Nation and World briefs for September 1

Thai police seek 2 new suspects in Bangkok blasts after raid finds bomb components

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai police issued arrest warrants Monday for two more suspects, a Thai woman and a foreign man of unknown nationality, and released their images in the widening investigation into Bangkok’s deadly bombing two weeks ago that yielded its first arrest over the weekend.

National police spokesman Prawuth Thavornsiri said he was certain the two were part of a group police say was responsible for the Aug. 17 blast at the Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok that killed 20 people, more than half of them foreigners.

During a televised statement on Monday, Prawuth displayed a photograph of the woman’s Thai identification card showing a young woman in a black headscarf and a sketch of the man. He later said police were asking for additional arrest warrants.

The development came after police arrested a man from an apartment in Bangkok’s outskirts on Saturday and seized bomb-making equipment that included detonators, ball bearings and a metal pipe believed to be a bomb casing.

Thai police, meanwhile, awarded themselves a 3 million baht, or $84,000, reward Monday for tips leading to the arrest of bombing suspects.

Arctic chills, messy energy politics await Obama on his historic trip to Alaska

WASHINGTON (AP) — Shrinking glaciers, Arctic temperatures and a mix of messy energy politics await President Barack Obama as he begins his historic trip to Alaska.

Obama departs on Monday morning for a three-day tour of the nation’s largest state, closely choreographed to call attention to the ways Obama says climate change is already damaging Alaska’s stunning scenery. By showcasing thawing permafrost, melting sea ice and eroding shorelines, Obama hopes to raise the sense of urgency to deal quickly to slow climate change in the U.S. and overseas.

His excursion north of the Arctic Circle will make Obama the first sitting president to step foot in the Alaska Arctic, home to Alaska Natives who have received less attention amid Obama’s recent efforts to improve conditions for Native Americans. In a major show of solidarity, Obama announced on the eve of his trip that his administration is changing the name of North America’s tallest peak, Mount McKinley, to Denali, its traditional Athabascan name.

Obama’s move to strip the mountain of its name honoring former President William McKinley, a son of Ohio, drew loud condemnations from Ohio lawmakers, including Republican Rep. Bob Gibbs, who said he planned to work with his colleagues to see what they could do to stop it.

Yet Obama was to navigate far more turbulent political waters when he arrived Monday afternoon in Anchorage, where his grand declarations on climate change have been met with skepticism by leaders in a state that’s heavily dependent on oil revenues that have fallen precipitously.

Syrian government official says amount of damage done to Palmyra temple unclear after bombing

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian official in charge of antiquities said Monday his government has not been able to determine how much damage an explosion near the ancient Temple of Bel caused the ancient structure in the militant-controlled city of Palmyra.

Activists, including a resident of the city, said an Islamic State bombing extensively damaged the 2,000-year old temple Sunday. The resident described a massive explosion, adding that he saw pictures of the damage but could not get near the site.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museums Department in Damascus, said that “undoubtedly” a large explosion took place near the temple, which lies in a sprawling Roman-era complex. But he said the extent of the damage remains unclear.

An Islamic State operative told The Associated Press over Skype on Monday that the temple had been destroyed, without elaborating. He spoke on condition of anonymity because members of the group are not allowed to speak to journalists.

The extremists destroyed the smaller Temple of Baalshamin in the complex last week. It posted images of the destruction days later.

Afghan airfields built for war now seen as hubs for economic growth of landlocked country

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AP) — It is a striking vision for a country torn to pieces by war and jihadi insurrection: a series of airports, built by NATO to fight the Taliban, are being handed over to the Afghan government in a civil aviation upgrade that optimists hope will fuel not only regional trade but even tourism.

The eight airfields, worth an estimated $2 billion, are scattered around a landlocked and mountainous land whose lack of rail transport or decent roads makes almost every intercity journey a perilous adventure — even without factoring in attacks from Taliban militants.

Ex-lawmaker Mohammad Daud Sultanzoy, who is overseeing the project for the government, said the airfields — self-contained cities that housed thousands of foreign troops who are now pulling out — will amount to a latter-day “Silk Road” that “will connect Afghanistan internally and to South Asia and Central Asia, and beyond.”

The billions of people living in Asia and the Middle East “can constitute a huge number of tourists and related other activities: cargo, passenger and export/import,” Sultanzoy said.

Pessimists will have little trouble imagining the Taliban trying to shoot down planes as they land, but officials say the militants do not currently have that ability, making air travel a reasonable and safe option.

Walker looks to Iowa to regain momentum in presidential race

ONAWA, Iowa (AP) — With his sleeves rolled up, Scott Walker wowed Iowa Republicans in January at one of the first events of the 2016 campaign — a moment that shot the Wisconsin governor into the top-tier of GOP candidates for president.

In the months since, Walker has slowly fallen back into the pack of more than a dozen seeking the GOP nomination.

While he’s no different from any of the other Republicans struggling for attention amid the spotlight focused on billionaire businessman Donald Trump, Walker has also endured a series of setbacks of his own making since launching his campaign in mid-July.

He’s had to backtrack and clarify his positions on immigration and terrorism, reassure jittery donors after a lackluster performance in the first GOP debate and reshape his campaign to try and rekindle the spark he showed in the middle of the winter in Iowa.

That’s where Walker was last week, retail politicking at diners and dives. Shaking hands with fewer than a dozen people at Miller’s Kitchen in Onawa on Wednesday, he said such stops in all 99 Iowa counties — a classic campaign stunt that’s paid off for candidates in the past — is the key to getting back on top.

Hyping Communists’ WWII efforts, China gives little credit, or help, to aging Nationalist vets

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese veteran Sun Yibai doesn’t have much time for the Communist Party’s claim to have led China to victory against Japan in World War II.

“The Communist Party didn’t fight Japan,” said the sprightly 97-year-old, who once served as a translator with the storied Flying Tigers aviation brigade. “They made up a whole bunch of stories afterward, but it was all fabricated.”

That view challenges a basic premise underpinning this week’s lavish celebrations in Beijing of the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat: That Mao Zedong’s Communists were the saviors of the nation, battling against Japanese forces that began occupying parts of China in 1931 before launching a full-blown invasion in 1937.

Veterans such as Sun have long found themselves on the wrong side of that narrative. Their service with the Nationalists led to imprisonment, persecution and often death in the years after the 1949 Communist revolution. Now mostly in their 90s, they’re living out their remaining years shunned and forgotten by all but a few who care to hear their stories.

“Nobody cares about veterans like me. Nobody cares. People just forget what happened in the past,” said Sun in an interview in his Beijing apartment stuffed with books and old photos.

California neighbors rally together as they struggle with drought

TULARE, Calif. (AP) — Looking for water to flush his toilet, Tino Lozano pointed a garden hose at some buckets in the bare dirt of his yard. It’s his daily ritual now in a community built by refugees from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl. But only a trickle came out; then a drip, then nothing more.

“There it goes,” said Lozano, a 40-year-old disabled vet, masking his desperation with a smile. “That’s how we do it in Okieville now.”

Millions of Californians are being inconvenienced in this fourth year of drought, urged to flush toilets less often, take shorter showers and let lawns turn brown. But it’s dramatically worse in places like Okieville, where wells have gone dry for many of the 100 modest homes that share cracked streets without sidewalks or streetlights in California’s Central Valley.

Farming in Tulare County brought in $8.1 billion in 2014, more than any other county in the nation, according to its agricultural commissioner. Yet 1,252 of its household wells today are dry, more than all other California counties combined.

Lozano, a 40-year-old disabled vet and family man, has worked with his neighbors to rig lines from house to house, sharing water from a well deep enough to hit the emptying aquifer below. County trucks, funded with state drought relief money, fill 2,500-gallon tanks in many yards. Residents also get containers of drinking water, stacking them in bedrooms and living rooms.

Mourners to pay tribute to 27-year-old slain WDBJ television cameraman Adam Ward

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Salem High School will open its doors to the community Monday to commemorate the life of an alumnus — Adam Ward, the 27-year-old cameraman for a Roanoke television station who was slain on live TV last week.

The family of Ward, a 2007 graduate of the school, has asked visitors to wear colors of his favorite teams, Virginia Tech and Salem High, where he played football for the Spartans on two state championship teams. His funeral is set for Tuesday at First Baptist Church in Roanoke.

“He was truly a Salem Spartan, born and bred. From childhood, he loved Salem sports, especially football,” his obituary says. Ward’s father, Charles, is a guidance counselor at the school, which Adam chose to attend even though he lived in another district.

The Ward family has stayed out of the spotlight since Wednesday when he and reporter Alison Parker were gunned down by a former co-worker. Ward and Parker were on an early morning assignment for WDBJ-TV at Smith Mountain Lake when Vester Lee Flanagan walked up and shot them and Vicki Gardner, a Chamber of Commerce official, with a 9mm Glock pistol during a live interview. Ward and Parker died at the scene and Gardner is recovering in a hospital.

The shootings occurred as thousands of viewers across the central Virginia community watched and the footage quickly spread to millions on social media. Flanagan shot himself as police pursued his car. He died hours later.

Horror master Wes Craven, director of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Scream’ films, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s hard enough to redefine a genre once in a career, but horror virtuoso Wes Craven managed to do it twice.

The prolific writer-director, who died Sunday at age 76, ushered in two distinct eras of suburban slashers, first in the 1980s with his iconic “Nightmare on Elm Street” and its indelible, razor-fingered villain Freddy Krueger. He did it again in the 1990s with the self-referential “Scream.”

Both reintroduced the fringe genre to mainstream audiences and spawned successful franchises.

Perhaps it was his perfectly askew interpretation of the medium that resonated with his nail-biting audiences.

“Horror films don’t create fear,” Craven said. “They release it.”

Another MTV VMAs, another controversial Miley Cyrus: Wild child singer shows breast at show

(AP) Justin Bieber cried, Taylor Swift won most of the awards and Kanye West ranted onstage, but Miley Cyrus still owned the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.

The 22-year-old wild child flashed one of her breasts, wore outfits that showed most of her skin and traded words with Nicki Minaj. She closed the Sunday show with a performance of a new song about marijuana.

She posed for photos clutching a moon man trophy and passed out avocadoes to photographers and reporters.

“I didn’t actually win one of these. They just give it to you for free because you host, so that I just wanted to clarify,” she said.

Sunday’s show comes after Cyrus stole the night at the 2013 VMAs after twerking on Robin Thicke, causing a frenzy. At last year’s show, she won video of the year for “Wrecking Ball.”