President Obama, so often cool and unemotional, struggled to maintain his composure Friday as he addressed a nation reeling from a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.
“The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said partway into a four-minute statement.
SINGAPORE: Some 2,500 low-income families will benefit from a S$250,000 initiative to help their children.
The five Commmunity Development Councils will help identify eligible families with monthly household incomes of less than S$3,500.
OCBC Bank will also contribute S$100 when a low-income family deposits the first S$50 into their Child Development Account (CDA).
Under the existing Baby Bonus scheme, the government will match the contributions to the CDA dollar for dollar.
The money in the account can then be used at approved institutions for the child's development and healthcare needs.
Acting Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing said: "This year, we have also expanded the kinds of things that you can spend the CDA money (on). For example, it will also include early intervention programmes, visits to the doctor, medical insurance and purchase of healthcare-related products. We hope that in this small way, we can help families to defray the cost of bringing up the children, especially for the needy families."
Under the initiative, parents can also attend financial literary talks by OCBC Bank staff volunteers to learn more about money management.
- CNA/xq
"Common man dreams are not looked at ... it is just one man's dream that prevails in the state and who is doing politics of anger," Gandhi said without naming Modi.
"What's the problem here ... this one man who claims to run Gujarat and having changed the entire state is full of anger ... and with anger the state cannot progress ahead," Gandhi said, while addressing a rally here ahead of the second phase of polling on December 17.
The Amethi MP said it was "love of the people" that could help the state progress and not anger.
"This state can only progress ahead with love ... a path shown by Mahatma Gandhiji ... this is what I wanted to tell you ..." Gandhi said asking people to vote for a change.
"Two out of four people who mattered the most to me in my life were snatched away by terrorists ... When my grandmother and father died, I had a lot of angst in me ..." he said.
"What anger does ... it makes a person blind ... I was like a blind man ... but when I kept the anger aside I started seeing things clearly... I don't have one bit of anger today in me ..." he asserted comparing himself with the BJP strongman.
Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.
A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.
After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)
Published December 14, 2012
The FBI is in at least three states interviewing relatives and friends of the elementary school gunman who killed 20 children, seven adults and himself, trying to put together a better picture of the shooter and uncover any possible explanation for the massacre, ABC News has learned.
The authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview relatives of Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, who was one of Lanza's shooting victims.
The victims died Friday when Lanza invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and sprayed staff and students with bullets, officials said. Lanza also was found dead in the school.
Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died later in a hospital.
Six adults also were slain, bringing the total to 26. Among them was the school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, multiple sources told ABC News. Another adult victim was teacher Vicki Soto, her cousin confirmed.
In addition to the casualties at the school, Lanza's mother, Nancy Lanza, was killed in her home, federal and state sources told ABC News.
According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.
READ: Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'
Lanza then drove to the elementary school and continued his rampage, authorities said.
It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The rifle was found in his car.
"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dan Malloy said at a news conference Friday evening.
CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.
In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24. Identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the shooting scene, federal sources told ABC News.
Ryan Lanza soon took to Facebook to say he was alive and not responsible for the shooting. He later was questioned by police.
During the rampage, first-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.
"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."
She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas. ... I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."
A tearful President Obama said Friday that there was "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."
The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were "beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10."
As he continued with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye. He has ordered flags flown as half staff.
It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.
Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.
The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.
The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said.
BEIJING - China's capital is to destroy swathes of ancient courtyard homes surrounding a 13th-century landmark in what is being called an effort to preserve Beijing's historical legacy, residents said Friday.
Large numbers of hutong homes, some of them dating back to the Qing dynasty, will be demolished around the Drum and Bell Towers -- a tourist hotspot in Beijing's historic centre -- to make way for a large plaza, they said.
Notices for the "destroy and evict" project are plastered throughout the quarter, dated Wednesday and saying the work was due to be completed by February 24.
Besides protecting the historic legacy of the capital, the project is also aimed at restoring and repairing old and dilapidated buildings, the notices said.
Forced evictions are a major source of unrest in China. Ordinary citizens routinely accuse local officials and developers of cashing in on a property boom by clearing away longstanding residents to pave the way for new projects.
Destroying old homes in central Beijing has particular sensitivity. Critics say new development projects rob the capital of its cultural legacy.
"We have been hearing this was going to happen for years, but now that the notices are up there is not much you can do but leave," said souvenir shop seller Ma Yong.
"When I first saw the notices I felt nothing but despair."
Besides having her rented shop torn down, Ma's small home nearby, where she lives with her retired husband, will also be flattened.
Residents must negotiate compensation with the newly set up "destroy and evict" office near the Bell Tower, with compensation beginning at around 40,000 yuan (US$5,800) per square metre.
Between 130 and 500 homes are to be destroyed, state press reports said.
Officials refused to answer questions when approached by AFP.
"A lot of people are opposed to the campaign, 40,000 yuan per square metre is too cheap, especially with the price of housing in Beijing sky-rocketing," said the manager of a coffee shop near the Drum Tower, who gave her surname only as Wang.
"People are already asking for 150,000 yuan per square metre," she said.
Others said they were happy with the compensation.
"We took the money," said Zhou Li, 51, who was to move out to the suburbs with his elderly parents this weekend after living most of his life near the Bell Tower.
- AFP/ir
JAMMU: Trikuta hills housing the cave shrine of Mata Vaishnodevi today received the season's first snowfall even as pilgrims continued their journey to pay obeisance.
Trikuta hills and nearby areas received 4 inches of season's first snow, shrine board officials said.
Despite the snowfall, over 15,000 pilgrims are on their way to the cave shrine to pay their obeisance, they said.
Braving the chill, pilgrims were seen shouting hymns and moving towards the Bhawan from Katra, the base camp of the shrine, they said.
If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.
The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.
It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).
First, the good news:
We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.
Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.
Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.
Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.
We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.
And the bad:
Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.
Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.
We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.
Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.
To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice removed herself from possible consideration as secretary of state after becoming yet another player in the divide between the left and right.
Rice, who withdrew her name Thursday, has faced months of criticism over how she characterized the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She also has come under fire for her approach to dealing with African strongmen.
Rice became a target for conservatives when she went on Sunday morning current affairs shows such as ABC News' "This Week" following the Benghazi attack and failed to characterize it as a pre-meditated act of terror. Instead, she said it was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and cited in the region as an example of anti-Islamicism in the West.
After it became clear that Rice's assertions were untrue and elements of the Obama administration may have known that to be the case, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte said they would do whatever they could to block Rice's possible nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
"This is about the role she played around four dead Americans when it seems to be that the story coming out of the administration -- and she's the point person -- is so disconnected to reality, I don't trust her," Graham said. "And the reason I don't trust her is because I think she knew better. And if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of America."
Members of the administration defended Rice. At his testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, said Rice was speaking from unclassified talking points given to her by the CIA.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated what Petraeus said outside his closed-door hearing before the Senate.
"The key is that they were unclassified talking points at a very early stage. And I don't think she should be pilloried for this. She did what I would have done or anyone else would have done that was going on a weekend show," Feinstein said. "To say that she is unqualified to be secretary of state, I think, is a mistake. And the way it keeps going, it's almost as if the intent is to assassinate her character."
Minutes after she announced her withdrawal from the process, Graham tweeted, "I respect Ambassador Rice's decision."
McCain's office released a paper statement saying, "Senator McCain thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans."
Over the last few weeks, criticism of Rice had grown beyond her response to Benghazi to include a closer scrutiny of her work in Africa, where she had influence over U.S. policy during the Clinton administration.
Critics of her Africa dealings were not partisan -- but included human rights workers, journalists and some Africans themselves.
Among the most serious critiques was the accusation that she actively protected Rwandan President Paul Kagame and senior members of his government from being sanctioned for funding and supporting the rebels that caused Eastern Congo's recent violence.
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.
Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”
Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12
Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11
Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11
Also in The Reliable Source:
Jenna Bush Hager announces pregnancy on ‘Today’
Hey, isn’t that. . .?: Steve Harvey; Max Baucus and Tim Geithner
Quoted: Marco Rubio on his hair loss
D.C. power players appear in new video portrait — but is it art?
Elizabeth Kucinich becomes a real-estate agent; will keep public-affairs job, too
Albert Small buys George Washington letter for $290,000 — but don’t tell his wife
HOBART, Australia: Skipper Michael Clarke has vowed there will be no complacency in the Test series with Sri Lanka, insisting Australia will improve on their recent performances against South Africa.
The Australians had the better of the opening two Tests against the world number one Proteas only to be crushed by 309 runs in the series decider in Perth last week.
Sri Lanka are ranked sixth in the world, have not won in 10 Tests in Australia over 25 years and are rated outsiders to upset Clarke's team in the three-Test series, beginning in Hobart on Friday.
Former Australian quick Rodney Hogg has rubbished the Sri Lankan attack as the "worst ever" to come to Australia, with Nuwan Kulasekara, Shaminda Eranga and Chanaka Welegedara only having 38 Tests and 99 wickets between them.
Clarke said the third-ranked Australia were focused only on beating Sri Lanka in the first Test since 168-Test great Ricky Ponting's retirement.
"The opposition is irrelevant to how you judge yourself as players," he said.
"Our goal is not to come out and play the same way against Sri Lanka as we did against South Africa.
"We have to learn from that series, take the positives - and I thought there were a lot of positives - and the areas where we need to get better, we need to make sure we do that.
"I'm sure that if we improve on the series against South Africa, we'll continue to have success."
Mitchell Johnson has been left out for the Hobart Test with Australia opting for the pace attack of Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle and left-armer Mitchell Starc, supplemented by swing bowler Shane Watson and spinner Nathan Lyon.
Recalled Phil Hughes will bat at number three with Watson at four while Clarke and veteran Mike Hussey stay at five and six in the Australian line-up now missing Ponting.
"The strength and advantage we now have in our top four is that all four have opened the batting for Australia," Clarke said.
"So against the new ball they will be very well suited and if we lose early wickets we're still very capable against the new ball which is a real positive."
Clarke also defended the daredevil batting style of opener David Warner, whose second innings dismissal for 29 against South Africa in Perth triggered criticism.
"The one thing we have to understand about Davey, is that the same ball that got him out in Perth, we were all applauding in Adelaide when it went over slips for four. That's the way he plays," he said.
"The only thing I continue to say to Davey is to make sure his intent is there. When the intent is there, his defence is better, his shot selection is better.
"Sometimes it's not going to look great when he gets out, but on the other hand he has the X-factor. He takes the game away from the opposition in the first session of a Test match ... there's not many players in the world that have that talent."
Clarke rated Warner's unbeaten 123 in last year's Hobart Test against New Zealand as among the dashing left-hander's finest.
"I think one of Davey's greatest innings was the hundred he scored here against New Zealand in really tough batting conditions. He still had that intent, even though the wicket was doing a lot. His shot selection was perfect. "In a perfect world, you'd love to bottle that, but you have to have a bit of give and take with Davey."
- AFP/de
Abroo, daughter of Nisar Ahmad Chak of Manzgam village, along with her parents and three siblings, fell unconscious after consuming the noodles, which had expired in the year 2007, on Tuesday evening, superintendent of police, Kulgam, Muhammad Shafi Mir told PTI.
The pack of noodles had been brought from the family's own shop owned by Chak and his brother Gulzar Ahmad Chak, Shafi said.
The entire family was immediately rushed to a hospital in Kulgam where they were given a 'gastric lavage' (stomach wash), afterwards which they were referred to Srinagar for further treatment, he said.
Abroo died on the way to Srinagar, he said, adding that the other members of the family are being treated in two different hospitals of Srinagar.
The parents are under treatment at SMHS hospital, while the children were admitted to G B Pant hospital here.
The SP said the noodle wrapper and other samples have been taken by the police for evidence and a detailed report is awaited.
Police has registered a case under section 174 of CRPC and investigations are on, Shafi said.
The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.
The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.
"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.
Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.
The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")
Baby Pictures
The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."
These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.
The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)
"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."
John McAfee's month-long international run from police through two Central American nations ended with a flight to Miami, where the businessman who says he abandoned his fortune admitted to playing the "crazy card."
As a gaggle of media waited near several exit doors at the airport Wednesday night, federal authorities whisked the founder of McAfee anti-virus software off the plane and into a van.
"They said, 'Mr. McAfee, please step forward,'" McAfee, 67, later told ABC News exclusively overnight at a Miami Beach hotel. "I was met by a dozen or maybe fewer officers. I said, 'Am I arrested?' They said, 'No, sir, I am here to help you.' That felt the best of all."
He eventually snuck out of the airport in a cab and headed to South Beach. After walking down famed Ocean Drive to the bewilderment of tourists and eating sushi, his first meal in three days, he sat down with ABC News and admitted to playing the "crazy card" and says he is broke.
"I have nothing now," McAfee said. He claims he left everything behind in Belize, including $20 million in investments and about 15 properties. "I've got a pair of clothes and shoes, my friend dropped off some cash."
Just hours earlier, the self-made millionaire was deported by Guatemalan police who forced him aboard his U.S.-bound flight away from the home and the two women he said he loves. After he arrived on South Beach, he said, a mysterious "Canadian friend" ordered another man he'd never met to drop off a wad of fresh $5 bills that McAfee later displayed to ABC News, pulling them from his coat pocket.
He says he left his fortune, including a beachfront compound, behind after his neighbor Greg Faull was found shot to death in Belize on Nov. 10.
Belize officials said he isn't a suspect, but when they asked to question him, McAfee disguised himself and ran.
After three weeks ducking authorities in Belize, by hiding in attics, in the jungle and in dingy hotels, he turned up in Guatemala Dec. 3.
Barely a day later he was detained for entering the country illegally. As Guatemala officials grappled with how to handle his request for asylum and the Belize government's demand for his deportation, McAfee fell ill. The mysterious illness, described by his attorney alternately as a heart ailment or a nervous breakdown, led to a scene with reporters chasing his ambulance down the narrow streets of Guatemala City and right into the emergency room, where McAfee appeared unresponsive.
He now says it was all a ruse:
"It was a deception but who did it hurt? I look pretty healthy, don't I?"
He says he faked the illness in order to buy some time for a judge to hear his case and stay his deportation to Belize, a government he believes wants him dead. When asked whether he believes Belize officials where inept, he didn't mince words.
"I was on the run with a 20-year-old girl for three and a half weeks inside their borders and everyone was looking for me, and they did not catch me," he said. "I escaped, was captured and they tried to send me back. Now I'm sitting in Miami. There had to be some ineptness."
The man who many believe only wants attention answered critics who called his month-long odyssey and blog posts a publicity stunt by simply saying, "What's a better story, millionaire mad man on the run. You [the media] saved my ass. Because you paid attention to the story. As long as you are reporting, it is hard to whack somebody that the world is watching."
He denies any involvement in his neighbor's death but adds that he is not particularly concerned about clearing his name. He is focused on getting his 20-year-old and 17-year-old girlfriends out of Belize and says he has no idea what he'll do next, where he'll live or how he'll support himself.
HONG KONG: Asian markets rose on Wednesday as dealers welcomed signs of progress in US fiscal cliff talks and upbeat data from Germany and Spain, while shrugging off news of North Korea's rocket launch.
With investors becoming more confident the safe-haven yen came back under pressure ahead of a general election in Japan on Sunday and expectations of more monetary easing by the country's central bank.
Tokyo rose 0.59 percent, adding 56.14 points to 9,581.46, Seoul was up 0.55 percent, gaining 10.82 points to 1,975,44, and Sydney climbed 0.17 percent to a 17-month high, adding 7.8 points to 4,583.8.
Hong Kong ended up 0.80 percent, adding 179.41 points to close at 22,503.35, while Shanghai was 0.39 percent, or 8.03 points, higher at 2,082.73
US President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner have swapped new offers to avoid the fiscal cliff of huge tax hikes and spending cuts due to come into effect on January 1, according to sources on both sides.
It fuelled hopes that the two, who have been at loggerheads over plans to increase taxes on the rich and slashing aid to Medicare, could come to an agreement.
If a deal is not reached by the New Year, the package currently in place is widely expected to send the economy into recession.
Markets are also eyeing a meeting of the Federal Reserve policy committee, which is to decide on what action to take as the end approaches of its "Operation Twist" -- selling short-term debt to buy longer-term debt.
There are expectations that policymakers will replace it with more outright bond purchases, or "quantitative easing", aimed at lowering interest rates to encourage businesses to invest and hire.
Buying support was also provided by positive numbers from Germany, where investor sentiment in Europe's key economic machine hit a seven-month high on hopes it will dodge recession.
The confidence index from the ZEW economic institute surged to 6.9 points in December from minus 15.7 in November. Forecasts had been for a reading of minus 11.3.
It was the highest reading since May and the first time since then that the index has been in positive territory.
Spain also enjoyed a successful Treasury bond auction, easing fears over its ability to raise cash to pay its bills.
Traders on Wall Street ended on a positive note. The Dow rose 0.60 percent, a fifth straight day of gains, while the S&P 500 added 0.65 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 1.18 percent.
Confidence in "riskier" assets hit the yen, usually the go-to unit in times of uncertainty, in US trade on Tuesday and it remained under pressure in Asia Wednesday.
The dollar rose to 82.77 yen, compared with 82.51 yen in New York, while the euro was at 107.70 yen from 107.28 yen. That compares with 82.36 yen and 106.68 yen in Asia Tuesday.
The euro bought $1.3010 Wednesday, from $1.3003 in New York.
The yen has come under pressure in recent weeks ahead of Sunday's polls widely expected to see Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan beaten by the Liberal Democratic Party, which is headed by Shinzo Abe.
Abe, a former prime minister, has promised to push a more aggressive monetary easing policy to jumpstart the economy.
Investors shrugged off news that North Korea had fired its rocket, which critics insist was being used as a disguised ballistic missile test.
Previous launches and nuclear tests have led to an initial asset sell-off owing to geopolitical fears, but regional markets remained up in early trade.
"Frankly, it was almost a non-event," Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, told Dow Jones Newswires.
On oil markets New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate for delivery in January, edged up 23 cents to $86.02, and Brent North Sea crude for January added 44 cents at $108.45.
Gold was at $1,713.23 at 0805 GMT compared with $1,709.35 late on Tuesday.
In other markets:
-- Taipei rose 1.0 percent, or 76.5 points, to 7,690.19.
HTC rose 4.05 percent to Tw$282.5 while TSMC was 0.1 percent higher at Tw$98.4.
-- Manila closed 0.20 percent lower, dipping 11.71 points to 5,819.79.
Ayala Corp. fell 3.22 percent to 510 pesos while Philippine Long Distance Telephone slipped 1.29 percent to 2,596 pesos.
-- Wellington ended 0.77 percent, or 30.92 points, lower at 3,995.26.
Telecom fell 2.0 percent to NZ$2.19, Fletcher Building also lost 2.0 percent to NZ$8.28 and Contact Energy was down 2.1 percent at NZ$5.10.
- AFP/lp
"I am in favour of the execution of capital punishment to Afzal Guru," he told reporters at his ancestral town, Raghoharh in Guna district.
He, however, said that the decision on the execution would only be taken after the disposal of Guru's mercy plea.
The senior Congress leader accused the BJP of adopting double standards on the issue of capital punishment.
Singh alleged that while on the one hand the saffron party wanted Guru to be hanged, on the other, it was demanding remission in capital punishment awarded to the extremists of Punjab.
Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory
This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.
To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.
"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.
Full story>>
Why We Love It
"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor
Published December 11, 2012
A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals and seriously injuring a third before killing himself, has been identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.
The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and proceeding to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.
"We have been able to identify the shooter over last night," Sheriff Craig Roberts told "Good Morning America" today.
"At this point in time, because of the investigation, we're actually doing supplemental search warrants, we're not able to release the name of the individual at point in time for the reason being that we don't want to jeopardize the investigation."
Police have not released the names of the two deceased. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.
The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital, according to Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.
PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting
Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of the injured victim, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.
"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."
Christopher Onstott/Pamplen Media Group/Portland Tribune
Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.
More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, police said. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.
"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."
Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.
READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look
"For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place where we can take our families, especially during the holiday season," Roberts said. "Things like this are not supposed to happen."
Roberts also said that shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot. Other shoppers helped escort individuals out of the mall and out of harm's way, he said.
"There were a huge amount of people running in different directions, and it was chaos for a lot of citizens, but true heroes were stepping up in this time of high stress," Roberts said. "E.R. nurses on the scene were providing medical care to those injured, a physician on the scene was helping provide care to the wounded."
Mall shopper Daniel Martinez told KATU that he had just sat down at a Jamba Juice inside the mall when he heard rapid gunfire. He turned and saw the masked gunman, dressed in all black, about 10 feet away from him.
"I just saw him (the gunman) and thought, 'I need to go somewhere,'" Martinez said. "It was so fast, and at that time, everyone was moving around."
Martinez said he ran to the nearest clothing store. As he ran, he motioned for another woman to follow; several others ran to the store as well, hiding in a fitting room. They stayed there for an hour and a half until SWAT teams told them it was safe to leave the mall.
Our peculiar habits can sometimes confound out-of-town guests.
CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
(Saul Loeb - AFP/Getty Images)
Take, for example, U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Scullin Jr., normally of the Northern District of New York, but spending a little time here as a visiting judge.
He was presiding last week over a case involving a former CIA deep cover operative who alleges that unknown agency personnel bad-mouthed him to a defense contractor, costing him a job.
Marcia Sowles, a Justice Department lawyer for the CIA, argued that the agency never said anything publicly about the man, known as Peter B in court pleadings.
Scullin asked Peter B’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, to lay out the material facts the plaintiff believes are at issue so the judge could decide if limited discovery is warranted. He gave Zaid a week.
No problem preparing the filing in a week, Zaid said, but he couldn’t submit it to the court. He would first have to give it to the CIA for review to see if it contained classified information.
But there is no need to include any classified information, Scullin said.
Agreed, said Zaid, but the agency still has to get it first. Sowles and CIA lawyer Anthony Moses concurred: Everything must be reviewed in Langley.
Scullin seemed a tad irritated by this seemingly redundant requirement. Impatient to move along a case that has been stalled for years, Scullin asked Moses how long the review might take.
The CIA lawyer couldn’t predict.
Scullin, an Army infantry commander in Vietnam and Bush I appointee, ordered him to get it done in a week.
“If there’s an issue,” he said, “have your boss call me.”
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian customs have seized 24 tonnes of unprocessed elephant tusks worth almost US$20 million, the largest haul in the country to date, officials said Tuesday.
Some 1,500 tusks hidden in two containers were discovered by customs officials at the country's main port of Klang, in the western state of Selangor.
The tusks had been hidden within pieces of timber inside the containers, which had originated from the west African nation of Togo.
State customs director Azis Yaacub said in a statement that the cargo had been transferred from one ship to another in Spain and was believed to be headed to China.
"The two containers were found to be filled with sawn timber. Inside the wood there were secret compartments that were filled with elephant tusks," he said.
The haul is worth 60 million ringgit, which amounts to US$19.6 million. Officials said that the seizure on December 7 was the fourth in the past year and was larger than the other three combined.
Wildlife trade-monitoring network TRAFFIC has described Malaysia as a major hub for illicit wildlife products.
International trade in elephant ivory was banned in 1990 with rare exceptions, such as auctions of tusks from elephants that have died naturally, or that have been seized from poachers in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
However, the ivory trade has grown globally since 2004, largely due to demand in China, where it is used in traditional medicine.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, African elephant populations may have been as high as five million in the first part of the 20th century, but their numbers could now be as low as 470,000.
- AFP/ir
The petition has been jointly sent by the Flag of Honour Foundation and Dr NK Kalia, father of the captain.
Capt Kalia was the first officer to detect intrusion into Indian side of the Line of Control by the Pakistan army. He was later allegedly captured by Pakistani forces and tortured for over three weeks.
The petitioners urged the UNHRC to ensure that a full and independent investigation is conducted into the issue immediately and the ends of justice is met. They also asked the UN body to take appropriate steps to urge the Government of Pakistan to conduct an enquiry into the matter and ascertain those responsible for the torture and death of the captain.
The petition identifies the torturers as "unknown members of the Pakistan army, reportedly belonging to either the Elite Special Services Group or the Northern Light Infantry".
Capt Kalia's "post-mortem report and the death certificate indicate burns inflicted by cigarettes, eardrums pierced by hot rods, broken bones and teeth. Removal of eyes before puncturing then and chopped limbs and private organs", the petition said.
Talking to TOI over telephone from Palampur Himachal Pradesh, Dr Kalia confirmed that the petition had been filed. "I have very happy to see many people coming forward to support our family in this fight for justice for Saurab," he said.
A group of lawyers from Bangalore, including a senior lawyer associated with the UN, had been preparing the case to be submitted to the UNHRC. The activists said the apathy of the government in taking up the issue had forced them to do it themselves.
"Our idea is to let the families know that the sacrifice made by their sons will not forgotten and fight for justice will continue," said Rajiv Chandrashekar, MP and founder of the Flag of Honour Foundation.
Thomas K. Grose in London
The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.
As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.
In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")
A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.
Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."
The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")
Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."
A Big Role for Gas
If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")
The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.
As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.
Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.
The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")
A Tougher Road
But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.
A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.
Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.
Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."
In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.
Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
Closing "corporate tax loopholes" sure sounds good to the average, non-corporate American -- so good, in fact, that politicians talk about it all the time.
House Speaker John Boehner's fiscal-cliff proposal purports to raise $1.6 trillion in revenue by "clos[ing] special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates."
The White House, meanwhile, has complained that Boehner hasn't offered specific loopholes to cut.
On the other side of the aisle, House Democrats have repeatedly offered up "closing overseas tax loopholes" as a means to pay for spending bills -- a plan Republicans routinely reject. In the last two and a half years, President Obama has often been heard griping about writeoffs for corporate jets.
For both Republicans and Democrats, "corporate tax loopholes" are an old saw. But, like most things in politics, raising revenue from "loopholes" gets a bit stickier when the specifics are hashed out.
A misconception about tax "loopholes," some experts say, is that they're loopholes -- gaps in the tax law that corporations have exploited against the law's intent.
Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
"Most of these proposals were not 'loopholes,' these were incentives," said Eric Toder, co-director of the left-leaning Tax Policy Center.
For example, take the research-and-development tax credit. During the campaign, both Obama and Mitt Romney suggested making it permanent.
"One wouldn't call the research credit a loophole," Toder said.
Cashing in by closing the biggest "loopholes" could be a politically fraught endeavor. To generate meaningful revenue, House Republicans would have to sign off on measures that raised it from taxing the overseas profits of multinational corporations, from ending immediate writeoffs of equipment purchases, or from ending a credit for domestic manufacturing.
When the Joint Committee on Taxation scored some of these provisions, as part of a tax-reform bill pushed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and then-GOP-senator Judd Gregg, it found the government could save significantly:
Savings Over 10 Years: 2011-2021
Taxing Overseas Profits of Multinational Corps: $582.7 billion. In other words, the "overseas tax loophole" Democrats are fond of trashing. While most countries with large economies tax only profits made at home, the U.S. code taxes all income everywhere. To offset the different, U.S. multinational corporations receive credits to prevent double taxing. They also can defer paying any tax on foreign income, until they transfer the money back to the United States.
Taxing that profit could generate significant revenue. But this could be controversial, and large corporations would fight it. A senior aide to one business lobbying group said ending foreign-income deferral would amount to double-taxing U.S. companies and put them at a disadvantage to foreign competitors; one supporter of ending deferral suggested U.S. companies have been able to hide profits overseas, avoiding taxes altogether.
CAIRO: President Mohamed Morsi has ordered Egypt's army to take on police powers from Monday -- including the right to arrest civilians -- in the run-up to a divisive constitutional referendum that has triggered mass street protests.
The decree, published in the government gazette, takes effect on the eve of mass rival protests on the referendum and follows street clashes that have left seven people dead and hundreds injured.
It orders the military to fully cooperate with police "to preserve security and protect vital state institutions for a temporary period, up to the announce of the results from the referendum," according to a copy obtained by AFP.
The military, which ruled Egypt between the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and the election of Morsi in June this year, has sought to remain neutral in the political crisis.
It has warned it "will not allow" the situation to deteriorate, and urged both sides to dialogue.
Army tanks and troops have since Thursday deployed around Morsi's presidential palace but they have not confronted thousands of protesters who have gathered there every night.
The opposition, made up of secular, liberal, leftwing and Christian groups, has said it will escalate its protests to scupper the referendum.
It views the draft constitution, largely drafted by Morsi's Islamist allies, as undermining human rights, the rights of women, religious minorities, and curtailing the independence of the judiciary.
Morsi, though, has defiantly pushed on with the new charter, seeing it as necessary to secure democratic reform in the wake of Mubarak's 30-year autocratic rule.
Late Sunday, the main opposition group, the National Salvation Front, called for huge protests in Cairo to reject the December 15 referendum.
It dismissed a key concession Morsi made rescinding another decree giving himself near-absolute powers as too late, saying he had already used it to railroad through the draft constitution.
"We do not recognise the draft constitution because it does not represent the Egyptian people," National Salvation Front spokesman Sameh Ashour told a news conference.
Going ahead with the referendum "in this explosive situation with the threat of the Brothers' militias amounts to the regime abandoning its responsibilities," he said.
In recent days, the protesters have hardened their slogans, going beyond criticism of the decree and the referendum to demand Morsi's ouster.
The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, shot back that it and allied Islamist movements would counter with their own big rallies in the capital in support of the referendum.
"We are calling for a demonstration Tuesday, under the slogan 'Yes to legitimacy'," the Brotherhood's spokesman, Mahmud Ghozlan, told AFP.
Morsi's camp argues it is up to the people to accept or reject the draft constitution.
If the charter is rejected, Morsi has promised to have a new one drawn up by 100 officials chosen directly by the public rather than appointed by the Islamist-dominated parliament.
But analysts said still-strong public support for Morsi, and the Brotherhood's proven ability to mobilise the grassroots level, would likely help the draft constitution be adopted.
"The Muslim Brotherhood believes that it has majority support so it can win the constitutional referendum," said Eric Trager, analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
If that happens, he warned, it would "set up the country for prolonged instability".
- AFP/ir
A bench of justices D K Jain and Madan B Lokur turned down the plea of Tamil Nadu which contended that the report is factually wrong and the court should interfere in the matter to direct Karnataka to release more water.
"They (members of CMC) are experts and we should not comment on it. If you are not happy with the report then do what you want to do for getting remedy," the bench said.
"It seems that both sides are not satisfied by the direction issued by the CMC. We leave it for the parties to work out in accordance with law," the bench said in its order.
The bench posted the matter for further hearing on January 4 after noting that the order of the Committee is for the month of December.
The CMC, which met on the direction of the apex court, had on December 7 asked asked Karnataka to provide Tamil Nadu with 12 TMC of Cauvery water during December.
Kerala and Pudducherry are the other two member states of CMC which is headed by Union secretary, water resources.
"It would seem equitable if Karnataka should manage water in such a way that Tamil Nadu receives 12 TMC feet during the month of December, 2012," the committee had said in its interim award.
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
UPDATED: Multiple reports, including one from Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's Secretary of Communications and Transports, confirm that the remains of the private jet carrying Jenni Rivera have been found, with no survivors. Rivera, 43, was one of seven passengers.
Rivera's father, Pedro, confirmed the news of his daughter's passing to reporters stationed outside of his home in Lakewood, Calif., where several family members are gathered, including Rivera's mother Rosa and her eldest daughter Chiquis, who has still not made any statements. Rivera's father reportedly received the news via telephone from his son, singer Lupillo Rivera, who was in Mexico at the time of the jet's disappearance. "This is the first tragedy of this kind that we suffer as a family," Rivera's father told reporters on Sunday evening. "I hope people remember her as she was - someone who was straight with the world."
Celebrity reactions on Twitter have poured in since news of the disappearance of Rivera's jet, including Paulina Rubio (who was set to co-host the Mexican edition of The Voice with Rivera) William Levy, Joan Sebastian, Ricky Martin, and others.
See also: Jenni Rivera Immortalized in new Track 'La Misma Gran Señora
AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, file
Mexican officials have confirmed the disappearance of a private jet carrying regional Mexican music superstar Jenni Rivera that took off from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey at 3:15 a.m. local time on Sunday and fell off the radar 10 minutes (or 62 miles) after take-off.
The Learjet 25 jet, which dates back to 1969, is believed to have been carrying seven people – five passengers and two pilots. It was headed for Toluca International Aiport, located outside of Mexico City, where it was meant to arrive at 4:40 a.m. An official search for the jet was initiated at sunrise.
Rivera's publicist Arturo Rivera and her make-up artist Jacob Yebale are believed to have been on that flight. Their most recent tweets are of photos from Rivera's concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.
The Mexican American singer's most recent tweet is a re-tweet of what appears to be a fan's message.
Rivera was due in Toluca this evening for the taping of a Mexican TV show, La Voz. Televisa has canceled tonight's show given Rivera's disappearance.
Known as La Diva de la Banda and beloved by fans on both sides of the border, Rivera, 43, has had a groundbreaking career in regional Mexican music, selling some 15 million records. Among her many feats in a male-dominated genre, she made history in September 2011 when she sold out the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the first female regional Mexican artist to do so. Her reality show on mun2, I Love Jenni, is one of the network's highest rated shows. Rivera made her film debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the indie family drama Filly Brown, due in theaters in January 2013.
See Also: 'Filly Brown Gives Jenni Rivera a Chance to Grow and Gina Rodriguez a Chance to Shine
The Long Beach, Calif.-born singer's personal life has often called for as much attention as her career. A mother of five, Rivera had filed for divorce from baseball player Esteban Loaiza in October after two years of marriage, citing "irreconcilable differences." Soon after, rumors of an affair between Loaiza and Rivera's own daughter Chiquis surfaced, which Chiquis addressed on Twitter in October by saying, "I would NEVER do that, Ever! That's a horrible accusation."
SINGAPORE: Pasir Ris West constituency organised Vertical Challenge on Sunday morning to demonstrate difficulties which rescue workers face when navigating past cluttered areas during emergencies.
The challenge was coordinated by the Singapore Civil Defence Force. Seven participating teams had to evacuate a casualty and manoeuvre the stretcher along a narrow corridor past various obstacles.
Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean encouraged residents to cooperate in keeping their corridors and common areas free from clutter.
"So very often when I visit the residents, we say (the residents) have to keep the corridors clear. They said 'No problem, I can walk through, my neighbours can walk through'," he said.
"Then I said, what if someone has a wheelchair? They said 'if somebody has a wheelchair, then I will make sure I make my corridors clear'. I think our residents also need to understand anybody can need an ambulance at any time."
Clutter at common areas such as corridors and lift lobbies, also pose fire hazards, hampering fire fighting operations.
- CNA/xq
MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.
With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.
This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.
"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.
Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.
READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage
A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.
The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.
In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Check Out Same-Sex Marriage Status in the U.S. State By State
It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.
While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."
Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."
Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.
"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."
Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.
Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?
"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"
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