Zimbabwe alleges a 2nd American killed a lion with bow and arrow in illegal hunt months ago
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Now there are two: Zimbabwe accused a Pennsylvania doctor on Sunday of illegally killing a lion in April, adding to the outcry over a Minnesota dentist the African government wants to extradite for killing a well-known lion named Cecil in early July.
Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority accused Jan Casimir Seski of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, of shooting the lion with a bow and arrow in April near Hwange National Park, without approval, on land where it was not allowed.
Landowner Headman Sibanda was arrested and is assisting police, it said.
Seski is a gynecological oncologist who directs the Center for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
He’s also an active big-game hunter, according to safari outfitters and bow-hunting sites where kill shots identify “Dr. Jan Seski” as the man standing next to slain animals including elephants, a hippo, an ostrich and antelopes such as an impala, a kudu, and a nyala.
Obama orders steeper greenhouse gas cuts from US power plants
WASHINGTON — Aiming to jolt the rest of the world to action, President Barack Obama moved ahead Sunday with even tougher greenhouse gas cuts on American power plants, setting up a certain confrontation in the courts with energy producers and Republican-led states.
In finalizing the unprecedented pollution controls, Obama was installing the core of his ambitious and controversial plan to drastically reduce overall U.S. emissions, as he works to secure a legacy on fighting global warming. Yet it will be up to Obama’s successor to implement his plan, which reverberated across the 2016 presidential campaign trail.
Opponents planned to sue immediately, and to ask the courts to block the rule temporarily. Many states have threatened not to comply.
The Obama administration estimated the emissions limits will cost $8.4 billion annually by 2030. The actual price won’t be clear until states decide how they’ll reach their targets. But energy industry advocates said the revision makes Obama’s mandate even more burdensome, costly and difficult to achieve.
“They are wrong,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said flatly, accusing opponents of promulgating a “doomsday” scenario.
Ferguson shooting leads to passage of 40 new measures in states
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — When a white Ferguson policeman fatally shot a black 18-year-old nearly a year ago, the St. Louis suburb erupted in violent protests and the nation took notice. Since then, legislators in almost every state have proposed changes to the way police interact with the public.
The result: Twenty-four states have passed at least 40 new measures addressing such things as officer-worn cameras, training about racial bias, independent investigations when police use force and new limits on the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
Despite all that action, far more proposals have stalled or failed, the AP review found. And few states have done anything to change their laws on when police are justified to use deadly force.
National civil rights leaders praised the steps taken by states but said they aren’t enough to solve the racial tensions and economic disparities that have fueled protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere following instances in which people died in police custody or shootings.
“What we have right now in the country is an emerging consensus as to the need to act,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks. “What we don’t have is a consensus as to how to act, what to act on and how to do this in some kind of priority order.”
IOC to order tests for viruses in Rio Olympic waters
RIO DE JANEIRO — The International Olympic Committee said Sunday it will order testing for disease-causing viruses in the sewage-polluted waters where athletes will compete in next year’s Rio de Janeiro Games.
Before, the IOC and local Olympic organizers in Rio said they would only test for bacteria in the water, as Brazil and virtually all nations only mandate such testing to determine the safety of recreational waters.
But after an Associated Press investigation published last week revealed high counts of viruses directly linked to human sewage in the Olympic waters, the IOC reversed course after being advised by the World Health Organization that it should expand its testing.
“The WHO is saying they are recommending viral testing,” IOC medical director Dr. Richard Budgett told the AP. “We’ve always said we will follow the expert advice, so we will now be asking the appropriate authorities in Rio to follow the expert advice which is for viral testing. We have to follow the best expert advice.”
On Saturday, the International Sailing Federation became the first to break with the IOC’s insistence on bacteria-only testing, saying it would do its own independent tests for viruses.
US resumes formal security talks with Egypt after 6-year hiatus
CAIRO — Despite persistent human rights concerns, the United States on Sunday resumed formal security talks with Egypt that were last held six years ago and kept on hiatus until now amid the political unrest that swept the country in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Two days after the U.S. delivered eight F-16 warplanes to Egypt as part of a military support package that the Obama administration is boosting to help Egypt counter an increasing terrorist threat, Secretary of State John Kerry restarted the so-called “strategic dialogue” with Egyptian officials in Cairo. The dialogue was last held in 2009 and did not occur in subsequent years due to the Arab Spring and turmoil following the ouster of Egypt’s authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Kerry said the administration is committed to working with Egypt to enhance its military capabilities as it confronts growing threats from extremists, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula. That aid had been on hold until earlier this year because of human rights and democracy concerns in the wake of the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
Billionaire Charles Koch warns GOP hopefuls, donors on need for less intrusive government
DANA POINT, Calif. — Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch warned America is “done for” if the conservative donors and politicians he gathered at a retreat this weekend don’t rally others to their cause of demanding a smaller, less-intrusive government.
“History demonstrates that when the American people get motivated by an issue of justice, that they believe is just, extraordinary things can be accomplished,” he said on Sunday, going on to reference the American Revolution, abolition of slavery and women’s and civil rights movements. “We, too, are seeking to right injustices that are holding our country back.”
Listening intently inside a tightly guarded luxury resort in Southern California were 450 business leaders — many among them top political contributors — and the elected officials who receive that largesse. They’ve been strategizing with officials at the education, policy and activist groups that Koch and his brother David have spent years building up and funding.
That network has a budget of $889 million through the end of 2016 — and much of it will be directed at electing a Republican to the White House.
As such, five GOP contenders are speaking to the donor group, answering questions. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, responding to a question about why celebrity businessman Donald Trump is surging in GOP presidential polls, echoed Koch’s sentiments that the country is at a crossroads.
By wire sources