Efforts under way to confirm Qaeda boss death in Mali

BAMAKO: Algeria was seeking Saturday to confirm the reported killing of Al-Qaeda's top commander in northern Mali, where French and African troops attempted to flush out Islamist fighters from desert and mountain hideouts.

Chad's president announced on Friday that his troops had killed Abou Zeid days earlier, in what would be one of the worst blows to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the seven-week-old French-led intervention.

Idriss Deby Itno claimed the AQIM commander in Mali was killed during a major battle that also left 26 Chadian soldiers dead on February 22. "Our soldiers killed two jihadist chiefs including Abou Zeid," he said.

Adding to the confusion over the jihadist supremo's fate, Mauritania's private news agency Sahara Medias on Saturday confirmed that Abou Zeid had been killed but had a different story.

It said Abou Zeid was killed "four days ago" in a French air strike during a clash between a jihadist unit he was leading and the group of Chadian soldiers that had suffered the 26 losses days earlier.

Sahara Medias said the strike occurred in the mountainous region of Tigharghar near the border with Algeria and added without naming them that "extremely well informed sources" had confirmed Abou Zeid's death.

However the Islamist organisation itself has not yet confirmed the jihadist leader's death and officials in his native Algeria were carrying out DNA tests in an effort to confirm the demise of one of Africa's most wanted men.

Analysts have suggested Abou Zeid's death could spell AQIM's doom with other jihadist groups now thriving in the region but while Washington described the report as "very credible" France has so far treated it with caution.

Algeria's El Khabar newspaper said Saturday that Algerian security services, who were the first to report Abou Zeid's death, had examined a body believed to be his.

"Algerian officers have examined a body said to be that of Abou Zeid in a military site in northern Mali and identified his personal weapon... but were unable to formally identify" the body as his, it said.

"Confirmation of Abou Zeid's death remains linked to the results of DNA tests done on Thursday by Algeria on two members of his family," said El Khabar.

Mauritanian expert Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Aboulmaali pointed out that Algeria had announced his death several times in the past and that Chad needed morale boosting news after suffering such heavy losses.

Matthieu Guidere, a French university professor and Al-Qaeda specialist, also voiced caution in the absence of any confirmation of Abou Zeid's death on jihadist forums.

"Experience shows that jihadists never try to hide their dead and immediately broadcast their martyrdom," he said.

Guidere explained that announcing the death of a wanted jihadist was a tactic that had been used in the past to force the operative to deny his death and reveal his location.

Abou Zeid, 46, whose real name is Mohamed Ghedir, was often seen in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao after the Islamists took control of northern Mali last year and sparked fears the region could become a haven for extremists.

An Algerian born near the border with Libya, Abou Zeid was a former smuggler who embraced radical Islam in the 1990s and became one of AQIM's key leaders.

He was suspected of being behind a series of kidnappings in the Sahel region, including of British national Edwin Dyer, who was abducted in Niger and killed in 2009, and of 78-year-old French aid worker Michel Germaneau, who was killed in 2010.

Abou Zeid was believed to be holding a number of Western hostages, including four French citizens kidnapped in Niger in 2010.

Guidere said Abou Zeid had adopted such a hard line since reaching the top of AQIM's operational command that many of his lieutenants left the group to join other organisations or launch their own.

One of the main splinters is the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which first emerged last year and was battling African forces near the main northern city of Gao as recently as Friday.

"We waged a tough battle against Malian troops and their French accomplices around 60 kilometres east of Gao on Friday," MUJAO spokesman Abou Walid Sahraoui told AFP.

"We'll see later about the death toll," he said.

A Malian soldier who claimed he took part in the fighting said the operation had left a MUJAO base destroyed and "many dead" among the Islamists.

- AFP/jc

Read More..

‘Modi for PM’ cry in BJP grows louder, pressure on leadership

NEW DELHI: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi stole the show at BJP's national council meeting here without uttering a word. Even as the BJP leadership debates whether or not to declare Modi as the party's candidate for prime minister in the coming election, party delegates cutting across regions made plain their choice unambiguously on Saturday.

While the leadership now has to take note of the clear sentiment of around 3,000 delegates, who lustily rooted for Modi with slogans like "desh ka neta kaisa ho, Narendra Modi jaisa ho", this new push to slot the Gujarat CM as the party's white steed for the polls is pregnant with political implications.

For one, it signals to leaders like Nitish Kumar — who has made no secret of his discomfiture with Modi as the prime ministerial candidate — that the party ranks still want to press ahead with the charismatic, if controversial, leader. For another, it gives time to parties like the Congress and the Samajwadi Party to rally their troops against a leader whom they consider a polarizing politician.

Chorus drowns debate

At the Talkatora Indoor Stadium here, the applause for Modi hit a crescendo when party chief Rajnath Singh singled Modi out for special compliment for being the first BJP CM to have won three assembly elections in a row.

There was high drama that began as a murmur and mild clapping as Singh mentioned Modi while introducing the leaders on the dais. Soon, it grew into a standing ovation from the stadium's galleries, with applause and slogans refusing to die down for a good five minutes, until Singh signalled to party members to stop and move on with the proceedings.

The reception that NarendraModi got at the BJP's national council meet here is seen as contrary to the view in certain sections of the party that it should go into the 2014 LS polls without projecting anyone as its choice for PM. Many in the party see it as a warning to those leaders who are opposed to Modi's projection as the "shadow PM" ahead of the looming contest.

The mood was vividly reflected by Leher Singh, MLC from Karnataka and a trusted aide of party rebel BS Yeddyurappa. "Narendra Modi is the party's popular leader and time has come to declare him as the party's PM candidate. It will benefit the party and such an announcement could even bring Yeddyurappa back to BJP," he said.

Modi too seemed to relish every bit of the loud adulation. Known for his ability to work the audience, he came to the front of the stage and walked the length from one end to another with folded hands, soaking in the thunderous rooting. The confident smile looked like an acceptance speech: a clear indication of his willingness to play a role beyond the frontiers of his home state, Gujarat. In the post-lunch session, Modi stood out for being the only one on the stage who had found the time to change into a different attire.

Many in the party feel that the pressure building from the bottom for Modi will render the "to project him or not" debate irrelevant. They appeared vindicated as many of the participants freely declared their support for Modi as if the gag on any discussion on the leadership issue had ceased to exist.

Delhi BJP chief Vijay Goel said it appears that Modi is already the PM. "Though the Prime Ministerial candidate will be chosen later it appears as if he (Modi) is the PM," Goel said at the venue.

In the post-lunch session, Modi stood out for being the only one on the stage who had found time to change into a different attire.

How to download and use Alive app

Step 1: Get the Alive app: Give a missed call to 18001023324 or go to aliveapp.in

Step 2: Open Alive app on your phone and scan this picture by focussing your phone's camera on it. Hold your phone about 6 inches over the photo and watch it come alive . Android and iOS phones scan the picture automatically, while Nokia and BlackBerry users need to click options and then, capture.

Step 3: You will get various options that'll enable you to view, save and share exclusive videos

Available on select Android (version 2.2 and above), iOS (version 4.3 and above), BB (version 5.0 and above) and Symbian (version S60 and above) handsets

Missed call Application powered by TIMESMOBILE LTD.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Rescuers Search for Man as Fla. Sinkhole Grows

Rescuers early Saturday morning returned to the site where a sinkhole swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom after the home's foundation collapsed.

Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday night.

While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials now estimate it measures 30 feet across and up to 100 feet deep.

MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop

Rescue operations were halted Friday night after it became too dangerous to approach the home.

Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team said that the house "should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't."

RELATED: Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach

Florida Man Believed Dead After Falling into Sinkhole Watch Video

Florida Sinkhole Swallows House, Man Trapped Inside Watch Video

Sinkhole Victim's Brother: 'I Know in My Heart He's Dead' Watch Video

Using ground penetrating radar, rescuers have found a large amount of water beneath the house, making conditions even more dangerous for them to continue the search for Bush.

"I'm being told it's seriously unstable, so that's the dilemma," said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrell. "A dilemma that is very painful to them and for everyone."

Hillsborough County lies in what is known as Florida's "Sinkhole Alley." Over 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.

The Tampa-area home was condemned, leaving Bush's family unable to go back inside to gather their belongings. As a result, the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue set up a relief fund for Bush's family in light of the tragedy.

Officials evacuated the two houses adjacent to Bush's and are considering further evacuations, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, Bush's brother, Jeremy Bush, is still reeling from Thursday night.

Jeremy Bush had to be rescued by a first responder after jumping into the hole in an attempt to rescue his brother when the home's concrete floor collapsed, but said he couldn't find him.

"I just started digging and started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and told me the floor's still falling in," he said.

"These are everyday working people, they're good people," said Deputy Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office, "And this was so unexpected, and they're still, you know, probably facing the reality that this is happening."

Read More..

Tennis: Federer beaten by Berdych again

DUBAI: Roger Federer's defence of the Dubai Open title came to a dramatic end in the semi-finals after he failed to convert three match points against Tomas Berdych, the man who also upset him in the US Open.

The world number six from the Czech Republic thrillingly turned the match around after a neck-and-neck second set tie-break, going on to win 3-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-4 against the five-time champion and set up a final against Novak Djokovic.

The Serbian world number one extended his unbeaten run to 17 matches and reached the 55th final of his career with a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) win over Juan Martin Del Potro, the former US Open champion from Argentina.

Federer was on the verge of success at 6-4 and 8-7 in the tie break, with the second of the three points coming on his serve, only for Berdych to somehow get into a rally and win it with some fierce ground strokes.

One break of serve halfway through the final set then proved decisive, as Federer gambled more and more on rushing the net instead of continuing the bruising baseline exchanges which characterised the first two sets.

"It's obviously unfortunate, you know," said Federer, for whom this is a tournament in his second home. "Pity to lose that one, but Tomas did well to hang in there.

"Obviously I leave this match with a lot of regrets I'm feeling: serving for the match, with the serve, having chances in the beginning of the second, you know, when he wasn't quite in the match yet, to go break up, you know, set and a break, you know, a few points where things just didn't happen for me."

Of his best chance, the second match point, Federer said: "That's just disappointing right there, because the match was in my racket.

"You do all the right things for so long, and then at the end you've got to explain why you didn't hit two shots decent, you know. So it's disappointing."

Berdych was pleased that he avoided the perils of tension in the later stages, as he closed the match out.

"Staying calm is definitely the big thing I have been working on," he said. "And I am still working on it, especially with the serve. When I serve well I can do a lot of damage."

Earlier, Djokovic was again in fine fettle for a man who had not played a tournament since the successful defence of the Australian title nearly five weeks ago, and, after three solid wins already, he raised his level once more.

Djokovic was made to.

Del Potro hit fierce first serves and heavy ground strokes mixed in with thunderbolt accelerations with his forehand, advancing to a 3-0 lead in the second set.

Djokovic responded superbly when behind, containing brilliantly, moving superbly, and counter-attacking with excellent timing and accuracy.

However, his break back to 2-3 came amidst controversy. Umpire Magdi Somat imposed a time violation on Del Potro when he took a longer to prepare at a vital moment, at 30-40, break point down.

The Argentine walked up to the umpire to protest, gesticulating as he did so, and accompanied by a spate of boos from spectators. By the time the situation had calmed, the delay was at least twice the permitted 25 seconds.

There followed a forehand-to-forehand exchange ending with a mis-hit under pressure by Del Potro costing him the game. When they sat down at the change of ends there was another exchange between the umpire and Del Potro, with further jeering from spectators.

Djokovic was critical. "I don't know exactly if the chair umpire gave him unofficial verbal warning before that. If he didn't, then I don't agree with that decision," he said.

It muddied the waters and proved to be a turning point. It also landed the Argentine with extra pressure in his next service game and although he diligently saved two break points amidst a sequence of excellent rallies, Djokovic eventually broke serve.

"It was very important point for the game, for the match," Del Potro said of the timing of the umpire's decision. "Maybe he doesn't know about that, you know.

"I mean, in that moment, if you call warning or if you do something different, you can lose the focus and that's what happened with me."

-AFP/ac

Read More..

BJP meet to discuss larger role for Modi

NEW DELHI: A two-day meeting of BJP's national council, which is likely to clear the way for Gujarat CM Narendra Modi to play a larger role on the national stage, is beginning here on Saturday.

Although the meeting of the council has been convened to ratify Rajnath Singh's appointment as the party chief, it has taken on a greater significance because it is also supposed to clear the way for the return of Modi to party's central parliamentary board.

So far, the party leadership has dodged the growing clamour from the ranks to project the Gujarat CM as the spearhead for 2014 polls, and his ever-growing profile has already cast a shadow on the event.

Former Uttarakhand CM Bhagat Singh Koshiyari on Friday defied leadership's instruction to publicly argue that Modi be anointed as party's candidate for the PMO in 2014.

Party chief Rajnath Singh, while addressing the meeting of the national executive on Friday, also complimented Modi for being the first BJP CM to win three elections in a row.

Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley also said that there was a groundswell for Modi, while seeming to counter the view that the delay in CM's projection suggests that BJP may not go into the poll arena with a PM candidate. He said that the "best name" would undoubtedly come up at an appropriate time, emphasizing that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was named party's prime ministerial candidate just ahead of the 1996 polls.

The growing clamour for Modi coincides with the optimism in the party that they may be able to end a decade-long barren spell in Delhi. Addressing the national executive, Singh struck an optimistic note , quoting from the Bhagwad Gita to say that party should be focused on victory.

He recalled that he had addressed the body amid gloom after the 2009 debacle. On that occasion, Singh had quoted from former US president FD Roosevelt's 1933 speech — "the only fear that you have to fear is fear itself" — to lift spirits. On Friday, he said that all-round failure of UPA and corruption scams have led the people to look favourably at the BJP and that the cadre should work for the victory with the single-minded determination.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

Obama met for just over an hour at the White House today with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

Read More..

Amid US budget battle, another likely missed deadline

WASHINGTON: Leaders of a divided Congress acknowledged their failure to avert across-the-board spending cuts set to begin Friday, with lawmakers and the White House trading blame for the doomsday scenario that may lie ahead.

The only related actions of substance Thursday appeared to be votes on competing Senate bills, one sponsored by Democrats and the other by Republicans, to replace the indiscriminate budget austerity, which both sides wanted to avoid when it was baked into law in 2011, with targeted spending cuts and revenues.

President Barack Obama will make a final plea to bickering congressional leaders at a White House meeting on Friday, the last day before the severe cuts known as the sequester begin to kick in.

But many lawmakers from both sides have already resigned themselves to the realization that a deadline-beating budget deal to head off the damaging package of indiscriminate cuts totaling $85 billion this year is just not happening, and that a solution could arise from March negotiations over funding government operations for fiscal year 2013.

"We've laid our cards on the table," House Speaker John Boehner said in explaining why his chamber, which passed two sequester-replacement bills last year, would take no further action until the Senate passed a bill.

Some Republicans have begun to tone down the histrionics over the effects of the sequester, saying the cuts should be manageable -- even as the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that the sequester will slow growth in the United States and have "an impact on global growth" as well.

But John Cornyn, the number two Republican in the Senate, said Thursday that Obama and his Democrats have been overstating their "apocalyptic predictions" of hundreds of thousands of job losses, a slash in economic growth, and harsh cuts to social services and national security.

"I would suggest... put down the Beltway Kool-Aid, because they are predicting a disaster that will not occur."

Some Republicans in the House agreed. "It is going to happen. It is 2.4 percent of the budget, and it is not the end of the world," Republican Representative Jim Jordan said in US News & World Report.

"We want the savings. We want to bank those savings, and we want to move on."

Democrats have put forward what they are touting as a "balanced plan" that raises new tax revenue to help replace the $85 billion in cuts.

It also cuts several billion dollars in what Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid called "wasteful subsidies to farmers," longstanding and controversial payments that some lawmakers first sought to scrap in the 1980s.

Republicans laid out a competing version that maintains the full financial effect of sequester, without raising new revenue, but gives the president broader "flexibility" to map out where the cuts would hit.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the Republican proposal "the worst of all worlds."

"It explicitly protects pork-barrel projects and every single tax loophole that benefits the wealthy, but puts on the table cuts to things like Medicare and education, forcing middle-class families to bear the burden while asking nothing from the wealthiest Americans."

And Reid complained that such a plan would force Obama into deciding which programs stay and which get the axe.

But Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that is precisely the leadership Obama needs to show in a time of crisis.

"It's your job to make the tough decisions," McConnell said of the president.

Democrats are trying to force Republicans into accepting more revenues through closing what Reid calls "wasteful tax loopholes" that favor millionaires.

But conservatives appeared to be standing firm, saying Obama got his $600 billion in tax revenues for the coming decade in the last fiscal negotiations in late December.

"Given those facts, the revenue issue is now closed," Boehner insisted.

Neither plan is likely to receive the necessary votes Thursday to move the legislation forward.

House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi called the delay "mindless," slamming the "anti-government ideologues" of the far right who were cheering for sequester.

Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer blamed Boehner for running out the clock until sequester hits, and he sounded resigned to the sequester sliding into effect after Friday.

"These votes (in the Senate) will not be the last word on the issue. The debate's only beginning," he said.

"In the coming weeks... we'll consider a budget that will keep these issues front and center."

Republicans in the House had similar intentions. They were coalescing around a plan that would see the sequester absorbed into negotiations on legislation that funds the government.

House Appropriations committee chairman Harold Rogers said there was broad support for the plan, which would pare down the $1.043 trillion discretionary spending budget for 2013 down to $974 billion, the difference being the amount of sequester cuts set to affect such spending.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Manik Sarkar, son of tailor, to be Tripura chief minister again

AGARTALA: Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, set to assume office for a fourth time after leading the Left to a huge electoral win, is the son of a tailor who still washes his own clothes.

An unassuming man, the 64-year-old got down to work no soon than he was declared the winner from Dhanpur constituency. He met CPM leaders and activists at Sonamura, 60km from here.

On Thursday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) bagged 49 of the 60 seats while its ally Communist Party of India won one seat. The Congress finished with only 10 seats.

It was the best result for the Left since 1978 when the legendary Nripen Chakraborty-led CPM swept 56 seats. This time, Sarkar helped the Left Front increase its 2008 tally by one seat.

Undoubtedly, the "poorest" chief minister in India, Sarkar, according to documents filed with the Election Commission, has Rs.10,800 in cash.

In line with CPM rules, Sarkar gives away his salary to the party, which pays him Rs 5,000 a month.

He is probably India's only chief minister who does not own a home, car or bank balance worth mentioning.

He does not even have a mobile phone and has never used the red beacon on his official car.

Sarkar's wife Panchali Bhattacharjee, 62, who retired as a government employee in 2010, has Rs 22,015 in cash and Rs.24,52,395 as savings. The couple has no children.

She said her husband still washed his clothes every morning.

"My wife's pension can sustain us. My expenses are a small pot of snuff and a cigarette a day," Sarkar said.

After the death of his mother in 2009, Sarkar inherited a small house worth Rs.200,000 in Agartala. He donated it to his younger sister.

Sarkar's father Amulya was a tailor and mother Anjali was an employee of the state health department.

Sarkar joined politics in 1967 and was elected secretary of the CPM's Tripura unit in 1993.

A bachelor of commerce from Calcutta University, Sarkar was first elected to the Tripura assembly in a 1980 bypoll and again in 1983.

He is the second in the northeast to be the chief minister for 15 years or more after Gegong Apang of the Congress who ruled Arunachal Pradesh for 24 years over two periods (1980-99 and 2003-07).

On Thursday, Sarkar defeated his Congress rival Shah Alam by 6,017 votes. In 2008, Sarkar's winning margin was 2,918.

"This is a verdict in favour of development, peace and stability besides good governance," Sarkar told reporters.

According to a CPI-M leader, Left Front leaders will meet here Friday and decide when to form a new government.

Read More..

WHO: Small cancer risk after Fukushima accident

LONDON (AP) — People exposed to the highest doses of radiation during Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011 may have a slightly higher risk of cancer but one so small it probably won't be detectable, the World Health Organization said in a report released Thursday.

A group of experts convened by the agency assessed the risk of various cancers based on estimates of how much radiation people at the epicenter of the nuclear disaster received, namely those directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, a rural agricultural area about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Some 110,000 people living around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant were evacuated after the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water.

In the new report, the highest increases in risk appeared for people exposed as infants to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

"These are pretty small proportional increases," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," he said. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

WHO estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare, one of the most treatable cancers when caught early, and the normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That risk would be half of one percentage point higher for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase in such cancers may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most heavily exposed areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected to the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who was not connected to the WHO report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the WHO of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally-grown food. Kanno accused the report of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

Read More..

Benedict XVI's Tenure as Pope Ends

VATICAN CITY -- Benedict XVI's eight-year tenure as pope ended today, after he bade farewell to the faithful and departed the Vatican as the first pope to resign in six centuries.

"Thank you for your love and support," the pope tweeted from his Pontifex account. "May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

With church bells ringing across Rome, the pope was driven to the helipad on the Vatican grounds for the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence where he assumed the title "pope emeritus" after 8 p.m. local time.

When Benedict arrived at the residence just south of Rome, he was greeted by a crowd of supporters waving flags and banners.

READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

"I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth," he told them.

Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI's Helicopter Ride to Castel Gandolfo Watch Video

Pope Benedict XVI Says Goodbye to Cardinals Watch Video

In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor. At a morning meeting at the Vatican, Benedict urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict, 85, spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

When Benedict's resignation took effect once and for all at 8 p.m. local time, the Swiss Guards left his side for the last time, their time protecting the pontiff completed.

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure was bittersweet.

Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

Read More..

Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West still wary

ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears about its atomic ambitions.

Rapid progress was unlikely with Iran's presidential election, due in June, raising domestic political tensions, diplomats and analysts had said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the first in eight months.

The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered modest sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive nuclear work but made clear that they expected no immediate breakthrough.

In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to Iran, the six powers appeared to have softened previous demands somewhat, for example regarding their requirement that the Islamic state ship out its stockpile of higher-grade uranium.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the powers had tried to "get closer to our viewpoint", which he said was positive.

In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commented that the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.

Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very confident" an agreement could be reached and Jalili, the chief negotiator, said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a "turning point".

However, one diplomat said Iranian officials at the negotiations appeared to be suggesting that they were opening new avenues, but it was not clear if this was really the case.

Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "Everyone is saying Iran was more positive and portrayed the talks as a win."

"I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face internally while buying time with the West until after the elections," she said.

The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul on March 18 to discuss the powers' proposals, and return to Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western diplomats made clear they wanted to see a substantive response from Iran.

"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said.

A senior U.S. official in Almaty said, "What we care about at the end is concrete results."

ISRAELI WARNING

Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic sanctions were failing and urged the international community to threaten Iran with military action.

Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products. They gave no further details.

In exchange, a senior U.S. official said, Iran would among other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".

The official did not describe what was being asked of Iran as a "shutdown" of the plant as Western diplomats had said in previous meetings with Iran last year.

Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil.

But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a short technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it produces higher-grade uranium to fuel a research reactor.

Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.

In Vienna on Wednesday, a senior U.N. nuclear agency official told diplomats in a closed-door briefing that Iran was technically ready to sharply increase this higher-grade enrichment, two Western diplomats said.

"Iran can triple 20 percent production in the blink of an eye," one of the diplomats said.

The U.S. official in Almaty said the powers' latest proposal would "significantly restrict the accumulation of near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical reactor.

This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that Iran ship out its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.

Iran has often indicated that 20-percent enrichment could be up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.

Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers had not made that specific demand.

The Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday, currency tracking websites reported.

(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl and Yeganeh Torbati in Almaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Read More..

US army forced to release WikiLeaks case documents

FORT MEADE, Maryland: The US Army published dozens of documents online Wednesday in the case of WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, after media outlets and other groups had criticized a lack of transparency.

The move came in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the case against Manning, who stands accused of passing a trove of secret files to Julian Assange's anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website.

Among the organizations that demanded access to the pre-trial documents were The Washington Post, CNN and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which all said they had been prevented from informing the public about the case.

Such documents have been sealed based on requests either by the prosecution or defense lawyers in the case against Manning, which is being heard in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, north of the US capital Washington.

In federal civilian court, similar types of documents are nearly always made public.

Even in the military commissions at the Guantanamo detention facility, where pre-trial hearings in the case against the 9/11 plotters are being heard, military lawyers have made such documents available.

On Wednesday, 84 court orders and rulings were released in the Manning case, including a partial transcription of a deposition made by Manning.

The 25-year-old Army private faces a slew of charges, including "aiding the enemy," for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive US military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks.

He was arrested in May 2010 while serving as an intelligence analyst near Baghdad and subsequently charged over the largest leak of restricted documents in American history. The trial is expected to begin in June.

"Due to the voluminous nature of these documents, it will take additional time to review, redact, and release all of the responsive documents," the Army said in a statement, adding that 500 documents have been released thus far.

During Wednesday's hearing at Fort Meade, Judge Denise Lind dealt the defense a blow when she rejected their claim that the documents allegedly leaked by Manning were incorrectly marked top-secret.

"Evidence of overclassification is not relevant," she said.

The proceedings at Fort Meade are shown to reporters via closed circuit television with a slight delay, so the transmission can be cut if sensitive matters are discussed.

Prosecutors had asked that hearings be closed when classified information is to be discussed.

Prosecutor Ashden Fein said that of 141 possible witnesses, "some form of classification" should be used for testimony from 73 of them, though "not necessarily all their testimony."

Manning is expected to offer a revised plea proposal Thursday.

The most serious of the 22 charges against him, "aiding the enemy," carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, but Manning's team is trying to have that charge dropped.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

No difference in Cong, NDA regimes: Pawar

NEW DELHI: NCP chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said he did not find much difference in the policies of the Congress governments and the Vajpayee-led NDA regime, in what can set off speculation of political realignment.

Speaking at a book launch function on Wednesday, the NCP chief said while many governments had been formed by the opposition parties, most of them were supported by the Congress. Stating that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA regime was the truly non-Congress government, Pawar stressed that its policies in key areas, foreign or domestic, did not diverge from those followed by the Congress.

The comment is seen as significant since NCP is seen by many as potential swing players to be ready to side with the winner post-2014. Pawar had moved closer to the NDA during Vajpayee's prime ministership, and had come close to allying with BJP for 2004 polls. However, resistance from BJP's leaders from Maharashtra scuppered the move: something that Vajpayee would regret later.

Pawar's comment suggesting that the BJP was not radically different from the Congress can set off speculation of a political realignment before or after the next Lok Sabha polls, especially in view of the perception of a political tie between UPA and NDA.

Interestingly, the Maratha strongman refused to comment on Sonia Gandhi or Congress, saying he was an UPA ally and a comment on contemporary issues would only create mistrust in UPA. He said he wanted the government to serve its term.

Sharing the dais with home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Pawar said he was expelled from Congress for six years but he never felt like returning to the party.

The senior leader added there was no running away from coalition era and, Congress and BJP cannot think of coming to power on their own in the near future. For good effect, he said differences were bound to be there on issues like secularism but differences should not turn into political hatred.

Pawar left the Congress to launch NCP in 1999 following rebellion against Sonia Gandhi on "foreign origin" issue. The expulsion on the bitter note raised signs of a permanent divorce but strangely, the two soon came together to form the government in Maharashtra.

Ever since, the Congress and NCP have been together in Maharashtra while the coalition came alive at the Centre when Congress trounced BJP in 2004. Pawar has been a senior minister with agriculture portfolio in the UPA regimes led by Manmohan Singh.

Read More..

Vt. lye victim gets new face at Boston hospital

BOSTON (AP) — The 2007 chemical attack left the Vermont nurse unrecognizable to anyone who knew her.

But now Carmen Blandin Tarleton's face has changed again following a facial transplant this month.

Doctors at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston said Wednesday that the 44-year-old's surgery included transplanting a female donor's facial skin to Tarleton's neck, nose and lips, along with facial muscles, arteries and nerves.

"I know how truly blessed I am, and will have such a nice reflection in the mirror to remind myself what selfless really is," Tarleton wrote on her blog Wednesday.

The Thetford, Vt., woman suffered burns on more than 80 percent of her body and was blinded after her estranged husband attacked her with a baseball bat and doused her with lye in 2007.

Tarleton, who once worked as a transplant nurse, has undergone more than 50 surgeries since the attack, including work to restore some of her vision.

The latest surgery took 15 hours and included a team of more than 30 medical professionals. The lead surgeon, Bohdan Pomahac, called her injuries among the worst he's seen in his career.

"Carmen is a fighter," the doctor said Wednesday. "And fight she did."

Pomahac's team has performed five facial transplants at the hospital. He said the patient is recovering very well and is in great spirits as she works to get stronger.

He said she was very pleased when she saw her face for the first time, and that her appearance will not match that of the late donor's face.

"I think she looks amazing, but I'm biased," he said with a smile.

The donor's family wants to remain anonymous, but released a statement through a regional donor bank saying that her spirit would live on through Tarleton and three other organ recipients.

The estranged husband, Herbert Rodgers, pleaded guilty in 2009 in exchange for a prison sentence of at least 30 years.

Read More..

Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions.

"There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."

With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among a small chorus of conservatives saying bring on the cuts.

Read more: Bernanke on Sequester Cuts: Too Much, Too Soon

Lucas cited duplicative equipment purchases, military-run golf courses and lavish food on larger bases -- unlike the chow he endured at a combat operations post in Afghanistan with about 120 other soldiers.

"These guys would have very good food, and I'm talking almost like a buffet style, shrimp and steak once a week, ice cream, all this stuff," Lucas said. "They had Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and McDonald's. And I said to myself, 'Do we really need this?'"

Lucas and AFP would like to see the sequester modified, with federal agencies granted more authority to target the cuts and avoid the more dire consequences. But the group wants the cuts to happen.

"We're very supportive of the sequestration cuts but would prefer to see more targeted cuts at the same level," said the group's spokesman, Levi Russell.

As President Obama and his Cabinet members are sounding the sequester alarm bells, AFP's willingness shows that not everyone is running for the hills.

Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo

Speaker Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass' Watch Video

Sequester Showdown: Automatic Spending Cuts Loom Watch Video

President Obama Details Consequences of Sequester Cuts Watch Video

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

Obama traveled to Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday to speak at a shipyard about cuts and layoffs to defense contractors. In his most recent weekly radio address, he told Americans that the Navy has already kept an aircraft carrier home instead of deploying it to the Persian Gulf. And last week, he spoke before national TV cameras at the White House, warning that first responders would be laid off.

Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano has warned that the sequester will "leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks." Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned that air travel will back up after the Federal Aviation Administration furloughs air traffic controllers. And the heads of 18 other federal agencies told Congress that terrible things will happen unless the sequester is pushed off.

Some Republicans have accused the president of scaremongering to gin up popular support for tax hikes. Obama has warned of calamity and demanded compromise in the next breath, and a few Republicans have rejected this as a false choice.

Read more: Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass'

"I don't think the president's focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "For 16 months, the president's been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill."

After Obama spoke to governors at the this week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Jonathan Karl outside the White House that the president is exaggerating the sequester's consequences.

"He's trying to scare the American people," Jindal said. "He's trying to distort the impact."

Read More..

Oscars host says "no way" doing it again

LOS ANGELES: Oscars host Seth MacFarlane said Tuesday there is "no way" he will do the show again, after his performance was widely criticized as offensive and dull.

The "Family Guy" creator insisted it was fun to have hosted the 85th Academy Awards on Sunday, despite media and online critics panning the show, notably for jokes about actresses' breasts and Jews in Hollywood.

The choice of MacFarlane as Oscars host was seen as the latest attempt to attract younger viewers by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the august industry body which organizes Tinseltown's biggest awards show.

Viewing figures suggested that may have worked -- the US domestic audience was up 11 percent, to just over 40 million, according to the Nielsen media analysis and polling company.

But MacFarlane posted a Twitter exchange with a fan saying he won't do it again. "RT @CrusePhoto: @SethMacFarlane Would you host the #Oscars again if asked? // No way. Lotta fun to have done it, though," he tweeted.

The comic, who also created foul-mouthed movie bear Ted, had said before the show that he would probably not do it again, telling an interviewer last week: "Even if it goes great, I just don't think that I could do this again.

"It's just too much with everything else that I have to do. I'm happy to be doing it and I will be thrilled to have done it, assuming I get out of there in one piece, but I really think this is a one-time thing for me."

Critics slammed MacFarlane's opening segment as over-long -- and in particular blasted a song called "We Saw Your Boobs," which listed the actresses who had appeared topless on-screen.

A sketch featuring Ted provoked some of the harshest attacks, notably for jokes about Jewish control of Hollywood. The Anti-Defamation League, an anti-Semitism watchdog, blasted them as "offensive and not remotely funny."

On his Twitter feed Tuesday, MacFarlane also posted a link to an "interesting press article about the press anger over the Boobs song," and in another tweet noted: "My cat said the show went well."

-AFP/ac

Read More..

PDP’s Mufti joins chorus of demand for Afzal body

SRINAGAR: Former Union minister and Jammu and Kashmir's main Opposition PDP's patriarch Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has expressed solidarity with the crowded corner that is asking for the dead body of Afzal Guru. The ruling National Conference, a coalition government between the NC and the Congress, has already pressed for the return of the mortal remains of Guru, hanged inside Tihar jail on February 9.

In a letter to PM Manmohan Singh, the former CM of J&K said, "I request you to take necessary measures to accommodate the wishes of the people of the state and a majority of them in the country to have Afzal Guru's remains returned to his family for the last rites and try to retrieve whatever little can be of the trust of the people in Kashmir."

Mufti added: "I am writing this letter after an agonising fortnight that, in my opinion, witnessed all the effort at rebuilding a relationship of trust between Kashmir and the rest of the country almost evaporate into thin air. The manner in which Mohammad Afzal Guru was executed in secrecy and very obvious unholy haste is not just another hugely negative reference point in our painful history, but it could have the potential to redefine the very nature of how the people here would view their status within the Union. And I am deeply anxious about its possible fallout on our younger generations who had been struggling to come out of a nightmarish experience of life marked by blood and tragedy."

"Never in a democracy of our size and quality is a convict culled out of a queue from serial number 28 and sent to the gallows. Never is a dying convict denied a last meeting with his family. Never is a condemned man denied what is now established as a last chance to seek judicial intervention after spending 12 years in jail. The people of Kashmir felt he was hanged because the noose fitted only the neck of a man of Afzal's description, and given the sad history of the state's association with the Union, they easily relate themselves with his fate," the letter said.

Agencies, meanwhile, reported that Guru had in a letter to the editor of a local Urdu weekly over four years ago written that there was no need to be ashamed of the December 13 attack on Parliament, but had stopped short of owning any responsibility for it. Guru had addressed Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin and said "I request Salahuddin to not call the attack of December 13 as a conspiracy. It pains my heart. The attacks are related to the Kashmir issue. If the attack was a conspiracy, then the whole struggle is a conspiracy. We should not be ashamed of December 13."

Editor Shabnum Qayoom was quoted as saying: "I used to receive his (Guru's) letters and articles, so this was nothing new. The handwriting is the same as the previous letters. I do not care if people believe it to be authentic or not." Asked why he did not publish the letter for four years, he said he did not deem it appropriate. "I believe he was swept by emotions. He was not involved but he thought that as there was no way for escape, why not accept and achieve martyrdom. I did not think it was appropriate to publish the letter at that time as it might have been taken as evidence against him, but now that he is no more, I went ahead with it," he said.

Read More..

FDA halts Amgen study after teen patient death

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health regulators say they have halted Amgen's studies of its thyroid drug Sensipar after the death of a 14-year-old patient in a company trial.

The Food and Drug Administration says it is gathering information about the death, but has shut down all studies of the drug in children.

Sensipar is approved for adults to treat over-activity of the parathyroid gland. Amgen Inc. had been studying the drug to see whether it works in children.

The FDA says in a statement it is unclear whether Amgen's drug had a role in the patient's death, but it is reminding doctors to prescribe it carefully.

The agency says doctors should monitor patients' calcium levels to make sure they don't fall to dangerous levels.

Read More..

Boehner Pressures Dems to Get 'Off Their...'

Feb 26, 2013 12:48pm

House Speaker John Boehner used some choice words to pressure Senate Democrats to avert the looming sequester — $85 billion of arbitrary across-the-board cuts — insisting that “the House has done its job” and the burden to offer an alternative before the cuts strike Friday is on the president’s party.

“We have moved the bill in the House twice,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something.”

House Republicans voted twice during the 112^th Congress to narrowly pass legislation to offset sequestration with alternative savings, but those measures languished in the Senate and expired with the end of the session.

Read More About Sequestration

Boehner also criticized President Obama for taking a Virginia road trip “to use our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

“I don’t think the president’s focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester,” he said. “For 16 months, the president’s been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill.”

Considering Republicans have not acted in the current session of Congress on any legislation to replace the sequester, House Democrats question whether there is sufficient support to pass the old GOP proposal.

“I don’t think I need to give the Speaker a lesson in legislating or how government runs, but whatever was done last year that didn’t get signed into law has evaporated. It is gone. It does not exist,” California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said today. “This is a new year, a new session of Congress and it’s time for everyone to get to work.”

Boehner deflected a question whether he believes his weakened majority could pass the Republican bill again, and returned his attention to pushing for a vote in the Senate.

“It’s time for the Senate to act. It’s not about the House,” he responded. “We’ve acted.”

Related: Sequester Timeline – When Will Cuts Kick In?

“Where’s the president’s plan to avoid the sequester? Have you seen one? I haven’t seen one. All I’ve heard is that he wants to raise taxes again. Where’s the president’s plan? Where’s the Senate Democrat plan? I want to see it.”

Senate leaders are expected to introduce and vote on their respective plans later this week, perhaps by Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Congressional Republicans of being “part of the problem” in finding a solution to the upcoming cuts, pressing for new tax increases to help offset the sequester.

“We want to work with Republicans to come to a balanced responsible way to reduce this sequester, the impact of it.  My republican colleagues are standing in the way,” Reid, D-Nev., said on the Senate floor. “They only want cuts and more cuts.”

Related: States Prepare for Sequester

Although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he is not interested in a last-minute deal, Boehner said “If the Senate acts, I’m sure the House will act quickly.”

The House is meeting for legislation business today, although no action to avert the sequester is expected. The House also meets Wednesday and Thursday, but is currently not expected to be in session on Friday.

ABC News’ Arlette Saenz contributed to this report

Read More..

Italy election forecasts point to political gridlock

ROME (Reuters) - Conflicting early forecasts of the result of Italy's election on Monday raised the specter of deadlock in parliament that could paralyze a new government and re-ignite the euro zone crisis.

Officials from both center and left warned that such gridlock could make Italy ungovernable and force new elections.

Opinion polls have long pointed to the center-left of Pier Luigi Bersani winning the lower house, but projections from RAI state television showed Silvio Berlusconi's center right in front in the Senate - which has equal lawmaking power - but unable to form a majority.

RAI showed the center-left well short of a majority in the Senate even in coalition with Monti, who was seen slumping to only 19 out of 315 elected Senators against a massive 65 for the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comedian Beppe Grillo.

Senate votes are counted before the lower house.

The latest projections ran counter to earlier telephone polls that showed the center left taking a strong lead in the Senate as well as the lower house.

Italian financial markets took fright after rising earlier on hopes for a stable and strong center-left led government, probably backed by outgoing technocrat premier Mario Monti.

Such government is seen by investors as the best guarantee of measures to combat a deep recession and stagnant growth in the euro zone's third largest economy, which is pivotal to stability in the currency union.

Berlusconi's declared aim is to win enough power in the Senate to paralyze a center-left administration.

The benchmark spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their German equivalent widened from below 260 basis points to above 280 and the Italian share index lost all its previous gains.

"These projections suggest that we are heading for an ungovernable situation", said Mario Secchi, a candidate for Monti's centrist movement.

Stefano Fassina, chief economic official for Bersani's center-left, said: "The scenario from the projections we have seen so far suggest there will be no stable government and we would need to return to the polls."

The earlier telephone polls on Sky and Rai television after voting ended at 3 p.m. (1400 GMT/9 a.m. ET) had shown the center left 5-6 points ahead of the center right in both Senate and lower house, with Grillo taking third place.

Adding to the confusion, official results from more than 50 percent of polling stations showed the center-left ahead with 32.7 percent against 29.5 for the center-right in the Senate race. The partial official count is often not representative because of the order in which votes are counted regionally.

Italy's electoral laws guarantee a strong majority in the lower house to the party or coalition that wins the biggest share of the national vote.

However the Senate, elected on a region-by-region basis, is more complicated and the result will turn on four key battleground regions. Projections from LA 7 showed Berlusconi winning in three of them: Lombardy, Sicily and Campania.

A Sky television projection showed him strongly ahead in the rich northern region Lombardy, which returns the largest number of Senators, with 38.8 percent against 27.6 for the center left.

BITTER CAMPAIGN

A bitter campaign, fought largely over economic issues, has made some investors fear a return of the kind of debt crisis that took the euro zone close to disaster and brought the technocrat Monti to office, replacing the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, in 2011.

Monti helped save Italy from a debt crisis when Rome's borrowing costs were spiraling out of control, but the polls and projections suggested few Italians now see him as the savior of the country, in its longest recession for 20 years.

A surge in protest votes for Grillo's 5-Star Movement had raised uncertainty about the chances of a stable government that could fend off the danger of a renewed euro zone crisis.

Grillo's movement rode a huge wave of voter anger about both the pain of Monti's austerity program and a string of political and corporate scandals. It had particular appeal for a frustrated younger generation shut out of full-time jobs.

"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old Rome lawyer who voted for 5-Star.

"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited."

Bad weather, including heavy snow in some areas, was thought to have hampered the turnout in Italy's first post-war election to be held in winter. This could have favored the center left, whose voters tend to be more committed than those on the right, which has strong support among older people.

Berlusconi, a 76-year-old media tycoon, pledged sweeping tax cuts and accused Monti of being a puppet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a media blitz that halved the lead of the center left in opinion polls since the start of the year.

Whatever government emerges will inherit an economy that has been stagnant for much of the past two decades and problems ranging from record youth unemployment to a dysfunctional justice system and a bloated public sector.

(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei, Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Philippa Fletcher)

Read More..

US special forces told to leave key Afghan province

KABUL: Afghanistan's president has ordered US special forces to leave a strategic province as he seeks tighter control over Afghan militia, exacerbating tensions before the 2014 withdrawal of NATO troops.

Hamid Karzai on Sunday gave American special forces two weeks to pull out of Wardak, a hotbed of Taliban activity on the doorstep of Kabul, accusing Afghans they work with of torture and murder that has incited local hatred.

It remained unclear what led Karzai to issue the order, two US officials said. "We're not aware of any incident that would have generated this kind of response," one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

At a news conference, spokesman for the US-led NATO mission Brigadier General Gunter Katz said: "We're looking at those allegations, we didn't find any evidence and we will talk to our colleagues and Afghan partners to find a solution."

The Pentagon confirmed that a special panel of Afghan officials and officers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were looking into Karzai's allegations.

"We're trying to seek clarity from the government of Afghanistan," spokesman George Little told reporters.

Asked if the United States would pull out its elite special operations units from the province, Little said: "It's premature to speculate on what the outcome of our discussions would be."

Wardak is a deeply troubled flashpoint where a Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban in August 2011, killing eight Afghans and 30 Americans, in the deadliest single incident for American troops in the entire war.

Analysts said the order underscored Kabul's growing distrust of international troops and their desire to control local militia, who are trained by the Americans but operate without government control in the war against the Taliban.

Relations between Karzai and Washington have long been troubled, and with the bulk of NATO's 100,000 combat soldiers due to leave and the Afghan president to step down next year, there is huge uncertainty about the future.

"It appears to be an on-the-spot, emotional decision, based on a long-standing frustration that there are forces... Afghan and international, that are uncontrollable," said Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

The New York Times quoted Afghan officials as saying the order was taken as a last resort after they had tried and failed to get the coalition to cooperate with an investigation into claims of murder, abduction and torture.

The presidency accused armed individuals working with US special forces of "harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people".

It cited, for example, a student who was taken away at night from his home and two days later was found dead with torture wounds and his throat cut.

Kabul did not specify which groups were responsible, but the United States is understood to have trained a variety of local militias, a number of which reportedly operate beyond the control of the Afghan government.

Karzai's order was issued amid sensitive discussions over the size and role of a residual force that could remain in Afghanistan after 2014 to focus on training and counter-terrorism operations.

Kabul and Washington are still negotiating an agreement on the legal status that could allow an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 American troops to remain.

On February 16, Karzai also restricted Afghan forces from calling in NATO air strikes -- an important weapon in the fight against insurgents -- amid concern over civilian casualties.

Some say the latest order exemplifies a conflict that many Afghans feel towards foreign troops -- that they are needed to counter the Taliban, but that civilian casualties and detentions can also make them part of the problem.

A spokesman for Wardak's governor said local residents have complained for two and a half months about US special forces and "their illegal Afghan armed forces arresting, torturing and even killing villagers".

"We want our Afghan security forces to take control of this province and replace these US special forces," the spokesman, Ataullah Khogyani, told AFP.

In the neighbouring province of Ghazni, dozens of protesters shut down the Kabul-Kandahar highway for around three hours, accusing the US-trained Afghan Local Police (ALP) of harassment and beatings, officials and witnesses said.

The ALP is often accused of thuggery and operating outside the law, and its reputation was further damaged on December 24 when an officer shot dead five of his colleagues.

-AFP/ac

Read More..