1. www.yourwestvalley.com | Daily News-Sun | TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2013
A7
NEWS IN BRIEF
Obama defends
U.S. spying on Europe
Prescott
>> From page A1
specialists like the 19 fatally
trapped Sunday — a group
of firefighters known as
Hotshots called to face the
nation’s fiercest wildfires.
With no way out, the
Prescott-based crew did
what they were trained to
do: They unfurled their foillined, heat-resistant tarps
and rushed to cover themselves. But that last, desperate line of defense couldn’t
save them.
The deaths of the Granite
Mountain Hotshots marked
the nation’s biggest loss of
firefighters in a wildfire in
80 years. Only one member of the 20-person crew
survived, and that was because he was moving the
unit’s truck at the time.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
called it “as dark a day as I
can remember” and ordered
flags flown at half-staff.
“I know that it is unbearable for many of you, but it
also is unbearable for me. I
know the pain that everyone
is trying to overcome and
deal with today,” said Brewer, her voice catching several times as she addressed
reporters and residents at
Prescott High School in the
town of 40,000.
President Barack Obama
called Brewer on Monday
from Africa and reinforced
his commitment to providing necessary federal support to battle the fire that
spread to 13 square miles
after destroying 50 homes.
More than 200 homes were
threatened in the town of
700 people.
Obama also offered his
administration’s help to
state officials investigating
the tragedy, and predicted it
will force government leaders to answer broader questions about how they handle increasingly destructive
and deadly wildfires.
Brewer said the blaze
“exploded into a firestorm”
that overran the crew.
The blaze grew from 200
acres to about 2,000 in a
matter of hours.
Southwest incident team
leader Clay Templin said
the crew and its commanders were following safety
protocols, and it appears
the fire’s erratic nature simply overwhelmed them.
The Hotshot team had
spent recent weeks fighting fires in New Mexico
and Prescott before being
called to Yarnell, entering
the smoky wilderness over
the weekend with backpacks, chainsaws and other heavy gear to remove
brush and trees as a heat
wave across the Southwest
sent temperatures into the
triple digits.
Prescott Fire Chief Dan
Fraijo said he feared the
worst when he received
a call Sunday afternoon
from someone assigned to
the fire.
“All he said was, ‘We
might have bad news. The
entire Hotshot crew deployed their shelters,’”
Fraijo said. “When we talk
about deploying the shelters, that’s an automatic fear, absolutely. That’s
a last-ditch effort to save
yourself when you deploy
your shelter.”
MIDEAST
U.S., Russia
want
transitional
government
for Syria
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei (AP) • U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry says both
the U.S. and Russia are seriously committed to holding an international conference to set up a transitional
government to end the Syrian crisis.
Kerry says the two countries both believe the meeting should take sooner rather
than later, but acknowledged
it might not be possible until
August or later.
Kerry spoke outside the
U.S. Embassy in Brunei after a 90-minute-plus meeting with Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov on
the sidelines of an Asian security summit.
Russia has been a key
backer of Syrian President
Bashar Assad regime’s in
the two-year civil war that
has claimed more than
93,000 lives.
Kerry said the objectives
of both countries remain
the same — to “save the
state of Syria and to minimize destruction.”
WEDGE ISSUES
Splits on
immigration,
marriage offer
GOP preview
Washington (AP) • Pivotal developments on two cultural issues — immigration
reform and gay marriage
— offer an early preview of
potential fault lines among
Republicans weighing White
House bids in 2016.
When the Senate approved a comprehensive immigration reform measure,
Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in opposite directions amid divisions in
the party over how to curb
the fast-growing flow of Latino voters to Democrats.
At the same time, the Supreme Court rulings supporting gay marriage attracted broad criticism from most
2016 hopefuls, though Paul
suggested that Republicans
need to “agree to disagree on
some of these issues.” That
foreshadows likely fissures
ahead, as Republican contenders face increasing pressure to show more tolerance
toward gay marriage with
many Republican voters in
their 20s, 30s and 40s calling
for acceptance.
Republican strategists say
both topics serve as gateway
issues for many voters. If the
party’s tone on immigration
or gay marriage sounds too
intolerant, they say, it could
prevent voters from listening on other issues.
TRAVELS
NSA leaker
withdraws
asylum request
to Russia
Moscow (AP) • Edward
Snowden’s attempts to seek
refuge outside the United
States hit hurdles today, after Russian media reported he canceled his asylum
bid in Russia and several
European countries said
such applications wouldn’t
be considered if they were
made from abroad.
Russian news agencies
today quoted President
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as
saying that Snowden withdrew his request when he
learned about the terms
Moscow has set out. Putin said on Monday that
Russia is ready to shelter Snowden as long as he
stops leaking U.S. secrets.
At the same time, Putin said he had no plans to
turn over Snowden to the
United States.
16983627
A woman reacts as the national anthem is sung at the start of a memorial
service Monday in Prescott. The service was for the 19 Granite Mountain
Hotshot Crew firefighters who were killed Sunday, when an out-of-control
blaze overtook the elite group. [AP Photo/Julie Jacobson]
Washington (AP) • President
Barack Obama had a simple
answer to European outrage
over new allegations that the
U.S. spies on its allies: The
Europeans do it, too.
Obama said Monday
during his trip to Africa
that every intelligence service in Europe, Asia and
elsewhere does its best to
understand the world better, and that goes beyond
what they read in newspapers or watch on TV. It
was an attempt to blunt
European reaction to new
revelations from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden that
the U.S. spies on European
governments.
“If that weren’t the case,
then there’d be no use for
an intelligence service,”
Obama told reporters in
Tanzania.
“And I guarantee you
that in European capitals,
there are people who are
interested in, if not what I
had for breakfast, at least
what my talking points
might be should I end up
meeting with their leaders,” Obama said. “That’s
how intelligence services
operate.”