Archives for May 2021

What Congress is considering for your agency in the week ahead

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Nothing has quite jelled enough to be headed to the president’s desk for signing, but many bills concerning federal agencies and their operations are simmering in Congress. Postal Service reform, 10 bills about veterans and Veterans Affairs and a couple of key nominations. For the latest we turn to WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller.

Tom Temin: And Mitchell, let’s start with Postal Service reform. This seems to be – maybe this is the year it could happen?

Mitchell Miller: Maybe it is, after many, many years, as you well know, of arguments back and forth about the future of the Postal Service. And of course, former President Trump not a big fan of the Postal Service. It does seem like we’re finally making some progress here. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week, putting out this new bipartisan bill that would do all kinds of reforms related to the Postal Service. But the big one, as you have reported on for many, many years, of course, is the big issue about pre-funding the requirement for Postal Service retirees, basically, the reform proposed by Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio would allow this to be deferred. And that would save close to $50 billion over a decade, which would really do a lot, of course, to alleviate a lot of the Postal Service’s issues on the financial side. And then there are also reforms related to the day to day things, they would still require that the post office deliver mail six days a week, and there would be more reporting to Congress to make it more accountable. These, of course, come on top of the reforms that have been proposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a lot of Democrats still don’t like some of those proposals. But nonetheless, I think this bipartisan legislation actually does have a chance of getting passed, because it looks like at least 10 Republicans have indicated they would support it. And that’s a rare thing these days on Capitol Hill, as you know.

Tom Temin: Yeah, and the other key provision in there is that future retirees would be going on to Medicare. So the Postal Service itself would not face the $50 billion savings just later on down the line. They’d have to pay it all, at some future indeterminant point.

Mitchell Miller: Exactly, and that’s a huge part of that whole financial picture because without that cost, at least on an annual basis that really could, at least for the temporary time being hold off the money woes for the Postal Service.

Tom Temin: All right. So that has bipartisan support and – mentioned the Senate, and the House has a component there, also?

Mitchell Miller: The House also has a component. Some of the details are still being worked out on that. But it does seem like the lead on the Senate side is going to really help because as you know, everything seems to get backed up on the Senate side. So the fact that that we have agreement on the Senate side, I think that the House legislation can be pulled along.

Tom Temin: And when they can’t agree on anything else, there’s always Veterans Affairs and veterans.

Mitchell Miller: That’s right. A good bipartisan area, something like infrastructure, right? Although there does seem to be more of an agreement here, whereas infrastructure, as we may touch on later does not have that. But this is a big package of bipartisan bills that was put out by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, the House last week passed this package. That in itself is actually an accomplishment, because there’s been some procedural issues about getting these big packages of bills through the House. But nonetheless, they were able to do that among some of the bills, one that would make more accountability in connection with sexual harassment cases. They would strengthen the oversight of COVID relief money, they would expand healthcare resources at the VA. And then there’s an interesting one involving a case in West Virginia, they’re actually going to expand the use of cameras in Veterans Affairs facilities. There was a lot of concern about security and issues about people going in and out of a facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where some murders actually took place there. So there was a big push to get cameras and more accountability related to security issues, at these VA facilities.

Tom Temin: Interesting about the oversight on the spending for the VA stimulus money from the pandemic. Because it turns out, they’ve only spent half of it so far.

Mitchell Miller: Right, they’ve still got a pot of money there that they’ve got to figure out exactly what to do with. They’re still trying to basically parse that out and get it out. And that is true also of a lot of other agencies where there is money. And that’s been one of the criticisms that Republican lawmakers have lodged, saying, when we’re continuing to approve we Congress continue to improve approve all of this money that is not obviously going right into the bloodstream of all these agencies right away. So that’s another issue for the VA.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Mitchell Miller, Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. And this commission on Jan. 6 seems to be really scrambling up already bad relations. Since that seemed to have been passed on a party line vote. I guess one side wants to skip it. The other side wants to put up scaffolding on the front lawn to hang people. So where’s that all headed?

Mitchell Miller: Well, it looks like the commission and security funding for the Capitol are both in big trouble in the Senate. The security measure did pass barely by one vote actually, and almost was taken down by a group of liberal Democrats who had problems with the funding of Capitol Police. But then the 9/11-type commission for looking into Jan. 6, once Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out and said he was going to be against it, along with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, that basically gave a safe haven for a lot of Republicans in the Senate who now say that they are not going to support it. In fact, there are only really a handful of Republicans who say they’re still looking at it. So once again, for Democrats to get those 10 votes to overcome the filibuster looks very, very difficult, related to Jan. 6 and actually, the funding related to improvements at the Capitol, which would include a huge retractable fence around the Capitol complex, a rapid response team that would be part of the D.C. National Guard, those elements are also in some trouble in the Senate as some Republicans say that they’ve really just rushed this through and that there needs to be a more timely, a lengthier assessment of everything that is needed. So while there were a lot of calls right after Jan. 6 for this bipartisan commission, I just wonder if it’s really going to happen at this point, because now there’s a lot of talk about whether there’ll be a select committee in the House or whether it will just be left to all the House and Senate Committees to do their own investigations?

Tom Temin: And switching gears, any nominations for the administration? I mean, they’re down to kind of the second tier positions at this point.

Mitchell Miller: Right, we’re really down to what is left the last immediate Cabinet-level position. And this is really new that it’s a Cabinet-level position. This is the – to be the director of the House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Eric Lander is the nominee who basically would be President Biden’s chief science advisor. This is something the administration wanted to do. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation pushed through his nomination, not with complete unanimity however. There were some questions raised by Republicans, one interesting one that was raised by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn was about the fact that Lander had some interactions with Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and of course, got caught up in with the controversy with all kinds of sexual allegations. But Lander said that he had only met Epstein a couple of times and didn’t really have any major interactions with him. I think this was a kind of minor blip in connection with his nomination. I do expect it will probably move forward by the full Senate.

Tom Temin: Gosh, that Epstein had a way of getting around, didn’t he?

Mitchell Miller: Boy, he talked to just about everybody. I mean, it’s amazing how whether it’s, former President Bill Clinton, or all these high level people on the financial side with Wall Street and politicians, it’s incredible how many fingerprints he got on a lot of different things.

Tom Temin: Just for the record, neither you or I ever met the guy.

Mitchell Miller: Never met the guy, no.

Tom Temin: And now I’m glad I didn’t. And what about just to get to the stimulus idea? Because that is looking like maybe there is some conference going on there.

Mitchell Miller: Right, Republicans are still trying to basically get their final proposal to the Biden administration. There were more talks last week, with Republicans coming forward. As you know, President Biden has tried to keep an open door at the White House getting more of these bipartisan meetings, whether or not they can really close this gap still remains to be seen. Republicans are slowly kind of bumping up their proposal from close to $600 billion, they say it may go as high as $800 billion. Of course, that would still be only a fraction of more than $2 trillion that the administration is talking about. The other thing is they’re still considering whether it might be parsed out as it traditionally has been into smaller pieces. The White House has indicated that they might be open to that but there are a lot of congressional Democrats who really just want to say, let’s get this through, and they’re still keeping that budget reconciliation possibility in their back pocket.

Tom Temin: And just a final question i everywhere I look, there is somebody talking about this new book about the Secret Service, Carol Leonnig’s new book “Zero Fail.” Everywhere I look, there’s a review of it. Has any of that reached Capitol Hill that you’ve heard about people talking about looking at the Secret Service as a congressional concern?

Mitchell Miller: Well, they’re definitely talking about it. Whether or not they will actually have any type of hearings is still being worked out. But there is a lot of concern about that. I mean, some of the things that she reported on as you know, were just kind of mind blowing the fact that the first of all, the morale in the Secret Service has really dipped in recent years. But more specifically, you had those incidents where people that basically had no real plan got over the White House fence and then literally got into the White House. So there’s also concerns lingering related to former President Trump and some of the costs incurred related to the Secret Service and his family and the protection but there’s a – really concern about from some lawmakers that the Secret Service has in many respects lost some of its luster. Now, obviously there are a lot of incredibly brave and really great people within the Secret Service. But there is worry that a lot of these different issues over the years have sort of tarnished the Service. And, it kind of reminds me in a different respect, although they have two very different roles of what’s happened with the Capitol Police, that there was some concern about whether the Capitol Police may have been involved in somehow letting some of these demonstrators through on Jan. 6. The morale, frankly within the Capitol Police has also dropped quite a bit. And then of course, you have the arguments back and forth about exactly what should be done to bolster the department. So these are two law enforcement agencies that are really undergoing a lot of tummult right now.

Tom Temin: Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. As always, thanks so much.

Mitchell Miller: You bet.

Japan opens mass vaccine centers 2 months before Olympics

TOKYO (AP) — Japan mobilized military doctors and nurses to give shots to elderly people in Tokyo and Osaka on Monday as the government desperately tries to accelerate its vaccination rollout and curb coronavirus infections just two months before hosting the Olympics.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is determined to hold the Olympics in Tokyo after a one-year delay and has made an ambitious pledge to finish vaccinating the country’s 36 million elderly people by the end of July, despite skepticism it’s possible. Worries about public safety while many Japanese remain unvaccinated have prompted growing protests and calls for canceling the games, set to start on July 23.

Suga’s government has repeatedly expanded the area and duration of a largely voluntary request-based virus state of emergency since late April and has made its virus-fighting measures stricter. Currently, Tokyo and nine other areas that are home to 40% of the country’s population are under the emergency and a further extension is deemed unavoidable.

With COVID-19 cases still high, Suga now says vaccines are key to getting infections under control. He has not made vaccinations conditional for holding the Olympics and has arranged for Pfizer to donate its vaccine for athletes through the International Olympic Committee, while trying to speed up Japan’s inoculation drive as anti-Olympic sentiment grows.

Suga, speaking to reporters after a brief visit to the Tokyo center, said accelerating the vaccine rollout is an “unprecedented challenge.”

“We will do whatever it takes to accomplish the project so that the people can get vaccinated and return to their ordinary daily lives as soon as possible,” he said.

At the two centers, staffed by about 280 military medical staff and 200 civilian nurses, the aim is to inoculate up to 10,000 people per day in Tokyo and 5,000 per day in Osaka for the next three months.

In hardest-hit Osaka, where hospitals are overflowing, with tens of thousands of people becoming sicker or even dying at home, dozens began lining up before the inoculation center opened early Monday. In Tokyo, some vaccine recipients said they took taxis or shuttle buses to get to the center to avoid packed commuter trains.

People inoculated at the two centers were the first in Japan to receive doses from Moderna Inc., one of two foreign-developed vaccines Japan approved on Friday.

Previously, Japan had used only Pfizer Inc., and only about 2% of the population of 126 million has received the required two doses.

Japan began vaccinating health care workers in mid-February after delays resulting from its decision to require additional vaccine clinical testing inside Japan — a decision many experts said was medically meaningless and only slowed the inoculation process.

Vaccinations for the next group — the elderly, who are more likely to suffer serious COVID-19 effects — started in mid-April but have been slowed by reservation procedures, unclear distribution plans and shortages of medical staff to give shots.

The completion of Japanese-developed vaccines is still uncertain, but government officials hope the approvals Friday of Moderna and AstraZeneca will accelerate inoculations.

“Speeding up the rollout makes us feel safer because it affects our social life and the economy,” said Munemitsu Watanabe, a 71-year-old office worker who got his first shot at the Tokyo center. “If 80-90% of the population gets vaccinated, I think we can hold the Olympics smoothly.”

That goal seems impossible to meet. Those currently eligible are 65 years or older, and some officials say it may take until next March before younger people are fully vaccinated.

Japan also has a dire shortage of medical staff who can give shots since only doctors and nurses can legally do so — and they are already busy treating COVID-19 patients.

Under pressure, Suga’s government has allowed dentists and retired nurses to perform inoculations, and on Monday asked for pharmacists’ help. Suga said he is also considering adding paramedics and clinical laboratory technicians to create a pool of “several tens of thousands” of medical personnel. There are worries, however, that loosening the criteria may increase vaccine hesitancy in the public.

Also Monday, Tokyo’s downtown Sumida district organized a one-time inoculation event at the Kokugikan sumo arena, a venue for Olympic boxing, to attract elderly people with a lottery to win sumo-themed souvenirs.

Several other local governments, including Aichi in central Japan and Gunma near Tokyo and Miyagi in the north, also were to open their own large vaccination centers on Monday.

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Associated Press journalists Chisato Tanaka and Kantaro Komiya contributed to this report.

One more thrill: Phil Mickelson wins at 50 in raucous PGA

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Standing on the 18th tee with a two-shot lead in a championship he refused to imagine himself winning, Phil Mickelson took one last violent swing with a driver — the club that betrayed him 15 years earlier in the U.S. Open.

His tee shot Sunday in the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island landed only a few yards off the fairway, but it still nestled among the people — the gallery packed tightly between the ropes and a row of hospitality tents — screaming the name of their aging hero.

After Mickelson’s approach shot settled on the green, assuring the 50-year-old of becoming the oldest major champion in history, the crowd swallowed him up entirely.

Phil Mickelson, the people’s champion.

“It’s an incredible experience. I’ve never had something like that,” Mickelson said. “It was a little bit unnerving, but it was exceptionally awesome, too.”

Golf can be cruel to veteran, sentimental favorites. Ben Hogan at the 1955 U.S. Open. Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters and the British Open a dozen years later. And, perhaps most heartbreaking, 59-year-old Tom Watson at the 2009 British Open.

Mickelson, too, has had as many close calls as major victories — most of them at the U.S. Open, where he’s been runner-up six times. Winged Foot — where he gave away a one-shot lead on the 72nd hole in 2006 — wasn’t the first, or the last.

But now, the two biggest stars of their generation have a signature late-career win. Tiger Woods overcame four back surgeries, turmoil in his personal life and 11 years of frustration in major championships to win the Masters two years ago at age 43.

Mickelson — happy at home and injury-free — merely stretched the limits of what’s possible after a half-century on Earth.

“There’s no reason why I or anybody else can’t do it at a later age. It just takes a little more work,” Mickelson said.

Nine days earlier, Mickelson accepted a special exemption to play in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in his hometown of San Diego. Now he’s assured at least five more cracks at the lone major that has eluded him. The victory makes him exempt at the U.S. Open through 2025.

Already a Hall of Famer, Mickelson joined Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino as six-time major winners. Only 11 players have won more. If he somehow won another in his 50s, he’d match Arnold Palmer, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead and Harry Vardon.

“I don’t know how to describe the feeling of excitement and fulfillment and accomplishment to do something when — you know, of this magnitude when very few people thought that I could,” Mickelson said.

The record will show Mickelson closed with a 1-over 73 for a two-shot win over Brooks Koepka (73) and Louis Oosthuizen (74). That doesn’t begin to describe the wild fluctuations of Sunday on the menacing Ocean Course, where Mickelson and Koepka hit shots that were both spectacular and shocking, sometimes on the same hole.

Between them, Mickelson and Koepka made 16 pars, 10 bogeys, nine birdies and one double bogey. Five of the first 10 holes had swings of two shots or more — and that didn’t include the par-3 fifth, when Mickelson holed out from a waste bunker with Koepka safely on the green.

Even with three bogeys in a five-hole stretch on the back nine, Mickelson hit enough good shots to avoid bigger numbers and hold off Koepka. Then came the bedlam on 18, where Mickelson and Koepka fought their way through the crowd to get to the green.

There were no fans at last year’s three major championships. Patrons returned to the Masters last month to cheer Hideki Matsuyama’s breakthrough win. But this was golf’s rowdiest gallery since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it came at a time when the virus is receding in the U.S., with well over half of adults at least partially vaccinated.

Masks were rare among the crowd, which the PGA of America said was limited to 10,000 people a day. Fans pressed five-deep against the ropes, stumbled atop steep dunes and clambered into trees on the sprawling Ocean Course.

Golf, which surged in popularity last year as a sport with built-in social distancing, returned to something approaching normal, with fans celebrating an extraordinary champion.

“It was like the Phil that I remember watching just when I turned pro and it was great to see,” Oosthuizen said.

The records Mickelson shattered were numerous. Julius Boros for 53 years held the distinction of golf’s oldest major champion. He was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship.

Mickelson became the first player in PGA Tour history to win tournaments 30 years apart. The first of his 45 titles was in 1991, when he was still a junior at Arizona State and Koepka was 8 months old.

Mickelson joined Woods — who sent a tweet of congratulations — among the 10 players who’ve won majors in three decades.

Lefty spent very little time talking to reporters before Sunday’s post-tournament news conference and refused to discuss what a win would mean to him. Instead, he pounded extra balls on the driving range — even on Sunday, he was rehearsing swing positions in between shots — and spent time meditating to recapture the mental sharpness he said he’d lost earlier this year.

“Anybody who really thinks they can win on a Sunday is going to be feeling that pressure and the nerves,” said 49-year-old Padraig Harrington, who closed with a 69 to tie for fourth. “I’d say Phil is full to capacity, but that’s where he likes to live.”

This was Mickelson’s first major win with his brother, Tim, as his caddie. Could there be more?

“It’s very possible that this is the last tournament I ever win. Like if I’m being realistic,” Mickelson said. “But it’s also very possible that I may have had a little bit of a breakthrough in some of my focus and maybe I go on a little bit of a run.”

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Follow Ben Nuckols at https://twitter.com/APBenNuckols

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More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Experts or ‘grifters’? Little-known firm runs Arizona audit

In early March, a Boston-based vote-counting firm called Clear Ballot Group sent a bid to Arizona’s state Senate to audit the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.

The firm has conducted more than 200 such audits over 13 years in business. “Our level of comparison data is unmatched,” Keir Holeman, a Clear Ballot Group vice president, wrote to the Republican-controlled Senate. He never heard back, he says.

Instead, the state Senate hired a small Florida-based cybersecurity firm known as Cyber Ninjas that had not placed a formal bid for the contract and had no experience with election audits. Senate President Karen Fann says she can’t recall how she found the firm, but her critics believe one credential stood out: Cyber Ninjas’ chief executive officer had tweeted support for conspiracy theories claiming Republican Donald Trump, and not Democrat Joe Biden, had won Maricopa County and Arizona.

Now the untested, little-known cybersecurity firm is running a partly taxpayer-funded process that election experts describe as so deeply flawed it veers into the surreal. Its chief aim, critics say, appears to be testing far-fetched theories, rather than simply recounting votes — an approach that directly undermines the country’s democratic traditions.

“If I give you 20 M&Ms, and you want 30, you can keep counting it, but you did not get 30 M&Ms,” said David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a former Department of Justice voting rights attorney and elections expert. “This is not an effort to find the truth.”

Experienced vote counters have watched the process in shock. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said this week Maricopa County will need to replace all of its election machines because their security has been permanently compromised by the auditors. Experts note the review isn’t following standard recounting procedures and, unlike with other election audits in Arizona, members of each major political party are not at each table observing the counting.

The auditors are checking for bamboo fibers to test a theory that tens of thousands of fake ballots were shipped from Asia. A onetime treasure hunter who claims to have invented a new method to automatically spot ballot fraud says his technology is being used in the review.

It’s become too much for some Republicans. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, all but one of whom are Republicans, this week accused Republicans in the Senate of having “rented out the once-good name of the Arizona Senate” to “grifters.”

“Your ‘auditors’ are in way over their heads,” the board wrote in a letter.

Cyber Ninjas’ defenders say they’re creating a template for a re-examination of the election in every battleground state Biden won. Trump allies have already called for similar operations in Georgia. And criticisms about the firm’s lack of election experience are hollow, its advocates argue, because the Arizona audit is unprecedented.

“This is an audit like none that has ever been performed,” said Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive officer of Overstock.com who has been raising money for the audit. “This audit is an audit check for all forms of mischief.”

The man running the operation, Cyber Ninjas chief executive officer Doug Logan, declined through his spokesman to be interviewed. He has only answered questions from reporters in public once, during a contentious press conference last month.

“There’s a lot of Americans here, myself included, that are really bothered at the way our country’s being ripped apart right now,” Logan said. “If we go through here and we don’t find any fraud, I will be ecstatic.”

Maricopa County has already conducted two audits, which found no problems with the count in the state’s most populous county. At the urging of Trump supporters, the Senate insisted on a third and subpoenaed more than 2 million ballots from the county.

When the Senate leader went looking for an elections firm to do the work, she did not put together a formal request for proposal, as is typical for government contracts. Fann said she and her staff reached out to several firms and got two bids back — the one from Clear Ballot Group for $450,000 and the other from a cybersecurity group called Intersec Worldwide. Fann said she preferred the Intersec proposal, but balked at an $8 million price tag.

In an interview, she said she could not recall who had referred her to Cyber Ninjas. “To be honest with you I can’t even tell you exactly what path led me there,” Fann said.

But Fann had tapped into a loose network of computer security experts who had become active in pro-Trump election conspiracy theories. In a self-published book written this year, Byrne dubbed the group “cyber ninjas” — a term used by so-called “white hat” hackers who defend against online intrusions. Byrne told AP that, in December, he and Logan “crossed paths in a few places.” But Byrne said he wasn’t involved in the audit bid and does not know Logan well.

Logan, 42, in December had tweeted and retweeted references to the conspiracy theory that voting machines were hacked to switch votes from Trump. “The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year’s election are astonishing,” Logan tweeted, with a #StoptheSteal hashtag that referenced the pro-Trump movement seeking to overturn the election.

Logan also served as an expert witness in a pro-Trump lawsuit raising conspiracy theories about the election in Antrim County, Michigan. Another cybersecurity professional who filed an expert witness affidavit in that case, Ben Cotton, was a partner on the Intersec proposal. Cotton’s own firm, CyFIR, which did not respond to a request for comment, is now a subcontractor on the Arizona audit.

The Senate agreed to pay Cyber Ninjas $150,000 in state money, but it is not clear how much more the audit will cost and who is paying for it. The pro-Trump One America News Network raised $150,000 in a single day in April and has continued to ask for donations. Byrne has also started a fundraising drive with a group that says it has raised $1.7 million with a goal of $2.8 million. Neither will have to disclose donors or account for how the money is spent, and Logan has declined to detail financial information.

Byrne’s organization is also involved in recruiting volunteers. The audit’s liaison with the Senate sent an email to local Republicans last week asking for more volunteers and referring them to the website of Byrne’s organization’s to apply. Byrne said his group simply refers volunteers to Cyber Ninjas for “vetting.” The email was first reported by The Arizona Republic.

Logan started Cyber Ninjas in 2013 in Indiana after working for two years for a cybersecurity firm called Cigital, according to his LinkedIn profile and Cyber Ninja press releases. He moved his firm from Indiana to Sarasota in 2014, according to the Cyber Ninjas website, which quotes Logan describing the firm as a “Christian company.” Last year, when Cyber Ninjas received $98,000 in federal COVID relief money, it claimed five employees.

At a public presentation last week, Logan cited as part of his qualifications that his firm “worked with some of the largest names in the financial services space.” Two of the companies he lists as former clients in his expert witness statement, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase, said through spokespeople that they have no record of hiring Cyber Ninjas.

Logan’s scant public record before the audit was a history of volunteering for the U.S. Cyber Challenge, a training event for internet security amateurs and professionals. In 2015, Logan received an award from the security firm SANS for his volunteerism with the event,

John Pescatore, the SANS employee who oversees the award program, said Logan was cited mainly for designing an online “capture the flag” game where players try to hack into an opponent’s base. “It takes a lot of work,” said Pescatore of Logan’s volunteering. He added he doesn’t know Logan but Cyber Ninjas has a good reputation for testing companies’ systems for vulnerabilities, its market niche.

A spokesman for the U.S. Cyber Challenge did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Logan is not the only person associated with the effort to overturn the 2020 election who is working on the audit. Jovan Pulitzer, an inventor who unsuccessfully pushed for a post-election audit in Georgia, has said his technology is being used to detect altered ballots.

Pulitzer is also a former treasure hunter and author of a series of books on lost treasures, including one titled “How to Cut Off Your Arm and Eat Your Dog.” In 2000, he developed a barcode scanner called Cuecat that purported to link print magazine ads to the internet. It was later named one of the 50 worst inventions of all time by Time magazine.

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Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Italy investigators probe why cable car brake ‘didn’t work’

STRESA, Italy (AP) — The investigation into Italy’s cable car disaster that killed 14 people will focus on why the lead cable snapped and why the emergency brake didn’t engage and prevent the cabin from careening back down the mountain until it pulled off the support line and crashed to the ground, the lead prosecutor said Monday.

Verbania Prosecutor Olimpia Bossi outlined the contours of her investigation based on what she said was objective, empirical fact of what occurred: “The brakes of the security system didn’t work. Otherwise the cabin would have stopped,” she said. “Why that happened is naturally under investigation.”

Bossi spoke to reporters as the lone survivor of Sunday’s horrific tragedy, a 5-year-old Israeli boy living in Italy, remained hospitalized in Turin in intensive care with multiple broken bones.

The Israeli foreign ministry identified him as Eitan Biran. His parents, younger brother and two great-grandparents were among the dead, the ministry said, correcting an earlier statement that had included Eitan among the victims.

Italian media identified all the other victims as residents of Italy.

The disaster, in one of the most picturesque spots in northern Italy — the Mottarone mountaintop overlooking Lake Maggiore and other lakes near Switzerland — raised questions anew about the quality and safety of Italy’s transport infrastructure.

Transport Minister Enrico Giovannini visited the site Monday and announced a commission of inquiry to investigate the “technical and organizational causes” of the disaster, while prosecutors will focus on any criminal blame.

Giovannini told reporters in Stresa, the lakefront town at the foot of the Mottarone peak, that the aim of the investigative commission would be to “ensure this never happens again.”

The transport ministry said a preliminary check of the cable line’s safety and maintenance record show that the whole lift structure underwent a renovation in August 2016, and that a full maintenance check was performed in 2017 and more inspections last year.

In November and December 2020, other checks were performed on the cables themselves, including magnetic inspections on the primary cables of the lift: the cable that pulls the cabin up the mountain, the support cable that holds the car and the rescue cables. In December another visual check was performed, the ministry said.

The mayor of Stresa, Marcella Severino, quoted witnesses as saying they heard a “loud hiss,” apparently when the lead cable snapped. She said the cabin reeled back down the line until it apparently hit a pylon and then plummeted to the ground. It rolled over two or three times before crashing into trees, she said.

Some of the bodies were thrown from the car and were found amid the trees, rescue workers said.

In on-camera comments to LaPresse news agency and other reporters in her office, Bossi noted that the emergency brake had engaged on the other cable car that was traveling in the opposite direction, down the mountain.

She said the possible crimes that are being investigated are multiple manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and an “attack on public transport.” She acknowledged the transport crime was an unusual hypothesis, but justified it by recalling that a cable car up and down a mountain is a form of public transportation.

The funicular line is popular with tourists and locals alike to scale Mottarone, which reaches a height of 1,491 meters (4,900 feet) and overlooks several picturesque lakes and the surrounding Alps of Italy’s Piedmont region. The mountain hosts a small amusement park, Alpyland, that has a children’s rollercoaster, and the area also has mountain bike paths and hiking trails.

It only reopened a few weeks ago after Italy’s wintertime coronavirus lockdowns lifted, and officials hypothesized that families were taking advantage of a sunny Sunday to visit the peak and take in the view.

The mayor declared a day of mourning for Stresa, which like tourist destinations around the country had suffered from COVID-19 lockdowns that not only slashed foreign tourism but cut local day-trip visits by Italians.

The Israeli foreign ministry identified the five Israelis killed as Eitan’s parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg-Biran, an Israeli-born couple studying and working in Pavia. Biran’s Facebook page identifies him as a medical student at the University of Pavia.

Their 2-year-old son, Tom Biran, died at the scene, as were Peleg-Biran’s grandparents, Barbara and Yitzhak Cohen. The ministry said they had arrived in Italy on May 19 to visit their granddaughter and great-grandchildren.

Amit Biran’s sister, Aya, wasn’t involved in the crash and was at the bedside of Eitan at Turin’s Regina Margherita hospital, the foreign ministry said, adding that other family members were flying to Italy from Israel to join her.

In a tweet Tuesday, Italy’s national firefighting squad said they were cheering for Eitan even as they mourned the others: “Forza Eitan (Go Eitan), all the firefighters are with you.”

The head of intensive care at the Turin hospital, Dr. Giorgio Ivani, said Eitan was sedated and intubated after surgery to repair his broken bones. An MRI scan was planned for Monday to assess any brain injury, though hospital officials have noted that he was conscious when he arrived.

Among the other victims were an Italian researcher, Serena Consentino, and her Iranian-born companion, Mohammadreza Shahaisavandi, according to a statement from Italy’s National Council of Research, where Consentino had a research grant.

Also killed at the scene were Vittorio Zorloni and his wife, Elisabetta Persanini. Their 6-year-old son, Mattia, died at Regina Margherita after multiple efforts to restart his heart, hospital officials said.

A young couple, Silvia Malnati and Alessandro Merlo, were killed while Malnati’s brother stayed down in town and frantically tried to call her, Italy’s La Stampa newspaper reported, quoting the brother.

Another couple, Roberta Pistolato and Angelo Vito Gasparro were celebrating Gasparro’s 45th birthday. La Stampa said Roberta texted her sister in Puglia right before the tragedy: “We’re going up in the funicular. It’s paradise here.”

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Nicole Winfield reported from Rome. AP reporter Laurie Kellman contributed from Jerusalem.

Archives for May 2021

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