. >> now we will curran it over to our executive director. mr.oskovich, i want to thank you and your staff as we near the end of the calendar year for all the work that has been done this calendar year. >> thank you, mr. chairman. my report was a couple of additional handouts as well. i'm only going to focus on five of the items in the report in the interest of time. the first thing i'd like to comment on is that we have on the van ness vip project, bus rapid transit project, we've submitted the revised exception fact sheets to caltrans. as you know, caltrans has jurisdiction over the design on van ness avenue because it is a state route. and we are working very closely with the mta to make sure that we have a really top notch design for this bus rapid transit route in san francisco, the first fully featured vrt project to come through, probably in the north american continent of this kind. and we anticipate getting an approval from caltrans in early january. the publishing of the final eirs is now slated for february and that should allow us to

. >> commissioner curran? >> here. >> commissioner walker? >> here. >> and commissioner melgar is excused. we have a quorum and the next item on the agenda is president's announcements. >> good morning, everybody. thank you. very happy thanksgiving to everybody. this morning also like to recognize fresh out of retirement [speaker not understood] here, [speaker not understood], boasting her new first meeting out of retirement. good to have you here. >> thank you. >> so, president's comments, i'll keep it fast. we have a pretty swift agenda today because i believe we have to turn the room over at 12 o'clock here because i think we should be on time here. there was a 2 alarm fire at 42 fernwood drive caused by structural damage per dbi [speaker not understood]. they signed an emergency demolition order on this. there were no injuries, that's good news. looks like we'll be able to close that down. mayor lee [speaker not understood] important contributions to the successes of green sustainable buildings in opinion editorial published in the san fr

. >> who was malcolm curran? what happened to him? >> use a professor of science at ucla, who leaves ucla year before i arrived. he had grown up in beirut. his parents had been on the faculty. though he had made a distinguished career for herself, she came home and it really is he during particularly difficult times. due to the israeli incursion of 1982. the city was a mass, school was under assault. but he loved school and he gave his life for the school. >> by whom and how? >> mostly by a group known as the islamic jihad. she had been previously excluded from politics and economics of the country. and they had ideological tendencies for the power in iran. he had been radicalized by south lebanon in the early 1980s. it was a very toxic mix that led them to take medical steps that climax in the assassination. >> why was he targeted? >> because he was an american. he was a very visible presence in the middle east and their is no more higher profiling and that in the american region than that. >> was the american university put in beiru

all of those american citizens in in re curran were held in military custody and tried by the military because we have long understood that when you join the enemy, that is not a crime but an act of war. we have very bad people who get a right to a jury trial. i will be the first one to say that when you go to court, no matter if you're the worst terrorist in the world, you will get a jury trial, you will get a lawyer and you will have your due process rights. but the difference that i'm trying to inform the body of, when you're fighting a war, the goal is not to prosecute people. the goal is to win. and how do you win a war? you kill them, you capture them and you interrogate them to find out what they're up to next. so i am here to say to my colleagues that the al qaeda taliban efforts to do harm to our nation are alive and growing. the narrative that al qaeda has been decimated is a false narrative. what happened in libya, unfortunately, is going to happen again, and i know my good friend from california who is chairman of the intelligence committee knows there is active efforts in