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| Tom Donilon resigning as national security adviser; Susan Rice to replace him - Washington Post Posted: 05 Jun 2013 07:55 AM PDT National security adviser Thomas E. Donilon will resign his post, White House officials said Wednesday, and be replaced by U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, a close confidant of President Obama who has been strongly criticized by Republicans but was widely expected to move into the job. White House officials said Donilon's resignation will take effect in early July. Rice, one of Obama's most trusted foreign policy advisers, does not need Senate confirmation to take his place. Earlier this year, she withdrew her name from consideration to become secretary of state — a position that does require Senate confirmation — in the face of extensive criticism of her role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11-12, 2012, attacks on two U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya. The attacks killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Republicans on Capitol Hill have accused Rice of misleading the public over the nature of the attacks in an attempt to protect Obama from criticism during a difficult reelection campaign. White House officials said Obama will nominate Samantha Power to replace Rice at the United Nations. Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem from Hell," about the U.S. response to genocide, served as a senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the National Security Council during Obama's first term and the start of his second. Her nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations also has been much-anticipated. Unlike the security adviser job, it will require Senate confirmation. Some of Rice's toughest critics have said they are prepared to move on and work with her if, as expected, Donilon resigns and she is tapped to replace him. "She's going to have her plate full if she's chosen," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) "I will not be petty. I will put my differences on Benghazi aside and work with her." But Republicans could decide to launch a fight against Power, whose book generated considerable reaction by focusing on what she deemed America's moral failure to act in the face of modern genocides in Africa and the Balkans. Power said the United States applied double standards — what she termed a la cartism — in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Washington complained about a "shortage of democracy in Palestine, but not in Pakistan," she wrote, and bombed Serbs in defense of ethnic Albanians but said nothing about Russian excesses in Chechnya. Power argued that the United States' international standing and credibility required that Washington also confront the darker chapters of its foreign policy past — CIA-backed coups in Guatemala, Chile and Congo, for example, or the doubling of U.S. financial assistance to Iraq's Saddam Hussein the year he gassed the Kurds. "We need a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, permitted by the United States," she wrote. Keith Urbahn, a former chief of staff to Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary in the George W. Bush administration, tweeted Wednesday morning: "I don't know about you, but it might be helpful to have someone rep'ing America at UN who doesn't think we are the source of world's ills." Power has also turned her no-holds-barred commentary on the United Nations itself, writing in the New Republic in 2003, "The U.N. Security Council is anachronistic, undemocratic, and consists of countries that lack the standing to be considered good faith arbiters of how to balance the stability against democracy, peace against justice, and security against human rights." Donilon, a seasoned Washington insider, has held senior national security posts in the administration since Obama took office, rising from the principal deputy national security adviser to his current job. His reputation for trying to protect Obama politically has caused friction with other agencies over the years, beginning in the fall of 2009, when he advocated for a far smaller deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan than the Pentagon had requested. Executing the administration's shift to a stronger focus on Asia in its foreign policy has been one of Donilon's primary policy initiatives; his resignation is timed to follow the summit meeting he helped organize between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping this weekend. The news of Donilon's resignation was first reported by the New York Times. |
| Desperate rescue effort underway after building collapse in downtown ... - Fox News Posted: 05 Jun 2013 08:55 AM PDT
DEVELOPING: Philadelphia rescue crews are searching frantically for survivors after a building collapsed in downtown Philadelphia Wednesday morning, with initial reports indicating up to 10 people may trapped under the debris, MyFoxPhilly.com reported. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said police are "still pulling people out," and there is no way to know for sure how many people remain trapped. News helicopters have been asked to move from the scene because it is hindering the crews' ability to hear screams. It was considered a "hands-only" operation with no heavy equipment for about the first hour. It was firefighters with buckets moving bricks. A team of four search dogs are also deployed at the scene. The collapse occurred on 22nd and Market streets, in the city's downtown area. Dozens of firefighters and emergency personnel are at the scene actively searching for victims. At least three people have been pulled from the rubble and transported to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Initial reports indicate there were 11 total hospitalized. The collapse involved a Salvation Army corner thrift store and a four-story building next door with a sandwich shop on the first floor. It's not clear whether any other adjacent buildings were damaged. The building's facade and side wall came down shortly before 10:45 a.m. MyFoxPhilly.com reported that it appears firefighters are split into two groups: one group is focused on the back of the collapsed building while the other group is inside the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army next door was undergoing demolition, but it is not immediately clear if there is any connection, The Philadelphia Fire Department told Fox News. Police, however, said it appears the collapse was the result of an industrial accident. |
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