Melissa Martin - My Blog

WATERVILLE, Maine – As the FBI stepped up its efforts to find a 20-month-old girl who disappeared from her father's home over the weekend, investigators combed through trash bins, drained a stream and pored over more than 100 leads offered by the public.
Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey refused to speculate Tuesday on whether Ayla Reynolds was alive, saying authorities are focused on finding her. The investigation remains a missing-person case, he said.
Meanwhile, in his first public statement, the girl's father, Justin DiPietro, said he doesn't know what happened to her.
"I have no idea what happened to Ayla, or who is responsible," he said. "I will not make accusations or insinuations towards anyone until the police have been able to prove who's responsible for this."
The Portland Press Herald reported that DiPietro released the statement through the Waterville Police Department, saying his family and friends will do "everything we can to assist in this investigation and get Ayla back home."
Massey said the FBI launched a door-to-door canvass of neighbors to glean any information that may lead them to the little girl.
"We've ruled out nothing," said Massey, whose central Maine agency has combined efforts with firefighters, state police, game wardens and the FBI.
Ayla was last seen when DiPietro, put her to bed Friday night. He called police to report her missing the following morning, saying he found her bed empty.
"I have shared every piece of information possible with the police," DiPietro said in his statement.
On Tuesday, a state police evidence vehicle remained outside the home that DiPietro shared with his mother in Waterville.
State police stationed outside the house told reporters that the DiPietros were not there. Their whereabouts were unknown to the public, and The Associated Press could not find phone numbers for them.
While the neighborhood was canvassed, police were checking out trash bins across the city. A stretch of Messalonskee Stream a few blocks from DiPietro home was drained nearly dry so wardens could get a better look, both from the ground and from an airplane overhead, officials said.
Massey said each of the 100 leads that have been given to police was being followed.
Ayla's mother said she's trying to remain optimistic that her daughter is OK. Trista Reynolds said she's trying to keep it together for an 8-month-old son who remains in her care but acknowledges the past few days have been tough.
"Sometimes I think that she's OK. Sometimes I start thinking that the worst can happen. That's how I've been feeling. I lay my head down at night and wonder where she is. Am I going to see her again? Do I get to see her beautiful smile?" Reynolds said of her daughter Ayla. "She's my little girl."
Police said both of Ayla's parents, who live separately, continued to cooperate with police.
"Ayla Reynolds is etched in all our minds and reminds every investigator why it's important to stay focused and committed to the task at hand: to bring Ayla back home," Massey said.
The Reynolds family was advised after meeting with Waterville police to return to their homes 75 miles to the south in Portland to let police conduct their investigation. Reynolds and her older sister, Jessica, were staying in a hotel Tuesday to keep away from the media frenzy.

"I'm watching my sister fall to pieces," Jessica Reynolds said. "I don't think she has any tears left to cry."

Trista Reynolds told The Associated Press that she and DiPietro never lived together as a couple. But Reynolds said a drinking problem prompted her to enter rehabilitation in Lewiston for 10 days in October; she said that although her mother and older sister cared for Ayla during that time, child welfare agents intervened to place the girl with DiPietro.

Last week, Reynolds filed court papers that she hoped would lead to the return of her daughter. The filing occurred the day before Ayla was last seen in Waterville.

DiPietro said Tuesday that although he has sole custody of his daughter, "It has always been my intention to have a shared parenting arrangement with Ayla's mother and I will continue to work towards that when Ayla is returned to us."

___

Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS – Europe's main weapon in the battle against climate change is now fighting for its own survival.
In early January, investors in the continent's cap-and-trade system still had to pay some euro14 ($18.30) for the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide into the air. By last week, the price of one emission allowance had tumbled to a meager euro6.41 — making it much cheaper to pollute and slashing the financial incentives for companies to invest in low-carbon technologies.
Analysts warn that the prospect of another recession in the debt-ridden continent, and the accompanying decline in emissions, could push prices below euro2 by the end of next month.
The troubles in the carbon market, a system being watched closely from California to China, is linked to the struggles of Europe' other ambitious project, the euro. And just as financial investors have looked to the European Central Bank to save the currency through massive intervention in the bond markets, analysts say the emissions market may need similar centralized help.
Last week, 19 companies, including oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Philips Electronics NV and supermarket chain Tesco PLC, sent a letter to the European Commission urging it to reduce the number of emission allowances in the system and figure out how to protect the market from future economic shocks. The commission and national governments jointly manage the cap-and-trade system.
"The lower price is really undermining the development of technologies that will be needed in the decades to come," said David Hone, Shell's climate change adviser.
Shell, which is mostly known for selling oil and gas, has been one of the pioneers of carbon capture and storage, projects in which CO2 emissions are stored underground so they don't get released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. But investing in new technologies like carbon capture and storage only becomes commercially viable at a carbon price of between euro25 and euro30, Hone said.
"Over the last few months, we have seen some of these projects disappear," he added.
In October, the U.K. government shut down the carbon capture project in Longannet in eastern Scotland in which Shell was one of the partners.
While the prospect of another recession is the main reason for the recent drop in carbon prices, experts say that — just like with the euro — serious flaws in the system are exacerbating the problems and could lead to its failure if they can't be fixed.
The economic crisis has lowered emissions and thus hit the price of carbon allowances. But the drop has been so dramatic because there were too many allowances in the system to begin with.
To get industry and skeptical governments on board, the Commission set a very high cap for emissions when it launched the carbon market in 2005.
Since then, most allowances have been given out for free to the 11,000 power stations and factories covered by the system based on their historical emissions. Companies that emit less carbon dioxide than they are allowed can sell their spare permits to firms that exceed their limit. As of next year, airlines will also be included in the system.
But the big test for Europe's carbon market — and whether it can provide the financial incentives for cutting emissions — will come in 2013, when governments start selling a growing number of allowances at auctions.
It is before then that the Commission has to intervene, say the companies that wrote last week's letters.
There are signs that their calls are being heard.
On Tuesday, the environment committee of the European Parliament voted to withdraw some 1.4 billion allowances, about 15 percent of the total, from the carbon market between 2013 and 2020. At the same time, the committee said, the annual cap should be cut by 2.25 percent per year, rather than the 1.74 percent currently planned.
While the committee vote is the first step in a long process of changing the system and few industry watchers expect the figures to survive negotiations among EU states trying to protect their national industries, it caused carbon prices to jump more than 18 percent.

"It opens up a much deeper discussion about what does the intervention look like and when is it going to happen," says Sanjeev Kumar, an expert on carbon trading at environmental watchdog E3G in Brussels.

"Without intervention," warned Kumar, "not only the ETS is over, but Europe's climate policy is over. It will put Europe back into the dark ages."

Apart from failing to encourage the necessary cuts in emissions and technological innovation, the collapse in the carbon price could also worsen Europe's debt crisis.

Between 2013 and 2020, when companies have to pay for more and more of their allowances, the cap-and-tade system could raise as much as euro190 billion for governments across the EU if prices recover.

"This is a pretty important revenue stream for most member states," says Rob Elsworth, of climate campaign group Sandbag in London. "And they are watching revenues just disappear."

Experts like Kumar and Elsworth are hopeful that states will garner the political will to save the carbon trading system, which has pioneered the market-based approach to saving the environment.

"If you take away this green-economy narrative," asked Elsworth, "what's really left of Europe?"

What are the chances Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith was laughing out loud when he composed his response to the additional sanctions heaped on his school by the NCAA?
"We are surprised and disappointed by the NCAA's decision," his statement read. "However, we have decided not to appeal the decision because we need to move forward as an institution."
Based on the kid-gloves treatment afforded the Buckeyes, that shouldn't be a problem. Ohio State had already offered to vacate the 2010 season, return bowl money, go on two years of NCAA probation and use five fewer football scholarships over the next three years. On Tuesday, the NCAA tacked on a year of probation, took away four additional scholarships and imposed a one-year bowl ban. Even combined, those penalties are roughly half as severe as those the NCAA dropped on Southern California in June 2010.
A comparison of the cases is instructive. At USC, Heisman trophy-winning running back Reggie Bush and basketball star O.J. Mayo were found to have pocketed thousands of dollars in improper benefits from agents. The bigger sin, though, appears to have been the Trojans' decision to be less than cooperative when NCAA investigators began snooping around the program and downright defiant when the enforcement people issued veiled threats. As a result, the NCAA leveled the dreaded "lack of institutional control" against USC, banned the Trojans from postseason play for two years and docked them 30 scholarships for the next three.
In Ohio State's case, five players swapped jerseys, rings and assorted memorabilia for thousands in cash and tattoos, former coach Jim Tressel learned of the exchanges in April 2010, and not only kept the news to himself, but lied about it to his superiors or the NCAA on four separate occasions. There is no better example of lack of institutional control than what Ohio State's clueless president, Gordon Gee, said in the middle of the unfolding scandal, when he and Smith tried to staunch the damage last March by suspending Tressel for two meaningless games and fining him $250,000: "I'm just hopeful the coach doesn't dismiss me."
But it got better. Barely 10 days later, Tressel's suspension was extended to five games and by the end of May, he was forced out. In July, Ohio State half-heartedly punished itself and in August appeared before the NCAA's Committee on Infractions. Then we learned that months after the original scandal made headlines, nine players got paid by a longtime booster for showing up at charity events and cozy summer jobs. By November, the NCAA upgraded the notice of allegations to include "failure to monitor" and Ohio State offered to cut five scholarships.
But it got even better. For reasons that have yet to be explained, the NCAA's enforcement staff stopped short of lack of institutional control charges, meaning the infractions committee can't whack Ohio State the way it did Southern Cal. In the end, the school's athletic department gave Tressel a hefty severance deal and nearly all of the blame and that was good enough for the NCAA. It slapped the once-beloved coach with a five-year "show-cause" order that likely means he'll never coach in college again. Tressel has been reduced to a job as a game-day consultant with the NFL's Indianapolis Colts.
And if the Buckeyes escaping the punishment they deserve because of a technicality sounds familiar, it should. The five players originally suspended last December after the tattoo-parlor portion of the story broke were allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl thanks to an NCAA ruling so favorable that it should have made everyone involved blush redder than one of Tressel's sweater vests. Together, Ohio State and the NCAA dusted off an obscure interpretation of the rules that allowed postponement of a suspension — in the case of the so-called "Tat 5" it was supposed to be five games — to preserve a "unique opportunity." Then, conveniently, they decided the Sugar Bowl presented just such an opportunity.
Maybe some schools just have all the luck. Or maybe by cooperating, even as incompetent as Ohio State has been from the beginning of the investigation to the bitter end, the Buckeyes bought themselves enough good will to avoid the scorched-earth treatment USC got. Whichever it is, based on the lack of guts the NCAA showed in this case, it might be the one outfit in America that would finish behind Congress in a popularity poll — especially if the survey was conducted in the Los Angeles area.
In the coming months, North Carolina and Miami will face the infractions committee for scandals that are every bit as juicy. When committee member Greg Sankey was asked whether the additional penalties the NCAA levied against Ohio State meant things would be tougher for future violators, he replied, "I would not suggest this is necessarily a new day, but these penalties are significant."
Right. And North Carolina and Miami would sign on the dotted line for the same deal in a heartbeat. Ohio State, after all, is hoping to start recovering from its disappointment with a trip to the Gator Bowl, despite a 6-6 record.
"I'm disappointed on the one hand," Gee said when reporters caught up with him at halftime of a basketball game Tuesday night. "But on the other hand I'm very relieved because I feel closure. I think we can now move forward.
"I have been one of the most outspoken advocates for reform in the NCAA," he added a moment later. "My hope is that what the NCAA is signaling is a higher bar and a higher standard."
Easy for Gee to say — right after he and his school slithered underneath it.
___
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org. Follow him at Twitter.com/JimLitke