Xi Jinping moves to left
to exert control over party


With ousted senior politician Bo Xilai jailed for life, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stamped his authority on the Communist Party by effectively warning he will not tolerate dissent as he seeks to push through tough economic reforms.

Bo was sentenced Sunday after being found guilty on charges of corruption, taking bribes and abuse of power. Since all courts are controlled by the party, the verdict was likely pre-ordained although a source with direct knowledge of the case said Monday that Bo had filed an appeal.

“It's killing one to warn a hundred,” a source with ties to the leadership said.

The ideological fractures exposed last year by Bo's fall from grace had hobbled Xi, forcing him to row back on an ambitious plan to rebalance the world's second largest economy, sources close to China's leadership have said.

The party's fear had been that Bo's supporters, who lauded him for the old-school leftist social welfare policies he championed as boss of the city of Chongqing, could remain a brake on reforms that favor private businesses and a greater reliance on market forces.

Xi needed the Bo affair settled because the next few weeks are critical for his government, which took office in March.

At a closed-door party plenum in November, Xi will push for more economic reforms and he needs unstinting support from the party's elite 200-member Central Committee.

The reforms Xi wants include opening up the banking sector to let in private players and enact interest rate reform, and introducing more competition in key industries dominated by state-owned giants, such as in the energy and telecommunications sectors, sources say.

Leftists are deeply suspicious of private enterprise and market reforms, believing they have led to the income inequality and the anything-goes economic growth that China grapples with today.

“For other senior officials, I think this is intimidating because the plenum is coming up,” said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based political commentator and historian.

Bo had been expected to rise to the top of the party until his career unraveled last year following a murder scandal in which his wife, Gu Kailai, was convicted of poisoning a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had been a family friend. She was given a suspended death sentence.

After his appointment as Chongqing party boss in 2007, the charismatic Bo, a princeling son of a late vice premier, turned the southwestern metropolis into a showcase of Mao-inspired red culture, as well as state-led economic growth. The leftists in the party flocked to his side.

Xi has been mindful of Bo's constituency and courted neo-leftists ahead of the trial at the expense of reform-minded liberals.

Shortly before the trial, Xi paid his respects at a villa once used by Mao Zedong, and then gave a widely publicized speech calling Marxism a must-study subject for party members.

Xi, in a sense, already has sought to assume Bo's mantle as the hero of the left.

“Ideologically speaking, Xi's shift to the left has been quite dramatic,” said Li Weidong, a writer and former editor who has followed Bo's case closely. “Bo has been kicked to the side but his policies have remained.”

That is a path that may not be sustainable, Li added.

“It will create an effect of left-wing politics but right-wing economics, which will become a problem long-term.”

Still, Bo's verdict is unlikely to be a real deterrent to the rampant corruption Xi has sought to tackle, despite the party and state media playing up the angle that all are equal before the law.

“This case had little to do with corruption. It's a political case,” said Zhang Ming, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing.


Most of Colorado's missing
have turned up still alive


Search teams in flood-ravaged areas of Colorado have accounted for all but a half dozen people, down from hundreds initially reported missing in the disaster nearly two weeks ago. Authorities said on Monday the body of an eighth victim has been recovered.
 
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden surveyed the devastated region by helicopter and pledged that disaster relief would continue even if there were a government shutdown stemming from a congressional budget clash over President Barack Obama's healthcare program.
 
“They will not shut down if Congress does not fund the government,” Biden said or recovery operations during a brief appearance at a Federal Emergency Management Agency center in Greeley, Colorado, north of Denver. “The help is going to remain.”
 
President Barack Obama has declared nine of Colorado's hardest-hit counties a major disaster area, making residents there eligible for direct federal grants to repair their flood-damaged homes, replace personal property and provide rental assistance.
 
The declaration also provides unemployment payments of up to 26 weeks to workers left temporarily jobless by the disaster and makes special low-interest loans available to farmers and small businesses to help cover their uninsured flood losses.
 
Authorities were winding down search-and-rescue efforts even as more heavy rain prompted a renewed flood warning for some areas. Biden was accompanied on his hour-long aerial tour by Emergency Management Agency chief Craig Fugate, Gov. John Hickenlooper and several members of Colorado's congressional delegation.
 
After evacuating thousands of survivors left stranded in washed-out areas of Larimer and Boulder counties, northwest of Denver, emergency management authorities said their focus has shifted to recovery initiatives and thorough damage assessments.
 
A new burst of heavy rains overnight prompted the National Weather Service to post a flood warning for the town of Kersey along the engorged South Platte River, just east of Greeley. The river was expected to crest about a foot above flood stage late Monday or early Tuesday.
 
Additional flooding was also possible in saturated fields and creeks farther east in low-lying stretches of Logan, Washington and Morgan counties, weather forecasters said.
 
The worst flooding to strike Colorado in about four decades swept the eastern slopes of the Rockies and prairie farmlands downstream the week before last, causing property losses across 17 counties estimated at $2 billion, including the destruction of at least 1,800 homes.
 
The confirmed death toll from the flooding rose to eight when Larimer County officials reported the body of a 79-year-old flood victim Evelyn Starner had been found on Saturday.
 
Six more Larimer County residents remained listed as unaccounted for, down from 82 on Friday. Search teams reached the last remote, isolated pockets of the flood zone over the weekend, county sheriff's spokesman John Schulz said.
 
Unless they surface in the next few days, those six are likely to be added to the list of missing and presumed dead, he said.
 
Ms. Starner was one of three Larimer County residents who had been listed as missing and presumed dead after their homes were washed away more than a week ago along the Big Thompson River. A 1976 flood disaster in the same vicinity claimed more than 140 lives.
 
Ms. Starner's remains were discovered near a ranch on the banks of the river. The bodies of two others believed swept away in Larimer County have yet to be recovered.
 
Compared with the estimated 1,200 people statewide whose whereabouts were unknown in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the unaccounted-for roster has fallen sharply as families reunite, evacuees register at shelters and survivors turn up in areas initially cut off by the floods.
 
Schulz said the last 16 people still awaiting evacuation in Larimer County were rescued Saturday, but nearly 370 others have opted to stay put even after losing sewage, fresh running water and other utility services.
 
The widespread flooding along the so-called Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, a region encompassing the state's most highly populated areas, was unleashed by heavy rains that started Sept. 9 and continued almost unabated for a week.
 
Days after the deluge began, floodwaters roared off rain-soaked mountainsides through canyons that carried torrents of runoff into communities below, sweeping homes from their foundations, crumbling roads and bridges and initially leaving some 12,000 people stranded.
 
Floodwaters spread out onto the plains east of the Rockies, swamping farmland along South Platte River and oil and gas production sites in the region, creating a toxic stew of industrial contaminants and wastewater.
 
Farmers in the northeastern corner of the state were particularly worried about their top cash crop, corn, which could be lost if water that has inundated low-lying prairie fields fails to drain away before the October harvest.


As U.S. moves to shutdown,
politicians solidify positions


As accusations fly between the two major political parties, Congress and the White House are headed to the latest in a series of showdowns that have nearly resulted in the partial shut down of the government.  This time it might happen, as two ideologies collide just as spending authorization runs out.

Analysts say such repetitive brinkmanship would be unlikely in other democracies around the world.

House Republicans celebrated Friday their government spending measure crippling the president's health care law.

Furious House Democrats are now accusing Republicans of threatening to close down the government rather than give in.

"This place is a mess.  Let's get our house in order," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, minority Leader of the House of Representatives.

At the heart of the battle is a clash over the role of government. The Tea Party, an anti-big government faction of the Republican Party,  emerged four years ago to oppose the president's signature reform of the health care system.

After Barack Obama pushed through health insurance reform to provide health coverage to millions, 

Republicans took back the U.S. House with a core of about 30 Tea Party-oriented members who say they are willing to take risks for their convictions.  

 "This is in many ways a takeover of the Republican Party by an extreme faction that did not really exist 10 years ago," said budget expert Stan Collender. 

Tea Party members are carrying out the wishes of voters in their districts by taking Congress to the brink, says Steve Bittle of George Washington University.

"Many of the more rebellious members, these Tea Party members, come from districts that have very solid Republican majorities," he said.  "They are really not worried about a challenge from the Democrats. They are worried about a challenge from the right-wing of their party."

At a luncheon for conservatives, Republican Raul Labrador blamed the threat of a shutdown on Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama.

"And if Harry Reid and the president want to shut down the government because all we are asking for is a simple delay of Obamacare, then I hope you write the story that way, and not in the way that we are the ones who are at fault," he said.

Republican Reps. Mark Meadows says Americans shouldn't worry.

"We have had 17, 17 government shutdowns, in our history.  And all of those were partial shutdowns," he said. "The longest one was 21 days.  No one ever didn't get paid ..."

Asked if other democracies could have showdowns on routine funding bills, analysts say it's hard to imagine.

"In parliamentary systems, a situation like this probably would have ended up in a call for new elections, maybe a vote of no confidence in the prime minister," Collender said.

"The next act in the drama will be in the Senate, where all eyes are focused on Majority Leader Harry Reid to see what he does with the House bill.  He has already said the Senate will not pass a bill that defunds the health care law.

 
Physicians see gun violence
from mental illness perspective


After yet another mass shooting in the U.S., when a gunman killed 12 people at a military facility in Washington last week, members of Congress are again talking about gun safety. Deep divisions on the issue kept Congress from passing new laws on gun control earlier this year even after 20 children were killed in a shooting at a Connecticut elementary school last December. But doctors are now adding their voices to the debate.

Across the nation, doctors are speaking out against gun violence.

At Medstar Washington Hospital where victims of the Navy Yard shooting were treated, Janis Orlowski said there is an "evil" in U.S. society.

"I may be the chief medical officer of a very large trauma center, but there's something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries, there's something wrong," she said.

A study published in the American Journal of Medicine indicates that gun ownership does not make a country safer. The report also found another factor in the level of gun violence: mental illness.

Those who committed mass shootings in the past few years in Colorado, Arizona, Texas and Virginia were all men who had serious mental illnesses and access to guns.

"Mentally ill people who are not in treatment, are more violent than the rest of the population," said Eliot Sorel, who is a psychiatrist at The George Washington University School of Public Health.

According to The National Institute of Mental Health, those with a serious mental illness are more likely to be violent if they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs or during an extreme state when they are out of touch with reality. But the institute also reports that most people with a serious mental illness are not violent.

However, statistics show that in the U.S., almost half of adults with a serious mental illness are not in treatment.

"Mental health is somewhat relegated and still is, kind of like an orphan as part of health system. So the access to those services are very limited," said Sorel.

Sorel also points to cultural aspects of American society, the value of individual rights and the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

He says to reduce the incidents of gun violence, it must be treated as a public health issue.

"We have the tools in public health to do a disciplined review of what is going on and to come up with some recommendations," he said.

Polls show most Americans agree that those with serious mental illnesses should not have access to firearms, but they wonder if the current mental health system is comprehensive enough to prevent mass shootings.


German hackers reporting
they broke Apple security


A group of German hackers claimed to have cracked the iPhone fingerprint scanner Sunday, just two days after Apple launched the technology that it promises will better protect devices from criminals and snoopers seeking access.
 
If the claim is verified, it will be embarrassing for Apple, which is betting on the scanner to set its smartphone apart from new models by Samsung and others running Google’s Android operating system.
 
Two prominent iPhone security experts said that they believed the German group, known as the Chaos Computing Club, or CCC, had succeeded in defeating Apple's Touch ID, though they had not personally replicated the work.
 
One of them, Charlie Miller, co-author of the iOS Hacker's Handbook, described the work as a complete break of Touch ID security. “It certainly opens up a new possibility for attackers.”
 
Apple representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
 
CCC, one the world's largest and most respected hacking groups, posted a video on its Web site that appeared to show somebody accessing an iPhone 5S with a fabricated print. The site described how members of its biometrics team had cracked the new fingerprint reader, one of the few major high-tech features added to the latest version of the iPhone.
 
The group said they targeted Touch ID to knock down reports about its marvels, which suggested it would be difficult to crack.
 
“Fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints,” a hacker named Starbug was quoted as saying on the CCC's site.
 
The group said it defeated Touch ID by photographing the fingerprint of an iPhone's user, then printing it on to a transparent sheet, which it used to create a mold for a fake finger.
 
CCC said similar processes have been used to crack the vast majority of fingerprint sensors on the market.
 
“I think it's legit,” said Dino Dai Zovi, another co-author of the iOS Hacker's Handbook. “The CCC doesn't fool around or over-hype, especially when they are trying to make a political point.”
 
Touch ID, which was only introduced on the top-of-the-line iPhone 5S, lets users unlock their devices or make purchases on iTunes by simply pressing their finger on the home button. It uses a sapphire crystal sensor embedded in the button.
 
Data used for verification is encrypted and stored in a secure enclave of the phone's A7 processor chip.
 
Two security experts who sponsored an impromptu competition offering cash and other prizes to the first hackers who cracked the iPhone said they had reviewed the information posted on the CCC Web site, but wanted more documentation.
 
“We are simply awaiting a full video documentation and walk through of the process that they have claimed,” said mobile security researcher Nick DePetrillo, who started the contest with another security expert, Robert Graham. “When they deliver that video we will review it.”
 
The two of them each put up $100 toward a prize for the contest winner, then set up a Web site inviting others to contribute. While the booty now includes more than $13,000 in cash, it was not clear that the CCC would receive the full payout, even if DePetrillo and Graham declared them winners.
 
A micro venture capital firm known as I/O Capital, which had offered to pay $10,000 in prize money, issued a press release late on Sunday saying that it would make its own determination about who won the contest.