FUN TO BE BAD

FBI 'Anti-Terror' Arrest Near US Capitol

2012-02-18T02:58:00.000-06:00

A man has been arrested in Washington, near the Capitol building, as part of an anti-terror investigation. Amine El Khalifi, 29, is said to be an illegal immigrant originally from Morocco.
Officials said the man was heading to carry out a suicide attack on the Capitol Building, home to the US Congress. He was "closely and carefully monitored" for weeks, according to the FBI and US Capitol police. Authorities say the public was never in any danger. Mr Khalifi allegedly thought undercover FBI agents he was working with were members of the al-Qaeda network. However, he was not believed to have any genuine connections to al-Qaeda, officials said.

Mr Khalifi made a brief court appearance and was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against US property - a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The suspect was said to have overstayed a visitor visa since 1999, and was under investigation for more than a year. He was based in Alexandria, Virginia. He carried a vest he thought was packed with explosives, reports said, but had in fact been supplied and made harmless by undercover agents. He was also carrying a gun that did not work. Explosives the suspect allegedly sought to use in connection with the plot had been "rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public," a spokesman for the US Justice Department said. Mr Khalifi was said to have been arrested in a parking garage a few blocks from the Capitol as he made his way towards Capitol grounds. He had been under surveillance for several weeks.

According to an FBI affidavit, Mr Khalifi met other individuals at a residence in Arlington, Virginia in January 2011, at which he agreed with a statement that the "war on terrorism" was a "war on Muslims" and said the group had to be ready for war. He considered other targets for an attack including an office building in Alexandria and a Washington restaurant, the affidavit said, before switching his sights to the Capitol. It said he had detonated a test bomb in a quarry in West Virginia in the presence of undercover operatives last month.

He had also visited the Capitol on multiple occasions to plan the details of the alleged attack. US law enforcement officials routinely carry out "sting" operations in an effort to stop potential terror suspects. In one of the most recent incidents, in September 2011, 26-year-old US citizen Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested for allegedly plotting to fly explosive-packed, remote controlled planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol building.

There have been number of convictions based on stings in recent years, the BBC's Adam Brookes reports from Washington. However, Muslim groups and civil rights groups have expressed concern at the way the FBI uses stings in counter-terrorism cases.

Iran Loads 'First Domestically-Made Nuclear Fuel'

2012-02-17T03:39:00.000-06:00

Iran has staged an elaborate ceremony to unveil new developments in its nuclear programme. Tehran says it has used domestically-made nuclear fuel in a reactor for the first time, and also unveiled more efficient enrichment centrifuges. State TV showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspecting the rods as they were loaded into a reactor.

Western countries fear Iran wants to make nuclear weapons; Tehran says it only wants to produce its own energy. The government unveiled the "new generation" of faster, more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz facility in the centre of the country. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, said they were three times more efficient than their existing capacity. President Ahmadinejad was wearing a white coat at the research reactor in Tehran, and was also shown attending the ceremony to mark what he has called the great achievements in the nuclear sphere. He said last week that his country would never halt its programme to enrich uranium.

In January, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Iran had started the production of uranium enriched up to 20% at its Qom plant. A deal to provide fuel for the reactor from abroad collapsed two years ago - at which point Iran decided to make the fuel itself.

One central point links these developments, Iran is determined to show that it can master nuclear technology on its own, and that international sanctions against its nuclear programme will make no difference. The US and the European Union have recently imposed new sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales as part of a drive to increase international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, Iran has written to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to offer to re-open talks with world powers on its nuclear programme. "We voice our readiness for dialogue on a spectrum of various issues which can provide ground for constructive and forward-looking cooperation," the letter from chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said, according to AP news agency.

The Obama administration dismissed the move as erratic behaviour resulting from the squeeze caused by sanctions. EU officials have not yet commented. Talks between Iran and six world powers - the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China - on Tehran's nuclear programme collapsed a year ago.

Unique Proposal

2012-02-14T14:20:00.001-06:00

When Matt Grevers jumped into the pool prior to this last weekend's 100-meter backstroke at the Missouri Grand Prix, he had diamond on his mind, not gold. The two-time gold medalist had concocted an elaborate plan to propose to his longtime girlfriend, fellow national-team swimmer Annie Chandler, atop the medal stand. All he had to do was get there. Grevers ended up winning the race. And when organizers asked Chandler to present the medals to the three top finishers, she didn't suspect anything out of the ordinary. When Grevers dropped to a knee, Chandler's reaction says it all:

Courtesy USASwimming.org

"I've just been searching for a unique way to pop the question," Grevers told reporters. "My whole family is here and I figured it would be a perfect opportunity and a unique situation."

Originally, Grevers had hoped to propose while Chandler was on the medal stand. A fifth-place performance in Friday's 100 breaststroke scuttled those plans. He didn't want to do it on Sunday, so his plans were all riding on Saturday's backstroke race.

"I took [the race] out a little fast because my heart was racing the whole time," he said. "If I didn't get first it wouldn't have worked out so well."

Grevers' brother, Andy, is an assistant swim coach at the University of Missouri (where the event was held) and played a key role in the proposal. He held the ring during the race and surreptitiously passed it to his brother afterward.

The couple didn't talk about potential wedding dates, though late July probably won't be in the cards. The 2012 London Olympics begin on the 27th of that month. Grevers and Chandler hope they'll both be competing.

Story and video : courtesy of Yahoo

OOPS!

2012-02-14T14:00:00.000-06:00

OOPS! Blowing a little more than snow in Ontario today

Obama Hosts China's Heir Apparent

2012-02-14T13:49:00.003-06:00

President Obama: "It is absolutely vital that we have a strong relationship with China"

Obama has pressed China's leader-in-waiting on trade and human rights, as he welcomed him to the White House.

Meeting Vice-President Xi Jinping in the Oval Office, Mr Obama also said it was "vital" that Washington maintained a strong relationship with Beijing. Mr Xi said he hoped his visit would deepen mutual understanding and friendship between the two powers. The US and China have been at odds over trade, currency and human rights.

Mr Xi, 58, is widely expected to succeed China's President Hu Jintao, who must retire as head of the Communist Party later this year and from the presidency in 2013. Washington has been putting pressure on Beijing over what it sees as unfair trade practices, as well as the value of its currency and intellectual property theft. "We want to work with China to make sure that everybody is working by the same rules of the road when it comes to the world economic system," said Mr Obama, flanked by Mr Xi. "That includes ensuring that there is a balanced trading flow not only between the United States and China but around the world."

Demonstration outside the Whitehouse

Mr Xi's trip comes amid concerns over a clampdown by Beijing on protests in Tibet. Human rights activists staged a protest outside the White House as China's vice-president arrived. "On critical issues like human rights we will continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of recognizing the aspirations and rights of all people," Mr Obama added. He also said that China's "extraordinary development" over the last two decades had brought "increased responsibilities".

The leaders were expected to discuss foreign policy issues, including Syria and Iran. But Washington also hopes to learn more about the Chinese heir apparent's leadership style, say correspondents.
Mr Xi is making a week-long trip as the guest of US Vice-President Joe Biden, who made a high-profile visit to China late last year.

Earlier in the day, Mr Xi met Mr Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the White House's Roosevelt Room. Mr Biden said that while "we are not always going to see eye to eye", both nations would speak "candidly" about their differences.

Mr Xi will meet Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, too. On Wednesday, he is due to travel to Iowa to meet his hosts from his first visit to the US in 1985 when he was a county official. He is also scheduled to visit a farm in Iowa on Thursday before flying to Los Angeles, California, to meet business leaders there. Mr Xi will reportedly also attend a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game on Friday.
Correspondents say the US-China relationship has become an increasingly delicate one over a series of security and economic issues. Mr Xi's visit comes a year after President Hu's trip to Washington, which he referred to in his comments provided by the Chinese government to The Washington Post.
In his remarks to the newspaper, Mr Xi sounded a note of warning to the US over its presence in the Pacific. He said scaling up military activity was not what the region wanted to see. China and the US, Mr Xi said, had ''converging interests'' in the region and there was ''ample space'' for both in the Pacific Ocean. "We also hope that the United States will fully respect and accommodate the major interest and legitimate concerns of Asia-Pacific countries," he wrote. In his remarks to the newspaper, Mr Xi also emphasized that China had taken ''active steps'' to address US concerns over trade.
''Frictions and differences are hardly avoidable in our economic and trade interactions,'' he said. ''We must not allow frictions and differences to undermine the larger interests of our business co-operation.''
Who is Xi Jinping?

China's likely next leader, expected to lead the country from 2013
Currently China's vice-president and vice chair of the Central Military Commission (which controls the army)
Son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party's founding fathers
Joined the party in 1974
His wife, singer Peng Liyuan, describes him as frugal, hardworking and down-to-earth

Whitney Mourned at Grammys

2012-02-13T03:26:00.000-06:00

the decline

the bottom

comeback

finale

The music world has been remembered the life and career of Whitney Houston at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The star was found dead in her Los Angeles hotel room on Saturday, the day before the prestigious ceremony.

Meanwhile, after a post mortem examination, the Los Angeles coroner said there were no visible signs of trauma on Houston's body and that foul play was "not suspected at this time". The coroner confirmed that Houston, 48, was found in the bath.

Host LL Cool J opened the event with a prayer for the singer. Cool J said: "There is no way around this. We've had a death in our family. "The only thing that feels right is to begin with a prayer for a woman who we loved - for our fallen sister, Whitney Houston."

The audience then gave a standing ovation after watching a clip of her hit I Will Always Love You. Later, dressed in black and with a simple piano accompaniment, singer Jennifer Hudson gave a moving rendition of the same song, ending with the line: "Whitney, we will always love you."

Others paying tribute during the ceremony included Bruno Mars, who told the crowd: "Tonight we're celebrating. Tonight we're celebrating the beautiful Miss Whitney Houston.

Stevie Wonder said: "To Whitney up in heaven, we all love you."

Melanie Fiona, who won best traditional R&B vocal performance and best R&B song, said: "Whitney Houston, I would not be standing up here if it were not for you, thank you so much."

The reaction to Houston's death dominated the ceremony, which is the most high-profile event in the US music calendar.

Before the show, Jimmy Jam, a friend and producer of Houston's, said it was "a bittersweet occasion". Anytime someone passes away, the thing you do is you gather your family together, tell stories," he said. "A little bit of mourning, little bit of celebrating - this is our family tonight and we're going to do it the best that we can do it."

Earlier on Sunday, the Rev Al Sharpton paid tribute to Houston while preaching at the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles. "Yes, she had an outstanding range," he said. "Yes, she could hit notes no one else could reach. But what made her different was she was born and bred in the bosom of the black church. A lot of artists can hit notes but they don't hit us. Say words but they have no meaning. Have gifts and talent but no anointing. Something about Whitney that would reach in you and make you feel."

Houston became known for powerful ballads such as I Will Always Love You and One Moment In Time.She holds the record for having the most consecutive chart-topping singles in the US - reaching number one seven times between 1985 and 1988. She won six Grammys during her career. But her later career was overshadowed by substance abuse and her turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown. In recent years drug use had taken its toll on the star and her voice - once acknowledged as one of the finest in pop music - was badly damaged.
Meanwhile, Houston's 18-year-old daughter Bobbi has been released from hospital after being treated for stress and anxiety following her mother's death.

Black Hole Eats Asteroids

2012-02-11T03:42:00.001-06:00

What is a black hole?

A black hole is what's left after a very big star dies, after it has collapsed under its own gravity
The gravitational pull of black holes is so massive that nothing, not even light, can escape their pull

For years scientists have been puzzled as to why a giant black hole at the centre of the Milky Way has bright flares coming out of it. Experts from the University of Leicester say they've found the answer in data from Nasa's Chandra satellite. They say it's because the huge black hole, called Sagittarius A*, is vaporizing massive asteroids.

But scientists say the asteroids need to be over 12 miles across to create flares big enough to be detected. So there are many, many more smaller asteroids being sucked in that can't be seen.
The black hole's huge force rips apart any asteroid passing within about 100 million miles of it - that's roughly the same distance between the Earth and the Sun. The pieces of rock are then vaporized, which is what creates the flare.

X-ray observations
Nasa's Chandra satellite scans the skies looking for the X-rays given off by really high-temperature explosions and other extreme events in space. It's so sensitive that it can study particles right up to the last millisecond before they get sucked into a black hole. The flares that Chandra has detected coming from the black hole are actually flashes of X-rays, not visible light.

Scientists will continue to study Sagittarius A* for the rest of 2012 to try to find out even more about it.

US Banks Agree $25bn Mortgage Settlement

2012-02-09T20:55:00.000-06:00

Five of the biggest US banks have agreed to provide $25bn to homeowners to settle claims over improper foreclosure practices. The deal, struck with the US government and most US states, follows allegations of abusive practices by lenders during the country's housing collapse. The banks involved are Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Ally Financial.

President Obama said that homeowners had not been treated fairly. "Many companies that handled these foreclosures didn't give people a fighting chance to hold on to their homes," he said. "In many cases they didn't even verify that these foreclosures were actually legitimate." He added that the deal would "speed relief to the hardest hit homeowners in some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry", saying this was the first step in turning the page on an "era of recklessness".

The settlement follows a year of wrangling and is the biggest struck between the US government and a single industry since 1998. The deal will provide $3bn of relief for borrowers who are currently on repayments but who cannot refinance their loans because they are larger than the value of their homes. It will also give $17bn in principal reductions to those who are behind on their payments and at risk of default, and provide about $2,000 in compensation for those whose homes have been foreclosed.

The five banks involved will contribute relative to their share of the market, and other banks could join the programme, increasing the size of the pot. By settling, the five banks will avoid civil federal lawsuits. However, they are still exposed to the possibility of litigation from states or individuals. They will also be subject to tighter regulation of foreclosure practices.

All US states except Oklahoma were involved in the agreement, which will last for three years. The abuses happened after the US housing bubble burst five years ago. From 2006, when the American property market peaked, house prices are down by a third and almost 11 million Americans owe more than their homes are worth.

Many companies processing foreclosures - or repossession orders - failed to verify documents. Some employees signed papers they had not read or used fake signatures to speed up the process, an action dubbed "robo-signing". Attorney General Eric Holder said the deal represented the "latest step forward in righting the wrongs that led to our nation's housing-market collapse and economic crisis".

Californian borrowers will receive almost half of the $25bn settlement, which does not include mortgages originated by the giant mortgage backers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. California's Attorney General, Kamala Harris, said she would try to reach a deal with the two lenders. "I will continue to fight for principal reductions for the approximately 60% of California homeowners whose loans are owned by Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac," she said.
Analysis:

This deal is significant because it is likely to help as many as two million American households and it could help to reshape mortgage lending practices. But this by no means solves all of America's housing woes. Critics say this deal may prove more help to the banks than to struggling home-owners and the collapsed housing market.
For one, the banks can now put this behind them without a deeper investigation into any wrong-doing. They have already set aside money to pay for the settlement. Meanwhile, borrowers who lost their homes to wrongful foreclosure are unlikely to get them back. And this deal does nothing to help the one in four borrowers who are struggling with negative equity and who have continued to repay their mortgages on time.
This is a step in the right direction but there is still much more work to rehabilitate America's housing market.

Tibetan Immolations Protest Religious Repression

2012-02-09T20:38:00.001-06:00

The U.S. has expressed "disgust" with the Chinese and Russian vetoes of a United Nations resolution to condemn the Syrian regime, and rightly so. So why is the Obama Administration saying so little when it comes to ongoing violence against another repressed people? Do mounting protests in the restive region set the stage for a 'Tibetan Spring'? Hugo Restall discusses.

We're talking about China's crackdown in Tibet, where at least 19 Tibetans have burned themselves to death over the last year in protest at Chinese rule, most recently last Friday. Senator John McCain may have been right when he told China's Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun in Munich last week that China could be seeing the start of an Arab Spring-like movement. "It is a matter of concern when Tibetans are burning themselves to death because of the continued repression of the Tibetan people in your country," he warned.

As expected, Mr. Zhang dismissed this possibility. But Beijing's actions show that it appreciates the danger. As the Tibetan New Year holiday and the anniversary of the 2008 Lhasa riots approach, the government is moving troops into restive regions and rounding up suspected troublemakers. Internet access and mobile phone networks have been shut down, and foreign journalists shut out. Lest any officials think of going soft, Tibet's official newspaper warned that leaders who fail to maintain stability would lose their jobs. A "thankfulness education" campaign requires Tibetans to hang the portraits of Chinese leaders in homes.

The use of brute force often succeeds in preventing unrest for a time. But it also fuels resistance in the long term and increases the danger of a more violent movement forming. The latest self-immolations could presage another outbreak of riots.

As usual, Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile for encouraging the self-immolations. In fact, the suicides are a rebuke to the Dalai Lama's "middle way," which asks the Tibetan people to be patient while exile leaders offer to negotiate with China on their behalf. As calls for violence and extremism echo on both sides, the Dalai Lama looks increasingly irrelevant.

This image from video purports to show Buddhist nun Palden Choetso engulfed in flames in her self-immolation protest against Chinese rule on a street in Tawu, Tibetan Ganzi prefecture, in China's Sichuan Province Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011.

Self-immolation is forbidden by Tibetan Buddhism and it was practically unknown to Tibetans as a form of protest until 1998, when a former monk named Thupten Ngodup burned himself to death in New Delhi. His suicide, which came as Indian police broke up a hunger strike by the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress, was an expression of frustration with the Dalai Lama's failure to achieve any alleviation of the suffering in Tibet. Prominent Youth Congress leaders have long called for an end to the nonviolent resistance insisted on by the Dalai Lama.

Some Tibetans hope that the new generation of Chinese leaders who are due to assume power later this year will take a more humane approach to governing Tibet. While there is little evidence to support this, the possibility should be kept alive. If violence breaks out next month it will become even more difficult for the authorities to reverse direction. Statements like Mr. McCain's can get the message to the Chinese that Congress hasn't forsaken Tibet. A statement from President Obama would be even better.

40 Foot Whale Shark beached in Pakistan

2012-02-09T20:17:00.001-06:00

A 40-feet long whale shark washed ashore in Pakistan near Karachi Fisheries Harbor Authority today. People gather to gawk at the magnificent, enormous dead shark. Local authorities hoisted it out with a crane. This is not the first time Karachi beach has welcomed such a massive fish carcass. Last September a whale washed ashore. The big fish is considered very valuable and will no doubt be sold whole or in pieces by the local government.

Ha!

2012-02-09T17:56:00.000-06:00

Santorum Declared Winner in Minnesota and Missouri Votes

2012-02-08T00:07:00.000-06:00

Rick Santorum has been declared the winner in Minnesota and Missouri's Republican presidential nominating contests, thrashing Mitt Romney. Mr Santorum, a social conservative, was in a tight race with Mitt Romney in Colorado. Defeat in Colorado for Mr Romney would be a huge upset, as he was expected to win easily on the eve of the vote. The winning Republican nominee will go on to face Democratic President Obama in November's election.

Newt Gingrich, still Mr Romney's main challenger, hardly campaigned in the three states that voted on Tuesday, and did not even appear on Missouri's ballot. Speaking from Missouri, Mr Santorum told supporters: "Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota! In Missouri, with 99% of the vote counted, Mr Santorum was in the lead with more than 55%, well ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Romney at 25%, and Texas Congressman Ron Paul at 12%. In Minnesota, with 82% of the vote counted, Mr Santorum was on 45%, while Mr Paul was on 27% and Mr Romney third on 17%.

In Colorado, Mr Santorum was narrowly ahead with almost 38% of the vote, with 70% of votes counted. But Mr Romney was snapping at his heels with 36% of the vote. Pitching himself as the only true conservative in the presidential race, Mr Santorum campaigned hard ahead of the votes in Minnesota and Missouri - states with significant blocs of Tea Party and evangelical Christian voters respectively. The former Pennsylvania senator, who had not won a contest since grinding out a narrow win in Iowa's caucuses back in January, has been viewed as a long-shot candidate.

Tuesday's victories will inject new momentum into Mr Santorum's campaign, as he hopes to displace Mr Gingrich as the conservative alternative to Mr Romney. In Missouri, where Mr Gingrich did not appear on the ballot, Mr Santorum had the opportunity to marshal conservative voters behind his candidacy. Mr Gingrich, who was campaigning in Ohio, told CNN: "I think the big story coming out tonight is going to be that it's very hard for the elite media to portray Governor Romney as the inevitable nominee after tonight's over." Correspondents say the game plan of Mr Gingrich, a former House of Representatives Speaker, is to ride out February and hang on until March when Southern states where he stands a better chance of success come into play.

Mr Romney tried to boost his credentials on being anti-abortion, pro-religious freedom and opposed to gay marriage, in a last-ditch effort to win over social conservatives ahead of Minnesota and Colorado's caucuses. During his first run for the Republican presidential nomination back in 2008, Mr Romney was victorious in both Colorado and Minnesota. But both states are perceived to have moved to the right since then, so doubts over his Mormon faith and political record as governor of a liberal state could have cost him votes. Playing down the significance of Tuesday's contests, Romney campaign political director Rich Beeson said earlier in the day: "Mitt Romney is not going to win every contest. John McCain [the 2008 Republican nominee] lost 19 states in 2008, and we expect our opponents will notch a few wins, too."

In Minnesota, 37 delegates are at stake with 33 up for grabs in Colorado. The primary in Missouri is being dubbed a "beauty contest" since it will actually allocate its delegates next month. Before Tuesday's votes, Mr Romney had 101 of the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination at the Republican Party convention in August, according to an Associated Press news agency tally.

In second place, Mr Gingrich was on 32 delegates, Mr Santorum 17 and Mr Paul nine. Mr Romney has racked up the most victories in this year's election race, with resounding wins in New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada.

Egypt Crackdown Under Guise of Legality

2012-02-07T20:31:00.001-06:00

US Presidential Election 2012 ... Obama: 'I deserve a second term'

2012-02-07T03:22:00.003-06:00

US Presidential Election 2012

President Obama has said he believes he deserves a second term in the White House. His declaration, in an interview with NBC, came as a new poll showed his approval ratings moving past 50% for the first time since May 2011.

The ABC News/Washington Post survey also suggests Mr Obama would beat Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. Mr Romney and his rivals are now campaigning in Colorado and Minnesota after his weekend caucus win in Nevada. States across the US are currently holding nominating contests to pick a Republican nominee to challenge Mr Obama in November's general election.

Mr Obama's NBC interview was broadcast ahead of the Super Bowl, the most-watched TV event of the year. It came two days after improved employment figures prompted analysts to suggest his prospects for securing four more years in the White House were improving.

"I deserve a second term, but I am not done," Mr Obama said. "We've created 3.7 million jobs in the last 23 months. "We've created the most jobs since 2005, the most manufacturing jobs since 1990, but we're not finished. "What I'm going to just keep on doing is plodding away, very persistent. And you know what? One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on."

The ABC News/Washington Post poll - carried out over the end of last week and into the weekend - indicated that some of the positive economic data of the past few months could be filtering through to the electorate. Asked directly to choose a president if an election were being held now, 51% of the 1,000 respondents chose Mr Obama, with Mr Romney on 45%. Matched against former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is running second in the Republican race, Mr Obama came out ahead by a wider margin, 54% to 43%.

Mr Gingrich, as well as Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, has vowed to stay in the nomination fight, despite seeing Mr Romney win 50% of the votes in the Nevada Republican caucuses at the weekend. Although his approval ratings are up, Mr Obama remains a polarizing figure. Asked whether or not he should have a second term in office - but without being asked to choose between him and an alternative president - the respondents were split 49%-49%.

Despite his winning record in primary season, Mr Romney has endured a barrage of hostile advertisements from rivals, and a lengthy focus on his wealth and business interests. Some 52% of those polled said the more they learn about the former Massachusetts governor, the less they like him. However, Mr Romney is still considered the favoured Republican candidate on economic issues, the poll suggests. Although he is the front-runner, Mr Romney faces a long path to the Republican nomination. He needs 1,144 delegates from across the 50 states to secure the mantle, and currently has 101 to his name. Mr Gingrich is his nearest challenger, with 32, while Mr Paul has 17 and Mr Santorum is on nine.

On Monday, the Romney campaign turned its attacks on Mr Santorum, after recent polling showed the former Pennsylvania senator ahead of Mr Romney in Minnesota and second in Colorado.

US and Israel Working Together on Iran, Says Obama

2012-02-06T02:47:00.000-06:00

Former President Khatemi and President Ahmadinejad of Iran

The US is working closely with Israel to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, President Obama has said. He told NBC he believed Israel had not yet decided how to deal with the issue, amid reports that Israel may strike Iran as early as spring. Mr Obama said the aim was to resolve the crisis diplomatically, but added that no option was off the table.

The US and Israel suspect that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. Iran says its programmes are for peaceful purposes. Last November, the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said it had information suggesting Iran had carried out tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device". Since then, the US and the EU have imposed a series of sanctions against Iran, including measures targeting the country's lucrative oil industry.

"I've been very clear - we're going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating a nuclear arms race in a volatile region," Mr Obama told NBC in a live interview on Sunday. He said Washington was working "in lockstep" with Israel, which was right to be very concerned about Iran's controversial activities.

Asked if he believed the Jewish state could launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, Mr Obama said: "I don't think Israel has made a decision on what they need to do." He declined to answer directly a question whether Washington would be consulted first, saying only that the US and Israel "have closer military and intelligence consultation... than we've ever had".

Mr Obama also said there was no evidence that the Iranians had "intentions or capabilities" to strike US targets in retaliation. The US leader was eager to play down tensions between the US and Israel over suggestions that Israel is preparing a military strike against Iran.

But she says that behind the scenes Washington is deeply alarmed by reports that Israel may strike Iran as early as April - in a move that would drive up tensions in the Middle East as well as oil prices, which would threaten the global economy and Mr Obama's re-election chances.

CLimate Change Skeptic Sees the Light

2012-02-04T19:05:00.001-06:00

TAKEN VERBATIM FROM BIG THINK:

Climate change deniers lost an important ally in 2011. They used to claim the Berkeley physicist Richard Muller among their ranks, although Muller claims to have been merely a skeptic, not a denier (one who denies). Muller recently completed a David and Charles Koch-funded study that found the earth is in fact warming.
James Lawrence Powell, the former President of Reed College, has published The Inquisition of Climate Science as a primer on the climate change denier community. Powell investigates the published works of the likes of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and Bjorn Lomborg, and shows how these authors' works are rife with errors and cherry-picked bits of scientific data. For instance, as Powell points out, Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist contained 318 mistakes, or about one per page.
And yet, according to Powell, Richard Muller is not a con artist like Monckton or Lomborg. Muller is a serious scientist, which made his stubborn refusal to accept peer-reviewed science all the more curious. In the video below, Powell describes the significance of Muller's Berkeley Climate Study and what lessons we can learn from Muller's unexpected conversion.
Watch the video here:

What's the Significance?
"I think what we could learn from the case study that Muller did," says Powell, "is that [Muller] should have trusted the other scientists and the peer review process which had produced the data that he was questioning."
In an article Muller published in The Wall Street Journal, he argued that two years ago everyone should have been a skeptic. Powell points out that "two years ago you had 98 percent of the climate scientists in the world saying that they accepted human-caused global warming." It was "a little offensive," and "arrogant," Powell says, for Muller to "refuse to believe this" until he did it himself. Imagine if every scientist acted that way. If that were the case, we would be "at least a century behind where we are right now," says Powell.

New Planet Considered Most Habitable

2012-02-04T03:22:00.001-06:00

International astronomers say they have found the fourth potentially habitable planet outside our solar system with temperatures that could support water and life about 22 light-years from Earth.
The team analyzed data from the European Southern Observatory about a star known as GJ 667C, which is known as an M-class dwarf star and puts out much less heat than our Sun.
However, at least three planets are orbiting close to the star, and one of them appears to be close enough that it likely absorbs about as much incoming light and energy as Earth, has similar surface temperatures and perhaps water.
The new rocky planet, GJ 667Cc, orbits its star every 28.15 days - meaning its year equals about one Earth month - and has a mass at least 4.5 times that of Earth, according to the research published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," said Guillem Anglada-Escud who was with the Carnegie Institution for Science when he conducted the research but has since moved on to the University of Gottingen in Germany.
The theory about water, however, cannot be confirmed until astronomers learn more about the planet's atmosphere.
Other planets circling the same star - which is part of a three-star system - could include a gas-giant and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days, but more observations are needed to confirm that.
Some experts have been sceptical that M-class dwarf stars could have planets that support life because they are too dim and tend to have lots of solar flare activity, which could send off lethal radiation to nearby planets.
And even though this star, GJ 667C, has a much lower abundance of elements heavier than helium, such as iron, carbon, and silicon - the building blocks of terrestrial planets - than our Sun, astronomers are intrigued by the possibilities.
"This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy," said co-author Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz.
"The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets."
French astronomers in May last year confirmed the first exoplanet, Gliese 581d, to meet key requirements for sustaining life. It is a rocky planet about 20 light-years away.
Swiss astronomers reported in August that another planet, HD 85512 b, about 36 light-years away seemed to be in the habitable zone of its star.
The US space agency NASA confirmed its first such planet late last year, Kepler 22b, about 600 light-years away
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/gj-667cc-fourth-planet-that-could-support-life-found-20120203-1qw53.html#ixzz1lOzRt4pR

Grail Mission Reveals Dark Side of the Moon

2012-02-03T02:46:00.000-06:00

PASADENA, Calif. -- A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM. The images were taken as part of a test of Ebb's MoonKAM on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date.

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The twin spacecraft successfully achieved lunar orbit this past New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Previously named GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft received their new names from fourth graders at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., following a nationwide student naming contest.

Thousands of fourth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study. The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. Her team at Sally Ride Science and undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego will engage middle schools across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.

"We have had great response from schools around the country; more than 2,500 signed up to participate so far," Ride said. "In mid-March, the first pictures of the moon will be taken by students using MoonKAM. I expect this will excite many students about possible careers in science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow periodically perform trajectory correction maneuvers that, over time, will lower their orbits to near-circular ones with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Face-off Between Lion and Croc....Who Wins??

2012-02-02T20:11:00.000-06:00

One Boat - 145 Skiers

2012-02-02T19:31:00.000-06:00

Donald Trump Endorses Mitt Romney in Las Vegas

2012-02-02T19:20:00.000-06:00

Billionaire US businessman Donald Trump has endorsed front-runner Mitt Romney for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Mr Trump announced his support at a Las Vegas hotel he owns, contradicting earlier reports that he would back Romney rival Newt Gingrich. The candidates have been campaigning in Nevada after Mr Romney's resounding win in Florida's primary on Tuesday. The eventual nominee will go on to face Barack Obama in November's election.

Telling Romney supporters that it was his honour to endorse the former Massachusetts governor, Mr Trump said foreign business people he deals with had taken advantage of increased US uncompetitiveness. In short remarks, Mr Trump said Mr Romney would not "allow bad things to continue to happen to this country we all love". Aides from the office of Mr Trump and Republican officials told US media that the real estate tycoon and reality TV star had spoken to Mr Romney on Wednesday night to inform him of the endorsement. The outspoken businessman flirted last year with the idea of jumping into the presidential race himself as a third-party candidate, but ultimately decided not to. Mr Trump said on Wednesday that he had an announcement to make about the presidential race, but did not say what it was.

Former House of Representatives Speaker Mr Gingrich told reporters he had not spoken to Mr Trump for weeks and was not aware of any plans by the businessman to back a candidate. In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Mr Trump said he was still undecided as to whether to support Mr Romney or Mr Gingrich. "I like both," Mr Trump said. "They both want my endorsement. We'll see what happens but in a very short time I'll be making an endorsement."

On Thursday, the candidates were campaigning in the south-western state of Nevada ahead of its Republican caucuses on Saturday. An opinion poll released by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Thursday showed Mr Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, leading the pack by 20 percentage points. He was on 45%, while Mr Gingrich was on 25%, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum 11% and Texas Congressman Ron Paul 9%.

The Trump development may at least give Mr Romney's campaign some respite from negative publicity over ill-chosen remarks he made about the poor on Wednesday morning. During an interview with CNN, the private equity tycoon said: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95% of Americans who are struggling."
Mr Gingrich led critics in pouncing on his rival's remarks about the poor, in an attempt to portray him as out of touch with the lives of ordinary voters. At a rally on Thursday, the former House Speaker said "we should care about the very poor" unlike Mr Obama or Mr Romney. Mr Romney later told reporters on his plane: "Of course I'm concerned about all Americans... poor, wealthy, middle class, but the focus of my effort will be on middle-income families who I think have been most hurt by the Obama economy."

Nevada's caucuses on Saturday are the next contest in the state-by-state process of picking a Republican nominee to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in 6 November's general election. The Silver State offers 28 delegates, out of 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination at August's Republican convention.

Madrid Museum Finds 'Copy of Mona Lisa by da Vinci Pupil'

2012-02-02T03:10:00.001-06:00

A painting thought to be the earliest copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and painted alongside the original has been discovered in Madrid's Prado museum, giving a fresh insight into what the model for one of the world's most famous paintings actually looked like.

Recent conservation work reveals that the work was painted by a pupil working alongside Leonardo da Vinci

The discovery, hailed as one of the most remarkable in recent times, was made during conservation work and is believed to reveal how the famous sitter would have looked at the time.

"This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world's most famous picture," said Art Newspaper which published the findings.

The Prado painting was long thought to be one of dozens surviving replicas of the masterpiece made after Leonardo's death but it is now believed to have been painted by one of his key pupils working alongside the master.

The Louvre original, displayed behind glass, is obscured by cracked darkened varnish, making the woman appear much older than her true age. Because of its fragility, cleaning and restoration is thought to be too risky.

But art historians believe the Prado's Mona Lisa which is in the process of being painstakingly stripped of a dark over-paint reveals her as she would have looked at the time.

Lego Man in Space

2012-02-01T21:02:00.002-06:00

A bunch of guys got together in January 2012 and launched a Lego man, on a weather balloon, into space with surprising success. They got some great pictures of near space.

A Unique but Somehow Useless Talent...Business Card Throwing

2012-02-01T20:17:00.000-06:00

Science Decodes 'Internal Voices'

2012-02-01T03:36:00.000-06:00

The studies focused on a part of the brain associated with sounds called the superior temporal gyrus

Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words. The technique reported in PLoS Biology relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients' brains. Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of. The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.

Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts. In a 2011 study, participants with electrodes in direct brain contact were able to move a cursor on a screen by simply thinking of vowel sounds. A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to track blood flow in the brain has shown promise for identifying which words or ideas someone may be thinking about.

By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant's group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of - recreating "movies in the mind". Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that "stimulus reconstruction" work one step further. "This is inspired by a lot of Jack's work," Dr Pasley said. "One question was... how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach?"

The team focused on an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus, or STG. This broad region is not just part of the hearing apparatus but one of the "higher-order" brain regions that help us make linguistic sense of the sounds we hear. The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences. The trick is disentangling the chaos of electrical signals that the audio brought about in the patients' STG regions.

To do that, the team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played. With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen. They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant. "There's a two-pronged nature of this work - one is the basic science of how the brain does things," said Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study.

"From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders... could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can't speak but they can imagine what they want to say," Prof Knight explained. "The patients are giving us this data, so it'd be nice if we gave something back to them eventually."

The authors caution that the thought-translation idea is still to be vastly improved before such prosthetics become a reality. But the benefits of such devices could be transformative, said Mindy McCumber, a speech therapist at Florida Hospital in Orlando. "The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise 'augmentative and alternative communication', and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means."

2,200-Year-old Egyptian Mummy Had Prostate Cancer

2012-02-01T03:17:00.000-06:00

Oldest case in Egypt: The 2,250-year-old Ptolemaic mummy, which revealed tell-tale signs of prostate cancer under high-powered digital imaging

Agonizing end: The mummy, known as M1, was a 5ft 5ins adult male who died a painful death at the hands of the disease aged between 51 and 60

Disease likely to be caused by genetics not environment

Scans reveal tumours between pelvis and spine

Whether environment or genetics triggers cancer is key to understanding it. The unnamed Ptolemaic mummy, which is kept at the National Archaeology Museum of Lisbon, had a pattern of round and dense tumours between its pelvis and lumbar spine - giveaway signs of man's modern-day killer.

The mummy was that of a 5ft 5ins adult male‭ who lived between 285 and 230 BC and was between 51 and 60 years old when he died, researchers said. The bone lesions were considered very suggestive of metastatic prostate cancer,‭' ‬wrote the researchers in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

They subjected the mummy, known as M1, to powerful Multi Detector Computerized Tomography‭ (‬MDCT‭) ‬scans, which produced‭ 'really unusual high quality images', ‬Carlos Prates,‭ ‬a radiologist at Imagens Médicas Integradas in Lisbon, told Discovery News. Digital X-rays showed that M1‭ ‬had been buried with crossed arms‭ - a common pose in Ptolemaic mummies,‭ ‬although in the New Kingdom it was often associated with royals‭. He was adorned with a cartonnage mask and bib,‭ ‬and boasted an elaborately painted shroud. The images showed he suffered from lumbosacral osteoarthritis,‭ ‬which was probably related to a lower lumbar scoliosis and there were several‭ post-mortem fractures,‭ ‬possibly produced when the mummy was transported to Europe. But they also found a variety of tumors,‭ ‬measuring between‭ ‬0.03ins‭ ‬and‭ ‬0.59‭inches,‭ ‬interspersed‭ along ‬M1‭’‬s pelvis and lumbar spine.‭

Prostatic carcinoma begins in the walnut-sized prostate gland and typically spreads to the pelvic region,‭ ‬the lumbar spine,‭ ‬the upper arm and leg bones, and the ribs,‭ ‬ultimately reaching most of the skeleton.‭

Dr Prates and colleagues‭ ‬considered other diseases as alternatives.‭ ‬But‭ ‬M1‭'‬s sex,‭ ‬age,‭ ‬the‭ ‬distribution pattern of the lesions,‭ ‬their shape and density,‭ ‬strongly argued for prostate cancer. 'It is the oldest known case of prostate cancer in ancient Egypt and the‭ ‬second‭ ‬oldest case in history,‭' Dr ‬Prates said.

The earliest diagnosis of‭ ‬metastasising prostate carcinoma came in‭ ‬2007 ‬when researchers investigated the skeleton of a‭ ‬2,700-year-old Scythian king who died,‭ ‬aged‭ ‬40 to 50,‭ ‬in the steppe of Southern Siberia,‭ ‬Russia‭
'This study shows that cancer did exist in antiquity,‭ ‬for sure in ancient Egypt.‭ ‬The main reason for the scarcity of examples found today might be the lower prevalence of carcinogens and the shorter life expectancy,‭' ‬Paula Veiga,‭ ‬a researcher in Egyptology,‭ ‬told Discovery News.

Moreover,‭ ‬high-resolution CT scanners,‭ ‬able to detect tiny‭ ‬tumors‭ only ‬became available only in‭ ‬2005., which suggests earlier researchers may have missed them.

Peru Struggles to Keep Outsiders Away From Isolated Indians

2012-02-01T02:31:00.000-06:00

Peruvian authorities say they are struggling to keep outsiders away from a clan of previously isolated Amazon Indians who began appearing on the banks of a jungle river popular with environmental tourists last year.

Members of the Mashco-Piro Indians have been blamed for two bow-and-arrow attacks on people near the riverbank in Madre de Dios state where officials say the Indians were first seen last may. One badly wounded a forest ranger in October, and in the following month, another pierced the heart of a local Matsiguenka India, Nicolas "Shaco" Flores, who had long maintained a relationship with the Mashco-Piro.

The behaviour of the small group of Mashco-Piro Indians has puzzled scientists, who say it may be related to the encroachment of loggers and by low-flying aircraft from nearby natural gas and oil exploration in the southeastern region of the country. The advocacy group Survival International released photos Tuesday showing clan members on the riverbank, describing the pictures as the "most detailed sightings of uncontacted Indians ever recorded on camera."

The British-based group provided the photos exactly a year after releasing aerial photos from Brazil of another tribe classified as uncontacted, one of about 100 such groups it says exist around the world. One of the Mashco-Piro photos was taken by a bird watcher in August, Survival International said. The other two were shot by Spanish archaeologist Diego Cortijo on Nov. 16, six days before Flores was killed.

Mr Cortijo, a member of the Spanish Geographical Society, was visiting Flores while on an expedition in search of petroglyphs and said clan members appeared across the river from Flores' house, calling for him by name. Flores could communicate with the Mashco-Piro because he spoke two related dialects, said Mr Cortijo, who added that Mr Flores had previously provided clan members with machetes and cooking pots.

The Mashco-Piro tribe is believed to number in the hundreds and lives in the Manu National Park that borders Diamante, a community of more than 200 people where Flores lived. Although it's not known what provoked the Mashco-Piro clan to leave the relative safety of their tribe's jungle home, Beatriz Huerta, an anthropologist who works with Peru's agency for indigenous affairs, speculated their habitat is becoming increasingly less isolated. The upper Madre de Dios region where the tribe lives has been affected by logging, she said. "They are removing wood very close."

Meanwhile, Ms Huerta said, naturalists in the area and Manu National Park officials told her during a recent visit that a rise in air traffic related to natural gas and oil exploration in the region is adversely affecting native hunting grounds, forcing increasing migration by nomadic tribes.
The clan that showed up at the river is believed to number about 60, including some 25 adults, said Carlos Soria, a professor at Lima's Catholic University who ran Peru's park protection agency last year.

"It seemed like they wanted to draw a bit of attention, which is a bit strange because I know that on other occasions they had attacked people," Mr Cortijo said. "It seemed they didn't want us to go near them, but I also know that the only thing that they wanted was machetes and cooking pots."
Mr Cortijo said the group lingered by the river a few minutes, apparently to see if a boat would pass by so they could ask for some tools, something authorities say they had done in the past.

"The place where they are seen is one of heavy transit" of river cargo and tourist passage, and so the potential for more violent encounters remains high, Prof Soria said. That is compounded by culture clash. The Mashco-Piro live by their own social code, which Prof Soria said includes the practice of kidnapping other tribes' women and children. He said the Mashco-Piro are one of about 15 "uncontacted" tribes in Peru that together are estimated to number between 12,000 and 15,000 people living in jungles east of the Andes.

"The situation is incredibly delicate," said Ms Huerta, the government anthropologist.
"It's very clear that they don't want people there," she said of the area where the clan has been loitering, noting that it had ransacked a jungle ranger's post that authorities later removed.
One of the clan's likely fears is being decimated by disease borne by outsiders, as has occurred with other uncontacted peoples, Huerta said.

But its also a mystery why they have appeared in an area so heavily trafficked, she added.
After the first sightings, and after tourists left clothing for the Mashco-Piro, state authorities issued a directive in August barring all boats from going ashore in the area. But enforcing it has been difficult as there are few trained and willing local officials.

Authorities say they aren't sure why Flores was killed. It could be that the Mashco-Piro were angry because he hadn't provided them with more machetes and cooking pots. Or perhaps it was because they considered the farming plot where he was killed too close to what they considered their territory.
Mr Cortijo, the Spanish archaeologist, said the loss of Flores makes reaching any understanding with the Mashco-Piro very complicated. "The problem is that 'Shaco' was the only person who could talk to them," he said. "Now that he's dead it's impossible to make contact."

Development of Shafia Case

2012-01-31T19:26:00.012-06:00

Top row...convicted murderers...Bottom row...victims

Story taken verbatim from Yahoo:

KINGSTON, Ont. - When the call first came in on the morning of June 30, 2009 about a car in the locks at Ontario's Kingston Mills, police thought they might have a stolen car on their hands, or maybe even a teenage prank.

They had no way of knowing at that moment that inside the car were the bodies of three sisters and their father's first polygamous wife, the victims of an elaborately planned but clumsily executed "honour killing," the details of which would soon shock people across the country.

Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, were each found guilty Sunday of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths. And Kingston police say now it didn't take long for them to become suspicious of the unlikely proposition it was an accident. Once they turned their attention to the Shafias and started digging into their family dynamics, it became clear quite quickly they were dealing with a chilling multiple murder.

The "honour killing" label would come later, as detectives talked to family, friends, boyfriends, social workers and school authorities, and finally as they listened to the rants straight from Shafia's mouth, placing the value of his honour higher than the value of his daughters' lives.

The morning the car was found, Const. Brent White arrived on scene around 10:30. He thought first of pranksters, because he looked at how the lock gate and a wooden beam formed a small triangle, with barely enough clearance for a vehicle to slip through into the water. "I'm thinking, 'This is pretty difficult to get that vehicle in that narrow spot,'" he testified. "It had to be driven there on purpose."
Then divers went into the canal to scope out the underwater scene and found four bodies floating in the car. They would be identified as sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.

The case became a sudden death investigation that fell under the coroner's authority, and police officers began to collect information at the scene, including pieces of broken head light that would soon become the key to the whole case.

At the same time, a couple and their 18-year-old son showed up at the Kingston police station to report three daughters and a woman missing. The Shafia family from Montreal had been staying in Kingston for the night at a motel and when they woke up they discovered three teenage sisters and a woman described as their father's cousin were missing, along with their car. They said their eldest daughter Zainab had taken the car keys and must have taken the other three for a joy ride that somehow turned tragic.

While police were taking statements from Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed — the police had found a Farsi interpreter to help with the parents' interviews — the Nissan Sentra was being hoisted out of the canal, and some of what police found didn't quite fit with the accident scenario. The car's ignition and lights were off and it was in first gear with the front seats reclined all the way back and the driver's window open. The findings weren't initially indicative of murder, but they were suspicious.

The angle of the seats would make it nearly impossible to drive, and it certainly wouldn't have been comfortable. Even an inexperienced driver would know they should have the gear shift in D for drive. And all indications were the car fell into the water in the middle of the night. Why were the lights off?
As one of the divers pointed out, why did it appear as though nobody tried to escape through the open window? The only logical possibility, the Crown would later argue at trial, is that the four victims were already dead, drowned first then put in the car to stage an accident.

In the family's initial interviews with police they said they were on their way home from a vacation to Niagara Falls when they stopped in Kingston for the night. The family of 10 had been travelling in two cars: a Nissan Sentra and a Lexus SUV. The police found it odd though, that Shafia, Yahya and Hamed had driven to the police station in a Pontiac minivan.

Hamed said he had decided not to stay at the motel that night with his family and instead drove through the night back home to Montreal so he could get his laptop and conduct some business, meeting with retail tenants at the strip mall his father owned.

Kingston police called colleagues in Montreal to make some initial inquiries about the vehicles and were startled to find that Hamed had reported a collision between the Lexus SUV and a parking barrier in a near-empty lot that very morning in Montreal. He had asked the officer who took his collision report if the damage could be repaired immediately. Hamed had neglected to mention these details in his interview when he talked about leaving to go to Montreal. By the end of Day 1, police already had their suspicions, but they still had a long way to go to build a case against the family.

The next day Const. Steve Koopman got consent from Shafia to search the Lexus and pieces of broken Lexus head light, presumably from Hamed's parking lot collision, were taken to be analyzed. Const. Rob Etherington was busy trying to reconstruct the head light with pieces from the Montreal collision, when he discovered what would be the turning point in the investigation. Tiny pieces of plastic collected at the scene where the Nissan was found were the missing pieces of the Lexus head light. Only, according to the family's story, the Lexus was never at the scene that night. Investigators on the case were informed July 4 that it was now a homicide investigation.

The theory eventually presented by the Crown in court was that the Shafias thought the Nissan carrying the bodies of the girls and Rona would go into the canal under its own power in first gear, but that the front-wheel drive car got hung up on the canal ledge. With the wheels spinning someone reached in through the open window to turn the car off, the Crown said, then the Lexus was used to push the Nissan all the way into the canal, explaining the damage to both the back of the Nissan and the head light of the Lexus. "In essence it could almost be described as the murder weapon," Koopman says. The Nissan had been purchased used for $5,000 just one day before the family left on their trip, the police learned.

Police then also began to gather their first clues that it might be an honour-based crime. They talked to relatives scattered all over the world and they kept hearing the same themes — Shafia cares deeply about his honour and he had problems with Zainab and some of the other daughters. They also learned then that Rona was actually one of Shafia's two wives and not a cousin, even though Shafia continued to assert she was a cousin when confronted with their wedding photo. He dismissed it as a birthday celebration.

"Even though the prosecution doesn't have to prove motive, it's always going through our heads, 'Why would they do something like this?'" Koopman says. "When we were in touch with the family members, especially from overseas, we started to understand the bigger picture. We started to understand this might have been done in relation to their honour."

Police received cellphone records on July 14, and were surprised to find that on June 27, right in the middle of their family vacation to Niagara Falls, Hamed's cellphone was pinging off a tower in the Kingston area. Records show he or someone using his phone drove 4 1/2 hours from Niagara Falls to Kingston and back the same day.

It was an odd finding, and Shafia would later testify he took Hamed's cellphone and was driving back to Montreal in the middle of the trip when Sahar called asking him to come back as he happened to be passing through Kingston. So, he said, he turned around and drove back to Niagara.

The Crown says it was both Shafia and Hamed who drove to Kingston that day to do some reconnaissance on the site they had picked for murder. Some of the most sensational evidence from the trial, which formed the basis for the "honour killing" theory, was collected in the days leading up to the Shafias' arrests.

Police asked the three to come from Montreal so they could pick up some personal items that had been in the motel rooms that could now be released back to them. Police also suggested they go look at the scene with investigators, so they could explain how they thought the car had fallen into the water.
When they got there, police told them they had found a camera at the site, so they were going to analyze it and hope it had captured the car going into the water.
What Shafia, Yahya and Hamed didn't know was that was a lie, a ruse designed to get them talking. What the Shafias also didn't know was that during their visit to Kingston that day the police had bugged their minivan so they could intercept and record their conversations.

The camera trick worked. Shafia and Yahya talked the whole way back to Montreal, apparently quite concerned that if there was a camera it would show they had been there before. Hamed was mostly silent, though he curiously warns his parents only at the end of the long conversations that police could bug their car and secretly record their conversations.
"That night, there was no electricity there," Shafia says. "It was pitch darkness. You remember, Tooba?" "Yes," she replies.
The family was speaking their native language of Dari, but Kingston police had brought two Farsi-speaking Toronto police officers into the investigation to assist with interpreting the wiretaps. Dari and Farsi are two very closely related dialects, akin to American and British English, court heard.

Over the next few days came angry rants from Shafia, cursing his dead daughters as whores for having boyfriends, and saying, "May the devil (defecate) on their graves." He brought up his concept of honour about half a dozen times. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows...nothing is more dear to me than my honour," Shafia says in one conversation.
"This is my word to you: Be I dead or alive, nothing in the world is above than your honour," he says in another.

The pre-arrest phase culminated in a search warrant executed on July 21, 2009, when the Shafias first learned from the language on the order that they were being investigated for four counts each of first-degree murder. During the search, police found a diary written by Rona in which she alleged beatings and mistreatment from Shafia and Yahya, as well as other items that would prove to be crucial at trial.
One of those items was a laptop used mostly by Hamed. It was seized and, when a thorough analysis was completed many months later, investigators couldn't quite believe some of the searches that had been made. "Where to commit a murder" was probably the most shocking, Koopman says. Also of note were searches inquiring if a prisoner could retain control over their real estate, searches about Montreal jails, for "facts and documentaries" about murder and a large number of searches and photos viewed for bodies of water.

By that point, police had started talking to school officials, social workers and police to whom the girls had complained about their home life and a picture of the dysfunction in the Shafia household began to emerge.
It was all beginning to add up for Kingston police, especially after they learned from motel manager Robert Miller that even though the Shafias swore everyone in their family of 10 was alive and well at the motel, Hamed and Shafia had checked in for six people.

Shafia, Yahya and Hamed have been in custody since their arrests on July 22, 2009, and will have to spend at least 25 years from that date behind bars before they can apply for full parole. The investigation didn't finish with the arrests. A tireless team of police led by Staff Sgt. Chris Scott poked into every corner of the Shafias' lives for the past 2 1/2 years to scrutinize every piece of physical evidence in minute detail. After the verdicts were delivered, Scott praised both investigators and prosecutors.

"What that verdict says is that (after) 2 1/2 years of police work and Crown work, if some evil individual decides they're going to undertake such an enterprise, we're going to put (out) all our resources and we're going to do everything we can and justice is going to be served," he said.

Chuckles

2012-01-30T19:48:00.001-06:00

Heart Dropped on Ground is Successfully Transplanted

2012-01-30T01:27:00.003-06:00

MEXICO CITY

A heart that was dropped on the ground while being transported to a hospital has been successfully transplanted into a 28-year-old hair stylist. However Dr. Jaime Saldivar said Erika Hernandez doesn't yet know that her new heart made national news when a medic stumbled and the plastic-wrapped heart tumbled out of a cooler onto the street two weeks ago. Saldivar said it would be up to the family to tell her.

A rosy-cheeked Hernandez spoke briefly with reporters on Tuesday and thanked the donor's family, saying "I have no words to express what I'm feeling right now." Hernandez was born with a congenital heart defect. She received the heart of a man who died in a car accident. The heart was taken from Guanajuato state to Mexico city, a distance of 280 miles, traveling in an ambulance, then a plane, and then a helicopter, according to The Guardian newspaper. The nation's media followed every step of the journey.

Mexico City police had described the operation to deliver the heart as a "rapid, precision maneuver."
The medics are seen on video hurriedly pushing it back inside, leaving some ice packs behind, and continuing the short journey to the hospital. In one of the more printable online comments made after the incident, newspaper reader Christian Sabido said that, "Anybody can make a mistake, but with this type of thing you should be careful."
At the time, doctors said the transplant operation had gone ahead, but added that they wanted to wait to confirm it had been successful.

Canada 'Honour' Killings: Shafia Family Found Guilty

2012-01-29T22:11:00.002-06:00

The three members of the Shafia family convicted were sentenced to a minimum of 25 years each in prison

Three members of an Afghan immigrant family in Canada have been convicted of murdering four female relatives in a so-called "honour" killing. The bodies - three teenage girls and their father's first wife - were found in a car submerged in a canal in the city of Kingston, Ontario, in 2009.

The girls' father, brother and mother will serve at least 25 years in prison. Prosecutors said the father was angered that his two eldest daughters wanted boyfriends, in defiance of his values. The court heard how Mohammad Shafia had become increasingly angry and upset with his three teenage daughters for having secret relationships with boys and wearing revealing clothes.

The prosecution relied heavily on wiretap recordings that revealed the level of Shafia's anger and comments in which he referred to his dead daughters as whores. "The apparent reason behind these cold shameful murders was that four (victims) offended your twisted notion of honour," the judge, Justice Robert Maranger, told Shafia and his two co-accused, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed.

The BBC's Lee Carter, in Toronto, says the three-month trial riveted the country. After the verdict was read out, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, "We are not criminals, we are not murderers, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust.'' The bodies of sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, aged 19, 17 and 13, were found along with the body of their father's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, in the Rideau Canal in June 2009. They had been on a visit to Niagara Falls and were returning home to Montreal when they stopped for the night near Kingston. The prosecution alleged Mohammed, Tooba and Hamed drowned their four victims, placed their bodies in the car and then pushed it into the canal with the family's other car.

The court heard the girls lived in an abusive home and received frequent death threats, in part over the fact that the two eldest daughters had boyfriends without their father's approval. The jury was told the decision to murder the four women was taken after 19-year-old Zainab took refuge in a shelter, defying her male relatives. The defence said their deaths were the result of a joyride gone wrong after Zainab took the wheel

Ms Mohammad, 52, wanted a divorce and supported the girls' wish to live according to Western norms. The prosecution presented wiretap evidence, including one conversation where Mohammad Shafia said his daughters "betrayed us immensely." In other recordings, he was heard calling them treacherous and whores and calling on the devil to defecate on their graves.

The 10-member Shafia family left Afghanistan in 1992. They came to Canada in 2007, having previously lived in Australia, Pakistan and Dubai. Shafia married Tooba Yahya because his first wife was unable to have children. She was living with Shafia and Yahya at the time of her murder. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.

Testicular Zap 'May Stop Sperm'

2012-01-29T22:02:00.001-06:00

A dose of ultrasound to the testicles can stop the production of sperm, according to researchers investigating a new form of contraception.

A study on rats published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology showed that sound waves could be used to reduce sperm counts to levels that would cause infertility in humans. Researchers described ultrasound as a "promising candidate" in contraception. However, far more tests are required before it could be used.

The concept was first proposed in the 1970s, but is now being pursued by researchers at the University of North Carolina who won a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They found that two, 15-minute doses "significantly reduced" the number of sperm-producing cells and sperm levels. It was most effective when delivered two days apart and through warm salt water.

In humans, the researchers said men were considered to be "sub-fertile" when sperm counts dropped below 15 million sperm per millilitre. The sperm count in rats dropped to below 10 million sperm per millilitre. Lead researcher Dr James Tsuruta said: "Further studies are required to determine how long the contraceptive effect lasts and if it is safe to use multiple times."

The team needs to ensure that the ultrasound produces a reversible effect, contraception not sterilization. As well as investigate whether there would be cumulative damage from repeated doses.
Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "It's a nice idea, but a lot more work is needed." He said that it was likely that there would be recovery of sperm production, but the "sperm might be damaged and any baby might be damaged" when sperm production resumed. "The last thing we want is a lingering damage to sperm," he said.
Geez Louise, I think a lot more testing and research is required if there is any chance we will produce mutant offspring. But at least it is a step towards making men as responsible for birth control as women.

Greeks Reject German Plan for EU Budget Commissioner

2012-01-28T22:11:00.003-06:00

Many Germans fear Greece will need even more than the 130bn euros foreseen for its second bailout

Greek officials have reacted angrily to a leaked German proposal for an EU budget commissioner with veto powers over Greek taxes and spending. The Greek government said it must remain in control of its own budget. The European Commission says it wants to reinforce its monitoring of Greek finances, but Greece should retain sovereign control.

Meanwhile, Greece and its private investors are close to a deal which will pave the way for a second bailout. Negotiators say a tentative agreement could be finalized next week. Greece must reach agreement in the next few days in order to receive the next tranche of funds from its first bailout. It needs the money to pay off a significant number of bondholders whose bonds mature in March. Without the bailout funds, Greece could be forced into an uncontrolled default from the euro.

"Given the disappointing compliance so far, Greece has to accept shifting budgetary sovereignty to the European level for a certain period of time," the Financial Times quotes the German plan as saying. Under the proposals, European institutions already operating in Greece should be given "certain decision-making powers" over fiscal policy, a German official told the Reuters news agency. He was speaking on condition of anonymity.

Greek government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis said Greece's budget must absolutely remain its own responsibility. The spokesman for the centre-left Pasok party, one of the parties in Greece's coalition government, said a similar idea had been raised before and should be avoided.

The German plan was leaked ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Monday, when they will discuss a new fiscal pact. Anyone looking for a clear sign that Germany and its fiscally conservative allies are losing patience with Greece should look no further.

Because Greece has repeatedly failed to meet earlier fiscal targets, and has made little progress on public-sector reforms, there is concern that even with a deal on the next bailout, Athens may need more than the 130bn euros agreed last October, our correspondent says. Meanwhile, Greek officials and private investors struck an optimistic note as talks wound up on Saturday, saying they were close to reaching agreement. They were discussing a debt swap, under which private creditors take a 50% cut in the nominal value of their Greek bond holdings, in return for cash and new bonds.

The swap would relieve Greece of about 100bn euros of its total debt of 350bn euros. "We must do everything that will restrict the recession and will begin the cycle of growth. The coming days will determine the coming decade," Finance Minister Evangelis Venizelos told reporters as the talks broke up on Saturday.

In return for the first bailout, Greece agreed to sharply reduce public spending, including cuts in pensions and wages for public-sector workers. However, it has repeatedly fallen short of its targets. Last year, the budget deficit went up, not down. The austerity measures have angered many Greeks. In Athens on Friday, protesters tried to blockade inspectors from the "troika" of institutional lenders - the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) - into their hotel. Elections in Greece are due to take place in April.

Snowy Owls Soar South From Arctic in Rare Mass Migration

2012-01-28T21:50:00.000-06:00

SALMON, Idaho... Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable."

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.
A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions. "What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. "This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.
An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said.

Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal. Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia. The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.

"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington.
But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.
He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on.

This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature. "There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

Davos 2012: Bill Gates Commits $750m to Fight AIDS

2012-01-26T21:21:00.001-06:00

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed a further $750m (£479m) to a global fund to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. "These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world's poorest," said Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The Global Fund is a 10-year-old public-private partnership. The fund says it saves 100,000 lives a month. The WEF's annual gathering is being held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. More than 2,600 delegates - including world leaders, economists and business chiefs - are attending the conference.

"By supporting the Global Fund, we can help to change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world," said Mr Gates. "I can't think of more important work." The Gates Foundation has given $650m since the Global Fund was launched 10 years ago at Davos. The Global Fund has faced controversy after it reported a "grave misuse of funds" in four countries last year, which caused major donors such as Germany to freeze their donations. The current head, Michel Kazatchkine, will step down in March and former banker Gabriel Jaramillo is to take over. Mr Gates said at Davos that some corruption is inevitable in large-scale charitable endeavours such as this, and it should not overshadow the good work of the Global Fund.

The Fund says that it has provided medical treatment to 3.3 million people, detected and treated 8.2 million people with tuberculosis, and provided 230 million bed nets to families to prevent malaria.
On Wednesday, Mr Gates said that "the world is better off" because of capitalism. "We're going through a tough period, but there is no other system that has improved humanity,"

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $26bn to fund health,

BP Must Cover some Transocean Liabilities for Oil Spill

2012-01-26T21:13:00.000-06:00

The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April 2010 killed 11 people and caused the worst offshore oil spill in US history.

BP must cover some but not all of oil rig owner Transocean's liabilities for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a US judge has ruled.US District Judge Carl Barbier said that Transocean was shielded by its contract with BP from having to pay many pollution claims.But Transocean must cover its own legal fees and is not exempt from paying punitive damages and civil penalties.

A trial on damages from the oil spill will begin next month. The trial, which will also involve oil services firm Halliburton who made the cement cap on the well which blew, is expected to apportion blame and quantify damages arising from the incident. BP said that the ruling made it clear that contractors would be held accountable for their actions.

"Under the decision Transocean is, at a minimum, financially responsible for any punitive damages, fines and penalties flowing from its own conduct," the company said in a statement. "As we have said from the beginning, Transocean cannot avoid its responsibility for this accident."

In his decision Judge Barbier said: "The court defers ruling on BP's arguments that Transocean breached the drilling contract or committed an act that materially increased BP's risk or prejudiced its rights." He added that the court "does not express an opinion as to whether Transocean will be held strictly liable, negligent, or grossly negligent".

BP has spent $14bn so far in its spill response and cleanup operation and has set aside a further $20bn for damages claims. It has been locked in legal battles with both Transocean and Halliburton over who should pay for costs and damages arising from the spill.

Steven Tyler - Dream On - 1973

2012-01-26T20:37:00.000-06:00

Every time that I look in the mirror

All these lines on my face gettin' clearer
The past is gone
It went by like dust to dawn
Isn't that the way
Everybody's got their dues in life to pay

I know what nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know its everybody's sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life is in books written pages
Live and learn from fools and from sages
You know its true
All the things come back to you

Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if its just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away
(x2)

Dream on, dream on
Dream yourself a dream come true
Dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream come true
Dream on, dream on, dream on...

Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears
Sing with me, if its just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away
*************

Steven Tyler wrote "Dream On", lyrics and music.
He has sold over 180 million albums
A rock icon

Dark Energy

2012-01-26T02:35:00.000-06:00

Dark energy

In the 1990s, scientists studying exploding stars called supernovae in far-flung galaxies discovered that the Universe's expansion is accelerating, not slowing as theorists predicted. This discovery led them to the conclusion that some unknown process was causing the Universe to speed up, and they named it dark energy.
One of the biggest goals in science is to explain this mysterious energy, which is thought to make up about 70% of the energy density of the Universe.
Image: A Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the distant galaxy cluster Abell 2029. Astronomers use images like this to better understand dark energy's effects. (credit: NASA/CXC/IoA/S.Allen et al.)

UN Concerns Over Libya Militias and Secret Detention

2012-01-26T01:52:00.001-06:00

Bani Walid still a 'Gaddafi stronghold'

Libyan militias are out of control and holding thousands of people in secret detention centres, while the weak interim government struggles to assert its authority, the UN has heard. The Security Council was told recent violence in Tripoli, Bani Walid and Benghazi highlighted the problem. More than 8,000 pro-Gaddafi supporters are being held by militia groups, amid reports of torture, UN officials said.

Four died in clashes in Bani Walid, a former Gaddafi stronghold, on Monday. The UN's Libya envoy, Ian Martin, told the Security Council in New York on Wednesday that those clashes between armed residents of Bani Walid and revolutionaries had been misreported as pro-Gaddafi forces retaking the city. Nevertheless, he said, it highlighted the challenge of reconciling the former leader's supporters and the rebels that had defeated them.

Militias were responsible for fatal clashes in Tripoli and fighting in other towns this month, he said. "The former regime may have been toppled, but the harsh reality is that the Libyan people continue to have to live with its deep-rooted legacy," said Mr Martin. He described that legacy as "weak, at times absent, state institutions, coupled with the long absence of political parties and civil society organizations, which render the country's transition more difficult".

Mr Martin said some steps had been taken towards demobilizing ex-combatants. But the government was struggling to establish its legitimacy, he added, with weapons freely available and various armed brigades having unclear lines of command and control. While authorities had so far successfully contained any outbreaks of violence, they could escalate and widen in scope, he warned.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay meanwhile raised concerns about detainees being held by revolutionary forces, saying there were some 8,500 prisoners in about 60 centres. "The majority of detainees are accused of being Gaddafi loyalists and include a large number of sub-saharan, African nationals," she said.

"The lack of oversight by the central authority creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment. My staff have received alarming reports that this is happening in places of detention they have visited." She urged the authorities to take control of these informal jails, review the cases, and deal with the prisoners in a legal framework.

Libyan Defence Minister Osama al-Juwali, who has been negotiating with militiamen in Bani Walid, told reporters on Wednesday that the situation was stable. As he arrived, National Transitional Council (NTC) forces - loyal to the new government - gathered outside the town. They were heavily armed and apparently poised to attack if talks failed, although one commander insisted they were there for "reconciliation". Fighters in the town have reportedly expelled NTC forces into the surrounding desert.

Chuckles

2012-01-24T15:28:00.000-06:00

Costa Concordia: Bodies Found as Fuel Pumping to Start

2012-01-23T17:20:00.000-06:00

There is no decision yet on when fuel pumping will begin but the civil protection agency has said it is likely to start within the next 24 hours. Civil protection official Franco Gabrielli told reporters on Giglio there was no risk the Costa Concordia would drop down to a lower seabed. "We are ready to go," an official from the Dutch salvage company Smit told the BBC. "As soon as we get the green light, we start the work".

The salvagers must first attach steel moorings to the front of the ship. They will not want to start pumping in the dark, she says, so work is likely to begin on Tuesday. Smit must also install a double containment boom around the ship to limit any spill, instead of the single boom originally envisaged. "Booms are commonly used to reduce the possibility of polluting shorelines and to help make oil recovery easier," Smit said in a statement.

The Costa Concordia crashed on the first day of a seven-day cruise around the Mediterranean, when it was carrying a full load of fuel. Although there has been no leak so far, the civil protection agency says there is pollution in the water from solvents and disinfectants which were on board the vessel.
The area around Giglio is part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, which describes itself as the largest marine park in Europe. It is home to rare flora and fauna, including tree frogs, finches, and geckos.

Italian Admiral Ilarione Dell'Anna predicted it would take 28 days to remove all of the fuel, without any interruptions, the Associated Press reports. Search and rescue work has been suspended several times owing to bad weather. Coastguard and navy divers have been blasting their way into submerged areas of the vessel using explosives in an effort to find those unaccounted for. Emergency officials said on Saturday they would not end the search until the whole ship had been examined.

The captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest in his home town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples, while his actions are investigated. He is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated. He denies the allegations. Capt Schettino tested negative for drugs, his lawyer said on Monday.

Eighteen people are still missing, but fears that extra, unregistered passengers may have been on the ship have now diminished. A Hungarian woman whose name was not on the passenger list was initially said to be missing after having contacted her family from the ship on the day it set sail.
However, the Hungarian foreign ministry has told the Italian authorities its inquiries show the individual who declared her missing did so using a false identity, that of a person who has been dead for three years.

Confirmed dead: Sandor Feher, Hungary, crew; French nationals Pierre Gregoire, Jeanne Gannard, Jean-Pierre Micheaud, Francis Servil, passengers; Italian Giovanni Masia, passenger; Spaniard Guillermo Gual, passenger; Peruvian Thomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza, crew.

Missing: 18 people including seven unidentified bodies. Nationalities include German, Italian, French, American, Peruvian and Indian nationals

Mitt and Newt Attack Each Other in Florida (what Else is New)

2012-01-23T17:01:00.000-06:00

New polls show a drop in support for Mitt Romney

US Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have moved their campaigns - and attacks on each other - to Florida. Mr Gingrich's campaign said it received $1m (£643,000) in 24 hours following his primary win in South Carolina. Meanwhile, his rival Mitt Romney said Mr Gingrich engaged in "potentially wrongful activity" on healthcare policy after leaving Congress.

In two polls released on Monday, Mr Gingrich's lead among likely Florida voters grew to as much as 9%. He won a decisive victory in South Carolina on Saturday, taking 40% of the vote. The Florida primary will be held on 31 January 2012.

After being forced to endure a tough night in South Carolina, Mr Romney went on the attack in Tampa, Florida, ahead of Monday evening's debate between the four remaining Republican candidates. Mr Romney suggested that Mr Gingrich worked for companies that potentially benefited from the passage of a prescription drug benefit in 2003. At the time, Mr Gingrich was no longer a member of the House of Representatives, and did not register as a federal lobbyist. However, he continued to advocate on Capitol Hill as he ran a variety of foundations and private groups.

Mr Romney demanded that Mr Gingrich also release consulting contracts he struck with government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Mr Gingrich denied he was lobbying and said he was working to release information about his relationship with Freddie Mac. "It's not true," Mr Gingrich said of Mr Romney's assertions. "He knows it's not true. He's deliberately saying things he knows are false."

He told reporters the decision to release the documents rests with the Center for Health Transformation, which he founded but no longer owns. Two former Gingrich companies earned $1.6m over eight years from Freddie Mac. Mr Gingrich himself spent the days before the South Carolina primary calling on the former Massachusetts governor to release his tax returns - something Mr Romney has now said he will do on Tuesday. The Gingrich campaign's new infusion of cash will help in a state where television ads are crucial, but his campaign is still under-funded compared to Mr Romney. Texas Congressman Ron Paul will skip the state, focusing on other upcoming primaries. Mr Santorum, however, will campaign in Florida in an attempt to stay in the race after a third-place finish in South Carolina.

Mr Gingrich followed his upset in the Palmetto State by saying he now expects attacks to come from all sides. "I think you're going to see the establishment go crazy in the next week or two,'' he told ABC News on Monday. Mr Romney's supporters continued to characterise Mr Gingrich as highly erratic - focusing on both his ties with Freddie Mac and his time leading the House of Representatives.

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out of the Republican race in August and now backs Mr Romney, told reporters in a conference call that he completely rejected Mr Gingrich's claim that he served as a "historian" for the company. "The notion that he was paid $1.7m dollars as a historian for Freddie Mac is just BS," said Mr Pawlenty.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told NBC News on Sunday that Mr Gingrich has embarrassed his party in the past. "Whether he will do it again in the future, I don't know," Mr Christie said, adding he didn't want "another legislator in the Oval Office who doesn't know how to use executive authority".
Mr Christie is often speculated as a potential running-mate for Mr Romney if he wins the nomination.

With Newt Gingrich's win in South Carolina, the nomination contest is now expected to continue into the spring. The eventual Republican candidate will face President Barack Obama in the general election in November. Stop bickering guys. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Iran Says Oil Embargo is 'Unfair' and 'Doomed to Fail'

2012-01-23T16:06:00.000-06:00

Iran has said an oil embargo adopted by European Union foreign ministers over the country's nuclear programme is "unfair" and "doomed to fail". The measures would not prevent Iran's "progress for achieving its basic rights", foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.

The sanctions ban all new oil contracts with Iran and freeze the assets of Iran's central bank in the EU.
The EU currently buys about 20% of Iran's oil exports. "European officials and other countries which are under America's political pressure... should consider their national interests and not deprive themselves of Iran's oil to help US officials achieve their secret aims," Mr Mehmanparast added.
He accused the US of trying to create "problems with energy supply requirements in countries which are America's economic rivals".

The sanctions were formally adopted at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

Iran had "failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme", British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a joint statement. "We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. Iran has so far had no regard for its international obligations and is already exporting and threatening violence around its region," the leaders added.

The measures were "another strong step in the international effort to dramatically increase the pressure on Iran", US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog has confirmed it is sending a team to Iran between 29 and 31 January "to resolve all outstanding substantive issues". Last November the IAEA said in a report that it had information suggesting Iran had carried out tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device". Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for energy purposes.

Earlier on Monday, the Pentagon said the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as well as a British Royal Navy frigate and a French warship, had passed through the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf without incident, following Iranian threats to block the trade route.

The EU said the sanctions prohibit the import, purchase and transport of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products as well as related finance and insurance. All existing contracts will have to be phased out by 1 July. Investment as well as the export of key equipment and technology for Iran's petrochemical sector is also banned.

So once the new measures are in place how successful will they be? Even western diplomats are uncertain. There is no doubting that the Iranian economy will suffer. But the nuclear programme is a matter of national pride and ultimately national security.
Iran has seen the demise of regimes in Iraq and Libya and noted the survival of that in North Korea - the one so-called "rogue state" that has nuclear weapons.
Iran's rulers may well believe that having at least the potential for a nuclear bomb is something that could secure the country against outside threat.
Seen in this light one can imagine the Iranian authorities being willing to absorb considerable economic pain to pursue their nuclear research effort.

Owner of Newspaper Suggests Assassination of Obama

2012-01-21T04:14:00.000-06:00

Andrew Adler, the owner of local publication the Atlanta Jewish Times, has apologized after suggesting that assassinating President Obama is an option that should be considered by the Israeli government.
As reported by Gawker, Adler's article, written earlier this month, describes the urgency in protecting the Israeli people from threats such as Hamas and Hezbollah and argues that there are essentially only three options available: attack Hamas, beat back Hezbollah, or assassinate Obama.
From Adler's column, which is not available online, but which Gawker uploaded to the web:

"Yes, you read "three" correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles? Another way of putting "three" in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives ... Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table."

In a subsequent interview with Gawker, Adler seemed hesitant to stand by his words, saying he had written them just to "see what kind of reaction I would get from readers."
Now, however, Adler has issued a full apology.

Obama Serenades Supporters at New York Fund Raiser

2012-01-21T04:02:00.000-06:00

NEOShield to Assess Earth Defence

2012-01-21T03:52:00.001-06:00

NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet. The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, and had its kick-off meeting this week. It will draw on expertise from across Europe, Russia and the US.

It's a major EU-funded initiative that will pull together all the latest science, initiate a fair few laboratory experiments and new modelling work, and then try to come to some definitive positions.
Industrial partners, which include the German, British and French divisions of the big Astrium space company, will consider the engineering architecture required to deflect one of these bodies out of our path. Should we kick it, try to tug it, or even blast it off its trajectory?

"We're going to collate all the scientific information ," explains project leader Prof Alan Harris at DLR. "What do you need to know about an asteroid in order to be able to change its course - to deflect it from a catastrophic course with the Earth?" It's likely that NEOShield will, at the end of its three-and-a-half-year study period, propose to the politicians that they launch a mission to demonstrate the necessary technology. The NEO threat may seem rather distant, but the geological and observational records tell us it is real.

On average, an object about the size of car will enter the Earth's atmosphere once a year, producing a spectacular fireball in the sky. About every 2,000 years or so, an object the size of a football field will impact the Earth, causing significant local damage. And then, every few million years, a rock turns up that has a girth measured in kilometres. An impact from one of these will produce global effects.

The latest estimates indicate that we've probably found a little over 90% of the true monsters out there and none look like they'll hit us. It is that second category that merits further investigation. Data from Nasa's Wise telescope suggests there are likely to be about 19,500 NEOs in the 100-1,000m size range, and the vast majority of these have yet to be identified and tracked.

New telescopes are coming that will significantly improve detection success. In the meantime, the prudent course would be to develop a strategy for the inevitable. The strongest mitigation candidates currently would appear to be:

Kinetic impactor: This mission might look like Nasa's Deep Impact mission of 2005, or the Don Quijote mission that Europe designed but never launched. It involves perhaps a shepherding spacecraft releasing an impactor to strike the big rock or comet. This gentle nudge, depending when and how it's done, could change the velocity of the rock ever so slightly to make it arrive "at the crossroads" sufficiently early or late to miss Earth.

Can a gravity tractor be relied upon to work for as long as its effort is needed?

"The amount of debris, or ejecta, produced in the impact would affect the momentum of the NEO," says Prof Harris. "Of course, that will depend on what sort of asteroid it is - its physical characteristics. What's its surface like; how porous or dense it is? This is really something you would want to test with a demonstration mission."

"Gravity tractor": This involves positioning a spacecraft close to a target object and using long-lived ion thrusters to maintain the separation between the two. Because of gravitational attraction between the spacecraft and the NEO, it is possible to pull the asteroid or comet off its trajectory. "It's like using gravity as a tow-rope," says Prof Harris. "It's not straightforward of course. Can you be sure those thrusters will keep working for the time they're needed - a decade or more? Do you have confidence that the spacecraft can look after itself autonomously all that time? These are the sorts of technical problems we will look at."

Kinetic Impactor

In both scenarios, the effects are small, but if initiated years - even decades - in advance should prove effective enough. What we've learnt about asteroids, however, is that they are not all the same. Different rocks are likely to need different approaches. One method often discussed but about which there is great uncertainty is "blast deflection" - the idea that you would detonate a nuclear device close to, or on the surface of (even buried under the surface), an incoming rock.

The Russian members of the NEOShield consortium will take a close look at the option. Delivering the device to just the right place would prove very difficult, and the outcomes, depending on the composition and construction of the NEO, would be very hard to predict. But some better numbers than we have currently are required and TsNIIMash, the engineering arm of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos), will gather all the available data.

"We will look at the spectrum of techniques, trying to see which ones might be applicable in different cases. And then taking it to a level where we can work on a possible mission to demonstrate one or more of these techniques,"commented Dr Ralph Cordey, from Astrium UK.
And Prof Harris added: "At the end of this, we want to be able to say to the space agencies 'if you're interested in asteroid mitigation, this is what we think. We have six countries represented in our consortium and we're all agreed this is the way to go'. The politicians would then have everything on a plate. All they have to do is decide whether or not to execute the mission."

Huffington Post Weird News - Man Marries Dead Girlfriend

2012-01-21T03:08:00.000-06:00

Andrea Bocelli - Nessun Dorma - 2007

2012-01-20T03:55:00.026-06:00

I love Andrea, wonderful voice, beautiful man.

2006 Winter Olympics in Turin Italy

Andrea and Sarah...Live in Tuscany

Captain Dining With 25 Year Old Woman Shortly before Crash

2012-01-20T03:10:00.001-06:00

This image taken from Il Secolo's website reportedly shows 25-year-old Domnica Cemortan. The Moldovan woman is believed to have been the blonde female seen dining with Costa Concordia Capt. Francesco Schettino shortly before the ship crashed Friday night, according to the newspaper. Cemortan, who may have been a guest of either Schettino or another officer, may emerge as a key witness to Friday night's events, though Italian prosecutors have not confirmed any reports about her.

Five more bodies have been found in the capsized cruise ship off the coast of Italy, bringing the death toll to 11. Teams have been searching the ship for passengers and crew missing since the Costa Concordia struck rocks Friday evening and capsized. The ship, operated by Genoa-based Costa Cruises and owned by Carnival Corporation, was carrying more than 4,200 people when it struck a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio late Friday. Schettino made an unauthorized diversion from his programmed route and strayed into the perilous waters. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Monday that he may have sailed close to the rocky shores of Giglio to please his head waiter who comes from the island. Officials and witnesses said earlier that the disaster may have been caused by a risky practice of close-passing the island of Giglio in a foghorn-blasting salute to the local population.

Divers resumed their search for the missing on Thursday, but rough seas forecast for later in the day added an element of uncertainty to the operation and plans to begin pumping fuel from the stranded vessel. Also Thursday, a new audiotape emerged of the first contact between Livorno port officials and the Costa Concordia -- and Schettino is heard insisting that his cruise ship only had a blackout a full 30 minutes after it had rammed into a reef.

The recording between Schettino and port officials began at 10:12 p.m. Friday, more than 30 minutes after the ship violently hit a reef and panicked passengers had fled the dining room to get their lifejackets. Schettino is heard assuring the officer that he was checking out the reasons for the blackout. But he doesn't volunteer that the ship had hit a reef. Rather, the port officer tells Schettino that his agency had heard from a relative of one of ship's sailors that "during dinner everything fell on their heads." That was an apparent reference to the plates and glasses that slammed down onto passengers in the main dining room. "We are verifying the conditions on board," Schettino replies. Asked if passengers had been told to put on life jackets, he responds: "Correct." Crew members and passengers alike have complained about the chaotic evacuation and the lack of direction from the ship's management.

Meanwhile, divers were focusing on an evacuation route on the fourth level, now about 60 feet below the surface, where five bodies were found earlier this week, Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TG 24. Officials restarted the search after determining the ship had stabilized after shifting on the rocks 24 hours earlier. The ship's sudden movement also postponed the start of the operation to extract the half-million gallons of fuel on board the vessel, as Italy's environment minister warned Parliament of the ecological implications if the ship sinks."Today is an important day, the weather forecasts are negative, rough sea, we'll have to see how the ship reacts to that," firefighter spokesman Luca Cari said Thursday.

Also Thursday, seven of the dead were identified by authorities: French passengers Jeanne Gannard, Pierre Gregoire, Francis Servil, 71, and Jean-Pierre Micheaud, 61; Peruvian crew member Thomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza; Spanish passenger Guillermo Gual, 68, and Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who news reports said would have turned 86 next week and was buried in Sardinia on Thursday. Italian authorities have identified 32 people who have either died or are missing: 12 Germans, seven Italians, six French, two Peruvians, two Americans and one person each from Hungary, India and Spain.

Authorities on Wednesday identified the first victim: Sandor Feher, a 38-year-old Hungarian musician working aboard, who a fellow musician said helped crying children into lifejackets, then disappeared while trying to retrieve his beloved violin from his cabin. Among the missing are an Italian father and his 5-year-old daughter. The girl's mother issued a fresh appeal to speed the search and for passengers who saw the pair to come forward to help determine where they were last seen. Other missing include retirees Jerry and Barbara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minn.. The couple were treating themselves after putting four children through college. The Heil children said in a blog post Wednesday that their parents were not among the passengers whose bodies were recently recovered, and they were praying that weather conditions would improve so authorities could resume search operations.

Capt. Francesco Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship before everyone was safely evacuated, was placed under house arrest Tuesday, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship. The ship's operator, Crociere Costa SpA, has accused Schettino of causing the wreck by making the unapproved detour, and the captain has acknowledged carrying out what he called a "tourist navigation" that brought the ship closer to Giglio. Costa has said such a navigational "fly by" was done last Aug. 9-10, after being approved by the company and Giglio port authorities. However, Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading maritime publication, said Wednesday its tracking of the ship's August route showed it actually took the Concordia slightly closer to Giglio than the course that caused Friday's disaster. "This is not a black-and-white case," Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd's List, said in a statement. "Our data suggests that both routes took the vessel within 200 yards of the impact point and that the authorized route was actually closer to shore."

New audio of Schettino's communications with the coast guard during the crisis emerged Wednesday, with the captain claiming he ended up in a life raft after he tripped and fell into the water. I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board, the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water," Schettino said, according to a transcript published Wednesday in the Corriere della Sera paper. Initial audio of Schettino's conversations made headlines on Tuesday, showing an increasingly exasperated coast guard officer ordering Schettino back on board to direct the evacuation, and the captain resisting, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping. The officer's order, "Get back on board, (expletive!)" has entered the Italian lexicon, becoming a Twitter hashtag and adorning T-shirts.

Audio Released of Captain Schettino Being Ordered Back Aboard Stricken Cruise Ship

2012-01-17T23:45:00.000-06:00

The announcement that Capt Schettino would be held under house arrest instead of in jail came as prosecutors accused him of causing the crash and also of fleeing the Costa Concordia while passengers were still stranded.

A recording of a call between him and a port official after the crash appears to support this, though Capt Schettino denies the claims. In the recording, released by the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Livorno Port Authority chief Gregorio de Falco can be heard repeatedly telling the captain to get back on board the ship to help the stranded passengers.

"Schettino, maybe you saved yourself from the sea, but I'll make you have trouble for sure. Go aboard," says Mr De Falco. The captain appears to refuse, replying first that there are rescuers already on board, and then that it is dark and difficult to see.
Mr De Falco replies: "Do you want to go home, Schettino? It's dark, so you want to go home?"
Coastguards believe he never went back to the ship. He was arrested shortly afterwards. But during a court hearing on Tuesday, the captain said he could not get on board the vessel because it was lying on its side.

A phone conversation of Capt Francesco Schettino being ordered to get back on board to co-ordinate the evacuation has been released. He argued that after hitting rocks he had executed a difficult manoeuvre that had saved many people's lives.

The ship, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, had its hull ripped open when it hit rocks late on Friday, just hours after leaving the port of Civitavecchia for a week-long Mediterranean cruise. Some people were forced to swim for shore as the angle of the ship made launching lifeboats impossible.

Meanwhile, satellite tracking information by the shipping journal, Lloyd's List Intelligence, shows that the Costa Concordia sailed closer to Giglio island on a cruise last August than it did on its disastrous voyage on Friday. Lloyd's List claim that the vessel passed within 230m of the island on the 14th of August 2011 to mark La Notte di San Lorenzo - the night of the shooting stars festival on the island. The route deviation on that occasion had apparently been authorized by Costa Cruises - the company which owns the vessel.
The company said on Monday that the ship was never closer than 500m to the coast when it passed on 14 August.

Lloyd's List describes that occasion as a "near miss" and says the ship's route would have been less than 200m away from the point of collision on Friday's voyage. Costa Cruises said on Monday that the route deviation last Friday had been "unauthorized, unapproved and unknown to Costa". But Richard Meade, the Editor of Lloyd's List, said: "The company's account of what happened, of the rogue master [Capt Schettino] taking a bad decision, isn't quite as black and white as they presented originally. This ship took a very similar route only a few months previously and the master would have known that."

Costa Cruises says it is looking into the claims, but stands by the statement it gave on Monday. Meanwhile, Lloyd's List says the issue of which nautical charts the captain of the vessel was using looks likely to be critical to his defence if he does face a criminal prosecution.

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) has issued a statement declining to comment on whether its charts were being used. No rocks are shown on the UKHO's chart at the position where the Costa Concordia sank. The UKHO points out that its charts are only at the 1:300,000 scale and that Italian charts are available on a much larger scale.
"It should be noted that this small scale chart is considered to be unsuitable for close inshore navigation," the UKHO told Lloyds.

Costa Concordia - Rescue Operations Still Underway

2012-01-17T23:11:00.000-06:00

ROME - Five more bodies were pulled Tuesday from the wreckage of a crippled cruise ship off Tuscany, and a shocking audio emerged in which the ship's captain was heard making excuses as the Italian coast guard repeatedly ordered him to return to oversee his ship's evacuation.

Prosecutors have accused Capt. Francesco Schettino of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship before all passengers were evacuated during the grounding of the Costa Concordia cruise ship Friday night.

The death toll nearly doubled to 11 on Tuesday when divers extracted five more bodies, all of them adults wearing life jackets, from the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, according to Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro. He said they were thought to have been passengers.

Smiley Face on Cancer Cell

2012-01-17T22:59:00.000-06:00

Australian researchers were surprised when an experiment literally laughed in their faces. "We spend 90 per cent of our time going down dead ends, and sometimes you feel as though a disease is having a cackle at your expense," says Dr Beric Henderson, head of the gene expression laboratory at Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, University of Sydney, where this was filmed.
"This just says it all. But we've never, ever seen anything like this ever before."
The beta-catenin protein causes cancer by moving into the cell nucleus, the round "face" or centre of the cell (see attached photo), and activating a set of genes that transform normal cells into tumour cells.
In this highly-unusual image, beta-catenin (green) was monitored moving into the nucleus, the round shape in the centre. The dark patches in the nucleus that bear an uncanny resemblance to a smiley face, with eyes and a mouth, are actually parts of the nucleus where the beta-catenin protein cannot enter.
WMI researchers are trying to understand how beta-catenin moves into the nucleus and in future design drugs to stop its entry into the nucleus.

Annual No Pants Subway Ride

2012-01-17T20:00:00.000-06:00

On Sunday, January 8th, 2012 tens of thousands of people took off their pants on subways in 59 cities in 27 countries around the world. In New York, our 11th Annual No Pants Subway Ride had nearly 4,000 participants, spread out over six meeting points and ten subway lines.

The Promise

2012-01-17T13:01:00.011-06:00

The Promise

It's an old promise, to be sure, made when I was young and pure of heart, with intensity and fervor and lived each word right from the start.
And, for my part, I kept my vow and keep it still.
I wonder now, wistfully, if I must live within a cold and lonely place until I die.
I will because I'm proud and stoic too, I don't deny.
Nor can I wound the one who holds me here, unconsciously restrains me here....year upon empty year.
But, oh, the memories are bright and clear and filled with love and laughter,
And each one, as treasured as a drop of gold, still brings pleasure every time retold.
When did they go away, the love, the warmth, the passion?
A slow trickle, like glistening grains of sand held soft between the palms of my hands.
I didn't notice for a while, the absence of the glowing smile; so occupied was I with worry and with care.
And yet the warmth did seep away and the passion go astray.
Ah, life is seldom fair.
And here am I, self pity falling from my eyes as salty tears.
Shall I break free and go adventuring once more?
I hear the siren call of romance, it draws near.
And reach for it so eagerly, yet pull back in fear.
How can I break my solemn word to one so dear?
I sadly close my eyes, my thoughts to clear,
And return now to my lonely place...I shall endure.
It's an old promise, to be sure.....

The Genie

Fears Grow For Concordia Missing

2012-01-17T02:27:00.001-06:00

The damage to the body of the ship is clearly visible under water

A coastguard makes his way carefully through the debris

The huge rock still protrudes from the hull of the ship

The vessel lies fifty metres from the shores of Giglio. All of the ship which lies above the water has been searched

Italian firefighters have been working under extremely dangerous conditions

Cruise disaster :....Emergency crews are working through the night around the wreck of a stricken cruise ship, but fears are growing for the 29 people still missing.

Six people are known to have died after the Costa Concordia crashed into rocks off Italy's west coast on Friday night. But local coast guard chief Marco Brusco said there was still a "glimmer of hope" that survivors could be found. The missing are thought to include four crew members, as well as passengers from the US, Germany, France and Italy.

The ship's owners have blamed the captain for Friday's crash, saying he changed course towards an island. Meanwhile, Italy says it will declare a state of emergency over the incident, and provide funding to help avert any environmental disaster. The Italian environment minister said liquid was leaking from the ship, but it was unclear if it was fuel.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, has been detained on suspicion of manslaughter and a judge is due to decide on Tuesday whether the 52-year-old should continue to be held. On Monday, the Costa Concordia's owners, Costa Cruises, said Capt Schettino hit the rocks because he deliberately steered the ship towards to Giglo Island.

A transcript purportedly of conversations between the captain and the coastguard has emerged in the Italian media - apparently drawn from one of the ship's black box recorders - which appears to corroborate the claims that the captain left the ship before the all passengers escaped.

The ship, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, had its hull ripped through when it hit rocks late on Friday. Some people were forced to swim for land as the angle of the ship made boarding lifeboats impossible. German media have reported that 12 German passengers are still missing, and US officials have appealed for information about two Americans - Jerry Heil, 69, and his wife Barbara, 70, from White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Six Italians, two French couples and a Peruvian are also reported to be unaccounted for.

Ship Captain Defends Actions

2012-01-16T04:43:00.001-06:00

The captain of a cruise ship that overturned off the coast of Italy, killing five, blames faulty charts for the mishap. Maritime authorities, passengers and mounting evidence point the finger of blame towards the captain. The cruise ship ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast near Giglio. They have accused him of showing off when he steered the vessel far too close to shore and abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated. Divers searching the partially submerged Costa Concordia found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, bringing the confirmed death toll to five.

Three survivors were found - a young South Korean couple on their honeymoon and a crew member brought to shore in a dramatic airlift about 36 hours after the grounding late on Friday.At least 15 people were still missing.

Meanwhile, attention focused on the captain, who was spotted by Coast Guard officials and passengers fleeing the scene even as the chaotic and terrifying evacuation was under way. The ship's Italian owner, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise lines, issued a statement late on Sunday saying there appeared to be "significant human error" on the part of the captain, Francesco Schettino, "which resulted in these grave consequences". Authorities were holding Mr Schettino for suspected manslaughter and a prosecutor confirmed on Sunday they were also investigating allegations the captain abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had escaped.

According to the Italian navigation code, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison. A French couple who boarded the Concordia in Marseille, Ophelie Gondelle and David Du Pays, told the Associated Press they saw the captain in a lifeboat, covered by a blanket, well before all the passengers were off the ship. "The commander left before and was on the dock before everyone was off," said Ms Gondelle, 28, a French military officer. Coast Guard officers later spotted Mr Schettino on land as the evacuation unfolded. The officers urged him to return to his ship and honour his duty to stay aboard until everyone was safely off the vessel, but he ignored them, Coast Guard Commander Francesco Paolillo said. Mr Schettino insisted he did not leave the liner early, telling Mediaset television that he had done everything he could to save lives. "We were the last ones to leave the ship," he said.
Questions also swirled about why the ship had navigated so close to the dangerous reefs and rocks off Giglio's eastern coast, amid suspicions the captain may have ventured too close while carrying out a manoeuvre to entertain tourists on the island. The ship's owner, Costa Crociere SpA, issued a statement late on Sunday saying it was working with investigators to determine "precisely what went wrong aboard the Costa Concordia". "While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship's master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences," the statement said. "The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and the captain's judgment in handling the emergency appears to have not followed standard Costa procedures." Residents of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the dangerous "Le Scole" reef area.

The ship was a mere 150 metres from shore at the time of the grounding, ANSA quoted Grosseto prosecutor Francesco Verusio as saying. Mr Schettino insisted he was twice as far out and said the ship ran aground because the rocks weren't marked on his nautical charts. However, he did concede he was manoeuvring the ship in "touristic navigation" - implying a route that was a deviation from the norm and designed to entertain the tourists. "We were navigating approximately 300 metres from the rocks," he told Mediaset television. "There shouldn't have been such a rock. On the nautical chart it indicated that there was water deep below." Costa captains have occasionally steered the ship near port and sounded the siren in a special salute, Arienti said. "Many ships pass by Giglio to salute the island's inhabitants with a whistle. It is a beautiful spectacle to watch the illuminated ship from land ... This time things went badly," daily La Repubblica quoted Giglio mayor Sergio Ortelli as saying.

Officials say cruise liners normally sail about two to three nautical miles off Giglio. Prosecutor Francesco Verusio said the ship was so close to the island that hitting rocks was "inevitable". He noted that the captain was "certainly not the last to leave the ship".
The ship's "black box" has been recovered and was expected to shed light on the vessel's final movements, while there was growing concern about a possible oil spill, with the ship carrying an estimated 2380 tonnes of diesel fuel.