As states in the mid-Atlantic region lined up for the jobs and tax revenue that would come with drilling deep into the shale to release gas, Maryland held back.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and other state officials said no thanks, wary that poisonous chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing could contaminate ground water in rural areas where it matters most.
BEIJING: While the plight of the disabled in China has improved significantly over the years, many still face discrimination at work.
The lack of job opportunities and job discrimination are cited as the main challenges faced by the disabled in China.
There is an estimated 83 million disabled yet their unemployment rate in 2010 stood at 8.6 percent, twice as high as the national average.
Twenty-seven-year-old Song Yichuan is paralyzed from the waist down after an accident a few years ago.
A talented singer and songwriter, Song's biggest wish is to write a song that everyone will listen to and fall in love with.
But achieving his dream seems like an uphill battle.
"No matter how good and musically-talented I am, and no matter how the audiences love me, they tell me there are practical considerations of moving me around. It's not convenient for me to fly in a plane or even ride in a bus. They even tell me it would be so much better if my condition is not so bad and if I could walk with a walking stick," said Song.
Thirty-two-year-old Xiong Yan is also familiar with work discrimination.
She lost both her arms after being electrocuted when she was merely two.
She now relies on her feet to get things, whether it's in writing, or picking up a book - moves that often earned uncomfortable looks from her colleagues.
Gao Yanqiu, a communications manager at Handicap International, said: "The disabled faces discrimination at work due to society's lack of understanding and knowledge about them. It's easy for them to be marginalized, and job opportunities are hard to come by."
Given the widespread discrimination faced by the disabled, many have argued that the government should take the lead not just in hiring but also in allocating and even reserving certain jobs for the disabled.
The government has made it mandatory for all government departments and institutions to employ at least 1.5 per cent disabled people among its workforce.
But this has seldom been followed, and the situation is even worst in the private sector.
Even though the disabled can sue employers for discrimination, this has seldom been practiced.
Like most disabled, Xiong Yan's biggest wish is to be accepted for who she is.
"It's very simple. I wish that people won't see me as different. We're all similar. If everyone else is relaxed, I will be relaxed. If I am relaxed you'd also be relaxed," said Xiong.
- CNA/fa
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Joshua Price-Brent was arrested on an intoxication manslaughter charge today after a single vehicle roll-over killed his passenger, Jerry Brown Jr., who had been a linebacker on the team's practice squad and his former teammate at the University of Illinois.
Price-Brent, 24, was allegedly speeding "well above" the posted 45 mph speed limit at about 2:21 a.m. when he hit a curb, causing his vehicle to flip at least one time before landing in the middle of a service road, Irving Police Department spokesman John Argumaniz said.
Authorities were alerted to the accident by several 911 callers, Argumaniz said. When police arrived, they found Price-Brent pulling Brown from his 2007 Mercedes, which had caught fire.
Brown, 25, was unresponsive and was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Argumaniz said.
It was not known where the men were coming from or where they were going, but Argumaniz said officers suspected alcohol may have been a factor in the crash and asked Price-Brent to perform field sobriety tests.
"Based on the results of the tests, along with the officer's observations and conversations with Price-Brent, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated," Argumaniz said.
This is the second week in a row an NFL player has been accused of being involved in another person's death. Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend early Dec. 1, then committed suicide while talking to team officials in the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium.
Jovan Belcher: Police Release Dash-Cam Videos of NFL Star's Final Hours
Price-Brent was taken to a hospital for a mandatory blood draw where he was treated for minor scrapes, Argumaniz said. He was then booked on an intoxication manslaughter charge after it was learned Brown had died of injuries suffered in the crash.
It is expected that results from the blood draw could take several weeks, the police spokesman said.
Price-Brent is scheduled to be arraigned Sunday at 10 a.m., when bond will be set, police said.
The second-degree felony intoxication manslaughter charge carries a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. It was not yet known whether Price-Brent had retained an attorney.
The 6-foot-2, 320-pound nose tackle left the University of Illinois as a junior for a career in the NFL. He was picked up by the Cowboys during the 2010 NFL supplemental draft and has played three seasons with the team.
The Cowboys are set to take on the Cincinnati Bengals in Ohio on Sunday.
WASHINGTON: The dollar headed higher against the euro Friday, helped by surprise numbers in the November US jobs report, though the details still painted a less buoyant picture than the headline numbers.
At 2200 GMT, the euro was trading at $1.2928, compared to $1.2969 Thursday.
The US Labour Department reported the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 per cent in November, instead of a rise to 8.0 per cent as most economists had expected.
The economy spun out a net 146,000 new jobs, also beating estimates.
But the picture wasn't all good: the job creation numbers for the previous two months were lowered, and the data also showed that more people dropped out of the jobs market altogether than got new jobs.
"At the current pace, we would not see the economy returning to full employment for another decade," said Dean Baker of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research.
The eurozone currency also continued to show the impact of Thursday's ECB shock economic forecast, which slashed growth expectations with a prediction of more contraction in 2013.
ECB officials hinted at a possible future rate cut given the continued contraction in the region's economy.
The Japanese yen was mixed, gaining to 106.64 yen to the euro but falling to 82.46 to the greenback.
The dollar rose to 0.9343 Swiss francs from 0.9325 francs; the British pound slipped to $1.6039 from $1.6050.
- AFP/fa
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
Elizabeth Johnson -- who at one point admitted to killing her son, the missing infant Gabriel Johnson, before saying she gave him away -- told a judge she "deserved the maximum" sentence, before receiving a prison term of 5.25 years, half of the max.
In October, Johnson, 26, was found guilty of custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment stemming from the disappearance of her 8-month-old son, last seen on Dec. 24, 2009. The baby's whereabouts remain unknown.
"I am brokenhearted over my son still being missing," said Johnson, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit. "I'm at a loss because I do deserve the max. What I have done is unconscionable. I would convict myself.
"I do deserve the maximum, I do," she said through tears. "[But it] wasn't how [the prosecution] made it out to be. It wasn't like that. That's all I have to say."
Judge Paul McMurdie said he wished he could design a sentence that would compel Johnson to disclose Gabriel's whereabouts, but could only "sentence her for the offenses [for which] she's been convicted."
Johnson, 26, will serve 5.25 years in an Arizona state prison, followed by four years of probation.
At today's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Angela Andrews called Johnson' actions "despicable," but said the state would drop its request to see Johnson serve out a maximum sentence if she would tell authorities where her son could be found.
Johnson, who has been in jail for the past three years, faced a maximum of 9.5 years in prison on the two convictions. In October, the jury did not reach a verdict on a third charge of kidnapping.
Before Gabriel's disappearance, Johnson had been embroiled in a custody battle with the baby's biological father, Logan McQueary. The couple differed on putting their infant son up for adoption. Johnson had wanted to, McQueary did not.
"I think Elizabeth should be held accountable for her actions, for making my son disappear," Johnson told the court. "She should stay in jail until Gabriel is found or be given the maximum sentence as possible."
While she was fighting with McQueary over custody of their son, Johnson left Tempe, Ariz., with Gabriel and traveled to San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2009. Johnson failed to bring Gabriel back to visit with McQueary two days later, violating a court custody order.
Gabriel was last seen with his mother on Dec. 26, 2009. The following day, Johnson sent text messages to McQueary saying she had killed him. Johnson was recorded telling McQueary that she suffocated their son with a towel until he turned blue. She said she then put his body in a diaper bag and put the bag in the trash.
Later, Johnson told authorities she gave Gabriel to a couple she met in a park in San Antonio, though she has never named who she gave the child to.
ABC News' Alexis Shaw contributed to this report.
NEW YORK: The euro only barely rebounded against the dollar in late trade Thursday, after plunging on the European Central Bank's sharp cut in its eurozone growth forecast for next year.
The euro lost more than one cent after the ECB forecast that the euro area economy will shrink by 0.3 percent in 2013, instead of growing by 0.5 percent as previously estimated.
Also pressing it lower were hints from the ECB that it might be moving toward cutting its benchmark rate, even as it held firm on Thursday.
"The ECB appears to have the door open for an interest rate cut, and we expect it to step through early in 2013," said Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight.
At 2200 GMT, the euro was at $1.2969, compared to $1.3064 late Wednesday. It hit a low of $1.2951 during the day.
There was nothing otherwise to budge the dollar, with trade mostly on hold for Friday's US jobs data for November, expected to be down due to Hurricane Sandy's impact on the economy of the northeast corridor.
If anything, the data will support expectations that the Federal Reserve will further extend its bond purchase stimulus program when it meets next week.
The yen picked up slightly, 10 days before national elections in Japan. It gained to 106.85 yen to the euro from 107.71, and 82.37 yen to the dollar from 82.42.
The dollar rose to 0.9325 Swiss francs, and the British pound slipped to $1.6050.
-AFP/ac
Talking to newspersons, Sudripta Roy, chief secretary said, "There has been a sudden increase in tourist bookings for the last week of this year and the first week of next year. We are almost booked to near capacity."
"The government was in touch with civil aviation ministry for getting Air India to operate flights to Dharamshala, Kullu and Shimla so that high end tourists who would like to be part of the New Year celebrations at our hill resorts get to avail the service," he said. With grounding of Kingfisher Airlines, the only operator, who was plying flights to these destinations, the three airports have been lying idle for months.
To diversify tourism from crowded destinations like Shimla and Manali, the concept of home stays under the promotional campaign of 'Har Gaon Ki Kahani' has caught the fancy of tourists, said Roy. The scheme intends to adopt another village in each district, besides the 12 already taken up for developing basic infrastructure in the adopted villages. By Feburary 13 next year ,12 rural circuits to these villages would be operational.
Holding of the Masroor cultural and folk festival is part of this campaign and the second such festival would be held in the last of this month, he added.
The chief secretary said that in the absence of any rail network, air connectivity; road transport was facing infrastructural constraints and funds had been marked for developing 75 parking lots and 40 public conveniences.
Of the Rs 86 Cr provided by the central government for improvement of tourism infrastructure, Rs 52 crore had been spent and the remaining would be utilized by March 13.
In addition the central government had provided an additional Rs 34 crore for developing a mega circuit, he said.
Till October, tourism has grown by 10.26 percent over last year, said Arun Sharma, commissioner tourism. Against 14.6 million tourists, 15 million in the corresponding period had already visited the state, he added.
The tourism department is executing works worth Rs 52 crore and has also spent Rs 2.5 crore on eco-tourism.
Image courtesy T.A. Rector, UAA/WIYN/NOAO/NSF
A new camera called the One Degree Imager, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, is responsible for this enticingly crisp image of the Bubble Nebula. Released on December 4, this closeup highlights the sphere of gas blown out by the nebula's central star, which is 45 times larger than our own sun.
Located in the constellation Cassiopeia, the Bubble Nebula is ten light-years across. Intense radiation from the massive star causes the otherworldly glow that lights up what looks like a celestial soap bubble.
(Related: "Amazing Hubble Images.")
Published December 6, 2012
Photograph by Frank Olsen, My Shot
Delicate green auroras light up the water at Buksnesfjord, Norway, in a picture taken just after midnight on December 4.
(See pictures of auroras sparked by a massive solar flare.)
Published December 6, 2012
Image courtesy SDO/NASA
Sheets of plasma—or superheated gas—break off from the surface of the sun in this image taken in extreme ultraviolet light. Before floating free, the plasma rose up and danced along pathways determined by magnetic fields. These unseen forces pushed and pulled the gas into contorted shapes.
(Learn about the sun.)
Published December 6, 2012
Image courtesy NASA
What looks like a jawbreaker is actually a gravity map of the moon. Red areas indicate places with higher gravity fields while blue areas indicate lower gravity fields.
(Learn about lunar exploration.)
Twin probes circling the moon—part of NASA's GRAIL mission—since 2011 have been recording changes in gravity as they fly over peaks and valleys on the lunar surface. As one probe flies over an area with a greater gravity field, the washing-machine-size instrument speeds up slightly, increasing the distance between it and its sister probe. These minute changes in position have enabled scientists to construct this very detailed view of local changes in the moon's gravity.
(How well do you know your moon myths? Take our quiz.)
Published December 6, 2012
Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO/NAOJ/NRAO
In this artist's conception of fine-grained particles around a brown dwarf—or a failed star—bits of debris are on their way to becoming a rocky planet.
Current thinking on Earthlike, rocky planet formation says that random collisions between tiny debris occur in the disc of material surrounding newborn stars. But the recent discovery of such a disc surrounding a brown dwarf has some astronomers rethinking that hypothesis. If planets can form from the debris around these failed stars, then rocky planets may be much more common than previously thought.
(Related: "Coldest Star Found-No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee.")
Published December 6, 2012
Image courtesy Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, Suomi NPP/NASA
The Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime image of the aurora australis over the Antarctic coast south of South Africa. Despite the winter darkness and a waning crescent moon, the auroras produced enough light for sensors on board the new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite to capture the boundary between the ice shelf and what some scientists call the Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean (dark line across the bright center swirl).
Launched last year, Suomi NPP enables scientists to capture nighttime images of the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The new sensor is so sensitive, it can capture the lights from one ship at sea.
(Learn about Antarctica.)
Published December 6, 2012
Image courtesy Michael Taylor, Landsat/NASA
In NASA's Landsat 5 satellite image, the Mergui Archipelago shows off the vibrant greens of its rain forests and the brilliant blues of the surrounding tropical ocean. Located along the southern border of Myanmar (Burma), next to Thailand, the area is known for valuable pearl oysters (Pinctada maxima) and a highly diverse concentration of plants and animals.
(See photos of Myanmar.)
Published December 6, 2012
Illustration courtesy AOES Medialab/ESO
The Venusian atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide, along with periodic spikes in sulfur. Recent research has found that volcanoes on the planet's surface, seen here in an artist's conception, are likely injecting that sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Direct confirmation is difficult, however, since Venus's thick atmosphere precludes a peek at its peaks.
Published December 6, 2012
Image courtesy SSI/ISA/ESA/NASA
Published December 6, 2012
Authorities believe two bodies found by hunters in Iowa this week are Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins, two young cousins who vanished in July.
"At this time, law enforcement is confident, based upon evidence at the scene and preliminary investigation, that the bodies are those of Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins," Capt. Rick Abben, chief deputy of the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office, said at a news conference in Evansdale, Iowa.
Asked why authorities were so confident that the bodies were those of the two girls, Abben replied, "We have no one else that's missing in this area. We have two bodies that were found. They were smaller in stature so we have nothing else to think, at this time."
Abben noted that the state's medical examiner's office in Ankeny, Iowa, had yet to complete the positive identification of the girls.
Asked if the kidnapping investigation was now turning into a homicide investigation, Abben replied, "We are looking that way at this time."
Lyric, 11, and Elizabeth, 9, went missing on July 13 on a bike ride in the small town of Evansdale, Iowa, near Waterloo, Iowa. After hunters found two bodies in a wooded area in Seven Bridges Conservation Area on Wednesday afternoon, the families of Lyric and Elizabeth were notified and the bodies were sent to Ankeny for positive identification.
The families expressed "their gratitude to the community for their ongoing support," according to a statement released by authorities. Elizabeth's mother, Heather Collins, later posted a message on her Facebook page.
"We knew when our girls went missing that [there] would be two outcomes," she wrote. "Unfortunately this is not the one that we wanted but we know our girls [are] dancing with our savior. We know that he will continue to be with us giving us strength and comfort always."
On Wednesday night, residents of Evansdale, Iowa, gathered at Meyers Lake -- where the girls' bicycles and a purse were found -- for a candlelight vigil.
"It's hard to believe," said Lorissa Wilson, who attended the vigil. "I didn't want it to happen to the girls. They're too young to pass away, I believe."
Mary Carroll, who knew Elizabeth, said, "You don't expect it for somebody so sweet and innocent."
Another participant at the vigil, Holly Timmerman, noted that this was "not the outcome anybody wanted at all."
The Seven Bridges Conservation Area will remain closed until Monday, Abben said.
Two high-profile Republican members of Congress who stand at the forefront of the effort to rebuild the party after a stinging presidential defeat delivered speeches Tuesday night aimed at turning the page with a fresh emphasis on inclusion and a renewed focus on growing the middle class.
“Nothing represents how special America is more than our middle class. And our challenge and our opportunity now is to create the conditions that allow it not just to survive, but to grow,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), the Leadership Award recipient at a dinner hosted by the Jack Kemp Foundation, a charitable nonprofit organization named for the late congressman and Housing and Urban Development secretary.
SYDNEY: Sydney radio station 2Day FM Thursday hailed "the biggest royal prank ever" after two of its presenters got through to a nurse treating Prince William's pregnant wife Kate at a London hospital.
The embarrassing hoax Tuesday made worldwide headlines and was condemned by the private King Edward VII's Hospital, which said it took "patient confidentiality extremely seriously".
Presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian, who posed as the Queen and Prince Charles, apologised after an uproar in Britain.
"We were very surprised that our call was put through. We thought we'd be hung up on as soon as they heard our terrible accents," they said in a statement.
"We're very sorry if we've caused any issues and we're glad to hear that Kate is doing well."
But the station was also making the most of the publicity, headlining a story on its website "Biggest Royal Prank Ever."
"With some of the worst English accents in the history of radio, the Summer Hot30's MC and Mel managed to convince the staff at Duchess, Kate Middleton's hospital in London that they were the Queen and Prince Charles," it said.
"In a prank that they never even imagined would work, MC and Mel called the private King Edward VII Hospital where Kate is staying, put on their best (yikes!) Queen and Prince Charles accents and were asked to be put through to Kate's room.
"To MC and Mel's absolute shock they were put straight through to a nurse on Kate's ward."
The pair were connected to a nurse treating Kate and given an update on her condition, including that she had not experienced any recent "retching".
In the background of the call, in which the pair affected upper-crust accents, another member of the radio show can be heard barking in an attempt to impersonate one of the Queen's corgis.
The hoax divided opinion on the broadcaster's website Thursday.
"Good one. We are amused. A bit of harmless fun," said one listener, identified only as Jeff G.
"I reckon HRH Prince Charles would have had a bit of a laugh when he heard it. Pity there's so many sad sacks who can't see the lighter side of a couple of Aussies taking the piss out of the Poms."
But others were less amused, saying a line had been crossed.
"There is nothing funny about duping hard-working healthcare professionals or abusing a pregnant woman's right to privacy. Royal or not," said Emily Quiggin.
Julie Mango said: "Your actions have me feel ashamed as an Australian.
"I feel sorry for the staff you involved in your mindless prank, they will obviously be disciplined and could I guess even lose their jobs over this."
Kate is in hospital suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness that affects about one in 200 pregnant women.
News of her pregnancy has ended the feverish speculation about a new royal heir that began immediately after the couple's lavish wedding in April 2011.
The baby will be third in line to the throne.
- AFP/ck
The UPA's serial rescuers — the SP and the BSP with 43 votes between them — again performed the role to the hilt. The two UP outfits, which had slammed the FDI move on Tuesday, predictably decided not to translate their rhetoric into action.
They walked out of the House just before the members were called to stand up and be counted, allowing the UPA to romp home with 253 seats with a total 471 members voting.
A motion for amending the Foreign Exchange Management Act — an imperative for implementation of the decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail — was also passed by 30 votes.
The rescue act attracted the familiar allegation that Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati had let their fear of CBI get the better of their aversion for Walmart, but reinforced the reputation of UPA as escape artistes who manage to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat every time. Beginning with its victory in the trust vote over the nuclear deal with the US, the UPA has consistently defied the heavy numerical odds to pip the rivals to the post.
NASA is so delighted with Curiosity's Mars mission that the agency wants to do it all again in 2020, with the possibility of identifying and storing some rocks for a future sample return to Earth.
The formal announcement, made at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting, represents a triumph for the NASA Mars program, which had fallen on hard times due to steep budget cuts. But NASA associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld said that the agency has the funds to build and operate a second Curiosity-style rover, largely because it has a lot of spare parts and an engineering and science team that knows how to develop a follow-on expedition.
"The new science rover builds off the tremendous success from Curiosity and will have new instruments," Grunsfeld said. Curiosity II is projected to cost $1.5 billion—compared with the $2.5 billion price tag for the rover now on Mars—and will require congressional approval.
While the 2020 rover will have the same one-ton chassis as Curiosity—and could use the same sky crane technology involved in the "seven minutes of terror"—it will have different instruments and, many hope, the capacity to cache a Mars rock for later pickup and delivery to researchers on Earth. Curiosity and the other Mars rovers, satellites, and probes have garnered substantial knowledge about the Red Planet in recent decades, but planetary scientists say no Mars-based investigations can be nearly as instructive as studying a sample in person here on Earth.
(Video: Mars Rover's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")
Return to Sender
That's why "sample return" has topped several comprehensive reviews of what NASA should focus on for the next decade regarding Mars.
"There is absolutely no doubt that this rover has the capability to collect and cache a suite of magnificent samples," said astronomer Steven Squyres, with Cornell University in New York, who led a "decadal survey" of what scientists want to see happen in the field of planetary science in the years ahead. "We have a proven system now for landing a substantial payload on Mars, and that's what we need to enable sample return."
The decision about whether the second rover will be able to collect and "cache" a sample will be up to a "science definition team" that will meet in the years ahead to weigh the pros and cons of focusing the rover's activity on that task.
As currently imagined, bringing a rock sample back to Earth would require three missions: one to select, pick up, and store the sample; a second to pick it up and fly it into a Mars orbit; and a third to take it from Mars back to Earth.
"A sample return would rely on all the Mars missions before it," said Scott Hubbard, formerly NASA's "Mars Czar," who is now at Stanford University. "Finding the right rocks from the right areas, and then being able to get there, involves science and technology we've learned over the decades."
Renewed Interest
Clearly, Curiosity's success has changed the thinking about Mars exploration, said Hubbard. He was a vocal critic of the Obama Administration's decision earlier this year to cut back on the Mars program as part of agency belt-tightening but now is "delighted" by this renewed initiative.
(Explore an interactive time line of Mars exploration in National Geographic magazine.)
More than 50 million people watched NASA coverage of Curiosity's landing and cheered the rover's success, Hubbard said. If things had turned out differently with Curiosity, "we'd be having a very different conversation about the Mars program now."
(See "Curiosity Landing on Mars Greeted With Whoops and Tears of Jubilation.")
If Congress gives the green light, the 2020 rover would be the only $1 billion-plus "flagship" mission—NASA's largest and most expensive class of projects—in the agency's planetary division in the next decade. There are many other less ambitious projects to other planets, asteroids, moons, and comets in the works, but none are flagships. That has left some planetary scientists not involved with Mars unhappy with NASA's heavy Martian focus.
Future Plans
While the announcement of the 2020 rover mission set the Mars community abuzz, NASA also outlined a series of smaller missions that will precede it. The MAVEN spacecraft, set to launch next year, will study the Martian atmosphere in unprecedented detail; a lander planned for 2018 will study the Red Planet's crust and interior; and NASA will renew its promise to participate in a European life-detection mission in 2018. NASA had signed an agreement in 2009 to partner with the European Space Agency on that mission but had to back out earlier this year because of budget constraints.
NASA said that a request for proposals would go out soon, soliciting ideas about science instruments that might be on the rover. And as for a sample return system, at this stage all that's required is the ability to identify good samples, collect them, and then store them inside the rover.
"They can wait there on Mars for some time as we figure out how to pick them up," Squyres said. "After all, they're rocks."
Nearly five months after Iowa cousins Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins disappeared, the girls' families have been told two bodies were found by hunters in a wooded area, though the identities of the bodies have not been confirmed, authorities said.
Capt. Rick Abben of the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office said at a press conference this afternoon that the bodies are being transported to the state's medical office in Ankeny, Iowa, for positive identification.
"It's definitely not the outcome that we wanted, obviously," Abben said. "This is a difficult thing for us to go through."
Lyric, 11, and Elizabeth , 9, vanished shortly after noon on July 13 while on a bike ride in the small town of Evansdale, Iowa, triggering a massive search that brought the town to a standstill. The girls' bicycles and a purse were quickly found near Meyers Lake, but there was no sign of the girls.
PHOTOS From ABC News Affiliate KCRG: The Search for Lyric & Elizabeth
Black Hawk County Police/AP Photo
On the two-month anniversary of the girls' disappearance, local residents held a prayer vigil and authorities urged members of the public to provide any new information that might help them solve the case.
Authorities said the girls left Elizabeth's house in Evansdale around 12:15 p.m., were spotted at approximately 12:23 p.m. at a nearby intersection and then were seen between 12:30 and 1 p.m. on a road by the lake.
During the following week, authorities canvassed the area and drained the town's lake. Lyric's estranged parents, Misty and Dan Morrissey, at one point became the subject of intense police scrutiny because of their criminal pasts and their lack of cooperation.
Over the summer, the families received a boost when Elizabeth Smart, one of the country's most famous kidnapping survivors, offered some words of encouragement. Police found Smart after a nine-month search in Utah a decade ago.
"For as many bad things that we hear about that happen, for as many kidnappings and terrible stories about finding the remains of children, why can't these girls be the exception?" Smart told the Des Moines Register.
Elizabeth's mother, Heather Collins, told ABC News' Alex Perez in July that the wait for the girls to reappear was an agonizing one.
"A day doesn't seem like a normal day," Collins said. "It's just like it doesn't stop. It keeps dragging and dragging. You're just waiting for a time to go up to your room. You're just waiting, waiting, waiting."
"Whoever's out there, we're just begging you to bring our girls back home," she said.
A $50,000 reward had been offered for information that led to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the girls' disappearance.
As Team Obama prepares for the president’s second inaugural address, there’s word that White House chief speechwriter
Jon Favreau
may leave the administration soon thereafter.
We hear he’s mulling various options but hasn’t made a decision about his second-term plans.
SYDNEY: Australia's economy grew 0.5 per cent in the three months to September and 3.1 per cent from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, with China's slowdown dampening growth.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said gross domestic product (GDP) grew a seasonally adjusted 0.5 per cent in the quarter, in line with expectations, driven by the mining and manufacturing sectors.
It compares with growth of 0.6 per cent in the three months to June and year-on-year growth of 3.7 per cent last quarter, lending weight to the central bank's decision to lower interest rates on Tuesday to stimulate the economy.
Mining contributed 0.4 per cent to quarterly GDP growth, despite a plunge in commodity prices due to a cooling in China's economy that saw a 4.0 per cent drop in Australia's terms of trade -- the value of its exports against its imports.
Private business investment accounted for 0.5 per cent of GDP growth and consumer spending added 0.2 per cent. Falling government spending detracted 0.5 per cent.
The Reserve Bank of Australia slashed the official interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.0 per cent this week -- their equal lowest since RBA independence in the early 1990s.
- AFP/ck
Joining in a Parliament gherao by farmers under the banner of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (RKMS) on Tuesday, Singh demanded that the Rangarajan committee report on freeing the sugar sector be junked.
On FDI, he said even when Pepsico came to India, it was said that it would help farmers but that was never the case. "In India, we have an excellent model in terms of Amul to empower farmers. We can bring about the same change what people are trying to bring through FDI by making suitable modifications to the Amul model," he said.
Singh said farmers would not be benefited because the multi-brand retailers would import cheap items from other countries and not procure them from within India.
On the Rangarajan committee report, Singh said, "No politician has worked for farmers. They get votes from you people by promising many things, but they forget that there is a community called farmers after the elections. Next time, when you go to the polling booth, think who will fight for you and then vote only for that person.''
However, the former Army chief said he was not supporting any particular party but was only asking farmers to keep their "betterment in mind" before pressing the EVM button.
The protesters gathered near Parliament Street police station, less than a kilometre from Parliament House, and raised slogans demanding that the report be rejected.
RKMS's V M Singh said there was a need to raise a 'Kisan Sena' in the country that would fight for farmers' rights. He added that if the government did not pay heed to the farmers' demands, they would go on indefinite dharna at Boat Club.
Dubbing as "anti-farmer" the Rangarajan committee report which has recommended phased decontrol of the highly regulated Rs 80,000-crore sugar industry, he said the prime minister and Parliament should not accept the report.
The North Star has been a guiding light for countless generations of navigators. But a new study reveals that its distance to Earth may have been grossly overestimated.
In fact, the North Star—also called Polaris—is 30 percent closer to our solar system than previously thought, at about 323 light-years away, according to an international team who studied the star's light output.
Using Russia's 6-Meter Telescope, the researchers were able to calculate the North Star's distance from our solar system by analyzing its spectrum of light and obtaining data on its temperature and changes in intrinsic brightness over time.
That significantly revises the previously accepted value of 434 light-years, which was obtained by the European star-mapping satellite Hipparcos in the 1990s. (Take a solar system quiz.)
The new discovery of a closer North Star is "most unexpected for what is considered to be one of the Hipparcos satellite's most solid results," said study leader David Turner, an astronomer at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
(Also see "New Supernova Found 'Next Door'—Getting Brighter.")
North Star a Celestial Beacon
The North Star's claim to fame is due to its fixed position in the sky for Northern Hemisphere observers—aligned with Earth's northern axis—while other stars appear to wheel around it.
Known to fade and brighten over a four-day period, this celestial beacon of true north is considered the closest and brightest member of a class of stars called Cepheids that change in brightness over time. (See star pictures.)
The star is also a type of cosmological yardstick used by researchers to measure great cosmic distances out to billions of light-years.
For this reason, it's vital for our understanding of the cosmos that scientists get a reliable grip on the North Star's true distance, emphasized Turner, whose study will appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
For instance, research on dark energy—the mysterious force thought to be causing the universe to fly apart faster over time—is dependent on stars such as the North Star.
(See "New Galaxy Maps to Help Find Dark Energy Proof?")
Unseen Object Orbiting North Star?
The new results also located nearly a half dozen stars that appear to be surrounding the North Star and show signs that they have all once belonged to the same star cluster, which has now dispersed.
"This system is known to contain two other stars in addition to the Cepheid stars, but there may be yet another unseen object orbiting Polaris ... a massive orbiting planet for example," he added.
"There definitely remain a few oddities to keep Polaris an object of study for many years to come."
Deep in the rain forests of Panama, in a secret location behind padlocked gates, barbed-wire fences and over a rickety wooden bridge, grows what could be the most debated food product of our time.
It may look like the 1993 hit movie "Jurassic Park," but at this real-life freshwater farm scientists are altering the genes not of dinosaurs -- but of fish.
They are growing a new DNA-altered saltwater fish in the mountains, far from the sea -- a salmon that could be the first genetically altered animal protein approved for the world to eat. If it is approved, this would be a landmark change for human food.
But it is one critics call "Frankenfish."
"The idea of changing an animal form, I think, is really creepy," said Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm, an organic dairy farm. "When you move the DNA from a species into another species ... you create a new life form that's so new and so unique that you can get a patent for it."
And until now, AquaBounty, the multinational biotech company that for 20 years has been developing this giant fish, has kept it under close wraps.
The press has never been invited to its Prince Edward Island laboratory on the Canadian maritime coast, and its fish farm location in Panama has been kept secret out of fear of sabotage.
The Food and Drug Administration has seen it, but few from the outside. In fact, the last public tour of any kind was four years ago.
AquaBounty Creates 'Fort Knox for Fish'
ABC News was given exclusive access to see the facilities up close and an opportunity to taste this mysterious fish that FDA scientists say "is as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon," although have yet to officially approve it for public sale.
Ron Stotish, the president and CEO of AquaBounty Technologies, the company that created and hopes to market the eggs of this salmon to independent fish farms around the world, told ABC News it has employed bio-security measures, creating a "Fort Knox for fish," to ensure safety for the fish and prevent cross-contamination with the wild.
Entry to both facilities begins with body suits and iodine baths for shoes, which serves to keep the fish safe from germs.
Inside these protected tanks, America gets the first up-close look at the final product, the fish that has the food police up in arms.
"These are very healthy, beautiful Atlantic salmon," Stotish said.
With one big difference -- the growth rate of a regular salmon compared to that of an AquaBounty genetically modified fish.
While the AquaBounty fish do not grow to a size larger than normal salmon, they get to full size much faster, cutting costs for producers.
A normal-size 1-year-old Atlantic salmon averages 10 inches long, while the genetically modified fish at the same age is more than two times larger, coming in at 24 inches.
Salmon is the second most popular seafood in America. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average size of an Atlantic salmon is 28 inches to 30 inches and 8 pounds to 12 pounds after two years at sea.
How do they accomplish the accelerated growth?
"They differ by a single gene," Stotish said.
But, it's that single gene change that makes the DNA-altered salmon grow much faster than a normal Atlantic salmon, because it's really three fish in one.
AquaBounty scientists have taken a growth gene from the Chinook salmon and inserted it into the DNA of the Atlantic salmon because Chinooks grow fast from birth, while Atlantics do not.
"Salmon in their first two years of life grow very slowly," Stotish said.
House GOP leaders endorsed a debt-reduction plan Monday that would raise tax collections by $800 billion over the next decade, but they refused to budge on higher tax rates for the wealthy, the central issue dividing Republicans and Democrats.
In making a counteroffer to President Obama, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other senior Republicans suggested that a framework laid out by Democrat Erskine Bowles last year could serve as a starting point for talks aimed at averting the year-end “fiscal cliff.”
TOKYO: Japanese police on Tuesday raided offices belonging to a highway operator over a weekend tunnel collapse that killed nine people.
More than eight officers from the Yamanashi Police Department entered the office of NEXCO in Hachioji, western Tokyo, a spokesman for the highway operator said.
"We are fully cooperating with the authorities over the accident," the spokesman told AFP.
Police also plan to raid more of the company's offices in connection with the tragedy at the Sasago tunnel, which passes through hills near Mount Fuji, Japanese broadcaster NHK said.
On Monday, the Japanese government ordered inspections of ageing highway tunnels following the accident as suspicion over the cause of the accident centred on decaying ceiling supports.
- AFP/fa/ck
In all, there are 148 Patel candidates in fray representing the three main players - BJP, Congress and GPP. Leuvas, a Patel sub-caste which Keshubhai Patel represents, dominate at least 40 out of the total 182 seats in Gujarat, mostly in Saurashtra, south and central Gujarat. Leuva Patels constitute anything between 20% to 50% votes in these 40 seats. Kadva Patels are in large numbers in north Gujarat. With Keshubhai threatening to make a dent into BJP's vote share, mainly due to the clout he enjoys in his community, BJP has also fielded a large number of Patels. But BJP's Patel leaders like Purshottam Rupala, Anandiben Patel and RC Faldu are no match to Keshubhai.
Modi tried his best to rope in Naresh Patel, a community leader who has become a rallying point for the economically powerful community, which now wants to re-gain its lost political glory by helping both the GPP and Congress.
Besides, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, which has a large following among Patel farmers, is aggressively campaigning against Modi. VHP leader Pravin Togadia, himself a Leuva Patel, is likely to make matters worse for the Gujarat CM.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.
Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously in polar Mars—appeared to also be present in Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity's exploration.
The possible discovery of organics—or carbon-based compounds bonded to hydrogen, also called hydrocarbons—could have major implications for the mission's search for more complex organic material.
It would not necessarily mean that life exists now or ever existed on Mars, but it makes the possibility of Martian life—especially long ago when the planet was wetter and warmer—somewhat greater, since available carbon is considered to be so important to all known biology.
(See "Mars Curiosity Rover Finds Proof of Flowing Water—A First.")
The announcements came after several weeks of frenzied speculation about a "major discovery" by Curiosity on Mars. But project scientist John Grotzinger said that it remains too early to know whether Martian organics have been definitely discovered or if they're byproducts of contamination brought from Earth.
"When this data first came in, and then was confirmed in a second sample, we did have a hooting and hollering moment," he said.
"The enthusiasm we had was perhaps misunderstood. We're doing science at the pace of science, but news travels at a different speed."
Organics Detected Before on Mars
The organic compounds discovered—different combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine—are the same or similar to chlorinated organics detected in the mid-1970s by the Viking landers.
(Related: "Life on Mars Found by NASA's Viking Mission?")
At the time, the substances were written off as contamination brought from Earth, but now scientists know more about how the compounds could be formed on Mars. The big question remains whether the carbon found in the compounds is of Martian or Earthly origin.
Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the instrument that may have found the simple organics—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)—said that while the findings were not "definitive," they were significant and would require a great deal of further study.
Mahaffy also said the discovery came as a surprise, since the soil sample involved was hardly a prime target in the organics search. In fact, the soil was scooped primarily to clean out the rover's mobile laboratory and soil-delivery systems.
Called Rocknest, the site is a collection of rocks with rippled sand around them—an environment not considered particularly promising for discovery. The Curiosity team has always thought it had a much better chance of finding the organics in clays and sulfate minerals known to be present at the base of Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, where the rover will head early next year.
(See the Mars rover Curiosity's first color pictures.)
The rover has been at Rocknest for a month and has scooped sand and soil five times. It was the first site where virtually all the instruments on Curiosity were used, Grotzinger said, and all of them proved to be working well.
They also worked well in unison—with one instrument giving the surprising signal that the minerals in the soil were not all crystalline, which led to the intensive examination of the non-crystalline portion to see if it contained any organics.
Rover Team "Very Confident"
The simple organics detected by SAM were in the chloromethane family, which contains compounds that are sometimes used to clean electronic equipment. Because it was plausible that Viking could have brought the compounds to Mars as contamination, that conclusion was broadly accepted.
But in 2010, Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico published an influential paper describing how dichloromethane can be a byproduct of the heating of other organic material in the presence of the compound perchlorate.
They conducted the experiment because NASA's Phoenix mission had discovered large amounts of perchlorate in the northern polar soil of Mars, and it seems plausible that it would exist elsewhere on the planet.
"In terms of the SAM results, there are two important conclusions," said McKay, a scientist on the SAM team.
"The first is confirming the perchlorate story—that it's most likely there and seems to react at high temperatures with organic material to form the dichloromethane and other simple organics."
"The second is that we'll have to either find organics without perchlorates nearby, or find a way to get around that perchlorate wall that keeps us from identifying organics," he said.
Another SAM researcher, Danny Glavin of Goddard, said his team is "very confident" about the reported detection of the hydrocarbons, and that they were produced in the rover's ovens. He said it is clear that the chlorine in the compounds is from Mars, but less clear about the carbon.
"We will figure out what's going on here," he said. "We have the instruments and we have the people. And whatever the final conclusions, we will have learned important things about Mars that we can use in the months ahead."
Author of the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012, Marc Kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including the past 12 as a science and space writer, foreign correspondent, and editor for the Washington Post. He is also author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, published in 2011, and has spoken extensively to crowds across the United States and abroad about astrobiology. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lynn Litterine.
A man charged in the death of a teenage barista in Alaska told police that he traveled the country with the sole purpose to kill strangers because he "liked to do it," prosecutors said today.
Vermont and federal prosecutors detailed the meticulous and cold-blooded murder of Bill and Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vt., last year and said the information came from Israel Keyes before he killed himself in an Alaska jail cell Sunday. Keyes provided details that only the perpetrator would know, police said.
Keyes, 34, the owner of an Anchorage construction company, was in jail charged with the February murder of Samantha Koenig, 18. While in jail he had been confessing to at least seven other killings in Washington, New York and Vermont.
Now that he is dead, investigators are wondering how many more killings Keyes might be responsible for and why he committed the crimes.
"He provided some motivation, but I don't think it's really [possible] to pigeonhole why he did this," Tristram Coffin, U.S. Attorney in Vermont, said at a news conference today. "He described to investigators that this was a volitional act of his. He wasn't compelled by some uncontrollable force, but it was something that he could control and he liked to do it. Why someone likes to act like that, nobody knows."
Authorities described the murders of the Curriers in great detail, offering insight into how the twisted killer traveled to murder, his criteria for choosing random victims and his careful planning of of the murders.
"When [Keyes] left Alaska, he left with the specific purpose of kidnapping and murdering someone," Chittenden County State Attorney T. J. Donovan said at the press conference. "He was specifically looking for a house that had an attached garage, no car in the driveway, no children, no dog."
The Curriers, unfortunately, fit all of Keyes' criteria. He spent three days in Vermont before striking. He even took out a three-day fishing license and fished before the slayings.
In June 2011, Keyes went to their house and cut a phone line from outside and made sure they did not have a security system that would alert police. He donned a head lamp and broke into their house with a gun and silencer that he had brought with him.
Keyes found the couple in bed and tied them up with zip ties. He took Lorraine Currier's purse and wallet as well as Bill Currier's gun. He left the man's wallet.
He put the couple in their own car and drove them to an abandoned farmhouse that he had previously scoped out. Keyes tied Bill Currier to a stool in the basement and went back to the car for Lorraine Currier.
"Keyes saw that Lorraine had broken free from the zip ties and observed that she was running towards Main Street," Donovan said. "He tackled her to regain control of her."
Keyes took Lorraine Currier to the second floor of the farmhouse and tied her up. He rushed to the basement when he heard commotion and found that Bill Currier's stool had broken and he was partially free.
At times, it has seemed that Republican lawmakers eyeing a fiscal compromise with President Obama were moving closer to a public split with Grover Norquist, author of the famous no-new-taxes pledge that has defined conservative politics for decades.
Yet Norquist, whose influence in the conservative movement spans well beyond his well-known fixation on taxes, remains an unwavering force in the GOP debate — and even some of the most prominent lawmakers publicly flirting with a break from Norquist have assured him in private that they remain loyal soldiers in the anti-tax cause.
LJUBLJANA: Slovenia's centre-left former prime minister Borut Pahor became the country's fourth president on Sunday, scoring a comfortable second-round victory despite his support for the government's unpopular austerity measures.
With 99.99 per cent of ballots counted, Pahor had 67.44 per cent of the votes, ahead of the incumbent Danilo Turk with 32.56 per cent, the central electoral commission said.
49-year-old Pahor, who was backed by the centre-left opposition Social Democrats (SD), also received the votes of the centre-right ruling parties in the second round.
He appeared to have won voters over with a populist US-style campaign -- and by admitting that some of his decisions as prime minister had been wrong.
Pahor was ousted as premier by a no-confidence vote in 2011, but during his presidential campaign, he capitalised on his image as a good-looking, relaxed, people's politician.
"This victory is only the beginning of a new hope, a new time," Pahor said after exit polls earlier on Sunday gave him victory. He was "overwhelmed" by the support he had received, he said.
Earlier, he had told reporters: "If I succeed, that result will send a strong message to Slovenian politicians that collaboration and unity are needed to overcome the (economic) difficulties."
Voter turnout in the second round however was 41.95 per cent, the lowest ever at a presidential election since Slovenia declared independence in 1991.
Pahor became the favourite to take over the largely ceremonial presidential post after a surprise win in the first round on November 11, when he pushed Turk into second place.
Unlike Turk, he had defended the austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Janez Jansa's centre-right government, arguing that there was no other option.
The belt-tightening is aimed at cutting the public deficit this year to 3.5 per cent of GDP.
The cuts, including to public sector wages and welfare benefits, have brought thousands of protesters out into the streets in recent weeks.
The prime minister was among the first to congratulate Pahor on his win.
"During the campaign debates, he said things that were not popular but had to be said, and despite that he received such support," Jansa told journalists on Sunday.
Earlier, Jansa's ruling Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) tweeted: "This evening is marked by hopes that the new president will bring more collaboration."
At a debate last week, Pahor had called for more cooperation with the government, adding: "We should not lose any more time speculating about possible alternatives (to austerity)."
Slovenia, once seen as a star new member of the European Union, is suffering one of the deepest recessions in the eurozone. The problems with its banks have raised fears it may need a bailout.
The European Commission has predicted the country's output will shrink 2.3 per cent this year and 1.6 per cent in 2013.
Turk had hoped to capitalise on the wave of protests against austerity measures.
"This government has been unsuccessful, it is arrogant, and it should make big changes," Turk said as he voted Sunday, urging it to "listen to protesters."
On Sunday evening however, he admitted defeat in a speech to supporters. Clearly disappointed, he regretted the low turnout.
"I failed to convince more citizens to cast their votes and to give me their support," he said.
Turk, long a thorn in the side of the government, ran as an independent candidate, but with backing from the largest centre-left opposition party, Positive Slovenija (PS).
Although Slovenia's president has little power, analysts say the prime minister will benefit from collaborating with the head of state.
This could be particularly important if the opposition and unions succeed in calling referendums to try to block new reforms.
Those reforms include a controversial IMF-backed plan to create a "bad bank", a financial institution that would take over risky debt held by state-owned banks to restore trust in their balance sheets.
A week after the first-round vote, 30,000 people attended a rally in Ljubljana called by Slovenia's main unions to protest at austerity cuts, and several other demonstrations have followed.
On Friday, police in Ljubljana used tear gas and water cannon against demonstrators, detaining more than 30 people after violence erupted at the end of a largely peaceful rally.
Some 1.7 million were eligible to vote on Sunday.
- AFP/xq
ANI Dec 1, 2012, 03.28PM IST
NEW DELHI: India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today said retail reform is a step taken by the Congress led-federal government to safeguard the interests of the international market mafias at the cost of national interest.
BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Saturday that voting inside the parliament would decide as to who is in favour of national interest and who is working for international interests.
"The government feels that their responsibility is to safeguard the interest of international market mafias instead of national interest and for saving the interest of international market mafias, the government is ready to compromise with national interests. Now, the parliament will decide as to who is in support of international market mafias and who are supporting national interests," said Naqvi.
The government's decision to allow foreign supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart had triggered protest not only from opposition parties but also from some of its allies.
BJP had sought debate on the issue of allowing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector, under the rule that entails voting after discussions.
Meanwhile, Minister in the Prime Minister Office (PMO), V Narayanaswamy said the government would answer all the queries raised by the opposition parties in the parliament and will explain the benefits of allowing FDI in retail sector.
The lower house of parliament has set December 04 and 05 as the date to vote and debate on FDI. The dates for the upper house are yet to be decided.
Narayanaswamy said the government is confident of becoming victorious in the debate.
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
A spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into the ocean, sending up plumes of steam as it made contact with the waves.
Though lava can still be viewed from Kalapana near the Big Island's Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, ocean entry is no longer occurring, according to the National Park Service.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
The lava traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) from Kilauea’s Pu'u O'o vent to the ocean. When lava reaches the water, it cools and hardens, forming a lava delta that can be dangerous to nearby onlookers, according to Reuters.
The news service reported that no communities on the Big Island were threatened by the lava flow.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
A burst of volcanic activity erupts from Kilauea’s crater in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on November 27.
The volcano has been erupting continuously for nearly 30 years. No major damage has been suffered by a town since 1986, according to Reuters.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
“Ocean entries are beautiful but dangerous,” said Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in a statement reported by Reuters. She warned that the steam could be more hazardous than it appears.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Matt Northam, My Shot
A plume of smoke billows where lava from Kilauea meets the sea in this aerial photo taken November 27.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Peter Vancoillie, Your Shot
Published November 30, 2012
Copyright © News dittied. All rights reserved.
Design 
And Business Directories
