California declares drought emergency

Los Angeles: California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on Friday due to what could be the western US state’s worst drought in a century, which has sparked wildfires and hurt farmers.

The declaration allows authorities to access federal help to battle the dry spell that has left huge swathes of tinder-dry forest vulnerable to going up in flames.

On Thursday, a massive blaze raged just outside Los Angeles, damaging several homes and forcing residents to evacuate the area, where the fire risk had been elevated for weeks.

Brown urged state residents to reduce their water use by at least 20 per cent.

“I’ve declared this emergency and I’m calling on all Californians to conserve water in every way possible,” he said in a statement.

“We can’t make it rain,” he added.

“But we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities, and increased fires in both urban and rural areas.”

Brown told reporters in San Francisco that the current conditions were possibly “the worst drought that California has ever seen since records [began] about 100 years ago,” media reports said.

The region is suffering its third dry winter in a row, highlighted by the Los Angeles inferno.

California and other western US states are routinely hit with wildfires during the summer, but winter blazes, like the ones burning currently, are relatively rare.

California’s rivers and reservoirs have reached record lows, with only 20 per cent of the normal average supplies of water from melting snowpack, which flows down from mountains like the Sierra Nevada.

“Water years 2012 and 2013 were dry statewide, especially in parts of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California,” said the state’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) in its latest drought update.

“Water year 2014, which began on October 1st, continues this trend. Precipitation in some areas of the state is tracking at about the driest year of record.”

Farmer Mark Fontanilla was among dozens of people who staged a protest outside the state capitol in Sacramento on Thursday, urging Brown to do more.

“You can turn off your taps and minimise your pool and all that, but until we build more dams and increase the water storage, and get these clowns out of office, we’re gonna be importing our food from China,” he told KCRA television.

On average, half of California’s rain falls in December, January and February, the DWR noted, lamenting the lack of precipitation but saying it had not yet given up hope of some this winter.

“It is still too early, however, to call this water year, and Mother Nature may surprise us,” it said.

Six more U.S. retailers hit by Target-like hacks

Security firm IntelCrawler also identified a 17-year-old Russian it says wrote the BlackPOS malware, a version of which was used against Target

 

IDG News Service - Cybercriminals have stolen payment card data from six more U.S. retailers using similar point-of-sale malware that compromised Target, a computer crime intelligence company said Friday.

The conclusion comes from a study of members-only forums where cybercriminals buy and sell data and malicious software tools, said Dan Clements, president of IntelCrawler, which conducted the analysis.
The retailers have not been publicly named, but IntelCrawler is providing technical information related to the breaches to law enforcement, Clements said in a telephone interview Friday.
IntelCrawler has also identified a 17-year-old Russian who it says created the BlackPOS malware, which intercepts unencrypted payment card data after a card is swiped. Security experts believe malware based on BlackPOS was used against Target.
The teenager, who goes by the online nickname "ree4," sold more than 40 copies of BlackPOS to cybercriminals in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to forum postings IntelCrawler analyzed.
Clements said IntelCrawler is "90 percent" sure of its finding, based on the forum postings and sources it communicated with.
The forum posts indicate the teenager sold the malware for US$2,000 or for a share of the profits that came from monetizing stolen payment card details, Clements said.
BlackPOS was also sold to "carding" websites such as .rescator, Track2.name and Privateservices.biz that trade in stolen card details, according to IntelCrawler.
BlackPOS was originally called Kaptoxa, which is Russian slang for potato. Clements said the Russian teenager eventually renamed the malware BlackPOS during a fresh marketing push.
Dallas-based security company iSight Partners wrote in a report earlier this week on the Target hack, which it called the "Kaptoxa operation." It says the hackers used a high level of skill to gain stealthy access to the retailer's network.
Since early 2013, IntelCrawler has seen a brisk trade in login credentials for POS terminals on underground forums, suggesting cybercriminals are still finding gaps in industry security recommendations for how payment card data is handled.
Cybercriminals were selling "remote desktop protocol" credentials for POS terminals, which would allow them access to the machines, Clements said.
In many cases, default passwords had not been changed on the terminals, which were located in the U.S., Australia and Canada, he said. In other cases, cybercriminals were successfully trying many combinations of usernames and passwords to find the right one, known as a brute-force attack.

 

 

Sunanda Pushkar's death sudden, unnatural, reveals autopsy report

2.30 pm: In some starling revelations, the Board of senior AIIMS doctors who conducted the autopsy on Sunanda Pushkar, concluded that the post mortem suggests that it was a case of 'sudden unnatural death'.

However, Dr Sudhir Gupta, Autopsy Board AIIMS ruled out the presence of poison in her body. Dr Guota also mentioned that there were i njury marks on Sunanda's body.

Her remians have been handed over to Shahsi Tharoor who is in the ambulance with Sunanda's body.
2.15 pm: The post mortem of Sunanda Puskhar's body has been completed at AIIMS and her remains handed over to husband Shashi Tharoor. The last rites of Pushkar are likely to be conducted at the Lodhi Road crematorium later on Saturday evening.

Sources said some of Pushkar's family members, including her brother and son Shiv Menon, visited AIIMS where the autopsy was conducted by a three-member panel of senior doctors.

12.30 pm: A board of three doctors, led by Dr Sudhir Gupta, on Saturday began conducting the post mortem of Sunanda Puskhar, wife of minister of state for Human Resources Development Shashi Tharoor, who was found dead in a Delhi hotel room. All proceedings are being videographed.

Earlier, a day after Sunanda was found dead, police suspected it could be a case of accidental overdose (accidental poisoning) of medicine leading to failure of respiratory system.

They have been informed by forensic experts in the absence of normal tell-tale signs of suicide. This possibility is quite high.

If somebody consumes overdose of anti-depressants, the person, all of a sudden, discovers he/she can't breathe since it leads to paralysis of lung muscles.

Sunanda Pushkar

Police sources said on Saturday at the time when her body was discovered, she was on the bed, in the normal sleeping posture, wearing a night suit (top and pyjama). They said she had covered her body with a blanket, but did not cover her face.

"Nothing unusual was found inside the room to suggest there were any signs of her struggle," police sources had said, adding, there were some blue marks on her body, but forensic experts had said earlier, sometimes it happened naturally after a person's death. 

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/nothing-ususual-in-sunandas-room-to-suggest-struggle-sdm-to-probe-death/1/338448.html

Fewer Flushes in California as Brown Sells Emergency Water Cuts

In 2009, Cameron Diaz shook up late-night America when she told Jay Leno one of the secrets of living with California’s periodic water shortages involved infrequent toilet flushing, invoking images and colors that were unusually graphic even for adult audiences.

California’s 38 million residents are again being asked to conserve water after the most populous U.S. state suffered its driest year on record in 2013, leaving reservoirs depleted. Governor Jerry Brown, declaring a state of emergency yesterday, asked residents and businesses to voluntarily cut use by 20 percent and warned that mandatory restrictions may follow.
“We are in an unprecedented, very serious situation,” Brown said. “People should pause and reflect on how dependent we are on the rain, on nature and on one another.”
Signs of drought are everywhere from the barren ski slopes of the Sierra Nevada to farm fields fallowed by lack of irrigation crucial to California’s $44.7 billion agricultural industry. If it persists as forecasters predict, the drought threatens major hardships and higher water and energy costs for the world’s 10th largest economy.
For individuals, water conservation steps include flushing the toilet only for solid waste, limiting time in the shower, reusing water from rinsing fruits and vegetables to care for plants, and limiting when and how to water lawns or wash cars. The California Catholic Conference of Bishops has asked its faithful to pray for rain.

Mountain Water

About two-thirds of Californians get at least part of their water from northern mountain rains and snow through a network of reservoirs and aqueducts known as the State Water Project, according to the Water Resources Department, the state’s largest water supplier.
The system supplies households and businesses from the San Francisco Bay area to Southern California and irrigates crops in the San Joaquin Valley near the center of the state -- the world’s most productive agricultural region.
Most of California’s rain falls from November through March. Across most of the state, skies have stayed stubbornly blue for months, leaving reservoirs at 63 percent of average, according to state water data. The snow pack is at 20 percent of average for this time of year.
Los Angeles, which normally gets almost 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain a year, got less than 4 inches in 2013, according to the National Weather Service. San Francisco, where 22 inches is typical, got 6. The state’s two biggest population centers have built up water reserves and won’t be as hard hit as places such as Sacramento and the Central Valley farming region.

Hydropower Drop

Still, the drought may cause a drop in hydroelectric generation used by power companies such as PG&E Corp. (PCG:US) as stream flows dwindle. In 2012, hydropower production in California fell to 13.8 percent from 21.3 percent a year earlier because of drier conditions, Fitch Ratings said in a report this month. That led to an increase in higher-cost natural gas-fired generation, which rose to 61 percent from 45.4 percent.
California’s water managers say that without strong winter storms, they will be able to deliver only 5 percent of the slightly more than 4 million acre-feet of water requested to supply more than 25 million people and almost a million acres of irrigated farmland. An acre-foot is the volume needed to cover an acre of land one-foot deep with water.
Brown’s declaration includes 20 separate orders aimed at preparing the state for a prolonged drought, including setting up a statewide conservation plan.

Fire Threat

“‘We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities and increased fires in both urban and rural areas,” Brown said.
State emergency disaster planners are bracing for a record wildfire season as the lack of snow and rain has left most of the state with tinderbox conditions. California experienced almost a 50 percent increase in the number of wildfires last year from 2012, according to the state Forestry and Fire Protection Department, known as Cal Fire.
The drought declaration makes it easier to divert water into the Sate Water Project from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, an ecologically sensitive confluence of two rivers that feed into San Francisco Bay. It bans new landscaping at state buildings and along highways and roads, and gives officials more power to enforce water rights.

Fishing Restrictions

The emergency declaration advises local communities to establish contingency plans and warns that sport fishing in some lakes and rivers that are home to threatened species could be restricted.
The state will draft a plan to provide emergency food supplies, financial assistance, and unemployment services in communities that suffer high unemployment from the drought.

Some cities and towns are already taking action.

In Sacramento, the state capital, local officials last week ordered all residents and businesses to curb water use by as much as 30 percent. Residents may use only buckets to wash cars and can water lawns just twice a week.

In nearby Folsom, the local reservoir is so depleted that the building foundations of a gold-rush town that was purposely flooded a half century ago are now visible on a dry lakebed. The city has asked residents to cut water use by 20 percent.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael B. Marois in Sacramento at mmarois@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net