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NATION/WORLD Friday, June 17, 2016 East Oregonian Page 9A CIA director: U.S. has been unable to curb IS global reach Associated Press NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP This artist’s rendering made available by NASA/ JPL-Caltech in 2015 shows the Juno spacecraft above Jupiter. NASA spacecraft to reach Jupiter July 4 LOS ANGELES (AP) — A NASA spacecraft is bound for a Fourth of July encounter with Jupiter in the latest quest to study how the largest planet in the solar system formed and evolved. As Juno approaches Jupiter’s harsh radiation environment, it will ire its main engine to slow down and then slip into orbit around the planet. “It’s a one-shot deal,” mission chief scientist Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said Thursday. “Everything is riding on it.” If all goes as planned, Juno will spend nearly a year circling Jupiter’s poles and peering through clouds to scrutinize the planet’s southern and northern lights, which are considered the strongest in the solar system. “Jupiter is a planet on steroids. Everything about it is extreme,” Bolton said. Since the 1970s, spacecraft have circled or zipped past Jupiter, sending back stunning views of the planet’s signature Great Red Spot — a long-lived storm — and its numerous moons. The most extensive study came from the Galileo spacecraft, which dropped a probe on the surface. Galileo explored Jupiter and its moons for 14 years. Unlike Earth, which is a rocky planet, Jupiter is a gas giant made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Scientists still don’t know whether Jupiter has a solid core or how much oxygen “Jupiter is a planet on steroids.” — Scott Bolton, Mission chief scientist and water the planet has — information that could help unravel how Earth and the solar system came to be. The trip to Jupiter — the ifth planet from the sun — took nearly ive years, allowing Juno to loop around the inner solar system and use Earth as a gravitational slingshot to propel itself into deep space. Previous missions to Jupiter have relied on nuclear power sources because of the distance from the sun. Juno is running on solar power, with panels designed to face the sun during most of the mission. Juno will be about 500 million miles from the sun on the evening of July 4 when it prepares to enter orbit. To protect against radi- ation, Juno’s instruments are tucked inside a titanium vault. The spacecraft also carries a camera and scien- tists said the public will get a chance to decide what pictures to take. After Juno completes its mission in 2018, it will plunge into Jupiter and burn up. Scientists planned this inale to eliminate the possibility it could smack into Europa, one of Jupiter’s watery moons. WASHINGTON — The U.S. battle against the Islamic State has not yet curbed the group’s global reach and as pressure mounts on the extremists in Iraq and Syria, they are expected to plot more attacks on the West and incite violence by lone wolves, CIA Director John Brennan told Congress on Thursday. In a rare open hearing, Brennan gave the Senate intelligence committee an update on the threat from Islamic extremists and shared his views on a myriad of other topics, including encryption, Russia and Syria. Brennan said IS has worked to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, as in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels — ones the CIA believes were directed by the top IS leaders. “ISIL has a large cadre of Western ighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West,” Brennan said, using a different acronym for the group. “Furthermore, as we have seen in Orlando, San Bernardino and elsewhere, ISIL is attempting to inspire attacks by sympathizers who have no direct links to the group.” Brennan said the CIA has not been able to uncover any direct link between the Orlando shooter and a foreign terrorist organization. He said the U.S.-led coalition has killed IS leaders, forced the group to surrender large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and that fewer ighters are traveling to Syria and others have defected. While the group’s ability to raise money has been thwarted, it still generates at least tens of millions of dollars every month, mostly from taxation and sales of crude oil on black markets in Syria and Iraq. “Unfortunately, despite all our prog- ress against ISIL on the battleield and in the inancial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach,” he said. He said IS is slowly cultivating its branches into an interconnected global network and that the number of IS ighters now far exceeds what al-Qaida had at its peak. The CIA estimates there are 18,000 to 22,000 IS ighters in Syria and Iraq — down from about 33,000 last year. The branch in Libya, with between 5,000 and 8,000 ighters, is the most advanced and most dangerous, but IS is trying to increase its inluence in Africa. He said Boko Haram is now the IS branch in West Africa and has AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite CIA Director John Brennan arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on IS. several thousand ighters. Brennan described the IS branch in the Sinai as the most active and capable terrorist group in Egypt, attacking Egyptian military and government targets as well as foreigners and tourists, such as in the downing of a Russian passenger jet last October. The Yemen branch, with several hundred ighters, has been riven with factionalism. And the Afghanistan-Pa- kistan branch, also with hundreds of ighters, has struggled to maintain its cohesion, in part because of competition with the Taliban, he said. The issue of encryption arose several times during the nearly two-hour hearing. Law enforcement oficials say data encryption is making it harder to hunt for terror suspects and intercept their messages. They say they need access to encrypted communications and that tech companies should maintain the ability to unlock the data from their customers. They face ierce opposition from Silicon Valley companies that say encryption safeguards their customers’ privacy rights and protects them from hackers, spies and other breaches. Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the “feud between the tech companies and the intelligence community and law enforcement has to stop.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that requiring companies to build back doors into their products to weaken strong encryption will put the personal safety of Americans at risk. “I want to make it clear I will ight such a policy with everything I have,” Wyden said. In the House, wary lawmakers on Thursday rejected a measure that would have prohibited the U.S. government from searching the online communications of Americans without a warrant. The vote came days after the mass shooting in Florida. Oppo- nents of the amendment to the annual defense spending bill said the measure would have blocked investigators from searching lawfully collected informa- tion to determine whether the gunman had contacted terrorists overseas. The CIA chief embraced a bill that seeks to set up a commission to bring together intelligence, law enforcement and the business and tech communities to work on the issue. Brennan also expressed his views on other issues: RUSSIA Brennan said Russian military forces have bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are carrying out attacks against the U.S.-backed forces trying to unseat him. He said Assad is in a stronger position now than he was in June 2015 and that the agreed cessation of violence is “holding by a thread.” TORTURE Brennan said individuals within the CIA have been held accountable for problems in the agency’s former detention and interrogation program set up after Sept. 11. He said he could elaborate in a classiied setting. TWITTER Brennan conirmed a May report in The Wall Street Journal that the data mining company, Dataminr Inc., had ended its contract with the CIA. The New York-based company, which monitors information streaming across Twitter and sends alerts to clients, continues to provide data to Russia Today, a television network backed by the Russian government. BRIEFLY Few if any minority execs in Trump’s empire WASHINGTON (AP) — There are few, if any, black executives in the upper ranks of the Trump Organization, a review by The Associated Press has found. Other minorities are also scarce at that level though Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has employed scores of executives. Former executives say they cannot recall a single black vice president-level executive at Trump’s headquarters during their combined tenures at the Trump Organization LLC, which ranged from 1980 to late in the past decade. Reviews of social media postings by Trump and his family and Trump’s acknowledgements thanking executives in his books also fail to identify any senior black employees past or present. Asked about the lack of African- American vice presidents in an interview last month, Trump assured the AP that he had hired minorities as senior executives and said his staff could readily provide speciic details. “I am the least discriminatory person in the world,” Trump said. “I have people that do the hiring, if you want to speak to them.” The Trump Organization, however, did not grant subsequent requests by the AP to provide such information or say whether Trump had hired an African-American vice president over the past 35 years. The AP limited its review to the circle of senior executives who hold titles of vice president or higher within the Trump Organization, an amorphous corporate entity in which Trump and a group of top executives oversee hundreds of different companies and partnerships that control real estate, licensing and hospitality businesses. Some subsidiary businesses have their own hierarchies of presidents and vice presidents, but those executives are generally not located within Trump Tower headquarters and do not have the same authority and prestige. Philadelphia becomes irst major U.S. city with soda tax PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia became the irst major American city with a soda tax on Thursday despite a multimillion-dollar campaign by the beverage industry to block it. The city council gave inal approval to a 1.5 cent-per-ounce tax on sugary and diet beverages. Only Berkeley, California, had a similar law. Soda tax proposals have failed in more than 30 cities and states in recent years. Such plans are typically criticized as disproportionately affecting the poor, who are more likely to consume sugary drinks. But Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney sold the council on the idea with a plan to spend most of the estimated $90 million in new tax revenue next year to pay for prekindergarten, community schools and recreation centers. The tax, which passed 13-4, is a hard-fought win for the city. The soda industry spent millions of dollars in advertising against the proposal, arguing the tax would be costly to consumers. The plan also attracted national attention and dollars, with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Texas billionaires John and Laura Arnold, advocates for less consumption of sugary drinks, funding ads in support. The American Beverage Association called the soda tax “discriminatory and highly unpopular.” “The tax passed today is a regressive tax that unfairly singles out beverages, including low- and no-calorie choices,” it said a statement. The association and beverage bottling businessman Harold Honickman promised to ight the tax in court, with Honickman saying the tax would mean sales will go down and jobs will be lost. After fatal attack, theme parks weigh alligator warnings LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — It’s an unwritten rule for Florida residents: Keep your kids away from lakes because alligators are everywhere. But after a gator killed a 2-year-old Nebraska boy at a Walt Disney World resort, attention soon turned to tourists. In a state with an estimated 1 million alligators, how should theme parks and other attractions warn visitors, and did Disney do enough? Disney beaches remained closed Thursday after the death of Lane Graves, and the company said it was reviewing policies that do not currently include posting alligator warnings around park waters. The review “includes the number, placement and wording of our signage and warnings,” Jacquee Wahler, vice president of Walt Disney World Resort, said. Local law enforcement and state wildlife oficials publicly praised the company for spotting and removing nuisance gators from park waters. Disney’s wildlife management system has ensured “that their guests are not unduly exposed to the wildlife in this area,” Sheriff Jerry Demings said during the search for the child. $ 300 in U.S. Cellular ® Promo Cards. AND MORE! 2 GB Bonus Data monthly for two years. Learn more at uscellular.com/bonus. 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