scărișoara, where they froze into thin layers of ice containing chemical evidence of past winter temperature changes.
Until now, scientists lacked long-term reconstructions of winter climate conditions. That knowledge gap hampered a full understanding of past climate dynamics, Onac said.
"Most of the paleoclimate records from this region are plant-based, and track only the warm part of the year -- the growing season," says Candace Major, program director in NSF's Directorate for Geosciences, which funded the research. "That misses half the story. The spectacular ice cave at Scărișoara fills a crucial piece of the puzzle of past climate change in recording what happens during winter."
Reconstructions of Earth's climate record have relied largely on summer conditions, charting fluctuations through vegetation-based samples, such as tree ring width, pollen and organisms that thrive in the warmer growing season.
Absent, however, were important data from winters, Onac said.
Located in the Apuseni Mountains, the region surrounding the Scărișoara Ice Cave receives precipitation from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and is an ideal location to study shifts in the courses storms follow across East and Central Europe, the scientists say.
Radiocarbon dating of minute leaf and wood fragments preserved in the cave's ice indicates that its glacier is at least 10,500 years old, making it the oldest cave glacier in the world and one of the oldest glaciers on Earth outside the polar regions.
From samples of the ice, the researchers were able to chart the details of winter conditions growing warmer and wetter over time in Eastern and Central Europe. Temperatures reached a maximum during the mid-Holocene some 7,000 to 5,000 years ago and decreased afterward toward the Little Ice Age, 150 years ago.
A major shift in atmospheric dynamics occurred during the mid-Holocene, when winter storm tracks switched and produced wetter and colder conditions in northwestern Europe, and the expansion of a Mediterranean-type climate toward southeastern Europe.
"Our reconstruction provides one of the very few winter climate reconstructions, filling in numerous gaps in our knowledge of past climate variability," Onac said.
Warming winter temperatures led to rapid environmental changes that allowed the northward expansion of Neolithic farmers toward mainland Europe, and the rapid population of the continent.
"Our data allow us to reconstruct the interplay between Atlantic and Mediterranean sources of moisture," Onac said. "We can also draw conclusions about past atmospheric circulation patterns, with implications for future climate changes. Our research offers a long-term context to better understand these changes."
The results from the study tell scientists how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales. The scientists are continuing their cave study, working to extend the record back 13,000 years or more.
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Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as
the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas
banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.
FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous
records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12
heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and
Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.
Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and
federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On
Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear
oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.
In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable
expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell
phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a
customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone
company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a
mobile device placed and received calls.
Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to
tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that
Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than
what the administration has proposed.
"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the
government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and
online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the
Fourth Amendment."
Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998's "Enemy of the State," Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has "been in bed with
the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s--they've infected
everything." After a decade of appearances in "24" and "Live Free or
Die Hard," location-tracking has become such a trope that it was
satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from "Pineapple Express" (2008).
Once a Hollywood plot, now 'commonplace'
Whether state and federal police have been paying attention to Hollywood, or whether it
was the other way around, cell phone tracking has become a regular
feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police
obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.
Obtaining location details is now "commonplace," says Al Gidari, a partner in the Seattle offices of Perkins Coie who represents wireless carriers. "It's in every pen register order these days."
Gidari says that the Third Circuit case could have a significant impact on police investigations within the court's jurisdiction, namely
Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; it could be persuasive beyond
those states. But, he cautions, "if the privacy groups win, the case
won't be over. It will certainly be appealed."
CNET was the first to report on prospective tracking in a 2005 news article. In a subsequent Arizona case, agents from the Drug Enforcement
Administration tracked a tractor trailer with a drug shipment through a
GPS-equipped Nextel phone owned by the suspect. Texas DEA agents have
used cell site information in real time to locate a Chrysler 300M
driving from Rio Grande City to a ranch about 50 miles away. Verizon
Wireless and T-Mobile logs showing the location of mobile phones at the
time calls became evidence in a Los Angeles murder trial.
And a mobile phone's fleeting connection with a remote cell tower operated by Edge Wireless is what led searchers to the family of the late James Kim, a CNET employee who died
in the Oregon wilderness in 2006 after leaving a snowbound car to seek help.
The way tracking works is simple: mobile phones are miniature radio transmitters and receivers. A cellular tower knows the general
direction of a mobile phone (many cell sites have three antennas
pointing in different directions), and if the phone is talking to
multiple towers, triangulation yields a rough location fix. With this
method, accuracy depends in part on the density of cell sites.
The Federal Communications Commission's "Enhanced 911" (E911) requirements allowed rough estimates to be transformed into
precise coordinates. Wireless carriers using CDMA networks, such as
Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, tend to use embedded GPS technology
to fulfill E911 requirements. AT&T and T-Mobile comply with E911
regulations using network-based technology that computes a phone's
location using signal analysis and triangulation between towers.
T-Mobile, for instance, uses a GSM technology called Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, or U-TDOA, which calculates a position based on precisely how long it
takes signals to reach towers. A company called TruePosition, which
provides U-TDOA services to T-Mobile, boasts of "accuracy to under 50
meters" that's available "for start-of-call, midcall, or when idle."
A 2008 court order to T-Mobile in a criminal investigation of a marriage fraud scheme,
which was originally sealed and later made public, says: "T-Mobile
shall disclose at such intervals and times as directed by (the
Department of Homeland Security), latitude and longitude data that
establishes the approximate positions of the Subject Wireless
Telephone, by unobtrusively initiating a signal on its network that
will enable it to determine the locations of the Subject Wireless
'No reasonable expectation of privacy'
In the case that's before the Third Circuit on Friday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said it needed historical (meaning
stored, not future) phone location information because a set of
suspects "use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and
transactions in furtherance of their drug trafficking activities."
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan in Pennsylvania denied the Justice Department's attempt to obtain stored location data without a
search warrant; prosecutors had invoked a different legal procedure.
Lenihan's ruling, in effect, would require police to obtain a search
warrant based on probable cause--a more privacy-protective standard.
Lenihan's opinion (PDF)--which, in an unusual show of solidarity, was signed by four other magistrate
judges--noted that location information can reveal sensitive
information such as health treatments, financial difficulties, marital
counseling, and extra-marital affairs.
In its appeal to the Third Circuit, the Justice Department claims that Lenihan's opinion "contains, and relies upon, numerous errors" and should be overruled. In addition to a search warrant not
being necessary, prosecutors said, because location "records provide
only a very general indication of a user's whereabouts at certain times
in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth
Amendment privacy interest."
The Obama administration is not alone in making this argument. U.S. District Judge William Pauley, a Clinton appointee in New York, wrote in a 2009 opinion that a
defendant in a drug trafficking case, Jose Navas, "did not have a
legitimate expectation of privacy in the cell phone" location. That's
because Navas only used the cell phone "on public thoroughfares en
route from California to New York" and "if Navas intended to keep the
cell phone's location private, he simply could have turned it off."
(Most cases have involved the ground rules for tracking cell phone users prospectively, and judges have disagreed over what legal rules apply. Only a minority has sided with the Justice Department, however.)
Cellular providers tend not to retain moment-by-moment logs of when each mobile device contacts the tower, in part because there's no
business reason to store the data, and in part because the storage
costs would be prohibitive. They do, however, keep records of what
tower is in use when a call is initiated or answered--and those records
are generally stored for six months to a year, depending on the
Verizon Wireless keeps "phone records including cell site location for 12 months," Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance, said at a federal task force meeting
in Washington, D.C. last week. Arena said the company keeps "phone
bills without cell site location for seven years," and stores SMS text
messages for only a very brief time.
Gidari, the Seattle attorney, said that wireless carriers have recently extended how long they store this information. "Prior to a
year or two ago when location-based services became more common, if it
were 30 days it would be surprising," he said.
The ACLU, EFF, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and University of San Francisco law professor Susan Freiwald argue that the wording of the federal privacy law in question allows
judges to require the level of proof required for a search warrant
"before authorizing the disclosure of particularly novel or invasive
types of information." In addition, they say, Americans do not
"knowingly expose their location information and thereby surrender
Fourth Amendment protection whenever they turn on or use their cell
"The biggest issue at stake is whether or not courts are going to accept the government's minimal view of what is protected by the
Fourth Amendment," says EFF's Bankston. "The government is arguing that
based on precedents from the 1970s, any record held by a third party
about us, no matter how invasively collected, is not protected by the
Fourth Amendment."
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NEW YORK (AP) — A security officer hired to help protect the U.S. Special Mission in Libya gave conflicting versions of events during a terrorist attack there on Sept. 11, 2012, The New York Times has reported.
In an article published Thursday on its website, The Times said Dylan Davies, who worked for the Blue Mountain security business, gave the FBI a version of events in Benghazi that contradicts the account he provided in a recently published book and in an interview with "60 Minutes."
The newspaper said two senior government officials have described the information Davies gave the FBI as being consistent with an incident report by Blue Mountain, which had been hired to protect American interests in Benghazi. The report said Davies remained at his villa in Libya and did not get to the scene the night of the attack.
However, in his book "The Embassy House," which Davies wrote under a pseudonym, and in the version he gave to the CBS news show, Davies said he left his villa that night to visit a hospital, where he saw the body of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was slain during the attack. He said he went to the scene twice and that at the compound he had a confrontation with an attacker.
Last week, Davies said in an interview with the online magazine The Daily Beast that he did not write the incident report and had never seen it, The Times said.
Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of "60 Minutes," said Thursday, "we will make a correction," if the show has been "misled."
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Berrien County is soliciting bids/proposals for the following commodity or services. For more information please call 269-983-7111, Ext. 8200. If you would like to be on the County bidder's list, fill out the Vendor Application Form.
The Berrien County Board of Commissioners reserves the right to reject any and all bids or make any deviations deemed in the best interest of Berrien County.
The following list is provided for the convenience of potential vendors. It does not necessary include all requests for bids or proposals active in the County at any given time. For more information, please call 269-983-7111, Ext. 8200.
View our current bids.


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Microbes are not only a rich source of disease, but also a rich source of medicines, and experts think many life-saving compounds produced by as-yet-unnamed bacteria are awaiting discovery. But they don't always give up their secrets easily. Researchers must know where to look to find promising bacteria, and how to get them to grow in the lab, the traditional route to identifying potentially valuable molecules they produce.
Researchers in Sean Brady's Laboratory of Genetically Encoded Small Molecules are working on a way around these roadblocks. By using genomic sequencing technology, they can investigate the organisms that live in habitats like soil without having to grow the microbes in the lab. They are using this information to map out the location of gene clusters they believe may encode novel antibiotics, and, with help from citizen scientists around the country, they are hoping to process soil samples from areas they would never be able to visit on their own.
In a preliminary effort, Brady's lab has surveyed nearly 100 soil samples from two U.S. regions, looking for genetic sequences that encode certain molecule-making abilities. "We hope to expand to other regions of the country and the world, to incorporate many more samples in order to create maps of the biosynthetic diversity of soil microbes," says Zachary Charlop-Powers, a postdoc in the lab. "These maps could help guide drug discovery by identifying variants on known bacterial genes that might be part of a gene cluster encoding a new antibiotic."
Medicine already owes a major debt to microbes, particularly bacteria. These tiny organisms have produced or inspired many antibiotics, from tetracycline to vancomycin, as well as cancer-fighting drugs and immune system-suppressing therapies used for organ transplants. These bacterial natural products are part of the organisms' chemical defense system and these molecules have historically been isolated from the broth of bacteria grown in the laboratory.
"However, genetic evidence hints there are many, many more bacteria out there that we may not be able to grow," Brady says. "And they should be an equally rich source of useful natural products. We have been developing genetic tools to help us look for new chemistry by looking at the genes used to synthesize these natural products."
For the past five years, Brady's lab has been sequencing and shifting through DNA obtained directly from soil to identify potentially useful genes, which the researchers then transplant into more-laboratory friendly bugs.
Charlop-Powers, Brady and colleagues recently published the first geographical survey intended to speed this discovery process in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For this study, they focused on genes responsible for producing two important families of biologically active molecules: nonribosomal peptides and polyketides. These families include most of the therapeutic molecules isolated from cultured bacteria, but in spite of this diversity, the underlying genetic architecture remains constant. In these families, repetitive genetic domains generate molecules in an assembly line-like fashion that evolution has frequently retooled.
In DNA from 96 soil samples collected for the survey, the researchers looked at two of these domains to get a sense for the diversity and richness of microbes capable of producing compounds these families. They found a link between the type of soil and the sorts of molecules its resident microbes had the capacity to produce. "For reasons we don't understand, arid soils turned out to harbor microbes capable of producing a greater diversity of compounds," Charlop-Powers says. For this preliminary survey, Brady called on his family to send in samples from Arizona and New Mexico; another postdoc in his lab, Jeremy Owen, collected soil in New England.
The Brady Lab would like to extend this study and hopes to encourage citizen scientists to contribute to the effort. The lab has set up a website: www.drugsfromdirt.org and after signing up, citizen scientists will receive information about how to collect and ship samples. The process is simple, says Brady: "Take a sandwich bag, a spoon or a trowel, and dump a couple of spoonfuls in the bag and ship it to us."
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Story highlights
Ankara's mayor has used his Twitter account to accuse a BBC correspondent of spying
Mayor Ibrahim Melih Gokcek created a hashtag to spread the claims against the journalist
However, online opponents mobilized their own hashtag in response to Melih Gokcek
Their hashtag - accusing Melih Gocek of being a provocateur - became more widely spread
Twitter has been the scene of a bizarre Turkish hashtag war between the mayor of Ankara and, well, a lot of other social networkers.
The drama began Sunday when Ibrahim Melih Gokcek, the man who has been mayor of Turkey's capital for more than a decade, accused a reporter from the BBC's Turkish service of being a foreign agent.
"Who is @selingirit? BBC's reporter in Turkey," Gokcek wrote in a series of English-language tweets.
"Led by England, they are trying to collapse our economy via agents hired, both nationally and internationally. They are dreaming for Turkey to be the 'Sick man of Europe' once again. Here is a concrete proof."
The BBC issued a statement Monday expressing concern about what it described as threats issued by Turkish officials against a BBC correspondent.
Gokcek is an elected official from the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which is led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Since an unprecedented explosion of street protests against Erdogan erupted more than three weeks ago, the prime minister and his deputies have accused demonstrators of being terrorists and vandals organized by an alleged shadowy foreign conspiracy Erdogan has labeled "the interest lobby."
Gokcek appeared determined to prove this Sunday via Twitter.
Shortly after accusing Girit of being a spy, he announced the creation of the Turkish hashtag #INGILTEREADINAAJANLIKYAPMASELINGIRIT, which translates roughly to "Don't be a spy in the name of England Selin Girit."
Then, the mayor of Ankara launched a campaign to make the hashtag one of Twitter's worldwide trends.
For the next several hours, he cheered on his followers as the accusation gained online traction with messages like "Keep going Turkiye. Our Hash Tag is ranked 2th. Must place to number 1. This will be our answer to BBC."
Within hours, the mayor's Twitter campaign appeared to have backfired.
Online opponents began mobilizing their own hashtag in response to the mayor of Ankara.
They began retweeting the hashtag #provokatormelihgokçek (Melih Gokcek is a provocateur).
By Sunday night in Turkey, #provokatormelihgokcek had replaced the mayor's hashtag attacking Girit on Twitter's list of world-wide trends.
Gokcek responded by threatening anyone in the world who retweeted the provocateur hashtag with legal action.
"My lawyer is going to sue everyone one by one who tweets #ProvokatorMelihGokcek No one can get away with anything because Turkey is a country of law," the mayor of Ankara announced on Twitter Sunday night.
As of 10am in Istanbul Monday, the #provokatormelihgokcek hashtag was ranked as the second most popular worldwide trend on Twitter.
The BBC issued a statement expressing concern about what it called "the continued campaign of the Turkish authorities to discredit the BBC and intimidate its journalists."
"A large number of threatening messages have been sent to one of our reporters, who was named and attacked on social media by the Mayor of Ankara," wrote Peter Horrocks, Global News Director of the BBC.
Horrocks maintained that BBC reporters were committed to providing "impartial and independent journalism." He called on the Turkish government to use "proper channels" to make comments and complaints to the organization.
For the last several years, press freedoms organizations have published a number of reports expressing alarm about the Turkish government's record of jailing journalists.
"The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has waged one of the world's biggest crackdowns on press freedom in recent history," wrote the Committee to Protect Journalists in a 2012 report. Reporters Without Borders has labeled Turkey among the world's worst jailers of journalists, since scores of media workers are currently in prison, many of them awaiting trial on terrorism-related charges.


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Not water, but sunlight is the main factor in determining the growth of the hundreds of tree species in tropical forests. The variation in physiological characteristics between tree species explains how the various species fit into their ecological niches, thereby contributing to diversity in tropical forests. This is the conclusion drawn by researchers from Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR, and their colleagues from Utrecht University in a publication in the scientific journal PNAS.
Tropical forests are able to sustain hundreds of tree species on just a few hectares, but little is known about how this diversity has evolved. A study carried out by Frank Sterck, Lourens Poorter and Lars Markesteijn (Wageningen University) and Feike Schieving (Utrecht University) shows that the species examined all responded differently to variations in the availability of light and water because they had different physiological characteristics. Most of the species occupied a unique niche where they do better than the other species, which may contribute to the co-existence of these species and the diversity of the forest.
As part of the study, the researchers measured a range of physiological properties such as leaf surface area, wood density, photosynthesis capacity, leaf water potentials and resistance to water transport in tropical tree species from a Bolivian forest. They used a physiological plant model to calculate the speed at which the various species can grow when exposed to different combinations of water and light. The simulations show that variations in leaf production and photosynthesis capacity enable species to specialise for a variety of light niches. The sensitivity of stoma to drought in the various species (and therefore the water consumption) also varies, but this does not lead to trees becoming specialised for dry or moist locations in the same forest.
The researchers conclude that even in relatively dry tropical forests, light is the driving force behind niche specialisation in tree types. This makes sunlight more important than water in terms of whether different trees grow side-by-side or not. This is one of the first studies for which physiological plant models have been used to scale up plant characteristics to the growth and survival of various tree species in order to explain the wealth of species in a tropical forest. In future, these models will also be used to look into the distribution of plant species along climate gradients.
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text: City of Sacramento Hopes New Economic Development Plan Pans Out Bob Moffitt Monday, June 17, 2013 | Sacramento, CA The City of Sacramento's Economic Development Department has a new plan to stimulate the economy. The new plan starts with developing the urban core and extends all the way to the city's new satellite office in China. Department Director Jim Rinehart says the office was opened because of a new emphasis on exporting goods and services outside the region. "We're beginning to reap the benefits to have Chinese currency come to Sacramento, importation of money and exportation of goods, investment here as well. So, we're building on those relationships right now. And, I'm hopeful that a year from now, we'll come back and show that we made a wise choice." In between the urban core and China is the development of business that support the region's strongest economic engines – green tech, agriculture, education and especially healthcare. Rinehart says every major hospital in the region has or is expanding: "We're taking advantage of that and building and multiplying on that with the nurses, the techs, the physicians, the others that come in to support that. Those clusters will be very beneficial to Sacramento." The proposed downtown arena is prominent in the plan. Michael Ault with the Sacramento Downtown Partnership says it will have a far-reaching effect. "That is generating not only renewed interest I think in this region, but a renewed focus by the city to understand that they've got to be prepared and have the capacity to take advantage of these opportunities." The new plan includes more emphasis on infill projects and redesigned zoning codes. Rinehart says the city's new plan will do more to help small businesses get started in Sacramento. The department had previously reviewed its economic development plan every five years. Rinehart says if the department is to react promptly to the changing business climate, it must review its policies every year -if not more often. Follow us for more stories like this CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today. Donate Today


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Frankenstein - The Legacy Collection (Frankenstein / Bride of / Son of / Ghost of / House of)
About a year or so ago, Universal made the odd decision to retire their Classic Monsters line of DVDs, despite the fact that there has always been a strong following for these films and that they contain some of the most beloved characters and performances in the history of American cinema. Now though, just in time to tie in with their reincarnations (appearing soon at a theater near you to do battle with Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing), the films have been re-issued in box sets as part of the Legacy Collection.
Frankenstein (1931) -
Colin Clive plays Dr. Frankenstein – a scientist obsessed with creating a living creature from various body parts salvaged from the dead. After a few failed attempts, he finally achieves his goal but unfortunately his creation (Boris Karloff) isn't quite stable and is seen by the townspeople as a monster. Ultimately, because of this, Frankenstein shuns his creation him and the monster makes a run for it, wreaking havoc along the way and culminating in a showdown with the inevitable angry mob that occurs when you accidentally drown a little girl.
Directed by James Whale, Frankenstein is arguably the most recognizable of all the famous monsters and Karloff's image is the one most associated with the character. He brings a sense of menace to the proceedings when he needs to, swinging his arms around and demonstrating the monster's great strength, but also a sincere sense of pathos as well, in scenes where he's attempting in his own pathetic way to reach out and make friends in the only way he knows how.
The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) -
The Monster Demands A Mate! Or so the tagline for this exceptionally good sequel to the original Frankenstein would have you believe. Karloff and Clive resume their roles as monster and creator respectively when it's revealed that both the monster and the doctor are still alive after the events in the first film. The good doctor wants to get out of the mad scientist business and tries to make a clean break from his past, but he's pulled back into the thick of things once more when the sinister Doctor Pretorius kidnaps Frankenstein's wife. Pretorius forces Frankenstein into agreeing to help him his evil scheme. What is that scheme, you may ask? Why, to create a mate for the monster! Thus, The Bride Of Frankenstein (played wonderfully by Elsa Lanchester – who also plays Mary Shelley in the film!) is born, but we all know that these things never work out.
Following the path of horror and sympathy that the first film laid out so effectively, James Whale gets behind the camera once more to helm this sequel which many horror movie fans feel betters the original (I disagree – I still think the first film is the best!). Once again, the sets are terrific, the performances stellar (you've got to love the interaction between Karloff and Lanchester) and the direction picture perfect.
Son Of Frankenstein (1939) -
This time out, Basil Rathbone (best known for his Sherlock Holmes films) plays the role of Baron Wolf Von Frankenstein – the son of the original Doctor Henry Frankenstein from the first two films. Along with his wife, Wolf returns to the family estate to receive his inheritance but when he arrives, is shocked to get an extremely cold reception from the townsfolk. One night, while digging around his late father's lab, he meets Ygor (Bela Lugosi) h is father's old assistant and a man with less then moral intentions. Ygor talks Wolf into resuming his father's work and reviving the comatose creation, once again played by Karloff. He thinks he fails when he tries to bring the monster back to life, but those dead townspeople may be able to prove otherwise! Once Inspector Krogh is on the case he finds that Ygor is using the monster to do his dirty work. When Wolf finds out, he kills Ygor in a fit of rage, sending the monster on another spree as he believed Ygor to be his only friend, ignorant of how he was being used.
This time out, Rowland Lee gets behind the camera and while this film doesn't quite hit the levels of posh visuals that the first two entries had going for them, it still looks great, especially the lab scenes. It's always fun to see Karloff and Lugosi on screen together – throw Rathbone into the mix and you've got a winner.
Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942) -
Bela Lugosi resumes his role as Ygor, having survived the events in Son Of Frankenstein after all. He resurrects the monster once more (played by Lon Chaney Jr. this time out), and tracks down Henry Frankenstein's other son, Ludwig (Cedric Hardwicke), in hopes of having him restore the monster to a more powerful state. Ludwig initially doesn't like this idea but once Ygor blackmails him, he really has no choice but to help out. Ludwig soon realizes that the monster can never be anything but evil and wants to put a stop to him before he goes on yet another murderous rampage. Life is sacred to Ludwig though, and he must overcome his aversion to killing in order to halt the monster once and for all. He decides that rather than kill the monster, he can simply replace his evil brain with the brain of the recently deceased Doctor Kettering, a noble and gentle human being. Ygor is smarter than Ludwig gives him credit for, though, and has yet another doctor, Bohmer (Lionel Atwill), replace the monsters brain with his own! With Ygor's brain inside the monsters brawn, is there anyway Ludwig can stop the madness?
Ghost Of Frankenstein is a fun monster romp with Chaney doing a good job in Karloff's shoes, but really, the role belongs to Boris and it is just not the same without him under the make up. Erle Kenton does an admirable job behind the camera but the plot lacks some serious logic and this one chalks up to the worst of the series in my opinion. That being said, even mediocre Frankenstein is better than none and there's enough monster action going on to keep the movie going, even if it's in too many directions at once.
House Of Frankenstein (1944) -
The fifth and final film in the set brings Karloff back into the picture, but not as the monster we all know and love. This time out, Karloff is the insane Dr. Nieman, a recently escaped mental patient who, along with his assistant, Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), attempts to revive Dracula (John Carradine). But he's not going to stop there, he's also going to revive the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) and the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) as well! Why on Earth would someone want to resurrect so many evil monsters? Because he's made a lot of enemies over the years and what better way to get back at them then by bringing in the big guns or horror to take them all down!
Erle Kenton once again directs and this time turns in the silliest of the five films so far in the franchise. But, silly as it may be, there is no denying how much fun this movie is. Thanks in no small part to a terrific cast of horror movie legends, House Of Frankenstein is a fast paced monster-mash of epic proportions! Well, maybe epic isn't the right word but the movie is truly a blast and it's never anything less than pure fun watching the cast interact in front of some great sets delivering some wonderful lines.
All five of the films hold up very well. Sure, some of the appeal is nostalgia, a lot of us grew up on these films or were introduced to them as children as they were easy to get a hold of and, of course, suitable for younger viewers. But more of their appeal comes from the fact that they are truly great movies. The performances are possibly a bit dated but that doesn't make them any less charming or captivating. The set design and attention paid to detail in the background of sets like the laboratory or the windmill make them visually appealing and the direction is slick and professional.
The DVD Video:
All films are, as they should be, presented fullframe. Compression issues are virtually non-existent and there is, considering the age of the films, very little print damage to complain about. The black and white photography looks excellent on all five films and while there are some scenes that are a little grainier than others, the overall quality of these transfers is very nice. The framing issue on Bride Of Frankenstein has been corrected as well (you can see the credits, the certificate is there, and the framing is improved and the image is cleaner than on the previous release).
Sound:All five films are presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono mixes. Background noise, aside from what is supposed to be there, is minimal and while there is some hissing and popping throughout most of the films, it's minimal. Dialogue and music are clear sounding and considering the age of the source materials used in this set, the audio is quite good. There's really very little to complain about and those who were disappointed by the clean up job that Universal did to Frankenstein when the first DVD came out a few years back will be happy to know that the original sound mix is back in this set.
Extras:Well, there's not much here in the way of new extra features. The only supplement we haven't seen before is a six minute long piece entitled Stephen Sommers On Universal's Classic Monsters - Frankenstein. This is basically a glorified commercial for the upcoming Van Helsing and doesn't have a whole lot to do with the classic monsters at all. It's mildly interesting, worth watching once, but I can't see myself revisiting this piece again.
Luckily though, Universal was wise enough to port over all of the extra features from the first pressings of these films. Frankenstein and Bride Of Frankenstein both have excellent commentaries from Rudy Behlmer and Scott MacQueen respectively. There's a wealth of great information on these tracks and anyone who enjoys these films will want to sit down and spend the time listening to the tracks if they haven't already heard them.
Moving along to what resides on the second disc, you'll find The Frankenstein Files – How Hollywood Made A Monster (thirty-nine minutes in length) and She's Alive! Creating The Bride Of Frankenstein (forty-five minutes in length). Both are great documentaries that provide a pretty in-depth look at just what went into getting these films made. They may seem commonplace or even somewhat cliched nowadays but these documentaries do a pretty nice job of bringing you back in time with the movie makers and putting it all into an historical context. David Skal directed both pieces and his love and enthusiasm for these films shines through in the attention to detail on display here and the respect with which he treats not only the characters but the actors who portrayed them as well.
Minor supplements include a vintage short film entitled Boo! from 1932 that takes a humorous look at the Universal Monsters, the nine minute Frankenstein Files which displays a wealth of promotional materials for the film, and a theatrical trailer for each of the movies included in this set.
Finally, while the menus are bland and nearly static (not to mention confusing to navigate – you have to turn over the discs periodically and to access some of the features for Frankenstein and Bride Of Frankenstein you have to go into the special features section of the second disc) they look quite slick. Likewise, the packaging is very nice with both discs housed inside of a hard cover digipak which in turn slides into a slipcase style cover creating a nice effect with the artwork (which is a really nice painting of Karloff in full on monster makeup).
Final Thoughts:At a suggested M.S.R.P. of only $26.98 (with many places offering the set for sale considerably cheaper – or you can get it bundled with the Dracula and Wolfman sets), Universal is practically giving these films away. Plenty of nice extras, solid audio and video, and of course, the classic films themselves make this purchase a no brainer. Frankenstein – The Legacy Collection is highly recommended!
Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.
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America's 5 Best Rivers For Fly Fishing
Immortalized in fiction like Chris Santella's "Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die" and films like "A River Runs Through It" fly fishing is one of the world's most popular methods in the sport of fishing. One of the most beautiful and most graceful examples of angling, fly fishing is often described as a true art form, perhaps best exemplified by a lone fisherman wading in knee deep water amid rushing waters and the peaceful silence of a spellbinding forest. For the experienced fly fishing enthusiast, it's not hard to think of several phenomenal rivers across the country, although coming up with just five might easily provoke a hearty debate. For beginners new to the sport or for those just curious to know some of the best across America, here are five of America's best rivers for fly fishing.
Extending more than 135 miles across Northern Michigan, the fabled Au Sable River is widely recognized for hosting one of the finest brown trout fisheries east of the Rocky Mountains. As one of the major tributaries filtering into Lake Huron, the Au Sable River is frequently known as a dry-fly nirvana, with multiple access points across the north, south and main branches of this celebrated blue-ribbon trout river, particularly the legendary nine-mile stretch known as the Holy Waters. Situated just east of the town of Grayling from the Burton's Landing to Wakeley Bridge downstream, the Holy Waters is regulated as fly fishing only, as well as catch-and-release using only artificial flies for trophy size brook and brown trout. Other prominent access points include Twin Bridge on the North Branch, Chapel, Mio Roadside Park and Boat Launch and McKinley Bridge on the South Branch. Attracting fishing enthusiasts worldwide, the Au Sable River is also home to several notable fly fishing shops, guide services and outfitters and among the best are Old Au Sable Fly Shop, Ron's Fly Shop and Gates Au Sable Lodge in Grayling, Streamside in Fairview and Au Sable Angler and Trophy Waters Fly Shop in the community of Mio. In addition to Gates Au Sable Lodge, other recommended places to stay are Old Sable Lodge and Riverview Lodge and Cabins in Grayling, and the cabins, campsites and RV parking within the Huron-Manistee National Forests.
Beaver Kill River
Of the many legendary rivers within the breathtaking Catskill region in New York State known as the birthplace of American dry fly fishing, the Beaver Kill River is unquestionably among the most revered. Indeed, it was on these pristine waters in the 1890s along with the equally renowned Neversink River where American writer Theodore Gordon first fished here in one of first resort destinations in the country. Through his published works, Gordon became known as the "Father Of American Fly Fishing" for advancing the popularity of what is now one of America's favorite pastimes. While the Neversink River is credited for being the precise birthplace of American dry fly fishing, it's the Beaver Kill that draws the most contemporary attention from seasoned anglers and anxious newcomers, for its abundance of exceptionally big brown trout, in particular in Roscoe, a small town in the Sullivan Catskills that calls itself "Trout Town USA". Just along the southwestern border of this peaceful hamlet also once named the "best outdoor sports town in New York," is the confluence of the Beaver Kill and the Willowemoc Creek known as Junction Pool, with a commemorative sign nearby that hails it as "one of the most famous pools in angling literature". About a two-hour drive northwest of New York City, Roscoe is home to many reliable fishing outfitters like the Beaverkill Angler and Trout Town Adventures and Guide Services, as well as popular attractions like the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. Despite an estimated population of less than 700 residents, Roscoe offers a number of camping and overnight accommodations, such as Roscoe Campsite Park, Russell Brook Campsites, Baxter House and Creekside Bed and Bath and Reynold House Inn and Motel.
Said to be North America's premiere destination for big trout, the San Juan River is one of the major tributaries of the Colorado River. Traveling very close to the famous "Four Corners" region of the Southwestern U.S., the San Juan measures approximately 383 miles long and one of its own tributaries, the Animas River, is among a select number of Colorado Gold Medal rivers, capable of producing at least twelve 14 inch or larger trout per acre and 60 pounds of trout per acre. However, the majority of the San Juan River passes through southeastern Utah and more prominently, in northwestern New Mexico, where the fly fishing for big brown, rainbow and cutthroat trout just below Navajo Dam is world renowned, particularly the Miracle Mile section just over four miles downstream that's known as one of "North America's most hallowed fishing waters." Plenty of camping and RV parking is available along the shores of New Mexico's second largest lake at Navajo Lake State Park, along with noteworthy fishing lodges like the Rainbow Lodge, Soaring Eagle Lodge, the Octagon Inn and the Orvis-endorsed Fisheads San Juan River Lodge.
The main tributary of the Potomac, the Shenandoah River is one of the premier rivers for smallmouth bass in the Eastern U.S. and among the top rated fly fishing rivers in the country. Stretching more than 55 miles across the Shenandoah Valley with two prominent forks extending approximately 100 miles each, the Shenandoah River features year-round fishing with the most productive months being April through September. Great fishing action can be enjoyed all along the Shenandoah but particularly on the snakelike South Fork for smallmouth bass, sunfish, rock bass and others, and in Shenandoah National Park for brook trout, in addition to the Rapidan River, commanding the top-rated trout stream in the northern section of the park. Other notable fly fishing spots in the area include Mossy Creek, James River and St. Mary's River. Not surprisingly, several exceptional outfitters operate within the region, such as Mossy Creek Fly Fishing in the historic city of Harrisonburg, Murray's Fly Shop in Edinburg and Shenandoah River Outfitters in Luray, which also features cabins, cottages and campsites. Other suggested places to stay include Village Inn in Harrisonburg, Prospect Hill in Louisa, the Country Place in Luray and the cabin rentals or camping at Shenandoah National Park.
Yellowstone River
Montana and Wyoming are home to such an enormous collection of legendary rivers, one could easily fill a complete list of America's Top 10 for fly fishing destinations between these two states positioned in the Western U.S. Take for example iconic rivers like the Blackfoot and Gallatin as well as the fabled rivers in Yellowstone National Park, such as Firehole, Gibbon and the Madison River. But for sheer enormity of fly fishing options, the Yellowstone River is arguably the premier freestone stream in the country. Extending 692 miles through Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota, the Yellowstone River is the only undammed river in the continental U.S. and features a wealth of fishing access points for visiting anglers. If one was trying to narrow it down to a few, the fishing action for rainbow, brook, brown and cutthroat trout is extraordinary near the city of Billings, the confluence with the Boulder River and through Paradise Valley. In addition to the camping and lodging options within Yellowstone National Park, there are campsites available at places like the Livingston/Paradise Valley KOA, Yellowstone River Campgrounds and Yankee Jim campground north of Gardiner. Lastly, there are a significant number of world-class fishing lodges operating in the area such as Bighorn River Lodge, Madison River Lodge, Madison Valley Ranch and Firehole Ranch, once named Orvis' Fly Fishing Lodge of the Year.
Related: Top Fishing Destinations In The U.S.
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