Investigators still seek motive
in D.C. Navy Yard massacre


A U.S. military veteran opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard Monday in a burst of violence that killed 13 people, including the gunman, and set off waves of panic at the military installation near the White House and U.S. Capitol.
 
The FBI identified the suspect as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas, a Navy contractor who had two gun-related brushes with the law. He was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2011 after a series of misconduct issues, a Navy official said.
 
He was killed in one of several gun battles with police after he entered the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters about 8:20 a.m. Eastern time and started picking off victims in a cafeteria from a fourth-floor atrium, witnesses said.
 
That set off pandemonium, with fire alarms sounding and security officers yelling at people to leave the building. Hundreds fled, some scrambling over walls to escape the gunfire. A loudspeaker announcement ordered those who remained to stay in their offices.
 
The motive remained unknown. He was armed with an AR-15  rifle, a double-barreled shotgun and a handgun, a federal law enforcement source said.
 
About 12 people were injured, Washington Mayor Vincent Gray said, though it was unclear how many of them were shot. About 3,000 people worked in the building.
 
Hours later, police were searching for a possible second suspect in an incident that raised questions about security at the Washington Navy Yard, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) south of the U.S. Capitol and three miles (five kilometers) from the White House.
 
Police patrol officers and active shooter teams put an end to the rampage, killing Alexis. Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the gun battles produced acts of heroism she could not yet reveal.
 
“Everybody was panicking and trying to decide which way to get out. A few of us just ran out the side exit,” Patricia Ward, who works at the Navy Yard, told reporters.
 
Security guards told people to “run, run, run,” Ms. Ward said.

It was the worst attack at a U.S. military installation since U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan opened fire on unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, killing 13 people and wounding 31 others. Hasan, who said he acted in retaliation for U.S. wars in Muslim countries, was convicted and sentenced to death by a military jury in August.
 
“We are confronting yet another mass shooting, and today it happened at another military installation, in our nation's capital,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.
 
Alexis, a one-time Texas resident who was known to worship at a Buddhist temple, served in the military and most recently was furthering his education while holding a job in the private sector, his father, Algernon Alexis, said in a telephone interview.
 
Alexis served full time in the U.S. Navy's Reserve from May 2007 to January 2011, becoming an aviation electrician, and he received the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, a Navy official said.
 
He was recently hired as a civilian information technology contractor to work on the Navy and Marine Corps intranet and was given a security clearance classified as secret, his company's chief executive said.
 
“He did have a secret clearance. And he did have a CAC ,” said Thomas Hoshko, CEO of the company, called The Experts, referring to a common access card by its initials.
 
Alexis was arrested on Sept. 4, 2010, in Fort Worth, Texas, on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm but the case was dropped when investigators determined he was cleaning his gun and it accidentally fired, Tarrant County prosecutors said.
 
He was also arrested in Seattle in 2004 for shooting out a construction worker's car tires in an anger-fueled blackout triggered by perceived disrespect, according to the Seattle Police Department.
 
In recent years, he developed a love for Thai culture, learning to speak the language and working at the “Happy Bowl” restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2008, said Tiki Confer, 64, owner of another Thai restaurant nearby. He worshipped at a Buddhist temple, she said.
 
“He was a very nice boy. When I saw his picture on the news, I was shocked,” Ms. Confer said.

The shooting rattled the U.S. capital, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to briefly suspend departures at Reagan National Airport. The District of Columbia Public Schools put six schools and an administration building on lockdown as a precaution.
 
The Washington Nationals baseball team postponed its game against the Atlanta Braves scheduled for Monday night at nearby Nationals Park.
 
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus called the Navy Yard shootings an attack on the Navy family, and the shooting revealed a potentially serious security breach.
 
Military personnel are generally banned from carrying weapons on military installations but most people with proper credentials are not routinely checked for firearms.
 
“It will be interesting to see as this develops who the shooter is, how he got in,” said Navy Commander Tim Jirus, who was in charge of evacuating the building. “Right now a lot of people are wondering just how safe the building is or just how safe the office environment is.”


Righting wrecked cruise ship
continues as expected in Italy


Salvage crews shifted the wrecked "Costa Concordia" cruise ship slowly off a rock shelf Monday in a painstaking process that looked set to continue into the early hours of the morning.
 
The most complex and costly salvage operation of its kind ever attempted began at 9 a.m. on the Italian island of Giglio after a three-hour delay due to an overnight storm, and progress was slower than originally estimated.
 
Still on its side, the flank of the ship was entirely off the rock shelf and raised far enough out of the sea to reveal a dirty brown water mark staining the white hull.
 
“The ship is reacting very well because it's rotating in a uniform fashion, which is what we expected but it's a pleasure to see it confirmed,” said Franco Porcellacchia, leader of Costa Cruise's technical team.

The "Concordia" was carrying more than 4,000 people when it hit rocks off Giglio on Jan. 13, 2012, and capsized with the loss of 32 lives. Two bodies have yet to be recovered, and underwater cameras failed to find any sign of them as darkness fell and searchlights lit up the port.
 
“They must still be under the keel of the 'Concordia,' and I hope after this finally they will have a grave . . . ,” said Luciano Castro, a 49-year-old journalist who was on the ship when it sank.
 
In contrast to the accident, a catalog of mishap and misjudgments under which the "Concordia's" captain Francesco Schettino faces multiple charges, the salvage operation has so far been a tightly coordinated engineering feat.
 
At a cost estimated at more than 600 million euros ($795 million), it is expected to be the most expensive maritime wreck recovery, accounting for more than half of an overall insurance loss of more than $1.1 billion.
 
The so-called parbuckling operation will see the 114,500-ton vessel slowly rotated upright using a series of huge jacks and cables prior to be towed away and broken up for scrap, probably next spring.
 
Italy's Civil Protection Authority said work would probably continue until dawn. Engineers said they were satisfied with progress and not concerned about the time.
 
A multinational team of 500 salvage engineers has been on Giglio for most of the past year, stabilizing the wreck and preparing for the lifting operation, which has never been attempted on such a large vessel in such conditions.
 
“We have done parbuckling before but never on a location like this,” said Nick Sloane, the South African engineer coordinating the recovery for contractor Titan Salvage.
 
“She is on the side of a mountain on the seabed, balanced on two reefs, and she is a really large ship - she's three football fields long, a hundred thousand tons plus ... So it's never been done on this scale,” he said.
 
A series of 11 towers with hydraulic mechanisms controlling 205-kg (450 lb) cables under the ship and attached to its side slowly rotated the vessel, aiming to place it on six specially built platforms drilled into the granite rock bed.
 
As the sunken side of the vessel inched out of the water, engineers eased the pressure from the cables, preparing for a second phase, when huge tanks fixed to the ship's exposed side begin filling with water, using the effect of gravity to pull the ship vertical.
 
Oil booms surround the vessel to intercept waste water and oil trapped in the ship, but no significant environmental damage was observed in the first hours of the operation.
 
Once the "Concordia" is upright, salvage teams will spend  months stabilizing it and preparing for it to be re-floated with the aid of additional giant buoyancy tanks before it is towed away for scrap.
 
Marine insurers who have to calculate the cost of covering a new breed of large cargo and cruise vessels have been watching progress closely, as any problems could have a significant impact on future insurance contracts.
 
On Giglio, locals were hoping the ship which has given their Tuscan holiday island global fame would soon be gone.
 
Giancarlo Farni, who said he was one of the first rescuers on the scene, said: “I saw it sink, and now I want to see it brought upright and taken away.”


1,500 homes said destroyed
by flooding in Colorado


Seven people were confirmed dead and at least 1,500 homes destroyed in Colorado after a week of rare, torrential rains along the eastern slopes of the Rockies, and helicopter search-and-rescue flights resumed Monday in flood-stricken areas.
 
Much of the evacuation effort was focused on remote foothill and canyon communities of Larimer and Boulder counties in north central Colorado, where 1,000 residents remained stranded due to washed-out roads, bridges and communication lines, the county sheriff's office said.
 
Drizzle and patchy morning fog that had hampered airborne emergency operations lifted by afternoon, allowing National Guard helicopters to return to the skies to help ground teams find trapped flood victims and carry them to safety.
 
Ranchers were advised to move livestock away from rain-swollen streams as floodwaters spread further east onto the prairie, and authorities warned residents to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes that might be moving to higher ground.
 
Larimer and Boulder counties bore the brunt of flash floods first unleashed last week by heavy rains that started last Monday and drenched Colorado's biggest urban centers along a 130-mile (210-kilometer) stretch in the Front Range of the Rockies.
 
At the peak of the disaster, the heaviest deluge to hit the region in four decades, floodwaters streamed down rain-saturated mountainsides northwest of Denver and spilled through canyons funneling the runoff into populated areas below.
 
The flooding progressed downstream and spread onto the prairie on Friday. During the weekend, waters topped the banks of the South Platte River and inundated farmland as high water rolled eastward in the direction of Nebraska.
 
State officials issued flood warnings to Nebraska residents along the South Platte. State emergency management spokeswoman Jodie Fawl said they began putting sandbags inside culverts beside a Union Pacific Railroad line in the town of Big Springs to prevent a wash-out of the tracks there.
 
The Colorado Office of Emergency Management issued a statement on the disaster, putting the official death toll at seven, up from five over the weekend, but a breakdown of the fatalities was not immediately available.
 
Separately, two women, aged 60 and 80, remained missing and presumed dead after their homes were washed away by flash flooding in the Big Thompson Canyon area, Larimer County sheriff's spokeswoman Jennifer Hillmann said. But she said local authorities were still not counting those two women as confirmed dead because their bodies had not been recovered.
 
Nearly 400 other people remain unaccounted for in Larimer County, with many believed to be still stranded in remote areas cut off by floodwaters and left without telephone, cell phone or Internet service, she said.
 
An estimated 1,500 homes have been destroyed and 4,500 more damaged in Larimer County alone, Ms. Hillmann said. In addition, 200 businesses have been lost and 500 damaged, she said, citing preliminary assessments by the county.
 
As the weather began to clear Sunday night and Monday, rescue workers fanned out across a flood zone encompassing an area nearly the size of Delaware.
 
“They'll take advantage of the weather today and help out everyone they can,” said Micki Trost, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Management. “We hope that those weather forecasts stay in our favor.”
 
The air rescue operations were the largest in the United States since flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, National Guard officials said.
 
Bryon Louis of the National Weather Service office in Boulder said some areas had been soaked by as much as 16 inches (40 cm) of rain in just three days, the average for an entire year in the semi-arid region.
 
President Barack Obama declared the area a major disaster over the weekend, freeing up federal funds and resources to aid state and local governments.
 
U.S. Army and National Guard troops have rescued 1,750 people cut off by washed-out roads in the mountain canyons of Boulder and Larimer counties, an Army spokesman, Maj. Earl Brown, said in a statement.
 
State officials would be unable to assess the overall damage until rescue efforts were complete and the floodwaters had receded, Trost said.
 
The prolonged showers were caused by an atmospheric low-pressure system that stalled over Nevada and western Utah, drawing extremely moist air out of Mexico and streaming it north into the southern Rockies, meteorologists said.
 
The last multi-day rainfall event to spawn widespread flooding in Colorado's Front Range occurred in 1969. But a single-night deluge from a 1976 thunderstorm and dam breach triggered a flash flood that killed more than 140 people in Big Thompson Canyon.


Obama  takes credit for actions
to reverse U.S. economic crisis


President Barack Obama has marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S. financial crisis. He claims credit for major progress in the recovery from near collapse five years ago but says more work lies ahead.

An economy shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs, banks saddled with worthless subprime mortages, millions losing their homes, and an auto industry near collapse: It was a downward spiral that began Sept. 15, 2008, with the bankruptcy and collapse of Lehman Brothers, followed by bailouts for other financial firms considered too big to fail.
 
And that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression.

When Obama took office in January 2009, the financial system itself was near collapse.

He spent much of his first term implementing a stimulus passed by Congress and bailing out the struggling auto industry. On Monday, he reviewed the past.

"We put people to work repairing roads and bridges, to keep teachers in our classrooms, our first responders on the streets," he said. "We helped responsible homeowners modify their mortgages so more of them could keep their homes.  We helped jump-start the flow of credit to help more small businesses keep their doors open.  We saved the American auto industry."

Other steps included cutting middle class and small business taxes, financial system reform, and establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But the U.S. economy continues to face challenges. 

Obama pointed to a growing income gap.

"Even though businesses are creating new jobs, and have broken record profits, the top one percent of Americans took home 20 percent of the nation's income last year, while the average worker isn't seeing a raise at all," he said. "In fact, that understates the problem.  Most of the gains have gone to the top one tenth of one percent."

Republican opponents in Congress rejected much of the president’s proposals for new stimulus and tax reform.

The negative political atmosphere in Washington, with a divided Congress, promises more conflict.

Republicans are threatening to defund Obama's signature healthcare law which could trigger a government shutdown, and a new battle looms over raising the government’s debt limit, something Obama says is non-negotiable. He claims the Republicans’ budget priorities would place the economy at risk.

He said, "Are some of these folks really so beholden to one extreme wing of their party that they are willing to tank the entire economy, just because they can't get their way on this issue?  Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points?"

The government runs out of spending authority Sept. 30.  Obama will continue his focus on the economy.  Congress will spend the next two weeks trying to hammer out a new budget.


Another firm gets permission
to resupply space station


NASA on Monday cleared a second commercial company to launch a cargo ship to the International Space Station, with blastoff slated this week from a Virginia spaceport.
 
If successful, Orbital Sciences Corp. would join privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX, in flying supplies to the space station, a $100 billion research complex that orbits about 250 miles (about 400 kilometers) above Earth.
 
Orbital Sciences' two-stage Antares rocket, which made a successful debut flight in April, is scheduled to lift off at 10:50 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday from the Virginia-owned Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, which operates under a lease agreement with NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
 
The 133-foot (40.5-meter) tall rocket will be carrying the company's first Cygnus cargo capsule.
 
Like SpaceX's Dragon capsules, which so far have made three flights to the space station, Cygnus is intended to restore a U.S. supply line to the station following the retirement of NASA's space shuttles in 2011.
 
“We have them lined up to use them fairly regularly,” NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters during a pre-launch press conference.
 
“This is what we said was going to be the fleet to take care of the U.S. segment, and we need to have it,” Suffredini said.
 
Russia, Europe and Japan also fly freighters to the station, a partnership of 15 nations.
 
Unlike traditional government contracts, NASA provided $684 million in seed funds as well as technical support to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to develop their rockets, capsules and launch facilities.
 
The firms also hold a combined $3.5 billion in contracts to fly cargo to the station for NASA.
 
SpaceX, which was awarded its development contract in 2006, is preparing to debut an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket later this month.
 
NASA wants SpaceX to have two or three missions under its belt with the new rocket before resuming supply runs to the station, Suffredini said.
 
Orbital Sciences, which began its partnership with NASA 18 months later, stands to collect a final $2.5 million development payment from NASA upon completion of its demonstration flight to the station.
 
If the launch occurs as planned Wednesday, astronauts aboard the station on Sunday plan to use a robotic crane to pluck the Cygnus capsule from orbit and attach it to a docking port.
 


.