Nation & World briefs: 1-4-18

Massive storm roars into East Coast; record cold to follow

HARTFORD, Conn. — A massive winter storm roared into the East Coast on Thursday, threatening to dump as much as 18 inches of snow from the Carolinas to Maine and unleashing hurricane-force winds and flooding that closed schools and offices and halted transportation systems.

Forecasters expected the storm to be followed immediately by a blast of face-stinging cold air that could break records in more than two dozen cities and bring wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees this weekend.

Blizzard warnings and states of emergency were in wide effect, and wind gusts hit more than 70 mph in some places. Eastern Massachusetts and most of Rhode Island braced for as much as 3 inches of snow per hour.

Four people were killed in North and South Carolina after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said. Another fatality was reported near Philadelphia when a car could not stop at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill and slammed into a commuter train. A passenger in the vehicle was killed. No one on the train was hurt.

In New Jersey, Orlando Igmat’s car got stuck in a snowbank along the Garden State Parkway in Tinton Falls as he drove to work at Verizon. He waited a half hour for a tow truck to pull him out.

Trump-Bannon feud lays bare new fissure in fractious GOP

WASHINGTON — The acrimony surrounding former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s very public break with President Donald Trump escalated Thursday, suggesting a permanent split between the president and the pugilistic strategist who helped put him in the Oval Office. The new fissure in an already fractious Republican Party cast doubt on Bannon’s hopes to foment a movement centered on “Trumpism without Trump.”

White House officials described the president as furious at Bannon’s criticisms, laid out in an explosive new book that quoted the former aide questioning Trump’s competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

A parade of administration officials and allies worked to discredit Bannon as a disgruntled has-been. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went so far as to suggest that Bannon ought to be booted from Breitbart, the populist website he helps run.

“I certainly think that it’s something they should look at and consider,” she said.

Bannon had helped Trump form a coalition of anti-establishment Republicans, blue-collar working class and economic nationalists that launched him to the White House, but Trump had long ago grown frustrated that Bannon seemed to be overstepping his role as a staffer.

Dow Jones industrials climb above 25,000 for the first time

NEW YORK — The Dow Jones industrial average burst through the 25,000 point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000.

The Dow passed five 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25 percent gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics.

Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently.

The Dow has made a rapid trip from 24,000 points on November 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes.

“For a long while in 2017 I would say the biggest driver was excitement and anticipation over tax reform, but at a certain point I think there was a handover to global economic growth really helping to carry the stock market,” said Invesco Chief Global Markets Strategist Kristina Hooper.

Sessions terminates US policy that let legal pot flourish

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration threw the burgeoning movement to legalize marijuana into uncertainty Thursday as it lifted an Obama-era policy that kept federal authorities from cracking down on the pot trade in states where the drug is legal. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will now leave it up to federal prosecutors to decide what to do when state rules collide with federal drug law.

Sessions’ action, just three days after a legalization law went into effect in California, threatened the future of the young industry, created confusion in states where the drug is legal and outraged both marijuana advocates and some members of Congress, including Sessions’ fellow Republicans. Many conservatives are wary of what they see as federal intrusion in areas they believe must be left to the states.

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who represents Colorado, one of eight states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use, said the change contradicts a pledge Sessions made to him before being confirmed as attorney general. Gardner promised to push legislation to protect marijuana sales, saying he was prepared “to take all steps necessary” to fight the change, including holding up the confirmation of Justice Department nominees. Another Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, called the announcement “disruptive” and “regrettable.”

Colorado’s U.S. attorney, Bob Troyer, said his office won’t change its approach to prosecution, despite Sessions’ guidance. Prosecutors there have always focused on marijuana crimes that “create the greatest safety threats” and will continue to be guided by that, Troyer said.

The largely hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement set forth by Barack Obama’s Justice Department allowed the pot business to flourish into a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar industry that helps fund some state government programs. What happens now is in doubt.

Trump moves to vastly expand offshore drilling off US coasts

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday moved to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans with a plan that would open up federal waters off California for the first time in more than three decades.

The new five-year drilling plan also could open new areas of oil and gas exploration in areas off the East Coast from Georgia to Maine, where drilling has been blocked for decades. Many lawmakers in those states support offshore drilling, though the Democratic governors of North Carolina and Virginia oppose drilling off their coasts.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, also opposes offshore drilling near his state, as do the three Democratic governors on the West Coast.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the plan Thursday, saying that responsible development of offshore energy resources would boost jobs and economic security while providing billions of dollars to fund conservation along U.S. coastlines.

The five-year plan would open 90 percent of the nation’s offshore reserves to development by private companies, Zinke said, with 47 leases proposed off the nation’s coastlines from 2019 to 2024. Nineteen sales would be off Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic and seven in the Pacific, including six off California.

Aid group projects 48,000 births in crowded Rohingya camps

DHAKA, Bangladesh — An international aid agency projects that 48,000 babies will be born this year in overcrowded refugee camps for the Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh from neighboring Myanmar.

Save the Children warned in a report released Friday that the babies will be at increased risk of disease and malnutrition, and therefore of dying before the age of five. Most of the babies will probably be born at home in tents, the agency said.

“The camps have poor sanitation and are a breeding ground for diseases like diphtheria, measles and cholera, to which newborn babies are particularly vulnerable,” said Rachael Cummings, the agency’s health adviser in Cox’s Bazar, the nearest city to the camps. “This is no place for a child to be born.”

More than 600,000 Rohingya, a minority group from Rakhine state in western Myanmar, have fled what the United Nations says is a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar military and Buddhist mobs since late August last year. Many live in flimsy tents made of plastic and bamboo in camps and makeshift settlements. Almost 60 percent are children, many of whom suffer from disease and malnutrition, UNICEF has said.

A Bangladeshi official called the projection of 48,000 babies mind-boggling.

Swatting death call suspect threatened to kill grandmother

WICHITA, Kan. — A man accused of making a hoax emergency call that led to the fatal police shooting of a Kansas man once threatened to kill his grandmother if she reported him for phoning in a false bomb threat to a television station, according to news reports and court documents.

Tyler Barriss, 25, is accused of calling 911 last week with a fake story about a shooting and kidnapping at a Wichita home. The call was a case of “swatting,” in which a person makes up a false report to get a SWAT team to descend on an address. Police shot 28-year-old Andrew Finch when the unarmed Wichita man came to his door.

Barriss earlier pleaded no contest in a separate case on May 10, 2016, to one felony count each of false report of bomb to agency or business and malicious informing of false bomb in California. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

The Wichita Eagle reports that his 62-year-old grandmother wrote in a domestic violence case seeking a restraining order in 2015 from a California court that Barris had made “constant threats to beat my face bloody.”

He also allegedly made death threats against the woman, along with threats to destroy her home and dogs. He was ordered to move out of the house they shared and stay away from her, her home, her dogs, workplace and vehicle, according to the document. The order was later dismissed when he and his grandmother missed a court hearing.

Low oxygen levels, coral bleaching getting worse in oceans

WASHINGTON — Global warming is making the world’s oceans sicker, depleting them of oxygen and harming delicate coral reefs more often, two studies show.

The lower oxygen levels are making marine life far more vulnerable, the researchers said. Oxygen is crucial for nearly all life in the oceans, except for a few microbes.

“If you can’t breathe, nothing else matters. That pretty much describes it,” said study lead author Denise Breitburg, a marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “As seas are losing oxygen, those areas are no longer habitable by many organisms.”

She was on a team of scientists, convened by the United Nations, who reported that the drop in oxygen levels is getting worse, choking large areas, and is more of a complex problem than previously thought. A second study finds that severe bleaching caused by warmer waters is hitting once-colorful coral reefs four times more often than they used to a few decades ago. Both studies are in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science .

When put all together, there are more than 12 million square miles of ocean with low oxygen levels at a depth of several hundred feet, according to the scientists with the Global Ocean Oxygen Network. That amounts to an area bigger than the continents of Africa or North America, an increase of about 16 percent since 1950. Their report is the most comprehensive look at oxygen deprivation in the world’s seas.