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Page 10A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Friday, July 1, 2016 Oficial: Airport attackers from Russia, Central Asia Tesla driver killed in crash while using car’s ‘Autopilot’ ISTANBUL (AP) — As the death toll from the Istanbul airport attack rose Thursday to 44, a senior Turkish oficial said the three suicide bombers who carried it out were from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Turkish police raided Istanbul neighborhoods for suspects linked to the Islamic State group. Turkish authorities say all information suggests the Tuesday night attack on Ataturk Airport, one of the world’s busiest, was the work of IS, which boasted this week of having cells in Turkey, among other countries. Police raided 16 locations in three neighborhoods on both the Asian and European sides of the city that sprawls across the Bosporus Strait, rounding up 13 people suspected of having links to IS. There was no immediate claim of responsibility by the militant group, which has used Turkey to establish itself in neighboring Syria and Iraq. IS has repeatedly threatened Turkey in its propaganda, and the NATO member has blamed IS for several major bombings in the past year in both Ankara and Istanbul. Across Istanbul and beyond, funerals were held for the airport victims Thursday, and heartbroken families sobbed as they bid their loved ones farewell, including several local airport workers. Nilsu Ozmeric wept over the cofin of her iance, Jusuf Haznedaroglu, a 32-year-old airport worker who was fatally wounded while waiting for a bus to go home. “The wedding was next week,” sobbed his mother, Cervinye Haznedaroglu, as visitors offered condolences. A video obtained by the Turkish newspaper Haberturk purported to show a police oficer asking one of the WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. announced Thursday the irst fatality in a wreck involving a car in self-driving mode, the 40-year-old owner of a tech- nology company who nick- named his vehicle “Tessy” and had praised its sophis- ticated “Autopilot” system just one month earlier for preventing a collision on an interstate. The government said it is investigating the design and performance of the system aboard the Tesla Model S sedan. Joshua D. Brown, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car’s cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn’t automat- ically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday. Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was “playing Harry Potter on the TV screen” at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that “he went so fast through my trailer I didn’t see him.” “It was still playing when he died and snapped a tele- phone pole a quarter mile down the road,” Baressi told The Associated Press in an interview from his home in Palm Harbor, Florida. He acknowledged he couldn’t see the movie, only heard it. Tesla Motors Inc. said it is not possible to watch videos on the Model S touch screen. There was no reference to the movie in initial police reports. Brown’s published obituary described him as a member of the Navy SEALs for 11 years and founder of Nexu Inno- vations Inc., working on wireless Internet networks and camera systems. In Washington, the Pentagon Haberturk newspaper via AP Photo In this framegrab from CCTV video, made available by the Turkish Haberturk newspaper on Thursday, people believed to be the attackers walk in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport June 28. suicide bombers for identii- cation before he was subse- quently shot by the attacker. The video shows the alleged police oficer, in short sleeves, approaching a man dressed in black. The man in black then appears to shoot the oficer, who falls to the ground. The Associated Press was not able to independently verify the location of the video or the sequence of events. A Turkish senior oficial, who spoke on condition of anonymity because govern- ment regulations did not authorize him to talk to the media, said the attackers were from Russia and the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. A medical team was working around the clock to identify the suicide attackers, the oficial said, noting their bodies had suffered extensive damage. Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry denied that an attacker came from that country. Asked about the possible involvement of a Russian in the attacks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no information on that and there was no comment either from Uzbekistan. Russian President Vlad- imir Putin has said between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other nations of the former Soviet Union have joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. People from Chechnya and other provinces in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region have had a visible presence among Islamic State ighters. Turkish state media said the death toll in the attack rose to 44 after a 25-year-old airport worker succumbed to his wounds. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said the dead included 19 foreigners. Oficials said 94 of the over 230 people reported wounded in the attack were still hospi- talized. Two memorial services for victims were held at the airport, one of them honoring taxi drivers slain in the attack. Five funerals were held elsewhere, including for four members of the Amiri family. Abdulmumin Amiri escaped death because he went to look for a taxi while his relatives watched their luggage. “At that time, the bomb went off,” he told The Associated Press. “I was about four or ive meters (13 to 16 feet) away.” At the funeral for Ferhat Akkaya, who had gone to the airport to see off a friend, his wife and three children sobbed as they clutched his cofin in the northern province of Ordu. His relatives railed against Turkish authorities, blaming them for failing to ensure airport security. “Damn it! The state should hear our voices and take the necessary precautions,” said Ferhat Kabakci, the victim’s brother-in-law. “Now a widow and three orphans have been left behind. Who will look after them?” In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated in the red-and-white colors of the Turkish lag to honor the victims in Istanbul. The U.N. Security Council condemned the attack, saying that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustiiable and are “one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.” Unconirmed details about the attack looded Turkish media. The private Dogan news agency said the Russian attacker had entered the country one month ago and left his passport in a house the men had rented in Istanbul’s Fatih neighborhood. The Karar newspaper, quoting police sources, said the attackers were part of a seven-member cell that entered Turkey on May 25. The assailants raised suspi- cions of airport security on the day of the attack because they wore winter jackets on a summer day, media reported. conirmed Brown’s work with the SEALs and said he left the service in 2008. Brown was an enthusi- astic booster of his 2015 Tesla Model S and in April credited its sophisticated Autopilot system for avoiding a crash when a commercial truck swerved into his lane on an inter- state. He published a video of the incident online. “Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent,” Brown wrote. Tesla didn’t identify Brown but described him in a statement as “a friend to Tesla and the broader EV (electric vehicle) community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla’s mission.” It also stressed the uncertainty about its new system, noting that drivers must manually enable it: “Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert.” A man answering the door at Brown’s parents’ house who did not identify himself said he had no comment. Tesla founder Elon Musk expressed “Our condolences for the tragic loss” in a tweet late Thursday. Preliminary reports indicate the crash occurred when Baressi’s rig turned left in front of Brown’s Tesla at an intersection of a divided highway where there was no trafic light, the National Highway Trafic Safety Administration said. Brown died at the scene of the crash, which occurred May 7 in Williston, Florida, according to a Florida Highway Patrol report. The city is southwest of Gainesville. WEBB’S: Committee will seek private, state, federal grants Continued from 1A from Webb’s. The committee includes representatives from the city of Pendleton, Umatilla County, CAPECO, the Pend- leton Farmers Market, Bank of Eastern Oregon, Eastern Oregon Business Source, Round-Up Development Corp. and the Pendleton Center for the Arts. The committee is being led by Umatilla County Board of Commissioners Chairman George Murdock, who took interest in the project through his involve- ment with the Umatilla County Health Department and the Pendleton Down- town Association. Murdock said involve- ment from multiple commu- nity organizations will help the project move past the planning stage. “I’d like to see things happen rather than just be talked about,” he said. Besides funding from the city and county, Murdock said the committee will seek grants from private founda- tions, the state and the federal government, which could be receptive to the project’s health angle. The next plaza committee meeting is open to the public and will be held on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. at the Umatilla County Courthouse. ——— Contact Antonio Sierra at asierra@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0836. Staff photo by E.J. Harris SHORT: Compares the subtleties of pot to ine wines Hermiston Police community watch-crime preven- tion oficer talks with a group of children while they eat lunch Thursday at the Umatilla-Morrow Head Start in Hermiston. recreational cannabis become legal in Colorado, Washington and, a year ago, in Oregon. The legality gives people like Short some elbow room, but he still operates outside the state and the law. Even in-state cannabis operations face obstacles: zoning restric- tions, problems getting bank accounts, black market weed and local bans on businesses. The prices, he said, are out of whack — cannabis is “grossly overpriced” and hash (a byproduct) is “grossly under- priced.” It’s a gray market with all of the outlines blurred to some extent, but Short isn’t worried. “I’ve been functioning underground for so long,” he said. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do regardless.” Short resists coming completely into the open. He avoids cameras. He doesn’t invite reporters and most others to his home or work- space. “I’m optimistically pessi- mistic. Things will get better, but for whatever reason, they have to get worse irst,” he said. “There’s no crystal ball for the future of cannabis law.” FOOD: Free to all kids under 18 Continued from 1A he lives locally, rather than a more marijuana-friendly locale. “I love Eastern Oregon,” said Short. “It is my favorite place on the planet to be. The environment, the climate, the people — it’s special here.” He said he started growing pot in 1978 under a luores- cent desk lamp at the foot of his bed. Using knowledge of phenotypes and genotypes garnered from his college botany classes, the 21-year-old experimented with light, soils, fertilizers, terpenes and cloning techniques. Even- tually, the luorescent lamps became halide lights and then sodium lights. He succeeded in crossing Sativa and Indica plants to create fast-growing varieties with various aromas and physical effects. In 1979, he started selling clones. In 1988, he moved to Eastern Oregon. The Michigan native said he comes by his marijua- na-whispering skills naturally. His Romanian great-grand- mother, a gypsy herbalist who grew cannabis and other herbs for medicinal reasons, passed her skills down the line to her daughter. According to family lore, his grandmother’s cannabis cultivation landed her in jail. “She got busted in 1938 for growing pot in the city of Detroit shortly after it was made illegal,” Short said. His grandmother often sewed with hemp, a variety of cannabis used for its iber. “Tablecloths, curtains and my mom’s baptismal gown were all made of hemp,” he Image by Ralf Schuetz of Mushroom Dreams D.J. Short is an icon in the world of cannabis breeding stock, but is still something of an enigma. said. Short’s irst taste of pot didn’t come from his grand- mother’s pharmacy, but in a more typical way when he and friends purchased a bag. At the time, Short said, he was a skinny teenage boy who struggled with depres- sion sparked by his parent’s divorce. “I started with cannabis when I was about 14,” he said. “In essence, it saved my life. It gave me an appetite I lacked and set me on my path.” Short said he was shocked at the gentleness of his irst exposure to pot, calling it “a benign, intimate, natural expe- rience.” This was in the early 1970s, shortly after President Richard Nixon had launched the War on Drugs and declared them “public enemy number one.” Short, then and now, chafes that marijuana is considered a dangerous drug. In truth, he said, shaking his head, cannabis heals more effectively than most phar- maceuticals and is “the safest substance known to human beings,” except for maybe oxygen. “Even water you can drink enough to kill yourself,” Short said. “Cannabis is a mild, nontoxic inebriant that doesn’t allow us to put enough in ourselves to harm ourselves.” In addition, cannabis heals, he said. Marijuana soothed his mother’s pain after a stroke. His girlfriend, after under- going chemotherapy for her irst bout of stage three breast cancer, survived a second bout by taking massive doses of cannabis oil. Short often compares the subtleties of pot to ine wines. The olfaction chart used by cannabis connoisseurs is much like the wine wheel. Tasters can detect a diverse array of aromas such as fruit and berries, grasses, teas and even ozone, funeral parlor lowers or chemical astrin- gents. The latter, much like in wine, aren’t necessarily bad, he said. The breeder said he watched with interest as Enjoy the Jazz sounds of Brass Fire July 2nd, 2016 7 pm - 10 pm • No Cover In the Red Lion Lounge 304 SE Nye Pendleton 541-276-6111 Continued from 1A year they averaged 25 students a day. She said the staff came together to brain- storm ideas for this summer to increase awareness and attendance. So far their efforts seem to be working. The program has averaged 50-55 kids each day. “It seems the hotter it is the more people come out,” Eddy said. “No one wants to cook in the hot weather.” Eddy works with local businesses to try and procure as much fresh, local food as she can. Peach Tree Produce in Umatilla has donated apricots, K&K Bluberries in Hermiston provided fresh berries, and S.R. Walker Farms near Hermiston will be offering fresh watermelon in mid-July. This week Dave’s Killer Bread of Portland donated 1,056 loaves. The food service program is administered through the Oregon Depart- ment of Education and offered for free to all kids under 18. Parents choosing to volunteer with the program can also eat at no cost. The price of an adult lunch is otherwise $2. The UMCHS backyard is grassy and shaded. Families can choose to eat picnic-style on the grass or seated at the umbrella-cov- ered tables. A schedule of daily activities in July is posted on the UMCHS website and Facebook page. Oficer Sandoval emerged from the tank after a series of dunks and high- ived the girl whose pitch dropped her in the water. “It actually feels so good!” Sandoval said.
