In Brief | Nation & World | 12-22-15

US troops killed near Bagram, Taliban insurgency intensifies

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden motorcycle into a joint NATO-Afghan patrol Monday, killing six American troops in the deadliest attack on international forces since August. Two U.S. troops and an Afghan were wounded.

The attack happened as Taliban fighters overran a strategic district in southern Helmand province, the scene of some of the deadliest fighting between the Taliban and international combat forces prior to the 2014 withdrawal, adding weight to Pentagon predictions that the insurgency is gaining strength.

The soldiers were targeted as they moved through a village near Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military facility in Afghanistan, NATO and Afghan officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

A U.S. official confirmed that six American troops were killed and two wounded. An Afghan was also wounded. The official was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those affected in this tragic incident, especially during this holiday season,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. William Shoffner, head of public affairs at NATO’s Resolute Support base in the Afghan capital Kabul, said in a statement.

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Obama: Trump exploiting blue-collar fears in campaign

HONOLULU — President Barack Obama, in a broadside against the leading Republican presidential candidate, says billionaire Donald Trump is “exploiting” the fears that working-class men in particular have about the economy and stagnant wages.

In a year-end interview with NPR News, Obama said demographic changes combined with the “economic stresses” people have been feeling because of the financial crisis, technology and globalization have made life harder for those who rely on a steady paycheck.

“Particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck,” Obama said in the radio interview released Monday. “You combine those things and it means that there is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear. Some of it justified but just misdirected.”

“I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that. That’s what he’s exploiting during the course of his campaign,” Obama said.

Trump has called for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and has made inflammatory comments about Hispanics and others.

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Suspect in Vegas crash said she was stressed living in car

LAS VEGAS — A homeless woman accused of slamming a car carrying her 3-year-old daughter into a crowd of pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip told authorities she was stressed out after being chased by security guards from parking lots where she had been trying to sleep before the crash, according to a police report obtained Monday.

Lakeisha N. Holloway, 24, resided in Oregon and had been in Las Vegas for about a week in her 1996 Oldsmobile sedan, parking it at garages throughout the city, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.

After her arrest, Holloway “described a stressful period today where she was trying to rest/sleep inside her vehicle with her daughter but kept getting run off by security of the properties she stopped at,” the police report states.

“She ended up on the Strip, ‘a place she did not want to be,’” the report quoted her as saying. “She would not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk but remembered a body bouncing off her windshield, breaking it.”

Investigators said Holloway had run out of money and she and her daughter had been living in the car. Police believe she was headed to Dallas to find her daughter’s father after they had a falling out.

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Shipping mania: rushing to deliver millions of holiday gifts

SCOTT MAYEROWITZ, AP Airlines Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The humming is constant; a low-pitched drone from 155 miles of conveyer belts racing packages in every direction. Boxes shift from one belt to another and bump into a metal wall. Thud. Thud. Thud. In the background, trucks beep and jet engines roar.

Forget jingling bells and ho-ho-hos, these are now the sounds of the holidays.

As more gift-givers shop online, there are more packages to ship. Online sales now account for 10 percent of all shopping and 15 percent during the holidays, according to research firm Forrester. That leaves FedEx and UPS with a combined 947 million packages to deliver between Black Friday and Christmas Eve — up 8 percent from last holiday season’s forecasts.

For UPS, the key to getting all those last-second orders delivered on time is Worldport, a massive sorting facility located between the Louisville airport’s two main runways. On a typical night, 1.6 million packages pass through. Just before Christmas, there can be 4 million, peaking on Monday night.

(UPS plans to deliver about 36 million packages on Tuesday, its busiest day of the year, up from 35 million last year. That includes all of Worldport’s shipments plus those traveling by truck.)

Standing next to the runways just after midnight, jet headlights can be seen lined up miles away. Every 60 seconds another plane lands on one of the two parallel runways and pulls up to the facility — the size of 90 football fields — to unload its goods.

If everything goes right, the packages are just touched twice by humans: first when pulled out of large aircraft shipping containers and then again at the end of their journey through the conveyors and into a new bin and another jet.

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Lindsey Graham ends his 2016 presidential campaign

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham ended his 2016 campaign for president Monday, saying he remains committed to working to achieve security for the American people and helping the GOP expand its base.

With just over a month to go until voting begins, the South Carolina senator — the only candidate from one of the four early voting states — posted a video telling supporters “we have run a campaign we can be proud of.” He noted his emphasis on national security and improving the nation’s balance sheet, saying he “put forth bold and practical solutions to big problems.”

In a taped interview broadcast later on CNN, the 60-year-old senator warned that the election is “not about 2016” but instead “an election for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.” He warned that the current GOP front-runner Donald Trump cannot defeat a Democrat like Hillary Clinton “without some major adjustments.”

Having mustered little support in the polls, Graham’s exit will not have an immediate effect on the race in the final stretch before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary. But his decision could produce a ripple effect in his home state, which follows New Hampshire with a Feb. 20 primary. Graham will likely be a highly sought-after endorsement for those still in the race, though he’s given no indication of who he would back.

By ending his campaign, Graham deprives the GOP field of perhaps its most aggressive military hawk — he said even before the June 1 launch of his campaign that more American servicemen and women “will die in Iraq and eventually in Syria to protect our homeland.” That was often a stark contrast to other candidates who joined Graham in blasting President Barack Obama as weak in his approach to Islamic State militants, yet hedged when it came to questions of ground forces.

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Street gangs migrate from drugs to white-collar crimes

NEW YORK — The Van Dyke Money Gang in New York made off with more than $1.5 million this year — but it wasn’t in gunpoint robberies or drug running, it was a Western Union money order scheme. In New Jersey, 111 Neighborhood Crips used a machine to make dozens of fake gift cards for supermarkets, pharmacies and hardware stores. In South Florida, gangs steal identities to file false tax returns.

These aren’t members of an organized Mafia or band of hackers. They’re street crews and gangs netting millions in white-collar schemes like identity theft and credit card fraud — in some instances, giving up the old ways of making an illicit income in exchange for easier crimes with shorter sentences.

“Why would you spend time on the street slinging crack when you can get 10 years under federal minimums when in reality you can just bone up on how to make six figures and when you get caught you’re doing six months?” said Al Pasqual, director of fraud security at the consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research.

Law enforcement officials say they see increasingly more gangs relying on such crimes. This year, more than three dozen suspected crew members have been indicted in separate cases around the country. Grand larcenies in New York City account for 40 percent of all crime last year — compared with 28 percent in 2001. About 5 percent of Americans nationwide have experienced some kind of identity theft, with Florida leading the country in complaints.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton wrote in an editorial in the city’s Daily News last week that white-collar crime was being committed by gang members “to an astonishing degree.”

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Study: Some cardiac arrest victims ignore warning symptoms

WASHINGTON — Sudden cardiac arrest may not always be so sudden: New research suggests a lot of people may ignore potentially life-saving warning signs hours, days, even a few weeks before they collapse.

Cardiac arrest claims about 350,000 U.S. lives a year. It’s not a heart attack, but worse: The heart abruptly stops beating, its electrical activity knocked out of rhythm. CPR can buy critical time, but so few patients survive that it’s been hard to tell if the longtime medical belief is correct that it’s a strike with little or no advance warning.

An unusual study that has closely tracked sudden cardiac arrest in Portland, Oregon, for over a decade got around that roadblock, using interviews with witnesses, family and friends after patients collapse and tracking down their medical records.

About half of middle-aged patients for whom symptom information could be found had experienced warning signs, mostly chest pain or shortness of breath, in the month before suffering a cardiac arrest, researchers reported Monday. The research offers the possibility of one day preventing some cardiac arrests if doctors could figure out how to find and treat the people most at risk.

“By the time the 911 call is made, it’s much too late for at least 90 percent of people,” said Dr. Sumeet Chugh of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, who led the study reported in Annals of Internal Medicine. “There’s this window of opportunity that we really didn’t know existed.”

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Bill Cosby sues model Beverly Johnson over drugging claim

LOS ANGELES — Bill Cosby sued one of his most vocal accusers for defamation Monday, accusing supermodel Beverly Johnson of fabricating claims that the comedian drugged and tried to sexually assault her in the 1980s.

The lawsuit is part of a new legal strategy by Cosby to attack some of the women accusing him of sexual abuse in court. Cosby last week countersued several women accusing him of defamation, but the lawsuit against Johnson is the first time the comedian has taken legal action against a woman who hasn’t sued him first.

Cosby’s lawsuit accuses Johnson of lying about an incident in which she says Cosby drugged her with a cappuccino in his New York home before letting her go after she angrily rebuked his advances.

The suit contends Johnson, 63, has been using the story — first told in a Vanity Fair story and repeated in numerous interviews and a memoir — to try to rekindle her career.

Johnson’s “false allegations against Mr. Cosby have been the centerpiece of her attempted resurgence and she has played them to the hilt, repeatedly and maliciously publishing the false accusations in articles, interviews, and television appearances,” Cosby’s lawsuit states.

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NFL suspends Giants WR Beckham for 1 game

NEW YORK — Losing control during Sunday’s loss to the Panthers will cost Giants star receiver Odell Beckham Jr. one game.

The NFL on Monday suspended Beckham for next weekend’s visit to Minnesota for his conduct against Carolina, when he drew three personal foul penalties. The league cited “multiple violations of safety-related playing rules.”

Beckham appealed the decision. His case will be heard by either James Thrash or Derrick Brooks, the hearing officers jointly appointed by the NFL and the players’ union.

Without Beckham, the Giants (6-8) would be missing their best offensive weapon as they try to stay alive in the NFC East race.

Beckham and Panthers cornerback Josh Norman tangled from the beginning of the Panthers’ 38-35 victory. At one point, Beckham delivered a diving helmet-to-helmet hit on Norman while blocking.