Exclusive: At Texas fertilizer plant, a history of theft, tampering

By Selam Gebrekidan and Joshua Schneyer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded two weeks ago, killing 14 people and injuring about 200, was a repeat target of theft by intruders who tampered with tanks and caused the release of toxic chemicals, police records reviewed by Reuters show.

Police responded to at least 11 reports of burglaries and five separate ammonia leaks at West Fertilizer Co over the past 12 years, according to 911 dispatch logs and criminal offense reports Reuters obtained from the McLennan County Sheriff's office in Waco, Texas through an Open Records Request.

Some of the leaks, including one reported in October 2012, were linked to theft or interference with tank valves.

According to one 2002 crime report, a plant manager told police that intruders were stealing four to five gallons of anhydrous ammonia every three days. The liquid gas can be used to cook methamphetamine, the addictive and illicit stimulant.

In rural areas across the United States, the thriving meth trade has turned storage facilities like West Fertilizer Co and even unattended tanks in farm fields into frequent targets of theft, according to several government and fertilizer industry reports issued over the past 13 years.

The cause of the April 17 blast at the plant in the town of West is still being probed, and investigators have offered no evidence that security breaches contributed to the deadly incident. There also is no indication that the explosion had anything to do with the theft of materials for drug making. Anhydrous ammonia has been ruled out as a cause because the four storage tanks remained intact after the blast, said Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Texas Fire Marshal's Office.

MANY LEADS

Investigators are pursuing about 100 leads, including a call to an arson hotline and a tip that there had been a fire on the property earlier on the day of the explosion, according to Moreno. Authorities have not said whether either tip was credible. About 80 investigators from various state and federal agencies are contributing to the probe. They hope to determine by May 10 what caused the explosion, Texas Fire Marshal Chris Connealy said at a state legislative hearing on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), one of several state and federal agencies that monitor security at chemical plants, declined to answer questions about the breaches of security at West Fertilizer Co. State investigators also declined to comment.

Thefts of anhydrous ammonia are common in McLennan County, where burglars siphon fertilizer from trailer tanks into five-gallon propane containers, said McLennan County Chief Deputy Sheriff Matt Cawthon, who took up the position in January.

After reviewing crime reports from the past 12 years and speaking to deputies who responded to some of the break-ins, Cawthon said security was clearly lax at the plant.

The perimeter was not fenced, and the facility had no burglar alarms or security guards, he said. "It was a hometown-like situation. Everybody trusts everybody."

Chemical safety experts said the recurrent security breaches at West Fertilizer are troubling because they suggest vulnerability to theft, leaks, fires or explosions. Apart from anhydrous ammonia, the company stored tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used in bomb-making. No thefts of that substance were reported to police.

"Regardless of what triggered this specific event, the fact that there were lots of burglaries and that they were after ammonia clearly shows this plant was vulnerable to unwanted intruders or even a terrorist attack," said Sam Mannan, a chemical process safety expert at Texas A&M University, who has advised Dow Chemical and others on chemical security.

NEW LAW

Owners of West Fertilizer, responding through a representative, declined to answer questions about specific instances of theft or the level of security at the plant. The company has encouraged its employees to share "all they know" with investigators, said Daniel Keeney, a spokesman for the company.

The current owners of West Fertilizer are Donald Adair, 83, and Wanda Adair, 78, who bought it in 2004. Calls to a number listed for previous owner Emil Plasek were not returned.

In a 2006 permit application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the company reported it would protect ammonia tanks against theft or tampering and conduct daily equipment inspections. A TCEQ spokesman would not comment about security measures. He said the agency's responsibility is to regulate emissions from the plant, not to oversee security.

Documents from the Texas Department of State Health Services show the West plant was storing 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia in 2012. Ammonium nitrate was among the ingredients in the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

After that bombing, Congress passed a law requiring facilities that store large amounts of the chemical to report to the DHS and work with the agency to ensure proper security measures are in place to keep it out of criminal hands and protect against such attacks.

West Fertilizer did not report to DHS, despite storing hundreds of times more ammonium nitrate than the amount that would require it do so. Depending on the grade of the chemical, companies are required to report if they store at least 400 pounds or 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate.

A 2005 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study identified hundreds of cases in 16 states where anhydrous ammonia was stolen for use in meth production. Some illegal labs mix anhydrous ammonia with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine and sodium or lithium to make methamphetamine, the U.S. Department of Justice reported in 2001.

In dozens of instances, the CDC said, the thefts by meth makers siphoning ammonia from tanks caused injuries or forced evacuations because gas was released into the environment. However, cases of ammonia theft have become less frequent since 2006, when new laws restricted the sale of pseudoephedrine, which is found in some common cold drug remedies, according to The Fertilizer Institute, an industry association.

Police records show West Fertilizer began complaining of repeated thefts from the facility in June 2001, when burglars stole 150 pounds of anhydrous ammonia from storage tanks three nights in a row. Nearly a year later, a plant manager told police that thieves were siphoning four-to-five gallons of the liquefied fertilizer every three days.

Randy Plemons, who was chief deputy sheriff during the years when the thefts occurred, declined to discuss specifics of his agency's response to the repeated break-ins.

"Whenever we were notified of the burglaries and thefts we responded to those," he said. "I can't speak to every offense."

Company owners downplayed security risks in documents submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006, saying thefts had dropped to zero over the preceding 20 months as meth makers now had found a substitute for anhydrous ammonia available at garden nurseries or major retailers.

VERY STRONG ODOR

Yet burglars and trespassers continued to target the facility. Following a series of break-ins in late 2008 and early 2009, including one where a trespasser visited pornographic websites on a secretary's computer, police told plant manager Ted Uptmore - who has worked at the company for decades -- to install a surveillance system. Later documents show the company complied. Uptmore did not respond to phone calls seeking comment for this story.

The last record of tampering was in October 2012, when a 911 caller reported an odor "so strong it can burn your eyes." The firm dispatched Cody Dragoo, an employee often sent after hours to shut leaking valves and look into break-ins. That night, he shut off the valve but reported it had been tampered with.

Two weeks ago, Dragoo, 50, was among those killed in the blast while responding to the fire.

(Editing By Janet Roberts, Martin Howell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-texas-fertilizer-plant-history-theft-tampering-050245710.html

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Amid new security threats, some in Congress look to update 9/11 law

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A few dozen words rushed into law days after the September 11, 2001, attacks have been used to justify U.S. counterterrorism efforts from the war in Afghanistan to warrantless wiretapping and drone strikes, all on orders of the White House - and with little congressional oversight.

Now, as criticism grows that the law has been stretched well beyond its original intent to go after militant groups that did not even exist on 9/11, some Democrats and Republicans have begun writing legislation to update the nearly 12-year-old resolution.

That could restoke tensions between Congress and the White House over executive power, which were on display when Republican Senator Rand Paul staged a 13-hour filibuster in March to protest President Barack Obama's use of unmanned aircraft to conduct targeted killings.

"If you look back at the 60-word authorization that was put in place on September 18, 2001, and look at where we are today, there's a very, very thin thread, if any, between that authorization and what is occurring today," said Senator Bob Corker, a leader of the effort to examine the 2001 resolution. Its formal title is the Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF.

The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Corker said he wanted to spell out the kind of counterterrorism activities that could be authorized, and to bring Congress back into the equation.

"Congress has totally outsourced its foreign policy oversight," he said in an interview. "And a lot of people like it that way. Congress can take credit if things go well, criticize if things don't go well, but in essence Congress has no ownership over what we are carrying out right now. That's not an appropriate place for Congress to be."

The AUMF gives the president authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any further acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons."

It has no geographic limits or expiration date and, as such, has been the legal justification for drone campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen that have sometimes killed civilians and increased tensions among local populations.

In recent days, debates over U.S. national security policies have been roiled again by the Boston Marathon bombings, and a spreading hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected foreign militants, which Obama pledged - and has failed - to close.

While opponents want the AUMF repealed, a group of more moderate legislators wants it adjusted to account for a changing world and to set precedent as other countries build their own counterterrorism - especially drone - programs.

It is not yet clear what a revised AUMF would look like. Some members of Congress want to spell out policies for conducting drone strikes. Many want its scope expanded to include militant groups not directly tied to or found to be "harboring" al Qaeda, including some operating in Africa, and to groups that target U.S. allies in its fight against terrorism.

Some say a "Son of AUMF" should include more controls, such as defining who can be detained and for how long, including U.S. citizens. Others said there should be some definition of when hostilities under the AUMF would end.

"The current AUMF is too broad, too narrow and too vague," Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March.

Most presidents, Obama included, guard their war-making powers jealously. White House officials have suggested they are open to changes in the AUMF, congressional aides said. Publicly at least, they have not offered specifics.

Obama, who has pledged more transparency over U.S. drone operations, said in October, "One of the things we've got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president's reined in in terms of some of the decisions that we're making."

White House officials had no immediate comment.

'GETTING OLD'

John Bellinger, then a legal adviser to Republican President George W. Bush's National Security Council, helped draft the AUMF "almost on the back of an envelope" when the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. Congress passed it three days after the attacks, and Bush signed it on September 18.

Bellinger said the measure needed an update. He noted, for example, that it was now being used to justify going after targets who were only 8 or 9 years old when the September 11 attacks occurred.

"It really is getting old," he said. "It was drafted extremely rapidly after September 11 and has covered a whole variety of different activities over the last 12 years that were not originally contemplated."

Bellinger, now a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, said there was a tension between those on the left - an important part of Obama's base - who want to cut the law back or repeal it and those who would revise it to provide authority to engage in more activities.

"If people ... were to delve into the legal theories, I think they would find that the administration is probably either really stretching the boundaries of the AUMF to cover some of the individuals or groups that they're targeting, or, without telling anyone, simply relying on the president's constitutional authority," Bellinger said.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said any effort to change the AUMF should be done carefully.

"It's a huge subject and there's not an easy answer to it. It takes a lot of thought and I myself have thought a lot about it, but I don't have an answer to (the question) if I could write a new AUMF, what would I say?" he said.

Democratic U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the AUMF in September 2001, said the intervening years had only underscored her original concerns and intensified her desire for repeal.

"This has been I think a very dangerous resolution and it's given the executive branch just such broad authority that it has eroded our system of democracy and our system of checks and balances," she said.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/amid-security-threats-congress-look-9-11-law-051151977.html

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T-Mobile US shares rise in New York Stock Exchange debut

NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc shares rose 3 percent in their debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, after the company was created by the merger of MetroPCS Communications and Deutsche Telekom AG's U.S. unit T-Mobile USA.

Shares of the new company opened at $16.38 and had risen to $16.89 after 10 a.m. (1400 GMT), according to a company representative who was at the New York Stock Exchange.

MetroPCS and T-Mobile USA, whose combined 2012 revenue was $24.8 billion, merged to pool their spectrum resources to compete better with bigger rivals.

"It's a good debut," said Hudson Square Research analyst Todd Rethmeier. "They both had good first-quarter results, so we think there's more room for upside."

T-Mobile US, the fourth-largest U.S. mobile phone service provider, said it ended the first quarter with about 43 million customers. This compares with 55 million for third-ranked Sprint Nextel Corp .

MetroPCS shareholders voted in favor of the deal on April 24 after Deutsche Telekom, under pressure from activist investors, sweetened the terms.

Under the deal Germany's Deutsche Telekom owns 74 percent of T-Mobile US. MetroPCS shareholders received $4.06 per share in cash plus 26 percent of the combined company.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/t-mobile-us-shares-rise-york-stock-exchange-144135375.html

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Syria's Assad makes rare public visit for May Day

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Syrian President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance Wednesday, visiting a Damascus power station just a day after a powerful bomb hit the capital, Syria's state television reported.

The broadcast showed Assad speaking to staff on the occasion of International Workers Day, or May Day, at the Umayyad Electrical Station in the Tishrin Park district. Similar still images also appeared on a page used by the Syrian presidency on the popular social network Facebook.

At least 14 people were killed in Tuesday's blast, the second in the heart of the capital in two days. Rebels seeking to topple Assad have been trying to create a supply line from Jordan, so that arms bought by Saudi Arabia and Qatar can be shipped in for assaults on the city they hope to capture.

The television showed Assad, confident and wearing a dark business suit, talking with workers and shaking their hands. Later he is shown encircled by the staff in a garden.

Meanwhile, the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, in its first public response, rebuked the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, a day after he said that Syrian rebels will not be able to defeat Assad's regime militarily.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah had warned that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed militant group, could intervene on the government's side if the need arises.

The coalition said it hoped Hezbollah would stay out of the Syrian war, and urged Lebanon to "control its borders and urgently stop, through all available means, the military operations attributed to Hezbollah in areas close to the Syrian border."

It also blamed Assad's regime for "destroying" religious Muslim and Christian sites.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim group, is known to be backing Syrian government forces in Shiite villages near the Lebanese border against the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad. But Nasrallah's comments were the strongest indication yet that his group is ready to intervene more substantially on the side of Assad's embattled regime.

"You will not be able to take Damascus by force and you will not be able to topple the regime militarily. This is a long battle," Nasrallah said, addressing the Syrian opposition. "Syria has real friends in the region and in the world who will not allow Syria to fall in the hands of America or Israel or the Takfiris."

Takfiris is a term used to refer to followers of an al-Qaida-like extremist ideology.

Hezbollah and Iran are close allies of Assad. Rebels have accused both of them of sending fighters to assist Syrian troops trying to crush the 2-year-old anti-Assad uprising, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrias-assad-makes-rare-public-visit-may-day-133859210.html

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Larry Flynt Endorses Mark Sanford (ABC News)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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Sony CEO Michael Lynton on Hulu: 'I'm Not a Buyer'

By Sharon Waxman & Jethro Nededog

It sounds as if Hulu's board of directors is going to have a tough time finding a buyer for the video streaming service.

"I'm not a buyer," Sony Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton said at Tuesday's Milken Institute Global Conference.

"Who wants to buy it?" CBS Corporation President and CEO, Les Moonves, asked the event's moderator, CNBC reporter Julia Boorstin, whose parent company, Comcast, also co-owns Hulu.

Also read: 3 Things That Need to Happen Before Big Money Gets Spent on YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo & AOL

Moonves and fellow panelist Clear Channel Communications CEO Bob Pittman agreed that Netflix's paid subscriber model is more viable than Hulu's free model for its main service. The CBS boss predicts that the company will probably fold its free service for the paid model under Hulu Plus.

Another problem with Hulu is its short-term content agreements, the panelists said. "Eventually the networks [will] take back the content, like CBS has," Moonves said.

Hulu's board reportedly began approaching buyers in March. Earlier this month, there had been at least one reported bidder, former News Corp. president Peter Chernin.

Hulu is partially owned by News Corp. along with Walt Disney Co. and Comcast.

Related Wrap Stories

Source: http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/sony-ceo-michael-lynton-hulu-im-not-buyer-88651

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93% Lore

All Critics (88) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (82) | Rotten (6)

It's a harrowing walk through the heart of darkness.

Saskia Rosendahl gives an impressively poised performance as the beautiful teenager, whose determination to protect her remaining family coincides with her growing revulsion toward her parents.

"Lore" is not a pretty story, but it is a good and sadly believable one.

"Lore" is not a love story, nor the story of a friendship. Rather, it's a story of healing and of how breaking, sometimes painfully, is often necessary before that process can begin.

A fiercely poetic portrait of a young woman staggering beyond innocence and denial, it's about the wars that rage within after the wars outside are lost.

Full of surprises, the movie draws a thin line between pity and revulsion - how would you feel if you had discovered your whole life had been based on lies?

Proves that there is always room for another [World War II] story if it can be presented in an original and unexpected fashion.

Texture and detail embellish a provocative story

Child of Nazi parents faces an uncertain future

[Director Cate] Shortland directs with an almost hypnotic focus, favoring Lore's immediate experience over the big picture.

Rosendahl's performance is raw and compelling, as Lore fights for her siblings' survival and grows up in a hurry.

Lore and her siblings make a harrowing journey across Germany

Worthwhile, but so subtle that it's frustrating.

The Australian-German co-production takes an unconventional tale and turns it into a challenging, visually stunning and emotionally turbulent film experience.

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go. Except this ain't no fairy tale... unless it is, perhaps, a hint of the beginnings of a new mythology of ... scary childhood and even scarier adolescence...

With a child's perspective on war, "Lore" deserves comparisons with "Empire of the Sun" and "Hope and Glory," and with a feisty female protagonist it stands virtually alone.

Rosendahl...provides both narrative and emotional continuity to a film whose deliberate pace and fragmented presentation of reality might otherwise prove exasperating.

A burning portrait of consciousness and endurance, gracefully acted and strikingly realized, producing an honest sense of emotional disruption, while concluding on a powerful note of cultural and familial rejection.

Although there are moments that push the story a bit beyond credulity, Shortland has created something remarkable by forcing us to find within ourselves sympathy for this would-be Aryan princess.

Stunning, admirable and indelible - truthfully chronicling the triumph of the human spirit - in a class with Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon.'

Can we spare some sympathy or hope for the children of villains, even if they too show signs of their parents' evil? Lore provides no easy answers.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lore/

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