Associated Press

Neither side seemed to benefit from the fight

NEW YORK — One of publishing’s nastiest, most high-profile conflicts, the months-long standoff between Amazon.com and Hachette Book Group, is ending.

Amazon and Hachette announced a multi-year agreement Thursday.

With e-book revenues reportedly the key issue, Amazon had removed pre-order tags for Hachette books, reduced discounts and slowed deliveries.

Neither side seemed to benefit. Hachette sales on Amazon.com, the country’s biggest bookseller, had dropped sharply. Amazon, meanwhile, issued a disappointing earnings report last month, although the impact of the Hachette dispute was unclear.

Hachette’s authors include James Patterson and Donna Tartt. It was among five publishers sued in 2012 by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly fixing e-book prices. The publishers settled and were required to negotiate new deals with Amazon and other retailers.

No proof was found of long-standing allegations of bribes and voting pacts

(GENEVA) — A FIFA judge has cleared Russia and Qatar of corruption in their winning bids for the next two World Cups.

German judge Joachim Eckert formally closed FIFA’s probe into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding contests on Thursday, almost four years after the vote by the governing body’s scandal-tainted executive committee.

Eckert noted wrongdoing among the 11 bidding nations in a 42-page summary of FIFA prosecutor Michael Garcia’s investigations.

However, Eckert ruled that the integrity of the December 2010 voting results was not affected.

No proof was found of longstanding allegations of bribes and voting pacts. Eckert concluded that any rule-breaking behavior was “far from reaching any threshold” to require re-running the contests.

Eckert wants Garcia to prosecute cases against individual FIFA voters and bid staffers.

The bison were due to be slaughtered but instead are being returned to the park to help with conservation efforts

(BILLINGS, MONT.) — A group of Yellowstone National Park bison is due to finally arrive at a permanent home on a northeastern Montana American Indian reservation on Thursday, almost a decade after they were captured and spared from slaughter.

About 100 of the 138 animals were loaded onto trucks late Wednesday to travel overnight to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

All of the bison were set to make the trip Wednesday, but one of the trucks broke down. The remaining bison will begin their journey Thursday.

The small herd will help tribal members regain a connection to an animal that helped shaped their ancestors’ nomadic existence, tribal officials said.

Bison, also known as buffalo, still play a central role in many ceremonies for Plains Indian tribes.

The Yellowstone animals will be “welcomed with prayers,” said Tom Escarcega, one of a group of Assiniboine and Sioux tribal leaders who planned to escort the animals to Fort Peck.

“It starts to bring back our ceremonies that we kind of forgot,” Escarcega said. “In our culture, we treat the buffalo as a people, and we’re the two-legged nation. They deserve respect.”

Escarcega said a bull bison from the group that could not be transported because it was uncooperative had to be killed. The meat was to be distributed to tribal members.

Yellowstone’s bison are highly prized for their pure genes. Yet thousands have been killed during their winter migrations under a government-sponsored program meant to protect livestock outside the park from the disease brucellosis, which many bison carry.

The bison for the tribes were culled from Yellowstone’s wild herds in 2005 and 2006 under an experimental program designed to start new populations elsewhere.

They are being shipped at night because they will be calmer and easier to move, said Tom Palmer with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The wildlife advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife is covering the shipping costs, Palmer said.

On the reservation, the bison will be kept in a 140-acre pen for a 10-day adjustment period, Fort Peck Fish and Game Director Robert Magnan said. Then they’ll be released onto a 13,000-acre pasture north of Poplar that already holds about 48 Yellowstone bison transferred to the tribes two years ago.

Earlier attempts to relocate the animals failed, in part because of opposition from livestock interests. They had been held since 2010 on CNN founder Ted Turner’s ranch near Bozeman. As compensation for caring for the animals, Turner gets to keep 75 percent of their offspring, or 179 bison.

Most of those offspring will be kept in Montana for the foreseeable future as part of a conservation herd, Turner Enterprises General Manager Mark Kossler said. Some of the bulls will be used for breeding to improve the genetics in other Turner-owned bison herds scattered over 15 ranches across the Western U.S., Kossler said.

“It’s worked out well for the bison,” Kossler said. “They’ve been preserved instead of going to slaughter, and they’re going to be used for conservation.”

The experimental program under which the original animals were captured as they attempted to migrate outside the park has since ended.

However, Yellowstone administrators have proposed reviving the program in hopes of establishing the park as a source of bison to start new herds across the U.S.

Closer to the park, wildlife officials on Wednesday released a proposal requested by Gov. Steve Bullock that would allow bison to roam year-round in some parts of Montana if the park population drops below 3,500 animals.

If adopted, it would break a longstanding impasse over where and when bison should be allowed to roam in areas of Montana bordering Yellowstone.

Bullock intervened after state livestock and wildlife officials could not agree on a solution.

At populations exceeding 3,500 animals, bison still would be subject to slaughter, increased hunting and hazing back into the park.

Yellowstone had about 4,900 bison at last count.

"Honestly, it was like we just did it yesterday and boom, we were back in it"

LOS ANGELES — Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels made another “Dumb & Dumber” film because fans asked for it, and the two actors said making the sequel was more fun than working on the 1994 original.

“We were kind of just meeting each other as we were doing the first one,” Daniels said in a recent interview. “You got two different acting styles going on — is it going to even work? And the first one, we guessed right, and it did …

“Now it’s just a lot easier. We know more, we know what’s funny, we know the two characters well — all the stuff we didn’t know in the first one we already know in the second one, so we just get to do it again, only we hope better.”

“And we were blood doping,” Carrey added. “So that made it easier.”

Daniels and Carrey reprise their roles as painfully dim pals Harry and Lloyd in “Dumb & Dumber To,” opening Friday. Reuniting on a sequel 20 years after the original wasn’t hard, Carrey said.

“Honestly, it was like we just did it yesterday and boom, we were back in it,” he said. “It was a fantastic, familiar feeling.”

Daniels was delighted to return to comedy after spending the past three seasons starring in the Aaron Sorkin TV drama, “The Newsroom.”

“Comedy is a joy,” he said. “There’s a freedom to it. There’s a fearlessness to it that you don’t get in everything else. It was a thrill to do.”

The quasi-civilian government has progressed, but deep problems remain

(WASHINGTON) — President Barack Obama’s visit to Burma, officially now known as Myanmar, in 2012 celebrated the nation’s historic shift from military rule. But as Obama returns Wednesday, optimism over economic and political reformshas faded. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has questioned what’s been accomplished in the last two years.

The answer is mixed. On the eve of Obama’s first visit, Burmese President Thein Sein made 11 policy pledges on human rights concerns, ties with North Korea and anti-Muslim violence. The quasi-civilian government has progressed, but deep problems remain.

An Associated Press review:

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GOAL: Allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisons.

UPDATE: In early 2012, the government agreed to the first Red Cross prison visits in seven years. Spokesman Ewan Watson said the agency has visited 28 detention sites this year. Rights activists say ill treatment of detainees persists.

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GOAL: Invite the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to establish an office in Burma.

UPDATE: The government issued the invitation in November 2012 but has refused to let the agency open an office to monitor human rights. U.N. staff visit on a rotating basis.

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GOAL: Allow blacklisted people to enter and leave the country.

UPDATE: Formerly blacklisted human rights activists, journalists and others have been able to visit. Exiled Burmese dissidents have returned. But some returning exiles have been unable to secure Burmese citizenship; members of the Burmese diaspora say they have been denied visas. Some freed political prisoners face travel restrictions.

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GOAL: Initiate a process to assess the criminality of remaining political prisoners.

UPDATE: The government says all political prisoners have been freed. The U.S. says more than 1,300 have been released in the past three years. But 27 prisoners are still held, according to the main nongovernmental group tracking the issue. Rights groups say hundreds of new dissenters and peaceful protesters have been detained in the past year.

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GOAL: Pursue a durable cease-fire in Kachin state, scene of the largest ethnic rebellion. Pursue sustainable political solutions with ethnic minorities.

UPDATE: Thein Sein’s administration has held peace talks with an array of ethnic rebel groups. In northern Kachin state more than 100,000 villagers have been displaced by fighting since 2011. Clashes escalated in October between the army and ethnic Shan and Karen rebels.

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GOAL: Take decisive action in Rakhine state to prevent communal violence, hold perpetrators to account and meet the humanitarian needs of the people. Address contentious political issues.

UPDATE: Attacks by Buddhist extremists since mid-2012 have left hundreds of minority Rohingya Muslims dead and 140,000 trapped in dire conditions in camps. More than 100,000 Rohingya have fled Burma by boat — with departures reported to be accelerating. Hundreds of the migrants have died at sea.

Authorities have obstructed humanitarian access, leading to preventable deaths. The main aid group in Rakhine state, Doctors Without Borders, was expelled in February.

A draft government plan would enable the estimated 1.3 million Rohingya in Burma to seek a form of citizenship but only if they categorize themselves as “Bengalis,” which they object to as it implies they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Those denied citizenship would be put in camps and face deportation.

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GOAL: Expedite negotiations with international humanitarian organizations for broader access to conflict-affected areas.

UPDATE: Hundreds of thousands of members of ethnic minorities remain displaced in border regions. The International Committee of the Red Cross has opened offices in Shan and Kachin states and been allowed into conflict zones.

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GOAL: Sign the Additional Protocol to the U.N. nuclear agency’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement.

UPDATE: Burma signed the protocol in September 2013, but has yet to ratify it. The agreement requires the government to declare all nuclear facilities and materials and allow greater scrutiny by inspectors.

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GOAL: Abide by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 prohibiting weapons imports from North Korea.

UPDATE: U.S. officials say Burma has taken significant steps, but has not cut all military ties to North Korea.

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GOAL: Strive for more open and accountable government.

UPDATE: The government has fired hundreds of civil servants for petty corruption. Burma has applied to join an international agreement intended to ensure full disclosure of taxes and other payments from oil, gas and mining companies. But reporting of revenues by state-owned enterprises, including on jade and timber, remains patchy. The military and cronies of the former junta dominate the economy.

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GOAL: Combat human trafficking.

UPDATE: For three years, Burma has stayed off the annual U.S. list of the worst offenders failing to combat human trafficking. But there’s evidence Burma’s security forces are profiting from the mass departure of Rohingya Muslims by extracting payments from those fleeing.