GAO calls on Postal Service to prefund retiree benefits

U.S. Postal Service officials and postal unions have long pushed Congress to relieve the agency of its obligation to prefund retiree health benefits. It’s a burden other agencies don’t share and one that officials say the Postal Service can’t afford. Defaults on prefunding payments total $11.1 billion.

But not everyone agrees that removing or substantially reducing the prefunding requirement is the best way out of the USPS hole.

A recent Government Accountability Office report says the “USPS should prefund its retiree health benefit liabilities to the maximum extent that its finances permit.”

The GAO said that deferring the prefunding payments “could increase costs for future ratepayers and increase the possibility that USPS may not be able to pay for some or all of its liability.”

The report said the Postal Service’s financial condition makes it difficult for the agency “to fully fund the remaining $48 billion unfunded liability over the remaining 44 years of the schedule” set up by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

USPS officials say they can pay $0.00. The Postal Service is losing $25 million a day.

“If Congress was to eliminate the requirement for USPS to pay down its unfunded liability on retiree health care, taxpayers would almost certainly pick up the bill,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). “USPS needs to cut costs, not cheat taxpayers or its own employees.”

The GAO report gives something to both sides, saying that the USPS should prefund its retiree health benefits, while acknowledging that it currently is too broke to do it.

In a response included in the GAO report, Joseph Corbett, the USPS chief financial officer and executive vice president, said the Postal Service “does not have the financial resources to make the prefunding payments required by current law.”

He criticized the GAO for releasing a report that did not include the controversial USPS proposal to sponsor its own health-care plan, outside of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan that now covers postal workers.

“Allowing the Postal Service to gain control of its own health care program would save money, reduce or eliminate the current unfunded liability, and allow for better management of health care costs going forward,” Corbett said.

Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, called on Congress to “reject the GAO’s policy myopia. . . . Government records show that 80 percent of all the USPS red ink stems directly from prefunding.”

Report: Close the digital divide

Uncle Sam needs to get with the digital program.

That’s the takeaway from a report — with the appropriate title #ConnectedGov — on the government’s use of technology and social media. It is being released Wednesday by the Partnership for Public Service, in collaboration with the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.

The report identifies innovative digital programs in seven agencies, demonstrating that “there are places in government that are doing immensely creative and impactful things,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership.

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Cool change aids Australia firefighters

SYDNEY: Cooler conditions helped firefighters battling blazes across Australia Wednesday but up to 30 were still out of control, destroying a handful of homes and killing thousands of livestock.

After facing one of the highest-risk fire days in its history on Tuesday, residents in hard-hit New South Wales state woke to shifting winds that caused temperatures to drop significantly.

While the mercury topped 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 F) in Sydney on Tuesday, it was forecast to peak at just 25 degrees Wednesday, while the Victorian capital Melbourne was down to 20.

The ratings on many bushfires were downgraded with none now at the "catastrophic" level which signifies fires will be uncontrollable, unpredictable and fast-moving, and evacuation the only safe option.

But NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned against complacency, with new fronts breaking out despite the colder weather and a total fire ban still in place.

"It is far from over when it comes to the threat to New South Wales," he told reporters in Bookham, a small village in Yass Shire west of Canberra where a fire has so far burnt out 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres).

"We need to sustain the vigilance today. We are not out of the woods yet, the risk is very real and there's a long day ahead and a forecast for a return to hot conditions toward the weekend and into next week."

More than 2,000 firefighters worked through the night tackling more than 140 blazes across New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, with 30 of those uncontained.

One home was earlier believed to have been lost in the state, at Jugiong, but Fitzsimmons said it now appeared to be an outbuilding or shed.

"It's a tribute to firefighters across the state that we haven't got any homes destroyed," he said.

"But we've seen significant agricultural losses already been tallied up, thousands of hectares of pasture and crops, and stock in the thousands lost."

New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell said an estimated 10,000 sheep had perished in the Yass area alone.

Wildfires are a fact of life in arid Australia, where 173 people perished in the 2009 Black Saturday firestorm, the nation's worst natural disaster of modern times.

Most are ignited naturally, but in Sydney's west three teenage boys were charged with deliberately lighting a fire in bushland on Tuesday.

Victoria state has also been experiencing extreme conditions with four homes destroyed and six people treated for minor burns or smoke inhalation in a bushfire in the farming community of Carngham, which was evacuated.

Authorities said the fire was now under control.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the federal and state governments were working together in the recovery effort and to support victims.

"Firstly, it's all hands on deck fighting the fires, dealing with the emergency, and then we move into the recovery phase," she said.

No deaths have so far been reported.

While it was initially believed as many as 100 people could be missing in the southern island of Tasmania after wildfires razed more than 100 homes over the weekend, police said there was confusion about movements during the crisis.

"We know there have been no significant injuries, which is amazing, and we are encouraged that we haven't found any human remains at this stage," Tasmanian acting police commissioner Scott Tilyard told Sky News.

Much of southern Australia has been enduring a summer heatwave and in the nation's arid centre the popular tourist resort of Kings Canyon south of Alice Springs was damaged after a blaze spread from the Watarrka National Park.

-AFP/ac

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Earthquake hits India's northeast

SHILLONG: An earthquake of moderate intensity jolted India's northeast Wednesday morning. Officials said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage to property.

The quake measured 5.9 on the Richter scale and was felt at 7.11 am.

According to the Regional Seismological Centre here, the epicentre lay in the India-Myanmar border.

Besides Meghalaya and Nagaland, the other states which felt the tremors included Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, an official said.

India's northeast is considered to be the sixth most earthquake-prone belt in the world.

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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Holmes Played Childish Games After Aurora Carnage

As police confronted the movie theater carnage and a massive booby trap left behind by accused Aurora gunman James Holmes, the suspect loopily played with hand puppets, tried to stick a metal staple in an electrical socket and clamly flipped a styrofoam cup, according to court testimony today.

Holmes, 25, displayed the bizarre behavior once he was in custody and taken to Aurora police headquarters after the shooting that left 12 people dead and dozens injured, the lead investigator in the case testified today.

While being cross examined by Colorado public defender Daniel King, Police Detective Craig Appel was asked about the observations of two Aurora officers assigned to watch over Holmes in an interrogation room.

Appel said that to preserve possible gunshot residue, police had placed paper bags over Holmes' hands. One officer, King said, noted in a report that Holmes began moving his hands "in a talking puppet motion."

Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.

King asked if Appel was also aware that the officer "observed Holmes take a staple out of the table and tried to stick it in an electrical socket?" Appel confirmed Holmes' actions.

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The officers also noted that they watched as Holmes began playing with an empty styrofoam cup, trying to "flip it" on the table.

While Holmes was carrying out his childish antics, police were puzzling over a complex booby trap Holmes had left behind in his apartment, according to testimony.

A gasoline-soaked carpet, loud music and a remote control car were part of Holmes' plan to trick someone into triggering a blast that would destroy his apartment and lure police to the explosion while he shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., according to court testimony.

FBI agent Garrett Gumbinner told the court that he interviewed Holmes on July 20, hours after he killed 12 and wounded 58 during the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

"He said he rigged the apartment to explode to get law enforcement to send resources to his apartment instead of the theater," Gumbinner said.

His plan failed to prompt someone into triggering the bombs.

Gumbinner said Holmes had created two traps that would have set off the blast.

The apartment was rigged with a tripwire at the front door connected to a mixture of chemicals that would create heat, sparks and flame. Holmes had soaked the carpet with a gasoline mixture that was designed to be ignited by the tripwire, Gumbinner said.

"It would have caused fire and sparks," the agent said, and "would have made the entire apartment explode or catch fire."

Holmes had set his computer to play 25 minutes of silence followed by loud music that he hoped would cause a disturbance loud enough that someone would call police, who would then respond and set off the explosion by entering the apartment.

Gumbinner said Holmes also told him he rigged a fuse between three glass jars that would explode. He filled the jars with a deadly homemade chemical mixture that would burn so hot it could not be extinguished with water.

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Obama’s failure to nominate women for two top Cabinet posts questioned

President Obama brought his top Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency chiefs together Monday with their potential replacements, and some critics noticed one thing that stood out: Each of them was a white man.

Obama, who made women’s issues a core of his reelection bid, has nominated men to serve in three of his most prominent national security positions, including secretary of state, where Sen. John F. Kerry (D) was named last month to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president on Monday announced former senator Chuck Hagel for the defense job and counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan to head the CIA.

The moves have disappointed some supporters who said they fear, with Clinton’s departure, a paucity of females among Obama’s top advisers, particularly in the traditionally male-dominated field of defense and security.

Thomas Donilon, the president’s national security adviser, was in the audience, as outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and acting CIA director Michael J. Morrell joined their possible successors and the president.

The pattern is particularly striking for a president who was elected with majority support from women and racial minorities and focused heavily during his reelection campaign on women’s health concerns and equal pay in the workplace. Obama won 55 percent of the female vote to Republican rival Mitt Romney’s 44 percent.

Obama is committed to “finding the very best people for each job,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday, when asked about the lack of women among the second-term appointments. “And that’s what he’s done today, and that’s what he’ll continue to do.”

Among those passed over to lead the Pentagon was Michele Flournoy, who became the highest-ranking woman to serve in the Defense Department when she was confirmed as undersecretary of defense for policy in 2009. Flournoy, 52, resigned from the role last February, citing a desire to spend more time with her family. But she also served as an adviser to Obama’s reelection campaign and was considered a top candidate.

Instead, Obama chose Hagel — who got to know Obama when he was a senator — though the Nebraska Republican has been criticized by GOP leaders and some Democrats for statements on Israel.

“I think he’s blowing a huge opportunity here for reasons I don’t even get,” said Rosa Brooks, a professor on national security at Georgetown University who spent two years working for Flournoy at the Pentagon.

“It would have been fantastic for this president to appoint the first woman secretary of defense,” Brooks said, “particularly given we are so embroiled at this moment in the ongoing conflict in the Islamic world, where the suppression of women is such a major issue. It was a chance for us to show we’re leading by example.”

Carney noted that Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, and U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice are in top national security roles.

He added that Obama “insists on diversity on the lists that he considers for the job because he believes that in casting a broader net, you increase the excellence of the pool of potential nominees for these positions. But in the end he’ll make the choice that he believes is best for the United States.”

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Japan summons China envoy over islands dispute

TOKYO: Tokyo summoned the Chinese ambassador for the first time under the new nationalist government to "strongly protest" against the presence of official ships in waters around disputed islands.

The foreign ministry said it told China to stop sending the vessels to the area around a chain controlled by Japan under the name Senkakus, but claimed by China as the Diaoyus.

Deputy minister for foreign affairs Akitaka Saiki met with Chinese ambassador Cheng Yonghua from around 11:00am (0200 GMT) on Tuesday to protest against Beijing's dispatching of four ships Monday, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry on Monday lodged a protest with the Chinese embassy by telephone.

It summoned Cheng on Tuesday for the first time since conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power on December 26 with promises of assertive diplomacy to confront a confident China.

The ministry last summoned acting Chinese ambassador Han Zhiqiang on December 13 to file a strong protest after Beijing sent an airplane to the area. Japan scrambled fighter jets in response.

It was the first incursion by a Chinese state aircraft into Japanese airspace anywhere since Tokyo's military began monitoring in 1958.

In the meeting on Tuesday, Saiki "strongly protested over the Chinese public vessels' entry and staying for a long time inside Japanese territorial waters, as well as strongly demanded that such incidents do not happen again," the foreign ministry statement said.

Cheng responded by reiterating China's claim over the islands, but said he will report Japan's protest to Beijing, the foreign ministry said.

- AFP/al

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Hate speech: Akbaruddin Owaisi to go for medical test today

HYDERABAD: Police teams arrived at Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi's residence here on Tuesday morning, a day after the leader avoided arrest citing medical reasons. Owaisi had sought four days time to appear before the police.

According to reports, Owaisi will be taken for a medical test for determining whether he is fit for further questioning or not.

Owaisi, who returned from London on Monday, is facing a slew of cases for his alleged hate speeches that he delivered in December last year.

Akbaruddin arrived in Hyderabad via a Qatar Airways flight from London in the early hours of Monday. He was received by MIM legislators and hundreds of party supporters. The MLA then directly came to his residence located at Road Number 12 of Banjara Hills.

Earlier, BJP activists carried out protests and burnt effigies of Akbaruddin Owaisi at Nagulchinta, Moaza Jahi Market, Karbala Maidan, Ram Nagar and Musheerabad X Roads on Monday morning. Police arrested 43 BJP activists including their senior leader, Bandaru Dattatreya at Moazam Jahi Market and 10 more activists have been nabbed at Nagulchinta. Heavy bandobust has been provided at Akbaruddin's house to prevent untoward incidents.

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Primitive and Peculiar Mammal May Be Hiding Out in Australia

It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.

Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.

The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.

(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)

Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.

(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)

“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”

John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.

With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).

As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.

Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.

No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.

As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.

This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”

Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.

Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”

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Meet Obama's Defense Secretary Nominee

President Obama nominated former Senator Chuck Hagel as the next U.S. secretary of defense. To those who haven't followed the Senate closely in the past decade, he's probably not a household name.

Hagel is a former GOP senator from Nebraska and Purple-Heart-decorated Vietnam veteran, but he wouldn't necessarily be a popular pick with Republicans in Congress.

At age 21, Hagel and his brother Tom became the next in the family to serve in the United States Army. They joined the masses of Americans fighting an unfamiliar enemy in Vietnam.

In his book, he describes finding himself "pinned down by Viet Cong rifle fire, badly burned, with my wounded brother in my arms."

"Mr. President, I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve our country again," Hagel said after Obama announced his nomination Monday.

In 1971, Hagel took his first job in politics as chief of staff to Congressman John Y. McCollister, a position he held for six years. After that, he moved to Washington for the first time, where he went on to work for a tire company's government affairs office, the 1982 World's Fair and in 1981, as Ronald Reagan's Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration.

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He worked in the private sector for most of the 80s and 90s before his first election to the Senate in 1997.
Since the turn of the century, Hagel has followed a curvy path of political alliances that puts his endorsements all over the map. Hagel's record of picking politically unpopular positions could be a large part of why Obama is naming him for the job, as Slate's Fred Kaplan surmises the next Defense secretary will be faced with tough choices.

In 2000, he was one of few Republican senators to back Sen. John McCain over then-presidential-candidate George W. Bush.

After that election, Hagel fiercely criticized Bush for adding 30,000 surge troops to Iraq, in place of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's proposal of a draw-down and regional diplomacy, which Hagel preferred. When Bush instead announced that more troops would go to Iraq, Hagel co-sponsored a nonbinding resolution to oppose it, along with then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel told Esquire in June 2007. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

Hagel's fierce opposition to America's involvement in Iraq – he called it one of the five monumental blunders of history, on par with the Trojan War – will be of substantial importance as the Obama administration charts our course out of Afghanistan, deciding how to withdraw the last of the troops in 2014 and how much of a presence to leave behind.

Hagel's support for McCain, which was substantial in his competition against Bush, disappeared in the 2008 election. Hagel toured Iraq and Afghanistan with Obama during his first campaign for the presidency.

In October 2008, Hagel's wife, Lillibet, announced her support for the Obama team, after the Washington Post reported on her donations to his campaign. She donated again in 2012.

Before the 2008 election, Hagel wrote: "The next president of the United States will face one of the most difficult national security decisions of modern times: what to do about an Iran that may be at the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons."

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