A5
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2019
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Senate backs major public
lands, conservation bill
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tues-
day approved a major public lands bill that
revives a popular conservation program, adds
1.3 million acres of new wilderness, expands
several national parks and creates fi ve new
national monuments.
The measure, the largest public lands bill
considered by Congress in a decade, com-
bines more than 100 separate bills that desig-
nate more than 350 miles of river as wild and
scenic, add 2,600 miles of new federal trails
and create nearly 700,000 acres of new rec-
reation and conservation areas. The bill also
withdraws 370,000 acres in Montana and
Washington state from mineral development.
Lawmakers from both parties said the
bill’s most important provision was to per-
manently reauthorize the federal Land and
Water Conservation Fund, which supports
conservation and outdoor recreation projects
across the country. The program expired last
fall after Congress could not agree on lan-
guage to extend it.
In Oregon, the bill will create the Devil’s
Staircase Wilderness by designating roughly
30,000 acres of remote lands in the Oregon
Coast Range; permanently protect the Chetco
River from mining and mineral extraction;
designate 250 miles of prime salmon- and
steelhead-producing rivers and streams as
part of the National Wild and Scenic Riv-
ers System, about 120 miles of Rogue River
tributaries; and protect an additional 40 miles
of Rogue River tributaries from mining and
future dam installations.
U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley
of Oregon both praised the bill’s passage.
“Managing our public lands is a matter of
public safety, our local recreation economies
and the health of the water we as Oregonians
drink and air we breathe,” Wyden said. ... The
House should move quickly to ensure these
protections are signed into law.”
US says ex-intelligence
offi cial defected to Iran,
revealed secrets
WASHINGTON — A former Air Force
counterintelligence specialist who defected
to Iran has been charged with revealing clas-
sifi ed information to the Tehran government,
including the code name and secret mission
of a Pentagon program.
The Justice Department said today that
Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, defected in 2013
after attending a conference in Iran aimed at
“condemning American moral standards.”
NASA
An illustration of the rover Opportunity on the surface of Mars. The exploratory vehicle
landed on Jan. 24, 2004, and logged more than 28 miles before falling silent during a
global dust storm in June 2018.
NASA about to pull plug on
Mars rover, silent for 8 months
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is trying one last time to contact its record-set-
ting Mars rover Opportunity, before calling it quits.
The rover has been silent for eight months, victim of one of the most intense dust
storms in decades. Thick dust darkened the sky last summer and, for months, blocked
sunlight from the spacecraft’s solar panels.
NASA said Tuesday it will issue a fi nal series of recovery commands, on top of more
than 1,000 already sent. If there’s no response by today — which NASA suspects will be
the case — Opportunity will be declared dead, 15 years after arriving at the red planet.
Team members are already looking back at Opportunity’s achievements, including
confi rmation water once fl owed on Mars. Opportunity was, by far, the longest-lasting
lander on Mars. Besides endurance, the six-wheeled rover set a roaming record of 28
miles.
Its identical twin, Spirit, was pronounced dead in 2011, a year after it got stuck in
sand and communication ceased.
She is currently at large, along with four
Iranian hackers who, prosecutors say, used
the information she provided to target her
former colleagues in the U.S. intelligence
community.
The four Iranians were acting on behalf of
the government-linked Iranian Revolutionary
Guard, prosecutors said. They also remain at
large; arrest warrants have been issued for
them.
Witt left the Air Force in 2008 and later
became a Defense Department contrac-
tor. The indictment suggested that Iran had
reached out to her at least as far back as 2012.
Democrats question pledges in
$26.5B T-Mobile-Sprint deal
WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmak-
ers are challenging a pledge by T-Mobile and
Sprint not to raise prices or hurt competition
if their $26.5 billion merger goes through.
Although T-Mobile says it won’t raise
prices for three years, Rep. Frank Pallone,
D-N.J., chairman of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee, said he isn’t sure that
Trump administration regulators are willing
to hold T-Mobile to that promise.
“How can we be sure that consumers who
can least afford to pay more are not harmed
by the merger?” Pallone asked at a House
subcommittee hearing today.
The deal would combine the nation’s
third- and fourth-largest wireless companies
and create a behemoth roughly the size of
industry giants Verizon and AT&T. Congress
doesn’t have authority to rule on the merger,
but members are able to use the forum to ask
pointed questions. Now that Democrats con-
trol the House, they have convened its fi rst
merger-review hearing in eight years.
T-Mobile US CEO John Legere and
Marcelo Claure, Sprint Corp.’s executive
chairman, defended the merger and said
American consumers would get more and
pay less.
Complicating their argument is the fact
that urban consumers are paying 22 percent
less for cellphone service following AT&T’s
failed bid to acquire T-Mobile in 2011, a
combination rejected by federal regulators
as anticompetitive. That data comes from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics price index for
wireless telephone service.
National debt hits new
milestone, tops $22 trillion
WASHINGTON — The national debt has
passed a new milestone, topping $22 trillion
for the fi rst time.
The Treasury Department’s daily state-
ment showed Tuesday that total outstanding
public debt stands at $22.01 trillion. It stood
at $19.95 trillion when President Donald
Trump took offi ce on Jan. 20, 2017.
The debt fi gure has been accelerating since
the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut in
December 2017 and action by Congress last
year to increase spending on domestic and
military programs.
The national debt is the total of the annual
budget defi cits. The Congressional Budget
Offi ce projects that this year’s defi cit will be
$897 billion — a 15.1 percent increase over
last year’s imbalance of $779 billion. In the
coming years, the CBO forecasts that the
defi cit will keep rising, top $1 trillion annu-
ally beginning in 2022 and never drop below
$1 trillion through 2029. Much of the increase
will come from mounting costs to fund Social
Security and Medicare as the vast generation
of baby boomers continue to retire.
The Trump administration contends that
its tax cuts will eventually pay for themselves
by generating faster economic growth. That
projection is disputed by many economists.
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