2 months on, victim gets rapist cousin arrested

REWARI: Nearly two months after she was raped and shot at by her cousin, a 19-year-old girl mustered enough courage to revealed the incident to police in Rewari on Wednesday. The cops registered a case and arrested accused Deepak Kumar, 23, a college student, immediately.

Rewari SSP Bharti Arora said that the girl, a second year college student, was accompanying her cousin in his car when he raped her on November 3. The victim told cops that when she tried to escape from the car, Deepak opened fire on her and threatened her with dire consequences.

A bullet hit her on the shoulder and she was admitted in a private hospital, where she remained for about a month.

Sources said that since the accused was a close relative, the family too kept the incident under wraps fearing social stigma. But the girl finally revealed her trauma to the Rewari SSP on Wednesday.

The SSP said that the police have registered a case under sections 376 (rape), 307 (attempt to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation) against the accused.

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Pictures: Errant Shell Oil Rig Runs Aground Off Alaska, Prompts Massive Response

Photograph courtesy Jonathan Klingenberg, U.S. Coast Guard

Waves lash at the sides of the Shell* drilling rig Kulluk, which ran aground off the rocky southern coast of Alaska on New Year's Eve in a violent storm.

The rig, seen above Tuesday afternoon, was "stable," with no signs of spilled oil products, authorities said. But continued high winds and savage seas hampered efforts to secure the vessel and the 150,000 gallons (568,000 liters) of diesel fuel and lubricants on board. The Kulluk came to rest just east of Sitkalidak Island (map), an uninhabited but ecologically and culturally rich site north of Ocean Bay, after a four-day odyssey, during which it broke free of its tow ships and its 18-member crew had to be rescued by helicopter.

The U.S. Coast Guard, state, local, and industry officials have joined in an effort involving nearly 600 people to gain control of the rig, one of two that Shell used for its landmark Arctic oil-drilling effort last summer. "This must be considered once of the largest marine-response efforts conducted in Alaska in many years," said Steve Russell, of Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation.

The 266-foot (81-meter) rig now is beached off one of the larger islands in the Kodiak archipelago, a land of forest, glaciers, and streams about 300 miles (482 kilometers) south of Anchorage. The American Land Conservancy says that Sitkalidak Island's highly irregular coastline traps abundant food sources upwelling from the central Gulf of Alaska, attracting large numbers of seabirds and marine mammals. The largest flock of common murres ever recorded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was in Sitkalidak Strait, which separates the island from Kodiak. Sitkalidak also has 16 wild salmon rivers and archaeological sites tied to the Alutiiq native peoples dating back more than 7,000 years.

Shell incident commander Susan Childs said Monday night that the company's wildlife management team had started to assess the potential impact of a spill, and would be dispatched to the site when the weather permitted. She said the Kulluk's fuel tanks were in the center of the vessel, encased in heavy steel. "The Kulluk is a pretty sturdy vessel," she said. " It just remains to be seen how long it's on the shoreline and how long the weather is severe."

—Marianne Lavelle

*Shell is sponsor of National Geographic's Great Energy Challenge initiative. National Geographic maintains editorial autonomy.

Published January 2, 2013

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Tax Deal Done - but Where's Obama to Sign It?

Jan 2, 2013 6:29pm

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Congress officially delivered the bill to avert the fiscal cliff to the White House this afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner’s office told ABC News.

Now the question is when will the President sign it?

The bill, passed late on New Year’s Day, expires tomorrow at 11:59 a.m. when the current session of Congress concludes. If President Obama doesn’t sign it by then, constitutionally the bill is dead.

But this evening, eighteen hours before the deadline, the President is on a golf course in Hawaii.  And the bill is in Washington at the White House.

Administration officials won’t say what they will do despite repeated inquiries from ABC News.

There seem to be two options:  1) An Air Force jet can deliver the bill to Hawaii (better leave quickly!) in time for the President to sign it before 11:59 Eastern Standard Time; or, 2) The White House can use a presidential “auto-pen.”

The simple mechanical device uses a template of the presidential signature to scrawl it on paper if activated by the White House at Obama’s direction.

But would an auto-pen – usually used to sign insignificant correspondence and photographs – pass constitutional muster?  We don’t know.  The question has never been tested by the courts.

A 2005 legal study commissioned by former President George W. Bush determined that use of the autopen is constitutional but acknowledged the possibility that its use could be challenged.  Bush never used the autopen, officials from his administration told ABC.

President Obama is only believed to have used the autopen once to sign a piece of major legislation — the 2011 extension of the Patriot Act — which reached his desk while he was on a diplomatic trip to Europe. Officials invoked national security concerns to justify the move.

Use of the autopen has been controversial.  Conservative groups alleged last summer that Obama used an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of Navy SEALs killed in a Chinook crash in Afghanistan — a charge the White House disputed flatly as false.

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was criticized for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of fallen troops.

And in 1992 then-Vice President Dan Quayle even got into some hot water over his use of the autopen on official correspondence during an appearance on “This Week with David Brinkley.” More HERE.

ABC News’ Ann Compton and Devin Dwyer contributed reporting.

SHOWS: World News

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Helping VA rehabilitate those with multiple wounds of war

Micaela Cornis-Pop oversees more than 110 rehabilitation facilities around the country, helping the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) stay at the forefront of developments in treating traumatic brain injury and other medical injuries and issues facing injured veterans and military service members.

With the increase in battlefield survival rates of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, service members live with more complex casualties, which led the VA to coin the word “polytrauma” to describe multiple injuries to one person, the most prevalent of which is traumatic brain injury, but also can include post-traumatic stress disorder, multiple amputations, burns, auditory and visual impairments and mental health issues.

In 2005, Cornis-Pop helped conceive, develop and implement the VA’s Polytrauma System of Care, an integrated network of facilities that provide specialized programs to help wounded men and women recover, and move from acute care to outpatient rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. She now leads and manages the system, developing policies and procedures and monitoring their implementation.

“We have a direct impact on how health care is delivered and is impacting veterans and service members, and that is tremendously gratifying,” said Cornis-Pop, national program manager of the Polytrauma System of Care at the Veterans Health Administration, Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services, at the VA.

She also is responsible for providing education opportunities for VA health care providers who treat traumatic brain injuries. And the system works with another 39 VA locations that provide some, but not all elements of comprehensive polytrauma rehabilitation care, to define the care those facilities can provide and help make the decision when to refer patients to another level of care.

In addition, Cornis-Pop was the lead author and editor of a “massive project” to publish a 166-page book that came out in April 2010, which serves as an accredited independent study course on traumatic brain injury for members of VA health care teams around the country, said Joel Scholten, director of Special Projects at the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Program Office (PM&R), which manages the Polytrauma System of Care. Nearly 12,000 clinicians have completed the course between April 2010 and July 2012, using either the book or a Web version of it.

Cornis-Pop “has the innate ability to pull people together and get focused on a task and think creatively, and, most amazingly, develop an end product that is useful and veteran-centric,” Scholten said. “She develops programs and projects that have been sustained because they are clinically relevant. It’s not just policy that is developed and sits there.”

Dr. David Cifu, national director of the PM&R office, not only relies on Cornis-Pop to coordinate the care programs around the country but also to respond to outside requests for information, including from Congress. “She’s the person who makes it all happen,” he said. “She doesn’t care about getting credit. She just gets things done. That’s gold.”

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Tennis: Ferrer avoids falling into a hole

DOHA: Top-seeded David Ferrer started the new season with a dropped first set here Tuesday to Dustin Brown, a qualifier outside the world's top 150, and a damaged court which opened like a crater on the moon.

Repairs appeared to involve tape and glue on a tear about five feet behind the baseline where Ferrer's heel had ripped into the surface.

There was also an anxious-looking conference and a ball-boys' impromptu Gangnam-style dance session on the playing area during a delay which lasted more than an hour.

It was eventually two and a half hours before the world number five from Spain survived his first round in the Qatar Open by 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 against Brown who is a tall, Jamaica-based German nicknamed "Dreddy," with impressive locks flying down to the small of his back.

"None of it was easy," said Ferrer, which was an understatement. Brown was unusual for his aggressive serving, eager forward movement, and willingness to volley, and other circumstances must have seemed to Ferrer bizarrely familiar.

Two years ago, he and Andy Roddock were forced off their court at the US Open by a crack near the baseline which let the water through, and required them to change courts, and last year at New York, a tornado forced Ferrer and Novak Djokovic to interrupt their semi-final by an entire day.

Roddick tweeted a solution for Doha, suggesting they should "move Ferrer to court 13" - the court number where the American completed his 2011 US Open win over the Spaniard. Ferrer chortled his laughter when he heard.

Later Ferrer commented on the oddities which had afflicted him in the last two years by saying: "Yeah - so many things, yeah. Too many things."

Asked if something were following him around, he said: "Something, yes - it's bad luck. I don't even know why."

This time Ferrer had a more fortunate resumption. Though a set down he broke Brown's serve at once, and consolidated that advantage right through the second set.

He then making another crucial break at the start of the third set, by which time the favourite was accelerating towards safety.

The seedings say that Ferrer should play a final on Saturday with Richard Gasquet, the world number ten from France, whose fluency appeared only intermittently during a 6-3, 6-4 over Jan Hernych, a 33-year-old Czech qualifier.

Hernych struck his ground strokes more often inside the baseline than Gasquet - often a sign of potential dominance - but missed with three of his four break point chances.

Gasquet's confidence improved markedly after breaking serve at the start of the second set and never looked like being pegged back, dropping only five points in his next five service games.

He could have a semi-final with his compatriot Gael Monfils, last year's runner-up, whose first match in two and a half months was a comfortable re-introduction, a 6-0, 6-3 win over the local wild card player, Mousa Shanan Zayed.

However, Monfils' next encounter is a potentially tough one, against Philipp Kohlschreiber, the third-seeded German.

He may also be mindful of the fate of another Frenchman, Jeremy Chardy, the fifth seed but a 6-4, 6-4 loser to a German qualifier, Daniel Brands.

-AFP/ac

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Geetika suicide is a minor case: Haryana minister

CHANDIGARH: Haryana's minister of state for public relations and cultural affairs Shiv Charan Lal Sharma is under fire for describing Geetika Sharma as his former colleague Gopal Kanda's "mere servant". Kanda, a former Haryana home minister, is in jail for allegedly pushing Geetika to suicide.

Sharma had also described Geetika's suicide as a "minor one" while speaking at a gathering in Sirsa to celebrate Kanda's birthday on December 29.

"This is not a big case. It is a matter of time," he had said. "He hired a servant (Geetika) by mistake."

Sharma's statement triggered outrage with All-India Democratic Women Association's state unit vice-president Savita Malik asking chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda to seek a clarification from him for passing such remarks.

Sarv Jat Sarv Khap Mahapanchayat women's wing president Santosh Dahiya said, "Allegations against Gopal Kanda are serious and the case cannot be termed as minor."

BJP national general secretary Captain Abhimanyu said such statement shows how Congress leaders have little respect for women. "It is a crude display of power."

Sharma was unavailable for comments on Tuesday.

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Space Pictures This Week: Ice “Broccoli,” Solar Storm

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  Happy Trails

  Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN

  Amateur astronomer Alex Cherney captured these star trails as they blazed above Lake Tyrrell, a salt lake in Victoria, Australia in October 2011 and posted to The World At Night website December 25, 2012.

  (See pictures of another Australian salt lake, Lake Eyre.)

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  Tokyo From Space

  
  Image courtesy DLR

  The sprawling Japanese capital Tokyo looks like a funky computer chip in this image taken by Germany's Earth-observing satellite TerraSAR-X and released December 20.

  Launched in 2007, the satellite's radar sensors map Earth from 319 miles (514 kilometers) up in a near-polar orbit.

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  Extreme View

  
  Image courtesy SDO/NASA

  NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this extreme ultraviolet view of an active region on the sun as it rotated into view from December 16 to December 18. Ultraviolet light makes it easier to trace the whorls and loops created by superheated gas, or plasma, and the sun's magnetic field lines.

  Active solar regions such as this create space weather that, when aimed at Earth, can disrupt satellite communications and electronics. (See more pictures of solar activity and space weather.)

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  Saturn’s Dark Side

  
  Image courtesy SSI/Caltech/NASA

  This image of the unlit side of Saturn's S rings, released December 24, was taken with visible light by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

  The shadow of Saturn's innermost major moon, Mimas, is visible as a black oval south of the rings' shadow. For those with completely dust-free computer monitors, Janus, another Saturnian moon, is visible as a tiny white speck above the planet's north pole. (Learn about Saturn's major moons.)

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  A River Runs Through It

  
  Image courtesy ESA/JAXA

  The European Space Agency released this picture—taken by Japan's satellite ALOS—of Italy's longest river on December 14.

  The Po river and its surrounding fields divide Italy into its northern and southern regions. The Japanese used ALOS, which they lost contact with in late April 2011, to generate precise land maps, monitor disasters, and conduct resource surveys. (Read an excerpt from National Geographic magazine about the Po river.)

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  Glacial "Broccoli"

  
  Image from DigitalGlobe/Getty Images

  The Moshniy glacier, located on the Russian archipelago Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, calves chunks of ice and debris into a pattern reminiscent of broccoli in an image released December 20.

  Novaya Zemlya was a sensitive military area during the Cold War, and was also the site of the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated. The energy released by the 50-megaton "Tsar" bomb was ten times that of all the explosions set off during World War II.

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  











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  Image courtesy Caltech/SSI/NASA

  Published December 31, 2012

  
  

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House Hesitates, Cites Cliff Deal Spending

Top House Republicans today opposed a bipartisan compromise that passed the Senate in the wee hours of New Year's Day to avert the "fiscal cliff," amid concerns about the cost of the deal's spending provisions.

If House Republicans tweak the legislation, as they seem likely to do, there's no clear path for its return to the Senate before a new Congress is sworn in Thursday.

GOP leaders emerged from a morning conference meeting disenchanted by the legislative package devised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Biden early this morning, with several insisting they cannot vote on it as it now stands.

"I do not support the bill," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said as he left the meeting. "We're looking for the best path forward. No decisions have been made yet."

It's almost certain that Republicans will attempt to amend the bill in order to win over the support of more conservatives.

House Speaker John Boehner refused to comment on the meeting, but his spokesman said "the lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today's meeting."

"Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward," Brendan Buck said in a statement.

As lawmakers wrestled with the legislation, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill's added spending combined with the cost of extending tax cuts for those making under $400,000 would actually add $3.9 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The Joint Committee on Taxation reached a similar conclusion.

Bill Clark/Roll Call/Getty Images

Fiscal Cliff Countdown: Missing the Deadline Watch Video

Obama on Fiscal Cliff: 'Agreement Within Sight' Watch Video

The impasse once again raised the specter of sweeping tax hikes on all Americans and deep spending cuts' taking effect later this week.

"This is all about time, and it's about time that we brought this to the floor," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said after emerging from a meeting with Democrats.

"It was a bill that was passed in the U.S. senate 89-8. Tell me when you've had that on a measure as controversial as this?" she said of the overwhelming vote.

Pelosi could not say, however, whether the measure had the backing of most House Democrats. "Our members are making their decisions now," she said.

Biden, who brokered the deal with McConnell, joined Democrats for a midday meeting on Capitol Hill seeking to shore up support for the plan.

While Congress technically missed the midnight Dec. 31 deadline to avert the so-called cliff, both sides have expressed eagerness to enact a post-facto fix before Americans go back to work and the stock market opens Wednesday.

"This may take a little while but, honestly, I would argue we should vote on it today," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who sits on the Budget Committee. "We know the essential details and I think putting this thing to bed before the markets is important.

"We ought to take this deal right now and we'll live to fight another day, and it is coming very soon on the spending front."

The Senate passed legislation shortly after 2 a.m. that would extend current tax rates on 98 percent of Americans, raise taxes on the wealthiest earners and delay by two months the pending automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, known as the "sequester."

The measure passed by an overwhelming majority vote of 89-8, boosting the prospects that enough House members would follow suit to make it law.

If the House amends the bill, however, the fragile compromise could get shattered. The Senate would need to reconvene to consider the changes.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide told ABC News, "we did our work, and McConnell's office said they were confident of House passage. All bets are off if they amend our bill."

Meanwhile, most Senators have already returned home, dismissed early this morning by Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid.

"I've said all along our most important priority is protecting middle-class Americans, this legislation does that," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said early this morning prior to the vote.

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Obama says ‘fiscal cliff’ deal is within sight but some issues still unresolved

President Obama said Monday that an agreement to avoid the worst effects of the year-end fiscal cliff is “within sight,” but he stressed that a deal is “not done yet,” and House Republican leaders announced they would hold no votes Monday night, ensuring that the nation would go over the “fiscal cliff” for at least a day.

The Senate was moving, however, toward a late-night or early-morning vote on a potential agreement being negotiated by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). With the House likely to reconvene at noon on Tuesday, negotiations appeared likely to stretch into the new year in the effort to reach a deal to cancel historic tax hikes for most Americans.

“I think it’s highly likely that some time this evening there’ll be a vote on the Senate side,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Monday evening as he emerged from a meeting with fellow Republicans and signaled that talks are continuing. “This is one of those things that could well go into the early morning by the time it goes to a vote. ... I think they’re attempting to get the legislative language in order and vote on it tonight, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning, whatever.’’

Regardless of whether an agreement is reached to avoid the fiscal cliff, many Americans are all but certain to face a broad hike in taxes starting Tuesday because of the expiration of the payroll tax cut, which was enacted in 2011 as a temporary measure to boost economic growth. The increased payroll taxes, combined with hikes affecting the very wealthy, would effectively mark the end of a prolonged period of declining taxation that has become a defining characteristic of the American economy

The announcement that the GOP-controlled House would not vote on New Year’s Eve came after Obama urged lawmakers to “stop taxes going up for middle-class families, starting tomorrow,” and he called on them to remain focused on the needs of the American people rather than politics.

In what the White House billed as an event with middle-class Americans, Obama said there were “still issues left to resolve” in the talks. He said he was “hopeful that Congress can get it done. But it’s not done.”

Obama said the potential agreement that Biden and McConnell are crafting would prevent federal income taxes from rising on middle-class families, extend tax credits for children and college tuition, provide tax breaks to clean-energy companies and extend unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans.

He would have preferred to “solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement,” the so-called grand bargain, that would have dealt with spending in a “balanced way,” he said.

“But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time,” Obama said, adding that perhaps “we can do it in stages.”

Congressional Republicans immediately pushed back, objecting to comments that one GOP senator described as “heckling Congress.”

The president made the remarks as negotiators moved closer to a deal but were still hung up on spending, with Democrats so far resisting Republican proposals for spending cuts that would come in exchange for delaying automatic spending cuts at federal agencies for just three months.

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No House vote before US 'fiscal cliff' deadline

WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives will not vote on Monday on an 11th-hour proposal to prevent the country from tottering over the so-called "fiscal cliff," a senior Republican source told AFP.

US markets will not immediately feel the shock of the failure as January 1 is a public holiday, giving lawmakers a short breathing space in which to hammer out a stop-gap deal and pass it through the Senate and House on Tuesday.

Lawmakers worked feverishly through the night to hammer out a deal that would raise tax rates on the wealthy but preserve tax breaks for the middle class and maintain some key stimulus benefits like unemployment insurance.

At the end of the day Monday, while President Barack Obama and lawmakers acknowledged they were close, there was still no finalised deal between Senate Republicans and Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden who is now playing a key part in negotiations.

"We don't have anything to vote on," the senior House Republican source said, referring to the lack of any bill in the Senate.

There was "no chance they pass something early enough that we could (vote) before midnight, even if we wanted to," he said.

Another House Republican source sought to downplay the fact that lawmakers were missing their self-imposed deadline.

"If a deal is reached, there's little difference between a vote tonight or tomorrow to give members a chance to review," the source said.

Some would argue there is a very clear distinction.

Passing a measure on New Year's Eve would mean Republicans - who by and large oppose raising taxes on anyone - vote for a tax hike on the wealthy.

If they wait until January 1, when the tax cuts first enacted under president George W. Bush expire and rates go up on everyone, Republicans could then turn around and vote to reduce taxes on the middle class.

As for whether the Senate could get it together to at least present a bipartisan deal before the year end, the number-two Republican in the chamber was non-committal.

"I don't know" if a Monday night vote was still possible, Senator Jon Kyl told AFP.

The Republican caucus was going to "try to get together here before long, and at least review the bidding and see where we are," he said.

"A lot of progress has been made, and I think it's obvious that we either have to have something finished here very soon or it's not going to happen."

- AFP/de

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