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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2016
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Seoul: North Korea’s ifth nuke
test ‘fanatic recklessness’
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said it conducted a
“higher level” nuclear test explosion on Friday that will allow it
to inally build “at will” an array of stronger, smaller and lighter
nuclear weapons. It was the North’s ifth atomic test and the sec-
ond in eight months.
South Korea’s president called the detonation, which Seoul
estimated was the North’s biggest-ever in explosive yield, an act
of “fanatic recklessness.” Japan called North Korea an “outlaw
nation.”
North Korea’s boast of a technologically game-chang-
ing nuclear test deied both tough international sanctions and
long-standing diplomatic pressure to curb its nuclear ambi-
tions. It will raise serious worries in many world capitals that
North Korea has moved another step closer to its goal of a nucle-
ar-armed missile that could one day strike the U.S. mainland.
Seoul vowed to boost psychological warfare efforts by increas-
ing the number of propaganda loudspeakers along the rivals’ bor-
der, the world’s most heavily armed, and the number of hours of
anti-North Korean broadcasts.
Hours after South Korea noted unusual seismic activity near
North Korea’s northeastern nuclear test site, the North said in its
state-run media that a test had “inally examined and conirmed
the structure and speciic features of movement of (a) nuclear
warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on
strategic ballistic rockets.”
House conservatives serve
notice to Ryan and Clinton
WASHINGTON — House conservatives have wasted no time
since returning from their summer recess showing just how tough
they can make life for Speaker Paul Ryan — and for Democrat
Hillary Clinton if she becomes president.
Conservatives look determined to force a vote in coming days
to impeach the head of the IRS despite deep misgivings among
other Republicans about such a pre-election move.
They’re pressuring Ryan to oppose a deal taking shape in the
Senate on must-pass legislation to keep the government open.
And they’re promising to keep investigating Clinton’s email
issues even if she ends up in the White House. Some conserva-
tives are even saying openly that impeachment hearings should
be an option against Clinton.
“There probably ought to be,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Trump supporters court Jewish
settlers in the West Bank
JERUSALEM — Republican activists are trying to “make
America great again” — from inside a Jewish settlement deep
in the West Bank.
This week, supporters of Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump have set up a campaign ofice in the Karnei Shom-
ron settlement in the northern West Bank, hoping to tap into the
large numbers of American immigrants in the area for support.
The ofice is in addition to several Republican outposts set
up across Israel to get American expatriates to register to vote.
A new location in Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements near Jeru-
salem, is expected to open next week. It’s believed to be the irst
time either Republican or the Democrat activists have placed a
campaign ofice in the West Bank.
Marc Zell, co-chair of Republicans Overseas Israel, said the
get-out-the-vote effort is not just for show.
His group estimates there are about 300,000 American citi-
zens living in Israel, including some 50,000 West Bank settlers.
Zell hopes as many as 200,000 of them will register to vote. With
the vast majority believed to be Republicans, he said there could
be enough votes to inluence results in swing states like Ohio,
Pennsylvania or Florida.
As hajj nears, questions about
deadly 2015 stampede remain
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Marching with thousands
of other pilgrims at last year’s hajj in Saudi Arabia, 23-year-old
Sobia Noor of Pakistan felt the crowd get tighter and the air grow
thicker in the scorching heat. Suddenly, there was shouting and
crying along the narrow street bordered by tall metal barriers.
She was holding hands tightly with her mother and aunt, but
her grip was broken as a push of people struck her like a giant
wave. She lost sight of her father. Thrown to the ground with oth-
ers on top of her, she couldn’t breathe.
The next thing she remembers was being sprinkled with water
and pulled from the pile. Then she saw a scene that still haunts
her: “There were heaps of bodies all around, and some injured
were crying for help,” she said.
The stampede and crush on Sept. 24, 2015, along Road 204
in Mina, a pilgrimage route on the outskirts of Mecca, killed at
least 2,400 people — a disaster that the kingdom has yet to fully
acknowledge or explain.
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9/11: ‘We can’t act like racism
hasn’t been a part of all this’
Continued from Page 1A
amid economic concerns, a
Gallup poll around then found
only 43 percent of Americans
were satisied with how things
were going.
Then, in under two hours
on Sept. 11, the nation lost
nearly 3,000 people, two of its
tallest buildings and its sense
of impregnability. But out of
the shock, fear and sorrow rose
a feeling of regaining some
things, too — a shared iden-
tity, a heartfelt commitment to
the nation indivisible.
Stores ran out of lags.
Americans from coast to coast
cupped candle lames and
prayed at vigils, gave blood
and billions of dollars, cheered
ireighters and police. Mili-
tary recruits cited the attacks
as they signed up.
Congress scrubbed parti-
sanship to pass a $40 billion
anti-terrorism and victim aid
measure three days after the
attacks, and approval ratings
for lawmakers and the presi-
dent sped to historic highs. A
special postage stamp declared
“United We Stand,” and Amer-
icans agreed: A Newsweek
poll found 79 percent felt 9/11
would make the country stron-
ger and more uniied.
“I really saw people stand
up for America. ... And I was
very proud of that,” recalls
Maria Medrano-Nehls, a
retired state library agency
worker in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Her foster daughter and niece,
Army National Guard Mas-
ter Sgt. Linda Tarango-Griess,
was killed by a roadside bomb
in Iraq in 2004.
Now,
Medrano-Nehls
thinks weariness from the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
and combative politics have
pried Americans apart, and it
pains her to think of the mili-
tary serving a country so torn.
Larry Brook can still pic-
ture the crowd at a post-9/11
interfaith vigil at an amphi-
theater in Pelham, Alabama.
The numbers seemed a tangi-
ble measure of an urge to come
together.
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
Imam Abdur-Rahim Ali, with the Northeast Denver Islamic Center, gives a sermon be-
fore Friday prayers in Denver on Aug 19.
Now? “I don’t think we’re
anywhere close,” says Brook,
who publishes Southern Jewish
Life magazine. To him, polit-
ical partisanship and clashes
over Middle East policy are
walling off middle ground.
Three days after 9/11,
Joseph Esposito was at smol-
dering ground zero as Republi-
can President George W. Bush
grabbed a bullhorn and vowed
the attackers “will hear all of us
soon.” The moment became an
emblem of American strength
and resolve, and Esposito, then
the New York Police Depart-
ment’s top uniformed oficer,
was struck by “the camarade-
rie, the unity” of those days.
He remembers the support
police enjoyed then, and how
much the tone had changed by
the time of the Occupy Wall
Street protests in 2011, when
police arrested hundreds of
demonstrators, many of whom
said cops unjustly rounded and
roughed them up. Now the
city’s emergency management
commissioner, Esposito has
watched from the sidelines as a
national protest movement has
erupted in recent years from
police killings of unarmed
black men, and as police them-
selves have been killed by
gunmen claiming vengeance.
These days, Esposito
hopes his job can be unify-
ing. He wants people to feel
that the city helps neighbor-
hoods equally to handle disas-
ter. “The 1 percenters should
not be better prepared than the
99 percent,” he says.
“If everyone feels they’re
getting their fair share,” he
adds, “it fosters better feelings
toward one another.”
Ali, who is African-American,
believes Muslims and people
of color are being demonized
with “incendiary and divisive”
remarks.
“We can’t act like racism
hasn’t been a part of all this,”
he says.
Retribution
Can the United States feel
united again?
Some Americans fear it
will take another catastrophe,
if even that can shift the cli-
mate. Others are looking to
political leaders to set a more
collaborative tone, or to Amer-
icans themselves to make
an effort to understand and
respect one another.
When Sonia Shah thinks
about the push and pull of
American unity since the attacks
that killed her father, Jayesh, at
the World Trade Center, she pic-
tures a rock hitting a pond.
The innermost ripple, that’s
the tight circle of support that
came together around the peo-
ple most directly affected by
tragedy. Outside it, bigger
and more diffuse, are bands of
debate over policies and poli-
tics in the wake of 9/11.
“We usually see the outer
rings of the arguments,” says
the Baylor University senior.
“But I think there always is
a current of unity that goes
underneath things.”
Getting it back
For all the signs of kinship
after Sept. 11, the irst retribu-
tion attack came just four days
later, authorities said.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was
shot dead while placing low-
ers on a memorial at his Mesa,
Arizona, gas station. Prosecu-
tors said the gunman mistook
Sodhi, an Indian Sikh immi-
grant, for an Arab Muslim.
Seeing hundreds of peo-
ple gather in solidarity on the
night of his brother’s death
showed me “the greatness of
unity,” says Rana Singh Sodhi,
of Gilbert, Arizona. But in
the last two years, he’s felt a
“change toward hatred again.”
He worries politicians are stir-
ring animosity toward immi-
grants and minorities.
So does Imam Abdur-Ra-
him Ali.
After 9/11, he invited irst
responders for tea and coffee at
the Northeast Denver Islamic
Center to show appreciation
and emphasize that Muslims
“are regular Americans.” Now,