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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Charlotte chief:
Family will watch police
video of shooting
SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — Facing
international pressure for failing to stop human
traficking in the seafood trade, Thailand prom-
ised almost a year ago to compensate victims of
slavery and industry leaders vowed to bring all
shrimp processing in-house.
That hasn’t always happened. Instead, some
formerly enslaved shrimp peelers have been
deported. And some shrimp peeling sheds
are being inspected and authorized to keep
operating.
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SALEM — Groundwa-
ter depletion problems in Ore-
gon discussed during a recent
legislative hearing in Salem
potentially foreshadow policy
proposals during the upcoming
2017 legislative session.
While participants in the
“legislative days” informa-
tional session did not address
the recent newspaper series by
name, the Oregonian’s “Drain-
ing Oregon” package obvi-
ously loomed over the hearing.
Printed stacks of the series,
which was printed last month,
sat on a table near the entrance
during the Sept. 21 hearing.
The newspaper’s allega-
tions that state regulators are
allowing farmers to over-
pump groundwater were also
clearly on the minds of law-
makers on the House Interim
Committee on Rural Commu-
nities, Land Use and Water
— as well as those of Oregon
Water Resources Department
staff called to testify.
Committee chair Brian
Clem, D-Salem, said the topic
will likely be a source of con-
Since 1955, when legis-
lators passed a law requiring
groundwater regulations, the
number of wells across the
state has increased from 4,660
to 256,800, said Justin Iverson,
groundwater section manager
for Water Resources.
Agricultural wells —
which require permitting —
make up roughly 10 percent of
the total number, but they rep-
resent about 90 percent of total
groundwater usage in Oregon,
Iverson said.
While domestic users must
only report the location of new
wells, drillers of agricultural
wells must also provide infor-
mation about water levels and
irrigators must report their
usage, he said.
OWRD also monitors
groundwater with more than
1,200 observation wells, Iver-
son said.
Rep. Ken Helm, questioned
whether water regulators were
“driving in the dark” in regard
to well-drilling and the effects
of climate change on water
availability.
“Does that change the par-
adigm under which we should
be operating?” Helm said.
He also asked if the OWRD
is simply short of funding to
robustly study groundwater,
or if policy changes are also
needed.
Byler replied that the
agency already has many regu-
latory tools but is always open
to looking at new ones.
S eptember 23
rd
!
se
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Bureau
versations during the next
series of “legislative days” in
November and during next
year’s legislative session.
To avoid “brutal neigh-
bor-on-neighbor
warfare,”
lawmakers should try to ind
a collaborative approach for
water conservation, he said.
With the caveat that he didn’t
want to attack journalists who
“buy ink by the barrel,” Clem
said he was concerned about
loaded terms that imply farmers
are greedy and wasteful.
“Farmers don’t become
farmers to become rich,” he
said. “There are much easier
ways of getting rich.”
The basic thesis of “Drain-
ing Oregon” was that Water
Resources had insuficient
information about groundwa-
ter levels across much of the
state but nonetheless freely
allowed well drilling, deplet-
ing aquifers.
Tom Byler, OWRD’s direc-
tor, conceded that over-pump-
ing in past decades had led to
several critical groundwater
areas across the state, which
led the agency to restrict uses.
“We haven’t done as good a
job as we should on that item,”
he said.
Byler said groundwater
is tough to manage given the
complex geology of under-
ground aquifers and because
farmers have become more
reliant on this irrigation source
when surface waters dwindle
during the dry months.
NAMIE, Japan — In an abandoned Japanese
village, cows grazing in lush green plains begin
to gather when they hear the familiar rumble of
the ranch owner’s mini-pickup. This isn’t feed-
ing time, though.
Instead, the animals are about to be mea-
sured for how they’re affected by living in radi-
ation — radioactivity that is 15 times the safe
benchmark. For these cows’ pasture sits near
Fukushima, a name now synonymous with
nuclear disaster.
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Groundwater
depletion likely
to spark policy
proposals
Cows in Fukushima
radiation zone ind new
purpose: science
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Oregon lawmakers discuss
groundwater problems
NEW YORK — Investigators of last week-
end’s bombings have released an image of two
men who took a suitcase they found on a city
street, possibly without realizing a wired pres-
sure cooker they removed from it and left
behind could have blown them to bits.
Police investigating the bombings in New
York and New Jersey have been saying for sev-
eral days they were looking for the men, who
they stressed were being sought as potential wit-
nesses in the case, not as suspects.
“They’re not in any jeopardy of being
arrested,” Jim Watters, chief of the New York
Police Department’s counterterrorism unit, said
on Wednesday. “We have no reason to believe
they’re connected.”
Federal prosecutors have charged Ahmad
Khan Rahami with detonating a pipe bomb in
a New Jersey shore town on Saturday morn-
ing and a pressure cooker bomb in New York
City’s Chelsea neighborhood later that night.
Thirty-one people were injured in the New York
blast. A second pressure cooker bomb left in
Manhattan didn’t explode and is the subject of
the latest public plea.
Prosecutors said surveillance video shows
Rahami rolling a suitcase down the street, then
abandoning it on the sidewalk where that sec-
ond device was found.
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Promises unmet as
Thailand tries to reform
shrimp industry
NEW YORK — It doesn’t matter what Pres-
ident Barack Obama says these days, his listen-
ers are bound to hear two words: Donald Trump.
With his proclivity for dominating the con-
versation, the Republican presidential nomi-
nee is forcing Obama’s inal few months to be
viewed almost entirely through the prism of
campaign politics. As Obama carries out his
presidential duties, voters can’t help but wonder
what the role would look like if it were inhab-
ited by the brash billionaire.
At the United Nations this week, Trump
trailed the president both metaphorically and
physically, as world leaders took stock of what a
dramatic shift a Trump presidency would mean
for American leadership.
The fusion of the campaign with real-world
governing was on vivid display Monday when
White House and State Department oficials
mingled in the same Manhattan hotel lobby
where Trump’s advisers were gathered as their
candidate met upstairs with Egyptian President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Obama was staying in the hotel, while Trump
was using the meeting to try to show his read-
iness to go head-to-head with a foreign leader.
Democrat Hillary Clinton met with the Egyp-
tian at the same hotel earlier in the day.
2 potential bombing
witnesses seen with
suitcase are sought
y
and offering only temporary patches to stem the
bloodshed.
In a U.N. Security Council session originally
envisioned to enshrine the Sept. 9 truce, world
powers rued the possibility of a darker phase in
the conlict amid increased attacks on humani-
tarian workers. The council’s nations all sought
to revive the U.S.-Russian cease-ire deal, but
once again illustrated why they’ve been unable
for more than ive years to stop Syria’s civil war.
Obama speaks, and
listeners hear nothing
but ‘Donald Trump’
MI
NG
NEW YORK — The United States and Rus-
sia are taking their differences over the conlict
in Syria to new heights, after trading ferocious
allegations of duplicity and malfeasance at the
United Nations Security Council.
After a fractious meeting of the council on
Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry and
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were
set to duel again over Syria at a gathering of the
roughly 20 nations that have an interest in Syria.
Thursday’s meeting of the International Syria
Support Group comes after the two men blamed
each other for spoiling the country’s cease-ire
that they had agreed to earlier this month. Each
has blamed the other for violations.
Kerry called for all warplanes to halt lights
over aid routes, while Lavrov suggested a pos-
sible three-day pause in ighting to get the truce
back on track.
Thursday’s meeting comes a day after Kerry
and Lavrov abandoned diplomatic niceties in
a fractious public debate over Syria, blaming
each other for the failure of a week-old truce
AP Photo/Chuck Burton
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police chief Police
Chief Kerr Putney gestures as he answers
a question during a news conference today
after a second night of violence following
Tuesday’s fatal police shooting of Keith
Lamont Scott in Charlotte, N.C. . Putney
plans to show video of an officer shooting
Scott to the slain man’s family, but the video
won’t be immediately released to the public.
Tin Nyo Win, who escaped slavery and
alerted police to abuses, was deported to Myan-
mar this month, along with his pregnant wife
and a half-dozen others, after being held almost
a year in a Thai government shelter. Authorities
said that although the couple were victims of
modern-day slavery, they had illegally entered
Thailand to begin with.
“They don’t treat us like humans. They treat
us like dogs,” Tin Nyo Win said hours before
Thai authorities took them away. “They just try
to bully those of us who are victims already.”
Nattamon Punbhochar at the Thai foreign
ministry said the couple never requested com-
pensation and were deported in accordance with
a memorandum of understanding Thailand has
with Myanmar.
C O
US, Russia take Syria
battle to new heights
Jeff Siner/The Charlotte Observer
Protesters block an intersection near the Transit Center as they march uptown in Charlotte, N.C. Wednesday. Authorities in Charlotte tried to quell
public anger Wednesday after a police officer shot a black man, but a dusk prayer vigil turned into a second night of violence, with police firing
tear gas at angry protesters and a man being critically wounded by gunfire. North Carolina’s governor declared a state of emergency in the city.
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte’s police
chief said Thursday he plans to show video
of an oficer shooting a black man to the slain
man’s family, but the video won’t be immedi-
ately released to the public.
Charlottte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr
Putney has said that 43-year-old Keith Lam-
ont Scott refused oficers’ repeated commands
to drop a gun, but he said during a news con-
ference that the video does not deinitely show
Scott pointing a gun at anyone.
Putney said he is working to honor the
request from the family of Scott to view the
video. It’s unclear when or if the video might be
released publicly.
“Right now my priority is the people who
really are the victims of the shooting,” Putney
said. “I’m telling you right now if you think I
say we should display a victim’s worst day for
consumption; that is not the transparency I’m
speaking of.”
The video could be key to resolving the
chasm between police, who say Scott refused
repeated commands to drop his gun, and resi-
dents who say he was unarmed.
Residents say Scott was unarmed, hold-
ing only a book, and disabled by a brain injury.
But it’s unclear what the body cameras worn
by three oficers who were present during the
shooting may have captured. The plainclothes
oficer who shot Scott, Brently Vinson, was
not wearing a camera. He has been placed on
leave, standard procedure in such cases. Vinson
is black,
As oficials tried to quell the unrest, at
least three major businesses were asking their
employees to stay home for the day as the city
remained on edge. Mayor Jennifer Roberts said
earlier Thursday the city was considering a
curfew.
But Putney said during the news conference
that he saw no reason to impose a curfew. He
said Charlotte now has more resources to deal
with problems, following a declaration of a state
of emergency and the arrival of the North Caro-
lina National Guard and more oficers from the
State Highway Patrol.
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D EADLINE : September 9, 2016
P UBLISHES : September 23, 2016
I NSERTED I N : The Daily Astorian