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Pope blasts abortion in olive branch of sorts after denouncing obsession with rules

Pope blasts abortion in olive branch of sorts after denouncing obsession with rules

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis offered an olive branch of sorts to the doctrine-minded, conservative wing of the Catholic Church on Friday as he denounced abortions as a symptom of today’s “throw-away culture” and encouraged Catholic doctors to refuse to perform them.

Francis issued a strong anti-abortion message and cited Vatican teaching on the need to defend the unborn during an audience with Catholic gynecologists.

It came a day after he was quoted as blasting the church’s obsession with “small-minded rules” that are driving the faithful away. In an interview that has sent shockwaves through the church, Francis urged its pastors to focus on being merciful and welcoming rather than insisting only on such divisive, hot-button issues as abortion, gay marriage and contraception.

Even before the interview was published, some conservatives had voiced disappointment that Francis had shied away from restating such church rules. Francis explained his reason for doing so in the interview with the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, saying church teaching on such issues is well-known, he supports it, but that he doesn’t feel it is necessary to repeat it constantly.

EPA proposes first-ever carbon controls
on new power plants,
but effect ‘negligible’

WASHINGTON — Linking global warming to public health, disease and extreme weather, the Obama administration pressed ahead Friday with tough requirements to limit carbon pollution from new power plants, despite protests from the industry and Republicans that it would dim coal’s future.

The proposal, which would set the first national limits on heat-trapping pollution from future power plants, is intended to help reshape where Americans get electricity, moving from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It’s also a key step in President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, because it would put in motion proposals to end what he called “the limitless dumping of carbon pollution” from all power plants.

Under the law once the Environmental Protection Agency controls carbon at new plants, it will also control carbon at existing plants — a regulation the agency said Friday it would start work on immediately to meet a June 2014 deadline.

Yet the federal government’s own analysis of the new power plant proposal concludes that it would have a “negligible” impact on carbon dioxide emissions, pose little to no costs for the industry and provide no additional benefits to the public by 2022. That’s because it essentially locks in what was widely expected to happen anyway.

Chicago police chief says assault-style rifle used in shooting that injured 13 people

CHICAGO — Those behind a late-night attack at a southwest Chicago park in which 13 people were wounded, including a 3-year-old, used an assault-style weapon to spray the crowd with bullets, making it “a miracle” no one was killed, the city’s police superintendent said Friday.

Ballistics evidence shows that those behind Thursday night’s attack used a 7.62 mm rifle fed by a high-capacity magazine, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told reporters. That type of weapon, he said, belongs on a “battlefield, not on the street or a corner or a park in the Back of the Yards,” the neighborhood where the shooting took place.

“It’s a miracle in this instance that there have been no fatalities based upon the lethality of the weapon used at the scene,” McCarthy said, calling on lawmakers to restrict the sale of such weapons and choke off the flow of illegal guns into the city.

By wire sources

The attack happened shortly after 10 p.m. while the Cornell Square Park was still crowded with people watching a basketball game and enjoying a warm late summer night.

Investigators believe several people took part in the attack but weren’t sure yet how many fired shots. McCarthy said that based on witness interviews, it appears the attack was gang-related and that several victims are gang members.

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Al-Qaida kills at least 38 Yemeni troops as the group’s branches grow bolder across region

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Under a heavy fog, al-Qaida militants disguised in military uniforms launched car bomb attacks on three different security and military posts in southern Yemen on Friday, killing 38 soldiers in the group’s biggest attack in the country since last year.

The coordinated attacks point to how al-Qaida is exploiting the continued weakness of Yemen’s military to rally back here at a time when the group’s branches across the region grow more assertive. More than two years after U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, factions of the group he led are taking advantage of turmoil in multiple Arab nations to expand their presence and influence.

In Syria, foreign jihadis linked to or inspired by al-Qaida have become such a powerful force in the rebellion that the Syrian opposition on Friday accused them of being opportunists hijacking the uprising against President Bashar Assad. After the coup in Egypt toppled the Islamist president, al-Qaida leaders have called on sympathizers to join militants’ fight there against the military. Iraq’s al-Qaida branch has stepped up attacks in that country and extended operations into neighboring Syria.

Last month, the U.S. temporarily closed 19 diplomatic missions across the Middle East and North Africa after intelligence agencies intercepted a message between al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, also a one-time confidant of bin Laden who leads the Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

“I think there’s been a promiscuous rush to write al-Qaida’s obituary, and it’s always been presumptuous. It’s certainly had setbacks … but its resilience has always been more formidable than we imagine,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.

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Colorado races to replace roads washed away by floodwaters before winter descends on Rockies

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — With snow already dusting Colorado’s highest peaks, the state is racing to replace key mountain highways washed away by flooding, in some cases laying down crude, one-lane gravel roads just to throw a lifeline to isolated towns before winter descends.

More than 200 miles of state highways and at least 50 bridges were damaged or destroyed across this rugged region, plus many more county roads. Fully rebuilding all of them is sure to take years. But for now, the work has to be fast, even if that means cutting corners.

“Our priority is to reconnect these communities as quickly as we can, recognizing that we’re in a very tight timeframe,” said Amy Ford, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.

In many other parts of the country, road crews would be able to work through the fall and much of the winter. But in the Rockies, the cold weather comes earlier, stays longer and brings with it countless dangers. The first storms could hit as soon as next month.

That urgency was underlined this week when Trail Ridge Road, the high-elevation path through Rocky Mountain National Park and one of the few supply routes into the town of Estes Park, was temporarily closed because of snow. It normally stays open until October.

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Chaotic scene outside Southern Calif. Apple store where man recruited homeless to buy iPhones

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — An overnight campout for the new iPhone turned chaotic Friday morning when two men were arrested for fighting outside an Apple Store and a man’s plan to hire homeless people to wait in line for the coveted devices backfired, authorities said.

Dozens of people recruited at a downtown Los Angeles homeless shelter to buy iPhones in bulk at a Pasadena store were left unpaid, and they mobbed the man who had hired them, Pasadena police Lt. Jason Clawson said.

One of the homeless men was placed on a 72-hour mental health hold after running into the street in an enraged state, Clawson said. Television news footage showed police breaking up several scuffles and calming down furious customers.

Dominoe Moody, 43, told the Los Angeles Times he was driven the 10 miles or so to Pasadena from Los Angeles with several vanloads of people to wait in line overnight.

Moody was promised $40 but said he wasn’t paid because after handing the man an iPhone, the man was escorted away by police when people became angry with him.

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Arctic sea ice way up from dramatic low record set last year, but still far below average

WASHINGTON (AP) — The amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to the sixth lowest level, but that’s much higher than last year’s record low.

The ice cap at the North Pole melts in the summer and grows in winter; its general shrinking trend is a sign of global warming. The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said Friday that Arctic ice was at 1.97 million square miles when it stopped melting late last week.

It takes scientists several days to confirm sea ice hit reached its lowest level and is growing again.

The minimum level reached this summer is about 24 percent below the 20th Century average, but 50 percent above last year when a dramatic melt shattered records that go back to 1979.

Center director Mark Serreze says cooler air triggered a “considerable recovery,” from last year, while the ocean temperatures were still warmer than normal. But he adds climate change deniers who point to the bounce back from last year — which skewed the trend — would be wrong.