Coordinating couple: Josh Brolin and fiancée went all black for 'Everest' premiere
osh Brolin attended Wednesday’s Hollywood premiere of Everest at the TCL Chinese Theatre with his fiancée, Kathryn Boyd. The pair coordinated with all-black ensembles and similarly slicked-back hair.
LOOK OUT, PDA!
Smooch! (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Brolin plays Beck Weathers in the movie based on the true story of climbers stuck in a storm onMt. Everest.
Other Everest actors at the premiere included:
A BEARDED JAKE GYLLENHAAL
His beard is even longer in the movie. He plays Scott Fischer. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
A BLUE-SUITED JOHN HAWKES
Lookin’ sharp! (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images)
AND A BLONDE JASON CLARKE
He dyed his hair that color for another movie. He plays Rob Hall. (EPA/Mike Nelson)
Brolin also got to pose with the real Beck Weathers, who also attended the premiere.
Beck Weathers, left, is played by Josh Brolin in the drama ‘Everest,’ which is based on true events. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Latest military lab concerns involve plague bacteria, deadly viruses
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's most secure laboratories may have mislabeled, improperly stored and shipped samples of potentially infectious plague bacteria, which can cause several deadly forms of disease, USA TODAY has learned.
The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionflagged the practices after inspections last month at an Army lab in Maryland, one of the Pentagon's most secure labs. That helped prompt an emergency ban on research on all bioterror pathogens at nine laboratories run by the Pentagon, which was already reeling from revelations that another Army lab in Utah had mishandled anthrax samples for 10 years.
Army Secretary John McHugh ordered the research moratorium on Sept. 2, Pentagon officials say, out of an abundance of caution.
Moreover, officials point out that continuing testing has shown the suspect samples of plague contain a weakened version, and not the fully virulent form that was of concern to lab regulators at the CDC.
There is no danger to the public from the plague and encephalitis specimens found in the labs, said a senior Defense department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to speak publicly about some of the specifics of the pathogens. After extensive testing, no danger has been found to scientists and researchers who have worked with the vials, the official said. Final test results are expected by the end of the month.
However, for the first time since the scandal broke in May about an Army lab's botched handling of anthrax, the Pentagon is now acknowledging that worries now extend to other lethal agents that it studies. In addition to the plague samples and some additional anthrax specimens, the CDC has raised concerns about military labs' handling of specimens created from two potentially deadly viruses that are also classified as bioterror pathogens: Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and Eastern equine encephalitis virus, which can cause rare but serious illnesses in people, including deadly inflammation of the brain.
The bacteria that cause plague, Yersinia pestis, can cause several types of serious and potentially fatal illnesses: bubonic plague, which has symptoms that include swollen lymph nodes; pneumonic plague, which involves the infection spreading to the lungs; and septicemic plague, which may involve skin and other tissues turning black and dying. It's the pathogen often blamed for the Black Death that killed millions of people in Europe during the 14th century. Today antibiotics can be used to treat the diseases, but plague still kills about 11% of those sickened, according to the CDC.
Untreated pneumonic plague has a fatality rate of about 93% and can be spread from person to person through aerosols generated during coughing.
The suspect specimens, which may be live despite being labeled as killed or weakened, indicate a wider range of dangerous bioterror pathogens being handled using sloppy safety practices at laboratories operated by the U.S. military. They also further illustrate the risks faced by other scientists who rely on pathogen "death certificates" to know whether or not a provided sample is still infectious and can be worked with safely without special protective equipment. An ongoing USA TODAY Media Network investigation has revealed numerous mishaps at government, university and private labs that operate in the secretive world of biodefense research prompting growing concern in Congress and among biosafety experts.
Last week's announcement on the moratorium failed to note the CDC's concerns about the plague and equine encephalitis. Instead the Pentagon traced the ban to the mishandling of anthrax at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, called a "massive institutional failure" by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. An ongoing international investigation has found that Dugway used an ineffective irradiation method and unwittingly shipped live anthrax — labeled as killed specimens — for more than a decade that ended up in research facilities in all 50 states and several foreign countries. Although no illnesses have been reported as a result of the mistakes, several researchers who handled the specimens were put on antibiotics as a precaution.
In a statement this week to USA TODAY, Army spokesman Dov Schwartz said the CDC's concerns about the plague and encephalitis directly contributed to McHugh's ordering of the moratorium. An Aug. 17 CDC inspection at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland raised questions as to whether a strain of Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes plague, was infectious even though it was stored in an area designated for non-infectious material.
The new CDC investigation is focused on specimens created and stored by Dugway, Edgewood and two other military labs for further distribution by the Defense Department's Critical Reagents Program, a scientific materials supply group that offers a catalog of what are supposed to be "inactivated" and other pathogen specimens for researchers to use in developing and testing biodefense products, such as detection equipment and diagnostic tests.
Lab regulators at the CDC declined to be interviewed but acknowledged they are investigating issues at the four labs and the Critical Reagents Program. "CDC has identified a number of transfers of concern involving multiple organisms," the agency said in a statement in response to USA TODAY's questions.
Most of the shipments of the specimens went to other Defense Department facilities, the CDC said, and the agency's investigators are "working to track shipments and confirm the safety of those working with these materials." It is uncertain at this stage of the investigation, the CDC said, whether the material in the shipments contained live "select agent" pathogens, or a killed or weakened version that doesn't pose a severe risk to public health and is exempt from federal regulation.
Select agent is the government's term for certain viruses, bacteria and toxins that are regulated because of their potential to be used as biological weapons and the potential risks they pose to public health and agriculture.
"At this time, there is nothing to suggest risk to the health of workers or the general public," the CDC said.
Vials of plague specimens were the first to draw the CDC's concerns during an Aug. 17 inspection at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. How those samples were being handled prompted lab regulators to conduct a review of the labeling of specimens offered to other labs through the Critical Reagents Program's catalog, the Army's Schwartz said.
"The CDC raised questions about the labeling of some material listed within the catalog, including a strain of Bacillus anthracis and derivatives of equine encephalitis viruses, and consequently, whether this material was properly handled and shipped by the Department," Schwartz said. Bacillus anthracis is the bacterium that causes anthrax.
Last week USA TODAY was the first to report that the Pentagon had ordered an immediate moratorium on work with a wide range of potential bioterror bacteria, viruses and toxins at nine biodefense laboratories while they perform safety reviews to ensure they are properly handling select agent pathogens.
McHugh issued his order for the sweeping safety review two days after lab regulators at the CDC on Aug. 31 ordered Dugway’s labs to suspend work will all types of select agent pathogens because of new revelations about sloppy biosafety practices at the Utah facility. Dugway officials, in testing surfaces in their laboratories, detected anthrax bacteria on the floors of two rooms where staff had worked with the deadly pathogen — an area where it shouldn't have been found.
The military labs covered by the safety review and moratorium include the four that produce specimens for the Critical Reagents Program: U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Dugway, the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center and the Naval Medical Research Center's Biological Defense Research Directorate. McHugh's Sept. 2 order also called for "validating" current inventories, catalog items and record keeping for the military's Critical Reagents Program (CRP) and "ensuring that all materials associated with the CRP are properly accounted for." The labs were given 10 days to report back the findings of their safety reviews, according to McHugh's memo.
Read full coverage of USA TODAY's ongoing investigation of safety issues at labs nationwide: biolabs.usatoday.com.
Former tennis star James Blake mistakenly tackled by NYPD
(CNN)This wasn't the greeting Olympian James Blake is used to getting in New York during the U.S. Open.
The former tennis star says as many as five plainclothes police officers tackled and handcuffed him Wednesday outside his Manhattan hotel, according to the New York Daily News.
Blake, 35, was waiting for a car to pick him up and take him to the tennis tournament, where he's doing corporate appearances, the paper said.
New York police told CNN that Blake was detained during an ongoing investigation after a witness misidentified him.
"I'm shaken up," Blake said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "A couple bumps and bruises, but all right."
Detectives from the Identity Theft Task Force were investigating the purchase of cell phones using fraudulent credit cards, two law enforcement sources told CNN.
Investigators organized a sting operation at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where phones were delivered to a male suspect later taken into custody, the law enforcement sources said.
That suspect identified two people in the hotel's lobby to whom he had delivered cell phones purchased with a fraudulent credit card, the sources added.
Blake, once ranked No. 4 in the world, was one of the people placed in handcuffs but was let go shortly after a retired New York police officer informed detectives that he was a tennis player.
"Once Blake was properly identified and found to have no connection to the investigation, he was released from police custody immediately," the New York Police Department said in a statement.
The second person identified by the suspect was taken into custody, the sources said.
'It's blatantly unnecessary'
Blake suffered a cut to his left elbow and bruises to his left leg, according to the Daily News.
The former tennis pro, whose father was black and whose mother is white, said he doesn't understand why the officers roughed him up. The Daily News reported they are white.
"In my mind there's probably a race factor involved, but no matter what, there's no reason for anybody to do that to anybody," he told the News.
"I was just standing there. I wasn't running. It's not even close (to being OK). It's blatantly unnecessary."
Blake told "Good Morning America" that he initially thought a friend was running toward him to try and surprise him with a bear hug.
Instead, "he picked me up and body-slammed me and put me on the ground and told me to turn over and shut my mouth and put the cuffs on me," Blake told ABC.
He said he cooperated and tried to explain who he was and provide his identification but that his explanations were ignored.
New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton has ordered an internal affairs probe into the incident. But he flatly denied accusations that race played a role in targeting Blake.
"Sorry, race has nothing at all to do with this," Bratton told CNN's "New Day" on Thursday. "If you look at the photograph of the suspect, it looks like the twin brother of Mr. Blake. So let's put that nonsense to rest right now."
When asked why Blake was tackled during a probe of a nonviolent crime, Bratton said the internal affairs investigation is in its early stages.
Bratton said he watched video of the incident and was concerned about what he called "the inappropriate amount of force in the arrest."
The footage has already led to one of the officers' being moved to desk duty, Bratton said.
Police have not publicized the surveillance video from the hotel.
Italy's top court: Amanda Knox conviction based on poor case
Italy’s top criminal court on Monday said the murder case of Amanda Knox had “stunning flaws” — and that prosecutors brought it to trial with an “absolute lack of biological traces” tying Knox and her co-defendant, former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, to the murder of Knox’s British roommate.
The five-judge panel, explaining why it threw out the pair’s convictions in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, said they did so in part because there was no proof Knox and Sollecito were in the bedroom where Kercher was fatally stabbed. Knox and Kercher shared an apartment as students in Perugia.
The March ruling cleared Knox and Sollecito once and for all in Kercher’s murder.
Carlo Dalla Vedova, one of Knox’s lawyers, said Knox was “very satisfied and happy to read this decision. At the same time, it’s a very sad story. It’s a sad story because Meredith Kercher is no longer with us, and this is a tragedy nobody can forget.”
In a statement issued Monday, Knox said: “I am deeply grateful that the Italian Supreme Court has filed its opinion and forcefully declared my innocence. This has been a long struggle for me, my family, my friends, and my supporters. While I am glad it is now over, I will remain forever grateful to the many individuals who gave their time and talents to help me.”
Knox said she would “now begin the rest of my life with one of my goals being to help others who have been wrongfully accused.”
The case began on Nov. 2, 2007, when the body of Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Surrey, England, was found in the bedroom of the apartment she and Knox shared. Kercher’s throat had been cut and she had been sexually assaulted.
The case attracted worldwide attention, with Knox, a native of Washington state, portrayed both as a harmless innocent and a “sex-crazed killer,” The Guardianreported.
Italy's highest court overturned the murder conviction against Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Friday over the 2007 slaying of Knox's roommate, bringing a definitive end to the high-profile case. (March 27) AP
Italian law requires that the so-called Court of Cassation issue formal written explanations for its rulings. The 52-page legal motivazioni, published on Monday, detailed the reasons for the acquittal of Knox, a U.S. exchange student, and Sollecito, who each served four years in prison for Kercher’s murder before they were released and then retried.
In the statement, the judges said the trial “had oscillations which were the result of stunning flaws, or amnesia, in the investigation and omissions in the investigative activity,” The Guardian reported. They also said investigators, under intense international media pressure, compromised the investigation. The international spotlight, they wrote, “resulted in the investigation undergoing a sudden acceleration” that “certainly didn’t help the search for substantial truth.”
Amanda Knox was convicted in 2009 for the murder of her housemate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Umbria, Italy, where they were both students. She served four years of a 26-year sentence before the murder conviction was overturned in October 2011. Now she is working to move on with her life. Scott Eklund, Red Box Pictures, for USA TODAY
They also said prosecutors and lower court judges never established a clear motive for Knox, who is now 28, and Sollecito, 31. Instead, they said, the officials offered a “theory of complicity,” suggesting that Knox had been resentful of Kercher with few facts to back up the assertion.
The judges said evidence in the case pointed to one suspect: Rudy Guede, a drifter from Ivory Coast, who received a 16-year prison sentence for Kercher’s murder following a fast-track trial in 2008.
They said the only crime of which Knox was guilty was the false accusation she made to police days after the killing, in which she blamed her boss, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, a bar owner, for the crime. Lumumba spent two weeks in jail before he was exonerated, The Guardian reported.
Obama Channels Kennedy, Reagan in Iran Deal Defense
Supporting the pact is 'not even close' to a tough call, the president told an audience at American University.
Evoking attempts by his predecessors John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to pre-empt nuclear war against the Soviets, President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged members of Congress and those influencing them – including an outraged Israel – to support his administration's agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program.
"This deal is not just the best choice among alternatives. This is the strongest non-proliferation agreement ever negotiated," Obama said at American University in Washington, the same venue where Kennedy spoke about preventing nuclear war with Russia 52 years earlier. "And because this is such a strong deal, every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support."
"I've had to make a lot of tough calls as president," he added. "But whether or not this deal is good for American security is not one of those calls. It's not even close."
Obama referenced Reagan's assertion that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means, as well as Kennedy's caution that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war.
He also stressed that while the deal contains provisions that will last only 15 years, the Reagan-spurred START treaty limiting the weapons capabilities of the U.S. and Soviet Union covered the same amount of time.
"That's how arms control agreements work," Obama said.
The room of roughly 250 people occasionally applauded Obama following his repeated contrasting of the deal, announced in Vienna last month, against the logic that brought America into war with Iraq in 2003. The president emphasized that the most vocal domestic critics of the deal are many of those who supported that war. But, he said, they have not learned from the subsequent decade.
Walking away from the deal now, Obama said, would only further embolden Iran and damage America's reputation abroad.
"How can we in good conscience justify war before we've tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives?" Obama said.
"That should be a lesson we've learned from over a decade of war," he added. We should "worry less about being labeled weak, [and] worry more about getting it right."
In the lengthy address, Obama rejected some of the most prominent arguments against the deal – voiced by critics like Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – including that Iran may delay inspectors' ability to follow through on suspicions of cheating and that billions of dollars in sanctions relief would aid Iran in sponsoring terrorism.
After the remarks, Graham and McCain released a joint statement calling Obama's speech "just another example of his reliance on endless straw men to divert attention from his failed policies."
“It is particularly galling to hear the president try to defend his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming that its critics also supported the war in Iraq. Having presided over the collapse of our hard-won gains in Iraq, the rise of the most threatening terrorist army in the world, the most devastating civil war and humanitarian catastrophe in generations in Syria, the spread of conflict and radicalism across the Middle East and much of Africa, a failed reset with Russia, and escalating cyberattacks and other acts of aggression for which our adversaries pay no price, the president should not throw stones from his glass house," the senators said.
Obama's speech came as members of his administration testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill before a Senate committee, aiming to convince lawmakers to support the deal but admitting that Iran is unlikely to curtail its support of terrorists.
"I expect we’ll continue to see that," Adam Szubin, acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, told members of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. "The alternative that’s put out there, though, doesn’t make sense to me strategically. … We’ve decided that we need to address the nuclear threat and then turn to the terrorism.”
Congress is expected to vote on whether to support the agreement after returning from August recess, and Obama has said he would veto any measure that attempts to sink the deal. As support for the deal continues to trickle in from key senators, it remains unclear whether the two-thirds majority opposition in Congress exists to override the veto.
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